NXR Podcast·Feb. 28, 2023·THEOLOGY APPLIED - Tim Keller’s Problem Isn’t His Embrace Of Abraham Kuyper, It’s His Embrace Of Karl Marx | with David McLeod & Chris Hwang·
Pastor Joel Webin, David McLeod, and Chris Hwang critique Tim Keller's alleged embrace of Karl Marx over Abraham Kuyper, arguing his "third wayism" compromises biblical truth. They reject Keller's apologetics-focused approach in favor of post-millennial hope, launching Every Good Work to produce high-quality art like "The Conquering King." This project demonstrates that Christians must build God-honoring alternatives rather than merely boycotting culture, proving truth and beauty are inseparable tools for reclaiming society. [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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Shadow Banning and Keller's Legacy00:15:05
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The problem with Timothy Keller is not that he's embraced Abraham Kuyper, but that sadly, at least at some level, he seems to have embraced Karl Marx.
Kuyperianism is not the problem.
The problem is Marxism.
This is something that I hope, especially, some of my Baptist friends may listen to and might at least consider that Abraham Kuyper is not the primary.
Problem.
The sentiment of engaging all of life with all of Christ is not the issue.
The issue is are we actually engaging all of life, every realm of life, with all of Christ or some of Christ and some of a progressive, neo Marxist, godless pagan idea?
That's what we're going to address in this episode with two special guests, David McLeod and Chris Huang.
Tune in now, applying god's word to every aspect of life.
This is theology applied.
All right, welcome back to another episode of theology applied.
I am your host, pastor Joel Webin, with Right Response Ministries, and in this episode i'm privileged to welcome not one, but two special guests to the show.
We have, Chris Huong and David Mccloud.
Would you guys go ahead and just share a little bit about yourselves, and then we'll get into some Tim Keller stuff, as promised, as the title showcases.
We're going to talk about how all three of us in different ways were shaped by Tim Keller, how we came to eventually realize the problems with Keller, how we overcompensated, but then came back and saw some things that are actually good that the church, even the conservative evangelical realm, has thrown out the baby with the bathwater, and it's actually creating some serious problems that we want to address.
So before we hop into all of that, first, let's just welcome our guest.
Could you guys, Chris and David, tell our listeners a little bit about yourselves?
Hey guys, I'm Chris Wong and I'm really thrilled to be a part of this community, Joel.
I work in New York City for, gosh, 12, 13, 14 years of my life.
Worked on Wall Street for a few years.
And then from there, joined a startup where I helped build that business for over a decade.
We sold that business, had a brief stint at a public technology company.
And then, as of now, I'm the co founder of Every Good Work with my business partner.
And artist David, and I'm also advising startups as well.
Great.
So, as, yeah, there's a lot to talk about.
Go ahead, David.
Go ahead.
Well, I'm an artist.
I've been an artist essentially my entire life.
I grew up in Birmingham.
I grew up in the PCA, kind of at the epicenter of the founding of the PCA in the 70s.
I'm a child of the early 80s.
Grew up with great Christian family, went to school, studied art, and have been a portrait painter and painting for galleries and personal collectors for about two decades now.
Awesome.
That's so interesting.
Yeah.
So I'm excited about this episode.
And our listeners, you should be excited about this episode because part of what we're going to be talking about is this all of Christ for all of life, this Kuiperian mantra.
Abraham Kuiper, he's the guy who was famous for saying, there's not one. square inch of all the world that Christ doesn't cry out, mine.
You guys have heard me use this analogy or illustration several times, but we don't want to do the Mufasa and Simba Lion King routine where they go up to the Pride Rock and Simba's looking at this kingdom that he's going to inherit and Mufasa, his father, says, everything that the light touches is going to be your kingdom.
And Simba responds by saying, but what about that dark, shadowy place?
We don't want to do that as Christians and say, well, that dark, shadowy place, that's politics or that dark, shadowy place, that's art.
That dark shadowy place, that's culture, that's medicine, that's science, that's no, no, no, it all belongs to Jesus.
And so basically the team that we have on the show today is we've got Chris and David, we've got the business guru, and we've got the artist.
And so we're going to be looking at markets, we're going to be looking at economics, we're going to be looking at art and culture and painting and talking about why business is corrupt and art sucks.
And it's because of a rejection of Christ and how to fix those things.
But the first thing that we want to look at is Part of the problem has to do with Tim Keller and not saying that it's exclusively his fault or that he's the first guy to make this mistake.
But the reason why we're going to address it from Keller is because all three of us have been shaped by Keller particularly.
And so I want us to talk about that.
But then also because Keller is not the original failure in this arena that we're about to discuss.
But he's probably one of the most notable guys today.
And so what we want to talk about is this all of Christ mantra, redeeming that.
But the problem, just to stop beating around the bush, the problem is that Keller actually did that and does that really well.
Keller is a Kyperian.
And I think there's a lot of guys who have watched Keller's deconstruction, his theological evolution becoming more and more politically and culturally progressive and compromising on more and more conservative biblical theological issues.
And I know, at least in the Baptist world, I have a lot of Baptist friends.
pastors, podcasters, you name it, authors, they think that the problem with Keller and the Achilles heel that led to his progressive, theological, progressive downfall is his embrace of Abraham Kuyper.
And it's not.
The problem with Keller is not Kuyper.
The problem with Keller is that he's a Marxist.
That's the problem.
And so all that being said, let me throw it to you, Chris, and then you throw it to David.
But talk a little bit about the ways that you were shaped by Tim Keller, the good, the bad, the ugly.
Yeah, I mean, I remember being on my campus, and that was when he wrote, I believe, his apologetics on what was it?
The Reason for God.
The Reason for God.
Yeah, I remember that.
He was on a book tour.
I had lunch with him with a group of college students.
And he really radically changed my understanding of the gospel.
He spoke in a language that I would say really was attractive.
He had a different type of way of communicating.
I think he was very gifted in that.
I think, obviously, adding his intellectualism was also very attractive.
And so, really, I just kind of fell in love with the whole Tim Keller mission and what he was up to.
And I would say that the impact that he made was he really was able to communicate the gospel.
I think that was something good, and we should praise God for that.
There's a lot of good stuff about that.
I think the really bad stuff that I ended up embracing as a disciple of Tim Keller was I ended up nuancing everything.
I think C.S. Lewis, I believe it's C.S. Lewis, where he said something where, you know, if you start seeing through everything, at some point you see nothing at all.
And in many ways, I kind of became that as a Christian.
And I think when you live that out, where you start nuancing everything, you start losing spine.
Right.
You start losing witness.
You start losing the very power of why the Holy Spirit indwells inside of the believers.
It's boldness.
So, so I think I became a, I almost, I wasn't, I wasn't, I would say I wasn't a person who mastered apologetics.
I ended up becoming a person over time who apologized a lot.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
So there's a lot of practicing sodomites that we were friends with.
Um, And we loved, right?
But I found myself, in terms of the most effective witnessing that I could do, was number one, practicing hospitality.
But whenever we're talking about the gospel, it was always something about me trying to point a finger with contempt at those self righteous Christians.
Right.
And little did I realize that those self righteous Christians were actually Christians who were being faithful to the text, right?
They actually were being faithful to the Lord and they were willing to take.
Nasty stuff from even people like myself, right?
And they were willing to be faithful.
And so I think for me over time, I became that winsome intellectual guy who spoke poetically.
But then when you double click on does this guy have any substance?
Does he have any rock?
Is there anything that he's standing on?
I would say people would not really know.
So I would say, in short, that's a little bit of how Tim Keller has impacted me positively, but also a lot of negative too.
Right.
And you, Chris, were, correct me if I'm wrong, but you were a part, a core member of an Acts 29 church in Manhattan because you lived there.
Yep.
And that church, the pastor there was intimately involved.
He was a part of, how would you describe it?
Yeah, he was part of a cohort, had personal discipleship with Tim Keller.
Gotcha.
Yeah, I would say Tim Keller was very much like the mayor of New York City when it came to church planting, right?
You kind of get the blessings of being a part of that ministry, being a part of, Some sort of leadership training, pastoral training.
And yeah, so was definitely involved.
And yeah, Tim Keller was always just a subway right away.
So, my friends' roommates were all part of it.
So, yeah, definitely had a lot of involvement with Tim.
So, you were part of the 829 church, but your pastor, in many ways, was discipled with other pastors in a cohort with Tim Keller.
But you had friends who were part of Tim Keller's church.
You would attend it sometimes.
And it's funny because you were part of an Acts 29 church, and you know, I was an Acts 29 pastor.
And a lot of people don't understand, like, I remember going to Acts 29 conferences, and they would literally call, like, it wasn't, they would say it out loud.
They would say, uh here's, you know, every single lecture, you know, um plenary speaker, you know would, would give their their speech and uh, and the quotations would be, you know, 50 of the quotations would all be Keller quotes and they would, and they would call him Yoda.
So, even so, even though, like Keller wasn't ever in Acts 29, people underestimate uh, the the extent of his influence like acts 29.
I would say acts 29 has been impacted more by Keller than it has by Champ.
Oh yeah, I would say Joe, like how many times?
And you probably even preached this message where it's like, Everything needs to end with, like a gospel, right?
The gospel, uh, hook.
Yeah, you're not allowed, you're not allowed, you're too broken, you're too sinful, you don't even realize it.
And how many times have we not been allowed by maybe this is a counseling session between us, Joel?
Um, but but no, I'm I can talk about all that stuff, but yeah, I'm being very serious.
Like, how many times do we just feel immobilized as a body?
Like, we're not allowed.
To have dominion.
We're not allowed to conquer.
Those are actually sensitive words that you should be careful, Chris, using, even though they're very biblical words, right?
Right, because it's the Keller gospel twist, is what we would sometimes call the Keller gospel twist, is that essentially what it is, is that the whole sermon leading up to that gospel twist is a use of the law of God, but exclusively, only ever in the first use of the law.
The first use of the law is that it functions as a mirror.
It reveals to us the holiness of God and by way of consequence, our sinfulness and all the ways that we fall short and that we will never, ever be able to measure up to God's standard of holiness, which is true, right?
All of us sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
No man will be saved by works as done unto the law.
All that's true.
But the Reformed tradition is not just one use of the law.
The third use of the law is that for the Christian, the law, it doesn't just reveal our need for a savior, but having by grace through faith alone in Christ received a savior.
The law in its third use is now a lamp unto our feet, a light unto our path.
It's a guide.
It's a compass.
It shows us where to go in the process of sanctification, being formed more into the image of Christ, but also growing in godly dominion.
And guys, you don't like the word dominion?
Okay, then in place, you should like it because it's a biblical word.
But just in place the word stewardship, stewarding God's world.
That is dominion.
So all that being said, Keller was good with using the law in its first use.
That is a legitimate use of the law of God.
People, you know, Spurgeon said, a man cannot appreciate the beauty of Christ unless he first come to see the need for Christ.
And the law reveals to us our need for Christ.
But the law, having received Christ, reveals to us where to go, how to grow in holiness, but how to grow in holiness for the purpose of glorifying God by exercising Christian stewardship and dominion in the tangible physical world and not just in the 17th dimension.
And that's where Keller we'll get there.
David, we'll go to David, but we'll get there.
No, Chris, Joel, awesome insight.
I'm probably not going to be quite as eloquent or long-winded as either of you guys.
That's fine.
Offense, Boldness, and the Gospel00:02:57
Nobody's as long-winded as me.
Until we get to art.
It's a great compliment.
In which case, I can just go on forever.
Great.
Yeah, my experience with color was very positive for a very long time.
And I say that even looking back, that I still see it as positive during that era of my life.
As Chris said, similar story heavily impacted on my understanding of justification, need for a savior.
The beauty of the gospel, my interaction.
I didn't read a whole lot of Keller books, so maybe that's why.
Sorry, maybe that's why it's still also so positive to me, my history.
I remember something about a forgetfulness book.
It's a tiny little book.
Blessed Forgetfulness, the humility thing.
Don't think less of yourself, but think of yourself less.
Yeah, yes.
He spoke at a church in Nashville.
when I was either newly married or a college student, so somewhere around 23, 24, 25.
And he just, like Chris said, he had just a great way of delivering, making very apparent biblical truths to my modern ears.
So talking to mothers in the audience about how if they don't like doing the dishes, you know, changing your motivation to a Christ-like motivation.
And again, looking back, I can see how there was a little bit of jujitsu going on in order to always make everything kind of like the third way.
There's this way, which is this, the bad ditch, and there's this way, which is also a bad ditch, but this is the right way.
And it's like walking a tightrope.
You eventually You eventually look silly because you're just trying to balance, and you can't possibly say one thing to offend these people or another thing to offend these people.
And in application in my own life, I mean, being an artist in a very broken world, in a broken world, in a broken country, in a broken field, the arts, being able to proclaim the gospel in a way that is.
in your face or winsome or anything is nearly impossible.
And I found myself just being silenced whenever the topic would come up.
The Trap of Third Wayism00:04:39
There were times when I would be more bold, but it certainly wasn't because I had a great Tim Keller quote in the back of my mind to pull out, to really convince my pagan friends in New York that they should start going to Redeemer.
It was more boots on the ground, very basic stuff about how sad they clearly were and how fulfilling my life in Christ is.
Yeah, that's really good.
And I like that you brought up the third wayism because that's just a classic.
So you got the classic Tim Color gospel twist.
First use of the law exclusively, never the third.
And then at the end, hey, but thank God for Jesus.
So you're lawless.
You've broken the law.
You'll never be able to keep the law.
Don't even bother trying, but Jesus kept the law in your place.
Praise God.
Let's go home.
So that's a classic, you know, but the third way thing is a classic too, right?
You know, so there's Republicans and there's Democrats and then there's Jesus.
And what's implied in that, the problem with that is because the Republican Party and the Republican platform is certainly not synonymous with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Or for that matter, not that it even should be, but what it should be in line with as a ministry of justice with the civil masterate, it should be in line not with the gospel, but with the law of God.
And it's not in line with that either.
So the Republican Party is not synonymous with biblical law.
and justice.
But what you do, here's what you do, it's this subtle, crafty jujitsu, like you said, David, is that it's not even what you're saying out loud, but by way of implication, what you're implying by your silence, and I think an intentional and careful, crafty silence, is you're saying, well, republicanism isn't Christian, and Democrats aren't Christian.
And then what you're implying is that they're both wrong, but that they're both equally wrong.
Which is not true.
When you have one party that recently had 49 out of 50 representatives vote to codify Roe into law in all 50 states for abortion, the murder of the unborn child, to be legal all the way through nine months of pregnancy for any reason at any point in any state.
And you have one party that has 49 out of 50 people voting for that to be law.
And then another party that's voting against it.
These things are not equal.
They're just not.
And so that third wayism is really, I think, just, it's really, it's a euphemism for the biblical word, which is compromise.
Because what you have is, you know, another classic color thing was contextualize the gospel, contextualizing.
Well, you know, and he would point to Paul, you know, like in Athens, you know, or Mars Hill.
You know, I see you are a very religious people.
You know, you have all these idols built to all these gods, but I noticed one over here built to the unknown God.
I've come to make him known, to reveal, you know, who this God is.
And Keller would really emphasize that text, which is a biblical text, and there's lots of truth to be preached from it.
But he would emphasize it over and against other texts, overemphasize it.
And this whole contextualizing of the gospel, what I realized, and it took me a long time to realize this, but what I finally came to see was when Tim Keller contextualizes the gospel, what he means is he means being very acutely aware of the culture that you're preaching the gospel in, and then taking the gospel, namely taking Christ, and instead of all of Christ for those people in their lives, you take the portions of Christ.
Now, being an expert in this particular culture, you take the particular portions of Christ that you think will be most palatable to this particular people.
And so it's actually some of Christ, part of Christ, a portion of Christ against the whole Christ, all of Christ, for these particular people.
And I can't remember who it was, but someone at some point correcting Keller on this, it was a podcast I was listening to, it was a few years back.
But it was so helpful.
He said, Yeah, Paul contextualized the gospel, but contextualization of the gospel in the mind of Paul and in the New Testament apostolic writings, what that always meant was being aware of the culture that you're in, their customs, their culture, those kinds of things, for the sake of making the gospel more clear, not less.
So to contextualize the gospel means to clarify the gospel, not to make it more ambiguous.
Secularism vs. Christ in Economics00:15:08
Right.
It's to clarify the offense of the gospel, right?
Exactly.
So, yeah.
It's to make it what it is, which is a sword, and not what it isn't, which is syncretism.
Yeah.
I think that's a good point because for me, what I was going to say was it was really weird for me.
It was almost like the power of the gospel had to submit to secularism.
You know what I'm saying?
That's right.
It's almost like the gospel was not powerful enough to chop off the head of an impotent God of secularism, which is so impotent.
And yet, for some reason, we needed to be shrewd and intellectual and find the compatible pieces of secularism and mix it.
Yeah.
And in many.
You said, David, yeah.
Go ahead.
No, go ahead, Joel.
Well, I was just saying finding those compat instead of instead of actually right like I think Phil Johnson said it like this like I want to engage culture He said, but I want I want to engage culture the way David engaged Goliath Yeah, he killed him right so it's like we want to engage secularism But we want to engage secularism with the mentality that it's a fight to the death.
That's right and and the reason why the left has been winning is because they play for keeps.
They know it's a fight to the death.
Right.
Exactly.
So when you just think you're sparring, you're wrestling, or you're just sitting down and having a charitable conversation and seeing how we can learn from each other, you know, and establishing this synchronization between secularism and finding, well, it can't all be bad.
Find the compatible pieces that might fit with Christianity and this principled pluralism, right?
A lot of this comes back to classical liberalism.
It comes back to misinterpretations and some of the negative things with John Locke and all these kinds of things.
When that's your mentality, that's a recipe for losing.
It's a loser mentality.
The left keeps winning because not because they had all the institutions.
They have them now.
But they got them.
They were at a massive deficit 40 years ago.
And yet now they're winning.
How?
Because they were scrappy, right?
Like when there's two guys fighting and one of them's a little scrawny dude, he knows he doesn't have the physical advantage.
So he's biting, scratching, punching.
Go, David.
Go for it.
We're playing to win.
Yes.
And guys like we could name a whole laundry list.
Of sort of wannabe conservatives, evangelicals who just want a seat at the table.
Right.
I think of these men as they see where the culture is going and they don't have the boldness to proclaim the actual truth to the enemy.
And as a result, they want to be, they want to have a seat at the table for now.
And then when things get really bad, they want to be the last against the wall.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And I think, and it's all for the sake of love.
Right.
And I think that's the, I think, I'm curious to hear your thoughts, Joel, like as a pastor, but since when can we not still be so burdened by love for our enemies?
Why can't we still be bold and actually believe that the gospel can destroy the enemy, but that it destroys the enemy and we welcome that enemy into?
The family of God.
Right.
Like, why does it have?
I think that's the biggest critique that I think is just a straw man.
David loves the lost.
You love the lost.
I love the lost.
But we're not going to compromise before the word of God and we're not going to compromise the glory of God.
Well, it's that very compromise that makes it ineffective.
If we are not bold in proclaiming the truth, then they're not going to be caught up in the stories we have to tell.
Because they think that their story is better than ours.
Their story goes along with the world that they see around them way better than ours does in most cases.
We have to call out these giants that are in the land for what they are.
And I think that's the most loving thing that we can do.
And if a world could see men with spine who believe more than ever that God is their Lord, Jesus Christ is Lord, but also see that we're willing to lay down our lives, right?
Because we love too.
Like there's something glorious, the lion and the lamb.
But I think for me, what was kind of the tipping point was Twitter.
Seeing how much I still believe, you know, I'm earnestly hoping, you know, Keller.
I love Keller.
I love him as someone who's learned so much.
But on Twitter, when you're convincing an entire generation that it's okay to vote, it's just so nuanced and so complex that it's okay to vote for people who love to murder babies.
That to me is insane.
There's something insane about that, right?
And I think.
You know, Lord have mercy on us.
And thank God for me, you know, praise God, I'm still repenting.
I was just like that.
So I completely understand it.
But the tipping point for me was they would point the fingers at the sheep.
Right.
Keller would be more focused on blasting his members, the Lord's sheep.
The Lord's, this is the blood was spilt for his sheep.
For their self righteousness or for their.
As if he knows they're all their hearts.
That's right.
And, you know, we can do our own name calling, Joel.
I know you've got an awesome video on who we have to be aware of.
But, I mean, Russell Moore, right?
There's all these people where you just look at what they're doing on Twitter.
They care more about bashing the church.
They punch right.
They tickle left.
They coddle the left, kowtow left.
And what that means, that's political, you know, cultural terms.
What it means in Christian terms is that they beat up Christians and a particular kind of Christian.
They beat up blue collar, salt of the earth.
average ordinary Christians.
The Christian who believes that God actually made the world in six literal days.
The Christian who believes that marriage is between a man and a woman and that gay marriage is a mirage and that it shouldn't be legal.
That's right.
The Christian who's such a primitive Neanderthal that he actually is ignorant enough to think that Christian nationalism might be biblical because Christ is king.
You know, the dumb Christian.
Keller laughs and mocks that person.
Russell Moore is laughing and mocking that person.
Beth Moore is laughing at and mocking that person.
And when I realized that Matt Chandler has laughed and mocked that person.
And when I realized that, that's when I left Acts 29.
I was like, I'm not going to give you my blood, my sweat, my tears, our money, our support.
No, because that person that you're mocking is the member in my church.
Amen.
That's right.
And it's me.
That's right.
And it's my wife.
And Lord willing, if he would be so gracious.
It's the kids that I'm raising.
I hope that my kids are your Neanderthal primitive Christians that believe that God created the world in six literal days and that Christ is king.
And that Jesus is Lord is the most political statement ever made in all the universe.
So no, I'm not going to help build and support your clout and your ministry that exists for mocking my future children.
No, I'm not going to participate in that.
And so all that being said, my point to segue here for us, my point is that like I had that experience, you guys had that experience, but then the next experience and the leg of my theological development as the Lord was in his sovereignty, sanctifying me, producing repentance for things that was wrong.
Well, part of the problem is that when I started seeing that, right, we left in 2018.
I took my church out of Acts 29, the church I was pastoring in California, because it was right after Eric Mason had wrote Woke Church.
You know and, and so ACTS 29 was getting, you know, Chandler had just made his his, you know um his, his notorious statement of you know, i'll take um a, a um African-american six on a scale one to ten instead of an Anglo seven.
Um, you know, and those, those kind of things were happening and that was Keller influence, and so when that happened, I moved out.
So this is 2018, and and when I took our church out of ACTS 29, ACTS 29 was very Kyperian again.
Um that, not everything about Abraham Kyper is great.
In fact, Abraham Kyper has a couple quotes about art that all three of us would strongly disagree with.
But when we're talking about, when we say Kyperianism, what the three of us mean and what Keller means, and we would agree with what he means about Kyper, and what, you know, the quintessential way that Kyperianism, the term is used in theological realms today, is simply meaning all of Christ for all of life.
That's what we mean by Kyperianism.
We don't mean prescribing to, just like Calvinism doesn't necessarily mean that you prescribe with everything in John Calvin's institutes, but it means primarily his take on soteriology.
Right that the five points of Calvinism as it refers to salvation, the sovereignty of god in election and salvation, that's Calvinism well, Kyperionism.
What we mean is all of Christ for all of life, the recognition um that yes um, the church is unique.
Christ is uniquely head of the church in the sense that the church is the only um, it's the only institution for which Christ died, the only entity for which Christ died, it's the only entity that is Christ's eternal bride.
Um, but Christ is head.
So he is uniquely head of the church, but he is not exclusively or merely head of the church, uniquely head of the church, but he is head of everything.
Caesar submits to God.
He's God's deacon.
God's servant.
So Christ is head of Caesar.
Christ is head of markets.
He's head of arts.
He's head of culture.
He's head of science.
He's every square inch.
That's the Kuiper sentiment when we say Kuiperianism.
And my point is, in 2018, pulling out of Acts 29, seeing the negative impact of Keller with compromise, becoming more and more culturally and theologically and politically progressive, those kind of things, you guys, me, we started pulling away from this.
And I don't want to put words in your mouth, but for myself, one of the things that I did is I threw out my Keller books.
I also threw out Kuiper.
And I looking, and it took me a couple of years.
It wasn't until probably about 2020 when all the stuff started going down with the branch COVIDians and the summer of love, where the country was on fire.
Those kind of things is what really started to wake me up where I realized, okay, wait a sec, wait a second.
Because I had thrown out Keller.
And I threw out Kuiper with him.
And my point is, because I thought the all of Christ for all of life, every square inch mentality, that's what would cause you to cozy up to culture, want a seat at the table, like you said, David, and start to make concessions and compromises.
But then I realized as I looked under the lid a little bit, took a closer look, I realized, no, no, no, it's not that Keller is Kuiperian.
It's that Keller is Marxist.
And I went back and started listening to Acts 29, you know, conference sessions that I had sat in.
you know, that I decided, man, I'm going to pull the church out.
And I realized, you know, like there were talks about how we should be more socialist in our economic, you know, framework as a country, because that's caring for the poor.
And I realized, wait a second, that's not Kuiper.
That's Christ has a stake in economics.
The problem is they're not applying Christ to economics.
They're applying Marx to economics.
And so then I went, you know, from Keller to like Kuiper sucks.
Let's go radical to kingdom.
I started looking at Van Druden and I was right there, you know, next to Escondido, Westminster.
And I started looking at like this.
Now it's just the church.
Let's just do the holy huddle.
Let's build the bunker and just practice the ordinary means of grace.
And Christ will, you know, he's going to return in 15, 20 minutes anyways.
So let's just do this and just worry about that.
And this whole, you know, we lose down here, as Brother MacArthur would say.
We lose down here.
And that's, you know, and so I embraced that.
And then I started to realize, you know, it was guys like Doug Wilson.
God bless him forever.
You know, it was that I started realizing, oh, there's actually a, the problem was not Kuiper.
The problem was, using a Kyperian lens, but marks and progressive things as the source instead of Kyperian lens with Christ as a source.
So it's not the all of life piece applying to all of life that's the problem.
It's the are you applying all of Christ piece?
Is it the biblical Christ, a biblical view of government, biblical view of economics, biblical view?
And that saved my ministry.
It revitalized everything.
It brought me into post-millennialism, theonomy, all these different things.
And it brought you guys.
It moved.
It caused me practically in terms of practical implications to move across the country and it did similar things.
This, this testimony that i'm sharing.
It did similar things with you guys and it caused you to move.
It caused you to to start a company, and that's what I want to talk about now, because what you guys are doing is it's it's so.
It's exactly the same as what i'm doing and entirely different at the same time.
I'm doing like podcasting and right response ministries and preaching but, but what we're doing, it's entirely different.
You're in the business realm, but it's 100 the same and, and The sense of that, Kyperion, all of Christ for all of life.
When I got that, I moved from California to Texas.
Chris, you moved from New York to Tennessee.
New York to Seattle.
No, I wanted more of an adventure.
New York to Seattle to Tennessee.
Oh, okay.
But yeah, so you moved to all the blue collar, primitive Neanderthal Christians who have the gall to believe the Bible, right?
Instead of being the sophisticated, snobbish kind of, you were like, I'm not, no, man, I've been arrogant.
What am I right?
I was raised in Texas and I thought like, no, I'm going to be sophisticated.
I'm going to, you know, and, and, and I, I've had to repent and be like, no, these people, some of them, sure, there's religious, you know, religiosity and self-righteous.
Some of that, everybody's a sinner.
But a lot of it was like, no, these are the salt of the earth.
These are some really sweet people that, that I took for granted because I thought I was too cool for school.
Repentance and Arrogant Maturity00:02:32
Yep.
David, how, how is, how's this coming back to Kuiper's good?
Marx is bad.
Let's apply all of Jesus to all of life.
How has that affected you in your personal life?
And then let's talk about you guys combined with your business endeavor.
Probably less of a drastic journey for me.
Although my moment of sort of upheaval, I guess it did happen.
It just wasn't necessarily along the same lines.
It wasn't post COVID, it was pre COVID.
And it wasn't necessarily because of Kuiper or not Kuiper.
In 2016, my wife and I moved our family from downtown Nashville, a mile from the Titans football stadium, to a 50-acre farm an hour south.
And it was the time right when she was quitting work with our church, which was a PCA church, mostly because she was having a baby, our third.
It was time for her to quit work, and our oldest was five and to be home with the kids.
And I don't know.
I mean, I don't have, like I said, I don't have quite as drastic of a journey with Keller and Kuyper.
Kuyper and Calvin, Kuyper's interpretation of Calvin has kind of always been on my radar.
And I don't think it's any fluke that we're all sort of similar ages.
I think that like coming into like some, I have a long way to go, but coming into some bit of maturity, having a, my oldest is nearly a teenager now.
And, you know, just the responsibilities, my wife and I will be married for 16 years in a couple of weeks.
You know, life has just gotten, I've just, I'm not a boy anymore.
I feel like a boy in many days.
But I don't know.
Is that, Yeah.
Yeah.
It sounds like from you, if my interpretation of what you just said is that Chris and I drank the Kool-Aid maybe a little bit more than you did.
In terms of the, you know.
I was going to say, Joel and I have more commiserating.
We went through more sprints.
Redeeming Art Through Regular Portraits00:06:57
That's what it was.
He's going to New York.
I'm going to California.
We're going to be sophisticated and influential and sit at the table and be nuanced and winsome and contextualize the gospel, a.k.a. make the gospel less clear so that the offense is removed.
And David was awesome.
That's what I'm saying.
No, I did have that.
That's every good work, man.
Great segue.
Exactly.
No, I did have that.
I showed my work in Manhattan in 2003.
Right, right.
Okay.
Gotcha.
I went there multiple times.
I had shows there.
I went and visited my art buddies there.
And, you know, so yeah, I thought, okay, I've got the keys to the kingdom.
I'm showing in the epicenter of the art world, or at least in America.
I can.
I can work my way and sort of avoid this.
The world that I was in was so pagan, and the way that I was going about it was just sort of pushing aside my personal convictions.
This work that we're doing now, so I've always done portraits, even during that time, because those gallery sales didn't pay the bills like I needed them to.
I've always done portraits, which is beautiful because I get to depict the image of God in a human face.
But this work that we're doing together is something that.
I did not see coming.
Chris might have, but we got to chatting one afternoon at his house and I told him about an idea to paint people doing regular things and I want to kind of redeem the art world.
And Chris was like, well, how do you feel about making a marketplace and like really democratizing this thing?
Like if you want to make it accessible, if you want to paint regular people, why don't we actually be able to sell the paintings to regular people?
And 30 minutes later, we were like already sort of drawing up.
There were no napkins, but the proverbial pin to napkin moment had happened.
Right.
In terms of the business model and what we wanted.
So with that, let's do, so this is different for my listeners.
You know, you'll probably recognize if you've been following Right Response for a while, I don't typically do this, but I think that this will be really special and unique.
So what I actually want to do at this point is I want to actually start showing some of the paintings that David's done.
from their website, Every Good Work, as we continue this conversation.
So we're going to pull this up and you're going to be able to see some of these paintings.
You're going to be able to see the quality of the craftsmanship with the paintings, but also just the website itself, this Christian excellence in everything.
And as we do this, real quick, what I'd like to do is I'd like to have Chris and David now actually reintroduce themselves.
So we kind of started as just normal guys in the church world, followers of Jesus, how we've been shaped by Keller negatively, positively, how we relearn from the scripture along the way and set some things right.
Personal testimony was kind of the first half of this episode.
But now I want you to hear the professional side of things.
I want you to actually hear Chris and David introduced in regards to this company that they've started that's significant, that it's impacted Right Response Ministries personally, even with our new studio and our set.
David's the guy who painted the painting that's right behind me on the wall.
So we're going to do all of that, new introductions, as you're being able to look at the website, looking at the paintings.
And I want you to hear because I want you to hear their testimony.
I want you to hear what they're doing.
But I want you to be inspired.
Chris and David are inspiring.
I want you to hear the inspiration because they've got a good work that they're doing.
But the Lord has prepared in advance a good work for you to do.
And it's not just the good works of putting sin to death, yes and amen, and sanctification, but good works in business, good works in arts, good works in the home, good works in every realm of life.
So Chris and David, would you guys just take a moment and read for our listeners your bios?
Okay, so yeah, as Joel has said, I'm David McLeod.
I'm an artist.
I grew up drawing and painting.
It wasn't until I studied with a portrait painter for a kind of an old world classical style apprenticeship for four years while I was also a college student that I got the passion and realized this is something that I wanted to do.
So I've just been an artist ever since, mostly painting portraits, but doing other things as well.
Like I said, I'm Chris, and with David, we founded Every Good Work, which we're excited to reveal this painting here shortly.
I think the biggest difference is on post mill, covenantal, really focused on building the kingdom from the bottom up outside of the walls of the church, outside of the walls of the family.
Of course, those are priorities, but I think we can talk about sort of how Every Good Work really synergizes with that change.
And then, yeah, like I said before, I worked on Wall Street for a few years.
That's where I cut my teeth in the media and entertainment space back in 2007, which was an interesting time for all of us.
And then from there, I decided to roll up my sleeves and figure out how to build businesses from scratch.
And so, I joined a small startup.
We raised a pretty significant round of venture capital.
We scaled the business and we sold it for a little over a couple hundred million dollars to a publicly traded competitor.
From there, I joined a public technology company and was very much introduced to how public company woke culture works.
I'm a master at that now.
And then the Lord did his work around that same period of time.
And it's been three years of repenting, three years of reforming, three years of God's goodness over David's life, over my life, and bringing us together.
I believe the Spirit's doing a wonderful work in a specific area in Tennessee, which, you know, that's a whole different topic.
But ultimately, you know, we're here to build, we're here to make a difference.
We believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and he's Lord over.
Yes.
He's Lord over business.
He's Lord over art.
Amen.
So, we just revamped our whole studio, which is kind of cool because I met you guys really around the same time that I was thinking about, you know, making these changes, revamping the studio, which a lot of that, here's one of the things that I think Christians get wrong.
And one of the hesitancies for other Christians, because so many Christians do get it wrong, there's a hesitancy to pursue Christian excellence in every realm of life because.
People will say it's vain.
They'll say it's frivolous.
Pursuing Christian Excellence Everywhere00:03:05
They'll say, why not?
You know, it should just be the gospel or it's just the content or it's just the, you know, it's just the message.
It's just the truth.
It's just, just give me the doctrine and give it to me from a webcam on your computer.
Don't spend a dime.
Don't, don't do anything for it to be, you know, aesthetically excellent and don't do anything.
And, and I just reject that because a lot of the message that I'm trying to convey to my listeners is not that everyone should, should, Should quit their job and become Christian podcasters, and not that everyone should quit their job and go to seminary and become pastors.
That one of the big theological messages that I'm trying to convey with Right Response Ministries, theology applied, right?
The show that we're doing right now, that's our flagship show.
Theology applied to what?
Right?
Applied to every realm of life.
So, a lot of what I'm trying to accomplish is I'm not trying to get a bunch of people to decide to be pastors.
Or to decide to be Christian podcasters, but to be Christians in every realm of life.
And because that's that all of Christ for all of life, Kyperion, post millennial, theonomic, restoring Christendom.
That's the big banner would be Christendom.
Christendom 2.0.
And because that's really the mission of Right Response Ministries, and that's the message I'm conveying, I realized that it was almost hypocritical and at least at minimum, maybe not hypocritical, maybe not malice of intent in my heart, but at least at minimum inconsistent.
Contradictory and confusing to the listener, and in the ministry and the message that I was trying to convey to say Christian excellence in all of life, um, and to do it with a blank white wall behind me and a webcam.
Um, and so, uh, we were like, Man, we want to do a studio, and I want it to look like Professor Xavier meets the Apostle Paul, slash, you know, whatever.
I want it to be like Ligonier, except I'm not as smart as Sproul, and that, you know, and everybody knows that that's fair.
Um, but, but, you know.
But presuppositional, so better apologetic.
But I want it to be like, you know, that's, but that's the style.
Now, with that, leading to you guys, I thought, um, I can't have a piece of wood, um, hanging that says there's no place like home, or you know, you know what I mean?
Like, I can't go to, um, I can't go to, uh, to Hobby Lobby, right?
Uh, no offense to deck this studio out to achieve what I'm trying to convey to everyone else.
And, and so then it's like, well, I don't even know anything about art.
And I don't know a painter.
And in God's happy, favorable providence, God sent you guys and you found me.
And I was like, yeah, I'll partner with you guys because this is exactly what I'm trying.
And so, all that being said, like, as we're pursuing excellence in all of life and applying all of Christ to all of life, part of that has to do with art.
Beyond Boycotts to Creative Hope00:11:52
And part of that has to do with good art.
Talk about that, guys.
Yeah, so totally agree.
If Christians aren't going to be making good things and buying good things, Then there aren't going to be people making good things that Christians like.
Like, if we want for there to be better things that glorify and honor God, then we need to be spending our money on good things.
Yeah.
Period.
We need to be hiring craftspeople and looking up.
I mean, it's fine to look up where your clothes came from and where the furniture came from and trying to orient all of our purchases around something that is God honoring.
Absolutely.
And if we just hold our pennies and save them, the world is just going to keep going.
It's just going to keep building.
It's just going to keep building up its own idols.
Christians, especially now, I think we've sort of come out of the haze of the last 50 years, really since post enlightenment, this has kind of been coming.
And that if we don't have an alternative, a better story to tell, we're just going to keep finding bad stories all over the place.
It's not okay just to, you know, turn off your Netflix or cancel Disney.
What are you going to read?
What are you going to watch?
What are you going to consume?
This is where.
What are you going to create?
What are you going to create?
And the creation is, it's everywhere because we are made in God's image.
We are sub creators.
We're going to be making things no matter what.
And we're going to be consuming things no matter what, which we have a small slice of that sub creator world and our company, Every Good Work, intends to make.
Art that is accessible to everyday people, not just paintings and drawings, but also in other fields as well as the business continues to grow.
Yeah.
Chris, would you give us a little rundown?
Yeah, yeah.
I was just going to say, I mean, that's very well put.
I think for us, like, we forget God is the best storyteller, right?
David already pointed out stories.
I think that was really captivating to us.
Like, God is an artist, God creates, God is a storyteller.
Going back to Kuiper and kind of recovering the wells of Abraham or Calvinism, I think for us, we've been awakened to this idea of the sovereignty of God, like the sovereignty of God and the very Holy Spirit that resurrected a dead body.
Like we live in a story in which the tomb is empty.
Like, how does that not completely undo every conventional line of thinking, every sense?
How does that not undo or cause you to repent from laziness or cause you to somehow think life is boring?
God has done something magical, you could almost say.
And so we believe that our task as Christians is to tell the best stories.
And praise God that I'm out of the world of the best story that only I can tell is the upper level story, right?
As Joe put Joe Boot on your show one time.
Right, right.
Praise God that I don't have to be a community group leader.
In order for me to tell a better story, praise God, I don't have to be a part of the elder pastoral training program and the next discipleship, next 90 day discipleship plan from the pastor.
Praise God.
I don't have to do that to tell the best story.
Praise God that really we can build businesses and we can tell better stories through better art.
And so, every good work, go ahead, Joel.
Were you going to say something?
No, I was just agreeing.
But if you give me a chance to talk, I'll never turn you down.
But as I was listening to both of you guys, David, I love what you were saying.
You can't just cancel your Netflix.
It's not enough to just cancel your Disney Plus.
It's not enough to just say, I'm not going to give my pennies to people who hate me and who hate Christ.
You're going to, it's well, this is a Rush Dooney sentiment.
Uh, it's not whether but which you're going to spend your money, you're going to, even if you save it in your coffer, you know, until the day you die.
Well, even then, you're going to get the death tax, you know, depending what state you live in.
Is you know, a state tax like then your pennies they don't go to Disney, they go to you know, they go to um, the government.
That's right.
So, my point is, what I hear you saying is it's not enough to boycott, and I kept thinking this is the way to phrase it as you were talking.
Um, Christians can't only boycott, Christians have to build, it's not just boycott.
But boycott and build.
And really, I've talked about this in the past, but it's kind of like five B's.
And Christians and conservatives sadly have only done four of them and always left out the fifth one, which is build.
The first B is vitally important, and Christians are experts.
I mean, just phenomenally successful at it.
And that first B is getting beat.
So Christians are great at that.
Get beat, right?
Following Christ's example, right?
He's the suffering servant, like a lamb led to the slaughter, right?
So, first, it's vitally important.
You can't miss the first step.
You must get beat.
John MacArthur has great notes on that.
We don't win down here.
So get beat.
All right.
Number two is once you get beat, bemoan.
Right.
And that's the Christian version of the B word.
There's another B word that you could put in there.
But get beat, bemoan.
All right.
So whine, complain, complain about getting beat.
And then the third one is get beat, bemoan, and then boycott.
And that's what you were talking about, David.
And that is actually something we should do.
So these first two we actually shouldn't do.
We shouldn't get beat and we shouldn't bemoan.
But we should boycott wickedness.
We should not give our dollars, our time, our blood, our sweat, our tears, our children to wickedness.
So, boycott.
Then, the fourth one is you know, and this is again what Christians have done wrong get beat, bemoan, boycott, and then beg, which typically means a nonprofit.
And there's nothing inherently wrong with this.
Right Response Ministries is a religious organization, it raises awareness, teaches theology.
It is a nonprofit.
So, I'm not saying that this is inherently wrong.
But what I'm saying is that I think that if anybody has any ambition at all and they're a Christian, 90% of Christians with ambition go the nonprofit route.
And so that fourth B is beg.
So get beat, bemoan, boycott, and then beg for donations instead of build.
That's right.
And know that people, even if they hate you, will buy.
Because you can hate Chick fil A because you're a sodomite.
But by golly, it's a good chicken sandwich.
That's right.
And you and your gay partner are going to be eating Chick fil A, not on Sunday, right?
Not on Sunday, Sabbatarian, you know, but you are going to eat Chick fil A whether you like it or not.
And we do the same thing, right?
So I'm going to cancel Netflix, but I've got Amazon.
You know, like, I mean, so, anyways, that's all I was thinking.
The whole time you guys were talking, is not enough to boycott.
David nailed it.
We've got to build.
We've got to build.
And it is okay.
It's not only okay.
I would say it is imperative that Christians build for profit enterprises in the realm of business, in the realm of art.
That is not a sinful endeavor.
That is a righteous, good endeavor.
What makes it sinful is when you produce a product that's lousy and that rips people off.
Making good things to be sold for ethical prices pleases the heart of God.
And I think, how can we not?
Like dead men become new creations, and all of a sudden, by the sovereign spirit of God, we're created to actually worship God again.
And we worship God with our total self, our total humanity.
And a third of our life is committed towards work.
How could we not, as an act of adoration, act of worship to this glorious Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, where Christ is Lord over all, how can we not see?
Coding as an act of worship.
Right.
Just imagine if the church would just awaken, or, you know, we kind of use this term where the church, it's almost like every good work exists to break spells.
The church is under a spell and it's living a half life because of Radical Two Kingdom and forfeiting better stories that God has actually given our generation an opportunity to make our mark for the king.
Yeah.
Right.
And so, in many ways, we don't jokingly say we mean it seriously that a painting might actually, if it could just wake up one person to a better story, the story of what it means to be truly Christian all the way, then we've served our purpose.
Yeah.
And so, yeah, with fine art, we want to reclaim art, but we want to make it available for everyday people again.
Yeah.
Because art is such a strategic channel.
It's such a strategic place because where art goes, David can attest to it, obviously.
There goes the culture.
They're just 10 years ahead, right?
When you're in New York City and Williamsburg, right?
You just see what's going on there.
You'll see that normalize a decade later.
Yep.
You're right.
So for us, if we were radical to kingdom about it, we would abdicate our role, right?
As an artist or as a business person.
And unfortunately, we would be so undereducated.
I would be, and I'm still learning because of help.
From the likes of David, we would almost be discipled into actually thinking that a banana with duct tape tied to it is actually worth me paying 99 bucks to watch, to look at.
And right, like, not only is it discipling us, but it's discipling us to be anti Christ.
Yeah.
Right.
We're actually choosing to accept a story that's based off of evil, wickedness, and godliness.
And we're choosing to, like you said, Jill, syncretize with the false God.
Yeah, right.
Because art, of course, is driven by worldview.
And so, if Christian artists like David has been consistently doing for his career, if it's an act of worship to God, we can't help but want it to make it excellent.
But at the same time, it's going to show something about who Christ is.
And we know that the perfection of beauty is in Christ.
And so, if we can just awaken a renaissance, almost create a renaissance or an emerging class of artists.
Who are willing to be unashamedly Christian through and through in their art and be inspired by Christ in what they do and create works of beauty, works of art, then our hope is that we become a platform, right, in which we can create a parallel path and we can create an avenue in which better stories are being told.
And so, every good work in a nutshell, we're an e commerce marketplace for buyers and sellers of fine art originals and exclusive limited prints on canvas.
A Faith Experiment in Art00:15:20
Can I speak?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, please go ahead.
So, the print technology is phenomenal.
We have access to a scanner that takes works of art that I think they can do five and a half feet by eight feet or something like that.
Hopefully, we can do a painting that size.
And then it scans it with the same machine that is used by the Smithsonian to scan any image you see online in print material.
that the Smithsonian uses the same exact scanner.
It's a seven figure scanner.
So we have access to that machine and then it's printed using a printing technology called a giclet, which is it's not it's different from a print on canvas that you just order online for a family photo on canvas.
The archival quality is the biggest difference and the quality of the printing.
So it's using pigment based inks instead of dye based inks.
These prints.
That look identical to the original.
So we have the original behind us here, and Joel has a print behind there.
Right behind me.
Very hard to tell apart until you get really close.
And they're also guaranteed for 100 years.
So we wanted to make something that is significantly less of a price from the original, but also is still an heirloom, something that you could pass on to your grandkids, your great grandkids, potentially.
five, six, seven, eight generations from now could own these same works of art.
And what is the name of this one, David?
What did you name this painting?
Well, I'm terrible at naming my paintings.
I occasionally strike gold, but for this one, I believe it was Chris who actually gave the name The Conquering King.
The Conquering King.
Yeah.
So it's an allegorical painting.
And go ahead and then I'll keep going.
No, no, go ahead.
It's an allegorical painting.
Go.
Yeah.
It's an allegorical painting.
There's two figures um, they're the heroes.
It's fun because while I was painting this, my two and a half year old son would come into the studio and would continually point and say, good guys, good guys, um.
So Joel wanted a painting that depicted light and dark.
He wanted a painting that depicted war victory, struggle.
We collaborated with Joel.
That's kind of one of the cool parts of this, actually.
That's what I was going to say because I want you to talk about the painting.
You're the artist and you're on the show.
But what was so cool to me about this model is like, okay, first, because of having access to a seven figure, and David just said that just for anybody who, you know, just to spell that out, what that means is this is a piece of machinery that is in the millions.
So this is not just like a cheap knockoff print.
This is something when David says it's really hard to tell the difference, he means that I can.
I personally could be a foot and a half away from both of them and probably wouldn't be able to see the difference.
Someone trained, very highly trained in the realm of painting and arts and texture would have to be very close for them to even be able to tell the difference.
So, one, what's really cool about the model is being able to take high quality works of art that should cost thousands of dollars, 10 grand, you know, maybe more, maybe less, give or take, you know, given the size, the time, you know, all those things, but be able to put them in the hundreds, not thousands, but hundreds of dollars to where your average blue collar family could say, Okay, we may not be able to have a painting on every wall of our house, but we could have one or two.
Instead of the Hobby Lobby, instead of like a bunny that's chewing on a piece of grass and made out of twisted iron, whatever, that you get at the big, what's the name of that store?
Big something.
I can't remember the name of the store, but whatever.
Instead of those kinds of things, we're going to have, so it's incredibly high quality art at a reasonable price.
But then, what was so cool is that that's one piece of the puzzle.
The other piece of the puzzle with your model that I love is that Chris and David are actually seeking out like minded pastors and theologians.
And so, they're actually, instead of just, we're going to do this, and this is actually humble too.
And this is one of the, you know, this kind of proof that David is a Christian artist.
Because I don't imagine most secular pagan artists would be willing to do this.
But David is saying, okay, I'm the artist.
He knows.
That he's the artist and I'm not.
I don't have this kind of skill.
But he's saying, I'm going to collaborate with Joel and I'm going to hear his ideas.
And he's not going to know what he's talking about at certain points along the journey.
But what was cool was that me and David got to work together.
And it wasn't a lot, but a few text messages or a 15 minute phone call here or there about once a week for about a month throughout the whole painting process to where I can't paint, but David can.
And I was able to say, this is my vision of what I see theologically as.
As the cultural moment that the church is living in right now.
And I want to capture it, not just in a podcast and not just in a sermon.
That has to happen.
But I want to capture it on a canvas where you can not just hear it, but you could see it and be moved.
And David was able to help me do that and not just do it for me personally, but he was able to collaborate with me.
So you've got the, I'm providing the theological vision, and David's providing the artistic vision.
And then, and then this model that Chris has brought in with the business piece means that, um, not just a guy who you know has a podcast that thousands of people listen to, and you know, it's a little bit not a lot, but a little bit of clout, a little bit of credibility, and a little bit of a budget.
You know, he can afford a painting on his wall and his fancy, you know, Professor Xavier studio.
No, but like Chris comes in with the business piece, and you get to take Joel's theology, David's artistic gift, and Chris's business mind, and now you can have the conquering king.
In your house, and when people come over, you can say, Yeah, this means something, and this will last not for 10 months, but Lord willing, 100 years.
And I'm going to give it to my kids, they're going to give it to their kids.
Um, that's that's beautiful.
And without that, then again, it's just the independent fundamentalism bunker that we're just you know, we're just on the sinking ship.
And let's just you know, do another podcast on Lauren Daigle and why she's a heretic, you know.
And um, but but the world gets to keep everything that you can see.
Right, they get that.
I think that Christians have gotten very comfortable with books and podcasts and filling our mind with things, but we don't know what to do with our walls.
We don't know what to do with our clothes.
We don't know what to do with our movies.
We don't know.
We don't know what to do with a lot of our activity.
What should our Sundays look like?
What should our shopping look like?
What should our food look like?
We're exploring all of these things.
And it really is amazing to, you said it so well, Joel, that the three of us could kind of.
Use our different gifts and collaborate on something that provides.
Hopefully, other people will like this and will respond positively to it, and then we can keep.
We could do it again.
You know right, um?
One of the things that keeps sticking out to me is we're three guys um sitting around talking about art and theology.
Now, it's pretty common for guys sit around talking about theology nowadays, at least in the circles that i'm familiar with, but for us to talk about how that applies to art is very it's unique and And early on in our conversations, one of the things that Chris harped on before we even chatted with you first, Joel, was I want to make art for, I want to make it masculine again.
I want art that men want to buy.
Because a lot of the decisions in art and in the home are made by women.
It makes sense that it would.
But we want to tap into that part of a man that is looking for the battle that really is there.
And not to be told just to go sit back down on the bleachers, but actually to engage the culture wherever he is.
Yeah, we forget that men, we're called to fight, but as men, we're called to know how to feast, right?
Because our Lord does that perfectly.
And so we really want that's what's amazing about being word driven.
I think, right, having you, Joel, as sort of the foundation by which David could kind of have a biblical grid and a biblical imagination, you know, that's something that we would love.
I think that's how Reformation works, right?
Artists and farmers, they just go to the scriptures and all of a sudden it changes the way in which they do their work.
And so having that was a really, really powerful thing for me to see, like seeing it come alive.
But yeah, ultimately for us, like we believe that men should know what beauty tastes like, men should know what beauty looks like, right?
That's what it means to be a masculine man.
And so for us, this conquering king really.
Really, really was a special thing for us.
But then ultimately, you know, what we care about, like what David was pointing out, is because we're post mill and because we're covenantal, fine art makes so much sense to us.
Yeah.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, the world is inundating us with inglorious, unrighteous images.
And they're saying, look at this on the computer screen, look at this on the television screen.
Look at this in the next art gallery.
Have to deal with the fact that this piece of art is supposed to be worth $20 million.
Right, right.
Even, and then the average person just going, that doesn't make any sense.
That's right.
So what happens is our appetite for understanding for art goes very to kingdom.
We just go into this little hole where everything art is bad.
Because everything that art in the world right now kind of is bad.
They've taken over.
This amazing institution that was largely created by Christians who seek to honor God.
And if the best thing that we've got, and there's nothing to say, I mean, from what I know, the CEO of Hobby Lobby is a brother in the Lord and seems to be a man who's on fire for him and praise God for that.
But to your point, Joel, like if the best that Christians have is a Bible verse that's on a quilt in a very sentimentally way, then something is wrong.
The church is under a spell.
Could it have been made in a sweatshop?
I mean, hopefully not.
We have no idea how these things were made.
And so, how can you be post mill if the best you've got is blessed in cursive?
How can you deal with all the screens, all the unrighteous images that are on your children, right?
That they see on social media, that they see.
On whatever, and that's considered glorious, that's considered beautiful, that's considered righteous.
Well, this is for us a faith experiment.
You know, it's a mustard seed, it's a startup, but ultimately, what we want to do is we want to inundate every wall for Christ.
Yeah, right.
Our mission is that the real mission behind this is we want to reclaim every wall because, just like you said, Christ everywhere, everything is mine, and so your wall is his, so is your television screen, whatever your magazine cover shows.
It's either going to be Christ or it's not going to be.
It's either going to be beautiful or it's going to be ugly.
And what a white space opportunity we've got.
I think David and I were shocked.
We're like, how, where's the competition?
I'm kind of nervous, Joel, that you have a decent followership.
But I think for us, we really believe that this is our post mill response.
This is our faith in action.
And we pray that God will bless it.
Yep.
Yeah.
And going back to the start of the The episode, you know, I think you made a good point to begin with.
Keller, Tim Keller, was with his Every Good Endeavor.
The Kyperian sentiment, the Kyperian mindset is there and is good.
That was good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He was on to something.
You know, we didn't actually name the company Every Good Work after that, but coincidentally, it's the same idea.
Right.
And not only art, but like, You go through the scriptures and you look at the word work and where God uses work and workmanship.
We are his artwork.
Our whole lives sort of become a work of art.
Schaefer talks about that in one of his books.
So, yeah, I love, Chris, what you said.
It's a perfect time, I think, for this because people are starting to look other places.
And, right.
Do you guys remember?
This is a little bit random, but do you remember, David and Chris, the little three minute video?
And this was years ago, but I remember seeing it and I thought, whoa.
And this is when I was still in Acts 29, but it was from Keller and it was about how they were going to take over New York and saying, right now, statistically, it's like 3% Christian, but we believe if we could get to 10%, it would be a tipping point.
But the whole thing was this Kyperion, all of Christ for all of life thing.
He said, art would become 10%, that much salt concentrated in one area, it would affect everything.
It wouldn't just mean more churches.
It wouldn't just mean more churches.
Art would become more hopeful.
I remember that line, that phrase right there.
Art would become more hopeful.
This would become like business would become more ethical.
Medicine would become more compassionate.
You know, all these.
And I remember watching that.
It's a lot more just.
Yeah.
Amen.
Exactly.
So I remember watching that.
And sadly, you know, it's so ironic.
I'm remembering that video.
And now with the latest and greatest, you know, 2.0 update from Keller is the Keller Institute.
And I don't know if you guys have noticed, but it's tragic because it really is kind of, it's basically a concession that like that didn't work.
Cascading Glory and Ethical Business00:14:41
We failed because now the Keller Institute is an acknowledgement that we're in a negative world now.
We're in a hostile world.
Christendom is on decline.
We're not going to win, at least not anytime soon.
And so we just need to learn how to live in a world that's owned by the enemy, where we're the minority.
And we've been preached to give away.
Exactly.
And we need to learn how to live in this hostile world where we're the minority, where we lost.
Basically, how to live in Babylon when Israel gets taken captive.
And And what that means is with the Keller Institute, we're going to focus on apologetics because we want to make it, you know, we don't want to just surrender.
We want to go down with a fight.
But we are the ones who are conquered.
They are the conquerors.
They are stronger.
And so we're going to be doing careful apologetics.
And so the Keller Institute is going to train you how to be apologists in a negative world, which we both, all three of us know.
What that means is how to be even more.
You thought we were winsome before.
You've seen nothing yet.
We're going to be even more winsome, even more contextualizing, even more ambiguous, even more.
Stephen Colbert, you know, as an example of great Christian witness.
And it was just so sad because it was like the Keller Institute is kind of like the answer to that little three minute video and that endeavor from 10 years ago, whenever it was, and that not working out.
And I see that.
And I just, again, you guys are more in the Presbyterian world.
And I have at this point probably more Presbyterian friends than Baptists, but I am still 1689, and I have some Baptists, you know.
Relationships and networking.
And my Baptist friends, especially, don't get Kuyper.
They don't get Abraham Kuyper.
And they look at, like, Keller tried to do this thing.
They remember that video that I'm referencing.
And they look at that and they say, and now look at Keller and the Keller Institute.
The Keller Institute is the fruit of that.
And whereas I want to say, no, the Keller Institute is the response to that failing.
It's not the fruit of that.
It's the failure of that not working.
And the reason why that didn't work.
In my assessment, a couple reasons why, but one is because the all of life peace was not the problem, but it was the lack of all of Christ.
It was compromising on Christ.
And number two, it was also missing the art of war, of just warfare, just war theory, but also successful war strategy.
The decisive point finding a place that's both significant but also winnable.
Keller went to a place that was significant, but he is right in the sense that.
Yeah, Manhattan's not going.
We're post Milton.
Manhattan is going to bow to Christ, but probably not in the next couple of years.
Right.
And what did you say, Joel?
And this does line in with what you're saying, and I think every good work.
I think what Keller was up to, yeah, being Kyperian, being Marxist, I mean, fail.
That's number one.
But also, it seemed like it was all about the world.
It was always about for the world as opposed to for the glory of God.
Yeah.
That's true.
Like the good of people more than.
It's all about evangelizing the lost.
It was always about being winsome for anything, anyone, but, right?
But I would say it's almost like Christ was not Lord.
Jesus was not Lord.
To your point about just war, because Jesus is Lord, we say just war, right?
Because it's all about the glory of God, we're able to say these controversial things that might, you know, raise a hair, you know, brother, don't be too.
Where's your winsomeness certificate?
You know, I thought you earned it through the Keller Institute.
I really do believe that it wasn't about worship.
Yeah.
It was about, you know what I'm saying?
It was, it wasn't about.
It was objective Christianity instead of objective Christianity.
Yeah.
It wasn't like Westminster Catechism question number one.
What's the whole point?
Exactly.
The chief end of it.
Exactly.
Everything God does, he does for his glory and for the good of those who love him or are called according to his purpose.
But it's both of those.
And I think, yeah, you can emphasize one or the other.
You can say everything God does is for his glory.
And the world's going to go to hell in a handbasket, you know.
And anybody who's post mill is just shining brass on the sinking ship, right?
So that's like glory of God, but not good of his image bearing people.
Or you can go image bearing people, they're good, but not glory of God.
And it's got to, the two have to stay together.
Yeah.
And also taking a longer look at it.
We as Americans, especially, just want to look at every decade as just every generation that Jesus is coming now.
We're also, we're special.
We're the special ones.
And to not look at, the future of Christendom to be potentially thousands of years before Jesus returns.
I mean, it could be that our grandkids are running every good work and it's finally making an impact.
I don't know right.
It's got to do something in order to maintain a functioning business model between now and then, but there's.
I don't want to be arrogant to say that God's going to do something amazing, but I also don't want to be falsely humble And pretend like God doesn't want to bless work that is honoring to his name.
Yeah, I think for us, like even with the whole worship to the glory of God, like our thesis is if by faith we do this to the glory of God, and then one of the byproducts is it becomes a blessing to the world, whether or not the world wants it or not.
And I think what's missing is when you're focused so much on the world, and that's what it's all about.
And it's about sharing the gospel to the lost so that you actually compromise your entire Lord's Day service, right?
Where a pastor, a mega church pastor like Andy Stanley, can tell you, look you in the eyes, look the sheep in the eyes, and say, Church isn't for you.
Church isn't for believers, right?
Church, if you're thinking about that, then you have the wrong idea of why you're here, right?
There's just this obsession with wanting to win the lost.
That's not the end goal.
The goal is the glory of God.
To delight in him.
And as we worship him, yeah, everything falls into place.
We're going to see what good is a man to gain the world.
That's right.
We're going to love.
Yeah.
So this is an act of love just as much as it is an act of worship.
And our hope is that what this displays actually will be a blessing.
You know, that there will be pagans who say, I don't like Christ.
I don't understand the Bible verse.
But that story really resonates.
With me, and I don't know what to say other than it's gonna fit on my wall.
And then, or Christians put it on their wall, and maybe mom or dad explain it to their kids a couple times, and it just goes in one ear out the other.
They come home in 20 years and they realize in a moment of sanity that this painting or one like it has been catechizing them day after day after day after day into the very things that the first, I remember Joel very distinctly, you wanted.
1 Corinthians 15, 25, for he shall reign until he makes an enemy his.
All of his enemies are under his feet, right and Romans 12, 2, that we would be able to test, we would discern what is before us.
You wanted to see a clear light and dark that, that that a man can see what is good, that a man can see what is bad, and that he would.
We would also understand that Jesus is reigning and ruling.
He is in dominion right now.
And he is going to put all of his enemies under his feet.
And he's called us to be a part of that story.
There's going to be kids that see that and have no idea what that story means because they're children.
But their imaginations potentially are stirred up by the imagery of the demons in the background.
And their imaginations are stirred up by my two and a half year old who just wants to turn the corner and see the good guy standing there who just looks so powerful, so serene, but yet so ready to fight.
That image, those images, that feeling, that does something, especially on a daily basis for the course of years, that we're hoping that we're going to bring up people and call other Christians into similar works where we're just surrounded by good things.
We can't look around and not see Christians doing good things.
It's happening all over the podcast world, it's happening all over the publishing world.
We want to see it happen in the art world.
Yeah.
Amen.
Real quick.
No, go ahead.
Go ahead.
Well, I was going to take a minute to describe the elements in the painting, but I want to hear.
Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to do.
But go ahead.
No, no, no.
I want to hear your take on it.
I can give the theological side.
Yeah, go for it.
And then maybe, yeah.
So, like David said, looking at 1 Corinthians 15, for he must reign until he has made all his enemies a footstool for his feet.
And And so that's actually in the painting.
There's like a monument, like a pillar, like an Ebenezer being raised.
And you see that in kind of the bottom right hand corner and etched in stone, you find engraven those words.
And so the verse is actually spelled out with a reference 1 Corinthians 15 20.
It's 25.
Is that right?
And so you've got that in the bottom corner.
But then the two heroes, the figures, what I wanted David to do is I wanted to see a Christ figure reigning.
So not Christ himself.
So it's not.
It's not a second commandment violation.
It's not, you know, this isn't Jesus, but a Christ figure, just like Aslan is a Christ figure in Narnia.
I wanted a Christ figure, but then I also wanted the church and the church, you know, on earth, militant and, you know, dressed for battle.
And the biggest thing that I told David, and David came up with a lot of that stuff, but the biggest thing I said is I want to see Christ reigning, this great post millennial hope, a conquering king, like, but I want to also see darkness.
I want to see the enemy.
And that's where the cross reference of 1 Corinthians 15 kind of works in with Romans chapter 12, where some of the best stories, at least in my assessment, in my opinion, things like the Lord of the Rings, you know who the bad guys are.
Because they're literally, right?
There's this triple braided cord in theological terms and in just reality, the world that God made.
And that's truth, goodness, and beauty.
These three things are inseparable.
As.
As creatures, right?
Everything, God alone is the creator.
As any creature begins to deny its purpose, the purpose for which God intended it, that's glory, right?
A glorious tree is a very tree-ly tree, a tree that is truly truthful.
You know, it's the tree-est tree you could ever find.
It's being a tree and all the greatness of a tree, and all the right ways, and the right direction, and the purpose for which God intends it.
And so too with man.
You know, man is the glory of.
Of God, right?
That man is the glory of Christ, a woman, the glory of man, and a woman's hair is the glory of woman.
This cascading flow of reflecting glory.
But part of reflecting glory is being in step with the purpose of the creature for which the creator made it.
And so when man is doing what God, being who God created man to be, there's a glory there.
And so my point is that the truth is there.
You're doing what you've truly been made to do.
To do.
But along with that truth comes automatically goodness and beauty.
And so one of the things that I love about Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings is that you see not just this is a good man, but that good man also happens to be a beautiful man and not a beautiful in an effeminate way.
But there are elves and there are orcs.
You don't have to ask 20 questions to figure out who the bad guys are.
And that's not to say that the elves are perfect.
There are some nefarious elf characters.
But what happens is that the orcs, and especially a certain species, a certain type of orc, is actually even used to be an elf, but is now a hybrid because of dark magic.
There was a compromise in the truth, and the immediate result was a disfiguring of beauty.
That as truth went, so beauty went with it.
And you can see that in art, right?
The unveiling of the Martin Luther King statue.
It's a pair of hands holding a penis.
That's what it looks like.
It's disgusting.
It is objectively ugly because as culture denies truth, they can't make beauty.
Truth and beauty are intertwined.
You can only make that which is objectively beautiful for a very short period.
If you look at human history as a whole, for a very short period after a culture has turned its back on the truth.
So, all that being said, I wanted the The Christ figure, and then this lesser good guy, still a good guy, but the shorter guy that you see who's dressed for battle next to the Christ figure.
I wanted them to be good, true, and also beautiful in the light.
You see, the light is focused on them.
Truth, Beauty, and the Final Enemy00:06:01
It's beautiful.
There's this cascading, you know, above it, you know, with the red garment.
But then I wanted bad guys, and I wanted bad guys to look like bad guys.
I want them to look like orcs.
Like, let's make bad guys bad again.
You know what I mean?
That's my mantra.
Let's make bad guys bad again.
I wanted them to be.
Ugly and to depicted physically, visibly as such, to look as ugly as they are evil.
And so what you see is you've got this dragon, and the theology behind it, as that pulls into the post mill thing, is that basically the Christ figure is holding a bow, and you can tell that he's already fired off his shot.
And so it's being held down.
And what he shot and killed is this giant dragon over, and it's dark, so it's hard to see, but Nathan will pull it up in post.
And so if you're watching right now, you should be able to see a close-up of the painting.
But you see this dragon.
And the dragon is more than just a singular atomistic bad guy.
It's like the mothership carrying all these other lesser bad guys, and its belly is like a hole of a ship, and out of its belly is coming other monsters.
And you can see them depicted that David drew in there.
So you've got the chief monster, and that's the monster that the Christ figure has already taken out.
But now the dragon, this mothership bad guy, is crashing to earth, and it's whole, it's Belly is being opened up, and all these lesser monsters are coming out and polluting the earth.
So, the Christ figure said, I've already given the death blow to Satan, is what's being communicated.
Um, you know, I've bound the strong man, um, but now you, church militant, the church on earth, so that lesser good guy is not supposed to be an individual person like the Christ figure, but it's supposed to represent the church corporately, the church as a whole, and the church militant on earth.
Um, I gave the death blow to Satan, now you go finish the job.
And round up all his minions, and your eschaton is there in the background before you, always before you.
A glimpse of the celestial city, um, and you can see in the background the celestial city, and that's so that's the theology piece.
And David, can you talk about like some of the textures and the colors and things like that?
Yeah, um, I think Joel just completely, yeah, that was Joel.
Thank you for pitching, yeah.
I mean, the only things that I would really add are.
The painting is, it depicts a very high contrast of what is apparent to believers.
And that is, victory is sure.
Yes.
But also, we live in turmoil a lot of the time.
We don't know.
Our own personal lives can be confusing.
The world at large can be confusing.
Family life, church life, business, finances.
Why is this all not working out if.
Christ is victorious and Christ is ruling.
And so the painting actually, from a visual standpoint, depicts that contrast.
You have the stable, sort of calming, very simple graphic effect of the vertical central figure that everything is around.
The whole painting is divided in thirds vertically.
So there's a bottom third that goes from the bottom to the golden hero's feet, and then to the top of his helm, and then to the top of the painting.
And then he stands in the exact center of the painting.
From his feet, the ground goes out in a pyramid shape that just gives structure to that dark object.
And then around him, so he's also unaffected by.
The swirl, the swirling storms of evil.
The swirling storms of evil have swept across the foreground and have pulled the cape of the silver hero, the church militant, along with it.
He is even affected by it.
You can see how it sweeps across his figure in some places.
And then there's this, so then you see also like the light side of the painting with the celestial city in the background and the foreground of pasture land is very.
Beautiful, and there's a river and a stream that comes through, and then on the other side, you have chaos, demons, the leviathan, the beasts, the fire, and the smoke plumes that come up from the crashing of the beast to the ground.
Um, and then the but the final say, the final word is God's word the banner of the banner that that matches the same color of the cloak of the golden hero.
Is God's final word and gives the painting a.
It gives it sort of a surreal feeling, but also gives it kind of the final say.
This is the way things are going to be.
The final eschaton is that God is going to bring his people to himself through Jesus.
Jesus is going to present us to him.
And the last enemy to be defeated is death.
Affordable Prints for a Beautiful Future00:11:20
Awesome.
Yeah.
So.
So, with that, I want to turn to you, Chris, now because I've got some guys in my church that I'm thinking of that I think probably want to get.
You know, we've actually already had a couple people email us, you know, because they've seen the painting and I've talked a little bit about it in some of my other videos as we just unveiled, you know, our new studio.
And so we've had a couple people reach out and say, you know, how do I get one?
So, Chris, talk about that now.
So, we, you know, there's theological meaning, there's beauty, there's all the reasons, everything we've talked about thus far, why we need to recapture art, why, you know, it needs to be, you know, all of Christ for all of life.
Every good work, art's one of those good works.
And what this particular piece of art means, how an artist and a business guy and a pastor collaborated together to make something that's beautiful.
But it's beautiful because it's what I want to say is it's not beautiful and true.
It's beautiful because it's true.
It's beautiful because it's true.
It means something.
And so, how do people get it, Chris?
This is the best part.
I got the easy job.
So, go to everygoodwork.art.
That's our domain.
And you'll see either in the top banner, and we'll see if we can do this in post, but in the top banner, we have Right Response Ministries.
We call out the conquering king.
And you can click on that, and it'll take you to the actual page where you can either get a recap of some of the technical things that David had applied to the painting itself, some of the theological narratives that inspired Joel.
But ultimately, you can kind of get a sense of it.
I know it's hard to see, and I know Nathan's going to try his best to get some close ups.
But we also do our part.
We've also done our part to create some good product photography where it'll allow you to kind of get a deeper glimpse of it in a multi dimensional way.
And ultimately, look, we're brothers.
And so this is not a company of 2,000 people.
It's David and myself.
And so we'll be personally handling any questions or emails or anything like that.
And then prices are very affordable.
So this is something that's over $10,000 as an original.
But we've been able to figure out a way to make this affordable through high quality prints on canvas.
And so prices start as low as $240 based on a certain type of dimension.
And then it can range all the way as high as $600 plus to get this real life, very magnificent looking print, depending on obviously the wall that you want to put it on.
And so ultimately, our goal was how do we make this a really unique, special experience for the right response ministries?
We wanted to honor you, Pastor Joel, and honor the community that supports you too.
And so this is made available really on a limited print.
I think that's the other thing that we wanted to bring up is that, you know, A lot of people don't realize that declaves actually do increase in value over time just because it's a very high quality product.
But at the same time, we wanted to also accentuate the value of this by making it limited as well.
And so we have a limited print release, but we want to expose this amazing work of art in collaboration from Pastor Joel and David.
And we wanted to give it to y'all, the right response community.
And it's a one time discount of 40% off.
So That's as affordable as we would want to make it to be.
That's not super generous, guys.
Thank you.
The community kind of rallies around this, and we've done everything we can to hopefully explain to you why this is meaningful.
But we also ultimately want to make sure that you see it just as meaningfully.
And so, yeah, go to everygoodwork.art.
There's a top banner, or you can scroll down and you'll see the Conquering King image.
Click on that.
And then, just like any other simple e commerce website, add to cart will take credit cards and all that normal standard.
Great.
Is that going to be 40% off on whatever dimension, whatever size they pick, or just on a specific size?
So they can get that, like the original, which is I have that, you know, I don't have the original, but I have the same size of that 30 by 40 inches.
It's massive, you know, like it's about they could get that for 40% off.
That's right.
So, if my math is right, go ahead, go ahead.
So, something that's $4.99, you can get it at $240, right?
And so, we're really trying to do everything we can to make it affordable.
But also, we really want to bless your community, Joel, because you were the first.
There's a short list of pastors, and we wanted to also honor you because you actually took a risk on us.
And so, this is not something, this is not a sustainable business model.
You're talking to the business guy here, but it's also something where, man, we really want to.
Make this a special thing that we'll remember for a long time.
And we also know that this painting hopefully will be present at the upcoming conference.
It will.
That's the last piece of the puzzle.
Yeah.
Okay, well, we'll say it.
So we've got five.
Well, no, no, no.
We'll say it, but like 550 people are registered.
And, you know, and I know that I've had so many people emailing me.
And so, listeners, I apologize that we were not able, I've told you, but we were not able to get a larger venue this year.
Now, that said, we have decided to host this conference again.
In 2024, and Lord willing, we will secure a larger venue that can seat you know around a thousand to twelve hundred people.
But in God's providence, we want to be content with what He's provided this year.
So for 2023, May 5th, 6th, and 7th, the Theonomy and Post Millennialism Conference, our venue holds 500.
We've got you know 550 that we've let in, so we've already gone over our capacity, and we've got another like 150 people on a waiting list.
So we just can't take anyone else.
But if you are one of those 550 people who was able to get through, you were able to register, you're going to be there at this conference.
This is a painting that you can get right now, and I would not encourage you to wait.
Get it now for 40% off.
But if for whatever reason, just financially, you can't swing it right now, we're living in Joe Biden's recession.
I get it.
May 5th, 6th, and 7th at the Theonomy and Postmillennialism Conference.
I'm pretty sure that even if we've sold out, we're going to limit it.
But even if we sold out, I think that I might be able to twist David and Chris's arm just enough to say, this is the postmillennial conference.
This is the postmillennial painting.
It's a match made in heaven.
Let's bust it out of the vault one more time.
So, yeah, this painting will have an appearance at that conference as well.
The original will be there.
And we'll have.
Oh, awesome.
Yeah.
And we'll have prints to view and purchase.
And we've talked about maybe, you know, if you've placed an order a week or two before the conference, maybe we could deliver it.
We could bring the print for you.
We can figure out some of those details in the time being.
But for now, think about it as a limited print run.
We know that this 100 or 200 prints is going to be special.
It's our first set.
So I will be hand signing the front of these.
I won't be doing that for every.
I will not be doing that for everything and every good work that is painted by me, but I will be doing it for these.
So this painting, the original is not signed yet.
I had it scanned without being signed so that Joel, when they printed yours, the signature wasn't done yet.
I signed it and then I finished it with a clear coat that's UV.
That protects the ultraviolet light, and then i'm also going to um number them on the back.
So if you're in the first of this limited print run, you're going to have those two things and i'm not sure how often we will be doing that sort of next step and I know from my, from looking into it, that the way as you clay increases in value is the limited print and being signed by the artist.
So those two things for sure are going to give you something that Hopefully, you like just because it's a good painting and tells a good story, but also it's going to last and also it's going to go up and value.
That's great.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
Cool, guys.
Well, that's it.
I think that this episode is great.
I think it'll be helpful.
I think people will get an idea of, you know, all right, here's some of the problems with Keller, but here's the baby that we don't need to throw out with the bathwater.
All of Christ for all of life.
Let's reject Marx.
Let's keep Kuiper.
Okay.
With the Kuiperian mindset, how can we apply all of Christ to every single realm?
Art's one of them.
What does that look like?
How do truth and beauty relate to one another?
And how can I actually put my money where my mouth is?
What good endeavor does God have for me?
And what good endeavors and good works can I support, like what Chris and David are doing?
So thanks for coming on the show.
Thanks for our listeners tuning in.
And I encourage you guys, if you like art, if you like this painting, it means something.
It means something beautiful and true about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who is also God.
King reigning and ruling right now.
So if you can afford it, don't break the bank.
But if you can afford it, don't spend $240 on crap.
Spend $240 in a Christian way.
Get a nice piece of art.
So thanks for tuning in.
Can I be frank with you for just a second right here at the end?
Look, some of you guys, you're financially supporting this ministry.
And from the bottom of my heart, I say thank you.
I cannot thank you enough.
However, some of you, you just can't afford it.
In fact, some of you, you shouldn't afford it.
Let's be honest.
I mean, we're living in Joe Biden's ridiculous economy.
Our nation and our totalitarian political elites lost their minds over the last three years due to COVID.
We have written checks that we simply cannot cash.
It doesn't matter if people change the definition of a recession.
We are living in a recession right now, regardless.
Some of you are struggling to afford a carton of eggs at the grocery store.
You cannot support financially this ministry at this time, nor should you.
But you could still help us tremendously.
I am asking you, please, if you're willing to do so, take one minute of your time.
Leave us a five star review on your favorite podcast platform iTunes, Spotify, whatever that might be.
This is the way the system works.
We want to be innocent as doves, but shrewd as vipers.
We need to be strategic.
You leave us a five star review, and our podcast shows up for more people.
And the Word of God.
And courageous theology applied in practical ways to every realm of life gets out there.