Pastor Joel Webbin and Eric Kahn dissect generational conflict, arguing Boomers squandered wealth through 1970s-90s debt, forcing younger generations to challenge established institutions. They contrast "weak gods" of globalism with a potential return to nationalism, citing Thomas Watson's teachings that honor belongs to faithful leaders rather than mere age. Critiquing evangelical hypocrisy for rejecting living figures like Stephen Wolfe while venerating historical reformers, the hosts contend democratic pluralism is unsustainable. Ultimately, they assert that engaging in "Woke War II" and defending Christian nationalism is essential for theological reformation, even amidst pushback from leaders like Jen Ellis. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Honoring Fathers in a Globalist State00:05:01
Right Response Ministries 2025 conference is a go.
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Honor thy father and mother, the fifth commandment.
I believe one of the most difficult commandments for young people today to seek to obey.
Why?
Well, because young people in every generation have struggled with some kind of streak of rebellion, but also because our fathers and mothers, in the immediate sense, namely the boomer generation, has failed immensely.
They have in many ways sold Gen X and millennials down the river.
So, in today's episode of Theology Applied, I'll be joined with Eric Kahn, the host of the Hard Man podcast, to discuss the fifth commandment, the particular ways that boomers have failed, and the challenges that we face to change the fabric of our nation, to get things on track, and to honor our father and mother as we seek to also recognize the mistakes they've made along the way.
I'm Pastor Joel Weben.
This is Theology Applied with Right Response Ministries.
Tune in now.
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
Eric, thanks for coming on.
Thanks for having me once again, Joel.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Absolutely.
Well, today, you and I were talking offline, preparing a little bit, and what we want to talk about is the fifth commandment, the biblical imperative that we should honor our fathers and our mothers, which seems to be A bit difficult in our generation.
I have no doubt that it has always been difficult.
There's always an inclination, a temptation because of sin to dishonor those who come before us.
But I've talked to a lot of young men, and a lot of young men today are angry.
And you can make an argument that that's just the nature of young men.
Young men of every generation have been angry and frustrated and zealous about something, you know, zeal without wisdom.
But it seems as though the anger that a lot of young men have today is a justifiable anger.
It seems as though they're frustrated because, in some ways, they really have been.
Ripped off.
They've been robbed by the prior generation.
They've been robbed of opportunity.
There's some real difficulties.
And so you and I were talking about this.
I've got a lot of thoughts, but before I go any further, what do you think about this idea of young people today, especially young men, being frustrated and struggling to honor their father?
Yeah, I mean, I completely agree with it.
I think what's interesting, a lot of times it gets painted as like these young men are like 15 or 18 year olds.
But a lot of times it's guys like you and me, close to 40, somewhere in that ballpark.
Even right below the boomers.
Some of the guys who will have the complaints are in their 50s.
But I think generally what you're seeing is like there's been a whole century controlled by boomers.
It was a huge segment of the population because of being fruitful after World War II.
But they held power for the longest amount of time.
Many of them are still in power.
And so I think what's happened is a lot of people are starting to recognize and say, okay, here's the world they built.
It really sucks.
And we're getting the shaft on a number of things, including inflation, the economy's bad.
A lot of the decisions that were made in the 70s and 80s and 90s, it was functionally to pass the debt burden on to us.
So we're getting to realize those things right now.
2008 was another example of that.
You know, these companies are too great to fail.
And so we're going to, you know, we're going to give the shaft again to future generations.
And so in 2030 and afterwards is when people are going to start really having to pay for those financial decisions.
I also think a big part of it is a book I read.
Read recently, but RR Reno's book, Return of the Strong Gods, really helping people understand what is the post World War II consensus?
The Problem with Strong Gods00:15:07
What's this world that we live in after World War II?
We've been in countless wars.
We have been engaged in this race to become a globalist type state.
And I think because of that, so many people are feeling like, and they're right, that this is not the world that we signed up for or want to live in.
And so that.
Other generation is sunsetting.
And so now I think you're seeing a lot of the rift and the power struggle between these groups as that transition has failed to happen.
And, you know, the imperative for fathers as it pertains to their posterity is that they would leave to them more than what they had, that they would do everything they can with what God sovereignly chosen to give to them and multiply it.
So they'd be fruitful, multiply in terms of their offspring, but also multiplying.
Their influence, their wealth, their resources, their land, their business, their this, their that.
I mean, that's my goal is to not just multiply my name in terms of my offspring and having multiple children, but I want my children to have multiple things.
And not because I'm a materialist, not because the world is just stuff, not because Darwin was right, not because of the prosperity gospel, but because I want to honor God.
I want to live a glorious life, and I want my children to live a more glorious life than I did.
And that includes in terms of what they have, their influence, their wealth, what they're able to steward for the kingdom of God, not just their own personal comfort.
I want to leave lots of children, but I want to leave my lots of children with lots of things.
I want to give them an inheritance.
Proverbs says explicitly that a good man leaves an inheritance not only for his children, but his children's children.
So a wise and good man is thinking about the financial well being of his grandchildren, not just his children, but his grandchildren.
And some people would You know, be you know, pietistic, and they would kind of try to, you know, take that square peg and put it in the gospel centered circle hole, you know, and like, well, it's a spiritual inheritance.
And I would say it can never be anything less.
A Christian man, a good man, can leave nothing less than a spiritual inheritance, a gospel inheritance.
But I would eat my hat if God is speaking of, of not something that doesn't include more.
I think God is speaking of, yeah, give them the gospel, give them Jesus, catechize them, raise them in the fear and nurture of the Lord.
Leave them stuff.
If a man who, I mean, the Bible talks about this, you're worse than an unbeliever.
You've denied the faith if you don't offer gospel centered platitudes to your household.
No, if you don't clothe them and feed them and provide, physically provide.
And I think this inheritance, sure, it's a spiritual inheritance, but it's also a physical inheritance.
It's monetary.
And so you look at generations and it's like you want to be fruitful.
The greatest generation was a fruitful generation, but they didn't just create lots of boomers, lots of children, but they gave their children the world on a silver platter.
Boomers, it's not just that there were a lot of boomers.
If it was just a lot of boomers, but they came into a world that didn't have anything, then maybe I'd have some sympathy.
But it seems like, and you correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like the boomers is a large, numerically large generation, but also had unparalleled resources and opportunity.
And instead of multiplying it even more, it seems like a swarm of locusts ate it up and they just.
Fit us the bill, and we're all going to have to pay for it.
I feel like some people are upset for some reasons.
I think, in many ways, you could say something like the prodigal generation.
You took a lot of wealth, you took the inheritance you were given, and you went and you squandered it.
Helen Andrews, in her book on the boomers, we were talking about this before, but it's a good book.
Yeah, one of the things that's really interesting about that is she does some biopics on people like Steve Jobs, and they talk about, oh, the boomers were all about, you know, You know, bringing work to America.
Steve Jobs pushed all the globalist work over to China for the iPhone.
It was about outsourcing and sort of like an old style British colonialism where we're not impacted by tariffs.
Extremely bad for American workers, but great for the company.
I think somebody even said if the iPhone had been made in America, it would have cost Apple an extra $100.
Instead, they chose to outsource it to China.
And again, it was part of this globalist push.
You look at what they did to their employees, they were terrible to Apple employees.
You know, we need you to work 90 hours a week and not have a life.
And Steve Jobs himself was a terrible father, a terrible husband, and kind of a terrible person in many ways.
And that, you know, Helen says that's kind of the quintessential, you know, picture of what the boomers were.
They got a lot.
Sometimes they did a lot.
Sometimes it wasn't all that good.
Back to your original kind of analogy, though, I think what's happening for a lot of people, this is kind of a parallel with the church.
We're looking at the church like young, restless, and reformed is what you and I grew up with.
Right.
And we're looking back and we're saying, wait a minute.
You know, my dad taught me that.
This is metaphorical, but my dad taught me, my dad's taught me, you know, Acts 29.
But then you, it was a gateway drug into the confessional historic faith.
And you go, wait a minute.
Maybe grandpa was actually smarter.
Maybe grandpa was actually the one with a head on his shoulders.
And I think that's what's happened with Stephen Wolfe and Christian nationalism.
Listen, I read that book too.
And I said, wow, this is kind of some edgy stuff.
And then you start reading it and you're like, well, that's what Aquinas said.
Yep.
That's what Augustine said.
That's what Calvin said.
Definitely what Calvin said.
And you go, okay, okay, wait a minute.
Maybe I'm wrong.
But I think what's happened in our culture is boomerism has infiltrated the church.
It's infiltrated politics.
We think that democratic pluralism is the answer to everything.
And when people are challenging that, which I think a lot of people in the younger generation are starting to do, I think that's where you're seeing such a rift and a split.
Sort of like this idea of a Christian prince is one example.
Well, that is the most anti boomer.
Reno talks about it in his book.
He's like basically, you're bringing back the strong gods of religion.
To culture and to society.
And we've learned all our lives that that's fascist.
Like, you want to be Hitler.
And that's why you see all these comparisons.
Anytime somebody says, we want to love our country, oh, blood and soil, Hitler, you're Hitler.
Like that, that's the immediate response because that's how the boomers grew up thinking of democratic pluralism as the answer.
And in fact, even in the Reno book, he says democratic pluralism is going to be the savior of society.
One group doesn't have power, everybody, it's distributed, and we're not dominant Christian, we're not dominant anything.
And again, so here along comes this generation saying Christian nationalism.
And of course, they're going to hate that.
That is.
As antithetical to George W. Bush, Obama, Clintonism as you could possibly get.
Yep.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Reno's book was helpful.
You know, my synopsis takeaway from his book was kind of like I think of, you know, Saul has killed his thousands and David his tens of thousands.
So it's like the strong gods have killed their thousands and the weak gods have killed their tens of thousands.
The weak gods, in the final analysis, it seems as though they might actually bear the potential of killing more.
Not less.
Doing more harm?
That's the crazy thing.
Yeah, right.
The whole fear was that fascists like Mussolini and Hitler were the real danger.
And so we functionally exterminated these guys.
We got rid of them from the world stage, at least.
And then on the scene comes totalitarian, bureaucratic, filth world statism.
And so you get the USSR killing hundreds of millions.
How many millions have been killed in America since 1970 because of abortion?
Right.
Yeah, this is the crazy thing, right?
The atrocities done under a bureaucratic filth world are far greater than what Christendom did.
Exactly.
Than what these supposed Christian nations had done on their own.
Right.
And I think that what I'm getting at, and I think what Reno's getting at, is just that, well, it's the old Rush Dooney adage not weather, but which.
The strong gods are coming back.
So I think that that's baked into the equation.
I don't think we have much to say about that because.
The weak gods have reigned, their divine reign has been long enough now to where the people are ready to throw them off.
You know, the people, we've had it.
We've seen that, oh man, the weak gods are worse than the strong gods.
So the strong gods are going to return.
So then the question is, which ones?
So this idea, globalism, that's a weak god.
So the way that Reno, you know, he says, you know, the weak gods are, it's like pluralism, inclusivism.
It's, you know, it's the uh, all the anti fascism, exactly, anti racism, and all the phobias, right?
Homophobia, transphobia, you know, the uh, yeah, so all these kinds of things that that's that's the weak gods.
The weak gods are don't you ever, ever, ever make a strong dogmatic uh statement.
There is no uh, dogmatism, no transcendent truth, no uh, no real authority, right?
Just it's egalitarianism across the board, everybody's an equal, um, but then you know, that sounds great in theory, but but in practice, the way that plays out is.
Okay, well, Hitler's an authoritarian, 6 million Jews, right?
Okay, well, you got 60 million babies murdered under the weak gods with abortion just in this nation.
So, my point is, it's just like, I think we've realized the weak gods, we can't, that's unsustainable.
We can't do that.
The strong gods have problems.
There are problems with the strong gods if they're not Christian gods.
So, we're using lowercase g gods, just let the listener understand.
What I'm trying to say is that I think the strong gods are coming back.
So, instead of globalism, it's going to be nationalism.
Instead of this, Egalitarianism is going to be patriarchy, right?
Instead of feminism, it's going to be patriarchy.
Instead of Darwinism, it's going to be religion and tradition and family.
So then the question is, which one?
If nationalism is going to replace globalism, because we realize globalism kills 100 million and nationalism at its worst, on its worst day, only kills 10 million, and 10 million dead is better than 100 million.
If there's going to be a return to the strong gods, then the question is, is not whether, but which.
So which nationalism do you want?
Do you want Christian nationalism or Islamic nationalism?
Because you're probably going to get one of those two, right?
Do you want Christian patriarchy or do you want Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate patriarchy, right?
Do you want, see, that's what I think a lot of young guys are sensing right now, and boomers don't get it.
They don't.
All of them except for Doug Wilson.
You know, Doug Wilson gets it, but pretty much, you know, an entire generation.
And so they think we're being contentious and overzealous and that we're just being divisive and we're being argumentative for no reason, just, you know, or platform building or trying to, you know, just to take influence away from guys who have just been so faithful for so many years.
That's not it.
What we're realizing is that something is profoundly and deeply broken.
And the solution cannot merely be to wind back the clock to the 1990s, because the 1990s got us here.
And so we're saying, well, wait a second.
Why can't the state be Christian?
A separation of church and state is not the same thing as a separation of Christ and state.
Why should the state be Christless?
And those kind of questions are starting to be raised.
Okay, now if the state does honor Christ, well, then what does that mean?
Is it just privately that Caesar privately worships Christ?
Or does Christ have something to say about our vocation?
Does he have something to say about all of our vocations?
Is it just the pulpit, the minister that Christ has orders for?
Does he have orders for the cobbler, the one who makes shoes?
And does he have orders for Caesar?
And not just how Caesar privately worships Christ, but how he lives Christianly in his vocation, in his legislation.
These are the questions that we're starting to ask.
And these are all reasonable questions, but right now we're seeing a massive amount in the Reformed world of division.
Because the moment that younger guys, and again, like you said, not 15 year olds, but 35 year olds start asking very, very reasonable questions, we're being maligned, we're being slandered, we're being misrepresented.
Oh, you want a Protestant pope?
Oh, you want this, you want that?
And it's getting bad.
It is getting bad.
I think a big part of it, Joel, like, why is that happening?
You know, it really comes down to a Machiavellian power structure at the base.
This is what's happening.
I think that people are cognizant that there is a transfer, a generational transfer underway.
And I think what you're seeing in the boomer camp and in the older guys, this is very indicative of conservatism going back to like William F. Buckley.
As he approaches his sunset, he wants to guard and guarantee who gets his inheritance culturally.
And so what he spent the end of his years doing was vilifying guys like Pat Buchanan.
He did not want Pat to take his reins and then push it in that direction.
So he.
Essentially, he ousted him.
And so, this is what I think you're seeing a lot of the older generation doing right now.
You know, they're trying to guard who the future leadership will be.
I think what's really interesting is if you look at the younger leadership, you'll see something else in ministries and stuff like this, different groups.
People are all jockeying to win that approval.
So, the younger generation that is like, yeah, we're going to be boomers too, democratic pluralism, they think that they're going to get the inheritance from dad.
That's what it is.
Yeah.
They're the older brother.
They're not dad himself.
The boomers are, that's dad.
But then there's the older brother.
Like, I've always worked for you.
I always, you know, like you said, you said that, you know, we shouldn't, you know, that politics is a separate thing and blah, blah, blah, you know, and principled pluralism.
And so I said principled pluralism.
And then they're seeing other guys who are not saying what the boomer said.
We're disagreeing with dad and rising to prominence.
And so the older brother is like, wait a second.
I've been slaving away and he's over here, you know, preaching a different message.
And now he's, people are following him.
They're listening to his podcast and not mine.
And, They're getting upset.
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Frustration Over Company Men00:05:55
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The big part of this, right, is that because of the way the world and technology has changed, It used to be that you had to have certain things to control institutional power.
So you got to have a TV station or a radio station and a lot of money to publish books and do stuff like that.
The name of the game has changed though because of things like Twitter, now X.
So when you think about it, some of the even groups that we've kind of gone head to head with in the last year, the irony is that we're basically nobodies with no institutional power or little who are a threat to people who've been doing this for a long time, who have long standing preaching and teaching and conference ministries and whatever.
And I think what they're recognizing, both the older generation and then that younger generation, as I described them, trying to grapple over who gets this inheritance, cultural, institutional, or otherwise.
What's really interesting about that is there is a group of guys who have basically come in, swooped in, and stolen the hearts of a lot of these young people without anybody's permission.
And I think that's why you're seeing so many people be so upset about it.
Because, you know, we just got on Twitter and we're like telling the truth.
You know, I don't know about you, but for me, I wasn't like trying to build an audience.
I was just like, these things are true, and I'm going to point to them and say that's true.
And I'm going to, you know, lean into the plow wherever I can, masculinity, King's Hall, this sort of thing.
And then you look behind you and you'll have a whole following.
Right.
And then the older people are like, well, I didn't assign that to you.
You're stealing my people.
So I think, and I can certainly understand that, you know, why these guys would be frustrated.
So I think the problem is, though, because the game changed institutionally.
Right.
Like those older guys, I don't think that they realize, and a lot of younger guys trying to get their favor.
I don't think they realize that the mass of people don't respect a lot of them anymore and they don't trust them.
And so you do have a shift.
And, you know, as David and Saul, it's always going to create jealousy, and Saul's probably going to try and kill David.
And, you know, if you're the David out there, then you just say, okay, well, him trying to kill me elevates me to his position and his level and keep fighting the good fight.
And, but I've been reliably informed.
I've been reliably informed that you're not David.
I am not David.
That's what Matt Chandler told me.
He said, You are not David.
He also said, Jesus wants to use mattress.
So, you know, that's all sorts of things for Matt Chandler.
All sorts of things.
But yeah, and that's a good example, too.
It's like, you know, why was J.D. Greer preaching on this, you know, lambasting his people for, you know, lost your soul because you voted for Trump and people are leaving his church?
And, you know, look at what's happening in Acts 29.
You look at all these things.
It's like the institutional power is changing.
Because you failed.
And when you fail as a leader, people don't trust you.
And so you're going to see a shift.
And I think, you know, tying it back to the generational divide, I think what's probably going to happen is there will still be, in large part, the older generation trying to work with younger guys who are going to follow what they were doing.
Right.
But I think you're seeing all these fault lines forming for a reason.
I think the tension will get worse.
And then, you know, you're going to see a real shift.
I mean, I don't mean to be crass, but it's like, RC Sproul died, John Piper's, you know, nearing eternity, John MacArthur.
These guys are exiting stage right.
And so that's going to cause change.
You know, stuff is going to happen and we'll see, you know, kind of where the power shakes out at that point.
Yeah.
I think there's frustration because you have company men.
You know, it's like we did it the right way.
We took the right path.
We went through the right channels.
You know, when dad said jump, we said how high.
We, you know, Like we went through the proper institutions and now.
We should get the inheritance.
We should get the inheritance.
Dad is exiting, you know, he's exiting the stage and, you know, we were there.
We were there for dad.
And so right now, as dad's now exiting the stage and about to hand over the inheritance, they're discovering it's like, you know, like we're kind of, you know, we're using a lot of analogies here David versus Saul, but another one would be like Jacob versus Esau, you know, that Jacob slips in there.
And it's actually a righteous thing to do.
Jacob's Righteous Deceit00:10:05
Jacob, I don't believe that he's actually being deceitful.
In fact, he's honoring his mother.
His mother is the one who kind of puts him up to it.
And she is obeying the word of the Lord, spoken in Malachi, the older, a prophetic word that the older should serve the younger.
She knows that Isaiah is the sinner in the equation.
Esau certainly is fleshly and sold his birthright for a bowl of soup.
He's immoral, as Hebrew says.
But Isaac is the one who, Isaac's physical blindness, James B. Jordan talks about this, like his physical blindness is indicative of this.
Point of his life.
Spiritual blindness.
Exactly.
Like he knows that Jacob's supposed to get the inheritance.
He knows that Jacob is the one that God has chosen.
That's a prophetic word that they've received.
And so Rebecca is being righteous and saying, okay, like my husband is about to terribly sin against the Lord by going directly in disobedience against what God has said, giving the blessing to Esau when God has told him to give it to Jacob.
It's Jacob's blessing.
But here's the deal God is sovereign.
And if God has determined that Jacob will get the blessing, guess who's gonna get the blessing?
Jacob's, he's gonna work his way in there one way or another.
His mom's going to slip him in.
He's going to put on goat skin, whatever he's got to do.
But if God has ordained that Jacob should get the blessing rather than Esau, even though Esau was the favored son of his father Isaac, then it doesn't matter.
If God has spoken it, then that's what's going to happen.
And right now, I think that's what's going on is that what we're realizing is that, okay, the last 80 years haven't been so hot.
This is not a winning strategy.
And a lot of these things, they're novel.
They're novel.
People say, well, we're not, you know, You lose down here, whatever.
And like, we're not supposed to win.
What do you mean, winning strategy?
Okay, take all that language out of it.
Take the optimism, pessimism with eschatology.
Put all that on the side for a moment.
The bottom line is what does the Bible say and what has the witness of church history held to for 19 and a half centuries?
I mean, dispensationalism is novel.
It's novel.
That is not the longstanding position.
That is novel.
Complementarianism is novel.
It is not historical.
It's novel.
The idea of secularism.
Secularism is novel.
Globalism is novel.
All these things, these are the inventions of men.
This is not the witness of history.
This is not the biblical pattern.
And so now you have a generation saying, okay, well, we want to go back to the Bible in part because of God's mercy and electing people and regenerating hearts and opening our eyes, but also in part because we are the prime object of the harm of.
Of trash world, the harm of all these novel positions.
We're the ones who are inheriting the bill, us and our children.
And so we're, you know, like people complain, well, in the 70s, you know, there were 18% interest rates.
Yeah, on a $50,000 house.
Right.
Like I understand it's not like this is the first time that things have ever been economically bad.
I understand.
All right.
I've read a little bit of history.
I understand that the economy, there's been some bleak moments.
I understand the Great Depression and I understand the 70s, you know, were bad.
But there is, it is an objective fact.
That our parents' generations, the boomers, in terms of income, wages, to housing costs, even regardless of what the interest rate might have been, it was way easier for them to own a home than it is for somebody trying to buy a home who's a millennial.
Way easier, not even a comparison.
And so, this idea of like, okay, well, I'm trying to obey God's word.
I want to be a breadwinner.
I want to be a protector and provider.
I want to have multiple children.
And I don't want to put them in public schools.
And I want my wife to be able to stay home and not rely on her.
For a second income, and I want to own a home so I don't just build somebody else's wealth, but so that I actually have an investment that I can give as an inheritance to my children's children.
In other words, I want to obey the scripture in tangible, practical ways.
And then you get out your calculator and you do the math, and you realize that your parents have made it all near impossible to practically obey scripture in any of those regards.
And so, yeah, you're like, yeah, we want to change things.
We're not trying to be disrespectful.
We're not trying to be honorary just for the point of being honorary.
We're not trying to just be this rebellious teenage kid.
Again, we're not teenagers.
We're in our 30s and we're looking at mom and dad and saying, I love you.
And you're going to live with me when you're old and I'm going to take care of you.
And we're going to sing hymns over your bed as you're dying.
You're going to die with dignity.
But also, you don't get to drive anymore.
I love you, mom and dad.
But you don't get to, right?
There's a certain point where you can honor your father and mother.
But also, you don't let them behind the wheel of a car.
You take away their keys.
And that doesn't mean you're dishonoring them.
That's just you're saying, I'm sorry, mom.
I'm sorry, dad.
I'm sorry, father.
But you're degrading and you're not able to do that.
And you have a proven track record of getting behind the wheel of a car and running people over.
Like, you can't do that anymore.
I love you.
I will always love you and I'll provide for you and I'll care for you.
And I honor you.
I do honor you.
But no, your generation can't drive anymore.
And that's what we have.
We have Biden in his 80s driving, Nancy Pelosi driving.
Like, we can go on and on.
Mitch McConnell, like, literally having brain aneurysms behind the pulpit, can't even talk, just like going off into nowhere.
It's an indictment on our country, it's mockable.
It's people, the world is laughing at us.
It's embarrassing.
Years ago, I think sometime when it first came out, but Bronze Age Mindset, I was reading that.
It was really interesting because he said, the kind of pinnacle of the downfall of our culture will be where we're headed, which is when sclerotic old men and the gynocracy rule.
And I was kind of like, hmm, that's weird.
And then you look around and that's exactly what it is.
Meanwhile, who gets really oppressed in that situation is young men.
I also think, too, like going back to what you were just saying, there has to be a category where we can say we want to be faithful men like Josiah, who becomes king and begins with national repentance and says, both we and our fathers have sinned.
And no one said to Josiah, you're dishonoring your father.
You're not dishonoring your father when you repent of sin, his or yours or whatever.
Like that, he did the righteous thing.
And so I think we have to have that category.
And I think we can too also have a category where we say, I'm not going to belittle my parents.
I'm not going to say nasty things to the boomers all the time.
But I am going to be cognizant of what the problems were.
This is one of the things Helen Andrews says in her book that I find so interesting.
She says, No culture lost more in terms of Western civilization than the boomers.
And she said, Consider all the things that happened under the boomers' watch.
They brought women into the workforce, civil rights.
Movement passed, which was the end of the first constitutional era.
Hyperinflation.
You have the 70s with banking changes and deregulation, all these things.
Student loan debt begins to triple.
Sexual anarchy in the 60s and 70s, all under the boomer watch.
So, yeah, I mean, I think when you start adding it up, and it is really hard because there's a lot of shame associated with this.
As a boomer, you have to say, like, on our watch, like, that sucked.
That was not good.
We have a lot to own up to.
Now, the one thing I will say, which I found an encouragement.
So, if there's older guys who listen to this and are like, yeah, but they're rubbing it in our face, whatever, you know, people who handle this really well, I think one is like Chris Wiley.
I have another friend who's very similar to Chris.
They are boomers, but they will say, you know what?
Our generation did a terrible job, not proud of it, but here's what we can do to fix it.
And be an encouragement to the young people and pass off whatever inheritance you possibly can to your children.
But I think fundamentally, we all have to kind of own the problem for what it is.
We're not going to repent as a nation until we recognize all the things that are wrong.
And I think that is.
Yeah, we're not going to repent until we realize we messed this up.
But I think that's the problem right now, Joel, is that you have boomers still holding on to power and they're like, no, we made the right decisions.
Like the George W. Bushes of the world are still defending Iraq and Afghanistan.
Are you kidding me?
Pretty much everybody on both sides is like, that was a terrible decision.
Financially for our country, it wasn't good.
Shouldn't have done it.
But they still won't own those mistakes.
And I think that that causes ongoing problems.
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Political and Spiritual Fathers00:04:08
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I want to read a couple quotes from Thomas Watson.
His book, The Ten Commandments, is really helpful.
But he says this in commentating on a ton of commentating on Exodus 20 12.
So, Exodus 20 12, honor your father and mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God gives you.
Having done with the first table of the law, I am next to speak of the duties of the second table.
The Ten Commandments may be likened to Jacob's ladder.
The first table respects God.
And is the top of the ladder which reaches to heaven.
The second respects man and is the foot of the ladder that rests on the earth.
By the first table, we walk piously towards God.
By the second, we walk religiously towards man.
He cannot be good in the first table who is bad in the second.
All right.
So then, honor your father and mother.
In this, we have a command honor your father and your mother.
And second, a reason for it that your days may be long in the land.
The first commandment with the promise.
This is all I'm quoting Matthew Henry here.
But then he gets into this.
He says, Father is of different kinds as the political, the ancient, the spiritual, the domestic, and the natural or familial.
So he's saying there are different kinds of fathers, and Exodus 20 12, it addresses all of them.
It's including all of them.
So a lot of, again, to go back to the boomers when they say, Well, you need to honor your father.
Well, right there.
Which one?
Exactly.
Which one?
That's the question.
Which one?
It's not whether.
Of course, it's God's word.
We need to honor our father.
But the question is, which father?
There's an obligation for me to honor my familial father, my actual father who brought me into the world.
In my case, I was adopted, but the one who named me, gave me his name, protected me, provided for me, who raised me, he fathered me.
But beyond that, there are other fathers.
So, fathers of different kinds as the political, the ancient, the spiritual, the domestic, and the natural.
All right.
So, then he talks about the political father.
You want to read some of that, Eric?
I think you've got it pulled up too.
Yeah, absolutely.
He says, The political father or the magistrate, he is the father of his country.
He is to be an encourager of virtue, a punisher of vice, and a father to the widow and the orphan.
Such a father was Job.
I was a father to the poor, and the cause which I knew not, I searched out.
Job 29, 16.
As the magistrates are fathers, so especially the king, who is the head of magistrates, is a political father.
He is placed as the sun among the lesser stars, and the scripture calls kings fathers.
Kings shall be your nursing fathers, Isaiah 49, 23.
They are to train up their subjects in piety by good edicts and examples.
I don't know, Joel, this sounds like Christian nationalism again.
They are to train up their subjects in piety by good edicts.
So, creating laws that support biblical piety and examples and nurse them up in peace and piety.
Such nursing fathers were David, Hezekiah, Josiah, Constantine.
He lists Constantine.
Kings as Political Fathers00:15:18
I just got really uncomfortable.
And Theodosius.
It is well for people to have such nursing fathers whose breast milk comforts their children, and these fathers are to be honored.
Beautiful.
Yes, fathers.
Fathers as magistrates, Joel.
Let's stop there for a second.
So this is Matthew Henry, right?
This is the late, great Puritan.
That's Thomas Watson.
Or I'm sorry, Thomas Watson, another late, great Puritan.
And he's saying he lists Constantine as a positive example of a nursing father.
Yeah.
Okay.
And this is why I wanted to read this.
Okay.
Because, all right, I'm just going to be frank.
I'm tired of seeing guys building tombs to the prophets.
But they don't actually honor them.
They're not actually honoring their father.
They say, oh, man, we would have been on Jeremiah's side, you know, had we lived in his day.
You would have killed him.
No, you would have killed him.
How do you know?
Because Jesus is straight in the line of Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel.
Here's the prophet of your day, and you're trying to murder him.
That's how we know.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
And so much of this, it was actually Mark Driscoll years ago who said, a lot of reform guys today are like ancient gun collectors.
They collect old guns.
And you're like, oh, do you use that?
No, I've never even shot that gun in my life.
That's what we do with our theology books.
We don't put them into practice.
And then we criticize guys who do.
Right.
So, this is the crazy thing, you know, say about the Christian nationalism debate again is like you can read Thomas Watson, and there's all these reform publishing houses that love to publish this stuff, and they will do nothing on the cultural engagement front.
Nothing.
In fact, a lot of the books will actually cut out parts of, you know, that we don't like anymore.
You know, William Googe addresses slavery and slaves and masters.
That's not in the book anymore.
It was cut out because, you know, It was in scripture, but it's not good enough for us today to read those portions.
So you look at these guys and we say, oh man, we're so proud to be Westminsterian or 1689.
And you're like, you don't even know what these guys wrote.
It's clear that you're either willfully blind to it or you're ignorant.
It's like one of the two things.
You don't know what they wrote.
And I know you don't know what they wrote because what they wrote has almost been plagiarized by Stephen Wolfe.
Oh, yeah.
And you hate it.
Well, and I mean, Stephen, that's a joke.
I'm being facetious, but what I'm, he's not a plagiarizer.
But what I'm saying is, I mean, Stephen Wolf has, has like all but copy and pasted what they did, all but copy and pasted the reformers.
Yeah.
And so that's fine.
Because I actually would detour from the reformers on a few things.
I would be more in the vein of Cornelius Van Til and a presuppositional idea.
So I would, you know, I'm more of in the post millennial theonomic camp, right?
Whereas Stephen Wolfe is more very much in the Aquinas, you know, Thomistic, and he's all millennial.
But I'm even willing to, I've read Stephen Wolfe's book.
It wasn't easy.
It's 400 pages long, but I read it and I've read Calvin's Institutes, right?
Because we all talked about how we love Calvin.
So I thought we actually meant that.
I thought we love Calvin.
So I read the Institutes and then I read.
Stephen, and I'm able to recognize, all right, here's Calvin, here's Stephen, and I will concede and say, I'm going to be on a platform with Stephen and Doug Wilson at Fight Laugh Fees talking about Christian nationalism, and I plan to concede even there and say, listen, guys, whatever we say about Stephen's view of Christian nationalism, we all have to admit that he has claim on the reformers.
He is more in line with their tradition than we are.
As post millennial theonomists, presuppositional, you know, Vantillian, general equity theonomic guys, Bonson, the Reconstructionists, I love them.
I love Rush Dooney.
I love Bonson, and I'm more in line with them.
But I recognize that, That Stephen has more in common with Calvin than Rushdie does.
So, all I'm saying is if you're in the crew that loves Calvin and claims to love the reformers but hates Stephen, that seems kind of similar.
I'm not saying it's a one to one ratio, but it seems kind of similar to loving Jeremiah and building his tomb but hating Jesus.
Well, it's the same thing.
I mean, it's the same principle.
Stephen's no Jesus, but it's the same principle.
I love the guys who sound just like this guy.
But conveniently, they're dead.
But then the guy who's living, who's just repeating their words, that guy we're going to say is a heretic.
Yeah.
I mean, it's the exact same thing we do with the prophets, with the Puritans.
I mean, read the Puritans on modesty, you know, the whole modesty blow up on, you know, Twitter, X is not surprising.
What is surprising is how many like Reformed Christians are joining in the mob.
And then you start reading like, I don't know, somebody who's just real warm and devotional, like John Bunyan.
And man, did he have some sharp things to say to women who dressed like whores.
And we say, John Bunyan's so great.
Not that John Bunyan.
And it really does.
I think it makes you realize that what does this come down to?
Like with the Pharisees, it's easy to celebrate things in the past that you're not willing to fight for today.
That's the coward's position, right?
The Pharisees didn't want their position and their power to be threatened by the Roman government.
Now, actually, I think you have a very similar thing that a lot of these leaders of ministries and churches and blah, blah, blah, who are so opposed to this, everybody realizes what a threat Christian nationalism is.
It is a real threat.
Right.
And the reason why they, part of the reason, you're making a really good point that they're tamping down on Christian nationalism, speaking of now evangelical leaders, not political regime, but evangelical leaders tamping down on Christian nationalism because they know that's a threat to the regime and it'll get us all in trouble.
In the same way that the Pharisees were trying to suppress.
The Jewish zealots of their day because they're like, hey, dude, we've got a good thing going.
Like, yeah, it's not ideal.
We see it too.
Yeah, Rome kind of sucks and blah, blah, blah, you know, but this is as good as it's going to get.
Pipe down there, young man, because if you speak too loudly, Caesar will crush us.
And that was the Pharisees' position, you know, and it seems like that's kind of some of our evangelical leaders' position right now look, they'll let us have our Puritan conferences, they'll let us go and do our tours and visit Calvin's grave.
As long as we don't try to implement any of it.
As long as it's not theology applied.
So, can we just have an agreement where we just don't apply theology?
Privately, you can.
That's sure.
That's fine.
Privately, you can.
But in the public square, we need you to simmer down.
It's the same, dude.
The parallel is when you see it, it's inescapable of building the tombs to the prophets before you.
The Pharisees saying, hush, hush, because Rome, the regime, there's so many parallels.
It's incredible.
Let's read a little bit more and then we can land the plane.
But I want to just read a little bit.
So that's the civil.
Fathers, the political fathers.
Go on, let's scroll down a little bit here.
Scroll down, scroll down, scroll down.
Okay, the ancient father.
Eric, you want to read about the ancient father real quick?
Yeah, absolutely.
So there is the grave ancient father who is venerable for old age, whose gray hairs are resembled to the white flowers of the almond tree.
Ecclesiastes 12 5.
There are fathers for seniority, on whose wrinkled brows and in the furrows of whose cheeks is pictured the map of old age.
These fathers are to be honored.
You shall rise up before the hoary head and honor the face of the old man, Leviticus 19, 32.
Especially those are to be honored who are fathers not only for their seniority, but for their piety, whose souls are flourishing when their bodies are decaying.
It is a blessed sight to see springs of grace in the winter of old age, to see men stooping towards the grave, yet going up the hill of God, to see them lose their color, yet keep their savor.
Those whose silver hairs are crowned with righteousness are worthy of double honor.
They are to be honored not only as pieces of antiquity, but as patterns of virtue.
If you see an old man fearing God, whose grace shines brightest when the sun of his life is setting, oh, honor him as a father by reverencing and imitating him.
Beautiful.
So, this is actually helpful too, Joel, because a lot of people were like, I'm old, you have to respect me.
Right.
And notice the connection with, well, you might be a vintage fool.
I don't actually have to honor you in the same way that I would a man who is actually wise and godly and virtuous.
Right.
A man stooping toward the grave, yet going up the hill of God.
Or a man, if you see an old man fearing God, whose grace shines brightest when the sun of his life is setting, oh, honor him as father.
So here we've got Watson making the argument, not just for your father, who if you're a grown man, if you're an adult child now, then your father is going to be old, but not just your old personal father, familial father, but all older men.
Honor your elders, plural.
So those who are older.
So here Watson is making, so we've had the civil fathers.
But if they're righteous, if they're godly.
And Thomas Watson gives some of the imperatives for civil fathers.
And now, just fathers in general, the ancient fathers, those who are older, the generation older than you.
But again, there's a condition, the caveat, if they honor God.
Let's look at spiritual fathers now.
I'll read that one real quick.
There are spiritual fathers, as pastors and ministers, these are instruments of the new birth.
Though you have 10,000 instructors, yet you have not many fathers.
For in Christ Jesus, I have begotten you through the gospel.
1 Corinthians 4 15.
The spiritual fathers are to be honored in respect of their office.
Whatever their persons are, their office is honorable.
They are messengers of the Lord Almighty.
Malachi 2 7.
They represent no less than God Himself.
Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ.
2 Corinthians 5 20.
Jesus Christ was of this calling.
He had His mission and sanction from heaven, and this crowns the ministerial vocation with honor.
John 8 18.
These spiritual fathers are to be honored for their work's sake.
They come like the dove with an olive branch of peace in the mouth.
They preach glad tidings of peace.
Their work is to save souls.
Other vocations have only to do with men's bodies or estates, but the minister's vocation is employed about the souls of men.
Their work is to redeem spiritual captives and turn men from the power of Satan unto God.
Acts 26, 18.
Their work is to enlighten those who sit in the region of darkness and to make them shine as stars in the kingdom of heaven.
These spiritual fathers are to be honored for their work's sake, and this honor is to be shown three ways.
Do you want to continue, Eric?
Yeah, definitely.
Number one, by giving them respect.
Know those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake.
1 Thessalonians 5 12 and 13.
I confess the scandalous lives of some ministers have been a great reproach and have made the offspring of the offering of the Lord to be abhorred in some places of the land.
The leper in the law was to have his lip covered, so such as are angels by office.
But lepers in their lives ought to have their lips covered and to be silenced.
But though some deserve no honor, yet such as are faithful and make it their work to bring souls to Christ are to be reverenced as spiritual fathers.
Obadiah honored the prophet Elijah, 1 Kings 18 7.
Why did God appoint that the prince should ask counsel of God by the priests?
Numbers 27 21.
Why did the Lord show by that miracle of Aaron's rod flourishing that he had chosen the tribe of Levi to minister before him?
Number 17.
Why does Christ call his apostles the lights of the world?
Why does he say to all his ministers, Lo, I am with you to the end of the world?
But because he would have these spiritual fathers reverenced.
He says, Honor these spiritual fathers by becoming advocates for them and wiping off those slanders which are unjustly cast upon them.
1 Timothy 5 19.
Constantine was a great honorer.
I love that he's just using Constantine.
Constantine was a great honorer of the ministry.
He vindicated them, ministers.
He would not read the envious accusations brought against them.
Them, but burnt them.
Do the ministers open their mouths to God for you in prayer?
And will you not open your mouths in their behalf?
Surely, if they labor to preserve you from hell, you should preserve them from slander.
If they labor to save your souls, you ought to save their credit.
Good night.
That would preach.
You want to say anything about that, Eric?
Yeah, no, I mean, I think overall, you know, like Thomas Watson going through this talking about authority.
So, What is interesting here is the overall respect for authority.
We have people telling us you have to obey authority no matter what.
This was the whole Romans 13 thing.
But what's interesting, I find, is how many pastors were honored?
Pastors who were doing the right thing, particularly.
How many pastors were honored by anyone during COVID?
Not very many.
We honored James Coates, but did the authorities, did the Canadian people?
Did the Canadian Christians, though?
See, that's the sad thing.
There were so many Canadian Christians.
I remember getting Tom.
They were the ones bashing him.
Yeah, they were like, his church, they're zealots and they're getting us all in trouble and they're making this more difficult than it has to be.
And, you know, a lot of times I've heard older people, you know, browbeat their children.
You need to honor your father.
You're like, well, yeah, but I mean, like, we have to have a.
Thomas Watson's great here because we have to have a full understanding of the whole range of what honoring authority means.
And this would include, right?
Honoring your ministers.
He'll say for conforming to their doctrine, this is the way that you honor them.
So he's actually showing you how.
And then I think also, like, then we'll get into number four.
Like, there's the domestic father who Thomas Watson very unpolitically correctly calls the master.
He's the father of the family.
Right.
Therefore, Naaman's servants called their master father, 2 Kings 5 13.
You have the centurion who calls his servant son, Matthew 8 6.
The servant is to honor his master as the father of the family, though the master is not so qualified as he should be.
Yet the servant must not neglect his duty, but show some kind of honor to him.
So you have honor and obedience.
You know, again, the only authority we were told to obey is, you know, Lord Fauci.
But outside of that, like no other authority matters.
So you can kind of see where all the distortions happen in our society where you have boomers who are like, you have to do what I say.
The government says you have to do what I say.
Luther, Errors, and the Woke War00:16:27
But you read this and you're like, well, wait a minute.
There's a whole range of ways in which you have to obey authority.
Like, let's do them all.
And then they're like, nah, we're actually not in favor of that.
Exactly.
And that's the big point.
There are a lot of fathers.
There are a lot of fathers.
And if we're going to be faithful in the Decalogue and obeying the fifth commandment, it's, It's not just your familial father.
It is fathers.
There are civil fathers.
There are familial fathers.
There are ancient fathers, spiritual fathers, natural fathers.
And there are fathers spanning back all the way until Adam, all the way until the beginning of the world.
So it's not just the immediate fathers right before our generation.
But there is a sense in which the Apostle Paul is our father.
There is a sense in which Calvin is our father.
Augustine is our father.
You know, Athanasius is one of our fathers.
Constantine is one of our fathers.
And so there is something, remember, and this is the rhetoric that I thought we all, I thought we already figured this out.
That's why it's so frustrating for me.
I thought we figured it out when people were tearing down statues of fathers.
And then we did this whole woke thing back in 2020.
Right now, it's like right now we did a woke.
War one.
Now we're doing woke war two, right?
So this is this is WWII that we're in, you know, just three years later, right?
But people change sides exactly.
So, but but in woke war one, I remember that there was a consensus from those who, you know, were on the conservative side that we wanted to honor our fathers and that, yeah, sure, our fathers had some faults, but we wanted to recognize that, you know, Stonewall Jackson, we're going to be worshiping with him in eternity in heaven.
So, so if we don't want to make that awkward, we probably, you know, should.
Just come to terms with that right now.
You know, that I mean, there's going to be a lot of people shocked by the very fact that I won't say this dogmatically, only the Lord knows, but I will say, in terms of likelihoods, statistical likelihoods, there's a good chance that Martin Luther King Jr. is in hell and Stonewall Jackson is in heaven.
And there's a lot of Christians who I believe really are regenerate who are going to be shocked when they die and go to heaven and find that MLK Jr. very likely is in hell and Stonewall Jackson, along with a lot of other slave owners, are in heaven around the throne of God.
Yeah.
You know, and so I thought we were having that conversation three years ago.
And I thought that we kind of settled it, right?
That we lost about half of evangelicalism, Russell Moore and David French and, you know, everybody.
I thought we already, it's like Gideon with his army.
That's what it feels like right now.
It's like, all right, we already, God already trimmed off half of our army.
Surely that's enough.
And now God's like, nah, let's whittle it down to 300.
You know, let's see who laps like a dog, you know, versus those who, you know.
And so, like, and so here we are, you know, WW2 now, Woke War II in 2023.
And we haven't learned the lessons, right?
Because we were saying this was the rhetoric.
You're pulling down statues, and we're saying, wait a second, a generation that dishonors its fathers will not be honored by God.
We don't need to be doing this.
This is wrong.
But then all of a sudden, what happens just three years later is we say, you know what?
I like that.
That's really good.
We should honor our fathers.
Let's dust them off.
Let's see what they wrote and let's obey.
Let's put it into action.
And then all of a sudden, it's like, no, Don't you dare honor your fathers.
When we said honor fathers, we didn't mean Calvin.
We meant us.
We meant us.
We meant boomers.
We meant boomer theology.
We meant honor the theology of your fathers.
It goes back all the way to the 1960s.
Yeah.
And not a second before.
And that's where we are right now.
Yeah.
Anyway, so we can land the plane.
Eric, any final thoughts?
Yeah, no, I think that's really good.
I think the big question, as you pointed out, you think about the generational things.
It really comes down to, I think, a competition between ancient fathers who were probably right and more modern fathers in multiple senses.
Some of them are political, some of them are religious, who are quite obviously wrong.
And so, what we have to do is you have to make a decision.
And what I would just encourage people with is well, the decision should be made which father aligns with God's word, which father aligns with the righteousness of scripture.
And one of the things I've tended in the last 10 years, say, of my life, to really lean on is that on issues like sexuality and biblical interpretation, I put less and less weight on what people today are saying about those things because they've been so unreliable.
And so, what I am more prone to do is actually to go back to Matthew Henry.
I had a pastor tell me one time when I first started my preaching ministry, he said, You know, I would really shy away from reading a lot of modern commentaries about the text.
And he said, I would lean on Matthew Henry and John Calvin.
And I said, Well, do you think that John Calvin just didn't have errors?
And he was like, No, I think he did, but his errors weren't our errors.
His errors weren't 1970s and after errors.
His errors weren't John Piper and Grudem and complementarian errors.
You're not going to find that error in John Calvin because he didn't care about that.
Right.
So I think that's one thing that I would say to people having the perspective to get out of your time and to read the ancient fathers is going to be really helpful.
I don't think they're right about everything.
You know, unfortunately, Joel, some of them take the Sethite view.
So we know they're wrong.
So.
Yeah, for about 1,500 years, of them take the Sethite view.
But if we want to honor our ancient fathers, our oldest fathers, They believe the Bible.
That's exactly right.
Fallen angels.
Exactly.
Fallen angels all the way on a cosmos.
Go listen.
Yeah.
But in all seriousness, I think it's like being aware of that.
And then I would just encourage people to step back and just think about what's happening in this moment and say, okay, is this historical?
Meaning, like, people are losing their minds.
I've done this before, Joel.
I remember reading a book about Abraham Lincoln, and it was like Abraham Lincoln was a tyrant.
And I was like, excuse me, that is not what they told me in public school.
And for a half second, I was upset.
But then, you know, sort of by the grace of God, it's like, okay, well, let's examine the argument, though.
Let's just hear the guy out.
Let's hear what he has to say.
And you start reading it and you're like, okay, there might be a valid case here, you know?
And so, because of those things that they've happened in my life so many times, where I was a dispensationalist forever.
And then I read David Chilton and I was like, wait a minute, I didn't even know this other view existed.
So, that has caused me to be a lot slower to bash somebody like Stephen Wolf.
And I didn't.
I mean, I saw, we probably all did.
You saw the quotes in the beginning, and people were like, these are problematic.
And I was like, you know, I'm going to reserve judgment.
I'm going to read the dang book.
And then I read the book and I was like, I don't know, this seems historical.
So that's what I think a lot of people, especially on Twitter, need to do slow down, do the reading.
You know, how many of these people who are being hypercritical, they still haven't read the book and they don't intentionally.
A ton of them haven't.
A few of them, I've, you know, at least they've said, I read the book, you know, and they'll do a screenshot of a page or two.
I don't know if they read it carefully, but here's part of the problem.
And I'll just be honest, I won't, instead of calling everyone else dumb, I'll just go ahead and call myself dumb.
Stephen Wolfe's book is a difficult book.
Yeah.
And so, number one, yeah, 95% of people who are angry on Twitter have not read the book.
I can just about guarantee that.
But even the 5% that have, and of those 5%, some of them still saying, well, I did read the book and it's terrible.
I'll just speak for myself, but let the listener understand the point that I'm making.
I don't know if I caught everything in the book.
I feel like a little bit of it went over my head.
Like Stephen is writing at a very Academic level.
And a lot of us who even did read the book may not be qualified to comment on the book.
Yeah.
Like, we're like, honestly, like, see that.
And that's the difficulty.
This is where we go back and forth, right?
So it's like me and you are doing a podcast right now, and a bunch of people are going to listen.
And this goes back to the whole gatekeeping and institutions, the whole nine yards.
But like, because we don't have our institutions are corrupt and a lot of them are being, you know, broken down and destroyed right now and they're falling into ruins.
It's like the Luther thing, right?
So, you know, it's like if you do this, if Luther translates, you know, from the Latin Vulgate into, you know, the vulgar tongue, the common tongue, then you're going to have, you know, open up the floodgate of iniquity, you know, Luther, so be it.
You know, you're going to have 45,000 different denominations, which is what we have today.
And what I've always told people is I've said better to have a needle of truth in a haystack of falsehoods than to have a haystack.
Instead of a haystack, you have a bushel of wheat, nice and trim and all bound up, wrapped together, but there's no needle at all.
There's no truth, right?
That's what Rome was.
Well, you've got Luther, God's giving reformation, theological reformation, but also in his providence, he's giving innovation, technological innovation, teamed up with that theological reformation.
And that's what we have again with social media, with podcasting, with the internet, you know, thanks to Al Gore.
But, you know, like, but what we have, it's the same kind of thing.
I think there's some theological reformation happening right now, teamed up in God's sovereignty, his providence, with a technological innovation and what it allows for.
Is truth.
But it also does allow for the peanut gallery.
And there, you know, I'm a bit of a peanut gallery person myself from time to time.
It allows for the peanut gallery to be behind a microphone.
And so, my point is like everybody has an opinion.
And honestly, I'd rather it be that.
I'd rather have the mess that we have on Twitter because a lot of people are bothered by it.
And sure, it's frustrating.
But I'm glad.
I'm glad that there's something outside of the status quo being talked about.
I'm glad that we have an old idea.
That's not just more post war consensus.
I'm glad that we're dusting off some kind of stuff.
Now, everyone's talking about it, and not everybody's qualified to talk about it.
And I would, in some sense, include myself in that.
I don't think that I have the academic know how, the philosophical, political, theological understanding that Stephen Wolfe does.
I don't.
And a lot of people who don't like his book, they don't either.
That's my point.
They don't.
They're not really qualified to have a credible opinion.
But I defend their right to have an opinion.
And I'm glad that we've gotten out, we've broken out of the bubble, the ivory tower, where we're getting to hear multiple different voices.
But I think we just need to recognize that what we're seeing right now, it's not novel, it's not pressing on to this new, unheard of foreign thing.
It's really just turning a chapter back in the story that God's been writing these past 2,000 years of church history.
And we're just now hearing it because the mold has been broken in a technological, innovative sense in God's providence to where voices that before.
The regime would have crushed.
They never would have seen the light of day.
Stephen Wolfe never would have made his way into a pulpit before the internet and these kinds of things.
If it wasn't for canon, that book's not getting published.
Crossway's not publishing the case for Christian nationalism.
No way.
And so it's a miraculous, incredible thing that's happening right now.
But my point is just like the Reformation, it's a messy thing.
And I think it's just going to be that for a while.
It's going to be messy.
But it's good because better to have a mess with some truth in there than to have nice, clean, tidy, you know, no mess, but also no truth.
Oh, big time.
Well, and, you know, just to put it in historical perspective, too, you know, even this week on Twitter, you know, I've got the feminists are mad, whatever.
A lot of Christians are mad, too.
How dare a pastor speak so harshly?
You already said the feminist.
You don't have to repeat yourself.
Yeah, exactly.
But it was really interesting because my oldest boy is reading The Bondage of the Will and reading through some other literature of Luther for third form in St. Brandon's Academy.
And he was telling me, it was pretty funny.
He goes, Yeah, you know, our teacher showed us your Twitter today, Dad.
And he said, I got to say, I'm a little disappointed.
And I was like, Really?
What are you disappointed about, son?
And he said, Well, you're a little soft.
Let me read you some of the things Luther said.
And he's reading them.
And I'm like, Wait, that's in the, I don't remember that.
I have to go back and read that.
And then you think about it, and it's like, We have just no idea where all of the like pietistic language and like, you know, when you get in a disagreement with somebody on Twitter, it's got to be like, oh brother, I yearn for your soul above the highest heavens that ye shall repent and that you would come to a proper understanding of not being a racist, bigoted, anti whatever.
You're like, okay, just, you know, again, put it in historical perspective.
Anytime you have a Reformation, as you said, it's going to be messy.
What was Luther like?
Was he like, you know, winsome Matt Chandler type guy?
No.
There's going to be men at the front of this thing who are doing the fighting.
And trust me, when the fighting comes, these are the men you want.
And so I think, again, we'll see that.
We'll see more of the shifting.
Keep in mind, Stephen Wilson, intellectual, I think he's done a phenomenal job.
I think what you're going to see, though, is people who take up that mantle who are a little bit more brawlers and street fighters.
And that's when it's going to get interesting.
And I think that's a good thing for the church.
I think it's a good thing for the future of America.
I do not.
Think that democratic pluralism is a healthy, happy future.
We've already seen the fruit of that.
Really sucks.
Right.
It's not sustainable.
And that's the thing people are like, oh, this is, you know, but your attitude or this or that.
And like, yeah, we want to be godly.
I'm not trying to excuse sin.
Yeah.
But again, what I'm saying is all of this is an improvement.
Big time.
All of it's an improvement.
Big time.
Like Luther was an improvement to indulgences and relics.
And so too, disrespectful at times, disrespectful memes on Twitter are an improvement to the globo homo.
That we currently have.
So, you know, again, that doesn't mean like, oh, so you have to be mean, you have to be rude, you have to be disrespectful.
Sure, we should try to have our cake and eat it too.
We should try to be godly and persuasive.
But what I'm saying is that talk about straining gnats and swallowing camels.
The biggest problem in evangelicalism and in our nation and in the world right now is not a few rough and tumble guys, reformed guys in their 30s on Twitter.
And to think, I mean, you have to have so lost the thread to think that that is the biggest problem.
If you think that a guy advocating for Christian nationalism is your enemy and that that's the big threat, then you have.
But here's the thing, Joel.
You're just gone.
Here's the thing.
This is what's crazy, is again, because of Luther.
Everybody talks about Luther in the Reformation, but there were advances going on with the printing press and having people who would publish it and all these things.
So the media or the medium was a huge part of the Reformation.
You could not have had that without mass producing pamphlets.
Well, and there were memes.
We're going after something very important here.
And because of Twitter and because of all these things, like you and I are not massive, we're not Simon Schuster.
You know, Cannon Press is not Simon Schuster, but we have access to Amazon now.
So, because of the technological medium advancements, we're able to get our messages out there.
And this is true.
Media as the Reformation Engine00:02:05
We are a threat, which is why you have, like, why the heck is Jen Ellis talking about the danger of Christian nationalism?
Like, why does she even care?
So that's the craziness of it.
But I think we should also be encouraged that you can have so little resources, right?
But if you have the truth, you have so little resources, but you have the truth.
Like, you can go and look and you're like, how come Russell Moore has this kind of big platform on social media and like there's zero engagement?
You ever wondered that?
Like, nobody cares, Russ.
And then you go to our accounts and it's like, well, we had to build our accounts based on quality content.
That's a fair free market type approach.
Like, Your content does well because people like it and people are essentially voting for it, and many people voting to destroy you.
But that aside, I think it should be an encouragement to a lot of people that's like this sleeper movement could actually do a great thing.
And I would also encourage people it's the same thing Tucker Carlson did with Andrew Tate.
He forced masculinity into the mainstream conversation, and everybody was mad.
Like, why would you interview Andrew Tate?
You know, why would Cannon publish Christian nationalism?
Well, here we are talking about it.
And here, like, people at the top.
Are they talking about this theory and they're sending FBI people and all that good stuff too?
So it matters.
It is making inroads.
It's effective.
And, you know, that's a good strategy to say, like, what does the enemy hate?
Well, why?
Right.
You know, because it's effective.
They know it.
Yep.
Yep.
Christ in politics, I think, in, yeah, Christ in politics, the civil magistrate actually being consciously Christian.
Mm hmm.
And then God's design for men and women.
I think those are two of the biggest patriarchy and Christian nationalism right now.
It's just, it's not a coincidence that those two things get a ton of engagement and get a ton of pushback.