NXR Podcast - THE INTERVIEW - The Real Truth About The Crusades & Why It Matters with The Kings Hall
Aired: 2024-04-01
Duration: 01:11:26


=== King Alfred's Courageous Stand (11:52) ===

[00:00:00]  All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
[00:00:02]  I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
[00:00:05]  In this episode, I was privileged to have back on the show Eric Kahn and Dan Burkholder.
[00:00:10]  They're two of the three hosts for a podcast called The King's Hall.
[00:00:15]  And right now, The King's Hall in season three, they're discussing the Crusades and Christendom and all these things of the past.
[00:00:22]  They're looking at some major figures like Duke Godfrey or Richard the Lionheart or King Alfred and saying, well, in our revisionist post war sentiment history, you've been taught that you're Fathers of Christendom are icky and bad and oppressive, but actually they're not perfect.
[00:00:38]  They are human, they are sinners, but there is a mountain of virtue that can be appreciated and gleaned from if we are simply willing to view history rightly, to look at our lineage and our heritage as it truly is, and then to take those principles and apply them in our place and our time.
[00:01:00]  So that's the focus of today's episode.
[00:01:02]  Tune in now.
[00:01:04]  Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
[00:01:07]  This is Theology Applied.
[00:01:13]  All right, so you guys have just recently, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:17]  You've just recently started the third season of one of the podcasts that you guys put out in Ogden.
[00:01:23]  For anybody who's not familiar with these guys, they're both pastors at Refuge Church in Ogden, Utah.
[00:01:29]  And they do a number of different media and podcasts and things like that.
[00:01:33]  And one of them is the King's Hall.
[00:01:35]  The third season is underway.
[00:01:37]  And you guys are focusing on Christendom.
[00:01:39]  And you're focusing on giving not just blueprints for Christendom 2.0, which is very important.
[00:01:46]  In a lot of ways, that was kind of the first season of King's Hall.
[00:01:49]  But this time, you're looking back through the eyes of honor on Christendom past and familiarizing the listener with his heritage, his history, the line that we come from, and great men of old.
[00:02:02]  You want to give us maybe a little bit of the overview of, you know, maybe even the motive.
[00:02:07]  Like, why are you doing this?
[00:02:09]  Yeah, it's a great question.
[00:02:10]  I think the biggest thing for us was as we were looking at.
[00:02:14]  Season three, which is what we're now in, we were really saying, you know, you hear a lot of talk about Christendom and you hear a lot of people saying we want to rebuild it.
[00:02:21]  And somewhere in the middle of all that, just in our discussions, really came the question like, what was it?
[00:02:28]  Do we really understand what the first Christendom was?
[00:02:32]  So we started to look at a lot of the history and really just interview a lot of people.
[00:02:36]  We've interviewed like Dr. Glenn Sunshine, Ben Merkel, which wrote a fantastic book on King Alfred, really starting to dig into the history and talk to the people who've done a lot of the work.
[00:02:47]  And then, really, as we looked at that, I mean, Dan can speak to this too, but like with King Alfred, you find that the version of Christianity back then is very different than today.
[00:02:59]  And a lot of times that's a bad thing.
[00:03:01]  So, as we started to unpack sort of the foundations, I think that's where we were saying, What stirs us?
[00:03:07]  What moves us?
[00:03:09]  What fires our passions?
[00:03:11]  And as we started to share some of that with our audience on Twitter and other places, you start to realize that like there's something in the masculine soul that will resonate with a Jan Sobieski.
[00:03:22]  At the Battle of Vienna and Richard the Lionheart.
[00:03:25]  And I think it's something the masculinity, the piety that they demonstrated, I think is something that's missing in modern evangelicalism.
[00:03:33]  You know, I told Dan the other day as we're preparing for 1683 in the Battle of Vienna in one of our next episodes, the Super Bowl happened.
[00:03:41]  And I'm sure you saw it as well, but we see a pastrix, Lady Pastrix, kicking off a Bible across the stage.
[00:03:49]  And this was a Super Bowl service that was held in a church.
[00:03:52]  And I said to Dan, what do you think Jan Sobieski?
[00:03:55]  Would have thought about something like this, or Alfred the Great, or Richard the Lionheart.
[00:04:01]  And it just goes to showcase, I think, just how different the faith was.
[00:04:04]  So, anyway, I think that was kind of the motive.
[00:04:06]  Dan, you can speak to that, but wanting to recover who were our forefathers.
[00:04:11]  Yeah, in a lot of ways, this season is us self educating as we go through the season, because it's interesting how great a disservice church history books have done to us, because they talk about the theological battles, which are good, and the ecumenical councils and the martyrs.
[00:04:29]  And the great missionaries of the faith.
[00:04:32]  But all that we were talking about with Alfred and Richard the Lionheart and Baldwin and Jan Sobieski, all of these men are great Christian heroes.
[00:04:43]  And we're discovering them for the first time for ourselves.
[00:04:46]  And you can see, like Eric said, it's resonating with men because of the courage that they shared in their fight of the faith that they had to fight at their particular place and particular time, especially in defense of their people.
[00:04:59]  It's also interesting as we dig into the history.
[00:05:02]  That you see how much revisionist history you've been fed throughout your education.
[00:05:08]  We went to public school, and so the narrative has always been well, Christendom, the first Christendom was bad, like just inherently it was evil and oppressive.
[00:05:18]  And they attacked a lot of innocent Muslims.
[00:05:21]  And that's what we were told.
[00:05:23]  And then you go look at the histories and you realize that's actually not true at all.
[00:05:27]  Well, and I think one of the things, too, Joel, was that we were, we have guild training, which is our elder training.
[00:05:32]  So, we've all been plowing through different church histories.
[00:05:35]  Bruce Shelley, Yusuf Gonzalez.
[00:05:38]  One of the things we realized we're like, okay, and adjacent to that, we're doing all the research for season three.
[00:05:43]  We're like, why are these Christian heroes missing from the church history?
[00:05:47]  Like, why do we view this separately?
[00:05:50]  And a lot of times you'll find, even in guys who are quote unquote conservative, they're talking about lady pastors and why it was a good thing.
[00:05:57]  Or, you know, they're talking about, well, you know, Constantine, he was pretty bad though.
[00:06:01]  Like, that was pretty bad for the church.
[00:06:02]  I wish that wouldn't have happened.
[00:06:04]  And so I think we also found ourselves like scratching our head and saying, wait a minute, even in the church, even in the conservative part of the church, we really don't like big portions of Christendom.
[00:06:14]  And these guys were actually heroes.
[00:06:16]  Right.
[00:06:17]  Yeah.
[00:06:17]  You said with your elder training, you called it guild training.
[00:06:22]  I'm just going to assume the word was actually geld.
[00:06:24]  You're training them to pay the Dane Geld, training them to compromise.
[00:06:28]  We are not training them.
[00:06:30]  Guild training.
[00:06:30]  That's right.
[00:06:32]  Never pay the Dane Geld.
[00:06:33]  Never pay the Dane Geld.
[00:06:35]  You'll never get it.
[00:06:36]  Let's use that as a launching pad into your most recent episode.
[00:06:40]  Now, I'm not sure when this is going to air.
[00:06:41]  So, at this point, you know, for the listener, it probably will not be the King's Hall most recent episode.
[00:06:47]  So, you can go back a few.
[00:06:49]  But the one that you did particularly on King Alfred, you were using Ben Merkel.
[00:06:53]  What is it?
[00:06:53]  The Winter King.
[00:06:54]  What's the name of his book?
[00:06:56]  Yeah.
[00:06:56]  So, The White Horse King.
[00:06:57]  The White Horse King.
[00:06:58]  There it is.
[00:06:59]  Yeah.
[00:07:00]  Yeah.
[00:07:00]  So, I, you know, kind of similar to you guys, my journey of recovering.
[00:07:05]  Our heritage and our legacy, Christian legacy.
[00:07:08]  Same thing.
[00:07:09]  So I read that book a couple months ago and was impressed by how great these men were, and how feeling the sense of I've been lied to and all those kinds of things.
[00:07:19]  But there was one part in particular that stood out to me.
[00:07:22]  And then, Dan, when I listened to you guys' episodes on King Alfred, you mentioned the same thing.
[00:07:28]  But King Alfred, one of the most glorious battles that he won facing the Danes was he was leading half of his army because the other half.
[00:07:38]  Was following his brother, and his brother was late for a particular reason.
[00:07:42]  Can you give us a little bit of that scene and how that might apply to evangelicals today?
[00:07:48]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:07:49]  So, the White Horse King, Merkel gets that name actually from where the battle was fought at Ashdown at White Horse Hill, which you can still see today.
[00:07:59]  They don't actually know the specific time that this creation was made, but at the top of the hill, there is a chalk structure, a chalk etching, if you will, into the ground of a horse, a white horse at full gallop.
[00:08:11]  And it's been maintained to this day.
[00:08:14]  And that's where the Vikings chose to fight Alfred and his brother, King Aethelstan.
[00:08:20]  Alfred wasn't king.
[00:08:21]  Yet at this point.
[00:08:22]  And the Vikings had divided their army into two.
[00:08:26]  And so they were split in half.
[00:08:28]  Alfred and Aethelstan decided that they would also split their army in half to match the Viking forces so that they wouldn't, you know, for battle tactics.
[00:08:36]  I won't get into details.
[00:08:37]  But so Alfred shows up for the battle right in front of the Vikings, right in front of the Danes.
[00:08:44]  And he's supposed to have his brother there with the other half of the army, the king.
[00:08:49]  He's supposed to be there.
[00:08:51]  But what ended up happening was that Aethelstan lingered in his tent in mass and in prayer.
[00:08:59]  And so he was, maybe he was very pious.
[00:09:03]  Maybe he was a very godly man.
[00:09:06]  I don't know.
[00:09:07]  But he was late for the battle and he was the king and he was delayed in mass.
[00:09:13]  And so what ended up happening is Alfred had a decision to make.
[00:09:16]  He was facing now the entirety of the Viking forces and they had the high ground.
[00:09:22]  And so they had superior footing and they had double the numbers.
[00:09:27]  And so Alfred had to face a decision.
[00:09:30]  He didn't have a cell phone.
[00:09:31]  He's not calling his brother saying, Hey, bro, where are you at?
[00:09:34]  So he either had to run and retreat, which the Vikings would then cut them down from behind and they would be decimated essentially, or he could stand and fight.
[00:09:46]  And Alfred, knowing what would happen in retreat, decided to stay and fight.
[00:09:51]  And they say that he fought like a wild boar.
[00:09:54]  And the particular mode in which they fought, the strategies that they used were a shield wall, which, if you've seen any Viking movie or any Viking TV shows, you're familiar with the shield wall.
[00:10:04]  It's essentially just a wall of shields, right?
[00:10:06]  The men line up and they have their shields in front of them and it's impenetrable if the men maintain.
[00:10:12]  Well, Alfred, being the leader of this military, had to actually fight in the shield wall.
[00:10:18]  He wasn't just a guy that sat in the back and ordered his men forward with only half of the forces in order, you know, good luck.
[00:10:26]  I hope you beat him.
[00:10:27]  He was actually, he had some risk and he had to display courage by fighting from the front.
[00:10:31]  And his men fought for him because if he continued to fight, they would continue to fight.
[00:10:36]  And if he retreated, if he fled, there would be no reason to fight.
[00:10:40]  And so they would run away as well.
[00:10:41]  And so you couldn't have cowards in the shield wall because fleeing men would absolutely decimate the line.
[00:10:48]  And Alfred fought courageously.
[00:10:50]  And they're pushing in the shield wall.
[00:10:52]  It's like a rugby scrum, is how Ben Merkel describes it in White Horse King.
[00:10:56]  And it gets to the point in the battle.
[00:10:59]  It's pitched.
[00:11:00]  It's, it's, uh, they're pushing.
[00:11:02]  There's only so much energy and so much stamina that these men can exert.
[00:11:07]  And it gets to the point where one side has to give and the enemies start to run away.
[00:11:12]  The Vikings start to run away.
[00:11:14]  And it's at that point that Aethelstan, King Aethelstan, shows up with the other half of the army and then they rout the Viking forces.
[00:11:21]  And so it was a tremendous battle.
[00:11:23]  I said in the episode that it was one of the most important battles in.
[00:11:29]  Western history, not because of its size or because of the land or it secured a kingdom, but it actually gave us one of the greatest kings in Christendom with King Alfred.
[00:11:40]  It was the battle that ended up giving him credibility.
[00:11:43]  And it was soon decided after that that he would be heir apparent to the throne if Athelstan died, and he did shortly thereafter.

=== The Danger of Centralized Power (04:26) ===

[00:11:52]  And then we got King Alfred, who is the father of what we now know as Britain or England.
[00:12:00]  Right.
[00:12:01]  What application?
[00:12:03]  I feel like there's probably multiple different elements that could be drawn out, but in what ways do you see people like King Alfred's brother lingering long in their prayers?
[00:12:15]  In piety, when there's actually a battle that they're neglecting.
[00:12:19]  Yeah, I think you see this a lot in certain pietistic circles where there is an element, prayer is good, you should pray.
[00:12:30]  But the me and my Bible by myself, me as my own pope, me in my prayers, and that's the front lines of battle as far as they extend for certain folks when there are actually people out there that want to enslave your women and children.
[00:12:47]  They want to steal your legacy.
[00:12:49]  They want you to stay in your prayer closet.
[00:12:53]  They want you there.
[00:12:54]  They actually prefer to keep it there.
[00:12:57]  You've heard the idea a long time ago, before Burgerfeld and things like that.
[00:13:02]  Like, I don't care what people do in their bedrooms, you know, it's their own business.
[00:13:06]  Well, that applies actually to you too, Christian.
[00:13:09]  They're fine as long as you keep your Christianity inside your home and inside your head.
[00:13:14]  But as soon as it comes outside the four walls of your home, the enemy would tremble because.
[00:13:20]  You actually worship the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
[00:13:23]  And so there's a whole group of people, it's really modern American Christianity, that exercises this sort of pietism that would say your faith should not touch anywhere outside of your home or church.
[00:13:35]  That there's this whole category of untouchable law that God, I guess, you should not be interacting with, that Christ is Lord, but not in that specific way.
[00:13:47]  And so you find a lot of cowards.
[00:13:50]  Yeah, I think another part of it is, you know, history is helpful because it shows you that these things have existed for a long time.
[00:13:56]  So even in the 1500s, into the 1600s, you still have the onslaught of Islam.
[00:14:02]  And Martin Luther, actually, in his early writings, because he was so oppositional to the.
[00:14:10]  Sorry about that.
[00:14:11]  Sorry.
[00:14:12]  Because Martin Luther was so oppositional to what was going on with the Roman Catholic Church and their practice of indulgences connected with the Crusades, right?
[00:14:20]  A lot of that stuff is theologically problematic.
[00:14:23]  But early on, he had said things like, you know, it's better just for the Muslims to kill us.
[00:14:28]  And all they're doing is sending people straight to heaven.
[00:14:30]  So we should thank them.
[00:14:32]  He changed course later in his life, especially if you have a couple major battles.
[00:14:38]  Solomon the Magnificent lays siege to Vienna for the first time, and Luther will change his position.
[00:14:44]  But I think even that, it goes to show you that there's always that tendency among Christians to over spiritualize things.
[00:14:51]  And I think one of the things I take from Alfred. Is, you know, what I've often said to people just in pastoral counsel, you know, God seems to seldom answer a man who's praying for a hole and leaning on a shovel.
[00:15:02]  So pray by all means, but get to work.
[00:15:05]  God seems to honor that.
[00:15:06]  And so the men in history who did a lot of great things, they viewed all of life as pertaining to piety and defending their people and their nation as pertaining to piety.
[00:15:18]  And so it wasn't, as Dan said, it wasn't just, you know, pray in your prayer closet and that's going to be enough.
[00:15:24]  We actually have to defend the walls.
[00:15:26]  The danger of centralized power is often represented by the word king.
[00:15:31]  As Americans, we hate the word king.
[00:15:34]  And ownership of body armor is about helping people to have increased power to resist tyrants and criminals.
[00:15:42]  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.
[00:15:55]  This is Armored Republic, and in a republic, there is no king but Christ.
[00:16:01]  We are free craftsmen and we are honored to be your armor spread of choice.

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[00:17:27]  Some of what we're getting at is just in a general sense would be ambition.
[00:17:32]  Eric, you've talked about this in the past, but it seems like ambition, especially when it comes to men, right?
[00:17:40]  Because if you're a woman, then you're constantly being encouraged to be ambitious, even within a lot of soft, you know, or even conservative, sadly, evangelical circles.
[00:17:50]  If you're a woman, you know, you'll be pushed in that direction to take risks, to be ambitious, to not be.
[00:17:56]  A doormat, don't allow yourself to be trampled over.
[00:17:59]  You know, do this, do that, exercise power.
[00:18:02]  You know, I think Foster said it before like, if you want really good advice as a young man, just read, like, you know, read a vice article that's written to women, you know, or something like that.
[00:18:12]  That'll lead you in the right direction.
[00:18:14]  But within evangelical circles, within the church, as it pertains to men, ambition has been frowned upon severely.
[00:18:23]  Basically, ambition has been chalked up to, Vanity, worldliness, selfishness, idolatry, everything's an idol.
[00:18:32]  And you've talked a little bit about that, Eric, but I feel like if we're trying to apply this principle of a king who's lingering long in his prayers when he should be fighting, I think ambition is part of what we're getting at.
[00:18:46]  That I think a lot of people today within the church have been encouraged to place piety, to take two things and put them at odds when there really should be no.
[00:19:00]  They shouldn't be at odds.
[00:19:02]  Piety and dominion, ambition, and these kinds of things.
[00:19:07]  But it seems like we're constantly being encouraged by the church not to have any ambition outside of faithful attendance and membership in a local church, our quiet time and prayer life, being a good husband and being a good dad.
[00:19:22]  But anything, if it comes to politics or economics and markets and starting a business or this or that or the other, that's usually frowned upon.
[00:19:30]  And if If somebody does find themselves being successful in the business world or something like that, it's always only spoken of in a positive light if they live on the least amount possible and give everything else to the church.
[00:19:46]  What do you think about that?
[00:19:47]  Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.
[00:19:49]  And I think it really comes back to kind of one pivotal thing that we've seen more clearly since 2020.
[00:19:55]  But essentially, what you have is what I call regime evangelicals, regime aligned evangelical leaders who are all for. appropriating Christianity, not necessarily destroying it, but appropriating it for leftist causes.
[00:20:09]  And this includes the weakening of men.
[00:20:11]  So, one thing you see even right now happening, you know, it's not just a coincidence that Karen Swallow Pryor is publishing things like the biblical masculinity movement is a scam.
[00:20:24]  Okay.
[00:20:24]  Well, why does she think that?
[00:20:25]  Because she's Dolores Umbridge and she's a school mom and all those things.
[00:20:28]  But fundamentally, they realize the problem that if their goal is to push leftist, woke, he gets us style Jesus, well, an obstacle that the key obstacle to left wokeism is men.
[00:20:40]  Acting like men and reading histories like this, and then saying, Wait a minute, we don't actually have to act like pansies.
[00:20:46]  We can actually be a guy like Alfred who had godly courage.
[00:20:50]  He had a grand vision for what he wanted Christendom to be.
[00:20:54]  And it was Christendom that he envisioned for England.
[00:20:57]  He had looked at Charlemagne, he'd seen the bringing together of the Holy Roman Empire and what that could do for God's people.
[00:21:04]  And so he's inspired and he wants to do something similar.
[00:21:08]  And I think those regime evangelicals, like, Look, what are they doing?
[00:21:12]  Whatever the left is pushing and the progressive left, globalist left, whatever they're pushing, they will find a way to force it into scripture, right?
[00:21:20]  They're distorting scripture to make it sound like Jesus is actually a leftist.
[00:21:25]  Well, and I think one of the key things that they have to do is neuter ambition, right?
[00:21:30]  You've got to geld all the men to buy into that sort of worldview.
[00:21:36]  And really, I mean, it comes in many different forms, right?
[00:21:39]  Some of them are more subtle.
[00:21:40]  Some of it is just saying, well, Jesus is meek and lowly.
[00:21:43]  Some of it is.
[00:21:45]  Even Karen, you know, she's been pushing the anti masculinity stuff for a while, but then promoting, right, Jesus and John Wayne.
[00:21:54]  She's also been promoting things like Robert Bly, which is really interesting because she's actually fine with the Robert Bly style of masculinity, which is real therapeutic, right?
[00:22:04]  Robert Bly, if you read his book, Iron John, he's like, you know, homosexuals fall in love, and I'm not discounting that.
[00:22:10]  And you have to embrace your internal femininity.
[00:22:12]  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:22:13]  So they're cool with that.
[00:22:15]  They're cool with you getting in touch with your feminist side.
[00:22:19]  But what they're not cool with, and I think what is going to eventually cause huge problems, like you're like, wait a minute, you're saying that a Christian nation should defend itself?
[00:22:29]  And we're like, yep.
[00:22:31]  Then the rubber meets the road, right?
[00:22:33]  And that's the sort of thing that they've got to deal with.
[00:22:35]  They've got to get rid of it.
[00:22:37]  Right.
[00:22:39]  Yeah.
[00:22:39]  Right now, it seems like all the West, and I think it's, you know, it's intrinsically tied to Christianity, but I do think there are multiple pieces.
[00:22:47]  I don't think it's just.
[00:22:49]  Christianity, but the West, Western countries, Europe, America, Canada, I don't know if you even count them as a country, but these Western places, predominantly Anglo white, where they used to be, but that's still part of it.
[00:23:07]  So I think there's a national level, there's an ethnic level, and then there's a religious level, Christianity.
[00:23:12]  But those three components combined, it's not just that there's a fight or the world is against us or something like that.

=== Ambition and Internal Betrayal (11:40) ===

[00:23:20]  The world doesn't really even have to be against us.
[00:23:22]  I think the West is just, it has a death wish.
[00:23:25]  We're just, we're suicidal.
[00:23:27]  Like we, like we just want to kill ourselves.
[00:23:28]  Nobody has to fight us.
[00:23:30]  Like people are just, they're running as fast as they can off of a cliff.
[00:23:35]  Like every single, like the things that would lend towards the most harm, the most destruction, that's what has been heralded as a virtue.
[00:23:45]  You know, so like, yeah, I, yeah, like the He Gets Us commercial, you know, I know plenty of people are talking about it, you know, the one from the Super Bowl.
[00:23:55]  Which again, by the time this episode lands, it'll probably be a few weeks in our past.
[00:24:00]  But all those examples, I think it was Ben Zeisloff, he did like a thread that I thought was helpful.
[00:24:06]  He's always using AI pictures.
[00:24:07]  He's pretty good at it.
[00:24:09]  But he was showing some of the pictures that they had in the ad.
[00:24:13]  And one of them was the woman who's washing this other woman's feet outside of a Planned Parenthood, an abortion clinic.
[00:24:21]  And then there's people picketing off to the side.
[00:24:23]  And he just did a thread of each of these pictures.
[00:24:26]  And it was a hypothetical, facetious, but well within the realm of possibility, saying, let's check back in six months down the road.
[00:24:34]  Where are these people now?
[00:24:36]  And it says, well, this, or not six months.
[00:24:39]  I think he said, like, Six years down the road.
[00:24:42]  They said, well, this woman, she's now going back to Planned Parenthood for her fourth abortion.
[00:24:47]  These people were picketing.
[00:24:49]  Two of them were elderly women who have an 11 year jail sentence and are serving time in prison.
[00:24:55]  The people who were saying, don't murder your baby.
[00:24:58]  So they're in jail.
[00:24:59]  This woman's getting her fourth abortion and feels a little bit entitled and frustrated that no one's there to wash her feet as she's standing in line.
[00:25:06]  And this immigrant couple over here, well, the husband actually came in and were being shown.
[00:25:14]  A Christian, you know, white Christian family showed them hospitality and had them in their home.
[00:25:18]  But then the husband actually, you know, six months after being in their home, actually murdered the wife of the host couple, you know, and he's, but he got off with a slap on the wrist, you know, like, and so, anyways, it was like this really interesting, you know, thought experiment that's, you know, people, you know, obviously, like if you're a leftist, you know, you're going to read it and rage.
[00:25:38]  But if you have just an ounce of common sense, you don't even have to be a Christian, but you're just like, yeah, that's, I mean, that's every major news story.
[00:25:45]  You wash the feet of someone who's transgender and then they shoot your daughter in a school.
[00:25:50]  You wash the feet of somebody getting an abortion, now they're getting their fourth abortion, and a 73 year old woman gets an 11 year jail sentence for saying, please don't murder your baby.
[00:26:01]  You welcome in the immigrant.
[00:26:02]  The immigrant ends up murdering someone or getting in some brawl, some fight, and beating up police officers, gets let off with a slap on the wrist, and does the double bird to the news media crew on his way out saying, F America.
[00:26:19]  These are like, that's not a hypothetical.
[00:26:21]  Everything I just listed right there, those are actual headlines.
[00:26:23]  Those are things that have actually happened.
[00:26:25]  And so, my point is, it's not like the world is against the West.
[00:26:28]  Nobody has to be against the West.
[00:26:29]  The West hates itself.
[00:26:30]  The West is doing everything it can possibly to commit suicide.
[00:26:35]  Guilt is a hell of a drug.
[00:26:36]  And people are, you know, it's like we're racing to the edge of a cliff.
[00:26:43]  Who can kill themselves first?
[00:26:45]  And so, it's not just ambition is frowned upon.
[00:26:47]  It's at this point, it's like if you're not exercising ambition towards your own suicide, Then you're in sin.
[00:26:54]  And so every single virtue is don't have borders or let women commit abortion or this, that.
[00:27:03]  But everything that's virtuous, if you just draw the line out, and it's not very far, I mean, it's like two dots that are right next to each other.
[00:27:09]  It's pretty easy to connect.
[00:27:10]  But if you just look for the correlation, everything that's deemed as virtuous in our society today is everything that would fall under the category of self destruction, self destruct, self destruct, kill yourself, end it.
[00:27:24]  You're done.
[00:27:25]  You're horrible.
[00:27:26]  That's where we are.
[00:27:26]  Yeah.
[00:27:27]  A big part of it, too, is you have to go back and say, where did that come from?
[00:27:30]  Like, what makes people suicidal?
[00:27:32]  And a lot of times, nationally, suicidal, it really comes from history.
[00:27:38]  And so the histories we've told ourselves really matter.
[00:27:41]  And so, even with critical race theory, the Frankfurt School coming out of Germany, what do they do?
[00:27:47]  They come to America, they infiltrate Marcuse, they infiltrate the university system.
[00:27:52]  Of course, he's trained at the OSS and propaganda, he's very good at this thing.
[00:27:55]  And then they just slowly undermine their core function is to undermine really the foundations of Western civilization, which is Christian.
[00:28:03]  And so, as they do that, now you have a generation that hates its fathers.
[00:28:09]  And so, here's an interesting connection that I've found in all of this.
[00:28:12]  It's interesting from a fifth commandment, you know, honor thy father and mother.
[00:28:15]  From a fifth commandment perspective, when you start hating your fathers, you start hating yourself, right?
[00:28:22]  Like that connection, where we, I mean, you can even look at the youngsters today.
[00:28:28]  You look at teenagers and the rates of suicide are skyrocketing.
[00:28:32]  Well, you know, you've taught them to hate their fathers, their heritage, their ethnicity, their skin color.
[00:28:38]  They hate everything about themselves.
[00:28:41]  I mean, it's kind of the logical conclusion.
[00:28:43]  It's interesting because there's a promise associated with that, right?
[00:28:46]  Yeah.
[00:28:46]  Is that you'll dwell long in the land if you honor your father and mother.
[00:28:50]  And so, even the average age, life expectancy is dropping in the United States, which is shocking.
[00:28:59]  Right.
[00:28:59]  Right.
[00:29:00]  And because we have an entire generation, we have generations of people that actually hate their father and mother.
[00:29:07]  And so there's judgment.
[00:29:09]  We're even being displaced out of our own land, right?
[00:29:13]  Because of how we despise our father and mother.
[00:29:16]  Yeah.
[00:29:16]  And I mean, the craziness of it, right, is you go back to some of the problems going back with Alfred.
[00:29:23]  Sometimes it's the people in your own lines.
[00:29:26]  And often that's true.
[00:29:27]  In the book of Joshua, we have the same thing.
[00:29:29]  If you have Aiken in your camp and you put up with Aiken, and maybe you're putting up with female pastors, maybe you're putting up with wokeness, maybe you're putting up with a Matt Chandler who's saying, you know, I actually want the African American seven, right?
[00:29:41]  If that's the case and you're allowing all these things to exist in your camp, don't be surprised when it's torn your whole culture down because you've ingested the poison.
[00:29:51]  And I think in large part, I don't know, you know, you'll see this throughout history.
[00:29:56]  You get to 1683 in the Battle of Vienna.
[00:29:59]  How do they get to the point where the Ottoman Empire has 200,000 Turks?
[00:30:03]  Ready to invade the capital of the Holy Roman Empire.
[00:30:06]  How do you get to that point?
[00:30:07]  The West fell asleep.
[00:30:08]  Its leadership fell asleep.
[00:30:10]  They downplayed the problems.
[00:30:12]  And then, you know, what's crazy?
[00:30:14]  You can read books like The Sword and Scimitar by Raymond Ibrahim.
[00:30:17]  And how did Yarmouk happen?
[00:30:19]  How did the West first get conquered by Islam?
[00:30:21]  And then you read the accounts of the religious people of the day who were faithful, and they're like, we got transgenderism.
[00:30:27]  We got homosexuality.
[00:30:29]  We got all this crazy stuff happening.
[00:30:31]  And it's like a replay.
[00:30:32]  It's the same thing with Alfred, you know, in England before Alfred, that.
[00:30:37]  When the Vikings first invaded Lindisfarne, which is the holy island of Lindisfarne, the Emperor, I'm sorry, Charlemagne's clerk or whomever, Alcuin, he wrote to the king in Wessex and said, It's because of the sensualities, because of fornications and adulteries, that the judgment of God has come upon you.
[00:31:04]  So it's the same thing, Yarmouk.
[00:31:05]  We're finding this on repeat within history.
[00:31:07]  And the assumption, I think, for a lot of pietistic.
[00:31:10]  Christians is that, well, that's Old Testament.
[00:31:12]  That's Old Covenant sort of language, right?
[00:31:15]  That the people of God would turn away and God would send enemies against them and judge them, but we have Christ now, and so that doesn't happen.
[00:31:22]  Well, history would beg to differ.
[00:31:24]  And so, really, the trajectory that we're on is that we're under judgment and that there will be more judgment unless people repent and turn back to Christ.
[00:31:34]  Yeah.
[00:31:35]  Do you think part of it, so certainly there's been an apostasy in the West turning from Christ.
[00:31:43]  That is our foundation.
[00:31:44]  That's our heritage.
[00:31:46]  And as we've rebelled against Christ and his principles and against his commands, there's certainly been judgment.
[00:31:53]  We find ourselves being taken over by, we used, I mean, America was a world superpower.
[00:32:01]  And at this point, that's up for serious debate.
[00:32:06]  And so there are foreign enemies that have gotten stronger as we've gotten weaker.
[00:32:10]  There are all these different forms of judgment because of no fault divorce and pornography and all these different things where we've turned our back.
[00:32:19]  But it seems like one of the judgments, also, I think of the Old Testament prophets that say that part of God's judgment will be that women and children rule over you.
[00:32:28]  And, you know, that I, you know, on one hand, I see that as a sin.
[00:32:33]  So on one hand, I feel like you could put in the same category as no fault divorce and pornography, you know, you could put female pastors and female politicians and senators and, you know, this and that.
[00:32:45]  You could put it over there.
[00:32:47]  But on the other hand, you could also put it as, you know, in the category of not the sin, but the judgment.
[00:32:54]  And one thing, I guess, what I'm building up to is one thing I've noticed about.
[00:32:59]  I'd be interested to see this.
[00:33:00]  I'll just, I'm going to say it, and somebody in the YouTube comments is going to say, no, you know, this survey says you're wrong.
[00:33:06]  But don't women on average commit suicide more than men?
[00:33:13]  That's a good question.
[00:33:14]  I know, I certainly know the stat line that when men do it, it's more violent.
[00:33:18]  I believe that.
[00:33:19]  Yeah.
[00:33:19]  A gun, you know, women, it's usually pills or something like that.
[00:33:22]  You know, I remember reading that.
[00:33:25]  I'm curious.
[00:33:26]  I guess what I'm getting at is one, you know, women just aren't supposed to be in that role.
[00:33:30]  And so they're going to struggle in a leadership role in a way that a man's not.
[00:33:34]  Because it's not what they're built for.
[00:33:35]  They're built towards nurturing and not leading in the face of opposition and danger and all these kinds of things.
[00:33:43]  But yeah, so the point is.
[00:33:45]  The stat line, Joel, sorry to interrupt, but the stat line is that more women attempt suicide, more men are successful.
[00:33:54]  Okay, there you go.
[00:33:55]  All right, well, that adds up.
[00:33:57]  I don't know why you're laughing.
[00:33:58]  We finish what we start.
[00:33:59]  I'm saying we're not going to finish what we start.
[00:34:01]  Yeah.
[00:34:02]  Men are successful one way or another.
[00:34:06]  So, you know, but my point is this as you find women in more positions of leadership, I do think, all right, so take suicide out of it.
[00:34:13]  I do think that women are more susceptible to guilt, to being manipulated, especially by some kind of guilt tactic.
[00:34:21]  And so, as you have, you know, I think of, you know, even the Supreme Court, you know, ruling on the border situation, you know, like, is it a coincidence that, you know, that five votes, you know, towards, you know, let the immigrant in and, you know, you can't have the razor wire.
[00:34:37]  You can't, you know, we.
[00:34:39]  Right, exactly.
[00:34:39]  It's all five women, one of them, you know, women of both sexes, four women, and then one, you know, honorary woman.
[00:34:45]  John Roberts.
[00:34:46]  But, anyways, but like, that's not a coincidence.
[00:34:50]  Yeah.
[00:34:50]  That's not, I think part of the judgment of having women and children ruling over you is that they're going to make detrimental decisions.

=== Historical Repentance and Poor Rule (15:00) ===

[00:35:01]  Why would that be a judgment?
[00:35:02]  Why is that a bad thing to have women and children rule over you?
[00:35:04]  Well, the obvious implication is because they're going to rule poorly.
[00:35:09]  And I think one of the poor, I don't think it's the poor ruling of, well, they're going to burden you and tax you to death and this and that.
[00:35:17]  Like, how is it that a woman would rule over her citizens that would be toward their detriment?
[00:35:27]  I think it's by letting down every barrier, every wall, every protection and letting their enemies trample them.
[00:35:34]  I don't think it's that she tramples them.
[00:35:37]  I think it's that she doesn't possess the fortitude.
[00:35:41]  To protect her citizens.
[00:35:42]  I think that's the judgment of a female ruler is that the female ruler will prefer the foreigner to her own citizens.
[00:35:52]  She'll let this person cause this atrocity.
[00:35:55]  And so, anyways, I'm wondering how much of where we're at with the West is because of our sensuality, because of our rebellion towards Christ, because of all these things, but also because we are, what does Stephen Wolfe call it?
[00:36:11]  Gynocracy.
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[00:36:14]  We all know that finding quality music that's theologically sound can be difficult these days.
[00:36:20]  That's why the Psalms Project is putting together.
[00:36:23]  All 150 Psalms with every single verse included to artful, creative, professionally produced music without gutting or censoring the God breathed text.
[00:36:35]  The Psalms Project is led by Shane Halman, a Reformed believer who holds to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith.
[00:36:43]  Here's a quick sample.
[00:36:57]  To hear more music from the Psalms Project, including their new album for Psalms 47 through 55 that just drops, go to thesalmsproject.com.
[00:37:06]  Again, go to thesalmsproject.com today.
[00:37:11]  Yeah.
[00:37:12]  Yeah, I think a huge part of it, it's really interesting as you're talking about this, because you look through Christendom, and I'll have Dan Way in here too, but you look through all these great epics of Christendom.
[00:37:21]  Like there's rides and fall, but like the moments where people step up, you know, again, Jan Sobieski or Richard the Lionheart.
[00:37:29]  It is interesting to me in all the research.
[00:37:31]  We've done a ton of reading about this.
[00:37:34]  You don't find, as much as feminists want to make out of this, female rulers doing great things.
[00:37:41]  I mean, that's like 100% absent.
[00:37:44]  You find them doing great motherly things and great things for their people, certainly.
[00:37:49]  But even stories like that, you know, you think of something like a Jael, a Deborah, you would think like, oh, these would be great parts.
[00:37:59]  If Christ had really appointed female apostles, as some people Claim and you know that they were having pastoral roles.
[00:38:06]  Like, why don't we see that historically?
[00:38:08]  Um, but generally, what you do see, um, is what you said, which is you know, the supreme judgment on the West.
[00:38:15]  Um, I think even today, uh, I saw somebody say it was like a meme or something, conservative guy.
[00:38:21]  Um, but he said, you know, everybody thinks Taylor Swift's a hero, she's not.
[00:38:24]  But you know, look at Lauren Boebert and Christy Gnome.
[00:38:26]  I'm like, Christy Gnome is probably the best of our conservative leaders.
[00:38:30]  And I think within the last year, it came out that for like a long standing time.
[00:38:35]  She was having an adulterous relationship with one of the Trump advisors.
[00:38:39]  So it's like, that's your best, right?
[00:38:43]  So, highly problematic, certainly judgment.
[00:38:47]  Dan, I'm curious your thoughts, though, on Christendom.
[00:38:50]  Am I missing a female here?
[00:38:51]  Did I miss a female plotline?
[00:38:54]  I'm trying to recall from my reading.
[00:38:58]  The answer is no.
[00:39:00]  You're a genius, Eric.
[00:39:01]  I mean, we've had queens in Christendom before, but I guess I would point to, I know when Queen Elizabeth, Most recent queen of England died.
[00:39:12]  A lot of people heralded her as like the last great Christian ruler, right?
[00:39:18]  As she systematically dismantled one of the greatest empires that has ever existed on earth.
[00:39:25]  John Knox had some things to say to the queens also.
[00:39:27]  Yes, he did.
[00:39:28]  Which was great.
[00:39:31]  To your point, though, I can't think of a great female ruler in Christendom.
[00:39:36]  No, even thinking on the queens, you know, from Victoria onward, that's like.
[00:39:43]  You know, sort of the heyday in Victorian England, but like from their rule on is like the collapse of the British Empire.
[00:39:51]  So, you know, the feminists don't want to talk about that.
[00:39:54]  And obviously, there's a lot more going on, but I think it would seem to confirm that, yeah, you've got this judgment.
[00:40:00]  Obviously, Catherine the Great, people like this, but then you start reading the history and you're like, there's a lot of weirdness happening around those situations.
[00:40:07]  I mean, Queen Mary, she executed Latimer and Ridley, and then there was a great resurgence of the Christian faith because of the persecution.
[00:40:15]  So, I mean, thank you.
[00:40:17]  For that, you know?
[00:40:19]  Yeah, I'm at a loss.
[00:40:20]  I don't know what to tell you.
[00:40:21]  Yeah.
[00:40:22]  I wonder if they were good carriage drivers, though.
[00:40:24]  That's really what I want to know.
[00:40:27]  More accidents?
[00:40:28]  I don't know.
[00:40:29]  All right.
[00:40:30]  Well, yeah.
[00:40:31]  So, anyways, I just feel like that's an important element to work in as well.
[00:40:35]  It's just, you know, the West has rebelled against its Christian heritage, and a lot of that has been sexual immorality, sex related sins, infidelity, adultery.
[00:40:47]  No fault divorce, pornography, transgenderism, homosexuality, all these different things.
[00:40:53]  But wrapped up in that, it's hard to even parse out because it's just this big blob of sin and mess.
[00:40:59]  But part of it, I just feel like feminism has to at least get a mention.
[00:41:04]  Yeah.
[00:41:05]  I don't know if you recently watched the Tucker Carlson, Vladimir Putin interview.
[00:41:12]  But back to your point about women and the nature of women, the scriptures say that women are more easily deceived.
[00:41:19]  Obviously, that means like manipulation, guilt manipulation, emotional manipulation.
[00:41:24]  Just believing in lies.
[00:41:26]  They're easier to deceive, right?
[00:41:28]  To lead astray.
[00:41:30]  Something was really just obvious to me as Tucker is interviewing Putin.
[00:41:36]  As I look at this world leader after having seen Joe Biden, you know, now for some three years and then seeing Putin, I don't, he doesn't strike me as a guy that's easily manipulated, right?
[00:41:50]  It was very apparent that he didn't care two figs about what the American media had to say.
[00:41:56]  The media propaganda machine.
[00:41:58]  And that was just really an interesting picture between American politicians versus a Russian politician.
[00:42:06]  Well, I mean, it goes to the saying in the US, which is a distinct departure from Christendom.
[00:42:13]  But today, sort of the judgment is we have sclerotic old men and the gynocracy.
[00:42:17]  And those things are definitely true.
[00:42:19]  But I also think it's interesting going back to the Putin interview, we talked about how the poison, the arsenic in people's food has been history.
[00:42:28]  And I think it was interesting that why did he take 30 minutes of a two hour interview to talk about the history of Russia?
[00:42:34]  I think it's because history matters.
[00:42:37]  It matters a lot.
[00:42:39]  And I think if you're going to, you know, as we look at all of this garbage and nonsense, we say obviously we have to repent.
[00:42:45]  We can also draw from history that people in the past did repent.
[00:42:48]  Yes.
[00:42:49]  You know, you have Jan Sobieski, who got it's sort of like, I mean, almost in many ways, history reads like the book of Judges.
[00:42:57]  You know, like, You get Samson, and it says the people turned away from the Lord, and so he gave them 40 years of oppression under the Philistines.
[00:43:05]  Then they repent, and then God brings Samson, and God brings a Jan Sobieski, or God brings a Richard the Lionheart.
[00:43:11]  And I think because of that, it's like, well, Putin understands history in ways that a lot of Westerners don't, and we could disagree with some of it, but we could and should all agree that it is important.
[00:43:24]  You know, that's interesting you bring that up because I think the assumption for American Christians is that what is.
[00:43:32]  What does repentance look like?
[00:43:33]  I guess that's the question.
[00:43:35]  And I think the assumption is that, oh, we have another great awakening.
[00:43:38]  Well, if you look at the histories of the great awakenings in America, they have not produced good fruit, or another revival, like we could have a huge revival.
[00:43:46]  And that's going to be the way that God causes hearts to turn to Him.
[00:43:52]  And if you look at history, if you look at the Old Covenant, the Old Testament, it's usually a small band of courageous men.
[00:44:02]  That decides no, that we're going to fight.
[00:44:05]  We're going to stand here and we're going to fight.
[00:44:08]  And it ends up turning the hearts of the people back towards God.
[00:44:11]  And that seems to be the pattern that God uses throughout history either one man or a small group of men that actually turn history.
[00:44:19]  And so, I guess, as an encouragement, it might feel like we're kind of alone in this, like we're very small.
[00:44:27]  There's not a lot of Christians that think the way that we do, but you don't know what God can do with just a few brave men.
[00:44:35]  And so it's a call to courage.
[00:44:38]  Yep.
[00:44:39]  Amen.
[00:44:40]  Yeah, I've been telling people, you know, if you wanted to boil it down to two things in terms of a plan for victory, you know, what would have the highest likelihood of being successful, it would be honor to the past and hope for the future.
[00:44:57]  Honor to the past and hope for the future.
[00:45:00]  Like when I look at churches that are growing, Christians like you guys with influence over, you know, Over other churches and other Christians that are growing and doing good work, and that people are kind of flocking to their message.
[00:45:21]  And I try to take that message that contains a lot of different elements, but boil it down to just two.
[00:45:27]  It seems like the formula, if there is one, is fairly simple it's honor when looking to our past and hope when looking towards our future, which is the exact opposite of what we've had for at least 80 years.
[00:45:40]  You think of some people have called it the post war consensus, or Whatever you want to call it, you can call it the post war consensus, you could call it boomers, you could call it, you know, you could call it dispensationalism, you know, you could, you know, that would put you at 150 years, you could, you know, whatever.
[00:45:56]  Like there's a few, you know, and there's probably, you know, it's a mix of all that.
[00:45:59]  It's the post war consensus with a healthy dose of, you know, dispensational Zionism and then some boomer con, you know, sprinkled in there.
[00:46:11]  But if you look at their vision, it really has been the opposite of what I've just said.
[00:46:17]  It's disdain.
[00:46:18]  For their fathers, disdain for the past, and despair for the future.
[00:46:23]  So you have disdain for the past and despair for the future versus, and then you wonder why everything's falling apart.
[00:46:31]  Like, why are we shocked that that wasn't a winning strategy?
[00:46:35]  Yeah.
[00:46:35]  Right?
[00:46:35]  That's what, I mean, you could argue all the way back to the Enlightenment.
[00:46:38]  You could say it's been 300 years.
[00:46:39]  You could say it's been 150 years since Schofield and dispensationalism, or you could say it's been 80 years with a post war consensus, but any way you slice it, anywhere from 80 to 300 years in the West, That has been the mantra.
[00:46:52]  That has been the battle cry disdain for the past and despair for the future.
[00:46:57]  What do you think about your fathers?
[00:46:59]  I hate them.
[00:47:00]  They're icky.
[00:47:01]  Right?
[00:47:01]  What do you think about the future?
[00:47:03]  Jesus is coming back next Thursday.
[00:47:05]  Really doesn't matter.
[00:47:06]  Right?
[00:47:07]  And that's it.
[00:47:07]  And then things crumble and you're surprised.
[00:47:11]  And then someone comes around and starts a podcast like the King's Hall and says, hey, maybe Christendom wasn't so bad.
[00:47:19]  And maybe it's okay for men to not linger long in their prayers, but to actually fight.
[00:47:24]  You know, the enemy that's on their doorstep because they love what's behind them, their country, their kinsmen, their wives, their children, their heritage, their legacy.
[00:47:32]  And maybe God actually honors that.
[00:47:34]  Maybe Christianity isn't synonymous with suicide.
[00:47:40]  Like maybe, you know, because here's the thing martyrdom, right?
[00:47:43]  Well, you know, the martyrs, you know, the blood of the martyrs is the seedbed of the church.
[00:47:47]  Yes and amen a thousand times.
[00:47:49]  Martyrdom is not suicide.
[00:47:51]  What we're experiencing today is not martyrdom, it is self induced martyrdom.
[00:47:56]  It is self inflicted destruction.
[00:47:59]  Martyrdom is not self inflicted.
[00:48:01]  That's when you're faithful, you're pursuing Christ, you're obeying his commandments, and the enemy just in the sovereignty of God, he allows the enemy to come in like a flood, and you're one of the people that God in his sovereignty allows to be mowed down.
[00:48:18]  But it wasn't self inflicted, it wasn't a self fulfilling prophecy.
[00:48:22]  You didn't shoot yourself in the foot.
[00:48:23]  You were obedient to Christ.
[00:48:26]  And Christ allowed in that moment, in your case, for the opposition to take you out.
[00:48:32]  And all that he does for his good and holy purposes.
[00:48:35]  And he uses your life and the lack of life, your death, to bring about immense good for future generations.
[00:48:42]  Praise God.
[00:48:42]  That's great.
[00:48:43]  The martyrs, you know, I think of, what is it, Fox's Book of Martyrs?
[00:48:47]  Is that a thing?
[00:48:48]  Yeah.
[00:48:48]  Like, I mean, so those, that's wonderful.
[00:48:51]  That's wonderful.
[00:48:52]  But that is not what we're experiencing today.
[00:48:54]  We are not experiencing martyrdom in the West.
[00:48:57]  We are in other parts of the world.
[00:48:58]  There are faithful Christians losing their lives for the sake of the gospels.
[00:49:01]  But in the West, by and large, it's not martyrdom, it's suicide.
[00:49:05]  That is what we are experiencing.
[00:49:07]  And it's because you have people who have this frame of mind despair when they look to the future, when they look forward, and disdain when they look back.
[00:49:17]  So if you have a whole generation, a whole nation, a whole culture of people who think that their lineage, their heritage, their fathers, their ancestors are icky, and they think that everything they have came by oppression and And colonization and this and that, and that Jesus is going to come back next week, or if he doesn't, it'd be, you know, if they lost, it'd be great.
[00:49:45]  That would actually be a win because everything they have, they don't deserve.
[00:49:49]  It was accumulated wrongfully.
[00:49:51]  Then, I mean, that is going to lose.
[00:49:55]  There's no way that that mindset ever wins.
[00:49:59]  And my whole point in saying all that is that is the regime.

=== The Impact of Christian Conquest (15:42) ===

[00:50:02]  You're right, Eric.
[00:50:02]  You mentioned that earlier.
[00:50:03]  That is our leftist, progressive, atheistic, secular humanist regime.
[00:50:08]  But it's also evangelicals.
[00:50:10]  Yeah.
[00:50:10]  Like it's not, it's not like, and it's not even, it's barely even nuanced.
[00:50:14]  It's barely even has a Christian spin on it.
[00:50:17]  It's almost verbatim the exact same rhetoric of our past was bad.
[00:50:23]  You know, this was bad, that was bad.
[00:50:26]  And, you know, for the leftists, it's like global warming is going to kill us next week.
[00:50:32]  For the evangelicals, Jesus is going to come back next week.
[00:50:35]  You know, but both agree that our fathers were bad.
[00:50:37]  And if we lose everything, good.
[00:50:41]  Yeah.
[00:50:42]  And I mean, No kind of issue more can you see this, I guess, than the Crusades, right?
[00:50:48]  You had Karen Armstrong and other leftists who've, Karen, I think, is a former nun, but other people who've been pushing back against, you know, sort of the truth, which was that, you know, the Muslims invaded and Christianity was defending itself.
[00:51:05]  And but yet today we're told that, you know, the campus crusade for Christ, you had to change your name to crew, right?
[00:51:11]  There's still a huge part of the name, which is ironic.
[00:51:18]  We'll start landing the plane.
[00:51:20]  Maybe you could address this, Dan, while Eric takes a quick break.
[00:51:23]  But I was just thinking we'd be remiss if we're talking about the Crusades and all these kinds of things, if we didn't take at least here at the very end of the episode a moment to talk about the zero contribution of Muslims.
[00:51:36]  You know, as I've been reading, seriously, as I've been reading, you know, all these books, you know, the same kind of books that you guys are reading, I've been, I mean, I shouldn't say I'm shocked.
[00:51:46]  I was looking for it.
[00:51:48]  I did go in with this presupposition, expecting it, but.
[00:51:51]  It has exceeded all my expectations.
[00:51:55]  That part of the reason the Christians, I mean, of course, the Lord Jesus, Lord of Lords and King of Kings, is on their side, but also they have crossbows and they have Roman fire or Greek fire and they have this and they have that.
[00:52:08]  And Muslims have nothing, like down to the design of their shields and swords.
[00:52:13]  It's like everything they make is terrible.
[00:52:17]  Yeah.
[00:52:17]  They have any horses and terrible armor.
[00:52:20]  And yeah, they did.
[00:52:21]  Yeah.
[00:52:21]  But apparently they invented calculus and a bunch of other stuff.
[00:52:25]  So.
[00:52:25]  Right.
[00:52:26]  And that's what I found that interesting too, because when it came to, exactly, when it came to like science and philosophers and medical physicians and these kinds of things, one of the things that was, I forget which one it was, I think it was either Rodney Stark, God's battalions, or maybe it was Defenders of the West.
[00:52:43]  I think it was God's battalions, Rodney Stark.
[00:52:46]  But one of the things he said is that if you look into all these alleged contributions historically from Islam, it actually, if you like, okay, but who Who was the philosopher?
[00:52:59]  What was his name?
[00:53:00]  What was his origin?
[00:53:01]  Oh, he was a Christian.
[00:53:02]  Yeah.
[00:53:03]  That they took over, gave him, like, kind of like Nebuchadnezzar with Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego, right?
[00:53:08]  You give them Babylonian names, but your best advisors, they're all Hebrews.
[00:53:13]  Like, well, it turns out Yashir Ali, who was also known as Bob Smith.
[00:53:19]  Right.
[00:53:19]  Exactly.
[00:53:21]  Exactly.
[00:53:22]  Until he was conquered.
[00:53:22]  And the only way, and then you, you know, to play the devil's advocate, you know, somebody, well, well then, but if they were complete losers and had zero contributions, then how do they conquer?
[00:53:31]  All the time, which I would just say sheer numbers.
[00:53:34]  Do you have another answer to that?
[00:53:35]  Oh, yeah.
[00:53:36]  How do they ever win?
[00:53:36]  Their tactics.
[00:53:37]  Their tactics.
[00:53:40]  Yeah, and we can talk about that.
[00:53:42]  I think that's actually really interesting.
[00:53:44]  Something Eric would like to talk about that actually ties into Dracula.
[00:53:49]  Oh, Dracula.
[00:53:50]  Vlad Dracula.
[00:53:51]  Vlad the Impaler.
[00:53:53]  We can bring him up.
[00:53:53]  What a king.
[00:53:55]  All right, let's do that.
[00:53:56]  That can be the final segment of the episode.
[00:53:59]  But can you talk, basically, Eric, to catch you up?
[00:54:01]  I was just talking to Dan.
[00:54:03]  I said, we'd be remiss if we didn't cover in this episode here at the very end the absolute nothing burger of contributions that come from Muslims throughout history.
[00:54:14]  And I was just saying, you know, like anytime they, you know, they did, you know, allegedly contribute something, whether it be in philosophy or this or that, the other, you find out that, you know, oh, that's actually not a Muslim.
[00:54:24]  That was like a Christian nation that you conquered.
[00:54:27]  And so, like Nebuchadnezzar, you know, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, you know, it's like, oh, these are our best, you know, our best advisors.
[00:54:34]  Oh, they're all Hebrews, you know, like, You just gave them Babylonian names.
[00:54:38]  And yet, all that being said, to be fair, the Muslims conquered, though.
[00:54:44]  They won a considerable amount of battles.
[00:54:46]  So, how is it that they don't have the crossbows because they can't?
[00:54:50]  How is it that you hate Christ, who is the true God, and therefore you've rejected the world as he made it?
[00:54:59]  And therefore, naturally, it only makes sense that you're not honoring God.
[00:55:06]  So, you're not honoring the laws that he set up in his world.
[00:55:10]  So, you're not going to have some of the advancements that those who do acknowledge God have.
[00:55:16]  But the Muslims still kick some butt from time to time.
[00:55:21]  How do they pull that off?
[00:55:22]  You got crossbows on one side, and then on the other side, you're throwing rocks.
[00:55:28]  How do the Muslims win?
[00:55:29]  Yeah, it's a great question.
[00:55:30]  And I think a lot of it, if you look at the people who, Christians particularly, who spoke about it at the time, it's interesting how many of them referred to.
[00:55:38]  The Muslims as demons, you know, somehow demonically backed.
[00:55:41]  And then you start reading about the things that the Muslims, you know, which are, you know, Moors, Turks, Saracens, there's a bunch of different kinds, but fundamentally under the banner of Islam.
[00:55:51]  But it's so interesting when you see what they did, you know, they're slaughtering people by the tens of thousands at certain battles, selling women and children into slavery, raping them.
[00:56:02]  There's actually a lot of homosexuality as well.
[00:56:06]  This is how you get somebody like Vlad and his brother, who were sort of like harem boys for the Sultan.
[00:56:12]  And, you know, stuff like that where you're like, oh, why was Vlad so angry at the Muslims and why did he use their tactics against them?
[00:56:19]  Well, because he was probably the victim of pedophilia.
[00:56:24]  So, anyway, yeah, and you look at the kind of the cultural thing and you say, well, I think rightly the judgment of the Lord is present in why are they victorious?
[00:56:35]  Again, the Christians were asking that question quite a lot too.
[00:56:37]  And even as we might today, wrestling with it.
[00:56:40]  You know, it's a tough question and there wasn't necessarily just one answer.
[00:56:45]  But also, this is sort of one of the great myths, comes up in Rodney Stark's book, God's Battalions, which is really helpful, was this idea that, you know, all of culture, art, history, et cetera, was.
[00:56:57]  Somehow, you know, best in the Muslim form.
[00:57:01]  When in point of fact, what you find from history is that Islam would conquer by the scimitar, they would conquer in blood.
[00:57:08]  They would take a people, and within about 100 to 200 years, it would be thoroughly Muslim, and the culture would have deteriorated almost completely.
[00:57:17]  And a lot of the glories of the culture would be lost.
[00:57:20]  So, you know, one prime example the library at Alexandria, one of the greatest libraries probably ever built.
[00:57:28]  And you have the Muslims, this is crazy today.
[00:57:31]  People will say, well, the Muslims didn't burn it down.
[00:57:33]  Well, they sure claim to have burned it down.
[00:57:36]  In their own literature, it says, we burned it down.
[00:57:38]  Like, if it's not in the Quran, then we don't need it.
[00:57:40]  So we're going to burn it.
[00:57:42]  Actually, they did have a culture of anti intellectualism.
[00:57:45]  Yes.
[00:57:45]  That's part of the motivation for them burning it down.
[00:57:47]  Yeah.
[00:57:48]  So that's interesting.
[00:57:49]  But they invented calculus.
[00:57:52]  Yeah, they claimed to have invented calculus.
[00:57:53]  We didn't know what the number zero was until the Muslims came along and told us.
[00:57:57]  And it's really interesting because you look at that and you say, okay, well, is that historically true?
[00:58:02]  Certainly, there were some advancements that took place, technological, science, literature, astronomy, that took place under Islam.
[00:58:10]  But it was usually because they conquered a Christian nation and changed the person's name to Muhammad al Dirkadijer or whatever.
[00:58:17]  But you go back in history and you're like, it was like Steve Smith.
[00:58:21]  And Steve was a Christian who had all this knowledge, wisdom, et cetera.
[00:58:25]  So a lot of it, yeah, they conquered, they stole that, and then claimed it for their own, of course, in their histories.
[00:58:32]  It's also interesting to point out, though, that Europe was actually advancing pretty rapidly under Christendom in this time period.
[00:58:38]  One of the reasons they were so successful in the Crusades when those came around was because they were bigger, faster, and stronger because of food production.
[00:58:45]  They had figured out different plowing systems.
[00:58:47]  So Europe's having this boom.
[00:58:49]  And then you have Islam, which is a tribal raiding religion, which is multiplying, but really through very, very different means.
[00:58:58]  So, sort of that whole narrative that Islam had technology and we didn't is.
[00:59:04]  You know, patently false.
[00:59:07]  Interesting.
[00:59:08]  All right.
[00:59:08]  Well, I'll leave you with this.
[00:59:09]  One last question.
[00:59:10]  It's a banger.
[00:59:12]  You may not want to answer, but I'm going to throw it out there.
[00:59:15]  Over the course of Christendom, now, really just, you know, the last 2,000 years in this New Testament gospel age, what do you think is the bigger, most formidable enemy to the Christian faith?
[00:59:30]  Islam or Judaism?
[00:59:34]  Yeah, it's an interesting question, Joel, because even during the Crusades, several of the Crusades get derailed because the Christians will get into conflict with the Jewish people.
[00:59:46]  And it's interesting why that was.
[00:59:48]  The Jews, a lot of times, were selling Christians out to the Muslims.
[00:59:52]  The Jews were often siding with the Muslims.
[00:59:55]  You get into the Holy Land and Jerusalem, and a lot of that conflict was actually pretty intense the Jews and Christians hating each other.
[01:00:04]  I think, in terms of During medieval times, certainly the violence doled out by Islam is substantial.
[01:00:14]  It is immense.
[01:00:15]  And so I think from that perspective, just by like sheer number and sheer bloodbath, it seems to be the Muslims are kind of at the center, not kind of, they're at the center of kind of all of this, you know.
[01:00:28]  Now, I would say too, though, it's interesting when you look at history, you can also have groups of people which impact, you know, we were talking about the Frankfurt School and Marcuse.
[01:00:36]  Marcuse is one guy.
[01:00:38]  So you're not looking at it and saying like, how much wrath did one guy who was an atheistic Jew, as were many in the Frankfurt School, How much impact did he have that's detrimental to the West?
[01:00:51]  How many children today, just in the last 10 years, have cut their genitalia off because of CRT and because of wokeness, this Marxist, atheistic, Jewish type religion?
[01:01:02]  So it's like that's maybe just harder to calculate the impact.
[01:01:06]  But in many ways, in many ways, I think you could say that the plague of CRT and wokeness, all of that stuff that's internal and has caused us to lose our mind, in many ways, that's been worse than the external enemy.
[01:01:19]  Because many times the external enemy would actually rouse you to.
[01:01:27]  I don't know what that is.
[01:01:29]  What the heck?
[01:01:31]  Is that our soundboard?
[01:01:33]  Sounds like we found a treasure.
[01:01:37]  We have an absolute glitch on the soundboard.
[01:01:39]  Dan's not even touching it, I promise.
[01:01:41]  No one is touching the soundboard.
[01:01:42]  And I wouldn't use that one.
[01:01:43]  I would do the I'm not gay no more.
[01:01:48]  I'm delivered.
[01:01:51]  Where did I leave off?
[01:01:52]  I wasn't paying attention.
[01:01:54]  I was thinking about.
[01:01:54]  Well, basically, what you were saying is that Judaism has been incredibly detrimental, but more through more subversive.
[01:02:03]  Whereas Islam has been right there on the surface, easy to, you know, I mean, you can calculate the exact numbers because it was this many thousands of people died at the sword, at an Islamic sword, you know.
[01:02:15]  Well, and it's interesting today, too, because like both enemies, Jewish and Islamic, in different forms, like, and not all Muslims, and, you know, Tucker Carlson's in the UAE, and it seems to be a pretty peaceful event.
[01:02:28]  And so, it's not like entire people groups, right?
[01:02:30]  But you have different types of threat that still come from Islam.
[01:02:35]  That's still real.
[01:02:37]  And people are still kindergartners in Ireland getting butchered by Islamic terrorists.
[01:02:42]  You see this in France.
[01:02:44]  In fact, there are websites that track this, and people like to not think about that.
[01:02:48]  But Battle of Vienna, September 11th, there's a reason that the Twin Towers fell on September 11th.
[01:02:54]  That's when this is orchestrated.
[01:02:57]  When basically Islam was crushed by the West in this epic battle.
[01:03:03]  So I think that those threats are still real.
[01:03:06]  I think they're just different.
[01:03:08]  But I also think it's interesting when you think about something like dispensationalism.
[01:03:13]  The one thing you'll never find in the reading of Christendom is people who wanted Jerusalem to be like a Jewish citadel.
[01:03:20]  Okay.
[01:03:20]  Like Islam didn't want that.
[01:03:22]  None of the Christians wanted that.
[01:03:24]  There's nothing of like post 1940s like Zionism.
[01:03:28]  When you read the histories, like, yeah, Richard the Lionheart wanted to take Jerusalem for Christians, right?
[01:03:33]  Right.
[01:03:34]  They weren't trying to defend it for a Zionist movement or cause like that.
[01:03:38]  So I think some of that, too, is just helpful understanding like where maybe some of these movements come from, how much influence do they have today versus what they had in the past.
[01:03:46]  Right.
[01:03:47]  Dan, any final thoughts?
[01:03:48]  Yeah, I think that really the greater enemy immediately is Judaism simply because of, you know, Eric spoke a lot on this, the attack of ideas, propaganda.
[01:04:02]  And just the wealth.
[01:04:04]  Also, you look into the history of the Rothschilds and fomenting war and playing both sides.
[01:04:10]  Anyway, do your own research on that.
[01:04:13]  But the question that I have to ask is so Islam, Muslims, they hate the West.
[01:04:20]  I mean, they hate the West.
[01:04:23]  We're infidels.
[01:04:23]  We're dogs to them, right?
[01:04:26]  Subhuman.
[01:04:27]  Yeah, subhuman.
[01:04:28]  And in fact, part of their religion is to wage jihad against us.
[01:04:33]  And they have rewards and everything like that in eternity from Allah if they do that.
[01:04:39]  So why does the United States not have more terror attacks?
[01:04:43]  Why?
[01:04:44]  Well, I think there's a fairly obvious reason, and it's back to your earlier conversation about suicide is that when your enemy is destroying themselves, don't get in their way.
[01:04:55]  Right.
[01:04:55]  So, why would they attack?
[01:04:56]  So, that's why I would say I think long term Islam, you know, the Muslims are a much bigger danger, but currently we're being destroyed by Judaism.
[01:05:08]  Yeah.
[01:05:08]  And a lot of it too, even, you know, when we talked to Raymond Ibrahim, he would even say, like, The Muslims will speak of like a propaganda jihad.
[01:05:16]  So we think about, you know, you just do the research, like how much do these like lobbies spend in America from each of these nationalities?
[01:05:23]  Look at the numbers, you'd be astounded.
[01:05:26]  And then, and I think it's like how much impact is it having?
[01:05:29]  You know, when we have Minneapolis, which is like little Somalia, and you have settlements like that happening, but yet you have people in Texas who don't want to defend our own border and people.
[01:05:41]  A lot of that actually comes from the propaganda side first.

=== Destroying the Soft Regime (04:08) ===

[01:05:44]  And so I think just assessing those things and saying, you know, it's very dangerous.
[01:05:49]  And then, but I would just close with saying, like, the whole reason for season three of the King's Hall, the whole reason we're trying to encourage people is because if you can't defeat the enemy within yourself, if you can't defeat that enemy and you can't believe the truth and you can't have a community that believes that, like, you don't stand a chance against any outside force.
[01:06:08]  It doesn't even matter.
[01:06:10]  And so I think getting that right, even starting in the church, I think my approach, certainly after reading about the Crusades, is like, I think we've been too soft with Big Eba.
[01:06:20]  I think we've been too soft with these people are trying to like destroy your way of life.
[01:06:24]  They're trying to destroy the Christian faith.
[01:06:26]  And so I know you want to play nice with, you know, Tim Keller type people and, you know, oh, he's dead.
[01:06:31]  We can't talk about him.
[01:06:32]  But it's like that stuff is absolute rat poison.
[01:06:35]  It's disgusting and demonic in many ways.
[01:06:37]  And so we just have to treat it that way.
[01:06:39]  And I think our forefathers would have as well.
[01:06:41]  Deus vault.
[01:06:41]  Oh, yeah.
[01:06:43]  Definitely.
[01:06:44]  Amen.
[01:06:44]  Yeah.
[01:06:45]  You talk about like, you know, Hating the West, and it's you know, why not more you know, Islamic terrorist attacks and these kind of things?
[01:06:54]  I kept thinking, you know, in my head, just picturing like the Matrix movie, you know, and like, um, what you know, you can hate someone but still not destroy them if you could use them for a greater purpose, you know, like you could wipe out humanity or you could plug them to the Matrix and drain them all like batteries, you know, like why destroy the West when, um, all America is at this point is a tax farm, yeah, you subvert it.
[01:07:19]  That's That's, I mean, we're a tax farm.
[01:07:21]  We're not a country because you're not allowed to be.
[01:07:23]  You know, if you want to be an actual place, an actual people, you know, like you say, blood and soil, and immediately, like you're going to be deemed as a racist.
[01:07:33]  Where I, you know, I didn't even say what color the people were.
[01:07:37]  I just, you know, blood, as far as I remember, it's always red, you know, but just people and place, people and place.
[01:07:43]  That is a nation.
[01:07:43]  It's not an economic zone.
[01:07:45]  It's not an idea.
[01:07:46]  It's not a, it's not a principle, set of principles.
[01:07:50]  But these days, it's, we're definitely not a nation.
[01:07:54]  In the way that nations are supposed to be, people and place and borders and these kinds of things.
[01:07:59]  We're certainly not that, but we're not even America, even as an economic zone or as a set of principles, we're not even that anymore.
[01:08:07]  America is literally, it's just a tax farm.
[01:08:10]  It's like the Matrix.
[01:08:11]  It's a bunch of people plugged into Netflix or virtual Apple goggles or whatever, or Super Bowl sports ball, Taylor Swiftie, and then they just farm us, our taxes.
[01:08:27]  And here you go, Ukraine, here you go, Israel, here you go, this, here you go, that.
[01:08:33]  Not you, Texas.
[01:08:34]  Sorry.
[01:08:35]  Right, not you, Texas.
[01:08:37]  So why would you?
[01:08:39]  My point is, it's not.
[01:08:41]  As far as I can see, it's not compassion that is staying the hand of our enemies.
[01:08:47]  It's, if anything, it's just, it's even greater malice.
[01:08:51]  It's, it's, they hate us just as much as, as ever.
[01:08:55]  But, but why destroy people who, who you can enslave?
[01:09:00]  It's a slave.
[01:09:00]  Better to have slaves than to have a graveyard.
[01:09:03]  And the only reason you want to enslave them is if it's too much work, right?
[01:09:07]  To keep them in line or if the slaves might revolt one day or, you know, Pose the potential of being a threat.
[01:09:14]  But what if you could find 330 million slaves that hate themselves and actually feel like the most virtuous thing they can do is sell their children's future and give all that billions of dollars to you?
[01:09:29]  Right?
[01:09:29]  Like you would never destroy those people because they've already been destroyed.
[01:09:33]  Yeah.
[01:09:33]  When you think about it, it's like that's to the regime, that's the danger of something like, you know, a white boy summer type movement where it's like we're actually proud of who we are.
[01:09:44]  We love our heritage.
[01:09:45]  Yeah, there's sins.
[01:09:46]  Of course, there's sins.
[01:09:48]  But it's just interesting.
[01:09:49]  Christian nationalism, kind of the same thing.

=== Full Pursuit Against the Enemy (01:32) ===

[01:09:53]  You read Stephen Wolf and you're like, these are like old reformed ideas.
[01:09:56]  This isn't even new.
[01:09:58]  But in our context, it's absolutely anathema.
[01:10:01]  You're not allowed to talk about that.
[01:10:03]  You're not allowed to say things in such plain language.
[01:10:07]  And I think, you know, for the encouragement of your ministry, ours, what we're doing, fundamentally, you have to follow the Tactic that Alfred employed and Jan Sobieski and others, which is full pursuit.
[01:10:22]  When your enemy is on the run, you have to finish the job.
[01:10:25]  And so I think for a lot of us, it's just look, platforms have grown.
[01:10:29]  God's been faithful.
[01:10:30]  He's been gracious.
[01:10:31]  We pray He would raise up more and more judges who are righteous men, you know, Dusty Deavers.
[01:10:35]  We need more of them.
[01:10:36]  We need a thousand more of them, you know.
[01:10:39]  But at this moment, press the attack.
[01:10:41]  You have to keep going.
[01:10:42]  You cannot apologize.
[01:10:44]  You cannot compromise.
[01:10:45]  I think the days of that are over.
[01:10:47]  We saw where even with something like You know, complementarianism.
[01:10:50]  A lot of well meaning guys probably were like, well, let's kind of soften this here and maybe like take the edges off of that.
[01:10:56]  You're going to lose.
[01:10:57]  That is a losing strategy.
[01:11:00]  And what you have to do is you point your spears at the enemy.
[01:11:03]  And this is the great Sobieski charge.
[01:11:06]  He points his spears directly at the Emir's camp and he says, full speed ahead.
[01:11:12]  Like, we may die today.
[01:11:14]  He's 54 years old.
[01:11:15]  He's got his young son with him.
[01:11:17]  We may die today, but we're going to die like men.
[01:11:20]  And I think that's what we need.
[01:11:22]  Full send.
[01:11:24]  All right.
[01:11:24]  Well, thank you guys.
[01:11:25]  I appreciate it.