Andrew and the host argue that raising children to hate "Trash World" requires a supportive brotherhood utilizing Calvinist theology rather than isolation. They advise boomers to disinherit apostates while fostering local militias and Christian economies, rejecting fear-based homesteading for organized community defense. The discussion critiques modern evangelicalism's strategy of losing by assimilating culture, urging the church to rebuild anti-fragile institutions and enforce public decency laws instead of accepting predetermined defeat. Ultimately, this movement succeeds not through coercion but by attracting high-value individuals who reject a "losing team" mentality in favor of biblical victory. [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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Rooted in Tradition00:05:38
It is simply not enough to keep your kids from watching movies or having access to the internet when they are in your home.
No matter what you do, the magical, dark liturgy that runs 24 7 will still be out there.
But teaching your children to hate it is far more important than keeping it hidden away from them.
They should learn specifically why they ought to despise everything from Trash World, and you must raise them among others who understand the same.
The network of friends and family you interact with regularly is the soil your children are growing up in.
If they are alone and isolated, if the only friends they have are entranced with the trash world, no matter how much effort you expend homeschooling and keeping evil things from their eyes, they will be vulnerable.
More than anything, you and your wife and your children need friends who love what you love and hate what you hate.
The way that you write, Andrew, I think is helpful.
It's, you know, straight to the point.
You know, it gets, I think it's good, but it's entertaining.
Like I said in the beginning, it's my kind of book.
You know, it's something that is.
Accessible to just about anybody.
It's understandable by just about anybody.
And honestly, I believe, you know, there's different people need different styles, but I believe that to confront Trash World, you need to be kind of shocked into it a little bit.
You need to jump right into the ice water to just get that shock to your system.
Yeah.
Because it's almost like resetting yourself a little bit because this is the air we've breathed since we, you know, went to kindergarten.
I know probably some of you guys can remember like early on in your education.
Um, things that you were taught or told or you saw in the movies that um they're evil, yeah, you know, and you didn't know it, and so you you you went years and years getting the same doctrine, and it was evil doctrine, but you thought it was good, right?
And so you need to be slapped in the face, you know, metaphorically speaking, of course, yeah, maybe maybe literally, maybe literally, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good.
Um, brotherhood that's kind of the big theme that we're going to be discussing in this chapter, but really, you know, this is kind of our our.
Our final conclusion to this series that we're doing.
And we're going to hit, you know, in this episode, we want to try to hit multiple different themes all together.
But we want to talk about brotherhood.
We've already talked about worship.
So for those who are just tuning in, you can go back and check out that episode.
But the whole idea is, you know, the first half of Andrew's book deals with here's Donner's Oak, here's Trash World, here's the idol, let's chop it down.
But the second half is dealing with, okay, but what do we build in this place?
We want to actually do something.
Yeah.
You know, W's in the chat, you know, white pills for everyone, you know, so like, So, what can we actually do?
So, part two is transforming the felled trees of the trash world into new Christendom.
And for those who, again, are just maybe tuning in on this last episode, what we did is we talked about masculine economics.
We talked about how the last generation, the boomers, how they can help us, that times are harder for us.
They had seven years of plenty.
We have seven years of famine.
That doesn't mean that they didn't work hard, they worked extremely hard, but their work produced more than hard work does today.
But they can help by passing down generational wealth to their righteous, their righteous posterity.
And absolutely writing out of their will any kids that have apostatized.
That is the biblical model who don't love the Lord.
So that's one way that we win.
We win by being multi generational, the family unit working together, generational wealth.
We also win by worship.
We said that was the big idea, the tip of the spear.
We need to make liturgy great again.
That was one of the things that we talked about, like understanding that we're rooted in tradition.
None of us are doing life in a vacuum, none of us are doing theology in a vacuum.
We're all product of place and time.
And in the marvelous mercy of God, our place in time is pretty good in the sense that we're coming on, you know, seated on top of 1500 years of Christendom and like incredible confessions and liturgies and theology and a lot of heavy lifting that's already been done for us.
We just have to dust it off and actually, you know, read it, understand it, and seek to apply it.
Like we have Protestant political theology.
Yeah.
If we would just use it, yeah.
Instead of saying, oh, these guys were monsters, you know, and, you know, like, so, You know, so, but instead, what we do is, you know, we build the tombs, you know, for the prophets and, uh, and we talk about how we would, you know, we love Calvin and we love Luther and we love Knox.
Uh, but if anybody who actually reads them, really reads them and says, hey, maybe they had some pretty good ideas, it might help with our current situation, you know, that person is anathematized.
Yeah.
You're bad.
You're bad.
Yeah.
So, all that being said, tradition is good.
So, we do, you know, we talked about, uh, generational, you know, the generations working together, worship being the tip of the spear, uh, worship being warfare.
And within that worship conversation, we talked about tradition.
That we have a worship, Protestant worship tradition.
It's a good thing.
We shouldn't throw it away.
For this, the goal would be kind of wrapping up here at the very end Brotherhood, Made for War.
These are the last few chapters of his book, but Brotherhood, Made for War, A New Eve, and the Paideia of Christendom.
So we're going to be talking about mainly that cold open comes from your Brotherhood chapter.
But talking about Brotherhood, Flesh and Blood, we've already talked about this some, talking about that, but then putting in some of the pieces of Rescuing Eve, the Paideia, Christian education for our kids, all that kind of stuff.
You start with brotherhood, I think, because that makes all the rest of it easier.
Yeah.
Division of Labor00:08:31
Right.
You know, you can't do this alone.
No matter how good you think you do alone, you actually don't do that well alone.
I mean, God says as much.
Right.
You know, in the garden, you know.
It's not just about Eve, it's about humanity in general.
That's right.
Yeah, exactly.
There's an application for everyone.
It was not good for him to be alone.
Right.
And so that's where you start.
Only thing in creation not good.
Yeah.
Right.
And part of the reason it's not good to be alone, going back, To the episode right before this is because we do, God has made us differently.
We don't live in a world of androgyny where everybody's the same.
Division of labor is a good thing.
Division of labor is not like this.
And so it's kind of funny.
It's like people, you know, so some people are disenchanted with trash world.
Some people call it clown world, whatever, you know, and a lot of us have, you know, woken up and especially the past three years since 2020 and COVID and we're like, this is bad.
And it's funny how, like, a lot of people's natural, Reactions with, like, I gotta do something.
And so it's like, I'm gonna learn how to make shoes and homestead and grow food.
And, you know, and like, and it's like, which is great.
That's great.
But, like, if I could just be honest, all right, behind every homesteading woman on Instagram is a man who works in software.
Yes, right.
So, like, first, let's just start there.
Like, let's just be honest.
Like, I like these guys.
Yeah.
I like them.
Oh, they're great.
I know many Groves.
Yeah.
I'll just say he's a great guy.
And I think he's got some good, the durable trades.
I've read the book.
I've had him on my podcast before.
But he will tell you that he was able to do all of it because he made a lot of money in software.
I've got men in my church who have 40 acres and they have cows and they have this and all that kind of stuff and chickens.
One of the guys in my church has about 1,500 chickens, their own chicken business.
And it's great.
It's teaching the kids hard work, it's teaching them economics.
And everything's paid for in software.
The chickens break even.
He said that they barely even make a profit.
Yeah, it's the reward for the work that they've done.
And that's how we should look at it.
It's not like, oh, it's fake, it's a LARP, it's not real.
No, it's instead of buying the vacation home or having the big, huge 401k and things like that, they probably have savings and things like that too.
But this is the reward for all the hard work they've done in a different domain.
Right.
But that's different.
The homesteading being the reward for hard work is very different than saying homesteading will be the work that will sustain you.
Yeah, it'll be a.
That's just not true.
Yeah.
It's just not true.
We're not going back.
That's not going to happen.
That might happen in a.
But if we get to there, it's going to be like most of us will be dead by the time we get there.
That's a post apocalyptic, the whole world has almost ended.
What will happen is like you and your 10 sons, if you have that many, are not going to be able to defend your homestead with your ARs against the hordes of people that are going to come raid you in a post apocalyptic way.
I tell guys that all the time.
It's like, well, if it gets bad, I've got a garden.
And it's like, okay, I appreciate it.
And if you want to do that, just because again, you're teaching, I think the discipleship is valuable.
And I think that just literally having your hands in the dirt.
Is good for the soul.
I think it's just good.
So I'm all about that for spiritual formation, just being a good, godly person, teaching your children something, not having everything outsourced, that there's actually yard work, there are chores to be done around the house.
All that's awesome.
All the food that you grew and raised is good for the soul, too.
Yeah, that's true.
That's actually good for the body.
Yeah, in every sense.
Yeah.
Right.
So that's great.
But what I was going to say is with all that, if we're, but the person who's thinking, Because a lot of people, they're thinking fear based.
So it's not like this is just a good habit.
Yeah, this is what I'm doing.
This is where my ancestors come from.
And we need to be connected to our heritage and remember these things and tease them.
Praise God.
All that's great.
But a lot of people, it's a Mad Max kind of thing.
It's like, this is how we're going to make it when everyone else dies.
It's like, if things get that bad, you think they're not coming for your garden?
Yeah, they're coming for your garden.
You would be better off with your MREs that are in a locked up container inside your house where they can't get in.
Than your garden that's outside where they can just walk, you know.
So, anyway, so do it as a spiritual formation, teaching your kids discipleship, hard work, economics, all that kind of stuff.
But this is not going to replace your day job.
Like, I was talking to Michael Foster about this, and, you know, they got like a small farm.
And he was like, he's like, you know, why nobody, you know, everybody's excited about homesteading now.
Everybody's going to be over it in five years.
But he said, he said, everybody's excited about it right now.
He said, but you know, why nobody was doing this?
He's like, nobody was doing it because it sucks.
It's a lot of work.
He's like, it's terrible.
Yeah.
He's like, farming's really hard.
Yeah.
Like, really hard.
There's a lot of poop you got to do.
Yeah.
He's like, it's really, really hard.
And so, anyways, all that being said, my point is, my point is back to the brotherhood division of labor is that this is one of the blessings of, I think, that like post millennialism and Christendom, you know, and Christ's kingdom expanding is that we've realized that like this is 1 Corinthians chapter 12, different parts of the body, eyes and ears and like.
It just applied to a different realm of human life.
But it is a gift and a blessing that I don't have to do everything.
There was a time not that long ago where one family had to make their own shoes, they had to sew their own clothes, they had to grow their own food.
That like every single basic need had to be met by that family.
Nothing was outsourced.
No division of labor whatsoever.
And so, as that applies to a brotherhood, so not just one family, right?
So it's not just the guerrilla warfare, but you actually have.
Organized platoons, and not just I've got all my brotherhood virtually on the internet, but we actually live in the same locale.
We're part of the same church community.
We're being shaped by the same liturgy, the same text, the same worship, Lord's Day in and out.
Part of the beauty of that is we're also going to have different giftings that helps with a parallel, you know, Christian economy.
It also helps with the education of our children.
Yeah.
None of us is ever going to say anything negative about homeschooling.
Yeah.
Homeschooling is, yeah, praise God.
Like, you know, it's wonderful.
But one thing that I think is cool about Christian schools, there's a lot of cool things, a few, but one thing is within Christian classical, or even if it's not classical, the Christian school mentality is that I remember here, I think it was actually Lexi, Brian Sauvet's wife, talking about this on Brighthearth.
But she said, she's like, you know, at first I was like, you know, but it's fathers, it's, you know, fathers train up your children, you know, and like education falls on fathers.
And I get that, that's true.
She was like, but Brian's not doing it.
Like, yeah, he's involved, but he outsourced to me because he has to go out of the home to work to provide.
And then she was like, and then even with me, I order books.
It's curriculum.
I'm not writing the curriculum.
Yeah.
And she was like, and then even when we do, when I cook for the family, like fathers have this obligation to provide the education for their children, but also to provide food.
But we're willing to outsource that to take our money and buy food from the farmer who sold it to the gracious.
We are constantly doing that.
So to say that you must homeschool, so homeschooling is great.
But to go so far to say you must homeschool, it's mandated.
Yeah.
I think that's silly.
And what happens when you begin to outsource things is you get some of the best things.
You get the best food, the best produce, the best shoes.
If I was making my own shoes, they'd be rough.
Yeah.
You know?
And likewise, with education, this is not to say that parents aren't uniquely equipped by God to educate their own children.
I know they can do it.
Absolutely.
I believe they can do it.
But it is to say that those parents are ultimately going to oversee the education of their children.
They're going to be involved in many ways, but then you're pulling from All the parents in your church community.
And you know what?
A couple of them know trigonometry, and I can't even pronounce the word.
Yes.
So it just, it might be nice for my children to cross pollinate a little bit with that dad and that mom, as well as, of course, their dad and mom.
So the brotherhood, I mean, it plays into everything.
It plays into the paideia, it plays into the school education of children, it plays into work, parallel Christian economy, all these different things.
And it's also, I just felt like it was a great opportunity to say something negative about homestead.
Building Real Neighborhoods00:15:06
There you go.
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.
Well, I mean, I can speak positively of homesteading a little bit because, I mean, yeah, all we have is a garden.
My wife is like, oh, I'd love to have chickens.
And I'm like, yeah, you say that now.
You say that now.
But yeah, we'd love to have land and be able to produce things.
And I think some of the homesteading idea and pursuing that and really that becoming almost a meme that a lot of people in our world do isn't bad because you look at, I mean, the example that I like to use isn't the Mad Max.
You know, scenario where total societal breakdown, which I don't think is actually going to necessarily happen.
Yeah, either.
What things will look like if there's a collapse scenario is, right, the Soviet Union when it collapsed, it wasn't like just complete total societal breakdown, although there were aspects of that for sure.
But like Russia, regular Russians would have, there would have been massive famine in the 90s if it wasn't part of their life, partly because of the Soviet Union.
Where they all had gardens that were productive because they didn't trust if the government was going to feed them.
So they kept gardens, many of them illegally, and kept the food that they produced and that supplemented the food that the government gave them.
And if they didn't have that, there would have been massive famine and millions of people would have starved to death in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
So, to that end, like with homesteading, it's like we could be in a scenario like that.
And yeah, if you're growing tomatoes and potatoes in your backyard, That you're getting calories out of your backyard.
Like, that's good.
Like, you should have that supplementary thing, but don't think of it as, all right, it's going to be Mad Max and I'm going to be fending off, you know, all these hordes of people with my rifle and then, but also tilling the soil and weeding it all day and taking care of chickens.
And it's like, no, like, if it gets to something like that, you'll be dead.
Partly because you don't have people.
And that leads back to the point on brotherhood is what we need more than anything else.
Is just people, is numbers.
And not in this slimy, marketing centric, big EVA, mega church sort of way where it's like, oh, if we just market really well, we'll get a thousand people.
But those aren't your people.
They're not aligned with the same vision as the one.
You're a thousand atoms.
Those are the people who picked up the phone and called Governor Gavin Newsom when I wasn't wearing a mask.
Those are not your people.
Those people are against you.
So you want lots of people that are your people.
And to have many of them and gathered together.
So then, if you have a homesteading situation and there is a collapse, well, now you have like a company or a battalion strength that could fend off the hordes, right?
I mean, this is the thing like in where I'm in Minnesota, I remember sitting and watching the Floyd riot happen in Minneapolis, like 90 miles away.
And I'm sitting with like former military guys and they're watching this and they're like, no, these guys are moving in like coordinated formations.
Like, this is like watching a military operation.
And immediately they start thinking, like, And they're like, what if they just like grabbed rifles and they just came down here?
What would we do?
Right?
What would we do in a scenario like that where the governor is not, the government's not protecting you, you know?
Yeah, who are you calling?
What's your calling?
Kyle Rittenhouse, you know?
Like, what would we do in a scenario like this?
They could come rampage and just destroy everything here.
And what would we do as the people of this community?
And that's a question I think a lot of communities should ask is if there is chaos and widespread violence, things like that, which I don't think is like around the corner or anything like that, but.
But just to have in the back of your head, like, what would you do?
Who would you call?
Who would you call to protect your house and your family from masses of people that are willing to harm you?
I mean, and you look at history, you look at the history.
This is something that I think people should read.
They should read if I make any book recommendation besides my own, buy my book.
The memoirs of Peter Wrangel, the general that led the White Army, is really good during the Bolshevik Revolution because you see what happens when everything collapses and there are just hordes of.
Of violent criminal people that are ransacking everything.
They went and they just murdered kulaks and stole their stuff.
And what happens if there's a situation even somewhat analogous to that here?
What will we do?
Where will you go?
And the thing is, you need to have people that get it now and are on your side and willing to stand up and defend.
You need that.
And I'm not saying, all right, go form militias and invite the feds to entrap you and put you in prison.
I'm not saying that.
Don't do that.
But even have loose organizations and associations of men that are committed to the same views and goals.
Like, have things like that locally, right?
People that you know and you trust and that love the same things you do.
They love their country, love America, they love Jesus.
Yeah, it's not an organized militia or anything like that.
Do not do that.
What you're talking about, though, is just friends.
Yeah.
It's just having friends who have the same values that you have and also a gun.
Yeah.
And love.
Yeah, love your actual flesh and blood community that you're a part of and the people there and don't want to see it come to harm.
Right.
Right.
That's what you need.
And if you don't know these people in your community, like you need to develop roots in a place that you're at.
Right.
Or if it's not a place that you can do that, you need to go somewhere where you can have that and begin to have lots of friends.
Right.
And they don't necessarily need to be like your best buddies that you talk to every day, but they need to be people like you see at the grocery store and you say, Hi, hey, how are you?
How you been?
You know, like people that you, you know, a little bit more than acquaintances, but people that you know that are.
On the same page with you that are nearby.
And a lot of people don't have that.
And like we've talked about numerous times already, everything is set up for you not to have people that you're aware of that think like you do.
But you can create that.
You can strive toward having that.
And it's imperative that we do that now.
And you might need to move to that.
You might need to relocate to that.
You also need to cultivate that.
But with the relocation thing, even as the guy who wrote Fight by Flight, I would still say that better to be in a suburban, you know.
Area that's, you know, that's semi purple, maybe even a little bit blue or whatever, with a church of 100 people that think like you.
Oh, yeah.
Then to live in Kansas, but no one within a 50 mile radius.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, like that.
And I think some people overreacted with the last three years of COVID and BLM, you know, and all these kinds of things.
And they're like, man, I need to, like, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to homestead, I'm going to start a garden, we're going to get chickens, we're going to, and we're going to get away from it.
And I'm going to buy a bunch of ammunition, I'm going to get some guns, and I'm going to get this, and I'm going to get that.
And it's like, okay, well, you're in a red, red, tiny town, population 340 people, in a red state, and you've got 40 acres of land, you've got this, you've got that.
But here's the one thing you don't have friends, people.
I hesitate to use this example because maybe we can cut it out if it's too stupid.
Don't bring up the Avengers again.
One thing.
No, no, it's not the Avengers.
It's not the Avengers.
But I was talking to you earlier about I like to look into the mafia and stuff like that.
Oh, yeah.
And stuff.
And, you know, of course, they're a criminal enterprise and, you know, they're degenerates.
We get that, right?
But, but.
Where are you going with this?
But, you know, they had these neighborhoods, right?
And they would operate in these neighborhoods.
And it was known that that was their territory, right?
That was their neighborhood.
And you had to respect their neighborhood.
And so you'd get scenes in a movie or a show where some thugs come into the pizzeria and you're just causing a disturbance or whatever.
And, you know, they attack them and they're like, no, you're going to respect the pizzeria.
It's like, I'm not saying you should form a mafia, but they did have sort of a pride in their community.
You know, they didn't want their community to be the victim of, well, at least those thugs, I guess.
Yeah.
But, you know, their own thuggery is a different question.
Right.
That's why it's a stupid example, I think.
But there was sort of a pride of the neighborhood.
Like, that's our coffee shop.
That's our pizzeria.
You know, these are the places that we go, and we're going to keep it clean.
We're going to keep it, you know, a certain level of respectability.
And you don't disrespect the neighborhood.
I'm not saying to form a mafia, but do you care if your community gets disrespected or looks like trash or gets tagged by, In the local thugs or things like that?
Or is it just, this is just the place where I live and I really don't care what happens to it?
I just, I just, this is where I sleep.
You know what I mean?
Is the place you live an economic zone that you are taking advantage of or is it an actual place?
Is it an actual place?
Are you talking about America?
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And this could be something as simple as, you know, when I go to the park with my kids, you know, and I see it's all trashed up, do I throw the trash in the trash can?
You know, like that kind of stuff.
Or is this just, like you said, an economic zone that I just happen to be at right now and then maybe tomorrow I won't be here?
Right.
There's got to be some sense.
I mean, even the mafia had some sense, it is distorted, but some sense of community.
This is my town.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yep, you're right.
It's a great point.
Well, I think you should sort of form things like that.
I mean, not devoted to criminal enterprise, obviously, but still, there's a certain civic pride that you're trying to describe there.
And I think you're right that we should have things like that where we take pride in the place that we're from and that we live and that our children are growing up in, the community that we're part of.
If it's possible to.
I mean, some places, like if you're living in Portland, you can't really do that.
But even, you know, it's funny, like I spoke well of homesteading a second ago, and I'm going to the opposite direction and speak well of suburbs.
But suburbs are like literally designed to be anti civil disorder, anti riot, it's anti riot technology.
Like you look at how they're designed, even driving around in like the Austin suburbs here, you see them.
And it's like the GPS the other day where it was taking us to dinner, it took us through a Suburban residential area, and you could tell right away, like, I'm not supposed to be here.
Yeah, right.
I don't belong in this, right?
And like, there's cul de sacs everywhere, and everything.
Like, and if you're not supposed to be there, right?
Um, everybody knows, everyone, right?
You're not from here.
You don't, you don't belong in our cul de sac, you know.
And and they're organized and structured in that way where masses of people that shouldn't be there, it's easy to like, you know, for like police to trap them in there and round them out.
And we make fun of it, but like, but the whole idea of an HOA, you know, like, yeah, so like, I mean, there are bad things, you know, about an HOA.
It's, you know, I like.
To think of it as like neighborhood socialism.
But, you know, but there is that also that other sense of it's like a bunch of people who care.
And sometimes it's like they care way too much, but still it's nice.
And they're like lording over people.
Yeah.
But it's like that guy was a hall monitor.
You know, like when he was a shrubs.
Finally, I have some power.
You know, like your shrubs are too tall.
Even in my neighborhood, it's funny, like some of the guys, you know, and they're great guys, but like they, it's like for no other purpose.
And we don't have, like, I live in a suburb.
It's not like we have acres of land, but they have the, I forget what they're called, but they, it's like, Basically, a glorified golf cart.
It's better than a golf cart.
Yeah.
You would get it like you see them at the Bass and Pro shops and stuff like that.
And so, like, they're driving, you know, that's what they do.
Like, when on their time off, when they're done with work, you know, it's a Saturday, the kids get in, mom gets in, dad's, you know, like, kind of, I'm a big deal.
And he's driving through the suburbs and we're going to the pool.
It's like, you could have walked to the pool or taken your normal car.
But no, no, we're driving this little gator, you know, thing.
And like, we have that in my town too.
That's great.
That's in rural.
We're driving the gator to the neighborhood pool, you know, and oh, there's Gerald.
He's the HOA president, you know, and he really cares.
But here's the thing, though.
They know who lives here.
Yeah, exactly.
If somebody, they know the cars that belong on this street parallel parked, that car doesn't belong.
Yeah.
Who is that?
Right.
And if it was there for more than a day, you know, even overnight, it's like, we're going to ask a couple questions.
Yeah.
That's kind of nice.
And maybe you get bothered by like the nosy neighbors and things like that.
But it's like, at the same time, like, that's good.
Yeah.
You want people that care about the area.
Right.
Yeah.
And so, no, I think, you know, living in a place like that, it's just that so often these are vehicles of atomization.
To where the people pull into their driveway, you'd never talk to them.
I've lived in suburbs like that.
That's true.
So you have to work really hard to overcome that mentality.
And some people just don't want to, they like the anonymity of it.
But yeah, they exist as actual neighborhoods too.
And there's communities and there can be civic pride in these places too.
So the suburbs are not like everyone loves to rag on them and say, Oh, the suburbs are horrible.
They're the reason we have all the freeways and the urban sprawl and all these problems.
And it's like, Well, yeah, it is that way, partly because over the last 50 or 60 years, we allowed the cities to become just these.
Dens of crime and decay.
I mean, you look back 60 or 70 years ago, of like videos or even pictures of large cities, and they're places where families were and people just walked around and it was very, very safe and very clean.
And so it's not like we just somehow forgot how to live in cities and now we have to live in suburbs.
There are policy reasons why it's happened.
We let our cities go to hell.
The Armored Republic00:03:24
Yeah.
And so someday, you know, when there's a.
I mean, you're going to blame people because they don't want to live there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There'll be a reconquista.
Right.
It'll happen where, you know, the cities will be put to sword and fire.
Right.
And then resettled by people who want to live in the suburbs of the Red Cross will go and carve out this.
That's what we're doing.
We're just willing to mount our attack.
Yeah.
You know, because cities are important.
I mean, everyone wants to think like on the right, especially among Christians, that it's like, oh, we just want to flee to safety, flee to the suburbs or flee to the rural area.
And it's like, no, I would, cities are important.
God cares about cities a ton.
They're, they're, Central.
I mean, I'm going to sound like he's the God of the city.
Yeah, I'm going to sound like Tim Keller here, you know, and say, oh, for the city.
But it's like, well, his was we'll just baptize this, you know, Sodom, right, and call it good.
And I'm like, no, I want my city to be like the New Jerusalem and strive to.
Obviously, you're not going to make it that way and make it utopian, but you can have stable, well ordered, high trust societies in a large metropolitan area, but it takes a lot of blood, sweat, and tears and time.
To create that doesn't happen out of nowhere.
Like those things, again, it's the cathedral that's been burned down or it's Chesterton's fence that's been ripped out.
And it takes a long time to put those things back together.
Right.
Easy to undo it, but hard to build it back.
Yeah.
But worth the attempt to do it.
Yeah.
And I mean, imagine a Christian New York City.
Yeah.
I mean, that would be a site to behold.
You know the classic, well, it is a site to behold.
You know the classic picture that they'll show is from like 19, maybe it's 1969 or something like that, but it's Easter.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And it's that evening.
Yeah.
Oh, three.
Emperor State Building.
Uh huh.
And Ross's.
And Twin Towers, I think.
I can't remember which spit.
It's the Chrysler building.
Yeah, one other building.
Crosses with three crosses.
And it's like, not that long ago.
Yeah, now we have pride flags.
What's amazing, it's even more like fully absorbed.
Yeah, Manhattan.
We've got the pride stuff, but then, of course, when the Jets play, it's green and white.
And when the Giants play, they just put all of the elements of Trash World.
That's what we project on the Empire State Building now.
Yeah, no doubt.
And one day we'll retake them.
The danger of centralized power is often represented by the word king.
As Americans, we hate the word king.
Civilian ownership of body armor is about helping people to have increased power to resist tyrants and criminals.
And so, Armored Republic is about helping you to preserve your God-given rights to the honor of the Lord Jesus Christ because he is the king of kings and he governs kings and he will judge them.
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.
You know, we want this episode to be like, oh, white pills, you know, like, yeah, we're going to win and we're going to make it.
And we are.
I think we are.
Winning the Battle00:14:54
It's that it's gathering people together who think like you do and have become awake.
And it doesn't even have to be the majority of people.
That's the other thing.
Like, I mean, the classic example that everyone uses is that, like, the American Revolution was like, what, three to 5% of the population of the colonies actually rebelled against King George.
The rest were either on the fence or even opposed them.
And.
So, you don't need 50% or 60% or 70% majorities in order to produce cultural change.
I mean, just look at the negative cultural change that has occurred.
The sodomites.
How many homosexuals are there?
There's not that many, but they're able to push the bush.
Well, they're definitely push the bush.
But they're definitely push the bush.
40 years ago.
No, no.
Right now, everybody, the frogs are gay.
Everybody's gay now.
But 40 years ago, you're talking way less than 3% of the population, and they effectively replaced the American flag with a rainbow.
That's quite an accomplishment in 40 years.
In the span of one generation, And all that was written out, like, you know, manifestos and very clear, like, I mean, like, this is the goals were the goals.
It was militant, it was tactical, and they executed.
And so, why can't Christians, you know, Christian nationalists, you know, with this?
This is the stage we're at right now, writing out and figuring out what it is we actually want to do.
Step one.
That's why there's so much fighting right now.
Yeah.
Because that's the stage we're at.
We're not at the stage of actually, you know, doing this.
We're figuring out what we actually want to do.
Right.
Yeah.
Then, yeah, you cast a vision.
Figure out tangible goals that you want to accomplish.
And then you bring people on board.
And that's where the pushback is right now.
Like the 80s, you're absolutely right.
I'm glad you brought that up because we're in the stage of not even doing it.
We're in the stage of just writing out our manifesto.
We're in the stage of writing out, this is what we want to do.
And so when you think about it, though, like what is the biggest pushback that like the three of us, you know, and our comrades online, like what's the thing that we get the most pushback for?
It's all the practical steps.
That's right.
So it's like, hey, you know what?
So you're going to do this.
So yeah, okay, you're dreaming, you're LARPing.
It's like, okay, yeah, we are dreaming and we're.
Praying, but we're also asking that God would help us.
We know we're not there, but we're working towards it and we're trying to be practical.
So, here are some things.
And, like, all of our posts, that's really what it is.
It's just, okay, so what can I do today?
Oh, okay, so this week on Twitter, what's the big thing?
Like, well, we discovered that maybe it's a good idea if guys work out.
Yeah, if they're in shape.
Like, if we're not fat and sick.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, okay, step one, don't die.
Yeah.
Like, don't die.
The libs are killing themselves.
The libs will die.
Let's try not to die.
So, like, if all the libs live for 60 years, you know, because they eat, you know, Trash world food.
That's right.
Let's live for 80 years.
That's right.
And have 20 X years.
So let's work out.
And then, of course, what is Christianity's response to it?
You know, no, that's an idol.
That's terrible.
Because they want to lose.
And that's what this comes down to.
I think most of the pushback that we get, sadly, it's from Christians.
It's not from a bunch of God hating leftists.
It's from Christians.
And the reason they push back is because if we actually did win, then it would discount the last 50 years of what they've been preaching.
Everything they've done.
Because here's the thing if we could win, Then, what that essentially says is that not that they lost, because they definitely lost, but that they lost and that they didn't have to lose.
Yeah.
They could have done so differently.
So then it shows, oh, you weren't losing because dispensational premillennialism was true.
Yeah.
No, you were losing because you're a loser.
Yeah.
You were losing sinfully.
Yeah.
Not rightfully.
You intended to lose.
Yeah.
This is a self fulfilling prophecy.
You shot yourself in the foot.
You made yourself and others lose.
Oh, my goodness.
That's wicked.
And so, if people saw that, like, I mean, you'd lose your ministry, you'd lose your platform, you'd lose your influence, all these kind of things.
Your donations dry up, you know, like a lot of bad things happen.
So, of course, you need the Christian nationalists to shut up and be wrong.
Yeah, and be wrong.
But all that back to 80's point, because it's a good point is, you know, W's in the chat.
This is our last episode.
What can we do?
Practical takeaways.
And some of these, they seem so menial and so practical.
It almost, you know, and this is the pushback that we get.
It sounds stupid.
It's stupid almost.
You should have friends.
Don't die.
Yeah, exactly.
But that's what it is.
So it's have friends.
Work out.
Don't die.
You know, like.
Have children.
Oh, it takes them not to die.
Get married.
Have a gun.
Yeah.
Get married.
Have children.
Don't put them in public school.
Own property.
And if you can, then buy a second property.
Yeah, build things.
Try to be productive.
Not everyone's going to own their own business, but if you can, right?
Do it.
Avail yourself to do it.
Like Paul's saying, like if you're a slave, but you can gain your freedom, great.
Go do it.
So, yeah, start when in doubt.
If it's available to you, all things being equal, own a business and don't just work and build someone else's wealth.
If you're a boomer, right?
Then help out.
Reconstruct.
Build it.
Yeah, pass down some generational wealth.
But if two of your kids are idiots and two of them are wise, then let the inheritance, let the will reflect that.
By the way, this is a good reason why you shouldn't get angry with the people that are antagonistic towards us because at the end of the day, they are going to lose.
Because at the end of the day, when we're getting stronger, when we're having healthy families, when we're having healthy businesses, when we're not dying, all these things that we're talking about here.
Even though the conditions in every direction are totally opposing you to accomplish those things.
And you're still doing it.
You're still doing it.
And then again, we're having fun doing it.
Yes.
It is attractive.
They are 100% right to be.
To feel that way, that it's attractive.
And they're worried it's attractive because it's evil, but it actually is attractive.
And so anything fun must be evil.
We're going to get numbers too.
You're right.
We're going to get numbers too.
That's a good point.
Yeah, the numbers will come.
Yes.
Right.
Because people are attracted to someone with a vision of winning.
And especially, you know, a particular kind of people that are attracted to that males.
Yeah.
Men.
Yeah.
Like, and especially young men.
Right.
So it's like, hey, so we're doing this.
Here's some of our ideas.
Yeah.
Like, and they're like, yeah.
Like, I mean, that's who's, you know, like you look at the Gospel Coalition footage for their conference, you know, and it's All chicks.
It's all chicks and some men who are much older.
But then you come to a right response conference and it's all dudes.
You go to Fight Life Feast, it's a bunch of young dudes.
Even our YouTube channel, I think it's close to 78% male audience.
And I love that because everybody else is.
It's a small one, it's like 98% male.
My wife is the only one that was like, there you go.
But everybody hates.
The men.
So I'm happy to be a guy who has a ministry that predominantly is being viewed by men.
Well, and I think about this just in terms of politics kind of parallels this.
And I remember back to 2015 and 2016, and you would see Trump rallies, right?
And who are the people in the crowd in Trump rallies?
A lot of it would be older boomers, of course, but there were young men there.
And getting young men, I was involved in GOP politics in college and intermittently throughout my life.
It never was young men at all.
They had no desire because young men are busy building families and working and doing the things they do.
It's older people with time that get involved.
But here they are, like 20 and 30 year old men, by tens of thousands filling these crowds.
And what do they go to see?
They go to see a guy say, We're going to win so much.
You're going to be sick and tired of how much we win.
Sick and tired of it.
But you hear that, it's like, that's the opposite of anything that the GOP has said for decades.
It's like, While we keep losing, here's how we can maybe lose a little bit slower and slow it down.
And this is my plan, right?
And we're going to lower your taxes a little.
Right.
That was their vision.
But here you have a guy that says, we're going to win.
We should win.
We should make our country great.
It's not great anymore.
We're going to make it great again.
And it's like, wow, what a compelling vision.
And of course, he didn't accomplish it.
So people are going to watch this.
It's like, oh, he's just shilling for Donald Trump.
No, he did accomplish it.
It didn't happen.
But even just throwing the idea out there that maybe possibly we should try to, I don't know, win draws people in like, yeah, that's great.
Let's try to win.
How about that?
And so it's the same thing here where it's like, No, we should play to win a game.
Because I don't, I mean, Joel, you know, eschews sports, you know, and sports ball, but maybe his wife and her family can talk to him.
But, you know, he's a masculine boy.
That's right.
No, that's not what I'm saying.
But I'll talk to, you know, to AD.
Like, if you've been on a sports team and it's always been bad and the coach is an idiot, he doesn't know how to coach.
And you don't have very much talent on the team and you just expect to lose.
Like, that is miserable to be on a team.
And even if you're a good player on the team, but everybody else is terrible.
And you get up into the batter's box or you line up on the field and it's like you know you're going to lose before the first pitch or before the first snap or whatever.
Like, that's a horrible position to be in.
And it's like, even if you personally have this drive to win, like, I'm going to play as hard as I can and I'm going to win every rep. Well, you're still going to lose by 40.
Yeah.
Right.
And it's just miserable.
For you, even if you have it in you to want to win.
But then when you're on a team where, even if you're not good, and so I can speak from experience like when I'm on a team and I'm not the best player, everybody else is pretty good, and you all want to win.
You have a good coach.
And then when you do, it feels so good.
And there's this camaraderie you have with other guys where you're striving for this goal and you finally accomplish it.
And there's nothing in the world like it.
And men want that.
They want to be on a winning team.
Right.
And of course, you know, the pietists would be like, well, we are on the winning team.
We're on Jesus' team.
He won the victory and he's going to come back and everything thousands of years in the future or maybe tomorrow.
But for those of you who don't know, tomorrow.
Yeah.
I'm not going to have to do anything to accomplish that.
Right.
Right.
I'm going to lose down here and continue losing.
And that's really winning.
What kind of vision is that?
Like, how many young men are like, come join our losing team?
We're going to keep losing until Jesus just snaps his fingers and wins it all for us.
Like that.
No, nobody wants that.
You can see why very few young men are compelled by this vision at all.
And of course, it's like, You know, the detractor would say, Oh, well, this is just you preach against pragmatism, but this is just a pragmatic argument.
Like you're saying winning for the sake of winning, but that's not what the Bible teaches.
And I'm like, I think it does.
I think it does.
Like God wants his people to have victory and he leads his people to victory.
The word gospel, it means announcement of victory, right?
Announcement of victory.
Like you would go preach the gospel, you're preaching the victory of Jesus Christ.
Right.
And You know, if and you preach it in that vein, and if your Vic announcement of Jesus Christ's victory is you need to go lose, which doesn't mean right that maybe you're going to be martyred or maybe you are going to suffer, but that that is a victory, of course.
But that martyrdom produces victory even here on the earth, that's right, right?
That's how the early church viewed it.
It wasn't like we lose down here, so I'm going to go get torn apart by lions, and that's good.
It's my blood is going to be spilled and it's going to be poured out on the ground, and it's going to bear you know, fruit of.
60 or 100 fold.
Right.
Right.
That's what, you know, losing in that context, how it means winning.
Not we just lose and we're going to lose some more and we're going to keep on losing because losing is good for the church.
Right.
Right.
It's good.
It's good for the church to suffer because then we're really pure.
Right.
And then we're pure.
But you see, like, history, and even in the Bible, even in the New Testament, like the suffering that the church underwent, there still were grifters and charlatans.
Yes.
Even then.
Right.
With immense persecution, with Colosseums and lions and being, you know, drawn and quartered and sawed into, you also have the highest prevalence of heresy ever.
Yes.
So to say that, like, you can have suffering or you can have heresy, that's just a false dichotomy.
Yeah.
You look today and it's like, okay, the church is in the worst shape we've been in, and we're about to experience, like, real, Genuine persecution and suffering.
And you still have Russell Moore's and David French's and J.D. Greer's that doing the things that they do.
And they're going to continue operating that way.
And that's just one group of guys.
That's because we've gotten to the point where we don't even mention the Benny Hinn's and the Kenneth Cohen's anymore.
We don't even have to do it at that point.
So we've got plenty of heresy.
And it's not because of Christendom.
You can have heresy when religion, like Bunyan would say in Pilgrim's.
When religion is dressed in her glass slippers and her robes, you know, and applauded as she walks down the street.
Like when religion is adorned and praised, you can have heresy.
And when religion is in shambles, you know, and persecuted and hiding, on the run for a life, you can have heresy.
Throughout the church age, we've seen in both regards.
Speaking of heresy and heretics, I'm going to say something a little bit spicy here.
But you haven't done that.
And you guys can bring me back in.
I'm not even making a statement here.
I'm just going to raise the question.
You know, here's the thing.
Here's the thing.
When you think about heretics, one of the big themes throughout scripture is that they always appeal to the women.
The heretics, when you look at who's funding their ministry, you know what I mean?
Like, who are the people in their pews?
You know what I mean?
Who are they following?
Their following is predominantly, I was just thinking about earlier, we were saying 98% male, 78% male, you know.
But there's so many people within big and mid Eva that would point to us and say, you've gone off the rails, you guys are heretics.
You know, like, you know, like, yeah, exactly.
Post millennialism, this is heresy, you know, whatever it is, you know, whatever they're saying, you know, like, uh, working out heresy, you know, like, uh, owning a gun, heresy, you know, so, you know, uh, which none of that to be fair to Medieval, they'd say heresy like, heresy like, wolf like, yeah, I've been told wolf like, but I was explicitly with an E or not, uh, no, uh, sorry, but I was told that, like, uh, because I said, India, you know, somebody said, you know, one day India, uh, I pray that one day India would be Christian.
I retweeted and said, uh, you know, Jesus wills it and it will be done.
You know, like, and which is just classic post millennialism.
I'm just saying the nations belong to him, it is God's will, and it's just a matter of time.
I'm not saying I'm gonna do it.
Yeah.
And literally, that was retweeted by someone saying, Here it is, the new name it and claim it prosperity gospel.
Oh, yeah.
That was literally the tweet.
I was like, Whoa, what?
Number one, I'm talking about the salvation of India, not a Ferrari.
Postmillennial Prosperity00:15:12
And number two, I said, He wills it.
That is Christ, not Joel, not me naming it and claiming it.
And he said he does.
And he said he did in his word.
I didn't have a personal vision.
So, anyways, here's the point, though.
That guy and other guys like him, I'm not going to call them wolf like.
They're not heretics.
They're not.
They're confused.
They're dumb, but they're not heretics.
Now, that said, though, who follows them?
How do these guys have, like, I'm talking about guys who have more Twitter followers than I do.
And I literally will ask the question sometimes.
I'm like, how?
Like, is this guy, like, is he, like, secretly related to John MacArthur?
Is this, like, a grandson?
You know how Joe Biden has the eighth grandchild, you know, that he won't acknowledge?
Like, maybe this guy's the grandson of John MacArthur, but he was just Too dumb that Lucario doesn't want to publicly acknowledge that they're related.
And so I'm looking at some of these guys and I'm thinking, I'm not being facetious.
I'm like, there's got to be a reason.
There's nepotism here.
There's no way in real life that this guy could have a following.
Yeah.
I mean, it's just like everything he says is so unintelligent.
Yeah.
There's no way.
But then I look at the following and hear me, I'm not trying to be harsh here.
It's all older women.
That's right.
Yeah.
That's right.
It's all older women.
That is the following.
And I'm sure that the Apostle John, as he's writing, you know, 1 John, like Paul, I'm sure they felt this way about some of the heretics of their day.
They're like, you know, like you take weak willed women.
And you lure them astray.
Yeah.
And, you know, and that's what Jesus says about the Pharisees.
You know, they devour widows' households.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I mean, it's the same thing where it's like you get these women who are widows that have, you know, have the wealth that their husbands built up and they're living off of it after he's passed away.
And you just sweep them up into whatever you're saying and manipulate them.
And that's very, very common.
Right.
Yeah.
And it's.
And that's not, I'm not necessarily doing it.
And it's not as though there's one size.
Fits all, so I'm not saying, hey, men, yeah, right, gets back to your point about like it was a bunch of men at Trump rallies.
So it's not to say, hey, if Trump had a bunch of men, then yeah, then Trump must be solid, he must be righteous, yeah, he must be righteous, yeah, like that's not what we're saying, yeah.
So, but it's not a one size fits all, it's not a guarantee.
But what I am saying is, I think that's that's how I the disclaimer, how I preface this whole thing.
I said, I just want to ask, I just want to raise a question, yeah, I think it's worth questioning, it's just worth considering, thinking about, praying about, um, is there something to be said.
For your current gatekeepers within big and mid Eva, their predominant following, their donations, their supporters, their this, their that, are all women.
Can I say something else here?
It's related, I think.
Because if you go on Twitter and Christian Twitter, right, what is the kind of tone that gets warned about the most?
All of us get the same criticism.
You're an angry young man.
I've got a harsh tone.
You've got a whatever tone.
You're proud.
It's those kind of tones, right?
What are the tones that the Bible warns about?
It's the smooth talkers.
It's the ones with buttery words.
It's the ones that smooth talk you.
That's what the Bible warns about.
That does not mean that my tone is always dead on point and I'm doing the right things all the time.
That's not what I'm saying.
It's ingrained in how I speak.
But what I'm saying is that that disconnect, that says something.
I'm glad you brought up the language piece, AD, because those are two things worth considering.
If you have a movement that is, because they would say, This movement must not be, it cannot be of the Spirit of God when it's worldly and vain and harsh and it's marked by anger.
But on the flip side, just to be fair, and that's not to say that there isn't real sin in areas to grow and ways to repent.
But on the flip side, we can use, we got plenty of Bible on our side to just flip that argument and say, yeah, but what about the church movement?
Is it of the Spirit of God if the only people that follow these male teachers are women?
Yeah.
And that they, it's marked by flowery speech and smooth.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And they go on cruises to talk about persecution.
A persecution cruise.
And that was not that long, 2017, 2014 or 15.
Okay.
It was a while ago.
Less than 10 years ago.
Less than 10 years ago on a cruise, and the topic is persecution.
Suffering.
Yeah.
I mean, so it's just, I'm just saying, like, if we want to play that game, well, you guys, the only people that are following you are young men.
Well, hot diggity dock.
Good.
We're going to win, guys.
I mean, honestly, you know, we, you know, just recently, actually, I think they're still there at the time of this recording.
You know, people are touring the ruins of Christendom.
You know, you and I and you would see, wow, what a thing, man.
It was so amazing.
Like, we need to get this back.
This is just so glorious.
They just love, you know, the Lord and they did these amazing things.
The whole civilization loved Jesus so much.
They built cathedrals.
They built cathedrals.
So we see that stuff.
You know what?
That's attractive.
They see it and say, this is the dangers of church and state.
And this is what they're touring the glories of Christendom.
Right.
And they're seeing this cathedral, a troubling reminder of, like, the devil.
Right.
And they're seeing their negativity.
They're just bringing their negativity with them to that.
Yeah.
And honestly, like, We're going to win, guys.
Like that cannot survive.
That team doesn't score points.
That doesn't survive.
You know, that's stupid.
Yeah, they're committed to losing.
It's like, you know, they get the football and it's all right.
All right.
First play on the play sheet is kneel down.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's the first quarter and you're already down.
What are you doing?
Yeah.
It's so white pilling to see stuff like that.
It's funny, too.
Like we could all joke about it and laugh and make our memes and stuff.
But, but, um, They cannot win doing the things that they're doing.
They're committed to not winning.
Yeah.
And you see that, and it isn't just like that particular group.
It's so much of evangelicalism.
Even though they talk about evangelism and evangelism is like the highest priority, and we care so much about evangelism, but you just evangelize people into making a profession of faith for Jesus, but then living just like the rest of the trash world.
Yeah.
And it's committed to losing in a different way.
That's right.
But ultimately, it's still all about losing.
It's not about.
Building faithful communities, people having, like we've talked about before, having their theology come out of their fingertips and affecting every single part of their life.
It's not committed to those kinds of things.
It's committed to just loosely baptizing what already exists, calling it Christian, doing the Tim Keller thing that he does to Manhattan and just saying, okay, you're Christian.
Yeah, you believe in abortion and homosexuality and all this kind of stuff.
But you kind of like Jesus and you're intrigued a little bit by Christianity.
Well, come to my church.
Rather than going to Manhattan and saying, Thus saith the Lord.
It's preaching his word.
This is what God says and get with it or not.
Going there like Jonah, going to Nineveh.
And yeah, maybe you're not going to have thousands of people.
You'll maybe just be this vanguard of a few dozen people in Manhattan.
But that is way better.
And you're also, it's way better.
And here's something even better, maybe, than that.
You could also leave Manhattan.
Yeah, yeah, and let it kill itself, yeah, because that's what trash world does.
Trash world is self defeating, it is suicidal, yeah, because God's design, what He's built into the fabric of His natural created order, is that it lends towards fruitfulness, it lends towards longevity, it lends towards health and life, and these kinds of things.
And when you directly rebel against more naming and claiming stuff, right?
Here we go, yeah, and when you directly rebel against that, it lends towards destruction, it lends towards a short life and, you know, death.
And so, one, and that's part of the judgment that God brings.
So, again, I'm not saying there are no caveats, there are no exceptions.
There are, you know, some people really are called missionary, is a legitimate biblical category.
However, I do think that right now, by and large, on the whole, so this is not a one size fits all, but on the whole, I do think that right now, Christians have spread themselves too thin.
I think that's what we did the last 15, 20 years with church planting, urban church planting in the city for the city.
We spread ourselves too thin.
And so you got all these guys.
Who, you know, some of them just like Keller sold out and the city discipled them far more than they discipled the city.
And then the ones who, what you just described, yeah, sure, they're faithful and there's 10 people in their church.
But it's like, dude, but the guy is actually, he's not a 10 person pastor.
He's a rock star.
And if he would fall back, and this is where you guys made fun of me for being fake and gay, but if he would fall back, Avengers Assemble, you know, kind of thing.
Right.
But like, and join another team.
And then you start building juggernauts, Moscow.
Right.
And that's what the guys in Ogden are trying to do.
And rebuilding, you know, like.
Yeah, rebuilding Christendom even before the trash world collapses.
Right.
Right.
That's part of it too, is capturing the vision of what we want things to look like in 500 years.
And spending the rest of our lives and directing our children, our grandchildren, and all the other descendants that we get to meet while we're still alive and kicking, and saying, This is the vision.
This is the goal.
This is what we want to build.
And building it up and making it strong and resilient and anti fragile, getting stronger even as it faces opposition, building those things up while the other thing is still standing, because it's going to come down.
And if it comes down and you haven't been building these things up in the meantime, the chaos is even going to be worse.
Right.
That's the other thing to think about is like if you face a situation in America, if we face a situation in America like the collapse of the Soviet Union in 20 years, in 10 years, and there are no mediating institutions, there are no businesses, there are no Christian schools, there's no churches, there's no real flesh and blood communities, and you're just all alone, right?
That's a bad place to be in.
But if you've been spending the last 20 years building those things up, places and people that are resilient, And maybe that includes heavy chickens.
I don't know.
But you're building those things up.
Then, when all that stuff comes tumbling down and times are really hard for everyone else, you kind of have an arc to go in that's going to float right above everything else.
And you're going to be like Forrest Gump's shrimp boat, right?
When it goes out into the hurricane and then the hurricane smashes all the boats that are at port, right?
And now he's the king of shrimp in Alabama, right?
And he reaps the rewards.
Like the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous.
That's how that happens.
You build Christendom, you build these things, and then God comes in with the scythe and harvests all of it.
And that's been a wonderful thing recently that he's been talking about.
He's saying, like, okay, but you know, God sometimes takes forever to do something suddenly.
And part of the problem is you want to sit here and talk about how the, oh, the Crusades were terrible and blah, blah, blah.
But first, like, you know, probably you should know a little bit better, you know, historically what happened.
But beyond that, beyond that, whatever faults really did happen with Constantine or, you know, anybody else, part of it.
There weren't any.
Part of it is that, That this was all of a sudden Christians who were, you know, the object of persecution found themselves in power overnight, you know, very, very suddenly.
And that tends to be, if you look throughout, you know, history, that tends to be the way that God providentially works is that, you know, there's faithfulness and it's slow and it's slow.
So the same thing that we quoted, you know, earlier about like, well, you know, with Hemingway, how'd you go bankrupt?
You know, well, slowly at first, and then all of a sudden, you know, and then suddenly.
So gradually and then suddenly.
Well, I think in the same way, how does Christendom come?
Well, gradually and then suddenly.
And so my point is, Having these kinds of conversations about Christian nationalism and political theology and Christendom.
Yeah, and about these kinds of things, it's like, well, you guys are LARPing, or you guys are, no, look, you don't want to get flogged.
Everyone is LARPing.
Yeah, but here's the deal you don't want to get flogged.
Yeah.
Okay, Baptists, you don't want to get flogged.
Yeah.
Great.
You know one thing that would help?
Let's talk about it.
Yeah.
Let's talk about it before we get there.
Yeah.
Let's not wait till suddenly in the promise of God, he chooses to judge trash world.
And throws the Presbyterians in control.
But he judges the trash world and throws Christians a bone we don't deserve.
Let's not figure it out then.
Let's figure it out now.
Yeah, that's right.
Talk about it now.
That's not LARPing.
That's actually, but see, here's the thing I'm going against myself here.
I say that's not LARPing, but really, for the guys that we're talking about, for them, it is.
Because for them, truly, as God is their witness, you know, in terms of what they're convinced of in their theological framework, there is no possible scenario that God would ever, ever, ever allow that level of Christian victory again.
They cannot fathom or conceptualize it whatsoever.
Yeah, it can't happen.
It cannot possibly occur.
They're not quite sure how it occurred in the past.
But they know that the fact that it did occur, Constantine was bad.
It was evil and sinister and corrupt.
That's the only way it ever occurred in the past and it'll never occur in the future.
And so I think that's why when we have these conversations, they're like, you silly whippersnappers.
It's like, you're five years older than me.
But you're LARPing and you're not real serious people.
It's like, no, God's done this again.
And my Bible tells me that He's promised that He's going to do it.
He's done it before.
He's going to do it again.
It may not be in my lifetime.
But we need to have these kinds of conversations.
You think that things were done poorly before.
Well, I think you're probably wrong, but I'm sure it wasn't perfect.
Nothing's perfect.
So let's talk about how we can improve it.
That's why the name of the conference that I'm doing in March is Blueprints for Christendom 2.0.
Yeah.
Like saying, okay, yeah, sure, we can maybe do better.
We can have it and we can have it better than it was before.
Yeah.
We can take the experience of the past and build upon it and learn.
Yeah.
And yeah, it is so funny that.
That, yeah, they treat it like, oh, it's a LARP.
And it's like, well, how does anything that is currently not extant come into being?
Right.
Someone thinks about it and talks about it and plans.
You have to have ideas that people are, that are attractive, that people want to pursue and then carry out into reality.
That's right.
Right.
And that's the stage that we're at right now.
And no one denies that, right?
Stephen Wolfe isn't out there thinking, like, no, we are a Christian nation right now.
We just have to snap our fingers and say the magic words and then boom, you know, kind of like the, like, like, Like a lot of QAnon people today think like there's some secret admiralty law that the government is bound by.
Like, that's really a thing, is they think like, oh, there's like the property law of the Bank of England, and that's what they're actually under.
And so that's why the Patriots are still in control, right?
Secret Admiralty Laws00:03:10
I mean, they think that we think that about Christian nationalism, that like the Christians, we're still in control of everything.
We just are pretending that we aren't or something like that.
I think that's what they think that we're how we're operating, right?
And you see the libs do this, like, What Mike Johnson just became the Speaker of the House and he's a Southern Baptist and a creationist.
Christian nationalism is like, he's a Christian nationalist.
They're taking over and everything.
And it's like, I mean, the guy's first priority is to give $100 billion to Israel.
He's not, he's a Jewish nationalist.
Yeah, he's Zionist.
But like, his first priority is not, you know, making America a Christian nation.
Like, that's not the first thing he's doing.
He's not even like securing the American border, right?
Like, if you talk to the run of the mill Christian nationalist leader, you know, friends that we have, Right.
The first thing they would do if they're Speaker of the House is all right, $100 billion to just build a giant wall and a moat and machine gun nests along the border.
And that's step one, you know, like things like that.
That would be just the obvious one.
Right.
But we don't have that.
We don't have power.
We know that we are out of power.
You know, like these guys talk all the time about how, oh, we're in exile.
We're exiles.
And I'm like, yeah, we kind of are for the moment.
Right now.
In one sense, we are, but we're not going to be forever.
Like this world belongs to Jesus.
And, and, We need to work to realize his reign and rule and work to make all of the nations of this world, all the kingdoms of this world, the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And how does that happen?
It doesn't mean we just assemble a massive army and point guns at people and say, you will convert or die.
Dude, right?
But that's why they think that we're still saying forced conversions.
Yeah, yeah.
No one says that.
No one has said that.
No one has ever said that.
Yeah.
No, no, none of us.
No, yeah.
No, it's crazy.
We're not saying anything.
Even the most ridiculous Anon accounts don't even say that.
Yeah.
I've never seen anyone say that.
They'll say other stuff that's like, oh, yeah.
They'll say other stuff that I'm like, okay, I just don't believe.
But that one, no one says that.
Nobody believes that.
But that is still insisted again and again and again.
These guys hold to forced conversions.
Yeah.
They don't have, even if you say, like, hey, we don't want people to like blaspheme Jesus' name and we're going to try to put a stop to that.
Right.
And they'll say, internally, you can believe whatever you want.
Right.
We're not going to force you to like change your heart and believe Jesus.
But in the public square, you can't have a dude dressed up like Jesus and then a nun gyrating in front of them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sorry.
We're not going to allow that.
Sorry.
Yeah.
There are decency laws that always existed in American history until their wonderful democratic pluralist society came in in the middle of the 20th century.
Right.
Right.
Before that, it's like, No, those people would have been in jail right away, everywhere, in every part of the most liberal part of the country, straight to jail.
Jail.
They're going to do what they have to do, and we're just going to have to do what we have to do.
That's the ultimate white pill.
You actually don't need the powers that be and evangelicalism.
You don't need the self approval.
You don't need them to approve of anything.
Yeah, you just keep going.
You just keep going.
Yeah, just pretend they don't exist.
And we will get canceled.
But here's one of the cool things that I'm learning about the cancel thing is like when people cancel you, what you do is like you just say no.
Cancel Us Anyway00:02:50
Like, what was it?
I think it was the office.
Stanley.
It was Stanley.
And Michael Scott's like, you know, corporate, like forcing him to fire someone.
And so it's like this terrible Friday.
You know, he's like, you got to fire one person.
Stanley's like, yeah.
And so he's just, he's giving it a try on each of these people.
Like, you're fired.
You're fired.
And trying, you know, and he tries it on Stanley.
And, you know, so he's like, Stanley, I need to see you in my office.
And he comes in his office and he's like, Stanley, I'm sorry.
You know, I got to let you go.
You're fired.
And Stanley just laughs and he says, ha ha ha ha.
You're fired.
You're fired.
And he says it right back in, you know, and he goes back to his desk and just keeps working.
And so, you know, but my point is just like, you know, people are going to, you know, like they're going to cancel us.
They're going to say, well, you know, Joel, you know, you weren't qualified to be a pastor when you first tried to plant a church.
And I'll say, yeah, I've been saying that on every podcast for seven years.
I know that.
Everyone in my church knows that.
And anybody who needs to know that knows that.
Or, AD, you're harsh and you're this.
And it's like, that's cute.
You're fired.
And you just keep, You just keep going, and it's just like we don't.
So, you're right, you just keep going, yeah.
Exactly, they're they don't have the power over you to stop you anyway.
If they want to do, yeah, all they can do is just attack you and slander you and accuse you of things that you don't believe.
And meanwhile, the people that are capable of getting it are going to listen to what you have to say and join you and continue marching toward the same.
And that goes back to your point, you don't.
Here's the beauty, you know, the hopeful thing you don't need that many people.
No, not at first, not for leadership, not for getting the ball rolling.
So it's like, because it does work.
The smear campaigns work.
There's a reason why people do it.
So people will get slandered.
And you look at how much Doug gets slandered.
Oh, yeah, totally.
And it works.
Yeah.
And here's how I know it works it worked because there were a few years that I didn't, I held him at bay at arm's length.
But then eventually, you know, I looked into him and I was like, well, actually, he's pretty good.
And yes, there are some stories, but he's got some, you know, some answers to that.
And he just kept going.
And he just kept going.
That's the thing.
He just kept going.
Taking his drag.
He was just like, no, I'm just going to do it.
All the people, right?
The highest value people, right?
The brightest, the most competent, the hardest working, right?
Those young guys and gals, they're going to be wanting to win, right?
They're going to be on the side that wants to win and they're going to apply all of their energy and effort and the skills and abilities that God has given them to win, right?
Rather than just waste them in losing for the rest of their lives.
You're right.
Yeah.
Well, that's it.
That's our series.
I hope that it's been helpful for everybody who's listened.
And yeah, and by God's grace, we'll see.
Maybe, you know, maybe in the future we'll do something like this again.