Message For Old Guard Evangelical Leadership - Andrew Walker and Brent Leatherwood

When I do a video like this, I don't prepare that much. I have an idea of what

I want to say, the basic idea. And then, of course, I'll get any threads or tweets that I need to talk about.

I'll get those ready. And if there's a key point that I want to make sure to remember, I'll write that down.

But I don't even do that very regularly. But I don't have an outline or anything like that when I go into it.

And so sometimes what ends up happening is as I'm doing the video, I realize what the video is actually about.

And that's what happened in this case. This video is a message to all of the old guard

Big Eva leaders. And some of these guys are good guys, and some of these guys, I believe, are bad actors.

They're not trustworthy, and they have no scruples, and they're actually trying to do harm. And I think that this is what people are trying to sort out right now.

But both types of people, the good guys and the bad guys, they need to recognize the transition that's happened over the last few years.

And it's very difficult to face this, but it's true. Since the pandemic and since the summer of love, all the racial insanity that's happened, the critical race theory stuff, things have changed.

Things that you used to do that used to be really effective and people used to buy it, they're not buying it anymore.

We're sick of it. And whether or not you're a good actor or a bad actor, in this video, I talk about Andrew T.

Walker, who I consider a good actor, and then also Brent Leatherwood, who in my opinion is a villain.

He doesn't work for the right team. And I talk a little bit more about that in this video. But regardless of who you are, a good guy or a bad guy, you need to come to terms with the fact that the good faith debate style, where it's like the progressive gets to go and run roughshod all over, you know, whatever

Christians have believed for forever, for millennia. And then the conservative Christian, like the real believer, they have to basically apologize for their positions.

And, you know, oh, it's so nuanced. Oh, I'm so grateful for you. And I'm not grateful for people that are destroying the church from the inside out.

And we're sick of pretending like we are. We're not grateful for that. We're angry about that. And so this video is basically a call to you guys, especially the people that are actually believers.

Honestly, I don't care what Brent Leatherwood does. I mean, he's on his own as far as I'm concerned. But the thing is, guys like Andrew T.

Walker, you need to recognize that everything's changed. The things that you used to do that used to be good in evangelicalism, they're quickly going the way of the dodo.

And for me, that's all the better. This good faith debate style, it's garbage. And it's not biblical.

It never was. And in peace times, we could get away with doing stupid, worthless stuff like that.

But these days, we can't. It's just not good enough. And it's not biblical. We should have never held ourselves to that standard at all.

If you believe in what the Scripture actually says, don't apologize for it. You can have conviction for it.

You don't have to pretend that you're grateful for evildoers. And so that's what this video is about.

It's about abandoning the good faith debate style of all of these evangelical leaders that I believe are good people, but they're all mixed up in this old guard sort of standardist mode of operation.

You got to get rid of it. It's no good. It's led to all this poisoning of the Church of God.

And God's not going to put up with it very much longer. So I want you to recognize how things have changed, and this video is all about that.

I hope you find it helpful. God bless. You know, one thing

I forgot to mention in my video yesterday about the kerfuffle. I'm not using that word.

I refuse to use that word. Yeah, I don't use words like that. Why did I say that? I hate that word, in any case.

Who am I trying to impress? That's the thing. Who am I trying to impress by using that ridiculous word?

I hate that word. Every time I read it, I think to myself, why did that person choose that word over other words he could have easily chosen?

Yeah, I'm sorry about that. As you, the viewer, you deserve better. You deserve better than the word kerfuffle.

Kerfuffle? Kerfluffle? I don't even know how to pronounce it. In any case, the debate, the conversation, the interaction, the disagreement between Canon Plus and Al Mohler.

One thing I forgot to mention was this ridiculous tweet from Michael F. Byrd.

This guy is a Muppet. I mean, honestly, Michael Byrd is a Muppet. He's a cartoon character. This is the guy that decided to talk with like a pagan comedian about the

Lord of Glory and whether or not he had erections and stuff like that. And even the comedian was like, this is distasteful.

Like, what is wrong with you? You're trying to be cool, right? That's what Michael Byrd is. He's a nerd that's trying to be cool all the time.

But anyway, so he responds to Al Mohler's, you know, ridiculously slimy tweet that we discussed yesterday.

And he says, Al, I did think Canon Press was beneath you. So glad to hear this.

If I may politely suggest ditching Christian nationalism and embracing something like confident pluralism, a la

Tim Keller. So he wants everyone to be, every Christian in politics to be a confident pluralist.

And so, of course, I riffed on that. Therefore, go and make confident pluralists of all nations, taxing them in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion, teaching them to get along with everyone at all costs.

That is not what the Great Commission says, of course. The Great Commission commands us and also, in my opinion, guarantees that we will disciple the nations.

Do you know what that means, like to disciple the nations, to teach the nations to observe everything that Christ commands?

And again, I think this is not only a command. This is something that we need to do. But I think when Jesus says, go therefore, and then at the end, he says, and lo,

I will be with you to the end of the age. I think God's putting that seal that the disciples, that the nations will be discipled.

And I think some people, they read this and they're like, well, you know, a handful of people here and there will be discipled. I don't think that's what it's saying at all.

I really don't think so. I think this verse and also the witness of the rest of the text shows us that the nations will be discipled, that Christ will have dominion over all of this.

And the Bible is crystal clear on how that happens. And so, I just wanted to talk about this whole idea of the

Christian engaged with politics because this is an issue that we're encountering as Christian nationalism gets a little bit more traction and all of that.

We're having people that are good people that are pushing back against it, and I want to respond to some of those people in this video.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. So here is Andrew T. Walker. And Andrew T.

Walker is—I'm going to be completely honest about my opinion on Andrew T. Walker.

Andrew T. Walker isn't Big Eva. He is. He's a Big Eva representative.

You know, he's in all the key situations. He's a leader in the SBC. He's a professor at,

I believe, Southern Seminary. He writes for Gospel Coalition. He's an author.

So, I mean, he checks all the boxes. He's a Big Eva representative. There's just no question about it.

That being said—and yeah, I am throwing shade by saying that. I mean, honestly, at this point, I want people to come out of her.

You know what I mean? Big Eva is a sick puppy. It's a machine that is just, in my opinion, it is deathly sick, and people need to come out of that machine.

But that's just my opinion. I don't think everyone needs to listen. No one's held to my standard, obviously.

But, you know, some people that I think are still in Big Eva, and they're still kind of in those circles and all that, they're starting to fight back against a lot of the excesses of the progressives that have really poisoned and subverted evangelicalism from the core.

Like, from the ground up, there is so much poison in evangelicalism. And I think that some guys are starting to wake up and starting to push back and starting to make moves and strategize.

How do we rid ourselves of this progressive nightmare? And for that, hats off to you on that.

I think Andrew T. Walker is one of these people. Now, does that mean that I support everything

Andrew T. Walker says or does, or that I think he should remain in Big Eva if he really thinks that there's some issues like that?

I don't necessarily agree with that, but hey, I support it, and I want that to be clear.

So two things. Andrew T. Walker is in Big Eva still, and also

I think that he is fighting for the side of the angels. He's fighting the good fight, and he's doing a lot of good, in my opinion, in ways that is public.

And so I think I've done a video about Andrew T. Walker and some of the stuff that he's been saying and stuff like that.

But in any case, I wanted to provide this. I think this is going to be helpful, because I don't think

Andrew T. Walker quite gets it. You know what I mean? I don't think he quite gets the transition that we've experienced.

This is something that is ongoing, but it's also behind us already. This shift has already happened.

There's a change of the guard that's already happened, and it's progressively happening more. But I don't think

Andrew T. Walker quite gets it, and I want to help you out. And again, I'm not trying to say that you're ignorant or stupid or anything like that, or I'm so smart or whatever, but I think that because I'm not in Big Eva circles,

I can kind of see a little bit more clearly what's happened. And this transition is so obvious that I think you should really start embracing some of the truths of what

I'm about to tell you. So I'm going to read this thread. He actually read Andrew Torba's book on Christian nationalism.

And it's not just Andrew Torba, of course. It's also Andrew Isker, who is excellent as well.

I had a chance to just chat with him briefly on a message board, and he seems like a real solid guy.

But in any case, number one, I want to point out that the fact that Andrew T. Walker's even read this book and has decided to comment on it and stuff like that, that is evidence of this transition.

Because normally Big Eva people, they don't even give you the time of day. They won't even read your book.

My book, Social Justice Pharisees, got returned to sender by so many of Andrew T. Walker's buddies without even reading it, without even considering it.

They don't think that peons like us have anything important to say. That's, number one, evidence that this game has changed, man.

Even if the changing of the guard hasn't fully completed yet, the game has changed, and I think Andrew T. Walker's admitting that here 100%.

But he doesn't quite get it, though, because listen to how he starts this thread. He says, Read the

Andrew Torba book on Christian nationalism that many are discussing. Aside from its outlandish and aggressive, not to mention loaded rhetoric regarding Judaism, what strikes me is how a message of forgiveness and redemption is flattened out to earthly political gain.

Andrew, just a word of advice. This used to work, I think, in Big Eva circles and evangelicalism, where you say, oh, the tone is aggressive and outlandish.

And the thing is, though, we've seen this deployed, this kind of strategy. And I'm not saying you've done this,

Andrew, but maybe you have. I didn't follow you before. But we've seen this kind of language deployed on people that have not used aggressive language at all.

They just had the wrong opinions. It's like the boy who cried wolf. If you say, oh, it's aggressive and outlandish too many times, people start to wonder, number one, what are you even talking about?

And number two, we've read the Bible, and we've looked into this stuff about aggressive tone and stuff like that, and we see that Paul used aggressive language all the time.

We see that Jesus used aggressive language a lot. We see the prophets who were literally speaking the words of God used aggressive tones and things like that when the situation warranted it.

And obviously we're not idiots. We understand there are certain times when your tone needs to be softer and sweeter and things like that.

I don't talk to my children with aggressive tones all the time. But then there are times when it's needed to happen.

Our rhetoric and our tone and our claims have to rise to the occasion.

I use this example all the time. When I'm talking to my children about, I don't know, Moses in the

Exodus, I have a certain tone, right? And when I'm helping my children understand why they can't do something,

I have a certain tone, right? But when my children are about to run away from me in a parking lot, my tone changes!

And if it doesn't change, if your tone doesn't match the situation, that's a problem, right?

And I think that what we've seen, and this is something that I want to help you understand, Andrew, that people in the pews, we're sick of people using like, oh, fine, kind, softly, like sissy kinds of tone and rhetoric when the situation is extremely serious.

We're sick of sissy tones when the government is threatening to fine churches for meeting on Sunday.

We're sick of sissy tones when the government is promoting child gender mutilation and body mutilation and all this kind of stuff and they're promoting it as if it's good.

We're sick of people talking in like this, oh, that's not God's best for you. We're really sick of that.

And so, Andrew, I'm not accusing you of using those tones. That's not what I'm saying. In fact, I've said the opposite.

You've actually not done that recently, which I appreciate completely. But this whole trying to poison the well thing, well, it's just so aggressive and outlandish.

I think that shows you actually don't fully get the transition that has been made here.

We're not falling for that anymore. We're sick of it. Our situation is serious, and we want people that have a serious tone about them, and sometimes that's going to be aggressive.

Sometimes it's not. But there's a whole range of available tone options for a

Christian. And too many of your friends, Andrew, I'm just going to be honest, too many of your friends have promoted this version of a

Christian that's basically got to be like Mr. Rogers all the time. And we're not buying it.

It's not biblical, and it doesn't match the situation that we find ourselves in. So hope that helps you,

Andrew. Again, I'm not saying that you are doing this right now because I actually highly appreciate your tone lately.

Anyway, let's continue. So that's number one. Andrew says, while Christianity, oh, and just one more thing too, he talks about how the message of forgiveness and redemption is flattened out to earthly political gain.

That's a silly thing to say, Andrew. This book is about politics. It's about politics.

Obviously, if you were writing a book, and it was just a general gospel book, it's just about the gospel, and you don't talk about spirituality and having your sins forgiven and stuff like that, and you don't go full in -depth about that, yeah, that would be a problem.

This is a pamphlet about politics, Andrew. That's really not fair.

That's like somebody saying in my book, that's only about social justice, right? It's only about the social justice issue in the 2020s, right?

And you're like, yeah, but you didn't say anything about the Trinity. It's like, what in the world are you talking about?

It's just a very weird—I don't know, Andrew. That just doesn't make much sense to me. But I think

I know why you said that. Let's continue. He says, while Christianity is not an escapist or evacuationist theology that should spurn concern for this world—far from it, in fact— the book de -emphasizes the heavenly prerogative of the beatific vision.

The book's arc reduces Christianity to a cultural program. Again, that's not what the book is about, Andrew. This is a very weird way to kind of criticize the book.

Anyway, I'm going to skip the next tweet because I don't care about Augustinian realism, whatever. Anyway, so here's what he says.

He says—this is the tweet I wanted to get to. He says, there are obvious things in the book that any

Christian would agree with, especially regarding anti -Christian worldviews. But its acerbic triumphalism posits a conservative social gospel that imitates the eschaton.

Political theology is more layered than this simplified form. Andrew, let me help you out. Let me help you out, brother.

Because I would agree that political theology is more layered than the

Christian nationalism. It's a small book. I mean, it's essentially like a pamphlet, like a common sense would be a pamphlet.

Is it a full treatise on the subject? Of course it isn't, but that's not what the intention is. It's supposed to be an easily digestible— you know, some people were criticizing it and saying, it's a glorified pamphlet.

And that criticism didn't make any sense to me. I was like, yeah, that's kind of how I saw it too, but why is that a bad thing?

It's just so funny. It's like people criticize the Social Justice Pharisees book by saying that it doesn't reference a certain amount of systematics or old dead theologians and stuff like that.

And I'm like, that's a compliment. That's what I was going for. I wasn't trying to make this a complicated book.

I was trying to make this a book that you could just read in one sitting if you wanted to, or maybe a couple sittings, and you could easily understand it without having to check a million references and the whole premise of the book is that you don't need to be a scholar to understand the poison that you're being fed by SBC entity heads.

You don't need to be a scholar to understand the poison that Gospel Coalition is injecting into your veins every single day.

That feeling—because the book, the whole premise of my book, was that a lot of people come to me and they have a feeling that what they're being told is wrong, but they can't quite put their finger on it.

And I think that feeling comes from this expectation that everything has to be overly complicated and nuanced, and it can't really be as simple as they're breaking the commandments.

It can't really be as simple as they didn't properly apply the sons don't pay for the sins of the father.

And my whole premise of my book is, no, it is that simple. It is that simple. Because the

Bible says so, and the Bible was written in such a way that everyone can understand. Everyone can understand it.

That was the whole point of the book, and then they're like, you didn't quote enough dead theologians. I'm like, are you kidding me?

I didn't take it as an—I took it as a compliment, in any case. But here's the thing,

Andrew, I want to help you out here, because I don't think you get it. I don't think you fully understand. Because here you say—and you use a few big words in this tweet thread, which kind of shows me you really don't get it.

And you say, political theology is more layered than this simplified form. Yes, it is slightly more complicated than the

Christian nationalism pamphlet promotes, right? The book slash pamphlet, whatever you want to call it.

An essay, whatever you want to call it. Because it's not a treatise. It's not a multi -volume treatise.

So there's more that could be said. But, Andrew, here's what people like me and many people in the pews have realized.

It's more complicated than some say, but it's a lot more simple than most say.

Andrew, Christian political theology is way more simple than I think you give it credit for.

Because we so often hear that it's so complicated, it's so difficult, it's very nuanced, we've got to be nuanced, we've got to be confident pluralists, and stuff like that.

And we read the Scripture, Andrew, we can see where it says that the civil governing authority is a deacon of God, it's a servant of God.

That's easy to understand. That's easy to understand. The civil governing authority is a servant of God.

And its existence is to promote what is good and to punish evildoers.

And that's easy to understand. That's what the government is for. It's to promote what is good and punish evildoers.

That's what the government is for. And so then what we see is that some of your friends,

Andrew, and I don't mean to throw this in your face, but I'm going to. I'm going to, because this is directly related to what you're saying here.

Some of your friends overcomplicate this, and they say, oh, it's nuanced, the political theology is nuanced, and we're reading

Romans 13 and Romans 12, we see how God says, don't avenge yourself, justice is mine, says the

Lord, I will avenge, I will repay. That's what he says in Romans 12. And then in Romans 13, he doesn't leave us hanging.

This is not some kind of weird, mystical, spiritual vengeance, although it could mean some of that spiritual type stuff as well.

But Romans 12 says, I will repay, I will avenge. And then Romans 13 says, and by the way, the civil governing authority, that's my servant to be a revenger of evildoers, to punish evildoers, to seek vengeance upon the evildoer.

I will avenge. And God says, and here's what I've provided. I've provided this civil governing authority to bear the sword.

It does not bear that sword in vain, and it will punish evildoers and promote what is good.

That sounds pretty simple, Andrew. It sounds really simple. And then when you consider the fact that God gave us this big book of law that understandably, like, listen, the

Bible is simple and can be understood, but there is some stuff in the book of the law that is kind of out of context for us, right?

Our world is very different than the world that Moses spoke to in the book of Exodus, right?

There's different things, there's different nuances, different customs, different traditions. We get that, right? So that's a little bit harder to understand and to apply, and there's a lot of work that needs to be done there.

But the basics are very simple. The basics are very simple. It lays out this law that we can apply the moral equity, the general equity of in our own civil government.

Because again, we have to recognize that God said in the New Testament, God said this, that the civil governing authority is to promote what is good and punish evildoers.

And so we need to define good and evil according to how God does, according to how God does.

And we can see in the civil code, we can see, you know, what were the crimes that they had in Israel, and how do we apply what was a crime back then that was punishable by a certain punishment?

How do we bring that into the future? How do we bring that into 2022, right?

And then obviously not every sin of Israel was also a crime, only some of them were.

So we need to see, okay, what's the difference between a personal sin and a crime? Like, what's the difference between something that can get you excommunicated from the church versus something that can get you punished with a sword, right?

We need to talk about that stuff. But it's actually, it's a pretty simple idea that we're promoting here as Christian nationalists.

But basically what we're doing is we're saying, we agree with Romans 13, the civil governing authority is a deacon of God, right?

A servant of God. And we need to start acting like that. And then you start defining good and evil according to what

God defines good and evil. But then a guy like you comes along, Andrew, and you're like, well, this is just too simple.

It's more nuanced than that. And I got to ask, Andrew, is this what you mean by more nuanced?

Here you are talking about your friend, Brent Leatherwood. Look, I'm not saying you can't be friends with Brent Leatherwood, but here you are, you're celebrating his ascension to the throne of the

ERLC. And this is a man who campaigned against a law that would punish evildoers in Louisiana.

That would punish evildoers. Because here's the reality. Abortion should be banned in Louisiana, just like it should be banned everywhere.

And it should be punishable as murder. Because it's not too complicated to see that a woman who seeks an abortion is like a person who seeks someone to kill their husband.

It's murder for hire. And we ought to punish it as murder for hire. It's a conspiracy to commit murder.

And your boy over here, because I guess it's too complicated to understand what abortion actually is.

It's actually murder. That's not just a slogan that we say. That's actually the fact of the matter.

And your boy that you're celebrating, I guess it's because he's more layered. See, the thing is, we see this,

Andrew. We see this. See, we've read the Bible, dude. And I know you have too. It's a lot more simple than you and your friends make it out to be.

And the people in the pews are absolutely sick to death of you nuancing things to such a point where you can't even, it's not even discernibly

Christian, what Brent Leatherwood did in Louisiana. He helped kill a bill that would ban abortion in Louisiana, and he did it in the name of Christ?

Guys, we have brains. We can see what you're doing. We can see what you're doing.

You're trying to make room for what? What are you trying to make room for?

Is not the government there to punish evildoers? Is not a woman who seeks an abortion an evildoer?

You guys make all kinds of nuanced cases. We're sick of it because what the result ends up being is capitulation, progressivism, and moving further and further away from God's standards.

That's what the inevitable result has always been. The minute you guys bring your trademark nuance to the issue of political theology, it's more complicated than Christian nationalism book puts forward.

That's true. It's not as complicated as you guys have made a cottage industry pretending that it was.

It's just unreal. It's unreal. Christians don't celebrate the ascension to the judgeship of evil judges.

Christians ought to mourn when an evil judge ascends to on high. It's unbelievable.

Somebody responded to you, Andrew, and I completely agree. Despite the philosophical and legal differences individuals like me will have with her,

Judge Jackson's confirmation is a history -making moment. We should appreciate it as such.

Right, because she has black skin, so now you have to celebrate the ascension of a black evil judge.

Do you see the play you've just given the enemy? As long as they've got dark skin and maybe dreads or something like that, if they're evil, yeah, you know, we'll celebrate it because it's historic.

Yeah, I have some differences, some philosophical. That's the thing. You downplay this all the time.

You have fundamental worldview issues. She's evil. She's an evil judge. She subverts reality.

She turns God's morality inside out. The Bible talks about the righteous mourn when an evil judge is over them.

They mourn. But you guys are celebrating. I guess that's that trademark nuance.

You see, your nuance so often is you can't decipher it as anything remotely

Christian. And so, Andrew, I've got to be honest with you. I know you're not a theonomist and you're not post -millennial and whatever, but there are tons of people that are not theonomists, that are not post -millennial, that see this ridiculous play for what it is.

Oh, it's just nuance. It's more complicated than that. And then what gets spit out is just completely pagan.

It's completely pagan for Leatherwood to spend Christian dollars to go and promote against a bill that would ban abortion.

And so that's the ticket here. That's the ticket. I want to help you out. This whole idea of the tone and stuff like that, you've got to throw that away.

That's a loser at this point. We all have read the Bible. We know that doesn't have the tone that you demand of all of us.

We know that you SBC people would have had a problem with Paul's tone if you were alive at this time.

You would have a problem with Jesus' tone if you were alive. All the prophets, all of them, all the people that you laud,

Luther, Calvin, all these guys, you would be saying the same thing about their tone. It's unbelievable.

So we see that. We see the hypocrisy. And then, of course, this whole idea of political theology being nuanced and layered and stuff like that.

Yeah, I mean, I guess that's true as far as it goes. But the problem is you guys layer it so much that you promote and celebrate evil.

And the people in the pews are sick of it. That time is over. That might have worked before. It's not working anymore.

The guard has changed. And I would suggest you change with it. Because here's the reality.

This has never been biblical. This tone stuff and this, oh, it's so complicated.

That's never been biblical. Never. And it's still not biblical. So I want to help you out.

I want to help you out. This kind of stuff is going the way of the dinosaur. And so, anyway,