Episode 135: Providential America

To the Ruled Church Podcast.

Christ Is King and the Local Church Matters

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas? You see that one in Pechote, Mexico?

Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible congregation.

A Long Friendship and a Brief Introduction to C.J. Tanner

Well, I was trying to think, when I first met you, CJ, I think it was 20 years ago. I think it

Man, that's making me feel old, dude.

Yeah, I think it was 20 years ago when we first, well, probably, actually, probably even a little, actually, longer than that, because 20 years ago, we joined First Baptist Church of Apollo, but I'd kind of been around your dad a couple of times, a couple of years before that, so probably 20-plus years ago, and you were a lot younger then, had a little more hair.

Yeah, I know it, man. I have joined the wisdom club, I like to say up here, you know?

Yeah, and I was, and then I think it was 06, I started being youth pastor there, and what grade were you in in 06? Were you, you started out in the youth group, right, when I was there?

Yeah, yeah, so I would, well, let's see, I had been in the youth group for maybe a year, so I was in about eighth grade at that point in time, yeah, whenever you started.

Wow, well, so that is, we've, you're one of the longer relationships I've had that have been on this podcast, so grateful to have you. Welcome to the Rural Church Podcast. I am one of the, oh, wait, yeah, I forgot how to do my intro.

I'm one of the pastors at Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas. I'm your host, Alan Nelson, and with us today is C .J. Tanner, who hails from, right now, Clinton, or you're in Chicago?

No, I'm in Clinton right now, yeah, we'll be in Choctaw in about a month or so.

Clinton, Arkansas, okay, why don't we just do this? Why don't we just give everyone, before we talk about why you're on and all that kind of stuff, why don't we just give everyone like a two to three minute introduction to the man, the myth, the legend, Christopher James Tanner?

Yeah, so go by. C .J. Tanner, and man.

And Mr. Tanner.

And Mr. Tanner, yeah, to a class full of kids every day, but grew up in Perryville, went to school there and everything, and graduated from there, went to Arkansas Tech after that, and got my degree to be a history teacher, and now then I'm teaching up at Southside B Branch, been here for, this'll be year 11 this year, and teach all of the history and social studies stuff to grades seven through 12, so we're all over the board every day, but it's been a blast, been blessed to be up here for my whole career, and attend PD Baptist Church currently, and man, that's such a loving, awesome, Christ-centered group of people out there.

We've definitely been blessed, and met my wife, Jaycee, married her back in 2017, so we've been married now eight years, and have two little boys, Noah, who's six, and Gray, who's three, and man, it's a fun time right now.

It's a blast. Of course, we're in the process of experiencing a move, that's a whirlwind, but God's getting us through it, He's leading us along the way. Other than that, man, just decided here not that long ago to start this new podcast, and been having a blast with that too, getting that off the ground, and appreciate the opportunity to come on today and talk about it.

Loving the Local Church Because Christ Loves His People

Yeah, what, I got a big question. Do you, I love hearing, you know, member of a local church, so you have to love the local church to be on this podcast, so do you love the local church?

I absolutely love the local church, for sure.

How come?

Well, first of all, I mean, Christ has instructed us to. I mean, He died for the church, right? He said, upon this rock, I've built my church, and not only that, you know, part of loving Christ is loving His people.

We're told in 1 John, that if you do not have the love of the brother, and then the love of Christ is not in you, right? And so, and then along with that, man, these are awesome people. We love learning about the Word together, serving together, serving one another, building one another up in Christ, man, and it's also awesome for my family, too, man.

My kids love it and are growing in God's Word. It's, I mean, one of the most amazing things in the world is having, you know, my sons ask me about Jesus and want me to tell about Jesus, because they heard about Him in Sunday school and in our house, too, right?

But, man, all those things and more is why I love the local church.

Amen, that's good, brother. So let's talk about, so you have a podcast, Providential America, which, by the way, I obviously love that name, because we chose that name for our church, Providence Baptist Church.

I think Providence has a rich, not only theological history, of course, that's true, that's really more the reason we chose it, also has a rich history, historical root in our nation. And so I love that you picked that name.

I love the first episode, the one on Squanto. I want to know just a little bit, like, why are you qualified to have this podcast? Now, I'm not saying that as a challenge. I'm saying that as that I know you, our listeners don't.

You're not just CJ who has found an AI algorithm and you're just trying to podcast, but you have a little bit of background here. So tell us about that.

Why C.J. Tanner Is Qualified to Host Providential America

Yeah, so, you know, I don't like necessarily throwing out my credentials a lot.

You need to, throw them out, we want to hear.

But so I received a master's in history from Arkansas Tech as well here. Graduated in 2022, was part of the James Madison Memorial, that's a big, long name, Fellowship Foundation. Got to spend some time at Georgetown in Washington, D .C., taking some credit hours under some awesome professors that came to find out they were very Christ-centered, godly professors, actually.

It really worked out like Providence was involved, right?

Amen.

And man, got to dig into studying on the Constitution and the creation of the Constitution and the history of the United States. A lot of my coursework in my master's program, I dug into the Christian influence on the founding of the nation and just sent me on a rabbit hole of digging as much as I possibly could into that topic.

And man, I love those stories and I love learning more about them. In high school setting, I get to talk about those things to an extent, but we have so much to cover in the course of a year that I don't get to spend as long as I want to telling these stories.

And certainly not as much in a public school setting. I can't go into the doctrinal side of things as much as I would like. And so this gives me an opportunity to uninterruptedly tell those stories that not only I love, but have, I think, been left out or forgotten or revised in our recent days and years that people really need to know about.

So yeah, that's what brought me to this point, really.

Yeah, amen. That's good. That's encouraging. Do you have any aspirations of going further in your education?

Maybe one of these days. If the Lord wills, if the right door's open, then absolutely. Just not in the foreseeable future, but hopefully one of these days.

I hear you. Well, I love history and I can actually, my wife can, my undergrad is in history. I love history. My original plan for my life was I was gonna teach history and coach football. That's what I thought.

Lord had other plans. But I also have a particular view of history that it's God's unfolding story. And it all is ultimately about the magnification of Christ and the glory of the gospel and the furtherance of the church and these things.

Of course, I have a particular view about our nation and our nation's founding. And so when, before I played the episode, I told my wife, I said, I'm kind of nervous about listening because I know CJ and I love CJ.

And there's nothing that you could say to make me not like you, not care about you or any of those things. But I just was like, man, what if I listen to this and CJ has gone off the rails or something, which I shouldn't have even had that thought, but you get nervous in the world that we live in.

And so I listened to it and man, I loved it. I loved it. And you did a great job. Forgive me for even having a modicum of doubt. And it wasn't that I had a doubt. It was just like, because look, people start this kind of stuff and they get afraid to say, it's just, we live in a world where you're just afraid to express the truth.

And so, man, but you weren't. And so I hope you can not hold that against me.

I was just

Not at all, man. I guarantee you I won't be holding that against you. That's going into it. Excuse me. Going into it, I thought, man, I was worried about the same stuff. I was like, man, I can't, I don't want to be milked.

I'm sorry.

You're good, you're good.

I don't want to be milk toasty. I don't want to be

Exactly.

Like, and there's so much, there's so much bad stuff out there as far as history content goes, that's one extreme or the other. It'll either be to the point of just, well, the extremes are inaccurate on both sides on some of this stuff out there, right?

So I definitely wanted to be careful in how I presented everything to be factual and accurate, and then also not to back down from the truth of the gospel and all of that too. And to not call something Christian just because other people call it Christian when it's really not, right?

When it's something that's unorthodox or unbiblical or something of that nature, right? So yeah, definitely wanting to take as biblical of a route as possible.

And there's still time,.

You may listen to a future episode and go, oh, he's gone off the rails. So let me know if I ever do, man.

No, I know you won't go off the rails. I know you won't. It's just, and I'll be honest, I know this, in my past, maybe even the future, you can listen to my sermons and you can probably come across times where you're like, oh man, he should have been stronger here, but he wasn't.

And it's just a reality that we all face and just navigate in this fallen world. But I, yeah, no, I'm so thankful that you're starting the podcast. What, and like I said, they can, what is, I know I found it on, it's on Facebook.

Is there like a, I'll share a link, but you could just, it's like, how could they find it if they're looking like, right? If they're listening right now, they're just gonna go look, what should they do?

Where to Find Providential America

Yeah, so I primarily have it on, I'm on Apple Podcasts. You can just search up Providential America. And I can send you a link to that too, as well. I'm on YouTube, same name, Providential America. I think it's like at Prov America.

I should have this written down, but yeah, at P-R-O-V America, and that should show up there. You can also look me up on Facebook, Providential America there, and all the links will be found on that Facebook page as well.

Find stuff on X under at Prov America. And I think I've got TikTok too now. So yeah, all pretty much the same name there.

So people listen to this and they're like, meh, I don't know if I care about history. You know, what do you say? I know that you have to answer this question with high schoolers.

Oh yeah.

So why don't you just tell all of us, like number one, just in general, why should we care about history? And then number two, why should we care about Providential America? And what I mean is, not the podcast, we should care about your podcast, but why should we care about the point that the podcast is working to make?

Right. So just history in general, and if I had the perfect answer to this, then I'd have kids paying attention every day, not trying to sleep in class. But no, the importance of history in general, it sounds cliche, people overuse this, but it is his story, right?

History is his story. And if we want to understand fully who we are in the light of who God is, we need to understand the human story. We need to, you can learn so much from looking at human experiences, seeing how people have navigated, whether it's God's people navigating in a sinful world, or we see the effects of a sinful world and the downfalls of that throughout history.

And of course, there's that age old cliche of if you don't learn history, then you're doomed to repeat it. Well, I mean, it's true, right? I mean, if we don't learn about it, we're going to fall into the same pitfalls and mistakes of people in the past.

But ultimately, I think it is another way of honoring Christ is by learning the story that he has painted over time and looking for him in history because he's all over the place, right? And we see that just through the doctrine of providence.

And so to answer the part on, why should we care about providential America? For one, I think it's because there's a lot of revisionist history out there anymore that tries to say that, man, you know

Oh, really, where's that at? Where's

Yeah, just everywhere. Other than everywhere, not many places. But yeah, that tries to say that, ah, this was just a secular nation. It was just a big bunch of oppressors that came in and committed genocide or whatever.

I mean, you know, there's a million different narratives out there that just either are exaggerated or flat out not true.

But if we get rid of all their statues, we'll be okay, right?

Right, yeah. Oh, that should take care of it completely.

Yeah. Okay.

And it's a way of continuing to try to secularize our nation, which when you look at the very beginnings of our country and really all throughout, we see so many evidences, so many examples of how not only God working, but we see the people that founded this nation, that set up the structure of government that we have, that wrote the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

We see that they are pointing to divine providence. They're pointing to Christ. They're pointing to God. But today, people don't, we don't necessarily speak in the same language or rhetoric of them. People have lost, we don't have biblical literacy today like they did back then.

And so people don't see all of those things in those documents and don't understand what's being talked about in relating to scriptures. And so, yeah, I mean, that's just a small taste of why I think it's important that we understand that it's not just America.

It is a providential America that we live in.

Amen.

I'm not, so anybody listening, and I'm not holding CJ to what I'm about to say, but what I'm about to say is how I would define providence is the outworking of God's decree. From before the foundational world, God made a decree of all that would come to pass and God is working that out now in his divine providence.

And so this is, so at our church, we joke with guys and stuff sometimes, people say, good luck. We're like, we don't believe in luck, right? Because we believe, so sometimes some guys say good providence or whatever, but in the big picture, theological term, all providence is good because it's God's outworking of his plan.

Even in difficult times, we can back up, the age old question, what about evil, all that, all those, but it would be my position, our church's position as well, that God is sovereign even over evil, is able to use evil even for the furtherance of his glory.

And it's not to say that all things that's happened in the history of America is good. It's not, we're not opposed, or of course we're happy or hope, maybe not happy is not the right words, but we will own our sins, the sins of our fathers and move on and grow from those things.

But it is to say in the grand scheme that we see God's hand at work in our nation, and we should want God's hand at work in our nation. Again, I'm speaking from a pastor position, a theological position.

I would say that we ought to seek God's blessing on our nation, but you're only gonna do that when you seek to align our policies and practices as a nation with his word. Anyway, I'm just kind of rambling there.

I thought all of that was good stuff. I mean, did you need to make a comment or anything to what I said?

No, I mean, I think all of that is spot on, and of course you just anticipate people saying, man, separation of church and state, separation of church and state, and we're gonna tackle that in future episodes for sure.

Like, now wait a minute, what did they really mean and say about separation of church and state? And I think people would be shocked if they recognized the sort of things that in the past, the people that set up our governments were pushing for and wanting to be included in government and in the practices of people in this nation that totally flies in the face of what people today are calling separation of church and state.

So I'm gonna go down that rabbit hole, but

No, that's great. I look forward to that. Let me jump back on that in just a second, but let me just say, I was gonna make this comment that when you read some of the writings of our founding fathers, they actually use the word providence as a synonym for God.

So they say like providence hath dictated or whatever, what they're saying, they're saying God, because they understand God's hand at work. And so, yeah, that's good. So let me ask you this then, because you talked about separation of church or state, man, I'm ready, I'm ready.

Let's release that episode right now, but

That might be season two, we'll see.

Future Episodes on the Pilgrims, Thanksgiving, and Christmas

So you have, so yeah, so let's talk about your structure for a minute. So you've got, so Squanto's come out. I saw that you have been providentially hindered from releasing the second one. And what is the second one gonna be on?

And so what's your vision for this podcast? Second one's coming out. How many are you gonna do? And then are you gonna break? And then, like you just mentioned, season two. So give us a little bit of your format and your ideas here.

Yeah, so, I mean, a lot of the big picture is sort of work in progress. I'm testing out the beginning stuff here to see, okay, how does this need to flow? How's my workload gonna balance out with this?

How many can I crank out at a time? And just finished the second episode today. I'm in the process of uploading it. The internet went a little wonky today, so I haven't got that uploaded yet, but hopefully after we finish this, I'll be getting that one uploaded.

You're a fellow Arkansan, and people don't understand how tough the internet is here. You got that answer sometimes just falls asleep, and you're like, come on, crank the wheel. But anyway, sorry.

It's basically dial up in some places, though. But anyway, yeah, so this next, the second episode's gonna be about the Pilgrim. So we started out with Squanto and sort of his perspective, gonna then go from the other side of things, or at least the other part of that story from the Pilgrim's perspective, especially focusing in on William Bradford and a really cool part of their story with John Howland.

Man, I love that part of the story. But anyway, stay tuned. That'll be posted here soon. But then the next one, third episode, looking into taking a look at Thanksgiving proclamations, especially from George Washington and Alexander, Abraham Lincoln and their proclamations of Thanksgiving, making Thanksgiving an official holiday under Lincoln.

And so, yeah, the first three episodes gonna be kind of Thanksgiving-themed right here.

Is it, are they gonna come out once a week? Is that what?

Yeah, so we're looking at weekly releases here, hopefully each Tuesday. Of course, this week that didn't happen, but we're looking at every Tuesday. And we'll see how many I can get out there. I'd like to get at least maybe 10 people per season, 10 episodes, taking a little break in between to maybe plan some more, do some more research and make sure that I don't burn out or something.

But yeah, and we'll kind of go from there and play it by ear a little bit. Might adjust that. So I've already got an idea in mind for the, I'm gonna do a kind of a Christmas special on I love the story of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's writing of the, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.

Oh, that's such a great story. And I just hope, I hope I can halfway do it justice, but I'm gonna get into that. And man, we'll just, as the Lord leads, as providence allows, we'll see how it goes from there.

Yeah, good luck.

Thanks, I really appreciate it.

Oh no, see, you failed the test, cause I just said.

Oh, oh, oh, yeah. I gotta cancel the podcast now, I can't do it.

But well, this episode actually come out the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. So actually episode three, Lord Willin should be out then.

Okay, good.

But people can go, that's great, because people can kind of go and kind of catch up at their own pace. You know, my favorite pilgrim was John Wayne. Wasn't he a, or.

He called everybody else pilgrim, right? Yeah, he was, yeah, yeah.

No, that's great, brother. What kind of reaction do you hope you get out of folks? What do you, I mean, you've kind of touched on this some, but they're listening to Providential America, they're driving down the road, they're maybe working out, whatever.

Whenever people listen to their podcast, what do you want them to walk away from these episodes with?

Gospel Hope and Providence in History

Well, I mean, if they're lost, if they're not a child of God, I hope that it points them to the gospel. You know, it tried to incorporate that, especially at the end of the first episode.

Amen, yes, that was good, amen.

The importance of, man, taking people to the cross and letting the Lord hopefully make that gospel take root in their heart, you know, that's priority number one. For those that are already in the faith, you know, hoping that, just that, I mean, if nothing else, that they get to enjoy a nice story, you know, and get to hear a cool story about America's history.

But more than that, that they come away realizing, you know, God does work in every situation. He ordains it all, He is in control, He has a plan, and that through everything, we should honor Him. I mean, we all go through tough times and storms and all this, you know, suffering at various degrees.

And, you know, especially when we suffer for the cause of Christ. And that seems to be a common theme in the things that I'm, you know, planning on putting out in these episodes, especially with Squanto and then with the pilgrims of how in the midst of suffering, in the midst of tragedy, you know, God is still there, He's still at work, and He's still calling people to repent and believe the gospel.

He's calling His people to repent and to also rely on Him. And, man, we just see that so often in these stories that I hope to be putting out there.

Yeah, amen. Well, I wanna shift just a little bit, and because you're a history teacher, I know you can't predict the future, but I do wanna talk about, you know, where we are as a nation now, and I don't know of any, you know, Christian that would look at our nation now and say, well, things are great, so I know we, but we can kind of assess some things now from looking at the past, and you brought up the word secular earlier.

I actually had that word in my sermon last week, preaching through Acts, but just the idea that we've bought for a long time in our nation that the Lord Jesus reigns in certain parts of our nation, but not in other parts.

And, but the reality is that Christ is king overall, and I would argue that our founders understood that and had incredible, I was just gonna ask you your thoughts on this, but had incredible foresight in terms of the Constitution.

Like, there's different, as you know, there's different methods of interpreting the Constitution. Some, just like when people would try to, different methods of interpreting the Bible, but I would argue there's not, there's not multiple correct methods to interpret the Bible, and I would say there's not multiple correct methods to interpret the Constitution, that the Constitution is not meant to be a fluid document that we can just reach into and change and just make mincemeat, but our forefathers had an incredible foresight to say, look, this is it.

They said, look, in essence, we understand there'll be some things that may need to be added to this, and here's a way that you can do that, but this is not the way that, but I would argue that to have a fluid Constitution is to basically not have a Constitution at all.

So, I'm just kind of throwing that out there. What, do you have any comments to that as we navigate the current political chaos that's happening in our nation today? Anything you would want to mention to that?

Constitutional Relativism and Limited Government

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, that word relativism comes to mind, right? That it's like a constitutional relativism where they say, oh, well, we can just sort of bend it and mold it and stretch it into whatever we want it to mean.

They've really overused that elastic clause or those implied powers in the Constitution to make it fit so many things. If they even want to regard the Constitution, I think it's disregarded and seen as an old dusty document that doesn't matter to a lot of people.

But no, when the founders first set this thing up, first of all, they set it up with the idea in mind that human nature is one that is, it tends towards evil and sinfulness.

Yeah, they had a biblical view of that, yeah.

Say what? I'm sorry.

No, they had a biblical view of human nature. It's good.

Yeah, yeah, and that was a huge reason why they put in the separation of powers, wanted a very limited government so that no one branch could become too powerful because they knew that each branch would be filled with human beings and human beings would want to accumulate power under themselves.

And so if they were at least competing with one another, then they could limit each other. And so, yeah, and we see that, of course, playing out in every branch of the government all throughout America's history, and especially in our current condition.

We see that, man, the effects of so many trying to accumulate power and pursue their own sinful desires and all of that. So yeah, no, I think when we really have a correct and historical view of the Constitution, we see that it is not a fluid one.

It is not a, let's see, I think it's been called a living document, a moldable document before. It is one that, although, like you mentioned, they have things in place, an amendment process to make some changes there, even that they made incredibly difficult.

That's why we've only had 27 amendments all throughout our history, and really the first 10 were passed all at once. So really just 17 have been added since the beginning. So yeah, people are very loosey-goosey with the Constitution, and I wish they weren't.

What, you know, this is, I'm not trying to make it political. I mean, just the current trajectory, this is, regardless of one's view on Trump, I mean, I've said on podcast before, I voted for Trump. I mean, to me, it was a clear choice.

And so, but this is not really about him so much because I told our church, it doesn't matter if Trump's elected, that doesn't fix our nation. We're still on a very razor thin edge, if you will, very concerning trajectory.

And so I just wanna know if like, you have any, you know, as a historian, as a husband, as a father, church member, what, do you have any hope or do you have any words of counsel or wisdom for where our nation is now and leaving a nation for our children and grandchildren that was intended from our forefathers?

You have any words for us?

Hope for America Under the Sovereign Christ

Yeah, I mean, I would say that there's, you know, there's always hope because Christ is sovereign, because God is in control, right? And, you know, we look back, this nation survived, let me say it like this, Providence carried this nation through things like a civil war, which, I mean, when you look at everything that went down in that civil war, we can't imagine, I think, I can't fully grasp everything that people were dealing with at that point in time, the level of suffering and pain and everything.

I'm sure that at that time, a lot of people thought, man, it's over, there's no way out of this. And yet God carried us through as a nation in that and eventually brought us back. And there's a lot of pain and suffering as a result or in the midst of it.

But I would say that, you know, that Christ can still fix it, but he calls upon, you know, us as his people to lead out in that, to repent of our sins individually and collectively, to continue to go out and boldly share the gospel.

And, you know, if it be his will that this nation politically improves and survives, then he will make that happen. But, you know, we also, we don't need to sit on our hands and be like, well, you know, if he'll fix it, he'll fix it.

I'm not gonna do anything.

Right.

What our duty and calling is, is to, you know, as it says, as much as it depends upon you, be at peace with all. And one of the ways that we are at peace with all is promoting a nation that is based on godly values, principles.

We vote for those things and try to leave, like you said, leave that legacy behind us through our, you know, being educated in what's going on around us, paying attention to current events and taking a godly stance on those things and against evil.

You know, God has, he is sovereign, he is in control, and he chooses to use us in the process to be a part of the working out of his plan, I believe. And so, yeah, we definitely need to take that seriously.

Well, that's very, very well said. You know, I think, I understand that Christians can get afraid of politics because of, it certainly can get nasty and it can, it can become an idol, but so can a lot of other things.

But I think, I think that we need to not be afraid to, well, for one, the church has to have a prophetic voice in our age, preaching the law and the gospel and bringing those things to bear on people's lives, but also individual members of the church.

It's, you don't have to feel icky or whatever to run for a senator, you know, to run for a representative, to be involved, but we need men and women involved in those things to be people of integrity, to not sell out for a particular platform, to be willing to stand up and say, hey, look, right is right, wrong is wrong, and we actually have a foundation for right and wrong, and it's not what the culture votes on, it is the word of God, I would argue that our, again, by the way, we've said this a lot, but just in case, I doubt anybody, I doubt someone listened to this and be critical, but if they were, someone might say, well, you know, not all the founding fathers were regenerate, like, okay, we understand that, right?

We know about Jefferson cutting up the Bible, we know about, you know, the life of Franklin, although he was friends with Whitefield, but, you know, just never would embrace, to my understanding, never embraced Whitefield's God and rejected, ultimately ended up rejecting God, so we understand those things, we're not saying every single person, but the trajectory was one of understanding there is right and wrong, and that right and wrong is the word of God, and our rights, much to the chagrin of certain people in Washington, our rights don't come from the government.

Right.

They come from God, and so we need to, we have to return to those sorts of principles, and I would even argue, too, and again, I'm not putting my words in your mouth, brother, so, but this is just what I say, pastors need to be more clear and strong in the pulpit about these things.

We've kind of danced around sometimes about third-way-ism and, you know, but when we see evil, we've got to call evil evil, and good, good, so anyway, it's, I'm rambling there, that's what pastors do.

I don't know if you have anything that you want to say to that, and we'll talk about landing the plane in just a second.