John MacArthur on Christian Politics, Nations, and Nationalism

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast, I'm your host, John Harris. Hope everyone's doing well out there.

I am happy to be home. I was traveling though, and I was happy to travel as well over the weekend. Thank you for those who knew about the travel and prayed for me.

It really means a lot and travel can be grueling. There can also be illnesses and things on the plane.

I think I got pink eye for about a day, but I'm doing better and I'm rested up and just had a great time out in New Mexico.

I flew into Albuquerque on Friday and Pastor Selecki really rolled out the red carpet.

He showed me a museum where there were artifacts allegedly from the ancient city of Sodom. I got to hold pottery that looked charred from perhaps fire and brimstone, fascinating stuff.

I may have the archeologist in charge of the dig on the podcast to talk about it. He took me to some

New Mexican restaurants. I had no idea New Mexico had their own cuisine. They have their own unique, even burger joints with red and green chili peppers.

It's a New Mexico thing. It's on their license plates. When you enter the state, it's on their signs. Fascinating cuisine.

He took me to see the petroglyphs too, which are some ancient, I guess, indigenous peoples or Native Americans.

I don't know what I'm supposed to say there, but ancient peoples had painted on the side of this mountain pictures of the sun and animals and people.

That was really neat. Then I drove up to Colorado on Monday into Tuesday to talk to someone about some ministry opportunities up there.

I had a wonderful time with him. The Lord's real. The Lord's moving. I had a really good, productive time,

I think, and got to meet some of you, which was really great. It was just good to be with other brothers and sisters in the

Lord. That was my weekend. I'm back now in the studio for a while.

It's not really a studio, in my office, I guess, soon to be part office and part baby's room.

I don't know how that's going to work for the podcast. I may have to take momentary breaks to call him a baby or something.

I don't know how this is going to work yet, but anyway, I'm back here. I noticed there were a number of things when

I did go back online just to see what was going on that happened while I was gone.

I probably would have commented on some of them, but the reason I didn't was because I was traveling and I had other things to do.

Now I can comment on some of these things, but I don't think I want to cover all of them. There's one thing in particular that I thought, this

I want to touch. It's because I think one of the unique things about this particular podcast is

I try to be comprehensive when I can be about an issue. If it's a person or an issue, a topic,

I will look into the relevant information to try to provide the greater context.

What does this person believe about this issue? If we're focusing on a certain pastor or someone,

I'll bring in other things they've said and try to make sense of it. That's the important thing to me is that you understand what is being communicated so you can then make decisions for yourself.

We're going to talk a little bit about a pastor who's been influential in my life. That's Pastor John MacArthur. I think I've said in the past, there's a lot of personal connections.

My parents met at his church. I have an uncle who's a current member. I went there for a summer and a semester and did a semester at Master's Seminary.

I know a little bit about Pastor John MacArthur. Of course, I've listened to a number of his sermons in the past.

Hopefully, I bring a broader context to the issue that's being discussed now because the terminology might be different, but the issue is not really that different.

We've talked about it before, but I'm going to bring a lot of clips of John MacArthur throughout the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, and 2010s, and even now 2020s.

I mean, he's spanned such a long time of ministry and sometimes over periods of time like that, you might even change your approach to certain things.

That would be what I would expect. And of course, I've changed my approach to some things. And so I think there's kind of two major ditches

I see. There's people who seem to think that John MacArthur has never changed his approach on anything and that he's always said the same exact thing.

And it's a safe assumption to try to look through what someone has said and make sense of it, make it fit together.

I think that's a safe, that's what we should be doing. But sometimes things don't always quite fit. Circumstances also change and people might say different things.

So I want to bring some of that to this discussion. And then also I see people who oversimplify things.

I mean, they'll say John MacArthur has, quote unquote, loser theology because he's not a post -millennialist or he's a dispensationalist.

And that means that he doesn't believe in political involvement. And they're just reducing a whole lot. And I think there's a lot more to talk about with John MacArthur's approach to politics and civic life and the

Christian's responsibility to the government. And so there's really two big flashing issues here. One is, are there such things as Christian nations?

And if not, or if there are, I should say, should Christians work towards that end?

Should Christians be salt and light in a community, a region, a country to the point of affecting it so that it can be identified as Christian in a certain sense?

The other thing, a big kind of topic is just what is the, and they're obviously intertwined, but what is the relationship that Christians and the church as an institution, which two separate questions even there, but what is the relationship they have to the civil government?

Right. And so we've talked about this stuff before, but I have just a lot more information to share with you. And so hopefully you're going to enjoy this episode.

If you're someone who listens to John MacArthur, this is for you. If you don't know who John MacArthur is, maybe go to the next podcast.

I don't know what to tell you. Before we do, though, I want to show you a little bit about Ridge Runner.

Ridge Runner is a sponsor of this podcast. And I really believe in what Ridge Runner is trying to do.

They have properties in Kentucky in a rural red state where people who are perhaps in a blue state that are concerned about things like education and gun rights and religious freedom, you know, they may be attracted to going to a place like Kentucky where those those threats aren't as present.

And so Ridge Runner has really tapped into this. And they have a vision for Christians, especially coming into Kentucky to live in a community with each other and and really just providing that safety for their family.

So here's just one clip. I have a number of them I'll show you over the next couple of months. But here's one clip of Josh Abatoy, who is the the promoter.

And actually, he is also, I believe, the owner, joint owner of Ridge Runner, talking about the properties they have there in Kentucky on location.

Here on one of the pasture lots that very easy road frontage. These are smaller lots, four to five acres, easy to build on.

But if you look where I'm looking down south, actually, you can see that you can see these bluffs on the horizon.

That's the Cumberland River has carved those bluffs out of the limestone rocks. You know, that's about a 300 foot bluff.

But really from vantage points like this, you've got a panoramic 180 degree view.

Of all of these bluffs that roll along the Cumberland River. So, you know, if you were to build up here and easily could build up here, the view from your front porch would be almost unbeatable from here.

You almost don't want the music to stop because it's just great folk bluegrass sound. Anyway, Ridge Runner, check it out.

Ridge Runner USA dot com. And to find out more. Well, let's start with some clips of John MacArthur through the years.

We got clips spanning, like I said, decades here. And I want to start with this.

This is John MacArthur. I think we're starting here in the 80s, if I'm not mistaken. But a number of clips from him just about Christian involvement in governments, the

Christian civic involvement. Is how to stand up against abortion and gay rights and the

ERA and and a lot of other things. I really believe that we ought to take our stand on those issues.

But somehow what happens is in the midst of wanting to take the right and legal means to take a stand and preach and proclaim against sin, we get diverted into the illusion that we can change our country by effecting changes in the political system.

The reason I don't belong to the moral majority is because I'm not willing to alienate all the Democrats. What do

I gain by that? Because politics isn't the issue. I don't expect my government to act in a Christian way.

All I expect out of my government is that I can get here when I want to get here, not get shot in the process and that the water comes when

I turn the faucet on. There's always the temptation to cross the divide between the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness and borrow things from the kingdom of darkness to think that you think are going to aid you.

I mean, Jerry Falwell believed that, right? He believed that, you know, if we're going to reach the world, we've got to have a

Christian president, a Christian Congress and a Christian Senate that has nothing to do with the kingdom of God. And what you do in terms of social change, lobbying hard and fast for social change and giving too much of your time to that has nothing to do with the kingdom of God.

That's why Paul said we preach Christ and Him crucified. There's a singularity in our focus.

So you can see in that clip, a lot of people are familiar with John MacArthur's stance that he's had over the years on this.

Kind of not approving of the religious right and that kind of thing that he makes a separation between the church's responsibility, which he narrows to.

It's really the Great Commission and the gospel, he says there, and forwarding that.

And then he mentions the importance of also having this civic,

I don't know if he would call it a moral responsibility. I think he probably thinks that, but that there's a civic function that Christians at least can have where they are implementing their morality in the political sphere.

He just doesn't want people to be mistaken, though, in thinking that that's somehow the same as the kingdom of God or that he wants to keep those things very separate.

He doesn't want people thinking that they're making or influencing the nation to be

Christian necessarily. He wants them to have a basic moral structure, but he doesn't want that being conflated with the purposes of God ultimately.

So and I know there's probably a million questions and a million comments that some people might have just even in what

I just said. There's a lot more that we're going to talk about. So I'm just trying to summarize how

I take these things. So MacArthur's stance on this, this sort of separation that he makes between Christian responsibility as given to us in the

Bible and then the civic realm and the importance of the civic realm, it really gives the impression,

I suppose, that the civic realm is there to kind of keep things stable so Christians can do their thing. That's the best we can hope for, perhaps.

That has led to some people concluding that John MacArthur is very discouraging to Christians trying to get involved in these things.

So so let's say there's a Christian who does want to get involved and says, I think that's what I'm supposed to do. MacArthur is not going to tell him no, but Pastor John MacArthur may say things that could discourage such a person.

So let me give you a few clips that might make someone think that. Our nation was born out of a violation of this biblical text.

Now, that may throw you for a loss, but that's the fact. Our nation was born out of a violation of this text in the name of Christian freedom.

That does not mean that God doesn't overrule such violations and bring about good, which He did in this case, but that doesn't justify the means.

And still today, we struggle with how we should identify with our government because even though America had sort of a

Christian orientation, we are now living in, I suppose, what we could call post -Christian America.

Here we are in this country. We have a great Christian heritage. Not covenantal.

God made no covenant with this nation. We are not a covenant people. We don't have the insulation and protection and special mercies that Israel enjoyed.

And if God, in spite of those special mercies and that covenant which brought some protection to them, if God still destroyed them, what hope do we have to evade

His judgment? We have produced nothing but the same sour berries.

What we're seeing in America is the death of morality. What we're seeing in America is the death of biblical standards.

What we're seeing is the displacement of Christianity. Morality and biblical commitment are fading in our nation and fading before our very eyes.

And Christians, frankly, I think are disturbed not so much because we want George Bush to win, but because we want

Al Gore to lose. And it isn't personal. We really would prefer one last hurrah for what is moral, one last hurrah for what is right and righteous and biblical.

We would like to believe that we can hold on for a place in our society for God's word.

But it's a losing battle. It's a losing battle. Oh, guess what?

We don't win down here. We lose. You ready for that?

Oh, you were a post -millennialist. You thought we're just going to go waltzing into the kingdom as you took over the world.

No, we lose here. Get it. They killed Jesus. They killed all the apostles.

We're all going to be persecuted. If any man come after me, let him what?

And himself. Garbage of prosperity gospel. No, we don't win down here.

You ready for that? Just to clear the air. I love this clarity. We don't win.

We lose on this battlefield. But we win on the big one.

The eternal one. OK, so a lot to talk about there, but you get the impression from what you just heard.

And I'm going to try to sort of sum this up, that in the United States and perhaps in other

Western countries that have been impacted by Christianity, there is a blessing to acknowledge that in a positive thing to talk about there, that Christianity has made an impact.

So so again, perhaps the best you can hope for is some kind of a basic morality that allows

Christians to operate according to the Great Commission. And and you can have that in a country.

But once you start losing that, then there is this sense of discouragement that seems to be present in what

John MacArthur says. Now, he starts off in that clip with talking about the American Revolution as a violation of Romans 13.

There's many other clips where he talks about this. And of course, I disagree with this. I don't think that it was necessarily a violation of Romans 13.

And really one of the simplest ways to explain this in a short, short, compact manner is that the colonists had to make a decision on who they were going to submit to.

Were they going to submit to Parliament and the King of England, or were they going to submit to their local governments and their state governments in the

United States? So you have kind of a conflicting jurisdictional thing going on there as well, which which would beg the question, then, are you in violation, let's say, of of Massachusetts or Virginia or a local area when you decide you're going to be a loyalist?

Right. So are you in violation of Romans 13? And I get the impression sometimes the people who make these claims, perhaps and with all due respect to Dr.

John MacArthur, of course, perhaps have not studied in detail the historical situation. And, you know, they they have not perhaps and this is speculation on my part, but put themselves in the shoes of people who had to choose between, you know, the local governments that were emerging local shadow governments, if you want to call them that.

But really, they had the legitimacy in the sense of they had the support of the people and and then a far off across the ocean government that wasn't really as involved.

So so without getting into more details on that, I'll just say that I disagree with the oversimplification there.

But, you know, he wants to make the separation between a covenantal relationship, which he's right to do. I totally agree with him on this and a

Christian heritage. So you can have a Christian heritage in a country without having a covenantal relationship like Israel has, which

I think is exactly what the United States has enjoyed. But his conclusion from that seems to be that we're kind of like inescapably judged, that we're just you know, this thing can't really turn around.

It's just going downhill. And this is it. And we're we want morality. This is like the heartbeat that he has and the

Christians have. But we're in this losing battle. And if you're in a losing battle, then what are you going to do?

You're going to probably cut and run because you know that it's losing. You're going to hunker down with your family and develop a bunker mentality.

And I've seen this firsthand now and the reason that I've seen it is because John MacArthur is saying things that you could kind of see.

It seems kind of reasonable, given a certain theological bent and so forth. But the people who listen to him, some of the professors and I do know names that I could provide if people really want to know.

But I don't I don't really want to go there. I don't want to I think I don't want to at this point of online warfare with some of these guys.

But I know guys who have said things that would lead one to think that either political engagement is not important at all or it's and certainly beneath,

I should say, the pastorate in if you're looking at hierarchies, you know, or it's just such a losing battle that, you know, the right thing to do is to just not get involved.

So there's sort of this discouragement that I think it produces. And I've seen at Shepard's Conference before,

I remember one of the very, very prominent professors there did a session on I think it was called something like, you know, what does

Athens have to do with Jerusalem or what does Jerusalem have to do with Athens? As a professor, I had in historical theology, someone had come down afterward and I was standing there.

And I remember they said, thank you, because because of your ministry, this wasn't MacArthur, this one who works at the seminary because of your ministry.

I don't vote anymore. This is not that uncommon. I remember someone who's actually speaking tomorrow on the subject of Christian nationalism at the

Shepard's Conference, which I don't know how that's going to go. But I remember that individual. I had asked them years ago, hey,

I'm thinking of becoming a lawyer, perhaps. What do you think? Is that a worthwhile endeavor for a

Christian? And the answer that I got was that it's really no more important than being a janitor.

It's it's there's really nothing special about it. And of course, this is the kind of thing that did at the time discourage me as a young man and kind of just took the wind out of my sails.

So I'm not saying MacArthur's to blame for what others have said, but I am saying that I think oftentimes followers take things two steps farther.

And the net effect of this kind of this theology can potentially at least be persuading people that they should not be as involved.

And so I want to admit that off the top that I think that that could be a potential issue.

And again, I obviously respect, greatly respect Dr. MacArthur and Pastor MacArthur, and I have benefited and I will benefit from his ministry.

And I've seen things a little differently. This has not ultimately discouraged me. I have decided to to keep going and listen to other historic voices like John Calvin, who talks about I think it's in this final chapter of the

Institute's how the civil magistrate is like the highest calling. And so there's there's other things that I've just that have helped me reason through this process.

But, you know, there might be a slight disagreement there. So so this is these are some clips that just would lead you to believe that you're not supposed to be as politically engaged and that maybe

Christian nations aren't possible. I want to play this for you, though. America is a Christian nation. You are wrong.

There is no such thing as a Christian nation. There are only our Christian people. You can't have a

Christian nation. We are not a Christian nation. We are not God's chosen people, as was the nation

Israel. It is still true that we had amazingly privileged beginnings. We had a freedom here to take the

Word of God and to build a nation on the Word of God, really that is unique to the world.

There's no such thing, by the way, folks, as a Christian country and there's no such thing as a Christian government. Well, there will be a

Christian government in the millennium with Christ ruling. There's no such thing as a

Christian government. No such thing as a Christian nation, never has been, never will be until Christ establishes a worldwide theocratic kingdom.

Remember the America that was, some of you? This is not a

Christian nation. There's no such thing. It never has been a Christian nation. Even the founding fathers were not true Christians. But they did understand that Christianity was a fixed necessity because it established divine law, and when people knew that this was law from God, it controlled their behavior.

OK, well, I guess I'll start with this. The whole idea that the founders weren't

Christians is a sweeping generalization. Who are we talking about?

Are we talking about the signers of the Declaration of Independence, the signers of the Constitution? Like there's a lot of founding fathers, some of them were definitely

Christians. John Dickinson was certainly a

Christian. So even all you have to find is one to say that this is a broad, sweeping generalization.

Right. But I think this could be because of the whole the thesis that one of the professors at the

Masters College has that the founders were theistic rationalists. I think it's Greg Fraser, if I'm not mistaken, is his name.

And that would take a longer episode to talk about that. I don't agree with that. But but there's an element of discouragement even there that like, hey, this idea that we even have somewhat of a

Christian foundation or Christian ideas that that is that even true?

I mean, they weren't even Christians and we've never had a Christian nation. In fact, it can't even exist. It's not possible.

And John McArthur has been pretty consistent on this. And I guess what I want to say about that is it depends what you mean by Christian nation.

If you mean every single person is saved and he sort of alludes to that, like the founding fathers weren't

Christians, so it can't be a Christian nation. So if you're talking about personal salvation, then, of course, there is no nation that has ever had 100 percent.

Commitment to following the Lord, Israel on its best day did not have that right, ancient Israel. So, of course, that's that that's not possible.

In fact, that's not even going to be the case when Christ reigns in the millennial kingdom. You're not going to have 100 percent during that entire time of Christians and converts.

So it's a little muddy. I'm not sure exactly if that's what he means. It seems like maybe at one point that's what he meant.

The other way to look at it is, though, countries or nations that self identify as Christ think of themselves, conceive of themselves as Christian, which is really what

Christian the Christian nationalism thing is about. And to that point, I'm going to make a point that I've said many times, but I'm going to also play for you some

John MacArthur clips on this. Could there be Christian families, Christian businesses, Christian schools?

Are those institutions, is it fair to say that they are Christian when not 100 percent of the people that go to them are necessarily

Christian? That's the question I have. And here's John MacArthur to weigh in on that. First, we'll talk about or I'll let him talk about Christian families.

Do you know how many Christians it takes to make a Christian home? One person.

So what do you mean? Everybody else in the house is sanctified by your presence, family. The very word is a beautiful word for those of us who had the privilege of being raised in a happy family, a godly family, a

Christian family. That word is just loaded with meaning. One day I was in my office and a young man came in.

It was in his senior year, an outstanding young man from a wonderful Christian family. Every Christian home should be a place where Scripture dominates, where it is talked about when you stand up, sit down, walk in the way or lie down.

Pervasive exposure to the truth of God should dominate a Christian family.

So you can have Christian families. And there's actually some printed material that's more recent where he seems to indicate that he agrees with what he said in the 70s, which is the first clip there where you really only need one person to have

Christian influence in a family. And he even says in the 70s to have a Christian family. So you don't need you don't need everyone saved.

And of course, that's assumed throughout the rest of it that you don't need the kids don't necessarily when they're born, they're not saved.

They don't have to be saved individuals, you know, being having made personal commitments where God has worked on them so that they have been born again.

You don't have to have that 100 percent to be called a Christian family. It's really the idea that you can that Christianity sets the tone for the family and the parents are leading according to Christianity.

And this is what we've always meant by it. And John MacArthur is no exception. And he says something similar also about Christian publishing.

So you can have book publishers and music records and things like that that are also, quote unquote, Christian, even if not everyone who works there is a

Christian. The Jesus movement, frankly, witnessed an unprecedented rise in conservative biblical evangelicalism.

Along came Christian publishing. And every time we turned around, there was a new publisher publishing new material for the

Christian life. And then came tapes and then came an absolute unbelievable inundation of Christian music proliferating to the point where we no longer have to listen to anything that isn't

Christian. And we could never get through all that is available. As I look back on the 70s and maybe even the early 80s,

I think we might look at that and say this was a time of revival. Student movements, masses of Christians getting together, great interest in Bible study, flourishing of Christian publishing,

Christian music, Christian books, writings. And it's tragic to to hear from even a

Christian publisher the admission that the evangelical world can't handle anything of any substance.

And I understand that that's true. That's why they buy 10 million prayer of Jabez books, which essentially says absolutely nothing about anything.

So in this clip, you get the impression that John MacArthur believes that you can't have

Christian publishing, even negative examples like you saw at the end. He said he cited positive examples, negative examples.

You can have Christian publishing. That is a thing. And it doesn't mean that everyone has to be 100 percent committed to Jesus Christ who works at a

Christian publishing house. But I think a

Christian college is a tremendous thing, because what happens in a Christian college is you learn that wide range of academic subjects that prepare you for a career in life.

But you learn it in the context of a biblical perspective, which I think is really true education.

That's true education. So I think when a college is Christian colleges come alongside the church and they say, look, we want to teach mathematics and science and history and English and business and whatever else with a biblical perspective, that that is a tremendous assistance in the life of the church as young people are preparing for all kinds of things in the world.

We're a part of the fellowship of those who are in Christ, who are one with him and with the Father and one in the spirit.

And we talked a little bit about that fellowship, and it is a very unique reality that we enjoy as believers.

And we enjoy it in a way that is especially unique to the environment of a Christian college because we have this intense union in Christ, which we celebrate 24 -7 for four years together.

You will never experience that prior to coming, and you will never experience it once you leave.

This intense four years of your life is the richest and the deepest and the most far -reaching and intimate opportunity you will have for fellowship in the body of Christ.

Master's College is a four -year, fully accredited, liberal arts Christian college, and I've been privileged to serve there now for over 25 years, and it's a joy for me.

But we are so different than every other Christian college. Yes, we are fully accredited, the most extensive accreditation that the accrediting people can give.

We have the 10 -year accreditation we got last time. Only 12 percent of schools in the

Western Association of Schools and Colleges have that. We're there academically. So you just heard

Pastor John MacArthur say that there's this intense union in Christ that you experience at a

Christian college, which is a unique time in your life you won't experience again if you go. And I'm sure not everyone at a

Christian college is saved. Not every professor is necessarily even saved, certainly not every student.

I remember when I was at Liberty University, one of the professors told me he thought about 30 percent were saved, 30 percent were nominal, and then 30 percent were just honest about not being

Christians. And that's probably, the ratios may change, but that's probably a similar dynamic in many

Christian colleges. So you have Dr. John MacArthur attributing, though, this title of Christian college to an institution that doesn't contain 100 percent

Christians in it. And I'd just like to point out when it comes to the nation or the

Commonwealth or the government or these other institutions surrounding a collection of people, the extension of a family, which is what a nation really is.

There's quotes from our past that reveal that people didn't always feel this way. In fact, in a lot of our legal documents, we find this.

George Whitefield didn't have a problem talking about a Christian country. He even says, and this is from one of his writings,

The Almost Christian. So he's talking about specifically like nominal Christians, people who are culturally perhaps

Christian, but they're not actually born again. And he says, and the first reason I shall mention is because so many set out with false notions of religion, though they live in a

Christian country, yet they know not what Christianity is. So he's saying there are people, this is George Whitefield, the great evangelist of the second

Great Awakening, sorry, the first Great Awakening. I don't know why I said that. First Great Awakening. George Whitefield saying that there are people who are members of a

Christian country and they themselves do not know what Christianity is. Augustine also used the term

Christian nation. You have others less known works by people like Edward Fisher, where he talks about a

Christian Commonwealth. In fact, recently, when I was looking at some of the founding documents and the royal charters and so forth,

I came across lots of language to this effect. Here's just one example. This is from the Virginia Charter of 1606.

And it says this, let's see where I want to start. It says that the land that they're coming to shall commonly be called

Virginia and other parts and territories either appertaining unto us or which are not now actually possessed by any

Christian prince or people situate lying and being all so they're basically demarking the boundaries.

Later on in the same document, it says that the I mean, it's so overtly

Christian. We greatly commending and graciously accepting of their desires for the furtherance of so noble a work, which may by the providence of Almighty God hereafter tend to the glory of his divine majesty in propagating of the

Christian religion to such a people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God.

And it's talking about the natives there and how part of the mission in this royal charter is for them to propagate the

Christian religion among the natives. And these are people who are going there as adventurers, as people who are looking for business opportunity to trade and so forth.

And it's not like the the same motivations that sent the Puritans to New England.

But even in this, you still see this overt Christian language and this idea that there's a

Christian prince or people and it's not talking about the church. This was just universal.

This was just the way that people thought, with the exception, perhaps of like Anabaptist. Anabaptist didn't really think that way.

But in the reform tradition, at least, this was very common to in legal documents, especially to acknowledge that a place was

Christian. And it didn't mean that everyone was a Christian. Of course, it didn't. It meant that they were influenced by Christianity, that it was every country.

It's an acknowledgement that every country has a religion that sets the tone. That's the default setting for social mores and laws and customs and holidays and all of this.

And in the Western world and in particular, the Anglo American sphere, it's been

Christianity. So there should be nothing controversial about that. In my mind, that's just kind of like, you know, that's basic stuff.

And I understand someone who sees excess, who sees, you know, I see that, too, with people who want to make out like America has some kind of unique relationship that's similar to the way that God treated the nation of Israel, where there's this covenant.

I'm sorry, I don't see that with the United States. I just don't. There's more could be said on that, but there's a need to correct that kind of thinking.

But it doesn't it doesn't mean and maybe this is semantics, but it doesn't mean we have to stop using the term

Christian country, Christian nation, Christian region, Christian commonwealth. That's a perfectly acceptable term to use when describing something that isn't perfectly

Christian in every way. But if there's a religion that is holding sway, it is Christianity. And certainly that would apply to the

United States from the foundation of it. Now, you can say now we've left that foundation.

True enough. We're not a Christian country, nation, whatever you want to term you want to use, empire, probably the most accurate term.

We're not that, but we're still greatly affected by Christianity in our legal structure and our customs.

And we are in a transition from Christianity to paganism, where paganism is going to set the default customs and mores.

And so that's a sad thing. We don't want that to happen. And that's really what the whole Christian nationalism thing is about. It's people who don't want that to happen.

And at a most basic level, I played for you the clip a week ago of the the commentator on MSNBC.

It's just people who believe their rights come from God. That's all it takes to be a Christian to think you're living in a Christian nation, I suppose.

And so that includes pretty much everyone. Anyone, any Christian who would want to have any influence is now a

Christian nationalist in the minds of the media. Now, you could try to parse it out and say, I don't believe in Christian nationalism because A, B and C.

But or you could say that that that there's Christian nationalism is this unique thing over here that Stephen Wolf talks about or that Andrew Torba talks about.

And that's what it is. It's and it's relegated to that and only that you could try to make these distinctions.

I don't see that it matters a lot. It's really just this idea that the nation should conceive of itself as Christian, Christian customs, legal standards, that kind of thing.

And that that's that's something to shoot for. And if we're drifting from it, we need to get back to it. That's that's all I'm really seeing at the base of this.

But it's it's, of course, it's very controversial. So anyway, I'm going to back up from that.

We're going to come right back to it when I play the clip of John MacArthur talking about Christian nationalism. But I just want to acknowledge something.

So many of us, myself included, when we saw and I don't have all the clips for all of these things, but when there seemed to have been a turning point and there's there's clips of Dr.

John MacArthur from even like 2011, you know, saying I think I played some some similar sounding things, but saying things like, you know, it's it's good.

It's for everyone. It's good for there to be Christian morality in a country, in a government.

And he endorsed Donald Trump. He hadn't really done that before, but he basically endorsed him.

We said that's who he's voting for in 2016. And and I think he's even repeated that.

I think he repeated that in 2020. And then we had the covid thing. And I want you to just listen to this.

So so listen to how Dr. John MacArthur sounds in April and then listen to how he sounds in June, just a few months down the road about the same issue, which is the shutting down of churches because of covid.

And just listen to this. We're demand of scripture is to be subject to the powers that be because they're ordained of God.

Romans 13, Romans 13. And first, Peter talks about the same thing, honor the king and those who are in authority over you.

God has set them in that authority. The Apostle Paul tells Timothy that we're to be good citizens, that we're to be live a quiet and peaceable life.

We aren't rebels. We don't start protests. We don't defy the government. We conform.

We we're submissive to the government as as basically ordained by God. So that was an easy call for us.

If we defy this and if we say we're going to meet anyway, we run the risk of exposing people to this illness needlessly.

It didn't take me two seconds to immediately say, hey, I'm going to preach on Sunday. We're going to preach on live stream.

When do we when do we get back together? Are we just going to wait until the world opens up again?

Yeah, I don't know the answer to that. I don't know the future. No virus should stop us.

As time went on, however, we found out the virus was not as deadly as predicted, and the commands not to assemble didn't apply to protesters and riots.

And little by little, Sunday by Sunday, you kept coming back. We must obey God rather than men.

Does this mean we have no responsibility to our leaders? Not at all. God has ordained human government.

For the peace and well -being. Of temporal society, Romans 13, we are to recognize the authorities are designed by God, we are to submit to them in the sphere in which

God has designed them to operate. So you see Pastor John MacArthur appealing to spheral authority for the reason that Grace Community Church was opening up in June, which

I was overjoyed with, fully agreed with. It was a great thing when that happened.

But you can see the contrast in April to June that in April, Romans 13 is means that they need to shut down.

And of course, there's assumptions that later on they realized weren't exactly true, that this was a serious, at least serious enough to shut down the church's virus.

But then he's looking around and he's seeing that liquor shops are open and these kinds of things. So circumstances changed a little bit.

Well, they didn't really change. I guess circumstances were noticeably changing.

So we were noticing, some were noticing, some from the beginning saw what was going on, but some were noticing that there were changes.

And and so based on that, the Grace Community Church opens up. But there's also behind that there's something else going on, which is this reading of Romans 13.

You probably heard it at the end. He adds on a little tag. He says he first says that a virus shouldn't stop them from meeting right now.

That's different than in April, where they had the responsibility to meet and he couldn't really even say when they would stop doing the live stream and just meet again in person.

It was indefinite. There was it was uncertain. But then in June, it's, you know,

Romans, it's Romans 13 means that the government has a sphere of authority that they operate in.

And and then gives the impression that a virus shouldn't stop people from meeting, that this is obeying

God rather than men, which was the same same verse, same passage that he used in April to say that they should shut down.

Right. Because Romans 13 was used to say that they needed to submit to government and that this was not a violation of obeying

God rather than men. Right. So so you see that. And that encouraged a great many of us because we thought, OK, this is a little different flavor than what

I'm used to with Pastor John MacArthur. And this is a good change. And I think Pastor John MacArthur has been more confrontated.

If I know I did a podcast about it when he was very prophetic towards Gavin Newsom, it was an excellent sermon clip that he he put out a sermon and he just went after Gavin Newsom.

It was great. And he was right with everything he said. And we see a little more of like an uptick of this kind of thing.

And it's possible that because there's been so much more evil that he feels the need to do that in his own backyard in California.

So also, you know, I don't know if it's still happening, but I heard rumors for the last two years that the master's university is going to absorb and include a law school.

So that's a really good sign, too, that Christians need to be in influential fields like law to affect change in even political realms and so forth.

And of course, Grace Community Church fought these COVID mandates using legal action.

So there isn't a way for Christians to be involved in the law, in the government, in public life.

And it's and Dr. John MacArthur believes this because his actions say he believes this and because he opened up his church again and he's taken some of the stance he's taken.

So I see this. I'll just give you my my opinion about all of it. I see this as kind of like.

Two, depending on the circumstance. Two, two separate things that John MacArthur will appeal to, sometimes he will appeal to spheral authority,

Romans 13, the government will be judged by the saints of the world, by God, and they are responsible then as salt and light, which if you read, if you watch more of the sermon, he appeals to the metaphor of salt and light for why they were opening up that this is part of being a light to the world and the salt of the earth.

So he will appeal to those things under certain circumstances, especially when the church is affected, which

I think was the final straw. When the church was affected, it was it was time to speak prophetically to the state and hold them accountable and exert a

Christian moral influence standing on scripture. However, when it doesn't seem to directly perhaps affect the church,

I don't see that imperative as much. And there does seem to be, at least historically, there has been somewhat of a discouragement away from political involvement, at least a discouragement from thinking that you're doing anything good in a spiritual sense in your political involvement.

You may be helping people, broadly speaking, Christians and non -Christians, but there isn't this sense that you're doing something that's morally helping to preserve the nation or the state or the region for a

Christian purpose. So preserving a Christian identity, preserving Christian laws, there isn't a label

Christian stamped on that. It's just general kind of morality and it's a losing battle because everything's going in a bad direction.

So so you have both of these things, and it may be confusing for some people because we've listened to different sermons by Pastor John MacArthur under different circumstances and we might be reaching different conclusions.

Someone who just hears that we will not not bow sermon and who hears what he said about Gavin Newsom and hears what he said about Donald Trump may come to one conclusion.

And someone who has heard a lot more of his sermons where he's dealing with these texts and talking about things like the

American Revolution and the Christian coalition and religious right may come to a different conclusion about what he thinks about these things.

So you just need to know that both of these things, both of these kind of narratives, if you want to call them that, are at play with Pastor John MacArthur.

He's he's he's said both things that some would appeal to political people, politically involved on the right, and some would not appeal to them at all.

And then enters this. This is the clip that right now is getting a lot of attention. Good evening,

Brother John. Good evening, Brother John. This is Arno Babajanian. Yeah, Arno Babajanian.

OK, yeah. I have to say that is actually hysterical to me, because anyway,

I have I have I had a friend, I still have a friend, he's still my friend in California who is

Armenian and their names are like that, Agajanian and Gelfian and whatever his was and anyway,

I don't know if he's trying to get John MacArthur to pronounce that, but anyway, I thought it was funny. So so this guy comes up and he asks this question.

Yeah, my question is, since the theological conclusion of the

Great Commission is the victory of the Messiah, how should we consider biblical

Christian nationalism, deonomy and hopeful eschatology? That's a pretty big question.

So let's just pick off Christian nationalism. I'll give you a simple answer.

There's no such thing. There is no such thing as Christian nationalism.

The kingdom of God is not of this world. Jesus said that he said my kingdom is not of this world.

If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight. I just want to remind everyone he does believe, though, in Christian colleges and Christian businesses and Christian families.

Right. And so there's institutions in this world that even though Christ says my kingdom is not of this world, he has no problem describing them as Christian, which

I think is the same thing that, quote, unquote, Christian nationalists are doing, to be honest with you, or at least the majority of them.

And it's yeah. So I think that it's important also to note that this isn't really anything new.

What he's saying here about, quote, unquote, Christian nationalism. Yeah, that word hasn't been in vogue as much, but he's said the same things in the past.

That's what I just played for you, denying that there's such thing as a Christian nation. And so this isn't really new information, but you can tell that included in this is this post -millennialism, this eschatology.

And so I think John MacArthur is very right at the beginning to say, hey, this is like a big topic. Let's just start with this one

Christian nationalism. And so I'll keep playing. This is what he has to say. His kingdom is not of this world.

The kingdom of this world is a separate world. They're not linked together. Let me say it another way.

Nothing that happens in any nation, whether it's a communist nation, a

Muslim nation, or a, quote, unquote, quasi

Christian nation or an atheistic nation. Nothing in that nation, politically, socially, has anything to do with the advancement of the kingdom of God, because the kingdom of God is separate from that system.

God in his sovereignty is building his church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it,

Jesus said. Now, there are questions I have that I'd really love if I could just sit down with Dr.

MacArthur and talk about what does he mean by this? Because, you know, obviously, if you look at Daniel, you see the nations and there's angels and demons and so forth battling it out.

And you would, I guess, if you didn't see that, you would think it's just a physical battle going on, but there's a spiritual element to it.

And that is often the case. So to say, especially if you are looking at the eschatological calendar in the time frame or whatever, and you're seeing things move towards a certain end, no matter what your eschatological stripe, you're going to see nations as involved in those events.

So I don't know exactly what he means by this, other than, you know, that the church is a separate thing from nations.

And to that, I would say, absolutely, like they're two different institutions, for sure. I've always taken the whole line about Jesus saying that my kingdom is not of this world as like that's the source of his authority or power.

The source of my kingdom isn't of this world. That's why I've always taken it, that the power for his kingdom does not arise from Caesar, from this world.

It's a spiritual kingdom. And it doesn't mean, though, that there isn't like overlap in the sense that the spiritual kingdom obviously does affect physical things.

If it affects you in your individual life and affects you and your family and affects you in your place of business, affects you in your school, certainly,

I think it can affect you in your nation or your government or commonwealth, whatever.

So that would be, I guess, my conclusion on it. But there's more that Dr. MacArthur has to say here.

So the idea that you should link up some political effort, some political process, some social process, some gain of power or influence in a culture as part of the advance of Christianity is alien to Christianity.

You never have our Lord approaching anything like that, nor the apostles, and particularly the apostle

Paul. He sought to gain no favor with the Roman Empire whatsoever, or for that matter, with any other of the rulers that he ran into during his life.

Now, let me just put this thought out there. So. When the law is used to convict people of sin.

Does it reinforce and help people to be convicted when the civil authorities are also reinforcing that this is the law?

Right. In other words, if there's a penalty for stealing and you steal, isn't it a reminder that you violated

God's law? Of course, that's not the gospel. Of course, that's not advancing in and of itself in a spiritual way.

But it can be a means that God uses to awaken the conscience of someone. No doubt.

And so when those standards become looser and when the government decides to endorse sin, then it dulls the conscience.

And and so I think there's indirectly, of course, upholding virtue is important and it's important for the purpose of not just awakening someone's conscience, but also protecting the righteous.

And I think John MacArthur would agree with me. I think he would agree with me on that. But it gets confusing, at least when you when you hear things like this that seem to suggest that there's absolutely no spiritual component that that's attached to the advancement of Christian morality in the public sphere, because there can be there certainly can be.

And, you know, I think we even see this in examples in scripture with people like Joseph and Daniel. And if you look at the nation of Israel, of course, many of their kings that were righteous, you know, the people rejoice when there's a righteous king.

It has a good effect, not just temporarily. It can also have a good effect for the eternal realm.

And obviously, Dr. MacArthur earlier in one of the clips I played in 2011, it said there's a freedom that accompanied the

American system, whatever that is, that allowed the church to function in these ways without persecuting.

And that's a good thing. It's something to be celebrated. So let's keep playing this. I think he's going to talk about how it is actually important to be involved in moral issues.

That is not to say that we are indifferent to what happens in the nation. We've been talking about that the last couple of Sunday mornings.

We have to be the people who uphold righteousness. When we come to vote, we want to vote for that which is the most righteous option.

Obviously, we can't vote in righteousness, but we have to vote in a way that reflects our commitment to the righteousness of God.

So we couldn't possibly elect somebody who was an abortionist, somebody who was

LGBTQ or LGBTQ affirming or any other deviation from God's righteous moral standard.

So now you got to ask a question at this point. Why? Why can't we elect someone like that? Well, the reason is clear, because it would deviate from God's righteous moral standard.

Well, what is that? That's applying the Bible to civic involvement and political involvement.

It's saying that they should be promoting biblical morality. The people in power should be operating by biblical morality.

They should have biblically rooted laws and they should follow that.

Now, what if they're not Christians? Well, it doesn't seem to be an exception here.

We should pay attention to those kinds of things. Obviously, it'd be better to get Christians in those positions. But even if not, we should support, because Dr.

MacArthur has supported Donald Trump, we should support candidates that are closer to a righteous standard.

But it's a biblical standard. It's a Christian standard. You're saying at the end of the day that the country or the empire, the nation, however you want to conceive it, your locality must be in a certain sense

Christian. It doesn't mean, again, that everyone is saved and born again, but they're operating by Christian principles,

Christian procedures, that kind of thing. So when John MacArthur says there's no such thing as Christian nation, there's no such thing as Christian nationalism, it doesn't really, it's not a

Christian thing happening when the government does these morally good things. You can't advance

Christianity because of good laws and these kinds of things. But then he turns around and he says, but we really do need to be involved and we need

Christian moral laws and to vote for people who are closest to Christian morality. I think that's where the confusion comes in.

And you see it really in this one clip. I mean, I played for you a bunch of clips that show that this sort of tension, but you see it at play in even this one clip.

Gets harder, doesn't it nowadays? Because even sometimes when politicians are more conservative and anti -abortion, they may be sinful and wicked in some other categories.

And it's very hard to find out who is really honest and who is simply dishonest and seeking power.

But in the end, we do what we can with the understanding that the responsibility of the church is not to advance the kingdom of this world.

That's a faulty viewpoint. Christian nationalism is usually tied to what is called post -millennialism.

And that is the view that the church somehow by influencing the culture can bring in the kingdom of Christ.

In other words, it's the idea not that Christ returns and sets up His kingdom, but that the church establishes

His kingdom and then hands it to Him. That is not what Scripture teaches.

What Scripture teaches is what we're learning from the book of Revelation. Things are going to get worse and worse and worse.

And the end of human history is not the church triumphant, reigning in the world and taking over the structures of human kingdoms.

That's not what happens. At the end of human history, the believers are persecuted and murdered.

And that's the very opposite of what Christian nationalism would anticipate.

So we believe the Bible teaches that things get worse and worse, headed toward the wrath of God, which we're seeing in Revelation.

And then our Lord returns Himself to establish His kingdom. It's clearly what we read in the book of Revelation.

Okay, so a few things. First, some good lessons maybe to draw from this, and this will give you some more insight into why

I'm doing this podcast. Don't confuse Republican with Christian, okay? I think John MacArthur is clear on that, or conservative politics or anything.

Don't confuse that necessarily with Christian per se. You can have morality that is being supported by people who aren't

Christian, so that doesn't mean that they're born again. And certainly don't confuse just because someone says we live in a

Christian nation or something like that, that everyone's saved in that country. In case anyone's confused on that, don't be.

And he's spot on. I don't know anyone in my circles who's confused on that, but I'm sure there are people out there who are.

So, you know, good. I would say also don't confuse the mission of the church with the

Christian civic responsibility. This is something that I haven't heard him really get involved with because they seem like they're one in the same in all the teachings that I've heard from Dr.

John MacArthur on this. That Christians' role in this world is the same thing pretty much as like the church's role, like we're supposed to advance the

Great Commission. And I would just note that actually the church does have a Great Commission. The church does have spiritual gifts that are to be used in the edification of the body.

But our lives are much bigger than that. And we have different hats we put on as parents and members of a community and husbands and wives and children and those kinds of things.

So, and employers and employees, we have these other responsibilities that we're given. And a lot of our activity is consumed with those things.

And so I think you can say it is perfectly legitimate to say the church operates according to the

Great Commission. They shouldn't be necessarily. I even get uncomfortable, be honest with you, with churches lobbying.

I get uncomfortable with churches having political people speak at their service in a campaign kind of format.

I don't like that because I do think there should be a separation there. The church has a specific calling.

And there's a lot of good things churches can do that, you know, and I'm not saying those things are necessarily sins, by the way.

I'm just saying that we don't want to be careful of mission drift. We don't lose sight of what the purpose of the church is.

And so, yeah, I think, you know, churches can they can play volleyball. You can have men's softball leagues. I'm even wary of that, though.

You got to be careful with that stuff. Is it an end in and of itself or is it a means to an end? Right. So that's a discussion for another time.

But certainly Christians as individuals who live in this world, they can have the responsibility and the duty really to, especially in a republic and form of government, getting involved socially, publicly, politically, all of those kinds of things.

And it's not in conflict with their role that they play when they're as a Christian in church and advancing the kingdom of God in the spiritual sense.

So more can be said about that. But that's a distinction, I think, that needs to be brought up more.

And then I think, you know, get involved with the government, get involved. If that's something that you're, you know,

Moms for Liberty or grassroots organizations, hey, get involved with those things. If it's going to make a difference in your community, that's how you love others.

That's one of our callings as Christians. Right. It's a general call, but that's one of the ways we do it is laws. Good laws are good for the whole population, not just Christians.

So get involved. And and while you're doing it, just, you know, be self -aware that, yeah, you are making when you push things in a moral direction towards Christianity, Christian moral morality.

You are making things more Christian in a certain sense. It doesn't mean that everyone's even if no one gets saved and you have some good laws that are put on the books, people are operating by a more

Christian understanding of morality and it will judge them in the end. But don't be confused about that.

And certainly, especially if you live in the Bible Belt, you know, push for civic recognition of Christianity.

We have it all over the place. We have invocations. We have publicly displayed crosses and in God we trust signs and Christmas celebrations.

And I mean, there's so many things historically that we've just kind of assumed that were normal, not thinking that they were anything different, but they were

Christian. So support those things. And then, you know, of course, don't confuse.

I think John MacArthur is absolutely right on this. Don't confuse your Christian heritage with being in a covenant relationship like Israel was.

So America has a Christian heritage, Christian moral principles. There's some great books by Daniel Dreisbach, Reading the

Bible with the Founding Fathers and Mark David Hall. Is America a

Christian nation? I think is the name of it. Great books that really demonstrate that, hey, there's

Christian ideas that were very much influential in our legal system. And so important to recognize that.

And then the eschatology thing I'm saving for last year, you can't really deny it.

But there is something somewhat eschatological going on here with John MacArthur kind of associating

Christian quote unquote nationalism with post -millennialism. And, you know, it's funny to me that the guy who wrote the most popular book on Christian nationalism,

Stephen Wolfe, is a non -millennialist. He doesn't even believe in post -millennialism. And it just seems like there's there's people on both sides who want to make it all about post -millennialism or people who want to try to discredit it by associating it with post -millennialism.

And really, eschatology is not the issue with any of this. It's really more ethical. It's it's more about identity.

And it's, you know, there is an impression that John MacArthur has given in various sermons

I played for you where things are just getting worse and we should just expect that. And we do lose.

Right. And so, you know, but the thing is, like, even in the dispensational premillennial scheme, we don't know when that is.

Like, you know, there's this assumption that I guess it's right around the corner. And, you know, whether it is or not, like that doesn't change our moral responsibility here.

And so, you know, I don't frankly understand this. I don't I don't know why

I don't get this mentality quite. And I don't think it's all because of premillennialism, because it's really not even dispensationalism.

It's it's the element is premillennial, that Christ is going to come back at it or things are going to get worse and Christ is going to come back and set up his kingdom.

So that's common to historic premillennialists, dispensationalists, whatever. So I don't think, though, that it's that like premillennialism is the ingredient here.

And the reason is, is because the people he criticizes, like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, those guys were premillennial.

You know, they were actually I think they were dispensational, too. So, you know, some of the most active people on the religious right in the last 40 years, 50 years have been premillennialists.

And so it doesn't didn't seem to conflict with them. But, you know, is that at play in this?

I think it is. I think there's a certain version of it that Dr. John MacArthur seems to think maybe it's right around the corner.

Things are just getting bad and that we're going to lose. And I hope he

I just kind of hope that people don't get too discouraged by hearing that. Just just know that even in his scheme, we don't know when that's happening.

We don't know. You don't know what the future holds exactly. And so God's given you a mission where you are.

Maybe it's political. I don't know. But but yeah, there is an eschatological component.

It's not everything, though. It's certainly not everything. I think there's other things going on in all of this.

And I just I highlighted a few of the distinctions that would need to be made. You know, really, the big thing that stands out to me is this kind of like understanding of Christians as people, the church as an institution, the government as an institution and then the nation as a reality.

You have these like kind of four things that are all kind of related to one another. But they all get smashed together often in these kinds of discussions.

And I think it would be helpful for pastors and churches to have much more larger discussions about these four things, because you can say something like, you know, the church has a responsibility to carry out the

Great Commission and Christians involved in the church. That's what they're doing. And that Christians themselves, though, as people have a wider responsibility and including a civic responsibility to get involved in the government.

And the governments are over, especially in a nation state system.

The government, whether it's a region or an empire or a nation, they are tailored to suit certain people, the needs of certain people.

And sometimes, let's say you're in Tennessee as opposed to New York or let's pick Alabama or something and more, you know, a state that identifies more as Christian, Christian morality is still very much influential there, more so than in New York.

You can say something like, you know what, Alabama, as as a distinct people, the people who live there, they are their default setting is

Christian. Not everyone's saved, but they respect and operate by Christian principles in general when, you know, even their conception of good and evil is very

Christian influenced. And so a government that suits that people is going to be what it's going to be suiting a

Christian people. It's going so so you could you could see the Christian nation there. And sometimes, though, you know, the government might not suit that people.

And so it's not even a Christian government. So you could have a difference between those two things could be a tyrannical government. Right. So if you're a

Christian people, if you're in the Bible belt and your government doesn't seem to match, then, you know, you have the political will.

And if you're an individual who's active in his community socially, then you also have possibly even the responsibility for the sake of your people for and your for your kids, your immediate family to do something about it.

If the opportunity presents itself. Right. These are the kinds of discussions we need to have more of. But what you just heard in many of the sermon clips

I played and so forth are they're fusing a lot of these things together. And I think that this is just my best guess.

Again, I'm kind of spitballing on this, but I think that underneath a lot of this is kind of a fundamentalist bent.

And I'm not blaming fundamental. I don't do that. I don't blame fundamentalism like liberals do for everything.

I'm not. I just know historically. And John MacArthur says he comes out of fundamentalism.

And I think that's true. The fundamentalists tended to develop somewhat of a bunker mentality because and the dispensational outlook does affect this.

But they did think that the society was was bad. A lot of the things in society were bad.

And so they devoted themselves to establishing things like Bible schools that didn't teach these other disciplines.

They taught the Bible. And there's there's a place for that, by the way. I don't think that's all wrong at all. But I do think it can be imbalanced if that's all if that's your only focus, if that's becomes like this is the only thing to do.

Like and you see that with John MacArthur, where he's perfectly fine calling Christian colleges, Christian colleges. Right.

That's the fundamentals for establishing these institutions. But there are these are going to be overtly, specifically Christian.

And and where there was sort of a retreat from certain aspects of public life.

And and of course, the new evangelicals react to this and they want to. This is really gospel coalition as a product of that.

I believe in Christianity today. I mean, Christianity was originally a new evangelical project, but they seek to broaden

Christians appeal by making pastors experts on psychology and social justice. And these kinds of things is totally the wrong reaction to fundamentalism.

Totally. You can just read all about it. And Carl Henry's The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. I think it's totally wrong.

But it doesn't mean that the fundamentalists were necessarily right in their posture on everything either. They they really wanted to keep biblical fidelity.

And so they were they ended up getting kind of separatistic and schismatic. And that's they have a reputation for that.

And legalism and all those kinds of things kind of entered in to try to protect orthodoxy.

And so, you know, I don't think John MacArthur is certainly in the he is certainly not in the more extreme side of that at all.

But I do think that he is somewhat affected by that. And I think that this sort of in fundamentalism and there is this tendency towards a little bit of an

Anabaptist kind of separate where, where the church is kind of like sitting over here looking into the world, kind of judging the world and and making assessments about the world.

And and when I think that, you know, that may be true in a spiritual sense that these are separate things.

And I'm talking I'm not talking about world as the world system. I'm talking about like world is the world we inhabit temporarily.

But I think, though, in the temporal realm, actually, the church is part of the surrounding culture.

It actually affects it and it is affected by it. But it is it is an institution just like the family and the government businesses.

It's an institution that is also in a temporal sense. I'm talking about the visible church.

It is in it is part of the surrounding culture. And fundamentalists just don't seem to think they don't see things like that as much.

They tend to see the church as this very, very, very separate thing. And so their activities are very, very separate.

And this is where you start getting like, you know, Christian, Christian music,

Christian bookstores, all these things. Not not all of them bad at all. But there there's like a break that takes place.

So there's more that could be said. And I'm probably not satisfying anyone. It doesn't probably. But hopefully it's helping you raise some of the right questions and think about these things.

That's my hope in this whole thing. And I really do hope that, you know, maybe, you know, people who are under the influence of John MacArthur and rightly so, because he's a great

Bible teacher, will consider some of these things and maybe explore some of these other areas and ask some of these other questions and think deeply about them, because we need people who are willing to think deeply about the controversial issues of our day.

And we don't really I think we're lacking. I think we're lacking. I think we've had somewhat of a a wrong approach to social and civic engagement for so long.

We haven't had to we haven't had to approach these things until recently, it seems like, because we we went from this kind of positive world of Christianity to the neutral world and then to the negative world we live in now.

And I think a lot of these guys who are just so used to neutral world, they're just haven't they're still thinking in these neutral world categories, kind of.

And and that may be the case with some of this stuff, to be honest with you. It may be the case that there are guys on the right and the left, but in evangelicalism who are just so used to living in a neutral world where you could rely on, as John MacArthur said in the one clip

I played, the faucet to turn on. It was just going to turn on. And, you know, the common good was something that kind of was taken for granted.

Like we could actually live in this. This is where the boomer con term comes in. But you could live in this world where all these different cultures were, you know, living together.

And hey, we weren't the Soviets. So that was kind of like the division. Like we weren't them, but we could kind of under God in this vague

Christian way, kind of all live together. And even different religions, as long as they respected that, they could live here.

And you and you had a government that said, you know, Christianity is pretty good. And then it's OK to be a Christian. And now it's wrong to be a

Christian. And we got all these these cultures, the borders wide open. And we have these cultures coming in that don't value that at all.

And we just have we have a lot of sexual anarchy and chaos going on.

And then the covid thing happened and it's getting into the church. And all of a sudden, Christians who were somewhat separate in that fundamentalist

Ben, I described before, didn't have to think about the world because things kept functioning. All of a sudden have to think about it because things aren't functioning anymore.

And it's disrupting their actual lives and it's infringing on their church and it's creating problems.

It's affecting even the giving at their church and what the economy and in ways that it hasn't before.

And it's affecting the it's affecting the surrounding culture that people live in and the education that their children are getting.

And the list goes on and on and on and on of all the things that are happening at the same time that now pastors are all of a sudden having to navigate.

Like Alistair Begg, do you go to the gay wedding reception or the gay wedding or do you not go?

I mean, these are questions no one had to ask 30 years ago and now people have to ask them. And it's causing,

I think, reexaminations and it should. We need that. We need it's a healthy process. What do you do when you live in this negative world where Christianity is viewed as a negative?

Well, one group of people and the net is cast wide by the media.

But I'm talking about those who specifically use the term in a positive way. Christian nationalists are paving a way, not saying it's the only way, but it's one of the ways they're saying this is how we're going to deal with this problem that we're in the situation.

We are going to make sure that the people in power know that we're coming for them, that we're going to do everything we can to implement

Christian morality. And that we conceive of ourselves as Christian and we want everyone to operate according to Christian principles, even if they're not

Christians, because it's good for them. And so this is with no confusion about whether or not this is part of the kingdom of God or any of that.

There's people who who can see the separation, see that there's a spiritual kingdom, there's an invisible church and there's a visible church.

There's the invisible church as the actual members of the kingdom of God. And then there's civic society operating by some kind of principles.

It's going to be nature abhors a vacuum. It's going to be something, whether it's pagan or Christian, is the question. So they prefer

Christian. So that's just one approach to this. There are other approaches, too, though.

And and that's what we need to be thinking through. What is the positive approach that we can take in the civic arena?

You know, it's it's going to be more than just, hey, you know, neutral world, which is like just keep kind of voting for moral candidates without the

Christian label, you know, just because everyone kind of knows what's moral and it's not going to work. It's just not it.

It's going to be something more, more overt, more.

Just hard hitting Christian, I think. I think that's that's what's coming. Or it's going to be I think you're going to see a divide between like the really hardcore

Christians. And then you're going to see the people who want to kind of ingratiate themselves to the spirit of the age and say that Christianity doesn't really affect anything but what they do in their church.

And when the government says stop doing that in your church, we'll stop that, too. You're going to that's what you're going to have. I don't think there's going to be a lot in between and all the neutral world kind of.

Institutions, they're going to have to go one way or the other. And and this is my hope. And this is my this is what

I've observed. And just for all you kind of, you know, Christian nationalist types who might be listening to this, because I know

I got both listening to this, you know, just be encouraged. Just see this as a positive thing.

Yeah, I know. Not you make it frustrated. And some of the things that John MacArthur has said and some other preachers have annoyed you and you.

But look at the trajectory here. You have a guy who is saying some of the things I showed you who then endorsed a presidential candidate personally, who is starting a law school at his college, who wants

Christians to be civically involved in that way, who stood up to his governor publicly, who took his state to court when they told him to shut down.

And yeah, maybe it wasn't as fast as some of you want, but look where the direction he's going. And so, you know, that's why, to me, it doesn't really matter tomorrow whether or not there's nonsense that is spouted at at the conference at the

Shepherds Conference right now about what Christian nationalism is and so forth. And so it doesn't I'm seeing a trajectory here and I'm just telling you, it's you've got to line up with one side of the other.

You're either going to be with like the hardcore Christians who wear the Christian label and say we're doing this for Christ and this is his morality.

Or you're going to be with the people who just completely exit the political realm and then do whatever the government tells them to do.

I don't, I don't see a way in the next 10 years that you're going to be able to maintain a neutrality stance there.

You know, like John MacArthur said in 1985, I think it was, that he didn't want to alienate the Democrats. Why would he do that?

Why would he alienate the Democrats? You know, well now can he say that? No, I'm sure he wouldn't. Because you're going to alienate them by just saying that men are men and women are women.

So anyway, this is hopefully this podcast has been helpful for some of you, hopefully encouraging to some extent.

Hey, you may hear some things that you don't like if you're in that more conservative

Christian camp, but there's a good trajectory here, I believe. Also, you know, for those who have been, like myself, under a lot of John MacArthur preaching, you agree with a lot of his theology, and you still see these pitfalls, okay?

You still see that, like, you don't want people to think that, you know, there's a covenant between America and God in the same way that there was between Israel and God.

And you don't like some of these cringy things that have taken place in the religious right, and really the fringes of the religious rights,

I think more often than not. You know, you see people conflating the Great Commission with maybe government involvement.

I'm sure it's happened. I just want to say to you guys, you're 100 % right on that stuff too.

And there should be separations made there. And the institution of the church is different than the institution of the state.

But this is my encouragement to you. I don't see a lot of that with young people. With people that are in the

Gen Z category, and even millennials more so, what I just described seems more unique to the boomer generation, personally speaking.

I see that young, especially the Gen Z guys, I don't think they're conflating these things as much. And that's maybe just my assessment as I interact with people and I look across the landscape.

But it's honest. And I don't know of any studies that have been done on any of this or any way to track it.

But I don't see the kind of, you know, the God and country stuff that this

Christian nationalist documentary was talking about. I don't see a lot of that with the young people that are

Christians, I'm saying. I'm saying that younger Christians, they want to be hardcore Christian, but they're not confusing it with that means that, you know,

God is somehow obligated to step in and keep America from falling because we're just like Israel.

And, you know, there's a special relationship. I think they realize if they don't put in the work, they're going to lose their country, and they maybe already have, but they're gonna lose their region too.

And they want to keep their region safe for their families. And it's really nothing more than that.

They want their church, they want their families, they want the way of life that they've had for generations, and they're going to fight for it.

And there's no mystical higher purpose of we're going to take America back, tear in your eye, eagle flying over.

It's not that. It's survival at this point for the young people. So I think that's a good thing.

I think I see good trends, in some ways. Now, you know, it's hard when the evils in the government and stuff is rising up and in the world and society.

But I do see in the church, I think there is a cleansing happening, I believe.

And yeah, there's days I'm discouraged, because I don't see really great institutions out there. The institutions have yet to really come along in that way.

A lot of the Christian institutions are still operating based on neutral world. But I think that will change.

And if anyone's confused on neutral world, negative world, positive world, go listen to my conversation with Aaron Ren from two weeks ago.

And I talked more about it. He talks more about it. All right. I guess that's it. That's the podcast for today. God bless.

More coming perhaps later this week. If you have any questions, comments, please put them in the comment section. And maybe