NXR Podcast - THE LIVESTREAM - How Sacralism Saved the Church
Aired: 2025-05-23
Duration: 02:32:59


=== Why We Need Positive Reviews (03:19) ===

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[00:00:27]  Shortly before his ascension, our Savior commanded his followers to go and disciple all nations.
[00:00:34]  Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and to teach them all that He, that is Christ, had commanded them.
[00:00:43]  In pursuit of this command, the apostles and their successors commenced a multi century struggle to preserve the faith once delivered and declare it to all the nations.
[00:00:54]  These men, that is, our spiritual fathers, laid the foundations of the church and preached the gospel to every city they could, frequently inviting the wrath of the pagan authorities for upsetting the Pax Deorum.
[00:01:08]  That is, the peace of the gods.
[00:01:10]  Most of the apostles would be martyred, along with many later men like Polycarp of Smyrna, a bishop and disciple of John, and Cyprian of Carthage.
[00:01:21]  But divine providence would change this state of affairs over a mere few decades.
[00:01:27]  Not long after the Diocletian persecution of the early fourth century, Flavius Valerius Constantinus, or Constantine the Great, would ascend to dominance over the western half of the Roman Empire.
[00:01:42]  Constantine would adopt the Christian faith, and by consequence, he would set off a chain of events that saw the increasing fulfillment of prophecy of Isaiah that the law would go out from Zion and the Lord would judge between the nations.
[00:01:59]  His successors would solidify his Christian measures, culminating in the declaration of Nicene Christianity as the official faith of the empire through the Edict of Thessalonica.
[00:02:12]  Delivered by Emperor Theodosius I in A.D. 380.
[00:02:17]  Though paganism did not disappear overnight, these decrees oriented the Roman state and eventually other European kingdoms towards the full dominance of Christianity in all parts of their kingdoms, to the point that even our mere knowledge of various pre Christian folk religions is patchy, sometimes pure conjecture.
[00:02:39]  It was by these means that the faith would dominate Europe, and through these European empires be exported across the globe.
[00:02:47]  Further, the intellectual development of the faith that we enjoy to day was done under the patronage of princes, guaranteeing the time, resources, and security necessary for theologians of old to exercise their gifts.
[00:03:03]  Though the preaching of the word was the absolutely essential spark that lit the flame of the faith, it was the Christian magistrate who carried the torch and spread the light into all spheres, and thus fulfilled the prophecy of David.

=== Constantine's Edict of Toleration (15:21) ===

[00:03:19]  That is, blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.
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[00:03:48]  So, tune in to today's episode as we are joined by special guest.
[00:03:53]  The other Paul to talk about sacralism, the state, and how God established Christianity in the West.
[00:04:11]  Hello, hello, hello.
[00:04:12]  I predict no less than 147 sacralisms will be committed in this particular episode.
[00:04:18]  I would like to start by welcoming the other Paul from the land down under.
[00:04:22]  Welcome, brother.
[00:04:23]  Thanks for coming on the show.
[00:04:26]  Good, beautiful morning, gentlemen from Australia.
[00:04:29]  It is a very nice and early 6 14 a.m. here.
[00:04:33]  I am very happy to be on with you.
[00:04:35]  Great.
[00:04:36]  Well, let's go ahead and dive in.
[00:04:38]  Sorry, before we do, like and share the video.
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[00:05:25]  Okay, so our topic today is we're going to take a walk down memory lane.
[00:05:30]  We're going to look at a thousand years of Christendom, and we're going to look at the role that the state has played underneath the province of God when it comes to Christian faith, its preservation, also its expansion over the known world.
[00:05:45]  We did an episode, this would have been, I think, about a month and a half or so ago, and just titled The State Must Correct the Church.
[00:05:51]  That at some level, the state has a role in that.
[00:05:53]  And we intentionally went very high level at the end of the day, as far as knowledge and degrees and all of that.
[00:05:59]  We focused on some of the most known stories from Christendom.
[00:06:02]  And however, there is way more there to be spoken of.
[00:06:06]  And the other Paul is really read on this.
[00:06:08]  And so we reached out and we collaborated on this together.
[00:06:10]  There's actually even going to be, I think, this is one of the first times we've done it, there's going to be a link in the description on YouTube where you can see all of these sources, you can link to them, you can go read them.
[00:06:19]  So, he's done a ton of reading, a ton of research, really excited to talk really in depth about this.
[00:06:23]  And so, Paul, let's start with the early church.
[00:06:25]  We mentioned Constantine.
[00:06:26]  That's kind of the first moment the state even has much of a recognition of Christianity besides its persecution.
[00:06:32]  So, how does it go from there?
[00:06:34]  Correct.
[00:06:34]  So, before we just before we get into that, and thank you, gentlemen, by the way, for having me on because I do, I can't believe it's only been like what you said a month or a month and a half since that the state much correct the church video.
[00:06:45]  It's felt like way longer since then.
[00:06:47]  At least a lot has happened.
[00:06:48]  So, I guess that's probably why.
[00:06:50]  But just before we jump right into that, I want to set up some context with what we're talking about.
[00:06:55]  So, this word, sacralism, it's not one that our camp, so to speak, has really come up with, but it is one which we're using here and which I am quite fine with actually stealing for our purposes, but was otherwise largely pioneered, not first coined, but in this context, pioneered by the likes of Dr. James White.
[00:07:17]  He uses it to refer to this overall system of church state.
[00:07:22]  Synthesis in civil society.
[00:07:24]  And he basically uses it as a bludgeon to say, oh, this is a bad thing.
[00:07:28]  We don't want that.
[00:07:29]  Persecution, so on and so forth.
[00:07:32]  And he, excuse me, he uses that concept to, well, he uses that word to rail against the concept.
[00:07:39]  So if we can, would we be able to pull up the first quote, which is my own synthesized definition, nice and quick, I like that, of sacralism from Dr. White?
[00:07:51]  So, this definition I came up with from his work is a form of civil polity in which there is a formal relationship between the state and an established church, such that the state may exercise authority over the affairs of that established church, and the church in turn enjoys by law a supremacy of privileges over and above all other religions and sects.
[00:08:13]  In principle, these other religions and sects may be suppressed to some degree, including and up to total criminalization, depending on what is most prudent at the given time.
[00:08:21]  Further, national citizenship and official membership in the established church are.
[00:08:26]  Often, but not always, tied together.
[00:08:28]  So that's what I want to establish as the essential object of Dr. White's critique.
[00:08:34]  But for this presentation's case, what I'll be arguing was actually quite essential to the Christian cultural hegemony that all of us take for granted today and all of us enjoy.
[00:08:48]  So that's just the starting point I want to begin with.
[00:08:52]  And assuming there's nothing you gents want to say about that, I can get right into the history with the early church.
[00:08:59]  Go ahead.
[00:08:59]  That's a good definition, though.
[00:09:00]  I appreciate that.
[00:09:02]  Perfect.
[00:09:03]  Perfect.
[00:09:03]  Thank you very much.
[00:09:04]  So, the first event people commonly point to as the beginning of Christian church state relations in the early church will be the Edict of Toleration of Emperor Constantine in the year 313.
[00:09:20]  But that's actually not quite true.
[00:09:21]  I want to start with just an initial one where, actually, in the late third century, the heretic Paul Samosata was condemned by.
[00:09:31]  At that point, the largest council in Christian history, something like 70, 80 or so bishops, possibly more, the Council of Antioch, which is in the 260s, 270s.
[00:09:40]  I don't have this in my notes, but I just thought to mention it anyway.
[00:09:43]  And that bishop, when he was condemned for his heretical views, he refused to leave his church.
[00:09:50]  He refused to leave the building, and bishops around him apparently couldn't do anything about it.
[00:09:54]  So what they did was appeal to the pagan emperor Aurelian and just said, hey, this guy is occupying our buildings.
[00:10:02]  He won't leave.
[00:10:03]  Please get him out.
[00:10:04]  And Aurelian said, Look, whoever's in the good graces of the bishops of Italy and Rome, I'll give the building to them.
[00:10:11]  And so, with that, the bishop Paul Sanasata was kicked out of Antioch.
[00:10:16]  And that basically started the precedent of a long pattern where actually the church often needs outside help to sort out its affairs.
[00:10:23]  But anyway, we come to the year 311, where the pagan emperor Galerius actually issues the first edict of toleration.
[00:10:33]  I don't know if it was total.
[00:10:34]  But it was actually one that just preceded that of Constantine.
[00:10:38]  And it was an edict of toleration, basically out of necessity.
[00:10:42]  He basically says in the edict these Christians, they refuse to die.
[00:10:46]  They refuse to convert back to the ways of their forefathers.
[00:10:50]  So, fine.
[00:10:51]  All right, we're just going to let you be for the most part.
[00:10:53]  Just don't do X, Y, and Z. After that, Emperor Constantine in the year 313 issues his edict of toleration, which is much more positive.
[00:11:01]  And he frames it as allowing the different.
[00:11:05]  Especially the Christians, but not only the Christians, that's an important thing to note, to best appease heaven, to best appease divinity in whatsoever way is suitable so that they can best guarantee the love of heaven, the love of God slash the gods for the empire.
[00:11:26]  So that's the first edict toleration there.
[00:11:29]  But where the first real event, or one of the first real events of church state relations comes in, Actually, the proper first one would probably be with the Council of Arle, which is around in the 310s.
[00:11:42]  That's for the Western bishops in the issue of Donatism.
[00:11:45]  But for the church universally, the first real church state interaction comes with Emperor Constantine when he notices a theological dispute between Alexander, the Bishop of Alexandria, and Arius, a local presbyter, of course, on the issue of the deity of Christ.
[00:12:02]  And so Constantine takes note of this and he first sends a letter telling them both to cut it out, sort out their differences, and just leave, let the peace of the church reign.
[00:12:12]  Unfortunately, they don't do that.
[00:12:14]  And so if we could bring up the second quote.
[00:12:17]  This is what Constantine does in response.
[00:12:21]  So, this is according to Socrates Scholasticus, a 5th century church historian.
[00:12:29]  He says, The evil had become too strong, both for the exhortations of the emperor and the authority of him who was the bearer of his letter.
[00:12:39]  For neither was Alexander nor Arius softened by this appeal, and moreover, there was incessant strife and tumult among the people.
[00:12:46]  Moreover, another local source of disquietude had pre existed there.
[00:12:50]  Which served to trouble the churches, the dispute, namely in regard to the Passover, which was carried on in the regions of the East only.
[00:12:58]  This arose when some desiring to keep the peace more in accordance with the custom of the Jews, while others preferred its mode of celebration by their communion, sorry, by Christians in general throughout the world.
[00:13:11]  This difference, however, did not interfere with their communion, although their mutual joy was necessarily hindered.
[00:13:17]  When, therefore, the emperor beheld the church agitated on account of both of these causes, So that's an important thing.
[00:13:22]  Nicaea was not just for the deity of Christ, but also the standardizing of the day to celebrate Easter.
[00:13:27]  He convoked a general council, summoning all the bishops by letter to meet him at Nicaea in Bithynia.
[00:13:33]  And so this is the first absolutely essential point we have to get here.
[00:13:38]  And actually, it has application to the other issue of apologetics between Protestantism and Romanism and Easternism, or as commonly called Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy.
[00:13:50]  And that is that the ecumenical council, as a concept, as a mechanism, Was not actually the invention of the church.
[00:13:58]  In its most essential form, it wasn't actually an ecclesial function, but an imperial one.
[00:14:05]  An imperial function imposed by the emperor of Rome, by Christian emperors, to ensure that the church gets its act together and comes to a united position on things.
[00:14:16]  And through the conclusions of that council, the state, as we'll see a bit later, would then enforce its conclusions across the entire Christian world, at least within its own boundaries.
[00:14:27]  And That is an incredibly important point to understand because what this shows, actually, in the other apologetics context, is that unlike what Rome and the East claim, ecumenical councils were not this mechanism established by Christ per se, established by the church, and so their decisions are infallible.
[00:14:51]  No, not quite.
[00:14:51]  They were actually imperial tools, providentially given.
[00:14:55]  I'll 100% grant that.
[00:14:56]  That's actually kind of the point of this talk.
[00:14:58]  But importantly, They were tools of the quote unquote secular state.
[00:15:04]  And so that's an important first fact to keep in mind.
[00:15:06]  And of course, for this issue, what this first establishes, really the first key conclusion, is one that's really problematic for those who oppose sacralism, quote unquote.
[00:15:19]  And that is that, look, if you were alive at the time, if you were in the midst of the dispute between Alexander and Arius, and let's charitably assume that you're a Nicene Christian, so you were definitely on Alexander's side, not with Arius or his co belligerents.
[00:15:35]  And Constantine came with the letter and said, Hey, let's have a council to sort this stuff out.
[00:15:41]  All right.
[00:15:42]  I'm going to organize all this.
[00:15:43]  I'm going to pay for all the travel expenses.
[00:15:46]  I'm going to pay for the lodging.
[00:15:47]  And all these bishops, all you guys are going to gather at this one spot.
[00:15:50]  And you guys are going to hash this out.
[00:15:52]  And when it's done, I am going to guarantee that it's enforced across the Christian church.
[00:15:57]  Now, for people who oppose sacralism as it is defined, they are in principle required to have opposed this.
[00:16:08]  They are in principle bound to have said, No, Constantine, you can't do that.
[00:16:15]  You are not going to run a church, sorry, a council that helps the church actually get its act together.
[00:16:23]  What the church does is the church's business.
[00:16:25]  We have to sort it out ourselves.
[00:16:28]  So you can't do that.
[00:16:29]  Sorry, thanks, but no thanks.
[00:16:31]  We're not going to go to this council for you.
[00:16:32]  That is what the anti sacralists in principle would have had to do.
[00:16:37]  And given the witness of history, the Arian controversy would have gone on for at least a lot longer.
[00:16:44]  And being a lot less decisive in the favor of Nicaea because it was through imperial law that these things, that the Nicene faith was enforced throughout at least the Roman Empire to start with, but eventually other European kingdoms as well post the fall of Rome.
[00:17:01]  I think it's worth noting too, you read like Constantine's letter.
[00:17:04]  I remember reading that back when we did the episode, and this controversy was tearing apart the churches.
[00:17:09]  I mean, we all remember COVID, we remember Black Lives Matter.
[00:17:12]  Those are a microcosm of the differences that.
[00:17:16]  All of us had to kind of deal with within our own churches.
[00:17:18]  And so you had this controversy.
[00:17:20]  I mean, how long would you say it was really hit a fever pitch, Paul?
[00:17:23]  It was a good while.
[00:17:25]  And this is not just in the church, but then it's with Christians within the empire.
[00:17:29]  You have people unloading cities, humming ditties by Arius.
[00:17:32]  So you had an entire populace, not just for like a month, they can't disagree on this side or the other, but a controversy that's really causing brother to go against brother.
[00:17:42]  I mean, Constantine's like, please, like these strifes, these fights.
[00:17:46]  They're killing me.
[00:17:47]  I love the church and I love God.
[00:17:48]  I'm coming to my church and I'm seeing all this division.
[00:17:51]  Guys, please stop it.
[00:17:54]  Yep, yep, 100% true.
[00:17:56]  As for exactly how long the controversy went on, well, obviously, okay, not obviously, but Arianism did continue for a while, especially in the Germanic tribes, because those were actually Arians who basically first evangelized them.
[00:18:10]  As for the borders of the Roman Empire, I can't put a date on it, although from what I have read, most, if not all, the wind was knocked out of Arianism.
[00:18:23]  I'd probably say by the end of the fifth century, because the important thing to keep in mind is even though there was imperial legislation by that point for decades against Arianism, suppressing their right to hold churches, to hold bishoprics, to gather and assemble, it's one thing to have the law.

=== Top-Down Revival History (15:12) ===

[00:18:40]  As we all know from experience, it's one thing to have a law, it's another thing to enforce it, right?
[00:18:44]  And even in our modern, very technocratic days, we know from experience when our government is, and not in the case of anarcho tyranny where they're deliberately.
[00:18:55]  Allowing the law to be broken.
[00:18:56]  But even in case where they want to enforce the law but can't do so perfectly, such as in the era of the lockdowns, of the mandates, where many governments, including in the US, but especially here in Australia, tried to enforce X, Y, and Z, but they could barely enforce it.
[00:19:11]  There was a lot of law breaking going around.
[00:19:13]  And that's in an age of mass communication, mass transit, and travel.
[00:19:18]  Imagine it in the Roman Empire.
[00:19:20]  Imagine it in an area that is larger, as far as I'm aware, in terms of its overall span.
[00:19:26]  Than the United States, but traveling from one end to the other takes weeks on end.
[00:19:32]  And that's the same with communication.
[00:19:34]  So you can imagine enforcement was a whole beast of its own right.
[00:19:38]  But yeah, so Arianism, as far as I'm aware, most, if not all, of its wind is knocked out by the end of the fifth century, possibly before that.
[00:19:46]  Though that doesn't mean that there weren't pockets of Arianism here and there.
[00:19:50]  It's just very hard to track because our sources from antiquity and the very beginning of the Middle Ages are hard to come by.
[00:19:58]  Yeah.
[00:19:58]  I think Wes also is asking Paul for how long, do you know for how long this happened before Constantine stepped in?
[00:20:08]  Was it months, years, decades?
[00:20:12]  It was basically a.
[00:20:14]  I don't know if it was even like a full year.
[00:20:17]  Or maybe it was a few short years.
[00:20:21]  Because I know there's a very good website that lists all the relevant letters from the controversy, from its start until like the 330s or something like that.
[00:20:30]  And the first one, I think maybe comes about 318, possibly.
[00:20:35]  I'm not sure.
[00:20:36]  There's a bit of a back and forth between Alexander and Arius and their allies.
[00:20:40]  And it's in 324.
[00:20:43]  When Constantine intervenes, which, if you know the Council of Nicaea, that begins in May.
[00:20:49]  And by the way, we've just passed the 1700th anniversary of the start of the Council of Nicaea.
[00:20:57]  That started in May 20th, according to the Common Reckoning.
[00:21:01]  And Constantine sent his letter to Alexander and Arius in 324.
[00:21:06]  And so he actually got it underway pretty quickly when he intervened.
[00:21:13]  What that ends up doing, that council and the decision from that, that starts a precedent.
[00:21:18]  It starts an irreversible and irreversible precedent until very recently of imperial slash state intervention in the affairs of the church in order to keep her, at least from the perspective of the emperors, to keep her secure and keep her in sound and orthodox doctrine.
[00:21:35]  And it would be later emperors who would take this further.
[00:21:38]  In particular, we begin to see more work under Constantius II, who, to be clear, he was Aryan sympathetic and so not a great guy.
[00:21:47]  He would sponsor a few councils, which were very much on the Arian side.
[00:21:51]  He would persecute Athanasius a bit.
[00:21:53]  But thinking from his perspective for the moment, he was defending the Christian faith.
[00:21:57]  And in particular, he took the first major leap of action against paganism.
[00:22:04]  Now, Constantine, I'll briefly mention, Constantine did destroy a few pagan structures.
[00:22:10]  In fact, Constantine actually cleared out a temple complex over the alleged spot of our Lord's resurrection, over the tomb.
[00:22:21]  And in its place, he commissioned the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which we know of to this day.
[00:22:26]  And so that set a huge precedent as well.
[00:22:28]  But it's with Constantius II where the first real empire wide action begins.
[00:22:33]  If we could bring up the third quote now, which is a piece of imperial legislation or a decree from Constantius and his co emperor, I think he's a co emperor at this time.
[00:22:43]  It was a bit fuzzy, Constans.
[00:22:45]  And it says, It is our pleasure that the temples shall be immediately closed in all places and in all cities, and access to them forbidden.
[00:22:54]  So as to deny all abandoned men the opportunity to commit sin.
[00:22:59]  It is also our will that all men shall abstain from sacrifices, but if perchance any man should perpetrate any such criminality, he shall be struck down with the avenging sword.
[00:23:09]  We also decree that the property of a man thus executed shall be vindicated to the fiscus, or the Roman treasury, or one of the treasuries.
[00:23:17]  The governors of the provinces shall be similarly punished if they should neglect to avenge such crimes.
[00:23:23]  And so, right out the gate here, in relatively a very quick So, the estimated date for this legislation, as you can see, this is from the wider collection I pulled it, is somewhere around 346 to 356.
[00:23:37]  Let's take the latter range, 356, from 313 Christian toleration to 356.
[00:23:46]  That is, that's what, 43 years?
[00:23:50]  43 years' time, we go from Christianity's official tolerance to virtual imposition on the empire.
[00:23:58]  That is really, really, really quick.
[00:24:01]  And from the sources we have here, how did we get there?
[00:24:05]  This is very important.
[00:24:06]  And another massive point against the sacralists, especially the more naive post millennials.
[00:24:10]  And this isn't me.
[00:24:11]  Attacking post millennialism per se, but the but more this interpretation of post millennialism as merely voluntary mass conversion, or at least of what should be achieved.
[00:24:24]  Notice it wasn't because suddenly most or all of the empire was voluntarily convinced of Christianity, and the emperors were like, eh, you know what, almost no one's a pagan anyway, so we'll just shut them down.
[00:24:35]  No, no, the empire was still majority pagan, and here we have a zealous Christian emperor just full sending it.
[00:24:44]  Basically, saying in Latin, you can just do things, and he does it.
[00:24:49]  He closes the temples, at least on paper.
[00:24:52]  So, that's important to note.
[00:24:53]  Again, enforcement is another big question.
[00:24:58]  And from the evidence we do have, this wasn't universally done.
[00:25:04]  Again, the emperor at this time, you didn't have mass communication, you couldn't have your all seeing eye everywhere.
[00:25:09]  But nonetheless, from the evidence we do have, this did obviously have quite a bit of an effect, as we'll see soon with the last pagan emperor.
[00:25:17]  40 years.
[00:25:19]  I was just going to say, that's 1985 to us.
[00:25:22]  So your grandparents, like my grandparents, were born in the 1960s.
[00:25:25]  That means they would become adults at the beginning of their adult life, their early 20s.
[00:25:29]  Christianity would just barely be able to escape persecution.
[00:25:33]  And then they're literally 60 years old, they're hitting retirement, collecting social security.
[00:25:37]  And by that time, Christianity enjoys not just state toleration, but state acceptance and even state protection.
[00:25:43]  The pagan religions are being cleared out.
[00:25:45]  That's how quickly it happened.
[00:25:47]  To me, none of that sounds like a coincidence.
[00:25:49]  40 years is.
[00:25:51]  Significant in the sense that we've talked about previously on the show that it does seem like major events in history happen every 80 years.
[00:25:58]  So, you know, if you go 80 years back from now, you have World War II.
[00:26:04]  80 years back from there, you have, you know, the Civil War.
[00:26:06]  80 more years, you have, you know, the War for Independence.
[00:26:10]  And that's basically two generations if you're thinking of, you know, in a biblical sense, 40 years being one generation.
[00:26:17]  So, 40 years for an unbelieving, stiff necked generation to die out in the wilderness before their children inherit the promised land.
[00:26:25]  Also, 40 years where Jesus says that ultimately the Jewish system that brought about his crucifixion, that they would be judged for crucifying the Lord of glory.
[00:26:39]  And he says this in Matthew 24, all of that discourse.
[00:26:42]  And at that time, I mean, think about it that you have, in terms of the populace, like there were many who followed him, many disciples.
[00:26:49]  But at the end of the day, in terms of power, in terms of the ability to actually accomplish something, The scale was weighted in such a way that Jesus was ultimately the powerless position.
[00:27:04]  Now, of course, Jesus, at any point, as he said, you know, no man takes my life from me.
[00:27:09]  You know, he chose to willingly give it up.
[00:27:11]  He could have called a legion of angels to come and assist him and defend him at any moment if he had chosen to.
[00:27:17]  It was, of course, providentially, sovereignly, you know, preordained by God that Christ would be the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world and that he would do so at the cost of his own.
[00:27:27]  So, all these things happen in accordance with God's plan, and Jesus is sovereign as the second member of the eternal Trinity the entire time.
[00:27:33]  But the point still remains that, in a temporal plane, in a human sense, whether it's raw numbers, numerical or not, in terms of power and prestige and leadership, political power, it is anti Christ.
[00:27:49]  I feel like that's a safe argument to make.
[00:27:51]  At the time that Jesus is nailed to a tree, the world is anti Christ.
[00:27:57]  40 years later, That world is being utterly destroyed.
[00:28:03]  And so, my point is just to say that one more example of 40 years, real quick, and then I'll turn it back to the other Paul.
[00:28:08]  But to give an example in terms of our opponents and enemies of God, it was approximately 40 years that the LGBT mafia was able to take 3%, an extreme minority of the population, and in 40 years, infiltrate every institution, every corner of society.
[00:28:29]  To where those who formerly were in the closet, metaphorically speaking, on the fringes of society, are now in the town square and have an entire month, not just a day, but an entire month devoted to them.
[00:28:45]  And you have society coming out as a whole and praising them.
[00:28:48]  In 40 years, you went from 3% of the population to literally replacing the American flag with a rainbow.
[00:28:55]  And so, 40 years is, to me, not a coincidence.
[00:28:58]  A lot.
[00:28:59]  And I say this to encourage.
[00:29:01]  The listener, to encourage our Christian brothers and sisters that a lot can change and not just somewhere over the rainbow in a distant time period for our great, grandchildren, but a lot can change now.
[00:29:17]  Dr. Stephen Wolf, I'm post millennial and I have not budged on that position because I'm actually convinced by way of exegesis.
[00:29:28]  And I understand the concept that we very well may be still in the early church, but I agree with Dr. Stephen Wolf.
[00:29:34]  He challenged me with that premise and saying, Joel, there is a way of being post millennial and yet being just as pietistic, just as passive, just as pessimistic.
[00:29:49]  Ironically, with this supposed eschatology of hope and optimism, you can be pietistic, pessimistic, and passive by simply just panning out in terms of time.
[00:30:04]  So you can say, Christ wins.
[00:30:06]  And he doesn't just win, you know, coming back, you know, not just winning by the bell, not just in the bottom of the ninth when the church is on the ropes and puny and barely holding on and he comes back.
[00:30:17]  But no, Christ wins progressively and gradually through the church, not just despite the church, but through the church in history.
[00:30:24]  You can say all those things and they sound wonderful and I'm convinced of those things, but you can add this fine print if you're not careful and you can say, and he'll do it in 50,000 years.
[00:30:36]  And so, for all intents and purposes, The post millennial, and I know many of them sadly, can be just as, you know, operate under a mindset that's just as helpless as a dispy pre mill.
[00:30:52]  And whereas someone like Stephen Wolfe is saying, the final verdict, I don't know.
[00:30:55]  He's all millennial.
[00:30:56]  So he's, I don't know if the church will win here in America, you know, and progressively and tangibly, temporally.
[00:31:04]  But what he at least is able to say is he's saying, but it's possible.
[00:31:10]  And it's possible to happen relatively quickly.
[00:31:13]  We could have a Christian nation, not just in 50,000 years, but in my lifetime.
[00:31:19]  And so I think it's not a coincidence, but when you said that, Paul, about the 40 years with Constantine, and it's just one more, you know, W's in the chat, right?
[00:31:29]  It's just one more example of this is not a bottom up revival.
[00:31:33]  This is not a mass move of the Holy Spirit.
[00:31:37]  Of course, He can do that.
[00:31:38]  And we pray that He does that.
[00:31:41]  But we have to acknowledge not just what God can do, but what God historically has done.
[00:31:46]  What has God in his sovereignty been pleased to do?
[00:31:49]  Not just hypothetically what he could do, but what has he done?
[00:31:53]  And what has he done most frequently?
[00:31:54]  So, whether it's Josiah in biblical history or whether it's Constantine in church history, again and again and again, God has sent revival.
[00:32:03]  And I think it's fair to call it revival or reformation or something along those lines.
[00:32:08]  But often, historically and biblically, it has been top down, not bottom up.
[00:32:13]  It's not a mass move of the Spirit that converts and regenerates 50% of the population plus one.
[00:32:20]  And then, according to our sacred democracy, people go and they win the votes and put in place Christian officials who then pass Christian laws.
[00:32:29]  No, very often what it is, it's a minority, in some cases, even an extreme minority, but that minority attains power.
[00:32:38]  They attain power, whether it's cultural power or institutional power or political power.
[00:32:42]  That's how the gays did it.
[00:32:45]  And that's how Constantine did it.
[00:32:47]  That's how Josiah did it.
[00:32:50]  Was he said, I'm sorry, but under Christian nationalism, the high places will come down.
[00:32:55]  And then the law begins to work as a tutor in its pedagogical function.
[00:33:00]  And the people aren't necessarily on board right away, but over time, it shapes their hearts.
[00:33:05]  It begins to sharpen rather than sear and dole, but sharpen the conscience.
[00:33:09]  And it produces the context.
[00:33:11]  It doesn't save the gospel, does that, but it produces a more conducive context of understanding the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, and therefore the need.
[00:33:21]  For Christ.
[00:33:22]  And then on that backdrop, the church comes in with potent preaching of the gospel.
[00:33:27]  And very often it pleases the Lord that many might be saved.
[00:33:29]  And then you get the majority, but you don't get the majority and then the Christian leaders.
[00:33:35]  Often you get the Christian leaders and then the Christian majority.
[00:33:39]  And the final point is that can happen in a mere 40 years.
[00:33:43]  In our life, we could have a Christian nation.
[00:33:46]  Back to you, the other Paul.
[00:33:49]  Very true.
[00:33:49]  Very true.
[00:33:50]  Too true, you said there, Pastor Webbin.

=== Building a Christian Nation Fast (04:45) ===

[00:33:53]  I'll quickly ask how long do we roughly have for this first segment, just in case I need to.
[00:33:58]  Let's actually do this.
[00:33:59]  So we're actually 10 minutes behind, and that's more so my fault than yours, per usual.
[00:34:05]  But let's go ahead, if you don't mind, Paul.
[00:34:07]  Let's go to our first commercial break, and then we'll come back.
[00:34:09]  But if you have more material that fits into this first segment, then just pick up right where you left off.
[00:34:14]  Is that okay?
[00:34:16]  Sure.
[00:34:17]  Okay, here we go.
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[00:35:49]  It seems that we live in such times where ancient opinions and rules of life have indeed been taken away.
[00:35:56]  We are not estimating the loss, but experiencing this loss in real time.
[00:36:01]  Speaking of such times as ours, the reactionary thinker Nicolas Gomez de Villa said that modern man is scandalized by what was commonplace in traditional society.
[00:36:14]  The most radical book of our time, he said, would be a compendium of old proverbs.
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=== Pagan Witnesses to State Power (15:50) ===

[00:38:39]  All right, guys, we need your help to get this video out to as many people as possible.
[00:38:42]  Go ahead and subscribe to the channel.
[00:38:44]  But one of the biggest things that you can do is simply like and share, not just like.
[00:38:49]  But like and share the video so that we can get it out to as many people as possible.
[00:38:52]  The other Paul is joining us.
[00:38:54]  We are talking about Christendom.
[00:38:56]  We're talking about how God has used the civil magistrate, princes throughout history to preserve and also further expand the Christian faith.
[00:39:07]  The other Paul, let's go ahead and get right back to you.
[00:39:10]  Thank you very much.
[00:39:11]  So, I want to say a little bit more about the early church, and then once I'm done with that, I'll jump straight to the English Reformation for another case of great precedent.
[00:39:19]  So, to try and hopefully not keep us too long, Constantius II, I should have said, he would die in the year 361 and would be succeeded by a man by the name of Flavius Claudius Iulianus, or more often known as Julian the Apostate.
[00:39:37]  Who is known by that name because he was the last pagan emperor of Rome.
[00:39:43]  And though at least nominally raised Christian, he would very quickly, actually at quite a young age, gain a lot of sympathy for the old pagan ways.
[00:39:54]  And I'm studying his life right now.
[00:39:55]  He is actually a really, really tragic and sympathetic figure, but that's for another time.
[00:39:59]  I'll probably make some videos on it.
[00:40:03]  So he would not rule for long, only for a few short years, and he would die.
[00:40:08]  In what at least seems to us appears to be a really stupid and ill thought of campaign against the Persian Empire.
[00:40:15]  But while he did reign, he attempted a very comprehensive revival of traditional Greco Roman religion and suppressing the church.
[00:40:25]  But we know, and there's another important factor as well we know from one of the last pagan historians, Ammianus Marcellinus, who was a contemporary of Julian, I think he even knew him, if my sources are correct, that.
[00:40:39]  Julian kept his pagan piety largely a secret up until his ascension.
[00:40:43]  So I'll ask to bring up quote number five there.
[00:40:46]  So, not number four, we'll skip that, just quote number five.
[00:40:51]  And so, this is what Ammianus says pay attention because this is really, really fascinating.
[00:40:54]  There's a couple of things I want to draw out from this.
[00:40:56]  Although Julian, from the earliest days of his childhood, had been more inclined towards the worship of the pagan gods, and as he gradually grew up, burned with longing to practice it, yet because of his many reasons for anxiety, he observed certain of its rites with the greatest possible secrecy.
[00:41:12]  But when his fears were ended, and he saw that the time had come when he could do as he wished, he revealed the secrets of his hearts, and by plain and formal decrees ordered the temples to be opened, victims brought to the altars, and the worship of the gods restored.
[00:41:28]  And in order to add to the effectiveness of these ordinances, he summoned to the palace the bishops of the Christians, who were of conflicting opinions, and the people, who were also at variance, and politely advised them to lay aside their differences, and each fearlessly and without opposition, To observe his own beliefs.
[00:41:46]  On this, he took a firm stand to the end that, as this freedom increased their dissension, he might afterwards have no fear of a united populace, knowing as he did from experience that no wild beasts are such enemies to mankind as are most of the Christians in their deadly hatred of one another.
[00:42:06]  So, first of all, we've got to appreciate that last line.
[00:42:08]  That does hit hard and it's quite sad, but there is some truth to it that no wild beasts are such enemies to mankind as.
[00:42:18]  As are most of the Christians in their deadly hatred of one another.
[00:42:21]  We can really do a number on each other, sadly.
[00:42:24]  But there's two key points I want to note from this quote.
[00:42:27]  First, because of the, at that point, highly entrenched legal and cultural privilege of Christianity, he was pressured to keep his paganism a secret.
[00:42:38]  He was very much closeted.
[00:42:40]  It's only when, by a mixture of skill and luck, he attained the throne that he became open to it.
[00:42:48]  With his paganism and further legislated in its favor.
[00:42:52]  Why?
[00:42:52]  Because he gained power.
[00:42:54]  And when he had power, he knew hey, I can just do things.
[00:42:57]  You can just do things.
[00:42:58]  I can restore pagan worship.
[00:43:00]  And he did try.
[00:43:01]  But also, the second point, I hope you guys noticed this.
[00:43:05]  On the second point, he deliberately stopped involving the state in the church's affairs, except to suppress them, which he did a few things, but he wasn't very hard.
[00:43:15]  He actually knew from experience that that didn't work.
[00:43:18]  And the explicit goal of that, the explicit goal of withholding state support from the church, was to ensure that the bishops would keep fighting each other.
[00:43:27]  They wouldn't come over their differences.
[00:43:29]  And this would therefore weaken the church.
[00:43:32]  That is a massive testimony.
[00:43:34]  That is a huge admission there.
[00:43:36]  And again, this is at least according to Marcellinus.
[00:43:40]  I keep thinking that maybe I read Julian himself explicitly say this in one of his letters, but I'm not totally sure.
[00:43:45]  But either way, Marcellinus, he's in a very good position to know these things.
[00:43:49]  So I don't see any reason not to accept his testimony.
[00:43:51]  But that's really, really important.
[00:43:53]  Julian was very tactical, he was very shrewd in his governance and in his response to Christianity.
[00:44:02]  And so it is certainly a thing of divine providence that he only reigned a few years, a few short years, and none of his successes carried on the project.
[00:44:10]  Because what he was doing would have been something that could have easily undone the church and relegated it back to a minor cult in the empire.
[00:44:19]  But that's a key thing to keep there as well.
[00:44:21]  Another point in favor of sacralism was that actually, even the enemies of Christianity knew that state involvement in the church was good for the church.
[00:44:30]  It kept it united, it kept it together.
[00:44:33]  And so that's a very important pagan witness.
[00:44:34]  But also, I'll bring up quotes six and seven now.
[00:44:38]  Hopefully, it's on one slide, unless they're on two, if not all good.
[00:44:42]  But these are also from Julian, specifically from a couple of his letters.
[00:44:47]  And this is just what I cite to show that even he recognized, just to show the damage that Christianity had done to paganism at this point.
[00:44:56]  So, in the first one, which is his letter to a high priest, he says, I hold that we ought to observe the laws we have inherited from our forefathers, since it is evident that the gods gave them to us.
[00:45:05]  For they would not be as perfect as they are if they had been derived from mere men.
[00:45:10]  So, pagan theonomy, not based, but cool.
[00:45:13]  Therefore, when I saw that there is among us great indifference about the gods, and all reverence for the heavenly powers has been driven out by impure and vulgar luxury, I always secretly lamented this state of things.
[00:45:24]  And in his second letter, which was actually more of a decree that banned Christians from teaching the secular pagan classics, he says It is true that until now there were many excuses for not attending the temples, and the terror that threatened on all sides absolved men from concealing the truest beliefs about the gods.
[00:45:44]  But since the gods have granted us liberty, It seems to me absurd that men should teach what they do not believe to be sound.
[00:45:50]  So, what we have here and in other places of his is a recognition from Julian that the laws that the Christian emperors put on the books weren't just on the books but not actually enforced in practice.
[00:46:01]  No, no, no.
[00:46:02]  They did damage.
[00:46:02]  They did a lot of damage.
[00:46:04]  They forced people to, including himself, as we read from an earlier quote, to be closeted about their paganism.
[00:46:11]  And it did a number on their traditions.
[00:46:14]  There are many accounts you can find of various temples being destroyed.
[00:46:18]  And eventually, some of them would end up being converted wholesale into churches.
[00:46:22]  But yeah, and if you look in the letters of Julian, especially, a lot of these letters are actually focused on giving orders and giving orders to various lesser officials like priests that he sets up in different regions in order to get affairs in order.
[00:46:40]  Like, hey, open these temples, get sacrifices happening, make sure the priests are really high quality, they're actually very virtuous.
[00:46:46]  He deliberately tries to copy many of the tactics and, in certain ways, teachings of the church.
[00:46:51]  Because he saw them as being very effective for the church's spread and its durability.
[00:46:55]  And so he actually wanted to, in a way, not bring back the folk disconnected nature of the old Greco Roman paganism.
[00:47:05]  He basically wanted to make a pagan church.
[00:47:06]  He basically wanted a bishop like system where, for example, you had the high priest of Alexandria and you had the high priest of Galatia, of Asia, and so on and so forth.
[00:47:16]  And he would tell them, hey, appoint priests in the temples, make sure they're top notch, and so on and so forth.
[00:47:22]  And one more pagan witness I'll bring up is so this will be quote number eight.
[00:47:27]  This will be from the orator.
[00:47:30]  Or rather, well, orator technically, yes, but also the rhetorician and apparently well regarded scholar Libanius in an oration to Emperor Theodosius I, in order to appeal to him that there were Christian mobs basically destroying temples.
[00:47:44]  And he was basically saying to Theodosius, hey, stop them, please.
[00:47:47]  This wasn't part of your imperial law.
[00:47:49]  And he says this No one is so audacious and so ignorant of the proceedings of the courts as to think himself more powerful than the law.
[00:47:58]  When I say the law, I mean the law against sacrifices.
[00:48:01]  Can it be thought that they who are not able to bear the sight of a collector's cloak should despise the power of your government?
[00:48:07]  For I appeal to the guardians of this law.
[00:48:09]  Who has known any of those whom you have plundered, and he's speaking, I believe, to the mob here, to have sacrificed upon the altars, so as the law does not permit?
[00:48:20]  What young or old person, what man, what woman?
[00:48:23]  Who of those inhabiting the same country and not agreeing with the sacrifices in the worship of the gods?
[00:48:29]  Where then is the truth of this charge when they accuse those men of sacrificing contrary to law?
[00:48:34]  Here he's responding to an excuse given by the mobs that, hey, these people were attacking and plundering.
[00:48:39]  They were sacrificing to the gods, which is against the law at this point.
[00:48:42]  And he's saying, no, they weren't doing that.
[00:48:45]  They were not sacrificing to the gods.
[00:48:47]  So you don't have this excuse.
[00:48:49]  What's important here, and he goes on a bit further, basically to say, hey, look, whatever your imperial law is, we're fine with it.
[00:48:55]  We'll keep it.
[00:48:56]  But you haven't decreed that the temples be destroyed by mobs.
[00:48:59]  So please step in and do something about it.
[00:49:01]  This is important because Libanius is not a Christian.
[00:49:04]  He is a pagan.
[00:49:05]  And yet, Because of the legal and cultural hegemony of Christianity at this point, he feels the need to, if you will, grovel to the emperor and make excuses for himself rather than say, Hey, emperor, these guys are saying that we're sacrificing to the gods.
[00:49:20]  We're not, but could you please overturn that law?
[00:49:23]  No, he is saying, We're not sacrificing to the gods.
[00:49:25]  We obey your government.
[00:49:26]  We believe in your government.
[00:49:27]  We want to support it, all right?
[00:49:29]  Because we dare not oppose it.
[00:49:32]  This sounds very, very much like, and I hope this isn't taken the wrong way, it sounds very much like, When in our modern context, Christians are brought up in the court of public opinion, or in some cases, literal court, for speaking against, shall we say, sexual deviancy.
[00:49:49]  And their comments are brought up to this regard, and people are trying to bring an accusation against them on that.
[00:49:54]  And rather than be an actual Christian and say, yeah, I did say that, and what about it?
[00:49:58]  What are you going to do about it?
[00:49:59]  I don't care.
[00:50:01]  My Lord is eternal.
[00:50:02]  I'm going to raise from the dead with him one day.
[00:50:04]  Do whatever you want.
[00:50:05]  No, many Christians will say, Even if they are actually against sexual deviancy, in other words, if they're an actual Christian, they'll still make excuses for themselves.
[00:50:14]  They'll say, Oh, no, no, no, I wasn't doing that.
[00:50:16]  This is out of context.
[00:50:17]  I wasn't making fun of the gays.
[00:50:19]  I wasn't making fun of people with different lifestyles.
[00:50:21]  People can believe and do whatever they want.
[00:50:24]  That is the power of cultural and legal hegemony of a worldview.
[00:50:28]  And in this case, we see that with Libanius, a pagan, where he feels the need to distance himself from those who make sacrifices.
[00:50:36]  He is trying to say, No, no, no, I'm in step with the law.
[00:50:39]  No one's trying to break it.
[00:50:40]  Just please help us in this one little regard.
[00:50:42]  So, that's a very, very important witness as well from another pagan, basically showing that at least many of them were willing to toe the line, that they didn't want to be in the bad books of the emperor who had banned paganism at this point.
[00:50:57]  So, from those witnesses taken together, those key witnesses of Christian authors and of pagan authors, we see that the imperial legislation, the imperial decrees against paganism, Paganism were extremely effective.
[00:51:16]  They were quite effective.
[00:51:17]  They didn't completely wipe out paganism, of course, but they did a number on it such that people, such that pagans, many pagans, A, they felt the need to toe the line for a while, but B, when one of them did gain power such that he could try to reverse things, he was extremely aggressive about it.
[00:51:33]  He was extremely proactive.
[00:51:36]  And he himself bears witness that he had a lot of work to do because so much damage was done to the traditional religions of the pagan world.
[00:51:47]  And just as another example of this, I won't bring up the quote just so we can keep moving.
[00:51:52]  But there was an event where the bishop of, where at the time the bishop of Alexandria, and this was under, I believe, I believe this was under Theodosius I, the bishop of Alexandria at the time, he had actually requested that the local, and this was Theophilus of Alexandria, that the local temple of Dionysius in Alexandria would be given to his control.
[00:52:17]  And the emperor, Gave the temple to his control.
[00:52:20]  So, state power there.
[00:52:22]  And what Theophilus did was completely despoil it of its idols, including, according to Sosimon, who records the event, its quote unquote phalloi, which you can probably tell what that is, being a temple of Dionysius and the nature of the word.
[00:52:38]  And he took those things out and he paraded those items in the street as a way to ridicule the pagan religion.
[00:52:44]  But the local pagans, in response, were very enraged.
[00:52:47]  And so they started rioting.
[00:52:49]  They set up shop in the One of the most grand temples in Alexandria at the time, called the Serapaeum, which was a temple to a syncretic god known as Serapis, a combination of some Greek and Egyptian gods.
[00:53:03]  And they were in that place, they were taking Christians hostage, torturing them, killing them, forcing them to offer sacrifices, at least according to Sosimon and possibly one other, Rufinus.
[00:53:14]  And what ended up happening was the state intervened.
[00:53:17]  Theodosius said, All right, hey, hey, everyone, let's stop right now.
[00:53:20]  You pagans who did this stuff, And for the sake of bringing peace, he said, Look, I'll give you guys a pardon if you stop right now.
[00:53:27]  But I'll also declare this is what Sozeman says I'll also declare that these Christians who were killed were martyrs who died in defense of the faith.
[00:53:35]  And with that, apparently, that emboldened the Christians so much and disheartened the pagans a lot that the Christians were able to take the Serapaeum.
[00:53:45]  After which, it was basically, well, not destroyed, destroyed, but it was eventually converted by the Christians into a church.
[00:53:56]  And so that's just one of numerous, numerous stories we have of Christian physical and cultural victories over local paganism, importantly, with the backing of the state.
[00:54:08]  So that's a very, very important detail there.
[00:54:10]  And the last thing I'll do is just point to a quote, quote number 10, which is another imperial decree, this one from the co emperors Gratian, Valentinian, and Theodosius to, at the time, the proconsul of Asia.
[00:54:28]  And so.

=== Rome as Bound Hay (11:46) ===

[00:54:29]  This basically sums up everything I've been talking about in this, and this is how I'll end this section.
[00:54:35]  And he decrees, and this was given, I believe, in 381, July 30th.
[00:54:40]  He says, We command that all churches shall immediately be surrendered to those bishops who confess the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are of one majesty and virtue, of the same glory, and of one splendor, to those bishops who produce no dissonance by unholy distinction, but who affirm the concept of the Trinity by the assertion of three persons and the unity of the divinity, to those bishops who appear to have been associated in the communion of Nectarius, bishop of the Church of Constantinople, and a bunch of other bishops.
[00:55:10]  It's a long list.
[00:55:11]  Those bishops who are of the communion and fellowship of such acceptable priests must be permitted to obtain the catholic churches.
[00:55:18]  All, however, who dissent from the communion of the faith of those who have been expressly mentioned in this special enumeration shall be expelled from their churches as manifest heretics and hereafter shall be altogether denied the right and power to obtain churches in order that the priesthood of the true Nicene faith may remain pure and after the clear regulations of our law there shall be no opportunity for malicious subtlety.
[00:55:42]  So that's basically this whole section up.
[00:55:45]  We have explicit imperial legislation here, and there's multiple others that are just like this, which is evidence that it needed enforcement and needed reissuing over time.
[00:55:55]  But we would see the effect of this with time, where the various heretical sects would be forced to give over their churches to the Orthodox, lowercase o, Nicene Christians.
[00:56:08]  And bishops, various bishops of these heretical sects, would also be deposed and their bishoprics given to Nicene Christians.
[00:56:15]  And this was done by an act of the state.
[00:56:18]  It wasn't by a pure mass voluntary persuasion of everybody to the correct opinion.
[00:56:25]  It was the state who carried both the carrot and the stick and prodded the backside of the heretics and of the Christian church in order to set things in order.
[00:56:36]  It is because of this imperial legislation that we modern Christians, whether sacralists or not, Christian nationalists, theonomists, whoever, we all take for granted.
[00:56:48]  The Nicene faith and just how normal it is.
[00:56:50]  And so that's why we act all shocked and amazed when we see modern day Arians, for example, or those who deny the deity of the Holy Spirit specifically.
[00:57:00]  And yet, this wasn't taken for granted in the fourth and fifth centuries, but especially the fourth.
[00:57:07]  Arianism was quite widespread.
[00:57:08]  And yet, because of the intervention of the state and God's providential guidance of at least many emperors to the true Nicene faith, They were able to, with the sword, stamp out Arianism for the most part and create fertile ground for the rest of Christendom.
[00:57:27]  And so that's the point I want to leave off of for this section.
[00:57:30]  I'll let you guys, if you want to give some thoughts or whatever, that in the early church, it is fundamentally the state that created the soil that we take for granted for the Christian faith today.
[00:57:41]  It is state intervention that gives us Christianity as we know it.
[00:57:46]  Yeah.
[00:57:46]  Wes and Michael, what do you guys think?
[00:57:48]  I think it's funny, Julian the Apostate, he does something very interesting, which is try to rebuild the third temple, right?
[00:57:54]  It's dispensationalist, Julian the Apostate joining hands together.
[00:57:58]  And it's one of those historical events.
[00:58:00]  Foxhound brought it up, but contemporary accounts recount that literally fireballs, either it was gas fissions that came up from the ground that exploded and killed workers, an earthquake.
[00:58:09]  But you mentioned Paul's just a short couple of years.
[00:58:12]  One of the things he does there, for one, I think to attack the supremacy of Christ, having raised from the dead, is having said that the third temple will be destroyed.
[00:58:20]  So, to attack Christ, and then also to, I think, was to win Jewish support at the time.
[00:58:25]  One of the things he did during his short term was try to rebuild the third temple.
[00:58:28]  So, when you think of Julian the Apostate, all the things Paul mentioned, but also the guy who literally was like, well, we could remake it.
[00:58:35]  Third temple, we've had two, yes, why not a third?
[00:58:38]  But it didn't go very well.
[00:58:39]  Yeah.
[00:58:40]  I remember I listened to a series of lectures that were a recording of a seminary class.
[00:58:45]  So I wasn't in the class.
[00:58:46]  I was just listening to the lectures.
[00:58:47]  And it was on church history.
[00:58:49]  And the professor was talking about the events that you've been walking us through here, Paul.
[00:58:56]  And he talked about how, in some cases, it was like one or two years where what is now Orthodox doctrine was in power because an emperor would come into power who would assert that.
[00:59:08]  And then in this time period coming out of Nicaea, it was kind of back and forth.
[00:59:12]  Between emperors who were in power just for a little while, and it was going back and forth, and back and forth and, and he, he did not have a category or a framework for what to do with the fact that essentially orthodox doctrine came down to the last emperor that was able to exert the political power to enforce this, so much so that Arianism was no longer able to rear its head.
[00:59:36]  He, you know, his point was just, well, that's how God sovereignly worked.
[00:59:39]  But um I, I don't want to throw shade at him, but he was.
[00:59:42]  He was, as an American, visibly uncomfortable with the idea That a political body, the emperor, had been really, when you look at it, obviously under God's providence, but had been the deciding factor on establishing orthodoxy.
[00:59:57]  And I think what you're saying here, Paul, is actually this has been how God has chosen to use often and in numerous times throughout the church.
[01:00:06]  Precisely.
[01:00:07]  Yeah, precisely true.
[01:00:08]  I feel like I wanna, just before we move on, I feel like I wanna start, like, I don't know, give like a course or like an institute just on the education of this issue.
[01:00:18]  And you know how all the best ones, they always have some Latin phrase or whatever.
[01:00:22]  I want to make one where it says, sumus implicitera gereris, which is Latin for we can just do things.
[01:00:29]  So, wouldn't that be nice?
[01:00:31]  Yeah, there's also, real quick, there's also so many other, I mean, besides just doctrine, as important as it is, especially primary doctrine when it comes to theology proper and understanding the Trinity and all these things that we take for granted,
[01:00:45]  like Paul has said, we take them for granted, not realizing the immense battles that were fought and How so much of faithful, true doctrine that we assume today was ultimately both arrived at and preserved by the state.
[01:01:02]  But in addition to that, doctrine aside for a moment, there's also so many other ecclesiastical funny business and discrepancies and challenges that would be avoided.
[01:01:18]  And we all are aware that any civil power can be.
[01:01:23]  Abuse, but um, but I do, I can't help but think of you know, I've thought about this several times over the course of my ministry, particularly in pastoral ministry.
[01:01:35]  But I thought, you know, at a certain point, especially for Protestants, as things devolve more and more and more into where not just Protestant denominations of which there are many, but especially when you start getting into non denominational, you know, independent Baptist churches and these kinds of things.
[01:01:56]  Just when it comes to ecclesiology, when it comes to ordination.
[01:02:02]  And I can't help but like thinking of even myself and some of the trouble that I would have been spared as a young man if there had been, you know, some kind of system preserved that would have just said, no, you know, that just would have said, no, these are the standards.
[01:02:20]  You know, sometimes the reason I feel like it's worth mentioning is I think sometimes people, People will be connecting the dots and coming to the logical, the right conclusions from things like Paul is saying, things that we're agreeing with.
[01:02:34]  And they'll think, yeah, well, then, you know, the Christian faith should be more formal.
[01:02:39]  It should be more organized.
[01:02:41]  It should be more protected.
[01:02:44]  And one of the logical conclusions that comes out of this, and I've said it before publicly and I got in trouble for it, but I'll say it again people think, well, if that's the case, you know, John Bunyan being placed in prison for 12 years, you know, for preaching without a license, you know, then what about all these YouTubers?
[01:03:03]  What about you, Joel?
[01:03:05]  And my answer to that is I think it's consistent and not inconsistent or hypocritical.
[01:03:12]  But what I've thought for some time now is that I'm working by the grace of God, I'm working towards a rediscovery and renewal of Christendom that would not allow for me to do the things that I've done.
[01:03:28]  The Christendom that I would like to see established would not allow for Joe Blow.
[01:03:37]  To have a YouTube channel of 120,000 plus people tuning in and listening.
[01:03:45]  It actually would have boundaries, it would have requirements, it would have prerequisites and standards of who is teaching doctrine.
[01:03:55]  And I think we just have to admit as Protestants that the way that I describe it is that Rome is kind of like a neat sheath of hay that's bound and tied and all, you know.
[01:04:10]  Put in order, it's proper, it's organized, it's clean.
[01:04:15]  But if the needle is the truth and the hay is falsehoods, then the needle, especially at the time of Martin Luther, was largely missing.
[01:04:27]  So you have a nice sheath of hay, but you don't have a needle.
[01:04:31]  And what Protestantism has done, not initially, but I think it is the inevitable outcome that was bound to happen over time, 500 years to be precise.
[01:04:44]  Is that we have some needles, but instead of a sheath of hay, we have just a hay pile.
[01:04:50]  It's just this gargantuan, ever growing by the day, this larger, larger, larger pile of hay.
[01:04:57]  And there are needles inside, but it could take, in some cases, depending on your testimony and what church you start with and where you're born and those kinds of things and your upbringing, it could take you a lifetime to sort through the pile of hay to find one of those.
[01:05:17]  And so there really is, there are truths, I believe, within the Protestant church.
[01:05:22]  But there is so much disorganization and so many falsehoods, and that it's like diving into a swimming pool full of hay and swimming through it.
[01:05:34]  And it could take a lifetime to find the truth.
[01:05:37]  And so I think just recognizing, I guess my point is to recognize that people are quick, especially Protestants, to point out the pros and not so much the pros, but just the cons.
[01:05:49]  Of a more organized religion, a more organized expression of Christianity like Roman Catholicism, and say, well, look at the seemingly very unlimited degrees of power and the potential for abuse, and look at the Council of Trent, and look at indulgences, and look at all these things that have happened in the name of Christianity through the Roman Catholic Church.

=== Counting the Cons of State Involvement (04:56) ===

[01:06:16]  And I acknowledge those, but I would simply say, what is the alternative?
[01:06:23]  Look at Joel Osteen's church.
[01:06:24]  I mean, look at, go to one town in America and look at the number of Protestant churches and then tell me which percentage of those churches even have a discernible gospel proclamation.
[01:06:38]  You know, and then, you know, like, it's like, well, look at what Rome's doing.
[01:06:43]  Okay, but how many churches, Protestant churches, have female pastors?
[01:06:47]  How many of them are gay affirming?
[01:06:49]  How many of them have terrible, terrible doctrine?
[01:06:53]  And then, even for those like ours, by the grace of God, that is a biblical church, there are still certain shortcomings because Protestantism, at least in its most recent progressions, allows for anything.
[01:07:11]  It's kind of an anything goes scenario.
[01:07:14]  And so, we don't take for granted that these things just happen because faithful Christians found the truth and passed it down to their children, generation after generation, for 1700 years.
[01:07:27]  And so, Therefore, you know, I'm a Trinitarian Christian.
[01:07:30]  And we don't realize, no, there was a civil system and civil leaders that put their hand on the scale and ensured, right?
[01:07:42]  Like people will say, oh, well, you know, they'll get into conspiracies with Constantine and say, yeah, you're telling me, Joel, I know that Constantine put his hand on the scale.
[01:07:50]  They don't realize the immense positive fruit that came about from that.
[01:07:55]  It didn't just happen.
[01:07:56]  It wasn't, in other words, long story short, it was not organic.
[01:08:01]  It was organized.
[01:08:03]  It was formal.
[01:08:04]  It was official.
[01:08:05]  And without that, again, you can go back to the question of what can God do?
[01:08:10]  You know, like, well, God could have done it another way.
[01:08:12]  He could have preserved the truth.
[01:08:14]  Yeah, but what did God do?
[01:08:16]  What did God do?
[01:08:17]  And not just in one isolated instance.
[01:08:20]  I hope that one of the major themes that you're picking up from the other Paul and the point of this episode is it's not just Constantine, it's not just a one off, but you're talking about 1700 years, give or take, of.
[01:08:35]  The Christian faith, and that time and time again, when Christianity was on the ropes and almost became extinct, or when heresy was winning the day, where you would have had a quasi Christian church, but it would have been heretical from that point on, time and time again, it is the civil magistrate who comes in in those moments where Christianity is almost lost and puts his finger on the scales and ensures that it continues.
[01:09:04]  And I think for us not to, that doesn't mean that you don't have to account for the cons.
[01:09:10]  You can account for the cons of the state having involvement in the Christian faith.
[01:09:16]  You can have, you know, like you should account for, okay, what is the cost, right?
[01:09:21]  Count the cost that somebody like, you know, like John Bunyan, you know, is placed in prison for 12 years, you know, or this or that.
[01:09:29]  There are certain costs.
[01:09:32]  But then you look at the pros, and I don't know if we would be sitting here as Western Nicene Christians today.
[01:09:43]  Apart from the state's involvement, that is a major con.
[01:09:46]  And then you have to consider the alternative.
[01:09:48]  So the state isn't Christian and it has little involvement.
[01:09:54]  And so now, you know, you don't have 200, you know, something Baptists over the course of centuries being drowned.
[01:10:03]  And instead, you have 70 million babies being aborted.
[01:10:07]  Like, no matter how you slice it, when I look at this and I think of the faith that we've inherited, And the way that God preserved it.
[01:10:17]  And I look at the casualties because there are casualties, but I look at the casualties from sacralism and then I look at the casualties from secularism.
[01:10:27]  And it's just, no matter how I add it up, I'm just, every single time, I'm like, it's hard to fathom it being worse than this, than what we have today.
[01:10:38]  So let's do this.
[01:10:39]  We're about to jump into the English Reformation.
[01:10:41]  I also know for a third segment, Paul, you prepared also some common rebuttals.
[01:10:45]  So we'll hear our third commercial break.
[01:10:46]  We'll go into the English Reformation.
[01:10:47]  Take the time you need.
[01:10:48]  And then, depending how long we'll have left, we can hit as many as the rebuttals, especially the big ones that you want to tackle.
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=== Henry VIII Becomes Supreme Head (07:49) ===

[01:13:21]  All right, we are back.
[01:13:23]  Go ahead, Wes.
[01:13:24]  You're going to say something?
[01:13:25]  I'll turn it right over to Paul.
[01:13:26]  Okay.
[01:13:29]  Great, we are so back.
[01:13:30]  Quick correction on my Latin.
[01:13:31]  It is possumus implicitera gereres.
[01:13:34]  But anyway, just to put that to the side, I want to move now to the English Reformation, just as a second case study of what we're talking about here.
[01:13:42]  And for some context, this is when, as everyone would agree, sacralism was in full effect, but specifically for Romanism.
[01:13:53]  And what I want to show is that this was not overcome purely, or I'd argue even primarily, by a voluntary revival where.
[01:14:03]  Everybody was just intellectually persuaded, both bishops and all the laymen and everyone in between.
[01:14:09]  Now, key people were persuaded.
[01:14:11]  That's the important thing.
[01:14:12]  The key people in the key positions of power were persuaded.
[01:14:15]  And then they used that power to give everyone a bit of a nudge in the right direction.
[01:14:20]  That's the key thing I want to demonstrate here.
[01:14:22]  But to focus on England, to give a bit of context, and also at the same time to knock out a common myth about the foundation of Anglicanism, the ball got rolling when Henry VIIII, well, with King Henry VIII, because the The Pope at the time, Clement VII, refused to grant his request for an annulment of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon, which he requested because he was not getting a male heir, which for a kingdom that could be quite a disaster.
[01:14:51]  He had legit concerns there.
[01:14:53]  He was not getting a male heir from her despite years of trying.
[01:14:56]  And he actually, in further, he actually thought this was a curse due to marrying his brother's widow.
[01:15:03]  That's who Catherine was.
[01:15:05]  He believed that scripture actually forbade that.
[01:15:07]  So, what he did was he actually commissioned a bunch of clergy, including Thomas Cramer, who will become very important later, to survey the opinions of the major universities of England and in Europe on this question whether his request is a legitimate one, where it's actually good before the eyes of God.
[01:15:25]  Now, he got those opinions back.
[01:15:27]  And from what I've gathered when I've actually read through the survey of those opinions, it appears that many of them did, possibly even most of them actually, agreed with Henry's case.
[01:15:38]  And so he presented that again to Clement VII, saying, hey, Here's my case.
[01:15:43]  I've got good precedent.
[01:15:44]  Please, please, Papa, please give me the annulment.
[01:15:47]  Please, sir, can I have some more?
[01:15:49]  But this too was rejected by Clement VII, and it wasn't unusual, by the way, for kings to request annulments from popes.
[01:15:58]  But just in this case, and for certain political reasons, which I actually won't get into, so Pope Clement VII wasn't just some holier than thou, oh, you can't do this, Henry, I won't let you know there were actually political concerns as well.
[01:16:10]  And so he rejected Henry's request again.
[01:16:12]  Now, because of this, Henry was, despite this, Henry was still convinced of the validity of his case.
[01:16:19]  So, what he would end up doing was calling what's now known as the English Reformation Parliament, which lasted from 1529 to 1536, and which saw most of the fundamental ecclesiological changes that would persist to this day, largely in the Church of England, including and especially the 1534 Act of Supremacy.
[01:16:41]  And so that will be quote number 11.
[01:16:43]  So, I want to read that when it comes up.
[01:16:45]  And this Act of Supremacy is basically declaring that Henry, or more properly, the King of England and his heirs, Would be the supreme head of the Church of England.
[01:16:56]  So it says, Be it enacted by the authority of this present Parliament that the King, our sovereign Lord, his heirs and successors, kings of this realm, shall be taken, accepted, and reputed the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England called Anglicana Ecclesia, and that our said sovereign Lord, his heirs and successors, kings of this realm, shall have full power and authority from time to time to visit, repress, redress, reform, a bunch of other verbs.
[01:17:24]  All such errors, heresies, abuses, bunch more nouns, whatsoever they be, which by any manner, spiritual authority, or jurisdiction ought or may lawfully be reformed, repressed, ordered, verbs, most to the pleasure of Almighty God, the increase of virtue in Christ's religion, and for the conservation of peace, unity, and tranquility in the realm.
[01:17:48]  So, first of all, based, but second of all, this was absolutely essential to the possibility of the.
[01:17:58]  English Reformation.
[01:17:59]  This made it all possible, the king declaring himself the supreme head of the church.
[01:18:02]  And actually, when we look at the data we just glossed over, and I do mean gloss, there is so much more out there on the early church situation.
[01:18:13]  Although the emperors, as far as I've read, never called themselves like the supreme head and governor of the church, they might be a bit afraid to do that, if anything.
[01:18:21]  Although there is some lofty language from the period, including from some fathers, in calling them like guardians of the church or something like that.
[01:18:29]  Nonetheless, in function, practically speaking, the ancient Christian emperors had this role, including on multiple occasions over and against the Bishop of Rome.
[01:18:39]  Again, this is the Protestant apologetics coming out.
[01:18:41]  But point being, what Henry was doing here was actually not unprecedented, unlike what many people think.
[01:18:46]  The Christian emperors in the Roman Empire and elsewhere basically had the same role.
[01:18:50]  Henry was just here saying, I want to take that back now.
[01:18:54]  And so that's what makes everything very much possible.
[01:18:58]  Now, that said, Henry VIIII, as people should know, was not a Protestant.
[01:19:02]  He was not actually very friendly to certain claims by the Reformation.
[01:19:06]  In fact, before this all, he made a work called The Defense of the Seven Sacraments, which was a work against Martin Luther and his sacramentology, for which the Pope at the time awarded him the title of Defense, I think it's Defensor Fide or Defender of the Faith.
[01:19:24]  Unfortunately, Henry didn't change his mind on that, although there is some evidence I've read that actually he was quite sympathetic to a number of Martin Luther's reforms, especially as regards.
[01:19:34]  The clergy in that, which is very clear in the English Reformation Parliament because they did a number on the institutional church there.
[01:19:40]  But be that as it may, it is after Henry VIII that we get a very young king, Edward VI, and he was actually quite sympathetic and quite keen on the Reformation.
[01:19:52]  And so a number of bishops of the time took advantage of this.
[01:19:57]  Those who were actually quite convinced of the Reformation and the aforementioned Thomas Cranmer, it was his journey to the continent for King Henry VIII's case that saw him find the Reformation and basically bring it back to England.
[01:20:10]  He and a few other bishops, and the key ones, so Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, some other key bishops who were for the Reformation included Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, and also the chaplain to Edward VI, Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London, and John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester.
[01:20:28]  So these were some of the key figures, perhaps the foremost prominent, although there were many others, of course.
[01:20:33]  These men, under the support of Edward VI, took advantage of the situation to really press Reformation theology.
[01:20:42]  And worship throughout the Church of England as within their own jurisdictions.
[01:20:47]  So, one of the great examples of this, or a couple of them rather, are the 1548 Act of Uniformity and the 1551 Act of Uniformity.
[01:20:56]  Both of these, respectively, published new editions of what's called now the Book, or was called then as well, the Book of Common Prayer, which was the standard liturgical document to be enforced across the Church of England.

=== Enforcing Common Prayer Liturgy (15:39) ===

[01:21:10]  It had to be used for worship.
[01:21:13]  So, the 1549 was enforced in the first act of uniformity, and that was basically crafted by Thomas Cranmer.
[01:21:19]  And he also crafted the 1551 revision.
[01:21:22]  And what's noticeable between the two, the 1549 is already quite Protestant, quite reformed, but the 1551 Book of Common Prayer is even more so.
[01:21:32]  It goes harder on the reformed aspects, including the abolishment of certain vestments to a large degree, as well as more emphasis on.
[01:21:43]  The north side facing Lord's table structure of the Lord's Supper, as opposed to the old system of like an ad orientum, not necessarily ad orientum, but east wall altar, stuff like that, basically trying to go anti Romanism.
[01:22:01]  And so, with that, I'll bring up quote number 12, which is from the 1549 Act of Uniformity, just to basically give perspective for how this liturgy, it wasn't just like, oh, well, we kings, we kind of like this liturgy, so like, hey, the churches, you guys can use it.
[01:22:18]  No, It was mandated.
[01:22:20]  So it says, If any whatsoever minister that ought or should sing or say common prayer mentioned in the said book or minister the sacraments, shall after the said feast of Pentecost next coming refuse to use the said common prayers or to minister the sacraments in such cathedral or parish church or other places as he should use or minister the same.
[01:22:42]  By the way, I'm heavily, heavily cutting down this quote.
[01:22:45]  It's way bigger than this.
[01:22:46]  Or shall use willfully and obstinately standing in the same.
[01:22:50]  Any other rite, ceremony, order, form, or manner of mass, openly or privily, so in other words, if you use any other form, publicly or in private, or shall preach, declare, or speak anything in the derogation or depraving of the said book, or anything therein contained, or of any part thereof, shall lose and forfeit to the king's highness the profit of such one of his spiritual benefices or promotions as it shall please the king's highness to assign or appoint,
[01:23:17]  coming and arising in one whole year next after his conviction, and also that the same person so convicted.
[01:23:24]  Shall for the same offense suffer imprisonment for the space of six months without bail or main prize.
[01:23:30]  So, in other words, you pray the Book of Common Prayer, you clergy out there, you pray the Book of Common Prayer, you use it, and if you don't use it, if you use something else other than it, or if you speak against it, you're going to jail.
[01:23:44]  Simple as that.
[01:23:45]  So, that, as we can tell today, that had a great influence on the worship of the Church of England.
[01:23:52]  Obviously, we don't use the 1549, we use a later revision, primarily the 1662.
[01:23:58]  Which would also be enforced.
[01:24:00]  But I'll get to that a little bit later.
[01:24:02]  This situation of the enforcing of heavily reformed doctrine in the Church of England would allow for numerous changes like this.
[01:24:09]  Another example is from the Bishop of London, Nicholas Ridley, when one of his first acts upon entering the See of London was to remove the stone altars, which were perceived as representing Romanist sacramentology of the propitiatory sacrifice of the Mass and of the Eucharist.
[01:24:28]  And so.
[01:24:29]  He gave the following injunction, this one's quote number 13, to every parish in London.
[01:24:35]  This is an important thing to note.
[01:24:37]  He says, Whereas in divers places some use the Lord's board after the form of a table and some of an altar, whereby dissension is perceived to arise among the unlearned, therefore wishing a godly unity to be observed in all our dioceses, and for that the form of a table may more move and turn the simple from the old superstitious opinions of the Popish Mass, I love that word, and to the right use of the Lord's Supper.
[01:25:03]  We exhort the curates, churchwardens, and questmen here present to erect and set up the Lord's board after the form of an honest table, decently covered in such place of the choir or chancel as shall be thought most meet for their discretion and agreement, so that the ministers with their communicants may have their place separated from the rest of the people, and to take down and abolish all other by altars or tables.
[01:25:29]  Now, let's keep this in perspective, all right?
[01:25:31]  This is a bishop.
[01:25:33]  Of an established church.
[01:25:35]  This is in a diocese where every single legal church in that region, in London, was under his authority and was backed by the power and the law of the king.
[01:25:49]  Okay?
[01:25:49]  So he sent out this injunction.
[01:25:51]  It went to every parish and it was enforced.
[01:25:54]  And injunctions like this and numerous others from the Reformation period, there's a lot of documentary evidence and even archaeological evidence.
[01:26:05]  Of what that did.
[01:26:06]  So, if one wants a decent survey of that, albeit from a Romanist perspective, so he's obviously not quite happy with it, people can look up Eamon Duffy, E A M O N Duffy, his book, The Stripping of the Altars, which basically surveys the on the ground effects of the Reformation in English religious life, positive or negative, whatever your perspective.
[01:26:29]  The point I just want to make here is whether you like it, and for me personally, I'm a bit more on the lowercase c Catholic end.
[01:26:35]  Of Anglicanism.
[01:26:36]  I'm actually quite a fan of altars.
[01:26:37]  I'm quite an altar enjoyer myself.
[01:26:39]  So I'm not a fan of that injunction.
[01:26:41]  But what I'm pointing to it for, even though I understand the rationale, but what I point to it for is just to show that this was the power of the church with the backing of the state.
[01:26:51]  They were able to make these changes in many cases, all else being equal, at the drop of a hat.
[01:26:56]  They could do these things.
[01:26:58]  They didn't have to consciously persuade everybody.
[01:27:01]  They were able to make these changes, which the effects of which are felt to this day in the global Anglican tradition.
[01:27:10]  Now, following this, unfortunately, Edward VI wouldn't live for long.
[01:27:14]  He would actually die quite young.
[01:27:16]  And though he made an attempt with his privy council, his inner council, to ensure that his cousin, Lady Jane Grey, would get the throne, unfortunately, because he definitely didn't want Mary to, because Mary was still very much sympathetic to Romanism, he, unfortunately, through political shenanigans, ended up getting the throne.
[01:27:38]  And so we know of her today as Bloody Mary for a reason.
[01:27:42]  And that is because she sought to completely reverse the effects of the Reformation.
[01:27:47]  Both by Edward and even by Henry.
[01:27:49]  She brought England back under the authority of the Church of Rome and she sought to systematically try and execute unrepentant reformers.
[01:28:00]  And this includes all four of those bishops I mentioned earlier, those really massive foundational men for the English Reformation Thomas Cramer, John Hooper, Nicholas Ridley, Hugh Latimer.
[01:28:11]  And according to one list I found, approximately 280 other men who were supporting the English Reformation.
[01:28:19]  All of them were burned at the stake.
[01:28:21]  All of them were executed.
[01:28:22]  They didn't recant.
[01:28:22]  Thomas Cramer did initially cave in, but he went to be executed anyway and ended up actually before that saying, you know what?
[01:28:30]  No, I own this.
[01:28:31]  I support this.
[01:28:32]  I'm going to die.
[01:28:33]  I'm going to die for my faith.
[01:28:36]  And on that, I actually recommend there's a couple of little books here.
[01:28:39]  I recommend people can pick up what they want.
[01:28:41]  Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, both of these are short booklets on the life of these men, both by the Reverend Dr. Mark Erngie, an Anglican clergyman and actually professor of church history.
[01:28:51]  Here in Sydney, in Moore Theological College.
[01:28:53]  So, I highly recommend people pick these up.
[01:28:55]  I actually got these from him personally.
[01:28:56]  They're really, really good summaries.
[01:28:58]  And so, yeah, Mary was doing that.
[01:29:01]  She was reversing the English Reformation.
[01:29:04]  She could just do things too, unfortunately.
[01:29:06]  Our enemies can do things as well when they have power.
[01:29:08]  But thankfully, she wouldn't rule for long.
[01:29:10]  She would gain power in 1553, but die in 1558.
[01:29:14]  So, just five years of rule.
[01:29:16]  She still did some damage, but not as much as she could have.
[01:29:18]  And so, we actually see a very fascinating convergence between her and Julian the Apostate, where They both took power in an environment that was hostile to their ways.
[01:29:30]  There was a movement going that was systematically destroying traditional ways of doing things.
[01:29:35]  But Julian and Mary were both sympathetic to those traditional ways.
[01:29:39]  And so when they got power, they tried their best to reverse it.
[01:29:43]  But unfortunately, they only ruled for a short time.
[01:29:45]  They couldn't do everything they were able to do.
[01:29:48]  But more importantly, because they didn't have any other key allies to take power after them, it allowed the movement to continue.
[01:29:54]  And so that's a very critical, critical lesson for us where.
[01:29:58]  If and when we as Christians take power in various positions, we have to make sure it's not just a one man pony.
[01:30:04]  Yes, the great man is a thing.
[01:30:05]  Yes, the Christian prince is a thing.
[01:30:07]  But there's also still going to be the Christian heir.
[01:30:09]  You're still going to have someone where once you lose your power, whether you die or you are taken out of the position for whatever reason, unforeseen circumstances, you need to make sure if you want your changes, if you want your project to continue, that those who take power after you are on the same page.
[01:30:27]  That's a very, very important.
[01:30:28]  Critical lesson there.
[01:30:31]  But thankfully, again, Mary would die after a short period.
[01:30:36]  And her sister Elizabeth, who was sympathetic to the Reformation, not as hyper reformed as the past clergymen like Cromer and others, but she was very much in favor of the Reformation, she continued the project after Mary's death.
[01:30:50]  And she would end up affirming the finalization of what we know now as the 39 Articles of Religion, which is a foundational.
[01:30:58]  Confessional document of Anglicanism, sorry, Anglo Catholics, it is confessional.
[01:31:03]  And she would enforce that by the state through the Subscription Act of 1571.
[01:31:11]  And I don't want to.
[01:31:13]  People can look that up for themselves.
[01:31:15]  I'll get us moving along just so we can get some objections as well before we're done.
[01:31:19]  But basically, if people look up the Subscription Act of 1571, this basically enforced subscription to the 39 Articles of Religion for all bishops and clergy.
[01:31:31]  So, not necessarily for laymen, because that wouldn't really be super realistic, but for all clergy of the Church of England, it was enforced such that one of the very last lines in the quote I do have, it says, quote, Upon pain that every such person, every such person, rather, which shall not before the said feast do as is above appointed, that is, subscribe to the articles and give an authentic declaration of it to the bishop, shall be ipso facto deprived,
[01:32:01]  and all his ecclesiastical promotions shall be void, as if he then were naturally dead.
[01:32:07]  So, in other words, just like in the ancient church, as we read with the legislation from the Christian emperors, if you don't subscribe to The authentic faith as we legally define it, you lose all your privileges.
[01:32:21]  You lose your office, you lose your churches, you're gone, you're done.
[01:32:24]  See you later.
[01:32:26]  Now, what we see here is the effect of this in Anglicanism today, as we know.
[01:32:35]  This thing that we call Anglicanism today, whenever you see it in real life or if you look it up on the internet, inevitably a huge amount of space and discussion focuses on the 39 articles of religion and the Book of Common Prayer, especially the 1662 version, but also its prior versions.
[01:32:51]  Now, What this proves, whether you go to almost any given Anglican church where even if they don't formally require subscription to those things, they're at least still almost always highly regarded and at least well known, but especially in the actual Church of England today as well, notwithstanding its current ongoing apostasy.
[01:33:11]  What this shows is that because of the, and this is my final point for this section, what this shows is that the near absolute power of the state, Over the Church of England, allowed these true Reformed Catholic documents of the 39 Articles, the Book of Common Prayer, and a few others as well to become absolutely entrenched in the Christian life of the Church of England.
[01:33:38]  And following that, the Church of England's branches throughout the British colonies in the world, including here in Australia, the 39 Articles of Religion and the Book of Common Prayer still have an extremely high, minimally cultural power over the Church of England here in Australia.
[01:33:56]  Or the Anglican Church in Australia, of Australia.
[01:33:59]  And to the point where, again, even notwithstanding various liberal, a lot of liberal crap that's making its way in right now, in the meetings, in the synods, the authority of the articles and the Book of Common Prayer is at least nominally held up.
[01:34:16]  And it does have an effect, it does have a very positive effect.
[01:34:19]  And from what we see with this evidence before us, that wasn't just because of everyone being persuaded by the Book of Common Prayer.
[01:34:25]  The bishops, Cranmer, Ridley, and others, they didn't one by one go to every individual and every priest and say, Hey, here's the BCP, here's the 39 articles, here's why you should like them.
[01:34:35]  No, they didn't do that.
[01:34:36]  Not everyone had to like them.
[01:34:37]  The right people had to like those things and to enforce them on the churches, even if they didn't like it at first.
[01:34:43]  But because of their maintenance of that enforcement over generations, those things became absolutely entrenched in Church of England worship, in Church of England identity, such that it is now, because of the expansion of the British Empire, We had a co extensive expansion of Anglicanism, of what we probably call the Reformed Catholic faith through that tradition.
[01:35:10]  And that is all thanks to state enforcement, not pure persuasion.
[01:35:15]  It was done by state enforcement, which I'll add as well was absolutely inspired by the Holy Spirit.
[01:35:20]  It absolutely was.
[01:35:21]  Because the doctrines of the Church of England, of Anglicanism as we know it today, I believe are the truest expression of the Christian faith.
[01:35:29]  I believe it absolutely was a work of the Spirit that the right men in power would gain these opinions and would enforce true doctrine upon the churches and make it.
[01:35:42]  Become thoroughly entrenched in it such that now it's everywhere.
[01:35:47]  It's everywhere.
[01:35:47]  It has the level of influence that almost nothing else has.
[01:35:51]  And that is thanks to state power.
[01:35:53]  And with that, I think I will.
[01:35:58]  I had one last quote, but I think I'll leave it at that because I think it's a good point to end this Reformation section on.
[01:36:05]  Just a reminder, too, we've got all the quotes.
[01:36:06]  It'll be a link in the description of the YouTube channels.
[01:36:08]  You want to look these up, you want to link to them, see Paul's definition again of sacralism.
[01:36:12]  It's all there for your access.
[01:36:15]  Great, very helpful.
[01:36:16]  Thank you, Paul, for just taking us through history and showing us the prevalence of the state's work and influence underneath God's sovereignty in both preserving and encapsulating sound doctrine within the church, and that we all benefit from that today.
[01:36:36]  But now let's play the devil's advocate.
[01:36:38]  It's worth doing.
[01:36:40]  We've already acknowledged that certainly there have been and can be abuses to the state's power.

=== Addressing Sacralism Objections (15:22) ===

[01:36:50]  So, what are some of the common objections that you've thought through and dealt with when it comes to this concept of sacralism?
[01:37:05]  100%.
[01:37:05]  So, I have three main objections that I've encountered.
[01:37:10]  And so, the first one of these is that sacralism necessarily leads to a mere cultural Christianity and an inauthentic faith.
[01:37:21]  When the faith is imposed by force or even just by cultural pressures, a person does not undergo the rite of baptism or partake in the Lord's Supper in faith, but only out of conformity to social norms.
[01:37:35]  Thus, he is not truly saved and the visible church is blemished as a result.
[01:37:38]  So, first thing to that, I'll say is like, look, as an Anglican, this is largely coming from very, very, very low church Baptists.
[01:37:46]  So, I mean, like, look, I don't know what the problem is of someone partaking in a purely symbolic baptism.
[01:37:51]  And a purely symbolic Lord's Supper would be.
[01:37:53]  But being a little bit facetious, so putting that to the side, the problem is that this is also true of the posterior to a mass conversion event.
[01:38:03]  If you have a mass conversion of a nation to Christianity, let's say it's a fully authentic conversion, no state force, well, what's naturally going to happen?
[01:38:13]  From that mass conversion, you create a Christian culture such that now it becomes self propelling, at least the external norms of it become self propelling.
[01:38:22]  In a way where now later generations of Christians or people growing up in that society may not necessarily internally authentically believe everything, and yet they're carried along anyway by the external norms.
[01:38:38]  Cultural nominalism is an inevitable result of any belief becoming widespread.
[01:38:45]  And so, this argument really is not an argument against state enforcement of the Christian faith, it's an argument of Christianity gaining any meaningful numbers.
[01:38:54]  That's really what this argument is.
[01:38:56]  That's well said.
[01:38:57]  Whenever God had it.
[01:38:58]  And that really is sadly, that is the Baptist.
[01:39:00]  I've said for some time, and I am a Baptist, but the Baptist has his greatest fear that if it was a Venn diagram, it would just be one circle.
[01:39:09]  His greatest fear is also his greatest fantasy, which is persecution.
[01:39:17]  That the Baptist, Stephen Wolf will make jokes from time to time saying, under Christian nationalism, don't worry, there's a promo code, Strawn, Owen Strand, or James White.
[01:39:28]  And with this promo code, you will be able to receive a deep discount.
[01:39:33]  On persecution.
[01:39:35]  So, for those of you who voluntarily, you know, because it really is your heart's desire, you want to be persecuted, and we'll make sure that it's, you know, for, you know, in large part, that it's not genuine.
[01:39:46]  It's more of a LARPing persecution.
[01:39:48]  So, you'll be able to have your persecution card, your greatest fantasy, and we'll make sure to not persecute you too much and we'll give you a discount.
[01:40:01]  And so, anyways, the point is that.
[01:40:04]  A lot of it really does come from, you're right, like a lot of this pushback, it's not so much the state's abuses, because a lot of what they do talk about that, but in addition to that, they talk about inauthentic, non genuine conversion.
[01:40:19]  They think that cultural Christianity is going to erode genuine Christianity, that you're going to have nominal churches, nominal doctrine, nominal seminaries, nominal pastors, and nominal Christians, and that many of them will have a false assurance.
[01:40:38]  That they won't be saved at all, but it's actually even more unloving because they'll be constantly persuaded and told that they are saved when they're not.
[01:40:47]  But you're right, that's not a byproduct of the state's involvement in Christianity.
[01:40:52]  That's a byproduct of Christianity having any potency at all.
[01:40:56]  The only way to avoid that is for Christianity to inevitably be a minority and to be persecuted, for there to be a high bar so you can test the genuineness of someone's faith by.
[01:41:10]  By some threat of persecution.
[01:41:12]  If you follow Jesus, you'll immediately be put to death, and there's only 17 other people on the planet that currently follow Jesus.
[01:41:19]  So you basically just have to come to terms to say that if that's your fear, inauthentic Christianity, then basically what you have to ensure is not that the state doesn't have power over the church, but what you have to ensure is that the Great Commission fails.
[01:41:35]  That's your position.
[01:41:37]  And you should just admit that and say, in the name of authentic, deep, Profound Christian faith.
[01:41:46]  I am maybe not outwardly working towards it, but I am secretly praying and hoping inwardly that the Great Commission proves to be impotent and that only a minority of people are Christians and that the vast majority of people who hold power persecute us severely.
[01:42:08]  Yep.
[01:42:10]  Completely true.
[01:42:11]  Completely true there.
[01:42:12]  And it's like a final little point for this objection, I'll say as well, is that, well, actually, Cultural Christianity is a key way of making those nominal people, those nominal Christians, or even non Christians who are just surrounded by it in the culture, much more conducive, much more open to that conversion, precisely because they have been drenched in much of the ways of thought and practice of Christians, even if they don't personally believe themselves.
[01:42:36]  But because they already share so many premises, thanks to cultural Christianity, you only have to do a bit more work before bringing them to faith.
[01:42:44]  And of course, I don't want to say as if it's our work per se.
[01:42:48]  Obviously, it isn't necessarily a work of the Holy Spirit, but he does use these external means in order to bring genuine conversion about.
[01:42:59]  And so that's all with that there.
[01:43:02]  Yep, you're right.
[01:43:03]  We just had a super chat from Nick Bonner.
[01:43:05]  He gave us $28.
[01:43:07]  That's pretty funny.
[01:43:08]  And he lives in Canada.
[01:43:09]  And I thought he had a good point.
[01:43:11]  He said, if any of you brothers want to escape cultural Christianity, feel free to join us here in Canada.
[01:43:18]  Calcutta?
[01:43:19]  Oh, Canada.
[01:43:20]  For Canada.
[01:43:21]  So, for all the Baptists who are very concerned about cultural Christianity and the negative impact that it'll have in regards to genuine bona fide faith, the 17 conservative Christians that currently live in Canada would love for you to come and join them.
[01:43:38]  I was about to make a joke about Joe Boot there, but I probably won't do that.
[01:43:43]  I'll probably leave that to the after show.
[01:43:44]  I don't know.
[01:43:44]  But anyway, so the second objection that I encounter a lot.
[01:43:51]  It's a really annoying and snide one.
[01:43:53]  When people say it, they think they sound so intelligent, but they actually just show that they're really, really stupid.
[01:43:58]  I'll just be straight up.
[01:43:59]  So, this objection is oh, okay.
[01:44:01]  So, you want to establish sacralism or more often Christian nationalism.
[01:44:04]  Okay.
[01:44:05]  Let's just say that.
[01:44:06]  Oh, okay.
[01:44:06]  You want to do it.
[01:44:07]  Okay.
[01:44:08]  Whose Christian nationalism will be enforced?
[01:44:10]  Is it going to be Anglican?
[01:44:12]  Is it going to be Presbyterian?
[01:44:14]  What if it's Roman Catholic?
[01:44:15]  What if someone tries to enforce a sacralism that persecutes you?
[01:44:20]  Huh?
[01:44:22]  And.
[01:44:23]  The objection is so stupid because it's trying to turn what is actually an easy question into an objection.
[01:44:30]  And I say an easy question because the answer is really simple to that.
[01:44:35]  Oh, whose version of Christian nationalism?
[01:44:38]  Mine, obviously.
[01:44:42]  Who else's?
[01:44:43]  Am I going to say, I'm an Anglican, but actually, we should enforce Eastern Orthodoxy with their icon worship and their has a chasm and all that and their Putin worship?
[01:44:54]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:44:55]  I'm going to say, no, I'm obviously going to say, My version of Christian nationalism, and the Romanist is going to say, Well, my version, which will likely be integralism, or the Eastern Orthodox guy will say, My version, which would basically be Caesaropapism, although some of them don't like that, but that's just the reality of Eastern Orthodoxy for a long time.
[01:45:15]  Point being, let's reflect that back on the Theonomist.
[01:45:20]  Because this objection largely comes from post mill Theonomist type guys, or they say Theonomist, but they're actually just like closet libertarians.
[01:45:29]  I'll ask them, Whose version of theonomy?
[01:45:32]  Whose version of theonomy?
[01:45:33]  The Gary North et al. libertarian style theonomy or the RJ Rush Dooney theonomy, which opposes interracial marriage?
[01:45:42]  Which one?
[01:45:43]  Whose theonomy?
[01:45:44]  Why are we going to do this version of theonomy?
[01:45:47]  That version of theonomy?
[01:45:48]  What about not theonomy at all?
[01:45:49]  What about someone who just affirms two kingdoms?
[01:45:51]  And the rational answer to that is well, I have a particular view of theonomy and I want to see that enforced.
[01:45:58]  And I have arguments for that, so let's debate that.
[01:46:01]  That's a fair enough answer.
[01:46:03]  That is the answer you give when someone asks, Oh, whose version of this and that?
[01:46:06]  My version, because I'm arguing for my version.
[01:46:10]  And likewise, we would say here with sacralism or Christian nationalism, whoever's talking, when they give this objection, I simply respond, My version of Christian nationalism, because I am arguing for my version of Christian nationalism.
[01:46:24]  Now, granted, I think there is also a very base level concept of Christian nationalism, which can manifest in various versions.
[01:46:33]  My version.
[01:46:34]  Yes.
[01:46:35]  Stephen Wolfe's, and like we agreed 95% of the way, and other persons.
[01:46:39]  And although these are distinct visions of Christian nationalism, they do share a very basic core.
[01:46:45]  And I think you can argue just for that core just fine.
[01:46:48]  But if someone wants to say, oh, well, okay, well, whose version is going to win out in the end?
[01:46:52]  I can just say mine.
[01:46:54]  And that's perfectly valid because that's what we're doing.
[01:46:56]  When you're arguing for a position, for an intellectual position, you are ipso facto arguing for your interpretation of that thing.
[01:47:02]  That's just what everybody does.
[01:47:04]  Whether you're a Christian nationalist, sacralist, or you're a theonomist, or you're a straight up secular liberal, you can ask them the same thing as well because they often give this objection as well.
[01:47:14]  You can simply tell them, whose version of secular liberalism?
[01:47:17]  Your version with state enforced homosexuality?
[01:47:20]  Or, how about the John Locke version where atheists were not even permitted in public office?
[01:47:25]  God, how good would that be?
[01:47:27]  God, please bring that to us again.
[01:47:30]  So, whose version of secular liberalism?
[01:47:32]  So, you can give that objection to literally anybody.
[01:47:35]  It's dumb, it's ridiculous, and it has a very simple answer.
[01:47:38]  So, right.
[01:47:39]  Yeah, just for the record, for the listener, the form of Christian nationalism that, for myself, that I would advocate for would be creedal by nature and not confessional.
[01:47:48]  But a lot of this has to depend on the nation.
[01:47:52]  So, I do have the ideal that I think would be best universally.
[01:47:57]  But I also am willing to recognize that I think it would be especially ideal in these United States.
[01:48:05]  So, because I'm a Christian first and foremost, but I'm also an American, I recognize that heritage matters, history matters.
[01:48:14]  And in our American context, there always has been, it was at its founding and certainly before the founding with the 13 colonies, it was explicitly Christian.
[01:48:25]  But it has always allowed for a higher degree of tolerance than other nations have in their history.
[01:48:32]  And that's, you know, you have to look at, you know, the context in which America was founded.
[01:48:38]  It was founded in no small part to, you know, fleeing from religious persecution by the state.
[01:48:47]  And so, looking at, you know, so what form of Christian nationalism would I personally advocate for, and also do I think, you know, would be most ideal in our.
[01:48:57]  American context.
[01:48:58]  For myself, those two circles completely align.
[01:49:02]  The one that I would advocate for is the one that I think would work best here.
[01:49:06]  And so for the American context, it would be creedal, not confessional.
[01:49:09]  What I mean by that is it would not be the Westminster Confession of Faith or the London Baptist or the 39 Articles, but it would be creedal, meaning it would be something that all Christians can affirm Nicene Creed, Apostles' Creed, something that all Christians can affirm, that a Baptist can affirm, that a Presbyterian can.
[01:49:28]  Affirm it.
[01:49:29]  An Anglican can affirm it, but even also a Roman Catholic could affirm it.
[01:49:33]  And even, well, Eastern Orthodox could probably, you know, mostly affirm it.
[01:49:40]  They would probably have a little bit of difficulty, but for the most part would be able to affirm it.
[01:49:45]  And so, what I mean by that is that, you know, you could have Baptists and you could have Presbyterians and they would still have their differences and disagreements.
[01:49:55]  But I would like to see, you know, something like the Apostles' Creed adopted as a preamble to the Constitution.
[01:50:01]  I would like to revisit some of the latter amendments.
[01:50:04]  After the first 10, I would like to get back to authorial intent with the first 10 amendments.
[01:50:08]  And then the rest of the Constitution, in my opinion, would do just fine.
[01:50:12]  So, you know, guys think that, you know, that we're radical, but what we're saying is we should formally and politically declare allegiance to the triune God in this nation and declare that we are, in fact, a Christian nation and that there's some uniformity to that, that we affirm the creeds.
[01:50:33]  And, Historic Christianity, a Nicene Christianity, the Apostles' Creed.
[01:50:41]  Beyond that, there would be liberty.
[01:50:44]  There would be liberty for expression between each individual denomination and different confessions and all those things.
[01:50:52]  But it would be a pan Christian, predominantly, again, speaking to America's history, I would like to see it be a pan Protestant expression of Christianity for the most part.
[01:51:05]  Although I wouldn't go overboard in saying that Catholics could have no.
[01:51:14]  Place or the Catholics couldn't have a church.
[01:51:16]  Although I would absolutely take that position when it came to Hindus or when it came to Buddhists or even certain expressions of atheism.
[01:51:26]  And of course, when it comes to Judaism and Islam, that there wouldn't be public expressions of that.
[01:51:32]  And you start, like, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time?
[01:51:35]  So you start with the larger things.
[01:51:38]  So, like, when it comes to Islam, for instance, before you get to mosques, you start with prayer sirens and In Minneapolis, five times a day, you know, citywide sirens and calls to Islamic prayer.
[01:51:50]  You start there and you say, No, we don't do that here.
[01:51:52]  This is America.
[01:51:54]  We don't do that.
[01:51:56]  It's one, it's idolatrous and demonic, but two, even putting religion aside, it is an absolute nuisance.
[01:52:05]  And so, no, we're not going to have a public daily nuisance allowed in these United States.

=== Theonomic Nation Expectations (09:25) ===

[01:52:12]  So, there is a way.
[01:52:15]  There is a way.
[01:52:16]  But my point is, I think each nation would.
[01:52:19]  Be different, right?
[01:52:20]  Like if Russia has, you know, Orthodox, you know, capital O Orthodox as their national expression of Christianity, I'm going to retain my theological disagreements and they're significant, but I would understand.
[01:52:36]  I wouldn't expect, you know, Russia to declare allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ and then be Baptist.
[01:52:43]  You know, that's just probably not going to happen.
[01:52:45]  You know, Italy, you know, I would expect to be Catholic.
[01:52:49]  You know, that wouldn't surprise me.
[01:52:52]  And then other places, you know, other nations might be even, you know, Anglican, you know, like England or something like that.
[01:52:59]  But for America, I think that there actually would be an unusual amount of preference that's given, or deference, I should say, that's given to a pan Protestant nation, and yet still absolutely committed and with an allegiance to the Christian faith.
[01:53:21]  So there are ways of doing that.
[01:53:23]  And I think that's.
[01:53:24]  Part of what appealed to me about Christian nationalism and Stephen's conception of it.
[01:53:30]  I still am fine holding the label of a general equity theonomist and not just a closeted libertarian.
[01:53:40]  I'm fine with that label.
[01:53:43]  But as I thought about some of the more modern theonomists and what they were advocating for, I realized that they really do think that everything is dictated in the scripture, not just big things, but forms of government.
[01:53:58]  So, I mean, they would, for them, they want to see every nation be a Christian nation.
[01:54:02]  And for them, that would mean a theonomic Christian nation.
[01:54:06]  And they don't just believe that the Bible has case law in terms of morals that should be legislated, but they believe that the Bible dictates all the way down to forms of government and even several aspects of culture.
[01:54:21]  So, like the theonomic world that they would be working for, you wouldn't have, you know, one nation that's Orthodox and one that's Catholic and one that's pan Protestant and one that's Anglican.
[01:54:31]  They would all be.
[01:54:32]  They'd all be Westminster.
[01:54:34]  They would all be, for the most part, for the theonomic guys, they'd all be Presbyterian.
[01:54:39]  And not just in terms of denomination and doctrine, but they would all be constitutional republics.
[01:54:45]  They would all have elements of democracy.
[01:54:49]  And then, even beyond that, they would all eventually, it would take time, but in their conception, if it actually panned out and was true, they would all have the same cuisine.
[01:55:00]  They would all have the same entertainment and dance and art and philosophy.
[01:55:05]  I mean, there was a book that was even written about Christian stir fry that.
[01:55:12]  That the Christian faith dictates all the way down to cuisine.
[01:55:15]  And so that's where I started realizing that for the modern theonomist, you actually, in many ways, what they're advocating, they would still have borders for nations and still hold to sovereign nations, but those borders would be completely porous, right?
[01:55:31]  Because they believe that the world, not each and every, not universal, but that the mass of humanity will be saved.
[01:55:38]  And so this great post millennial hope that they're working for, when you ask them, what are the requirements for immigration, for instance?
[01:55:45]  It's for them, it's just as long as somebody publicly professes that they're a Christian and they've been baptized, and then beyond that, so long as they're not looking for a handout for welfare, so if they're willing to work and they've been baptized and profess Christ, then no nation should turn them away.
[01:56:06]  And so, what you would have in a theonomic expression, post millennial, modern theonomic, Rush, do anyone have held to this, but over time, if that happened, You wouldn't have distinct nations.
[01:56:19]  You would have, you know, a little bit of Japan came over here and a little bit of this went over to China and a little bit, and you would literally just have a collective of peoples and they'd have the same culture because, you know, Christianity dictates every facet of human society all the way down to the stir fry, you know, and so you'd, you would like everybody, you know, it would be what form of dance is most Christian and it wouldn't be, well, there are many, expect no, it would be, you know, these five, you know, so there'd be ballet, you know, or whatever, like.
[01:56:49]  And so it would be like literally every country would have the same kind of opera, the same kind of symphony, the same kind of art, the same kind of dance, the same kind of food, and even the same people, because eventually they would migrate, you know, because everybody can immigrate anywhere as long as you proclaim, you know, that you believe in Jesus and you're not going to take a welfare check.
[01:57:08]  And even though you would still have the borders, is my point, even though you would still have the national borders, it is Babel.
[01:57:15]  It's a tower of Babel.
[01:57:18]  It would just be, Like you could go and visit Japan and it would be unrecognizable.
[01:57:23]  It would be like going and visit, you could go across the world to the other side of the world for a vacation, and it would be no different if I just went to the next town in my own country.
[01:57:35]  And that's what really got me thinking.
[01:57:37]  Like Christian nationalism started to appeal to me, one, because I think it preserves different cultures and peoples.
[01:57:44]  Two, not only does it preserve those, which the only way you get diversity in heaven, every tribe, tongue, and language, is if diversity is actually preserved on earth.
[01:57:54]  But then beyond that, expressions of individual nations, culturally speaking, beyond that, that Christian nationalism, it has like so much of what Wolf argues for that people give him grief about.
[01:58:07]  They're all arguments of permissibility.
[01:58:09]  He's not talking about what he would do or even what he thinks should be done.
[01:58:13]  He's just talking about what's permissible.
[01:58:16]  And what he demonstrates time and time again is that, you know, that biblically speaking, there's more permissibility.
[01:58:23]  Than the theonomist is comfortable with, than he would like to admit.
[01:58:27]  But what that permissibility allows for is different cultures, different peoples, but then also different national churches, or even in America's case, the express intentional absence of a national church and just a creedal formation with perhaps state churches or not even state churches in a pan Protestant sense.
[01:58:48]  And so, America would be theologically different, culturally different, it would be physiologically different, like even by lineage and heritage, like the people.
[01:58:59]  The people, the church, the culture, the nation would be distinct and it would be able to maintain a lot of its distinctions in a theonomic post millennial.
[01:59:11]  And again, I hate because I love Rushdini.
[01:59:14]  I'm always going to love Rushdini, so I hate even saying theonomic.
[01:59:16]  But for the year of our Lord 2025, theonomic guy, you know, theocratic libertarian, he, you know, if he gets his way, number one, it won't happen for 50,000 years.
[01:59:32]  And then number two, When it finally does happen, and we're dead and gone, and our children are dead and gone, and our grandchildren are dead and gone, none of us ever got to see this Christian world.
[01:59:44]  But when it finally does happen, it would be homogenous.
[01:59:50]  The whole world, it would just be a soup, just one soup of people, of culture, of doctrine, of everything.
[01:59:59]  And I just started thinking about that even biblically, not just my personal preference, but even biblically.
[02:00:05]  And I was like, how?
[02:00:06]  How do you get the end of revelation if this is temporally what's going to happen before?
[02:00:13]  And especially when you compound that with postmillennialism, the highest population.
[02:00:17]  So, yeah, you still have some distinction of back when we used to have distinct nations, you know, and those saints who died in faith, you know, and are there.
[02:00:26]  There's actually, you know, Christian Ethiopians and Christian, you know, Englishmen and Christian, you know, Japanese or whatever.
[02:00:32]  But if in the postmillennial sense, you know, if, if, If the lion's share of the population of heaven in eternity comes towards the end, because you have the most people converted and you also have just the most people, the highest human population in this golden age, which I'm inclined to believe, but in the theonomic expression, and it breaks down every metaphorical distinction and wall, even though you still technically have borders, but all the people are the same and the culture is the same,
[02:01:01]  then the vast majority of heaven would not be diverse.
[02:01:05]  Anytime you went and saw someone different than yourself who's Spoke a different language than yourself and who had a different culture and a different heritage, you would probably be able to say, Oh, you were a Christian before the Theonomist won, right?
[02:01:21]  And then everybody else, you know, the 90% who all looked the same and talked the same and had the same ideas about everything, including stir fry, you'd be like, You guys are the guys who were prior generations that were saved after David Bonson's time, huh?

=== Natural Law vs Holy Scripture (14:46) ===

[02:01:38]  So, anyways, those are some of my thoughts.
[02:01:41]  Any thoughts on that?
[02:01:42]  The other poll, I'm curious to hear your response if you have one.
[02:01:49]  We lost you.
[02:01:50]  There we go.
[02:01:50]  Got it.
[02:01:50]  Got it.
[02:01:51]  I was muting myself.
[02:01:52]  Yeah, you said quite a bit there, but 100% on the point of at least certain branches of theonomy being just dictating every single little element of culture, which is obviously quite silly because there are countless elements of culture which you just will not find.
[02:02:12]  Even an implied answer for in Holy Scripture.
[02:02:15]  These things develop by the organic development of nations living and prospering in the world.
[02:02:27]  And scripture is obviously the infallible guide for that, but it's not exhaustive.
[02:02:31]  It can't be.
[02:02:33]  So, part of the point of scripture is to reorient our reason so that we can now make these decisions for ourselves in a proper, rightly ordered way.
[02:02:46]  And unfortunately, many of the modern theonomist types, because of their rejection of that paradigm of the necessity of reason and natural law, I mean, it's so weird.
[02:03:02]  I don't want to be too blunt, but they'll speak out of both sides of their mouths on this issue where we will say things like, natural law is good and necessary.
[02:03:12]  We need to use our reason.
[02:03:13]  Hey, look, Aristotle said some cool stuff here.
[02:03:15]  Let's use that.
[02:03:16]  And then they'll come out and start.
[02:03:18]  Basically, crying about that, like, oh, Aristotle was a pagan.
[02:03:22]  We're like, oh, man's reason's fallen.
[02:03:24]  Scripture alone, scripture alone.
[02:03:26]  And then, when we say to them, when we naturally interpret them as saying, okay, this is weird.
[02:03:32]  You seem to deny the very existence of natural law and the necessity of man to use his reason to discern things, then they turn around and say, oh, no, no, no, no, we're not saying there isn't any natural law.
[02:03:42]  No, We're not saying man can't use his reason.
[02:03:45]  No, We're not saying, no one's saying you can't find good stuff in Aristotle.
[02:03:49]  But then I look back at what they said earlier and there's, Yes, you did.
[02:03:54]  You just did say that.
[02:03:55]  I don't know if any of you guys here have seen that doublespeak before from this other side of the camp.
[02:04:01]  They'll basically condemn merely citing Aristotle for certain things.
[02:04:06]  But then when you turn around and say, why are you condemning me just for citing Aristotle or using natural law?
[02:04:12]  They'll say, oh, I didn't do that.
[02:04:13]  I'm just saying scripture needs to stay supreme.
[02:04:15]  It's just like a perpetual Mott and Bailey that they play with, which is just really, really, really frustrating.
[02:04:23]  I actually had another case of that very recently.
[02:04:25]  I don't think I'll mention his name, but it was a guy on one of the, shall we say, one of these live streams from what I like to call the kosher right, where they were reviewing the Mahler versus White debate.
[02:04:42]  And obviously, all just saying, like, oh, James White nuked it out of the park.
[02:04:46]  Mahler was a complete idiot.
[02:04:47]  So, obvious takes there.
[02:04:50]  But one of them basically poo pooed the very idea of using natural law.
[02:04:54]  He juxtaposed natural law with Holy Scripture.
[02:04:57]  And so I called him out on that.
[02:04:59]  Publicly on Twitter or irks, and he said, Oh, no, no, I'm not against natural law.
[02:05:04]  I just believe it needs to be rightly subordinated to scripture.
[02:05:08]  And then I just said to him, Okay, but then literally all of us in the dissident right, the new Christian right, we all believe that.
[02:05:14]  No one said otherwise.
[02:05:15]  Of course.
[02:05:16]  Perpetual Martin Bailey, perpetual Martin Bailey.
[02:05:18]  I haven't heard anyone in the new Christian right articulating or advocating for natural law being supreme to scripture.
[02:05:31]  I haven't come across that person.
[02:05:34]  Never met him.
[02:05:35]  Never met him.
[02:05:36]  Yep.
[02:05:37]  And even then, that requires some distinctions because properly conceived natural law, being the simple order of creation as God established it in his intention, logically and temporally, it does actually precede scripture.
[02:05:55]  That's undeniable.
[02:05:55]  Scripture is special revelation given ad hoc at particular times when God needs to correct.
[02:06:04]  His people, and it's used as a corrective, and that's the important thing.
[02:06:07]  Scripture is used as the corrective for our understanding of natural law.
[02:06:12]  And so, properly speaking, natural law and Holy Scripture, because they have the same divine author, they actually have the same authority.
[02:06:19]  But the issue is the epistemic problem, where because of our fallen reason, our ability to discern natural law is very often bad, not great.
[02:06:32]  You can get some particularly bright guys who can actually, even if they're not Christian, they can get a pretty good handle on many things of natural law.
[02:06:40]  But otherwise, they'll still inevitably fail.
[02:06:41]  And that's why, and this is from, I think a number of church fathers say this, but especially Ambrose of Milan, the Bishop of Milan, he basically says the whole reason why we have scripture is because God gave us the natural law, but man in the fall is unable to consistently interpret it right and his reason's fallen.
[02:07:01]  And so we have scripture to orient us back to the natural law on top of revealed things like the nature of the Holy Trinity, of Christ's sacrifice for all men, so on and so forth.
[02:07:14]  And so, in that way, articulated that way, it's just you can't really deny that.
[02:07:19]  It's just very, very obvious the premises and the conclusion that follows from that.
[02:07:23]  But unfortunately, many on the anti sacralist side will have this extremely, I'll just straight up say, childish understanding of theological authority, of the nature of scripture, of reason, and all that.
[02:07:41]  And they'll say that they're all like presuppositionalists and this.
[02:07:44]  We have to presuppose God and his revelation.
[02:07:47]  In order to have a consistent account of knowledge, which on the whole I actually don't disagree with, but they'll say all that and then they'll point out how, like, all these other non precept guys, especially atheists, oh, you're borrowing from the Christian paradigm.
[02:08:02]  Here's your presuppositions here, here, here, and here that you haven't accounted for.
[02:08:06]  But then on the flip side, they don't account for their own presuppositions, i.e., let's say Kantianism and baptized secular liberalism with the state.
[02:08:17]  They seem to assume.
[02:08:19]  That their idea, and again, this isn't theonomy simplicity.
[02:08:24]  That's something that needs to be made clear.
[02:08:25]  I wish I made that clear in my dialogues on eschatology matters.
[02:08:28]  It's not theonomy per se, okay?
[02:08:31]  Because the OG theonomy types like Rush Dooney were quite based.
[02:08:35]  I'm specifically critiquing the modern reception of theonomy that tends to be dominant, where it's basically baptized libertarianism and secular liberalism.
[02:08:45]  They seem to presuppose that the pure separation of powers.
[02:08:50]  And government non interference in religious affairs, in the church's affairs, that these are just self evident truths of what?
[02:08:59]  Axioms?
[02:09:00]  Are they axiomatic truths?
[02:09:02]  Or is scripture just so clear about this that nobody until they realize this until the past century?
[02:09:13]  That's what's so ridiculous about this position.
[02:09:16]  And that's why, really, this stream, that's why I really wanted to have this discussion on this stream in order to show that from a historical perspective, This idea, they have no grounds to presuppose their functional liberalism, their functional political atheism as the norm.
[02:09:33]  It was never the norm in Christianity.
[02:09:35]  It never was ever since the beginning.
[02:09:38]  When you don't presuppose that in your mental thinking and you read throughout the Old and New Testaments, you inevitably come to the view that the state must and inevitably will.
[02:09:53]  Bow the knee to God such that it proclaims his true religion through the law and suppresses evil religion.
[02:10:01]  That's just undeniable when you don't start with the presupposition of baptized libertarianism.
[02:10:08]  So I hope that, and there's actually one more objection to sacralism, if I may, which is actually a very important one, where they'll point to, oh, but sacralism always leads to these horrific atrocities in the name of enforcing the Christian religion.
[02:10:26]  You'll see James White, for example, he'll frequently talk about the German farmer Fritz Erb, who was held up in a, in a, in a, in a, Prison for a long time until he was eventually killed because he refused to baptize his children, among other things he will cite.
[02:10:41]  But then the problem is well, okay, can you name one God given institution that you grant is a God given institution which doesn't have countless cases of abuse?
[02:10:51]  Let's, let's, I don't know how many of you guys know of, because I think I watched like a documentary on him, that Christian anarchist guy, Sean McCraney.
[02:10:59]  One of his big things is he's against like the pastoral office, basically.
[02:11:04]  There's no authorities, no hierarchy in the church, everyone's equal.
[02:11:07]  He can easily just cite examples like, hey, look at Jim Jones, this alleged Christian pastor, Christian reverend.
[02:11:13]  What did he do?
[02:11:14]  He led 900 people to kill themselves, including women and babies.
[02:11:20]  And there's literally audio on site that he kept it recording as everybody was drinking the cyanide and killing themselves.
[02:11:29]  And you can hear them, especially the little children, screaming in pain until it all goes silent because everyone's dead.
[02:11:36]  You can point to that.
[02:11:37]  You can point to Baptist pastors, Roman priests, and others abusing children, abusing women, doing all sorts of evil things.
[02:11:48]  So, if we are to apply the same logic, because we can point to so many such cases, hey, let's not have a pastoral office anymore.
[02:11:55]  Let's not do that.
[02:11:55]  Why?
[02:11:56]  Because it's abused so often.
[02:11:58]  Obviously, that doesn't follow.
[02:11:59]  Obviously, it doesn't follow that just because an office can be and has been abused frequently, that therefore it's illegitimate.
[02:12:05]  That's literally impossible.
[02:12:07]  We abuse our bodies.
[02:12:09]  Should we kill ourselves?
[02:12:11]  No, obviously not.
[02:12:14]  So it doesn't follow at all.
[02:12:16]  Maybe they'll try to steel man it by saying, oh, well, but unlike these things, sacralism, it's like consistent and always comes to abuse.
[02:12:27]  Again, our human bodies, we always sin.
[02:12:31]  Literally, always sin.
[02:12:33]  Every pastor at some point sins in his office.
[02:12:36]  But even then, you don't even have to grant that claim.
[02:12:38]  You should just ask him, okay, can you do a comprehensive survey?
[02:12:42]  Of sacralist Christian orders and come to an objective, quantifiable metric of good things they did versus bad things they did.
[02:12:51]  And even then, you're presupposing what good and bad is, because you may think that persecuting heretics, oh, that's a bad thing.
[02:12:58]  That's a state overstepping its mounds.
[02:13:00]  Whereas I'd say, based.
[02:13:04]  So, yeah, it's a very silly objection.
[02:13:07]  And that's the last one I think is necessary to deal with.
[02:13:10]  Every office is abused, every institution is abused, as even these theonomous types will say.
[02:13:16]  There is no such thing as religious neutrality.
[02:13:18]  It's not whether you have a state religion, but which.
[02:13:21]  And so I want to reframe that against them and by saying there's never a state that doesn't have sacralism.
[02:13:28]  It's not a case of whether you have sacralism or not.
[02:13:30]  It is what sacralism you have.
[02:13:33]  We have a Christian sacralism.
[02:13:35]  We have Christian cultural and legal hegemony.
[02:13:38]  Or will you have the GAE, the global American empire?
[02:13:41]  Which one?
[02:13:43]  And that's, I say my piece.
[02:13:46]  Well said.
[02:13:46]  Good thoughts.
[02:13:47]  Anything from you, Wes and Michael?
[02:13:49]  Let me hit super chats real quick.
[02:13:51]  Paul, I know you have another stream.
[02:13:53]  Do you have to jump?
[02:13:55]  No, I actually don't yet.
[02:13:56]  Thankfully, that happens in around an hour and a half.
[02:13:58]  So I should be sweet.
[02:13:59]  Okay.
[02:14:00]  All right.
[02:14:00]  We're just going to hit the super chats real quick and then we'll call it a day.
[02:14:04]  This is from Evan Davies.
[02:14:05]  Super chat, five pounds.
[02:14:07]  Thank you, Evan Davies.
[02:14:08]  We appreciate it.
[02:14:09]  Is King Highwell or Howell, I think is how it is.
[02:14:14]  Howell.
[02:14:15]  Well known outside of Wales, a true Christian prince with a great system of laws.
[02:14:20]  Appreciate all you guys.
[02:14:22]  Christ is King.
[02:14:23]  No, but I'm going to look him up.
[02:14:25]  Are you familiar with him, the other Paul?
[02:14:28]  King Howell.
[02:14:28]  I like.
[02:14:29]  Well, is he well known?
[02:14:36]  Michael's going to look it up real quick.
[02:14:38]  We'll have to come back to it.
[02:14:39]  Yeah, go ahead.
[02:14:40]  I'll keep going through the line if you find something.
[02:14:42]  Jamie, we'll trust him.
[02:14:43]  I meant for a later date.
[02:14:45]  Oh, I see.
[02:14:45]  For a later date.
[02:14:46]  Okay.
[02:14:46]  Sorry, Evan Davies.
[02:14:48]  We'll take the five pounds and we leave you with no answer, unfortunately.
[02:14:52]  We're Americans, in case there was any confusion here.
[02:14:55]  The Salty Sailor.
[02:14:58]  He gave us $10 and said, GA, good afternoon from North Carolina.
[02:15:03]  Christ is king.
[02:15:04]  Thanks, Salty Sailor.
[02:15:05]  We appreciate that.
[02:15:07]  Jeff Halfley, $2 from Jeff.
[02:15:09]  He said, King Asa and Josiah intervened to correct heresy.
[02:15:14]  They sure did.
[02:15:16]  Thank you, Jeff.
[02:15:16]  Appreciate that.
[02:15:18]  Christian Ramirez, $5.
[02:15:21]  He says, God bless Right Response Ministries, the other Paul, and all other Pauls on God's green earth.
[02:15:30]  Sounds good.
[02:15:31]  Thank you, Christian Ramirez.
[02:15:33]  We appreciate it.
[02:15:34]  Covenanter, $5 from Covenanter.
[02:15:36]  Thank you, Covenanter.
[02:15:37]  He says, GA, good afternoon, y'all, and thank you for talking about what matters.
[02:15:44]  Do you think America or Texas has or can have a national covenant?
[02:15:51]  And then he said, Joel for Baptist, Pope of Texas.
[02:15:54]  I can jump in and say, I've been thinking for a minute, talked a lot to friends in real life, whether what a nation formally does as a nation is a covenant, like Old Testament covenants they had.
[02:16:04]  Michael, we've talked about this too.
[02:16:06]  So that is a real question that we'll probably have to do a full episode on.
[02:16:09]  As of now, I don't have a solid answer.
[02:16:11]  I don't know if you do, Joel.
[02:16:12]  Michael, I would imagine you do.
[02:16:14]  I don't think Texas or America has covenanted itself to God because in the preamble, we didn't.
[02:16:22]  Right.
[02:16:22]  You know, like that.

=== Concerns About Christian Tyranny (10:01) ===

[02:16:24]  When I retrace the failure of America over the last long time, it's that previous to that, they weren't explicit enough.
[02:16:31]  Right.
[02:16:32]  Previous to that, the documents were very covenantal towards the Lord.
[02:16:37]  But that didn't save Canada either, though.
[02:16:39]  Right.
[02:16:39]  Yes.
[02:16:40]  Canada was more explicit.
[02:16:42]  And yet they're doing too.
[02:16:43]  Ireland.
[02:16:44]  Yeah.
[02:16:45]  Yeah.
[02:16:46]  But yeah, America is unique, our founding.
[02:16:49]  I think in many ways, it's just like when you read the reformers, you know, like I'm convinced if John Calvin was here today, the Roman Catholic Church would not be his biggest concern.
[02:17:00]  I think that that was, you know, like everybody is, nobody's doing theology or starting a nation for that matter in a vacuum.
[02:17:07]  We're all products of place and time.
[02:17:09]  And so when you think of the reformers and the things that they had to say about the Roman Catholic Church, I think that they would still objectively, in a theological sense, hold.
[02:17:18]  To those problems, because I think the Roman Catholic Church, sadly, in many ways, I don't think that it's improved much doctrinally in these last 500 years.
[02:17:28]  Trent is still on the books.
[02:17:30]  But my point is so much, it's not just the objective, well, the Roman Catholic Church had bad theology and heresies, but it's also the Roman Catholic Church was the institution that was trying to kill them.
[02:17:44]  And you have to take that into account.
[02:17:45]  I think that if Calvin was here today, He would look at the Roman Catholic Church.
[02:17:50]  He would say that much of his critiques still stand.
[02:17:54]  And then I think he would say, All right, now tell me more about George Soros.
[02:18:00]  Tell me a little bit more about the Pelosi's and the Bidens.
[02:18:04]  And what is this war that's going on with Israel and Iran?
[02:18:09]  Tell me a little bit about that.
[02:18:11]  In other words, I think we're all a product of place and time.
[02:18:16]  So going back to the founding of America, what were they running from?
[02:18:22]  They weren't running from secular humanists, they weren't running from the LGBT mafia.
[02:18:27]  They were running from a Christian monarchy that had become very, very particular in their day to the point where, you know, there were edicts, you know, civil edicts that require them to read from the sports almanac as a part of the liturgy, you know, on Sunday morning, just to spite them because they knew that, you know, Puritans and covenanters would offend their conscience.
[02:18:53]  And try to rule from half an ocean away.
[02:18:55]  Like, no, no, no, you can't do your own thing.
[02:18:56]  We got you.
[02:18:57]  So that was their big concern, was civil tyranny.
[02:19:03]  And that Christian worship would be too formal and that it would be too particular and that it would confine the edicts of the conscience.
[02:19:16]  That was their concern.
[02:19:17]  And so, looking at their moment, what was the biggest threat?
[02:19:23]  Basically, I could say it like this they considered the timely threat of their day, and they considered it.
[02:19:31]  So exclusively, that I think they missed some of the timeless threats that eventually would come down the line.
[02:19:39]  So they just assumed Christianity as a dominant force and thought that it always would be.
[02:19:45]  And so they took things for granted.
[02:19:47]  And so they were concerned about Christian tyranny.
[02:19:51]  I don't think they conceived that we would be where we are today.
[02:19:55]  And if they had known, I think that even some of the Deists and Unitarians, I think Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin would be like, You put Jesus Christ in the Constitution right now.
[02:20:09]  I really think they would have said that, you know, but they didn't know.
[02:20:12]  So, okay, let's keep going with the super chats.
[02:20:16]  Michael, do you want to go to the Rubicon?
[02:20:17]  $2.
[02:20:17]  Thanks, Rubicon.
[02:20:18]  The wicked don't rule forever, Psalm 73.
[02:20:21]  Amen.
[02:20:22]  And it can all change in a moment, too.
[02:20:24]  We forget that how quickly our opponents can fall.
[02:20:27]  Yep.
[02:20:28]  Yep.
[02:20:29]  Ben Huffdetler, thank you very much for the $10.
[02:20:32]  Joel, hope to get to shake your hand and say thank you in June.
[02:20:35]  Maybe get a signed copy of that book if they are on sale at the conference.
[02:20:38]  Great conversation today, gents.
[02:20:40]  Keep up the great work.
[02:20:40]  Thank you very much again, Ben.
[02:20:42]  Thanks, Ben.
[02:20:42]  Ben is referencing just for the listener the new Christendom conference.
[02:20:46]  It's called Safety Third.
[02:20:48]  I believe something along the lines of like rediscovering or restoring the spirit of American excellence.
[02:20:54]  Right.
[02:20:55]  So, yeah, safety is on the list somewhere as third.
[02:20:59]  It's good.
[02:21:00]  Yeah, it's third.
[02:21:00]  Good one.
[02:21:01]  So it's like we don't want to be suicidal, but just saying that like so much of our ethos today is it's the school mom, it's the HR department, it's the like so much of it is.
[02:21:13]  Is that nice?
[02:21:13]  Is that kind?
[02:21:14]  Is that safe?
[02:21:16]  And we've lost the will to take risks.
[02:21:21]  And we've lost so much of what our forefathers were willing to do that really embodies a spirit of excellence and particularly the excellence here in America in our founding.
[02:21:35]  So that's in June.
[02:21:38]  I forget the exact dates.
[02:21:39]  I think maybe the 12th.
[02:21:40]  June 12th through the 15th.
[02:21:41]  Yeah, I think so.
[02:21:42]  Yeah, the 12th through the 15th.
[02:21:43]  I believe it's a Thursday through a Saturday in Ogden, England.
[02:21:48]  Utah.
[02:21:48]  New Christendom is the name of the organization that's hosting the conference, Safety Third.
[02:21:52]  You can go check that out.
[02:21:54]  I believe Dr. Stephen Wolf will be speaking.
[02:21:56]  I'll be speaking.
[02:21:57]  Andrew Isker is going to be speaking.
[02:21:59]  I think, I think, Chase Davis is going to be there.
[02:22:05]  David Reese will be there.
[02:22:06]  Oh, and David Reese.
[02:22:07]  Yeah.
[02:22:08]  Yeah.
[02:22:09]  So I'm excited to hopefully, hopefully, David Reese, who is a dear friend and who I love and appreciate greatly, hopefully he does not watch this episode, especially right before going to the conference because he's going to sit me down and give me a talk.
[02:22:25]  That's right.
[02:22:26]  Okay, Michael, you want to keep reading?
[02:22:27]  Let's go.
[02:22:28]  Nobody special, $10.
[02:22:29]  Thank you.
[02:22:31]  Can we please stop saying we are so back?
[02:22:33]  It sounds really impotent.
[02:22:35]  No, I'm sorry.
[02:22:36]  We cannot stop saying we're so back.
[02:22:38]  It's so over.
[02:22:39]  Yeah, under Christian nationalism, we don't make the rules, but we will continue to say we're so back.
[02:22:47]  What should the legal penalty for that comment be?
[02:22:50]  Yeah, seriously.
[02:22:51]  Exactly.
[02:22:51]  Seriously, I do appreciate the $10, but I think we can keep saying we're so back, but just But just recognizing the yin and yang that whenever we're so back, there is an inevitable we're right around the corner.
[02:23:06]  Okay, Guillen the Baptist.
[02:23:07]  Wes, you want to read that?
[02:23:09]  All right.
[02:23:09]  $5 from Guillen.
[02:23:11]  Thanks, Guillen.
[02:23:11]  All my favorite online Christian content, makers on one stream, take my humble amount of shekels.
[02:23:18]  Love it.
[02:23:19]  Thanks, Guillen.
[02:23:19]  Appreciate it.
[02:23:21]  And just final, Michael Landrum.
[02:23:23]  Italian name, so Jean, Jean the Baptist.
[02:23:26]  Oh, thank you, Jean.
[02:23:27]  Appreciate it.
[02:23:28]  And then Michael Landrum just left $4.99 super chat, no comment.
[02:23:32]  Thanks, Michael.
[02:23:33]  All right.
[02:23:34]  Cool.
[02:23:35]  Okay.
[02:23:36]  Paul, you're our guest.
[02:23:37]  Where can we share?
[02:23:38]  We'll find Paul.
[02:23:38]  How can people find you and any final words that you might have?
[02:23:43]  100%.
[02:23:43]  Thank you, gentlemen, very much for having me on.
[02:23:46]  I am so happy we managed to have this happen despite me having to bail the last time we scheduled it for unforeseen circumstances, unfortunately.
[02:23:55]  But I'm so happy we had it.
[02:23:57]  I hope for those who are watching that this served as a quite thorough and educational experience.
[02:24:04]  Demonstration of just how this basic premise of state and civil involvement in the affairs of the church and further the state promotion of the true Christian faith and state suppression of false religion is not only a good thing but was in fact quite essential for the Christianity that we take for granted today.
[02:24:27]  Minimally across the board, Protestant, Easterner, Romanist that's the fact for the early church scenario that I walked through today.
[02:24:36]  But also for those of us who are sons of the Reformation, that is also and especially the case for the Reformation traditions.
[02:24:42]  Without the involvement of the state, whether in England, but also on the continent, the Reformation never would have got off the ground.
[02:24:49]  It would have died, it would have been destroyed, just like numerous other small sects were that never enjoyed state sponsorship, or at least only very little.
[02:24:58]  So I hope that clearly demonstrated for that.
[02:25:00]  You guys can check, there's a link in the description below of this stream of a post of mine where I post where I have a PDF.
[02:25:08]  Of all my notes for this stream, including all the citations I gave with the quotes and that.
[02:25:13]  So, if anyone wants to follow this up for themselves, then please feel free to go to my blog and look that up.
[02:25:19]  And with that said, if people want to find me, you can find me here on YouTube.
[02:25:23]  It's just that name, The Other Paul.
[02:25:25]  You can find me there.
[02:25:26]  You can find me on Rumble by the same name.
[02:25:28]  And Rumble is where I'll typically put up my less YouTube friendly content, typically live streams with certain people and on certain topics.
[02:25:37]  But also, you can find my website, and that's where the link below goes to.
[02:25:41]  The otherpaul64.com.
[02:25:44]  That's where I post blog posts, but also certain exclusive content for supporters.
[02:25:50]  And if you want to become a supporter, you can go to the Become a Supporter tab on the website.
[02:25:54]  I'd highly appreciate that.
[02:25:55]  I do want to make this a full time job one day and, yeah, keep doing it in that regard.
[02:26:02]  And so, with that said, that's how you can find me.
[02:26:04]  That's where you can find me.
[02:26:05]  Oh, also on Twitter, it's at The Other Paul 2.
[02:26:09]  Unfortunately, and I kid you not, some libtard New York author already took at The Other Paul.
[02:26:14]  So, it's at The Other Paul 2 on Twitter.
[02:26:18]  And so, that's where those are the places where you guys can find me.
[02:26:21]  And, gentlemen, Joel, Thank you very much for having me on.

=== Achieving a Christian Consensus (06:34) ===

[02:26:25]  Absolutely.
[02:26:26]  Yeah, it was an honor to have you.
[02:26:28]  Just to be fair to Michael Landrum, since he did give us a super chat for $5, he had a comment underneath it.
[02:26:33]  I'm seeing it now.
[02:26:34]  He said, What is more valuable to you, Christian consensus within your community or Christian control in your local government?
[02:26:42]  My answer, to make it brief, would just be that it depends.
[02:26:46]  That's my short answer.
[02:26:46]  It depends.
[02:26:47]  For me, it would be a matter of degrees.
[02:26:49]  So if Christian consensus, so let's say that I opt for the latter and we have Christian control within local government, and let's say that my county and even my state will stretch that.
[02:26:58]  Far is explicitly Christian, but there's no Christian consensus.
[02:27:04]  So it's a general creedal Christian.
[02:27:08]  It doesn't allow for homosexuality.
[02:27:09]  It doesn't allow for things that are clearly anti Christian.
[02:27:14]  And for that matter, I would also include mass migration.
[02:27:19]  So it's holding the border.
[02:27:22]  It's not allowing for gay pride parades in our towns, in my community, and all those kinds of things.
[02:27:28]  And it's giving a certain deference to the Christian faith.
[02:27:33]  But there's, you know, in this scenario, there's very little Christian consensus, and 99, let's say hypothetically, 99% of Christian churches are absolutely heretical.
[02:27:47]  Then that would be, I would consider that a net loss.
[02:27:52]  On the other hand, if it's, you know, you have the church is completely aligned, but the church is few and far between, and Islam, Outnumbers the church, you know, 20 to 1, and Buddhism 10 to 1, you know, and Judaism 10 to 1.
[02:28:11]  And there's, you know, gay pride parades in the street, you know, multiple times a year.
[02:28:16]  And there's mass migration and a flood from the third world.
[02:28:19]  And RAPE cases are at an all time high to where I can't even allow my wife to take our children to the local park.
[02:28:29]  But every Christian church is a 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith Reformed Baptist Church.
[02:28:37]  And that feels like a net loss, also.
[02:28:40]  So, you know, you see what I'm saying?
[02:28:42]  So, I think it just depends.
[02:28:44]  It's a matter of degree.
[02:28:45]  But what I'm advocating for, you know, is I would like to see the homo jihad no longer having public celebration and even being able to push its weight around when it comes to hiring practices and all these kinds of things.
[02:29:05]  I would like to see mass immigration completely stopped.
[02:29:10]  Crime goes down because you have a Christian government that's tough on crime, welfare and taxes going down because of, you know, again, a Christian perspective.
[02:29:22]  The schools getting cleaned up, although I would advocate for homeschool or a Christian school, still the state schools, you know, in this hypothetical scenario, you know, there's no pornography for young students at schools and all these kinds of things and, you know, and Black Lives Matter and all that kind of stuff.
[02:29:43]  And let's say that the Christian consensus is about what it is currently, right?
[02:29:48]  So, there's still plenty of heretical churches, but there are also some good ones.
[02:29:53]  And yeah, I would take that every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
[02:29:57]  And I think that's what we're advocating for is, you know, I think that to achieve a Christian state and the ways that we've expressed on this stream and what I just described in brief right there, I don't see somebody would have to connect the dots for me.
[02:30:15]  I currently don't see how the state becoming more Christian.
[02:30:20]  Necessitates that the church becomes less Christian.
[02:30:23]  I think that I said that like maybe two years ago in the great battle over Christian nationalism with G3.
[02:30:30]  I said, No one has yet to prove to me or show me by logic or reason or even by history the principle, because they say it as though it's a principle, as though it's a foregone conclusion, that faithfulness in the realm of the state necessarily results in faithlessness with the church.
[02:30:51]  So even this idea of a nominal Christian culture.
[02:30:54]  They're saying, well, if the state, they would never word it like this, but this is essentially what they're saying.
[02:30:59]  They're basically saying, but if the state becomes faithful to Christ, then the culture will become nominal.
[02:31:09]  And my belief is that wherever you have nominal Christian culture that lends towards false conversions and all those kinds of things, it's not because the state became faithful in their Christianity, but because the church chose to become faithless.
[02:31:27]  And I don't see where a faithful state mandates or necessitates a faithless church.
[02:31:33]  I don't see that as a causation.
[02:31:40]  That could randomly occur, and I'm sure it has, but I don't see that as a direct causation that the more faithful the state becomes to Christ, that necessarily the less faithful the church becomes.
[02:31:55]  So, yeah, so I don't see that.
[02:31:56]  So I think we could, the state is pretty faithless.
[02:31:59]  Currently.
[02:32:00]  So I think we could ramp that up quite a bit.
[02:32:04]  And the church just staying where it's at.
[02:32:06]  I'd like to ramp that up also.
[02:32:07]  But let's just say the church hypothetically remains about what it is today in terms of faithfulness.
[02:32:14]  If the church remained where it is today, I don't see the state getting better somehow making the church get worse.
[02:32:22]  So I think it would just overall be a net positive.
[02:32:26]  And so I'm going to continue to advocate for it.
[02:32:28]  So thanks for tuning in.
[02:32:30]  We'll go ahead and end the stream here.
[02:32:31]  Again, to the other Paul, thank you for joining us.
[02:32:33]  We appreciate it.
[02:32:35]  And we will see all of our listeners, Lord willing, this next Monday on Memorial Day.
[02:32:40]  We have a pre recorded episode.
[02:32:41]  So it is new, it's fresh content.
[02:32:43]  Memorial Day is not, it's a rerun.
[02:32:47]  Oh, I'm sorry.
[02:32:47]  You're right.
[02:32:48]  Memorial Day is a rerun, but it's one of our favorites.
[02:32:52]  And I think it's worth tuning in, especially for those who haven't already seen it.
[02:32:55]  But Wednesday and Friday is fresh content.
[02:32:58]  And we'll see you then.
[02:32:59]  Yep.