NXR Podcast - THE LIVESTREAM - Does Christian Nationalism Have A Racism Problem? - Live with Eric Conn
Aired: 2024-08-21
Duration: 02:00:17


=== Accusations of Racism (03:42) ===

[00:00:03]  If there's one accusation that flies fast and thick against Christian nationalism, it is the accusation of racism.
[00:00:12]  Sadly, even many Christians are quick to levy the term against their brothers, rarely stopping to consider the Bible's actual teaching on the topic and the dubious recent origin of this term of racism.
[00:00:27]  Join us now with special guest Eric Kahn as we discuss how concerned Christians are.
[00:00:33]  Should actually be about this so called racism, and if Christian nationalism does indeed have a racist problem within its ranks.
[00:00:54]  All right, we are back.
[00:00:55]  GA.
[00:00:56]  GA.
[00:00:57]  It's not an M anymore.
[00:00:58]  We've got Eric Kahn with us.
[00:00:59]  Nathan, turn it over to Eric just for a second.
[00:01:01]  Eric, thanks for coming on the show.
[00:01:03]  Guys, thanks for having me.
[00:01:04]  What a pleasure.
[00:01:06]  Awesome.
[00:01:06]  Okay, so Eric, Wes, myself, we've all been in a bit of a dust up for a little while now, going back and forth in Twitter land, which from now on, I guess we have to call it X. Because once the progressives come out and say, you know, that it's conservative and right wing, you know, to call it X, then you have to.
[00:01:25]  Start calling it X.
[00:01:26]  So, anyways, but on X, there's been a dust up and some controversy over Aristotle.
[00:01:33]  That was one, and we've addressed that a little bit, and we could talk about that a little bit more.
[00:01:36]  But then other guys have started besides just on X, even on YouTube, you know, other guys have done some videos where they've talked about Eric Kahn, they've talked about me, they've talked about Stephen Wolfe, they've talked about, you know, different guys.
[00:01:48]  And basically, you know, in a nutshell, it all comes down to, you know, Christian nationalism is, you know, white.
[00:01:55]  Christian nationalism.
[00:01:56]  It's racist, and that's been going on for a while, but it seems as though it's heating up a little bit.
[00:02:00]  And so we want to respond.
[00:02:01]  So we're actually going to be showing some video clips today and having Eric respond because they, in this video, they talk about Eric Kahn, they also talk about Joel Webbins.
[00:02:09]  So Eric and I will both be responding to things, but we're going to do something a little bit different right here from the outset.
[00:02:15]  And it's going to take about seven minutes to do, but it will be seven minutes incredibly well spent.
[00:02:20]  We are going to read the entire article that this week, our very own Wesley Todd wrote for us.
[00:02:28]  And the reason why is just for those of you who are tuning in and you don't keep up with the live stream every Wednesday, what we do is Michael, who is out of town this week, Michael and Wes alternate taking turns every other week writing an article that corresponds with our weekly show.
[00:02:44]  And so what we're doing as a show is lockstep with the article that they've prepared ahead of time.
[00:02:50]  So that's why we have, you know, with the show, we'll be able to show, you know, graphics and statistics and all these things and sources and, you know, and quotes.
[00:02:59]  You know, to back up the arguments that we're making because this is a show that's live, but it is a show that is thoroughly prepared.
[00:03:06]  And if, for the record, if you ever want to have access to the whole article and be able to read it on your own time and be able to have it in written form so that you can cite it as you're arguing, you know, with your progressive uncle, you know, or whatever at Thanksgiving, then, you know, all you need to do is join us at patreon.com forward slash right response ministries.
[00:03:23]  Patreon.com forward slash right response ministries.
[00:03:26]  You'll get a bunch of perks, but that's one of them.
[00:03:28]  All of our Patreon members have access to the full article every single week that corresponds with.
[00:03:33]  The live stream.
[00:03:33]  Okay, here we go.
[00:03:34]  So, this is the title of the article.
[00:03:35]  I'm going to read some.
[00:03:36]  Wes is going to read some.
[00:03:37]  I'm going to read some.
[00:03:38]  We're going to go back and forth so that it's super engaging and you don't get bored.
[00:03:41]  But this, I mean, the content alone, it stands on its own two legs.
[00:03:45]  Here we go.

=== Origins of the Term Race (04:50) ===

[00:03:46]  Does Christian nationalism have a racism problem?
[00:03:49]  That's the title.
[00:03:51]  Does Christian nationalism, a loose collection of conservatives, elected officials, and reactionaries, have a problem with racism and racist within the movement?
[00:03:59]  Well, it depends on who you ask.
[00:04:01]  To some, the answer is unquestionably yes.
[00:04:04]  For others, it depends on what those words actually mean.
[00:04:08]  Take the definition of racism, for instance.
[00:04:10]  It is well known that the meaning is as slippery and malleable as the day is long.
[00:04:16]  While more formal dictionary definitions ground its meaning in a belief in the superiority of particular races, that would be Merriam Webster in Oxford, other sociologists have described it as a systematic, this would be Beverly Daniel Tatum, or global, not or, but and global, this is W.E.B. Du Bois, and or structural, that would be France or Fanon, phenomenon.
[00:04:42]  So, a systematic, global, and structural phenomenon.
[00:04:46]  This means that racism can functionally take on any meaning it needs to.
[00:04:51]  Sometimes, even having nothing to do with race or ethnicity at all.
[00:04:55]  As someone once observed, a racist is someone who is winning an argument with a liberal.
[00:05:01]  Now, when the origins of the term are considered, the meaning is thrown into even more question.
[00:05:06]  The term racism or racist only appears in French, German, and English literature for the very first time in the late 1880s, likely for the first time in 1888 by French anarchist Charles Mulatto.
[00:05:23]  However, the term itself did not see any widespread use until after 1930.
[00:05:29]  A fact some link to the use of the term by communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky in his writings.
[00:05:36]  Whether Trotsky brought the idea to public consciousness or not, a simple explanation of the use of the words racism and racist in books and publications dating back to 1800 shows absolutely no use of either expression leading up to 1930.
[00:05:54]  And very insignificant use until 1960.
[00:05:57]  Meanwhile, other common expressions relating to race and ethnicity have clear precedent even prior to 1800.
[00:06:05]  This means that no English, that would be the Westminster Divines and London Baptist, French, John Calvin, or German theologian, Protestant or Roman Catholic, would have used the concept of racism in any capacity before or during the course of the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment.
[00:06:22]  Additionally, any contemporary American theologians who wrote, And lectured prior to the 1960s would have never considered, used, or applied the concept to Christian life.
[00:06:35]  All right.
[00:06:35]  Can we actually just show?
[00:06:36]  I don't know if we'll get a chance to go back to these.
[00:06:38]  Yeah, let's show them.
[00:06:39]  Let's show these two charts quick.
[00:06:40]  This first one here is the use of the term racism or racist.
[00:06:45]  And this is a Google Ngram viewer.
[00:06:46]  And it's not just a raw count, like how many times does this word appear in books since this time period?
[00:06:51]  Because more books are being written, so naturally the count will go up.
[00:06:53]  This is a percentage of all words.
[00:06:55]  So if you're looking at this, I'll describe it for anyone that's maybe listening.
[00:06:58]  The use of these terms, there is no use.
[00:07:01]  Prior to really about 1940, none.
[00:07:04]  These are not rookie numbers on this chart.
[00:07:06]  We got to pump these numbers down.
[00:07:09]  Right.
[00:07:09]  We should be seeing it to cap off and decline.
[00:07:12]  But it's really even 1960 that you see the use of these words, publications, book, public consciousness go up.
[00:07:18]  And this isn't just because we started thinking in a new way about race or some words evolved.
[00:07:22]  If you can show the second figure, Nate, this is the term race.
[00:07:26]  Now, the term race has a long history of being used.
[00:07:29]  It was used prior to the 1800s.
[00:07:30]  You go back to Calvin, he's writing in the 1500s.
[00:07:33]  He uses the term race to speak of different groups of people.
[00:07:36]  So there's clear precedent for understanding race, nation, ethnicity, but racism and racist as words did not exist in our public consciousness less than 100 years ago.
[00:07:47]  And with Calvin using the word race, I assume that he only ever used the term race to describe the one human race.
[00:07:53]  He never used it to say that there are different races of people.
[00:07:55]  Never.
[00:07:57]  Right.
[00:07:57]  Okay.
[00:07:58]  No, he didn't.
[00:07:58]  Yeah, that's a normal way of speaking.
[00:08:00]  It is okay.
[00:08:01]  You can speak that way without being immoral.
[00:08:03]  All right, go ahead.
[00:08:03]  All right.
[00:08:04]  So part two.
[00:08:04]  So.
[00:08:05]  Despite the recent and dubious origins of the designation, an astute Christian could attempt to make the argument that while the word racism or racist itself may be new, the sin denoted is the more ancient concept of prejudice andor partiality.
[00:08:20]  Defined this way, racism, considered biblically, would merely mean prejudice and bitterness against a certain race.
[00:08:26]  For example, Pastor John MacArthur operates with this definition in a 2018 piece on social justice.
[00:08:32]  But these definitions still seem to fall short of a meaningful and helpful conception of racism.

=== Defining Racial Prejudgment (07:16) ===

[00:08:37]  For example, prejudice is simply the compounding of before and judgment in Latin.
[00:08:42]  To have prejudice is simply to prejudge.
[00:08:44]  Are there not times that require making a judgment prior to every fact being known?
[00:08:48]  We prejudge intentions very often, matters of trustworthiness and safety.
[00:08:53]  Paul himself seems to carry a prior judgment about the Cretans when he describes them as evil beasts, liars, and lazy gluttons in Titus 1 12.
[00:09:01]  Some level of prejudgment is clearly not off limits for the Christians, although, as all actions, it should be carried out with prudence.
[00:09:08]  In regards to partiality, perhaps a brief exegesis of James 2 would be helpful.
[00:09:12]  James 2 is frequently cited as a New Testament passage that condemns actions of favoritism, partiality, bias, etc., and could be reasonably construed to include racism.
[00:09:21]  In verse 1, James commands, My brothers, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons.
[00:09:27]  James roots this in the great commandment to love one's neighbor, and concludes the thought by explaining, If you have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors.
[00:09:38]  Thus, with full biblical authority, we can confidently assert that respecting of persons within the context of faith transgresses the command to love our neighbor.
[00:09:46]  But what kind of respecting of persons is being forbidden here?
[00:09:49]  Is all respect of persons, including kings and emperors, that other apostles like Paul and Peter, Command us to honor and respect, is that forbidden?
[00:09:57]  Calvin rightly observes that if this verse should read, He sins who respects the rich, the sentence would be absurd.
[00:10:05]  Instead, per Calvin, the key distinction is favored rendered to the rich alone, combined with the treatment of the poor with contempt.
[00:10:13]  Respect is certainly due to all manners of people, including magistrates, kings, elders, leaders, and earthly masters, but in the body of Christ, the church, elevation of earthly pomp and denigration of the lowly has no place.
[00:10:25]  As Calvin comments, when the esteem or value of riches or of honor dazzles our eyes, the truth is suppressed, which ought alone to prevail.
[00:10:33]  In other words, James is not warning against respect for the rich or any other social class as an entire group, since obviously respect is due to emperors and kings with wealth.
[00:10:42]  It's even a group designated by God as his servant and deserving of honor.
[00:10:45]  But James is warning against rolling out the red carpet in church for the well off individual attendee while shooing away the less socially desirable.
[00:10:54]  Based on this exegesis, there seems to be little overlap with the modern conception of racism.
[00:10:58]  And if anything, the evangelical church is in need of repentance for partiality against whites, as illustrated, for example, in prominent pastors, speak of hiring less qualified pastors instead of Anglo pastors simply because these less qualified pastors are African American.
[00:11:13]  That would be Matt Chandler in 2018, who said exactly that.
[00:11:17]  Last portion of the article.
[00:11:18]  Here we go.
[00:11:19]  To offer one final possibility for a biblical definition of racism, what about actual violence and mistreatment rooted in hatred for a certain race?
[00:11:28]  An example would be the story of Eugene Williams.
[00:11:31]  A black teenager who was killed after he unintentionally drifted his raft into an unofficially segregated white beach off Lake Michigan.
[00:11:40]  White men on the beach hurled stones at the raft after it crossed, eventually knocking Eugene into the water where he drowned.
[00:11:47]  The first officer to arrive at the scene initially refused to take the murderers into custody, sparking the 1919 Chicago race riots that left dozens dead and hundreds injured.
[00:11:59]  A number of heinous sins and crimes were committed against Eugene Williams.
[00:12:04]  Who was murdered and then denied justice, violating both the sixth commandment and the Noahic covenant, as well as probably the ninth commandment and lying, producing false witnesses.
[00:12:14]  But it is exactly these prohibitions against murder, theft, and injustice and envy that make the category of racism largely redundant.
[00:12:25]  Cain murdered Abel over anger that his sacrifice was accepted.
[00:12:30]  It would not have been more or less excusable of a sin if it had been for racial reasons.
[00:12:36]  The sin was the murder.
[00:12:38]  The reason is largely incidental.
[00:12:41]  Similarly, violence, theft, threats, and injustice are in and of themselves sin, and the motives seem to often be of little account in the biblical narratives.
[00:12:52]  If anything, some passages even allow for different treatment of native Israelites as a race versus foreigners, other races, such as Deuteronomy 23, verse 20.
[00:13:04]  An equivalent today would be the allowance of American citizens to charge interest only to immigrants or those who hold green cards.
[00:13:14]  Charging financial interest, a policy that the ERLC would trip over itself to condemn and oppose.
[00:13:21]  But God's perfect and just law makes no such apology, and in fact, even ties this command to blessing in Deuteronomy chapter 23, verse 21.
[00:13:32]  While hatred in the heart is certainly a sin, Matthew 5, verse 22 tells us that, in group preference seems not to be.
[00:13:41]  We are to prefer family, kin, and nation.
[00:13:44]  And this preference is not sinful when other matters of justice, love, and mercy are not neglected.
[00:13:51]  Thus, granting that racism may only be a sin when it serves as a motive to other sins, including hatred in the heart, we are equipped to answer the question So, does Christian nationalism have a racism problem?
[00:14:04]  Is it a movement marked by racial animus as the foundation for patterns of actual violence and abuse, theft, and hatred?
[00:14:13]  The answer is no.
[00:14:15]  Knowing crime statistics is not racism.
[00:14:18]  Assuming racism is properly defined.
[00:14:21]  Opposing immigration, illegal and legal, is not racism.
[00:14:26]  Advocating that a country share common values, a place, and a people is not racism.
[00:14:32]  Noticing and speaking up about patterns of behavior that destroy social trust is not racism.
[00:14:40]  Wanting to live in a safe and commodious nation is not racism.
[00:14:45]  The Christian is bound To the Word of God for its definitions of right and wrong, and none of these actions even begin to qualify as sins.
[00:14:54]  Could racial hatred be harbored in the heart, but never making its way to visible sin?
[00:14:59]  Certainly.
[00:15:00]  But only the final day when Christ reveals the hearts of men will vindicate or condemn an individual's heart.
[00:15:09]  For now we believe the best about our Christian nationalist brothers, laboring for a better Christian future alongside us, and strive to be marked by joy, ambition, and godliness.
[00:15:21]  Character traits that will choke out the seeds of all improper hate, inordinate lust, envy, and malice.
[00:15:28]  1 Timothy 1 5 7 says this The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith.
[00:15:38]  Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, but without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.

=== Hypothetical Examples of Bias (15:21) ===

[00:15:53]  Here we are.
[00:15:54]  Eric throwing it to you.
[00:15:55]  What do you think?
[00:15:57]  Well, I think, first of all, guys, that was brilliant.
[00:16:00]  I think you should do more of that.
[00:16:01]  Thank you.
[00:16:01]  Thank you.
[00:16:02]  Wes, I don't know if Wes gets a promotion, but I give Wes a promotion.
[00:16:06]  Perfect.
[00:16:07]  Without that.
[00:16:07]  Yeah, no, I think it's a higher title, higher title, maybe a new fancy tie, but absolutely no pay bump.
[00:16:16]  That's great.
[00:16:17]  What a deal.
[00:16:18]  Yeah, I think so much of this, you guys are exactly right.
[00:16:21]  And so much of it, I think, for Christians and how we think through these issues, you notice that spike.
[00:16:27]  Starts in the 40s on terms like racism, as you guys pointed out, not being used before.
[00:16:32]  But notice the jump in the 60s, right?
[00:16:35]  What happens in the 60s?
[00:16:36]  You get the Civil Rights 1964 Amendment.
[00:16:40]  And then, really, what becomes a bureaucracy of the US government that is pushing the legislation and really this total ideology of racism into all the culture.
[00:16:51]  We get things like affirmative action.
[00:16:53]  So, you're actually creating laws that are prejudiced against particularly white people.
[00:16:59]  And I think because of that, Christians are unaware of the ways in which we have actually been catechized, not by the scriptures, not by Reformed theologians.
[00:17:07]  But by really this influx of leftist, Marxist, you know, this is the CRT that we see now infiltrating the culture.
[00:17:17]  And so I think what's concerning, particularly, you mentioned Matt Chandler, but that they are, most pastors in America haven't seen that traditionally as a problem that he even said that.
[00:17:30]  And he's outspokenly saying, you know, I'm going to act in a manner that is showing partiality.
[00:17:35]  And there were a few fringe people.
[00:17:38]  You know, count us among them who called that out in the beginning.
[00:17:41]  But where were the denominational heads of the PCA in the SBC?
[00:17:45]  They were actually kind of in lockstep.
[00:17:48]  So I think because of that, now you've got all this reverse catechesis that we have to do to really get rid of race brain.
[00:17:55]  And I think a big part of it too, a lot of people, you know, the big hubbub was I had retweeted Andrew Torba, who was, he had screenshotted or taken a photo of somebody talking about Aristotle.
[00:18:09]  And people say, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, you can't, the Aristotle was the problem.
[00:18:13]  I say, okay, fine, but let me read a quote from Rush Dooney, right?
[00:18:16]  This is what Rush Dooney said about immigration.
[00:18:19]  He said, the problem, of course, is that now we have had a great deal of illegal immigration.
[00:18:24]  We have immigration laws that no longer follow the older pattern and concentrated on European countries.
[00:18:30]  We allow many, many peoples in who have nothing in common with us, who are Muslims or members of other religions.
[00:18:36]  And it appears that there is an effort to break the Christian heritage and character.
[00:18:40]  Of the United States.
[00:18:42]  So for our reform brothers, if you happen to be theonomic, of course, you're going to appreciate Rush Dooney.
[00:18:51]  But look, even in the 80s, these guys were talking about the problem in language that now, if one of us had said the exact same thing, people would have said, look, they're racists.
[00:19:01]  Well, and that happened, Eric.
[00:19:02]  I have said the exact same thing at your conference, and people said that I was racist.
[00:19:07]  That's right.
[00:19:08]  And I think it's interesting, too, because I was recently speaking with a pastor in the South.
[00:19:14]  In Florida, and he's Latino.
[00:19:16]  And he said, You know, it's funny because I petitioned our denomination to have a Latino Reformed church.
[00:19:23]  And they were like, Great.
[00:19:25]  And he said, I can only imagine what would have happened if I had petitioned to have a white Anglo Protestant church.
[00:19:32]  You know, well, there would have been an outcry over that.
[00:19:35]  And I think what's really hard in these conversations, people don't realize the extent to which they've been propagandized.
[00:19:42]  So when you think about unpardonable sins in our camp, I mean, even to be accused of racism, as we were, Joel, recently, as you mentioned with the conference, but also on Twitter, to even be accused of it is the unpardonable sin.
[00:19:58]  And we have to step back and ask ourselves have we even defined the sin clearly?
[00:20:02]  I think you guys have shown that we haven't.
[00:20:04]  But if we haven't defined the sin as a biblical sin, why is it to the level of it's really like a death penalty sin in our culture's view to do or say anything that's racist?
[00:20:16]  And we have to ask how we got to that place.
[00:20:19]  Right?
[00:20:20]  That was great, Eric.
[00:20:21]  Thank you.
[00:20:22]  Let me give an example, real quick.
[00:20:23]  This is something that a fellow pastor who's a godly man, I respect him plenty, plenty of respect for him, grateful for him.
[00:20:33]  But I said something that, you know, I didn't say it directly to him, but it was passed along.
[00:20:38]  I said something to someone, and that someone said something to, you know, and it got to him, and he couldn't believe it.
[00:20:43]  You know, it took him back.
[00:20:45]  And he's like, I, you know, I can't believe Joel said that.
[00:20:48]  And his first instinct was, that's racist.
[00:20:51]  And I'm going to actually give the example here, and it won't help me.
[00:20:54]  You know, Right Wing Watch will pick it up.
[00:20:55]  It's not going to help, but, well, it will help because Right Wing Watch will pick it up, you know, so we'll get, you know, whatever, a million more views.
[00:21:02]  But I'm going to share it, and some of you listening, you'll listen to this and say, well, I think that's racist.
[00:21:07]  But it's not.
[00:21:10]  This does not contradict the law of God in the book of James or prejudging the kinds of things.
[00:21:17]  It's not that we can't prejudge at all, right?
[00:21:19]  So think of it like this Matthew 7, judge not, right?
[00:21:22]  You know how you, Reformed Christian, get upset when people misquote Matthew and they say, you know, they basically boil down the entirety of the 66 books of the Bible to one verse, judge not.
[00:21:31]  And you know how you're going to point out, just like I would point out, you say, well, that's the first five verses of chapter 7 of Matthew, but then verse 6 says, Don't throw your pearls before swine, you know, or give what is holy to dogs.
[00:21:42]  And how do you know who swine are?
[00:21:43]  And how do you know what a dog is except for making a judgment?
[00:21:46]  So clearly, what's being condemned, you know, in the book of Matthew that Jesus is condemning in the Sermon on the Mount is not all forms of judgment, but sinful judgment, wrong judgment.
[00:21:55]  I think the same applies with pre judgment, which is that's what prejudice is pre judgment.
[00:22:00]  So when James is saying, don't say to the rich person who comes into your assembly, so first, what's the context?
[00:22:07]  It's the church.
[00:22:08]  So, when a rich person walks into your assembly, don't say to the rich person, Hey, come and sit right here at my right hand.
[00:22:15]  And you poor person, what are you doing?
[00:22:18]  You know, you peasant taking up this rich person's chair, come and sit at my feet.
[00:22:22]  Right?
[00:22:23]  James is saying, Yeah, that's not a good look.
[00:22:25]  The Lord is not pleased with that.
[00:22:26]  That's wrong.
[00:22:27]  And that would be wrong.
[00:22:28]  He uses the example of class and economic status, but that could also be applied to race.
[00:22:35]  So, if you said to a white person, Hey, come and have this nice chair, and to the black person, Hey, go and sit at my feet, that's wrong, or vice versa, which is, let's be honest, What's currently happening in the church for the last 15 years, easy if not longer, is hey, black person, come and take this job and you can be a campus pastor, you know, and then oh, sexual sin comes out.
[00:22:51]  Turns out that, you know, you weren't qualified.
[00:22:54]  And white guy, sorry, we had to look over you, even though you were more qualified, both in your life and doctrine, even your character.
[00:22:59]  You weren't cheating on your wife, but you missed out on a pastoral job opportunity because we had to get the black guy to fill that slot.
[00:23:07]  That is literally what's happening currently.
[00:23:09]  So that's not like a just a.
[00:23:10]  So we are literally doing what James says, except instead of economics, it's applied to race and it's putting down the white guy.
[00:23:17]  To elevate the non white person of color.
[00:23:20]  But here's the point.
[00:23:22]  In the context of the church, that is a prejudgment.
[00:23:24]  So, in the same way that Matthew 7 does not demonize all forms of judgment, but sinful judgment, because you have to make a judgment to know this person's a swine and I shouldn't give them my pearls.
[00:23:34]  So, too, in the book of James and also elsewhere in the Sermon on the Mount, I would argue, and I think Wes argued beautifully in the article that we just read, that not all forms of prejudgment are a sin.
[00:23:45]  In fact, we often have to use prejudgment on a daily basis.
[00:23:51]  If you're walking down the street with your wife and children, and you see some guy who's kind of, you know, going, he's, you know, skits and out a little bit, you know, and he's dressed in shabby clothes, that is not what James is talking about.
[00:24:04]  Oh, see, you're prejudging the poor.
[00:24:06]  No, you're prejudging somebody for all intents and purposes as showing nine out of 10 signs of being a meth addict.
[00:24:13]  And therefore, with a greater inclination towards violence and threatens the safety of your family, which you're obligated morally by God to protect.
[00:24:22]  Okay, that's totally different.
[00:24:23]  So here's the example that I got to my pastor friend, and he's like, Oh, I don't like that, Joel.
[00:24:28]  Are you sure you're not racist?
[00:24:29]  The example that I gave, not to him directly, but somebody else, and it got to him, was somebody in my church was asking.
[00:24:36]  He was asking, I'm trying to understand what is actually racist.
[00:24:40]  How do we define racism?
[00:24:42]  How would the Bible define it?
[00:24:43]  What actually is a sin and what's not?
[00:24:46]  And so I gave him an example.
[00:24:47]  I said, Well, recently, I have some heart troubles.
[00:24:50]  And so I have to see a cardiologist once a year, and eventually we'll probably have to have heart surgery on some things, and I won't get into the details.
[00:24:59]  Kind of had a bad heart.
[00:25:01]  And so when we moved to Texas, I needed to get a new cardiologist.
[00:25:05]  And so my wife, you know, she does a lot of this for me because before we had kids, she was an RN and she knows a lot more than I do.
[00:25:11]  And, you know, I actually let her read those books.
[00:25:14]  She read some medical books.
[00:25:15]  Yeah.
[00:25:15]  And so she's, you know, she's doing the research and looking at these things.
[00:25:18]  And she shows me two doctors, both of this within the same practice, same company, hospital, and saying, you know, do you like one over the other?
[00:25:28]  And one was a young white dude and one was a young black dude.
[00:25:31]  And I said, I prefer the young white dude.
[00:25:35]  And this is why.
[00:25:36]  The reason why is not because I'm white, but because we currently live in a historical moment in the West, and particularly in these United States, where I know that both of these guys could be perfectly qualified.
[00:25:48]  But I also know that if there's a chance that one of them was not qualified and was given a free pass, it'd be the black guy.
[00:25:55]  I know that that young white guy, there's no way he got a free pass.
[00:25:59]  There's no way.
[00:26:01]  I know that, and for the record, let's take the white guy out of the equation.
[00:26:04]  Let's say it was a young black guy and a young Asian guy.
[00:26:07]  I picked the Asian guy.
[00:26:08]  Yep.
[00:26:08]  Because he, I know, had to earn it.
[00:26:11]  And the black guy might have earned it.
[00:26:13]  And this is the tragedy.
[00:26:14]  The tragedy is he could have been a fantastic doctor.
[00:26:17]  I don't know.
[00:26:18]  Now, when I was talking to this member of my church, then I said, now let me give another hypothetical.
[00:26:23]  That was a real example.
[00:26:24]  Let me give a hypothetical example.
[00:26:26]  Let's say that the black doctor, there's a white guy that I don't know from Adam, and there's a black doctor who's a member in our church.
[00:26:34]  He's a member in good standing.
[00:26:35]  He's a brother in the Lord.
[00:26:36]  I know him.
[00:26:36]  I've had dinner with his family.
[00:26:37]  Then I'm going to him because I know him.
[00:26:40]  So it's not a universal blanket judgment against a particular person on the basis of their skin pigment.
[00:26:47]  That's not what we're talking about.
[00:26:48]  But the point is, that was a prejudgment that I made with the original example.
[00:26:52]  I didn't know either guy.
[00:26:54]  So I'm prejudging.
[00:26:54]  I'm not judging by, hey, let me sit you down and interview you and get to know you and ask you questions.
[00:26:59]  And what did you score on your NCATS?
[00:27:01]  I didn't do any of that.
[00:27:02]  I'm prejudging, not judging after the facts, but prejudging before the facts.
[00:27:07]  And I'm making.
[00:27:09]  A bias, an emotional, heartfelt bias based off.
[00:27:12]  No, I'm making a statistical analysis, a pre judgment based off of statistics.
[00:27:18]  I know that the likelihood of if one of these men, maybe they both got into their profession on merit, and I hope that they did.
[00:27:26]  But if one of them didn't, statistically speaking, there was a far higher likelihood that the young black man, as a doctor, that he got a pass and did not have to prove as much merit.
[00:27:38]  The white guy, statistically speaking, there's far less likelihood that he got a pass.
[00:27:43]  If anything, the system would be against him.
[00:27:46]  He would have to score even higher.
[00:27:47]  And these are things that are on the books.
[00:27:49]  Harvard, it's on the books.
[00:27:50]  You have to have a higher SAT score based off of race, right?
[00:27:55]  So this is not speculation.
[00:27:57]  This is not putting on the tinfoil hat.
[00:27:59]  This is, I can, I'm just believing my lying eyes.
[00:28:03]  I know how to read.
[00:28:04]  So that would be an example.
[00:28:06]  But here's the thing that is a prejudgment.
[00:28:08]  In that case, that is a prejudgment on the basis of skin pigment.
[00:28:12]  And none of that goes against what James says and the Holy Scripture.
[00:28:16]  Well, that same prejudgment that you're not allowed to do, Eric, you were talking about this deathly thing that once you're accused of it, there's no way out.
[00:28:22]  This happened in Florida at an SBC church, FBC Naples, an SBC church, First Baptist Church of Naples, where a black pastor narrowly failed to be chosen by the congregation and a kind of inquisition went out.
[00:28:35]  They found this deacon.
[00:28:36]  They hung him out to dry to the whole SBC in a letter claiming that he instigated resistance to this man being appointed to the office of pastor because of racism.
[00:28:45]  They said they vowed to deal with this sinful cancer and actually even church disciplined him.
[00:28:50]  So they took this man who said, Hey, I don't think this man's qualified.
[00:28:54]  He didn't say why, so he didn't give it away.
[00:28:56]  Some other members joined him.
[00:28:57]  They voted against.
[00:28:58]  And that prejudgment, I can't see the heart, but I've got a good guess.
[00:29:02]  They did that.
[00:29:03]  They hung this man out the dry, and now his name is in the mud.
[00:29:06]  And this incident is now forever known.
[00:29:08]  I remember J.D. Greer talking about it.
[00:29:10]  It's forever known as this terrible racist thing that happened in the SBC.
[00:29:13]  Proof we still have more to do.
[00:29:15]  So you can't prejudge, but most certainly the so called anti racist, they'll look into your heart and they'll figure out motive, whether you even have it or not.
[00:29:23]  Right.
[00:29:23]  Eric, thoughts?
[00:29:25]  Yeah, well, I think I know you guys have covered it on this show, but I think for people who are wondering on these issues, particularly would encourage them to read Jeremy Carl's book, The Unprotected Class.
[00:29:35]  He goes through this and documents, as you said, Harvard, you know, SAT scores, all that.
[00:29:41]  But there's actually been a number of cases in the medical profession.
[00:29:44]  And he cites one of the cases, I can't remember the gentleman's name, but basically where this black doctor made it all the way up through into plastic surgery in California.
[00:29:53]  And a lot of people end up dying.
[00:29:55]  Because it's essentially a DEI hire.
[00:29:58]  The other thing I think that's interesting about it, and what we have to just be aware of, because of the era of civil rights, you are at the point where to call someone racist has power, right?
[00:30:11]  It has a weaponized power to cancel, to destroy.
[00:30:15]  But I think it also, for particularly guys like J.D. Greer and white pastors, part of the problem is they're deathly afraid of this conversation, right?
[00:30:23]  They're deathly afraid of ever being accused of anything related to being racist.
[00:30:29]  And so, this is they've actually taken part in part of that cancel culture.
[00:30:34]  But also, it means that you have to distance yourself from the old dead guys of the reformed tradition.
[00:30:41]  And so, I think you'll see more and more of this happening because you're going to have to, like, what do you, obviously, R.L. Dabney, you know, very unpopular.
[00:30:50]  If you reference him, you're an automatic racist.
[00:30:53]  But even guys like Jonathan Edwards, I mean, this was a big deal at the Desiring God conferences.
[00:30:57]  John Piper had done a biography, one of his biographical sketches on Edwards.
[00:31:03]  And so much time had to be devoted to how could we have, you know, how could we be platforming and saying anything positive, given Edward's views on slavery and his defense from scripture and all those things.

=== Addressing Cancel Culture Clips (06:00) ===

[00:31:15]  So I think moving forward, the real issue is I think we need to, particularly as pastors, just refuse to play that game.
[00:31:23]  One of the things that happened online, people were making disparaging comments, the N word gets used.
[00:31:30]  And immediately you'll see what happens is like people are calling on me, say, like, you need to come denounce this person.
[00:31:37]  And one of the biggest problems I have with it is it's like, I didn't make that comment.
[00:31:41]  I don't even know who this person is.
[00:31:43]  Right.
[00:31:44]  But you saw so many pastors who were lining up and who are like, oh, no, no, no.
[00:31:49]  Like, even if it's not even if I commit the racist act, and that's in scare quotes, it's now also, I need to be first to jump on anything that could be potentially racist, and I need to be denouncing it firm and hard.
[00:32:02]  Otherwise, I too will be called a racist.
[00:32:06]  And again, the other thing about this is there's no due process in any of it.
[00:32:10]  Right.
[00:32:11]  As Wes pointed out, just to be called that, it's assumed that you are that.
[00:32:15]  And again, we want to talk about biblical justice.
[00:32:19]  Well, you've defined something unbiblically with racism, and now you've basically hung somebody in the court of public opinion without due process at all.
[00:32:28]  Right.
[00:32:29]  And to be clear, in that instance that you're referencing on X, I did come out and I said, hey, this is not the way, delete.
[00:32:38]  And the person deleted it, and that fixed the problem, right, Eric?
[00:32:43]  Everybody was content then?
[00:32:45]  No.
[00:32:46]  No.
[00:32:46]  And that's why I said, like, he didn't go hard enough.
[00:32:49]  He needed to, you know, he needed to go harder.
[00:32:51]  And, He needed to call his pastor.
[00:32:52]  Yeah, he needed to call his pastor.
[00:32:53]  You need to hunt him down, like Liam Neeson style.
[00:32:57]  I will find you, Anon.
[00:32:59]  I have a very specific set of skills and I will ruin your life, just like everybody ruined Thomas Acorn's life.
[00:33:06]  Anything short of that, unless when it comes to racism, unless you see to it that that man can't feed his children for the rest of his life, then you're not going to satisfy your opponents.
[00:33:19]  And so, yeah, so anyways.
[00:33:22]  Go ahead.
[00:33:22]  Just part of it with the double standard.
[00:33:25]  So, when you look at like hip hop, black culture music, and I did, I looked it up after that incident.
[00:33:32]  The rate at which that word is used is astronomical.
[00:33:37]  And so, again, we're judging on two standards based on your skin color.
[00:33:41]  Some people can say it, some people can't.
[00:33:44]  Again, biblically, you would have to say, well, why is that?
[00:33:46]  If it's so bad, why is it so frequently used?
[00:33:49]  Right.
[00:33:49]  That's a good question.
[00:33:50]  All right.
[00:33:51]  Let's go to our first commercial break.
[00:33:52]  And then what we're going to do is we're going to come back and we're going to show some clips.
[00:33:56]  Of a group that I can't remember, but I what were Fight Ministries?
[00:33:59]  Good Fight Ministries, which they seem like good guys, just um, you know, just of the boomer variety, you know, but uh, which by the way, boomer is not an age, it's a state of mind, you know, it's a state of heart, uh, but uh, definitely a boomer take on uh, Khan and me and and other Christian nationalists.
[00:34:18]  Um, but they said some things that I think are are still worth addressing, mainly uh, not that we haven't addressed these things a million times over.
[00:34:24]  Stephen Wolf, you know, he's probably exhausted at this point, how many times he's addressed all these things.
[00:34:29]  So, we've addressed these things multiple times.
[00:34:30]  Eric has, I have.
[00:34:32]  But I thought that it would be good to show their clips because I thought it could be good, not just to address it for the record, because the record's already been made.
[00:34:40]  You can go back and search videos and find where we've addressed these kinds of accusations.
[00:34:44]  But I thought it would just be fun in real time to show the video and just demonstrate how easy it is to address them.
[00:34:49]  Yeah.
[00:34:50]  That it's like my six year old daughter would be able to respond to 90% of what you'll see in these clips.
[00:34:58]  So, that'll be fun.
[00:34:59]  Let's go to our first commercial break.
[00:35:04]  Right Response Ministries 2025 conference is a go.
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=== Judging Elder Candidates Rightly (15:12) ===

[00:37:15]  Everyone needs soap, so wash yourself in the word.
[00:37:19]  All right, we're going to go ahead and check out those clips.
[00:37:26]  But before we do, I want to address something in the comments.
[00:37:29]  So, a few people at this point have mentioned, well, Joel gave this example of choosing doctors and exercising prejudgment and arguing that it's a form of morally permissible prejudgment, where he decided that he's going to pass over the black doctor that he doesn't know from Adam in order to choose the white doctor that he doesn't know from Adam because of Jeremy Carl, what he has outlined.
[00:37:52]  Things that are statistically, I mean, they're written down.
[00:37:56]  It's proven.
[00:37:57]  There's a statistical likelihood that the white guy had to get there on the basis of merit, and that's far more likely in our current cultural moment than the black guy.
[00:38:08]  Sadly, we wish that wasn't the case, but it is.
[00:38:10]  But I noticed in the comments that some people are saying, yeah, but then Wes gave an example where Joel's saying it's okay to have his prejudgment, but then Wes gave an example of a prejudgment that was imposed on a white guy, and that's not okay.
[00:38:26]  Can you explain a little bit more of this white deacon and what happened so that people can see the difference?
[00:38:31]  Yep.
[00:38:31]  So it was a black pastor.
[00:38:33]  Someone noted, why did they prejudge the white pastor?
[00:38:36]  It was a black pastor and it was a congregational church.
[00:38:38]  And so in the congregational church, the members of the church have to affirm and actually take a vote on it.
[00:38:44]  And then if the member or if the candidate that's put forward, it was 81%, I believe, at FBC Naples.
[00:38:50]  So, but this is a black, so he's not a pastor yet.
[00:38:53]  This is a black man who's up for the pastorate.
[00:38:56]  He's an elder candidate.
[00:38:57]  Exactly.
[00:38:58]  And then they had to approve him through a congregational vote of 81%, SBC Church, and he didn't get it.
[00:39:04]  Exactly.
[00:39:05]  He fell a little bit short of it.
[00:39:07]  And then what happened?
[00:39:09]  And so then they looked at it like, how could we not possibly put this black man forward?
[00:39:15]  How could we consider him not qualified?
[00:39:17]  And the individuals that voted against him, as I understand it, they had a myriad of different reasons.
[00:39:20]  So some of them maybe it was his teaching capacity, maybe some had concerns about his character.
[00:39:24]  And there was a group of individuals, because it's a big church.
[00:39:27]  That had gathered some signatures and said, Hey, we don't think he's the right fit.
[00:39:30]  And they pinpointed on a man, his name is David, I believe David Doral, as a man that kind of instigated this.
[00:39:39]  And they said, Because you oppose this man, whatever the reason would be, we don't care.
[00:39:42]  And this is a white man.
[00:39:43]  Exactly, this white man, it must have been racist that you oppose this ordination.
[00:39:48]  And the reason for it, there was no like text of him calling him any names, there wasn't any evidence brought forward.
[00:39:53]  It was literally simply because the congregation did not quite vote to the level to ordain him that the reason for that must have been.
[00:40:02]  Right.
[00:40:03]  So you didn't, you congregation did not vote to approve this black elder candidate to actually approve him with an 81% vote so that he would be ordained as a pastor in this church.
[00:40:14]  And this particular white man in the congregation who had a petition and was kind of getting people on board with not voting for him, his reason for doing that must have been racism.
[00:40:27]  And more broadly, it was concerns about transparency at the church, the absence of the vetted elders.
[00:40:31]  There was some maligning of a previous longtime former pastor that had been there, this Bob Codwell.
[00:40:36]  So they had concerns.
[00:40:36]  It's like I think of David Platt and McLean Baptist.
[00:40:41]  Huge church, lots of resources, and there's a shadow kind of elders and government there.
[00:40:45]  And so this man said, Hey, I have concerns.
[00:40:47]  Let's forestall maybe the installation of this man.
[00:40:50]  I'm not sure if he's the right fit.
[00:40:51]  And him doing that, the verdict was from this kind of shadow elder group must be racism.
[00:40:56]  Racism must be stamped out.
[00:40:58]  And they put him under church discipline.
[00:40:59]  Yep.
[00:41:00]  So for the guys in the comments who are saying, Well, it seems like a double standard here.
[00:41:04]  This is hopefully this clears it up for you.
[00:41:07]  And if it doesn't, well, then you're wrong.
[00:41:11]  But the difference is not that one is prejudgment of a black guy, this pastor who, or, you know, elder candidate who was up for eldership.
[00:41:19]  Who didn't get the vote, and that the white guy in the congregation was saying, Hey, I don't think we should vote for him because I have concerns about character and teaching capacity and blah, And then people just assumed that the white guy's being racist against this elder candidate because he happens to be a black elder candidate.
[00:41:35]  The reason why that prejudgment, assuming the white guy's being racist, is different than the prejudgment I described in the case of a black doctor.
[00:41:43]  The difference is not prejudgment towards a black man is acceptable and prejudgment towards this white man is not acceptable.
[00:41:49]  Here's, and this is going to blow your mind.
[00:41:50]  This is a shocking revelation.
[00:41:52]  The difference that makes one immoral and one acceptable is not the color of those two guys' skin, but that one prejudgment is true and the other one is false.
[00:42:03]  Let me say that again.
[00:42:05]  One was true and the other one was false.
[00:42:09]  So when I say, hey, if there's two doctors and I don't know either one from Adam, but I know statistically speaking, statistically speaking, and I'm not celebrating it, I'm not like, yay, I love this.
[00:42:21]  I wish it wasn't this way.
[00:42:22]  But I recognize that in the year of our Lord 2024, in these United States of America, that sadly, because of critical race theory and anti white discrimination, which is on the books in universities when it comes to SAT scores and all these different things, when I say, hey, I don't know either of these guys from Adam, but I know statistically speaking,
[00:42:45]  there is a higher likelihood that the white guy had to earn his position by merit and that the black guy has a lower likelihood of having earned it fully.
[00:42:56]  By merit.
[00:42:56]  When I prejudge in that way, I'm making a prejudgment that's true.
[00:43:03]  It's true.
[00:43:04]  That is a statistical, factual, accurate analysis.
[00:43:10]  An entire book was just written, read it, by Jeremy Carl, right?
[00:43:14]  Anti white discrimination.
[00:43:16]  That is a true prejudgment.
[00:43:18]  When this local church prejudged that a white individual who had concerns about a black elder candidate, when they assumed That his concerns were solely due to the color of this elder candidate's skin.
[00:43:32]  The reason why that was wrong is because it was not true.
[00:43:36]  You see how that works?
[00:43:37]  So it's not prejudgment against the black guy is wrong because he's black, and prejudgment against the white guy, you know, that's acceptable, you know, but like, no, no, no, it's not about that.
[00:43:46]  It's are your judgments.
[00:43:47]  It's the same as prejudgment standards, same for judgment standards.
[00:43:51]  So Matthew 7, what judgment is permissible according to Christ himself?
[00:43:56]  Matthew 7, verse 6, do not give.
[00:43:59]  To dogs, what is holy, or to swine, throw your pearls before swine.
[00:44:02]  What kind of judgment is permissible in the mind of Christ?
[00:44:06]  Right judgments, accurate judgments.
[00:44:09]  When you rightly judge, I'm not going to give pearls to this person.
[00:44:13]  When you make that judgment or decision, it's because you've made a judgment.
[00:44:16]  You've judged that this group of people, this person or this individual is a swine.
[00:44:21]  I'm not going to preach the gospel to this person for the 10,000th time and give what is holy to them because they have denied it and trampled underfoot every single time, again and again.
[00:44:30]  In the same way that Paul says, I will no longer go to the Jews, but instead I'm going to be an apostle to the Gentiles.
[00:44:35]  Like that was not unrighteous.
[00:44:37]  That was not wicked.
[00:44:38]  That was not sinful.
[00:44:39]  But here's the thing the reason why that kind of judgment is permissible is because it was a right judgment.
[00:44:45]  You're judging something rightly.
[00:44:46]  So, too, making a pre judgment.
[00:44:49]  Now, we should be careful with pre judgment, but there are times, inescapable moments in our lives, we're making a pre judgment.
[00:44:55]  Every time you choose a doctor, you are making a pre judgment.
[00:44:59]  Why'd you choose that one and not the others?
[00:45:01]  There's some kind of reason.
[00:45:03]  I actually had a biblically permissible reason and a factually, statistically true reason.
[00:45:10]  Now, for those who make a prejudgment that is solely based on some kind of bitterness or inner heart hatred with no statistical analysis, then yeah, then that would be a wrong prejudgment.
[00:45:22]  So that's the difference.
[00:45:24]  All right, so we got to get to these video clips.
[00:45:26]  Let's go to the first one.
[00:45:28]  It's going to become worse and worse.
[00:45:30]  But in him talking about we're looking, he's a green.
[00:45:35]  We've got to have this dictator come.
[00:45:37]  That just blows me away, Chad, that he.
[00:45:39]  Joe, it is really a sad thing to watch and to see.
[00:45:43]  There's a lot of great brothers in Christ that are like, what on earth?
[00:45:47]  Like our black brothers in Christ that are like, what on earth are you talking about?
[00:45:51]  Where are you going with this?
[00:45:52]  It's absolutely demonic, Chad.
[00:45:54]  It's demonic.
[00:45:55]  They're quoting Aristotle, you know?
[00:45:57]  Why don't they quote him on homosexuality and all these other things, you know?
[00:46:01]  But they're quoting Aristotle.
[00:46:02]  Basically, the quote Aristotle is saying, you really can't have a democracy if you have different ethnic groups.
[00:46:08]  And they're saying he was right, you know?
[00:46:10]  And of course, these guys are white, so I guess they want to be around just a lot of white guys.
[00:46:15]  Which is, to me, it just breaks my heart because I don't know if there's anything more beautiful than the gospel itself, than the effects of the gospel.
[00:46:24]  When you see people in our fellowship, we have all different races African American and Asian and Hispanic, a lot of Hispanic people and white folks and so forth.
[00:46:36]  And I love seeing different ethnic groups worship together because it's, you know, what Aristotle's saying, you know what?
[00:46:44]  Guess what?
[00:46:44]  Without Jesus, yeah.
[00:46:46]  Nation is going to be against nation, which is ethnos against ethnos in the Greek.
[00:46:50]  Without Christ, there isn't really hope for this world.
[00:46:53]  But in Christ, guess what it says in Revelation 7, 9 through 14, when John sees this great multitude that no man can number, and they're united as one in Christ in the heavenly kingdom.
[00:47:03]  They've come out of great tribulation, and the elder says to him, These are those that have come out of great tribulation, and they've been cleansed by the blood of the Lamb.
[00:47:10]  So these guys, you know, they're not going to really want to be in heaven because guess what?
[00:47:15]  Not with Jesus and all the different ethnic groups because guess what?
[00:47:18]  It works in Jesus because we're all of the same blood.
[00:47:22]  All right, Eric, nice softball for you.
[00:47:24]  Do you think you could respond to that?
[00:47:26]  Do you think you can handle it?
[00:47:28]  He raised some tough objections.
[00:47:29]  You up for it?
[00:47:30]  Yeah, it's tough.
[00:47:31]  Well, you put some pressure on me when you said that your six year old daughter could answer these.
[00:47:35]  And then, I mean, how do you fail at that?
[00:47:39]  How do you fail?
[00:47:39]  Yeah.
[00:47:41]  Yeah.
[00:47:41]  So I think there's a few things to notice.
[00:47:43]  And I would comment on the video and also kind of similar responses that I saw on social media.
[00:47:48]  Number one is the superlatives that are used to open, right?
[00:47:52]  It's like, this is demonic.
[00:47:53]  This is horrible.
[00:47:54]  It breaks my heart.
[00:47:55]  You notice how much of that and how little actual argumentation is happening.
[00:48:00]  So, that would be one of my, you know, explain what you mean.
[00:48:03]  Okay.
[00:48:03]  Why do you think it's demonic?
[00:48:04]  He didn't actually present an argument for that.
[00:48:06]  And I did happen to listen to more of the interview, and they never really get to that.
[00:48:10]  I'm sorry.
[00:48:11]  Yeah.
[00:48:11]  Yeah.
[00:48:12]  It was a trial.
[00:48:14]  So I think there's that portion of it.
[00:48:16]  The other thing is the assumption that a lot of people are making about Christian nationalists that they're saying what we're saying is we only want white people in the kingdom.
[00:48:25]  And that is, of course, not what we're saying.
[00:48:28]  I think also the understanding of ethnos, right?
[00:48:33]  So if we're talking about, and I'm just going to use the.
[00:48:37]  Dictionary definition here, but ethnicity as a social group of people who share a common culture, language, and religion, who have distinctive characteristics that differentiate them from other groups.
[00:48:48]  When they're quoting in Revelation or referring to Revelation that there are multiple nations worshiping before the throne, it never says that the nations are no longer distinct, right?
[00:48:59]  It no longer says that they lose all those attributes about what it meant for them to be an Ethiopian Christian, for example.
[00:49:06]  Yes, we'll be part of the same kingdom.
[00:49:08]  No, I don't.
[00:49:10]  I, you know, I, I, And rejoicing actually in the fact that those brothers will be there with us.
[00:49:16]  And yet, for all that, we still have our distinctions that God put there.
[00:49:22]  And so we don't have to hate the distinction.
[00:49:24]  It's actually a good thing.
[00:49:26]  And so I think there's also a confusion, I think, in many Christians' minds of a national political realm versus the church.
[00:49:37]  So I think they have some kind of idea that, like, our church is just white people.
[00:49:42]  I mean, we have black people.
[00:49:44]  Puerto Ricans, we have Cubans, we have Mexicans, right?
[00:49:46]  So, on that, we're not actually disagreeing with the fact that all those people are welcome in the ecclesiastical body of the church, right?
[00:49:56]  When you look at the nation, however, and we're saying, okay, can you have, for example, the easy one is Islam, Islam or probably Hinduism.
[00:50:06]  Can you bring these people in and allow them to build their statues to whatever calf god they're building their statue to?
[00:50:12]  Can you allow that to happen in your nation and it not tear the nation apart?
[00:50:17]  Can you have this syncretistic pluralism?
[00:50:20]  And I think that's where they're actually just not making a distinction between the nation and the church and how you have to protect each one according.
[00:50:30]  You know, the nation, you have the civil magistrate who carries the sword.
[00:50:33]  It's not the realm of the church.
[00:50:36]  But again, I don't think that they're even working on a paradigm that allows them to think in categories that way.
[00:50:43]  Right.
[00:50:44]  Let me, so my two cents, a couple of things that I would pick out.
[00:50:47]  I think that's everything you said is good.
[00:50:50]  The superfluous of, you know, breaks my heart and demonic and all those kinds of things.
[00:50:55]  But what I would add is right there at the very end when he said, you know, these guys won't want to be in heaven, you know, because I look at Revelation and it says, you know, that there was a great sea and a great number, you know, greater than anybody could count, you know, made up of every tribe, tongue, and nation.
[00:51:08]  Yeah, that's great.
[00:51:09]  But I thought we already went through this with the woke wars of, you know, 2017, 18, 19, 20.
[00:51:16]  Heaven does not have to be, the ethnic diversity of heaven does not have to be.
[00:51:22]  Represented in every single individual local church.
[00:51:26]  Right?
[00:51:26]  It's, I mean, Vodi Bakum's church doesn't represent heaven.
[00:51:30]  He's currently with Conrad and Bewe in Zambia.
[00:51:32]  And I have it on good authority that there's not a whole lot of Asians or white people, you know, or Hispanics in their church.
[00:51:38]  Their church is, as far as I know, it is almost, if not entirely black, mono ethnic.
[00:51:45]  It's mono ethnic.
[00:51:46]  There are only black people in that church.
[00:51:48]  And God is furious about it.
[00:51:50]  Absolutely.
[00:51:51]  You know that this is sin.
[00:51:52]  And, you know, if Vodi Bakum watched this, he would, you know, he'd be laughing right along with me and saying, yeah, of course, this is stupid.
[00:51:59]  Not every individual local church has to be perfectly ethnically diverse.
[00:52:03]  It depends where you are and who you are.
[00:52:07]  Who are your people?
[00:52:08]  Where are your people?
[00:52:09]  Where do you live?
[00:52:11]  If you live in Oklahoma and it's a particular county that's predominantly white, your church, guess what?
[00:52:17]  Shocker, probably going to be predominantly white.
[00:52:20]  If you live in a border state and there's a lot of Hispanic people there, then you're probably going to have a lot of Hispanic people in your church.

=== Building a Multi-Ethnic Nation (11:28) ===

[00:52:28]  That's all that is perfectly permissible.
[00:52:30]  There is nothing.
[00:52:31]  So, this idea that, well, heaven is perfectly diverse, and so these guys aren't going to like heaven, that's not what we're talking about.
[00:52:37]  Of course, heaven is going to be diverse because God is saving, Christ is saving people from among every tribe, tongue, and nation.
[00:52:42]  The gospel is going out like a little bit of leaven through the whole batch of dough, like a mustard seed growing into an earth encompassing tree and reaching all the nations and praise God for it.
[00:52:51]  But all the nations being in heaven doesn't mean that all the nations have to be in our country.
[00:52:57]  That's the point.
[00:52:58]  The point is that heaven, right?
[00:53:01]  But you do not have the Apostle Paul going to Ethiopia and saying, you need, because all the nations will be in heaven then, you need all the nations in your country now.
[00:53:12]  That is not in scripture.
[00:53:15]  Some reasonable degree of immigration that's legal.
[00:53:19]  And I, as a Christian nationalist, if I was Christian Caesar for the day, I would argue that it would need to be legal, not just legal, but there would need to be a profession of Christ from the adults, at least from the parents.
[00:53:31]  So they would need to be Christian immigrants, legal immigrants, and they would also need to be contributing immigrants, meaning that they're coming and they're bringing the skill that our country currently has need of.
[00:53:42]  They're engineers, they're doctors, they're whatever.
[00:53:46]  If you have something to contribute, if you are going through the legal process, and if you are not coming to just, you know, so that we can import Hinduism, but you're coming as someone who loves the Lord Jesus Christ and loves America and wants to be an American.
[00:54:02]  And not just as a set of propositions or an economic zone, but you've done your homework.
[00:54:07]  You've read the Declaration of Independence.
[00:54:09]  You've looked at American history and you're like, I love that.
[00:54:12]  Your people will be my people and your God.
[00:54:15]  I've given up Hinduism.
[00:54:16]  Your God will be my God.
[00:54:18]  I want to be a Christian.
[00:54:19]  I see Christ, the triune God, is the one true God.
[00:54:22]  I want to be a Christian.
[00:54:22]  Your God will be my God and your people, your history, your heritage.
[00:54:26]  I love that.
[00:54:27]  And I know it's not mine, but I hope by God's grace, generations down the line, that my children's children would be Americans because America is wonderful and Christ is glorious.
[00:54:36]  And also, I'm an engineer and I can fix that bridge over there.
[00:54:40]  Then, all right, we'll take 250,000 of you a year.
[00:54:44]  For the next hundred years and no more.
[00:54:47]  That is not racist.
[00:54:49]  And you can say how you can put it, whatever, it breaks.
[00:54:52]  I'm sure the good fight, if they listen to that, they're like, I probably just broke both of their hearts.
[00:54:57]  Their hearts are just wide open, just broken.
[00:54:58]  But I'm sorry, that is not, none of that is racist.
[00:55:03]  Countries are allowed to do that.
[00:55:05]  And the last thing I'll say, the Aristotle thing that Torba and Khan shared, and then I retook, it was Torba sharing it, and then it was Khan resharing Torba saying Aristotle is right, and then I reshared Khan.
[00:55:17]  But here's the thing.
[00:55:18]  Number one, no one said Aristotle was right about everything he ever said.
[00:55:23]  No one said that once.
[00:55:25]  Two, there were three components.
[00:55:27]  We talked about this last week.
[00:55:28]  Three components in that portion that's talking about Aristotle's thought on this matter.
[00:55:33]  Three components two explicit, one implicit.
[00:55:35]  The two explicit is this multi ethnic nation.
[00:55:39]  Second, democracy as the form of government.
[00:55:43]  So when Eric Kahn says Aristotle's right, he's not saying Aristotle's right, multi ethnic countries don't work ever.
[00:55:49]  No, he's saying Aristotle's right in what Aristotle said.
[00:55:52]  What did Aristotle say?
[00:55:54]  Multi ethnic with a democratic, raw democratic form of government that devolves into an oligarchy, which is what we currently have now.
[00:56:02]  And then the third, and I would argue that it's implicit, but the third implicit element is element number one, multi ethnic.
[00:56:10]  Element number two, democratic form of government.
[00:56:13]  Element number three, because it's Aristotle and he's not a Christian, the third is Christless.
[00:56:18]  And what have all these guys, Eric?
[00:56:20]  I don't know if you remember this.
[00:56:21]  It doesn't feel that long ago for me, but what have they been insisting on?
[00:56:25]  On for the last two years.
[00:56:26]  They've told me, I don't know if they told you, but they told me that if there's anything we cannot have, it's a Christian nation.
[00:56:32]  So I'm simply saying that if we can't have a Christian nation, I tried, I thought that was a good idea.
[00:56:39]  I threw my hat in the ring for a Christian nation that distinctly honors Christ, that adopts a Christian preamble like the Apostles' Creed to our Constitution.
[00:56:47]  But I was told by all these guys who were getting mad on X about you sharing Aristotle, these are the very same guys who told us we cannot, under any circumstances, have a nation that is Christian.
[00:56:57]  There's no such thing.
[00:56:59]  So, if we're conceding to their point, not our point, their point, that there's no such thing as a Christian nation, you cannot have a Christian nation.
[00:57:07]  And our nation is going to just devolve more and more into apostasy from Christ.
[00:57:12]  So, you're going to have a Christless nation with a raw mob rule, kangaroo court, democratic form of government.
[00:57:19]  Then, yes, with those two ingredients, then the third ingredient is true.
[00:57:23]  The more multi ethnic it is, the more factions and divisions you will probably have.
[00:57:28]  I'll give you Japan not a Christian nation, democratic.
[00:57:31]  98% Japanese, and they are commodious.
[00:57:33]  They have safe cities.
[00:57:35]  They have a lot of cohesion.
[00:57:36]  So, not Christian.
[00:57:37]  It's not a Christian nation.
[00:57:38]  It is democratically ruled, and it's 98% mono ethnic.
[00:57:42]  Right.
[00:57:42]  And for the record, what we're saying is we're not saying, oh, you can't have different ethnicities.
[00:57:47]  But what we're saying is you can't have both.
[00:57:49]  You can't have different ethnicities, democratic and Christless.
[00:57:54]  So, let's be a Christian nation that loves Christ and has that as our common denominator, be rooted in Christ, where it's not multiculturalism.
[00:58:05]  It's like Stephen Wolfe talked about.
[00:58:06]  It's monoculture.
[00:58:07]  There may be different ethnicities, but there's one culture, and the culture is an Anglo Protestant culture.
[00:58:13]  Anglo, not meaning that you have to be white of skin, but that you adopt that Christendom, distinctly British, and certainly European Protestant culture that is hundreds, centuries of years old, is tried and tested and true.
[00:58:31]  One of the things that Stephen Wolfe said at the end of his talk at the New Christendom Conference is he said, Well, here are a few of my favorite Anglo Protestants.
[00:58:36]  And he said, Clarence Thomas is one of my favorite.
[00:58:39]  Anglo Protestants, because he is.
[00:58:41]  For all intents and purposes, he embodies that culture, that historic, centuries old, tried and true culture of Anglo Protestantism.
[00:58:52]  That's what we're saying.
[00:58:54]  But to share that Aristotle thing that says, hey, all these different nationalities under one roof with a democratic form of government where your leaders, oligarch leaders, are going to be bringing up grievances to vie for this person's, this group's.
[00:59:13]  Preference to get their vote against this group.
[00:59:16]  That is a recipe.
[00:59:17]  If it's Christless, if it's an oligarchy, mob rule democracy, and it's all these different nationalities under one roof without generations to assimilate, then that is going to be divisive.
[00:59:31]  That's what I took Aristotle saying there.
[00:59:34]  We were making zero comment on everything that Aristotle has ever said.
[00:59:38]  We were making a comment on what he said right there being shared on X.
[00:59:43]  And I'll say it again Aristotle was right.
[00:59:45]  He was right.
[00:59:47]  Eric?
[00:59:48]  Yeah.
[00:59:48]  Any thoughts?
[00:59:49]  The other thing I think that is in play here is the conception that Stephen brings up, right, in his book, Christian Nationalism.
[00:59:56]  It's actually very simple, but it's amazing how this gets warped in our culture today.
[01:00:01]  So he makes the assertion that a nation ought to be able to act in the interest of its own interests.
[01:00:07]  And it's funny because in America, we're basically brainwashed to think that we're not allowed to do that.
[01:00:13]  So you're not allowed to restrict immigration to people who would benefit you.
[01:00:18]  In other words, you're not allowed to restrict immigration in a way that would benefit the nation.
[01:00:22]  Because the nation should have no interests.
[01:00:25]  And you can see the double standard too, because obviously, like, we have all these communities.
[01:00:30]  You know, if you're in America and you're for the black community, that's fine.
[01:00:34]  And you can pick any number, you know, the Chicano movement, you know, Mexicans in America who are all for their culture.
[01:00:42]  It's fine.
[01:00:42]  You can do that.
[01:00:43]  Anybody can do that.
[01:00:44]  But again, the moment that you say Americans ought to act in the American national interest, and to Rush Duny's point, he saw like America is an Anglo Protestant nation.
[01:00:55]  And that is largely European and British.
[01:00:59]  And that's fine for us to say, hey, we want more people who embody what we believe about a nation.
[01:01:06]  There's actually no problem with saying that that's what you want to do.
[01:01:10]  And I would say the same thing if you're in Uganda.
[01:01:13]  If they say, this is the Uganda value, these are our people, culture, language, religion, this is who we are.
[01:01:18]  If you don't like that, you can go somewhere else.
[01:01:21]  There's no problem with them doing that.
[01:01:22]  And I applaud them for doing that.
[01:01:24]  Hungary, Poland, they're all entitled.
[01:01:27]  To do that.
[01:01:28]  But I think that the disease, and it's a suicidal condition of the West, is that we believe we have to be destroyed.
[01:01:35]  The only way to atone for our past sins is that we have to be destroyed and we have to actually encourage our own death.
[01:01:41]  And so I think the challenge here is getting people to wake up and to, and this is, by the way, King's Hall season three.
[01:01:50]  One of the big reasons we've looked back to Christendom and we're looking at nations like Portugal, the world's first global empire.
[01:01:58]  These guys did not believe that they were the scourge of the earth and that they ought to just die because they were so horrible and they ought to let their country be taken over.
[01:02:07]  No, they were like, We're going to build Christendom.
[01:02:10]  We're going to be Christ to every corner of the globe.
[01:02:12]  We truly believe that our culture is distinct and unique and we love it.
[01:02:18]  And the Spanish, you know, just to our east, they're allowed to believe that about their culture too.
[01:02:23]  That's fine.
[01:02:24]  And we're not going to war with them, but we're doing, you know, we're doing us.
[01:02:27]  We have a distinct culture and we're proud of that.
[01:02:30]  Even when you get to guys like Martin Lloyd Jones, People asked him, they said, Are you no longer a Welshman because you're a Christian?
[01:02:37]  And he said, Well, I will say this I'm a Christian first, but I'm a Welshman close second.
[01:02:42]  Like he was very proud of being Welsh.
[01:02:45]  And I read that and I read his biography.
[01:02:47]  It's a banner of truth.
[01:02:48]  And I said, That's beautiful.
[01:02:49]  That's great.
[01:02:50]  When I hear Chalk Knox saying, Give me the black church or I die, I have no problem with that.
[01:02:56]  That's fine.
[01:02:57]  What I have a problem with is that as Anglo American Protestants, we have to hate ourselves.
[01:03:03]  And I think what people are going to have to face is you've got to get over that.
[01:03:06]  You've been lied to.
[01:03:08]  You've been propagandized and catechized by the wicked regime state.
[01:03:13]  And I would just encourage people when you see me or you retweeting something that Aristotle said, you just have to have this thought.
[01:03:20]  Maybe we've been wrong.
[01:03:21]  Maybe the way that we've believed that culture and ethno should work in America, really for the last 60 years, maybe we're wrong.
[01:03:29]  Maybe that's a historical, a non historical way to look at cultures.
[01:03:35]  And then from there, just be willing to hear out the other side of the argument.
[01:03:38]  The problem is, it's never going to happen.
[01:03:40]  When you've got people who say, no, you're automatically a racist, anathematized.
[01:03:45]  And really, what these guys are trying to do is say, don't listen to them.
[01:03:49]  They're dangerous, you know, whatever.
[01:03:52]  And, you know, I think that's going to kill the conversation or has the potential to.

=== Hearing Both Sides of Arguments (02:45) ===

[01:03:56]  But that's why I would drive people back.
[01:03:58]  Well, did they make an argument?
[01:04:00]  Did they make a coherent argument in that video?
[01:04:02]  My answer would be absolutely not.
[01:04:04]  Nope.
[01:04:06]  Yep.
[01:04:06]  Well said.
[01:04:07]  We're going to go to our last commercial break and then we're going to come back and we're going to deal with one, maybe two more clips, but we also want to take a little bit of time.
[01:04:15]  To address some of the questions from our live audience.
[01:04:18]  So, guys, do us a favor, just like last week, if you were with us, go ahead and use this next segment and even during the commercial break to start writing in questions.
[01:04:29]  You need to make it clear that this is a question because sometimes, you know, and I'm not hating on you for it, but sometimes the chat has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand and you guys just start arguing with each other.
[01:04:42]  And that's fine.
[01:04:43]  I get it.
[01:04:43]  I would probably do that too.
[01:04:44]  But if it's meant to be addressed to Eric and myself and Wes, and it's something that you want us to address, Then please put it in a clear format.
[01:04:52]  Say, this is a question for you guys, you know, whatever, so that we actually get to it, so that I know you're not just arguing with, you know, one of the trolls in the chat, which today there are many, many.
[01:05:03]  All right, so here we go commercial break.
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=== Scripture as Highest Authority (14:56) ===

[01:06:42]  Our motto is that kingdoms were never built on salads alone.
[01:06:46]  Eat beef and subdue the earth.
[01:06:48]  And one more thing don't forget to enter the Dominion Ranch Super Summer Giveaway for some delicious Wagyu beef.
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[01:07:02]  America is a country that was founded for the purpose of allowing Christians to do their duty before God, not to have their consciences ruled by the doctrines and commandments of men.
[01:07:10]  Reese Fund exists in order to see the Ten Commandments properly applied, not just as a plaque on the wall, but to actually be used in business as though they're commandments from God that we're supposed to obey.
[01:07:21]  Our goal is to find businesses and to buy them and to build them up.
[01:07:25]  We want to find manufacturing businesses.
[01:07:28]  And use them to make sure that we can maintain our capacity to do things here.
[01:07:32]  Reef Fund, Christian Capital, boldly deployed.
[01:07:39]  All right, one more quick shameless plug.
[01:07:40]  We've got a four and a half, almost five page article this week.
[01:07:44]  Join us on Patreon, and there's always going to be an article that corresponds with the Wednesday live stream.
[01:07:49]  So, this week, our very own Wesley Todd wrote the article.
[01:07:53]  And so, if you're wanting some of the quotes that are in here, some of the scripture, the charts that we showed earlier in the episode are in here.
[01:07:59]  So, if you want the article for this week on actually, but what we're doing in this article, what Wesley did was provide an actual biblical definition of racism.
[01:08:10]  And then, you know, Juxtapose that with what racism has devolved into today.
[01:08:16]  And what is racism today?
[01:08:17]  The source, we made it up.
[01:08:20]  We made it up.
[01:08:21]  What is racism today?
[01:08:22]  It's a made up pretend sin.
[01:08:24]  That is 99% of it.
[01:08:26]  And so the Bible actually does talk about sinful forms of prejudgment, and Wes does a good job getting into that and what that actually is.
[01:08:34]  But what you'll find if you read this article, and we've got it for all of our Patreon members, it's available for you, and every week there's an article that you'll have.
[01:08:41]  But if you read it, what you'll find is that literally 99% Of what is going to be accused of as racism today is not actually something that the Bible would condemn as a sin.
[01:08:54]  So we're not saying it doesn't exist at all, but we need to do our homework and we need to be scriptural and not just submit to the post war consensus.
[01:09:03]  So go to patreon.com forward slash right response ministries.
[01:09:06]  Patreon.com forward slash right response ministries.
[01:09:09]  You guys are putting some good questions in the chat.
[01:09:11]  I see that.
[01:09:12]  Appreciate it.
[01:09:13]  Let's go ahead and get to at least one more clip and then we'll come to the questions.
[01:09:17]  And it's not biblical, Chad.
[01:09:18]  I'll give you a great quote from Stephen Wolfe, who made the case for Christian nationalism.
[01:09:23]  He's like the poster boy of a lot of the Christian nationalist movement.
[01:09:26]  And he admits that he doesn't really know theology in the Bible very well.
[01:09:31]  In fact, listen to what he says in his book.
[01:09:33]  I assume the Reformed theological tradition because he's a Calvinist.
[01:09:37]  And so I make little effort to exegete biblical text.
[01:09:41]  Some readers will complain that I rarely appeal to Scripture to argue for my positions.
[01:09:46]  I understand the frustration, but allow me to explain.
[01:09:49]  I am neither a theologian nor a theologian.
[01:09:52]  Nor a biblical scholar.
[01:09:53]  I have no training in moving from scriptural interpretation to theological articulation.
[01:09:59]  Well, then don't write a book as to how, you know, what, you know, you think the Christian worldview should be on nations, you know?
[01:10:05]  Yeah, what are you making an argument for if not from the text of Scripture?
[01:10:10]  Unless it's from a worldly viewpoint, which is exactly what it is.
[01:10:12]  Unless you don't believe in sola scriptura and you're throwing that out the window.
[01:10:15]  Yeah, this is the flesh right here.
[01:10:19]  Wow.
[01:10:20]  So, I mean, it's just so sad.
[01:10:22]  It's hard to watch.
[01:10:23]  Eric, do you want to, I've got plenty to say, but do you want to address it?
[01:10:26]  Yeah, I've seen this a lot actually.
[01:10:29]  The whole contention that Stephen is making, he's making a distinction on categories, right?
[01:10:34]  If I'm doing political theory, then I am not doing exegetical biblical work.
[01:10:41]  So in his mind, it's categorical.
[01:10:43]  And I think that's a fair distinction.
[01:10:45]  It's a distinction that's been made throughout even church history and political history, especially.
[01:10:50]  But I think taking that to say that Stephen doesn't know the Bible is not what Stephen does.
[01:10:57]  Is advocating here, or he's not saying I'm biblically illiterate and I wrote this book.
[01:11:02]  And so you see the host there unable to follow that distinction and then just saying, well, it's clearly not biblical because he says he doesn't know the Bible.
[01:11:12]  So if he doesn't know the Bible, he's writing an unbiblical thing about a nation, which I think is historically kind of ignorant and a bad argument.
[01:11:23]  Yep.
[01:11:24]  Let me add something with that.
[01:11:28]  This is something you guys, everybody listening, you have to get this through your head.
[01:11:31]  You just need to understand.
[01:11:33]  When Stephen Wolf says, I'm not a theologian, that's because Stephen Wolf still operates as very few do, and I'm including myself here, so I'll happily confess because it's true.
[01:11:45]  Stephen Wolf is a professional, he is an academic, he is an expert.
[01:11:52]  So when he says, I'm not a theologian, what he means is that he is not a certified expert theologian.
[01:11:59]  What he means is he does not have a PhD in theology.
[01:12:02]  For Stephen Wolfe, that's what a theologian is.
[01:12:05]  So when he says, I'm not a theologian, it's the way that our fathers within the Reform, it's the way everyone thought until very recently.
[01:12:13]  So it's, there are tons of guys, you know, Thomas Jefferson or, you know, or whatever, or, you know, George Washington or these guys, they were said, I am not a theologian or I am not, but they were still brilliant men, right or wrong, they were brilliant men.
[01:12:33]  Stephen Wolf knows theology a thousand times better than the two men in that video.
[01:12:40]  Sadly, sadly, he is 10 million times the theologian that those guys are.
[01:12:46]  The reason why he won't call himself a theologian is because Stephen Wolf is an old soul.
[01:12:51]  He is of the sort that still subscribes to an old way of life when titles meant something.
[01:13:00]  And the reason why I said I'll admit, you know, because it doesn't serve me.
[01:13:04]  But I will admit, under Christian nationalism, you see on X, you know, under Christian nationalism, this will not happen anymore.
[01:13:11]  Like, to be completely frank, under Christian nationalism, this is my earnest, I mean this from the bottom of my heart, my earnest prayer.
[01:13:18]  My prayer is that within my children's or at least my grandchildren's lifetime, that Christian nationalism truly would be achieved, that we would have a great Christian nation, and that under that, it'd be all of Christ for all of life, that all of our institutions, every single sphere and realm of life, would be drastically improved to such a degree.
[01:13:36]  That no one in their right mind would listen to Joel Webb on YouTube.
[01:13:41]  Do you know why?
[01:13:43]  The reason why I have a YouTube following, the reason why Kings Hall, not to not picking on you guys, but the reason why is because all of our theologians, we have them, but they all sold us out.
[01:13:58]  They all stabbed us in the back.
[01:14:00]  They all turned on us.
[01:14:01]  That's the problem.
[01:14:02]  And so the reason why we're listening to unaccredited guys, because that's what it is, these two guys in the video, just for the record, These guys are definitely unaccredited.
[01:14:11]  I can tell you that.
[01:14:13]  But the reason why you're listening to unaccredited people is because the credentialed people, they betrayed you.
[01:14:22]  That's why.
[01:14:22]  So when Steve Wolf says, I'm not a theologian, he's not saying I don't know theology.
[01:14:26]  He knows theology better than I do, probably better than Eric does, and certainly better than those two men in that video that we just watched.
[01:14:33]  But when he says, I'm not a theologian, he means by trade, he means I do not have a PhD.
[01:14:40]  Theology.
[01:14:40]  And he still probably at least knows that sola scriptura does not mean scripture is the only source of authority.
[01:14:46]  It is the highest and only infallible source.
[01:14:49]  It's so funny for him to act like, oh, well, sola scriptura, you have to derive all your arguments from scripture.
[01:14:54]  No, tradition is an authority.
[01:14:56]  It's just not over and above.
[01:14:57]  Scripture is the highest authority.
[01:14:59]  So they do not even know the definition, and this one is commonly misconstrued the definition of the sola scriptura alone as the highest authority, not the only, the highest.
[01:15:09]  Sola scriptura.
[01:15:09]  Torah is not saying that scripture is the only authority because scripture itself testifies to other authorities, kings, parents, and pastors, and all these different things.
[01:15:16]  So it's the only infallible authority and it's the highest authority.
[01:15:19]  You're absolutely right.
[01:15:20]  But then the last thing I was going to say is arguing from the Reformed tradition, what Stephen Wolfe is saying, he's saying Calvin did the exegesis.
[01:15:28]  He's saying Luther has done the exegesis.
[01:15:30]  The exegesis has been done.
[01:15:32]  And so then I'm taking the Reformed tradition and then I'm arguing for a political theory off of that, which was Calvin's theory, from the Reformed tradition.
[01:15:43]  I'm not going to rewrite every other book to get to this book.
[01:15:47]  And that's part of the reason, to be honest, that's part of the reason why the church, evangelicals, are constantly regressing.
[01:15:53]  And I'll admit, as a Baptist, we are the worst, the absolute worst with this, is because we despise tradition.
[01:16:00]  And we can't ever stand on the shoulders of giants who came before us and push the ball further down the field.
[01:16:05]  Instead, what we have to do is we have to start from square one, do all the work ourselves.
[01:16:11]  And what's the final analysis?
[01:16:12]  Well, we do all the work that our fathers have already done, and we do it more poorly than they did.
[01:16:17]  Oh, I can't trust that Calvin was right, so I need to go back and I need to do this.
[01:16:23]  And then what you end up with is like a paper mache equivalent of Calvin's institutes and all these, because you couldn't just.
[01:16:31]  You couldn't just.
[01:16:32]  That's what Wolf is doing.
[01:16:33]  He's saying, I'd like to make some progress here.
[01:16:35]  So I'm going to stand on the shoulder of giants.
[01:16:38]  I'm not going to write Bondage in the Will again.
[01:16:40]  It's already been written.
[01:16:42]  I'm not going to write The Institutes of the Christian Religion again.
[01:16:44]  It's already been written.
[01:16:46]  I'm not going to do that.
[01:16:47]  That work has already been done.
[01:16:48]  So then, from the basis of that work, the Reformed Tradition, I'm then going to argue how would the Reformed Tradition apply consistently within the political realm with the polis.
[01:16:59]  And that's what he does.
[01:17:01]  But unfortunately, people read that introduction from Wolf.
[01:17:05]  And it's usually Baptists, I'll admit.
[01:17:07]  And Baptists are so, today's Baptists, modern Baptists are so stupid that, like, I can't even, I won't even name them.
[01:17:14]  I'll try to be kind.
[01:17:15]  But, like, the number of times I've seen it on X, where they're like, look, Stephen Wolf right here, he's telling on himself and conceding the point and admitting that he doesn't, he's not arguing from the scripture.
[01:17:25]  And these are, like, these are reformed guys, too.
[01:17:28]  I'm seeing reformed Baptists, like, guys that I love that are brothers.
[01:17:33]  And I'm like, oh, no.
[01:17:34]  Like, Like, you're telling the entire world that your IQ is less than 85?
[01:17:38]  Why would you do that, brother?
[01:17:39]  Like, I want you to continue to have a job.
[01:17:41]  I want you to be able to preach the word of God and be qualified.
[01:17:43]  Like, why are you telling everyone that you're an idiot?
[01:17:46]  Like, aren't you embarrassed?
[01:17:48]  Like, I seriously, like, there's so many times I'm thumbing through X and I'm looking at my Reformed Baptist brothers and reading there.
[01:17:56]  And I'm like, oh, and I physically, like, sometimes my wife will say, like, what is it?
[01:18:01]  Because I'll start turning red.
[01:18:03]  I'm so embarrassed.
[01:18:04]  I'm like dying of cringe.
[01:18:07]  So, anyways, that just.
[01:18:09]  That clip, but that was pretty much it.
[01:18:10]  Like, those are the clips, and it's just more like that.
[01:18:12]  You can go watch the video from you know Good Fight Ministries, but it's just that's all it is.
[01:18:16]  It's just the most cliche things that Stephen Wolf and we have addressed again and again and again and again with zero substance.
[01:18:26]  It really is.
[01:18:27]  Brian Sauvay said this on X the other day.
[01:18:29]  He said, I finally figured out what Stephen Wolf is.
[01:18:33]  He's an IQ test, and the promise of God, like, that's what Stephen Wolf is, he's an IQ test.
[01:18:39]  And the results are devastating.
[01:18:42]  They're not looking good.
[01:18:43]  They're not looking good.
[01:18:43]  Eric, anything you want to add?
[01:18:45]  Yeah, the other thing I think is interesting going back to Calvin, Stephen was doing this in response to a lot of the Aristotle stuff.
[01:18:53]  He said, Calvin required that his students read Aristotle.
[01:18:57]  It's not that he was favorable to everything Aristotle said.
[01:19:00]  You can look at early church fathers, lots of people.
[01:19:03]  So I find it kind of odd that reform, especially reform pastors, are like, how could you possibly lean on anything that Aristotle said?
[01:19:11]  You know, and one of the things I pointed out in one of our podcasts following that whole incident, that dust up, I said, you know, R.C. Sproul has like a six part series on Ligonier on their website on Aristotle.
[01:19:22]  It's quite good.
[01:19:24]  But I don't remember anybody freaking out when, you know, R.C. Sproul did that.
[01:19:28]  And so I would just point people back to the past.
[01:19:32]  Yes, sola scriptura means it's the ultimate authority and infallible, as Wes pointed out.
[01:19:38]  That doesn't mean that we disregard everything else that's happened.
[01:19:41]  Certainly, the early church fathers, for the most part, you'll find that they were very influenced by Plato, Aristotle.
[01:19:47]  They had read these things later in church history.
[01:19:50]  Obviously, people had read Virgil.
[01:19:53]  Even the founding fathers, like the most read book among them was Plutarch's Lives, because obviously they felt that there were important things to be gleaned.
[01:20:01]  This would have been.
[01:20:01]  Included people like Jonathan Edwards.
[01:20:03]  So I would just encourage people maybe steer away or be cautious of kind of this biblicist argument of, well, I don't see the words Christian nation or Christian prince in any particular verse, therefore it can't be biblical.
[01:20:18]  It's just not typically a historical Christian way of looking at the world.
[01:20:22]  Right.
[01:20:23]  Yep.
[01:20:23]  Well said.
[01:20:24]  All right.
[01:20:24]  Let's take some questions here at the end.
[01:20:27]  What do we got, Nathan?
[01:20:27]  You'll have to scroll through.
[01:20:32]  Maybe start from the top.
[01:20:33]  So the ones asked first.
[01:20:34]  Yeah, we should start from the top.
[01:20:36]  Prioritize.
[01:20:40]  Are you pointing out one with the cursor?
[01:20:43]  I can tackle the top one quick.
[01:20:44]  The question is from August.
[01:20:46]  Doesn't this whole discussion boil down to bearing false witness?
[01:20:49]  Kind of when you call someone racist, you would be bearing false witness against them.
[01:20:53]  And I think that's fair.
[01:20:54]  And I would add, when we take away from God's law, that is, say something that is a sin and call it not a sin, that would be antinomianism.
[01:21:02]  But when we add to it and we add additional categories, when we say, if you do X, You're in sin, you're in transgression of God and His law and His character, but that's not actually in the scriptures.
[01:21:12]  It's not actually a violation of God's law.
[01:21:15]  That would be the sin, not the heresy necessarily, but the sin of legalism.
[01:21:19]  And so, yes, it is a sin to bind the consciences of Christians by calling them a name, so bearing false witness, you're being racist, you're committing the sin of racism, when in fact all they've done is maybe cited a crime statistic or said, hey, I have some concerns about immigration levels, this, that, or the other.
[01:21:37]  So I would say, At some level, you could boil it down.

=== Avoiding False Witness Claims (15:19) ===

[01:21:39]  I don't know if you would agree, probably.
[01:21:41]  It does boil down to you cannot bear false witness against brothers that are not actually sinning against the commands of God.
[01:21:48]  What do you think, Eric?
[01:21:49]  Does a lot of this boil down to bearing false witness?
[01:21:53]  I think I agree.
[01:21:55]  I think there is definitely false witness involved, but I also think you have to factor in bad faith actors.
[01:22:03]  And the reason I factor that in is because several of the people who were most vehemently opposed or vocal in attacking us.
[01:22:13]  I had reached out to several of them on Twitter, on X, in DMs, and I said, Hey, I think a lot of this, if we talked about it, we might be able to clear it up.
[01:22:23]  And I didn't have a single person respond back and say, Yeah, I'd be willing to talk to you.
[01:22:28]  It was pretty much, you know, one said, I'm conflicted.
[01:22:31]  I don't know that I can do that.
[01:22:33]  And I said, Well, hold on.
[01:22:35]  You don't know that you can talk to another brother in Christ to get a better understanding of what his views are.
[01:22:42]  You don't even think that you should do that.
[01:22:44]  What would prohibit you from doing that?
[01:22:46]  In fact, again, to making claims that somebody's a racist, I would probably want to be pretty sure I understood their position before I said that.
[01:22:54]  So that's why I say, like, I think there's just not a lot of, in a lot of these instances, they're trying to destroy you.
[01:23:00]  They hate your ideas.
[01:23:02]  They don't like you.
[01:23:03]  And they've already decided that.
[01:23:04]  And it's not really a fair fight in that way.
[01:23:07]  Right.
[01:23:08]  Yeah.
[01:23:08]  It's not really that they think that we're racist.
[01:23:12]  It's that they don't, they already, you know, decide they didn't like us two years ago because of our eschatology or because of, Whatever, you know, it was because of post millennialism.
[01:23:23]  It was because of patriarchy, right?
[01:23:25]  Like these are the same guys, you know.
[01:23:28]  It's because you're not Baptist enough, you know, or like, or whatever it is, you know, you're too covenantal, you know.
[01:23:35]  So, whether it be our covenant theology or our, you know, gendered piety or an eschatology of optimism, they already decided that we were borderline heretics.
[01:23:49]  And so they're just, but they know they can't quite make that argument because we're not.
[01:23:53]  So, they're just looking for the opportunity.
[01:23:56]  And so, racist is a good one size fits all, you know, like when in doubt.
[01:24:00]  If you can't beat someone in terms of an argument from the basis of substance, then call them a racist.
[01:24:09]  And if you can't call them a racist and beat them, if you're losing even at that, then write a rap song calling them racist.
[01:24:16]  We saw that apostate Kevin Young.
[01:24:17]  I was going to say he did that to Jay Chase Davis.
[01:24:20]  He made a joke about monkeypox.
[01:24:21]  Not at all related to anything race.
[01:24:23]  Right.
[01:24:23]  Called it racist.
[01:24:24]  Nothing was even mentioned about race in this.
[01:24:26]  Yeah.
[01:24:26]  No, that is not racist.
[01:24:30]  Let's get our made up sins categories correct.
[01:24:33]  That's.
[01:24:34]  Homophobia, aka godly, righteous indignation towards sodomy.
[01:24:40]  So, yeah, were you going to say something, Eric?
[01:24:43]  Yeah, I think the other thing is just on our side, in our camp, one of the things we have to be aware of is just the historical phenomenon.
[01:24:49]  So, if you go back to, say, France, and, you know, Jean Raspail and his book, I'll think of the title here in a minute.
[01:24:59]  Somebody's going to probably put that in the comments.
[01:25:02]  But writing against immigration, it's a banned book.
[01:25:04]  He was a Roman Catholic, but writing against the problems.
[01:25:07]  You read that and you go back and you say, okay, well, what did they say to him and to the other people who said maybe mass influx of Islam into France in the early 20th century is not a good idea?
[01:25:20]  Immediately, you're going to, it's the name calling, right?
[01:25:22]  You're a fascist.
[01:25:24]  So I think just being aware of that, like we're going to have to navigate those waters and realize that, you know, the pithy quote, right?
[01:25:31]  When their argument has failed, they'll call you a racist and a fascist and a Nazi and all those things.
[01:25:37]  No, it's coming.
[01:25:38]  And, you know, More or less, a lot of times that could mean you're over the target.
[01:25:43]  Yes.
[01:25:44]  Okay, next question.
[01:25:44]  Camp of the Saints is the book.
[01:25:46]  I'm sorry.
[01:25:46]  Camp of the Saints.
[01:25:47]  That's a good one.
[01:25:48]  This was a good question from Roland Scooter.
[01:25:50]  He said Can a Western Christian nation still limit non Western Christian immigration?
[01:25:55]  So let's say it's these United States of America.
[01:25:58]  The person that wants to immigrate into the country is a Christian.
[01:26:03]  So they're devoted to Christ, but it's from a non Western nation.
[01:26:08]  So it's a Christian Somalian, or it's a Christian somebody from the Sudan, or whatever.
[01:26:14]  And so he's asking, you know, if they're Christian, do you have to let them in, basically?
[01:26:19]  Or can you still limit and say, yeah, you're Christian and that's great, but you're from a non Western nation that's less compatible in terms of its culture with our nation, and therefore we're going to take, you know, we're only going to take 10,000 Christian Somalians, whereas we're willing to take 500,000 Christians from Ireland.
[01:26:46]  On an annual basis.
[01:26:47]  And my answer, I'll let you guys go and I can give some reasons why, but my short answer would be absolutely yes.
[01:26:54]  Yep.
[01:26:54]  Yes, you're allowed to do that.
[01:26:56]  Eric, Wes?
[01:26:58]  Yeah, no, I would say absolutely you are.
[01:27:01]  Certainly there's going to be a number of factors, right?
[01:27:03]  If it's like, let's say Somalia and you have, you know, 10,000 Somalian Christians who are fleeing Muslim persecution, right?
[01:27:11]  That may factor into the decision, right?
[01:27:14]  That you want to be hospitable to brothers in Christ.
[01:27:17]  But the question is, can you?
[01:27:19]  And I think the answer is yes.
[01:27:21]  Yeah.
[01:27:22]  The nation is under no moral obligation from God to let everyone who professes Christ in.
[01:27:28]  Nope.
[01:27:28]  I was going to say, too, commodious living, it is at some level, so we share Christ, but it is a function of sharing other particulars.
[01:27:34]  The family unit, a husband, wife, children, they share a home, they share a diet, they share holidays, they share a religion, they share all of those things, and those help towards a commodious experience.
[01:27:46]  The family writ large, broader, going to the national level, the more you share, so again, a language, a background, a heritage, the holidays that you keep.
[01:27:54]  The more that you share of that, the more generally, at an earthly level, commodious life is going to be.
[01:27:59]  And so, telling people, even in earnest, good people that are Christians, I'm sorry, you barely speak this language.
[01:28:05]  You don't know any of our holidays.
[01:28:06]  You have no familiarity with even how to drive here.
[01:28:09]  It's just not going to improve life for you.
[01:28:11]  You're going to be out of place.
[01:28:12]  You're not going to recognize anything.
[01:28:14]  Me, myself, it's going to be more difficult for us here in this nation.
[01:28:18]  It's not a good deal for either.
[01:28:19]  And so, we want you to sanctify and work hard in your nation to make it better where you actually know what's going on there.
[01:28:24]  The Christian nation absolutely can, it's not required to.
[01:28:28]  But can and maybe more often than not should say, We're sorry, we're here for us.
[01:28:33]  Amen.
[01:28:34]  And that's the beauty of Christian nationalism is one of the ways that it gets painted by the opponents of Christian nationalism is that it's this exclusive white American thing.
[01:28:47]  It's not.
[01:28:48]  When I say I'm a Christian nationalist, what I'm saying is that I want to see every single one of the nations become Christian.
[01:28:54]  And because I'm post millennial, not only do I want to see it, I believe that it will be done.
[01:28:59]  I may not see it, may not be done in my lifetime, but all the nations will be Christian.
[01:29:04]  I absolutely believe that.
[01:29:05]  So it's not arguing for American superiority from here until the end of time that if Christ tarries for 10,000 years, America will always exist and will always be the best nation on the planet.
[01:29:17]  No, no, no.
[01:29:18]  It's just saying America should be Christian, and so should Somalia, and so should China, and so all of them should be Christian.
[01:29:24]  And one way to ensure that the nations become Christian.
[01:29:30]  If Christians actually work on their nation.
[01:29:35]  And for anybody who's like, well, that sounds a little bit hypocritical.
[01:29:38]  Didn't you write Fight by Flight?
[01:29:40]  I did.
[01:29:41]  But I did not leave Somalia.
[01:29:43]  I left California to another state in my nation.
[01:29:47]  And it's also, just for the record, I've said it several times, but there's always new listeners who don't know.
[01:29:52]  It's the state that I was born and raised in.
[01:29:55]  I didn't flee my heritage of California to go to foreign Texas.
[01:30:00]  No, I actually.
[01:30:02]  I chose to flee Texas, where I was born and raised, that I loved to go to California with a missionary mindset because people needed Jesus.
[01:30:11]  And then once I started having kids and grew up a little bit, I realized California is probably not the best place to raise a family.
[01:30:18]  And yes, people here need Jesus, but so do people in Texas.
[01:30:21]  And Texas is where Mima and Papa are, and Grandma and Grandpa, and both sides of the family my wife's parents, my parents, in laws, outlaws.
[01:30:29]  I have 25 extended family members within a 12 mile radius of where I live now.
[01:30:34]  We left all that.
[01:30:35]  When we went to California, because we had to go to the mission field.
[01:30:38]  And after being in the mission field for 10 years, and for the record, leaving a healthy church behind that's doing great, I thought that it was strategic and wise and prudent to come back home.
[01:30:49]  That does not apply to being a native, born and raised Somalian, and then saying, well, because things are hard and I'm a Christian, I'm allowed to enter into whatever nation I want.
[01:31:03]  I'll go a little farther and say it could be a violation of the fifth commandment to have a family that worked.
[01:31:07]  Say your farm for five generations, things get hard and you just leave.
[01:31:10]  Now, there are legitimate cases, Canada, the tyranny there.
[01:31:13]  But if it's just things are average and like, I'd rather make 60,000 driving Uber in Austin, like, no, you might be dishonoring your fathers who worked and tried to make your country better for generations before you.
[01:31:23]  Right.
[01:31:23]  Can I see real quick Josh Haywood?
[01:31:25]  Scroll down a little bit.
[01:31:27]  Josh Haywood, he says, Oh, you know what?
[01:31:31]  This is a good one.
[01:31:31]  Right before that, Johnny Johnston.
[01:31:34]  Johnston.
[01:31:37]  How would you say that?
[01:31:38]  Johnston?
[01:31:38]  Johnston.
[01:31:39]  Johnston.
[01:31:40]  Just so many Johns in there.
[01:31:42]  I love it.
[01:31:43]  Okay.
[01:31:43]  He says, Do any.
[01:31:45]  Of you have an opinion on white Christian American men finding wives in Asia?
[01:31:50]  They are Christian and by nature, really more so by culture, submissive and want children, I think is what he's saying.
[01:32:00]  So they're submissive, they want children, while women here in America prefer cats and wine to marriage and family.
[01:32:08]  100% true.
[01:32:09]  I get it.
[01:32:10]  What do you guys think?
[01:32:11]  I have my answer, but Eric, let's go to you.
[01:32:13]  Oh, man, the cats.
[01:32:15]  That always gets me.
[01:32:16]  Taylor Swift with her cat around her neck.
[01:32:18]  Yeah, it's wonderful.
[01:32:20]  Yeah, I still think that the, you know, most people, I think naturally are going to prefer people from their culture.
[01:32:27]  Again, you know, I think most of the people that I know who have like traveled to foreign countries, I know you mentioned China, but I think sometimes we get like this idealistic view that like European trad wives are just going to be so much better than American women.
[01:32:43]  And so I think some of that is, I've known some of the situations where that's happened and there's a lot of cultural issues.
[01:32:50]  That makes even a marriage, if it can make a culture not commodious, it can also do that in a marriage.
[01:32:55]  So I think that can be, you know, maybe it's a little LARP y, at least from my perspective, that they're so much better.
[01:33:02]  But even then, you get into the cultural distinctives, language barriers, and stuff like that.
[01:33:08]  I think that would make it more difficult.
[01:33:11]  So I would tend to say, no, I still think it's, look, there are good Christian women in America.
[01:33:16]  I know this for a fact.
[01:33:18]  And that's certainly where I would have my son start.
[01:33:21]  Yeah.
[01:33:21]  That's good.
[01:33:22]  I was going to say there are churches that exist that are full of, like Eric said, good, godly women.
[01:33:28]  I would start there within the states where you share a language and share a culture.
[01:33:31]  But I don't see anything necessarily in the Bible that would prohibit it.
[01:33:34]  The Bible says that a man who finds a wife finds a good thing.
[01:33:37]  If you really, for some reason, feel like that is the best shot, I think the Bible would permit.
[01:33:42]  Now, it may not necessarily be the best, but I don't think there's sinning in that.
[01:33:47]  Right.
[01:33:47]  I would have the same answer.
[01:33:48]  I think start at home.
[01:33:50]  But I understand what you're saying.
[01:33:51]  America is just absolutely drenched in feminism, and sadly, the church is no exception.
[01:33:56]  If the church is an exception, it's only the exception in the sense that feminism will probably die slower.
[01:34:03]  It'll actually be worse in the church than in the world because the world has moved on.
[01:34:07]  Transgenderism has, you know, Rosario Butterfield said this.
[01:34:10]  Transgenderism, for all intents and purposes, has effectively killed feminism outside of the church.
[01:34:15]  But the church, you know, good old church, always 10 years behind, feminism is still alive and well.
[01:34:20]  There's really only one context in America where feminism still.
[01:34:23]  Thrives at its peak, and that's the evangelical church, sadly.
[01:34:27]  So, I hear you.
[01:34:30]  But Wes and Eric are also right, and I know pastorally, you know, Eric knows pastorally, there are godly American Christian women who would love to be wives and mothers.
[01:34:39]  We know this because we pastor them.
[01:34:42]  And so, please do not pass over them, you know, to just get a Filipino wife or whatever.
[01:34:49]  But all that being said, I agree with Wes.
[01:34:50]  I know Eric agrees as well, because this is the big question.
[01:34:54]  This would be another, you know, gotcha, we're going to get you.
[01:34:57]  He's about to hang himself.
[01:34:58]  All right.
[01:34:58]  Nope.
[01:34:59]  You're not going to see me hang myself because I'm perfectly fine with interethnic marriage.
[01:35:05]  Interethnic marriage is absolutely biblically permissible.
[01:35:09]  And there are some groups which I won't name.
[01:35:12]  I don't think it's helpful.
[01:35:14]  But there are some groups who have said so far as actually saying that the children of interethnic marriages are excrement.
[01:35:27]  And I don't like it.
[01:35:29]  I think that that's sinful.
[01:35:31]  So if you don't like that, that's fine.
[01:35:35]  But that's not new Christendom.
[01:35:37]  And that is not the right response.
[01:35:39]  That is not our position.
[01:35:40]  So you can use that and say, I found a smoking gun.
[01:35:43]  And you can take that smoking gun.
[01:35:45]  And you can shoot that ministry, but not ours, because that is not our position.
[01:35:50]  We think that that statement, the children of interethnic marriages are excrement, we think that that statement is sinful.
[01:35:58]  I think that that's an excrement statement.
[01:36:00]  I think it's a terrible thing to say.
[01:36:02]  And I think it is also, most importantly, objectively and biblically untrue.
[01:36:06]  So if you want to marry a wife from an Asian country, I believe it's permissible.
[01:36:12]  However, I do think that you should start at home.
[01:36:15]  I think you have an obligation, especially to your sisters in Christ here.
[01:36:19]  Who are often passed over by men who, I don't know, who just.
[01:36:26]  They're 35, looking for a 22 year old.
[01:36:28]  Exactly.
[01:36:29]  They've postponed marriage and they have a prolonged adolescence and those kinds of things.
[01:36:34]  So, wife the woman at home first if you can.
[01:36:38]  But yes, of course, it's permissible.
[01:36:40]  Okay, another question.
[01:36:43]  Oh, yeah.
[01:36:43]  Okay, so Josh Haywood, coming back to him.
[01:36:45]  Given that we have broken all three of Aristotle's rules for a successful political structure, what.
[01:36:52]  What do you see as?
[01:36:53]  What do you see as our option to see a flourishing society form again?

=== Revival and Better Laws in Israel (09:18) ===

[01:36:58]  Then the second, like, you know, my answer.
[01:37:01]  What do you see as our options to see a flourishing society?
[01:37:06]  Okay.
[01:37:07]  Yeah, I don't think we're going to be able to constitution even harder.
[01:37:10]  I do not believe we are going to, our sacred democracy, our way out of this one.
[01:37:15]  I'll give my answer.
[01:37:19]  It's going to be a Caesar, it's going to be a monarchy.
[01:37:21]  I'm just, I'm, I'm saying it.
[01:37:22]  I'll come back and explain that if you guys want more explanation, but I'm going to turn it to Eric and say, like, what do you think?
[01:37:27]  I don't think we're voting our way out of this.
[01:37:29]  I just don't.
[01:37:29]  What do you think, Eric?
[01:37:31]  Yeah, I don't think so.
[01:37:33]  I think an interesting case study, you know, one of the things I like to do is go back in history and say, like, how have people tended to write the ship?
[01:37:40]  And I think there's a number of ways to answer that question.
[01:37:43]  I think one of the things we have to realize, and it's hard as Americans to realize this, but somebody like Franco in Spain recognized this in his day.
[01:37:52]  That perhaps a lot of the ideals that they had imbibed in what is our conception of democracy today is really from the French Revolution, right?
[01:38:03]  And so a lot of it was like, well, we need to obviously, they're going to have one solution for taking back their country.
[01:38:09]  But I think you have to at least look at it because it was successful.
[01:38:13]  And they really did restore it largely for a time to Christianity and putting down communism and stuff like that.
[01:38:20]  I think what Franco also realized.
[01:38:23]  Was democracy kind of the perfect host for leftism, right?
[01:38:28]  And the reason it was, like, it was the Republican Party in Spain were the commies, right?
[01:38:34]  And so they were the ones that were like, well, let's turn it over to the people.
[01:38:37]  They used extreme violence to incite, you know, political unrest and stuff like that in the country.
[01:38:42]  It functionally took one strong leader to right the ship.
[01:38:46]  Now, again, that's not going to be the case in every country.
[01:38:49]  And I understand in America, you know, you're going to have your challenges.
[01:38:53]  It might be that you have.
[01:38:55]  A sort of aristocratic elite who write the ship.
[01:38:59]  Maybe it's a combination of people.
[01:39:01]  I know I've seen people, you know, positive.
[01:39:04]  Maybe it's a combination of an Elon Musk type guy with a Trump type guy and a lot of other players behind the scenes.
[01:39:10]  You got to work within the system you have.
[01:39:13]  So I certainly think that's true.
[01:39:17]  Everybody I've talked to on this issue, right?
[01:39:19]  We talk about a Christian prince.
[01:39:20]  We talk about a lot of times when those Christian princes in history came on the scene, it was somewhat unexpected.
[01:39:26]  Even before the Civil War in Spain, nobody was like, oh, we're going to use functionally a dictator to right this ship.
[01:39:34]  And then they go through a civil war.
[01:39:36]  Franco emerges and everybody's like, yeah, he's the guy.
[01:39:40]  And that's just kind of what happened.
[01:39:42]  So I think some of it's a bit of wait and see.
[01:39:46]  And I don't know that I, but I do agree with you, Joel.
[01:39:49]  I think that if you think that liberal democracy is going to solve this problem, I think that you're, I think that's incorrect.
[01:39:56]  And historically, that has not been true.
[01:39:59]  Yeah.
[01:39:59]  I was going to say, I think of Gandalf where he says, things are in motion now that cannot be undone.
[01:40:05]  I don't think there are options, as in, like, well, if the Heritage Project does this right, we can kind of steer.
[01:40:10]  Well, you notice, I think of Russia and the Bolshevik Revolution, it fractured, fractured, fractured.
[01:40:14]  The Tsar stepped down early in the 1910s.
[01:40:18]  And up to 1917, they had this.
[01:40:19]  Provisional government that was barely held together.
[01:40:22]  And it was Lenin and the Bolsheviks that eventually seized power, navigated through it, took over, commandeered the Red Army, crushed opposition.
[01:40:29]  So, same thing happened in 1930s Germany.
[01:40:31]  There's like six different political parties, and then Hitler became chancellor.
[01:40:35]  What's going to happen, I think, is things are going to devolve, devolve, devolve, fracture, fracture, fracture, and someone's going to come out of that.
[01:40:40]  And there's not going to be some group able to kind of navigate and steer the ship.
[01:40:45]  We'll see who comes out of that mess one way or another.
[01:40:47]  But I don't know that there's a way to take, we were talking about it earlier, the angry young men.
[01:40:52]  They've been disenfranchised, they can't afford a home.
[01:40:54]  The women that are their options to marry are SSRI zombies.
[01:40:59]  Their jobs have been taken away.
[01:41:01]  These young men aren't going away.
[01:41:04]  Something's going to happen with them.
[01:41:06]  We want it to be Christian.
[01:41:07]  That's the goal of everything that we're doing right here.
[01:41:09]  Christian men grounded in the Christian faith to actually do it right.
[01:41:13]  But something's going to happen one way or another.
[01:41:15]  We would hope to have an influence in that.
[01:41:16]  We would hope that it would go in a godly manner.
[01:41:19]  But there might not be controlling it.
[01:41:20]  History may have put in motion the things that will lead to whatever comes next, one way or another.
[01:41:26]  Right.
[01:41:26]  The other thing I would say, Joel, real quick, I know your answer is going to be amazing.
[01:41:31]  No, The one thing I would say to Wes's point, usually historically, what this always comes down to is who has the political will to act.
[01:41:40]  This is something that Christians do not currently in mass have the stomach for, which is you've got to be willing to exert political power to achieve your ends.
[01:41:50]  And it can make people uncomfortable.
[01:41:53]  But look, you read the history of Old Testament Israel, you're going to find the exact same thing.
[01:41:57]  It's going to be the guy or A group, it could be a few guys, but functionally, as you know, Wes said, you've got to have people with the political will to act and the stomach for it to push their agenda.
[01:42:12]  And as you said, hopefully, a Christian one that's good.
[01:42:17]  Yeah, I was just gonna say, both historically and then in terms of biblical history, you know, so with Israel and the Old Testament, um, most of the time, I've said this multiple times at this point, but most of the time, it's um.
[01:42:32]  It's top down revival and not bottom up.
[01:42:35]  I'm not saying that God can't do that.
[01:42:37]  God does what he wills.
[01:42:40]  And if God wants a bottom up revival, it won't be because we stood in his way.
[01:42:46]  By God's grace, we're going to do everything we can as Christians and as ministers to preach the gospel, to do the work of an evangelist, to disciple our children, to wash our wives in the word, all these different things.
[01:42:57]  So, if God wants to change the nation by just converting 50 plus 1% of all the individuals and giving them new hearts and discipling them and how to apply all of Christ to all of life in such a way that it filters down into our elections and our politics, great.
[01:43:12]  That's what I'm describing when I say bottom up revival.
[01:43:15]  If God wants to do bottom up revival, awesome.
[01:43:19]  Yeah.
[01:43:20]  That'd be a lot more painless.
[01:43:23]  It'd be the easier way, less riding in the streets and those kinds of things.
[01:43:26]  So, that'd be great.
[01:43:28]  And if that doesn't happen, it won't be because we didn't want it.
[01:43:31]  And that we weren't working for it.
[01:43:33]  Because, yeah, I'm doing podcasts, but I'm a local pastor.
[01:43:39]  I'm preaching the gospel.
[01:43:40]  We're seeing people come to faith in Jesus.
[01:43:42]  Baptisms are happening all the time with real converts, people coming to Christ.
[01:43:48]  So, yeah, that'd be great.
[01:43:49]  But historically speaking and biblically speaking, it's usually not bottom up, it's usually top down.
[01:43:55]  What I mean by that is it's not that preachers go out throughout the people of Israel.
[01:44:01]  Preach the gospel, individuals in Israel get saved, and once over half of them get saved, 50% plus one, they then elect a better king who then enacts better laws.
[01:44:13]  That's not the way it goes.
[01:44:15]  It's usually the people are degenerate, they hate God, and they're faithless, right?
[01:44:20]  Because we're talking about Israel, right?
[01:44:21]  The very few times in Israel's history are they faithful.
[01:44:24]  Most of the time, they're faithless.
[01:44:27]  But God, in His mercy, causes a succession of three wicked kings in a row.
[01:44:33]  To finally end, and Josiah takes the throne.
[01:44:37]  And then Josiah says to the people, I was not duly elected, and you do not want righteousness in the land because you're degenerate.
[01:44:45]  But guess what?
[01:44:46]  I don't care.
[01:44:47]  You will have righteousness whether you like it or not.
[01:44:49]  If your hearts are unchanged, who cares?
[01:44:53]  But outwardly, you are going to behave like people who fear Yahweh.
[01:44:58]  And all the high places built to idols and the 90 foot statue to some demon Hindu god in Houston, Texas, right now, it's all going to be melted down.
[01:45:07]  In some cases, Moses said, Hey, we're going to burn down that idol and you're going to drink it.
[01:45:11]  Right?
[01:45:12]  That is how God did revival in the Old Testament.
[01:45:15]  It was not bottom up, it wasn't.
[01:45:17]  It was top down.
[01:45:18]  It's wicked people with wicked rulers, but then one righteous guy in the providence of God.
[01:45:23]  He arises to the top, he becomes king, and he begins to enact righteous laws before the people have righteous hearts.
[01:45:31]  But the righteous laws in the pedagogical function of the law, it functions as a tutor, begins to shape the hearts of the people, and that righteous law in righteous Culture outwardly actually provides the most conducive backdrop for true gospel preaching to hit the ears of people who are actually aware that they're sinners in need of the gospel and people actually get converted.
[01:45:52]  This is what God does.
[01:45:54]  He's done it again and again and again.
[01:45:56]  He did it all throughout the Old Testament.
[01:45:58]  He's done it all throughout church history.
[01:46:00]  He didn't just stop with Israel for the last 2,000 years and multiple different nations.
[01:46:03]  He's done the same.
[01:46:04]  And to think that he won't do it in America because God will stop his pattern, his MO, because he respects our democracy and classical liberalism too much.
[01:46:14]  To make us uncomfortable is, I think, arrogant.

=== Apostasy and Democratic Comfort (14:00) ===

[01:46:17]  So I'm not the extremist here.
[01:46:19]  It sounds extreme because you're sold out to the post war consensus.
[01:46:22]  But what I'm saying is, I'm saying what God has always done, statistically, in terms of likelihoods, it is far more likely that God would keep doing the thing he always has than God doing a new thing that he never has or virtually never has.
[01:46:36]  And you might say, well, but that's not our founding.
[01:46:39]  Listen, our founding as a constitutional, number one, it wasn't democracy, it was a constitutional republic, and we don't have it anymore.
[01:46:45]  I'd love if we did, but we don't.
[01:46:47]  I like constitutional republics.
[01:46:49]  Wish we had one, but we don't.
[01:46:51]  But here's the deal.
[01:46:51]  We did not start in a vacuum out of thin air, ex nihilo, with this Christian constitutional republic.
[01:46:57]  You know where that came from?
[01:46:59]  It was the product descended from generations and centuries from another place, namely Great Britain, with another government, namely monarchy.
[01:47:07]  1,200 years.
[01:47:09]  1,200 years of a Christian monarchy is what produced a Christian constitutional republic.
[01:47:16]  You know what has never produced a Christian constitutional republic?
[01:47:19]  Ever?
[01:47:20]  Classical liberalism.
[01:47:24]  That one hasn't.
[01:47:25]  Classical liberalism is the fruit of Christendom.
[01:47:29]  Classical liberalism has only produced secularism.
[01:47:32]  Yeah.
[01:47:33]  So, all right, let's do maybe one more question.
[01:47:36]  Let's scroll down.
[01:47:37]  One thing that I got to say, we're coming up on the end of our early bird pricing.
[01:47:41]  So, this is August 31st, 11 59 p.m. Central Time.
[01:47:46]  It's over.
[01:47:47]  And the price will go up, and it's going up a decent bit.
[01:47:50]  But until that point, you've got about a week and a half left $140 for an adult.
[01:47:54]  $140, it's one of the lowest prices we've ever offered.
[01:47:57]  For the most value we've ever offered, we have like 15 speakers, three days, eight main sessions, four hour and a half long panels.
[01:48:04]  You need to sign up.
[01:48:05]  So come check out the conference.
[01:48:08]  And we're trying to get the best of both worlds here.
[01:48:11]  We've got Stephen Wolfe.
[01:48:13]  We've got Orrin McIntyre, who is great on like elite theory and just wrote The Total State.
[01:48:18]  You've got Stephen Wolfe, who's going to come from the classical two kingdom perspective and the Protestant magisterial reform perspective, the case for Christian nationalism.
[01:48:26]  But that's not the only thing we're doing.
[01:48:28]  We also have Jeff Durbin, who is a theonomist.
[01:48:29]  We've got David Reese, who is a theonomist.
[01:48:31]  We've got Who else?
[01:48:32]  We've got Dusty Devers, you know, and so we've got multiple different perspectives.
[01:48:36]  We've even got Steve Dace.
[01:48:38]  Yep.
[01:48:38]  Steve Dace, who is, I believe, a Baptist evangelical, right?
[01:48:42]  Southern Baptist, or something close to it.
[01:48:45]  But here's the common denominator with all these guys they're all fighters.
[01:48:50]  None of them are going to just roll over and say, oh, we lose down here.
[01:48:53]  All these guys are fighters.
[01:48:55]  And some of the differences between, you know, Aristotle versus, you know, Aquinas versus Van Til and all these kinds of things, or post mill versus, you know, dispensational pre mill, which you guys know, if you listen to the show.
[01:49:07]  I'm not a fan.
[01:49:09]  I do not like dispensationalism.
[01:49:12]  But Steve Dace is a brother in the Lord and he fights.
[01:49:14]  He fights more than some of, honestly, some of our post mill brothers.
[01:49:20]  They say hashtag, you know, that post mill and we win down here.
[01:49:24]  But they think we win 50,000 years from now.
[01:49:27]  And Steve Dace thinks we'll probably eventually lose.
[01:49:30]  But Steve Dace is saying, yeah, and we'll lose over my dead body.
[01:49:33]  I'd rather have that guy.
[01:49:34]  I'd rather have the guy who's convinced we're going to lose, like Theo did.
[01:49:38]  One last time, we'll ride out.
[01:49:39]  He thought we were going to lose.
[01:49:40]  We're going to ride to our deaths, but he's going to fight at least.
[01:49:42]  I'd rather have that guy than the guy who's just going to hide out and say, hey, our great, great, great, great grandchildren, they'll win.
[01:49:49]  So, anyways, $140.
[01:49:50]  It's a good price.
[01:49:51]  Go to rightresponseconference.com.
[01:49:53]  Rightresponseconference.com.
[01:49:56]  Sign up for our conference today.
[01:49:58]  Okay, one more question.
[01:49:59]  What do we got?
[01:50:01]  Is that the last one, Nathan, or are there more?
[01:50:03]  Can you scroll?
[01:50:04]  Last one.
[01:50:05]  Okay, here we go.
[01:50:05]  This is Euclid.
[01:50:06]  He says, every Democrat in federal office, other than a handful of Jews and Muslims, Claims, I'd say a little bit more than a handful there, but a handful of Jews and Muslims claims to be Christian.
[01:50:17]  Could it be that the fight in America isn't against secularist, but apostate Christians?
[01:50:23]  Eric, what do you think?
[01:50:26]  That's a good question.
[01:50:27]  It is.
[01:50:29]  Maybe I take the middle road here.
[01:50:32]  It's called We Do a Little Tim Keller.
[01:50:33]  We take the middle way.
[01:50:36]  But I think it's probably, that's hard to pinpoint.
[01:50:39]  I would say it's probably a lot of both.
[01:50:41]  There's certainly a lot of apostasy.
[01:50:44]  That has spread across the country.
[01:50:47]  And at the same point, it's like you've also brought so many people in from other countries through illegal forced immigration.
[01:50:55]  They're certainly pagan and were never Christians.
[01:51:00]  So I would actually say you'd have to look probably at the demographics and that.
[01:51:06]  You can look at certainly past generations and say apostate for sure.
[01:51:09]  I don't know about today.
[01:51:13]  Good point.
[01:51:13]  Wes, any thoughts?
[01:51:15]  I was thinking about the comment because I saw it and was kind of considering.
[01:51:19]  I think one thing that's cool that's happening is as we talk, as Christians used to talk, there's almost been a narrowing and a winnowing that people are like, this is why I could never call myself a Christian.
[01:51:27]  This is why I don't like Christianity.
[01:51:29]  So hopefully, as a rooted and grounded muscular Christianity continues to, I would hope, dominate the public square, there will be people that self select themselves out and say, I could never touch that name.
[01:51:39]  I could never be associated with it.
[01:51:42]  I think that would be really helpful to get people where, because we're in a negative world, it's not a positive thing to bear the name of Christ, to have your membership at your local Episcopalian church kind of.
[01:51:51]  As a badge when you go to run for public office.
[01:51:53]  So, in a negative world where it doesn't carry that positive connotation and the Christianity that people know and think of as Christianity like ours that gets labeled with all sorts of things, hopefully they'll do that themselves and they'll say, Yeah, I'm much closer to a secularist, I'm agnostic, and Christianity is just not for me.
[01:52:12]  But that is a real dynamic.
[01:52:14]  Like, how do you deal with people that say, Oh, I'm a Christian, I love Jesus, and then go on and legislate the murder of children?
[01:52:19]  Right.
[01:52:19]  Yeah, it's tough because I think it's both positive and negative.
[01:52:23]  It is a positive thing.
[01:52:24]  And this is something that I think some of us who are like, you know, like we actually are real Christians.
[01:52:29]  We're not feminist.
[01:52:30]  We're not, you know, like we actually believe what the Bible says.
[01:52:34]  I think we miss this, but I think it matters and it's true.
[01:52:37]  It is a good thing that we have never had a president of the country who didn't at least profess to be a Christian.
[01:52:43]  That's actually a positive thing.
[01:52:45]  So, like, and this came up a lot in some of the, you know, the old GC, you know, in all the group chats that, you know, with different pastors and guys, you know, arguing back and forth when during the primaries.
[01:52:56]  GOP primaries with Vivek Ramaswamy.
[01:52:59]  And, you know, it was like, you know, some guys, about half of them were saying, like, we like him because he seems conservative and he's, you know, he can speak well.
[01:53:07]  He's got good rhetoric.
[01:53:09]  He's really conservative.
[01:53:10]  He knows what time it is.
[01:53:11]  He's on it.
[01:53:12]  And then the other half, and I was part of the other half, was saying, yeah, I like him.
[01:53:17]  And maybe you make him press secretary, you know, or something like that.
[01:53:21]  You know, like maybe there's a place for him in the, you know, GOP administration, Lord willing, if, if, If Republicans win, but not president.
[01:53:31]  And the reason why is because, yeah, he's conservative, but he's a Hindu.
[01:53:38]  And once you open that box, here's the deal.
[01:53:40]  So it's like, yeah, but Joe Biden claims to be a Christian and he hates God.
[01:53:44]  Yes, yes, indeed.
[01:53:45]  100%.
[01:53:47]  Nancy Pelosi claims to be a Catholic.
[01:53:48]  She hates God.
[01:53:49]  Uh huh.
[01:53:50]  Yes, indeed.
[01:53:52]  But once you break the mold for your conservative Hindu, who actually embodies in many ways more Christian virtues than the professing Christian Joe Biden.
[01:54:02]  Or Nancy Pelosi, or you know, go down the list.
[01:54:06]  Um, Vivek might be good for four years, but then you inevitably will get the Muslim who, um, who is not conservative in any Christian sense, but actually hates the triune God and hates the West and hates Christian values even more than the secularist.
[01:54:27]  And, um, it is a good thing that that box has not been opened yet, is my point.
[01:54:31]  The solution.
[01:54:32]  The solution is for the nation to turn back to Christ, and that when somebody professes the name of Christ, it would mean something.
[01:54:38]  The solution is not to say because so many profess Christ's name and don't mean anything by it, then we shouldn't say that the mere profession has any value.
[01:54:47]  No, the profession does have.
[01:54:49]  The solution is not to say because so many people say they're Christians and they don't mean it, saying you're a Christian is not valuable.
[01:54:57]  No, it is valuable.
[01:54:59]  Pretense is valuable.
[01:55:00]  Philippians 1?
[01:55:01]  Yeah.
[01:55:02]  When King Charles, you know, and people.
[01:55:04]  Again, the Reformed Baptist, it's so embarrassing.
[01:55:07]  It's like, it's really embarrassing.
[01:55:10]  It is hard.
[01:55:11]  You don't have hearts.
[01:55:12]  You're a hard man over there.
[01:55:13]  You want to be a hard man?
[01:55:14]  Try being publicly known as a Reformed Baptist.
[01:55:18]  That takes more courage and more grit than almost anything.
[01:55:24]  It is embarrassing.
[01:55:25]  But during the, what was it?
[01:55:29]  What do you call it?
[01:55:29]  The coronation of King Charles.
[01:55:32]  And you had the Reformed Baptist coming out and saying, Like, look at this, you know, and it's terrible, and like they're blaspheming, and it's like, yeah, uh huh, yeah, because they don't mean it, they are blaspheming in their hearts.
[01:55:42]  Um, but this is good, the pomp and circumstance matters, the pretense matters.
[01:55:49]  Um, you don't want to lose this, even if it's just on the books, if it's just pretend, if it's all those things, yeah, that's it's not great, no, of course, it's a problem, but the solution, even what Jesus said to the Pharisees, Jesus doesn't say.
[01:56:07]  With the Pharisees, hey, you should stop doing these outward things and do the inward things instead.
[01:56:11]  No, he says you should continue the latter, but also the former.
[01:56:17]  When he said you tithe down to a tenth of your mill and dent and spice, he doesn't say you should stop doing all that outward pretense in adherence to the law of God and really you should just love me privately in your heart.
[01:56:30]  No, he says keep doing that, but do the thing that matters most.
[01:56:34]  The heart does matter more, but we can't say that the heart matters in such a way that the outward pretense doesn't matter at all.
[01:56:40]  I hope.
[01:56:41]  That England becomes truly a Christian nation.
[01:56:44]  In the meantime, though, I hope at least it continues to maintain a veneer, outward veneer of Christianity.
[01:56:51]  And I hope these United States do as well.
[01:56:54]  The fact that we have never had a non Christian president.
[01:56:57]  Have we had a non regenerate president?
[01:57:01]  A ton.
[01:57:02]  Too many.
[01:57:02]  Right.
[01:57:02]  Abraham Lincoln, right?
[01:57:03]  You can go way back.
[01:57:04]  So we've had plenty of those presidents who weren't Christians in the true eternal sense.
[01:57:10]  But the fact that they all had to tip the hat to Christianity, that's power.
[01:57:14]  That's the very power that Eric's talking about.
[01:57:17]  That evangelicals, we have to begin to develop the stomach to be able to wield that power.
[01:57:22]  That's what cultural power is.
[01:57:23]  That's what religious power is.
[01:57:25]  Where a guy who hates the unborn children and wants to murder them by the millions, he knows, yeah, but I at least still have to pay some credence to the name of Jesus Christ.
[01:57:35]  That's a good thing.
[01:57:36]  That is actually a good thing.
[01:57:38]  And we don't want to lose it.
[01:57:39]  We don't want to lose that.
[01:57:40]  So let's do the former without neglecting the latter.
[01:57:43]  Let's get the heart without losing the veneer.
[01:57:46]  We need both.
[01:57:48]  Any final thoughts from you guys?
[01:57:49]  We'll go ahead and end the show.
[01:57:50]  Eric?
[01:57:52]  Yeah, just one thing.
[01:57:53]  I think there's also sort of a mistaken notion among Christians that you have to have a supermajority in order to act.
[01:58:02]  And it's not the case.
[01:58:04]  Obviously, you can look back at the founding, you can say, look, Mayflower Compact.
[01:58:08]  It's a nation that really is covenantal to the Lord.
[01:58:12]  But just to encourage Christians, I think that you actually can do a lot, even in a negative world, even if you're not the supermajority.
[01:58:21]  And there's some debate, probably demographically, if we are or not, but it's certainly shrinking.
[01:58:26]  But I think what it is is look, the homosexuals and the LGBT community, they've been for a long time a very vocal minority and were able to force their will.
[01:58:37]  And so I think for Christians, even if you're small, you sort of act like you're not.
[01:58:43]  Like in the best possible sense, you have the knowledge that God is backing you and you demand these things.
[01:58:51]  Even in a country like France, like the abomination that was the Olympics, right?
[01:58:55]  And everything that was going on there.
[01:58:57]  There were still Christians in that country that said absolutely not, and they had to come out at least and apologize.
[01:59:03]  Right?
[01:59:03]  So, at the very least, use whatever power you have and do not give ground on that.
[01:59:09]  Do not give up what you do have.
[01:59:12]  Yeah, it's good.
[01:59:13]  It's great.
[01:59:14]  Okay, that's it.
[01:59:16]  So, let's go ahead and sign off again.
[01:59:17]  Go to rightresponseconference.com if you want to get the early bird registration because that is ending very soon.
[01:59:23]  It's just a matter of days at this point, and the price is going to go up.
[01:59:27]  Somewhat substantially.
[01:59:28]  So go to rightresponseconference.com.
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[01:59:34]  If you want to sign up and become a Patreon member, so that you can get the articles every week, and also you get early access and ad free content with our Friday special and all those kinds of things.
[01:59:42]  So there's a lot of perks, but the one that's relevant for today is that you will get this article that reveals the psyop of racism.
[01:59:52]  And so if you want to debunk the boogeyman of racism from the Word of God, Wes wrote a great article, and you can go to, again, patreon.com forward slash write response ministries and become a member there.
[02:00:04]  Eric, thanks so much for coming on the show.
[02:00:06]  We really appreciate it.
[02:00:08]  Absolutely.
[02:00:08]  Thank you, guys.
[02:00:10]  All right.
[02:00:10]  Thanks for tuning in, guys, and we will see you again on Friday with another episode of the Friday special that we've got going with Coltish right now.