Hosts argue God created distinct nations to steward the earth, rejecting modern globalism in favor of the Noahic Covenant's dominion mandate. They dismiss moon landing conspiracy theories as propaganda diminishing white male achievement while promoting Michael Belch's In Defense of Christian Nations. The discussion interprets Hebrews and Revelation to show the kingdom progressively manifests through national efforts like the Mayflower Compact and transcontinental railroad, culminating in a restored earth rather than total annihilation. Ultimately, this theological framework advocates for diverse national identities as essential vessels for God's glory and creation stewardship. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
Time
Text
God Created Nations00:14:56
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.
What if I told you that most modern Christians have completely missed one of God's most foundational purposes for mankind?
Not just missed it, but forgotten it, ignored it, and in many cases, even denied it.
We're not talking about something minor here.
We're talking about why God created the world in the first place, what He expects humanity to do with it, and, crucially, how He intends for us to do it.
Here's the claim God created nations, that is, distinct.
Peoples in distinct lands for the express purpose of stewarding the earth.
Nations are not an accident of history or a necessary evil in a fallen world.
They are the fundamental unit of dominion.
And yet, most churches today act as if nations are at best irrelevant and at worst idolatrous.
Creation care?
That's the buzzword today, but much of what goes under the banner is just baptized globalism.
And soft environmentalism, its stewardship without dominion, guilt without glory, conservation without cultivation.
It replaces national duty with personal shame and trades biblical fruitfulness for bureaucratic minimalism.
Meanwhile, we live in an age when our greatest national achievements no longer bring glory to God, but glory to man.
The Mayflower Compact was a covenant for Christ.
The moon landing was a monument to mankind.
Somewhere along the way, we stopped building towers for God and started building Babbles for ourselves.
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 rightresponse ministries, or you can donate by going to rightresponseministries.com.
In this episode, we walk through a chapter from Michael's new book, A Deep Dive Into the Noahic Covenant, the Dominion Mandate, and the Rise of Nations, and then we bring it forward.
What does this mean for us today?
Why does it matter that God gave land to nations?
And how should faithful Christians think about patriotism, dominion, and national identity in an age of globalist fog?
GA, GA, GA.
Good afternoon.
Here we are.
This is Wednesday, the year of our Lord, April 2nd, 2025.
So, this is Wednesday, April 2nd, and it's the day before our conference.
And I have to just say this real quick.
Okay, so first and foremost, my bona fides here, a little bit of a defense.
Michael wrote that cold open, and the second that it came out of my mouth about the moon landing, I was like, we just lost half of our viewers.
What is he thinking?
The marketing strategy.
This is terrible.
But see, the proper response to anybody who says the moon landing is a fake is you have to out conspiracy the conspirators.
So you have to say, You believe in the moon?
What a normie.
I can't believe it.
It's like the moon landing never happened.
It's like, I can't believe you even believe the moon exists.
You're the normie here.
You haven't gone deep enough down the rabbit hole.
I will say this for the moon landing deniers, here's the real PSYOP it's just one more bit of propaganda to take away white men's achievement.
That's my That's my what an incredible navigation!
Yeah, we landed no computers, we landed on the moon.
And let's just admit, this was a time when, uh, that you know, that Houston control center was very white and very male, you know, like the diversity was not our strength at that time, for better or for worse.
But there's this picture of a woman supposedly standing next to all this code that she wrote, and it's kind of touted as oh, I've seen that, yeah.
Oh, look at how incredible and the backs of this diverse coalition.
If you actually get into like the code she did write, much of that was other people.
A lot of the code she wrote was like literally just visual interface.
So that's it's literally like a psyop and a story like women and authors.
I mean, she was adorning it, making it look nice.
Like, no, men got us there.
Right.
So, anyways, Moon Landing is not the discussion for today.
We get, you know, eventually I would actually appreciate, you know, us doing a full episode on that.
I think that it would be fascinating if nothing else.
But we're going to be talking about nations as distinct people and the marks of a nation, what that means for us, the implications today.
And we're going to be talking about that from Michael's book.
But because, again, because it is April 2nd, Wednesday, it's the day before our conference.
So, I would be remiss if I did not at least briefly mention at this point.
I don't think anybody's saying, like, hey, maybe I'll go in person.
Right?
If you're going in person, I think you've made the decision by now.
You're probably on the plane already.
Even the most procrastinating of procrastinators usually don't make a decision to go across the country 24 hours in advance.
So, we'll just assume that that's settled.
We have about a thousand people who are coming in person.
Praise God.
We're excited about that.
But it's not too late for those who would like to watch the conference online.
So, we are actually live streaming the entirety of the conference, all the sales.
Seven main sessions, three different panels.
All of it will be available, a live stream, but it's exclusively available for our Patreon members.
So you need to go to patreon.com forward slash right response ministries.
Patreon.com forward slash right response ministries, and you have to sign up for the gold tier membership.
The silver tier is going to provide early access and ad free for our Friday special and our live stream and those things.
But the conference live stream is.
Is only available for our gold members.
It's $10 a month.
And a little life hack, you could always cancel.
Believe it or not, you don't have to have 47 subscriptions, most of which you've forgotten about simultaneously.
I know it feels impossible, but it actually is possible to unsubscribe from something.
So you could subscribe just for the next few days and get all the content and unsubscribe.
If you choose not to because you want to support this ministry, then we are deeply appreciative.
We thank you for that.
Okay, so there's all that.
Last bit of business before we hop into the discussion.
Michael, where can people get your book?
Nathan, can you pan out and show?
We've got Michael's book here and the title, Michael?
In defense of Christian nature.
Show the print on that, too.
That's not size 24, like the inside.
This bad boy.
Size 11.
Let me just show you.
Show you this is the difference between a Michael Belch and a Jerry Levitt.
I have to zoom in a bit.
All right.
So there's two books, but it's really this view.
Remember Toy Story 1 where they're like, oh, there's a little present and he turns to the side?
So, like, when you're looking like this, it's like Toy Story.
Oh, sorry, I'm in front of my mic.
When you're looking like this, it's like, hey, it's not so bad.
You know, you got two books, but when you turn it to the side, you see there's a little bit of girth on this one and not so much on this one.
So, this is a 400 pages.
Kind of like you and me.
This is 400 pages, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So a 400 page treatment of nations.
Yeah.
And it's full of references too.
Like this is not just Michael's thoughts off the top.
I think every single page that I saw as I was thumbing through it is like references and citations.
And here's where I got this.
There are parts where there are lots and there are parts where there are fewer.
And part of the reason is one of the critiques that Stephen Wolfe got when he released his book was, well, you don't exegete any scripture here.
And he's like, well, I'm relying on the reformers who did that.
So there is a large section of the book which is making the biblical argument, which is really just.
What does the Bible say about this?
And even then, it's a lot of verses.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Where in the Bible, absolutely.
Yeah.
And so to purchase it, they go.
Well, so first of all, if you're coming to the conference, it will be available there at the table near the front, the right response table, at a slight discount for what's being offered on for retail.
If not, if you want to get your hands on a copy, the Amazon is the best place.
You can just search for the title in defense of Christian nations by Michael Belch.
And we have a Kindle, a soft cover, and a hard cover versions.
Awesome.
Yeah.
The case for Christian nationalism.
Deserves a hardcover.
Can't believe they've never done that.
I feel like that's kind of like a slap in the face.
It's a great book.
And for all of you dust jacket disrespecters out there, the publishing, I'm just using Amazon Publishing, they do not put dust jackets on it.
So if that matters to you, then there you go.
There you go.
Okay, we'll go ahead and kick us off.
Excellent.
So I'm really happy to jump into this topic today.
And I kind of thought, what would be an interesting Compelling place to start with this project, and because of the nature of the times that we live in, this question is being asked by a lot of people.
And so, I thought I would start with an aspect of it that I actually don't hear a lot of people talking about, and that is a lot of people have settled on the idea that nations are important, that nations are essential, that nations are part of the created order.
All of which I agree with and I support in the book, but one of the things that is Important, I think, to understand nations is that God created nations with a purpose.
And one of the purposes of nations is to steward the earth effectively.
And so I make a case in the book, starting with the Noahic covenant, because after the flood, God reinitiates the dominion mandate in Genesis 9.
He clarifies it and he says, by the way, all of that's still in effect.
And actually, you get to eat animals too.
But you don't get to kill each other.
And the sin before the flood, I mean, there was a lot going on with the Nephilim and all of that.
But it says in Genesis 6 that the violence was great in the earth, the bloodshed of man killing man was great.
And it's almost as if God said through the flood, We're going to reset.
And now that the flood is done, I'm going to retell you why I put you on the earth.
And I'm going to be very crystal clear.
Yes, the earth is.
Yes, animals.
No, you don't get to kill humans.
Right?
And that's actually the verse where it says, you know, if a man kills a man, his life is forfeit, his blood will be shed.
That's new in the dominion mandate from Genesis 1.
Now, obviously, the sin nature has entered the picture, and so God's clarifying there.
But a lot of Christians get the idea that the dominion mandate, the stewardship principles in the Bible, were only intended for the Garden of Eden.
And not only does God clarify it in Genesis 9, but David and the Psalms reaffirm it.
I mean, David clarifies it in Psalm 8.
You've set everything under the feet of mankind, it's still in effect.
It's just that God now has to account for the sinful nature.
I want to read a verse.
Nathan, I didn't send this to you.
I'm just going to read it.
This is Isaiah 45, 18.
And it says this For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens, he is God.
Who formed the earth and made it, he established it.
He did not create it empty, he formed it to be inhabited.
So, what happens coming out of the reinitiation of the Noahic government?
Covenant is.
We move almost immediately into the table of nations and I find it incredibly important that God's talking about taking dominion of the earth and then he says he gave to each nation its own land.
The implication there is that the reason why God created nations in genesis 10 was so that dominion, stewardship, could continue in the best possible conditions under the curse, and it would be done in a national effort.
And this is the thing before we get into some quotes, just to kind of set it all up.
This is kind of the thesis of this chapter and of my argument today nations exist for a lot of things, but one of the things we've forgotten is they exist as the fundamental unit of large area stewardship of the earth.
Obviously, a family, a man is responsible to steward the resources that he's been given, but that goes best when he lives in a prosperous and peaceful and just nation.
And so, nations.
Are to marshal the efforts of their people and to analyze and bear fruit with the resources and the places that God has given them in order to achieve great things.
They're supposed to achieve great things.
So I'm going to get into some quotes here, but I'll throw it to you guys here for a second and just get some initial comments or thoughts on that.
I was going to add that it's implicit up till that chapter 9 that there would be nations.
So a lot of the reformers would say if there was no sin in the world, Adam would have had sons and daughters and they would have spread out.
And then the ones that went east would, over time, just be different than the ones that went west.
West.
Some would live high, some would live low, some would eat a different diet, some would eat fish or some would eat mountains and game or whatever it is like that.
And so they would have been different, they would have looked separate, but that's all implicit.
We can only kind of really assume that from the dominion mandate, obviously Adam and Eve having children.
So when God comes out in Genesis 9 and says it, it's not something brand new.
Like, hey, sins happened, I erased the world, and now I guess we got to do some type of nation thing.
I didn't really have a plan, I'm scrambling to put it together.
That was always probably the plan that Adam's progeny would have spread out over the world and they would have had nations even without sin.
But then in Genesis 9, God comes in and says, just in case you missed it the first time, just in case you didn't understand how this was supposed to play out, here's what it's going to look like.
Here's your task.
Here's your mission.
Here's what these accomplish.
Right.
The land, the world that God created in and of itself has natural barriers, right?
Filling the Earth00:15:23
There's mountain ranges, there's rivers, there's oceans, you know, like, so the land itself would naturally, in a geographic sense, would bifurcate peoples.
They would just naturally have less access to one another.
People who live on this side of the mountain.
And those who live on the other side, people who live on one side of an ocean, and those who live on the other side.
And so, because of that, at least for, you know, foreseeably for, you know, centuries, if not millennia, as technology is taking time to develop and innovate and all these kinds of things to where, you know, travel becomes much more accessible and easy, you're talking about peoples who wouldn't have seen each other.
Like maybe there would be, you know, sin never entered the world and death would have never entered through sin.
So everybody would still be alive.
And so maybe there would be like a once every 10 years or as time went on, maybe once a century, you know, there's a migration to go and visit, you know, Father Adam.
You know, and like, and pay homage, you know, in the fifth commandment to honor thy father.
And everybody would go and meet Adam and hear once more the telling of, you know, the garden, walking with God in the cool of the day, you know, and the laws that God had given to him and these kinds of things.
But it's not like everybody would live in a huddle together.
Like people, because that was the cultural mandate, pre lapsarian, pre sin, was to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth to spread out.
And we think of like Babel, well, like this is a curse, you know, because man was being arrogant, you know, trying to ascend to heaven, trying to make a name for himself.
And so the judgment of God is that God disperses him, confuses their language, and disperses them, divides them, separates them over the face of the earth.
It is a judgment for the sin of pride and directly disobeying what God had told man to do, which was to spread out and fill the earth.
But even though it's a judgment, it's a judgment that also simultaneously is a mercy.
And what I mean by that is that God providentially, through natural means and through judgment, he actually doesn't derail the human project, but he actually, the judgment is a discipline in a way that like, Discipline is a judgment of sorts for the child who is being disobedient.
But the full end game, the full intention of discipline is to recalibrate the child so that they're back on the rails because they've gotten off and they need to be redirected and recalibrated towards God's original ends and things that are right.
And so too with Babel, God does judge the people who have congregated and are trying to make a great name for themselves by being as God and building a tower to the heavens.
But God, He judges, but He mercifully judges.
And what He does by confusing their languages is He forces them to disperse, which is essentially to get them back on track with His original plan all along, which was to fill, spread out, and fill the earth.
And they literally say that.
We forget that in Genesis 11, but they literally say, like, let us build a great tower to heaven and make a name for ourselves so that we will not be scattered over all the earth.
But that's literally what God told them to do all the way back in Genesis 1.
So God says, not just take dominion over the earth, but be fruitful, multiply, and fill it, which means spread out, go, explore, and cover the whole face of the earth.
Don't just congregate in one place.
So that's literally the original cultural mandate before sin even enters the picture.
Then skip forward 10 chapters in Genesis chapter 11.
And the very thing God told them to do, to fill, go and fill the earth, they're now saying, let us take the place of God.
Let us somehow exalt ourselves and our name and our, you know, Our glory above God so that we won't end up doing the very thing that He commanded us to do.
And then what does God do?
He judges them, yes, but in His judgment is an incredible display of mercy that forces them through practical means to do the very thing that they were supposed to do.
Oh, you want to congregate and not spread out and fill the earth?
Well, that's going to be really hard.
And so here you go.
And so the point that I'm making is.
Nations were God's original plan, pre lapsary in Genesis 1.
That's the natural inference and implications of the cultural mandate.
And then Babel, because if you just think Babel is a judgment and you don't see it as a mercy to get humanity back on track, well, then multiculturalism and globalism is the gospel.
That's right.
And if we miss this, which a lot of modern Christians have, then you're going to hear the sermons that I've heard preached.
Where Acts chapter 2 and speaking in tongues is a reversal of Genesis 11 and Babel.
And so the goal is actually one human language and just, you know, no borders, you know, and no one, no human is illegal.
And all of a sudden you're like, hey, Christianity is perfectly compatible with raging leftism.
Well, they try to throw that verse from Revelation and say, well, you hate this idea of every tribe, tongue, and nation gathered before the throne of God.
How do you think that happened?
Do you think Babel, if that had gone on for 2,000 years, Christ comes in a sense?
Would that have resulted in tribes, tongues, and nations, distinct people?
It would have been one homogenous goo.
That's such a good point.
They had to be distinct to actually enable that beautiful passage where they're saved out of every one of those groups.
Amen.
And yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.
It's the usual suspects, the detractors on X.
But that was just last week.
That was posted by someone.
And you could tell they were proud of it.
They were like, got him.
We cook here.
He's like, this is a banger, man.
And he's literally posting those ethnocentric.
You know, Christian nationalists, white Christian nationalists.
Here's some of the verses in the Bible that they hate.
And then they quote Revelation, like, before the throne of God, before the Lamb.
So many times in the Bible.
Every tribe, tongue, and nation.
But here's the irony if they had their way, there will be no tribes, no different tongues and nations.
If they have their way, then they legitimately think that what the gospel does is it doesn't elevate nature, but it eradicates and steamrolls and homogenizes nature to where they're, you know, like if they're.
They literally think, they think this.
They think that if God swept the world with a global revival, that what that would look like is everybody mixing together and, you know, like 10% of China moves to the US and 10% of Russia, you can go to the US.
A university brochure on the front lawn.
Yeah, exactly.
And eventually, but think about it logically for a moment.
Eventually, over time, if all this were to happen, then everybody would end up speaking the same language.
Through intermarriage and these kinds of things, everyone would eventually look the same, talk the same, and you would just have this.
The point being, there would be no tribe, tongue, and nation.
There would be no distinctions.
Revelation and its great problem.
Christian nationalists, here's the irony we actually like that.
We actually think distinct nations with distinct peoples and distinct languages and distinct cultures.
We actually think, yeah, you know what?
God was pretty smart.
That's a great idea.
I love that.
I'm excited to spend eternity worshiping with Chinese brothers and sisters in Christ.
I'm excited about that.
But you know what has to continue for that to be able to happen?
China.
Right.
China has to actually exist.
And when you tell everybody that it's racist to have a country, nobody says that.
When you tell white people in European countries and America it's racist for them to have a country and the whole world has to come in, then you lose that distinction.
China would still exist and Japan's, you know, all these countries are allowed to exist.
Brazil would be allowed to exist.
But But all of Western European countries would just be a homogenous soup.
Right.
And you make the argument, you have to buy the book, but you make the argument about nations do they persist into the final revelation?
Well, so I'll say this before we go to our break then.
Joel, when you mentioned the idea that pre-fall, maybe there would have been every 10 years or 100 years people going on pilgrimage to visit the great-great-grandfather Adam, I think that there's a strong case in Revelation 20 and 21 that that will happen, except it will be national pilgrimages into the New Jerusalem, some sort of city where they have developed as a nation, as a people.
I think peoples will continue into eternity.
They have worked and developed something together that particularly is esteeming of God.
They have stewarded what he gave them and produced something incredible.
And then at that point, there's kind of a, all right, everyone, next year we're going to all meet at the throne room of the Lamb and Nation X is going to bring something incredible into the glory of the Lamb.
Yeah.
But all the nations gathering because it says the kings come in and out.
It's a progressive, ongoing thing that happens.
Bringing their glories to the throne of the land.
So, yeah.
I love that.
All right, we'll hit our first commercial break and then when we get back, we'll get into some quotes from the book.
Our sponsor, Private Family Banking, wants to help you with one money move that'll implicate itself in multi generational wealth building starting the first day.
They help you to avoid taxation and to draw compound interest to your money.
Now, if you're a high net worth individual, someone who has maybe even $10 million in net worth, then they can help you even more.
W 2 workers, contract workers, business owners, it's all about cash flow and making tax deferred gains on all your money for the rest of your life.
Don't avoid this.
It's a big move, but it's a great time to make it.
Click the link below and you can get on Chuck de Lotterante's calendar and he'll go over your background and what you want to accomplish.
And he's going to help model a program that exactly fits your needs.
So go ahead and send an email to chuck at privatefamilybanking.com.
Again, that's Chuck at Private Family Banking.com.
Or you can click the link below.
Make a free discovery call now.
America is a country that was founded for the purpose of allowing Christians to do their duty before God and not to have their consciences ruled by the doctrines and commandments of men.
Reese Fund exists in order to see the Ten Commandments properly applied, not just as a plaque on the wall, but to actually be used in business as though they're commandments from God that we're supposed to obey.
Our goal is to find businesses and to buy them and to build them up.
We want to find manufacturing businesses.
And use them to make sure that we can maintain our capacity to do things here.
Reef Fund, Christian Capital, boldly deployed.
All right.
All right, welcome back.
So, with that as kind of a preliminary, again, my point there is as we think about Christian nationalism and as Christians thinking about their own nation in China or Japan or whatever, one of the things that needs to be at the back of our mind is not just about conversion and laws.
At some point, when a nation is Christian, it's actually.
Turning the totality of its national effort to a stewardship of the land that God has given to it.
And that's going to produce different things, right?
This is good.
Some countries have timber.
Some countries have, you know, different resources.
Some of us harness desert power.
Yes, absolutely.
Some are on Arrakis and.
Yeah.
But.
Behind our national, Christian national efforts has to be eventually the goal that we would steward the land that God gave us.
The resources, the productions, the cities, the monuments, all of that would be for God's glory.
Okay.
Nate, let's go ahead and show a couple quotes here.
I don't know.
I guess I'm just showing some of the arguments in the book for people who might be interested.
And if you guys have a comment on them, you can react to it.
So let's go with quote number one, Nate.
All right.
So I say this.
I need to point out again that this passage comes after the fall.
This is the Noahic covenant.
We live in the reality of the curse through which God put the entire world under a sigh of despair.
And often we think that this grumbling chord is the only voice, the only notes that the earth has.
But like with a cancer patient, there are good days and bad days.
The earth groans, to be sure, but the earth also opens its arms to humanity.
To welcome us, and it also lifts its voice to praise the creator.
When we think of how God fine-tuned the earth for life, and when we examine how vast the heavens are, we ought to fall to our knees and kiss the ground, not for the ground's sake, but in worship to the creator, who did indeed form the earth to be our home.
God created places where crops would grow, mountains where we could mine iron, seas and rivers to sail our ships, petroleum and the nuclear forces to fuel untold multitudes of human activities.
And At every turn and all throughout history, we find that God suited the earth to host us, his image bearers.
He has given us the earth.
So, the point again that the earth actually is for our dominion.
It is a home that has been given to us.
It's not the life force that needs to be protected from the evil humans.
It's not the sacred Mother Earth that we are intruding on.
The earth is our home and God gave it to us.
And I like what you've said before, Michael, in terms of one of the things that would.
Make people distinct peoples and also maintain distinctions indefinitely.
Because it's like, well, you know, but like with airplanes and all that, like with travel and, you know, and if the gospel goes forth, because here's the thing that, like, this is one of the distinctions I think between the Christian nationalists and some of the modern theonomists.
And you can be a Christian nationalist who's theonomic and those kinds of things, but the hardline, you know, modern theonomic kind of guys, they.
If you're not careful, like they kind of think that, you know, that everything is, doesn't just stem from Christian faith, but is like directly correlated.
Can, you know, like a one to one correlation from like, you know, from culture to cuisine to art to science to like everything is just straight from the scripture.
And if that's the case, then really the only distinctions you would have from, you know, different nations is really just steps along, you know, it'd be one path and it'd just be who's.
Further down, and who's less, you know, so like more sanctified as a people, yeah.
Like, what's the difference between, you know, in that scenario with that presupposition?
What's the difference between England and Ethiopia?
Well, England's just better, right?
Just more like Christ, you know, in Ethiopia.
What will Ethiopia look like in a thousand years, exactly like England today, you know, like, you know, if they, you know, and so whereas the Christian nationalists are like, no, God made distinct peoples.
And grace doesn't obliterate or replace or destroy nature, but rather elevates and restores.
Redefining Exile00:15:18
And you made a really good argument.
I remember talking to you about this as you were in the process of writing the book.
But you said that one of the natural aspects that's not obliterated by grace, but rather heightened and restored to its full beauty is the land itself.
And that the land is actually one of the things that God built into the rubric of the world to both create and maintain the distinctions between peoples, that peoples who live in the Alps.
Will probably always be different, not just color of their skin, but all the way down to certain cultural aspects and all this, than people who live in a desert near the equator.
And so, like, people who live on rivers and seas would be different than, you know, people who live, you know, predominantly in forests, you know?
And so, like, there would be different.
You can see that difference in, like, the Germans versus the Italians.
Italy has always been much closer to a city state.
And even today, Italians are much more of a city dwelling people.
And then the Germanic peoples were much more of farmers and land.
And you see even a comfortability and accessibility.
And so, one side.
And so, one side, when they came here, moved to Texas.
A bunch of Italians went to New York.
It's great.
Because they were bound to the land.
They've been raised in that land.
Their ancestors have been in that land.
They were shaped into a city people, shaped into a seafaring people, shaped into a farming people, to the point of being that the land is meaningful and the work that you do on it exerts not just an impact, you to the land.
When we shape the land, we farm it, but it exerts an impact on the person itself.
And the people are actually shaped by how they cultivate, how they care, how full they make it or not full they make it, in a very organic connection that they exert an influence on one another.
That's a good point.
Yeah, there's a reason why the Dutch were such great explorers.
They were literally reclaiming land from the sea, right?
Like their connection to the sea was primary, even in a way that other nations that had a lot of oceanfront property, as it were, they were not quite the explorers that the Dutch were.
The Dutch really, I mean, if I'm not mistaken, I'm pretty sure Magellan sailed under the Dutch, and he's the one that, in the modern sense, circumnavigated the globe.
And so you're right, Wes.
All of this does relate to.
It is somewhat of a reciprocal relationship between a people and its land and the land and its people.
And go ahead.
I was going to say, I got a question for you, but continue.
I was just going to say, and this is why in the Old Testament, God's ultimate and most devastating judgment to a people is that he will remove them from the land.
And so they can, through their sin and their lack of stewardship, they can sin so grievously against God that he actually takes away their claim.
To the land.
All land that's given to a people is actually given by God.
This gets tricky when we think of conquest and war and all of those things, but nevertheless, God in His sovereignty and providence, He is the one that bequeaths to all peoples the land that they have, and He's the one that determines the times and the borders, not just the borders, but how long they're going to be on it for.
And the providence of God includes suffering and sin.
So, when we say God does something, we either believe He's sovereign over all things or not, and we believe He is.
And so, when God providentially accomplishes something, we're not saying that it was just by divine edict, you know, in a voice in the sky.
Right.
But it's no less divine.
And so, conquest is like, well, yeah, but was this, did this meet the seven conditions of just war theory?
You know, and like, did this meet, you know, our modern sensibilities of, you know, standards of ethics and these kinds of, like, okay, like, there's a debate to be had about that for sure.
But it's still something where there's no debate is, did God do it?
Right.
God did do it.
And you think even like conquest, You know, it's like, well, what happened to the indigenous people here in America?
And, you know, like, what happened is that God judged them.
They were worshiping demons, smoking peyote, and killing and eating each other for hundreds of years.
And God said, All right, your sin is too great, and I'm going to spew you out of the land.
He did it with Israel.
He did it with Aztecs.
He did, like, he's done it all through in biblical history, in human history, in church history the last 2,000 years.
And the lesson for us is, like, we're not special.
We're not special.
Same thing can happen to us.
Like, oh, it's a nice country you have here.
Be a shame if you kept murdering babies.
Right.
You know, because you can get kicked out too.
Right.
There's that passage in Isaiah where God says clearly that he uses Assyria to judge the nations around them.
And then.
And then he says, Assyria, you went too far.
Now I'm going to judge you for your cruelty and your cruelty.
For the thing I providentially used you to do.
Absolutely.
He uses the rod, another nation as a rod, to discipline his people and then disciplines the rod.
Yep.
Yep.
And all to his glory.
Amen.
How do you reconcile the tension?
So we've heard it once, we've heard it a thousand times.
But first, Peter, he insists several times on the status of the Christian as.
Exile that he really makes the point, and some of that they're literal Jews that are exiled out of Jerusalem, and so he's writing to them in like a literal physical sense like you're literally physically as citizens, all these different things, you're exiles.
But there is, and Calvin says it in his commentaries like there is a real spiritual dimension where he kind of references them as you're in another sense far from home, you're exiles, you're lost.
How do you hold our creation care, the stewardship of the earth, and the enjoyment of it?
How do you hold that, and then at the same time, the genuine status that the Christian has as exile?
Because some people then say, well.
The earth is just passing away, you know, like it's all going to be done.
We're exiles on this earth, we're waiting for a heavenly home.
And then there could be another way of doing it where this is it, this is the place to be, this is kind of all the sum of it.
How do you hold both of those in tension?
I have a chapter on that question in the book.
Um, gotta buy it and read it.
My argument is we have to think carefully about what the word exile means.
You think of like Robin Hood, right?
The king, King Richard was absent, and so either would Prince John or the sheriff, whichever version you're reading. has exiled Robin Hood from his rightful land, not just England in general, but even from his lordly lands that his family owned.
And so he's living as an exile out in the woods, right, with his merry men.
An exile is someone who has been removed from his home with the expectation of coming back once things are put back into order.
And so in that case, when King Richard comes back and he gets rid of Prince John and the sheriff and he sets things aright, Robin Hood comes back to a reordered England and lands that his family owned.
And so when we say we are exiles, we are exiles because the situation on earth is out of order.
And someday Christ is going to come back and he's going to put it back into order.
And then in Revelation 20, it says, the New Jerusalem descends, which I take to be the church.
God's people will descend back to earth, which has been put back into order.
And so we are exiles from the earth because we've been kicked out because of sin and corruption.
Not because the earth is not where we belong.
So someday Christ will come and perfectly set it right.
And our job now is to comport ourselves and behave ourselves as individuals and as nations in a way that reflects that final ordering of creation as best we can.
Yes, the new heavens and the new earth, which many theologians, especially within the Reformed tradition, have taken to mean the new heavens come to the new earth.
And any Christian for that matter, whether you're Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox or Protestant, All affirm that there is a final physical resurrection of the dead, the reprobate to damnation, and the saved unto glory.
And so we're going to have, we're not just going to be floating on clouds in some ethereal plane.
Like we're going to have a physical earthly existence.
And I think that's this whole idea of grace not destroying nature, but rather restoring and elevating.
So then, what is the new earth?
Is it a new earth meaning, like, hey, I'm going to get a new TV because my last.
One broke.
What that means is that my last one is going to be hauled out to the curb and taken out by the trash, and I'm getting a whole other separate, distinct TV.
No, the new earth is this earth made new.
And so I believe it's going to be glorified in the same way.
And that's what we believe about the physical resurrection.
I'm not getting another body, it's going to be this body resurrected, glorified, and made new.
And Christ is the first fruits of that.
Christ is the first one.
You had revivifications of Lazarus, people come back to life.
But Jesus didn't just come back to life.
He wasn't just revived, he was resurrected.
The resurrection is that Jesus was actually glorified in his heavenly body, which is still a physical body, and it's the same physical body that came out of the virgin's womb, that was born and that walked in the streets of Jerusalem and that was nailed to a tree.
It's the same body.
Most Christian theologians believe that he even still bears the scars, the marks on his hands and in his side from the crucifixion, no longer in any pain or suffering, but.
But that body, those scars being monuments to the testimony of his salvific work.
And so we know that's what God is doing with our physical bodies, that they will be glorified, not just revived, but resurrected.
So they'll be new, but not new in the sense of another body, but this body made new.
And so then to just apply that same theological concept to the earth, that it's not another earth, but it's this earth made new, a glorified Alps, a glorified Pacific Ocean, glorified rivers, glorified Nile.
Glorified, no more fire ants, you know, or so they don't bite you, you know, like, but like a glorified creation, but it's not another world, it's this world fixed and set in order, and that we're going to have an eternal physical existence in these bodies on this planet.
And so I say all that to say this I'm so tired of the, this world is not our home.
Right.
My brother in Christ, it is quite literally your forever home.
Right.
This world.
Not just it's your home right now.
It is forever your home.
Now, will it be better?
Like, for you to say, this world's not my home.
I'm so tired of living in this world.
Like, okay, I'm tired of a world ravaged by sin.
I'm tired of that.
Absolutely.
I'm tired of the world in many aspects of the world as it currently exists because of being under the curse of sin.
Sure.
But this is your home.
And what God is doing is He's.
He's conquering it.
He's reestablishing.
So there'll be a final culmination when Jesus returns and the new Jerusalem comes to earth.
But then also, in real human history, there's a progressive and gradual sense of the world being redeemed and Christianized one by one, nations, you know, and every enemy, right?
1 Corinthians 15, like every single enemy being made a footstool for Christ's feet.
And the last, not the first, but the last of those enemies being death itself.
And so one by one, even now, nations are being subjugated to the lordship.
Kingship of Christ.
And they're still different.
Even being redeemed is not being fully glorified and resurrected as it will be in the day to come.
But yeah, there's a real sense in which this is our home.
So the last thing I'll say is I remember thinking about this years ago and thinking, well, it's likened to Abraham who was a sojourner.
Because a lot of the New Testament, it's not just the old, the New Testament, I mean, it's these.
Guys who have this view, they're not crazy.
I get it.
I get where it comes from, but a lot of the New Testament, including Peter's epistles, talks about being sojourners and strangers and aliens.
And I think that that's true.
And it was particularly true of first century apostles, like who were like at that time, it's like a ragtag team of disciples, like vastly outnumbered by Rome and Pharisees and Sadducees.
And I mean, they were the minority.
They didn't have.
There were missionaries from a Christian land that could go.
Patriots were not in control.
They were not in control at this time.
They were very much not in control.
And so, in that sense, yeah, like in Rome, yeah, at the time of Peter, as he's writing, very much an exile, very much a sojourner.
But here's the deal Abraham sojourned, but this is what's so unique that a lot of Christians miss.
He was sojourning in a land that eventually he was.
He was destined to own.
So Abraham's sojourning, but he's sojourning in a land where, at that moment in time, yeah, he's the minority, he's the stranger, he's the foreigner, he's a sojourner.
But his descendants, they become the rightful heirs, the inhabitants.
So the very place where he sojourns, he's not sojourning so that he can be taken out.
He's sojourning so that he can go deeper in, so that it can all be rendered unto him.
So it's not.
So, yet there is a sense, even now, I would say that that continues what the apostles and first century Christians experienced in Rome.
That's still being experienced in China.
That's still being experienced in some sense in the West, because right now we're in the midst of a very great apostasy.
And so, throughout all of this Christian gospel age, there are multiple places and times where Christians will be a remnant and be on the losing end, a minority, and feel like, and for all intents and purposes, will literally be sojourners and exiles.
And the foreigner, the stranger in a land, but they're not sojourning in a land to eventually be extracted from it.
They're sojourning in a land that Christ has promised they eventually will conquer.
That's a difference.
Well, when you trace the argument through Hebrews, because Hebrews talks about Abraham being a sojourner, and then Hebrews 11 13 says, These all died in faith, not having received the things promised.
So Abraham did not receive what was promised to him.
But then you look one chapter over, Hebrews 12, it says this.
Instead, now the writer, I think Paul, turns to the Christian and says, Abraham and all those great men of faith, they died without having received what was promised.
Faith That Endures00:11:42
They were looking always forward to the city that God had promised, the better city that God had promised.
And then in chapter 12, verse 22, he says, Instead, you, but now you have come to Mount Zion.
And there is a sense where, because, and again, I don't have time to trace it here, but I make a real Big argument in the book that the incarnation of Christ, tracing his genealogy as the true and rightful king, not just of David's throne, but of Adam's dominion privileges, totally alters the game.
Yes.
And so, whereas everyone was looking forward to everything in the Old Testament, spiritual and physical, the writer of Hebrews says, But now you have received your eschatological end.
You have already come to the holy city, Mount Zion.
You've already been brought in.
And when Jesus tells us to pray, Thy kingdom come, that will be done.
That is happening on earth as it is in heaven.
That's right.
That is happening.
Heaven is coming to earth.
Yes.
And it's happening.
There is a, sure, no one's denying there is a final glorious eschaton, like a final heightened culmination to that, that will happen at the end of the age with the final physical return of Christ.
Nobody's denying that.
But to say that it happens in its fullness then, and therefore because of that, it doesn't happen at all now, is to eisege biblical text.
That's reading your own assumption.
Into the text.
Jesus himself, he even says that the kingdom of heaven is in your midst.
It's upon you.
It's here.
It's here.
When Jesus came, it was here.
And he says, To what shall I compare it?
It is like a mustard seed, which grows.
It doesn't just come at the very end all at once.
You don't plant a mustard seed and then a year goes by and there's nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.
And then one day you wake up, boom, there's a tree.
That's not how it works.
And then Jesus.
Goes even further than that elsewhere in the gospel narratives where he compares himself to a seed.
He says, I tell you the truth, unless a kernel, a seed, goes into the earth and is buried, was he buried in the tomb in the earth?
And unless it dies, like the seed actually has to die in order for something else within it to spring up and into life.
And so he says, unless a kernel goes into the ground, it is buried and dies, then it cannot produce.
Life.
And then you compare that with his parable of the mustard seed, where he's trying to say, This is what the kingdom of God is like.
So it's something that something comes like a seed, goes into the earth and is buried and dies, and it springs forth something else.
And it doesn't just happen at the very end all at once, suddenly and cataclysmically, but it happens progressively, gradually, and steadily, slowly over time in the way that trees grow.
And so then what is that Jesus?
Ever since Jesus came in his life, death, and resurrection, the seed was successfully planted.
And what we're experiencing from that point on, these last 2,000 years, and for however much longer the Lord chooses to tarry, what we're experiencing is the kingdom of heaven coming progressively and gradually here to earth.
And there's a fullness in which we're awaiting at the end, but it's increasing progressively even now in real human history.
And so this world.
In quite a literal sense, it is our home.
It really is our home.
And you might as well take off your hat and stay a while and get to work.
Get to work.
Like, this is like one day, you know, to die is to be absent of the body, is to be present with the Lord.
So, a spiritual, immediate existence with the Lord for all those who are redeemed upon their physical death.
But eventually, Christ will return.
There'll be the resurrection of the dead.
And then I'm coming back to live here.
Right.
Here and I would like to think that everything that's done in faith here, yep.
Um, that in some sense it may not be the exact form, it'll probably be a further glorified and redeemed form.
But every good endeavor, every good thing that's accomplished that was done for the glory of God and done in faith, a reliance on His grace and a desire for His glory, that those things I really believe like will have some eternal continuity and, um.
And we'll continue.
I think there'll even be, I honestly could be wrong, but not just, you know, that's the same mountain range.
I remember going to Yosemite Park, but like now it's incredible and awesome and glorified.
But not just like geographic markers, but I think man made cities.
Yep.
Like that's Philadelphia.
You know, like there's a lot of work that needs to be done there.
Good, good.
Well, I know.
Because Hebrews, but still like glorified and like that was because that was a city.
The reason I mentioned Philadelphia, like, is like American cities, you know, or even like certain European cities, like those were built initially by Christians.
Right.
Yep.
And there's some lasting characteristic.
Peter talks about the elements being burned up, but, and we have our, our, Interpretation of that, that it's a refining, burning.
But Hebrews, again, its apocalyptic language is a shaking.
And the things that are sturdy don't get knocked over when the shaking happens.
And then Hebrews talks about how now is the time of shaking.
I think you're right, Joel.
I mean, there's not as much biblical evidence of it, but I do get into that a little bit in the book also.
I think there is a sense where some things, like you say, will have been built on faith and will survive the shaking and will endure even into eternity.
And what I've always said with Peter's epistle is one, it's Peter.
I mean, The guy's not that smart.
It's the Bible.
No, but when he talks about that it will be consumed by fire, what I've always said with that is Peter, it's not just that the scripture says elsewhere, but Peter says elsewhere.
He speaks about what God did through the flood.
And he says that God destroyed the world.
And that language is utilized.
God destroyed the world through water, and then he'll destroy it through fire.
And we would look at that and we'd say, Did God destroy the world?
Yeah.
Well, in.
For all intents and purposes, and the way that that word's being used, and God's purpose is what he means by destroy.
Yes, in a very real sense, God destroyed the world by water.
But that doesn't mean that the world was literally annihilated.
It's not like some.
And the righteous endured.
Yes.
And the righteous endured.
You're right.
So when the world did that, and that water reshaped the world in a literal geographic sense, maybe that's probably where we got the Grand Canyon and certain things, maybe even tectonic plates shifting, and maybe, I don't know, like.
I'm not a flat earther, but I could be persuaded of like a Pangea kind of thing, like all the continents together.
And that also just being one, because it kind of pairs up nicely with the Noahic covenant and then leading towards Babel of like God saying, No, you will split up.
You will have nations.
I'm going to do it through confusing your languages.
I'm going to literally put oceans in between you.
I'm going to like, you guys are not going to be globalist.
And here we are, Christians saying, Oh, so you're saying, You want globalism.
So you're telling me gay multiculturalism is what you want.
I read you loud and clear, God.
I mean, it's literally comical when you think how far off.
But, anyways, the point is God destroyed the world through water, but He didn't destroy every single person.
Or the ark.
Right.
He preserved the righteous, preserved, and then He started over with a completely new species of animals.
No.
He kept those species, but then with them, created more species, glorified them, maximized it.
And God replaced this floating rock in the sky.
It was a whole new planet.
Nope, same planet, reformed and cleansed, purified and reshaped.
And even in some sense, you could say, glorified the majesty of just the violent aspect of the great torrents of the deep and all these geysers erupting.
Because it's not just the water that comes from above, the canopy breaking, but then also the waters of the deep under the earth opening up and the sheer shock and shaking of that is.
Probably part of the way that we got Mount Everest and the Grand Canyon.
So, like, there's even a geographic glory that was accomplished by this judgment that made it better.
Like, we go to national parks to witness things that might not have actually even existed if it weren't for the flood.
So, it's like the land was improved.
The people were certainly improved.
The animals were improved.
But here's the thing all improved, but also not replaced, but preserved.
Improved upon something preserved.
So, who's to say if God destroyed the earth, and that in a real sense, destroyed is a fair word, it's the accurate word.
But we know he didn't replace it.
Then who's to say that this destruction in the end of fire wouldn't be, in the literal sense, the same kind of thing?
Not a total replacement, not a total annihilation, but a total burning away of the wicked.
Like it's spoken of a lake of fire.
So God visits, he descends, the fire consumes all that is, as Michael was saying earlier, the things that can be shaken, the temporal, that which is to be burnt up, the wicked themselves cast into the burning lake, and the righteous preserved and established in the holy city.
Amen.
I'll get weird for one second.
But I think it's good, but it's weird.
Right?
So, like, so Christ, you know, all his enemies being made a footstool.
And as we share in his kingship and his glory as priest, a royal priesthood, kings and priests, that also his enemies are going to be a footstool under our feet.
I think that the earth, in the same way that water from the earth, and it came from above, but also under the earth, the great springs of the deep opened up and swallowed people up and drowned them.
And they died by water.
And then you also see this actually through biblical history when you think of Achan.
You know, um, and the earth swallowing him up.
Yeah, I actually think that, um, I think the lake of fire will be under the earth, it'll be a physical place because we know the resurrection, the bodily resurrection, is not just for the elect, it's all, but also for the damned, the reprobate.
And it's going to be a physical, conscious torment, right?
And I actually think that the earth will, uh, likely open up in the same way that once it produced water, this time it'll be fire, and the damned will be taken down below, and we will have an eternal existence.
With the enemies of God under our feet.
Well, the description 22, Revelation 22, is a city, and it says outside are the dogs, the cowards, the immoral.
That outside there's darkness, the shapeless, the damned, the burning, and then the holy, beautiful city of which God itself is its light.
So, certainly, like there's the imagery there that we can look out into the chasms and into the darkness and see the wicked forever shut out of the holy city and its light and its glory and its perfection.
Yep.
All right, let's hit our second commercial break.
And when we come back, I want to tie this to a couple modern applications and then we'll wrap things up.
All right, the clock is running out.
Stewarding Our Nations00:07:44
You need to go and register now for our Christ is King How to Defeat Trash World Conference.
It's happening the year of our Lord 2025, April 3rd, 4th, and 5th.
That's a Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
And by God's grace, we're able to provide for you an all star lineup.
We've got Steve Dace, Calvin Robinson, Orrin McIntyre, Dr. Stephen Wolfe, Eric Kahn, David Reese, Andrew Isker, John Harris, A.D. Robles, Dan Burkholder, Dusty Devers, Ben Garrett, CJ Engel, and yours truly, Pastor Joel Webbin.
Come on out, join us April 3rd, 4th, and 5th, 2025, Thursday through a Saturday.
Go to RightResponseConference.com to register today.
Again, that's RightResponseConference.com.
Listen, guys, you probably listen to RightResponse Ministries because you take the Dominion mandate offered to us in Scripture seriously.
Well, unsurprisingly, so does Dominion Wealth Strategist.
As the only distinctly reformed financial consulting firm, they help Calvinistic, covenantal, and confessional Christians to steward their resources faithfully in a way that actually aligns with God's Word.
Dominion Wealth leverages all corners of the financial service industry as independent brokerage agents, matching you with suitable products and services from dozens of top industry providers.
Their mission is to equip Believers to secure their family's future and build a legacy that glorifies God by building holistic financial strategies that include budgeting, insurance, debt management, retirement planning, estate planning, and more.
In order to make wealth Christian again with a portfolio that might even put King Solomon to shame, go and take dominion over your finances today by visiting www.reformed.money and book an introductory overview right now.
All of Christ for all of life and all of finance for Christendom.
All right, here we go.
All right, welcome back.
So we're going to wrap things up.
I'm going to read a quote, Nathan.
This is going to be the last two quotes.
So I'll start with quote five here.
And I want to make the case that in previous times, Christians did think about stewarding their nations for God's glory.
So first a quote from the book and then a historical example.
So here I say God commands all nations to use the land that he has given them.
He commands them even to organize themselves towards this end, that the earth may blossom in beauty and that the people of those nations would take the resources in their specific land and produce things that honor God.
It is good that nations lay down highways, Numbers 20, 17, and other infrastructure.
It is good that they erect amazing buildings and undertake feats of engineering.
But the key point that we see in Psalm 72, which Solomon wrote about how great it was that the kings of the earth were bringing their goods and their glories to Jerusalem.
Yeah.
Nuclear treasures.
As Revoice has said.
You remember that article?
No, I don't.
I don't remember that one.
Nobody wrote an article about how same sex gay Christians will bring queer treasures to the world.
Oh, my word.
By being like celibate or whatever, like their gift and treasure to bring it.
Sorry for that.
No, it's okay.
Well, that was a lovely mental image, too.
So that's what you really should apologize for.
Terrible.
All right.
So the key point that we see in Psalm 72 is that rather than use their accomplishments to glorify themselves, They are to use those accomplishments to worship the one true God and to direct all attention and focus to him.
And in a way, this is the problem with Babel, right?
Babel was not inherently wrong in that they were attempting a great project of architecture and building, right?
They developed new technology exactly in line with how God has made us.
They learned bricks and tar instead of just the previous building technology that they had.
And the problem was that they used it for their own glory to rebel against God.
A lot of times, the common misconception is that it's really a waste of time for a nation to accomplish something.
You think about the Cathedral of the Sagrada Familia in Spain, which has been an over two century project.
And we've talked about this on the podcast before.
Like, what an incredible pooling of resources by a nation and a people to build something that.
Hopefully, it would stand to the honor and glory of Christ.
Libertarians, hardest hit.
That's right.
Well, even too, there's no like financial consideration.
Like cathedrals were not built by private equity groups that think about the return on their investment.
That's correct.
It was literally not like, well, we could make money on this, we could create a job.
No, tax.
Maybe even a few indulgences.
Right.
Well, there was some of that.
I remember CJ, like, he visited, he says it to give himself a hard time, not take himself too seriously, but he said that he was visiting Europe and checking out all these cathedrals, but it was during his libertarian days.
Okay.
And so he was just walking around, frowning the whole time, like, I can't believe they spent tax dollars on this.
And he tells the story now saying, like, if you're wondering how gay libertarianism is, let me tell you a story about myself as a libertarian.
Well, that's exactly the point.
Like, an individual family is never going to build the Hoover Dam or Notre Dame or something like that.
Like, that is a national project to do these things.
And so, this even gets into the question of, you know, who should be in charge of infrastructure in a nation.
I don't have a definitive position on this yet, but I think there's a good case that, insofar as these are projects that benefit the nation, it's not wrong for the nation to bring those under a governmental organization.
Like, who else is going to build?
The highway system across the United States or the railway system, which, by the way, the railway system was distinctly pushed forward as a way to achieve God's will of taking dominion of the West.
Like there were some backers, one of them was Brigham Young, unfortunately, but it was fairly common to talk about the railroads West as our Christian duty to subdue the land that God has given to us.
Another example, and Nate, you can put this quote up.
This is from the Mayflower Compact.
And this was their intention.
This was how they stewarded what they hoped was going to be their new land.
They say, having undertaken for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith and honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and of one another covenant and combine ourselves together in a civil body politic for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid.
By the virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices from time to time as shall be thought most meet, which means necessary, and convenient for the general good of the colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.
And so they were pledging the totality of their effort to really the overall overarching purpose.
They were going to do things for the practical good.
They were going to pass laws.
They were going to organize themselves in particular ways.
But it was all going to be for the glory of Christ.
Practical Creation Care00:03:46
Amen.
In downtown New York and Columbia University, the library there that's right over the quad, it literally says it's for the advancement of the public good and the glory of Almighty God.
We're building this beautiful library in this rotunda.
If you go inside, there's four pillars and it's theology, law, medicine, and art.
Like it's these pillars holding up society and emblazoned across the top in New York City to this day, as in we're doing this for public good and the glory of Almighty God.
Amen.
Yeah.
Well, and it's almost trite now, but the.
The founding universities in America all had in their mottos, you know, for honor of Christ and this sort of thing.
And of course, the Puritans, you know, use language of like, we're building a city on a hill that will be a light to the world.
Like, this is going to be not the New Jerusalem, but a New Jerusalem of sorts that, like, this, you know, these Americas will be Christian colonies, Christian cities, Christian cathedrals that will be a light to the nations.
Yep.
So, all of that to say, one.
Kind of fallout of this is, I mentioned it earlier, it is quite common now to assume that humans are the intruders.
I remember I was at a track meet for one of my kids two years ago, and there was a snake that was near where some of the people were sitting, and people were obviously concerned about it.
We didn't know what kind of snake it was, but people were a little bit concerned about it.
And as we were leaving later on, I remember one of the coaches said, Well, it's understandable, we're in the snake's home.
Right.
And it's like, I get what you're saying.
I don't want to be too pedantic here.
But no, the snake actually is in our home.
And we have the right to protect ourselves and to kill or relocate that snake.
Like the world is not nature's.
It's not Mother Earth's.
It's not Gaia's.
It belongs to us and we are to steward it.
The buzzword a few years ago was creation care.
I don't know if you guys remember this whole thing.
Creation care says protect the planet.
Biblical stewardship says subdue it, build with it, and offer the glory back to God.
And do it, of course, in a sustainable fashion.
Of course.
Yeah.
So it doesn't mean that we burn tires in our backyard to own the lid.
No, we don't want to be suicidal.
This is the only home we have.
And so you're doing all these in ways that are sustainable.
But when it's done well, you can harvest thousands and thousands and millions of trees and actually plant bigger forests that replace them.
So there's a way to be a true conservationist.
But But not living as a guest, but like this is my home and I'm also taking care of it.
Yep.
Environmentalism, and there's a change in public perception in this.
Environmentalism is actually a right wing position.
It was occupied by the left for a while through the 80s and the 90s and the 2000s.
But setting up a factory and not killing every form of life in the pond that's right outside it, not polluting the air with all of your whatever it is that you're burning, like that's actually right wing.
If we're here for tradition, we're here for the establishment of the family, we're here for the care of the church and ordering people towards earthly good and heavenly good.
Trash, toxic chemicals, all of those things are very much so relevant interests.
Now, you can do something like harnessing wind.
It's just economically, even the fossil fuels required to assemble the pieces to actually put these turbines in, to say nothing of the birds they kill, to say nothing of disposal of them.
That doesn't mean that we go to wind and we go to solar, price be forgotten.
But it does mean, generally speaking, we actually care about what are we putting into the environment, how is this affecting individuals, and saying it does matter.
Right.
Building Christ's Honor00:03:38
Good.
So, as we, you know, As we further the cause of Christian nationalism, it's at one hand a little bit daunting to say, man, we're not there until we're building the buildings to Christ's honor again, right?
It's not just passing an abortion law or, you know, whatever political gains we talk a lot about politics and political gains on the show.
All of that is good.
But also, like, we are desiring that our nation, that all the nations in the earth really would direct their national effort in real, tangible ways.
Toward the glory of Christ.
And so we won't be discouraged.
That's the goal.
That's what we're pushing towards.
And we want to see it reclaimed in our nation.
And we hope that missionaries will take up that cause and they'll approach missions in a slightly different way, too, where they're building the seeds into evangelism to other nations we're not just saving 2% of you, we're Christianizing your nation so that the totality of your action would glorify and honor Christ.
Right.
And we're not exporting, we're trying to export.
The gospel and a Christian foundation.
We're not exporting things that are just not really rooted in the scripture, but distinctions of our own culture.
We're not exporting our sacred democracy.
Like, it's okay to do the work of an evangelist, a missionary, and say, this is the gospel, this is the scripture, this is the foundation for all of life, and then to still let that country be that country.
And like, the reality is that if every nation was Christianized tomorrow, I am absolutely persuaded that they would still look very distinct.
That some nations would have great, glorious cathedrals, but they wouldn't all look the same.
Right.
Different nations would have different colors and different architecture.
There'd be different forms of art.
There'd be different cuisine.
The Bible says a lot, and none of us would ever deny the sufficiency of Scripture.
But the question that that raises is the Bible is sufficient for what?
We believe that it's sufficient so that the man of God would be equipped for every good work.
So it's sufficient for character, it's sufficient for morality, and certainly it's sufficient for salvation.
And heavenly things.
But the Bible, in its own claims of sufficiency, never says that it is so particular that it's exclusively sufficient for one type of architecture.
So that if two nations, one in.
You mean we're not all supposed to be using cubits?
Right, exactly.
So if one nation in Sub Saharan Africa and then one nation in Europe, if they were both equally Christian, then they would both build a Notre Dame.
Right.
The Bible doesn't make that claim.
Well, Japan has huge palaces.
They're built out of huge beams of wood and they look totally different than the rock and brick palaces in Europe.
And yet they're still glorious.
And that's part of the reason why, as we have further innovation and travel and all these kinds of things, that's one of the great glories.
I would like for my grandkids to be able to go, if they desire to, to visit Japan and I would like it to still be Japan.
How disappointing would that be to go and visit Japan and there's no more samurai?
You know, like there's no museums, there's no like no distinct style of dress.
It's all American.
If I go to Japan and it's just like 10% black people, 10% white people, 10% you know, Latinos, you know, like and and then it looks like DFW, you know, would just strip with just Japanese instead of English.
Preserving Distinct Cultures00:02:18
Like, what are we doing?
It's like, I don't know, like that's that's that's we should be able to see that as sad, right?
So when when we're not, you know, the biggest advocates of multiculturalism in every single nation right now, it's because we actually It's not because we're against multiculturalism in the life to come.
Not only do we think it's good, but we think that it must be preserved.
Every tribe, tongue, and nation before the throne of the Lamb, worshiping in unity and unison and at peace with one another, that can only be accomplished if distinct nations exist.
So thank you guys for tuning in.
Last thing for today, again, it's the day before our conference, which starts tomorrow, April 3rd, 4th, and 5th.
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
And I just want to make sure that you guys are able to get the content if you would like.
We are going to make the content available to the public eventually, but it's going to be coming off of the conference.
There's a lot of work and a lot of different practical things that we have to get done.
So it'll probably be a few weeks before we put out even the first piece of content to the public on YouTube and X and those platforms.
And then what we're going to do is we're going to drip out slowly.
Each individual piece of content, of which there will be 10, seven main sessions and three panels.
And we're only going to drip out one piece of content per week.
So, you're looking at probably three or four weeks before even the first one comes, and then having to wait one week, you know, so three or four weeks to start, and then 10 weeks to get all 10 pieces of content.
So, without exaggerating, like you're looking at, you know, a quarter of a year, three months.
But if you want to get all of it now, ad free, uninterrupted, and be able to watch it at your own time, you can live stream it as it's happening, or you'll have the files and you'll be able to watch it at your leisure.
But to be able to have access right away as it's happening, then You got to sign up and become a Patreon member.
We're making the live stream exclusively available to our gold tier Patreon members.
So go to patreon.com forward slash right response ministries.
Patreon.com forward slash right response ministries.