June 12, 2023 Show with Jarrin Jackson on “Christian Nationalism is Inevitable & That’s Good News!”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father, James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer, George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister, George Norcross, and sports legend, Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27, verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view and conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 12th day of June, 2023.

Introducing the Guest and the Topic of Christian Nationalism

We are addressing, once again, a very controversial subject. I believe it is the third interview that I have done on this subject with a different guest. All three interviews have involved different guests taking slightly different perspectives on this issue that we are about to unfold right now.

We are going to be talking about Christian nationalism and, specifically, from the viewpoint of my guest, Jaron Jackson, who is a first-time guest today. He is a combat veteran, recipient of two Bronze Stars, and the Combat Infantry Men's Badge, and the host of Jaron Jackson ThoughtStream.

We're addressing his book, Christian Nationalism is Inevitable, and that's good news. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Jaron Jackson.

Chris, God bless. Thank you for having me on. It is a privilege to be on this program.

And it's a privilege to have you on the program. And I don't know if anybody has ever told you this, but your name is the perfect action hero name, as far as I'm concerned, Jaron Jackson. But, Jaron, tell us, first of all, we have a tradition here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio where first-time guests give a summary of their salvation testimony.

And that would include the kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which you were raised, and the kinds of providential circumstances our Lord raised up in your life that drew you to himself and saved you.

So let's hear your story.

Salvation Testimony, Military Service, and God’s Providence

Well, thank you. I was raised Church of Christ. I still attend a Church of Christ denomination. And from my salvation story, I've always believed there was a God. I've never doubted. It's never been an issue in my life that I've ever doubted.

With that, both of my parents, loving Christian parents, Christ was a conversation, is a conversation topic, conversation focus in the house. And so I am one of those that benefited from two godly parents.

My father just went home February 1st, but he and my mom were married. It would have been 45 years, April 29. So, you know, he just passed away from stage four cancer. But other than that, you know, very loving Christian home.

All four of us kids are, you know, gospel believers. We're all, you know, Bible believers. I saw the towers fall on 9 -11. Wow. I decided to, well, I saw them on TV. So I wasn't there. I'm from Oklahoma, so I wasn't there.

Actually, my brother who worked in Manhattan nearby Ground Zero saw them fall.

Okay, well, yeah, so I'm not the, so I remember walking into high school. I was a junior in high school. And I remember that was the day, I mean, that was a Tuesday and it was the biggest news around.

And that was the day that I decided to go into the military. So it was two more years before I graduated. And long story short, I went to West Point. I graduated Ranger School. I chose infantry to be an infantry officer so I could get as close to the enemy as I could because like all, you know, America-loving red-blooded men, I wanted to go, I wanted to go do the damage to the enemy.

In fact, I wanted to be as close to the enemy as possible, which is why I live just a few minutes from the Democratic headquarters here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Yeah, and there's, Carlisle, you guys have the War College there too.

That's right, we do, we do.

You have, you have all the, you know, all the brass has gone through Carlisle at some point. In fact, if your listeners didn't know that, that's something that I would, I mean, that's a great apologetic, that's a great mission field.

If you want to influence, if you want to influence, you know, the U .S. military, every general, just about every army general's gone through Carlisle, Pennsylvania for the War College. So

And I've, I know friends who are Christians who are retired military, who are actively involved in evangelism over there. And I've had at least one chaplain from the Army War College come to my Iron Trip and Zion Radio Pastors Luncheon.

It may have been two, but I've definitely had at least one. And of course, they vary in degree of whether or not they're truly Christian, but being a chaplain in a place like that. But I hope to have more visits from chaplains over there and members of the military.

Well, and if, I mean, if you look at our military today, basically everything's a mission field right now. I mean, you can throw a stone at anything and that's a mission field. So if you have the hankering to, you know, evangelize to some high-ranking army officers, Lord knows we need it.

The military is not going the way that it should be going. But it was as a junior officer. So I was an infantry officer, deployed my first time out of Fort Campbell, member of the 101st. I was there for about 14 months in Eastern Afghanistan.

Right before I deployed, I met my wife. I dated her for five weeks. I asked her to marry me after five weeks. We got married four months after, and then three weeks after my wedding day, I was in Afghanistan for 14 months.

So yeah, so we moved quick and we survived, still married. We got three kids, we homeschool. And that first deployment really grew me up. It was a very kinetic, very lethal. You'd basically think of anything you could think about in combat.

And I've, if I haven't done it, it's been very close. And so there were multiple instances there. I hit three dismounted IEDs, which is basically a bomb on the ground that blows up with unit right next to it.

And every single time that the device detonated, it knocked me to the ground, but the insurgent had put the shrapnel on the other side of the berm. So the shrapnel just would have been a loose collection of rocks or nails or glass or bullets, just something to rip through flesh.

And whenever they put in the device, they would put the shrapnel on one side of the berm, expecting the victim to be on that side. Well, by God's grace, he put me close enough to the explosion, which knocked me down, but all of the shrapnel went the other direction.

So yeah, that was three times. I also got hit when I was in a truck. I got the video of that. I'll send it to you after so you can see that. It's just a big bomb exploding a truck. It's nothing special, but...

So anyway, so I have multiple, multiple times when before I even knew it, God was protecting me. And I mean, it doesn't make sense. Statistically, to hit three dismounted IEDs on one deployment is rare.

Personally, to hit three dismounted IEDs. Well, I hit three and every single one of them, the shrapnel was on the other side. Wow. That's not, I don't know what the statistics are, but that's not common.

Other than that, I mean, so I could give you lots of other ideas, but the biggest one was after I got out of the military, my father had cancer. He had complications from surgery where they took out his prostate and he went septic.

And he was in the ER, he was in the ICU. And I remember the doctor coming up to my mother and asking her to sign the do not resuscitate. And my mother being the godly faithful woman she is, she said, no, he's gonna get better.

And the doctor's looking at all of us like we don't know what we're talking about because he knows the science and he knows that my dad's body is failing. And I remember pulling the hoodie, this is February 5th, 2018, so it's winter.

I remember pulling the hoodie over my head, saying, God, if you restore my father, I will be shameless for you. And my father did not die at that time. He came back to a good recovery. And that was really the first time that I had that weight that said, go tell people about Jesus.

So I'd walked with Christ since 1997 when I was 12, but in 2018 was really the first time that I had this, you need to go tell people about Jesus type of situation. Like do it earnestly, do it purposefully.

And given my background as an infantry officer, I debated and did speech at state champion level and national level in college. So public speaking is not hard for me, it's a gift. And so that was the first time I said, okay, I'm gonna start doing this.

So I'm a little bit combative, I can be, I should say. And so I do things online and then all of a sudden when 2020 rolled around, I lost both of my restaurants in COVID, they were both shut down. So I lost both of them there.

And I decided to run for state Senate in Oklahoma in 2022. And long story short, the press caught a hold of a Bible believer who spits fire and quotes the Bible.

And you know, they What kind of restaurants did you own?

So I owned two Subway restaurants, two Subway franchises. I didn't know anything about business, but I figured if I just do what they tell me, kind of like the army, you know, I can succeed. And I was hitting record sales, things were going really well.

And all of a sudden I had two police officers come in my restaurant March 18, 2020. And they said, you need to shut down, don't let anybody in and don't let us catch you with anybody in. And one of them was a vet and one was a veteran.

And I remember telling him, what are you doing? You know what you're doing is wrong, right? Like, you know, this isn't America. And he goes, I'm just following orders. I was like, dude, the Nazi said that.

Like that's the German answer. That's what the Nazi said. And he just goes, he just goes, my hands are tied. I was like, okay, I got you. And so, you know, for all of us, I'm sure COVID was a wake up call for many people.

And for me, I was just trying to make a living, trying to do things. And I said, if you're not gonna leave me alone, then we homeschool my kids. My kids get an internet pre-roll ad on YouTube. It's a program teaching them how to play piano.

And the ad is a cartoon LGBT material. And I said, I'm homeschooling my kids and I can't even let them watch a piano video. And this is back in 2020. So I said, okay, I'm in. So I ran for state Senate and a lot of people didn't like what I had said because, you know, the comment was about if you don't believe the gospel, you're gonna go to hell, which is true.

I mean, that's a biblical comment, but there's a contingent on the internet that really hates Jews. And I never said anything bad about the Jewish people because I want to study their culture. I mean, I want to know, you know, that's where my Messiah comes from, right?

Like that's, and so

And the church initially was entirely Jewish, initially.

Right, so they want to know why do I never say anything bad about the Jewish people? And I go, cause God chose them and I need to learn about them. And so I said, if Jews don't believe the gospel, they're gonna go to hell, just like everybody else.

And of course our biblically illiterate, godless, anti-Christian media, of course they take that and they run with it. So, you know, that's how things go. If you love Jesus in the public square, you will be skewered, you will be attacked, which is kind of the basis of where I'm coming from in this book.

Amen, and just to do some damage control, so we don't waste time when we may have listeners sending in questions about your Church of Christ background. You are not a stereotypical member of the Church of Christ.

You were talking before about introducing aggressively and passionately introducing people to Jesus. You weren't or are not aggressively and passionately introducing people to a baptismal tank or a swimming pool.

And as I was telling you there, as a young man, a teenager, when my brother was first involved in the Church of Christ, he and his friends wanted to drag me into any deep enough body of water to immerse me, regardless of what I understood about Jesus Christ and the gospel.

You are not that. You are not some cultic individual who believes everyone else on the planet is damned.

Right.

And you have a close fellowship with theologically reformed people and even Pado-Baptists, like Gabriel.

The Gospel, Presuppositionalism, and a Christian Witness in Public Life

Yeah, and so I am good friends with the Moscow, Idaho crowd. I have wrapped my arms around Jeff Durbin and given him a hug.

He's a good friend, by the way.

Yeah, so he was at the Oklahoma Capitol. I'm an abolitionist, so I work here in Oklahoma trying to get rid of abortion, because it's murder. No, my theology is that 1 Corinthians 15, one through four, this is the message that saves, that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, according to the scriptures, that he was buried and that he was raised three days later, according to the scriptures.

I don't push the denomination. And like I was telling you off-air, probably one of the greatest, I would say one of the greatest influences on my faith is Greg Bonson. The presuppositional approach, it just clicked with me.

With my debate background, he approached it from a rhetoric and a logic perspective. I understood it from a begs the question perspective, like you have to have some type of foundation for your knowledge.

And it just made sense to me that whenever we're speaking about the Bible, the Bible has to be self-referential and self-authenticating, because if it's not, then God's word needs someone who's not God in order to verify what God said.

And that just made sense to me. And I didn't even know that Bonson was reformed whenever I was reading his book. So, I had no idea, but I was like, this guy makes sense. And he kept talking about Cornelius Van Til, so I became a student of Van Til.

So that should flash my bona fides.

Yeah, I had the great honor and privilege before I was even a talk show host to interview Greg Bonson in the study of a pastor, my friend, Steve Schlissel, of Messiah's Congregation in Brooklyn, New York.

Years ago, back in the early 90s, Steve had Greg Bonson preach at his church in Brooklyn. And I can still remember, it was the first sermon that I ever recall having heard on the theme of the ascension of Christ.

And Steve said to me, I know you're not a talk show host now. I worked in Christian radio as an advertising salesman. And he said, I know you're not a talk show host yet, but I know you will be. He was not speaking as he believed he was a prophet, but he just recognized some of my gifts and my passions.

And he said, so I want you to record an interview with Greg Bonson in my study. And I did. And amazingly and astonishingly and tragically, I lost the tape. So my one interview with Greg Bonson, who I'm almost certain passed before I had my own show, it's gone forever.

Unless someday somebody finds it in a trash heap somewhere and mails it to me. But...

You've heard his last sermon, right? Like you've heard his very last sermon that he preached.

I actually don't know if I have.

Well, so his last sermon, he speaks about the fact that he's about to go underneath or under surgery. Like he died from complications in surgery. And his final sermon, he speaks about that. He says, it's God's sovereignty.

It's God's will. If I die, then I'm gonna be with Christ. If I don't, then, you know, cause he had heart problems and I just found it so profound. And it reminded me a lot of my dad. My dad, right before he died, his last words, and this is a stage four cancer victim.

His body is withered and ravaged from cancer. My dad's last words were, his grace is sufficient. And I was just, you know, and so it is just so profound to me when someone speaks about our Lord endearingly right before they die.

Because it's like that, I mean, that's right where you wanna be. That's right where you wanna be.

Amen.

Well, we are going to our first commercial break right now. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Jaron Jackson on Christian nationalism, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Let's say something we are addressing is something that you agree with, but you know that your own pastors are very radically opposed to something that you may believe about this subject, and you don't wanna identify yourself at this point.

I understand that. Well, you may be the pastor yourself, and you may have come to adopt a view that supports Christian nationalism, and you're not ready to identify yourself because you're at odds with your own elders, you're at odds with your denomination or what have you.

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We are now back with our guest, Jaron Jackson, combat veteran, recipient of two bronze stars and the Combat Infantry Men's Badge. And the host of Jaron Jackson ThoughtStream. We are addressing his book, Christian Nationalism is Inevitable and that's good news.

If you wanna join us with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. And we already have some folks waiting to have their questions asked and answered by my guest, Jaron Jackson.

But before I go to them, is there a bare minimum workable definition that you can provide for Christian nationalism that the majority of professed adherence to that concept have some kind of mutual agreement over?

I mean, one thing that I've learned about this topic is that it is not a monolithic group of people who identify themselves as Christian nationalists. There is diversity, there is disagreement. In fact, I want to let our listeners know that if after this program is over, after this live interview is over, if you go to ironsharpensironradio .com and you type in Christian nationalism in the search engine, you will find two interviews that I've already conducted on this theme.

The first on May 18th with my friend Virgil Walker of G3 Ministries who conducted an interview on Christian nationalism, a review of the broad spectrum of its professed adherence. He takes a more cautious view of this concept.

And then on June 2nd, I had my friend Doran Ray, who is the pastor of Union Baptist Church of Ahoski, North Carolina, address Christian nationalism, a pastoral examination, where he is a passionate advocate of Christian nationalism.

And what makes him unique in having this view is that he is a progressive dispensationalist and a premillennial pretribulationalist, which seems to be a very rare group of people that would endorse something like Christian nationalism.

Most of the people I know that endorse it are post-millennial and theonomic. But going back to you, Jaron, can you provide us with any kind of a minimal definition?

Yeah. And one of the things that I try to do in my book is I try to let the Bible define a word. I don't think that God speaks like a dictionary, and I don't think that he answers questions like an algorithm.

And so there's some type of maturity we have to have whenever we approach it, when we have to say, does God speak on this? God, I do think he speaks on Christian nationalism. He needs to be heard though.

So Christian, Acts 11, 26, is the first time that Christians are called Christians at Antioch. That's chapter one where they love each other, they witness to people, they tell people about the Messiah, they preach the gospel, they do life together, and then they get called Christian.

So we might even disagree on what the definition of Christian is. But I would say someone who's born again has their heart circumcised by the Holy Spirit, according to the gospel as Paul taught. At the same time for nationalism, I think a nation is simply a people in a place with a purpose, a people in a place with a purpose.

And I believe that it is Christ's mission to his church that we should all want, that he wants everything to obey him. And so that means all people in all places and all their purpose is going to be his purpose to obey his commands.

And so that's not really a working academic political definition. And I think that's kind of the point, but at least hopefully that reflects some of my thinking about how to come to that idea.

Well, we have our first listener question, Seth in Hummeltown, Hummeltown, Pennsylvania. And Seth says, greetings, Mr. Jackson, thank you for your service to our country. How has serving in the military given you a unique perspective on the Christian nationalism topic?

And this is going to be raw. I've killed people for our country and I've lost friends in service to this country. If your country is led by people who don't love Christ, then you're going to be doing things that, I mean, just take that to its logical conclusion.

One of the worst moments of my life was on October 5th, 2010, we engaged five insurgents bearing a bomb. So it's a legal target, they're planting a bomb, it's two o 'clock in the morning and we kill them, because they're putting in a bomb, they're doing what they should not be doing.

And it hit me, I was 25 at the time, it hit me, this is a Muslim country. I'm 11 months into my deployment here and it finally hit me, they're Muslims. And they probably, I mean, they're probably Muslim, it's 99 .9 Muslim country.

And it hit me, they're in hell because they don't know Christ. And so that really got to me because now I'm still, I still got three months left in country and there were still people that we engaged after that.

And I guess my purpose in the military is if you're commander in chief, or if you're not serving the King, the implications are dramatic. And so if your actions are not, if your actions and your path is not with Christ, it could be catastrophic.

And that could be small, whether that's a sin nobody knows about that's hidden in your deepest recess of your heart, or you're using lethal force on a foreign battlefield against an announced enemy to your state.

The ramifications are profound.

Yeah, well, even right here on our soil here in America, we had Barack Obama advocating drone strikes against American citizens for reasons that he deemed to be fit to do that. So if somebody is going to be doing something like that, there's got to be somebody in the military operating that drone.

And if you're a Christian, you don't want to just be like a Nazi. I must follow orders where you're killing somebody that may be, who knows the way, the direction this country may go with the leftists imposing their insanity upon the population.

You may have drone strikes against people because they are born again evangelicals and they are openly opposing transgenderism or who knows. But am I making sense there?

Yeah, I think what I would call it is first principles, or as Jesus teaches at the very last of the Sermon on the Mount, the wise man builds his house upon the rock, the foolish man builds his house upon the sand.

I believe he's talking about your epistemology there. I think he's talking about your knowledge and how you build your worldview. And I can have someone in my chain of command, like the president, I mean, I was deployed in 2010.