Christ or Chaos!

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00:02

Nope. Sorry. Three, two, one. Non -rockabodas must stop.

00:09

I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it. Are you going to bark all day, little doggie, or are you going to bite?

00:18

We're being delusional. Delusional. Delusional is okay in your world view. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional.

00:25

You don't chastise pigs for being delusional, so you calling me delusional using your world view is perfectly okay.

00:30

It doesn't really hurt. It's hung up on me. What? What?

00:38

What? Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men.

00:44

The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

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Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives.

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Right. Don't go into the world and make homies. Right. Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle neck.

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That's a joke, pastor. When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

01:13

Take an amazing journey and move your heart so you will never be the same again.

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But all things should be done decently and in order. First Corinthians 1440.

01:36

Welcome everyone back to Apologia Radio. Luke to bear hosting today.

01:43

Pastor Jeff is off for a couple days with his family. Much needed after them surviving the

01:50

Rona's for like six months or something like that. They've been they've been super sick for quite some time.

01:59

So yes, we pray for them, but they're all feeling better. They're all good. He'll be back next week. Actually, I'll be gone the next couple weeks as I'm leaving money for my sabbatical to an undisclosed location.

02:11

Don't try to follow. What's up? I got joy. The girl to my left.

02:17

Hello. Tell everybody about your cool water bottle. You were telling us about. Oh, well, so the design we have here can be found on various products on shop.

02:27

She alleges dot com. We have this design and another feminism is poison design.

02:33

But I am sorry to report that you will not be able to order this specific amazing water bottle because it was made for me.

02:40

Only for people that that person likes. Right? Yeah. So sorry.

02:47

It's just well, you know, it's not bad to have a skill that you can just gift to people and nothing else.

02:54

Yeah. Not a bad, not a bad. Only to sheologians co -hosts. What? Yeah, it's very cool.

03:02

And I'm sorry you can't have one, but you can go check out other stuff. You can. Yeah. We have other drinking for my wife.

03:09

We have drinking receptacles on there, but they're just not as cool. Yeah. I'm sorry. Which is also a link to apologies. Your shop.

03:15

Apologies. Studios dot com. Actually, it's part of that, isn't it? A separate item. I think it's ours is separate.

03:21

Okay. Well, never mind. But we have a shop. Yeah. Apologies. Studios has a great shop.

03:27

We have lots of great stuff on it. Good stuff on there. So what's up? I got Conover back with me.

03:33

Good to be back, brother. You don't have any cool water bottles. Just your run of the mill disposable. Blue for you.

03:39

You're a mate. Yucky. I'm not advertising. Fortune. Unfortunate. I heard for apology.

03:44

A studio sits guy. I heard that they were sending Pastor Jeff a bunch of those because they caught wind of him promoting it or something.

03:54

Well, that's interesting because I know their worldview is very different than the one we espouse.

04:00

So most people's is. Yeah. I had to think about the proper grammar for that.

04:06

Yeah. But it's universal that we love high energy infusion. So blue for you. Yucky.

04:15

So we've already announced this, but I'm going to talk about it a little bit here. We have announced Reform Con 22.

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Very excited for that. That will be in May of 22. It's not actually the 22nd

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Reform Con ever. It's just going to be taking place in the year 2022.

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There we go. So, yes, we'll be looking for more information for that.

04:43

We should have a landing page coming soon, but I will go ahead and announce some of the names of the speakers.

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We tentatively have penciled in. Please. One of them is our guest I will introduce in a minute.

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But, of course, Pastor Jeff Durbin and Pastor Dr. James White. And it wouldn't be

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Reform Con without our good friend Samson Claus. So, John Samson. But I have got confirmation from Gary DeMar.

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Uncle Gary will be there. David Bonson. Cool. And Toby Sumpter.

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Good heritage there. Yes. And Toby Sumpter. So, we're excited. We're going to plan on having some sort of podcast row or radio room or something like that.

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So, all of our podcasts will be there and then CrossPolitik will be there and hopefully some others as well.

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So, we'll be looking for that. It's going to be super duper dope. And speaking of conferences, we will be at Fight, Laugh, Feast in September here in Nashville.

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So, all of our podcasts, which I'm very excited about. So, us and Sheologians and Provoked and Cultish will all be there.

05:54

So, very excited about that. And End Abortion now doesn't have a podcast, but we will be there.

05:59

You still get to go. So, come talk to us. Yes, you'll have a booth set up. It's awesome. You guys, am I allowed to announce what you guys are up to there?

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Is that public information? I don't know. I really don't know if it is or not. I'll just say that Sheologians should be involved in something else as well.

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Yeah, we'll have a thing. But I think they want us to keep it light on what exactly we're doing and who would be joining us and that kind of thing.

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Yes, exactly. But it'll be great. I'm sure. It will be great. I'm very excited about that. But all that to say, our other, our guest today,

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I'll try that again, will also be a speaker there. So, Andrew Sandlin. Oh, Joe Boot. Forgot Joe Boot.

06:40

Oh, nice. He's already committed as well. Very good. Andrew Sandlin. I'm very excited for him to be there.

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He already said he's going to have something loud and obnoxious and annoying or something like that, right?

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Isn't that what you said, brother? At least that. Yes, indeed. At the very least, it's going to be 100 proof cultural applied theology.

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Yes. Yes, indeed. Yes, because the theme of Reform Comm is going to be by the standard.

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And so I've asked Andrew to speak on culture. So, very excited. Looking forward to that.

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Which we're going to be talking about today a little bit. So, you can just start preparing your message now, today.

07:19

I'll do it. So, what's going on with you, brother? You've been a very, very busy man.

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Just around speaking and lecturing and preaching and teaching and writing and annoying the secularists and neo -pagans and antinomians and heretics and sort of the same stuff you guys do, but extremely busy at it.

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So, thank you that you invited me on. I appreciate it. You guys and your godly radicalism, you guys mean a lot to me.

07:46

So, thanks. Well, you know, we feel the same about you. Are you writing any books right now?

07:52

I was just going to ask that. Yeah, I'm actually writing one on the family, sort of controversial things.

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I'll just mention one of them quickly, the popular notion that it's somehow inherently superior to be single, which

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I take to be a misinterpretation of 1 Corinthians 7 and Paul's teaching there, but a number of sort of things like that, as well as a book, a longer book,

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I hope, next year or the year after on cultural Marxism, including critical race theory, but even broader than that, the sexual revolution and this whole broad way of thinking that's so dominant among the elites in our culture.

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It does have a basis in certain very dangerous ideas from early in the 20th century.

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So, those are two things I hope coming up. I know you've been speaking a lot on that the last couple of years, which

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I've been blessed by. So, I'm excited for that. Yeah. No, I was just going to say it's exciting to see all these works starting to come forth from the church.

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You know, Votie Bauckham had a book. Owen Strachan just came out with a book, Christianity and Wokeness. Everyone's kind of tackling this subject because it's what the church is currently facing.

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So, to hear you come at it with the cultural applied theology, I think will be a blessing too, just to have all these different inroads to address this great enemy that the church is up against.

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And by everyone, you mean the faithful few that are still standing on biblical bishops. By everyone, I mean those still holding to orthodoxy and orthopraxis and trying to stand against the tidal wave of secularism.

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Yes. Amen. So, this has been a subject that's been, I feel like I've just been regurgitating a lot of this stuff a lot lately, but it's been heavy on my heart really since the beginning of this year.

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And a lot of it stems from the chaos that was last year. But there's a quote here from, there's a

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Presbyterian pastor, Peter Marshall. He lived from 1902 to 1949. So, this is where Christ or chaos comes from.

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He said, the choice before us is plain, Christ or chaos, conviction or compromise, discipline or disintegration.

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I am rather tired of hearing about our rights and privileges as Americans. The time is now, it is now when we ought to hear about the duties and responsibilities of our citizenship.

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America's future depends upon her accepting and demonstrating God's government. This was 80 years ago.

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Oh, wow. That he said that. And I mean, it couldn't be more valid now than ever.

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And so, yeah, like I was saying, I mean, last year was just complete chaos, right? And so, just really been, it's been on my heart that really everything we face, whether it be culture, whether it be problems in the church, it's, we have to either choose

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Christ or chaos and to go deeper order versus disorder. So, that's kind of how

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I like to explain is that in Christ is order, in chaos is disorder. And so, actually, this was the subject or the title of my talk

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I gave with the OSA thing about a month ago. And I wanted to bring Andrew on because he sent me some of his material that helped me prepare this message.

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And so, I was super thankful for that. But, I mean, looking at culturally speaking, whether it be gay mirage, abortion, pedophilia.

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Transgenderism. Disintegration of the family. You name it.

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Masks. Vaccines. You name it. You go down the list. Statism. Communism. Like, all of it.

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Like, it's chaos. And it's because they're not choosing

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Christ. So, it's disorderly. It's chaos. And I was thinking about it today even as I was getting ready to come here.

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And I think we can apply this even more further into the actual church and those that name

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Christ. So, you look at sin issues within the church and it's because of disorder. I went back to the verse

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I started with. We should do everything in order. So, Andrew, I love that you mentioned singleness.

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That's a huge problem in the church. Singleness and pornography and cowardice.

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Men not acting like men. Being childish. And pride.

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Like, any sin in the church that's an issue that you can think about, it's because it's a lack of order.

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Because we're choosing chaos over Christ. So, before I go any further, Andrew, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

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You're right. I think a key here to understand is there must be some law.

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And if that law is not a transcendent law, that is God's law coming from outside history into history.

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And in our case as Christians, we know that's his law in the Bible. And the Bible tells us there's also the law of creation.

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Not natural law, but his law woven into creation, his creational norms. And, of course,

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Christ himself, the law of Christ. All of these, not three laws, but one law with three facets. If you don't have that, then what happens eventually is people start making up their own individualized laws.

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And that's what's happened really increasingly in the 20th century. So, basically, people have become a law to themselves.

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We use that term sometimes. Autonomy, autonomous, that means self -law. People become a law to themselves.

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And so, the things I mentioned, transgenderism to homosexuality and pedophilia and abortion and cultural

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Marxism. Essentially, people have said, we're going to abandon God's transcendent law and we're going to be our own law.

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What's ironic and what, of course, we see increasingly happening is when individuals start creating their own law, then those individual laws start conflicting with other individual laws.

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And because that's why today we see often a group of feminist lesbians fighting transgender people, scratching each other's eyes out.

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Why? Because their own private internalized laws are conflicting with other laws.

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Society before that, when we recognized God's law, wasn't perfect, since we're all sinners. But at least people recognized

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God's eternal law. So, when you remove that law, you get what we have today, chaos.

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And I must say, until we return to the law of God, this transcendent standard, we will have more and more chaos.

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Not only culturally, but Luke, as you wisely said, the church. If anybody should know this truth, it's the church.

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Sadly, the church has been largely, not entirely, but largely anti -gnomian, that is anti -law.

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And we're now paying a heavy price for it. Amen. I appreciate that a lot. Yeah, so, to take this conversation a step further,

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I mean, we can go a number of directions. It's kind of a broad conversation. But one thing that's been really important to me in this conversation, and I know it's going to spark a conversation with you,

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Andrew, because I've seen a lot of stuff coming from you lately, but really, it comes down to proper orderly worship.

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And, you know, with the Christian, all of our issues stem from not having proper orderly worship in the self -government, and then the family government, and church government, and so forth, and so on.

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But it boils down to that. And one thing, when I was preparing this talk a couple months ago, something hit me pretty profoundly.

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I thought about, and we all were post -millennial, right? So we understand that all things, that Christ is ruling

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Iran until all things are put under his feet, the last being death. And so, for the culture, what are they promulgating the most?

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All these things we talked about, homosexuality, transgenderism, abortion, all that leads to death. Death, yeah.

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Communism, statism, it all leads to death. And it dawned on me when I was preparing this, like, oh my goodness, like, that makes so much sense, that everything that they're promoting as good revolves around death, because that's the last thing that the enemy has to hold onto.

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Yeah, those who hate me love death. Exactly. That's right. Exactly. There's another irony here, guys, and it's really sad.

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It really shows the state that these rebels are in. I think many of them even know intuitively it's going to lead to death and be destructive, but they're willing to pay that price as long as they can hang on to their autonomy.

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Yes, it will destroy me. Yes, it will destroy the family. Yes, it will destroy my culture. Yes, it will send me to hell, but I would rather suffer all of that as long as I can protect my little right to tell myself what to do.

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It's a really sad case of rebellion against the sovereign God. Amen to that.

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Andrew, I know, like I said, you've been doing a lot on worship. I haven't seen a lot coming from you lately on worship, so I'd love to hear your take on that part of the conversation.

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Well, are you talking, first of all, more about the public Sunday church worship, the Sunday church meeting mainly?

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Well, I think it encompasses all of that, right? Yes. So it starts in the heart. It starts with proper worship in the heart.

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Like I said, one of the main qualifications for a man to be an elder was to have order in his home, right?

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That's right. But you can't have order in your home if you don't have order in your own heart, and it starts as an act of worship, really, to God.

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So it starts in the individual, and then to the family, and then to the church government, like you were saying, in a worship service context.

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So yeah, but go ahead. Yeah. No, that's right. That's a good place to start. You know, many of the

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Puritans believe that every home was almost like a little church, not what we would call today a house church, but that every dad, every husband was sort of the pastor of his own little church.

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Exactly. And it's his responsibility to lead his family in worship, the

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Word of God. I think one reason that there is such an utter lack of genuine worship in the church is because we don't have men with wives following and assisting that are properly leading and pastoring their families.

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And by the way, those of us and those of you pastors watching, if you think, well, it doesn't matter, that's not necessary, as long as we do a good job in church on Sunday, it doesn't matter whether the families are doing a good job.

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I'm afraid you're sadly mistaken, because the spiritual level of the church will never rise higher than the spiritual level of families that comprise it.

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I think that's an important point to understand. I think in the church a real problem, something I wrote about recently,

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Luke, and I won't go into the details here because of time, but historically the inward turn, which started largely in the 18th century, everything's turned inward to man, and everything for man is now inside out.

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We're not looking outside ourselves for standards like God's standard, but inside ourselves. That's really infected modern worship.

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And you'll talk to people and say, well, how was your church meeting Sunday? They'll say, well, I felt really close to the

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Lord, and I just sort of felt the Spirit moving, and I just felt really, really good, and there was this really great feeling.

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There was nothing about whether the Word of God was faithfully preached, or whether the music brought glory to God, but rather how they felt.

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If you think about it, if the church is what it should be, it's one place that we go every Sunday, and everybody has to do the same thing together.

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Now think about that. Most of us have our little smartphones, and most of us have our little iTunes playlist, and there's nothing wrong with that.

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I have songs I prefer. You have songs you prefer. But when you go to church on Sunday, you don't get to bring your playlist, and you don't get to say, well, my playlist is this song.

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And somebody else says, well, no, I think we should sing this song. No, it's actually determined for you by the elders and the leaders what it will be.

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When the apostles creed in some churches, it's confessed, or the Lord's Prayer is prayed, you don't get to say, well,

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I don't like the Bible's version of the Lord's Prayer, so I'm just going to change it a little bit, or I'm going to change the creed and make it my own.

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No, you don't get to do that. What you're really saying is the church has a standard, and that standard is the Word of God, and the church has failed largely because of that.

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It hasn't returned to the Word of God. That does involve a heart given completely to God, but a heart given completely to God and seeking after Him is a heart that is utterly immersed in the external

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Word of God. And you cannot have true devotion and worship without that devotion to the external

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Word of God. We need a crying revival, a crying need for revival of that today. Amen.

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That's a really good point about it coming to us from the outside of ourselves in terms of who we are,

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God's creatures, what we're supposed to do. Our roles and our duties are defined for us, which rubs up against the cultural normativity of autonomy, what you called self -law.

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And that is I'm self -created. I'm self -governing in the sense of I'm apostately self -governing because I'm trying to create from a blank slate, and I give meaning to myself.

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I can, by my bare expression of will, my own choices, my own actions, make myself into whatever

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I want to be. And I can fashion an existence for myself apart from the norms of God's law,

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His Word of command and promise. I don't have to have an external meaning tell me what to be.

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I'm autonomous, self -creating, and therefore I can be whatever

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I want. I don't have to rely on anything or anyone else to tell me what to be, and that rubs up right against this whole thing.

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I'm not self -defined. I have a role, and it's my job as a creature of God to live in obedience to that.

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And what you described there, actually, that first part when you were talking was so powerful, that actually was the satanic appeal in Genesis 3.

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You get to decide for yourself, to know good and evil, to determine good and evil. You get to decide for yourself what is right and wrong.

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You get to be autonomous. Think about this, when God created man and woman, even before the fall,

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He didn't say, well, you're innocent, and you're not sinful, so you can figure out on your own what's right and wrong.

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Think about that for a minute. Even before sin entered the world, they needed an external law to tell them what was right and wrong.

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Imagine then, after the fall, people saying, I think I can figure this out on my own. No, I'm afraid that is really the step to apostasy, and you can read all about it in Romans 1.

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And you can look at the effect of that thinking in our culture today. That's so good. I'm so glad you brought up Genesis 2, because I was going to go into, you know,

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Zach, you talked about just proper roles, and again, that has to do with order created by God.

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And so, going back to the fall, so before I get there, I listened to a series on biblical manhood.

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I can't remember the name of it, but there was a statistic that he said. Basically, it was something along the lines of, so if you have an unbelieving family, and the wife or the mother comes to Christ 17 % of the time, the rest of the family follows.

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But if the husband comes to Christ, it's 93%. That's right. It's almost like there's something to this.

23:25

Yeah, exactly. And so, I was just thinking today on the way in, I was listening to that series, and going back to the garden, and everyone, of course, wants to blame

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Eve. And I want Joy to jump in here when we get to this, but everyone wants to blame Eve for the fall.

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And, of course, it's like, well, actually, it's Adam's fault, because he didn't have proper order in his household.

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If he would have been leading his household according to God's standards, he would not have allowed his wife to do that.

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And most likely, he was sitting right there watching her. He was complicit in that.

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So, it just all goes back to, again, proper order. And we have to have men that are strong, grounded in Scripture, and have proper worship in their own lives, and then are leading their households in proper orderly worship.

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But anyways, I'd love to hear. Because, I mean, a lot of this has to do with feminism, the bottle right there, and CRT, and everything you guys do on Sheologians.

24:28

Well, yeah, I mean, there's a lot. I guess there's a lot to say. Yeah, it's very broad, yeah.

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But I think, to an extent, it does have to do with, so we're talking about roles that come from outside of ourselves, which means that God has given us all work to do.

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And some of our work is unique from other people's work. But when, to like, you are fundamentally unable to fulfill your role if you are unwilling to do the work involved in that role.

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And this kind of cross -section of what you were saying earlier, but basically, if everyone has decided that their only job on this planet is to just self -actualize, and the only point of it is just the journey, then you really do, you end up with kind of a disconnected, well, orderless, you're using the word chaos.

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So just this totally disordered, just ball of people all deciding who they are and figuring that out, and that's a, well, that's very, very secular.

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But it, you know, philosophers have talked about this forever and ever.

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And for some reason, the church jumped on and started believing that this, the point of your life is your journey, like your own personal journey.

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And it fulfills you. Right, right. Yeah. And that's, and yeah. So really, I mean, obviously, who could have, who could have predicted that a breakdown of that first sphere would just totally affect everything else?

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You're, you know, once you are unable to govern yourself because you just think you're figuring everything out and that's your only role on this planet is to, like, figure out who you are and tap into that.

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That's really pagan. But then, you know, then you're not requiring.

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So if you're, you know, especially if you're a husband, the only thing you're requiring of your wife is that she do the same thing, not that she help you with your work, which is what she's supposed to be doing.

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And then the same to your kids, and then that extends to your church as well. And then you have a group of people who are supposed to be existing in community with one another and sanctifying each other and sharpening each other.

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And they're all just hanging out every Sunday, figuring out their own existence.

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Like, I don't know, it's just very, it's, I guess it's kind of, it's immature,

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I guess is the word that I'm thinking of. It doesn't have any passion or direction.

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It's just kind of stale. And then at the end, when you die, you hope you, and I don't really know,

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I guess, what the goal is of actualizing. Is it just that, I guess we're just not thinking about when we die?

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I think a good illustration of it is, you know, obviously we have ministry in the area of abortion.

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And the fundamental theology is not that there's a right or wrong. The ultimate right is that I get to decide.

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That's right. It's not whether it's good or bad. What's ultimately good is that I chose it.

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And that's the point, is autonomy is the end in and of itself. Yeah, that was, both of you, that was so beautifully put.

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I wish every minister in America, Joy, could have heard you. Not that you could have preached it on their pulpit.

28:14

Right, agreed. But that they would hear what you said. For sure.

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That really is a fundamental tenet of leftism. And that's why the leading leftists, cultural

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Marxists, if you read them, William Reich, I was just reading recently, said it's not possible to have the just society without destroying the family.

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Because what does the family, if you think about it historically, the family, whenever you have a family, you're basically giving up on radical individualism and autonomy.

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The husband says, I'm sacrificing myself for a wife and also for children. The wife says,

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I'm sacrificing myself for her husband and the other members. I mean, it's constantly this effort of self -sacrifice.

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Well, that radically conflicts, of course, with autonomy and individualism. So to have autonomy and individualism, the just society, they would say, you have to destroy the family.

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And that's what's happening today. And I think, Joy, one point you made was really good. It's for this to get inside the doors of the church.

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And, of course, you even hear sermons. Many of the sermons today are self -actualization sermons. The gospel is basically,

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Jesus is calling you to do good things with your life. Come to Jesus. He can make you be everything you want to be.

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Now, I'm afraid I don't really read that in the Bible. You have to give up yourself and your life to follow the Lord.

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Oh, he'll give you great things that you can't even imagine, but it won't be on your own terms. And I think for this sort of self -actualization philosophy and autonomous philosophy to enter the church, it, too, is a form of apostasy.

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We guys were in desperate need of revival on this. Other things, too, but you've touched on one of the vital ones. Well, like you said,

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Luke, it's only in the man that you quoted, the Presbyterian pastor 80 years ago, put his finger right on it.

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The only thing that will bridge the gap between tyranny and anarchy is the establishment of God's government.

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Because that's the only thing big enough to handle those two extremes. If you're absent that and you just have rugged individualism, people doing whatever they view as right in their own eyes, that's a problem.

30:18

And then on the other end of the spectrum, if man becomes too enlarged, absolutized in the strong arm of the state, you need the top -down compulsion in order to bring about self -government, which isn't real self -government.

30:32

It's coercion. And so you're either going to be governed and ruled by the

30:38

Bible or the bayonet. It's going to be God's word inside of you, or it's going to be the strong arm of man trying to compel a false obedience and a false unity and all these other things.

30:52

But without God's government, there's nothing to bridge that gap. So you mean like the government making you wear a mask to do quarantining?

31:00

Yeah, that would be an example of, I think, what we're talking about. What they would call loving your neighbor, right?

31:08

Which runs counter to the law of God itself. Therefore, it's not loving to neighbor. Right. Well, and just the people who we get with no order, you just,

31:21

I suppose you just, well, everything just, nothing is natural.

31:26

Everything is just like social norms. Yes. Everything's artificial. Right. So it's just something humans created and can tear it down when it's no longer appropriate or when we've evolved to a sufficient level to know.

31:39

Yeah. So it's almost as though, I don't know, the government has just become, it's like, let's get a reading on what all these random people who are all just doing their own thing mostly want.

31:57

And then that's what we'll enforce. And that's why it's necessary, I interrupted you. Oh, no, you're fine.

32:02

Go ahead. And that's why it's necessary for statists to destroy, or at least marginalize the family business.

32:09

Because they're competing governments. They're competing authorities. And as long as people have loyalty, as the

32:15

Bible says they should, not unlimited loyalty, but measured loyalty to the church, to the family, to businesses, to friendships, to other people, that's going to threaten the absolute authority of the state.

32:25

And that's why the state, a lot of this, I'm not sure about Arizona, but we're hearing more and more about reimposed mask mandates.

32:35

This all has nothing to do with health. This has to do with the exercise of statist power. That's what all this has to do.

32:41

It's not about health at all. That's what happens. There has to be this destruction of competitors. And that's what's going on.

32:47

By the way, Joy, what you said was so true about everything has to be artificial, constructed. You read what they say.

32:54

I was reading some of the surrealists recently. They said we must war on nature. We must never say that nature can dictate to us.

33:01

We dictate to nature. That's simply another way of saying we are going to dictate to God. We don't care about his standards.

33:08

So this notion of the artificial creation of the person, artificial creation of culture, artificial creation of the family, whatever it is, the artificial creation of association, everything must be constructed by man, and everything can be torn down by man.

33:21

That's just utter autonomy as it relates to all of life. That's really good. I was going to take the conversation and turn it a little bit.

33:30

That's perfect. Again, going back to worship, I'm going to tie this together here.

33:37

As Christians, we know what worship looks like, at least what it should look like.

33:43

We can go to God's objective word for that. But I think what we miss a lot as Christians is the fact that this is a battle for worship, and the culture has their own worship.

33:58

This is just a battle for that. This is where I got some stuff from Andrew. I love one thing you said, that everywhere you look, essentially, it's a cosmic war zone.

34:09

The culture is worship, whether it be autonomy, whether it be comfort.

34:16

They have their own idols, their own gods that they're worshiping. Like you said, Andrew, it's a cosmic war zone for who will win, who will be the last

34:28

God standing. Obviously, we know who that's going to be. I have my notes up here.

34:35

I want to just go through a couple of things real quick, and then I want to hear what you think, Andrew. I will say from the beginning,

34:41

I did steal a lot of this from Doug Wilson. I had to give him credit.

34:46

He's a worthy guy. As long as you're not plagiarizing. Exactly. You're attributing some of it to him.

34:52

If I was elected the head of the SBC, I wouldn't have to give him credit. That's not going to happen anytime soon,

34:58

Lutz. I can assure you of that. Sorry. They don't want you at the forefront of that shit. Here's a couple things

35:06

I want to say. For the believer, worship starts with God, and it's ruled by order. We've established that. For the unbeliever, worship starts with chaos and is ruled by apparent order.

35:15

We all know, believer and unbeliever alike, that the world is broken and needs to be repaired. This problem then for the

35:22

Christian is that it's ethical. The world is broken because of sin and rebellion. Civilization is fragile because of the sinful heart of man.

35:30

The only solution, as we all know, is the gospel, and like I've been saying, right orderly worship. The problem for the unbeliever is that civilization is also fragile, but because of chaos and structural defect, the world is built upon a foundation of chaos.

35:44

The unbeliever has no ultimate standard of order. His only hope is to drive things back further into chaos, hoping to get lucky for better order on the next go around.

35:58

If you think about it from that angle, the more chaotic it becomes, the more hope they have that they can start a new civilization according to their subjective standard of what they think apparent order looks like.

36:14

Yeah, he's right. Chaos always serves the rebellious unbeliever very well.

36:21

I think it's an important point I was going to make a minute ago. I think it was Connor or somebody, maybe Zach. I'm not sure who exactly is there, but a great point.

36:28

The uniqueness of Christianity is that it sees the equal ultimacy of the one and the many, as Van Til pointed out.

36:35

That's why on the one hand, we can have a unity, a basic unity that doesn't turn into tyranny because we also believe in the many, the one and the three.

36:43

There is one God, and yet there are three persons, and yet only one God, not three gods.

36:49

There's an equal ultimacy here. You say, well, is God ultimately more one or ultimately more three?

36:54

We say, neither. He is equally one and three. Therefore, when you apply this in society, it's just so beautiful.

37:02

Not perfect because we're still sinful people, but so beautiful and correct. We can have a great deal of diversity and a great deal of individual uniqueness under God's authority because everything is bound to this one unity of the triune

37:15

God, and yet who permits and encourages diversity within that unity. But you don't have that in any other society.

37:22

In Islam, for example, it's a very strong unified society. You have just sort of the top -down crushing everything that seems diverse in a legitimate sense.

37:33

Then, of course, in other societies, radically Western societies, everything is just the opposite. As you were quoting there, everybody's his own little

37:41

God, and there's no single unifying factor at all, except the unifying factor that there's no unifying factor.

37:47

That's what we live in today, the kind of world we live in. By the way, having this show and rethinking about these conceptual issues is important.

37:55

Churches and pastors need to be thinking about this because how you think about this will impact your entire ministry.

38:01

You can't just say, well, we're not going to deal with these conceptual, philosophical, or theological issues because that's way above us.

38:07

Well, what you're really saying is you're going to import some other alien conceptual idea that's going to impact your ministry.

38:14

That's why we have to be governed by Christian presuppositions. Amen. Thank you. That's good. I mean,

38:20

I totally agreed. As our mutual friend, Joe Boot, would say, when you privatize the faith or you make the

38:28

Bible a church book, you call forth the secularization of the world. That's right.

38:34

So when you're just concerned with reforming the individual and the family and the church, in many ways, you're calling forth chaos and secularizing the world because you refuse to bring the

38:50

Word of God and God's standards to bear on it. And as we know, we're talking about Christ in chaos.

38:58

Colossians 1 tells us that by Him all things were created. Amen. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

39:06

So if it was made by Him, then it finds not only its origin, but its continued existence in Him.

39:14

It's not running under its own power. And then it also exists for Him. In other words, He's the ultimate end for which it is destined.

39:21

And if all things fall into that category, then that means that nothing can be understood rightly or apart from Him.

39:30

All things must find their coherence. They have to cohere in Christ because He is not the man of artificial unity.

39:39

He is the man in whom God is uniting heaven and earth again, which is the meaning of the gospel.

39:45

It's not just forgiveness of sins and personal salvation. It's the reconciliation, as it says in Colossians 1, of all things on earth and in heaven by which

39:57

He made peace by the blood of His cross. And so not only do we have to have these things in place, but we have to be prepared to proclaim that kind of cosmically reconciled gospel, what

40:11

Jesus has actually accomplished on the cross. Because if we're talking about the world being secularized, we really have to take a long look in the mirror and understand that we have had a large part to play in that because for some reason we believed in spheres of authority that Christ's word doesn't have anything to say to.

40:31

But in reality, it was made by Him. It doesn't run under its own power, and it exists for Him, which includes every authority above which

40:40

He sits as the reigning king. And so if we're not applying His word,

40:46

His lordship to every area of life, then we're really being unfaithful and have a big hand in this chaos that we see all around us.

40:56

Right. At some point, we stopped looking to the

41:03

Bible to figure out. So when we had the question, somewhere along the line, someone's church members or whoever, they were like, well, who are we?

41:14

And instead of being like, what does the Bible say about man and about you as someone who's saved?

41:22

Instead of doing that, we were like, well, you know, everyone has a seat at the table, so that's up to you to figure out.

41:30

We do promote love here, and we're sort of just like enjoy moral goodness.

41:39

And so that's what we promote here. But at some point, because if you read the

41:44

Bible, and if you renew your mind, you know. If you're under the instruction of someone who's teaching the

41:51

Bible, you unmistakably know who man is, what he's doing here.

41:58

What is the purpose of this earth? What is the purpose of, you know, all the things in it?

42:04

But we don't know the answers to those questions, largely. And so, and then no one even taught, like somewhere along the line, we stopped teaching that even everything you need to know is in the

42:19

Bible. And, you know, a few decades of that, and here we go.

42:25

Churches full of people who think that they are their journey.

42:32

Like this is just, you know, like my journey is what glorifies

42:38

God. Like he saved me, and that's it. But he doesn't have anything else to say for me.

42:43

He doesn't, I can just jump into the vast open space of philosophical thought about who, what humans are and what their point is here.

42:56

And, you know, who am I to say that anyone's really wrong about that? Because we're all just in the big, open, vast pool and hanging out.

43:06

But I don't know, but it's all, it just shows that we're not in Scripture.

43:12

If we were in, if you read a book every day, you're probably going to talk about it a lot. People, eventually it's going to become apparent.

43:18

People are going to be like, oh, you've been reading this book a lot, because I can tell that you really know what's inside of it.

43:25

But we just, like, if you yell, hey, like, to the

43:31

Christian church, like, so, like, who is Jesus? And they just yell back, like, he was a really nice guy.

43:38

It's like, oh, well, where did you learn that? Probably not the Bible, if that's all you have to say.

43:46

I'm certain he was nice. But, you know, like our response, like, the response of a group of people can tell you if, like, what they've been looking into to form their thoughts and opinions.

44:01

And it's just very obvious that the

44:07

Bible has not been involved in a long time.

44:12

And I think even just Scripture, meditation on Scripture, the core principles are missing.

44:21

And if you're reading your Bible, they won't be missing, I guess is what I'm trying to say. That's great.

44:27

Joy, I agree with everything emphatically with what you just said. And I'd like to say we have right before our eyes, particularly a year ago, in 2020, we saw a just dramatic, utter failure on the whole of churches as a result of the whole status coronavirus drama.

44:46

And then, of course, the Black Lives Matter as a result of the George Floyd killing and the cancel culture and the critical race theory, all of this coming at once.

44:54

And the church, we look at them and we see this bankruptcy. But I think we can make a mistake. I don't think it's so much we saw the failure as we saw a church that had failed decades before.

45:05

And we just saw the reality, the external exhibition of the failure. It took this group, this confluence of crises, to demonstrate the bankruptcy of the church because they don't have this full -orb

45:19

Christian thinking and acting, Joy, that you've just so eloquently described. Man, that's so good, brother.

45:25

I appreciate that. So I'm going to go back to some of the stuff that you sent me here. And again, this is going to tie everything together here, but without getting us too far off track, because this can get us into a whole other conversation about Gnosticism and two kingdoms and all that stuff.

45:42

But basically what you just described, Andrew, is the church in our culture has essentially formed a dichotomy of Christ's lordship.

45:53

So a lot of the churches would, of course, say that Christ has lordship over your own life, over your own government, family government, church government.

46:02

But when it comes to civil government, that's something different. And you just described that's what we experienced in 2020 is the church saying, oh, no, they said we can't meet and that we can't wear masks, so we got to obey.

46:14

And so one thing that you sent to me, which I honestly,

46:20

I don't know if I ever caught this before. It's 1 John 3 .8. It says,

46:26

Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.

46:35

You know, and so we as Christians are like, well, Christ came to save us. It's like, well, it's more than that.

46:42

He came to destroy the works of the devil. And I'm going to quote you here,

46:48

Andrew. You said Christ's work on the cross was designed to reverse the effects of sin in every single area of life and thought and culture, including civil government.

46:56

And so we as a church have completely missed that. We've lost that because we've, again, said

47:01

Christ is lord over my life, but it stops at church, the church level.

47:07

It doesn't go any further than that. And, of course, Scripture says the exact opposite of that.

47:14

Yeah, a metaphor that I use, you may have seen, Luke, is maybe some of you guys have been to London, have seen their famous double -decker tour buses, you know.

47:22

I think they're red, you know. You get on the tour bus, and everybody, it seems, if they've not been on one of the bus before, they always want to run, oh,

47:27

I want to run to the upper deck. Well, much the same way, the church has sort of this double -decker view of reality, that there's the upper deck of my personal relationship to the

47:35

Lord and my prayer life and perhaps my going to church on Sunday and my warm Christian fellowship.

47:41

That's sort of the higher. That's closer to the sky, closer to Jesus. But the lower deck, that's sort of dirty things.

47:49

It may not be bad, but they're not that important. Politics and education and art, the whole issue of the pro -life issue, yeah, it's okay.

47:57

And human sexuality, yeah, we wouldn't support some of the bad stuff, but that's not what we're really all about.

48:03

I think what they forget is the bus driver is always on the first deck, and the bus is always taking them away from the places they should never be.

48:13

They don't recognize that Jesus Christ is Lord of all things. And I think, Connor, you said it well so beautifully a few minutes ago.

48:19

The gospel of Jesus Christ isn't that the Lord is saving a few elect people and getting us ready for heaven.

48:26

Thank God that's also true. The gospel, the euangelion is the good news that God in Christ is doing away not only with the penalty of sin, but also with the power and pleasure of sin, and that he's purging sin gradually throughout the earth.

48:42

And, of course, his church and preaching the gospel, living the gospel, conforming to the law of God, are part of that.

48:49

We're co -laborers. Paul uses that language in his epistles, co -laborers. So do people say, well, you folks like the pro -life stuff, an apology, you say, well,

48:59

I know, frankly, I know some people say, well, that's okay, I guess somebody has to do it. But I sure wish they'd get back to the gospel.

49:05

See, that is the gospel. That is an aspect of the gospel. And for too long, the church of Jesus Christ has truncated the gospel and reduced it to individual soteriology.

49:17

That is, my individually going to heaven when I die and living a godly life here. But the fact is, that's not the same thing as the gospel.

49:24

The gospel can't be reduced to individual soteriology. So to influence all of life for the glory of God, on the basis of the word of God, by the power of the spirit of God, because of Christ's atoning death and resurrection, yeah,

49:36

I said a lot there, but, all of that is designed to reorient the world, and that, in a nutshell, is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

49:45

I don't have the quote pulled up, but I use, it's a quote from you I use a lot, actually, when I'm doing my abortion talks, for an abortion now, and it goes right along that, where you're like, if you're out preaching at the mills, it's the gospel.

50:02

That's gospel preaching. Amen. Doing righteous legislation, that's the gospel. There's a whole list of things you go through, and I love that quote, because, like you said, our view of the gospel is so truncated, it's much more vast, much broader than just individual salvation, and it includes the reconciliation of all things to Christ.

50:27

That's where the church has failed. I think you were maybe quoting, mentioning Joe Burt earlier.

50:33

He made a great point. He says, let's just take politics. He says, all these pastors that say, I don't want politics to take over our church, so I'm not going to preach on any political issues.

50:42

Their motive may be good, but they're going to be utter failures, because if they don't preach in politics, they're not going to keep politics out of their church.

50:49

Their church members will get their political views from other places, like from CNN and Nancy Pelosi. They are going to be political.

50:57

They are going to be political. The question is whether they're going to be biblically political or anti -biblically political. I just saw a meme today, you speaking of Nancy Pelosi, that made me laugh really hard.

51:12

It was Donald Trump. They had a little bubble next to Nancy Pelosi.

51:17

He's like, hey, did you fall from heaven? She's like, no, why? He's like, because you remind me of Lucifer.

51:26

Yes, indeed. It was the best one I've seen in a long, long time. Pick up lines gone wrong.

51:32

Oh my gosh, it was so good. What I was going to say was, going back to Joe Boot, I stole this from him, but politics is nothing more than legislative morality.

51:44

The question is, whose morality are we going to legislate? The church has for far too long said, well, we're not going to get involved there.

51:52

Guess what morality has been legislated? Not that of the Bible. That's right, and not just politics.

51:59

Joyce said something earlier about the church's self -actualization. A chief culprit here was when about 50, 60, 70, 80 years ago, the church began to buy into premises of secular psychology.

52:11

There was no psychology in the 19th century. It wasn't around then. It was invented early in the 20th century by a bunch of atheists and secularists like Freud and Jung and others.

52:20

Well, what do pastors today see? A difficult issue comes up, somebody has mental problems, and of course we know they can't have because of sin, and they say, well,

52:27

I'm a minister. I'm not really equipped to deal with this. So we're going to send you to a secular psychologist.

52:33

They're really qualified to help you with this. Well, 150 years ago, and certainly the Puritans, who were doctors of the soul, that's what they were known for, knew the

52:42

Word of God well enough. They had a biblical worldview that they could address these things as the Word of God, either directly or indirectly, would address them.

52:49

That's one main way that the church has bought into this sort of self -actualization worldview that Joyce so eloquently expressed there.

52:57

That's one way, not just politics but also psychology. And this is true, by the way, across the board. In all of these other areas, these are down on the lower deck of the bus, and the church is all up having sort of a heavenly huddle, a little party up on the top deck of the bus, and the devil, who's the bus driver, is driving the bus over the cliff into hell while they're having a little party.

53:18

That's essentially what's been going on. That's so interesting, because that's the basis of J.

53:24

Adams' book, Competent to Counsel, right? Is that every believer is competent because they have the scriptures.

53:30

That's kind of a slight indictment on a pastor today who would say,

53:36

I'm not equipped to deal with this. Well, what does that say about your knowledge of the Word? That's right.

53:43

It goes back to that, if you ask someone a question and they just give you the wrong answer back, it's like, you don't know what you're talking about, and you're a shepherd of souls.

53:54

It's concerning. It's very concerning. Not to say that none of them know the

54:00

Bible, but even those that are studied in the scriptures, they're effectively saying, well, we kind of deal with Bible stuff.

54:07

That may not be your journey. That may not be what's your thing to help you and heal you.

54:14

Right. That's not to say that there aren't physical elements and physiological things that need to be looked at at all.

54:23

Oh, I agree with that. I don't think that the scriptures will necessarily fix those things. Obviously, we need to take a holistic view of the human person.

54:30

A lot of the fathers of psychology, many of them made observations that are totally...

54:40

They're just making observations of nature and humans, which it's governed already.

54:46

So they weren't inaccurate. Not all of their observations were inaccurate. But, yeah, there are certainly some observations they made that were just evil and totally off.

55:02

The problem is they could get many things right because of common grace, but it was set in a bad worldview context.

55:07

Right. You're right. If somebody breaks a leg, you don't sit down and say, I'm going to read Psalm 23 and you'll get all better. We don't say that.

55:13

We obviously take them to a doctor, because while modern medicine grew out of a Christian worldview, whether the doctor that you see is a

55:20

Christian, he has to act according to the precepts of a broad Christian worldview even to heal your leg because of the nature.

55:27

No, that's exactly right. Todd White might do that. I have a funny

55:36

Todd White story as we're closing up here. It's a well -known thing that Todd White takes month -long sabbaticals on the island of Kauai every year.

55:50

How can I get in on that? Is there a way to get in on that? I know, right? Pastor Jeff had actually ran into him a couple times there.

56:01

I guess he's a really sweet guy. I hope that the repentance he showed last year was genuine.

56:08

Yeah, I was going to say he didn't get an update on that. I guess he's a real sweet guy and everything. We were out there once.

56:15

He was out there at the same time. I didn't actually meet him, but I had a rental truck and was driving up on the beach for something, and my truck hit a soft spot in the sand and just sank and got stuck.

56:30

It was not getting out right. So I'm sitting here in the driver's seat.

56:36

I got all these guys trying to help me get this thing out, and I'm obviously frustrated. I got my window down, and this probably 12 - or 13 -year -old girl walks up to my window, real sweet, and just says,

56:51

Do you know Jesus? It was Ty White's daughter. And I just was like,

56:57

Actually, I do, but this isn't the best time to have this conversation. It was just so funny. She was super sweet, and she wanted to tell me about Jesus, but I'm like,

57:05

Maybe you should have some more tact about when you talk to people about Jesus because right now I'm ready to punch a hole in this truck.

57:12

She was ready in season and out of season. She set the trap. I think I said to her, I was like, You're Ty White's daughter, aren't you?

57:18

She's like, Yes, I am. That's my Ty White story. I'm sticking to it.

57:26

Anyways, I laugh at it now. At the time, I wasn't laughing. So we'll go ahead and wrap up here.

57:33

I know we've had you on for a while. Brother, anything else you want to add to that? Yeah, there's something that we talked about God's law, and if we don't operate according to God's law, we'll live in chaos.

57:45

I was reading something by a noted Pentecostal, believe it or not, Oswald Chambers. I wouldn't agree with all of his theology, but he said something very arresting one time.

57:54

He says, One reason we as Christians get discouraged is because we don't brood on God's viewpoint.

58:00

That was very, very weighty. If we spend our time brooding on God's viewpoint, and where will we find that?

58:06

Of course, in the Word of God. If we brood on the Word of God, and we think about it, meditate on it, and determine to live according to it, it's going according to Romans chapter 12, when we transform our mind, our decision -making, everything we see will be shaped by the

58:20

Word of God. That'll change our churches, our families first, our individual lives first, then our churches, our families, then our churches, and then the wider society.

58:29

But if we're not biblically saturated, then our minds will be weak, they'll constantly be a prey to secular and neo -pagan thinking, and the church will continue to fail.

58:40

It all starts with submersion in and obedience to the Word of God. Amen. Anything you guys want to add?

58:46

I don't think so. I think that was a pretty fitting way to end it right there. Joy, anything? Yeah, I mean, we've been,

58:52

Sheila's and the book club's reading a book called Fair Sunshine about the Scottish Covenanters, and it's really been hitting me.

59:01

Well, because you're seeing a glimpse into this very somber period of time, and you're getting these very eloquent speeches that these men gave right before they died, or I don't know.

59:15

The strength that a lot of them show in a time, not just a time of trial, but like, you're about to die, or your whole family just died, or whatever.

59:32

It's not just an accident that they respond with just utter faithfulness and obedience and praising

59:40

God and saying, God doesn't, He didn't wrong me. That doesn't just happen by accident, and it's because they were, what you were just talking about, was just so, they were so just like, just constantly meditating on the

59:55

Scriptures, and they were there, and they were battle ready. That's great. You think about Jesus at the most traumatic time of His life, hanging there on the cross, and Scripture is pouring out of Him.

01:00:07

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Well, I think that's a great point, Joy, and I think on the flip side of that,

01:00:14

I would say it's no accident that the Church has responded to 2020 the way it has.

01:00:21

Right. The reverse of the covenanters. The opposite, yeah.

01:00:30

Well, guys, a way to put this is the evil around us today, the cultural evil, is so perverse and so powerful that nothing less than a full -orbed, red -blooded

01:00:41

Christianity can defeat it. The kind of Christianity that's popular today cannot defeat the culture that is arrayed against us today.

01:00:49

Amen to that. And I saw, I did the covenanters tour in Edinburgh. I saw the

01:00:55

Scottish covenant signed by the blood of the martyrs. We haven't experienced anything close to that.

01:01:03

And I've been saying for a while that God's pruning His Church. He's building Gideon's army right now.

01:01:09

And the chaff is being blown away. So, you know, we have a ways to go before we experience true persecution, but we need to, as Joy said, it needs to be no accident that our offspring and generations after us will sign a covenant in blood and die for their faith in Christ.

01:01:31

Thank you, brother, so much for being on today. As always, it's a blessing. And look forward to having you on again another time.

01:01:40

You bet. God bless you guys. Great love to you all. Thanks, Dr. Salen. All right, guys.

01:01:46

Well, thank you again for joining us today. Thank you again to all of our supporters on All Access.

01:01:52

We can't do this without you. I know we say that all the time, and I don't ever want it to get old, but it's the truth.

01:01:59

And thank you for your support for End Abortion Now. We have a lot of exciting things coming up throughout this year yet, as we're starting to plan for 22.

01:02:08

Zach's going to be going to a lot of the big conferences. You're scheduled to go to G3 and Founders and Fight Lefties.

01:02:16

And so if you guys are able to make out to those, be watching for him.

01:02:21

Come along and say hello. That's what I was trying to say. I thought you were just going to say, come on.

01:02:28

But yeah, if you see him, come on. Come on to the booth. On that note, we are out.