December 7, 2023 Show with John L. Cooper on “Wimpy, Weak & Woke: How Truth Can Save America from Utopian Destruction”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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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.

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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 Thursday on this seventh day of December 2023.

And that date, as you likely know, December 7th is a day that will live in infamy, according to the president at that time in 1941,

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. And not to downplay the horrific tragedy of over 2 ,400

United States citizens being killed that day, keep in mind that in 2020, which is the last statistic

I could find, there were between 600 ,000 and nearly a million babies murdered in their mother's womb here in the

United States. So just keep that in mind when we consider the horrific tragedy that occurred on American soil in 1941 on this date.

But today, we are going to be discussing something that is not entirely different from the horrific crime of infanticide that occurs in our nation daily.

We are going to be talking about the woke movement. And to discuss this is a returning guest,

John L. Cooper, a lead vocalist, bassist, and songwriter and producer for a two -time

Grammy Award nominated and 12 -time platinum band Skillet.

He's going to be addressing the theme of his new book, Wimpy, Weak, and Woke, How Truth Can Save America from Utopian Destruction.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, John Cooper. Hey, it's great to be back.

Thank you so much. And tell us what it was that instilled with you, instilled within you this compelling need to write a new book.

There have been other books written exposing the evils and the falsehoods and the lies of the woke movement, the social justice warrior movement, and it comes by a number of other nicknames.

But what was it that compelled you to conjure up in your brain the notion,

I've got to write a book exposing this horrible movement in the

United States? Sure. I think the biggest thing that really got me going was just frankly, how much that it's hurting people.

It's hurting people from outside the church. Of course, it's hurting people inside the church because these ideas of have kind of seeped into the faith.

You know, there's been this sort of syncretism that has happened between Christianity and what

I would call the secular social justice movement, these Marxian concepts, and they redefine the faith.

And what you have is a lot of really well -meaning, I believe, followers of Jesus Christ to our brothers and sisters in the

Lord who believe that they are serving God by upholding these really evil ideologies and they don't know it.

And it ends up hurting them. It hurts their families. It hurts the church. And I believe that it takes the power out of the gospel in terms of our witness to the culture and in terms of what it means to be light and salt in the culture.

I think it redefines it and it takes the power out of the gospel. And so I thought, you know, I'm going to write this book.

I'm not the smartest person in the world, but the the thing that I'm good at is taking difficult concepts and saying them in,

I think, a simple way that your ordinary average mom or dad that doesn't have time to sit around, you know, reading philosophy books all the time goes, oh,

I get what he's saying. That kind of makes sense. Now, what would be the main pillars upon which the woke movement rests that you personally and particularly focus on in this book?

You know, that is a great question. I think it might be beneficial for me to tell people what I mean when

I say woke. Yes. Just because, yes, some people get really worked up about the word. I've noticed.

I mean, I can't believe the amount of people have gone completely apoplectic over the title alone.

You don't even know what woke is. You know, Jesus said to care for the poor and I'm not listening to you anymore. And yada, yada, yada.

The funny thing is, is in the book, chapter one is I'm defining what I mean when I say woke so people can know.

I actually say this word for word. I say caring for the poor, hating racism, wanting better outcomes for people who are suffering in this country.

That is not being woke. I repeat, that is not being woke. Those are those are things that Christians do.

That's because we've been saved by Jesus Christ. His Holy Spirit lives inside of us and a love for God begets a love for your fellow human.

You begin to stand up for justice. You begin to hate evil doing. You begin to love things like like the

Bible says, equal weights and measures, you know, equal weights and measures.

You judge the poor person against the same scale as the rich person, so on and so forth. That is not being woke.

What wokeness is, is a totalizing worldview that is at odds with the

Christian worldview. And that means it's also at odds with the worldview of Western civilization. It is a totalizing worldview that breaks everybody up into oppressors and oppressed groups of people.

But that is not defined by biblical standards. It is not defined by sort of Enlightenment rationalism standards.

It is not what Western civilization is understood to be oppressed and oppressors. It is looked at through this kind of neo -Marxist lens.

And that kind of gets us into where you say the pillars, the pillars are certainly going to be Karl Marx, without a doubt.

We would not have the 2020s if it wasn't for Karl Marx. But also you also have this this pillar of Freud, which which really that's what neo -Marxism is.

Neo -Marxism is basically a marriage between Marx and Freud. So you have those pillars.

Then you have the critical theories. And I think finally, a major pillar and I think is sort of the pinnacle of the movement is postmodernism.

It is the the complete obliteration of the belief in objective truth, objective reality and objective morality.

And I think all those things go into the woke movement. And this appears to me and and let me know your thoughts on this.

This appears to be even though you mentioned at the outset that you believe there are many Christians who are well intentioned in adopting publicly some kind of an identity with being woke.

But it appears to me that much of this is being perpetuated in a mindset of revenge.

People who don't really want racial harmony and I hate the word racial.

We're all one race, the human race. But harmony between those whose melanin content differs and whose facial features and hair texture differ.

They seem to just want to seek and enact revenge on the ill treatment, to put it mildly, the horrible, the wicked, the satanic treatment.

Of blacks and other minorities in this country by enacting a persecution of sorts against whites, and I could even include in that Asians, for some reason,

Asians are in the target area of those who consider themselves woke and they see nothing wrong, it seems, with the applicants to colleges being bumped to the back of the line or ignored completely because they are white or Asian.

And there are many other things that seem to be a desire of those who call themselves woke.

That would be the the robbing of civil rights of those that just happen to have less melanin content in their skin.

Am I off base here? No, I don't think you're off base at all. I mean, that's in my view, that certainly is definitely a section of this, especially when you get into the more in academics, you know, they call it critical whiteness studies, critical whiteness studies kind of is this this whole section of thinking that would include critical race theory, even like things like,

I would say, radical feminist literature. To be specific, it would probably be, you know, black feminist literature.

All these things are in that sort of critical whiteness studies thing. And I just pulled this up as you were saying that this is in chapter one of my book,

I actually quote Douglas Murray. So this is not my quote, but I quoted him in my book. It reminds me what you just said.

This is what Douglas Murray said in his book, The War on the West. He said words no longer meant what they had until recently meant people began to talk of equality, but they sorry, equality, but they did not seem to care about equal rights.

They talk of anti -racism, but they sounded deeply racist. They spoke of justice, but they seem to mean revenge.

And then I wrote tolerance is another word that has been obscured. Many of the most intolerant people are the ones shouting have tolerance, the loudest.

I think that what we're dealing with. It's certainly revenge, and I think that you have a lot of young people being co -opted into it.

I mean, I don't think these young people necessarily that they're not getting revenge for themselves, but they are trying to get revenge with what they have been told is a deeply

I mean, injustice doesn't even do that's not even the right word for it.

It's much more impactful than that in their minds that what they have been told is that the entire history of Western civilization is brutal oppression, annihilating indigenous peoples.

And just with the sword, you know, sort of like raping the earth and and annihilating all of life.

And it's this imperialistic colonialism. And of course, we see that most recently in the in and the fact that a lot of college students in America are supporting

Hamas, not just college students, actually, it's a lot of the country is. And when you look at the breakdowns of who it is, it's really shocking.

But for people under 35 in this country, it's over half the population is against Israel.

So I think as you look at these things. Yes, it is about revenge. Yes, it is about a self -loathing culture that believes that America is evil.

Western civilization is evil. And if you keep breaking it down, they actually believe that Christianity is evil.

They believe that those the foundations of America, based on Judeo -Christian worldview and ethics, are actually extremely oppressive.

And so it's a very self -loathing type of thing. But all of these philosophies really are working towards revolution against Christianity.

Yes, I agree. And what, in your opinion, is the reason why

Caucasians and perhaps some Asians would even go out in public and vociferously and enthusiastically support this movement when they would obviously place themselves within the target of being victims of this movement?

And I can't help but to think that it is nothing more than fear and a seek to retain or gain some kind of popularity, because I don't see the big white names involved in supporting this ideology really giving up anything.

One one vivid, glaring example would be our president,

Joe Biden. Why is it why is he running for president for a second term and not enthusiastically and excitedly putting forward a black candidate in his place, perhaps even

Kamala Harris, a black female candidate? Well, she's partially black. Her father is of is from Jamaica or the

West Indies somewhere. And, you know, you could go even further. Why doesn't he have a black, transgendered individual so -called?

We know that there's no such thing as transgender, but, you know, we could go on and on with the the characteristic traits of someone that he should be saying, because I really want to put my money where my mouth is and be logically consistent with my approval and enthusiastic support of this whole movement.

I'm setting aside my own candidacy. So someone that the woke movement will heartily support because this individual represents them in many factors.

Well, you know, that's just one example. So what is it and your knowledge and your research for this book, what possible other reasons could there be for whites and Asians wanting to support this?

Yeah, I mean, that's I think that's a wonderful, practical example you just said, I think there's something extremely nefarious that answers it, but I'll answer something prior to it and then

I'll work up to work up to what is most most destructive in my view.

So the great political commentator, not really political, cultural commentator Shelby Steele, Shelby Steele, of course, says that it's white guilt.

That's the biggest reason it is. And his, of course, explanation is that there's this white guilt because of the very real, terrible mistreatment.

You already alluded to a terrible mistreatment of people of color in this country, namely of blacks and indigenous peoples, of course.

And because of that. That terrible treatment, there is this people are a little scared to say that America is a good nation because then they're going to have to defend this horrible history, of course.

And so because of that, they they feel like they need to do whatever they need to do to sort of, as Shelby Steele always says, to gain back their moral authority.

I think that's a pretty good way to say it. So basically, you tell me what I need to march for. You tell me what

I need to shout. You tell me who I need to shout down and I will do it. And in fact, I think that's what virtue signaling is.

Virtue signaling is basically a way to gain back your moral authority. You need to be the first one yelling about whatever, you know, infraction happens.

So like, for instance, when you remember when Jesse Smollett, he's the black actor in Chicago that ended up faking a racial hoax.

You remember that? And how could I how could I forget that? Yeah. How could you forget that?

Please, God, can we forget? But we can't forget that.

But so when you see that, you know, what people used to do is they used to go, wow, this is crazy.

I wonder if it's true. And they would wait until facts came out about the thing. But now you can't wait, because if you wait, it makes it seem like you don't care about justice and you actually don't want to stand for what's right.

So you need to be the first one to denounce white people, white supremacy, yada, yada, so that you can gain back this moral authority.

Now, that is that is very dangerous. Of course, that's fear of man. It's evil. The thing that I think is the most nefarious about this, what

I am so deeply concerned about, because I love the church, is how this is impacting the church.

So what you are witnessing in real time is the the relativizing of morality.

That is what's dangerous. So in other words, we no longer look at events and judge them according to a fixed moral standard that never, ever changes.

We have that standard in the word of God. So we we know what is right and wrong because God gives us his word and God never changes.

We know what is right. But we have now removed that and we have a new moral standard.

And the new moral standard is sort of it changes every day. There's new faux pas every week.

And the only thing that is viewed as moral, I explain this in the book, the only thing that is viewed as moral to the culture is fighting for the revolution, the revolution against America, which is the revolution against Christianity.

Fighting against that revolution is the only thing that is moral, fighting for the oppressed. And of course, that definition of who is oppressed is going to change every week.

And we see that recently with what is happening, how all of a sudden Jewish Americans have found out all of a sudden they're no longer the oppressed class because they thought they were a minority class.

And now they're going, wait a minute. You know, I have a Jewish friend of mine in the music business. And he said, this is what he said to me.

He said, I just can't believe the amount of of people of color who are coming out against my people because why don't they remember that it's the

Jews that marched with MLK? Why don't they remember that? And the truth is that this oppressor oppressed class, they end up eating their own.

And of course, we see that with transgender sports, you know, biological men playing on women's sports teams because they identify as transgender.

All of a sudden you have progressive liberals who used to fight for women are now fighting for transgender.

So they're fighting for men who say they're women. They end up eating their own. And this is what is dangerous. And we have accepted that into the church and we have to stop doing it because it is splitting the church, namely on the race issue, is the biggest place it's splitting the church, in my view.

Yes. And it's interesting that many of the major feminist activists and organizations have retreated into a closet.

I don't know if they are regrouping, trying to figure out how are we going to oppose some of the anti -feminist rhetoric and activity of the transgender movement without losing our reputation of being liberal and so on.

I don't even know what the reason is, but it is it is an interesting phenomenon that you rarely hear feminists in the public square anymore speaking out on these issues.

Yeah, it really I mean, really what you're dealing with, this is the problem with progressivism, isn't it?

I mean, progressivism never looks to anything in the past. I believe that the past is retrograde and bad.

And we've got to we've got to kind of put it in the dustbin of history, if you will. And we're going to try something new.

And we're working towards equity and we're speaking up for the oppressed people.

And even though it's going to contradict itself, they don't know how to fix it. So they just keep striving forward.

I mean, this is another thing I wrote in my book, if you don't mind me reading a little excerpt here. Definitely. This is straight.

The reason I have six hundred forty eight footnotes in this book and the reason is, is because probably a lot of people listening to this are just like me.

You've had these conversations with friends, a lot of them Christians there, but we're on opposing sides of this whole woke movement and the racial justice movement.

And I say something to them like, brother, what you're talking about is critical race theory.

And they always come back to me and they say, you don't even know what critical race theory is. They always say that you don't even know what social justice is.

And so I put the quotes from the original people. I'd like to read this. This is this is from Trotsky.

OK, so in 1920, Lenin gave a speech to the third all

Russia Congress of the Russian Young Communist League in which he explained where their moral code would be derived from.

This is what he said. This is a quote. Is there such thing as communist ethics? Is there such thing as a communist morality?

Of course there is. In what sense do we reject ethics, reject morality in the sense given to it by the bourgeoisie who base ethics on God's commandments?

On this point, we, of course, say that we do not believe in God. We reject any morality based on extra human and extra class concepts.

And then a little later, he says, we say that our morality is entirely subordinated to the interests of the proletariat's class struggle.

Our morality stems from the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat. He's saying it in black and white.

What he's saying is morality is going to be defined by however we lift up the classes that are oppressed.

So what you are dealing with are people who have been feminists. They've been fighting for that. And now they're told there's a new group of oppressed people.

They're called transgender people. Now you have to fight for that. And they don't know what to do.

But they truly believe in a very sort of religious, spiritual way that miraculously, supernaturally, magically, however you want to say it, eventually all these conflicts are going to meld together and they are going to fix themselves.

They're going to meld together into unity somehow. And we can or cannot get into why they believe that if you want to, because I know that people listening are going, that doesn't make any sense.

No, it doesn't make sense. But they believe it in a very religious sort of way. It's going to miraculously work.

And we're just going to keep pressing forward towards utopia until it does. And we have to go to our first commercial break.

If you have a question for John L. Cooper about his book that we are discussing today,

Wimpy, Weak and Woke, How Truth Can Save America from Utopian Destruction.

Our email address is chrisarmsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence.

If you live outside of the USA, please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Perhaps, for instance, you are a member of a church that you believe has gone woke and you don't want to publicly identify yourself as you criticize what you see going on.

Perhaps you're even the pastor of a church that you believe is going or has gone woke and you are very alarmed about this.

You're even in disagreement with your fellow elders. We understand that those would be reasons why you would like to remain anonymous.

But if it's just a general question, please at least give us your first name, your city and state of residence and your country of residence.

And by the way, anyone who disagrees with what's being said is welcome to send in a question.

In fact, I would love to hear even more listeners questions who may be defending the woke movement.

Not that I'd be happy that there were more people out there in that in that defense position, but I would love to hear from you nonetheless if you're listening.

And once again, it's Chris Arnson at Gmail dot com. Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages. I'm Pastor Keith Allen of Linbrook Baptist Church, a

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and mention Iron Trap and Zion Radio. We are now back with John Cooper.

We are discussing his new book, which is

Demolishing the Woke Movement, Wimpy, Weak, and Woke, How Truth Can Save America from Utopian Destruction.

But John, before we return to that conversation, I have a bone to pick with you. My feelings were very seriously hurt.

I was actually emotionally devastated when I learned that you recorded a song about Iron Trap and Zion Radio.

And I'm going to play a clip of it, and I want you to answer for this, because it really has bothered me too much to remain silent about it.

Here's a clip of this song that you wrote about Iron Trap and Zion Radio. I'm sick of this radio show.

Yes, why on earth would you humiliate me that way with a recording like that? I'm just kidding.

That's a great song. I actually love that anthem, which actually basically goes hand in hand with the book you've written.

But going back to what you were saying before about Jewish people being mortified, horrified, shocked that Jews are being attacked and even threatened with violence in this country by those who are in the

Woke movement. And they have amnesia, it seems, about the fact that Jews were an integral part of the civil rights movement.

And I immediately thought of bringing up the fact,

I don't think Woke people care, because even though you would rarely, if ever yet at this point, maybe it's coming soon, but you'd very rarely hear of a

Woke individual, especially a well -known spokesperson for it, attacking the legacy of Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. And by the way, when I'm bringing this up, I do not necessarily agree with everything.

In fact, I do disagree with much of the ideology of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In fact, you could find out more about this from a phenomenal documentary that Larry Elder created.

And my friends Virgil Walker and Daryl Bernard Harrison are a part of this documentary.

And Vody Baucom is also a part of this. But it's called Uncle Tom 2.

You can hear more about the destructive legacy that the civil rights movement has left this nation.

But having said that, although you won't hear Woke folk by name tearing down the accomplishments of Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr., they don't have his ideology. In fact, if a white person today merely word for word repeats

Dr. King's core ideology when it comes to so -called race relations, they would call that person a racist.

If we're not supposed to care about the color of one's skin, and if we are to judge men by the content of the character and not the color of their skin, that's considered racist today, isn't it?

Yeah, you know, I think that part of what's happened here, and again, it's the reason that I decided to do so many footnotes in this book because I did such a deep dive.

I think that most people don't understand how radical these ideologies are. I feel certain that if your average

Christian person that let's just I think that most Christians are sort of like on the fence on a lot of this stuff.

I think they don't want to get involved. They didn't want to choose sides during, for instance, BLM that they didn't want to.

You know, most Christians recognize there's a there's a there's a difficult history in America, racism of the past.

They're still in that sort of white guilt phase. Most Christians didn't want to take sides on this.

But if they understood how dark these ideologies were, they would absolutely reject them and they would get involved.

A lot of these things just kept changing names. They went underground. And so, for instance, in the 60s, you had a lot of,

I would say, Marxist inspired movements like the Black Power movement. You had the

Black Liberation Army. You had some of these very Marxist radical groups that were doing a lot of violence, right?

Well, the American public got sick of that in the 70s. But what happened was, is that within about a decade, a lot of the leaders of those movements literally moved into academia.

I mean, they became professors at Berkeley and and they would they would they were hired to come and they went from prison straight to teaching in colleges.

And they would they change the names of their things. They realized that people were not down with the violence.

Americans were tired of that. They didn't want to see more violence. So they began to call it other things like decolonization.

That's when you end up getting postcolonial studies. And they began to critical theory liberation movements.

They no longer fought for socialism. They called them liberation movements, which is nothing more than than really was

Marxist socialistic movement. So what you have with I think what's happening with Jewish Americans right now is that they did not really truly understand what was going on in the university.

So I've seen a lot of of wealthy Jewish people on the news within the last two months. I'm sure everybody listening has.

They've been saying, what's happening with these colleges? I've been donating millions of dollars to these colleges, and all they're doing is teaching our kids anti -Semitism.

I'm going to yank my funds. So we're beginning to see that, which is a good thing. But the truth is, is that the problem with these colleges is not that they are anti -Semitic.

The problem with these colleges is that they are anti -Western civilization. And anti -Semitism is a natural result of being anti -civilization.

Even on my social media page, I posted stop anti -Semitism now.

And what I said on my social media was without the Jewish people, we would not have. And I listed out things that we wouldn't have.

We would not understand covenant theology. We wouldn't understand representative government.

Everybody should understand that Western civilization is built on the two pillars of Jerusalem and Athens, right?

So we would not have the government that we had, the liberty that we have today. The amount of pushback

I got for that, even from Christian people, was absolutely astonishing.

And so what I think that a lot of people haven't realized is that these ideas coming from post -colonial studies.

There's even a few Christian musicians. I don't want to say their names. So they're peers of mine.

They're in the Christian music world. They say that they are decolonizing their faith. So there's a movement called the

Christian Decolonization. And it applies these same type of ideas to Christian theology.

And then maybe we won't get into that right now. But if you read all of it, it's very radical stuff. And the idea is that our worldview, what we think is just, what we think is moral, what we think is good and lovely and beautiful, is all basically negatively influenced.

I would even dare say poisoned by Eurocentric patriarchy, whiteness, they call it.

All those various things. In other words, they would say what you and I call Orthodox Christianity. They would call a sort of bastardization of true

Christianity. And on that thread, how much of those in your personal experience that you're aware of, how much of this new breed of woke

Christian recording artists have also gone so far as to legitimize transgendered

Christians, cross -dressing Christians, openly homosexual Christians? And I have heard that, if I'm not mistaken, there were even some professing

Christian recording artists in drag that attended the Grammys. Am I mistaken on that? Or why don't you tell us about that?

Yeah. I mean, I think we're dealing with a few things here. All right. Let's answer in reverse if I can.

Sure. So, yes, at the Dove Awards, there was a... Oh, the Dove Awards. Yeah, the

Dove Awards. So, again, you know, dreaded Eric Scarecrow's Christian drag artists.

And then there's another artist called Derek Webb, who is literally an apostate, was a

Christian recording artist for a Christian band called Caveman's Call for a long time. Yeah, he had friendly communication with Dr.

James R. White, our mutual friend, for quite a while, years ago. Yeah, that's right.

In fact, I would say that Caveman's Call was probably one of the more theologically robust of the

Christian artists because a lot of Christian music, and I'm not even criticizing people for this.

I would definitely put my music in this category. A lot of Christian music is not necessarily theological.

It is either poetic. It is something that has a message that could be interpreted in various different ways.

It's positive. Even in the subgenre of worship music, which I am not a worship artist, even those songs are not necessarily robustly theological.

They are, you know what I mean? They are poetically theological. I would say Caveman's Call was actually more robustly theological,

Calvinist in orientation reformed. So the singer deconstructed his faith, went apostate,

I would say is a true, I would say a true, a conscious enemy of the gospel, meaning he spends his time trying to deconvert people from their faith into their faith to encourage them to either deconvert or deconstruct

Christianity. He also dressed in drag. They made a whole big thing of it going to the dove board. So that's point number one.

Point number two would be, you had asked me how many people in the

Christian music world either endorse this stuff or normalize it. I don't know the answer to this, but maybe

I'll give you a different answer if I could. Sure. I would guess that you're probably looking at 60 to 70 % of the

Christian music world is probably secretly okay with all of this stuff to a varying degree.

They probably are affirming in their hearts. They might not say so. They might not know why they are, but they tend to be.

Others aren't necessarily affirming, but they don't like the idea of saying that they're not, and they don't, they probably could not make a case for it.

And there's a lot we could talk about with that. And I've been very vocal about the market, about saying, guys, we need to stop apologizing for our faith.

And we certainly need to stop apologizing for the character of Jesus Christ, our

Lord, and the character of God we find in his revealed word to us. We can't apologize for that.

And actually, precisely, that's actually what I call my name in my book is Wimpy, Weak, and Woke.

And the weak section, as defined by me in the introduction, is stop apologizing for the character of God.

We are weak theologically, we're weak philosophically, and we start apologizing for who

God is. We can't do that. But anyway, that's going down a different rabbit trail. I think that what

I mostly focused on, the Christian music world is just a reflection of where the church is at.

And so I spend a lot of time trying to lovingly rebuke my fellow

Christian artists if they come out saying something that's anti -Christ.

And I spend time encouraging them to stand up for the Lord, to stand up for righteousness. But I just want to say this, there's another part of me that says, how can

I expect Christian artists to make this stand when so few pastors in America are willing to make the stand?

Now, I will say thousands and thousands of faithful Christian pastors are, but they are not necessarily, they're not platformed.

You know what I mean? They are not necessarily like the, they're not writing the articles in New York Times and the Atlantic, or a lot of them, they're not even writing articles for TGC or Together for the

Gospel. And these sort of platformed elite type people who really do steer where most pastors in this nation go.

They look to those elitists, those elites. So I am really disappointed in that.

And I can give examples of that. I give some examples in my book as well. But I'd like to just say one, if you don't mind, because I think it's important, not because I want to burn down somebody's work.

These are brothers in Christ. But here's the thing. A few years ago, I was very hard on a worship singer.

He had a song called Reckless Love. And the chorus is the reckless love of God.

I was bothered by that. I thought that was an inappropriate way to talk about God, even though I kind of knew what he was saying.

But I was very uncomfortable with it because it felt very emotional to me as if God is just, he can't even control himself and he's going crazy.

And when I was, let me rewind.

The reason I was a little hard on that lyric is that as poetry, I probably would let it slide.

Churches were singing that in their worship times. That's the reason I was hard. I was saying, hey,

I understand the poetry. But I first heard of the song because my son literally was reading the

Bible one day. We were on vacation at a pool. My son looked at me. He said, Dad, I don't think that God's love is reckless.

And I looked at him and I said, why would you ever say God's love is reckless? Of course it's not. And he says, well, because it's a worship song.

We sing at youth group. And I don't think I like that. I'm looking through the Bible and I don't see any reason to think that he is reckless.

And I said, there's no way there's a song that we're singing in church that says that. Well, sure enough, there was.

And it was probably the biggest played Christian radio song of the year. But guess what happened, Chris? Last year, as I was studying for my book,

I was reading a lot of material and I was reading a book called The Prodigal God from Pastor Tim Keller in the introduction of the book.

He describes God's grace as reckless word for word. That's what he said. And his interpretation of prodigal was not like when we think of prodigal son, we think of a wayward son.

Tim Keller said, no, he's prodigal because he was a, quote, reckless spin thrift. That's another definition.

By the way, can you can you pick up right where you left off when we return from our midway break? And sure.

And don't forget that we were talking about Tim Keller's book and the prodigal son section. Please be patient with us, folks.

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and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to John Cooper, and that is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

And before the break, John, you were mentioning Tim Keller's book that quite alarmed you.

If you could continue on that. Oh, yeah, sure. OK, so jumping back into it and again,

I don't want somebody to think that I'm here to try to blast Tim Keller. I'm only just saying it's pertinent.

So his book, The Prodigal God, he is defining prodigal not in the way that we think of prodigal, which is a son that is wayward.

And he said, no, prodigal means just a reckless spendthrift. He spent everything he had and he had nothing left.

And Keller says that's what God is like. God spent everything he had by sending his son,

Jesus, to die on the cross. He couldn't have possibly given any more for us. Right.

And so because of that, then God is prodigal and because he's a reckless spendthrift.

And then he says, because he he gave everything up in that sort of reckless way, he says, this is the reckless grace of God.

So, again, I'm not here to just really beat up on Keller. But what I'm trying to say is, is it's not really right for me to hold a

Christian musician's feet to the fire when I would say arguably the most famous Christian philosopher of the last two decades has written a book about it.

You know, and so I think what we're doing is we're seeing that on a lot of different facets. And I particularly would argue and we may get people listening that would totally disagree because one of my best friends is a

Presbyterian pastor. He says, John, he's like that book, Prodigal God. He's like that changed my understanding of grace, the grace of God.

It's an amazing book. He says, I'm I'm being too hard on the book. But in my opinion, the book also sort of sets open this path that that really the prodigal son, well, let's just say he spends most of his time demeaning the sort of moralism of the older brother, basically.

And how it feels when you're reading it is that conservative Christians today are sort of like the older brother.

Maybe I'm wrong. You guys read it. Make your own decision. I'm not trying to burn down Tim Keller.

But when I read the book, I'm getting this feeling like it kind of sounds like what you're saying is, is that Christians who are moralistic and who are against things like abortion or whatever it may be, and we spend our time saying to the world, these things are evil.

We're sort of being a little bit like the older brother. And so I think that that opinion of mine is further outworked.

When you see Tim Keller's his views on abortion, which were very much, hey, abortion is wrong, but it could be the case that the best way to fight it is voting for pro -choice candidates because they want to give more socialistic entitlements and that sort of thing.

He kind of created this third way approach. And again, the reason I say that about Keller is because there's a

Christian musician. And the reason I'm answering this is because you would ask me specifically about Christian music.

There's a Christian musician that got in a lot of heat during the 2020 election because he he said the same thing.

He was doing a get the vote rally and ended up that. Who is that guy down in Georgia?

He's a senator. He's a he's a pro -choice pastor.

Very yes. Yes. He he pastors the church that was formerly pastored by Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr. That's right. And I can't that's right. Ebenezer, I can't remember his name right now.

So that guy was when he was running for office, this Christian artist had done to get the get the vote rally out.

He was there and this Christian artist said, hey, I am against abortion, but I'm pro -life womb to tomb.

And then he explained what he means by pro -life womb to tomb. And the position is basically this. You can't say that you're only fighting for the life of the unborn child if you're not willing to give entitlements for single moms, if you're not willing to give free health care, free prenatal care to pay for the delivery, child care and this and there.

So basically, it's a leftist position that says, but I still do think that abortion is wrong.

So it's very hard to hold Christian musicians feet to the fire when our a lot of our most famous Christian leaders are creating these third way approaches that actually don't sound very conservative.

They're they're they're very much more, I would say, center left. And in my view, most of the time they in my in my opinion, they they go against biblical justice so that the world thinks that they're not near as mean as conservative

Orthodox Christians. That's my opinion. And by the way, Barbara in Schenectady, New York, says you were thinking of Raphael Warnock and she's right.

That's exactly who I'm thinking of. Thank you. Well, let me go to another listener who has a question.

We have Bernice in Wolfe, Wyoming. Has your outspoken views against the woke movement cost you any performing engagements with skillet?

Yeah, thanks, Bernice. Yes, it definitely has. And but believe me, I am not in any way saying woe is me.

I'm a victim. Do not feel bad for me. Skillet is doing wonderfully. God has blessed skillet so much.

It's absolutely amazing the doors he's opened. But yes, there is a huge price to pay.

You know, I would say that, you know, skillet makes most of our money. Most all of our I'd say 75 percent of our engagements are in mainstream music, not in Christian music.

We're more of a mainstream band than a Christian band at this point in terms of I'm talking about economics and where we get hired to play.

OK, and I hope that that's clear, not in terms of my faithfulness to Christ.

But because of that, yes, there's a lot of people that don't like the Jesus stuff. They don't like it when

I talk about Jesus. They don't like it when I talk about the Bible. But I will tell you what makes them really apoplectic is when

I stood up against church closures during the pandemic, when I said, hey, you can't you can't say it's

OK to open a casino or a strip club, but keep a church closed and deny the saints access to come together and worship the

Lord. That's against the Constitution. It's against the word of God. The answer is no.

I will tell you what, people got very upset about that. Skillet was also, I think, the first band probably in the world that that said that we would not play vaccine only shows.

We were not going to do it. It's against my my convictions. I think it's wrong. And the industry got very upset about that.

And I was very vocal about BLM and uncovering what BLM was truly about that kind of as this interview started, it wasn't really about justice.

It's about revenge. It's Marxist. It's it's it's more of an LGBT outlet than it is even for race relations, actually.

So those kind of things definitely have hurt the band. But then we gained a lot of other new followers, and I keep meeting people at every show that say, you know, hey, me and my kids listen to your music.

Thank you for your stand. And that is the best part about my job. By the way, Eric Clapton, I believe, also refused to perform.

Yes, he did. Any auditoriums that were mandating vaccines and even masks,

I think. That's right. You had Clapton, John Rich, who is a country artist,

Skillet. There may have been one or two other ones that I just don't know about, but there weren't many.

People got pretty angry about that one, man. That was like you kind of found out at that point, like, oh,

OK, this is their bail. You know, this is their this is their God. They this is Caesar to them.

You will not speak out against statism. It was an incredible thing. Well, we have a related question to the last one.

We have Victoria in blue, like the color Oklahoma. Have you lost friendships over your positions and writing on this subject?

Wow, what a great question. Yes, I have. I write about that in my book.

Maybe it's not quite fair. I would say this. I've lost minimal friendships, but I've had many, many, many friendships hurt.

Possibly beyond repair, except that we serve a God who does miracles every single day and he heals relationships.

He heals broken heart, the broken hearted. He's calling people to repentance. So without the work of the

Holy Spirit, I would probably say that those friendships would never be repaired.

But God can do it. But I've lost a few. Twenty twenty was so painful. I write about some of those things in the book.

And what was so painful was that these were Christian brothers and sisters, people that I've worshipped with literally no exaggeration for 30 years going to church together, worshipping together, our kids growing up together, thinking we believe the same things.

And in the 2020 woke movement, the BLM stuff, some people listening, probably most people don't know that I actually live in Kenosha, Wisconsin, which is where the

BLM rallies happened after Jacob Blake was shot by the police. If everybody remembers that, that famous meme that goes around that says fiery, but mostly peaceful protests, that was three blocks from my house.

Wow. So I got in. Yeah, that was that's when I began to be outspoken about the BLM stuff and about saying

Christians, if you want to march with BLM, that's an issue of conscience for you. But you have to speak out against this violence.

You cannot endorse this. And I cannot believe the amount of Christian people that rebuked me said,

John, you know, this is just showing that you hate people of color. Or one person even told me

I was supposed to be the bomb of Gilead, not a divisive weapon hiding behind Jesus rhetoric, you know, and I could not believe it.

And I wrote about that in the book, if you're interested. Yeah, it's it's really so hypocritical when you have professing

Christians charging those who are opposed to the woke movement of racism when we've already established that racism is a integral part of the woke movement, anti -white, anti -Asian racism.

And we have a clear example in the scripture of why even a persecuted minority has no legitimacy to harbor animosity towards those who were persecuting them before their salvation.

In other words, before the salvation of the persecutors, because of the fact that you have the

Apostle Paul rebuking Peter for basically caving into the

Judaizers and not eating with Gentiles, and it was the

Gentiles who had been persecuting the Jews for centuries. And that was no legitimate excuse to harbor animosity towards them.

I mean, it's right there. It's right there in the Bible. And yet people are completely blind to that or they choose to just overlook it because they are trying to accommodate that position for one reason or another.

But let's see, we have another listener for you. We have

Brando, just like Marlon Brando. Brando in Tranquil, Mississippi.

And Brando asked two questions. Do you have any plans on performing in Mississippi in the near future?

And my other question involves an explanation of the word wimpy in your title, since the woke movement seems anything but wimpy.

They seem to be more bold in their activities than many Christians are. That's totally true.

First part, I do not know of any plans to play in Mississippi. We are playing Little Rock tomorrow, actually, which

I am aware of the map. I'm not saying that's close. I'm only just thinking out loud. OK, so on to the next question.

I mean, you are right. The woke movement is extremely militant. I actually I heard this on the news the other day.

I don't know who coined it, but somebody described them as cry bullies.

I thought it was the best explanation I have ever heard. Yes. I don't know who made it up, but props to them.

Cry bullies. But in the book, here's how I define wimpy, weak and woke.

And I also want to say this because a lot of people were very offended. John, you're being mean. You're calling people wimpy.

The language of the book is not you are wimpy. They are wimpy. That person is wimpy.

The language in the book is we have become wimpy, weak and woke. It's the zeitgeist of our moment.

It's in the world and the church has become wimpy, weak and woke. Wimpy is defined as this, valuing winsomeness and tone or empathy over truth.

That's what it means to be wimpy. That is not good. And I even have a chapter in the book that I called empathy, one commandment to rule them all.

And the reason I called it that is because empathy is kind of become a sort of like Tolkien's one ring of power, like a super commandment that rules over everything else.

I thought that was kind of funny, but it's really true. We're told in the church, no, you can't say that because it just feels like it's mean or it's not the right way to say it.

And what you end up with is a church that is unwilling to speak truth. Obviously, we should speak things in love, with compassion, reach out to people.

But the wimpiness is in not being willing to say something that is true. Why we are weak is because, as I said earlier, we haven't understood theology and philosophy.

And because we haven't understood that, it makes us apologize for the character of God.

Amen. We have a listener named

Bart in Sugar, Colorado. Bart asks, because of the fact that you perform often with bands that are completely secular and may even have a vehemently anti -Christian worldview, has your performance on the same stage with them ever led to any friendships that have led to either conversions to Christ and repentance or to at least serious consideration of your

Christian worldview and theology? What a great question. Yes, in the goodness of God, the providence of God, I would say yes to both.

I've had more of the latter, which is conversations that I have deemed to be very, very good conversations, meaningful, challenging to people.

Everybody has presuppositions, even people who have never considered their presuppositions. If you're an atheist, you're still making certain presuppositions about the world.

And I sometimes find that if you can get someone thinking about those presuppositions and if they all of a sudden go, wow,

I hadn't thought of that. You're right. That isn't consistent. Why do I believe this? That's sort of step one towards someone being open to the idea of God to start with.

I've had a ton of those great conversations. Some of those have led not yet to repentance, but they have led to people going, hey,

John, do you mind if I reach out to you from time to time to ask your advice on how to raise my kids?

Because they have said to me, yeah, they said, John, why are your kids so behaved? I've never seen kids like this before.

Why are your kids so smart? Why are they so nice? And I've explained to them what the book of Proverbs is and yada, yada, yada.

And so one time I had somebody say, would you mind if I text you sometime and maybe ask you for some of these

Proverbs? I said, sure, you can text me anytime. I'll give you a proverb. So that has happened.

There have only been, I would say, a couple of occasions of the first part of the question, which was, has any of this actually led to actual repentance?

Someone getting born again? And the answer is yes. And I can't say who, but there is someone in particular who has been open even on social media about his faith in Jesus.

Um, he's not an evangelist or anything, but you're talking about someone that was, was known for drugs and sex and booze and all the things the world had to offer and got so radically, uh, born again.

That's somebody now that says, uh, you know, I, I, I'm clean. I'm sober.

I'm faithful to my wife. His family got saved. His kids got saved.

His whole family got baptized, you know, uh, really amazing stuff. And there's been a couple of those situations.

Um, so yes, I mean, I, I love to brag on what God does because he does amazing, absolutely amazing things.

And he, he allows us to be a part of his great work, which is what a, what a gift from God that is.

It's incredible. Wow. Praise God for that. Uh, we have

Philly, just like the Philadelphia Phillies from Ocean City, Maryland, who wants to know, has a band ever been so anti -Christian and perhaps even profane and vulgar that you could not ever appear at the same concert with them?

Yeah, there is, you know, I've never said this publicly and I won't say the name of the band, but there, there are a couple of bands that we are friends with.

We have toured together before. So, so let me put it, actually, let me put a nuance here if I can.

Sometimes Skillet gets asked to go play at a music festival. Right. You know, there may be 60 bands playing.

Just like in Shippensburg here locally where I am. Yeah, that's exactly right. The one that I had to miss because James White was in town speaking.

James is always gumming up the works, you know, he's always messing everything up, isn't he? Yeah, no,

I'm joking around. He's a mutual friend of Chris and mine. But yeah, so we do these mainstream gigs and you have no idea who's going to show up at those festivals.

And they're allowing us to come and do our show. And not only do I not have any power over who comes, it's not my business.

I perform with anybody on that stage. And I believe that the power of the

Holy Spirit will be there with us when we play. I believe the power of the Holy Spirit will be evident when we play and I'm happy to do it.

But there's a difference when I'm doing my own tour. You know what I mean? Like it's it's me and another band.

We're going to join together and go do a tour. I've had a couple of bands that I have become friends with from playing festivals who have said, we really, really want to tour together and I just can't do it.

It's too much because we are about such different things and they are so overtly against what

I believe. I still love them as friends and we contact each other or we text and I give them a big hug when we see them and I love them.

But I just can't do that. So the answer is, yes, that has happened. But I do enjoy playing with bands who don't believe the same things we do.

And and I'm quite tolerant when it comes to that. I let them be them.

They let me be me. And I believe that the power of the spirit is so much better and brighter than what the other acts are selling that I don't mind if people see it back to back to choose which one choose, which one of these things smells like life to you.

Just out of curiosity to add my own question to that. Have you ever witnessed a band ascend to the stage who begins to publicly denounce you and skill it for some of your views while you were at the con?

No, that has never happened. I mean, I will say I think this is a really, really great testimony, not just of the faithfulness of God, the power of the spirit.

But if I could, I think it's a great testimony of my unsaved friends who in these bands, they actually are quite tolerant.

They are not they are not intolerant like the what I see in a lot of the woke movement today.

They are very tolerant towards they're very like, hey, I would say they're very libertarian about it. They're like, you can be a

Jesus if you want to. I'm not. I'm into sex, drugs, rock and roll. And you do you and I'll and I'll be me.

We've been treated, I would say, wonderfully by 98 percent of the bands we played with.

Never been treated terribly in the way that you just described. And I really thank those bands for doing it.

And I certainly tried to do the same for them. I don't publicly berate those people and call them wicked and evil and this and that and the other.

Yes, I just recently saw just to give you an example of something somewhat similar.

I just saw an interview that I don't know if you know who Mayim Bialik is.

And I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing her name. She is a

Jewish actress who most notably performed as Sheldon's girlfriend in The Big Bang Theory.

Oh, yes, yes, yes. And she just interviewed

Ginger Duggar Volo. I know

Ginger personally, and I'm a very close friend of her father and mother.

I'm sorry, father and mother in law, Chuck and Diana Volo, and also her husband,

Jeremy Volo, former professional soccer player for the San Antonio Scorpions and the

New York Red Bulls. But she, even though she seems to be advocating some form of Orthodox Judaism, she is also liberal and a feminist in many ways.

But she interviewed Ginger and was the most polite and respectful and gracious person to her, even recognizing her very strong stances on conservative, evangelical, biblical

Christianity. So it does happen. Not everybody from Hollywood or elsewhere is necessarily a vehement foaming at the mouth anti -Christian.

Yes, that's right. And you know what's interesting, Chris, is that it used to be like that like 10 years ago, 12 years ago.

I never had any of this kind of stuff happen. Now, granted, I wasn't outspoken like I am now, but the times were different and it didn't necessarily require one to be.

As outspoken as now, because the level of shocking evil wasn't near his presence.

So back then I found that most people were extremely tolerant, were very open to what

I would consider to be rational dialogue. And and just to say, I would say, you know, most of the people that work for me,

I'm not talking about my band members. All my band members are are Jesus freaks, just like me.

Love Christ, love the word of God, you know, love the Bible. But the people that work for me outside of my band, most of them are atheists, center left or progressives, and most of them have worked for me for like 10, 15 years.

And we we get along really good friends. We have these robust debates and neither one of us has ever wanted to cancel one another or fire somebody or it's just a different time.

And so what I find with a lot of the musicians, if they're over 40, they grew up in a different America than a lot of the of the musicians who are under 40.

The ones under 40 have grown up in a more what I would consider to be sort of totalitarian woke movement.

It's sort of a secular puritanism that sort of hunts down anybody that's not saying all the things they need to say in order to be sanctified, if you will.

Let's see here. We have I was just looking at a question and it disappeared.

Oh, we have Jack in Tornado, West Virginia.

I love the name of that city. In addition to your musical performances, are you ever invited anywhere to speak?

And if you could provide for us some of your upcoming. Booked engagements to speak, especially on this subject.

I'd love to know about them. Sure. First, I need to rewind. I feel like I did the

Puritans a great disservice there. I love the Puritans, by the way. So I was only talking about the stereotypes of the secular

Puritans. The Puritans are some of my favorite reads. OK, I don't speak a lot.

I do sometimes. And so unfortunately, I can't give you any dates that I am. God may open more of those doors in the future.

I'm not quite sure. So as of now, I don't do very I don't do very many like book tour signing type things.

I have done a few things for TPUSA Faith and or like some sort of Liberty Freedom Center or something like that from Liberty University.

Oh, by the way, just because of you mentioning the Puritans and defending their legacy,

I want to remind our listeners that you might be fascinated to tune in on Friday, December 29th.

I have Paul Jelly. I forgive me if I'm mispronouncing his name,

Jaylee Jelly, J -E -H -L -E. He is the founder of the

Plymouth Rock Foundation. And he is going to be offering a two hour critique of Bill O 'Reilly's new book,

Killing the Witches. Bill really rakes the

Puritan movement and Puritans specifically over the coals in an unfair broad brushing manner.

And so my guests that day will will seek to separate fact from fiction when it comes to Bill O 'Reilly's book.

But I just thought I'd throw that out there since you made reference to the Puritans. And before we well, let's go to our final break now.

And by the way, I have good news for all of you who wrote in questions. Each and every one of you have won a free copy of the book that we are discussing today by my guest,

John Cooper, which is Wimpy, Weak and Woke, How Truth Can Save America from Utopian Destruction.

And so please make sure you send us your full mailing addresses and your last names as well, of course, so that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com

can ship those books out to you. If you're a first time questioner, please let us know because you will also receive a brand new

New American Standard Bible, compliments of the fine folks at NASBible .com

who sponsor this program. And we also want to thank John Cooper and the folks at Skillet for providing us with this limited number of free copies we are giving away today of John's book.

If you want to get in line and ask a question of your own, and we have

Grady, one of our wonderful, faithful, loyal listeners in Asheboro, North Carolina.

We will get to your question when we return from the break, Grady, and anybody else that we can have room for before we go off the air.

But if you'd like to get in line, send in your question to chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside of the good old

USA. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

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Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We have our friend

Grady in Asheboro, North Carolina. I don't know why I cracked up when

I read his question, but I almost get the feeling that James White asked him to ask this question.

He says, Greetings, brothers. John, I know you and Chris are both friends with Dr.

James White. Have you ever had to contact him to answer an apologetic question from someone you've toured with?

Oh, I certainly have contacted him to answer a lot of questions.

I can't remember if it was somebody I toured with or not, but believe me, he's been a resource for me and very, very gracious with his time, very generous towards me, which

I've really appreciated. But I don't know if it's been to answer a question from a musician. I can't remember.

Okay, Grady, make sure that we have your mailing address so that we can ship out to you, or should

I say, so Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, can ship out to you a copy of John's book.

We have Dan in Creekside, Pennsylvania, and believe me, John, I did not put

Dan up to writing this question, but he says, Chris, I would like to know if you'd be willing to have

John speak at one of your pastor's luncheons, and if that's something he'd be willing to do. If you're not aware, every year, twice a year,

I have pastor's luncheons. They're absolutely free. Nobody is charged anything for anything there, and Christian publishers from all over the

United States donate, each of them donate to me a hundred copies of a book

I select for them that is specifically meant to encourage and edify and challenge pastors, and there's never anything for sale there.

There's no ulterior motive. It was actually the brainchild of my late wife, Julie, and we began these luncheons back in the 1990s, and now they continue on in her loving memory and in tribute to her, but I'm very open to John doing that if he is ever able to fit that in his schedule.

That's putting you on the spot there, but I am. I'm on the spot. What do I do? No, that's very kind of you.

What a cool event. I had no idea that that happened. I love it. That's wonderful. James has spoken.

Yeah, I think people will be wondering, why is this guy here? I'll come tell some jokes.

Sing a little song. Well, that actually reminds me to remind you, the listener, that please mark on your calendars if you're a man in ministry leadership.

This is only for men, but the next free Iron Sharpens Iron radio biannual pastors luncheon is

Thursday, June the 6th, 2024, at the same place it has been for a number of years, the

Church of the Living Christ in Loysville, Pennsylvania, and our next luncheon features world -renowned

Puritan expert, historian, theologian, and conference speaker, Dr.

Joel Beakey, founder of Puritan Reform Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

So please mark that on your calendar if you want to register for free and attend that. Please email me at chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. We have an anonymous listener who wants to know, is there any reason to leave a church that espouses wokeism if they do not deny the gospel of Jesus Christ?

Wow, what a question. You know what? I'm evading for one second.

I meant to tell people, if you do want to get the book, you can only get my book at johnlcooper .com.

I forgot to say that earlier. So people assume you can get it everywhere you can't because I published it myself, johnlcooper .com.

I'm going to be totally honest about this question. I feel like I don't want to answer it because I just don't know.

I'm a big believer in the local church. I would never tell somebody not to be a part of a local church.

I think it's an anti -biblical thing. And the only reason I say that is I meet a lot of people that say,

John, I'm so fed up with the church. I don't even go anymore. I'm a Christian, but I don't even care about church.

And I always say, guys, that's just not a biblical approach. We are called to be a part of the church.

I believe in spiritual authority. I believe in local eldership, the whole thing.

I will tell people if it's helpful to you. I love my church, and I've had to go to my elders on a number of occasions since 2020.

We've had some hard conversations. And I guess what

I'm trying to say is I think this is a very difficult time. So I would just say, do everything you can do to humbly bring your issues or the things you think are wrong to your elders, that they should be loving enough to accept that even if they think you're wrong.

If you do it in a spirit of grace and humility, I can't imagine them being unwilling to answer the questions.

And then I would say, take counsel with somebody smarter than me, and not just smarter than me, more involved, because I don't know the situation.

But I would say, do everything you can do to try to keep that unity in the faith with the people that have cared for you and loved you.

But don't be afraid to challenge them on it. Because I do think, the last thing

I'll say about this, in some instances, there are a lot of church leaders who are wonderful men that just don't understand the times we're in.

And I don't mean that even critical about them. I mean, it's hard to keep up with. It's insanity.

Every year, so many new things are happening that sometimes

I go, man, can you blame them? It's all happening so fast. And if they're not on the Internet, a lot of older leaders, if they're 50, 60, 70 years old, they don't even know what social media is, and they don't want to know what social media is.

So they might not even understand the times we're in. And I don't mean that as critically as it sounds. So be gracious, be loving, but don't be afraid to bring up issues.

And I'm wondering, I think that you would probably agree with me, if you're in a church that is so far gone that they have gone to the extreme of legitimizing the murder of unborn children, legitimizing homosexuality, and even slandering as racist folks from the pulpit, as has happened to our mutual friend

James White. There are pastors who openly, publicly denounce him as a hateful, bigoted racist, which is insane, and it's a slander.

It's a lie from the pit of hell. Those would be reasons I would leave so quickly, that I wouldn't care if the door hit me on the way out.

I would leave. Well, yeah, I agree with that. And thanks for saying that, Chris, because I just started, like, wokeness is a spectrum, you know what

I mean? But yes, a hundred percent agree with everything you said.

I'm glad that you added that. And if you could conclude the program with what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of listeners today about your book in about 50 seconds or so, a little less than a minute.

All right, I'll go as fast as I can. Thank you. What I really want etched in people's mind is this.

Wokeness, social justice, whatever you want to call it, is not compatible with Christianity.

They both cannot coexist. And I want people to see throughout the book the beauty of the gospel of Christ and the law of God.

When you read the Bible, the way that God tells us to flourish, that if we will say no to wokeness, no to these

Marxist ideas and yes to the Bible and yes to God's ways, you will see your family flourish.

You will see your community and your church flourish. It is such a stark difference of darkness and light.

And I want people to have confidence in the word of God. Don't apologize for the character of God.

Don't apologize for the Bible. Champion the Bible, because as the Bible says, every word of God proves true.

Amen. And don't forget, folks, that if you want to purchase this book, if you could not win it today, or even if you've won the book, you want to get more copies.

Go to johnlcooper .com, correct? That's it. Thank you. And I want to thank

John for being so gracious and generous to accommodate us by donating the books that we gave away to the listeners who wrote in today.

And by the way, Dan in Creekside, PA, if you're a first -time questioner, let me know, because you'll also get a free

New American Standard Bible. I want to thank John so much for being an absolutely superb guest.

I look forward to his frequent returns to this program. I want to thank everybody who listened, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater