A Conversation with Redeemed Zoomer

Your Calvinist

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00:18

Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.

00:20

My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist.

00:24

And I am excited today to introduce, not only to my audience, but to the world, my new friend and friend of the show, The Redeemed Zoomer.

00:35

How are you doing, my friend? What's up, guys? I'm Redeemed Zoomer.

00:39

Some of you may know me, some of you may not.

00:41

I'm also a Calvinist, but I'm truly Reformed and have superior theology.

00:46

All right.

00:48

Yes, sir.

00:49

And you are, in fact, you are a Presbyterian, so I'm wondering why you're not wearing a bow tie.

00:57

Yeah, good question.

00:58

I am a Presbyterian.

01:01

I'm part of the PCUSA.

01:03

Don't click off yet.

01:04

I'm not one of those.

01:06

I'm trying to restore it, and that's something that I'll be talking about later in this video.

01:12

Absolutely, absolutely.

01:13

And that's a big part of why I'm having you on, is we became acquainted just a few weeks ago, and it was sort of by accident.

01:21

I had done a video several months ago where I had used a graphic that you had produced, and I didn't know that you produced the graphic.

01:30

So when I used it on the video, I said, whoever owns this, if you ever get in touch with me, I'll give you credit.

01:36

And that's what I did.

01:37

You reached out and you said, hey, that was my graphic.

01:39

I produced it.

01:40

And for those who may remember from my audience, it's the graphic with all of the different denominational logos, and it says this one likes this one, or this one doesn't like this one.

01:51

And it was sort of a basic understanding of the who's who of denominations.

01:56

And you reached out to me, you told me that it was yours, and so I went in and gave you credit for it.

02:01

But in the midst of that, you and I began to have a conversation, and I began to watch your videos.

02:06

And that was just at the moment that Wretched actually picked up one of your videos, and that video now has gone completely skyrocketed as far as I'm concerned.

02:18

I was not expecting that.

02:20

Absolutely.

02:21

I'm gonna pull up a screenshot here.

02:22

You have a YouTube presence.

02:25

It's RedeemZoomer.

02:26

You said you're also on Instagram, right? Yes, I have a RedeemZoomer Instagram.

02:30

I also have Twitter, but no one follows it and I don't post on it.

02:33

I understand.

02:33

I understand.

02:34

Well, you'll notice here, anybody who's watching this, that the RedeemZoomer has 6.5 million views on your All Christian Denominations Explained in 12 Minutes, and I've seen that video.

02:45

It is awesome.

02:47

And you have quite a few views on all of your other videos as well, so you have quite a YouTube presence.

02:55

You are not a small YouTuber.

02:57

You are, as far as Christian YouTubers go, you are big-time.

03:01

Yes, it's been quite a blessing.

03:04

Like I said, it was not something that I was expecting.

03:06

It started just out, like, me having conversations about theology with my friends, particularly my girlfriend, who some of you know on Instagram as TheFutureMrZoomer, and our mutual friend who's RedeemZoomer3rdWheel on Instagram.

03:21

We were trying to think through these things.

03:23

I made my page because of that, and I don't know, what I found was most interesting was talking about denominations, because it's something everyone has questions about.

03:33

Everyone wonders what the differences are, but there aren't really any good resources for it.

03:38

And in my theological debates and conversations, I learned more about the denominations.

03:44

So I don't know who says arguing online for hours isn't productive, but for me it sure was.

03:50

And what's funny is I have found the same thing, of course coming from it from an entirely different angle.

03:57

Mine is coming from humor, but anytime I do anything related to denominations, whether it's denominations shooting guns or denominations ordering chicken wings or whatever, people just seem to respond, because they think that the distinctions and the differences between the denominations are hilarious at times, but also interesting and intriguing.

04:17

So yeah, you definitely hit the nail on the head with that one.

04:20

I always watch your videos because it's an ego boost to Presbyterians like me.

04:24

Absolutely, absolutely.

04:26

Everybody I meet thinks that I'm a Presbyterian, and I say, first of all, that would be way too on the nose.

04:32

Yeah, well thank you.

04:34

But no, it's because it's...

04:36

I tell them, I say it would be way too much of an ego boost if I actually was a Presbyterian.

04:40

I make the hero someone that I'm not.

04:42

I'm the Reformed Baptist.

04:44

I'm never in the videos, except for the shooting video.

04:47

My friend played the Reformed Baptist just because I couldn't shoot two guns at one time and do it safely.

04:56

So I had to have a second person in the video, and he helped me with that.

04:59

But I want to ask you a question.

05:01

Actually, I have several questions to ask you, but I want to start with this one, because you and I have gotten to know each other and we've talked a little bit.

05:09

Can you tell everyone just a little bit of your story of how you became a conservative Christian in a...

05:19

when I say conservative, you became a gospel-believing Christian in a liberal denomination, because you're in the PCUSA.

05:26

You're in the one that many people would say is far afield.

05:30

So how'd you get there? Yeah, so I didn't like...

05:33

I wasn't like raised in the PCUSA.

05:36

I wasn't raised anything in particular.

05:39

My family's religious history is complicated, but what I was really sort of catechized by, so to speak, was simply my community, which was in the suburbs of New York, a very like nominally Jewish area, where leftism was just the default assumption and no one even questioned it.

05:58

So I didn't even know that leftism was what I believed until I started to get into politics, and then I became like a really hardcore leftist, and that's what I was for a while.

06:06

So I was never like an atheist.

06:08

I always believed in God in some sense, but I thought religion was stupid and anti-scientific.

06:13

That's what the public schools told me.

06:15

All the history textbooks about Christianity were like Christians oppressed minorities, killed a bunch of people, and denied science.

06:25

That was it basically, and everything changed when I actually went to other parts of the country and met other Christians my age.

06:34

I'd met Christians, but I hadn't really been in a community of Christians my age, and I learned that all the stereotypes I learned were completely wrong, and they were much more loving and accepting than anyone I had grown up with.

06:47

So when I was completely different than them, they accepted me as their friend, and I made better friends there than I ever had before.

06:53

And I went back home, and I was still very liberal, but I decided to become a Christian as well because I wanted to be like them, and being with them cleared up all the doubts and problems I had with Christianity.

07:05

That's when I joined the PCUSA, but at the time, I didn't know that it was a liberal denomination.

07:10

I just knew that the director of the camp where I went to was PCUSA, and the camp had a lot of connections with Presbyterian churches, so it just felt right for me.

07:20

And I also, I didn't know any theology, so I didn't know that Presbyterians were Calvinists.

07:26

I didn't know what that means, but I had an intuitive sense that Presbyterians were the nerdy intellectual Christians, and especially because I was coming from a very scientific, rational background, that's sort of what I felt like I belonged there.

07:39

And at first, my PCUSA didn't have any obvious liberalism problems.

07:43

It was one of the more moderate churches in the denomination.

07:46

So the denomination as a whole is liberal, just like all the mainline churches.

07:50

It's not just a Presbyterian problem.

07:51

The mainline Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, Anglican denominations are all liberal in their majority, but in all of them, it's a big tent, and there are conservative minorities.

08:00

My church wasn't particularly liberal or conservative.

08:03

It was just like moderate, and I didn't know enough doctrine to even smell anything that would have been wrong, so I don't even remember exactly what they taught, but I was just happy to be in church, and I was happy to be a Christian.

08:15

But once I got home and became a Christian, all my Jewish and atheist friends got really suspicious of me.

08:21

I was like, don't worry guys, I'm still a leftist, and I thought I could be like a Christian leftist.

08:25

I thought I could reconcile the two, and what I learned is that they're two completely different religions, and you cannot reconcile the two.

08:32

It's like being a Christian Muslim, and I wish leftists were more honest, that it is a religion, and every religion has orthodoxy and heresy.

08:42

So when I first started to question some leftist beliefs, it didn't matter that I was 95% leftist.

08:49

I start to question like the trans issue.

08:50

I was like, yeah, I don't really think there are 76 genders.

08:53

My story in that is not unique.

08:55

Every like, leaving the left, I left the left story always starts with like questioning the trans issue.

09:02

That's what happened to like JK Rowling and stuff, but I was completely canceled just for questioning the left on one issue, because it's a religion.

09:09

Like in Christianity, if a pastor believes everything in Christianity except, I don't know, the virgin birth, it might seem like a small issue compared to others, but you need to have doctrinal purity, so they would be considered a heretic for that, and because leftism is a religion, they just don't admit it, I was considered a heretic for not affirming the trans stuff.

09:28

So I was excluded for that, and that sort of made me double down on my Christianity, but after a while I was like, how do I know that Christianity is all true? I didn't have many resources, so that got me into studying theology, and I was always swarmed with atheist arguments from all sides, so that got me thinking about how to explain Christianity logically to other people, and that's how I sort of thought of a lot of the ideas that I share on my page now, so I think God used my time of doubts and struggles for that, and high school was absolute garbage for me because becoming more and more conservative as the years went on just put the nail in the coffin of my social life, so I had like no friends in high school, but things are much better now.

10:12

Now I'm in college, it's great, and the page has been an incredible blessing.

10:16

So along the way I learned that my denomination was, did not believe the essentials of Christianity, and I consider just leaving and going something else, like PCA many times, but I did learn the essentials of the Reformed faith from my mentor, who still was faithful, and he told me why we cannot leave the mainline, so...

10:39

Absolutely.

10:40

Yeah, and we're gonna talk about that in a bit, because I do want to talk about Reconquista and all that, your reason for staying where you are and wanting to redeem where you are, which I think is interesting, and I want my audience to hear about that.

10:56

It really is an amazing thought.

11:00

To me it almost seems impossible.

11:03

I'm just telling you, I'm not saying it is, I'm just saying it is.

11:06

I've listened to your videos, I'm encouraged by it, I think it's a grand pursuit, and so please don't think when I say that I'm being negative, I'm just saying it just seems it's such a monumentous thing that you're doing.

11:23

I agree that it seems impossible.

11:24

Yeah, and like I said, pray that it's not, but yeah, definitely.

11:30

So we'll get to that in a minute, but something you just said I have to mention.

11:34

You said that when you left the liberalism, when you left the leftist, you did so by committing heresy, because you didn't believe something that they demanded that you believed.

11:47

I don't think I've ever heard it explained quite that way.

11:50

I think that's very helpful for people, because when you say leftism is a religion, and then you say it has orthodoxy and heresy, that puts a whole new picture on things like the trans issue, or the LGBT movement, and all of these different things, and abortion, and all that.

12:07

These are like sacraments.

12:09

These are things that can't be touched.

12:12

So very good, very helpful.

12:16

Speaking of heresy, I have to ask you this, because I haven't seen this video yet, but when you left a comment on one of my pages, somebody immediately said, oh, this guy says that R.C.

12:28

Sproul and John MacArthur are heretics, and you came back and you said, no, I don't think, I never said R.C.

12:33

Sproul was a heretic, but I do think John MacArthur had a heresy.

12:36

I couldn't, I didn't have the time to find the video, so tell me what it is about MacArthur that you think was off the mark, and do you think that he is a full-blown heretic, I guess would be a good question.

12:49

Well, if by full-blown, you would equate like that with like Mormonism, definitely not, absolutely not.

12:56

A heresy is really strictly defined as any error about God that goes against what the church has defined that God and Jesus is.

13:03

Obviously some heresies are worse than others, so MacArthur has not explicitly said anything that would go against what the Council of Nicaea defines as the Christian faith.

13:14

So the heresy he committed that I think he committed is Nestorianism, and that was not addressed, that was addressed at like a subsequent council.

13:23

It's a lot less essential than like whether Jesus is God, because of course MacArthur would agree with all Christian traditions that Jesus is God.

13:32

The Nestorianism issue is radically separating the humanity and divinity of Jesus.

13:39

Now the thing that Nestorius got kicked out for was saying Mary's not the mother of God, she's just the mother of Christ, and a lot of Protestant evangelicals would want to say that, but for a different reason, they would just not want to seem Catholic.

13:53

But if you really think about it, it is heretical to say Mary is not the mother of God, because Jesus is God, all of Jesus is God.

14:03

Only he has two natures that can't be mixed or confused, but they also can't be separated.

14:09

That's why the Council of Ephesus and the Council of Chalcedon said Mary is the Theotokos, the mother of God.

14:14

Yeah, I was gonna say Theotokos, as you said it, is certainly within the historical Christian documents as a statement that the Church has affirmed.

14:23

And again, how we break that down from the perspective of, you know, we understand that Mary did not create divinity in her womb, and I think that's the fear that some would hear that term, and they would think, well, does that mean God was birthed in the sense of created in her womb? And obviously that's not what...

14:45

Some statements he's made are, he said it's a misconception to say Mary gave birth to God, she did not give birth to God.

14:53

Now that sounds really suspicious.

14:55

You could say everyone says things that are wrong, but it's a repeated issue for him on various topics, because another example of Nestorianism is denying that the blood of Jesus is the blood of God, which he did.

15:10

He actually said it's heretical to call the blood of Jesus the blood of God, even though there's a verse in Acts that says, be shepherds of the Church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.

15:20

If Jesus is God, the blood of Jesus is the blood of God.

15:22

Now to be fair to MacArthur, he was responding to another heresy.

15:26

Now when talking about Christology, there's a knife edge of orthodoxy with heresy on either side, so most heresies are an overcorrection to another heresy, and that's exactly what MacArthur did.

15:37

He was responding to a pastor who said the blood of Jesus is divine blood, and that's also heresy, that's monophysitism, because the blood of Jesus is an aspect of his human nature, so it can't be divine.

15:48

But to say it's not the blood of God is to say that you cannot call Jesus God overall.

15:55

You can only call half of Jesus God.

15:57

So there's heresy on both sides, and a lot in the Reformed tradition have leaned in the direction of Nestorianism, just as Lutherans often lean in the direction of monophysitism.

16:13

None of them actually committed, but they just lean in those directions, so MacArthur is just a radical example of that.

16:19

Yeah, and again, Nestorianism, it's funny when you look at Church history, it's Nestorius himself, it's hard sometimes to nail down what he actually believed.

16:29

Like you said, there's this razor's edge, and it's like there's this floating back and forth, and how to define what the followers believe versus what the original person himself, the thing that this is named after.

16:42

For instance, I think Pelagius is the same situation, where Pelagius is accused of things that he may not himself have believed, but his followers did believe, and so we end up with some confusion there too.

16:54

Yeah, now I want to clarify, not every heresy is like a damnable heresy, it's just that strictly speaking, this is not the way the Church has defined Jesus, because this is not the way the Bible defines Jesus.

17:04

Gotcha.

17:05

So maybe the belief itself is not kryptonite to your Christian faith, but the logical conclusions of it might be.

17:14

That's, I guess, how I would put it.

17:16

Yeah, no, and I just was curious, because like I said, I didn't get a chance to watch the video, so I appreciate the five-minute, you know, just overview, and I encourage people, again, go watch the videos.

17:27

And there are some things that you and I would probably not agree on, as far as I would call probably secondary issues, things that we would come to different conclusions on, but we're in different places in our life.

17:41

I think it's interesting that you are a young man, and I'm thankful to see a young man who cares enough to study these things, and to be looking into these things, and you know, I'm glad, because it's good.

17:58

And that's why you have the name, right? What does Zumer mean, by the way? Generation Z.

18:03

Zumer is slang for Gen Z.

18:06

I'm not, I didn't think of that name, even though there are a lot of accounts that are like Anglican Zumer, Baptist Zumer, all these things.

18:13

Zumer was already a common slang for someone who's in Gen Z, and there are a lot of well-meaning Gen Z-like influencers.

18:23

I don't know if you guys know Elijah Lam.

18:25

He's someone I know personally, I have a good relationship with him.

18:27

He's a big Gen Z TikTok influencer, but their strategy is to try and be like Gen Z, to reach Gen Z.

18:34

And there is scriptural support for that.

18:36

They say like, oh, I became all things to all men that I might reach all men.

18:38

However, I probably didn't quote that right.

18:42

I have a different approach.

18:43

I think Gen Z is a wicked generation that people need to be redeemed from.

18:47

So redeemed Zumer is almost an oxymoron in that sense.

18:52

But I think all things are redeemable.

18:55

But just because Gen Z is redeemable doesn't mean it's good.

18:57

I think relative to all the previous generations, it's the worst we've seen in a while.

19:02

And the suicide rates and the atheism rates, and just the utter disregard for family and even human life itself sort of proves that, I think.

19:12

Yeah.

19:13

And it's amazing to even consider what you just said, even things like suicide rates and things that, you know, people don't know how bad things have gotten.

19:25

It is as bad as people say and worse.

19:29

That's what I can say.

19:30

The condition of Gen Z.

19:32

Well, I want to point out one other video before we get to the Reconquista.

19:38

You have a video where you talk about five different levels of liberalism.

19:45

And the reason why I wanted to bring this video out specifically is where I come from, and what I mean by that is I'm a Southern boy.

19:55

I've been in Florida my whole life.

19:58

I literally never lived more than 50 miles from where I was born.

20:03

This is me.

20:06

And growing up, especially in a small Southern town, you know, you basically had the Baptists and the Catholics.

20:13

You had this, you know, you might have a few Charismatics here, Pentecostals, whatever, but you had the conservatives, and then you had the liberals, you had the Baptists, you had the Catholics.

20:22

Not to say that Catholics are necessarily liberal, I'm just saying that everything was...there was pretty much straight lines drawn.

20:28

You know, you had liberals, conservatives, Baptists, Catholics, everything was one or the other.

20:33

But you made a good point in the video.

20:36

You said that there's not one type of progressive or liberal Christian.

20:41

You said there's actually five, and it gets progressively...ironically, it's called progressive.

20:47

It's like a progressive illness that keeps getting worse.

20:50

Yeah, it gets worse.

20:51

So I know I want people to go watch that video, but can you, just for the audience, just kind of very quickly give us what those five steps are and where someone might be? Sure.

21:00

So step one is what I call Christian guilt.

21:03

It begins with thinking there's been something wrong with Christianity historically, and that Christianity needs to progress.

21:09

Step two is what I call disordered focus, where they still believe the essentials, but that's not what you'll hear preached on a Sunday morning.

21:15

They focus on other things like social justice, but they still would believe the essentials.

21:20

Stage three is scripture denial.

21:22

That's where they begin to be gay-affirming and universalist, but they would still believe the bare essentials to be saved.

21:27

Like, they'd still believe Jesus rose from the dead and that Jesus is God.

21:31

And level four is where they stop being Christian altogether and commit explicit heresy by denying the divinity of Christ or that the resurrection actually happened, but they still believe in some sort of spirit.

21:41

And level five is essential agnosticism, where they don't believe in a spirit.

21:45

They don't believe in an objective supernatural or spiritual reality at all.

21:50

They think it's all just a metaphor for social justice, and heaven is just a metaphor for the socialist utopia we're going to build here.

21:57

And you've experienced all the whole gambit, right? You've experienced everybody from one to the other.

22:04

We had a past, or go ahead, sorry.

22:06

In my denomination, you'll have, I think, an even distribution of all five levels, and there's some in my denomination that take an explicit stand against it.

22:15

The same is true of all main lines, but generally speaking, you'll find an even distribution of all five levels.

22:20

Gotcha.

22:21

When I was a young boy, our church had a pastor that we hired and did not know that he denied the virgin birth.

22:30

You mentioned that earlier as something that might be, and I don't know where he would land on the five, but I don't know where you...

22:37

does that put him somewhere specifically in your mind, or I guess you'd have to know more? If he really believed the resurrection literally happened, I guess he'd be like a high three, but I've almost never met someone who's like, the virgin birth didn't happen, but the resurrection definitely did.

22:53

It's like, the only good reason to deny the virgin birth is denial of the supernatural, and that's why people also deny the resurrection.

23:02

Gotcha.

23:02

Before we get to the Reconquista, I want to ask you one other question.

23:05

You have seemingly encyclopedic knowledge when you're doing these videos, and one of the funny thing is, you've inspired me, I want to tell you.

23:14

You make theology videos or denominational videos or whatever when you're doing a Minecraft game.

23:22

People watch you put the Minecraft together, or the castle...

23:28

it's a church, I'm sorry, not a castle, it's a church, and you're talking.

23:32

Well, you've inspired me, because I have never...

23:37

I come from the age of Atari, and I remember my first Super Mario game, and I've never beat Super Mario, not even one time.

23:46

The original Super Mario.

23:47

Me neither, I've never even played it and known what I'm doing.

23:50

Well, I am going to record myself trying to beat it for the first time while talking about theology, and I'm gonna do that in honor of you.

23:58

I'm gonna figure out a way to hook the Nintendo into the computer and do that.

24:02

That would be really great to see.

24:05

I'm actually not a gamer.

24:06

The only video game I play is Minecraft, because, I don't know, I just think it's different from all the other games, but I'm not actually a gamer overall.

24:16

Yeah.

24:16

So I've never actually played Mario and known what I'm doing.

24:19

Gotcha, gotcha.

24:20

Well, my wife has beat it several times, and I never have, so there's also a little bit of tension between the two of us when it comes to who's the better.

24:27

She's obviously the much better video game player.

24:30

So how did you come to these? How did you learn all this stuff? Did you just go to your library, spend a lot of time online, buy books? What was your method? Because it's been only a few years, right? The second thing, I spent a lot of time online.

24:46

I know that if there are any, like, moms watching this, they're gonna, like, turn the video off right now.

24:52

I didn't read that much.

24:54

I found out what I know from the internet, and I'm not saying that's the best way to do it.

25:01

I'm not endorsing that.

25:02

That's just sort of what happens, because I need to get into a habit of reading more, and thanks to some, thanks to a pastor, a PCA minister who's the RUF minister at my university, he's been recommending some theology books for me, like actual real books made out of paper, not some audiobook while I'm playing Minecraft.

25:19

That's how I read John Calvin's Institutes, with audiobook while I play Minecraft.

25:22

But I'm getting back into reading now.

25:25

So I'm not saying what I did was okay, but I mostly just listened to YouTubers and pastors from various different traditions, and I listened to how they talk about each other, and try and get a clear image of them, and also just a lot of conversations with people on, like, Instagram and stuff.

25:41

So I just sort of pieced it together, I guess.

25:45

But I'm not meant to be an academic resource at this time.

25:53

I'm meant to be a gateway drug to real resources.

25:57

So I'm just trying to point people in the right direction by making sort of meme format things that people can intuitively understand, and then if they wish, they can go check out the actual stuff.

26:09

Yeah, and what's great, most of your videos are relatively short, you know, 12-15 minutes, and you get through the whole thing, and it's got a lot of good information.

26:18

And, you know, like I said, if we dug down deep, we would find some things that you and I probably differ on.

26:24

But probably the biggest thing being, you're definitely more of a high church guy.

26:30

You have a lot of love for the, not just mainline, but the liturgical aspect of the church, the beautiful part of the church.

26:39

Even in Minecraft, creating the church, you're creating a castle-style church that would mimic the churches of the mainline Protestant world, or even Catholic.

26:52

Yeah, even Southern Baptist churches used to look like that in, like, the 1800s.

26:56

Yeah, no, that's true.

26:58

That's true.

26:59

We've gone now to the more club style, or I don't know what you call it, stage style, theatrical performing arts look versus a chancel with a choir and things like that, for sure.

27:14

So tell us about Reconquista.

27:16

Tell us what that is, because I'm anxious for people to hear what it is you're trying to accomplish.

27:22

Okay, so Reconquista is, I think, the only way that we can fight back against the tidal wave of leftism that is destroying our churches and our culture.

27:38

So Western civilization, particularly America, was built by the church, specifically the churches that are now called the mainline churches, the historically and culturally rooted ones.

27:49

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, all these really important cultural institutions were founded by the Protestant church, which is now just the mainline church.

27:59

So for those of you who don't know, the difference between mainline and evangelical is mainline are the ones that have more continuity with the, like, old Protestant churches, the ones that America was founded on, and evangelical churches, of course, sometimes the categorization is a bit arbitrary.

28:15

Evangelical churches generally refer to churches that split off from the mainline, as well as just non-denominational churches that do not have the same historical roots.

28:24

So the evangelical equivalent of the PCUSA would be the PCA.

28:28

There's many, but PCA is the largest.

28:31

The PCA has some historic roots.

28:33

They have some, like, historic buildings, but generally they don't have ties to the big universities.

28:41

Most old historic churches at the center of any given town are going to be mainline, like PCUSA or United Methodist or Episcopalian.

28:48

And these evangelical denominations, it just it all looks very new and new isn't necessarily bad.

28:56

But in this case, the old mainline churches are relics from a time when Christianity ruled society.

29:01

And they're really relics of a more sophisticated and more spiritually better time.

29:08

And that's why PCA churches objectively don't look as pretty as PCUSA churches on average.

29:14

Of course, there's exceptions.

29:15

And everyone's like, oh, that's very materialistic.

29:17

It's an outward, it's as Baptists say with baptism, it's an outward sign of an inward, an inward change.

29:24

It's an outward sign of an inward change that Christianity is no longer at the helm of the culture.

29:31

And because the heart of the culture has always been religion, when the religion changes, the culture changes.

29:37

And the religion that our society is based on is the historic Protestant churches.

29:44

A lot of the leftism that was introduced into universities came from theological liberalism in the church.

29:51

Theological liberalism denied the supernatural.

29:53

And that really changed the worldview of a lot of the universities that were affiliated with the church.

29:59

So the only way that we can fight back is to keep our cultural institutions and not let the things made for God's glory be used for blasphemy.

30:13

Tragically, conservative Christians adopted the exact opposite strategy.

30:16

Their strategy was run away, run away from the institutions when they get hijacked and start new ones.

30:22

The thing is, the new ones are never nearly as good.

30:26

That's what J.

30:27

Gresham Mason did with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

30:29

And no one would have blamed him for doing it at the time because he really tried to take to fix the PCUSA, didn't work.

30:37

He got kicked out.

30:38

He started a brand new denomination.

30:39

But the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, as devout as they are, as orthodox as they are, they have they're just they're kind of like the Amish of Presbyterians.

30:48

They're completely isolated.

30:49

They don't have any historic institutions to their name.

30:53

And the PCUSA still has a lot of cultural connections.

30:57

There are families who've donated to seminaries for generations since like Mayflower families, I'm talking especially for the Congregationalists who and those seminaries have now gone woke.

31:09

So what are we supposed to just build a brand new seminary that's like, you know, rents out a, I don't know, a public school or because a lot of that's what a lot of the churches do.

31:18

We need to retake the institutions and the problem with a lot of evangelicals is they have such an individualistic mindset.

31:25

They think all that matters is my individual soul going to heaven.

31:30

And before I go to heaven, I'll try and take as many other individual souls with me to heaven.

31:35

But it's about the it's really about the kingdom of heaven coming here on Earth.

31:38

Like N.T.

31:39

Wright talks about that a lot.

31:40

I know N.T.

31:41

Wright is shaky in some other areas, but he's absolutely right that Christianity is a kingdom.

31:47

And the kingdom strategy that the evangelicals have adopted is just keep retreating, keep retreating from the mighty fortresses and build tiny little shacks and try to stand up to them.

31:58

And now the institutions, the powerful institutions that Christians built for God's glory are now in the hands of leftists and evangelicals run away in all aspects.

32:08

They're like retreat to the rural areas, retreat from the universities, retreat from the schools, retreat from everything as if they don't think the Lord of the universe is on their side.

32:17

Now, what do we do about that? I pointed out a problem that, yes, Christians have been kicked out of the cultural institutions.

32:24

Everyone knows that I'm a genius.

32:26

But what do we actually do about that? Um, like you said, Reconquista seems like an impossible task.

32:33

How do you change a big denomination? How do you change a denomination that's had these beliefs for like a hundred years and get them to just change their religion practically? I know.

32:44

Ask the leftists.

32:45

They did that.

32:47

They did it.

32:48

If they could hijack, why can't we hijack? Are you saying that we're weaker than them? Are you saying that the Lord of the universe is not on our side? The way they hijacked was they were very patient.

32:59

They did not run away.

33:01

You'll notice leftists never start their own institutions.

33:04

They just hijack the institutions Christians make.

33:06

There are some like attempts at starting new leftist universities, and they're a total joke, just like a lot of the evangelical universities that Christians start.

33:14

But the leftists don't need to do that because it's like a virus.

33:19

I've compared to religion also compared to a virus.

33:22

Viruses are not technically classified as living.

33:25

I'm not trying to dehumanize leftists either.

33:26

It's an analogy.

33:27

Viruses are not technically living.

33:29

They don't reproduce on their own.

33:31

What they do is they hijack healthy cells, use the cells to reproduce.

33:34

The cells get destroyed and move on.

33:36

That's what the left does to our churches, to our universities and to all of our cultural institutions, even like Boy Scouts and entertainment, of course.

33:44

They hijack it.

33:45

They use it to turn it into a leftist factory.

33:48

Eventually it gets destroyed because of that.

33:49

They just move on to the next thing.

33:52

So Albert Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

33:58

The evangelical strategy of running away and just trying to convert as many individual souls as possible has been tried for 100 years.

34:05

And as evangelicalism has risen by evangelicalism in this context, I'm referring to the sort of offshoot splitting off from the mainline and trying to start something brand new as that has risen as these disconnected offshoot churches have risen.

34:23

Christianity in the West, Christian society has fallen.

34:25

I know correlation doesn't equal causation, but the very thing it was intended to do, it failed to do.

34:31

So Reconquista is going to be hard.

34:33

We're all going to need it to be on board.

34:35

It can't just be me and a few of my Zoomer friends, but I think it's something that really needs to happen.

34:41

Now, I'm not telling everyone to get up and leave their churches.

34:46

What I would like to happen is for the mainlines to unite with their conservative counterparts so we could have PCA pastors in the PCUSA institutions, for example, and the same with the Baptist or Methodist equivalent.

34:59

There's a lot of Christians who are just floating around and don't really have a church.

35:02

There are a lot of them that go to mega churches that they don't necessarily agree with doctrinally just because their friends are there.

35:08

Those are the people that we need to rally up.

35:12

They need to flood the mainline.

35:13

And you might be wondering, okay, you go into the mainline.

35:15

How do you actually take over? Let me let you in on a little secret.

35:19

The mainline doesn't want you to know they are desperate.

35:23

They make themselves look strong.

35:24

They are not.

35:25

They hand out leadership positions like free candy because all of them, with a few exceptions, are on the brink of closure.

35:33

There's a principle that liberals do not care about going to church.

35:37

That's why it's like they hijack it for a time and then it gets destroyed.

35:40

The only denominations that are actually thriving in the mainline are the that's right.

35:44

The only congregations in the mainline that are thriving are the conservative ones.

35:48

So liberal churches and liberals in church don't last very long.

35:54

What we do is we take the mainline is like a shrinking sphere.

35:59

We inject a bunch of conservatives into it.

36:01

The conservatives waited out whether the storm eventually the liberal population dies off and the conservatives take over.

36:09

And like I said, they hand out leadership positions like free candy.

36:12

My dad became an elder at our Presbyterian church within two years of joining.

36:16

I became a Sunday school teacher within one year of joining because because of how desperate they are.

36:22

There are these like Christians in the early church took over the entire Roman Empire and Christians today are like, I'm too scared to join the mainline.

36:31

I'm too scared of these like three old lesbians that run the church.

36:36

Guys, God is on our side.

36:38

We can do it.

36:39

That would be a great like 10 second opening clip.

36:43

I may have to try to remember that.

36:45

The three and we're scared of the three lesbians that run the church.

36:48

That's funny.

36:51

All right.

36:51

So so what does you kind of gave the game plan? OK, you want to see people join the mainline denominations and take leadership positions, try to try to reclaim these things for Christ in the name of Christ, because you believe that the church is the true church is strong enough to do that.

37:09

The true believers have the ability, have the have the spiritual pedigree.

37:16

I mean, the spiritual, you know, backing because it's Christ who is with us and is Christ who is in us.

37:26

So with what you're doing, you're you just said you're in your church.

37:30

You are and you're still a Sunday school teacher.

37:33

Well, no, because I went off to college.

37:35

Oh, OK.

37:36

My dad is still an elder.

37:37

My dad is working to try and make sure the church does not become a gay affirming church, because there are some liberals in the church who are trying to push that.

37:45

OK, so not all PC USA churches are gay affirming.

37:49

No, they have the ability to choose.

37:51

As of now, my church has not made an official stance and my church is voting in May whether or not it's going to celebrate Pride Month in June.

37:58

And it was just requested by one of the members of the congregation.

38:01

And the session is going to debate it.

38:04

My dad is the most adamant voice against it.

38:07

So prayers for my dad would be appreciated.

38:09

And his work, there are some PC USA churches that have explicitly said no to gay marriage.

38:18

There's actually an entire presbytery in San Diego, I think, that has said no to it.

38:21

And there's a whole organization within it called the Fellowship Community Ready to Harvest does denominations videos like me.

38:27

But unlike me, he's actually a lot more academic about it.

38:30

And he talks he has a great video called Evangelical Holdouts within the PC USA.

38:34

So we do exist.

38:35

Absolutely.

38:36

I do also want to tell you that in the future, if there ever does end up a PC USA joke within one of my denominational videos, because I kind of have one in the in the making right now, I just want you to know I'm not talking about you.

38:51

There is a well, actually, I put one in my did you see the Top Gun video? Not yet, I saw the recommendation for it, but there's a short little reference to PC USA.

39:03

And again, I am thankful that there are people out there like you who are who want to see redemption and restoration brought to these denominations.

39:14

And that's that's again, it's a it's to me, it's a it's an amazing concept.

39:20

It's one I hadn't even really considered before listening to your videos that, you know, they took it away.

39:26

Why can't we take it back? And as simple as that is, that's really your message is.

39:31

And I want to clarify something.

39:33

I'm not trying to turn the PC USA into something it's not.

39:35

I'm trying to make it more authentically what it is, because on the PC USA, by the way, this doesn't mean I'm offended by your jokes.

39:42

Keep making those jokes and make more of them.

39:44

The PC USA is not a liberal denomination.

39:48

The official beliefs of the PC USA are not what the General Assembly says, they're not what the lesbian pastor who went viral on New York Times or whatever says.

39:56

It's what's stated in the confessions.

39:57

And the PC USA, at its core, at its essence, is a very good denomination.

40:02

I actually like it better than the other presbytery denominations, because I think the PC USA is actually more richly rooted in the reformed tradition because we have a bunch of confessions, not just Westminster.

40:11

We have Westminster and a bunch of others, including some ones that actually address issues of modernity.

40:17

Like if you were to ask which denomination PC USA or PCA has a confession of faith that explicitly condemns sexual anarchy in the modern world? You'd expect it's PCA, but no, it's PC USA, because PC USA, it's not just one document that's frozen in time that they follow.

40:35

It's I feel like PC USA gives you a more holistic Christian tradition rather than just beliefs in a box.

40:42

And that's as a PC USA member, that's sort of how I see the PCA, even though I really like the PCA.

40:48

I feel like something is still lacking, if that makes sense.

40:52

When you say that document about sex, what was it, a document about sexual misconduct? It's not all about that.

40:59

It's the Confession of 1967 from the PC USA, and it addresses the issues of modernity.

41:07

And now some people would say it's like some people don't like it.

41:11

I actually really do like it.

41:12

I think it's a very necessary document.

41:15

The PC USA has also a confession that was written in 1935, Germany, when the Nazis were rising to power that we're not going to submit to dictators.

41:26

That's called the Barman Declaration written by Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

41:31

So there's a lot of really cool stuff about the PC USA that never gets talked about.

41:36

So some people ask me, like they try to take the Reconquista idea and apply it to like, oh, I go to like a prosperity gospel church.

41:42

Should I try to reconquista this church? No, because you're not trying to restore it.

41:45

You're trying to make it something it never was and was never meant to be.

41:48

If you're in a prosperity gospel church, just leave and join a historic biblical church.

41:55

Okay, well, that well, there you go.

41:58

There's the people that can fill the pews of the PC USA is just leave your prosperity gospel church.

42:05

Yes.

42:06

Yeah, that's a good message, because I would wholeheartedly agree, definitely, to get out of those churches that are not preaching the gospel.

42:15

Well, let me ask you one last question.

42:17

I do want to begin to draw to a close.

42:19

I appreciate you giving your time.

42:21

If, you know, with all that you've been doing and you've been producing great videos and you've got wonderful things, what's next? What are some ideas that you have coming? What are some things that people can be expecting from you? Have you been doing that? You mentioned your team earlier.

42:38

Do you guys sit down and brainstorm ideas or does it basically come from you? It's more like they regulate my ideas.

42:47

Okay.

42:47

Like some some people ask me, hey, where did this Instagram post you made go? Ninety nine percent of the time when a post just suddenly disappears, it's because my girlfriend was like, no, this isn't biblical.

42:56

Take this down.

42:59

So good.

43:00

Yeah.

43:02

Yeah.

43:02

But she she tells me that she tells she's a huge fan of Matt Walsh and she was quotes Matt Walsh that says it's the man's job to be the ambitious, creative one in the woman's job to regulate him.

43:13

Um, so but I do have a big idea coming up this summer.

43:19

I want to make the biggest Christian Minecraft server.

43:23

I mean, it's going to be the I'm going to invite everyone onto my Minecraft server.

43:26

That means they can build churches in the same Minecraft world where my church is.

43:31

And I want to make a ton of beautiful churches everywhere.

43:35

And I want it to be a place where different people can come to represent their own denominations.

43:39

I'm thinking of having like different countries of different denominations.

43:43

I think that would be cool.

43:44

I'm still debating that with my team, though.

43:46

I'm not sure if I'll do that.

43:48

But, yeah, I want to make a big online Minecraft community of Christians because I want to make stuff like entertainment stuff that's not only Christian, but actually fun and actually really interesting and stuff that's fun, not just because it's Christian, but because it's it's fun.

44:05

Excellent.

44:06

Well, that sounds like a fun idea.

44:07

And unfortunately, I'm not a Minecraft guy, but my son.

44:11

That is all right.

44:12

That is why I'm called Redeem Zoomer.

44:14

Yeah.

44:14

Yes, I am.

44:15

I'm not Gen Z for anyone who can't see the gray in my beard.

44:18

I'm I actually fall into a very unique category because I'm not Generation X and I'm not a millennial.

44:25

I was born right in the middle where they say I think I'm a Xennial, I think is what they were calling them now, which everything is so silly.

44:33

All those things.

44:34

I didn't know that was a thing.

44:35

Yeah, it's basically I was I was born in 1980.

44:38

So that puts me right at the end of the Gen X.

44:42

And, you know, and and right I was right there where I remember eight tracks and I remember cassettes.

44:49

I remember Betamax and I remember VHS.

44:51

And you may not know what either of those are, but I have a very vague idea about what some of that is.

44:57

I'm just a normal Gen Z.

44:59

Yeah, I remember, I don't know, Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

45:03

That's what I remember from my childhood.

45:05

Gotcha, gotcha.

45:07

Well, I want to say again, I'm thankful that I got to meet you, got to know you.

45:12

I'm thankful that you reached out to me and I appreciate the videos that you put out.

45:16

And like I said, you know, I'm sure someone's going to send me a message and say, oh, don't you know he believes this? Or you may have the same thing.

45:22

Somebody may send you a video.

45:23

I believe in evolution.

45:25

Yeah, I know.

45:26

I know.

45:26

And maybe we'll come back and talk about that another time.

45:29

Yeah, I did listen to your video, though.

45:30

So I gave I gave you no surprises here.

45:33

You're not going to be like, wait, he believes that.

45:34

I'm not posting this video.

45:36

No, no, I think I think I've got a pretty good idea of the things that you do believe and understand.

45:42

And the thing that I'm most encouraged by is that, you know, you believe the gospel.

45:49

You're pointing people to Christ and you're in a situation that is, for many of us, just seemingly impossible.

45:56

But yet you still are keeping your nose to the grindstone and moving forward.

46:00

And I want to see what God's going to do with you in the years ahead.

46:03

If I survived, if I've survived 13 years of public school in the suburbs of New York, I can survive a few lesbian pastors.

46:11

Again, great line.

46:13

Great line.

46:13

Well, thank you, buddy, for coming on the program today.

46:16

Thanks for having me.

46:17

Absolutely.

46:18

And I'll be looking forward to pointing people to your videos.

46:21

All right.

46:22

God bless.

46:22

God bless you.

46:24

And God bless all of you for being with us today.

46:26

I want to thank you for being a part of Conversations with a Calvinist.

46:29

And please keep in mind, if you have a question that you'd like me to answer on a future episode, just send me an email at calvinistpodcasts at gmail.com.

46:36

You can follow me on Twitter at YourCalvinist.

46:38

You can find all of my videos, both funny videos and my podcast at calvinistpodcasts.com.

46:43

And if you'd like to support the show, as you've seen on the line below, you can send me some support at buymeacoffee at YourCalvinist.

46:52

So thank you again for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.

46:55

My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.

46:58

May God bless you.