Dead Men Walking Podcast LIVE from Fight Laugh Feast: Doug Wilson

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00:02

All right, let's make sure you're up on that mic there, give us a little sound test.

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Test the microphone one, two, three. Test the microphone. All right. Beautiful. There we go.

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All right, let's go. We'll edit this in post so we can just start right now. Well, we're back with another session on Dead Men Walking from the

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Fight Laugh Feast Conference. We're in a question and answer session right now. We had

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Doug Wilson. Mr. Doug Wilson walked by and he jumped on. How are you doing, sir? I'm doing well.

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And when is your session coming up? Tonight at seven, I think. Okay, that's when we get rowdy, so that'll be good.

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All right, it's going to be good. So I talked to you in the hall before we jumped on here and I was actually complimenting you on Man Rampant, which

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I just thought was a wonderful series on Amazon. That's awesome. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Love it.

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And we were talking about some very intellectual ideas and I think discussing them very clearly for the layman like me to understand.

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Right, that's what we're trying to do. And then obviously after that, we had the CrossPolitik guys on and they invited us here.

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We got into some of your sermons. They actually turned us on to Ride Sally Ride, which we have a couple of copies over there on that table.

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We're going to have to pick one of those up. I wrote that, yeah. So what's on your heart right now? What are you going to be speaking about tonight or maybe introduce yourself to the listeners for those that don't know you?

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Okay. Well tonight, my name is Douglas Wilson. I'm a pastor up in the

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Panhandle of Idaho, beautiful part of Idaho. And I'm the son of Jim Wilson.

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Jim Wilson back in the 60s wrote a little book called The Principles of War. He was a

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Naval Academy graduate and studied with the Naval War College and he took The Military Principles of War, offensive, mobility, surprise, concentration, and he applied them in this book to strategic evangelism.

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Awesome. So if we've got a spiritual war on and evangelism is a part of that, how do the principles of war apply to this other type of warfare?

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So that's my topic tonight, The Principles of War is what I'm going to be talking about tonight.

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And I'm going to be stepping through all the different principles and how they apply to our situation. Okay, because I feel when people say spiritual war, they just say, oh, we pray and then it ends there.

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Right. Is there more to it than that? There's way more to it than that. But don't you feel sometimes Christians just go, oh, well, spiritual warfare is just prayer.

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Because we're praying in the spirit or, you know. And oftentimes I think it just amounts to a mindless waving of the sword.

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Right. Right. And we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

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We're to think about what we're doing. We are to think strategically about our task.

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So when Paul preaches in Ephesus, and he preaches for a couple years there in the

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Hall of Tyrannus, that was a key cosmopolitan center in Asia Minor. Right.

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Do you think that Paul gave any thought to how important a city that was? And it says that everyone in Asia Minor heard the word of the

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Lord. Wow. Because he picked a key place.

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Right. And it was an intelligent choice. So you don't go out to some hole -in -the -wall village in the backwaters of the

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Roman Empire and try to change everything from there. Much like when he said, hey, wait a minute.

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I'm a Roman citizen. Are you allowed to hold me like this? Right. I love how Paul used that to his advantage.

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He was obviously very intelligent in that. So without giving anything away on your talk tonight, can you give us a little preview of maybe one of the principles or laws?

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Let me give you the big takeaway that I think can't be repeated too often, because this is what

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I'd like everybody to come away with. Principles are constant and timeless.

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Methods change all the time. So the principles of war are the same whether you're fighting with rocks or with bows and arrows or with lances or with cannons or with nuclear warheads.

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Those are all methods. Those are all methods. Makes sense. Weapons and tactics.

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So the principles of war apply in the Vietnam War and the Korean War and in the warfare at the

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Tilt of the Hun. It doesn't matter where. But what happens is, especially when a country is technologically advanced, they start trusting in their technology or their weapons instead of the principles.

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Makes sense. I'm tracking so far. So in Vietnam, one of the reasons why the

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Viet Cong were able to fight us to a standstill, even though they were a third world backwater country and we were a first rate superpower, is they obeyed the principles of war and we didn't.

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So what happens is neglect of these principles neutralizes the technological or weaponry advantages.

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Kind of puts you on the same playing field. Yeah. It equalizes everything. Equalizes, yeah. And this is why Christians need to think in terms of principles, not methods.

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But since Christians are such careful, don't want to get in trouble and they want to follow the rules and they want to obey the rules, they tend to be color inside the lines kinds of people.

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Sure. Don't break the rules. What's the method? Tell me what to do next. And so they get, they're so method,

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Christians are so method oriented that they neglect the principles and that's why we're getting our hineys kicked.

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Well, I also think too, the way I think, when you say don't break the rules, my first thought is what rules and who set those rules?

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What rules are we talking about? Are we talking about rules of man? Are we talking about the rules of God and justice and all those things?

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So what Christians do is they don't make the right distinction because they were taught the rules of the method.

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Here's how you evangelize. Yeah. First you say this and then you say this and then you do this and you go there.

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It sounds like a program. It's a program. It's a method. It's a method. Yeah. Right? And so they're following the method and if somebody throws them off their game, they don't know what to do.

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Right. Yeah. But if they knew the principles, they would be able to use whatever method they had at hand.

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Absolutely. But the principles are the key. Right. And as a business owner, and I read through Proverbs every day, you start to see the principles of God and I put those into play.

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I've said this many times. There are many unbelievers that do not believe in who God is, but yet use godly principles and become successful because of it.

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Exactly. Because those principles are true. The method they're using is different, but the principle that they're applying, I would even say in some aspects you could apply that to the current president in his business dealings, used some principles that were godly.

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Maybe the method was not, right, to get there. And those are two very different things and you're making a good point.

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So we're getting our butts kicked, you're saying, because we are method -driven instead of principle -driven. Instead of principle -driven.

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What are some methods that you maybe could give us an example of that you think hinder us as believers or as a church?

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One method that we rely too much on, for example, is lobbying. Lobbying our elected officials.

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Okay. Now, I'm not against that. I think it's a fine method. But it turns basically, it is over time, it's turned the evangelical movement into the ecclesiastical equivalent of big tobacco or the gun lobby.

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Yeah, like the Jerry Falwell movement, the religious right and all that, that I grew up in. We go to Washington and we lobby our representatives trying to get them to do what we want, but we're just another pressure group, right?

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And that's not because we use that method. It's because we trust in that method. Okay. And what would be the alternative?

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Now, I'm a locally elected county commissioner in my district in Michigan, in my state.

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So what would be the alternative to trusting in principle instead of method in the example you just gave?

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All right. The principle is that you want your elected leaders to be accountable. Accountable? Okay. We want an accountable leadership, but that accountability can be brought in any number of ways.

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Okay. Okay. It can be brought with a protest. Yeah. It can be brought with a legal protest.

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It can be brought with an illegal protest. It can be brought with your lobbyist showing up in his office for the scheduled appointment.

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Sure. Those are different methods. Yeah. The principle is hold your elected representatives accountable.

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Accountable. Yeah. And ultimately vote them out would be a good way to hold them accountable too. Right. Correct. And sing hymns and psalms outside of their office.

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Right. Amen. Yeah. That is awesome.

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Well, yeah. It looks like they just... I think we're breaking for lunch here, right? Dinner. I think it's dinner. I'm sorry.

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Dinner. Geez. The day is just flying by. Well, as we wrap up here, we just wanted to get you on for a few minutes. We don't want to hold you too long.

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Thanks so much for your time. We have to go eat. Was there anything else on your mind that you want to get out there? Go ahead.

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Maybe tell the listeners where they can go. Where they can find you? A website? Any social media stuff you jump onto? Sure. If you go to my website, which is blogandmayblog .com,

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the address is dougwills .com, d -o -u -g -w -i -l -s .com. That's the place to go that is the clearinghouse for pretty much everything

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I'm involved with. Awesome. So you can find everything there. And I'm just going to say for everyone listening as well, go on Amazon and watch,

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I think it's six episodes of first season. They're about an hour or so, hour and a half. Man Rampant. What did I just say?

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Rampant. Did I say that? I said Man Rampant. Yeah. Yeah. On Amazon Prime, I think has them. They're unbelievable.

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And then we didn't get into the book, but the premise of the book as you described it on CrossPolitik, I went, that is so genius because that is where we're going.

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That's where we're going. To where we're going to have to defend that type of, well, not us, but the world and some woke

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Christians are going to defend that type of insanity. Right. You know, and I'll just tease that for the listeners, go, that's Ride Sally Ride.

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You're going to get shocked by it, but I'm telling you what, buy the book, read it. It makes complete sense in the culture we're living in.

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One of my grandkids called it a cheerful dystopia. Well, that's great.

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Thank you so much, Doug. We won't hold you any longer. Doug Wilson, everyone. Thank you.