The Friday Special "I'll Take The Christian, But Hold The Judeo" dissects The Case for Christian Nationalism, defining a nation by land, lineage, language, laws, loves, and liturgy. Hosts critique "hard supersessionism," which claims ethnic Israel's spiritual revival occurred in 70 AD, contrasting it with future conversion theories. They argue that special privileges for Jews undermine a cohesive Christian nation, citing the Emma Lazarus plaque as a symbol of multicultural dilution. Ultimately, the episode calls for an immigration moratorium to restore American identity through assimilation, rejecting universalizing trends that favor weak cultures over an assertive national character. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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A Nation Is People In Place00:05:43
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All right, we are back.
So, this is now episode four of a 10 part series.
Myself and Dr. Stephen Wolf, we are doing really going through the book, The Case for Christian Nationalism.
And what we've done so far is we started with what would you say, episode one?
I keep saying episode one was Aristotle, but it was a lot more than Aristotle.
What was episode one?
Yeah, now I have to remember.
It felt like it was months ago that I did that.
Hours ago.
Yeah, it was going to be the introduction, but then it was some methodological stuff, like why I didn't use scripture, stuff like that.
That's right.
Yeah.
But then, episode two, we got into defining Christian nationalism and Christian nationalism.
Episode three, though, became almost like a series within a series.
I made my inception joke, you know, Dream Within a Dream.
We've got a 10 part series and then a mini series, you know, within it.
And so, the last episode, episode three, was kind of like a part one answering the question okay, so we've already talked about in episode two, what is Christian nationalism, defining that.
But now, you know, to really understand that, we're discussing well, but what is a nation?
Especially for Americans, a lot of Americans can't answer that question or refuse to answer that question.
So, episode three, the episode immediately preceding this one, was what is a nation?
And we really focused on home and history.
In this episode, we want to go a little bit broader and say that a nation is never anything less than a people in place.
It's a particular people in a particular place.
It is a home, it's not just a set of propositions or an economic zone.
But it is true that nations.
Are not less but more than just people in place, and so we've got six different components, and you can push back on them or help me explain them or add some if you want.
But six different components that I kind of teased out at the end of the last episode, and I got these from my friend Michael Belch, he's a part of our live stream that we do with Right Response Ministries and a part of the church that I pastor, Covenant Bible Church.
He's coming out with a book called The Biblical Case for Nations, and so he came up with these six L's, they all start with an L land.
Lineage, language, laws, loves, and liturgy.
Land, lineage, language, loves, laws, and liturgy.
And so land and lineage, that's people in place.
A nation's never less, but a nation is also more.
What do you think?
I don't know if I'll be able to remember all those L's, but yeah, I would say.
Well, you do it your way.
I'll do it my way.
Yeah, you do it your way.
Yeah.
I mean, like language, for example, is.
Is pretty crucial.
That's the example I typically use when people try to say that all you need to do is be a Christian.
If everyone's a Christian, then you can form a political community.
And so I say, well, there is no universal language.
There's no language that the gospel prescribes, unless we want to all go to Hebrew or Greek or whatever, Latin, which would be kind of a lot of trouble.
Destroy nation groups as linguistic groups.
Like it's going to enter into an English speaking people, a Chinese speaking people, and that's going to be the way they preach the word is through the vernacular of that local place and the political community.
Yeah.
So, and there's even like, even though we share the same language with England, there's still many ways in which they communicate things that we don't and vice versa.
So that changes in different places.
So I think that's a.
I mean, there's an argument for why we actually can be closer to England as fellow states, fellow nations, because of a shared language.
So, yeah, I think that's absolutely the case.
I don't know if I have anything else to add on.
Does that help?
No, that's fine.
No, that's good.
This is kind of, I don't know.
It's a little quirky, but it's something that I've thought about.
Maybe I shouldn't get into it.
It deals with Israel a little bit.
Oh, okay.
It'll be fun.
It'll be fun.
I'm going to do it.
All right.
So, I don't actually even know your position.
So, I'm asking you here right on the spot.
This is not something that's planned or rehearsed.
And I don't even know the answer.
But so, I kind of.
Have prescribed to, you know, other guys have held it, but a lot of times it's attributed to Jim Jordan, James Jordan, and the partial preterist hermeneutic applied to the whole scripture, not the whole, but most of it in the New Testament, and basically saying that pretty much every New Testament book of the Bible is written pre 8070, and then taking that and applying it even to Romans 11.
Dispensationalism And Political Relevance00:14:35
And so saying, you know, there's certainly not, you know, as a supersessionist, a covenantal guy, both of us, I know, agree with that.
There's certainly not any physical land promises for Israel in our future.
But most covenantal guys, including the Puritans and a lot of the reformers, still held to a futuristic spiritual revival for Israel, ethnic Israel, according to the flesh, that eventually they would be saved.
And Romans 11, that they're the natural branches.
The true Israel isn't even the church.
That's true in a sense, but the true Israel is Christ.
He's the root.
And the wild branches have been grafted in the Gentile nations.
Eventually, you know, these natural branches will be grafted in two.
Well, I take the position that that actually already happened, that leading up to 8070, part of it going back to like the Olivet discourse, that Jesus gave really, I think, some of the most profound and accurate prophecy in the ministry of Jesus and his earthly ministry ever.
In Matthew 24, I tell you truly, you know, that not one stone will stand on another with the temple and that Titus, you know, he's going to come.
And he even says, before this generation passes away, I don't think that's a metaphor, this type of generation, but, but, You, you people.
And sure enough, 40 years later, give or take, you have the destruction of the temple, you have the destruction of Jerusalem.
And I think there were a lot of people there that remembered the words of Jesus.
And Jesus warned them, you know, don't go back and grab your tunic or this or that, but run, head for the hills.
And so I don't think he was referring to his final physical return that actually is still in our future, but he was referring to a local judgment that could actually be physically escaped.
That's why you don't go back and grab something, because you actually could.
Escape and you know, coming on the clouds, I think it's clouds, it's not like, oh, heaven's coming back, it's the final, you know, the end of the gospel age, but clouds signifying judgment, like in Isaiah or Joel chapter two.
And so, there's clouds and billows of smoke from the desolation, and Titus sacking Jerusalem and the temple, and all these things.
And even Josephus, you know, who sometimes is, you know, there's an argument to be made in terms of reliability, but um, Josephus, you know, had there were multiple eyewitness accounts that said that you know, through the smog and the desolation, the destruction of Jerusalem, people saw through the smoke.
Saw what looked like silhouettes of chariots going back and forth.
And so there's a parousia of sorts.
In a sense, it was a second coming of Christ, not in the flesh, not the final physical return of Christ, but Jesus did return.
He did come in a second time, in a spiritual sense, through judgment and providence carried out through Titus and the Romans.
All that being said, I think that Christendom that we've experienced from Constantine all the way up till present day, 1500 years in Gentile nations in the West, and And then, you know, beyond just Christendom in the West and, you know, lots of Gentiles being saved in China and Brazil and South America and all these different places, I don't think we're waiting for a catalyst.
And I love the Puritans probably more than a lot of guys.
But I think they were wrong on this.
I don't think we're waiting for a lot of them were post millennial, and so am I.
I know you're not, but I don't think we're waiting on the natural branches to be grafted back in this spiritual revival for ethnic Israel according to the flesh so that we can then experience this life from the dead revival among Gentile nations.
I think Christendom has been life from the dead.
We've been experiencing.
And I think the reason why we've been experiencing it is because the natural branches leading up to 8070 and at 8070.
I think some Jews were destroyed in Jerusalem as judgment, but I think a lot of them converted.
I really do.
And then in converting, they probably took heed to Jesus' words in Matthew 24 and got out of dodge, escaped the physical judgment, probably intermarried with different peoples and moved north outside of Jerusalem and all this kind of stuff and became other peoples and dispersed and were Christians.
And I bet you this one's a little controversial, but I can't prove it and we'll never know.
But I wouldn't be surprised if we find that some Christians in Palestine actually turns out are.
The posterity tracking back to, you know, Jews in 8070 that converted and ran away from the desolation.
And so that's my thought.
Now, that said, when it comes to like nationhood, a lot of guys, when they're advocating, you know, they'll never advocate for America.
Like I picked on Joel Berry in the last episode, and you can never do that too often.
Joel Berry deserves it.
Yeah.
But so I'll do it a little bit now.
You know, so he would never argue, you know, advocate for these things for America because, you know, he, He hates America, but he would argue these things for Israel because he loves him some Israel.
And I've heard guys like Joel Berry say, Well, you know, because Titus, all the birth records were destroyed.
Like I preached to Ezra recently, and it's like, if you wanted to go back and build the temple the second time, much less a third time, hypothetically, that I don't think will ever happen, but even the second time, you think of God's law being immutable and his standards never change and all these kinds of things.
Like you had to prove lineage.
If they didn't have the birth records, they didn't get to be a part of the project.
They weren't hated or despised, but I'm sorry, you can't.
You can't come and you can't do this because you can't prove that you're Israel.
It's not your thing.
So, going back and rebuilding the walls in Jerusalem and the temple and all these things in the book of Ezra and Nehemiah required proof.
Well, Titus destroyed all the birth records.
And you have like not 25 years, it's not 15 minutes, it's a quarter of a millennium.
It's like 250 years, 240 years before the entrance of the Talmud and then picking back up with birth records and tracking family names and all these kinds of things.
And I've heard some guys, this gets to nationhood.
I'm actually getting there.
With nationhood, I've heard some guys say, well, it doesn't matter.
Like people and place, land and lineage, blood and soil, God forbid, you know, whatever.
It doesn't matter.
What matters is even if these were different people, it doesn't matter.
They came back and they picked up the rituals and the customs and the culture.
And so, for all intents and purposes, they're Jews.
And I think of that and I'm like, Well, I think, you know, because I like some of the obscure stuff like Nephilim and fairies and stuff.
I think that Atlantis is the recrossed structure in the Sahara Desert.
And if I go there and excavate, and let's say I get lucky and I find different artifacts and I even find like some hieroglyphics and writings and stuff like that, and I recover Atlantean, the language, and learn how to write, learn how to speak it, and me and the boys, you know, we go and then we discover the customs and the culture and we start practicing those things, then we're Atlanteans.
Like, does nationhood work that way?
Does do people?
No, I would just say no.
Like we could recover and appreciate, and we could even learn how to speak the language.
And that's the whole thing with Israel.
It's not just that the temple was destroyed and the city was destroyed and the birth records were destroyed, and you got a quarter of a millennium that passes with no line of keeping birth records and all these kinds of things, but they lost the very language.
They had to relearn how to speak Hebrew.
You know what I mean?
And so, even if they are the little descendants, I can't prove that they're not.
I don't think very many people can prove that they are.
But the point is this it's funny because it actually applies to Israel.
But this idea of, well, a nation isn't really people in place.
It's not really land and lineage.
It's just language and just laws and just liturgy and just loves.
And so you could go anywhere and even peoples that don't exist anymore but have been lost to history, like Athens or whatever, you could go to a place and if you could recover the language, learn how to speak the language, learn how to write in the language, find some old books, pick up the rituals and the customs and the practices, and even dust off the religion.
Then you are those people.
You become the nation of Israel.
You become, and it's, I think that's, we were talking about it in our last episode.
I think that might be the correlation, the connecting point between the dispensational, I love myself some Israel Zionist, who also at the same time is propositional nationhood for America.
Because I think the propositional nationhood for America is the whole way you get modern day Israel, because there's a massive gap, and that's the only way it can happen.
So language matters, laws matter, liturgy matters, loves matter.
But I'm of the persuasion that even if I could get recapture all those things from the Atlanteans with me and my buddies, we still wouldn't be Atlanteans.
What do you think?
Yeah.
I mean, if you're going to, if you're coming from the outside and you are intent upon adopting a national way of life, there has to be the nation has to be there.
So it's like Ruth coming in to become your people or my people, your people.
There has to, you can't just.
Create this thing and then declare, I'm Israel or I'm Atlantean or yeah, that's not going to work.
Um, that there's a bet, Ruth really could become Israel, yeah, but she could only become Israel because there was an Israel, there was an Israel that existed, there was a people in which she could kind of graft herself, integrate into, and then her descendants as well, exactly.
Um, yeah, that's interesting.
I actually don't know if it's like if there's if people have thought that through though, because I think most people think that the Jews in Israel are Jewish people.
100% by dissent.
The reformers thought that.
Yeah, yeah.
I know I'm taking my position is thoroughly orthodox.
It's not heretical.
It's what I would call a hard supersessionist position.
And I would say the reformers and Puritans were soft supersessionists.
And I fully recognize that the soft supersessionist position is the majority opinion within the reformed tradition.
And that says something when you're going against the majority opinion of the reformed tradition.
But the opinion I'm having could be wrong, but it's not a heretical, unhinged.
Yeah, yeah.
And I don't, you know, that's actually the question itself.
I haven't studied enough to come down on a definitive answer.
And the main reason is so for me in theology, I focus on the theology that I think is most relevant for my political thought.
And so there's a lot of things I don't know in theology.
And there's some things in theology that where I sound like a mud theology whiz when I'm really not in like broad and totality of it.
But one reason I haven't studied that issue is I think it's not politically relevant.
Well, yeah, for today, for all intents and purposes, Israel, don't hear what I'm not saying, it doesn't matter.
They are a legitimate nation state.
They are a people today.
Whether there's a disconnect to biblical Israel or not, there's still a people.
And for me, as a post millennial guy, I believe all the nations eventually will be saved, including this nation of Israel, whether they can track it back all the way or not.
Yeah.
So I'm not saying that, you know, why do you care about it?
I'm saying that we should not consider that question as politically relevant, whether you fall on this side or that side.
I mean, dispensationalism becomes politically relevant.
That's why it's kind of dangerous that way.
Right.
But in this position, it's like, When people kind of fall on the side of there will be a mass conversion of Jews, they tend then to push back, even if they're kind of on our side, I guess.
Right.
They'll push back and say, well, if we're going to have a Christian nation, we can't have a Christian nation.
Or if we do have a Christian nation, it has to be kind of maximally religiously tolerant and have religious liberty.
Why?
Well, because you might have a handful of Jews.
Exactly.
I've asked the question all the time.
It's interesting that it's like, well, then what about Jews?
And I'm like, well, they're like 3% of the population.
Right.
Like, why?
So, you're saying we can't have a Christian nation if we're like 97% Christian, which of course we're not now, but if we were, as in people who identify with some sort of Christian confession or whatever, but there's 3% Jews, you're saying that the 3% have to dictate to us that we can't have a Christian nation.
I mean, certainly we can tolerate people.
What do Christians say today?
They literally say that, and that's why I'm constantly asking.
It's also because of like World War II, and they think it's very, if I answer on the side of like, You know, like, yeah, we'll have a Christian nation and people will tolerate synagogues, or even that will sound like Hitler.
And so, they'll that they think it's a gotcha question, they think it's a defeater.
Whereas, I think that if you have three percent of the population non Christian, then who cares?
Who cares?
Right, be kind, be respectful, but no, you don't get to drive the bus.
Yeah, yeah, if you are a small, yeah, that's not going to stop us, it shouldn't stop us from having a Christian nation, even if you believe that there will be a mass conversion of Jews.
And this is how, like, even you know, even like you said, the most people in the reformed tradition believed.
That there would be that, as I understand.
I haven't studied very closely, but I take what you said.
That is clearly the majority position.
I'm taking the minority position.
But none of them let them think, oh, well, we have like a family of Jews here.
Therefore, we can't have a Christian magistrate.
We can't have Christian laws.
Exactly.
Because, oh, you know, you're going to have blue laws on Sunday, but what about Saturday?
Because the Jew, you know, that family.
And so it's like, that's why I say it's to me not politically relevant, at least with regard to my own political.
I would say our political aspirations are very much like they were like, yeah, there's going to be a future revival for the Jews, and that's going to be a catalyst that kickstarts this life from the dead revival among Gentile nations that'll benefit us and everybody else in the world.
And yet, in the same breath, they were also able to say, and you also can't hold political office as a Jew.
Yeah.
Well, and many of them said more than that.
So they were willing, yeah, they were willing to do, to have specific laws about specifically targeting Jews.
And which is not to say that you can't, you don't get to drive the bus, right?
If you're somebody who is not a Christian, and even more than that, not just not a Christian, but someone whose entire religion is founded on the rejection of Christ, yeah, yeah.
And that's like so.
By pointing that out, I'm simply saying that none of that theology of conversion, the Jews came to shape their thoughts on politics, exactly.
And they were right, they were right to not let that happen, and today it does.
Theological Love For Israel00:03:00
And that's why I just generally am uninterested in Israel and Jews broadly speaking in terms of determining our political system and a Christian nationhood.
I only consider Israel as a state among other states in the world.
Exactly.
And if Iran is a threat or you want balance of power in the Middle East because they hate Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia hates them, and Syria hates all these dynamics in the Middle East, maybe it's good to have a place like Israel where they can occasionally bomb Iran.
Maybe that's good.
Maybe it's not.
But that's my level of analysis of Israel.
I don't care about that other stuff.
And I don't think we either should have no theological love for Israel.
There's reasons not to love Israel on lots of different levels.
Theologically, morally.
Well, yeah, yeah.
But I think we should treat them as a geopolitically rather than that.
Amen.
And we should just get.
Yeah, it's very frustrating.
It's very frustrating that.
Yeah, like you can have a society that tolerates people who are not Christians.
You can grant them citizenship.
You can have them in a formal sense capable of achieving anything anyone else can achieve.
Like in American history, there were, to my knowledge, there's never been a specific law targeting Jews in America.
I could be wrong about that.
And Jews did fairly well in the United States.
But at the same time, for most of our history, we said that we're a Christian people.
And no one had the second thought of, well, what about the Jews?
Right.
And so we should also, so we don't have to then, you know, have a take Martin Luther's or Martin Bootser's program for the Jews in the future.
We can grant religious liberty and toleration, but at the same time saying, you live here.
I mean, if you want to be publicly Jewish in a Jewish state among Jewish people, there's, you have the right to return to Israel.
And we should not hinder them for that.
But, and actually, I mean, it's people like, like Hazoni, Yoram Hazoni.
Right.
Who's said this clearly is that America is a Protestant, historically a Protestant country.
He has said that he wants Christians to return to having a strong, assertive will for itself, a public Christianity, and a return to a type of nationalism in which Protestantism was the essential feature of it.
And yeah, and so that's what I've always envisioned.
It's what you envisioned.
And so we should get away.
Again, it's like we don't have to go in the post work instances this time, but that is the driving mentality is that the moment you start getting these mental images of mustache man, it's like, oh, we can't have a Christian nation.
Special Privilege And Judeo Mentality00:15:45
Right.
And you're absolutely right.
So, what I was going to say, you said, like, so basically, you know, what you said is I have no theological love for Israel.
I don't really care, you know, as a political, you know, as it is a legitimate nation state.
Now, whether it should have been, you know, reformed in the 1940s and whether it should have been there, blah, blah, plenty of arguments to be made.
On either side.
However, in God's providence, this is the way it played out.
God's sovereign over all things.
It is what it is.
They have a right to self defense.
They have a right to exist and not be blasted off the face of the map.
So they are a nation, and whether or not other Western nations like ours should have some kind of partnership with them, that just depends on the situation and what's going on.
And that could be wise.
In other cases, it could be foolish.
But theologically, there should be no Christian nations like America shouldn't have any theological.
Obligation or motivation to be bound.
And so, this is the last thing I was going to say on that.
So, I agree with everything you said.
Part of, though, what landed me on hard supersessionism as my position with Romans 11 is first and foremost, the God breathed text.
I really feel like it makes that hermeneutic applied to Galatians, applied to the book of Hebrews, is integral.
The whole book.
The whole book of Hebrews, the book of Galatians, and then also Romans chapter 9, 10, and 11.
Those would be some of the key texts, and Ephesians.
That hermeneutic seems to be the most consistent and has the most, just the best way of resolving all those texts in a consistent manner for me.
And so the exegesis persuaded me beyond that.
So that's number one.
I really was persuaded, I think, by the word of God.
But secondly, one of the things that persuaded me is even if you're not a dispensationalist and you don't think there's any future land promises, physical promises for Israel, by simply holding to a future and our future, In Paul's future, because I date the writing of Romans probably like 8050, 8055.
So it was in Paul's future, 8070.
But if you think it's in our future, that Romans 11 is indicating a future, not land promises, not physical, but a spiritual revival for Israel, not in Paul's future, 20 years down the line, but still in our future, then one of the things that has to happen, especially, and here's see for you, you can get out of this as an all-male guy.
But for some of the post-male guys, Especially the ones who are like, it'll be 50,000 years before Christ returns.
Think about this logically.
If you're a long game post mill guy, but you're also like, there's a spiritual revival for Israel.
And a lot of these guys hold to like a David Chilton golden age, and they think the golden age comes right after.
So it's right at the end before the final physical return of Christ and right after this revival, spiritual revival among the Jews.
About a thousand years, but they think that we've got a 50,000 year timeline.
So think about this logically.
We're 2,000 years in, 50,000 years is the timeline, and the Jews are going to get saved with this revival right before the last thousand years.
That means we have, if my math is right, 47,000 years between today and the future spiritual revival of the Jews.
And even if there's not a physical land promise and it's just a spiritual revival promise, well, one thing that has to happen for that spiritual revival promise to be fulfilled.
Is they have to at least survive.
Yeah, right.
So for 47,000 years, Western Christian nations, with whether alliances, military, keeping them out of war, no intermarriage, like kinism for thee, but not for me.
Yeah.
Like at every single level.
And you basically have to grant special privilege.
Yes.
You have to give them special privilege.
Yeah.
And even if you're looking at spiritual revival.
Whereas, like me and Isker, we both take the approach that I already espoused with the partial credit.
And so, me and Isker, what it allows us to do is it doesn't require us to have any animosity or malice or hatred or anything like that.
But it also allows us to be like, you're not special at all.
At all.
You're not less special, you know, but not at all.
And here's the thing even the guys are like, well, Joel, you're talking to me like I'm dispensational, you're talking to me like I'm a Zionist.
It's like, well, brother, I know you're not dispensational.
I understand your covenantal.
I understand your Westminster, you know, federalism and blah, blah, blah.
I get it.
Good for you.
But here's what you, even you with your position, still require their survival.
So it's like a functional dispensationalism.
It is.
Yeah, that's interesting.
I mean, I have noticed that, yeah, we do very seriously attack the idea of the rejection of like inter ethnic marriage, but not for Jews.
Not for Jews.
I can see how there can be a theological motivation, but if it is morally wrong in itself to attack that, and then you're giving like a special almost release for Jews.
And we actually do that all the time.
I just read a Wall Street Journal article.
Written by a rabbi who was bemoaning the fact that Jews in the United States are not marrying fellow Jews.
Right.
And they're not, and the ones that do intermarry with non Jews are not raising their children.
We have a genetically Jewish guy in our church.
And of course, he's converted.
He's a Christian.
And he doesn't do the messianic Jew thing because he's like, no, I'm Christian.
Amen.
Amen.
Yeah.
And so he was a part of the church for a while and ended up moving on.
But he was married to, You know, white lady who's not Jewish.
I don't know what her exact ethnicity is, but she looked kind of Irish to me.
But, anyways, I asked him about it and I was like, Did you get some flack?
He was like, You wouldn't believe.
Yeah.
Like, my parents, I might as well have just killed them.
You know, like, it was, they could, you know, my parents, my aunts, uncles, like, it was received as like the most deeply disrespectful, heinous thing that I possibly.
Could do because all these Christian nations view Israel as very, very special.
And Israel certainly views Israel as very, very special.
And yeah, but the thing is, if you have that, if you've carved out that space for yourself, or others have carved out that space for you, then yeah, there are certain assumptions baked into the pie.
We can't let Israel get blown off the face of the map by.
Lebanon or Iran or whatever.
We've got to come to their aid militarily.
We need to send billions of dollars every 15 seconds.
Every election, you've probably seen the memes where it's like, who's going to win this election in America?
And it shows all 50 states are the same color.
And it shows Bibi.
And he's like, the true winner of every American election.
I do think logically, though, I think you could, I don't think it has to lead to that logically from that position.
I can see how someone would get there.
But I think you also could say that you actually don't have any theological obligation to anyone because it's a matter of providence that there will be Jews such that they could mass convert.
Yeah, but it's a matter of providence that God would save people, but we still do evangelism.
A matter of providence that God answers the need of people, but we still pray.
I think that's.
Yeah.
Even the providential Calvinists would still say, yeah, like if it is God's will and he's providentially going to bring it about, he's still going to do so through human agency and means.
And we have an obligation to.
You know, yeah, I mean, I, yeah, I can see, I can see how that could lead there, but I'm that didn't strike anyone in our tradition that that's the case.
I mean, of course, modern Israel did not exist, but it does today somehow, yeah, it does, yeah, that's, but you're right, I'm with you.
The reformers believed it was going to happen, ethnic Jews still exist, they're going to be saved.
It hasn't happened already, it's going to happen in our future, it's going to be a wonderful thing.
And if you're going to live in this Christian nation, you got to play by the rules.
They were able to do it, but we can't, yeah, for some reason, yeah, and and.
And I think that has to do with nationhood.
Back to our topic.
Yeah.
I really do.
I think part of it has to do with dispensationalism.
The reformers certainly weren't dealing with dispensationalism.
So, part of it's a theological problem, theological error, but I also do think that some of it has to do with our propositional nationhood idea that they're a real nation, people, place, lineage, land, but we're not.
So, they have certain privileges that we don't.
It would be consistent with the idea that the United States and the people who have historically lived here are here to facilitate other people having their identities.
And this kind of goes back to what we talked in the previous episode, and that is that.
We don't have a people, but we work such that other people can have a people themselves.
So we're, yeah, that would fit.
Yeah.
Yeah, the whole, the problem is, yeah, I mean, I haven't really thought about that before.
The idea that there is, it's connected to our understanding of Israel in that way.
Yeah, I mean, the idea of a propositional nationhood in the United States is only part of the story, of course.
Right.
Which we'll probably get to at the latter end of this.
Well, anything more?
I know I completely derailed the whole episode, but here's the deal.
Was it interesting?
Are you not entertained?
Yeah.
So, as long as it's interesting, but this episode, if you have any thoughts on what is a nation?
Yeah.
I mean, just back on that, I do think like after World War II, there was the never again mentality.
Right.
And that never again mentality is specifically focused in on Jews.
And they can openly in the United States, and you can read the Wall Street Journal article that I read.
He actually bemoaned the fact that there was assimilation happening among Jews.
There is a culture among them where, no, not all of them, but that it would be wrong to assimilate because you're assimilating into a Christian.
Yeah.
But they can openly do that.
That's one of the very, and this is just factually true, they can openly talk about how intermarriage is bad for them.
No one else can talk about that.
I mean, well, whites can't, but even increasingly, I think blacks cannot, and others like it's Asians.
It's increasingly frowned upon for even non whites to talk about that, in my experience, but not them.
And so, again, I would just treat the 3% of the population that's not Christian just as this abstract category.
I don't care if you're Jewish or if you're Muslim or if you're Hindu.
We're a Christian country.
And that's it.
And so, yeah, we should not give special consideration.
But yeah, I guess I see how, again, post millennialism keeps throwing all these problems away.
You guys got problems in your camp.
No, I don't.
No, I know.
Because I conceive of it in a different way.
But also, just pointing out to you.
If there is that 50,000 year timeline, then you have to justify, like, Intra ethnic marriage, like it would be a duty of us to affirm that, even though we think it's morally wrong, right?
Which then we're giving like a special moral dispensation against the law of God, I guess.
It's very, there's all these contradictions, and we tie ourselves into these like pretzels and knots in order to justify these things because it comes so natural to us.
Like, even the fact that a version of the postmonial mass conversion, even that, like we said in the past, is not the case.
Like, no one thought like we think today.
And have these special considerations for certain groups.
But it's, yeah, it just shows how strong this drive is to, I mean, in part, it's like when you're willing to say, okay, there's these slices of people who do not have to assimilate, then why not these other groups?
And so from there, you get the propositional nationhood idea.
Right.
And then you get Judeo Christian values.
You get these ideas.
And Judeo Christian values just happen to be that everyone can maintain their identities.
And be here and not assimilate, and there's multiculturalism.
So, in that sense, you have a slice of people who have an interest in non assimilation, in marrying among themselves, preserving themselves.
And then, what's the best way for a nation to maintain that the ability for them to do that?
Well, you just open it up for everyone to do that.
So, now you have America as a propositional nationhood with a historic core of people who have really no claim to this place, even their historical figures are universalized.
And yet, everyone comes here, affirm a certain set of propositions, and contribute to the GDP, and then you're kind of part of us.
Like, that's the Western mentality.
And yeah, we have to restore it.
It's so important because I'm glad you're connecting the dots, and I completely agree.
And I've thought some of these things for a while now, but this is what I want Christians to see and recognize.
What you're saying is that the idea of multiculturalism and come one, come all, bring us, you're tired, you're weary, all those kinds of things.
What we're doing for other nations, for Somalians and Haitians and whatever, everybody who comes.
I really do think, though, at the common denominator at the bottom is well, we got to do it for Jews.
You can be perfectly hinged, perfectly reasonable.
I hate Judaism.
I love Jews and wish them a very pleasant conversion to Christianity.
That's my position on Jewish people.
But I do see that they have been used, I think, as kind of like the crowbar that worked its way in to propositional nationhood.
And then every other people on the planet, all of a sudden, America becomes a set of propositions, an economic zone.
And a lot of the things that we're trying to fix, part of the reason we can't fix it is because of this Judeo Christian sentiment.
And it has to be discussed.
And it needs to be discussed by people who.
Are not spiteful or hateful or, you know, immature or, you know, it can't, it doesn't need to be discussed by jerks.
But I'd like to think that me and you aren't jerks.
And so I think discussing these things and just raising the question, you know, for the audience, the listener to consider as well, like, I think could be productive.
Yeah.
Right.
Disparate Groups Flourishing Separately00:05:11
If we give a pass on one group for not assimilating and having essentially making themselves separate from the core.
Yes.
Then it's not far from that to saying that anyone else who comes here can remain separate from the core.
And then it's not far from that to say there is no core.
There is no core.
The core is nothing.
And actually, this place is just a holding place for a collection of identities.
And we can all get along because we affirm these very generic set of propositions around liberty.
Right.
And speaking of liberty, and that's very good.
And like that.
That world is very good for those disparate groups.
It's not good for the historic people of a nation.
They would, they then, I mean, this is where like a presser oppressed narrative comes in, where they, because they tend to be the core and what made the country what it is, they are, their being in a way is attached to the very thing of the nation, right?
So you have to then downplay that and destroy that.
And so that these disparate groups can flourish in their own separate identities.
Right.
Yeah.
And that's happening throughout the West.
Yep.
Yep.
What I was going to say real quick about, you know, I said speaking of liberty, Lady Liberty, I was just curious if you're familiar with this.
You know, the, the, I don't even remember what it's called and I can't quote it, but the, bring us your tired, you're weary, you're poor, the plaque on Lady Liberty.
Yeah.
Have you heard that?
You probably know what I'm going to say, but it was written by a Jew.
Oh, was it?
Okay.
I did not know that.
And I think of that.
And this is not saying like, and, So, therefore, you know, there's this, you know, secret society and everybody's involved and blah, blah.
I don't think that's the case.
Just like, just like I don't, I'm not involved with what the Bidens and Pelosi's and, you know, I don't know, you know, like, so I think most people are probably just living their lives.
But I do think that on an individual basis, that different people do different things.
And sometimes people have an in game insight, they have an objective that they're trying to accomplish.
And I don't think it was just a coincidence.
I don't think it's just, I'll show my hand a little bit here, but I don't think it was just a sentiment of compassion.
I think it was that particular person who happened to be a Jew wanted America to be open to anyone, to everyone, because it served them.
And I don't think that America can be open to anyone and everyone.
And be viable and sustainable long term.
I think that America, you can always have some mitigated form of immigration.
I'm not saying that nobody ever gets to come ever again, but every single nation has a self preserving mechanism, is able to think about the majority dominant group and say, this is us.
And the nation exists for our good, you know, like the founders, like our, you know, for our good, the good of us and our posterity.
Like Adams wasn't thinking like for my good, for my wife, for my children, for India.
That's not what it was.
Yeah, we have this universalizing tendency.
And that universalizing tendency, when among the majority core of a nation, serves not the benefit of that majority, it serves the benefit of the disparate, small, highly in group preferenced groups.
Right.
And because if you, I mean, you have countries where the majority has high in group preference, take like Saudi Arabia, something like that, where it's It's they're Arabs, but there are a lot of immigrants in Saudi Arabia, such as Filipino nurses and maids and things like that.
But because they have a strong, assertive in group preference for Arabs and Muslims, they are able to have these small groups that then would kind of conform, you know, essentially they would be they're outsiders.
And right, but if you have a weak majority, a weak core, then those disparate groups can then benefit.
From that weakness.
And so I think without ever having to assimilate.
Without having to assimilate.
And so, yeah.
Yeah, and that's why that in part is why I critique our very universalizing tendencies, but where we're opposed to particularism for ourselves, but for it for others.
We are universal in ourselves.
Our in group is all people, not a particular people.
And that means that the people who can have high in group preference can exploit the people who don't have a people.
Exactly.
And my point was to say that even that sentiment is etched into Lady Liberty.
Critiquing Universalizing Tendencies00:03:39
Yeah, that's everywhere.
You go in America.
It wasn't in the founding, but in everything that came later, that's so deeply ingrained in all of our minds.
And so, my whole point in bringing all this up with this episode is just to say that a nation, there has to be assimilation, it has to be shared language, laws, loves, customs, and cultures, and even worship and liturgy.
But even with all that, that's absolutely necessary.
And that over time, not in 15 minutes, but over two, three, four generations, assimilation, all that can happen.
But then over time, what that also eventually shapes is lineage.
That you can look and say, our grandfathers fought in the same wars.
We have the same lineage, the same heritage, the same history.
And it's happened, the same people on the same land, lineage and land.
Without that, though, My fear is that the problem is that at the rate of attrition and the number, the sheer number of people coming in daily, you know, from all over the world.
And in many cases, some of the least compatible places.
Because one thing to take immigrants from England, you know, or Ireland or Scotland, but, you know, Haiti has very little in common, you know, with the United States.
And so to take such an influx.
Year after year after year after year, without pausing, you know, like there's always been immigration with America, but there were kind of like there were settling moments in between, also.
It's like a flood of Irish and then a breather, you know, and a bunch of Italians, a breather.
We haven't had a breather in decades.
No, that's not going to work.
It's just not.
Yeah.
We're in trouble.
Yeah.
Final thoughts?
The moratorium on all immigration.
Yeah, I remember talking to sitting down with Doug Wilson on this two years ago, um, before the book came out.
And I said the very same thing I said that, um, we have to stop all immigration.
Um, and because we have to, as an American, people have to sort out who we are, and that's only digest it.
That's only going to take time, throw a little bit of it, generations.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, there's got to, if you're illegal, you should be deported, but, but, um, But yeah, I mean, you can't have an actual people.
You can't fulfill all the goods of man, which includes having a people in a place by constantly bringing in people from the outside who are radically different than you are.
I mean, I would actually include, I think people in England and France and Germany, I don't want them here either because in general, they would vote for the Democrats.
I don't want anyone.
There's no people in the entire world that I want to come here.
And in some ways, I think the average Englishman and the average German and the average Frenchman would be just as detrimental as someone from Haiti in terms of our political life.
Because I think they would oppose.
In terms of how they vote, they would oppose.
Yeah, in terms of like, yeah, in terms of votes, they'd vote the same way.
But I think mentally, they're more screwed up than we are, especially Germany.
Who Belongs In America00:03:51
So, Germany, it's almost as though I remember visiting Germany when I was in high school with my dad, visiting a pastor there.
My dad was a pastor and we were going and visiting the church.
And I remember just looking around and like a lot of the people, the men especially, if you asked a question and they gave you an answer, they were making a statement.
But the inflection in their voice would go up at the end as though they were asking a question.
So it's like, what time is it?
12 o'clock, isn't it?
It's like, I don't know.
I'm asking you, is it 12 o'clock?
Yes or no?
But like, they can't say anything with any sense of certainty or confidence.
Oh, wow.
You know, so like everything has to be, it's weak.
It's weak.
It's always has to be hedged.
There's a reservation and you just can't confidently assert anything, especially again, the men.
And I remember, you know, I was like 17 years old at the time.
I remember asking my dad about it.
My dad, you know, was very aware of it as well.
And he had been to Germany a couple of times before.
And I think it was either me or my dad.
I think it was my dad, but he said, he's like, it's almost like they lost a war or something, you know?
It's like a very defeated people.
Yeah.
And it's, dude, it's sad.
80 years later, like.
They are defeated.
They're defeated.
It's, yeah, I mean, it's interesting.
You talk to your other Europeans, like Hungarians, and they think the Germans are the same as they've always been, but they think they're faking it.
At least that's what I was told when I was there.
I don't think that's the case, but you know, that's Hungarians.
But yeah, that's what I'm saying that they're defeated, so I don't want them anymore than I want anyone else.
Fair enough.
But yeah, I mean, about the American, I love that we're more assertive.
Like we say something and we sit down for business.
It's like you go to Iraq or Afghanistan, and these soldiers have to, sometimes young lieutenants have to sit down with these chiefs of a tribe, and they all want to talk about.
For half an hour, like your family and your history, where are you from?
And then they tell their life story, and then you get down to business.
So the Americans have to be trained.
Before you sit down with the Afghani, you have to let him talk about his kids and his great grandfather, and then you get into business.
But we just sit down and go straight for business, which I actually appreciate.
Me too.
All right.
So a nation is shared language, it's shared laws, it's shared loves, and also liturgy and worship.
A nation is more than land and lineage, more than people and place, but never less.
Yeah, and the last thing is there's a self affirming aspect to the nation that I think is crucial that you affirm yourself as a nation worthy of doing good for yourself.
So you can have all those things.
Germany has all those things in a way, but they're not a self affirming people.
That's a good point.
Same thing with the English.
Like you said, they're deferential, they apologize.
And same thing with Canadians are like that.
But we ought to be.
A self affirming people.
And then from being self affirming, we can act for our good instead of thinking we have to be deferential all the time.
Right.
Good point.
Thanks for tuning in.
Our next episode, what are we getting to next?
It'll be episode five next.
I guess like Christian nation.
Christian.
What is a Christian nation?
Well, we said what is Christian nationalism.
Yeah.
Now it's like, doesn't a Christian nation mean you eliminate all ethnic boundaries?
Doesn't it mean that it's like we're all one in Christ and therefore we ought to have the same like everyone?
What makes the nation Christian?
Okay.
Is that great?
Yeah, that's great.
I guess we'll decide.
You'll find out in a week what we do.
Right.
All right.
Well, thank you guys so much for tuning in, and we will see you next time.