Charles Finney, Billy Graham, and Andy Stanley critique modern evangelicalism's shift toward consumerism, arguing it mimics Roman Catholic spectacle rather than biblical liturgy. They condemn figures like Rachel Den Hollander for compromising the Southern Baptist Convention through female leadership and progressive ideology, labeling them dangerous threats to the church's mission. The discussion further warns against placing women in combat roles due to security risks and asserts that true worship must be a militant, corporate army preparing believers for post-millennial restoration, rejecting egalitarianism in favor of traditional covenantal orthodoxy. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Consumeristic Worship Problems00:06:07
Before the 1820s and 30s, Christianity in America looked more or less like it did in Protestant Europe in the centuries that followed the Reformation.
But as the country began to expand westward on the frontier, revivalism began to take over what had been standard theologically orthodox Protestantism.
Men like Charles G. Finney would hold tent revivals with dazzling oratory and salesmanship to generate religious excitement and manipulate the emotions of the crowd to produce conversions.
Variations of this method eventually became the baseline for evangelical Christianity in America.
The question of how God tells us he wants us to worship him is seldom considered.
From the very beginning of Genesis, the place where man encountered the presence of God to worship was the garden.
After Adam was expelled from God's presence in the garden sanctuary, men would draw as near to God as they could.
We see Cain and Abel doing just this in Genesis 4.
From that point on, we can see that worship is about drawing near to God's special presence on earth.
Official system in nascent form in Noah, then a detailed process of drawing near under Moses and Aaron, later under David and Solomon, respectively.
A sacrifice of song was added to the liturgy, and a new permanent garden of Eden, the temple, was constructed.
God's people would draw near to Him, have their sins forgiven, be consecrated to Him, offer their tithes and incense and prayers to Him, share a meal with their God, and be blessed by Him and sent out.
In the New Covenant, the big things that have changed is that Blood sacrifice is fulfilled by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
With the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, his people become the living stones of a new temple, and wherever they gather to worship is the temple, the new Garden of Eden, where the presence of the living God dwells on earth.
Consumeristic Christianity, making it all about you, that's what we have today in evangelicalism.
When we think of how the church should be structured, especially on the Lord's Day, if we think about liturgy at all, everybody has a liturgy.
It's like R.C. Scroll, everyone's a theologian.
You're either a good one or a bad one.
Everybody has a liturgy.
You know, it's either a good one or a bad one.
But when we think about how we construct the way that we do church, everything that you just read, it's either about man or it's about God.
Yeah.
It's either consumeristic what does church do for you?
Or it's God centered, thinking about, you know, what are we as God's people doing in our worship to honor and glorify Him?
Most churches are not geared in that way.
It's man centered.
So we need to make liturgy great again.
Right.
Yes.
That's kind of what we're getting at in this chapter.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
It seems like the consumeristic mindset fits right into the trash world, is what you're saying here.
Yeah.
Yep.
Absolutely.
And it plays into the individualistic mindset as well, which seems to be a reoccurring theme of the trash world is that you're all alone.
They want you to be, you know, isolated, alone, separated from covenant, family, you know, all these kinds of things.
And within the church, it really follows suit.
So it's, It's consumeristic.
It's just about the church is simply providing products on the Lord's day.
It's an event.
It's this, it's that.
So it's products for you to consume.
But it's also in all these products, it's isolating.
And what I mean by that is think about just worship through song in your typical megachurch.
It's not an accident that the lights are turned down low and the music, the volume of the instruments is usually turned up high.
So it's lights low, volume high.
Which accomplishes two primary things.
It means I can't see others and I can't hear others.
And that's precisely the point.
So, you know, I remember, you know, one song that I, you know, that I used to like when I was, you know, younger.
And now I'm like, well, it's not, you know, it may be okay, but it's not a good worship song on the Lord's Day.
But it was a, it's, you know, there's a tag in it, you know, that would repeat, as always, it's just you and me here now.
It's only you and me here now.
Yeah.
I think it was David Crowder.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, and so, but here's the thing if you're doing that on Sunday morning, well, it's not just you and me here now.
No, right.
It's precisely not.
It's not just you and God.
And it won't just be you and me, you know, you and God.
In heaven, either you're going to be sorely disappointed.
I think there's a lot of Christians, you know, especially a lot of Christian women, you know, that have this erotic, kind of romantic view of their relationship with them.
That when they get to heaven and figure out that it's not just an eternal honeymoon, which is Jesus and them, when they realize that other people are there too, they're going to be really disappointed.
You know, and one of the ways that we prepare people for that eternal state is that we go and visit heaven once a week.
Yeah.
On the day that Christ rose from the dead, the delectable mountains, you know, Pilgrim's Progress, we get just this glimpse of the celestial city.
And part of what makes it so.
Celestial part of what makes it heavenly is God first and foremost, but then also the excellent ones in all the earth.
You know, David says, like, you know, the saints.
Like, we're going to see the saints.
And so, in worship from start to finish, and it's all worship, worship that, you know, preaching the word, praying the word, singing the word, and seeing the word in the sacraments of the Lord's Supper and baptism, and all these different portions of the liturgy, whether assurance of pardon, you know, confession of sin, confession of faith, and all these different elements, none of them are private.
They're all public and communal and corporate by nature.
And one, just at a practical, just getting painfully practical, for something to be corporate and communal and public, I need to be able to physically hear you and physically see you.
But again, trash world and the church evangelical version of trash world and the ways that they've adopted trash world, it is not just consumeristic trash world, but it's individualistic trash world.
And that's what I'm trying to say I think those two things are two pieces in a Pot.
Physical Presence Matters00:09:39
They come in a pair.
I think that there's very few of us that are innocent in recent times here because even think of the best churches that you know of where you really believe that the worship is God centered.
They've got a wonderful liturgy.
They've got the right kind of, they don't do the rock concert thing, like that kind of thing.
These are the best churches.
We were a little too comfortable with doing Zoom church for however many weeks we did it because some of us didn't do it at all, and that's great.
Some of us did it for a few weeks, some of us did it for a lot longer.
We were too comfortable with that because that shows you that that that whole thing can almost be productized to you, right?
And you were comfortable with it.
And maybe, yeah, a lot of people gave lip service to, yeah, yearn to be back with you.
Not that bad because you could have done it right away, right?
You know what I mean?
Yeah, we miss you so much.
Like, I'm in every Zoom call as my congregation is not there.
And it's like, but Pastor, you told them they're not allowed to be there, yeah.
And and so, you know, listen, and again, so, so many of the best of us.
You know, to our shame, you know, we at the end of the day, when the chips were on the table, it was a product that we could just get on video.
And okay, it wasn't as good, but it's a replacement, right?
It worked for whatever, yeah.
We missed amount of time.
We came back together April 26, 2020.
We missed four weeks.
And when we came back, the first 10 minutes of my sermon, I didn't just do a hey, you're stupid, and I know you're stupid.
And so I'm going to pretend that what I'm viewing now is what I viewed all along.
I didn't do that, right?
So I didn't just say, you know, Christ is head of the church and I believe that, you know, 15 minutes ago.
No, you didn't believe that 15 minutes ago.
This is a new development for you.
And so let's own it.
So, what I did instead is I spent the first 10 minutes convincing to the best of my ability by the grace of God from the text from Romans 13, the same text I previously used wrongly.
I wanted to convince them from the text, this is why you should stay in our church.
Because, for all intents and purposes, after the stunt I just pulled for the last four weeks, you should leave.
Now, the problem is you'd have nowhere to go because everybody else did the same thing and did it worse.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But that said, I sinned.
Yeah.
And here's what I said.
Through Zoom on Romans 13, four weeks ago.
And here's the same text and why I was wrong, and now how it's right.
So it's not just I changed my mind.
Here's how, not just I changed my mind, but in God's grace, in repentance, I actually, as a man, you're the man, Nathan, the prophet pointing to David, you are the man.
You need to change as a man.
This is how God has used COVID and this sin of mine, this failure of mine to change my theology, to change my person.
To where I'm able to look at the scripture rightly.
So it's not just, oh, I'll get it right now.
I got it wrong, but I'll get it right now.
It was, no, I'll get it by the grace of God.
I'm getting it right now, and I'm going to show you how I changed.
That way you can trust that I'll get the next one right.
Yeah.
I think, obviously, I have no data for this, but I think that just from anecdotally, we all know if we could plot how correctly ordered a church's worship is versus terrible.
You would see that the churches that were more progressive, more liberal, more awful, they probably stayed closed longer.
Right.
Because this is not like we're innocent, but what I'm saying is it's no surprise that the liberalist churches you can imagine were closed for a year or two years or something like that.
And the churches that had their heads on straight, at least better, were four weeks or maybe a couple months or whatever like that.
Without the data, I don't have it, but honestly, at the end of the day, we all kind of know that's true.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's true.
Except.
The one exception is the liberal church closes for two years and the more conservative church closes for four weeks, whatever.
But sadly, the reform camp did terrible on COVID.
Oh, I'm not saying they did a good job.
Right.
What I'm saying is that Calvary Chapel kicked Calvinist butts on COVID.
I have to own that.
I was talking to a Calvary Chapel pastor.
He came to Fight Life Feast.
There were a lot of charismatics.
Yeah, exactly.
And so he came to Fight Life Feast.
And Gabe invited him, and he seemed like a great guy.
And we just bumped into each other at the airport on our way home.
And he was, you know, just talking to me.
And he's like, you know, I'm kind of a little bit new to some of this reform stuff, especially like the Presbyterians.
So they baptize their babies.
Do they believe that, you know, that that saves them?
I was like, no, it's not baptismal regeneration.
I was able to explain those kind of things.
And then, but then I just, you know, he was an older man and I wanted to honor him.
I said, you know, but the reason why Gabe probably invited you is because they're going after some of these cultural things.
They want theology applied.
And he invited you because he knows that you're doing that.
Too.
I said, and the guy he's friends with Jack Hibbs, he's friends with some of these other guys, you know, in Southern California.
And I said, I'll just confess, like, you guys did better than most of the Reformed churches on COVID.
You guys had a spine, you knew what time it was.
You know, some of you guys didn't close down at all.
If you did, it was brief.
But a lot of the Reform guys, there's two groups that would shut down for over a year.
These are the guys who did the worst.
Two groups: purple-haired female lesbian pastor and Westminster Escondido.
Yeah.
Those would be your two groups.
Yeah.
And we just have to acknowledge that.
Like the crazy Libtard, as bad as they did on COVID, the Radical Two Kingdom did just as bad.
Yeah.
Because when it comes to worldly engagement, they're both impotent.
Yeah.
Well, one is actually more potent than the other.
You're right.
One's poison and one's a placebo.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I think, you know, going back to just the nature of modern evangelicalism and the way it operates, how it is, you know, hyper individualistic and consumeristic, and those two things are perfectly, you know, fitting together.
You think about that, a lot of it is so many of these things, and it affects the theology as well.
That I am an individual, and you live in this egalitarian world.
I'm an individual.
I make all my own decisions.
I'm the master of my own fate, right?
The captain of my soul.
And I get to decide everything, right?
So, no obligations can be put upon me from before I was born or from before I was an adult that can make adult decisions.
No, I have no obligation.
So that affects family, right?
You are born into a family that you have duties and obligations to.
You're born into a country that you have duties and obligations to.
You're born into a community that there are social obligations and duties that you have to those people.
You don't just get to decide, all right, oh, now I'm an American.
Now I'm an Isker.
Now I'm a member of this thing and that other thing.
That's how God built the world, right?
A covenantal world that you were born into.
And that you have duties that exist before you arrived and to those who are yet to come.
Right.
Duties, responsibilities, and we could say traditions.
Yeah.
It's part of what we're talking about.
So, Roger Scruton, this is one of the guys that you quote in the book.
He said In discussing tradition, we are not discussing arbitrary rules and conventions.
We are discussing answers that have been discovered to enduring questions.
These answers are tacit, shared, embodied in social practices and inarticulate expectations.
It reminds me of like the GK Chesterton, like before you take down fence.
Yeah.
Maybe you should figure out why it was put up in the first place.
Oh, precisely.
All right.
I'm just going to say it.
This show is fantastic.
You know it's fantastic.
I know it's fantastic.
But I'm willing to admit there is one singular problem the waiting zone, right?
You got to wait a whole week for each new episode of this show to drop on Fridays at 4 p.m. Central Time unless you go on over to patreon.com forward slash right response.
Ministries, and then you'll be able to binge watch every single episode of an entire season all in one day.
So, this is a season based show, right?
The whole idea is a deep dive on one singular topic so that you know everything there is to know.
Each season comes out in a quarter, right?
So, a three month period, anywhere from probably eight to 12 episodes in a season.
And the moment that the first episode of a new season drops to the public, then you can go over to patreon.com forward slash Right response ministries and watch all of those episodes without having to wait week by week by week for the next episode to publicly drop.
So you know what to do.
Don't waste any more time.
Binge watch the whole season today.
And so the hyper individualist and consumerist, you know, egalitarian view of humanity is well, I don't have any duties or obligations that are here before I existed.
I can choose whatever I want.
So if I want to go to a church where it has the lights turned down low and the big rock band and You know, the TED talk that makes me feel good but doesn't really connect to the Bible at all.
False Independence Trap00:03:21
That's my choice.
That's what I want.
Right.
Right.
I don't want to have an obligation to some theological tradition that I didn't decide.
I didn't live in the 16th century.
I didn't get to write the Westminster Confession.
I didn't choose that.
Maybe I'll choose different bits and portions of it.
I'll go to the buffet and take some of my theology here, some of it there.
Those things are imposed upon you.
And that is abominable to the bug man.
Right.
Any type of obligation or duty that's imposed upon you is the worst possible thing ever because you want to be atomized.
You want to be an individual.
You'd want to have no bonds that you didn't choose.
But the irony is that the bug man has every bit, he's actually more a slave of tradition than people in past generations were.
Oh, yeah.
The difference, though, is that his tradition, his indoctrination comes through the form of media, it comes through the news, it comes through his.
His 18 years, 19 years of study and school and public state indoctrination and all these kinds of things.
He is 100% being trained and shaped and formed through tradition.
The problem is that it's a tradition that man has arrived at over the last 15 minutes instead of a tradition that has been arrived at over the last 1500 years and built the world.
And it's a tradition that is like in.
Direct opposition to how God created the world.
It wants to do the opposite of however God built the world.
And I mean, the irony too, I always.
But Bugman's not original.
He didn't come up with these ideas.
They were instilled in him.
Yeah, that's the thing is like, you see these people, you know, I make fun of the Redditor and for good reason, but you see the Redditor type person, right?
And what will they tell you?
They maybe have the bumper sticker on their car or on their laptop that says, I'm a free thinker or I'm an independent thinker.
And they've always been told, you're an independent thinker.
And the irony is, anytime I encounter.
A person who who self-identifies as a free thinker, an independent thinker universally, I can know exactly what they think about every single yeah, any topic.
I know exactly what they think.
They're the least independent minded people ever, but they're told, well, you're an individual you, you decide whatever it is you believe, and you just so happen to believe what every other independent thinker believes.
Right, they're all programmed to believe this stuff.
They they, they've never had an independent thought because they're terrified of uh, getting getting away from the herd, Right.
But they're terrified of that.
And so, you know, I always tell people, I'm like, I'm not an independent thinker.
Everything I think, somebody else somewhere has thought before.
Right.
And I just agreed with them.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
The irony is like, I have all sorts of different ideas that are unconventional.
And that's the reality for everybody.
Nobody really is an independent thinker in that sense.
So then we're all echoing, you know, we're all simply agreeing with the thoughts of somebody else.
So then the question is, am I agreeing with somebody's thoughts that, you know, this person had these thoughts last Thursday?
Or am I agreeing with somebody who had these thoughts, you know, over.
Centuries.
And do they correspond with reality?
Liturgy vs Entertainment00:15:24
Yeah.
Do they correspond with reality?
And one of the ways you can tell that is one, just look at the scripture, look at nature, but then two, look at the fruit.
Yeah.
So, like, do these thoughts, when followed by large swaths of society over any amount of time whatsoever, does it end the entire human race because it stops reproduction?
Yeah.
All right.
There's a great question to ask.
Or does it just make it miserable existence for everyone or not?
Like, yeah, the proof is in the pudding.
And the proof of Trash World is that it is a miserable place and it's been made that way purposefully because the people at the top, it's a good place for them.
They get a lot of wealth and they got a lot of luxury.
The irony too is the birth rates of the top percent of wealthiest people in America are some of the highest.
They're having families.
They're having kids.
And they're enjoying the life that virtually everyone used to enjoy.
At everyone else's expense.
They've ground under, they've plowed under the society that we used to have, and it has provided a tremendous amount of wealth for a very small number of people.
But the bill is going to come due and is coming due right now for it.
So, when we talk about, you know, so we've talked in all these episodes, these last few episodes, we're going to talk about building Christendom in the place of Donner's Oak.
All the previous episodes, if you've made it this far, were about, you know, how to chop down, sharpen the axe, and chop down, you know, Donner's Oak.
Now, we're talking about rebuilding Christendom and not just the problem, but the solution.
And so, what we're saying is that the tip of the spear is worship, that worship is warfare.
That's the tip of the spear.
It's the first day of the week.
When I was thinking about moving to Georgetown, Texas, I thought the first thing that I need to do is plant a church.
We need a church.
And then I knew that I needed a school, education, and I also needed media.
And so, we're working on, Lord willing, St. George.
Uh, classical academy, and then we're you know working on you know with right response, building that out with media, and then the men of the church, we're working with them individually, just encouraging them and you know giving counsel and inspiring you know one another, and you know, but to start businesses and then encouraging people towards having children and you know, all these kinds of things and owning property that's a big one.
So, but the tip of the spear is you know, we can get to some of those later things, but but for now, talking about worship, we need a church, we need worship.
Uh, but there's a lot of churches that aren't nearly as potent as they could be or should be, so.
In this, we're talking about tradition, not being a free thinker, but being rooted in a tradition, being rooted in covenant and a past and a heritage, but then applying that to the church world, the Lord's Day.
So, we're talking about liturgy.
Yeah.
So, as we talk about liturgy, like, what is it?
Because a lot of the listeners may not go to liturgical church, they may not even know what liturgy is.
Yeah.
So, what, like, what are some things, like, can you guys even say, like, what are some things, you know, on Sunday morning, getting painfully practical?
Yeah.
Like, Sunday morning, what does a Sunday morning service look like?
In a healthy church.
Yeah.
Well, do you want to go first?
No, I think I'm the only one that's not a pastor.
That's fair.
I could share what we do, but you go ahead first.
Well, I can say some of what I said in the book that the traditional Protestant liturgies and really just traditional Western liturgies are basically the same.
Of course, there's all different variations, whether you look at Lutheran or Anglican or Presbyterian, even.
You know, Baptists even had liturgies in before the 20th century, right?
Everybody had them.
And it's an order, you know, an order of service and the direction it goes.
Usually there's a call or at least some kind of entrance.
Then there is a confession of sin.
And, you know, some people, you know, especially in a hyper individualistic, you know, megachurch world, they think like confession of sin, well, that's just repeating stuff that you don't really believe.
And it's like, well, I don't know, when you said your wedding vows, right?
You repeated those.
Do you believe that?
Or you have to, Tell your wife something now, you know?
Well, that's part of the problem.
Even with wedding violence, everybody writes their own now.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
It has to be original.
Exactly.
And it's like, what?
Or when you sing the national anthem or said the Pledge of Allegiance when you were a kid, did you not believe that when you were saying it because someone else wrote that down?
It's like, well, of course.
Right.
So you confess your sin, and actually, it teaches you how to confess your sin.
There's Psalms that are confessions of sin, like Psalm 51.
And so, right, that's totally fine to learn from the Bible or from theological tradition how do other Christians confess their sins, right?
Because you enter it, you're going into God's presence.
That's the view.
And that has always been the view of worship on the Lord's Day for thousands of years.
Is not, we're going to go to some religious event, right?
Some religious production and consume religious entertainment.
No, God's presence is here on the earth because his people are gathered together.
It's the temple.
And it's not the temple of the building.
It's not because we entered into this building that's the temple.
It's because we entered it together.
And we, the people, like living stones, are coming together as this New Testament temple.
And Christ is there present among us.
Yes.
And so as we enter in, we're drawing near to God.
And all throughout the Bible, that's what's going on God's people are drawing near to him.
That's how it's described throughout the Old Testament drawing near and calling upon God's name.
That's what worship is.
And so as God's people draw near, they draw near as a sinful people.
And you see this.
I mean, this is why Leviticus is not this boring book that doesn't matter that we shouldn't read.
It's actually really important because that's a book where God teaches his people in the Old Covenant here's how you draw near to me.
Here's what you must do to draw near to me.
And of course, we're not bound by the same laws in the same way that the ancient Israelites were.
We're liberated into the new covenant, but there's still wisdom there in thinking, well, God had a plan and a description of how to draw near.
Is there anything we can glean from that?
And you see the order of the sacrifices that were done in Leviticus chapter 9.
And first, God calls his people into their presence.
And then the very first sacrifice is this sin offering.
And what is that?
It's God's people confessing their sins.
They're confessing their sins.
We're sinful people and we need your grace to forgive us.
And he forgives them their sin.
Then they offer this ascension offering.
And the ascension offering is this animal, this whole animal that represents the worshiper.
And it's burned up entirely.
That's where it's called an Ola.
It's usually called a burnt offering.
And that's where the word holocaust comes from.
And so the whole thing ascends up to God in smoke.
And so that's you ascending up to God in smoke.
And that's the part where the Bible is read, right?
And what is the Bible?
It's the sharp two edged sword, like the sword the priest has that cuts people up to be offered on the altar to go up as a living sacrifice.
Like Genesis 15, 16, that you're being cut in half.
Yeah, yep, exactly.
And you're a smoking.
Like in Romans chapter 12, like you are a living sacrifice.
What does that mean?
Well, you're being cut up by the word of God and ascending on the Fire of the Spirit, which is the new altar, and you're going up to God, right?
That's what the ascension is.
So God's word is read, God's word is preached, and then afterward, you give your tribute offering.
And all the traditional liturgies had this where you offer your tithes and offerings, and then you would have corporate prayer, right?
Along with the grain offering is the incense offering.
So you burn up the incense, and incense repeatedly is prayer, right?
You're offering your prayers up to God.
And then the last one was always the peace offering, right?
Well, what's the peace offering?
Peace offering is the one where the priests offer this animal up.
And they get a portion of it and they offer a portion to God, and you get a portion of it.
So you're all eating this together, eating this meal, and the peace offering of peace offerings was the Passover.
Right.
Well, we have something even greater than that, which is the Lord's Supper.
And so at the very end, the Lord's Supper is celebrated, and then the people are blessed and they're sent out.
That's what happens in Leviticus 9.
And it perfectly parallels the traditional liturgies of the churches.
Sometimes they're out of order in different orders and things like that, but all the aspects of it are right there.
And that's way different than just like, oh, I'm going to go hear a band play some songs, hear a short TED talk, and then a couple more songs to get me really riled up, and then I go home.
Right.
Right.
And we maybe have the Lord's Supper twice a year.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's a little, you know, saltine cracker and some grape juice.
You know, it's not like a hunk of bread and some wine.
Right.
And so, like, that's way different.
And part of it, too, is you'll have corporate participation.
You'll have congregational participation in this, where, you know, some people like freak out when they hear like call and response stuff because they think, well, that's Roman Catholic.
I could never do that.
But what's actually occurring, and the irony there, too, is, Like medieval Roman Catholicism, the congregation was silent before the Reformation.
They just sat there.
And these people, like if you're like my ancestors were in Germany, right?
They didn't speak Latin, they spoke German.
Right.
But the priest is doing everything in German.
So you don't understand anything going on.
And of course, some people knew Latin, but for the most part, you have to hear this service done in a totally foreign language.
And you're silent the entire time.
The religious professionals, they're doing their thing.
And then you'd maybe have communion very rarely and you would only get bread.
You wouldn't get any wine.
Right.
Because you'd spill it.
And it's like, what does that sound like?
I mean, it sounds exactly like modern contemporary worship where the congregation's silent.
They don't participate in any way at all.
The religious professionals are up there doing their thing.
And you don't really get any Bible at all.
No Bible teaching.
And you don't ever get communion.
And when you do, it's like a little cracker and you don't get any wine.
It's megachurch.
Yeah, it's no different.
Right.
Roman Catholicism.
No, I love that you said that.
Roman Catholicism, especially during the medieval period, it's not guys who are trying to be liturgical today within the Protestant vein are not mimicking Rome.
The megachurch guys are actually mimicking Rome.
Yeah.
Even with, you know, so like you have the religious professionals doing their thing, but part of their thing that they were doing isn't, it's not even just this thing of substance that the people can't understand because they speak a different language.
Some of these guys were literally trained in not just in substance or theology, but in hand motions.
It was about, it was the aesthetic.
It was having these robes, these tassels, this candle, this book, this incense, this smell.
Like it was, it was about setting this smoke machine, this lighting.
It's the same thing.
It's like, oh, he moves his hands like this.
Like that's literally where we get the phrase hocus pocus from.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hocus pocus is, I don't know how to say it, but from the Latin, what the priest would say.
Do you know that?
It's like corpus.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Corpus pochi or something like that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so when he was, that's what he would say when he was actually, you know, professing.
Forming transubstantiation, you know, and turning the Eucharist into the physical flesh and blood of Christ, you know, he would utter that phrase.
And the hocus pocus, that came from, you know, the common Neanderthal people who didn't speak Latin.
And they're like, hocus pocus is a spell.
It turns magic.
It turns it into Jesus.
Right.
It turns it into Jesus.
So still to this day, like that phrase of hocus, you know, we'll say that about, that's some hocus pocus.
Yeah.
You get that from Rome.
Yeah.
Like the written house trial, you know, hocus pocus out of focus.
Yes.
Hocus pocus out of focus.
But.
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This is Armored Republic and in a republic there is no king but Christ.
We are free craftsmen and we are honored to be your armor spread choice.
Anyways, so all that being said, I love that you made the connection of like the non liturgical mega church, TED talk, smoke machine, laser light, concert, lights turns down.
Like that thing today that doesn't have much of a liturgy to speak of, that has way more.
There's a straight line to be drawn there from Roman Catholicism to those guys.
The Protestants are the ones who are saying, no, no, no, no.
The table, it matters.
But first and foremost, central is going to be the pulpit, the word preached.
The table accompanies the word preached.
And it is going to be liturgical, but it's going to be of substance that people can understand.
Yeah.
That people will understand.
And the irony, too, is everyone thinks, okay, yeah, any kind of formal liturgy, that's Roman Catholic.
It's like what exists now within the Catholic Church was a response to the Protestants.
The Protestant Reformation was fundamentally not just doctrinal and changing and correcting views of soteriology, it was liturgical.
It was correcting all the problems in.
The papist understanding of worship and how they did worship.
And that's honestly, that's what we need badly now in evangelicalism a total reformation of how we do worship and going back to how Protestants worshipped and even advancing beyond, even looking more into the scripture and understanding the entire scripture in the Old Testament.
How did God's people approach him?
How did they draw near?
What should our church buildings look like?
Is it okay to have beautiful buildings?
Right, is that okay, or do they have to be austere like Puritan churches?
Right, thinking through those things, well, the temple was beautiful, are we allowed to do something similar?
You know, things like that.
Is it, um, our you know, particular forms of dress for pastors, right, something that we should do?
Right, the priests had robes, we don't have priests in the same way now, uh, but they had their vocation was called out in a particular way.
I mean, Jesus had a particular uh garment that he wore too, um, that was like a priest, actually.
Um, and so should we have our pastors in business suits?
Should we have them in skinny jeans and a v neck?
Like, how should our pastors dress?
You know, things asking those questions and asking, well, what does God want us to do?
Like, looking into the scripture and seeing, what does he want us to do?
Pastoral Dress Codes00:15:21
That's what we desperately need.
And I even mentioned in there, like, the other thing that happens in this hyper consumeristic mindset within everything, but in particular the church, is you can have like liturgical churches, and that's like their marketing point is like, we're authentic because we have this old liturgy.
Come to our church because it's way more real.
And then that becomes a consumeristic thing that you're selling as well.
It's like, oh, we're just trying to round up the people that want this.
Right.
When it's like, no, this is just how it should be.
Right.
This is what God's word teaches.
And that's where the change has to happen the leadership of the churches beginning to pursue what God wants in the Bible and not what is pragmatically advantageous.
Yeah.
What's going to really build our church and grow it?
Because this is what the people want, you know, because you see so many absurdities.
I mean, just disgusting.
There was, I think, a church in my old town of Springfield, Missouri, where they had like, you know, Chuck Norris driving a tank and like all the fireworks going off in this big stadium thing.
And it's like, oh, wow, that's a cool church.
I want to go there.
You know, it's like, it's just disgusting.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But you're right.
Like, we do have to be aware, though, that, um, Anything that can be marketed will be marketed.
And so I think that there is a return.
Ada and I talked about this on a separate episode a while back, but I think that there is going to be a return to, especially with AI, there's so many things in the trash world.
So tying it with it, like what we're talking about is something that has substance, that's transcendent, right?
So bringing back the transcendence, that you're not the central focus of the story, that you're not atomized, you're a part of something, a bigger thing.
So even like stained glass windows, where it's like this mosaic piece of the whole.
High ceilings, right?
It's like the theology and the architecture, angels and the architecture, that kind of thing.
So bringing back transcendence and then doing that with just the place that you meet, the way that it looks, but then your liturgy and the way.
But what I'm saying is, trash world is fake.
And it's so fake that AI, even being, not saying that AI is inherently bad, I think it can be used as a tool, but we are entering, I mean, we're right on the cusp of entering into a season of.
Human history, where it's going to be really hard to know what's real.
Yeah.
And so, all that being said, I think there's going to be an even deeper desire and demand for the old, the tried, the true, you know, the traditional.
Now, that said, people always want to make a buck.
So, if we need, I think, to be aware that there are going to be a bunch of guys who have, who are absolute liberal, progressive, God hating, you know, purple haired, you know, whatever.
They're like, They don't have any of our reasons that we're discussing right now.
So, for an entirely different set of reasons, but they still are going to try to execute some of the same tools.
Oh, yeah.
They're going to say, oh, liturgy, robes, tassels, high ceilings, old church buildings, stained glass.
Look at the size of this Bible.
It's coming down.
Look at that candle.
Smell that incense.
Like, they're going to be doing it.
And this is already happening.
I'm just saying, I think it's going to exponentially increase.
But right now, You can find some of the most traditional churches in terms of aesthetic and liturgy.
And in those same churches, that's where they ordain gay priests.
No, no, no, they already do that.
I think partly, you know, people, that's always one of the objections.
It's like, well, the ELCA and the UMC and the Episcopal Church, they have these beautiful liturgies too.
And it's like, yeah.
And those were taken over a long time ago for that reason because they have the beautiful building, the beautiful liturgy.
And that was attacked first.
I mean, those churches.
Like these ones, I mean, there's one, I think it's an Episcopal cathedral in Pittsburgh.
I remember seeing it one time and it's just gorgeous.
And then I looked it up on the internet and I'm like, oh my goodness, what do these people believe?
But it was built in like the late 1700s, right?
Right there on the stone.
Like when that thing was built, those people actually believed the gospel and believed all the doctrine that the church traditionally held to.
And it was the first, these denominations were the first ones taken over because Satan wanted to subvert them, right?
Because they had.
Deep cultural power in our country.
Right.
Right.
I mean, part of the reason our country is the way it is is because all the mainline churches apostatized.
Right.
Right.
And it's not because, like, that was just bound to happen inexorably.
It's because those ones had cultural and religious power in our country and have made it the way that it is.
They were under attack.
Yeah.
And so that it's the like the ejection.
It's like you kind of have to turn it on its head.
It's like, no, those were attacked that way.
When they were, because they had the best things going for them in that moment.
This is why you can't give any of this any quarter because you know, I can't imagine that that takeover at the Episcopal churches or wherever happened overnight.
You know, it happened with you tolerating a lot of little things and incrementally, oh, maybe the virgin birth didn't happen, you know, things like that, right?
150 years ago, exactly.
And it's and this is the thing, man like, it's okay for you to get these different controversies, whether it's gay Christianity, whether whatever it is, and people start to have these conversations about it, you know, and they start to set up.
Dialogues about it, and we're going to do this or that.
Maybe homosexuality is not really a sin, kind of is, you know, contumacy.
I don't know.
I personally believe that sometimes it's okay for a pastor to say, actually, no, we're not talking about that.
Yeah.
No discussion.
You have to shut it down.
Yeah.
Because it's just like that analogy you had with the little leaf.
You know, you could just pluck it out and get rid of it before it grows.
Because that's the thing, man.
Like they're trying all the same kind of plays on the churches now that are in warehouses instead of the cathedrals.
They're just warehouses, but they're good churches.
Yeah.
And they're, you know, installing a female director of evangelism.
And maybe we can get away with, you know, churches do studies like this.
I mean, Village Church, Matt Chandler's church, did a whole thing about how, you know, we're going to put women everywhere where we can feasibly get away with arguing that it's okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You got to cut that at the root.
Yeah.
Right.
In fact, I would argue maybe you shouldn't employ a single woman.
Yeah.
Because that's what time it is.
It's not time for playing around.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
So, but what about a secretary?
Nope.
Hire a guy.
Yeah, that'd be great.
Like, seriously, that would be great.
Just like to say, you know, we know what time it is, like the sons of Izakar.
Yeah.
The world hates women.
They say that they love women, but they hate women.
They don't want women to be able to be with their children.
Yeah.
They don't want them to have children.
If they do have children, they want someone else to raise them at all these different levels.
And we just, you know, even maybe there are a few places where it would be appropriate, but we're going to decide in this cultural moment, we're not going to have any female staff.
That's just a good, it's just a good.
To prevent any of the confusion from ever rearing its head.
Yeah, it's a good flag to go ahead and raise.
And this is how it happens.
If you don't do that, then what's going to end up happening is, you know, there's going to be someone to come in and say, you know, is that female secretary really happy here?
And then you're going to find out that, you know, no, there's a lot of misogyny here.
And what she means by misogyny is, you know, who knows what she means.
And then you do the case study of reevaluating everything we do.
And then you got to, you know, be anti racist or whatever.
And then that's how it gets a foothold.
Yeah.
So, look, that's not to say that every female secretary out there is going to do this.
Or that if you have a church secretary, you need to fire her now.
Right.
Not saying that.
But what I am saying is that, you know, when you have the problem that comes to you, it is okay to metaphorically crack some skulls instantly without even giving any quarter to it at all.
Right.
No quota.
No, I think you're absolutely right.
And it's the same with like military.
Like we are at war, the church is at war.
The church here on earth is militant.
And And when you think of like the military, having, you know, even if it's still majority male in combat, just putting one woman in a troop endangers the whole, you know, it's like Ron Burgundy.
It's like, you hear that?
Bears.
Bears are attracted to the menstruation.
You put the whole station in jeopardy.
Look at that, Ron.
You put the whole station in jeopardy.
But, you know, now that's being humorous.
But in a real sense, in the military, you put a woman in combat and everyone in her proximity is now in added danger.
Not just the internal danger of that she could say, well, so and so raped me.
God forbid he actually could do that.
The temptation, all those kinds of things, but also in danger.
Like if she gets captured, much greater likelihood of her selling out everybody else.
Oh, they're over there, like to spare her own life.
She's a woman, she's not a man.
Slowing them down, she can't carry as much.
She's a liability.
It's not just that she's in danger.
And she's a particular target.
Yeah, exactly.
So it's not just that she herself is in danger.
And that's enough reason that we're called to protect women.
But she also endangers everyone else.
And in this moment, like, I mean, we have to think in a militant sense.
And like that right now, our culture, our regime lords of trash world, they want to destroy the church.
We've already seen it in the SBC, you know, hashtag church two, you know, me too kind of thing.
Like all that kind of stuff that, you know, Rachel Den Hollander and all these.
All these snakes.
And so, if that's what time it is, then yeah, maybe you can't afford to have a single employee that is.
And again, not saying that, like, okay, so go fire, you know, Sister Betty, who's, you know, who's 65 years old and a widow who's worked for the church for 40 years.
And a creative secretary.
Right.
Yeah.
So, okay.
So, use some prudence and take it with a grain of salt.
But if you're a church planter, if you don't already have someone who's on staff, yeah, AD is absolutely right.
Maybe consider, let's not wake up, know the time.
Den Hollander is a sad example of this because.
You know, many people saw the danger for what it was, but nobody could have imagined how dangerous she actually is.
Yeah.
And it's all coming out now, what's going on with all that?
And it's just like, it's a disaster.
And it should have been nipped in the bud immediately.
It's one thing to have people that hate you and are hell bent on destroying you.
But it's another when the church becomes so emasculated, so castrated, so.
I don't know.
I'll stop there.
So bad.
Cash rate is pretty bad.
Yeah.
So bad.
I was going to say even worse, but so bad.
And it would have been appropriate, but it just, some people would tune it out and they missed my point.
But when the church, it's one thing when the devils, the demons, hate you enough to, like, they're going to attack you and seek to destroy you.
It's another when the church pays them to do it.
That's the SBC.
The SBC is like, hey, demons, you know, human demon hybrids over there.
You want us to be destroyed.
Can we give you money to do that?
Yeah, have at it.
Can we pay you to do that?
That's literally what.
What?
You had a woman walk into the office and say, just lower all of your defenses.
And they said, okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right.
Sure.
And that's what happened.
Yeah.
Will you like us now?
Yeah.
And I just think, I mean, so much of it and all of these types of things is.
You know, the churches, they get attacked.
And yet you see, like, the SBC is the big target now because that's the reasonably conservative, very large evangelical denominator.
That'd be a big, there's nothing that size that conservative.
Yeah, exactly.
Nothing.
Whether you're talking about church or anything political, like, that's the huge, huge target.
And so, yeah, you can see why they do these things.
And I look at it and I think, like, all right, Imagine if a huge chunk of SBC churches began to adopt traditional liturgy and began to say, and we're going to do this because it's not pragmatic.
It's the opposite of pragmatic.
It's asking, what does God want us to do?
What does his word say that he wants us to do?
And then you begin to kind of backfill this, really having a spine, right?
Saying, we're not going to do this because this is going to make everybody happy.
We're going to do this because we think this is more faithful.
Like if you begin to change that form of worship, It has an effect on the people as a whole.
That's why when people like, you know, Stephen Wolfe is like really critical of when people say worship is warfare.
And I get why he is.
I totally get it because people use it as a cope where it's like, oh, if we just faithfully worship, step one, faithfully worship, step two, question mark, step three, profit, right?
Like, that's what he's critiquing.
He's right.
No, it's step one, worship, step two, question mark, step three, 5,000 years, step four, we're so bad.
Exactly.
And that's what he doesn't like.
Yeah.
His contention against the worship is warfare is the same contention against post millennialism.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, he's fine with it if you're a serious person.
Yeah.
If it's not just a cope for inaction.
Right.
Right.
And he's right about that.
But in the real sense, right, worship is warfare because what it should be doing is it should be stealing your spine, right?
Because you're gathering before God as his army, you're chanting his war songs and singing his war songs and hearing his order, right, as the general to his people.
All right, here's what you're going to go do.
Here's how you go attack.
Praying and imprecatory songs.
Yeah.
And asking him, right, deliver us from our enemies.
Right.
And then sharing a victory meal with him every week.
If worship is that, then the church is an army that's going out into the world and conquering.
And so if you had like 10% of SBC churches viewing worship that way, how much would America change quickly?
Then it wouldn't be like worship is warfare, 5,000 years, question mark.
Then it would be five years and we're so back.
And that's why I think it's this way it's not like, oh, well, I made my consumeristic choice that I just really like the aesthetic of.
Of a traditional liturgy, and it feels so warm and cozy and holy.
And I just like it.
It's like, no, I'm persuaded that the tradition that we've forsaken was a good one.
The how stems from the why.
We do things in such a way because we believe certain things about God, about this world, about, you know.
And one of the things that you believe, like again, you know, building a cathedral, just talking about the building itself, one of the things you believe is that Christ may tarry.
Restoring The World00:03:17
You believe that it may be God's intention that we actually, that Christ redeems the world progressively throughout this gospel age.
Through his body here on earth, which is the church, that Christ is actually not just in salvation, saving individual eternal souls.
He is doing that.
It's never less than that.
But that by saving individual people and then gathering them into a covenant body, his body, and then sending them back out Monday through Saturday, that Christ is actually not just redeeming individual people, but then through them, restoring the world.
Everybody's Post mill around Christmas time, you know, like he comes to make his blessings flow as far as the curse is found.
Like, do we believe that?
And I do.
I believe that the only thing that won't be ultimately reversed until Christ himself returns is death.
That'll be the last, not the first, but the last of his enemies to be defeated.
But that even when this occurs, when Christ finally does return and defeats death, that people will be dying up until then.
But even death will be different in the sense that the youth will die at 100.
That no longer will anyone die in infancy, and that that would mean abortion is completely abolished.
But then also, you know, SIDS, those guys said that no more.
He has made his blessings flow as far as the curse is found, that swords are beaten into plowshares, and these kinds of things.
That there is a great victory that Christ, his gospel, is potent, it is militant, and it's victorious.
It is actually victorious, but it all starts with worship.
Worship is not for women only.
It is for women, but worship is masculine.
It's a militant cry to war.
And if people believe that.
So, all that being said, this is not just talking about the problems of the trash world.
With this episode, we're beginning with these last couple ones, we're beginning to talking about the solution.
And the first thing is church worship, the Lord's Day.
Any final thoughts that you guys have?
No, I mean, I think what Andrew said is so right.
You know, it's about stealing yourself for every area of your life.
You know, if you know that you went to church on Sunday, you were forgiven of your sins, you didn't hide your sins, you brought them to the Lord, you were forgiven of your sins, you heard.
You heard from him, he chopped you up, and then you had this meal.
You know it's squashed, right?
You know it's squashed.
And so you're in a position to move forward and to do the things you need to do.
That is a very powerful thing.
And it's not just about aesthetics, but it is aesthetics.
That's a part of it too.
When you know that you've got a group of people, not only is it just you, it's a group of people that all went through the same thing.
They had their sins forgiven, they're all ready to go.