Pastor Joel Webbon outlines seven non-negotiable doctrines for finding a biblically faithful church, rejecting modern compromises like "wokeology" and DEI councils. He demands confessionally Reformed soteriology, covenant theology over dispensationalism, biblical patriarchy with male elders, and presuppositional apologetics that deny moral neutrality. Webbon advocates Kuyperianism to Christianize all societal spheres against Marxism, general equity theonomy to apply Old Testament civil codes today, and postmillennialism as a hopeful eschatology. Ultimately, he argues that true gospel-centeredness requires the law flanking the gospel like an Oreo cookie, ensuring churches remain active in redeeming society rather than retreating into pietism or progressive error. [Automatically generated summary]
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Finding a Solid Church00:12:47
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Hi, this is Pastor Joel with Right Response Ministries.
Welcome.
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I am first and foremost a local pastor of Covenant Bible Church.
Covenant Bible Church in Georgetown, Texas.
That's central Texas, about 45 minutes north of Austin.
If you're in any vicinity close to that, a lot of people, we've got people who are driving currently from New Bromfields.
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So we have lots of people who are willing to drive hour, hour and a half, as far as two and a half hours to our church because sadly, that's what I'm going to be addressing in today's video.
Good churches are few and far between.
Good, uncompromised, biblically faithful churches are very hard to find right now.
So I'll start with that.
If you're anywhere in that Central Texas arena, then look us up.
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So it's not covenantbiblechurch.org that was taken.
So just covenantbible.org.
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Called Theology Apply.
All right, so without further ado, let's go ahead and jump into today's topic.
How do we find a biblically faithful, uncompromised church?
If I am churchless and I'm looking for a church, maybe I was, you know, maybe I've never really found a solid church to belong to, or sadly, many of you probably fall into the category of being someone who was previously a faithful member in a local church for five years, 10 years, 15, 20, 25 years.
You're not a chronic.
Chronic church hopper, you were a faithful, consistent member in a local church, but over the last three years, that church has nosedived.
They have completely discredited themselves.
They have compromised, whether it be on the issues of branch COVIDian, cultish behavior love your neighbor by getting the jab, love your neighbor by getting the 17th booster, love your neighbor by wearing two masks, love your neighbor by this, love your neighbor by that.
Whether it's the church compromising on COVID or whether it's the church compromising on wokeology.
With critical race theory and intersectionality, the whole DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion.
Maybe your church started a diversity council, right?
They're not technically elders, but there's this diversity council.
60% of it is made up of women and then people of color to give their input that influences the elders of your church on how to preach and what ministries they should have.
And you're sick of it, and rightly so.
And so you're trying to find another church.
You've been unsuccessful.
This video today may not necessarily completely solve all those problems.
Good, solid biblical churches are still few and far between, but at least we can maybe narrow it down a bit.
I'm hoping to at least provide some categories, some characteristics for you today that you can look for as you're searching and trying to find a solid church to belong to in church membership.
So that's what I want to address.
I want to address the person who is currently churchless and who's looking for a church and wants to speed up that process, right?
You don't want to go to a church.
And sit there for six months, right?
And then find out that the church is subtly woke, you know, or sit there for, you know, a year and a half and then find out that the church isn't really reformed in their soteriology and it's kind of middle of the road or whatever it might be.
So here are seven doctrines that I think are integral.
I think they're vital when it comes to looking for a church.
I think that these are what I would consider to be deal breakers.
Now, I'll say up.
Front as a disclaimer, I recognize that not everybody who subscribes to this channel, not everybody who follows this ministry, shares the same theological convictions as I do.
So, some of these I think are within the realm of Christian orthodoxy.
They're deal breakers across the board.
It should be a deal breaker for everyone.
And then some of them are deal breakers for me and deal breakers for a lot of you who follow this channel who are like minded and share some of the same theological convictions.
But may not necessarily be a deal breaker for somebody else because you hold to a different conviction and it's something that falls into the realm in terms of theological triage in a secondary category rather than a primary category.
But nonetheless, that disclaimer being made now, seven doctrines that you should carefully consider as you're looking for a local church.
Number one, confessionally reformed.
Confessionally reformed.
Let me take those two words and break it down.
And I'll start with this.
As I move on and I get through all seven of these, I know that there'll be someone who objects and says, Well, you listed seven doctrines and none of them were even the gospel.
Shouldn't that have made the list?
I mean, shouldn't that be the top number one doctrine, much less the top seven, the gospel of Jesus Christ?
Yes, it should.
And that's what I'm addressing in the first one Confessionally Reformed.
Well, you didn't say the gospel.
Yeah, I did.
Confessionally reformed.
Wait a second.
Are you saying that you have to be reformed?
Hear me out.
Okay, so Charles Spurgeon, who everybody likes, including Arminians, including Provisionists, a lot of people like Charles Spurgeon while hating Calvinism, which I find ironic.
But nonetheless, Charles Spurgeon, once famously or infamously, depending on how you interpret it, he said that Calvinism is the gospel.
Now, for the record, I am not willing to go quite as far as Spurgeon.
I agree with Spurgeon on a multitude.
Of theological topics and issues.
In this regard, I would distinguish myself from Spurgeon by simply offering a little bit more clarity of language.
What I would say is that Calvinism is the most faithful theological framework for presenting the gospel.
Spurgeon said Calvinism is the gospel.
Again, I would say Spurgeon says Calvinism is the gospel.
Webbin says, I believe that Calvinism is the most biblically faithful.
Theological framework for presenting the unadulterated, uncompromised gospel.
Okay, so all that being said, I'm distinguishing Reformed theology, namely the five points of Calvinism total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement or definite atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of all saints.
I am distinguishing the tulip, the Reformed view of soteriology.
That word soteriology just means doctrine of salvation.
So A reformed Calvinistic view of salvation.
I'm distinguishing that from the gospel itself, and rather I'm labeling that a framework, a theological system and framework for accurately presenting the gospel.
So, all that being said, I believe that a sufficient, not necessarily a perfectly theologically accurate or deeply well rounded and robust gospel presentation, but nonetheless a sufficient.
Gospel presentation can be made by an Arminian, not a Pelagian, which most Arminians, or they would call themselves Arminians, are really, if we're to be technical and to be accurate, are really Pelagian in the sense that they're not synergists, that they believe that God is reaching down, as it were, to man, and man is reaching up, and it's a collaboration of God and man that brings about salvation.
There are many today that would totally deny the doctrine of total depravity.
Jacobus Arminius.
He actually has one of the most poignant quotes in regards to total depravity.
He affirmed total depravity.
What made him Arminian, among many things, but one of them being this little loophole is what I would consider it, but the loophole being provenient grace.
Now, I don't believe that that's a biblical doctrine, but that's what allowed Jacobus to be able to affirm the Bible's depiction of man, anthropology, apart from salvation, who is man, totally depraved.
Not utterly depraved, doing as much sinful things outwardly as he possibly could, but totally depraved, meaning his reason and rationale, his conscience, his body and flesh, prone towards decay and disease and death.
The Doctrine of Total Depravity00:09:37
In every regard, man is totally depraved.
Not utterly depraved, doing as much evil outwardly as he possibly could, but totally depraved in terms of his nature and his heart and his reason.
He cannot and will not ever choose God.
God has to first do something miraculous, right?
That's the linchpin of Reformed theology, is that regeneration precedes faith.
Regeneration, meaning being born again, right?
We're new creatures in Christ Jesus, is what the Bible teaches.
If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature, a new creation, right?
Your choices, people have free will.
Not limitless free will, not autonomous free will, but people do have liberty of choices.
The problem is that.
Every creature, their spectrum of choices available to them is bound by their nature.
So, human beings made in the image of God, even though that image of God has been tarnished by sin, all right, total depravity, still a vestige of the image of God remains in all people, both Christians and non Christians alike.
And so, because human beings are the pinnacle of God's earthly creation, even despite the fall and the curse of sin, human beings are.
Creatures, earthly creatures, to animals, to a dog or a cat or a cow or a whale.
And so, because we're superior in our nature, I would argue, and Jonathan Edwards and others would argue, that there is a wider spectrum of choices made available to us.
Whereas animals, for the most part, their choices are more tightly bound than ours, predominantly just instinct.
So, we have a wider spectrum of choices, but we do not have a limitless spectrum of choices.
Our nature is Is what ultimately limits and binds our choices.
Our choice, our spectrum of choices available to us is limited and set very strictly by our nature.
For instance, you cannot choose to be nine feet tall.
You cannot will yourself to fly, right?
Because your nature doesn't allow for it.
So there are certain choices you cannot make because your finite creaturely nature limits you.
Limits you.
Now, as the pinnacle of all earthly creation, human beings made in the image of God, even despite the fall, we have a wider spectrum of choices made available to us than some kind of primitive animal.
Yet, one of the choices, because of total depravity, because of the curse of sin and the way that it has marred every facet of human beings, our will, our nature, our rationale, our conscience, our morals, The way that man has been totally marred and depraved by the curse of sin, one choice that is not within our wheelhouse, our spectrum of choices made available to us,
is the choice to believe the gospel and obey the commandments of God.
That's just not a choice that people can make.
An unbeliever can outwardly align themselves in terms of their speech and behavior to a degree, varying degrees based on the person.
An unbeliever can.
Can outwardly align themselves with God's moral law as found in the scripture.
What I'm saying is that an unbeliever can get married and never commit adultery.
Now, they're going to commit adultery of the heart, which the Christian does from time to time as well, but outwardly never commit adultery.
Outwardly, not steal.
Outwardly, there are plenty of non believers that go their entire life and they never physically, outwardly, literally murder someone.
Praise God.
Praise God.
But what they can't do is please the Lord.
Romans 14 says, anything that does not proceed from faith is sin.
Hebrews 11 says that without faith, it is impossible to please Him, to please God.
And therefore, so that raises another question what is it to do something in faith?
I've often defined this for my congregation as to do something in faith is to do it both with a dependence on God's grace and a desire for God's glory.
I'll say that again.
To do something in faith is to do it with a dependence on God's grace and a desire for God's glory, meaning that the atheist could do something outwardly in his behaviors that actually does align with the moral will of God, like not cheating on his spouse.
And yet, he will not be faithful in his marriage with a dependence on God's grace.
Rather, it will be a reliance on himself, and it also will not be A dependence on God's grace or a desire for God's glory.
It'll be a desire for his own happiness and, at best, a desire for the good of his children, for the good of his wife, for the collective happiness of mankind and the betterment of society.
But what it'll never be is obedience to God's moral will from the heart with a desire to glorify God.
And therefore, his righteousness is as filthy rags.
Even though he's outwardly doing that which aligns with the moral will of God, it is ultimately not.
Pleasing to God.
And that choice to do something in faith, to believe the gospel and to live out in accordance with God's law, but from a response, from a response of gratitude for the free grace that we have by faith alone in Christ, that is something that an unbeliever can't do.
Why?
Because our choices are bound by our nature, and the sin nature does not allow for that choice.
Romans chapter 8.
The mind of the sinful man is not indifferent, not neutral, but hostile towards God's law.
It does not submit to God's law, nor can it.
It's unwilling.
It does not.
Nor can it.
It's unable.
It cannot.
So, the nature, the sin nature of fallen humanity, apart from regeneration, which is a work of the Holy Spirit, where He removes, this is Ezekiel 36, removes the heart of flesh and replaces it with a heart of stone, rather, and replaces it with a heart of flesh.
Apart from being born again, this is John chapter 3, the discourse between Jesus and Nicodemus the Pharisee.
He says that a person cannot.
Enter the kingdom of heaven, he cannot even see the kingdom of heaven unless he first be born again.
Have a heart transplant, the heart of stone removed, a heart of flesh that's malleable and receptive and responsive to the things of God.
Unless that first happens, he will not enter the kingdom and he won't even move towards the kingdom because he can't even see the kingdom.
This is what Jesus says.
So, what does all that amount to?
Again, it amounts to affirming the principle that.
Choices are limited by our nature.
And in spiritual terms, speaking of human nature in spiritual terms, because of sin and the way that it totally mars our nature, human nature, because of sin and the doctrine of total depravity, an unbeliever, apart from saving grace, apart from salvation, does not submit to God, nor can he.
It's outside of his wheelhouse, his spectrum of choices, because it's not within his nature.
It's like asking him to be nine feet tall.
It's like asking him to spout wings, sprout wings, and fly.
His nature does not allow for it.
So, all that being said, the linchpin of Reformed theology is regeneration precedes faith.
So, it's not faith that you need to make a choice to believe in God and then that precedes regeneration.
So, it's not believe in God.
And if you choose to believe in God, you'll be rewarded for making the right choice with a new heart.
You choose to believe in God as you currently are under the curse of sin.
And if you make the right choice to believe in God, then the reward, the response, God's response to man's initiating choice is that God will reward you with a new heart.
No.
If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation, a new creature.
The nature has to change first in order for us to believe.
Regeneration precedes faith.
So, all this being said, again, that's not synonymous with the gospel.
So, I differ.
I love Spurgeon.
But I disagree with him on this point.
That is not a one to one ratio of being synonymous with the gospel.
However, I think that the better language to use is to say that the Reformed tradition, and particularly Reformed soteriology, a Calvinistic view of salvation, is not the gospel itself, but it is the most biblically faithful theological framework for presenting the gospel accurately and robustly.
Regeneration Precedes Faith00:03:11
So, Number one, seven doctrines.
Number one, confessionally reformed.
So we've handled gospel and Reformation theology.
But what do I mean by confessionally reformed?
Because it's not just reformed, but confessionally reformed.
I'll say it like this I spent years of my life, my Christian life, and my pastoral life, the first seven years of pastoral ministry, exhausted and wearied by doing theology.
Constantly and indefinitely, it felt like doing theology a la carte.
Meaning, I've used this analogy a few times, and I recognize that it's kind of silly, but I think it gets the point across.
If you remember the good old days and you grew up in the South or the Midwest, you probably remember Luby's, right?
It's that mom's cooking kind of cafeteria style, southern comfort food.
And what you do is you go through this line, it's a buffet, and you get a tray, or if you're smart, right, it's all you can eat, you pay the same price either way, you get.
You know, not a tray, you get three trays and you get multiple plates, and you're loading up, you know, this seven course meal, and you're getting some fried chicken or chicken fried steak, and you're getting some mashed potatoes and gravy and fried okra, and pretty much everything's fried.
At the end, you're getting, you know, some jello, you know, or whatever it might be, and you're getting rolls and this and that and that and this.
Well, I felt like I had been in a Luby's buffet line for years in terms of theology, and I had done a few trades.
Which I know is a no no.
And each time you get penalized, you know, I shouldn't have gotten, you know, the fried chicken because there's actually this other chicken that's even better.
And I'm going to put that back and switch it out for this.
And it's like I had done that, this theology a la carte, right?
So it's like you come to a new text in scripture, or you just come to a new challenge, just experientially, personally in your life, where there's certain doctrines you didn't even know they existed, right?
Like, well, what does the Bible say about women preaching from the pulpit?
Or what does the Bible say about head coverings?
What does the Bible say about eschatology?
What does the Bible say about this?
What does it say about that?
And each time you have to go back to the drawing board, back to the buffet line and decide, you know, did I make the right choice?
Do I go with the fried chicken or the chicken fried steak?
You know, and you're doing all this work and it's like I finally, finally got towards the end of that Luby's buffet line.
And all of a sudden I see this little chalkboard sign and it says, Chef Special, seven course meal.
And it gives each item, For each course.
And I'm looking at my three trays and seven plates, you know, and I'm realizing, all right, I've been trying to master this, you know, Luby's buffet line for, you know, 10 plus years now.
And I'm looking over there at the chef special and I see like I'm like 93% of what the chef said.
I'm either going to say that the 7% where I differ from the chef's recommendation is because I'm better than the chef.
Because I know more than the chef, because the chef got most of his recommendations right.
But at the end of the day, this particular Luby's connoisseur knows more than the guy who actually cooks up the food.
Or I can say, maybe the chef knows something I don't.
And I could just take his word for it.
And I could go ahead and swap out that 7% where I differ from the chef and just trust that the chef got it right.
Not just reformed doctrine, but confessionally reformed.
Not just a Calvinistic Baptist who holds to the five points of Calvinism, but he's a dispensationalist, rejects covenant theology.
He's a non Sabbatarian.
Maybe the chef, in this case, if we're talking about Reformed historic confessions, two of the big ones being the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession of Faith that I prescribed to, or the 1646 Westminster Confession of Faith.
Those are the two primary ones on both sides of the aisle, whether you're Pado Baptist or Credo Baptist.
But both historic confessions of Reformed theology, robust and detailed.
The 1689 is about, in book form, it's about 85 pages long.
So it's not 700 pages, but it's also not your general statement of faith that's three pages long that you would find on a church website.
It's lengthy and it's thorough.
And here's the deal it's not just one chef, right?
You've got Nehemiah Cox and Benjamin Keach, and you've got all these different pastors and theologians that came out collectively and And worked through these theological debates for hours and days and months and years and finally came to a consensus.
Whether it be the Westminster or the 1689, the process, the general process, and how they determined these doctrines as being biblically faithful is comparable on both sides.
So either the, not just the chef, but the team of world class chefs got it right, and I might add, all the chefs over the last hundreds of years.
Because these are documents, historic confessions that somebody, a team of brilliant Bible scholars came up with.
But not just that, they have been tried and true, tested and tried and true over the last centuries by other people saying, yep, the Westminster Confession of Faith is still good.
1689, still good.
So either these guys are right or they're wrong.
But.
But I got it right.
And so I spent so much of my life, and it was, it's not just that I was risking the very real opportunity of theological error, but I was also exhausting myself.
A lot of my pastoral ministry opportunities were swallowed up with, I would just, I had to study.
I had to study.
I still have to study to show myself approved.
Every Christian does.
I'm not negating that.
But there's an immense relief and safety and security that comes with being inside of a historic, confessionally reformed tradition.
That's what I'm saying.
So, all that being said, seven doctrines that I'd be looking for if I'm looking for a local church.
The first one is I want that church to be reformed, and I want that church ideally to be confessionally reformed, not just a Calvinist like John Piper.
Would be an example.
Sam Storms would be an example.
Wayne Grudem would be an example.
John MacArthur would be an example.
I don't just want him to be a Calvinist, Calvinistic Baptist, but I want him to be confessionally reformed, a reformed Baptist.
Somebody who is not just holding to the five points of Calvinism and reformed in terms of their view of soteriology, but I want them to be thoroughly reformed.
I want them to be reformed in the category of soteriology, salvation, certainly, but I also want them to be reformed in their view not just of the gospel, but their view of the law.
I want them to be Sabbatarian.
I want them to be covenantal and not dispensationalist.
I want them to be thoroughly reformed or confessionally reformed, tried, tested, and true.
So, first thing that I'd be looking for is a confessionally reformed church.
One, because it's thorough, it's accurate, it's tested and true, but also because it binds the ordained ministers, the officers of that church, elders and deacons, or on the Presbyterian side of the aisle, you would have.
Teaching elders and ruling elders.
They have a bifurcation of elders, so two.
Some Presbyterians would have three types of elders, but primarily two types of elders a teaching elder, a ruling elder, and then deacons.
But in both regards, the officers, ordained officers of the church in a Presbyterian or Baptist church, if it's confessional, not just Calvinistic, but reformed, confessionally reformed, not only is that tried, not only has that passed the test of time, and therefore provides a high level of.
Doctrinal accuracy, but it also provides a level of accountability, accountability and safety because it binds the ordained officers of that local church within the theological parameters of an 85 page,
not a three page general confession of faith on the website, but it binds them, you know, statement of faith, but it binds them to an 85 page, you know, or 100 page.
Depending on what your font in print is, but a much more thorough and lengthy and detailed confession of faith or statement of faith, so that you know when you show up at that church that now, guys can still compromise, you know, but you at least stand a much better chance of being able to trust that the elders and deacons, ordained officers of this local church, they're not just five point Calvinists when it comes to salvation, but they are confessionally reformed.
I've got There's still things outside of the confessions.
Head coverings is not covered by the Westminster.
Head coverings is not covered by the 1689.
So there's still going to be theological questions that you're going to have to inquire where do the pastors stand on this particular issue?
But you've got at least 85 pages of doctrine that's settled, that you can know where they stand.
And you can know that where they stand is where many other faithful men have stood for centuries before them.
That's encouraging.
So number one would be confessionally reformed.
All right, so that covers Calvinism, that covers the gospel in terms of it's not synonymous with the gospel, but I'm including the gospel in that more particularly, it being a biblically faithful, theologically accurate framework for presenting the gospel, and it can also cover historic confessionalism.
That's number one.
Number two, covenant theology.
Now, some of these things fall within the confession, but then some of them out of these seven doctrines are not covered by a confession, but I view them as being vital.
To a church is not only the doctrinal positions that that particular church holds to and preaches publicly from the pulpit, but doctrines that I think are integral in the way that it shapes the actual living out of the Christian faith of a local church.
It shapes their practice.
It shapes the way they live, not just their theology and theory, but their theology and practice.
Okay, so we'll get to some of those.
But first, confessionally reformed, second, covenant theology.
That's In both of the historic Reformed Confessions, Westminster and the 1689 covenant theology, but I think that it's worth its own mention.
It's that important.
For me, I would not be willing to take my wife and children to a dispensational church.
That doesn't mean that every dispensational church is heretical.
That's certainly not true.
There are guys who are generally biblically faithful who are dispensational ish.
Like John MacArthur, who by his own testimony would describe himself as you know, there's hard dispensationalists, and he would describe himself as a leaky dispensationalist.
I believe that John MacArthur, by and large, is a guy who's been incredibly faithful.
I'm very grateful for him.
So, hear that disclaimer.
Take this with a grain of salt.
But if I lived in LA, which I would never live there, but if I did live in LA with my wife and children, we would not be members at John MacArthur's church because I believe that dispensationalism is that problematic.
I believe that theologically it is so problematic that even a leaky dispensational approach is going to produce a fruit in my wife and me and my children.
That I do not want to see.
So, reformed, confessionally reformed, covenant theology, understanding that God works through covenants.
There's more that could be said about covenant theology, but we'll leave it there.
The third one would be, and this is kind of systematically building, but this is in the vein of covenant theology biblical patriarchy.
Biblical patriarchy.
Whatever church that I'm looking for, I want to know that that church is patriarchal, and as a litmus test, This is key.
As a litmus test, I want to know that the pastors of that church are willing to say the P word, patriarchy, from the pulpit.
Not complimentary.
I want to know that they are patriarchal and will say that they are patriarchal publicly without blushing.
Patriarchy simply means father rule.
Father rule.
Rule.
Biblical patriarchy is the idea that first and foremost, we live in the capital T, capital F, the father's world.
That God is a father.
He's not a mother.
It's not a sister.
He is a father.
He identifies himself and represents himself and conveys himself in paternal terms as a father.
He's the father of lights.
Every good and perfect gift comes down from the father, the father of lights.
So God is a father, and God predominantly works in the world through fathers.
There are three divinely instituted spheres.
Sovereign spheres in human society.
That's the home, the church, and the state.
And each of these is governed by fathers.
There are familial fathers.
The mother is not the head of the home.
Husband is the head of his wife, and he is the head of the home, head of the children.
The wife, as mother, in regards to her relationship with the children, she bears authority, but even her authority works in concert and it stems from the father.
She's, in a sense, the viceroy or the deputy.
Of the father, but he is the head of household, he's the head of household.
So, God the Father works in the world through human fathers in the realm, the sovereign sphere of the home, the family.
God works through familial fathers in the church.
God works through ecclesiastical fathers.
Right?
There's a reason why elders must be men, and the beauty of being confessionally reformed, c.a., is that deacons, as ordained officers in the church, also are required to be men.
The Westminster and the 1689 say this explicitly.
If you are a part, not a Calvinistic Baptist church, again, right, not just like an Acts 29 church or something, but you're a part of a true blue, confessionally historic Reformed Baptist church or Reformed Presbyterian church, you're going to have not only male elders, but also a male diaconate, male deacons.
I find it, you know, I feel like it should be fairly obvious that in Acts chapter 6, where we see, you know, the introduction of the diaconate, that one of the things that the apostles asked for is, you know, go and find us seven men filled with the Holy Spirit.
Men, right there, from the very beginning.
We need seven deacons.
All of them need to be men.
And then somehow we end up with female deacons later on.
I think that's silly.
And I've done a lot of work, and you guys have heard even in recent episodes of Theology Applied with like Zach Garrus, which just came out a couple weeks ago.
If you haven't watched that video, you can go back and watch that.
But we talk about the diaconate, we talk about 1 Timothy 3, likewise, their wives, and how some people translate that as women.
So there's one list of qualifications for a male deacon and one for a list of qualifications for a female deacon.
That's the wrong interpretation.
That's not how you read it.
If you want more theological and biblical support for that, you can.
Watch that episode of Theology Applied.
So, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that right now.
But the point is this in the ecclesiastical sphere, the sovereign sphere of the church, again, it's fathers that God works through.
It is, you know, the leaders of the church, and I would argue again, both elders and deacons are male and they are spiritual fathers.
So, it's familial fathers in the home, it's ecclesiastical or spiritual fathers in the church, both elders and deacons.
And then it should be what it's supposed to be is civil fathers in the sphere of the state.
That we would have, you know, some guys would use the language of the Christian prince.
But even with that language, it's not the Christian princess, it's the Christian prince.
Yes, our civil magistrates should be qualified men.
They should be men.
That's one of the judgments that we see in the prophets in the Old Testament.
It's actually a judgment of God for a nation, a civil nation, to be ruled by children or by women.
That's a judgment.
The fact that you have, you know, Nancy Pelosi and all that is God's judgment.
And certainly we have corrupt, terrible male civil magistrates in our nation today.
But that doesn't change God's word.
The fact that there are bad men who are in positions of civil authority doesn't mean that women should be in positions of civil authority.
God is a father, the father, and he works and blesses.
The Father's world, the world that He has made through human fathers in each of the three divine institutions that He established: familial fathers in the home, ecclesiastical fathers in the church, and civil fathers in the state.
Biblical Authority Over Civil Codes00:08:36
All right, so confessionally reformed.
Covenant theology: speaking of covenants, there's always a covenant head, a federal head.
All right, this is just a basic understanding of covenant theology and how covenants work.
There's always a covenantal head.
Adam is a covenantal head, right?
If you're not in Christ, You're in Adam.
There's only two categories.
You're either in Christ, the second Adam, he is your federal representative.
You're in Christ and clothed in his righteousness.
You have a union with Christ by the Spirit through faith, or you are in the first Adam.
You're either in the last Adam or the first Adam.
If you're in the first Adam, then you're underneath his federal headship.
He represents you, he's the head of that covenant.
And as being a covenant member in Adam's covenant, then you're a covenant breaker.
Because Adam broke that covenant.
It was a covenant of works that God established with Adam, and he broke the covenant, and the penalty for breaking the covenant was death.
And so you're a dead man, spiritually speaking, you are a dead man walking.
You are under the just condemnation of God, and there's no hope apart from switching covenants, switching your membership, and having a new covenantal head, federal head.
From the first Adam under the covenant of works, where you're a covenant breaker because your federal head broke that covenant, and you have followed suit and broken that covenant too.
And are due the just penalties for covenant breaking, namely death and eternal death, or you transfer membership to another covenant, namely the new covenant, the covenant of grace, with a new federal head, namely Christ, who has fulfilled all the terms of that covenant.
And he has fulfilled them not only for his own sake, but for the benefit in the stead as a substitute for all the covenant members.
Now, Christ is, through faith and by the work of the Spirit, You have union with Christ and you are a part of the new covenant and you receive all its blessings and promises.
So, confessionally reformed covenant theology is key, and biblical patriarchy flows out of covenant theology.
Biblical patriarchy.
So, I'd be looking for a church that is reformed.
I want them to be more than just Calvinistic, I want them to be confessionally reformed.
I want that church not to be dispensational, I want them to adhere to again, C point A this is part of being confessionally reformed covenant theology.
That is the historic confessional position.
I don't want a doctrine that burst onto the scenes in, you know, 150 years ago, aka dispensationalism.
I want an old doctrine that's been around for 2,000 years, aka covenant theology.
So I want confessionally reformed churches.
I want covenant theology churches.
And within covenant theology, if they're really covenantal and they're not bashful about it and they're not woke and they're not feminist and they're not just trying to kowtow to the culture, then they're going to have no qualms and make no apology about being.
Patriarchal, because covenant and patriarchy go hand in hand.
It's hand in glove.
And so I want to find a church that adheres to biblical patriarchy.
All right, confessionally reformed covenant theology, biblical patriarchy.
Next, presuppositionalism.
Presuppositionalism.
I want to be a part of a church.
If I'm looking for a church, I want to find a church that is presuppositional.
I want that church to be in line with Cornelius Van Til and not with Thomas Aquinas.
In other words, and this is another that would take a lot of time.
If you want more details on this, you can watch one of our Theology Applied episodes that I did a while back with Dr. James White.
You could also go and check out the sweater vest dialogues on Canon channel and see a discourse between Doug Wilson and James White about Thomism, those who would adhere to the teachings of Thomas Aquinas and the problems with that.
Thomas Aquinas was ultimately commissioned by the Roman Catholic Church to.
Essentially, baptize, as it were, Aristotle.
And so it's taking Greek and philosophy and metaphysics and imposing those on the scripture.
And basically, in a sense, I really do believe that Thomism, in a sense, denies the premise of sola scriptura.
That it basically says that scripture is not sufficient, that we can't really understand the Trinity, we can't really understand the essence and nature of God and the inner workings of the three persons of the Trinity.
And we can't understand revelation, and we can't understand how God speaks, and we can't understand this, and we can't understand that apart from something, apart from scripture plus something else, namely reason.
Right?
Divine revelation from God, the scriptures, special revelation, but also man's reason.
We need man's reason to supplement God's revelation in order to know what God has actually said.
Whereas presuppositionalism, Cornelius Van Til, obviously, I believe it's older than him.
I believe it would track back all the way back to.
Romans chapter 1 and 2 with the Apostle Paul, but Cornelius Van Til is the one who is probably most known for this presuppositional approach.
And this was taken up by guys like Greg Bonson.
And Greg Bonson is often remembered in regards to how he took the presuppositional approach to scripture, sola scriptura, the scripture alone, and applied that into the realm of Christian ethics.
And that's where you get this idea of general equity theonomy.
And Bonson did go on record saying that he was not just a theonomist, but a general equity theonomist.
Which is, again, C point A, the confessionally reformed position.
That is what the 1689 and the Westminster say in regards to the civil codes under the Old Covenant given to Israel.
The moral law of God, the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue, both the first table and the second.
Second table, love your neighbor as yourself, our obligation to our neighbor.
First table, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
So, our obligation to God, the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue is the moral law of God and it endures forever, it's immutable.
And that includes the fourth commandment of the Sabbath.
And Jesus did not remove the Sabbath, but rather by virtue of being Lord of the Sabbath and by virtue of his bodily resurrection, Jesus renewed, not removed, but renewed the Sabbath from the last day of the week to the first.
The Sabbath still stands, but it is now the Lord's day, the first day of the week.
So, all that being said, and that wasn't Constantine in the Roman Catholic Church, that was done for all the way back to the Apostles.
We find it in Scripture, and it was done for hundreds of years before Constantine made it cool.
So, all that being said, that's the Decalogue, the moral law of God.
But in terms of the civil codes, the civil law of God, like having a parapet, a border around your roof, those kinds of things, or muzzling an ox when he treads the grain, we see as the example of the apostles, the apostle Paul cites a civil code like muzzling an ox, and he uses that in the general equity, the moral principle underneath that particular civil code given to Israel under the Old Covenant.
He takes the general moral principle and applies it to why you should pay your pastor.
Don't muzzle the ox while he treads the grain, right?
The worker deserves the wages.
So, all that being said, that's general equity theonomy.
That's saying that we're not just going to take the moral law of God, that's certainly eternal and immutable, the Ten Commandments, but we're also going to take the civil codes, and we're not going to just take the civil codes and do a one step process of just dropping them wholesale on American culture today in 2023 without any amendments or application or revisions.
But what we're going to do is we're going to take all the civil codes, we're going to track the civil codes back to the moral law to find the general equity, and then we're going to, with wisdom, carefully apply that to our time and our place today.
So, a border around your roof of your house to protect the sanctity of human life, speed limits on the road for cars.
So, anyways, all that being said, Bonson was a general equity theonomist.
And he took, he was a disciple of Cornelius Van Til, and he took the presuppositional.
Presuppositional hermeneutics and understanding the scripture and applied it to the realm of Christian ethics, and that's where you get general equity theonomy.
Man Is Ultimately Rebellious00:07:56
But more renowned than Bonson's work on theonomy, perhaps, is his work in the realm of apologetics.
And that's where we really get the work of Cornelius Van Til, but now applied to a defense for the Christian faith, apologetics.
And that's where we get presuppositional apologetics.
If you're wondering, well, who's a presuppositional apologist today?
Well, that, you know, your quintessential examples would be, you know, like James White or Jeff Durbin.
This presuppositional apologetics.
Approach basically saying that neutrality is a myth, there is no moral neutrality.
Every man has an allegiance.
Christ said, You're either for me or you're against me.
That man is, per Romans chapter 1, he knows the truth, but he is lying and suppressing the truth in deeds of unrighteousness.
The presuppositional apologist, rather than a classical apologist or evidential apologist, the presuppositional apologist, what he's going to be very careful to insist again and again and again, is he's going to say that the Bible is true and it's the highest.
Authority.
So he's not going to say, here's an argument from reason that supports the credibility and authority of the Bible.
Because what the presuppositional apologist never wants to do is he doesn't want to inadvertently ever say that there's a higher authority than Scripture.
That you can trust Scripture because this other authority, right?
And inadvertently, what we're saying there is this other, more credible and higher authority, Scripture should be viewed as an authority because the higher authority said so.
And what's the higher authority?
Evidence, reason, sense perception would be one of the classical apologists would point towards.
They would say, Our five senses are reliable.
These are the reasons why we can trust that our five senses are reliable.
And here's Aquinas and what he did with Aristotle in terms of metaphysics and reason and these kinds of things and consciousness.
I think, therefore I am, those kinds of things.
And so we're going to start with man's consciousness and we're going to Move from man's consciousness to argue that, therefore, the existence of God.
No, we want to argue down.
We want to start with God.
We want to start with the scripture.
And we want to say, you know, this is true because the scripture says you know this is true.
And anytime you say anything to the contrary, like, well, how do I know that there is a God?
We're going to call you on it and we're going to say that you're lying and suppressing the truth and deeds of unrighteousness because that's what the Bible said.
That God, the existence of God, has been plainly revealed, displayed.
The character of God, right?
His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly displayed.
And not just clearly displayed, but the Bible actually says in Romans 1 clearly perceived, right?
So not just that God clearly put the message out there, but that it wasn't picked up, right?
It wasn't received, it was lost in translation.
No, God clearly displayed his revelation, natural revelation, but then also man perceived it.
The message was received by man.
It's been perceived by man.
And anytime man contradicts the existence of God and the truth of God's word, it's not because he's ultimately ignorant, it's because he's rebellious.
You could say it like this I think, in many ways, the heart of presuppositional apologetics and just the presuppositional approach is that rebellion does not stem from ignorance, but rather, ignorance stems from rebellion.
Very often, what unbelievers and even Christians will buy into this rhetoric, but very often what you'll hear the unbelievers say is, Well, I don't know if there's a God.
And because I don't know if there's a God, essentially what they're saying is that it's not my fault.
God failed.
The onus is on God to reveal himself, and God failed to sufficiently make himself known.
And so, therefore, I'm intellectually ignorant.
And because I'm intellectually ignorant of God, because God failed to sufficiently reveal himself, prove himself, I'm therefore morally absolved in terms of my behavior.
My rebellion.
So I'm free to rebel against God's law.
I'm not bound by his law.
I'm morally absolved of guilt and culpability in terms of my rebellion because of my ignorance.
And my ignorance is not my fault.
It's not culpable ignorance, willful ignorance.
That too, ultimately, God is at fault because I'm not ignorant because I'm choosing to be ignorant because I'm lying, suppressing the truth and deeds of unrighteousness, precisely as the Bible says, but rather because God failed to make himself known.
And I think that classical apologetics and evidential apologetics hear that rhetoric of the unbeliever and they give it credence in some measure, to some extent.
They say, oh, okay, yeah, okay.
Whereas the presuppositional apologist, someone like Van Til or Bonson or James White or myself, we would say, no, you're a liar.
How dare you?
No, you're not in the judge's seat.
Jesus is not on trial.
The triune God is not on trial here in your courtroom.
Now you stand in God's courtroom.
He's in the judge's seat.
The angels, and hosts of angels, and the great cloud of witnesses, they're sitting in the jury seat.
You're the defendant.
You're the one on trial.
And God has already mounted an impenetrable prosecution, and He has proved without a shred of doubt.
Without a reasonable doubt, that God has done everything He was required to sufficiently reveal Himself.
And your problem is not that you're ignorant, therefore you rebel.
Your problem is that you're rebellious, therefore you give yourself a self lobotomy, as it were, in order to try to be ignorant.
The chief problem with man, anthropology, with the Bible's anthropology and what it says about unregenerate man, apart from salvation, is not that he's ignorant, therefore he morally rebels.
It is that he is morally rebellious.
In his nature, because of sin.
In sin did my mother conceive me, in iniquity I was brought forth.
David says in the Psalms, from conception, because of the curse of sin, because he's under his father Adam as federal head in the covenant of works, and he is a covenant breaker, his whole nature has been marred by sin.
And therefore, he is a sinner and a rebel, and because he's rebellious, he chooses to make himself ignorant.
Ignorance stems from rebellion.
Not the other way around.
Presuppositional.
I want to go to a church.
So, all that being said, that's the fourth characteristic out of these seven.
Number one, confessionally reformed.
Number two, covenant theology.
Number three, biblical patriarchy.
Number four, presuppositional.
I want to go to a church that's presuppositional because I believe that the presuppositional church and presuppositional theology holds the scripture in higher regard.
It's that simple.
I think that that is the theological position.
That gives the highest credence to Scripture.
And I want to go to a church that gives the highest credence to Scripture.
So I'm going to opt for a presuppositional church rather than a Thomist church.
All right, number five.
Number five is, let me think, Kyperianism.
Understanding Kyperianism00:15:21
Now, this is interesting because John Harris, who's a friend of mine, I love John, and he does such good work.
John Harris with Conversations That Matter.
If you're not already subscribed to his channel, you need to go over there.
It's on YouTube, it's also on every major podcast platform Spotify, iTunes, et cetera.
But Conversations That Matter.
John Harris has been sounding the alarm on critical race theory and the social justice gospel and those kind of things since.
I mean, he was one of the first.
You know, Vodie Bacham probably beat him by maybe a couple years, but John Harris was right there.
You know, it was like Vodie Bacham was maybe the earliest.
And then you have, you know, Michael O'Fallon with Sovereign Nations.
He was early on warning guys and being faithful about that.
John Harris was right around that time.
But one of the early guys who got a lot of backlash for the record, John Harris, I tweeted this the other day and people liked it because, as a general concept, if you don't name situations and people, Then nobody's bothered by it.
But I'll probably name a couple situations and people and offend half of you.
We'll probably check out.
But I tweeted something like this I said, I've realized over the years, I've come to realize that it's actually quite easy to gain a large audience and popularity from a biblically conservative, theologically and culturally and politically conservative platform.
Being right, I said this, being right is not what gets you backlash.
What gets you backlash is not being right, it's being first.
Israel always killed the prophets.
And then the later generations of Israel built tombs to honor those prophets.
Everybody likes Charles Spurgeon.
You know why people like Charles Spurgeon?
Because Charles Spurgeon has been safely buried underneath six feet of dirt for over 100 years.
That's why they like him.
If Charles Spurgeon was alive today, most of you would hate him.
You would.
Well, we like Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones.
We just don't like MacArthur.
No.
No.
Mark my words 100 years from now, when MacArthur's good and dead, your average Christian will be talking about how, yeah, I stand with MacArthur.
I wish we still had MacArthur today.
He's probably rolling over in his grave.
I'd be on his side.
But people weren't when he was alive, they were attacking him.
Left and right, constantly, all the time.
So, all that being said, you don't get a ton of backlash for taking the right position, but you do get a ton of backlash for taking the right position first.
There is such a thing as the Overton window moving.
And here's the thing the irony, the tragic irony, is the prophetic, lowercase p, profit type guys who sound the alarm first that get all the backlash, but they're the guys who actually move that Overton window.
So that other guys later on can come in and say, Yeah, wokeness is dumb.
And now, like, if you talk about woke theology and social justice gospel and critical race theory and intersectionality, diversity, equity, and inclusion, as these are things that are contrary to the teachings of scripture and that these are things that are compromised, theologically dangerous, you say those kinds of things now in 2023, and you'll have a lot of evangelical support.
A lot of evangelicals are progressive.
About half of them will disagree with you, but about half of them will agree with you.
But if you say those same things back in 2017, you'd have virtually no support.
People would say that you were harsh, that you're being racist, that your white privilege is showing.
Well, what happened?
Think about that for a second.
I know some of you guys, you're dispensational pre mill guys, so you're very committed to everything always getting worse.
So, this is a hard concept for you that the Overton window has shifted in a positive direction, that something actually got better.
Because you're convinced that things can only get worse and that's the plan of God.
But just humor me for a moment.
On this one issue, over these last, let's say, five to eight years, it has gotten better.
The Overton window has shifted.
The wicked side of the room, for lack of a better label, the wicked side of the room has only gotten more hostile and wicked.
But the righteous side of the room, that's taking the right position and biblical fidelity, that side of the room was like five people in 2017.
And now it's like 50% of the room.
A lot of people have been won over to recognizing that wokeology is a bad idea.
How did that happen?
John Harris, Eddie Robles, Michael O'Fallon, Vodie Bacham, God bless him forever.
That's how that happened.
That's how that happened.
And so, my point is just to say that I love John Harris.
I disagree with him, however, on one particular issue, and he just put out a podcast on it today, which is funny because I was already planning on doing this, and I'm not going to change my plans.
But John Harris is not a big fan of Abraham Kuyper.
He doesn't like, you know, John Harris really struggles with the category of common grace.
Now, when I say Kuyperianism, I should say this I mean Kuyperianism the same way that I mean Calvinism.
I am a Calvinist, but I don't agree with every jot and tittle of Calvin's Institutes, which I have read, by the way.
I'm pretty sure there's only like 12 people in the whole world that have actually read all of Calvin's institutes, and by God's grace, I'm one of them.
But it's a journey, to say the least.
It's large.
But there are certain things.
I mean, here's one easy one.
John Calvin was a Pado Baptist.
I'm a Credo Baptist.
I'm about as close to being a Presbyterian as you could possibly get as a Baptist, but here I stand still a Baptist.
I can do no other.
So I'm a Credo Baptist.
And so, in that sense, that's just one very clear example where I. Don't adhere to all of Calvin's teachings.
And yet, I'm perfectly content saying that I'm a Calvinist.
And when I say I'm a Calvinist, most people know what I mean by that.
They don't assume that I agree with every tenet of John Calvin's convictions and theological premises, but rather they understand that what I mean is predominantly in regards to John Calvin's view of soteriology, because the term Calvinism has ultimately come to mean Calvin's perspective on salvation, God's sovereignty in salvation.
Well, I understand and I'm sympathetic with John Harris in terms of Abraham Kuyper in the sense that it's not as clear.
Calvinism, meaning John Calvin's view on this issue, that's clear.
And I'll concede that.
That's much clearer.
When you say Calvinism, you mean Calvin's view on these things.
That's much clearer than when you say Kuyperianism.
In part because Abraham Kuyper, like most theologians, virtually no one is as known as John Calvin.
But when I say Kyperion, primarily what I'm pointing towards, even more than common grace and those kinds of things, is the idea that Christ is king of everything.
The quintessential line from Abraham Kyper that not one square inch of all creation, there's not one square inch of all creation that does not cry out mine, that Jesus does not cry out mine.
Meaning it all belongs to Jesus.
You know, the illustration that I use regularly is kind of like an example from, you know, the Lion King.
Movie, you know, where Simba, you know, wakes his dad up on Pride Rock early in the morning.
The sun's just barely peeking over the horizon, and they go out to the edge of Pride Rock.
Mufasa, the king, is going to show his son, you know, all of his kingdom that he's going to inherit when Simba becomes king.
And he's everything the light touches, you know.
And then Simba looks and says, Well, what about that dark, shadowy place over there?
And Mufasa says, You must never go there, right?
And many evangelicals today kind of have that mindset, you know, it's like, Everything the light touches belongs to Jesus, right?
This two kingdom theology, you know, the sacred, this belongs to King Jesus.
Well, what about that dark shadowy?
Well, that's politics.
You must never go there, you know, or that's principled pluralism.
That doesn't really belong to Jesus.
Jesus actually doesn't want to be king of politics.
Jesus actually prefers to co reign with other false gods.
It actually really makes Jesus happy.
And if you're wondering, well, principled pluralism doesn't sound like a bad idea.
You can draw a straight line from principled pluralism and classical liberalism to drag queen story hour.
That's what it is.
It's sharing the public square with false gods, with other gods.
Pluralism is just a euphemism for polytheism, many gods.
So, Kyperianism, when I'm using that term, Kyperian, I'm looking for a church that's Kyperian.
What I'm saying is this I'm looking for a church that believes that Jesus is king.
And that he's king over everything.
Not just that he will be king when he returns on Thursday, dispensational premillennialism, and until then everything's going to get worse and worse.
And not that he is king now, but only in the 17th dimension in some ethereal spiritual plane, but not in any tangible, physical, literal sense here on earth, aka all millennialism.
Not all all millennialists, but some, some.
But no, I mean.
I mean, I believe that Jesus is king and that all authority on earth and in heaven, not just kingly royalty and authority in a spiritual sense in heaven, but all authority on earth and in heaven has been given to him.
Not will be, but has been given to him.
He must reign.
1 Corinthians 15, 25, until all his enemies have been placed under his feet.
Not he will reign.
He will reign after his enemies have been placed under his feet.
No, he must reign until all his enemies have been placed under his feet.
The last of his enemies to be defeated is death.
And the funny thing is, going back to dispensational premillennialism for a moment, in a lot of their minds, I'm sure there are some exceptions, and so I'm going to be careful with my language, but in a lot of their minds, they subconsciously behave as though death is not the last enemy of Christ to be defeated, but rather the first.
That all of Christ's enemies are actually going to only increase in power.
And dominance as the world spirals into more and more spiritual darkness and the church whittles down and gets fewer and fewer, the little remnant remaining.
But Christ will come, right?
Will be the church will not be victorious, but rather the church is on the ropes getting wailed on by Satan.
But Christ is sustaining, not strengthening his church, but sustaining his church until all 12 rounds and will be saved by the bell.
And when Christ returns, what we know upon Christ's final physical return, that he's going to lay death in its grave.
But if you think about that for just a moment, practically and logically and theologically, It's really, in a sense, that's saying that upon Christ's return, he'll defeat death and then all of his other enemies.
Because one of the first things that Jesus is going to do upon his return, as we see in Scripture, is raise the dead.
That both the reprobate and the righteous will come out of the tombs and be raised to life, the wicked to judgment, and the righteous to glory.
And so Jesus is going to come and defeat death in the day of resurrection, the final day.
And then there'll be judgment for the wicked.
So, in a sense, if you're not careful, you could reverse that and say that not that Christ, he must reign until all his enemies are put under his feet, the last of his enemies being death, 1 Corinthians 15 25.
But rather, you can say Christ, not he must reign, meaning he's reigning now as he's subjecting his enemies progressively one by one under his feet throughout human history in this gospel age through the power of the church as his body, hands, and feet in the world, and the success of the Great Commission that's the mustard seed growing into an all.
World encompassing tree and the leaven that's working through the whole batch of dough, or the stone cut by no human hand that rolls and crushes the kingdoms of this world and grows into a mountain that fills the whole earth.
And we can go on and on and on with Isaiah 65, Isaiah 2, Daniel chapter 2.
But I digress.
Instead of that, he must reign and is progressively increasing his reign here on earth through the church, which is his body.
I will not just sustain, but build my church and the gates of hell, meaning hell is not the offense, but hell is.
Gates being defensive, hell is on the defense, and the church is the battering ram of Christ.
And hell, even on the defense, won't be able to withstand, prevail the increasing advancing attack of Christ through his church.
Instead of all that, right, that's a little bit too biblical.
Let's get some left behind Nicholas Cage in here, you know.
And no, you know, Christ will return, not he must reign, but he will reign.
He's not reigning now, but he will reign.
Once he returns, and once he returns, he's going to resurrect.
So death is defeated, and then all his other enemies, which actually would say that Christ will reign, not reigning now, but will reign, and his first enemy to be defeated is death, which is not 1 Corinthians 15 25, which says he must reign.
And what that's saying implicitly is he is reigning.
He can do no other but to reign.
He must reign, and is reigning even now.
And one by one, his enemies throughout the course of history, according to the sovereign divine plan of God, are being footstooled underneath his feet.
And the last enemy that will be footstooled is death.
Not the first, but the last.
So when I say Kyperianism, and obviously I'm kind of skipping ahead with getting to post millennialism, which is one of the seven.
I'll get there in a second.
But when I say Kyperianism, that's predominantly what I mean.
Calvinism, predominantly, I'm talking about the five points of Calvin.
In regards to soteriology, Calvin's view of God's sovereignty in salvation.
Making Disciples of All Nations00:03:36
When I say Kyperionism, predominantly what I'm saying is King Jesus.
Not will be king later and soon because the whole world's going to end in the next 15 minutes.
I'm not saying that.
And I'm also not saying king now, but king somewhere else in the 17th dimension, spiritually, but not tangibly.
No, I'm saying all authority on earth and in heaven.
King now and king here.
I'll say it again.
Jesus is king now and he's king here.
And that Jesus, through the church, is subjecting progressively his enemies throughout human history, this gospel age, one by one, as a footstool for his feet.
And the last, not first, but last enemy that Christ will subject underneath his kingship upon his final physical return is death.
There's not one square inch.
Arts will be redeemed.
And I understand.
Harris, you know, and the guest that he had on his show today and other guys, they don't like the term Christianized, right?
They don't like, you know, that we're Christianizing culture, Christianizing the world, Christianizing governments, politics, society, nations.
But I think it's a good word.
I do.
Because I think it's a biblical word.
Because the Great Commission, as many people as they've tried, Lord knows they've tried, and they'll keep trying until the cows come home, but they're wrong.
It is not the proper Greek exegetical hermeneutics.
The Great Commission is not that we go and baptize individuals out of nations.
That's not the Great Commission.
The exact wording and what Christ is saying, and notice he prefaces it by saying, I have all authority on earth and in heaven.
So Jesus, he leads, he prefaces the statement he's about to make, the marching orders he's about to give to his body, the church, here on earth.
He prefaces this commandment, the Great Commission, by saying, I have all authority.
So, listen up.
And I don't just have authority in the 17th dimension, but here on earth, every square inch.
And this is what you need to do.
I have all authority, and this is what I'm commanding you.
You are to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the triune God, and not just preaching the gospel and making converts and doing the work of an evangelist, but also, here's your general equity theonomy teaching them to obey all my commands.
My law, gospel and law, law and gospel, both in the Great Commission.
Go and make disciples of nations.
We don't just make disciples of individuals, individuals are the only people who will be saved.
So when we speak of saving grace, yes and amen, a thousand times it is true that saving grace only applies to individuals.
God saves in terms of eternal salvation, penal substitutionary atonement.
Jesus died for individuals.
He died for a collective, covenantal, corporate bride, but it is made up of individuals from, among, out of every tribe, tongue, and nation.
But in terms of discipling the nations, this doesn't just mean that we make disciples of individual people out of every nation, but that the nations themselves will be discipled.
Blessing and Prosperity for a Nation00:07:29
The nations are Christ's inheritance.
The nations, as the scriptures say, will flock to Mount Zion.
Just like they did, it'll be in even greater sense, and we'll see it progressively happen throughout human history.
But we saw a glimpse, a prophetic glimpse of this, even under the Old Covenant, when Solomon was king in Israel, the son of David.
That David made war and God gave him great victory.
But then Solomon came into power and he had great wisdom and he built the temple.
And through the peace that had been achieved by his father David and his conquest and war as a great hero, a great champion, Solomon now with wisdom and times of peace.
He leads the nation into immense prosperity, unparalleled prosperity.
And all the other nations, it's not just that Israel sees this and is in awe of the wisdom of Solomon, which is ultimately God's wisdom, but all the other nations see this as well.
And the nations connect the dots.
They don't just say that Solomon's wise, the other nations recognize the scripture says this they recognize that the prosperity and blessing of Israel comes from the fact that they have superior laws.
That they have the law of the one true God, Yahweh, to where even kings and queens, the queen of Sheba comes and she says to Solomon, I have been told of all your splendor and all these things, and behold, not even the half of it was told to me.
And she cites specifically, she says, Even your servants are happy.
Right?
Notice, that's one of the signs of a kingdom or a nation or a society, culture, when it's under the blessing of God, is one, that blessing comes from obedience to the law of God, wisdom and blessing.
Are always tethered together.
And wisdom is not just the wisdom of man, but the revealed wisdom of God in his law word.
And when a nation receives the wisdom of God, his law, and obeys it, and has righteous, wise rulers who love, like David, they don't just acknowledge the moral rightness of God's law, but they delight in the goodness of God's law, the practical and tangible benefits of obedience to God's law, that we live in the Father's world, and that the Father has constructed the world and built into the very fabric of the world that he has made.
A rule book for life.
And when we follow the rules, things go better.
And when a person gets that, but not just a person, a society and a nation and rulers get that, even other nations will flock and see that kind of blessing and prosperity.
And even they, even despite the fall of sin, back to presuppositionalism, because the vestige of the image of God remains, even that is a testimony.
They can recognize that's a testimony of the goodness of God's law.
They'll be able to draw the Correlation and connect the dots that the prosperity and blessing of a nation comes from the moral superiority of their laws, that they have equal weights and measures, right?
There was a direct correlation in the minds of other nations for a long time, and we're eroding those foundations sadly, but for a long time with the West and particularly America.
You think of the prosperity of America.
Other nations, they want to be an American citizen, they want to come here if they can, and they want to come.
To Lady Liberty, but they also recognize the correlation between Lady Liberty and Lady Justice, who is blindfolded, no partiality, who has scales that are even in her hand, equal weights and measures, and who has a sword, meaning capital punishment, just punishment, proportional justice, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life, swift, fair,
proportional justice.
So it's unbiased, no partiality.
It's.
Do not be partial to the rich, but also not partial to the poor.
That's what Deuteronomy says that all of this comes from God's law word.
These symbols that we have still in our culture today no partiality, blindfold, swift, proportional justice, sword, equal weights and measures, just scales, unequal weights and measures.
The Lord abhors, the Bible says, He detests that.
Equal weights and measures, meaning not equity, equal outcome, but equal opportunity and equality of dignity and sanctity under the law, legal.
Equality.
And there's a straight line from Lady Justice to Lady Liberty.
And there's a straight line from Lady Liberty to prosperity.
And it's not just something that Americans benefited from and appreciated back in the good old days, but it's something that all the other nations could recognize, just like they did with Solomon.
Just like they did with Solomon.
Happy are your servants.
So when the Queen of Sheba says, Happy are your servants, what she's saying is this.
She says, Your nation is good.
And she draws the correlation.
Your law is good.
Your God is good.
And she doesn't say, Your nation is good because you're a socialist nation and there's equal outcome, equity.
Everybody has the same thing.
No, she says, Your servants, meaning, well, first, that implies you still have servants, meaning your nation still has hierarchy.
There are still servants.
And then there are those who are not servants.
There are kings and there are subjects.
So your nation still has hierarchy.
But the sign of blessing on a nation isn't egalitarianism.
It's not socialism.
It's not communism.
The sign of blessing on a nation isn't the doing away of patriarchy and the doing away of hierarchy.
The sign of blessing of a nation is that even the lowest on that hierarchy have more than enough.
See, that's why Marxism historically didn't work in America.
Are you aware of that?
Marxism didn't work because Marx thought that the fuel for this peasant revolt with the bourgeoisie that was going to push back on all the capitalists was ultimately that the workers were being treated unfairly.
But that never worked in the West and especially in America.
You know why?
Because all the workers, yeah, there were CEOs that made 20 times what workers made, 100 times what workers made, but the average blue collar worker.
In the 1950s and 60s, and those still had enough money to own a home, have a car, send their kids to school, and take two weeks of vacation and go travel once a year.
So they just weren't upset about that much.
They weren't mad enough to revolt because the servants were happy, because the kingdom was prosperous, because they were just.
And they followed, not perfectly.
I'm not saying America didn't have problems, but.
In general, the Constitution of the United States of America was based in our founding documents outside of the Constitution, were based in biblical law.
Based in biblical law.
Christendom Versus Secular Humanism00:08:39
That is the Christianizing of a nation.
That does not mean, that's not saving grace.
That doesn't mean that everyone in America in the 1950s was regenerate, right?
Because the 1950s gave us the 60s, and the 60s ruined the last, you know, the next six decades to where we are today, you know.
So, you know.
It wasn't perfect.
So that's not to say that it was Christianizing in the sense of genuine evangelism and saving grace, and that everyone was born again and regenerate.
But it is to say that as a whole, as a society, and as a nation, and in terms of our laws and the body politic of the United States, it was steeped in Christian thought, in Christian principles, and in biblical law.
It was.
And so, all that being said, Abraham Kuyper, I don't agree with everything he says, and he certainly gets flack for his common grace concept, which I don't really have a huge problem with as long as you define common grace.
And draw a very clear distinction from common grace and saving grace.
But in all that, there is a sense in which I think Kuiper was right.
His sphere sovereignty concept is right on the money.
Harris and pretty much everybody uses that the church and the state and the home.
And the fact that these spheres, it's not the state, it's over the church and the church is over the home, but like a Venn diagram, and there are moments of overlap where there's a vested interest in two or three spheres simultaneously.
Have to figure out that from the word of God and who gets jurisdiction.
So the sphere sovereignty concept of Kuiper, but the biggest thing, I think that's all good, the sphere sovereignty, but the biggest thing, the quintessential element is every square inch.
That Christ is king, not just spiritual king and not king later.
So it's not earthly king later, dispensational premillennialism, and it's not spiritual king now, all millennialism, but spiritual and earthly king now, postmillennialism.
Over everything, there is no dark, shadowy place like politics that remains devoted to principled pluralism and polytheism and neutral.
No, nothing is neutral, everything is presuppositional, everything has a bias, everything has an allegiance.
And part of the job of the church is first and foremost, it is word and sacrament on the Lord's day, rightly administering the word of God and the sacraments and practicing as needed biblical church discipline in the Lord's day gathering of the saints.
That's first and foremost.
Beyond that, though, it's the Great Commission, which includes personal evangelism and saving grace, hearts being converted by the power of the gospel, but it also does include, I believe, a corporate discipling, covenantal discipling of nations, baptizing, discipling, Christianizing nations.
Not that each and every individual will be saved, regenerate, eternally saved, but that there will be a general Christian sentiment.
Not just over Fred or Tom who live next door, but over societies, cultures, over the arts, over medicine, over politics, over America, over Brazil, over China.
And one by one, I believe, by God's grace, these things will happen.
So that's all of Christ for all of life.
In a nutshell, you could just say all of Christ for all of life.
I want a church that's Kyperion.
I don't want a church, when I'm looking for churches, I don't want a church that has a big emphasis on two kingdom theology.
Especially not a radical two kingdom church like a Westminster Escondido, Michael Horton, or Van Druden kind of, you know, radical two kingdom view.
But even a church that wouldn't be within the radical two kingdom, you know, category, but still emphasizes two kingdom theology and the way that it was espoused by Luther.
I disagree with, praise God for Luther and his rediscovery of the gospel.
But I think Luther had some bad two kingdom theology.
Augustine, I think, was better, right?
City of God, City of Man.
I like that better than Luther, really, in many ways, the two kingdoms, church and state.
But even Augustine, I think there are some problems there with his two kingdom theology.
And so, all that being said, I want an all of Christ for all of life church.
A church, not a social justice church.
And that, for the record, in John's defense, that's his thing John was pushing back early on, God bless him, before I was, and he deserves honor for this.
He was pushing back on the social justice gospel.
And I think, you know, he was looking at guys like Tim Keller and rightly criticizing Tim Keller and looking at Keller's Kyperianism because Keller is Kyperian.
But he was looking at that, and I think not just John, because I'm not picking on John, I love John, but I think a lot of guys associate some of Keller's compromises with Kyper.
Whereas I would say, and I've said this before in a previous episode, the problem with Tim Keller is not that he's Kyperian, the problem with Tim Keller is that he's a Marxist.
The problem with Kettler is not Kuiper, it's Marx.
And I think, you know, you can throw out the Kuiper baby with the Marxist bathwater.
And I don't want to make that mistake.
And again, just like Calvinism, I don't prescribe to every single thing that Calvin wrote in his institutes, but I am a Calvinist.
And you know what I mean when I say that.
Likewise, I am a Kuiperian.
All of Christ for all of life, every square inch, right?
Three sovereign spheres, but we want to Christianize all of them.
We want All of human life and society and culture to be drenched in Christian principles and a Christian ethic and a Christian worldview.
We want to restore Christendom.
That's what it is.
Kyperianism, I think, is Christendom.
I believe in Christendom.
We've had a thousand from King Alfred all the way until now.
We've had 500 years for sure, the last 500, but really you could say a thousand years of Christendom in the West and that that has been a blessing to the whole world.
And that Christendom is falling, sadly.
Secular humanism has done a number.
But I believe one by one, Christ's enemies are being subjected, footstooled under his feet.
Secular humanism is no exception.
It will fall.
I believe in many ways it's on its last leg.
I think it's being shown for how foolish it actually is.
Secular humanism is like a parasite, it only looks viable as long as it has a living host.
And the host was Christendom.
But as that host is being deconstructed by secular humanism, The parasite is killing the host, and as it kills the host, it kills itself.
I'll say that again.
Secular humanism is a parasite.
The host is Christendom.
This parasite of secular humanism is killing the host, Christendom, and as it kills the host, it's killing itself.
And it's proving to not be viable.
And I believe that by God's grace, there will be a reformation and a return to Christendom, to Christianity.
And it'll be, first and foremost, revival in individual hearts because of the preaching of the gospel.
Being converted to new life.
But out of that, I think it will also be because you'll have Christians in the arts.
Not every Christian is going to be a pastor.
Some of those Christians are going to be artists, they're going to be scientists, they're going to be doctors, they're going to be politicians.
And if they live out their Christian faith, they're not pietists, just living out the Christian faith in Jesus just being the private Lord of their private heart, but rather Jesus as public Lord.
And if they're living out a public faith, and some of them are politicians, and some of them are artists, and some of them are doctors, then you're going to start to see all these different realms of society shaped once again as they once were, shaped by Christian ethic.
Christianized.
That's Christendom.
And that's a good thing.
And I think that's a Kyperian thing.
So find a church that's Kyperian.
Okay?
That's number five.
A Gospel Centered Public Faith00:06:14
Number six, general equity theonomy.
That is the historic.
Reformed confessional position.
It's right there in the confession under the law of God in its treatment of how the Christian should apply the civil laws of God, the general equity.
So it's a confessional position, it's a biblical position, and I've already addressed it when I talked about Bonson and what general equity theonomy is and all these kinds of things.
You want a church.
What I'm getting at, so I'll do this one briefly.
What I'm getting at is you do not want, I'll say it like this, you do not want to find a gospel centered church.
And honestly, that breaks my heart that I have to say that.
But I have to say that.
I need to be that frank and that clear.
You do not want to find a gospel centered church.
Now, see, in actuality, you do want a gospel centered church, but you don't.
And the reason why you do, but you don't, is because if you find a church that says it's gospel centered, you bear probably about a 95% chance that what they mean by gospel centered is actually not gospel centered, but gospel myoptic.
Gospel truncated, gospel exclusive.
And you don't want that.
Sadly, most churches that purport themselves as being gospel centered today are not gospel centered because here's the thing about that little word centered.
The word centered implies that there's something around the center, that it's not the only thing.
If you say, you know, I love Oreos and, you know, Oreos have a creamy center.
Well, it's not just a bowl of white cream.
What makes it an Oreo is it has white cream in the center.
But there's also something around the center, namely the chocolate crunchy cookie, right?
And so, likewise, true gospel centrality is wonderful if we're saying the gospel is the center.
But what happened in the woke church, and guys like Tim Keller is a perfect example, guys like Russell Moore, is they said, Well, we want to be gospel centered.
And this is how they did it they spoke out of both sides of their mouth.
Whenever there was a conservative issue, like, Well, maybe we should police our borders.
Or maybe there should be equal weights and measures and equal penalties for abortion.
And that the mother who murders her child in her womb is actually not a victim, but she's actually committing murder and there needs to be a penalty.
Right?
Like you talk about something like that, you know, or you say student loan forgiveness isn't actually forgiveness in terms of the Bible's definition of forgiveness.
It's actually theft because student loan forgiveness comes from the government, but the government doesn't have money.
The government just takes your money.
So people who actually paid off their student loans or didn't even go to college are now having to pay by a tax hike from the government.
Theft, civil theft, pay for somebody else's loan.
So that's not forgiveness, that's theft.
So every conservative political issue, cultural issue for the last 15 years in the realm of Tim Keller types and Russell Moore types, everything like that, what would they do?
They'd say, well, we're gospel sinners.
Let's not get into that.
Let's stick to the main and the plane, gospel sinners.
But then every left issue, right?
Because they did both, it was a both and kind of thing, speaking out of both sides of their mouth.
Every left leaning issue, they would say, this is a gospel issue, racial justice.
Is a gospel issue.
Racial reconciliation is a gospel issue.
You know, retribution, reparations.
You know, we got to talk about this, right?
So, all the conservative things, we're not going to get distracted by politics.
We're gospel centered.
And then all the other politics, but just on the left, it's like, you're not going to get distracted by that either.
No, We have to do this because this is the gospel.
And so, guys like John Harris looked at that and it's like, they're conflating.
Social justice with the gospel, the social justice gospel, that's not the gospel.
And boom, guys like Vodi Bakum and John Harris and Michael O'Fallon, and they all did very faithful, good work in coming out against that and saying, This is heresy.
This is wrong.
This is wrong.
Whereas I just would be a little bit more technical and say, Yeah, that was wrong.
Absolutely.
The social justice gospel is a false gospel, it's a heresy.
But the gospel should bear fruit.
And the biggest problem was not the whole Kuiper and applying the teachings of Scripture to all of life.
The biggest problem, again, was Marx.
See, Kuiperianism is all of Christ for all of life.
Tim Keller was all of Marx for all of life.
So the all of life part is not the problem, it's the all of Christ part.
Because all these leftist, neo Marxist, socialist, feminist issues, critical race theory issues, The problem was not saying, yeah, Christians should be involved in social and political and cultural issues.
We should.
We should.
The problem is that the involvement that they wanted was not applying the scripture to these issues, it was throwing the scripture away and applying Freud and Engel and Hegel and Marx to these issues.
That's what we should object to.
So, the all of life piece is there's nothing wrong with that.
The all of life peace, though, only works if you have the all of Christ peace.
And the way that you ensure you have all of Christ is by remaining conservative theologically and having fidelity to the scripture.
So, all that means, my point is that this, you know, what was I saying?
I'm sorry.
My point is just to say that, you know, with all this stuff, you know, Kyperion is number five.
I want all of Christ for all of life church.
Jesus is king, not just spiritually, but Tangibly and not just then, but now.
And then the general equity theonomy.
The Necessity of All of Christ00:09:12
I want to see a church that has law and gospel.
That's what it was gospel centered, gospel centered.
So don't go to a church that says they're gospel centered because even though technically it's good to be gospel centered because the gospel should be the center, so long as it's not only the gospel, most churches that say they're gospel centered, they're not gospel centered.
They're gospel myopic.
It's gospel exclusive, it's only the gospel.
The beauty of true gospel centrality is that I would say that the primary thing that ultimately flanks the gospel, going back to my random Oreo analogy, is you got the creamy center, great, but then you got two cookies, chocolate cookies on either side.
Well, the two things on either side is the law, right?
The law of God, the three uses of the law within the Reformed view of the law.
The first use of the law is that it functions as a mirror, right?
It reveals to us the holiness of God, and by way of consequence, it reveals to us our sinfulness, and therefore it drives us.
To Christ because it reveals our need for a Savior.
Spurgeon said, A man cannot appreciate the beauty of Christ unless he first come to see the necessity for Christ.
So, no man will be saved by works as done unto the law, the Apostle Paul said.
The law isn't saving, but the law does reveal to us our need for saving.
So, the first use of the law.
And so, in my preaching, I'm, in the truest sense, gospel centered, that I have the first use of the law of God.
You're condemned.
You need Christ.
And then the gospel, right?
There's your cream filling.
And then I go back to the law, but now not the first use, but the third use of the law, which is that it's not just a mirror that reveals our need for Christ, but it's also a lamp into our feet.
And a light unto our path.
So it shows us now how to live, not the way to salvation, right?
Christ is the way, the truth, and the life.
Grace through faith is the way, the only way to salvation.
So the law doesn't give us the path to salvation, but it does give us the path from salvation.
It shows us not how to merit the favor of God, but the law of God is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path, showing us how to live a life in response to the free favor we've already received in the gospel.
So we preach the law in its first use.
As a mirror, gospel, Christ as substitute, fulfillment, but then law again.
How then shall we now live?
The Schaefer kind of thing.
How are we going to live?
Not to earn salvation, but as a response of gratitude for the free salvation we already have by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
First use of the law, gospel, third use of the law.
There's your two cookies law, law, first use, third use, in the middle, gospel.
That's gospel centrality.
I'll take that.
But if you find a church that says we're gospel centered, they probably don't mean that.
They probably don't mean that.
What they probably mean is we're antinomian and we hate the law of God.
We're antinomian and we hate the law of God.
So, that general equity piece, I've already talked about it with Bonson and fleshed out a little bit more technically and theologically what it means.
But suffice it to say, in the simplest terms, you want a church that loves the gospel and also loves the law.
You want a church that preaches both law and And gospel.
And then lastly, post millennialism.
You want a church that has a hopeful eschatology because it absolutely impacts the way that you live your life.
Now, you don't want, now here's the thing you can find a post mill church that actually the impact that their eschatology, sadly, has on their practical daily living is actually not positive but negative, right?
There is this sentiment that you'll find from time to time among Post mill types of, you know, that hashtag, you know, that post mill.
But they're not doing anything.
They're not running for city council.
They're not starting a business.
They're not trying to redeem the arts.
They're not even married.
They don't have children.
And so when they say hashtag that post mill, what they mean is Jesus is going to fix it all.
And what they're forgetting is that Jesus is going to fix it.
Fix it.
Jesus is progressively winning.
He is progressively playing out his victory in real human history, but he's doing it through his church.
He is.
And so there's a way of being, having an optimistic eschatology that actually, ironically, produces pietism and apathy.
Apathy.
And so when I say you want a post millennial church, I mean a post millennial church, but a church that is optimistic in their eschatology, but also Painfully practical in seeking to redeem all of society.
Back to the Kyperion piece, all of Christ for all of life.
And that's why I so admire Doug Wilson and all the guys at Moscow and Christchurch there, they're not just hashtagging that post mill, but they're redeeming a town.
They really are.
I mean, half the town adamantly hates them, to be fair.
But it's not just a bunch of Christians in a big church, they don't just have a big church.
Doug didn't just spend 40 years building a big church, he built a school.
And a college and a publishing house, and multiple other people raised up to start businesses and restaurants and buy land and build houses.
And it's all of life.
So it's hashtag that post mill.
Jesus is going to win.
And we're going to get to work.
And we're going to get to work.
So if you're just now tuning in, if you're looking for a local church, seven doctrines that I think are important to look for confessionally reformed.
Covenant theology, biblical patriarchy, presuppositionalism, Kyperianism, general equity theonomy, and post millennialism.
Again, I know some of you guys disagree with some of my secondary doctrines.
Not all this is primary.
Not all this is required for Christian orthodoxy, right?
Such as post millennialism.
You can be all mill and be orthodox.
You can be historic pre mill and be orthodox.
And you can be dispensational.
No, you can't actually.
But you could be those other three.
I will not include dispensational premillennialism, but you could be historic premill, you can be all male, and you can be post male and be within the realm of orthodoxy.
All right, so you can differ on these things within reason.
You could not be a big fan of Abraham Kuyper.
I think you're wrong.
But you can reject Kuyperianism.
And really, I think that's a semantic thing, though.
I really do.
I think the difference between me and Harris, again, I'll probably have him on the show and just talk to him about it because I know we agree.
I think he just, he's like, don't say common grace, Joel.
Don't say Christianize the nation.
Say this.
I think a lot of it's just language and we're talking past each other.
So I think that's more semantics.
But my point is, you cannot be Kyperian and be faithful within theological faithfulness, orthodoxy.
So, not all these, I'm not saying these seven doctrines are prerequisites for Christian orthodoxy.
So, please hear that disclaimer here at the end.
I said it up front.
I'm saying it again.
These are not prerequisites, theological prerequisites to be within the banner of Christian orthodoxy.
But you're tuned in.
So, I'm assuming you wanted to hear my thoughts.
My thoughts are my counsel, pastoral counsel to you is if you're looking for a church and you want it to have a spine, you want the preacher to have a little spice in his sermons and some masculine courage.
And you want that church to be involved and not pietist, right?
Not progressives compromising theologically, culturally, politically.
Not progressives, but also not pietist.
And just kind of, we do church and that's it.
And we're not really involved in it.
If you want a church that's not progressives and also not pietist, but actually really faithful and theologically rich, but also painfully practical.
In daily Christian living, then I think what you're looking for is a church that's confessionally reformed, adheres to covenant theology, biblical patriarchy, presuppositionalism, Kyperianism, general equity theonomy, and post millennialism.
I think that if you find a church like that, I think you will do well.
I think that you will be grateful.
Seeking a Painfully Practical Church00:01:37
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, you 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.