The Antioch Declaration sparks fierce debate over whether it bridges Reformed divides or weaponizes secular consensus against internal dissent. Hosts critique the document's assertion that Judaism is uniquely malevolent, contrasting it with historical harms from Islam and defending Confederate figures like Stonewall Jackson as Christians distinct from Nazis. They challenge the false dichotomy between Holocaust denial and historical skepticism, arguing that questioning records does not imply hatred. Ultimately, the discussion highlights a generational shift where older leaders cede to younger voices, exposing deep fractures regarding nationhood, biblical interpretation, and the definition of anti-Semitism within modern evangelicalism. [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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Welcome Back and Leave a Review00:01:47
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Last week, the Antioch Declaration dropped and it caused quite a stir.
Is this the bridge to end the brother wars within the Reformed world?
Or is it just another log to stoke the fire?
Many have already begun to critique the statement, asking questions about what it means and exposing certain problems.
Today, we'll take a closer look at some of the parts that are simply unclear and others that we entirely disagree with.
It probably goes without saying that I will not be signing the Antioch Declaration.
And what we hope to accomplish with this episode, towards the middle and end, is answering what we believe is the most important question where do we go from here?
All right, welcome back.
GA.
Here we are.
It is the day before Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Eve, if that's such a thing.
Drawing Necessary Dividing Lines00:02:59
I don't know if it is, but.
I mean, I suppose by definition, it is.
By definition, I mean, it quite literally is Thanksgiving Eve.
I don't know if that's a national holiday, but tomorrow is Thanksgiving, a very American holiday that we're all excited to celebrate with friends and family.
And I thought in this episode, so we're going to be dealing with the Antioch Declaration and we're going to be dealing with some of the larger pieces beyond just the Declaration.
We will get into a little bit of.
Of the particulars and certain aspects of the declaration that we think are unclear, and certain aspects that we entirely disagree with.
But that said, we also want to deal at kind of a macro level with relationally and strategically, even somewhat pastorally, but in some sense, even more so politically, what declarations like this do, why we think they're particularly unhelpful as we seek to actually try to.
Acquire tangible power, not for ourselves, but for the glory of Christ in the world, because we want to see these United States and other nations alike be Christianized.
And it's hard to do that if you are continuing to divide your forces.
And so, if there are times we know from scripture where Jesus says, I have not come to bring peace, but a sword from this time going forward, a family, a household of five, there'll be two against three, three against two, I'll turn, you know.
Father against son, son against father, mother against daughter, daughter against mother.
So there is oftentimes within the body of Christ where division is necessary when it's distinguishing the people of God from the world.
God does call us out of the world.
We live in the world, but we're not of the world.
So out in that aspect, that we are actually to be separate, distinct, different from the world.
And so there are times where we need to draw a dividing line.
And there are times, sadly, because Many false teachers have gone out into the world, many false prophets.
There are times where, even within the realm of the church, that sword that brings division is necessary because, like 1 John 2 says, they went out from us because they were never among us.
So, there is often within the body of Christ and throughout this gospel age a sifting process, and we acknowledge that.
But there is also a way, the Puritans even spoke of this, in part because some of the Puritans were particularly guilty of this, there is a way to overpurify the church.
There is a way to be unnecessarily divisive with the church.
And then it's also important when we look beyond teachers and leaders and pastors within the church, when we look to the congregation itself, those congregants and parishioners that make up the church, it can be difficult at times, but pastors have a moral obligation to be able to distinguish between a Bruce Reed or a smoldering wick versus a goat.
The Danger of Overpurifying the Church00:14:12
In other words, there is.
Often times within the body of Christ where pastors have to deal and sometimes even deal forcefully.
It's not to say that there can't be a strong hand in this, but pastors often have to deal with unruly sheep, but yet have the wherewithal to be able to recognize that an unruly sheep really is still a sheep and not a goat.
And then also recognizing that there are also goats.
And so there's just a lot going on.
We're going to deal with that, but I want to start from the outset with just a bit of humor.
So, for those of you who have been following, we have been kind of plugging the last two weeks saying that we were going to deal with the new Bonhoeffer movie.
And so the goal was to do kind of a full movie review.
And a couple things happened that were just outside of our control.
There was nothing we could do about it.
So the three of us did go to the movie theater last night, but we watched Gladiator.
So, you know, we thought, like, man, we need to watch the Bonhoeffer movie for the sake of, you know, cultural and historical theological research.
This will serve the body of Christ.
There are, you know, God bless them, but there are just naive.
Boomers in the world that, you know, and Bonhoeffer is just classic boomer fuel and they need to be warned.
But we just couldn't bring ourselves to do it.
We went and we ended up watching an interesting movie instead of the really, really boring movie.
And so we didn't watch Bonhoeffer.
We will try to get to it in the coming weeks and do a full movie review.
I think that that'll be helpful.
And then part of the reason we didn't watch it is because Gladiator, just even without seeing Bonhoeffer, I know for a fact, objectively, that Gladiator, the new Gladiator movie is.
Just definitively better than the Bonhoeffer movie.
And so the temptation was just far too great.
And then, secondly, we were unable to get free tickets.
And so, you know, there's been some of you have probably seen online that there's been a promise made by Angel Studios that for anybody who's anti Semitic, they can receive free tickets to Bonhoeffer.
And so I went up to the ticket person at the theater and I said, I would like a free ticket to the movie Bonhoeffer.
And they said, What are you talking about?
And I said, Well, this promise has been made that if you're anti Semitic, you can watch it.
And he said, Well, prove it.
How do I know that you're really anti Semitic?
And I said, Well, have you heard of the Antioch Declaration?
I didn't sign it.
And I expected him to give me 10 tickets.
Yeah, I thought I'd have a whole theater to myself.
But turns out he said, Well, I don't even know what that is.
And I don't think it makes you anti Semitic not to sign it.
The movie ticket guy, he gets it.
Certain reform pastors don't.
So, all right.
On that note, Nick, did you see the text message I just sent?
I don't know if it's possible to get it up there.
But I took this picture last night as we were walking in to the theater, and it has the movie listings.
Yeah.
And it has Gladiator 2, and then it has Bonhoeffer, Pastor, Spy.
And then the very next movie, which was listed right in order Assassin, Heretic.
The reader reads Gladiator 2, Bonhoeffer, Pastor, Spy, Heretic.
There you go.
So even.
All three of those are actually true.
AMC, they already get it.
Like, is our video even necessary?
Even the movie theaters, they understand that Bonhoeffer was a heretic.
So, we walked into the wrong theater, by the way.
Gladiator 2, they both came out this weekend.
Let's just say that.
Let's just say that.
Yeah.
Which that's there it is.
You love this.
Oh, there it is.
Gladiator 2, Bonhoeffer, Pastor, Spy, Heretic.
Sometimes just, you know, there's just no better word than delicious to describe it.
I want to give credit.
I took my son last night and he's actually like, Dad, look at this.
He's the one who pointed it out.
That's hilarious.
God's providence is often delicious.
All right.
So let's begin.
We are going to get into the meat of the statement or the lack thereof, but the details of the statement and discuss that.
But before, at a kind of a macro level, we wanted to share a clip from Orrin McIntyre, a friend of ours.
He did an episode today and he did a really good job of kind of staying out of it because it's really not his fight.
It's something, an intramural skirmish within the reformed world, and particularly not even the whole reformed world, but the What I would describe as the muscular section of the reformed world.
So, guys who are a little bit more politically inclined and trying to engage politics and culture.
So, it's really not as much of a skirmish within the G3 waters or the MacArthur waters.
It's more of a Moscow apology, a Georgetown, Ogden, Wolf, Stephen Wolf, kind of an intramural debate within those camps.
Ezra Institute would be another example.
So, in other words, it's part of the things that we have to realize is just we are a very small world.
We're a very small world.
And so, that's what you'll notice part of the sentiment from Oren that I think did a really good job at a 30,000 foot level saying, This is an intramural brother war, but it's being hashed out publicly for a bunch of people to see.
It's not a good look.
And he's kind of bemoaning that because he likes the muscular reform.
He's not really necessarily part of it, but he likes our camp and has relationships with us and with Andrew Isker and Stephen Wolf and CJ and others.
And so he's rooting for us.
He's not necessarily, we're all on the same macro level team, but you know.
He's not in our particular, specific camp, but he loves us and is rooting for us and doesn't just love us.
He loves Moscow and those guys too.
And so, anyway, so he did, I think, a really helpful clip without getting into the this side's wrong and this side's right, but just saying, guys, just tactically, strategically speaking, this is just, this is a bummer.
So, here we go.
This is a clip from Oren.
So, when I see something like this declaration, what I see is a very obvious attempt.
By people who are having an internal personal spat, to make that internal personal spat external, to take things that should have been resolved internally between people and instead bring it into public spheres where it will invite scrutiny,
and more importantly, where the people who externalize the conflict are hoping they can wield the power of cancellation, they can wield the power of the secular consensus.
That's what I see.
Now, they'll cloak that language in biblical language.
They say, oh, really, we're only appealing to these biblical principles.
But if that was true, you would have kept it internal.
You're appealing externally for a reason, and that's because it allows you to bring the weight of the mob.
And we see this all the time.
This is not just this one stupid internet drama instance.
We see this all the time with conservatives.
If a conservative wants to cancel somebody, what do they do?
They attack them from the left.
They don't attack.
From the left, go ahead, please.
I was just going to say that's uh, it's the framing I feel like is seen so much online.
Uh, we've talked about it before, but racist and anti Semite just wielded as cudgels, and they're that's from a leftist framing.
Those are terms that originated in Marxist, communist, egalitarian thought, and so when you see them just swung against brothers, that is literally using tools created by the left in the last hundred years to crack down on the skulls of good Christian men, and there may be.
For sure, brother, this was out of line.
This was sin.
But go there and then, instead of, again, the tools given to you by communists who put the bat wrapped in barbed wire in your hand, go to the scriptures and use that instead.
And so, when you're using those terms, that language, that framing, all you're doing, then you reinforce the frame.
He talks about elsewhere in the episode that when you appeal to other courts, like Paul when he exhorts the Corinthians, he says, don't go to the Roman court because then you're giving the impression you, the state, you, the Romans, you need to come rule over us.
No, keep it in the church and establish the authority of the church to judge in these spiritual matters.
We should never, as Christians, but also politically, be appealing to the cultural left.
Come in and moderate.
Come supply us with this in terms of this debate.
Come tell us so and so is out of line by the mob or whatever else it is.
Right.
Yeah.
And I think so much of this is another way that Orrin framed it on his show was not even so much in theological terms.
And I know that the crafters of the statement.
Would disagree at this point, and they would say, No, it's all theological, it's all just biblical language.
But the way that Orrin framed it, he said, It's really not.
It's those who have a post 1950s, 60s view of the world and those who have a pre 1950s, 60s view of the world.
And you can put Christian language on either side.
We, as moderns, are more well rehearsed in putting biblical language on the post 1950s, 60s.
So basically, he said, It's.
It's just, it's a pretty clear disagreement that's more of a political and historical disagreement than it is theological.
It's those who believe that the Civil Rights Act is synonymous with the gospel of Jesus Christ, and then those who don't.
So, like those who think that every single one of our Christian ancestors has been in sin until about 1967, and then those who don't.
And that's, I mean, that really is the divide.
So, you could call it, you know, The lovey dovey guys versus the cold hard racist.
That's one framing.
And you can call that biblical framing, but that's not what it is.
Or you can be a little bit more honest and say, well, really, it's the paleocons versus the moderns.
And this is something that I've been kind of discussing a little bit in the last few weeks as we've gotten in the chat, and we'll try to take some questions today.
But part of the reason people have said, Joel, it seems like you're gravitating more and more away from theonomy.
And part of the reason why is because I've realized that.
The theonomic position, although I still would describe myself as a general equity theonomic guy, certainly looking at the Decalogue as a summation of the moral law of God and then looking at the civil codes given to Israel and extracting the general equity and then applying it to our place and our time today, but allowing for reason and prudence and how we do that and all those kinds of things.
So I would still hold to that banner.
I could be, you know, maybe there's just some glaring example that I haven't read, you know, so I'm just ignorant here.
And if so, then I apologize ahead of time.
But do you guys know of, because when I think of theonomy, it's a relatively new position.
So when I think of theonomy, it's like, man, those guys are based, those guys hold to the Bible.
And I remember like when I was coming into theonomy, that was my first impression.
And then, and then like one of the things that kind of threw a wrench in the gears, and I never really got an answer for it was if theonomy is so biblical and so based and so conservative of a position.
Um, then how did we end up with Joel McDermott, right?
Like, how do you end up with a guy who's wearing uh skin tight capri leather pants and uh goes completely woke and uh is on board you know fully with Black Lives Matter and you know and just drinking and and administering the woke right you know Kool Aid?
Like, I do you so here's my question do you guys know of any PaleoCon?
Like, you know, like, like well known, whether, you know, Pat Buchanan or even like, you know, Paul Godfrey.
Is there a well known, because Joel McDermott was a well known theonomist, you know, and, and, um, so do you know of like a well known paleocon who started wearing skin tight leather, uh, capri pants and, and started, you know, joining the rallies at BLM?
The Joel McDermott downwells file for the record to start at after he got beat, I think it was 2015, 2016, in a debate.
He just, he tried to bring theonomy to the table.
And I don't know, I don't remember who his debater was, but he got trounced in that century.
J.D. Hall.
JD Hall.
Yeah.
And that sent him in the spiral, just at least for him trying to combat.
He did not have answers.
And that's what put him on this track.
I watched that debate and I don't feel like it was the best debate, but I don't think he got trounced.
I felt like it was, you know, my takeaway.
Maybe I'd feel different if I watched it now, but my takeaway was that it was kind of a stalemate.
I didn't feel like Joel McDermott, you know, just mopped the floor with JD Hall, but I didn't feel, you know, the opposite way either.
I felt like it was kind of a stalemate and a lot of talking past each other, and then it never really ironed out and proved that one side was actually superior to the other.
So I didn't feel like that.
And more largely to my point, to me, it doesn't seem as though his worldview didn't hold up, Joel McDermott's, and he got beat publicly in a debate.
And so then he gravitated away.
What I'm trying to convey, I think, more specifically, is I don't think that Joel, this is what I'm seeing as the dangers.
I don't see Joel as that he was a base theonomist and then gave up theonomy for wokeness.
I see Joel, if he was sitting here, Joel McDermott, I think he would say that theonomy is perfectly compatible with wokeness.
Western Influence on Biblical Definitions00:08:52
I think he would.
I think he would say that I haven't given up my prior convictions.
David Reese would not.
David Reese would not.
Yeah, those guys won it, and I love David Reese.
But no, that's the way I see it.
And because what they'll do is they would go, so here's how you get there, like to substantiate my claim is all the things about sojourners.
Yep.
Like, so, like, just the other day, you know, a well known theonomist was posting, you know, you shall treat the sojourner as a native citizen.
Well, that is, that's in the Bible.
And a theonomic, you know, the theonomic position can be a bit biblicist, rigid.
Rigid.
And like, so then anybody who comes into your country, You treat them, and I would just be like, well, no, but that's not what the verse is saying.
It doesn't mean that all of a sudden they should be treated as though their ancestors, 15 generations, have been in your country with all the same privileges and all this.
No, they're still a sojourner.
They should not be unnecessarily oppressed or stolen from, or the weight of the law in a political sense, in a legislative sense, wielded against them in order to exploit them for all their goods.
Uh, but but no, like the sojourner who has come into Israel and been there for all of 15 minutes is not a native Israelite and should not be treated exactly that misses the point, Joel.
Because the word sojourner is not the same as the word immigrant, right?
A sojourner is one who travels and then goes back, yeah.
The intention of a sojourner is to maybe you're there for a while because your country had a famine, right?
And so you come and then you but you're like you have a round trip ticket, and so.
It's a false equivalency to say that sojourner passages apply to what we have with immigration in America today because a sojourner was one who traveled and intended to go back.
Right.
Like maybe, maybe, you know, the famine never cleared up and they, you know, they were never able to go back.
But that's like they were not there as this is now my country.
It's I have to come here for a while, but my ties are still back in my land.
And even Israel, it's called they're called sojourners, even though they were in Israel or in Egypt for 400 years.
But that entire time, their intention was we've got to get out of here.
We've got to get back.
Right.
Like it was never so.
I think some of the problem with with some of the takes by modern theonomists is I'm not even opposed to trying to find those principles, but I would say you miss the principle.
The principle is a visitor gets treated.
Properly with the same respect and laws that you apply to everyone else.
But an invader, you treat them as an invader.
Right.
You know?
Right.
And someone pointed out too, there's provision if that foreigner or sojourner was to blaspheme, they would receive capital punishment.
That's right.
And we're kind of quiet about that part.
That's right.
Like that's what it comes with.
Okay.
Yeah.
Welcome the sojourner and the foreigner as they travel through your land.
And if they set up and decide, well, we're going to worship Allah here or get out of praying, Matt, it would be in the Old Testament system, capital punishment.
Oh, that part's not very palatable.
That part doesn't square very well with classical liberalism.
I think to go back to your point earlier, Joel, part of this is that our definitions of what we see reflected in biblical passages even have been influenced by the way that the West has moved in the post war context.
Our time period.
Yeah, it's our time period.
It's been influenced by the Civil Rights Act, it's been influenced by globalism, it's been influenced by some degree of universalism, not applied necessarily to soteriology that everybody's going to heaven, but I think it has been applied.
When it comes to an idea of what is a nation and what is citizenship and who are these things available to, that is just my point is that has affected, I think, every single element of Christianity.
So to stop picking on theonomy now, I guess my main point is not to say that theonomy finds itself particularly vulnerable to modernism, but my point is at least, at minimum, to say that theonomy is not invulnerable or immune to modernism.
That just becoming a theonomist, I remember thinking that like, you know, three, four years ago, that if I was post millennial and theonomic, that that would be sufficient and make me immune to being a lib.
But Joel McDermott is a lib and he is still a theonomist.
And so theonomy does not make you immune to being a lib.
And it certainly doesn't make you immune.
If anything, it almost forces you to be a lib.
Which is just a, you know, a lip.
And I'm the eternal optimist.
Theonomy is young, at least Rush Dooney's very young.
So we've only had 50 years to see the fruit.
The story could be different in 100 or 150.
But at least this point, to play the tape back, it's not great.
Probably about the, I would say, the 30 year mark or so.
You have Rush Dooney passes away.
Gary North obviously passed away a few years ago.
Bonson, really brilliant, sharp mind.
As that first generation went away, common saying, Lord, save me from my disciples.
Let's.
The disciples and the proteges that have taken this up.
And to be fair, there's a broader context that they're trying to do this within.
Not looking good.
So if you're a theonomist, you're based, you want to see God's law, then make it so that the next hundred years, in the next hundred years, we can point to it and say, no, theonomy answers these questions and it's rigorous and strong.
Yeah.
And I, you know, when I came into theonomy, general equity theonomy, I just, I know it was a new term, but I looked back at the way that English common law, Started studying scripture.
And I just thought, okay, this is a new term, but this is part of the Reformed and Anglo Protestant tradition.
Right.
And, you know, I realized that.
Definitely the Puritans.
Yes.
That was what pushed me over the edge was I was like, well, if it's good enough for the Puritans.
Well, but common law goes back way before the Puritans.
Right.
Yeah, I know.
But I was just saying, like now, I look with a little bit more of an informed view.
I look at the founding of America, and I'm able to actually distinguish between the Puritans and then others who were of the Reformed cloth, but they weren't necessarily part of the Puritans, and they would have had a different way of understanding things and doing things.
But I think the Puritans, it's safe to say that although the term wasn't there, they were theonomic.
In many ways.
So that's totally fair to say that the ideas have been there for a long time, beyond just 50 years.
Well, this is the division.
It seems like it goes very anti-division.
Nature, history, tradition, different sides falling on different ends.
Like you mentioned skinny jeans.
And it's funny, but it's kind of true.
A group of people are like, oh, what's effeminate about a man wearing skinny jeans?
You know, why does a man have to be strong?
And those are just high-level kind of characters of one side.
And then the other side that's like, no, let's read some Aristotle.
In our civics class, let's understand him.
Let's lose the dad bond.
Stephen Wolf says this in his book.
Nine times out of ten, those are kind of where the sides are falling nature, grace, tradition, modernity.
That's kind of what's running through this theme.
Theonomy, the Antioch Declaration, that's what's parsing it out.
At least that's my assessment.
And one of the things, Stephen Wolf was on Real Grace, Abounding Grace.
Abounding Grace, yeah.
And he kept saying, Art must be.
That guy didn't like me at the end.
Did you watch it?
I did watch it.
But Stephen Wolf kept saying, The perspective that you, Gordon, are espousing is really novel in history.
Like, we just have to realize that what has happened in the West and in Christianity over the last 50, 60, 70 years is not how Christianity has been for a very long time.
I'm not saying that the scholastic era or the medieval era had bodybuilding monks, right?
Like, we're not going to retcon all of that.
But I think as I've really thought through, because I'm the oldest one here and I can be.
Frank with the audience, I have the hardest time with this conflict, right?
Like, I just, I'm like, I don't want to, I don't want to get, I don't want to get involved, right?
But as I've, as I've tried to detangle what is going on, really, I think it is, we've introduced a lot of new ideas that are not traditional, not historical, not natural, and in some ways not biblical into the West, into Christian society.
And what we're doing, it's like a hook.
Once it gets swallowed, it's much harder getting the hook out than getting the hook in.
And to some degree, I've kind of resigned myself to the fact that the project of, Of the next while is getting the hooks out.
And that's not a fun process.
Joining the Parallel Economy Group00:02:22
Yeah, it's going to hurt.
Let's go to our first commercial break.
When we come back, we're going to be putting up on the screen exact statements from the declaration, ones that we think are unclear, and then even perhaps more importantly, some ones that we disagree with.
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Applying Commandments to Business Life00:05:25
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All right, a couple of housekeeping things, real quick.
This is from Tom Askell.
As the darkness clears away.
As the darkness clears away.
This is their new from Founders Ministry.
They're new.
Christmas devotional, and my wife and I and our family are going to be using it.
Tom was gracious enough to send it to me.
So go and check out the founder's website if you want to get one of those.
And then also, somebody just did this, they're not even trying to sell something, they just personalized this for me.
And so, but I want to plug their company.
They didn't even ask me to, but Axehead.
Axehead is the name of it.
And he's, I guess, a leather worker, but he just reached out and said, Hey, sorry, you're going through all the controversy on.
You know, everything that's been going down for the last month or so.
And so, yeah, he made coasters.
We've got these coasters.
And I guess these are stir sticks.
It makes me think of like if you're making old fashioned or something like that.
And then, so, anyways, really, really cool gift.
Probably it might be the coolest gift I've ever gotten.
Michael and I are going to arm muscle for the second one.
That's right.
Go to Patreon, that's where you can watch it.
And so, speaking of gifts, if you would be so kind and generous to consider giving an end of the year gift, we're coming up on the end of the year.
And we are, we do have.
Offer tax deductions.
And so we are a 501c3.
We operate in that vein because we want to benefit you, the people of God, as much as we can.
Um, so I've gotten people you know over the years who have said, um, well, that just makes you a wing of the state, and I'm like, have you listened to any episode I've ever done?
Um, we you know, like, we have been threatened, I get death threats, you know, all kinds of things.
And so, you know, my motto is, uh, as it pertains to the state with this particular topic, it's not my motto with everything, but on this topic, is, um, I'd rather ask forgiveness than permission.
So, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna use a 501c3, not for us, um, it's for you, so that you can actually get a tax write off on your donations.
And so, all that being said, and I'll do it as long as I can until they take it away in true Texas fashion, my mindset has been come and take it.
So, it's not like, oh, we're towing Joel's over there compromising with the US government or whatever.
So, we don't hold any punches.
We tell things as it really is.
But as long as we can get away and keep the ability to give you a tax write off, then we're doing that for your sake.
So, if you'd like to give us an end of the year donation, we'd really appreciate it.
Appreciate that.
There's a lot that we want to do next year.
We're going to take the live stream that we're doing on Wednesdays and make it three times a week Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Continue to do the Friday special in addition to three live streams a week.
We're also going to be breaking down our live streams into sections and releasing those as isolated clips so that it's a little bit more palatable.
So you have like a 20 minute video that's particularly on one topic.
You know, sometimes we do two hour, often hour and a half to two hour live streams, and it won't be to the final 30 minutes that we get into a particular topic that just organically arises, but it's Really good for the church.
And a lot of people, frankly, just don't make it that far.
Yeah, exactly.
People ask, so we deal with questions from the chat, and some of the questions are phenomenal and could be their own little 15 minute episode because we really try to be thorough in answering them.
And a lot of people miss that because a lot of people, when you're watching a video, you don't always make it to the end, especially if the video is an hour and a half, you know, two hours long.
So, but all that just takes time.
You got to make thumbnails for all of that.
Somebody has to do video editing.
And so we already have people in mind, and we just need to be able to pay them.
So we have some.
Equipment needs, we have staff needs.
There's just more that we want to do.
So we're not just asking for more money so that we can be comfortable.
We're asking for more money so that we can produce, by the grace of God, more fruit and produce more content for you.
And so if you'd like to be able to give a gift and do it with a tax deduction, then you can go to rightresponseministries.com forward slash donate.
Uh, portion of the statement that we want to deal with.
So, just to be clear, you know, many people have done point by point podcasts on the statement.
Maybe at some point, um, that happens.
That's not necessarily the goal today.
The goal is just to highlight why, really, Joel is the one that matters why Joel's not signing the statement.
And there are two reasons I think we could boil it down to some of the statement is just unclear and vague and not helpful.
It's like, what, why would I affirm this?
It's not objectively a false statement, but it's also just a very unusual thing to say, especially in a statement or declaration of theology in the life of the church.
So there's that category.
And then there's some that we want to just say, hey, actually, we can't sign the declaration because of disagreement, actual disagreement over this point.
Like, not just, it's not helpful, it's not clear, but we don't agree with this point at all.
So the first one is in relation to the study of science.
And I'm going to read it and then I'm going to make a comment and then I'll pass it on.
It says We affirm that if the superabundant, diverse forms of the veritable glut of evidence, detailed in diaries, documented records, firsthand testimonies of eyewitnesses, extensive photography and videography, all provided within living memory for the deliberate mass destruction of millions of Jews by the Nazis, does not amount to historical certitude for what specialists call the Holocaust, then, not specialists, everyone calls it that.
But anyway, then the science of history itself is called into question.
Okay, so in a nutshell, what they're saying is.
We worry that if we question the record about the Holocaust, we undermine the science of history.
If you can't believe the Holocaust, you can't believe anything.
And that's basically what they're saying.
That's what they're saying.
And that's what they're saying in order for us, they're basically saying, it's just silly.
It's basically an argument saying, well, one of the reasons that you have to affirm the Holocaust isn't even necessarily because it's true.
And of course, you know, the guys who pinned this statement would say that it's true.
But hear me out.
If you think of it on its face logically, the point that's being made is even if it wasn't true, it's still worth affirming.
Because you either have six million and you hold that to your dying breath, six million.
And if anyone questions it, just for good measure, you add another million.
So now it's seven million.
Now it's eight.
So it's either that on the one hand or total chaos and anarchy on the other.
And I'm like, that is just a false dichotomy that doesn't exist.
Somebody could have serious questions about the validity of the Holocaust or the measures that were taken or the numbers that have been cited or this, that, and the other.
Pat Buchanan did.
Yeah.
Well, here's another one.
It's talking about theonomy before it got gay, you know, back with, you know, the original guys.
Rush Dooney, for 30 years, Rush Dooney, and he made it as a matter.
He made it a moral issue and tying it to the scripture.
And these guys would do the same thing, but he did it on the other side of the fence.
And so the point is that the whole founder of the theonomic movement, your boy, right, you're like talking about honoring spiritual fathers, your theonomic spiritual father, Rush Dooney, from the same, I know what you guys are getting to.
You're getting to a biblical principle, namely the ninth commandment.
And not bearing false witness.
And you're saying, well, there's been so much testimony to go against it, is you're going against two or three witnesses.
And in this case, you're going against thousands of witnesses and all this kind of stuff.
And so it's a breach of the ninth commandment that you're actually slandering all these people as being a liar, unless you can prove it without a shadow of a doubt and blah, blah, blah.
But that was the same argument that Rush Dooney used from the other side.
For 30 years, Rush Dooney went on public record saying, yeah, six million, I don't think so.
Specifically, calling to question.
A lot of it was a lot of Soviets at Nuremberg, and so the Soviets were the ones that tortured witnesses, caused them to bear false witness.
As we said, even when Soviets versus Nazis, even when you're opposed to someone, you are not permitted to level false charges at them the way the Soviets did to the Nazis at Nuremberg.
That's his argument and the basis he's kind of saying.
So his argument is that the Ninth Commandment was breached, and that by giving your consent to the six million number, was you agreeing with Ninth Commandment breakers?
Right.
And here's the deal yes.
The record does state that towards the very end of Rushduni's life in his final years, he actually went back and said, Okay.
But here's the deal for 30 years, Rushduni was perfectly comfortable being publicly known by today's standards, right?
Because today, I mean, if you think it's 5,999,999, you're a Holocaust denier.
That's right.
You know, like, depending who you ask, definitely the ADL.
I mean, and so if you're a big dog and you say something like that, I mean, you guys remember how it wasn't that long ago that Elon Musk, you know, like, you know, he was losing all these advertisers off of X, you know, because of the ADL and their ridiculous standards.
And so he's losing, like, X is losing like 80%, 90% of all of its advertising income.
And he just barely bought the platform.
He's trying, he still was working on a subscription model and all these kinds of things to make it profitable.
And so, you know, he's getting massive pressure.
And he was on that panel room and he had like this pretty awesome Elon moment where he stood up to all the advertisers and a lot of.
A lot of guys who were heads of companies who were Jewish and in bed with the ADL, and some guys on the ADL.
And he said, F you, you know, like, and, and, and, but then what happened?
Well, two weeks later, he was kissing the wall wearing the little hat with Ben Shapiro.
He got, got the big call.
He got, shut it down.
He got the call.
And so, my point is, and, and nowhere in that did, here's my point as it relates to Rush Dooney and our larger topic, nowhere in that did, even in his, in his most courageous moment when he's standing up and saying, I'm going to.
I don't care if I lose every dime, and you're not going to hold me hostage.
Free speech is going to stand.
I don't care about the ADL.
I don't care about the Zionists.
You can't make me do this.
And apparently, the richest man in the world can still somehow, two weeks later, wind up at the wall, kissing the wall and wearing the little hat.
So, that, like, for anybody who's wondering, you know.
So, anyways, yes, there is real Zionist power in the world.
But that said, before he got the call, shut it down.
Before he got the call, he had this strong moment.
But my point is this.
Even in his strong moment, nowhere is there any record of Elon saying, Oh, and also, not only F you about the advertising and the money thing, but also the Holocaust never happened, and there's no way the ovens could have, you know, the math doesn't add up, and wooden doors, you know, doesn't make any sense.
And it was just a lice outbreak, you know, and it wasn't actually gas chambers, it was just showers, you know, and people were malnourished because, you know, Churchill cut off the trade.
And like, he didn't say any of that.
Right.
He didn't say any of that.
Comparing Nazis and Confederate Heroes00:16:01
And yet, He was still deemed as an anti Semitic and had to go through the ritual the same as everybody else.
You can't be a US president if you don't go to the wall and wear the hat.
You can't be the vice president unless you go to the wall and wear the hat.
Everybody's like, what's his name in Argentina?
Oh, yeah.
He's so courageous.
There is not one guy, right or left, who gets into any position of power without having a small hat.
And I'm not saying they themselves are a Jew.
But they have to pay homage.
They have to.
Greg Abbott, those pictures of him wheeling up in the chair.
Wheeling and weeping.
Just wheeling and weeping.
God bless him.
And so just a pinch of incest, a pinch of incest.
I did that like months ago and you were like, get that out of your system.
Yeah, incense at the wailing wall to the false god of Judaism.
And so my point is just saying this Rushduny wasn't unhinged.
Rushduny wasn't saying nothing bad ever happened.
And Hitler is the last Christian prince.
I think there are ways that you can go too far.
Where it's historically indefensible in Hitler's own words.
So it's just historically indefensible.
And it's morally reprehensible because it's denying, you're going against somebody's own admission.
So, by biblical measures, even if you don't have two or three witnesses, if somebody confesses, that's why when there's detectives and interrogations of this, you're going for a confession.
Because if you get a confession, it's over.
And so, just even by Hitler's own words and certain aspects with this, that, and the other.
So, anybody who's saying, you know, Hitler's the last Christian prince and he's great, that is, I think, tactically stupid, historically indefensible, and morally reprehensible.
And so, that's just dumb.
And as Stephen Wolfe has said, and I've said, and Ogden has said, everybody on our side, like, if you're looking for, I understand, 1930s Germany, they did some good things.
That's great.
And they did.
They really did do some good things.
And there are parallels to what was happening in Germany and what's happening here.
I get all of it.
But if you're looking for heroes to imitate, George Washington will do just fine.
Stonewall Jackson is fantastic.
Robert E. Lee.
There are great heroes, and you can even find some controversial ones.
But the controversial guys who were Confederates in American history, although the mainline consensus goes against them too, here's one dynamic difference between them and Hitler.
These men loved Jesus, they were undeniably, in their own words, Christians and not just, you know, hijacking a generic Christian language, you know, no, no, no.
Stonewall Jackson was a better theologian than most pastors today.
Dabney was his personal pastor.
They're back and forth, right?
He's discipling, writing a biography of him.
So these were good men.
These are the guys.
So when you talk about, like, well, we have a duty to honor our fathers, especially if they've been lied about, you're right.
But I'm an American.
I'm celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow.
Right.
I like.
Germany is not my fight.
I care about my American fathers.
I care about my reformed fathers.
Hitler was neither.
All these American guys with the Confederate, they were reformed.
They were American.
These are our guys.
And they're actually defensible.
And so if you're looking for someone to defend who's gotten bad press, it wasn't fair, okay, well, let's talk about Stonewall Jackson.
If you're looking for an example to follow, let's look at the Puritans.
Let's look at the reformers.
Let's look at some of these Confederate leaders, they would actually be good examples like Stonewall Jackson.
Um, we just don't need Hitler for that, however, here's my main point my main point is there is a gaping chasm between Hitler was the last Christian prince, the Holocaust never happened, but it should have.
Right?
That's how you know, like, that's the full nine yards.
If you're wondering, like, what is the furthest that I could possibly be, you know, the furthest you can possibly be is when you arrive at saying, uh, the Holocaust did not happen, but it should have.
Um, there's a big gap between that position, which is not my position, not even close.
And Rush Dooney saying, I think that there was some serious pressure by the bad guys.
The victors get to write the history books.
And in this case, the victors, it wasn't just us.
We were not the only victors.
We helped the communists to be victors.
The communists got to win because we let them.
And part of the reason why, for the next 80 years or so, 50 to 80 years, we had to fight a Cold War, not a hot war, but a Cold War with the communists, is because we came to the communists' aid.
Against the fascists.
So we picked the communists for a few years in a hot war.
So then we had to fight the communists for a few decades in a cold war.
Still fighting them.
The Nazis are not the problem.
And here's the deal are there thousands, right?
I'll admit, I want to be truthful here in the spirit of not breaking the ninth commandment.
It's not just 14 Anon accounts on X. There are thousands of accounts, thousands that have taken the entire bottle of red pills on World War II and all that kind of stuff.
But here's the deal.
A lot of these guys go too far.
Some of these guys, and there actually are a lot, really are good guys who are family men.
They're not just living in their mom's basement.
They have five kids.
They own their own business.
But all of them, the really bad guys and the good guys, and some of the guys in between, none of these guys are congressmen, Supreme Court judges, senators, those who own not just a business, but own a business that makes billions.
Not just millions, but billions.
So when I think of real institutional power, you know, chancellor of universities, but when I think of real levers of power, real positions of institutional power, let's just be honest what is our problem?
Is it fascism or communism?
Is it Nazis or Bolsheviks?
Right.
Well, there's thousands of neo Nazis on Twitter.
Uh huh.
Yes.
And occasionally we get a $10 donation from one of them.
Right.
Okay.
But there are also thousands of straight up communists who are currently running the world.
Right.
And that's part of what Warren also talked about in his episode, just saying this guy's, this is silly.
Pastorally, though.
Right.
So maybe they don't have real levers of power.
But if it happens to be a guy who's a member in your church, And he's not just the Rush Dooney position that was held for 30 years.
I got some serious questions because the guys who won the war got to do some of the trials and determine how bad things really happened.
And that seems a little sketchy to me.
That was Rush Dooney's position.
But are there guys in churches who go further than that, who are like last Christian president?
Uh huh.
And pastorally, you should talk about it.
But this goes all the way back to the Orrin clip.
If they're in your churches, then you can talk to them in your churches.
You can talk to them in your churches.
What you don't necessarily need to do is make an intramural skirmish or even smaller, a local church pastoral issue public for the whole world to see.
That is strategically unhelpful as we're trying to win a larger war.
And the larger war is not against Nazis, it's against communists.
Something that has helped me, and this took me a while to process.
Again, I'm the oldest one on the panel.
Something that clicked for me that was helpful, and it goes right back to what you said there, Joel.
I think in the minds of a lot of people, the only reason that they can imagine why someone would want to question the historical record around World War II is so that they have a justification to go out and hate and abuse and kill Jewish people.
That's a good point, Michael.
And that is not the case.
You just gave Rush Dooney, who came at questioning that record out of a love for God's law.
Right.
And Rushdie did not hate Jews.
And there are other reasons like the whole rise of the post-war consensus where some of us are saying we are bound by a set of assumptions and conditions and rules that came out of World War II.
And we're wanting to question the historical record, not because we want to re-persecute Jews or whatever, but because we feel like these are our chains and constraints on the West and on our nation.
And that at its root is actually an honorable sentiment to want to be able to say, why can't we as a nation Run ourselves properly.
Great point.
Cooper, I was going to say, he was on Jay Burden's show and he said, it's like this foundational myth, not in the myth of not true, but it is a story.
Because all the evidence that they say in the Antioch Statement, the pictures, the photographs, the record, none of those tell a story in and of itself.
You have to weave a narrative through it the narrative of genocide, the narrative of targeting, of racial hate.
And it's that story woven through all the evidence and then propped up.
I was in Boston to visit a client for work.
There was a billboard there and it was like a Holocaust museum.
It was like the display or the museum to awaken America's conscience.
As in, this is a story that has to be told and forced.
I mean, how many previews for World War II movies do we see when we go to the theater?
Oh, yeah.
At least two to three.
Hollywood puts out, like, there are World War II movies about Hitler, like seven of them, every single year and have been for forever.
For 50 years.
This narrative that is load bearing.
We can't have this because of the genocide that happened.
We can't have this because of that.
If you push back on Zionism, that's just hop stepping away from the Holocaust.
And so, in breaking it down, it's not out of hate or out of malice.
But no, genuinely, we can't have a society that just sits on this one event that, even if all of it were true and all the genocide, this, that, or the other, there have been millions, like genocide happens.
That's what's terrible about war.
Innocent people are brutally murdered, die, and starve.
That's what happens.
And this happened here to some degree.
The degree is what we're talking about.
But man, you just can't have something unquestionable, the foundation of your society, and be like, yep, this is going to last the next 200 years.
And this is going to be our build process.
You said something really interesting there.
You said it's load bearing.
And that.
Makes me think two things quickly.
One, you don't knock out a load bearing wall without having something.
I almost did this once.
We were remodeling a house and we were removing a wall and we were going to put a beam in.
We were going to replace the wall with a big beam.
We had an engineer give us the specs on the beam.
But one of my friends who was in construction, he goes, You're going to put up a temporary wall first, right?
While you knock out the main wall.
And I was like, Oh, yeah, that was definitely on my list.
Let me go to home.
So I think part of what some people legitimately are trying to do is they're trying to say, We need some structures.
That are going to hold up the society, the historical narrative.
And I think that we're, I think we would be naive to say, yeah, we have it all figured out.
And so now we can knock out the beam.
What we're saying is, let's start quickly building up other walls.
So our entire Western civilization doesn't rest on this one wall of this single narrative that has been reinforced over and over.
We need other walls.
We need other walls.
And then we also do need to be knocking that wall down.
Right.
Right.
To go back to what you originally said, Michael, in the very beginning, you said to immediately impute that anybody who's questioning World War II history or things like that, to immediately impute to them a malice and hatred of the heart towards Jews.
Right.
It just made me think that part I think of what frustrates me in all this is like you could just, like you could so easily, the parallels are just impossible to not see, at least for me.
That would be like saying, Anybody who questions Civil War history and questions the potential defense of the Confederates is harboring in their heart a malice and hatred towards black people.
Right.
Right.
And but but that one, guys in our camp have done.
Right.
And written books about.
And and I understand that there is a difference.
I've already said it multiple times in our episodes over the past few weeks and months.
And I'll say it again.
I do understand.
I think there is one clear substantial difference between the Confederates and the issue of slavery versus Nazi Germany and the Third Reich and what was going on with the Jews.
I think the biggest difference between the Confederates and the Nazis is that many of the Confederates really were, by their own words, Orthodox, not like a neo pagan syncretism kind of, but like Orthodox, Reformed Christian men.
Many of them were pastors.
They were good men, good men.
And I don't believe that that argument can be made, at least, certainly not a one to one ratio.
I'm not saying that no Nazi could have been a Christian, but in terms of the degree, the amount of how many people in the South who fought on the Confederate side really love the Lord Jesus Christ and will be in heaven worshiping forever with us, these are fathers and brothers in Christ.
And so that's one really big difference.
But again, the point still stands because even with that difference, so you can say, you can give that disclaimer and say, yeah, but the Confederates were largely Christian men.
And I don't believe that the Nazis were.
And so that's why it's okay to question the mainline history of the Civil War because it's literally all the same talking points.
It's like, well, actually, the real chief villain was Abraham Lincoln.
Actually, the real chief villain was Winston Churchill.
And actually, the Confederates were good.
Actually, the Nazis, like the parallels are striking.
Now, I would agree with that disclaimer and say, But this is apples and oranges.
It's not a one to one ratio because of the Christian peace.
Many good Christian men who were Confederates.
And I don't believe that it was the same with the Nazis.
However, in terms of an individual person asking questions and even coming to, because people are like, oh, he just said asking questions.
All right, so I'll go further asking questions and even coming to some specific conclusions about what happened in the war.
Even with both sides knowing that there were, um, that there's a strong Christian heritage with the Confederates that's not present with the Nazis, still to ask questions about both wars, Civil War and World War II, and to come to certain conclusions that go against the mainline consensus with both of these things, it's still in either case, it does not require hatred of blacks or hatred of Jews, it just says, I think we got this wrong.
Timing and Eternal Sense in Faith00:14:05
So you can still say, um, on this side over here, you can still say, yep, Hitler was a bad guy, he needed to be fought.
And you can still disagree with the strategy, the timing.
You can say, well, he was bad, but maybe we should have teamed up with him against the Soviets first and then tried to take out Hitler.
I think that Hitler called for peace three different times and Churchill refused to do it because he was war hungry and because he went into debt.
And then all of a sudden, magically, his debts were paid.
And maybe he was bought by somebody behind the scenes who was on the Bolshevik side.
You can do all of that.
And never have any hatred in your heart for Jews.
Tucker Carlson did that for two and a half hours in front of all of our faces.
That would be my question.
If Tucker Carlson comes and he confesses faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and the triune God, will you allow Tucker Carlson to be a member in your church?
Because I guarantee you, Tucker Carlson will not be signing the Antioch Declaration.
Even Derek Cooper, I believe, in good faith, is a Christian.
He claims the name of Christ, all of his public conduct, I can see.
Would he be accepted at your church, pastor listening?
Right.
Right.
So, I think that kind of brings us to, you know, we're going to do a couple more here in the statement, but that kind of brings us to a little bit of, you know, to be as charitable as possible.
I think, you know, if I'm imagining, you know, if Doug was listening to this or if he was sitting right next to me, I want to be fair to him.
I think he would say, he's like, all right, Joel, I've been listening to you guys for the last 20 minutes.
Will you give me a second to say something?
And I'd be like, sure, Doug.
You know, say, Well, then, if this is how you feel and this is what you believe, and blah, blah, blah, then it wasn't about you.
The statement wasn't about you, Joel.
I think that would be his defense.
It wasn't about you.
And my counter, my response to that would be then you shouldn't have released it in the middle of a very public conflict that's surrounding me.
On this topic.
Yeah, on this topic.
And not even because I wouldn't be able to just believe it or not.
People, a lot of people, and this is very kind of you guys.
So, all of you guys watching, you have my immense thanks and gratitude.
A lot of you have reached out to me emails and text messages and DMs on X and said, We're praying for you.
And, like, man, I can't imagine what you're going through.
And just so that you can all have a very peaceful and pleasant Thanksgiving tomorrow and be relieved.
You could ask Michael and Wes, you can ask Nathan, you ask my wife.
I'm doing just fine.
You know, people are like, How are you holding up?
Man, you must be.
I'm like, Just another day.
I mean, right now, I have conflicts.
I have conflicts within conflicts, controversies within.
It's like, so I have like my month long controversy on this topic.
And then today's controversy was blowing up on Twitter because I said, I made a very arrogant statement in 45 seconds where I said, I'm stupid.
I said like three different things, literally dissing myself, making fun of myself, but it was still very, very arrogant.
The goal was not to bolster Joel.
The goal was to absolutely.
Insult the evangelical church.
That was my goal.
And if you take offense at that, good.
I'm glad I offended you.
Because that was my goal.
A lot of times people are like, well, when you say it like that, it offends me.
I'm like, good.
Then I said it clearly.
I'm glad to hear that message received.
Good.
Thank you for that encouragement.
I'll continue to say things clearly.
So, all that being said, the point is I'm doing just fine.
Praise God.
And so, I have not been overly emotional or overly hurt or overly throughout this.
And so, because of that, I can distinguish between these things.
And say, okay, it really is possible that you're releasing something, a declaration on this particular topic while there's this particular conflict between me and Tobias that's going on, but the declaration doesn't actually have me in mind.
Okay.
Like I can do that.
You still shouldn't have done it.
Right.
Because you don't need to just persuade Joel Webbin.
Right.
I can actually be persuaded.
I happen to be a pretty reasonable man.
But a lot of people are not going to be persuaded.
Like you're watching on X, I'm watching on X. Most people are calling BS right now.
The majority of people are saying, I don't buy it.
So I actually could buy it.
I'm actually willing to say, okay, you know what?
It is possible that you had this declaration in the works for a while because you have been talking about this for a while.
I mean, Doug's written at least 457 blogs on neo Nazis in the last nine months.
So I know that he's been thinking about it for a while.
And so I actually could buy that.
But the timing is just still not great for you.
You should not have released the declaration until things with me and Tobias were solved.
And here's the deal.
I understand the sit down and shut up and wait that James White said.
I'm not a tech guy, so you guys correct me if I'm wrong, but does it take a month to charge a laptop?
Negative.
How long is Tobias going to be charging that laptop?
He lost his laptop charger, God bless.
But it's been four weeks.
And I know that even as we're streaming right now, something could drop.
From what I hear, it's going to be any day now.
But yeah, I just think you should have settled, you know, settle one thing at a time.
Settle the thing with me and Tobias, iron that out, let there be apologies wherever there need to be apologies from either side, and then make it very clear, unrelated to this, with the larger picture, there are some people who are not Joel Webbin, who really have gone too far and blah, and we're releasing the declaration for that.
I think you would have gotten a lot more support.
I still wouldn't have been able to sign it.
Right.
But I think a lot of people who would be willing to sign it, but are personally not signing it right now because of their devotion to me, they would be on your side right now.
But you lost them because of the timing, the way that all these things played out.
So let's go through a couple, let's go through at least one more statement and we're going to go to a commercial break.
One more statement.
This is another one that falls under the unclear category.
So the second one here says, We affirm that the ultimate bond, and that's in italics, so they want to emphasize that.
We affirm that the The ultimate bond or good for temporal human life is not, italics, grounded in absolute loyalty to blood and soil, family or nation, but in the totalizing bond of the kingdom of God through the covenant of grace.
And they have various scriptures there.
And so that is another thing that I would not sign.
And the reason I wouldn't sign it is not because I disagree with it.
I agree with it because of the specific disclaimers of ultimate and absolute.
Those two words actually make it, in the technical sense, It is technically, theologically true.
And I could sign it.
Here's why I won't because I know who wrote it.
Stephen Wolfe could agree with that in the technical sense.
And if Stephen Wolfe wrote that, then I could sign it.
Well, and if it wasn't in this context, then I could sign it.
I can't sign it because Stephen Wolfe didn't write it.
Joe Boot did.
James White did.
In fact, I'll be completely honest.
If this declaration was only written by Doug Wilson, I could sign on that particular tenet because Doug Wilson has proven over decades that he can think in categories.
Right.
But I can't sign it if James White, who I respect and love, I have no personal animus against him.
I'm just trying to be clear for the body of Christ, for the good of the body of Christ.
The reason I can't sign it with someone like Joe Boot or James White with their names on it is because James White has just recently said, like, made statements.
That against Stephen Wolf, about if you think that, what did he say?
I don't want to misquote him, but he recently said on the dividing line, remember the one that, like, then you're not even a Christian.
And people clipped it out and went pretty viral for a little bit there.
He's like, if you spend some money, it's tough.
Was this the one over the summer or more recently?
No, no, no.
This was like just a week ago, a week and a half ago.
He was like, if you think that nationality or being a Christian is not enough to.
To be close to someone or be like co-writing with someone.
Right.
Or I think it was more along the lines of like, if you think that ties, like, if bonds with between like blood and lineage and land and those kinds of things are more important than the spiritual bond of faith in Christ, then you're not a Christian.
Right.
And here's the deal it's just.
You're trying to put one over the other when the reality is they're just not in the same category.
So, in the eternal sense, and that's why I do technically agree with that statement because it uses the word ultimate.
So, in the ultimate eternal sense, it is our union to Christ that is most important.
Of course.
So, that is true.
And you can say that is so true that every Christian should be able to affirm that.
So, James White is saying, You're not a Christian if you don't believe in the ultimate eternal sense.
But I could be remembering incorrectly.
Feel free to, in the comments, correct me if I'm wrong.
But the clip that I'm remembering, it wasn't that James White said, In the spiritual and eternal sense, or in the ultimate sense.
It is our union with Christ through faith that is more important than any union we share temporally here on earth by blood.
And if you can't affirm that, then you're not a Christian.
If he said it like that, I'd agree.
I don't think he said it like that, unless I'm remembering just terribly wrong.
I think I don't think he said it like that.
He said it in such a way that it basically made it sound like I could move to China.
And as long as I can find enough Chinese Christians, and I'm a Christian, then we should, for all purposes of civilization and temporal life together, and these kinds of things, we should be able to get along just fine.
And I'm sitting over here and I'm thinking, like, and you mean, but I don't speak Mandarin.
You mean, get along, not in a.
General goodwill towards people.
You mean actual, like, meaningful collaboration when you say that.
Yeah, of course we have goodwill towards people.
What I'm saying is that if you, you know, hypothetically, I'm sure there's not an example that we could point to, but let's just say that like a bunch of people gathered together for like a building project and you were building, like, let's say, like a really large tower.
If all of a sudden something happened to where that group of people could no longer share a language with each other, then you would have to disperse because even if all those people did believe in the triune God, Their faith in Jesus would not be sufficient for them to build that tower.
Grace doesn't provide language, customs, habits, history.
That's where we have to be so careful.
This is what Sproul does.
Grace and nature.
Don't conflate the two.
Don't begin to think, well, grace overrides, supplants, and just destroys nature.
No, nature provides these categories that then grace lifts up and perfects.
This is all through the form of tradition.
And so, well, grace, Christians from India and Christians from China.
Yeah, but grace doesn't even give me a language to begin to converse with them.
It doesn't give us a common life experience.
It doesn't give us anything we share in the temporal sense for food, dwelling, industry, work.
Even in the case of Jesus, the God man, he still had to learn how to talk.
Yep.
Yep.
John the Baptist was regenerate from the womb, leaps in his mother's womb, still had to learn how to talk.
Right.
And if we were transported there today, we wouldn't actually understand him without some type of supernatural Holy Spirit gift of tongues, a first century passing gift that translated.
So actually, the gospel could go out.
And nature and different peoples could actually get saved.
Funny answer.
Right.
That works.
Right.
So, the ultimate bond, and I would add even the word eternal, the eternal bond is our faith in Christ, and that in an eternal and ultimate sense supersedes natural bonds of language and blood and lineage and land.
Yeah, of course.
And does the statement technically say that?
I got to give them credit on that one.
There's other ones that are bad, but on that one, it does say that.
But the problem with the statement isn't that.
The problem is that when I scroll up, I see these names at the top.
And a couple of those names, not so much Doug Wilson, but a couple of those names have just in the last few weeks been recording podcasts that don't just clearly say, oh, well, I just mean in the eternal sense.
I just mean in the ultimate sense that faith in Christ supersedes temporal natural bonds.
No, I see these guys saying, if you don't understand that faith in Jesus is the most important thing, you're not a Christian.
And they're saying it.
In opposition to guys who aren't saying otherwise.
They're not arguing.
They're just saying that, hey, when it comes to who gets to live in America, being a Christian is not enough.
Hard Earned Money for God's Kingdom00:02:47
It's not enough.
And so, again, categories are so important.
We've got a couple more examples.
We're not going to go line by line, but two more examples that we want to share with you guys that I think are significant and matter.
But before we do, let's go to our last commercial break of the day.
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All right.
We had a great super chat, great question.
Boomers and Moral Implications of Wealth00:04:33
We were kind of talking during the commercial that we'll want to hit before we get to the last couple pieces of the statement.
So, this is the super chat from Nate Dungan.
Nate Dungan, there we go.
Simple reformanda.
If Antioch's side refuses unity, then where do we go from here, especially since the current trajectory with the mudslinging and the ad hominem neo Nazi talk?
Someone else asked something similar, like, how do you?
Yep, same guy.
What if the Antioch side doesn't agree to reconciliation with their brothers?
Where do we go from there?
Honestly, with a trajectory, it seems unlikely from their side right now.
It does seem unlikely.
I said it earlier.
I am an optimist.
Yeah, this doesn't really bother me because this is the process of every movement and every organization that there comes a point where the new guard will take over.
Saul had to eventually cede, and well, God forced it to happen to David.
The old wine or the old wineskins will be replaced by the new.
Every single point.
We're not saying that these guys are Saul.
No.
Because there's moral implications to that.
Right, right, right.
Like David was righteous and Saul was bad.
Right.
But say Saul was perfectly righteous.
Right.
There would have come a point where Saul would be 90 years old and David had to say, No, it's time for me to lead the kingdom like God said so.
And so you can look at it, and many certainly have bought books and been taught a lot by these men.
I have.
Yeah.
But there just comes a point in time where you have to say, Things are moving quick.
The Overton window right now, like the Overton window may have moved as much in 20 years, 2000 to 2020, as it's moved in the last four.
Things are changing quick, and there's going to be a changing of the guard.
There's going to be new blood, there's going to be new wineskins, there's going to be new individuals.
And so, where do we go from here?
We continue doing the same thing, pushing for.
And boomers really are just even practically, they're at that time, that age right now where a lot of them are going to be transitioning out of the workforce and retiring.
So, part of it is like Overton Windows shifting, a new discourse.
And then part of it also is just like age.
You know, like right now, outside of the church world, a bunch of boomers are exiting the workforce, and millennials are kind of.
And Gen X are kind of coming into moments like we have a millennial vice president.
And we still have a ton of boomers doing things.
Mitch McConnell, hopefully, eventually, God in his mercy will kill him.
Well, he's done in January.
Okay.
I was going to say, but he's holding on to the lecture.
Having a brain aneurysm.
Don't you think you should maybe just retire?
It's like, no, the turtleneck.
I still have an opportunity to ruin Republicans.
But my point is just like boomers have been reluctant.
We were talking during the commercial break, part of it to not pick on the boomers too much is it really is a unique generation in the sense that, you know, you think in biblical times, it's like, you know, there comes a point where dad can't do the work anymore and has to hand the family business, the estate over to his son in large part because much of the work is physical.
It's actually physical work.
But this, in some sense, boomers are one of the first generations.
Like I understand, like we still had, The industrial age, and the but one of the first uh generations where a lot of work uh that boomers are doing is not manual labor, yeah, right.
Um, so it doesn't, um, so you can have a hip replacement and it doesn't force you to retire, you know, and and so there are to not just like make it a character issue or moral issue with boomers, but even just looking at the big picture and the uniqueness of this particular period of history and technological innovation and then also medical advancements and longevity of life and all these.
For all these reasons, boomers have been able to hold on much longer than other generations of people.
Other generations of people would hand things over to their sons, to the next generation, much sooner, long before they died.
And they'd still be alive for 10, 20 years, 30 years even, but the son would be in charge and they would be giving guidance and direction, but the son would be appointed as the guy who's in charge.
Whereas boomers, because of just Again, a long, you know, elongated lifespan and technological advances where you can do your work on a laptop instead of a mine or a field.
Boomers really are basically allowed to be still managing their hedge fund on their deathbed until they breathe their last breath.
And a few of them are going to do it.
Why Substantive Arguments Matter Now00:05:04
Yeah.
You know, and it's like, well, Warren Buffett.
Warren Buffett.
Yeah.
Yep.
Yep.
So, anyway, so it's just a unique situation, but I'm with you, Wes.
I don't think that everything has to be.
It doesn't have to be like a big blow up war.
It doesn't have to, we don't always have to impute nefarious motives.
I think some of this is just, it's the groaning pains of transition.
It's the groaning pains of transition.
And that doesn't mean that the older guard never offered anything, they offered a ton.
And the younger guys are only where we are because of them.
Number two, it also doesn't mean that they have nothing else to offer.
I'm not making that argument either.
But it does mean that I think we're eventually, we're now at the point though.
To where the young guys don't need to say, shut up, boomer.
But the boomers also don't need to say, shut up, whippersnapper.
Sit down and shut up.
Sit down and shut up to the young guys either, because I think some of these older men still have something to offer.
But some of the younger guys have proven that they have something too.
You know, the little quips, well, Stephen Wolfe in the beginning of his book says he even admits that he's not a theologian.
Like, all you're doing, you might as well just, like, when you publicly say that on Twitter, you might as well just Post your IQ.
And we already know that it's below 90.
When Stephen Wolfe admits to not being a theologian, he means he does not have a PhD in theology.
And little quips like that, he has a PhD in political philosophy, little quips like that just aren't going to work anymore.
Too many people, there's too many young people who are old enough and well read enough at this point in their lives to where you have to have a real substantive argument.
And so, my point is, in bringing up Stephen Wolf, is to say, I think Doug Wilson still has a lot to contribute.
But Stephen Wolf does too.
And both of those voices are now in the public space.
And neither voice can really say to the other, shut up and sit down.
Stephen Wolf is not going away.
He changed the game.
He changed the game.
And he changed the game by getting us back from the other guys who actually changed the game to what everybody always thought.
And If you didn't want his voice out there, then you shouldn't have published his book.
But the moment that you did that, you kind of put, in some sense, you put the death knell in the coffin of theonomy.
You'll see complaining too, like, oh my goodness, Christian nationalists, this is how they fight.
They couldn't run a lemonade stand.
No, this is the process that happens.
Like I said, new blood coming in.
None of this proves.
I mean, like the Secretary of Defense, very likely.
I mean, even JD Vance, probably.
The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.
Don't love the Israel thing, but they identify as Christian nationalists.
We're a nation.
We should be Christian.
We're people in place.
Like Christian nationalism is not this little thing that has just started fracturing in the last couple of weeks into oblivion.
No, in a matter of four years, three years or so, significant cultural movement within a broader range of people.
And constant pushback.
So it's not like, oh, look, Christian nationalists are in the midst of controversy, and that just proves that you guys are a joke and you're not ready to lead anything.
I'm like, wait, wait, you think Christian nationalists are just now in controversy?
Right.
There has been controversy from the second that that phrase was.
Was ever uttered.
It seems to have been born from January 6th.
Like I was already gone back in the internet.
Yeah.
And that's where really it hit mainstream.
So from the beginning, it was tied to January 6th.
But then the moment that it was mentioned from like mainlined within the Reformed world with Christian Reformed pastors, it like, and I'm thinking at that point it was more like 2022.
It was immediately met with the strongest opposition you can imagine.
I mean, some of these guys we forget because it's been a couple of years, but Nathaniel Jolly.
Anybody, yeah, who?
Nobody remember his name, but you know, but like the G3 wars of 2022, MacArthur weighed in a little bit, you know, like all, you know, MacArthur does part of the reason he's lasted as long as he has is because he's actually does a pretty good job staying out of some of these things, right?
You know, but even he kind of, you know, said a little piece about Christian nationalism on a panel one time.
That video circulated where he, you know, he didn't like it.
So my point is, it's not like this is not new.
Oh, Christian nationalists are in the midst of conflict, and that just proves that they're incapable of leading anything.
Christian nationalists within the reformed world have been in conflict from the first time that anyone in the reformed world admitted to being a Christian nationalist.
It's been constant conflict.
And there have been scandals in 2022 around Thanksgiving, Thomas, like there's all these moments.
Restoring Rome to a Propositional Nation00:03:48
It's over.
Stephen Wolfe, you know, white evangelicals at a lone bulwark, a voting block against degeneracy.
Oh, my goodness, look at it.
It's mask off, this, that, or the other.
Well, we're still here, and by God's grace, the election went great.
There's about to be a whole flux all across the United States, like at the state, House representative level, good Christian nationalist men, godly men, reform men.
They're going to come in and take office here in January.
So it's like it's over.
They couldn't manage a lemonade stand.
Who are you talking about?
My brother in Christ.
Go get your brain check.
We are winning by God's grace.
I would say pushing the ball up the field.
And this is just part of the process.
Some like this is friend enemy, you know, drawing some distinctions, making some clear boundaries, all part of the game.
As Gladiator would say, that's politics.
That's my friend is politics.
I'll say this about Gladiator.
Quick little Gladiator movie review.
I think it was really good.
It was a bummer in the sense that, you know, if you look at like, you know, well done movie, but if you look at like kind of the theme and some of the virtues in it, it's not disappointing because it's exactly what you would expect, you know, because it's America and we all, you know, modern Americans suck.
But it was basically the whole idea was like, you know, we're restoring Rome to a propositional nation.
Right.
Our sacred democracy, but for Rome, but for Rome, exactly.
So it's like we're gonna get rid of you know everything that really makes Rome Rome and its history and its heritage and all these kinds of things and strength and leadership.
And we're going to return it, you know, to our sacred democracy and a propositional nation, not just democracy, you know, power to the people, but beyond that.
Uh, the big thing, the big idea of Rome is uh, it's um, it's not good, Rome is not good unless anybody, anywhere, at any time can be a Roman, you know, like that's I mean, that's what it was.
It's just It's a set of propositions.
It's a set of ideals.
And we're going to get Rome back to being good, AKA anybody can be a Roman at any time.
And so that was kind of like the big, you know, hurrah moment of the movie.
But really well done.
It's certainly enjoyable, entertaining.
And even on that point, even though it was propositional nationhood for the win at the end of the day, even that I didn't mind so much because the guy pushing propositional nationhood and our sacred democracy and anybody can be a Roman anywhere at any time, the guy who's able to win that battle for Rome is the guy who has his lineage.
As a Roman, the guy who is off in a distant place but turns out actually was a native born Roman who's the son of so and so, who's the son of so and so, with a lineage and a bloodline through royalty in Rome with good men throughout the history who loves the heritage and this kind of thing and wants to get back to the vision of his fathers.
Like, and uh, the guy who believes it's more about strength and these kinds of things and not propositional nationhood, uh, that guy, um, turns out he's the foreigner.
He's the guy who his nation, he's native born somewhere else, not with Rome, was conquered by Rome and has resented it ever since.
And his goal, his idea of revenge is that he's going to try to ruin Rome by making it bad, making it all about power instead of a republic.
And so, anyways, so it's just funny that Hollywood couldn't help itself in typical American fashion, but to make Gladiator about propositional nationhood.
But even in accomplishing their aim of making the propositional nationhood win the day, they had to do it through a native born guy with lineage and ancestry and fatherhood.
So, pretty funny.
The Damage of Power Over Republics00:15:33
Okay, next thing.
All right, so this one, we might not get past this one today.
I don't know.
This is kind of the doozy.
So, be optimistic.
We can do it.
This now falls into categories that we disagree with.
So, this says we deny.
So, this is now a denial on the part of the Antioch Declaration.
We deny.
That Jews are in any way, in any way, uniquely malevolent or sinful, that Judaism, in its multifarious expressions, is objectively more dangerous than other false religions, or that it represents an exceptional threat to Christianity and Christian peoples.
By nature, the Jews are objects of wrath just like the rest of us, fair enough, which is condemnation enough, and are equally.
Recipients of God's grace.
I think they would probably say can potentially be recipients of God's grace by being saved.
But anyway, they don't say that.
What do you guys think?
Also, I see in the chat there, Tobias just released his response.
So I'm sure that'll be fun.
I'll check it out.
I heard something pretty funny this week.
He said, Would we apply this same standard to cannibal tribes who are invading Christian civilizations and trying to eat their children and women?
Right.
Nope.
No.
Yeah.
So there were multiple different indigenous people.
Who had multiple different religions.
They didn't all worship the same God.
And they were all false religions.
They weren't the true religion, the Christian religion.
So you have multiple false religions held and practiced by multiple indigenous peoples here in the Americas when the founders and pilgrims and all these different people arrived.
Some of those Indian tribes, those indigenous peoples, were worse than others.
And some of their false religions were worse than others.
The Karakwa Indians.
They were cannibals.
There were other Indians that were not.
Right.
Some of them all worshiped false gods.
Some of their false gods demanded human sacrifice.
Others did not.
I mean, to say that Judaism isn't any worse than the 14 people who worship Zod, the alien god.
I mean, there are a million different cults.
Are we going to say that they're all equal?
Like, I would say, I feel perfectly comfortable saying, Sinatology has had terrible effects.
But is not nearly as dangerous or pernicious.
I believe it.
Yeah, I'll tell you what.
As Islam.
Right.
Islam is responsible for the deaths of Christians in the thousands or millions for centuries over millennia, 1300 years or whatever it is.
Where Scientology is a false religion that will send you to hell, absolutely.
But it has like a weed sprung up and faded.
In the macro, if you look at human history as a whole, virtually overnight.
And all throughout human history, there have been examples of that.
There have been false religions that have staying power.
And then there are false cults and religions that are not timeless, but timely, that are just products of their time.
There's one cult leader that arises, that starts some rebellion somewhere, and he does a lot of damage.
But in the big scope of things, he does a lot of damage for about 15 minutes and then it's done.
But the reality is that both Islam and Judaism have been around for a very long time and have done a lot of damage for a really long time in a way that Mormonism has not, Sinatology has not, Jehovah's Witnesses have not.
Those are false.
So all false religions, aside from the one true religion, the Christian religion, they're all equal.
Kind of goes back to the same principles, categories of that earlier statement that we just handled.
If we're talking about the ultimate eternal consequences of a person's soul, then every false religion is equal in the sense that every single one of them will send you to hell.
But they are not all equal in a temporal sense in their outward effects, not the spiritual eternal side, but the physical temporal side of their effects on human civilization.
And so when I think of major world religions, That have had the worst effects on Christians, particularly and human beings, human civilization on the whole, for very long periods of time, not just for 80 years or 120 years, but for a very long time.
I think of really that kind of boils down to four you got Hinduism and Buddhism and Islam and Judaism.
And I would say, as bad as Hinduism and Buddhism are, I would say that the two worst.
In my opinion, in terms of their temporal outward effects, physical effects on humanity and on Christians, would be Islam and Judaism.
And then I would bifurcate those two if you said, well, which one's worse between the two?
I don't know if I would give a definitive answer, but what I would say is that both have been terrible, and they've been terrible in two distinct but specific ways.
Islam historically has had a terrible overt effect on Christians.
And Judaism has had a terrible subversive effect on Christians.
Judaism, by nature, in its ideology and its religion, is, I believe, parasitical.
And yes, I'm using the word parasitical.
I got in trouble because that's something that the church member, a member in our church, used on the Zoom call, and everybody's talking about on X, and I don't care.
I just, you get what you get with Joel Webbins.
So, yes, parasitical.
I'm not calling each and every Jew parasitical.
I'm not saying that.
I'm saying Judaism as an ideology and as a religion, I do believe is parasitical.
That what it has done historically throughout the ages is typically go into other countries.
Other peoples with other religions and kind of cozy up, but not really for their benefit, not a mutually beneficial relationship, but where they ultimately get far more out of the deal than the Christian nation does.
Judaism has thrived on Christendom.
If Christendom falls and the West falls and Islam wins the day, Muslims will not play nice with Jews, they will be screwed.
Jews need Christians.
Christians do not need Jews.
It is not a mutually beneficial relationship.
That doesn't mean that we therefore hate Jews.
I love Jews and I wish them a very pleasant conversion to Christianity.
I love the best thing for you to bow the knee to Christ.
Amen.
That's what love is.
It's the desire to have a good life.
And if you don't bow the knee to Christ, even if you don't, I still don't wish your physical harm.
I do wish, however, if you are a citizen of Israel, And you refuse to convert to Christianity, you're a Jewish citizen, Israeli citizen.
I do wish for you not to serve in public office in my nation.
You can come here if you're going to play nice, like any other immigrant, and contribute.
But no, you do not get to pull levers of power in my nation's government with dual citizenship.
And that goes for any nation for that matter.
I don't want anybody to be.
Like, I mean, think about that.
Like, would we ever do?
I'm sure we have a few.
Mehmet Oz, who Trump just appointed, or he was running for Senate.
I just heard that blew my mind.
He was Turkish intelligence, like the Turkish CIA.
That's crazy.
And now he's running for Senate in Pennsylvania.
Yeah.
So, like, but think about that.
Think if we had like dozens of people who were dual citizens of the United States and they lived here and China and they were holding seats in Congress.
Right.
Like, We would look at that, and your average American would be like, We have been, we're a conquered nation.
That's right.
We've been conquered.
Somewhere along the line, our leaders sold us out.
Our leaders are in bed with China.
We're in trouble.
This is crazy.
This is a travesty.
We'd be sounding alarms and ringing bells.
But that's been going on forever with Israel.
And here's the irony it's only because America has been historically so deeply Christian.
That a lot of Americans, particularly on the right, the more conservative Christian ones, are so comfortable with it.
They're like, yeah, but those are God's people.
And I just want to say, no, they're not.
You are Christian.
You are God's people.
And that doesn't mean we wish any ill will or harm, physical harm, on Israel.
They're still our neighbors in the sense that so is Ukraine.
Ukraine is our neighbors.
And they shouldn't get any money.
And Israel is our neighbors.
And it like, so you, there's, my point is, there's, again, like what we were saying earlier, there's a massive gaping chasm between, I hate these people.
I want them to all perish and be destroyed.
Right.
Versus, I don't hate these people at all.
But, but I, I don't, I don't want to give them any money.
I don't want them serving in public office in my country.
Mm hmm.
If they're involved in unethical vocations like the porn industry, then I would like to revoke their status, a green card or whatever they have, to where they're not allowed to be here.
And also, then again, that's just the people and then the ideology.
That one's real easy Judaism, not Jews, but Judaism, to be able to recognize and say, I mean, historically, I can point to this and all these examples of how it's been terrible for Christendom.
And a lot of times, it's funny, a lot of the Christian nations that did welcome Jews in, what would happen?
Not always, but there are multiple cases of this.
What would happen is that some, not all, but some of the Jews would end up converting to Christianity.
Praise God.
And it'd be a genuine conversion.
They would convert and they would then befriend Christians and be in their churches.
And then those Jews would teach the Christians how to read the Hebrew so they could better understand the Old Testament and the Pentateuch, the Torah, and these kinds of things.
And because the Christians would ask, like, now that you're a Christian, you speak Hebrew, can you help us with going back to original texts and these kinds of things?
We're doing a work of theology on this and that and the other.
And so they would do that.
But then they would also, not always, but in some cases, these now converted Jews who are Christians would also say, Oh, and by the way, now that we've taught you how to read Hebrew, you should probably be aware of this.
You should read our Talmud and know what's in it.
Since you welcomed all of us into your country, you probably should know what we think about you and say about you and think about Jesus.
And then the Christians would read the Talmud and then they would kick the Jews out of their country.
Like when you look at it, how did Jews get kicked out of the country?
Well, some Jews convert because God is merciful and some Jews get saved and love Jesus.
They would then teach the Christians what Jews actually think.
And then the Christians would say, wait, Jews think that?
You're not our allies.
You're not Christian adjacent.
You're enemies of Christ.
That's the thing about this statement taken at face value, a lot of the reformers could not have agreed with this.
John Calvin, Samuel Rutherford, they're farther than we are.
We look moderate compared to them on our stances on.
Public office, it cares for how big of libs we are compared to.
And I'm not just talking Martin Luther on the Jews and their lies.
That's an isolated example.
John Calvin, like the things he said.
That statement, written by obstinately claiming to be reformed men, would cut off and disqualify a number of the greatest reformed thinkers that we've had in our history.
This guy, real quick, Daniel Hughes, is asking Is Is Isker, Andrew Isker, a theonomist or a two kingdoms guy?
Me and Isker are pretty much in the same boat.
We're like, we're doing the splits right now.
We still like, you know, like we like Rush Dooney, we like Ponson, we like Rush Dooney more.
But we're also seeing within like the historic reform tradition, we are seeing that, like, yeah, if we want to go with the historic position of our fathers and the reformers, it is the classical two kingdom position.
Stephen Wolfe has successfully won that argument.
He's, I think, just that that was the position?
That that was the position of Calvin and all the reformers.
And so Isker is kind of similar to me.
Is like we're both kind of, we don't, like we're still comfortable, you know, maybe like the general equity, you know, but we are starting to say, like, yeah, but a lot of the modern, you know, capital T theonomists today, we would have a lot more space for natural law than they would allow for.
We would, you know, so.
And I just, again, those don't have to be enemies.
They don't have to be enemies.
They really don't.
There are contradictions.
So there is, they are different.
We're not the same group.
At first, I was like, oh, it's all the same group, Christian nationalists, theonomists.
And I realized now I was wrong about that.
And I'll admit that I was wrong.
I think it could still be the same group in a big tent sense, and there's no reason to be at each other's throats, but they are still distinct subsets underneath the big tent.
The Christian nationalists, Protestant magisterial, classic two kingdom guys, Stephen Wolfe, Timon Klein, those guys are different than the Theonomists.
But I'm with you, Michael.
They are absolutely different, but they are not so different that we have to be enemies.
I definitely don't think that.
One other thing I was going to say when you were talking about Calvin.
Calvin.
And Bootser and.
We would have to excommunicate.
Oh, and you said, and not just, yeah, you know, I was just going to make another joke.
You said, and I'm not just talking about Luther, you know, at the end of his life, his book, The Jews and Their Lies.
I saw a meme today that I just, I thought was hilarious, which of course means I should probably be excommunicated.
I did laugh at this meme, and I confess before God and men, I saw a meme and I laughed at it, and I will not apologize because it was just, it was funny.
But it was the.
Who's the guy?
Anakin and Padme.
Yeah, Anakin and Padme.
And they're sitting in the grass, you know.
And so he says, He says, 'My favorite book that I've ever read is written by Martin Luther.' And it shows her smiling, and she says, 'You mean his commentary on Galatians, right?' You know, and he looks like the Jews and their lies.
Romans 11 and the Gentile People00:15:25
Okay, so let's get into the last statement, see if we can do the last statement.
I think we handled that.
Like the idea, and it's not just to pick on Judaism.
Handled this topic too before we have, yeah, but it's not just to pick on Judaism, so we're not even saying that Judaism is the absolute worst.
Because I would pair it up there with Islam, and I would say during different historical periods, Islam was way worse, right, in its outward temporal effects than Judaism.
And then there have been other periods where, like, right now, Islam is rough, but if we're talking, that's another thing that brings into question worse for who, right, and worse for who, when in Islam, self contained in the Middle East, exactly.
So, so worse for Christians in the Middle East, Islam worse than Judaism, you betcha.
Well, and I, the last one, worse for us as Americans.
No, I think Judaism poses a bigger threat for us.
To be fair to the statement, it says threat to Christianity and Christian peoples.
Okay.
But the point is what they're saying in that, and this is what I was going to say my point is not even to say Judaism is the absolute worst and always has been.
My point is for their statement to be correct, they're not just saying Judaism isn't the worst.
Because if they said, we affirm that or we deny that Judaism has always been the most harmful false religion for Christians throughout, in every place and every time.
Then I'd be like, yeah, you know what?
That's probably true.
I could get behind that.
But that's not what the statement says.
Their statement at face value, if you read it, put it back on the screen one more time, Nathan.
So as I'm talking, those who are watching.
In any way uniquely malevolent.
Right.
So it says that Jews are in any way uniquely malevolent or sinful, and not just Jews, but Judaism as an ideology and religion in its multifarious expressions is objectively more dangerous than other false religions, or that it represents an exceptional threat to Christianity and Christian peoples.
I would just.
I'm like, you got to prove that, brothers.
You're going to have to historically prove that to me.
That is true to me.
If this statement were to last, that would hold in perpetuity for all of the church age.
Right.
Right.
Because this is saying for Christians, and this would mean Christians in any place.
Yep.
Yep.
Right.
Because I would, we just talked about it, but I would say that Islam, so using another false religion, Islam poses an existential threat for some Christians in some places much more than it does us as Christians in this place, in these United States.
But that's just.
But they, I mean, that is such a bold statement, such a foolish statement, such a foolish statement.
Because they didn't even just compare it with one religion or is it?
They said, any, any, any, all, like, so, anyway, every false religion.
So, you're saying, you're saying, this is so funny.
It's ridiculous.
It just shows that this is like, this is a much more personal, emotional statement.
And it's just not theologically, it's not a serious statement.
And therefore, because it's not serious, nobody should have signed it.
But the point is, you would be saying that Judaism, Does not pose any more temporal threats towards Christians in any nation more than Scientology?
There are plenty of nations all over the world where they don't even know what Scientology is.
Right.
And plenty of time periods where it didn't even exist.
So, I mean, that is just asinine.
There are a million different false religions and cults.
Um, so I mean, even being as charitable as possible, that let's say they're just talking about the major world religions and they're not talking about the 14 people who worship Zod, you know, uh, the alien god.
Um, but still, even with the major, um, false world religions, I don't know if you can make the argument that Buddhism, um, is equally in a tangible temporal sense harmful towards Christianity, right?
I don't think you can make that argument.
Marlene made a great comment.
She said something to the equivalent, if you could scroll up a little bit, Nate.
But she said, I've heard that every other religion in some way honors Jesus Christ, except perhaps Satanism, obviously, as a prophet of God, some type of divine figure, except Talmudic Judaism.
Is this true?
I don't know of any.
Some of the Eastern syncretistic religions, like the Tao, which just translates to the way, some of those don't really have a place for Jesus.
Right.
They don't have a category.
But there's no malevolence for him.
There's not like we have the Old Testament law.
Who's this Jesus character?
Don't care for him.
That's Talmudic Judaism.
The law, the Talmud, the commentary is they acknowledge that we hate.
Yeah, I don't know of any other religion that, at least in some level, like I've talked and witnessed to like you know, Buddhists or stuff down here in Austin, and like, oh yeah, we love Jesus too, he's a great teacher.
It's only really seems Judaism that truly just has it out and hates him.
Yeah, Judaism is absolutely unique in its hatred towards to be fair.
We would say there could be some fringe cultic things out there, right?
Sure, yeah, we're not going to make the same mistake that the correct.
I would say it's it is unique among the major uh world religions, yeah, major uh, false world anything less than.
Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam.
Out of those four, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism, Judaism takes an objectively more hostile view of Christ.
For sure.
In Israel, they hate Christians.
They spit on them.
They despise them.
There is conflict.
Yes.
But to be fair to that, in Palestine, Hamas hates Christians.
They don't hate Christians.
They don't treat Christians well either.
If I was in Israel or Nigeria, spit on.
But there are certain Muslim countries, if I was there, I'd be killed.
Yep.
But even though we share that same Old Testament, there's not like, well, and then they're more tolerant to us.
It only goes one way.
There's literally been like surveys where like positive view, negative view.
And Christians have a very positive view of Jews and it is not reciprocated whatsoever.
And that's just, I mean, honestly, that, yeah, whatever.
I'm not going to say what I was about to say.
Open a big hand.
Christians and particularly white Christians, I'm going to say it.
We're the only ones who don't have an in group preference.
Right.
Throughout like any peoples on the planet and throughout almost any period of history.
Like we're the white Christians.
Particularly, Protestants in the West and especially in America are really like the only people when you ask, like, who do you love the most?
We pick someone other than our process.
Right, right.
Yeah.
It's pretty crazy.
It's not just crazy, it is suicidal, and that's why we're a dying breed.
So, okay.
Last section.
Last one.
Yep.
All right.
And this really is just a question of Romans 11 and how you interpret it.
But it says, We affirm that the Jews are as all other men alienated from God and in need of the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ.
So, people, they have nevertheless remained an object of God's providential care.
With the Puritans of old, we affirm that in God's good time, multitudes of Jews will come to faith in Christ and be added to the true commonwealth of Israel, inheriting the same blessings as Gentile believers, hence the cancerous and counterproductive sin of anti Semitism that has no place among God's people.
And I would just say that this would not have been able to be signed by.
What role did James E. Jordan have in the CREC?
Did he help found it?
Yeah, he was one of the elders himself.
He himself would not be able to sign this section.
Well, to be fair, pull it up one more time because I tried to.
Unless you're going postmillennial, right?
Which I think all of us would agree.
Because I do believe that multitudes of Jews will come to faith in Christ and be added to the true commonwealth of Israel, true Israel being the church.
But their point is what I was emailing with you earlier that one of the Puritans' keystones of their postmillennial hope was that the Jews had not yet been brought in in the Romans 11 sense.
And so they still said there's time.
For the gospel to go through the world and do its salty work.
Right.
So, the only, pull the statement one last time, Nathan.
The only thing, because I read this carefully multiple times, I was trying to think charitably, pull it up one more time.
The only thing that I actually think would have been wise to leave out is that one phrase that says, with the Puritans of old.
So, if you leave that out, because when you say with the Puritans of old, now everyone's thinking the Puritan view.
And the Puritan view is the soft, supersessionist, reformed, Covenantal view that the Jews are still a people and that they eventually are the natural branches, and that that's still out in our future, even now, 2,000 years later, from the writing of Romans, and that that's still going to take place.
And when it does take place, it's going to be a catalyst that will then kickstart an even further revival among all the Gentile nations.
So it's only that phrase, we believe this with the Puritans of old, that forces you to do it.
Pull it back up, Nick.
But But if I don't read that, then even a Jim Jordan or Andrew Wisker or a Joel Webbin with a partial preterist hermeneutic of a hard supersessionism with Romans 11 would actually technically still work.
So, like, I'm going to read it now.
We affirm that the Jews are as all other men.
Yep.
Fine with that.
Alienated from God and in need of the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ.
Yep.
As a people, they have nevertheless remained an object of God's providential care.
I can say that for Uganda.
I can say that for.
You see what I'm like?
I can see, I think America has been an object of God's providential care as a people.
Preservation, maybe, is the word they're looking for.
Providential preservation.
I think that's what there's.
Yeah, yeah.
But they've remained, even though, like, what they're on its face, though, all you have to believe is this is saying, even without them being in Christ.
So they're currently not in Christ, but even without being currently in Christ, they're still a people.
And as a people, they are an object of God's providential care.
And I would say, by definition, it's all people.
That's all people.
Yeah, exactly.
Now, that's when it says, now with the Puritans of old, we affirm, if you just got rid of that and you said, we also affirm that in God's good time, multitudes of Jews will come to faith in Christ.
And be added to the true commonwealth of Israel.
Well, as a post millennial, I believe that that's true of Brazil and China, everybody, inheriting the same blessings as Gentile believers, and hence the cancerous and counterproductive sin of anti Semitism has no place among the peoples of God.
I could actually affirm all that.
Only two changes.
You have to X out the with the Puritans of old phrase, and then you also have to X out the made up word of anti Semitism, and you need to replace that with something that actually means something.
Right.
Because one of the big problems with this statement is that it uses that word, anti Semitism, several times and never defines it.
So, anti Semitism, according to who?
So, if they said instead of anti Semitism right there, they said, and because the Jews, like all peoples, will eventually be saved and blah, blah, blah, and be co heirs of grace and the same blessings as the Gentile believers.
And so, because of that, and because currently, even as non Christian, they are our neighbors and image bearers of the living God, we affirm that it is sinful and wrong.
To harbor an unjustified malice and hatred, wishing harm on them as an entire people group, or something like that, then I'd be like, okay, that's good.
But if you say anti Semitism, and then even though some of the collaborators on this haven't explicitly said this, a lot of guys in their orbit have come out and verbatim said Joel's anti Semitic.
So when you say the Jews are God's people, And therefore, we shouldn't be anti Semitic.
And then some of the guys in your camp have already described that I'm this, uh, an example of what it means to be anti Semitic.
Well, then there's a lot of guys who are going to be reading this declaration and saying, Well, but I agree with Joel's position and I know you think he's anti Semitic.
So then I guess I can't.
Does that make me exactly?
So you would have to, uh, X out the Puritans of Old Peace.
So to allow, you know, like guys who helped co found your own denomination, the CRC, like Jim Jordan, get rid of the Puritans of Old Peace because Jim Jordan didn't hold the Puritans of Old Peace.
Um, So, it allows both for the soft and hard supersessionist within the covenantal framework to affirm this.
And then you got to define anti Semitism.
And that pops up in that portion of the statement, but all over multiple places.
Wherever anti Semitism is, you either need to replace it with some actual real biblical words, or at the bottom, you need to have an asterisk and define that term.
When we say anti Semitism, we mean something that God actually hates and not something that would actually be a fairly accurate description of John Calvin and Bootser and all of our Reform Fathers.
I was going to say Jesus' invective against the Pharisees, teaching as doctrine the commandments of the ADL, the commandments of modern liberalism, teaching those as if they're doctrine that are binding the Christian conscience.
It's interesting to me because a lot of their statements in this declaration have scripture references.
They do not have Romans 11 in this statement, which is interesting.
I'm not going to read into it.
I'm just pointing it out.
Yeah.
In this point.
Which I actually appreciated because I think there are a lot of guys, and they know this.
There are a lot of guys in the CREC who hold Jim Jordan's position.
And I don't think Doug's trying to ostracize those guys.
I've talked to Doug even on the phone about that in the past.
And he's like, Joel, I don't think you holding that view, he told me, he was like, I want to be abundantly clear.
You holding that view does not make you, in my mind, anti Semitic.
You can hold Jim Jordan's view without hating Jews.
So I don't think that they're against that so much.
They're just, they just, it's really more the earlier tenet that we read of the thing.
So if I say, I think Romans 11 has already been fulfilled in our past, and we've been experiencing, as Christendom is the result of this life of the dead kind of revival among the Gentiles, because Israel was grafted in and there was a great revival leading up to 8070, and it already happened.
That, especially Doug, I can't speak for Joe or James as much, but especially Doug.
That is not going to make Doug call you an anti Semite.
It's more so the other statement.
Things that I would say is like, no, I actually do think Judaism is worse in its temporal effects.
The eternal result is the same.
Any false religion, you go to hell.
But in terms of earthly, temporal, tangible effects, there are some false religions that have motivated people to conquer and enslave entire nations.
And then there are some false religions that haven't.
Like, they're not all the same.
That would be my question for them.
Temporal Effects vs Eternal Results00:11:32
Are you denying that it's a category?
That there can be the category of a religion and a worldview that is uniquely malicious and pernicious towards Christianity?
Right.
And if you don't deny that that's a category, then I have a heart.
At least we have to be allowed to make the case that this is it.
Right.
You have to back that up.
Because at face value, it doesn't just defend Jews from anti Semitism or, you know, let's pretend it's real, like real hatred.
And there are some people who really do hate Jews.
It doesn't just protect Jews from those who really hate them.
But that point on its face, in order for it to hold up, everyone who signs this declaration effectively has to believe not just that Judaism isn't the worst, but in order for that logically to work, they have to believe all major world religions have the exact equal negative effects towards Christians.
That's a huge ask.
That is an egalitarian impulse.
It is a big ask.
To sign this statement, you literally would have to say that, like, even aside from Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism have had the exact same negative temporal effects towards Christians.
And the irony is the amount of research you would have to do to even prove that.
Like, I've heard James White say, you're forgetting your history.
Islam was much worse.
Exactly.
Right?
Exactly.
So, I mean, the category exists.
And that's what's so frustrating with all this is it's like, so, and I would say, some Christians in some places and in some times, Islam for sure was worse.
For sure, it was worse.
And still to this day, with many Christians in many places, not here in the West, but in other places, yeah, you'd rather come across a Jew than a Muslim if you're a Christian in the Middle East.
So I'm with you on that.
Here's the point, though.
Why is James so comfortable?
Because I've heard him say that too.
Why is he so comfortable saying that Islam has more negative effects?
And why isn't there, why aren't we writing a declaration to protect hateful speech against Muslims?
Can we just be honest and say that the West and Christians in the West, evangelicals and even reformed evangelicals, I think have, they're worried about anti Semitism.
I'm worried about an unbiblical Jew love.
Yeah.
That is, I think that what it comes down to when you think of like, Why a statement for this religion, but not for Islam?
Why can't you say Judaism is worse, but James White can say on the dividing line that Islam is worse?
In other words, it's not equal weights and measures.
This declaration, the purpose is to carve out special protections for one false religion that hates Christ and hates Christians, but they would never do that with any other religion, false religion that hates Christ and hates Christians.
And that just makes me ask the question do you have a soft spot?
For one set of demons.
Like, I don't like the Islamic demons, and I don't like the Buddhist demons or the Hindu demons, you know, and I don't worship, I don't worship and bow the knee to the Judaism demons, but they can, you know, they can have some right.
It makes me think of, like, even like Solomon with the wives, and like, Solomon's not gonna go and worship Molech, he's not gonna go and worship at the Asherah poles.
He's going to worship Yahweh and even his citizens.
You know, like this is our main God, but I'm going to bring in some other people.
And because now I have family ties through marriage to other people, I'm going to carve out space for them to have some high places.
I think you're entirely right.
To steal manate, I think they would probably say World War II was a lot more recent than the Crusades.
Yeah.
But I. That's true.
But your point stands.
Load bearing myth.
That's right.
Yeah.
Got to get rid of the story.
Got to get rid of the post war consensus.
All right.
Any other questions or super chats?
Anybody that we should thank?
I mean, we had some.
Yeah.
It's lots of questions, probably.
Super chats.
Oh, wow.
Look at all these super chats.
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We also had Nadungan Semper Reformanda.
We answered your questions, but thank you for your generosity.
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He says The Moors of Morocco are America's oldest standing ally by treaty in 1786.
We, who were black Muslims at the time, we've been lied to for a reason.
Maybe.
Interesting.
I'd have to do more research on that.
That may have been part of the effort to get rid of the Barbary pirates.
Oh.
So they signed a treaty with them as Black Muslims and they're just like, help us out.
Okay.
Yeah, I can't give one answer one way or the other.
And then, what would you say?
Region?
Region.
Region.
Thank you.
Another super chat.
Thank you for your generosity.
Appreciate that.
He said, Joel, talk about the statement that Joseph Spurgeon made in response that you helped with.
Yeah.
So some of you guys saw on Twitter, we don't have time to talk about today.
But yeah, check it out.
It was a good statement.
He reached out to me ahead of time because he had received the Antioch Declaration before they publicly dropped it.
And he had told me, Um, he said, Hey, you know, heads up, this thing's dropping.
I don't know if you've heard about it, and um, and I was like, Yeah, um, sounds about right, you know.
And uh, and and he said, I'm not going to sign it, um, there's some things that I don't agree with, and uh, and so then he started working on his own uh statement, and I and I helped a tiny, tiny bit.
Um, he did 99.9% of the work, but um, I thought it was good, it was um.
All the kinds of things that we just discussed, the four different things that we covered today that we disagreed with with the Anti Declaration, Joseph Spurgeon's statement didn't have those things and worded it much better and allowed for different false religions at various times and various places to have more or less negative temporal effects on Christians and just human beings alike and a lot of better language.
And so, yeah, so if you guys want to check that out, just go to Joseph Spurgeon on X, check out his profile, scroll down.
I'm sure you can find that's where he posted it was on X.
I thought he did a good job.
And yeah, that's about it.
Has James White preached the gospel to Jews?
All the Mormon, Muslim, Jehovah's Witnesses.
I'm sure he has.
I've never seen an apology episode at the synagogue right now.
Maybe not.
I don't know.
But Muslims just might be more hospitable in terms of giving him invitations.
They do.
I mean, they love to debate.
I know Jews do too, that stereotype.
Muslims do.
Okay.
They really love to have actual good faith debates.
Yeah, it could be that Muslims have just been more comfortable with having James come than Jews.
I don't know.
All right.
A couple of people said thank you for this panel.
They found it helpful.
We appreciate that.
Last thing I'll say here at the very end is just again, if you are considering a ministry where they can offer a tax write off to give an end of the year donation, we would very much appreciate it.
Appreciate if you would prayerfully consider Right Response Ministries.
You would just go to Right Response Ministries.com forward slash donate.
Right Response Ministries.com forward slash donate.
There's a lot that we believe the Lord has put into our hearts to do in the year of our Lord 2025, and we can't do it without you.
And throughout all this controversy and things that have been going on, yeah, like there's not our ministry, sadly, I don't feel like it had to be this way, but our ministry.
Will not, it's just, it's not for everyone.
I'll just say that it's not going to be supported by everyone.
And so, for those of you who are able to think in categories and understand the kinds of things that we're saying, you see why they're necessary and you see why it's important.
And you don't just watch, you know, a 30 second clip, you know, and, you know, get angry.
There's not a lot of you, I guess is what I'm saying.
There are, I mean, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people.
Who have been convinced that our ministry and that I personally are just terrible people and racist and anti Semitic and I don't know, whatever else.
And so we really do rely on the donations of those of you who appreciate us.
So I know that some of you are out there, you're like, Joel, stay strong, stand strong.
You're messaging me, you're emailing me, and it's been super encouraging.
You've been praying for me and saying, don't give up, don't give in.
And I'm telling you right now, I won't.
I will not give up.
But it would be all the easier not to give up if you would help support our ministry.
Because there's a lot of people who maybe have in the past who will not do that any longer.
You know what I'm talking about.
You know the dividing lines are kind of being etched in the sand.
And so, yeah, there is some turnover right now.
And so, for those of you who agree with us and understand what we're saying and think that it's important that it's being said, I need your encouragement and prayers, but I also need some of your money.
I'll be honest.
It takes money to do what we do.
Cameras cost money.
Nathan is not doing 70 hours a week pro bono.
He has a wife and children to feed.
We want to pay Michael and Wes.
They're doing a lot of work, and they want to do this with me, not just once a week, but three times a week.
So that's triple the work.
So we don't need millions of dollars, but we need something.