JD Hall analyzes the collapse of evangelical gatekeepers like Christianity Today and Liberty University, arguing that censorship by platforms like Twitter forced a populist revival where young white men now openly discuss Christian nationalism and reject DEI. He contends that established figures like Doug Wilson police boundaries to protect donor interests rather than evangelize, while the new movement unites diverse groups against Marxism despite theological differences. Ultimately, Hall asserts that ignoring internal feuds over Zionism or feminism is essential for securing a future for the next generation through unfiltered truth and tangible action. [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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Five Star Reviews Boost Reach00:02:47
Leave us a five star review on your favorite podcast platform.
I get it.
It's annoying.
Everybody asks, but I'm going to tell you why.
When you give us a positive review, what that does is it triggers the algorithm so that our podcast shows up on more people's news feeds.
You and I both know that this ministry is willing to talk about things that most ministries aren't.
We need this content for the glory of God to reach more people's ears.
It was only a matter of time before the democratization of all things came to evangelicalism.
Whether it was Elon Musk buying Twitter, entrepreneurs getting rich off of meme coins, or AI giving anyone supposed expertise in whatever field they wanted, we are experiencing a technological revolution that is as disruptive as the printing press.
Information, platforms, access, and ideas have been thrown wide open to anyone with the shrewdness, tact, and ambition to wield them.
Thing.
It's just the way things are moving.
And no one is taking this harder than the evangelical institutions of the past.
Seminaries, universities, parachurch ministries, and church networks that were massively influential in the 1990s and early 2000s still have lots of land, money, and reach.
But ultimately, despite their millions of dollars and track records that stretch back for decades, they are still rapidly losing their influence.
Men with no degrees, no pedigree, And minimal funds are capturing the hearts of the next generation of right wing and Christian men because they have what the institutions lack that is, courage.
The gatekeepers shriek and wail into the void, but they are gatekeepers now without a gate.
This episode is brought to you by our premier sponsors, Armored Republic and Reese Fund, as well as our Patreon members and our faithful donors.
You can join our Patreon by going to Patreon.com forward slash right response ministries, or you can donate by going to right response ministries.com forward slash donate.
Join us today with a very special guest, JD Hall of Insight to Insight and Protestia, to talk about how the populist social revival has finally come to evangelicalism and evangelicalism's once narrow doors for credibility have been blown completely off the hinges.
JD Hall Joins the Conversation00:08:05
Let's go.
Let's go.
Man, I feel like I'm reverting back to my charismatic days.
That music, I was like, this is profound.
This cold open, the content, the verbiage is on point.
And then I realized, no, I'm being manipulated.
I did it to myself.
It's just the music.
Hopefully, the podcast really does have good content.
But that cold open with the music will carry us through at least the first half hour.
We are very privileged to have on the show today Mr. JD Hall.
Welcome.
Hello.
Thanks so much for having me.
I'm so appreciative of being with you today.
Awesome.
Well, catch our audience up a little bit because I'm familiar, but even myself, you know, so much of this is timing.
We were talking offline a little bit.
I get in trouble because I'm two years early.
You got in trouble because you were 10 years early.
That's a whole other level of trouble.
And so, a lot of our listeners, my point is, even myself, I know some of the behind the scenes and things like that.
I've heard it from you or some of your friends, but there's probably some of our listeners who, Honestly, don't even know who you are and what you've done in the past.
Are you comfortable sharing maybe a little bit of your story, a little bit of introduction before we get started on our topic?
Yeah, I suppose.
I don't want to make it all about me, obviously, but started Protestia in 2021 after Pulpit and Pin, which I had started in 2012, got censored all over the internet.
So when COVID hit, we kept getting strikes on us because we would report the news on the COVID lockdowns.
Or on masking, stuff like that, the efficacy of the vaccines.
And then at the same time, we would report on January 6th, we would report on the election in 2020.
And they kept banning us from all the different social media platforms and Google AdSense and all the different ways that we kept our website on track financially were just kind of taken out from underneath us.
And so at the time when COVID went down, Pulpin Pin had more than 1 million readers.
Every month, and so all kinds of traffic and expense incurred with that.
And so, we thought, well, without the advertisers, let's see if we can get around the sensors.
And so, we started Protestia.
But for the last couple years, you know, I've been raising chickens, I live in Kansas, and I wanted to get some thoughts out there things that I was thinking about what I was seeing in the news and some insights that I had.
And I'm glad that the guys at Protestia had welcomed me back.
But not everything I write about is.
Polemics, and I'd rather not write that much about polemics, honestly.
And so, because it's kind of an eclectic collection of different things I'm writing about, I decided to do that at my own Substack, which is Insight to Insight.
I really didn't think that it would take off the way it has, but its readership has just gone through the roof.
And so, I'm kind of happy, honestly, with people not knowing who I am.
I was pretty reluctant to come on here for sure.
But I've had an interesting experience in the last.
Four months or so since I've been writing, because I went more than two years without paying attention to the news.
I talked to the guys at Protestia, but we had a deal, which was like, don't tell me what's going on in the world of polemics.
Like, I don't want to hear what Russell Moore just did.
I don't need to, like, for myself, for my own mental health, I don't need to hear about to be the Anabuile right now.
I don't care about that stuff.
Ron Burns.
When Trump was shot, I got onto X.
To find out what the real news was, because I knew, you know, I couldn't get that on Fox or CNN.
And then I saw you guys and what was happening in evangelicalism.
I got to tell you, it tickled me pink.
I had no idea what was going on.
I never would have thought that the war in evangelicalism really had started.
I saw the fires kindled during the whole time that I was writing and doing polemics.
But when I left, the type of engagement that is now commonplace on X was verboten.
You would just be shunned immediately for having something that could be.
Even closely resemble a serrated edge or an attitude that wasn't approved.
And now I show up and everyone is quote unquote based now, all of a sudden.
I had to Google that and find out what that was.
And I saw the definition of based and I'm like, I'm pretty sure that describes me.
I think I found my people.
Now, when I come back on X, it seems like I'm the reasonable one.
And so, you know, it's been fun to watch.
And most people, I was kind of.
Worried about how people would receive me, but for the most part, people have been very kind and understanding and loving.
And so I just want to share some thoughts at my Substack to help guys that are doing right now what I was doing five or 10 years ago, because I've got a lot of war wounds.
I've got a lot of memories and a lot of scars, and I might be able to help folks avoid some of the same trouble and pitfalls that I fell into.
Great.
That's good.
Good introduction.
So, again, the Substack, if anybody wants to follow along with JD's writing, which, by the way, I've read a few of them now.
And you're a good writer.
You're a really good writer.
I remember even, I think, a couple people, I guess I shouldn't name them.
I don't want to get them in trouble there.
But a couple people who are kind of like minded, but a little bit more pristine, a little bit more of a statesman than myself.
So I maybe shouldn't name them because people, it might hurt them if people knew that we were talking offline.
But they have been reading you as well.
And they're like, man, JD is a really good writer.
That's it.
Yeah, you're doing a great job.
The joke that I couldn't help but think of with having you on the show is I feel like your attitude, you and I, we connected recently just in the past few weeks, and I've been following you for the past few months on X and you've been following us.
But one of the things that's impressed me is honestly your attitude, like coming in and seeing all the young based guys, whatever the kids are saying, doing, you know, Polemics and speaking into some of these things that you spoke into early on and paid a very, very dear price.
And but your attitude of coming in, observing that, and then and then basically just being incredibly encouraging like the way that you'll retweet or share or you know shed light on the guys in Ogden or myself or you know other guys who are kind of doing things that that you yourself have done and paid a great price.
And so it made me think of super random, but it made me think of there was a A stand up with Dave Chappelle.
It was kind of after he came back from going a little crazy, talking about him, not talking about you, but he went to, didn't he like go to Africa and try to find himself and his true roots?
And so, like, Dave Chappelle had a, yeah, he had like an MIA season for a little while.
And then when he came back, I remember like his first stand up coming, you know, coming back into the public square.
He, one of his jokes was he was like, you know, this whole time I was gone, I had to watch Kee and Peel do my show.
And I was like, I wonder if JD.
Feels that way.
It's like this, you know.
I'm coming back in.
I'm like, Joel and Eric Kahn, if he's like, they're doing my show.
And yet, I haven't sensed that from you even for a second.
That, like, in terms of any frustration, it's been like, if anything, it's like, man, they're doing similar things and it's working.
And they're, you know, and they're actually making a difference.
And the discourse has shifted and people are listening.
Evangelicalism Shifts Drastically00:10:23
And so I just wanted to say, you know, publicly, I've been blessed, not just by your writing and by your input, but I've been blessed by your attitude because that's kind of what we're talking about today.
There's a lot of guys who have been in this world, the evangelical world, for, you know, years or decades.
And yet, the problem is that they see younger generation rising up, and their immediate response is like their instinct is to disparage, to correct, to discourage.
Whereas you're coming in and you're like, yeah, Joel's pretty much doing what I did 10 years ago, and everybody hated me for it.
And for the record, plenty of people hate me too.
But he's like, he's making headway, and they're successful.
And I feel like the first time I talk to you, you're Your general overall reaction was like, I'm watching you do things I did.
It's working.
And yes, I'm here for it.
That's awesome.
And so, anyways, that blessed me.
And I'm the one you didn't push, but I said, come on the show.
Let's talk about it.
Let me tell you, Joel, when I came back, one of the first things I saw was Shepherds for Sale by Meg Basham.
And I was so excited to see that in late 2023.
I was taking care of myself.
I had my stuff I had to take care of and my family and reprioritize my life and all that.
So, It was like late 2023 before I worked up the courage to go to Protestia to see if they even had a website still.
Because I was talking to those guys.
I'm like, I want to know nothing about polemics.
So when I saw that they were still kicking tires and lighting fires over there, like I was excited about that.
But I show up on X and I see Shepherds for sale.
And I've, I have rarely been happier at any other time in my life.
Cause I'm like, who's this lady?
Why does she have this book?
Why has she written about everything that I've written about?
So the whole time that, you know, I'm, I'm slaving away, trying to draw the connections between James Riotti and Leegan Duncan and George Soros and the Kern Foundation with Russell Moore.
I felt like I was screaming into the abyss, you know, like talking into a vacuum.
I felt like that meme of Charlie and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where I'm looking at these red lines drawn up on the wall, right?
And so I see that basically what happened is the work that I was doing and also Jeff Maples and John Harris and Um, Alan Atkinson and Tommy Littleton, like the original OGs fighting the woke war in evangelicalism before it was called woke.
I feel like we what happened was the information Megan put out there was just our info that breached containment.
We couldn't get our info out because of, and I think we'll get into this in the program, is my understanding.
Um, because of the stranglehold that the gatekeepers had back then.
On publishing, on blog, even blogs.
You wouldn't think that there's a stranglehold on blogs, considering anybody can start one.
Believe me, there is denominational pressure on guys to shut up and don't talk about that.
And it's like, I've just sat there in my office.
My office was my armory back home.
I'd sit there with all of my guns and bullets typing away and just praying, God, let people hear about this.
This is big stuff.
And so I was kind of mortified when.
You know, things went down with me, and I thought, well, this is over.
The fight's over.
I don't know who else is going to pick this up, but God had a way of doing it.
So, when I saw Meg, or Megan, I should say, she doesn't like being called Meg.
When I see Megan out there, and by the way, she didn't just take our work, she provided some of her own research, which was great.
And then I see you guys, and I'm like, I don't know who these guys are, but man, I'm thankful that they're doing what it is that they were doing because I was writing about Christian nationalism back in 2017, 2018, because I knew that was coming down the pike.
Like I could kind of see that coming.
And so, even though I don't see completely eye to eye, With you guys.
So far as I know, we've actually never had a conversation about it, about this specific subject of Christian nationalism with you.
On so many things, I agree with you.
I'm so thankful, sincerely, from me to you.
I'm thankful for you.
I'm thankful for the Ogden guys.
I'm thankful for John Harris and AD and everybody that has been doing the job that I was doing.
And I'm so thankful that God's shown me he doesn't need me.
And I just want to commend you and I want you to understand God doesn't need you either.
Because God's doing something bigger than all of us right now, and it's something that I call the progressive social revival.
Right.
And so we need to get into that.
Well said.
I'm going to give it to Wes because he's kind of outlined this episode and he's got lots of questions and things for you to riff off of.
But that was kind of your blog, your entries with Insight to Insight was the social populist revolution.
The social revival.
Yep.
So go ahead, Wes.
Lead off a little bit.
Well, you clued into it kind of in your opening there.
People do not realize about 2010 to 2020, especially, and then obviously COVID ramped it up.
But in that period, the stranglehold at the broader society level this was over sites like Facebook, Twitter at the time, Reddit.
Like, I remember I was all in on Trump 2015, 2016, and there was a big group on Facebook, thousands and thousands of guys in support of him.
It was called God Emperor Trump.
That was shut down pretty quickly.
And so there was another one, big one on Reddit, it was called The Donald.
Same thing, it got shut down.
So, at a huge kind of conservative movement level, As groups are trying to get traction.
I mean, you had Mitt Romney in 2012.
So you have this cheesy front face of conservative media, of conservative politics, of lawmakers.
And there's guys that are saying, we don't like the status quo.
We want someone like Donald Trump.
He bucked the trend.
But so many guys that could have networked, formed patronage networks, written books, gotten into positions of power, been in office, supported Trump's agenda, they were just straight up shut down because all the avenues, social media, blogs, platforms, all these things, they were, it was like whack a mole.
One to pop up, pop.
Bop, bop, bop.
And it kind of peaked in 2020 and 2021.
I mean, Donald Trump, after January 6th, could not have an X account.
And Trump, by all standards, is to all of our left, radically so.
He couldn't in 2021 have any type of public platform.
And then something changed at the higher kind of macro level.
We'll get into evangelicalism in a second.
But then in 2023, Elon buys X.
And suddenly people, like you said, JD, you came back and you're like, People are talking about things that you just could not talk about.
You couldn't say out loud.
And there's probably some social effect there where people would, where you're kind of expecting people to not even acknowledge or accept you if you're even to voice those things out loud.
It blows the door off the hinges.
And so, then in the same way, at a microcosm in American evangelicalism, early 2010s, social justice was coming in.
I have screenshots saved on my phone talking about systemic racism, white privilege.
Like it was not 2020 when these things first arrived, they'd been in the universities, in the media, all of these things.
For close to a decade with no resistance.
Martin Luther King, there was a celebration, 50 years of MLK, the Gospel Coalition, John Piper, Russell Moore, tons of other names that you would recognize.
It was like two guys at the time just willing to stand up and say, Hey, Martin Luther King was not all he was cracked up to be.
JD, you probably spoke out against that, but John Harris and AD Robles were the other two.
But that's three guys out of a huge array of evangelical institutions.
And now it's just commonly accepted knowledge.
I mean, Charlie Kirk is talking about it.
Hey, Martin Luther King, serial adulterer, heretical, according to his stated beliefs on the Trinity and the virgin birth and the resurrection.
This guy shouldn't be looked up to.
By anyone.
And so, macro level, conservatives just networking, getting together, face to face time, forming networks.
And then also at the evangelicalism level, things in the last two years, in a way, it's tough to comprehend if you didn't live it, if you weren't trying to do these things in the last 15 years, have just been absolutely opened up.
And so, what you're seeing is a quick return to the status quo.
Things aren't artificially suppressed, things aren't just tampered with.
Your posts actually have reach that they should get because they're interesting and insightful, and people find those ideas worth talking about.
That's all that's changed.
And so now, everything that's happening right now that we're involved in in the connections, it's all downstream of, they're just, it's been democratized.
You talked about this, JD.
I'd love to hear more from you, but it's been democratized.
It's available to the people for better or for worse.
Yeah.
What do you think?
Yeah.
And there's so much history there that has led us to this point.
And one of the things that I really like doing these days, because I wrote about these things so prolifically for well more than a decade, closer to 15 years, I have all these.
Articles I remember having written about these things.
And so, you kind of, as a tongue in cheek joke, I call myself Polemic Santa on X.
And so, somebody will be talking about this issue.
They think they found a clue and they're looking about six or seven years back, trying to piece things together.
And so, I'll drop a thread of about 25 articles that I wrote about that subject back in the day.
And so, people are reading it now.
They might not have been so eager to read it then.
But one of the things that I'm convinced of that I've talked a lot about.
At Insight to Insight is the supernaturality of God, that we are not Socinians.
I think that Socinianism has been the zeitgeist of America's left wing evangelical infrastructure, that these guys don't really seem to have a supernatural God that does supernatural things.
They have a very respectable, intellectualized religion.
Although, like, they project themselves as reasonable, but they don't reason, you know, one of those things.
Like, they're not capable of that.
And so, one of the things that I like doing is showing how Satan has played a very long game over the course of human events, but so's God.
Challenging Socinian Views Today00:08:20
And so, you know, we had the Reformed Resurgence that began in about 2007, 2008.
And that was the product of Ian Murray at Banner of Truth over the course of half a century, printing works from John Owen and Charles Spurgeon, getting out this information little by little.
But here's my point.
In a similar way, what we see happening right now in the populist social revival through the internet, through all sorts of information now breaching containment out away from the gatekeepers, it goes back very far.
So you have the dark ages, essentially, right, where the Catholic Church and state religion is in charge of virtually everything, every piece of ideology, philosophy, or theology goes through that main gatekeeper.
And then we have the invention of the printing press.
And all of a sudden, material can go out from one place to a thousand different places.
And it was sort of the first democratization of the church that one man with a printing press was a very dangerous man.
And that's how the Protestant Reformation started and also the Enlightenment.
Good and bad can come out of that.
But as the church enjoyed, The Church Universal enjoyed the democratization of Christianity through the printing press.
Sort of that era ended, I would say it ended in 1956 with the development of Christianity Today, which was started by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
Essentially, what that did right around that era, right after World War II, virtually all of the major, all of the Christian publishing houses consolidated.
And it went from lots of different.
Denominations, even independent churches, having printing presses, getting out their material, everybody having a newspaper, so many different newspapers of different religious organizations to just a few.
And the publishing houses and the magazines became fewer in number.
And it would be like, you know, it wasn't just a denominational publishing house, they were publishing material for lots of different organizations.
The point is, it went from a lot of information produced.
By a lot of people, a lot of opinions produced by a lot of people to sort of this cannibalization and monopolizing of the Christian publishing realm to the point that by the time 1955, 1960 rolled around, you couldn't get out contrary information at all.
It was verboten, banned, forbidden to print or publish material saying, I think this guy's wrong.
So you look at the chicanery that Billy Graham was responsible for.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, read Ian Murray's book, Evangelicalism Divided.
The establishment of the World Council of Churches, these globalist arms of Christianity trying to effectively take over the world, not for Christ, but for Marxism.
The reason why those things succeeded is because if you disagreed with the Billy Graham, you know, evangelical organization, you could pound sand.
If you disagreed with what a denomination was doing, there was no way to get that out.
The internet.
Is then made, and even still, for 15 years after the development of the internet, even though there were people like Ken Silva and Deprising Ministries and me, uh, that were contrarians publishing information that was against the flow of authority in evangelicalism, we still censored ourselves.
There was still we submitted to peer pressure, not telling people the truth because we would be social outcasts.
When I published my first article about Russell Moore, um.
I got a call from Frank Turk of Pyromaniac saying, You're going to ruin yourself.
You can't do that.
You can't talk about Russell Moore.
You're going to be done.
Wow.
You're going to have no more influence.
I'm like, I don't have any influence anyway.
I'm on the internet.
I'm a guy in Montana.
What are you talking about?
Blacklist me for what?
I'm not a part of anything.
But his thought was, He's a Calvinist.
He's associated with Moeller.
You're done.
And so I think what has happened in the last few years since COVID, there's not been a technological breakthrough since 2020.
Right.
We just.
We swallowed the red pill.
We threw off our chains and we're like, we're just going to say it.
And so I'll just give one example, and that is when Jackie Hill Perry, during the George Floyd days and all the riots, she had said, if you don't know who she is, she's like a rapper, spoken word artist, former practicing lesbian.
She's associated with the Gospel Coalition.
She said that the gospel was not the exclusive property of wealthy old white men.
And so I responded on Twitter, the gospel is neither the exclusive property of militant butch black women.
And I tell you what, you would have thought that I set her house on fire.
It was, we lost advertisers.
I lost friends.
We lost contributors.
I had my good friends in evangelicalism, the more Protestant ones, shaming me for that.
How dare you say that?
And I'm going, what did I do?
And now, well, you guys exist.
How's that?
Everything you do is significantly more controversial than that.
You know what I mean?
So, a lot of things would be over here.
He'd be like, She has to go back.
It's a little bit more nuanced than that.
But yeah, no, you're right.
The world has changed.
The Overton window has shifted radically to where, even for us, honestly, there's a lot of things like, well, for instance, this is a good example.
But Michael, you were telling me, you know, in a joking manner, but it's partially true.
Like, you've got a book that you've got lined up, ready to go.
And had you published it last summer, it would have been outside the Overton window to the right.
And how do you think it, where do you think it's probably right in the middle now?
Right now, it's moderate, it's a moderate position.
So things are shifting drastically.
And I think, you know, one of the things that all four of us have in common is that we think that generally speaking, that that is a good thing.
The Overton window is shifting radically to the right.
And we think that in general, that's a good thing.
There will be plenty of time for conversation and nuances and all those kinds of things in terms of, okay, but.
It can't mean this, or this over here is too far.
But I think what people so quickly forget is like the guys who are trying, right?
They're already trying to regulate right now.
They're already trying to, you know, pull guys back in.
They're trying to, you know, to kind of tie the young men's hands behind their back, disparage them a little bit, you know, try to get them to chill out.
I think, you know, the major disagreement in a general sense that I would have is I would be, guys, The left was doing everything according to their terms, manipulated by their systems, their money, for 40 years.
We've had momentum for four months.
Give us a minute.
Give us a minute.
Let us win for a second.
Yeah, sure.
We can have some conversations of, okay, but this is too far.
But you're talking about guys my age.
I'm 38 years old.
You're talking about young, you know.
Relatively young, you know, white men who have been disparaged since the day they were born.
They've never even known a time in Western civilization since the day they were born where, you know, the wind was ever in their sails, where, you know, where the society and culture at large was actually for them or even just neutral towards them and not, you know, radically and unapologetically against them.
Navigating Enemies on Both Sides00:06:00
And so all of a sudden it's like the tide is turning.
And it's only been a second.
One example, and I'm not trying to disparage him.
I'm grateful for Doug Wilson and a lot that he's done, and I've learned a lot from him.
And JD, I'm happy to hear your take on him.
I know that you may have some different thoughts, but what I was going to say about Doug is, you know, one of his arguments towards, you know, Ogden and towards me and others is he said, okay, well, you know, you're right, guys, about some things here, there, you know, yes, you know, Judaism is a problem, or yes, Zionism is a problem, you know, these kinds of things, but you need to fortify your right flank, right?
Because, you know, no enemies on the right.
Well, does Jesus have enemies on the right?
Well, then so do I, you know, and there's, you know, There can be enemies on the left and there can be enemies on the right.
And then the example that he gives, and this is where he kind of loses me, is he has said, when I wrote Southern Slavery as it was, I co wrote that book, all of a sudden there were a lot of people who were mad at me.
There were a lot of people who were happy.
And then there were a lot of people who were also happy, but for the wrong reasons.
People who were genuinely racist, whatever that means.
But to use actual biblical language, they genuinely had a deep seated animus.
Toward other races, particularly black people, without justification.
They just didn't like them.
And what Doug was saying is that there was a lot of those guys, too, kind of came out of the woodwork and they tried to attach themselves to my project, to my book, and say, Yeah, we're with him.
And so, anyways, his argument was, You have to watch both flanks.
And so I had to fortify my right flank and make sure that those guys knew that they wanted to be with me, but I didn't want to be with them.
And so that's all I'm saying.
I'm just saying that, you know, you and the Ogden boys, you know, you got to.
You know, with this whole Jew thing, you know, you just need to make sure that, you know, because there, you know, you may not be anti Semitic, but you say some things that sound anti Semitic.
You're re voice for Nazis.
You're, you know, anti Semitic, adjacent, whatever that is.
But you're attracting some guys who really are nefarious.
And the only, the last thing I would say is, yeah, but in the case of Doug, it's like you did that, but can we just admit that there was like an 11 year gap between Southern slavery as it was?
And then you later on writing, you know, sin, kin, and skin, or I forget the order, you know, skin, kin, like, you eventually did fortify your right flank.
You eventually did come in with the caveats, the clarifications, the disclaimers.
You eventually did come in and say, hey, I just want to be clear.
I don't think that slavery inherently, there's something that the whole other issue, the slave trade, the transatlantic slave trade, but slavery in an inherent sense, I just don't think that it's inherently evil according to the scripture.
And I do think that there were some slave owners in the South, in American history, That were godly men.
And that's all I was saying.
And I was not saying blah, So, yes, you did clarify it.
But if we go back and look at the record, you were comfortable with not clarifying it for like a decade.
And then, and yet, in our case, it's like, hey, guys, you made this statement about Judaism and it's been 20 minutes on Twitter without a clarification.
That's kind of a long time.
I know I waited 11 years, but you know, it's been 20 minutes.
Since your innocuous tweet about AIPAC controlling all of our Congress, and you haven't caveated it.
It's been a full 20 minutes, and I think that that's really concerning.
So, anyways, my point is just to say I feel like the door has been flung off the hinges.
Gatekeeping is incredibly difficult these days.
There is something to be said to recognize that, yeah, it is possible.
It is theoretically possible.
You can have enemies on both sides.
That's absolutely possible.
For me, the big picture, I'm trying to look at the 30,000 foot view, and I'm like, we have had an absolute stranglehold of leftism on the church, not just the country, but the church for 40 years easy, if not longer, but 40 years, my entire lifetime.
We have gotten a tiny bit of a win.
Like, this isn't even a hardly, it's just the, it's like a real win is just at least within sight.
You can see, finally, you can see a light at the end of the tunnel.
We have the potential of a win.
In our country and in the church.
And immediately you're telling me that you might want to temper that.
You know, you don't want to, there's a win coming and it'd be terrible if you actually got it, you know, or, you know, let's maybe just take one bite of that win, you know, and then still go ahead and swallow a bunch of losses because it's good for your soul, you know, like, and I'm like, no, we have lost for 40 years.
We're just going to get a win and we can sort things out a little bit later on.
You waited a decade to clarify that you weren't racist.
Maybe I can wait a week before coming up with a statement that clarifies that I'm not actually anti Semitic.
Is that crazy?
What do you think, JD?
Well, there's a lot to be said for the way that our generation looks at Doug's.
And I'll get into that in just a moment.
Let me go back to just for a moment, kind of the environment of what's happening right now so people understand what's happening in evangelicalism contextually, so far as history is concerned.
Um, back when I was doing pulpit and pen back in the old days, we dealt with the group that we called the tone police, where everything that you said was held up to scrutiny to see if you've broken the 11th commandment, which is not being nice enough, right?
A True Generational Divide00:04:57
And so people would always argue, JD, it's not what you say, it's how you say it.
And at some point, I did an article and I said something along the lines of, In a dearth of truth.
You don't complain about what form the moisture comes.
Meaning that, like, so if you're a farmer out on the prairie, one of the expressions that you give from time to time is moisture's moisture.
So you like moisture in the ground, right?
You need it for your crops, you need it for your farm.
So, you know, a farmer's not going to complain about snow or dew or fog or ice or sleet.
Moisture's moisture.
Well, in our culture, especially in church culture, there's been a drought, a dearth of truth.
And people are right now so excited to finally be able to drink down unfiltered truth, not filtered by gatekeepers for sure.
Just tell me the truth, even when it's sarcastic, maybe a little bit ugly, possibly insulting, not the most polite language, not diplomatic, not tactful.
The man who loves truth, the man who knows truth when he hears it, is appreciative for having heard it.
And those guys, the ones who've been lied to, By their professors at seminary and Bible college, their Sunday school teacher, their pastor, their mom and dad.
Maybe it's about something like MLK, because a lot of people were thinking during the MLK 50 conference, why are we venerating a man who denied the deity of Christ, who plagiarized his thesis, who didn't believe that Jesus rose again from the dead, who was clearly a Marxist, a homosexual, and a whoremonger?
Why are we doing this?
So it's like when somebody comes along and just says it, I don't know.
I'm thankful.
And I think that what you guys have tapped into is there's a lot of People who are like, just lay it on me.
Just tell me the truth.
So far as Doug is concerned, what really shocked me was reading the Antioch statement as he talked about accepting, believing the received accounts, unquote.
And because I'm thinking about his slavery book, and I'm like, the reason why I've had so much affinity for Doug, one of the many reasons, is because he was one of the only people during that timeframe notable.
I wouldn't necessarily call him notable, but to us, he is, right?
In our niche of evangelicalism.
The only notable figure to say, you know, every slave could have been freed, could have been bought, and then freed by the government for like one third of what it cost to fight the Civil War.
And that's really what they were mad about.
And so war's probably not good.
We might have freed the slaves a different way.
And he took, as you said, a decade of heat over that.
Right.
Right.
And so now I'm looking at him for his revisionist history.
What changed?
Yeah, right.
What changed all of a sudden?
Because the same faux pas that you broke by questioning the post war consensus is the same one that he broke.
You broke the same rule in questioning the purpose of the Civil War.
So here's what happened this generation, Doug, James, and others, they taught us certain principles that we made the mistake, you, me, other folks that are contrarian, we made the mistake of believing them.
And then we just plowed forward with it, and they're like, Hold on, hold on, you're going too far.
Well, I experienced that, and so did a lot of other guys during the Reformed resurgence because I was born and raised Southern Baptist, and inerrancy was drilled into my head, right?
God's word said it, that settles it.
The Bible's true from end to amen, from Genesis to Revelation.
That's the way it is.
God doesn't give apologies for his book, believe it because the Bible says it.
And then we went.
From the traditional church that taught us that into a circle that, I don't know, read us Romans 9, right?
And so we're introduced to the doctrines of grace in scripture and we come home believing it.
And our parents, our pastors, that generation is just livid at us.
It's so kind of funny to me that many of the listeners to your program are in the age bracket.
Like they don't remember it ever having been controversial to be a Calvinist, but for some of us, it was a big deal.
And so they think that they've lost their children.
To this heresy, and we don't understand them.
It's a true generational divide because we're like, You taught us to believe the Bible no matter what.
Romans 9 says what Romans 9 says.
What's wrong with you?
And they're looking at us going, No, what's wrong with you?
The Calvinist Controversy Explained00:15:13
And that's where we're at.
I think these guys did a service to us, a service to church, and a service to Christ by teaching us certain principles.
Like sometimes you take no quarter no matter what, and you burn bridges, and you're willing to take.
Uh, pick up your cross and follow after Christ, even if it's unpopular, and it seems like we've done that, and they've become our biggest critics.
I can't help but think, Joel, people who have prided themselves on being the lone central contrarian figure don't like the thought that there's a whole crowd behind them who are just as contrarian, and now they're no longer the lone surviving hero, but there are many, many more.
And I can't help but think that there's a little bit of rivalry and jealousy because, hey, I've been the guy all this time.
Now, there's a bunch of people following me.
And I think from our perspective, we're like, the whole goal of you leading was not to stand out, right?
Wasn't the goal of you leading having people follow?
Well, we followed.
So let's keep going or get out of our way.
Yep.
Well said.
Let's go to our first commercial break and we'll be right back.
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All right, welcome back.
JD, I just want to keep going right on that thread that we had leading up into the break.
Really getting into the evangelical institutions, and we talked about Doug Wilson, we talked about James White.
I think what's really interesting, and you were hinting at it there, is they were the original disruptors.
One of the reasons James White has the platform he's had, he's obviously built it over, I mean, probably 15 years or so.
He's been debating and writing books and everything like that.
But he's one of the early adopters of the internet.
So, back when people were recording cassette tapes, I remember in the early 2000s, like recording my grandpa, who was a Baptist preacher, on cassette tape and mailing them out to people who missed it.
So, that was the norm.
And maybe if you were lucky, you got a television spot.
That was if you were really, really good.
But those were your two options locally distributed physical cassette tapes or television.
And then the internet comes along with the internet, internet programming, internet broadcast.
And James White and some other guys were very early adopters.
And being early, then you get the advantage you're building when no one else is building alongside you.
So, in that way, probably way back in the day, there were broadcasts, institutions, all of these things that were like, we love the status quo.
We have millions and millions of people tuning in because TBN or this, that, or the other, we're your only.
Option.
So they were the original disruptors.
And it's the same thing, JD, you mentioned this in your article.
It's called The Keepers with No Gate.
Really good, worth reading.
But you said, for example, in Presbyterianism, Doug Wilson basically carved out the CREC for a home for federal vision, kind of outside the traditional Presbyterian structure, disrupting the structure that existed of obviously, you don't have bishops in a Presbyterian system, but the Presbyteries and the General Assemblies.
So he went around that.
So they were the original disruptors.
And there are many, many others, of course.
But now it's come time for that system to be disrupted.
And I think in many ways it's accelerating.
You could imagine, like you said, Billy Graham and evangelicalism of the 70s and 80s disrupting maybe the more traditional structure that was existing pre war, pre World War I and World War II.
Billy Graham and the, it's not Great Awakening, what was it kind of called?
The Crusades, the Billy Graham Crusades.
Those created a setup and an evangelical ecosystem that disrupted what came before.
And then came the emergent church movement.
And then quicker and quicker and quicker.
So this is the latest turn.
And the point is, it's happening quicker and quicker.
And those that disrupted the first time, they were the first to it.
They did it 10 years ago.
Now they're being disrupted, and that's what's so difficult to swallow.
Like you mentioned, aren't you leading to see other people follow and do that?
But it's so hard when you're Saul and people are singing, Saul has slayed his thousands.
And then they sing about David.
It takes a lot of effort as a man, as a leader, as someone who's dedicated their life to a certain work to be lauded for what you did, well and good, but then to watch someone just go on and excel far in front of you.
And this isn't just particularly about any two individuals, but it's seminaries, it's publishing houses.
They're atrophying.
They're drying up.
They have money.
They have campuses.
They have capital.
Liberty University, the moral majority, Jerry Falwell, so much.
And you would think this will power them for 100 years.
I mean, Christianity today, they were the only game in town for decades.
You would think, oh, it'll always be how it's been.
And then all of a sudden, it goes away.
And that is so difficult.
Love to hear your thoughts on this, JD.
So difficult to see the next generation come in and say, we're going to build and we're going to grow.
But we're not just stopping where you stopped.
We're not content to labor for 20 years to get our breakout session at the conference or get our spot on the Bible commentary series.
No, we're just ultimately not going to play that game at all.
Thoughts?
Well, let me explain to you a little bit of what's going on there because it seems like, like Doug, those who have been most controversial in the past are the ones that are attacking you the most for being too controversial.
It's very simple, and I got it too the many years that I've done what I've done, and that is.
These guys that were the flavor of controversy in the day, much to their credit, they took a lot of arrows, they took a lot of heat, but they could only go so far and they wouldn't cross this line.
Whatever it was, it was the taboo that couldn't be crossed, or else they'd go from being blackballed at half the evangelical conferences to all of them.
And then here you come along and you go one step further than they did.
Here's a truism, right?
So as soon as I say it, you'll realize that it's true.
Most of the time, when someone says you've gone too far, what they mean is very simply, you've gone further than they would have.
It's not as though you've really gone too far, it's just you've taken an extra step that they wouldn't take.
It's in the same direction, it's just they've been held back.
And frankly, I don't think it's necessarily cowardice per se, it's just that it's beyond the Ebenezer, it's beyond the boundary line of that particular era in which they worked.
You've gone a step further, so.
In their head, it's like either they could have gone further than what they did and they chose not to, and they don't want to think that they didn't go far enough.
So they're going to have to then rationalize that to themselves by saying, Well, you've gone too far.
So I would probably blow your mind at the names that I could drop of those who chastised me severely, some of my more prominent friends, because I, I made a habit of referring to BD Anna Bouillet as Ron Burns because that's his name.
That's the name his mother gave him.
He chose to self identify as Tabidi, not when he became Muslim, but when he became a Black nationalist.
And my argument was he's still a Black nationalist.
I don't use preferred pronouns, I don't make stuff up.
I'm going to call him Ron Burns.
And I had, I mean, the biggest names in conservative evangelicalism say that's just too far.
You can't do that.
Again, if you woke up after years of slumber and stumbled into X, you'd say, What's the big deal?
Everybody's doing it now.
The point is, that was a line that they wouldn't cross.
That when you do, they automatically think that you've done something wrong.
When you build an audience and a following for yourself based upon you being cutting edge, Of your, you know, you're getting close to the line of social moray of the Overton window of acceptability.
You kind of have in your head people follow you because you're edgy, and if somebody's edgier, they're going to take your following from you.
And I, it did not surprise me at all to discover that you guys were having heat from the places that you were getting heat because I knew that there were certain apologists that the moment I overtook them.
And downloads on sermon audio, that's when I could just set my watch and say, they're going to do a podcast about me.
That was sort of what incited, I think, most of that criticism.
And so, in terms of the gatekeeper, even though you can't say Doug Wilson, I'll just use him as an example, you can't say he's like a mainstream gatekeeper.
He's on the edge himself, he's on the periphery himself.
There has still been this self policing.
Among evangelicals and conservative evangelicals, there's probably that policing in every niche of online evangelicalism.
And if you come up through the ranks and they didn't help you, you weren't drafting on them, you weren't holding yourself to their coattails.
That's how things are ordinarily done in institutionalism.
That's credentialism.
It's you've been a sycophant enough years for this apologist, for this preacher, for this pastor.
Eventually, you'll get a breakout session.
At this conference, you'll get to be a guest on the podcast.
Then you'll get a name for yourself.
You guys come out of nowhere.
Why?
Now, I could be wrong, and I have been called a conspiracy theorist, the Alex Jones of evangelicalism, all that.
But hear me out.
I think the reason why you guys got a following out of nowhere is either you're the recipients of some deep pockets of dark money somewhere, probably from Indonesia or Kenya, sub Saharan African, if I had to guess.
Or you had ideas, thoughts, and perspectives that resonated with evangelicals because they couldn't hear that anywhere else.
And in evangelicalism and Christianity in general, we like to amen, say, I agree with that.
The reason why you amen a preacher in traditional fundamental Christianity is because he's saying something that's edgy enough, you're worried somebody in the congregation is going to get mad at him.
You know that he's stepping on toes.
So the reason why we amen traditionally, historically, the reason why.
Is because we're providing something audibly for him to hear to say, I agree with you and I got your back.
Don't worry if you get people mad.
I've got your back on this one, Pastor.
Well, they want to amen people who want to say things that, you know, Doug Wilson isn't going to say.
You're certainly not going to hear it on the other end of the spectrum at the Gospel Coalition.
And so the gatekeepers realizing that there's only so much of the pie to go around, so they think.
I think it's a fallacy on their part.
There's only so many donors, givers, supporters.
It fosters a real contempt.
That's why we have very much a circular firing line, so to speak.
So you've got G3, and you've got.
You've got Grace Community Church and Grace to You.
You've got the Dividing Line, Alpha Omega, Apologia.
You've got Clouds Without Water, One Passion, Founders Ministries.
You only have so many groups that solicit funds and have an online following.
We've never been big.
We, I mean, our branch of evangelicalism, Reformed Protestant evangelicalism, we've never had a ton of parachurch ministry.
So there's not that many.
And honestly, it's.
It's a damning accusation, but I believe it's accurate because I've lived it for 15 years.
There is a competing evangelical warlords trying to hold on to their fiefdoms and their donors.
You could even see that in Steve Lawson's Fall from Grace.
You could see a little bit of competition among those parachurch ministries fighting for who they knew were going to be disaffected donors to One Passion, trying to get out ahead of it.
Hey, you know, they're not going to be giving to them anymore.
Maybe they can give to us.
And so, what I, you know, you haven't asked me for advice.
It's not why you brought me on the program, but if I could just give some unsolicited advice, it's this the notion of there only being so many people who care, only being so many supporters and hearers is nonsense.
You know why?
We're Christians.
We bring converts.
God does anyway.
We preach the message.
We have to believe that if we share the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ and we Preach the full counsel of God's word between those two things.
Disciples of Christ are going to want to check out what it is that you're saying, and they're going to support that.
One thing that all of these various groups that I've mentioned, these warlord fiefdoms in Reformed evangelicalism, one thing they have, they all have in common is they're not evangelical in the slightest.
Young Males Return to Faith00:10:13
They rarely talk about Jesus.
They're really not out there attempting to make new converts.
They're beating war drums over things that may be very important, but are not evangelism per se.
And so They're used to the type of ministry growth that most churches have, so far as church growth is concerned, which is just fish moving from one fish bowl to the next.
You know, a member is going to move from one church to the next.
That's where most church growth comes from.
It's not like mega churches are having a sea of converts, they're just sucking people like a vacuum cleaner out of all these small churches that don't have bread and circuses on Sunday.
So, my point is this this world is white under harvest.
What's happening right now in the populist social revival, I think.
Is legitimately from God the Holy Ghost.
He's doing something.
All of these people are coming to the same conclusions that they've noticed Christians have come to on the transgender issue.
They know it jumped a shark.
You got people who were willing to use preferred pronouns a few years ago say, okay, it's a little bit too much.
Can we not have a kid climb onto the lap of the drag queen at the library?
It's pushed them too far.
And so they notice that where they stand on abortion, environmentalism, the importance of a small and limited government, why.
You know, homosexuality kills cultures, that women maybe really don't fly a plane as well as men.
They're coming to all these conclusions and they're searching for the genesis, the origin of their worldview.
Why is it that people that think climate change is a load of crap are the same people that think you shouldn't kill babies in their mother's womb?
And they're discovering the Christians all share these views.
And so they're searching.
They're searching because God the Holy Ghost is doing something.
And so that's the people I would recommend that you or anybody listening that wants to foster a movement and take it somewhere, go reach the lost people.
They're searching.
And now we know innately they don't do that of themselves, right?
No one seeketh, no one searches after God until God starts doing something.
And we have every indication in our culture, he's doing something.
It's very exciting to be doing what you're doing because you have the opportunity to do what these other ministries are doing.
Have not done, and that is actually reach people with the gospel.
Yeah, it does seem as though there is a ripe harvest.
It's just not where many thought it was for all these preceding decades.
They thought it was the cultural elite, the elites, you know, coastal elites.
They thought it was going to be in Manhattan.
They thought it was going to be in LA.
They thought, you know, that this harvest was going to be among all the hoity toity, you know, well to do.
Liberals, you know, people who are center left or maybe even, you know, all the way progressive.
And then God finally is doing something.
And, I mean, you can see it.
It's not even just, you know, I mean, it bears out even, you know, in statistics.
It's not just a personal opinion.
There was an article that was just released the other day that said, you know, that there's, you know, a radical shift of young, predominantly young white males that are going back.
To church.
This was the New York Times.
This was the New York Times.
Yeah, so even those who hate Christ are noticing it.
But my point is that it seems like Big Eva's upset about it because they've been talking about revival forever, but they didn't want the young white men to be the revival to be affecting them.
They were hoping that it would be a young black woman, you know, and preferably, you know, it would be even better if she was a lesbian.
You know, if it was a bunch of black, you know, young lesbians coming to Jesus, Christianity today would be.
They'd be stoked.
But the fact that it's a bunch of right wing young white males, then people aren't so excited.
I'm excited.
Joel, if I could pipe in on that issue, and I know we're up against the clock or whatever, it'd be remiss of me if I didn't get this out because I want to explain to people who are not sold out lock, stock, and barrel on Christian nationalism, or they may not be in complete agreement with you guys on everything.
I think they're looking at you kind of as a phenomenon.
I'm sure people tune into every podcast saying, okay, What's the big deal with these guys?
And they're listening.
This is one of the most important things that you can understand about why this movement, why Joel and you guys, and then Eric Kahn and the Ogden guys and both sets of wolves.
This is why young men care.
And it's not because they're Andrew Tate fans.
All right.
The North American Mission Board made a conscientious choice in 2009, 2010 in their SIND program, NAM, in the SBC, to focus almost exclusively on inner city urban.
Ministry, urban church planting.
If you're rural, if you're in the country, you're not important at all.
Bodhi Bacham had a very good sermon about this, where he's like, if you want to preach to rural people in America, you're not important.
You're wasting your life if you're doing that.
And so evangelicalism has adopted the DEI thing.
You've got the Southern Baptist Convention Pastor Conference a few years ago, literally employ a racial quota system to determine who would be.
Speaking there, right?
So, I think what's happened in America is not evangelicalism, just for a moment.
I'm talking about all of America.
You have so much attention on diversity that you have a very disaffected group of people that are young white males, especially young white rural males, where they're not important.
They're invisible.
No one cares about you.
You're not going to get a helping hand to go into college.
Nobody's worried about.
How you're doing.
Young men are blowing their brains out because it's pretty clear nobody cares about them.
And if that's not the case, perception becomes reality.
They still feel that way for some reason.
And I think there's a reason they're feeling that way.
Well, that same type of thing has happened in evangelicalism, where frankly, all you have to do to become prominent in conservative evangelicalism, especially online, I'm going to give you a tip to have a big following and lots of listeners and lots of opportunities and get lots of stage time and spotlight.
Here it is.
If you want to be prominent in online conservative evangelicalism, just be black.
That's all you have to do.
You're going to get roles and speaking gigs, and you're going to be able to rub shoulders with some of these guys.
Well, you know what?
The white guys noticed that.
And they're like, this guy kind of seems like an idiot.
He tweets nonsense half the time.
And yet he seems to be like, I think a lot of people are looking at what's happening.
They're saying, don't tell me that conservative evangelicals don't do DEI too.
Or that we don't, we do it also.
Oh, yes.
So when somebody comes along and says, I care about young white men, I care about rednecks, I care about hillbillies, I care about the type of people whose backs are strong enough that we've put this country on it for the last hundred years and they've carried the weight of the rest of us.
I care about them.
And it's not as though.
Someone has to be racist to have that appeal to young men, especially young white men or young rural white men.
They just have to actually notice their existence.
Right.
Because they're so used to it being ignored.
And part of what that requires, though, is you don't have to be racist, but you do have to notice their existence, their being the young white males.
You do have to notice race.
You don't have to be racist.
Now, granted, even the word we've talked about how we don't particularly like it, and I think you would agree.
We don't like more recent innovations that are used within a leftist framework and Marxist framework to demonize all of Christendom and all of the West and everybody else.
But the point still stands.
You know my point.
So there are better words to use.
But what we're doing is we're not just by noticing them, the young white male, Christian male who lives in flyover country in Kansas, such as yourself, and is raising kids and chickens, guys like you, guys like us, by noticing them, what we are also noticing is we are noticing race.
And we're noticing that, yeah, that DEI is not just something that's happening among the coastal elites.
It's not just something that's happening at the Ivy League schools of Harvard, you know, in Columbia.
Uh, it's but it's also something that is happening even in you know allegedly conservative churches within evangelicalism.
Um, we we we've all kind of experienced that, we've all to varying degrees and in varying ways, but we we've all kind of said, like, yeah, I I saw my friend you know make more headway because he was black, or or I saw you know so and so's book get um way more sales and way more attention.
Um, yeah.
Because it was a chick and she was blonde and, you know, relatively pretty.
And, you know, and I've watched, and like we've all seen enough of that.
And so if somebody just comes along and just says it and just says out loud, hey, this is DI, it's not just, you don't just need to check, you know, make sure that you have an old white male pilot, you know, when you're flying Delta.
Breaking Old White Male Stereotypes00:13:46
DI stretches a lot further than that.
It's in our churches, it's with the eldership, it's because they can.
The conservative, and I use, you know, for the listener, you know, I'm using the quotation marks.
The alleged conservative, such as Matt Chan, they told us this isn't a conspiracy, they literally told us that they would choose the less qualified individual if they met the DI quota.
And so, for me, like, it's like, well, who radicalized you?
Well, I was in Acts 29, I joined Acts 29 as a young white man.
That'll do it, you know.
And not late stage, not 2020.
When did you enter X29?
I joined in 2014.
I should have known better because it was right around the time they were kicking out Driscoll.
And yes, I think Driscoll had some problems, some, but not many of the ones that they were talking about.
I think there were some different things.
But, anyways, this is so funny.
I'll say it out loud.
People get mad, but I'm going to say it.
I feel like, have you ever seen the memes where there's a guy and he's looking through the blinds, looking out the window, and he looks sad?
You know, like he's like, oh man, I'm stuck in here.
And then there's somebody like outside who's just, you know, carefree and just living their best life now, Joel Osteen style.
That's how I feel in the Reformed Longhouse sometimes looking at it Driscoll, right?
Like if I see one more tweet from Gabriel Hughes about how that Bart Driscoll isn't qualified for ministry, meanwhile, he's shaking hands with the president, guys.
Do you know how much of a joke we are, the Reformed Church?
Can we just be honest about that for a second?
We are the smallest.
Niche of a niche of a niche of a niche of a niche, a subcategory of a subcategory of a subcategory.
Absolutely.
Continuing to talk about why Mark Driscoll's not qualified from something 12 years ago that we weren't even behind the scenes and we're not even privy to what he actually did.
We don't even know what happened.
Meanwhile, 12 years have passed by.
The dude is now shaking hands with the president and making real effects in the world.
But we're over here consoling ourselves so that we can sleep at night in the midst of our radical insignificance, but telling ourselves that we're doctrinally pure.
I, yeah, so that just that dog won't hunt.
I've written probably a hundred articles at least on Paula White at the last thing, real quick, JD.
My point is back to the DI.
Well, who radicalized you?
Acts 29 did it.
So, to answer what's so, I joined right as Mark Driscoll was being kicked out, I got sidetracked for a second, but then I left right after Eric Mason wrote his book, Woke Church.
And I talked about it for I didn't just immediately pull out, I talked to guys in my area.
And all of them disagreed with me.
And the area lead for San Diego at the time immediately started criticizing, like made it about, you know, he's like, well, actually, I've been meaning to tell you, I've never mentioned it before until you criticize Eric Mason, but now meaning to tell you, I'm concerned about your character and this, that, and the other.
And so then, yeah, I was like, and we're done.
We're done.
So it was those kinds of things that eventually, and it's not just me, I'm just, you know, in a lot of ways, I am insignificant, but it's a whole generation of Christians.
In flyover country, who have been passed up just like the flights, the flight path passes them over, so has evangelicalism, so has all the opportunities, so has their vocation, so has their employer.
Everything has passed them over.
And eventually, people revolt.
And if that people that's being passed over by the church, by politics, economically, at every single level, passed over again and again and again, if they also happen to be the majority, that's when a country is done, messed up.
When the people you've been disparaging are actually.
The majority people and stronger, well armed, well intelligent.
Um, and and they're the heritage historic people who built the country, and they're also have the numbers, they're still the majority.
That is just yeah, that is a recipe for that's a recipe for a Donald Trump presidency, that's a recipe for a Joel Webb and podcast, that's a recipe for a lot of things.
And here we are, JD.
Sorry, so I brought up Paul White because you were talking about Driscoll and.
Gabriel Hughes and others complaining about him.
And I know all about Driscoll.
And again, that's one of the things that we did at Pulp and Pen was cover that so extensively.
I've written about Paula White at least 100 times, if not 1,000.
It might actually be closer to 1,000.
You can see all those articles still up.
And so the other day I see Tom Buck railing about Paula White.
And I understand she is a heretic of the highest order.
I'm like, maybe not.
Maybe not like Mike Cosper bad, but she's still pretty bad.
I appreciate that.
That's why I have you on the show right now.
She is a heretic of the highest order, still not as bad as Cosper, but continue.
But here's what I had thought.
I had sent Tom a message, or maybe I just commented on a public feed as he was really attacking President Trump during the campaign within a few weeks of the election because he didn't like something that Trump had done.
Maybe that was back when people were calling him pro choice.
Getting pushback from whoever.
And so I just wanted to demonstrate to Tom and to others who are complaining about Paula White in Reformed Evangelicalism, we really have expedited our own irrelevancy.
We're the ones who have relegated ourselves to the timeout corner.
We're the ones that will fight about Mark Driscoll when that was 12 years ago.
Let's move on to another issue.
We have the opportunity, and with what's going on right now and the populist social revival, to reach so many people.
And we just sometimes can't let go of some of those old things.
And so the people are not going to tune in, let's say, to the Tom Buck radio hour and listen to him complain about Paula White for an hour and think, you know, I want to be a part of that, whatever that is.
I want that.
And so, the best thing that y'all can do and others associated with you is move forward.
Don't care what Kalmbach says.
Don't care what Gabriel Hughes says.
Don't care what Mike Cosper says.
Don't care what James White says, Doug Wilson says.
Listen, their kingdoms are crumbling.
Move forward.
Go.
Like the wind's at your sails.
Like get on the horse and giddy up.
There's nothing stopping you.
But if every time you feel it necessary to condescend yourself, climb down off the mountain, And talk to your accusers who are still calling you racists and anti Semites like this is 2020 and they're Antifa, like anyone cares, then that's going to be the biggest stumbling block to whatever it is that God is doing through you and through the movement.
And I always feel compelled to go back to the old debates and the old arguments and the old feuds.
Why?
They're irrelevant.
And when you spend your time defending yourself against every single accusation, Racist, anti Semite, misogynist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic.
You understand that's just stuff that Satan designs to slow you down.
And it doesn't matter if it comes from the blue haired nose ring feminist lesbians on Libs of TikTok video or if that's coming from James White.
It's done for the same purpose, and that's to cast shade and slow you down.
You wouldn't turn around and argue with a feminist for three weeks about why you're not really.
A racist, like they don't, they couldn't define racist, they certainly can't define anti Semite.
I would, as hard as it is to listen to James White and Doug Wilson, listen, their kingdoms are crumbling, they're old, and their ministries are dying.
It's not as though they lost their relevancy for the most part, they never had it.
When Steve Lawson fell, so many people were saying he's one of the most prominent evangelicals in the world, and they're lamenting the sky's falling.
I'm going, are you kidding me?
Nobody knows who Steve Lawson is.
He's not a household name.
They're not talking about him at the breakfast table.
He's popular in a tiny little niche.
We don't understand how small our niche is.
But here's the thing what you're talking about is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
That's a big deal.
It applies to everybody.
And love for our kingdom, excuse me, love for our country and love for our people.
Everybody is interested in that.
It applies to everybody, it's relevant to everyone.
And so cast a much wider net.
And I think you're going to have a lot of people care about what it is that you're saying.
So you've got Greg Locke and Clayton Jennings and some other people, kind of heretical, that I've talked about over the years.
And they have millions of followers on Instagram and Facebook, right?
I'm not saying imitate the heretics, but I'm saying they only got to that level of following in the masses because they didn't go through the gate, they went over the wall.
And if the gatekeepers want to say, you can't listen to those guys and follow me, if they're going to play games like they're the mean girls and they have a burn book and this is seventh grade lunch table and they're not nice to Becky or whatever, like we don't, you don't need them.
I don't need them.
You never really did.
You have your own platform.
Just plow forward.
I want to be encouraging to you in that way.
Yeah, I appreciate it.
I think you're right.
And yeah, I think that providentially, even beyond getting off of us as a case study, but looking at the larger Principle, that's kind of always what God has done.
Like it seems like, you know, whether it's Charles Spurgeon, you know, or whoever, you know, whoever the Lord's moving with, I think it's good.
I'm not saying this is bad.
I think it's prudence.
I think it's wise.
I think it's biblical, you know, to be discipling locally and trying to raise up successors.
But it seems fairly often, you guys feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but fairly often, the true successor is someone that you don't account for.
You know, it's like you're working with someone locally, and this person is going to be our, you know, my protege.
And, you know, like, and when I die, but like, so like, you know, people will guess, like, who's gonna, you know, who's gonna be the successor to John MacArthur?
And honestly, like, if I had to guess, it'll be some guy that, you know, that John MacArthur doesn't even know.
John MacArthur will die, and it'll be some kid, you know, who met him once at a shepherd's conference or something like that, who drove up and he didn't even live there.
He never even went to the church.
He certainly wasn't, you know, one of the main, you know, successor guys, but it's just, It's the spirit of God, you know, and that like maybe it's my charismatic, it's Friday, you know, so it's just, you know, charismatic Friday.
But it's like, but it's true.
They got like the wind, you know, John 3, the wind blows, the spirit's like, you know, he blows where he wills.
God is sovereign.
He does what he wills, he does what he wants.
And that's not to negate, again, because there is a biblical principle and we should be prudent and wise and diligent to make sure that we're, as much as we can, that we're reproducing ourselves and others.
So ultimately, we're reproducing Christ.
But we're taking whatever good Christ has given us and we're distributing that and multiplying that in others in a real, tangible, local way.
That we're doing that first and foremost with our families, with our wives, with our children.
We're doing that in our local church with other brothers in Christ and that we're discipling them.
We want to raise up others.
But at the end of the day, God's still sovereign.
And when it comes to not just in a random local church, as important as every local church is, but when it comes to A guy like a John MacArthur, or a guy like a Billy Graham, or whatever it might be, the true successor is not the guy on paper.
Rarely is it the guy on paper that that person hand selected and spent however many years grooming him and preparing him and left him in his proverbial will, left him the ministry, left him the influence, left him the opportunity.
But it's usually not him.
It's some other random dude who, you know.
Maybe they never even cross paths, and this guy goes on to truly become the next.
And he becomes the next Billy Graham.
And that's a whole debate whether we really want another Billy Graham, but he becomes the next Billy Graham precisely because, this isn't random.
I think this is, it happens this way because it's this way.
He becomes the next Billy Graham because he's nothing like the last one, because he's different, because he's different.
Becoming the Next Billy Graham00:03:23
You know, like, but I did it my way, you know.
It's like, you know, like now we're in Frank Sinatra territory, but like, it's because God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
There are some immutable principles, the law, word of God, all that's true.
But there's also timely, timeless principles, but there's also timely principles, things that the Lord is doing in a particular place, a particular time.
And the last guy is, he's fit for his time, his place, his generation.
But the next guy is, he's different.
The Lord is doing a new thing.
And it's like he was laying a foundation here.
Now he's putting up drywall there.
And you need different people, different tools.
At different stages of the product, the project.
And I think that's a lot of what the Lord's doing.
So I know that all of us probably have some thoughts, but let's go to our last commercial break from the day, and then we'll come back, get some concluding thoughts, and let's make sure to also get some of the questions in the chat.
All right, the clock is running out.
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All right, welcome back.
JD, do you have 30 minutes to just some closing thoughts and some questions?
Closing Thoughts and Chat Questions00:15:32
Sure, sure, I can do that.
Perfect.
So, just how do you do, how do you navigate a world where, as we've been talking about, the institutions and the gates are over in the sense that we used to know them?
How do you navigate a world where there is not a stamp of approval or he came out of that seminary or he's trained by so and so?
It's kind of a brave new world.
There's lots of ways.
JD, I definitely want to hear from you.
But I think one thing is really powerful is when, obviously, there's things about Trump we don't like, but something he did so well.
He won on election night.
So, November 6th, November 5th, I forget.
And he got up at 2 a.m. to give his acceptance speech.
I mean, this moment is all about him, JD Vance.
Now he joined as VP, what, three, four months ago?
But there was a moment in that speech where he said, let me give it to JD for just a couple minutes.
Because he recognized, and he recognized it better than probably many pastors, his time's coming to an end.
He's almost 80 years old.
He's just simply not going to be alive forever.
And the future of the Republican Party and the Conservative Party was standing in front of him.
And so instead of keeping and holding that spotlight as long as he could, I'm just going to hold on to it.
And this is going to be about me until the bell rings.
He said, No, I recognize my time's coming to an end.
And I want to use my platform to get this guy, who's the future, as much FaceTime as possible.
And with JD, I guarantee.
There are disagreements.
I wouldn't go as far as him with that.
I'm actually more partial to this.
But he just knows it's ultimately not going to be my show at a certain point.
And it's going to be his.
And what he can get from me is the encouragement, the support, the platform, and I'm going to give it to him.
And every single, at least certainly men here watching and listening in this chat, there will come a point, even if you are 15 years old today, where you will be that father.
You'll be 50, 55, 60, and your son and your grandchildren will be into something new or starting something different.
And you can, you have the option to be.
Crusty, grumpy, critical.
I don't know.
I remember this back in my day.
Or you can be encouraging.
And so, in a world where there are institutions, where there aren't, you know, kind of the stamp of approval that you can really count on, what you can commit to do, what you can actually change, is you can be the type of spiritual father, the type of civil father, the type of father that encourages the next generation to the point where they actually would go, Hey, I have some questions for you.
Could you tell me more about this?
That is a much better relationship.
Than browbeating and criticism, and trying as long as possible to hold on to whatever it is that you have.
JD, any thoughts to add, or we can go to questions?
You know, I find the discussion about who's going to replace so and so to be very revealing.
You know, we've been having that conversation about John MacArthur and Grace Community Church for literally a decade.
Like, you get together with other like minded guys, and it's like, it's not who's going to win the Super Bowl this year.
It's like, so when MacArthur dies, and he's old.
You want to know, but that question betrays a heart of institutionalism.
Who's going to fill the office almost as though they're like an apostle?
And the answer is most of the time it doesn't even matter because God really doesn't move through institutions.
Almost every time He moves through people.
I mean, Tolian Tavidgin replaced a D. James Kennedy at his church in Florida, Coral Ridge.
You've got what?
Joel McDermott was supposed to be the next Greg Bonson.
How did that work out?
Was he the second coming of Rush Dooney, or did maybe that not work out?
So we see the idea that the institutions must be saved, they must go forward.
Who's going to be the successor?
The next one, Ravi Zacharias, was to be the next Billy Graham.
How did that turn out?
And so it's not about institutions, it's really not even about, say, somebody's parachurch ministry.
When I talk about reformed fiefdoms and fighting for donations and And supporters and getting into these fights that we've been a part of.
God will move in whom He wants to move, when He wants to move, wherever He wants to move.
And the Holy Spirit, I believe, is doing this powerful thing.
And He's, you know, again, I call it the progressive, excuse me, the populist social revival.
You guys are a part of it, your listeners are a part of it.
Be on your knees in prayer, praying that God would do stuff through you that we don't have the capacity to do.
I'm not a post millennialist, but I'm as optimistic as one.
God's doing fun stuff, and I love this timeline, and I'm so thankful that this movement's happening right now.
Amen.
Speaking of God doing something and being a part of it, some of the questions that we're getting in the chat have to do with you, JD, and whether or not you're going to be a part of what the Lord's doing at our conference.
If you would like to come, then I would formally offer you a free ticket right here publicly on air.
We would love to have you, and you're welcome to bring anybody you want to bring with you.
If you want to bring the family or if you want to bring a friend, I know that, I don't know, it may be a little daunting to you, you know, not because it's us, but just.
In that environment, you know, I know that you've kind of been living, you know, quietly and working with your hands and doing that life for the last few years now, which I think the Lord is honored and blessed.
But if you just want to come, there's a lot of guys kind of similar to you, not exactly.
Everybody has their unique story, but there are some other guys, just, you know, for the record, I won't name them because they may not be comfortable with it, but other ministers that, you know, if I said their name, people would recognize it who aren't, you know, they're not necessarily speaking at the conference or anything like that, but they're going to be there.
They just want to be there and kind of, you know, hang around and, um, And just, you know, kind of see, you know, and they don't even necessarily, like you, like they don't even necessarily agree with every, you know, theological, you know, tertiary or secondary point that, you know, that we might hold.
But that's kind of the beauty of this conference.
I did that, right?
So for our listeners who were, you know, who were familiar with the conference that we had a year ago, you know, I did that.
I did, you know, seven doctrines, you know, and it was, you know, very doctrine heavy and very, very particular, very specific.
But, um, I'm building the plane in mid flight.
I'm learning as I go.
I've always admitted that publicly, like, all right, I was wrong about that.
I was wrong about this.
The more, as the Lord keeps kind of winnowing and winnowing, what I'm realizing is it's hard to distill what God's doing down to doctrine.
And it's not that doctrine, there's never a time that doctrine doesn't matter.
There are some core doctrines that will always matter no matter what.
But what I'm realizing is, you know, for this conference, I've got Steve Dace is coming.
Like, you know, he's not, you know, mean towards reformed guys.
He's not like anti reformed, but he's not really reformed.
And he's dispensational and he's much more of a friend to our greatest ally, you know, than I personally would be.
And we've got Calvin Robinson, who's Anglo Catholic, but the tail seems to be wagging the dog a little bit more than I would like, you know, on the Catholic side of things.
And then, you know, but technically, I guess I don't even know if he's.
Anglo Catholic anymore because they kicked him out for his Roman salute that he recently.
The gatekeepers got him.
And then we've got guys who are post millennial and more on the theonomic side of the aisle.
And then we've got more classical two kingdom, all millennial guys like Stephen Wolfe.
We've got a lot of guys coming.
And I think that's part of the beauty of it if there's any common denominator, it's that we love Jesus, everybody's Christian.
But beyond that, everybody's a fighter.
Everyone is a fighter.
And I think there was a time, if there's any lesson that we've learned over the last 10 years, 15 years, because before we would have said, well, it's, you know, the dividing line is, are you a Calvinist?
And then Russell Moore says, well, watch me.
You know, like, you know, because Calvinists, you know, we can trust them to hold to what, you know, what's true.
And then, you know, Russell Moore and Ligan Duncan and all, you know, Tim Keller, all these Calvinists come out and thoroughly disappoint us.
And then, even myself, I'll admit, you know, that like, I, you know, I've thought, I have thought, well, I get, you know, it wasn't just being a Calvinist, but it's being post millennial, being optimistic about the future and engaged in the culture war.
But then it turns out that even as a post millennial, I am still post millennial.
That's still exegetically what I'm convinced of.
I could be wrong, but that's what I'm convinced of.
But I've realized that even as a post millennial, you can just tweak it and nuance, and you can say, well, yes, Christ does win, and he wins progressively throughout history, but he's going to win 50,000 years from now.
And for the next 500 years or even 5,000 years, the general trajectory is up, but we're currently on a dip, and this dip is going to last for the rest of our life.
And so then, functionally, You can be the most pessimistic.
You can make a lot of the dispensational guys look like, by comparison, 10 times more optimistic than you as a post mill guy.
So, my point is that it's hard to put it into words, it's hard to pin it down, but it's like this old American spirit of excellence.
It's this ethos of a certain type of person who's nothing less than a Christian.
It's nothing less.
But in addition to that, believes that.
That we could win.
And here's the key that we could win here and we could win now.
And I've realized there's some guys who feel like, well, you know, gradually, progressively throughout history, we actually are going to lose.
However, I think for my life and for my kids, the next 50 years still matter.
And for the next 50 years, I'm bullish.
I think we could win, or I think we could at least have some serious improvements.
So there's Disby guys.
Again, not a huge fan of Zionism and some of the things that that can lend towards, not always, but more often than I would like.
But there's DISPY guys, there's post mill guys, there's a lot of all mill guys, there's theonomic guys, there's classical two kingdom guys.
But the common denominator is everybody loves Jesus and they want to see America be Christian.
Now, whether or not they would call it Christian nationalism, but they want to see a Christian America.
And everybody would have a different way of fleshing that out, what that looks like.
But they want to see that because they have kids, they care about their kids, they want their kids to be able to grow up and actually be able to.
Afford a home, be able to get married, not get passed over for the job opportunities, all that kind of stuff.
So, we've got all kinds of guys who are coming to this conference.
It's in some ways exactly the same as last year, and in some ways, it's exactly the opposite.
That instead of seven doctrines to rule the world, it's go fight, win.
And this, here are all your fighters.
We've got a ragtag team that doctrinally have differences among us, but we're here to raise hell.
You know, when it comes to fighting the hordes of Satan and winning back our country for our children and for us and for our posterity.
And so, anyways, all that being said, I'm excited about the conference.
I would love if you would like to come.
And that's one of the questions in the chat.
So I thought I'd bring it up.
What do you think?
You know, I've thought a lot about it.
It's a concern to me.
I want to clarify because, you know, it comes up about me getting back into things.
I spent 15 years.
Um, doing a podcast where I'm talking about James McDonald, Mark Driscoll, or whoever say, if you disqualify yourself for ministry, uh, like go sell cars or something.
Um, and and so, uh, kind of where I'm at, like I'm happy farming chickens, I'm not going back to that.
Now, James White says, I'm not, uh, I'm not qualified to share my opinions.
I think his exact words were, uh, be quiet and go away, I think is what he said.
You know, the Pope has made his pronouncement.
I think what I need to do, because I've lost a lot of sleep over the pronouncement that I need to be quiet and go away.
I need to send him a letter and ask if he was speaking ex cathedra or not, because I'm not sure how the rules work.
I'm quite comfortable farming and living my nice, quiet farm life and yet share opinions on stuff.
I will say I have been, and not just opinions, I think I do have something to offer in terms of.
Having been there and done that and seen a lot of this, I hope that what I produce on X or at Insight to Insight or Protestia Plus, my genuine hope is that people find it edifying and encouraging.
So that's why I do it.
And it does make me feel good to be of some use because I've spent two and a half years just talking to farm animals.
They've not started to talk back yet, but it sometimes is concerning.
Now, I've thought about going just for the fellowship of it because, you know, the meme, I think it was made by.
I saw it on the evangelical dark web where it was which way reformed man?
The main, yeah, yeah, right.
And to me, like, okay, your conference looks really fun.
Um, it looks like you're gonna have a good time.
And the conference that they were comparing it to kind of like this brown monotone, it reminded me of like when Dwight Schrute made the it is your birthday sign, right?
So it's just, it's just like it's, it seemed oppressive.
I stopped preaching at Reformed Baptist churches six, seven years ago.
I stopped because they'd have me come and do events and conferences.
I always left depressed.
They felt like, legit, they felt like funerals.
Like they're just sad, depressing.
Like, where's the unction in any of this?
But you guys honestly seem like you'd be a blast.
But you did put me in a hard spot right now, which is you brought up Calvin Robinson.
And now I love Steve.
I spoke with him.
I don't want to say I'm friends with Steve, but I know Steve.
I've spoken with him at conferences like where we both spoke at the same conference.
He's given one of the best talks I've ever heard at a conference at the Standing States.
He's got the only standing ovation at Fight La Feast this year.
He's an automatic standing ovation.
He's a fighter and he's a phenomenal speaker.
He's inspiring.
He quoted the verse about donkey ejaculate like without looking at his notes.
I was impressed that he pulled that one out.
So he's super great.
But you brought up Calvin Robinson.
Like I spoke at The Stand Against Marxism conference, and there was a papist there.
And so, like, I felt like I was obligated to be like, I'm the Protestant, I'm still protesting, stop being a Romanist, the Pope is Antichrist, and just kind of moved on.
Theological Purity vs. Collaboration00:14:15
And we, well, to be fair, just to clarify real quick, Calvin's not a papist, and he's like a.
He's papist light.
Well, so he's not a huge fan of the Pope.
He would certainly be more friendly than you and I would be.
But his whole thing, you know, the Anglo Catholic, his whole thing is.
It's more of your Catholic successionism, which I still obviously would disagree with.
But for him, think Catholic minus the Pope and minus Vatican I, Vatican II, and Trent.
Think that.
Now, is he still going to have some views of Mary that make you cringe a little bit?
Yeah, yeah, he does.
I can't deny that.
Is it the timing unfortunate that the moment I invited him to the conference, that that was the moment that he decided to go?
Full Mary, you know, veneration online.
Um, yeah, that was unfortunate timing, however, let's be honest, it wasn't a coincidence.
The reason that happened was because he went to Moscow and nobody cared, right?
Um, and then the moment that I announced that he was coming to our conference, he got pressed by James White and a bunch of other guys in the reformed crowd on the Mariology.
And this is what I love about Calvin.
Um, it's and honestly, ironically, it's kind of like James White.
Like, I've had a lot of guys say, Man, I remember watching him debate or watching him on the dividing line, and I loved it.
But then, when I saw it turned against me, then I was like, oh, that's actually not a fair argument.
Or actually, that was ad hominem.
You notice all the fallacies, you know, and all the bad argumentation and those kinds of things when it's turned on you.
And so, the thing that I love about Calvin is he's a fighter.
So, if you press him and say, well, you hold the Mariology and you need to deny it right now, well, then he's going to give you a Roman salute and he's going to pray the rosary even harder.
That's just like, that's.
And that's what I, now I don't like it in that avenue, but that fighting spirit of you cannot tell me what to do, I will do whatever.
That's why I invited him.
I defended you guys from the hypocrisy of that because I saw Southern Baptists complaining.
And I'm like, I was pulling my hair out just a few years ago when Rod Dreher was being drug around like a show pony everywhere.
And, you know, he doesn't even believe in penal substitution.
So it's like one step further away from orthodoxy than Roman Catholicism.
But when I spoke with Michael Hitchborn of the Lepanto Institute, At the Marxism conference, after saying what I felt I needed to say to keep my Protestant street creds, I said, Listen, right now we're all under assault.
I do want the Papists to fight Marxism, and I want to fight Marxism, and I want the Mormons to fight Marxism, and I want us to annihilate and destroy them so that we can then turn sights on each other and fight each other like God intended us to do.
So, like, I want to get back to that war.
So, I'm, you know, I was like, I.
I was thinking to myself, I hope he doesn't bring up Robinson because I'm going to have a thousand people on my ex going, why didn't you rebuke those guys for having Robinson there?
Well, just say you disagree.
You disagree.
You don't like it.
You don't like it.
There you go.
I disagree with people.
You covered your bases.
Well, I didn't like the fact that John MacArthur invited Albert Moeller, Legan Duncan, and Mark Dever to Shepcon while the Dallas statement was going around, or that they spoke at G3.
That year, I didn't like having Josh Bice attack me as a negative contrarian because he invited the worst proponents of social justice to the conference about social justice.
And so I was more offended by that than I am, Robinson.
But let me say this I wrote about this at Insight to Insight.
I forget the name of the article, but it was the Senate of Trash World, I think is the name of the article.
When I said, in a new movement, and Christian nationalism is not really new per se, like, it's It's got some reconstructionist vibes, a little bit of theonomic tendency, but like you basically hold the position of the pre 1788 Westminster Confession of Faith.
So we can't call it new, right?
But in any movement like that, a synod, a council, a diet has all been very important historically to get together and work stuff out.
To say this is a bad idea, we shouldn't have done this, we should support that.
That's why I thought it was pretty crazy that Durbin would back out, being that he was close enough, closely associated with you enough on the page about most things that you would have him come.
That would be the time and place to say, okay, while we're there, we need to have a family meeting and we need to talk about X, Y, and Z to then help direct and steer.
Here's the thing they never wanted to help direct or steer or correct, they only wanted to anathematize you.
That was the only reason.
Because if you refuse to show up to an event like that, when you've been invited and you've agreed, what that means is they just want to cast you off, hand you over to Satan, and anathematize you.
I hope that you have a discussion at Trash World or the correct name of the conference.
I hope that you have a conversation about is this going to involve Catholics and Orthodox or Mormonism or Seventh day Adventists?
Is it going to include hard shell or soft shell Seventh day Adventists?
Day Adventists, or both, and even if you already have the answers to all that, there are going to be people like me who don't, and so that's the place for um Nicholas to punch Arius at such an event.
And so, we'll just pray that a good fist fight breaks out at your conference and you'll settle.
Amen.
There's a good chance because we've got David Reese and Stephen Wolf and uh Calvin Robinson, and they've all the three of them online have already kind of been going at it, swearing off.
Yeah, we'll see what happens.
It's funny though that the irony to me is uh.
You know, one of the critiques we were getting is this is just a Christian nationalism conference, it's just a white nationalism conference.
Then I invited Calvin, they're like, It's papist.
So, you know, so they're like, We can't say it's racist anymore, but we'll say it's papist.
You know, so there you go.
All right, 10 minutes.
We'll be respectful of your time.
We've got all the super chats, real quick.
All the super chats.
Ben, of course, thank you.
Super chat, $20.
Ben Huffstedler said, Get that support going.
Joel, this is a question for you.
I have to ask this so I know how close to brotherhood we are.
You had only one option for the rest of your life would it be ketchup or all caps mustard?
Hashtag yeller for life.
Hashtag cat soup is garbage.
Yeah.
So it's actually, I'm not just saying this is funny that he is very clearly pro mustard, but I despise ketchup and always do.
Oh.
And yeah.
I didn't know that before I agreed to be a contributor.
I will always keep mustard.
Call it.
Call it.
So both of you are done, but I've got Ben over here and I'm guaranteed at least $20 a live stream.
So I think we'll be fine.
Next one.
Jeff Hafley, 499.
Thank you, Jeff.
You actually had a couple, so I'm going to go through and read all of them.
This is a question.
JD will get it to you since you're the guest, so you can think on it here while I just read the rest of his.
Jeff Hafley asks Do you think that ideological or theological purity is often used as an excuse by losers for losing constantly?
Is ideological or theological purity used as an excuse when losers lose?
And he also added some super chats Christians who say the church thrives under persecution should remember what happened to the North African church under the Muslims or the Japanese church in the 1500s.
Not good.
He said, JD, I helped Joel McDermott get elected to a minor GOP office in 2013.
He's been such a disappointment.
Any idea what happened to him?
And then one more comment, Nate, if you could just scroll down.
He said, JD, while I think Joel narrowly won that debate on points, your body of work versus Joel's since then has been the best argument from your side.
So, Jeff, thanks for the super chats.
Ideological, theological purity, the participation trophy for losing.
What do you think, JD?
Well, in terms of a participation trophy for losing, I don't know the context of what he's talking about.
I did see something from Neil Shinvey talking about why Christians might want to be bad debaters, kind of a weird thing, like to maintain your moral integrity.
But, you know, if we're right, if we're positionally right on a topic, then what does winning and losing mean to be more persuasive?
Like, I would rather be right.
And maybe less persuasive because at the end of the day, people are going to mull it over and truth permeates eventually, it'll shine.
So, without the more context on the question, I don't know that I necessarily understand it.
I guess what he's getting at is just saying, a lot of times, evangelicals have prided themselves as we're going down with the ship, or like the meme of the epitaph, the tombstone, and it says, here lies conservatism, and then in quotations it says, Imagine if the other side did this.
So it's like, as I lose and with finality, and my entire line is cut off, and I've basically committed suicide, well, at least I was principled.
So I think that's the heart of the question do evangelicals, do Christians sometimes use doctrinal purity and being right, the principled stand, as an excuse for the fact that we lose so often?
I don't know that I've seen that much.
Here's what I have seen it's not doctrinal purity so much as it is politeness.
And so while the left have been ugly and nasty, trying to put you in jail and blacklist you and all this other stuff, like they're super nasty.
We Christians feel the need to honor that 11th commandment where it's always pumping sunshine, right?
Like we're just supposed to grin and bear it and not only turn the cheek once, but, you know, Turn, give them every cheek, then give them your children's and wife's cheeks for them to strike.
Um, and so I've seen Christians handicap ourselves just so that we don't look like we're fighting dirty.
Um, and and I mean, honestly, uh, we're just now starting to uh to fight fire with fire in regard to some things, and I'm very thankful to see it.
It's hard to win a serious argument if you're over concerned about uh looking like Pollyanna or smiling like Joel Osteen, sometimes you just have to glare.
Yeah, well said.
And then, real quick, to go back to Jeff Hafley, what do you think?
Basically, he said, What do you think if you had to, you know, obviously this would be, you know, mostly probably speculation, but what do you think happened with Joel McDermott?
You know, I appreciate him saying he thinks Joel won on points.
If I could explain his trajectory, I'd say, you know, I beat the man out of him.
It was pretty one sided.
I will say that James White said definitively, and I'm pretty sure it was ex cathedra, that I won that debate at the time.
Now, here's what happens, and this is a super actually important question.
What did happen to him?
I always said theonomy has a huge backdoor.
So you have all these theonomists, some very prominent ones, with the exception of Bonson and Rush Dooney, who are both dead.
People come in, it sounds like a good idea, but then in terms of its application, people eventually take a step back and become general equity theonomists, which is true.
The other word for that is not a theonomist.
Okay.
So they're just saying that they agree now with chapter 19, or is it 17 in the Westminster Confession on the civil code?
And even the LBC says the same thing.
So the 1699.
Yeah.
So McDermott was like many, he was a doctrinal tourist.
And you see that with Christian nationalism too, right?
You probably see that a lot.
People are tourists.
They come in, they check it out.
But I think that what the moment to me where he switched was the bounds of love, which he did about six months after that debate, where he gave up the penologies.
He then said that no longer should we stone or execute homosexuals.
Thomas Granger should not have been punished for sodomizing the turkey that they brought up in the debate.
Kind of a crazy argument.
And here's what's nuts about that.
Um, that means I am infinitely more a theonomist than he is, although technically I'm not one at all.
I want people to understand that even though I don't call myself a Christian nationalist because I'm more like in agreement with the revised post 1788 WCF, I still believe in enforcement of the second table.
So, like, I could agree with Christian nationalists on criminalizing adultery because that's in the second table.
So we have those agreements.
But with Joel McDermott, listen, he was the flavor of the month in this new cool movement.
Reevaluating Theonomy and Law00:14:19
He was riding it like a surfboard.
He fell off his surfboard.
My understanding is that Gary DeMar got really upset at him for his poor debate performance.
And, you know, the next thing you know, he's got a ponytail and he's an attorney defending Antifa and taking selfies with Kyle J. Howard.
But I, you know, sometimes people just turn on you.
Like, you.
Who knows?
Some of it's mysterious.
Like, I could imagine him leaving Theonomy.
Most people do.
But he, I don't know if he fell and hit his head or got hit by a bus or what, but it seems like it, like, it knocked the heterosexual out of him somehow.
Like, he's just, he's weird.
Like, I don't know.
It's supernatural.
That's how far he went off course.
Yeah.
I, yeah.
I agree with a lot of what you just said.
And I think what I've noticed a little bit is, um, The theonomy, because I've kind of done what you just described in terms of, you know, okay, you know, general equity theonomy.
I've been saying that for about, you know, a year and a half now, because it is basically the confessional position.
Just saying that, okay, the moral law of God is immutable, it stands forever, you know, summarized summary law in the Decalogue, the Exodus 20, 10 commandments.
And then, you know, a ceremonial law has been fulfilled, and it's all been fulfilled by Christ, but that has been fulfilled in such a way that to continue the ceremonial law, It's not even to say that it doesn't continue, that it's been abrogated, that it's done away.
Not one jot or tittle will pass away.
Behold, on the Lord that changeth not, so that you, the sons of Jacob, are not consumed.
But it's the uniqueness of the way that Christ fulfilled the ceremonial law, Christ's fulfillment of the moral law.
If I go on and then say, well, Christ has paid the penalty of my sin, and the moral law has been completely satisfied by his life, he didn't just die in my place, but substitutionary life, his act of obedience, John Owen, like he lived in my place.
And didn't just avoid sin and maintain a state of innocence, but he fulfilled all righteousness, as John the Baptist said.
So he lived in my place perfectly and fulfilled the moral law of God on my behalf.
And his fulfillment of the moral law is such that as I seek to the best of my ability, empowered by the Holy Spirit and by grace, although imperfectly, because the presence of sin remains in this life.
But if I seek to obey the moral law, that's actually consenting to his fulfillment, saying that Christ did this perfectly and I want to walk in his example.
But if I take that same frame of mind and I apply that to the ceremonial law of God, and I say, Christ, you know, he's the behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, he's the perfect and final sacrifice for sin.
And so I'm now sacrificing this sheep or this goat in the same way that I'm trying to not commit adultery because Christ has perfectly fulfilled the moral law.
And now I'm sacrificing a sheep or a goat because Christ was the Lamb of God, the final sacrifice.
No, that actually points, that makes a statement in the opposite direction.
It points to, it asserts the insufficiency of Christ's sacrifice, that what he did ceremonially is actually not enough.
And then the civil, you know, all this, you know, our listeners know, and I know you, Chad, you know.
But the civil, it's just extracting the principle, the general equity.
It's, okay, what's the underlying, you know, taking the civil, tying it back to the moral law, and then saying it's not just dropping wholesale, you know, the civil laws given to Israel in Argentina, you know, or wherever else.
But, okay, but what's the underlining moral principle here?
And then it's not a one step process, but a two step process.
Take these civil laws to Israel, and step one is track it back to the general equity, the moral principle that undergirds it, back to the moral law of God, the Ten Commandments.
And then how does that apply?
In our world today, my point is that's where I'm at now, and I've realized that for guys who aren't really there, theonomy here's the thing is if it is a one to one ratio, then theonomy is as much as it is about the law of God and as much as that matters, and it does sound really good because I mean, we could always use more of the law of God, but it actually becomes because I was like,
how in the world are theonomists like some of the biggest advocates for the post war consensus?
How is it that the theonomist Um, are like, are actually some of the loudest voices championing, you know, GDP must go up.
And how are theonomists right now, the guys doing podcasts that are mad at Trump for tariffs?
It's the theonomists, though.
And then, and I was like trying to piece it together for why.
I mean, it really kind of confused me.
And I had to like rethink some things.
I was like, the theonomists are the guys who are really concerned about racism, really concerned about anti Semitism.
Like, really holding to the post war consensus in many ways, much more in line with Buckley than they are with Buchanan.
Um, they also, uh, um, and then I really it finally hit me, and I was like, this is what the theon this is what the theonomists like about theonomy.
They don't like it that it's a lot of God's law, they like that it's a little.
Um, so the best way I can explain it is uh, G.K. Chesterton, you know, and it's a good quote, I like it, but you know, he said, if man will not have 10 commandments, he will have 10,000 commandments.
This is what I realized.
It took me a while, but it really is this simple.
Theonomy is just the Christianized version of libertarianism.
They're just libertarians.
That's all it is.
They're libertarians, especially, maybe not so much morally, right?
So they're not libertarians like they would have some gay trans person as their mascot at their rally.
They're not libertines.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
But they are certainly libertarians economically.
And that's when I finally kind of was able to do a little digging and realize oh, these guys, they don't like.
They don't like this.
They don't like, like, they're actually okay.
They're actually okay with H 1B or with this or with that.
And they mask it in the language of these are extra biblical laws and it's only God's law, 10 commandments, not 10,000.
But really, really, what it amounts to is economically speaking and also racially speaking, it actually does lend itself towards globalism.
It actually is very friendly of the post liberal order of the 20th century, which is really an anomaly if you look at the whole rest of the swath of human history.
Theonomy is actually.
It's actually shockingly compatible with the post liberal order.
It's shockingly compatible with Amazon and being able to just franchise McDonald's and make widgets for the cheapest amount in China below minimum wages.
And then the moment that you say, but wait, this is taking all the jobs away from heritage Americans and a bunch of white guys in flyover country that have nothing that they can give to their sons.
And you raise that objection, and the theonomist says, yeah, but tariffs are actually biblical, and that's the law of God.
Forbids it.
And so it took me a while to realize like, are there any notable theonomists?
Like, is there an incentive that I'm not unaware of?
Are there any notable theonomists that are just like, I mean, surely not, but like just hedge fund managers, like multimillionaires in finance that actually profit off of free trade without any, you know, that is just economically speaking, that America is just an economic.
And then it hit me.
Oh, significant drive for Gary North.
I mean, that was central.
It's interesting you bring that up.
That was a big part of Gary North's theonomy.
Was the economic side.
Yes.
And so, anyway, so it just took me a while to figure it out.
But finally, I realized, like, oh, man, like it's not so much the law.
My point is for some of the OG theonomists, not so much Rush Dooney, though.
Rush Dooney was different.
But some of these guys later, and kind of like if there's three waves and now is the third wave and Rush Dooney and Greg Bonson are the first wave, some of these second wave guys.
What I realized for them, it wasn't so much we need theonomy because we need more laws.
It was, it was, theonomy for them is a one to one ratio.
It just directly means libertarianism and small government.
Whereas the only appeal to me for theonomy from the get go was not that.
I want righteous government.
Now, I do think biblically that a righteous government would be drastically smaller in many regards.
Small does not inherently mean righteous, and big doesn't inherently mean corrupt.
You could have a small bad government, you could have a big good government.
There are some things, I do think there are biblical jurisdictions, there are some things that government shouldn't be in.
But by and large, I look at our government and I think, yeah, in about seven out of 10 areas, if we were to boil it down to 10 categories, about seven out of 10, if it was to be righteous in those seven areas, it'd be smaller.
These other three areas over here, they'd actually be larger, they'd actually be bigger.
If they're going to be righteous.
And so for me, it's just a little bit more complex.
Go ahead.
You were going to say something.
No, I just wanted to add this to the theonomy discussion.
And I'm so thankful for that question because it was important to me for people to know who've been following my work for so long that despite what's occurred with my life and ministry and all of that, I really wanted people to know that.
I've not changed that my eyes are on Christ.
I'm not going down the slippery slope of bad ideas like a lot of guys do when they stumble.
That said, theonomy is actually the perfect example that I can use to express to people that this is why I'm treating Christian nationalism the way I am.
What I mean by that is my arguments with the theonomists might have been a little tad bit heated, right?
Like it got pretty ugly between me and those guys.
And over the years, I came to regret it.
McDermott went the way he went, but most of those guys came out of it.
And I suppose Durbin would be the other example if maybe it didn't turn out so well.
But for the most part, the men who followed them got it all sorted out.
And that's why when I went further and debated someone on New Covenant theology and charismaticism, when I debated Matt Slick and so forth, my attitude was much different.
I'm not debating really an enemy as though I was debating.
You know, a Roman Catholic or an atheist or something.
Here's my point, though.
What I discovered through the theonomy debate days is that for men who love the Lord and for men who genuinely are born again in the faith, they've been made regenerate, they've been given hearts of flesh after their heart of stone was plucked out of their chest.
God brought them to repentance, they're saved, they belong to Him.
Here's the thing I didn't consider like I should have back then, and that I do now.
Now, this is a wild concept, super controversial.
Cut this out of the podcast if you want to later.
Like, well, it's live.
So I guess I'm toast.
Here's my thought, as controversial as it could be.
I think the Holy Ghost leads people to the knowledge of truth.
Now, surprising, I know.
Like, I hope that's not going to get you guys into more, you're going to lose advertisers or something.
But I think that Christians that are led by the Holy Spirit can have their theology directed by Him.
That the Holy Ghost illumines our minds, and that if there is an idea that's bad or imperfect, I'm not talking about questioning the resurrection or something like reconsidering sola fide, but if there's a doctrine that somebody has adopted that I don't think is quite right, I can rest assured that the Holy Ghost, the same one that leads me, will lead them.
And when I have people look at me and say, Why are you being nice to the Christian nationalist guys?
You don't agree with them.
On all that stuff.
Why, you know, go after them.
It's like my disagreements are so small, but even if they weren't, I can't browbeat someone into agreement with me.
And I think that overall, Christianity has been evangelical Christianity in America has gotten really ugly.
I don't mean that we're not being nice enough to each other in like a sugar sweet sort of way, but we flat out anathematize people at the drop of a hat.
And I do have to blame some of your critics for that because they've helped lead that anathematize first, ask questions second attitude.
And you know what?
I'll be the first one to confess I did some of that junk too.
But the theonomy debate really taught me, you know, JD, if those guys belong to Jesus, he'll lead them and they'll come out of it.
So that's why I pray that you have a really successful, you know, conference coming up and that.
I'm convinced that if you're wrong on something, I have full confidence God will straighten that out.
That's why I really hate to see you all treated the way you're treated by people who are saying things they can't take back.
You know, when you just declare someone to be of Satan, it's really hard to walk that back.
And I'm sorry that you have to deal with that.
I hope that the ministry that I had previously in polemics has not fostered the attitude that because you have a minor disagreement with someone, you have to treat them the way those guys are treating you.
I appreciate that.
Appreciate that a lot.
Doctrine Must Make a Difference00:07:22
Yeah.
I, you know, it's, it's, I like what you said in terms of, you know, the minor disagreements and those kinds of things.
I've kind of realized that too is just people, yeah, like, like you said, the Holy Spirit leads people, people come around.
And, you know, at the end of the day, like with each passing year, I'm realizing more, you know, you realize more and more who your friends are, you know, where you're aligned.
And I don't know.
I don't know if it's ideology, you know, like just a bent towards being ideological or what it might be.
But for the longest time, I always thought that, you know, the dividing line, you know, when if we get pressed, you know, or, you know, that people would sort.
You know, they would self sort and the lines would ultimately fall around doctrine.
But I just feel like at this point it's 2025, the year of our Lord 2025.
And I feel like it's been long enough to look back over the last 10 years and whether it was woke wars one and social justice or, you know, or COVID, you know, or, you know, George Floyd later on, you know, and then or Trumpism, or with all these things, like with each.
Each new providential moment where the Lord just kind of drops another bomb on us from on high, you know, and I sit and seated on his sovereign throne, you know, drops another providential bomb.
And in real time, we're trying to, you know, to figure out what's the right position, where do we land, and what, you know, each time that happens, if I'm honest, and I wish this wasn't the case, like I wish with COVID, COVID was a game changer for everybody, but for me, it was a game changer in.
In multiple regards, and here's one of them.
I just had to admit to myself and to my church and to people online, that's about the time that we started podcasting.
I had to admit and say, I wish it would have been really compelling for Reformed theology if COVID came down the pike and all the Reformed churches stayed open and all the non Reformed churches closed.
But if we're going to be honest, I'm grateful for what John MacArthur did, but it was like 10 weeks in.
Let's be honest.
Calvary Chapel kicked our butts.
The reformed folk got our butts kicked.
I did pretty decent.
We were four weeks.
And part of that is because we didn't own a building.
We got kicked out.
But the point is, we all, just about all of us, there were maybe two or three exceptions of guys who never closed, but just about all of us failed.
And the only question is by how much, what varying degree.
But some of the biggest players on the field that did the best.
That did the best were like, I remember thinking when COVID first happened, I remember thinking, thank you, Lord.
We've been pushing against word of faith ministries, mega churches with 2,000 people that just cultivate a mystical experience with the dimmed lights and the fog machines and the loud music and all this kind of stuff and just emotionally manipulate people.
But all that requires, what that requires is an in person phenomenon type experience.
And with COVID now, their doors will be closed.
And it's going to be ministries that actually have substance, you know, the content that will last, you know, because they'll still be able to broadcast, you know, their sermons and that content will stand on its own two feet.
But anybody who was requiring, you know, or depending on an in person mystical experience with fog machines and laser lights and gold dust in the air vents, those guys will shut down.
You know what happened?
All these charismatic churches put next to their cross outside their church building an American flag and said, screw you, Joe Biden, and opened up.
And the reform guys were close.
And I was like, what in the world is going on?
I remember looking at that and thinking of like C3.
I remember I was in San Diego.
C3 became, you know, they rebranded and became awakened or something like that.
And I was like, you know, the C3, you know, and they were like the Bill Johnson, you know, type church, you know.
And I was like, C3 is done for.
This is like a week into COVID.
And I was like, well, COVID sucks, but, you know, praise God, C3, you know, they'll be done.
Like two weeks later, Two weeks later, they're doing church and Charlie Kirk is there.
And I had my differences with Charlie Kirk, but they're doing church.
Charlie Kirk is there.
And all these Calvary Chapel, Arminian, and charismatic C3 type, all of them do.
And so, my point, long way of saying, I wish that the dividing line had been doctrine.
I wish that as God kept throwing providential bombs, cultural bombs, political bombs, these tests, as the Lord kept.
winnowing and testing us with culture and politics.
I wish that as we got doctrinal, cultural and political test, that doctrine made the difference.
And I think we just have to admit as Reformed guys, we just have to sit here and admit it didn't.
Now we can argue about whether it should have, you know, and I'd like to think it should have, but it did not.
It did not.
There were Calvary Chapel did better than Reformed Baptist on the whole.
C3 and mega church, seeker sensitive, charismatic churches did better than the PCA on the whole with COVID.
And then with wokeness, it's like, well, we finally were putting the woke away and we beat wokeness.
We didn't beat wokeness.
The Daily Jew beat wokeness.
Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire did more against wokeness.
Matt Walsh deserves more credit for putting the woke away than any reformed pastor alive.
And so those were the moments where I was like, Okay, I'm a churchman.
I'm a Christian.
I'm not leaving the church.
I pastor a church.
I'm not leaving the church.
It's still ultimately eternally, you're eventually going to have to stand before God and you need your soul to be saved.
This is of utmost eternal importance.
I'm never walking away.
But in my day to day life, I want to make a difference because I'm a Christian, but I'm also a father.
I've got a wife and kids, and I want them to be able to live in America, a country that has at least some semblance.
Of the country that I grew up in, and hopefully by God's grace, better than the country that I had to grow up in.
I want them to be able to buy a home, afford to buy a home, be able to get a job, be able to have kids of their own.
I want them to be able to have a tangible future.
And as soon as I started thinking about that, I was like, yeah, okay, I will always be a Christian if Christ keeps me, and I believe He will, that He'll lose none of those that the Father gives to Him.
And I'll always be a churchman.
I don't always have to be a pastor, to be honest.
Christians Sharpening Iron Together00:07:37
I like that one.
There's no verse in the Bible that says, you know, Joel Webbin must be, but I'm always going to be a Christian.
I'm always going to be a churchman, whether that's as a pastor or whether it's a lay elder or whether that's a member, whatever that is.
But in my day to day life, outside of the Lord's day, I'm going to do everything I can and partner with just about everyone I can within reason to absolutely give everything I've got to destroy Marxism, to destroy the post war consensus, to destroy globalism, destroy feminism, destroy.
Zionists destroy these things that all want to destroy my kids.
And that has made me some weird friends along the way.
That's made me some Theonomous friends.
It's made me some JD Hall who despised Theonomous friends.
It's made me some Calvin Robinson friends and some Steve Dace friends.
And it's made me a lot of friends I wouldn't have expected.
And it's made me 10 times as many enemies.
And here we are.
Any final thoughts for today?
Yeah, I was going to say, I got kicked out of.
An event with Rodney Howard Brown in like 2017, 2018, somewhere along there.
He was preaching nearby.
He didn't share the gospel at all.
A lady got up to preach.
Long story short, I got thrown out literally thrown like on the ground.
Imagine my horror when after COVID happens, we didn't shut down.
And I was being told by master seminary graduates that I was in rebellion against God because of the interpretation of Romans 13 that they got from John MacArthur.
Right.
John MacArthur's church was shut down.
This is long before, I think you said 10 weeks, however long it was.
This was before he decided to open up.
And this guy that I couldn't stand, Rodney Howard Brown, who may be a wee little bit heretic, had got arrested in Florida.
They threw him in jail for keeping his church open.
Mm hmm.
And that really changed my view on the, you know, kind of like being overly simplistic with World War II.
Churchill, good.
Hitler, bad.
And you're like, Hitler was not maybe as great as you think he was.
Did I say Churchill?
That's the clip out of that.
Churchill was not as good as what they say he was.
But we're overly simplistic sometimes in terms of these guys are good guys.
These guys are bad guys.
I think there's a lot we can learn from a lot of people.
For example, I could learn from Rodney Howard Brown not to lick the government's boots in a health crisis that I couldn't learn from John MacArthur for a while.
And so I think there's a lot of iron that can sharpen iron in these types of situations between Christians, even if we don't have 100% agreement on certain issues.
Amen.
Amen.
And people come around.
I love that you said the Holy Spirit leads people.
We eventually come around.
It doesn't mean that doctrine doesn't matter.
Like our conference is going to have plenty of doctrine, it will.
But also, yeah, like we're doing multiple panels at this.
It's not just sitting there for lectures, but it's going to be a lot of space for networking and talking and discussing.
And then, even baked into the main events, is a lot of panels with too many people probably on these panels.
And then one of them being a debate.
So, informal disagreement and then formal disagreement.
Lots of disagreement.
Because honestly, like we just, we're.
We're not doing so hot right now, evangelicalism.
And we need to figure some things out.
We need to be willing to have some conversations that previously we haven't been willing to have with different guys that, in a previous life, we may not have found ourselves on stage with.
And yeah, and if Calvin gets up there and says that Mary is the queen of heaven and that apart from praying to her, you can't be saved, then yeah, then in my next moment of coming up on stage, I'm going to have to publicly rebuke that, and I will.
But aside from that, If he does what I asked him to speak on, which is, I watched Trash World devour and destroy my own country, namely Great Britain in his case, and I see signs of life in America, there's hope still, right?
Like in many ways for England, it's over.
But for America, there's still a chance, and I'm coming here to help you save your country and tell you what I've learned along the way and speak to culture and politics.
Then that's exactly what I asked him to do.
And then in the panels, when we talk about, all right, now who's included in this project and what does that mean?
And we maybe get a little bit rowdy.
I think we need a conference like that.
I think we need a conference like that.
And you know what?
If in 2020 all the reform guys stood strong against tyranny and all the guys with theology we disagree with were the ones that folded, then maybe we'd be in a different boat.
But that's not how it shook out.
You want the conference with only the reform guys?
Then let me say this to you, reform guys.
You should have done better.
You think reform guys are the only ones worthy of being heard?
Well, you had your chance to prove it and you failed.
You failed.
You have proved to the whole country and every Christian in it that the Calvary Chapel guys and the Anglo Catholic guy and this guy over here and this guy over here actually have something to say because you got caught with your pants down in a providential moment when the church needed you and you folded like a cheap suit.
And a bunch of other guys that you were despising ended up being heroes.
So that's how, if you don't like my conference, well, I blame you.
This is how you get a conference like Trash World with Joel Webbin.
You get podcasts like mine.
It's the same as Andrew Tate.
It's like, oh, Andrew Tate.
Andrew Tate's horrible.
Andrew Tate is going to hell.
Andrew Tate is a pimp.
And feminism is the environment that creates Andrew Tate's.
So if you don't want Andrew Tate, it's one thing to say Andrew Tate's bad, it's another to literally be the quintessential.
Chiefs of the reformed longhouse that emasculates every single young man and then have the audacity to decry Andrew Tate.
I'm like, can you, could you, could you be any more dense?
Could you be any more hypocritical?
I tweeted out just the other day, I said, Feminism is bad.
Andrew Tate is bad.
Both are bad.
But one is in your church.
Only one of them is in your church.
This idea that, you know, every young man in our church is listening to Andrew Tate and following him on, you know, on culture or on podcasts.
Politics or doctrine, you know, I don't buy it.
I personally do.
I pastor a church that is arguably one of the most conservative churches in the country, with, you know, like my opposition would say, you know, well, Joel, you're going to attract, yeah, I do attract some rowdy young men.
And even among those young men, I have not met one of them that says, I listen to Andrew Tate.
Supporting Ministry Beyond Paywalls00:05:09
Yep.
Not one.
But what I do see pervasive in the church today is feminism.
So, yeah, so, you know, if you want a perfectly doctrinally aligned conference with all your guys who believe all the same things that you believe, I understand the benefit to that.
I've done that.
I've gone to those conferences.
I kind of, you know, somewhat hosted one of those conferences.
I get it.
But if you want that, then your team needs to prove their salt.
And I don't feel like our team has, and myself included in that.
We have.
We have not proven that we have all the answers because when the big questions came and landed in our lap, we've fumbled.
So, all right, well, I feel like that's it for today.
Uh, one more time, JD, can you tell our listeners where they can follow you?
Yeah, you can follow me at Insight2insight.
Um, spell it real quick.
Substack, you can uh, well, the first insight is you know, like seeing things, insight, and the second insight is like inciting, like inciting a riot, and the number two, Insight2insight.
If you just Google the words and then put Substack or JD Hall, you'll find it.
You can also find my work at Protestia Insider, which is behind their paywall.
It's the same thing that Insight to Insight is.
And you can follow me at LostMyHats on X. Cool.
Are you hopping on podcasts every now and then with Protestia, or is it mainly just right now, just writing?
This week, yeah.
I'll be back with David Weekly starting, well, last night.
Oh, really?
Okay.
And is that David Morell?
Yeah.
Is that how you say his name?
David, it's moral, actually.
And I do an audio version of the Substack each day, Monday through Saturday, but it's just me reading the article.
I'm not really doing a real, you know, typical podcast, but you can get it on Spotify or, you know, from your Substack app in case you want to listen on the go.
You know, they're usually about 20, 25 minutes long.
I write long articles and give you lots of reading material.
And half my material at Insight to Insight is on this side of the paywall.
Anything related to the gospel or evangelism is on this side of the paywall because I want everybody to be able to access that.
If I start getting technical and start talking about the Nephilim or something that they might talk about on Haunted Cosmos, Bigfoot and Space Aliens or whatever I feel like talking about, it might be on the other side of the paywall.
But insight2insight.com.
Awesome.
Great.
Yeah, David, he's a good guy.
He's like you in the sense that early on, we found ourselves on separate sides of the aisle.
He's not a fan of Christian nationalism.
But with each year that goes by, it's like, okay, so he doesn't like this label.
I like this label.
But he's fighting.
He's still fighting.
What David doesn't like is watching you guys be mistreated and maligned unfairly.
Protestia has been the brunt of all of that, sometimes by the same people, and they've endured it for years.
And so they have always operated with integrity.
David has always been a person of integrity, and all of the writers.
And even though they may not be in agreement with you or anybody else, one thing that that website does not do is cower or let people just be mercilessly attacked for no good reason.
And so that's why David has taken the position he has.
And I appreciate him and Protestia very, very much.
Awesome.
Okay.
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Thank you to all of our listeners and our supporters.
We appreciate everybody just engaging in the chat if you can right here at the end.
One more chance if you could like the video and share it.
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Thanks for all the super chats and the generosity.
Thank you guys for praying for our ministry.
Continuing to encourage and support our ministry.
And Lord willing, we will see you guys next week.
Our weekly schedule is Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 3 p.m. Central Time.
Again, that's Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 3 p.m. Central Time.
And the last thing that we have also is the Friday special.
So be on the lookout.
That's tonight at 8 p.m. Central Time.
The Friday special.
That's with me and Pastor Andrew Isker.
We're right in the middle of a series on all things Israel, all about what is Judeo Christian.
Whatever, and you know, what should we think about dispensationalism or Zionism and all those kinds of things?
The modern state of Israel, what is the Christian view of this?
So, that's gonna, I can't even remember what episode we're on now, but probably episode six or seven at this point will be dropping tonight at 8 p.m. Central Time.
Nathan said it'll be episode eight, so it's a nine part series.
So, this is the second to last episode tonight at 8 p.m., and then the last episode will be next week.