REFORMCON2016 | Apologia Radio Live!

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All right, guys, if you would, come on back in and take your seats. Afternoon.

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How's everybody doing? Hey, man, I am so psyched to be here. My name's

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JB, and Lagos asked me to come in from Illinois. Central Illinois is where my family live.

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Anybody from Illinois? All right, good, or as we like to call it, the People's Republic of Chicago.

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But anyway, man, I got to tell you, it is so exciting to be here.

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I've really been looking forward to this. My friend Josh and I are out here. He's from Lagos.

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And I'm especially excited that you let me on the stage, especially since I don't have a beard.

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So that was really nice. But we are psyched to be here. I got to tell you, it is hot.

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Now, is this normal? Don't tell me it's normal. It's normal.

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Man, it is hot, let me tell you. I'm not saying that it's like record hot or anything, but on my way from the hotel,

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I did see two palm trees fighting over a dog. So you can figure that one out.

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But listen, I want to tell you about Lagos Bible Software. This is a tool that I use every day.

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My wife and I have six children, all of them boys, except the four that are girls.

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And we homeschool, and we've used this for 17 years. I first started using it in the classroom.

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I'm a professor at a Bible college and seminary. But it is a tool that has just revolutionized our family in terms of making the

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Word of God central to all that we do. And so we wanted to come in, Lagos asked me to come in, just highlight a few features, kind of tell you all about it, and then give you a chance to hopefully go home with it if you think it would benefit you.

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So let me just give you a sneak peek. What you see on the screen here is called the homepage. And the homepage is kind of where you do your personal spiritual disciplines, you know, your quiet time, your

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Bible reading plan. You can pick a book in your library, you can read through it, set up a reading plan. Your prayer list, you can see that kind of over here on the left.

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It's where you're gonna choose your default Bible for all of your studies. Lagos comes standard with 15 or 20 English versions, everything you've heard of.

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So you set your preferred Bible, and that's what it's gonna default to as you're studying. But the real power of Lagos is right here in this one box.

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Everybody say one box, one button, one button. It doesn't get any easier than that one box, one button.

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Enter a passage of scripture and click go. So I'm gonna enter one of my favorite passages, and I'm not just saying that,

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Ephesians 1. So I enter Ephesians 1, click go, and just like that, Lagos is gonna go out and run a report that would basically be 30 to 40 hours of serious research in about seven to 10 seconds.

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So it's just an amazing, amazing time saver, and as you're gonna see, it's gonna kind of dig deeper than you could ever dig just doing it on your own.

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Lagos is two things, for those of you who may never have seen it. It's a library and a research assistant all wrapped up into one.

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They've been around 25 years. There's three and a half million Lagos users in the world. It's standard in 1 ,500

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Bible colleges, seminaries, and institutes. That's where I got connected with Lagos. It is kind of the tool of choice if you're serious about theological research and Bible study.

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So let me explain what you see on the screen. It's pretty cool here. When I typed in Ephesians 1, it's like this research assistant went to the nearest seminary library and said, give me everything you got to help me understand

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Ephesians 1. So the first thing that pops up here in the center of the screen is our Bible, the most important book in the library, right?

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I think it was Spurgeon that famously said, never forget the Bible will shed a lot of light on commentaries.

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And I think that's a good reminder. Especially with digital software, it's so easy to kind of dive right into those commentaries because we've got dozens of world -class commentaries at our fingertips.

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But never forget to start with the word. So you're familiar with this passage, I'm sure, blessed be the

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God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places, even as he chose us.

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All right, so you're reading your Bible and you say, you know, I wanna do a little word study. How many of you recognize the Bible was not written originally in English?

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Okay, good. For the rest of you, no, of course, we know the Bible was not written in English.

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It was written over a period of 1 ,500 years in three different languages by some 40 different human authors under the inspiration of the

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Spirit. And we then translated it into the language through the centuries. And so when we wanna do a word study, we can just hover the mouse over the word in our

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English Bible, or I can right click on it and I can say, run the full word study.

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And watch this, just like that, Logos goes out and finds me every time this word occurs in the

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Bible, no matter how it's translated. It'll pronounce it for me. It'll give me the definition from different Greek lexicons.

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So you can see here, this is the word eklegomai, and it means to choose, to select, to prefer. I can go down here,

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I can see the root words, like lego, to say, or to tell. And I can just dive in with one click and be off to the races with doing some serious word studies, find out where else it's used.

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And then we read on, we see another word, same thing. I just right click on, say, for example, the word predestined, and I say, give me the word study on this.

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I mean, this is basically a one -week assignment that it would take first -year Greek students to do in a week by hand.

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And Logos puts it all on the screen for us. So again, it'll pronounce it for me. It's gonna tell me the meaning and what the different lexicons say, where else it's used.

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This particular word's only used six times in the Greek text. So already, by just right clicking on a couple of words, we've done more than you could normally do with just a traditional print

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Bible. Now, as we go back over here to the passage guide, notice all these commentaries.

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As I click on them, Logos takes me to the next commentary in my list.

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I can underline and highlight. If you like to write in the margin of your Bibles, you can do all of that with Logos.

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And the cool thing is, it synchronizes across all of your devices. So Logos works on any device.

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So it works on a Mac or a PC. So, you know, Christians and non -Christians can use it.

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It works on your, that's a joke, by the way. Obviously, I'm in a PC crowd. My wife's a

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PC person, I'm a Mac person. We're kind of unequally yoked. But anyway, she reminds me all the time

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Adam and Eve chose the Apple and look what it did to the rest of us. But anyway, it works on your iOS, your

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Android. You can take it with you wherever you go and it synchronizes across those platforms. So in the time it would take you to pull one commentary off the shelf, you've got dozens of commentaries open right to this passage in Ephesians 1.

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Let's say you find, like this is R .C. Sproul. So let's say you find something that you think is helpful.

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You can select it with the mouse. You can right click. You can say copy. Then you can go over here and you can open up Microsoft Word.

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You can paste anything from any book in your library. Logos is gonna automatically footnote for you at the bottom of the page telling you exactly where you got that from.

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You can also go over here and right click and say visual copy. And Logos is gonna create custom slides for you from your books that you can then incorporate into your presentation if you do any small group teaching, preaching, any of that kind of thing.

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All of this directly from the text itself. Now let's see what else our research assistant found.

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You've got outlines. It scoured my library and found any book in my library that outlines Ephesians 1 expositionally.

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It's got cross references, all those center column notes that compare scripture with scripture ready for us to just hover the mouse and we can begin to compare what those passages have to say.

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And then I've got ancient literature. I love this tool. Logos goes in and finds anything, Augustine, Polycarp, Arrhenius, Origin, anytime they ever referenced

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Ephesians 1 or even alluded to it in the ancient literature.

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Then I've got confessional documents. So I can go in here and say, hey, what are some of the reformed creeds and how do they relate to Ephesians 1 and when do they reference

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Ephesians 1? All at my fingertips. Cultural concepts. So many times understanding the text comes down to understanding an idiom or a metaphor or something unique to the first century

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Greco -Roman world or in the Old Testament, the ancient Near East. So it's gonna address all of those things and take me out to manners and customs books and commentaries that address those issues.

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Let me show you a couple other favorite features of mine. Obviously we live in a visual age. As you're reading the text,

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Logos is gonna bring up infographics that relate to the text. So it really begins to come alive.

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So here you see a theater in Ephesus. Here you see a map of Ephesus in Paul's day. You can look at what an ancient home synagogue looked like.

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You can zoom in or out with these tools. You can copy and paste them right into a document or into PowerPoint or Keynote.

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So again, as you're reading the text, you've got all of this interactive information right at your fingertips.

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You've got searching. Obviously that's the real power of a digital library. Let's say I wanted to find anything in my library where the word kingdom is mentioned.

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So it's literally gonna scour. And by the way, it found 201 ,000 hits in this particular library on this computer.

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And it took 1 .1 seconds, which is a little slow, by the way. We try to get it under a second. I apologize for that.

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Your time is valuable, I understand. But I can then begin to click and read it.

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Now, obviously that's a pretty unwieldy amount of results. So you can narrow the search. You can say, where does

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Piper ever mention kingdom? How many times does Sproul mention it in this book? And where does he mention it? And you can begin to really get to information now that you just, you can't walk up to your print library and shout justification and have every book that deals with justification jump off the shelf, land on your desk, open to the right page, all the scripture passages, all the theological, systematic theology books ready to deal with that page.

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So there's a whole lot more I could show you, but I think you're beginning to get the idea. Down here in the bottom right, you've got a text comparison.

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I know it's kind of small on the screen. But what it does is it allows me to see how this passage is translated in all the other

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English versions. So as I'm scrolling down, it's got NIV, NASB, New King James, ESV, NLT, even the message.

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You can put in whatever ones you want, and it'll show you those passages for you.

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Now, there's a lot more I could show you, but we're gonna be here the rest of the conference. Let me close out by telling you about the partnership with ReformCon and how you can get this software.

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By the way, here's what that slide looks like if you put it actually in a PowerPoint or keynote slide. So pretty awesome being able to really communicate some of these great truths from some of these authors.

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And by the way, some pastors have asked, is there a way to quote these guys without listing their names so they can kind of take credit for these great theological insights?

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And there is a way to do that. I'll show you how to do that for the right price. But again, you can take this anywhere with you.

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Here's just some screenshots of what it looks like on your iPads and mobile devices and so forth.

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So here's the deal. At the conference only, 15 % discount, but you get a 30 -day money -back guarantee.

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So what my suggestion is, you'll never get it cheaper any other time. This is the place to get it at the event.

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Take it home, play with it, you will never look back. Again, we've had it 17 years. It's just, it's amazing.

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This is Logos 6. It's their sixth release in about 25 years. I'm just gonna highlight some of the base packages.

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Now, we've selected the reformed base packages for obvious reasons because we're reformed here at this conference.

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I'm just gonna mention three of them, but remember there are smaller packages and larger packages and the name of the game in Logos is the library.

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The bigger the library, the more powerful the research tool becomes. But I wanted to highlight some of the great reformed resources and scholarship that come in these packages.

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So first of all, the basic library, the bronze collection, it has 380 books, includes 62 commentaries, 28 systematic theologies.

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Now, if you were to take this list of nearly 400 books to the bookstore and say, give me these titles, they would charge your credit card about $6 ,000, load up your minivan or your car with boxes of books, you'd take them home and put them on the shelf.

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The Logos price for the software and all of the library is usually about a dime on the dollar.

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It's actually a little bit less than that for this one. But if you get it at the conference, you're gonna save about $100, so it's 535.

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Now, you think about getting a $6 ,000 library for 535, that's a pretty good deal, but it's still, we understand a little bit of an investment upfront.

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So Logos allows you to do this over payments. You can do 10 payments for 62 bucks on your credit card if that's the way you wanna do it.

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You don't have to do that, and it saves you a little money to do it in full. The Reformed Silver Library then jumps up to nearly 700 volumes, so double the size of the library.

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It's got 182 commentaries, just an amazing collection. This is a $10 ,000 value.

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The normal cost, if you buy it after the conference, is 1 ,000 bucks. Obviously, if you save 15%, you're gonna save 150 bucks.

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If you did it on the installment plan, it would be about 81 bucks a month. And then finally, the last one I wanna mention is the

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Logos Gold Collection. This has all of the features of Logos 6. It's a phenomenal library, 1 ,000 volumes, 200 commentaries, just some amazing resources.

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It's a $16 ,000 value. The normal cost for the software and that library is about 1 ,500 or 1 ,300 if you get it here at the conference.

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That works out to about 99 bucks a month for 15 months. Now, here are some, just a short list that I put together reviewing this this afternoon, some of our favorite authors that would be in these collections.

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I mean, you get the R .C. Sproul Collection, you get Kuyper, you get the works of John Owen, you get the Spurgeon Collection, Hodge, Warfield, just an amazing selection and much more.

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And I encourage you to stop by and talk to Josh and he can kinda go into which package has which one. But I love this quote.

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I threw this in there just for our crowd here. Your character tells the world you're a real man. Your beard is merely the exclamation point.

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But anyway, so remember, lifetime license. You can take it with you wherever you go.

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There's no limit on the number of installations as long as it's for you personally, for your convenience. You can't give it to a friend or colleague.

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Free tech support for life, 30 -day money -back guarantee. And again, you get that 15 % discount.

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So thank you guys very much. I'm having the time of my life here. Come by and see us. We'll be here through the end of the conference tomorrow. Take it home, give it a shot.

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You're gonna love doing research using Logos Bible Software. Thank you guys. God bless you. It's okay in your world view.

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I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional. So you calling me delusional using your world view is perfectly okay.

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It doesn't really hurt. It's young up on me. Yes! What? What?

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Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

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Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives. Right. Don't go into the world and make homies.

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Right. Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle neck. That's a joke,

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Pastor. When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

39:56

What's up guys? Welcome back to another episode of Apologia Radio. This is our live

40:01

Apologia Radio. All right, this is where you guys come in. Our first live

40:07

Apologia Radio. We're going to be talking about That means you can't tell me to stop and put a marker there.

40:13

That's right. And not say that. You have no idea how much that happens. We go, mark it. Mark it. Mark it,

40:18

Marcus. You never hear that though. Hold on. There you go. See. So, there was a, you hear

40:26

Darren Doe in the background? Oh, oh. That's it. We had a little competition yesterday and it was which podcast has the best music.

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And we were number one. At our own conference. At our own conference.

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How's that work? That was an unbiased report. That's right. When I took the poll. You said, oh, whatever.

40:56

Let's take a poll now. Generally speaking, generally speaking, this is what

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I deal with every time. And I'm always like, mark it. Erase her voice, Marcus, out of the recording. Generally speaking, it's my music playing in the background.

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You guys enjoy it or what? Like, okay. All right. So, when Luke. Generally. Generally. In the background.

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That's me, right? No? You guys probably recognize this track by now, don't you?

41:27

Yeah, we do. We split with the intro music. We split like that. That's true.

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That is true. We need to get joy. Patriarchy movement. No. So, it's been an exciting week.

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It's been a lot of exciting talks and informative talks. We've got a chance today to hear from Nate Wilson, which was amazing, right?

41:55

It was a blessing. Darren Doan. My favorite. Dr. K Scott Oliphant.

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Apologetics. Ninja. Philosophy. Theology. Kind of stuff is amazing. There's a feeling here.

42:08

There's an atmosphere to all this, and it feels very much like... This is when your jokes don't work.

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No, this is... Now we know. For everybody, as a fan of Apology Air Radio, you know how much we love the movie

42:25

The Apostle. That's my favorite. But joy's favorite. So, you realize, of course, that joy, when we started mentioning the movie

42:32

The Apostle, she immediately said, no, I haven't seen it. And when she saw the look that she got from us, that she hasn't seen it, she's held on to that.

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It's a matter of sanctification for her. She likes that it hurts us, and so she has committed herself to never watching

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The Apostle, even though most of her listeners have seen The Apostle. And, you know, it hurts, joy. It does.

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So, first live episode of Apology Air Radio.

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Marcus, what do you think of the conference so far? It's awesome. Everybody here is awesome, so thanks for coming out.

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I think Nate and Darren's talk was amazing, both of them. And I'm just tired.

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So that would be, it's a tiring conference. It's a good conference. It's a good conference.

43:32

We're not done yet. Not done. One more day left. Let's go. We got one more day? Concert tonight, the concert tonight.

43:37

Wow, that's awesome. I'm just kidding. No, it's really great. Yeah. Really great. So, Luke, how do you feel about the conference so far?

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How are things? Good? That's classic

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Luke. That's good. Okay, alright.

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You spoke on something yesterday. What did you speak on? You spoke, reforming social media.

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Jinx. So tell everyone about it. And specifics?

45:06

The breakout sessions will be on all access, which is only a donation of $7 .95

45:12

per month. You get over 30 episodes, after shows. The Academy. The Academy.

45:18

And you make this possible. Speaking of Academy, we're going next week. Are you? Yep, next week.

45:24

You don't have a plane ticket yet, do you? Nope. Okay, well next week we're going to Moscow, Idaho and we're filming, is it six?

45:33

Yeah, six three -hour lectures from New St. Andrews professors just for the

45:39

Apology Academy. And Doug Wilson's going to be part of that. Nate is not.

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Nate is not. No, Doug Wilson's going to be preaching on Worldview. So we're going to have a three -hour talk from Doug Wilson on Worldview.

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In addition to a whole bunch of other stuff. It's going to be great. What? Okay, sorry.

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While they're talking, I'm just here trying to find some cute little videos to play. Right, right. What's that?

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Oh, speaking of social media, wait, wait. Can we do something? I want to try something. See if it works. No, I got to try this.

46:23

Okay. Okay, Google. Ah. I've seen it like the people at the conventions and they say, okay,

46:30

Google. And like everybody's phones just go crazy. But it doesn't work. Oh, well.

46:36

Anyway. I think you guys can you guys just real quick like grab your phone and just like share the live stream of the show like all at once.

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And then that way we can like. Are you telling me I can do it right now just like randomly? You can just share. Okay, Google.

46:53

It's listening. It works then. It's listening all the time. I've seen the video. I just wanted to try it out.

46:59

It just looked up. It's listening all the time. It does listen all the time. It's that mute. Someone call Edward Snowden.

47:05

Wow. That is crazy. I thought you had to do some kind of fancy little thing to it. No, it does. It actually just listens all the time. Well, speaking of reforming.

47:11

Except for the one time you wanted to listen. That's true. So speaking of reforming social media.

47:17

If you want to know why Pastor Luke would have to give a talk on reforming social media just look in the comments of the live stream as we speak.

47:24

Right now. It's happening as we speak. So, Joy. How do you feel about.

47:32

It's possible. We could probably pull some of those up. We can actually watch our live stream right now while we're doing the live show.

47:38

It's amazing. Yeah. So, Joy. We can see how well you're doing, Carmen. How do you feel about ReformCon so far,

47:46

Joy? The girl? It's great. Yeah? Yeah, it's fun. Don't you guys love that Joy's back on Apologia Radio like all the time now?

47:55

And you have to see really what she looks like when she comes in on Thursdays to record the show with us. She's been up all night and then she usually, sometimes we are taking a long time to get stuff done so she's hanging around, hanging around until we can complete everything and so she'll be there sometimes for like three years or four years or five years or more in the afternoon.

48:13

She hasn't slept yet. So, thank you, Joy. That's true. That's true.

48:21

Oh, right on. Right on. Maybe Joy will go to work full -time for Apologia Radio. What do you guys think? Wouldn't that be awesome?

48:30

Yeah. You want to commit now in front of everyone? All right. So, since we're here, we wanted to do some live interviews with some of our speakers and so we're going to invite up to the stage right now

48:43

We didn't actually even ask his permission which is the way you get things done. You just, you commit people and you don't ask so I didn't even get to ask

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Dr. Oliphant. Is this the first time he's been asked? No. Right now? No, no, earlier I ran into him and, you know,

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I found out that he didn't know and, you know, so. You didn't know? Yeah. No, I didn't know. So, he was like, oh,

49:05

I didn't even know I was going to be on the show. I was like, yeah. That's right. Okay, good.

49:11

So, Dr. K. Scott Oliphant is someone I greatly admire and I do want to say that if you have not read

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Dr. Oliphant, if you haven't been listening to him, I want to encourage you guys if you're into apologetics, if you're into theology and understanding the word of God, Dr.

49:33

Oliphant is somebody you really need to get into and really learn from. When it comes to apologetics, today,

49:41

I said this on, I think the last broadcast, I said that, I think that Dr. James White, to my mind, is one of the great gifts to the church because I don't know of anybody in church history and I may be missing somebody who has done so many debates with so many different world views and he does it in such a comprehensive way.

49:58

So, it's Mormonism, the Watchtower, Bible and Tract Society, when you talk about even atheism today, he's gone against Dan Barker, is it

50:08

David Silverman, he's really gone across a broad spectrum and Islam and so I don't think there's anybody to my mind in the

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Christian church, in the history of the Christian church that has really gone into that many debates with that many different world views and really just given the church a great deposit of resources.

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I know I heard Darren earlier talking about Dr. White being like the motherboard where you can just sort of like, okay, I can get anywhere

50:34

I need to go so he's a great blessing and help to the church. Well, that's me but there's a little bit of a delay, that's uncomfortable.

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But Dr. Oliphant, to my mind, I said this last week, that Dr. Oliphant to my mind is the greatest living teacher of presuppositional or covenantal apologetics, whatever you want to call it,

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I think he's the best, he's really helpful to me. Dr. Bonson is responsible for a lot of what

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I know about apologetics and he was just a real, great teacher But Dr.

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Oliphant teaches things in such a way and explains things in such a way that really helps.

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So a lot of times people listen to Bonson and they'll be like, okay, it sounds really biblical and amazing but I still don't get it.

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Well, if you're that kind of person that goes, well, I still don't get it, I think Dr. Oliphant does a superb job of helping to fill everything out and explain just how this comes from the

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Bible. So if you read his book, Covenantal Apologetics, if you haven't read it, sell your shirt and shoes and go buy the book and then read it.

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If you read Covenantal Apologetics, you'll see what I mean. You get into the book and you're immediately reading about Jesus in the gospel according to John and you're understanding how all these things are interconnected and I do actually respect and like and almost prefer the change from language and description between presuppositional apologetics and covenantal and I think

52:09

I like what Dr. Oliphant is doing there in terms of explaining what it really means in its approach. So it's a great honor and blessing for us in our first live broadcast like this to welcome to the stage

52:21

Dr. K. Scott Oliphant. Come on up, sir. And someone in the live feed said it's about time we address the

52:36

Oliphant in the room. Actually, that's what we named our show was

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The Oliphant in the Room. And so Dr. Oliphant is a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary fantastic school basically

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Presbyterian school, right? Nobody's perfect. Well, all the faculty subscribe to Westminster Confession.

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Our student body from over 40 different countries. In that way, it's not just Presbyterian.

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We graduate more Presbyterians than we bring in because that's our goal. And if any of you want to come, we will make you a

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Presbyterian in three short years because it's in the Bible. Hey. Dr. Oliphant, it's been great having you.

53:20

Thank you, Dr. Oliphant. You've been wonderful today on first broadcast of VOD. So, hey,

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I learned this, Dr. Oliphant. It's kind of weird. I'm sorry. It's kind of weird. I'm sorry. OK. I learned this recently that is it

53:35

Westminster in Philly has a large population of Korean students?

53:42

Yes. Large population of Korean and Asian students. That's amazing. The missionary, Bruce Hunt, went over decades ago and established

53:50

Christianity there. There's a large Presbyterian population in South Korea. If you're going to be a pastor in Korea of any note, now the story goes you need to have a

54:01

Westminster degree. So we educate a lot of Koreans. I know people who do reformed

54:06

Korean hip -hop. What? It's like super popular. That's next level right there.

54:12

Really? And they're like really talented. You have no idea what they're saying. You're talking about me then. That's awesome.

54:21

We actually have a member Yes. Yeah.

54:27

Fantastic. Cho Cho. Cho Cho. So that means like the

54:34

Presbyterians are like dominating in South Korea. Right on. So we should have the

54:40

Baptists take over North Korea and we'll have a battle. I'd like to see that battle.

54:46

That would be a lot better. Yeah. That would be a much better fight to have. So I thought it would be really a gift to talk to Dr.

54:56

Oliphant about two things because it's really special and unique. One is

55:02

I wanted to talk to you about your relationship with Dr. Cornelius Van Till because that is

55:08

I think a good story. So I mentioned earlier when I introduced you that your lecture at the

55:14

Bonson Conference is my favorite lecture on Christian apologetics. And some people might wonder like why, why, why that one.

55:23

I think that it was how you brought everything down to its foundation and God and God being the reference point and you just did it in such a clear way.

55:34

It was helpful. But you also talked about your relationship with Dr. Cornelius Van Till and that I really, really enjoyed. So maybe a lot of people watching this right now on a live stream around the world don't know a lot about Dr.

55:45

Cornelius Van Till. So can maybe you bring us into that discussion, Cornelius Van Till, what he brought into the world, the reformed world with apologetics and your relationship with him.

55:55

Right. Yeah. Thanks. And thanks for your hospitality. All of you need degrees.

56:01

Yes. It's just been a real treat for us to be here. Good. I'm very happy. Dr. Van Till came to Westminster in 1929 when

56:09

Westminster was founded. J. Gresham Machen who founded Westminster because he was kicked out of the liberal

56:14

Presbyterian church for being conservative. He started a church, a seminary in Philadelphia and Van Till had graduated and was pastoring out in the

56:25

Midwest and Machen called and said, please come. And Van Till said no. And Machen called and said, please, please come.

56:32

And Van Till said no, no. And so Machen went out to the Midwest and sort of like Pharrell to Calvin and said, this is the will of God for your life.

56:41

So Van Till resigned his pastorate and came in 1929. Machen then died of pneumonia in 1936.

56:48

So really Westminster was shaped in large part by Dr. Van Till and his approach.

56:54

His approach to apologetics, what he was tasked to do as a professor of apologetics was to make apologetics more reformed than it had been and especially more reformed than it had been at Princeton.

57:07

Van Till studied apologetics at Princeton so he knew what they were teaching. He sat in the chairs and he was a student there and when he was asked to teach at Westminster he told

57:15

Dr. Machen he said, I know that we're here to carry on Princeton's tradition but we can't do it in apologetics.

57:21

We've got to move in another direction. And Machen said, good for you, you're the man to do it. So he really shaped reformed apologetics for the next few decades.

57:29

I came into contact with Dr. Van Till, this could be a very long story but I'll try to shorten it. I was a relatively new

57:36

Christian taking a philosophy class at the university where I attended from a man who was a Christian, dear man, still living.

57:44

And he taught a course on Francis Schaeffer at a secular university because he had a course that he entitled

57:51

Issues in Philosophy. And he told me the reason I did that is because I can teach anything I want and it's issues in philosophy.

57:58

So we had a course on Francis Schaeffer. I hadn't heard of Schaeffer at that point. And then after that course came

58:07

Christianity Today magazine. This is in December of 1977. Yes.

58:13

And that magazine appeared in my mailbox and I remember picking it up and on the cover of the magazine was a picture of this elderly, white haired gentleman and it said the legacy of a down to earth scholar.

58:26

And I opened it up and it was an interview with Dr. Van Till. And part of what it said is

58:31

Van Till has taught such luminaries as E .J. Carnell and Francis Schaeffer.

58:37

So I thought to myself I should probably read the guy that taught Schaeffer. So I went down.

58:44

This is when you had to do this kind of thing. I went down to a bookstore and I said

58:49

I want this book, A Sense of the Faith. And this guy said I've never heard of the book, I've never heard of the author. So he gets this big tome out that's books in print and he says okay it'll be here in a month.

58:59

It took a month. So Van Till's book came a month later and I started pouring over it, reading it as much as I could.

59:06

I was in Texas in the middle of the panhandle, nobody there, nobody to help and I was having trouble with some of what he was saying.

59:12

So I brought it to my philosophy professor and I said I need some help here. So he took the book for a while and we met over coffee one day and he said

59:19

I don't know what he's saying either. So as a young kid I didn't know what to do and I noticed there was an address on the back of the book

59:28

Westminster Seminary PO Box 27009 Philadelphia. So I thought okay I'm going to write him and see if I can get any help here.

59:33

So I wrote Westminster and I said anything you can do to help me here I'm reading through this and I have some questions I'm just not sure what to do.

59:40

And they said oh we've checked with Dr. Van Till he wants you to write him. So that was good news.

59:46

So I just began to write him questions. I would be reading along and I'd say what do you mean when you say this?

59:53

And it worked this way. This was such a treat to me. It was like Christmas every week. I would send off a letter and a week to the day that I would mail it would come into my mailbox the spiral pages that were torn out of a spiral folded into a small envelope stuffed full of his seven or eight or nine page written response to my questions.

01:00:15

And we continued back and forth for a while two or three years to the point where I finally said you know

01:00:23

I really need to have a conversation with this man. I wonder if he would come to Texas. So I wrote him and I said would you like to come down for a few days and help some of us neophytes figure out what you're up to.

01:00:35

He said be happy to do it. So he came down to Texas and stayed with us for about four days. He said he said here's the here's the condition.

01:00:42

If I come down you're going to have to take a walk with me every day. And I thought you know I'm in my 20s.

01:00:48

I can I can walk with this oxygenarian. Well I'll tell you what that guy he picked him up and put him down and he would every day he would go on a two mile walk and it would just be huffing and puffing all the way through and it was you know

01:01:00

I look back I wish I'd had one of those little you know little recorder in the phone because I was just peppering him with questions tell me about nation tell me about your time at Princeton when you taught there when you were a student there tell me about early days of Westminster and on and on he'd go story after story just a fascinating time with him and then we'd get into some of the issues that that he wrote about.

01:01:19

So all of that led to my fascination with Van Till and by the time

01:01:24

I went to Westminster as a student I read it I'd read everything that was published on Van Till because I just couldn't get enough of it and he was he was just a dear and gracious man and so I finally wrote him and I said looks like I'm coming to seminary and he wrote back and he said good why don't you stay with me while you find housing.

01:01:44

So I went to Philadelphia and I stayed with him for a little over two weeks and he said use my car and you can just drive around and get whatever housing you want.

01:01:51

So we he said here's a condition if you're going to stay with me you're going to have to go on a walk. I said I know I'm going to have to go on a walk. So we'd go on this walk and I've written about this in a couple of places this is something that has never left me it really struck me when

01:02:04

I was walking with him every every neighbor that he introduced me to anyone along the path of the two mile walk and he would introduce me to various people every person to the person that's not an exaggeration would say something like this to me.

01:02:18

Oh I guess he's talking to you about Jesus too isn't he because that's what he did. Every neighbor knew him as a man who would talk about Jesus.

01:02:26

He told me of a neighbor whose wife had been ill and until had gone to the hospital to pray with her and the neighbor said don't you go there again because I don't believe in your

01:02:34

God and then said I won't and I'll pray for you too. He was a man with a heart for the

01:02:40

Lord and that's what drove his defense of Christianity that's what drove his apologetic that's what drove his love for the

01:02:47

Bible and I counted a real privilege to have known him even in his later years he was just a dear and gracious thing.

01:02:53

Wow what a story. Do you still have his letters? I do. Do you plan to publish them?

01:03:00

Yeah I don't know. I don't know. You know it's one of those things yeah I don't know. Well let me ask you that's kind of a personal thing but when like you got to get

01:03:10

Van Till out to you and then go you lived with Van Till you lived with Cornelius Van Till were you going fanboy the first couple times like with me to you when

01:03:20

I swear on you I'm fanboy and I have to try to contain it and act professional. I'm like yeah

01:03:26

I think I think I think I'm just an honest moment Dr. Oliphant. Just an honest moment.

01:03:34

No it can't be that way because because Van Till was a great Westminster and took the position

01:03:43

I was the best of what he did without.

01:03:55

The nice thing about Dr. Van Till is you know I did what some of you have done I brought him you know a few of the books and I said would you sign those and he would sign you know

01:04:02

Cornelius Van Till and then he started signing Uncle K because that was the nickname people would you know Cornelius K is the nickname in the

01:04:09

Dutch K -U -E -S so he just signed Uncle K Uncle K so he was very humble and disarming in that way and we we really became friends.

01:04:19

I respected him and would you know do whatever he would ask and think whatever he told me to think

01:04:24

I just had that you know you tell me to think that way I'm going to start thinking that way and see what happens. But he very much you know put me at ease fairly quickly and and you know

01:04:34

I I remember one walk I remember where we were and I said tell me about Gordon Clark because that's where a lot of friction had happened in the 40s in the

01:04:43

O. P. C. And the first thing out of his mouth he said I pray for him every day and then he said and he and he's a better philosopher than I ever was and he said

01:04:51

I wish we could have worked more closely together. So there was no you know I don't know people might get this way sometimes there was no bitterness in the man he loved the

01:05:00

Lord he he loved his gospel and to his last days that's what he wanted to propagate.

01:05:06

It's amazing. So a lot of people may have missed it and I mentioned it today at the beginning but I think it's interesting the movie is called

01:05:14

The Movie Collision. We're going to bring Darren up in a moment here. The Movie Collision Douglas Wilson versus Christopher Hitchens.

01:05:19

There's a really interesting scene. There's a scene where Wilson is in a pub talking to Christopher Hitchens.

01:05:27

Christians drinking with unbelievers. Okay. Christians drinking with unbelievers. What? Yeah.

01:05:34

Seriously. And that's right. But there was a man there was a man in there too and when

01:05:41

I first saw it I was like oh that's Dr. Arnold. So you got you were actually in that circle when that was happening that conversation that debate tour.

01:05:51

Tell me something about maybe your interaction with Christopher Hitchens. What was that like?

01:05:57

Because he is this I mean he's my favorite atheist. I mean really

01:06:03

I love loved Christopher Hitchens just I think that's the way he communicated and I think

01:06:09

I would have been able to be friends with him just because I love how honest he was at times and what was it like engaging with one of the most famous atheists in the last hundred years?

01:06:21

Well it was a it was a great thing for me as the as the series developed the

01:06:26

Collision Series you know we got a call at Westminster would you allow us to come and do this thing and I was very very excited to be able to moderate that and to watch that take place and before the interesting thing to me before the debate actually happened we all met for dinner at a relatively a very nice place actually near the seminary in Chestnut Hill.

01:06:48

I think Nate was there and I think Darren was there. We had a nice table of folks and had a nice chat with Christopher Hitchens and you know he made some comment at some point about how nicely he had been treated and how much he had enjoyed being with these people and and being at the seminary but after it was let me just preface this by saying

01:07:09

I told some of you some of you this but I'm now just about finished with the book The Faith and Faith and so some of some of what he's saying in that book

01:07:23

I'm kind of reflecting on now and seeing some of what he's saying to be true but after the dinner was over the limo pulls up you know the suffering

01:07:31

Christians the limo pulls for for Doug and Hitchens to get in a few of the others to go to the seminary and and Christopher turns to me and he goes

01:07:40

I want to ride with you. So so we got in the van to go to the seminary and we got in the van to go to the seminary and we got in the van to go to the seminary and we got in the van and we got in the van to go to the seminary and we got in the van to go to the seminary and we got in the van to go to the seminary to go to the seminary to go to the seminary and we got in the van to go to the seminary and we got in the van to go to the seminary and we got in the van to go to the seminary great time with him.

01:09:14

I'm with you, I think he was a brilliant man, he was an excellent writer, and a good thinker, and I think he,

01:09:23

I know this, I know he knew God, and you know, I hope that in God's justice there is some change.

01:09:30

Fantastic. So, I thought that would bless everyone, rather than just a big deep theological discussion about apologetics and philosophy that really interested me.

01:09:40

So, two weeks ago I got a phone call from someone that is a really well -known

01:09:48

Mormon blogger, and she has a book contract, and she wrote me, she's seen a lot of our stuff online, and she wrote me and described who she is, and I was like, oh actually

01:10:00

I already know who she is, and she said, and I want out, and so I ended up on the phone with her for about two hours, giving her the gospel, she turned to Christ, and there's a point

01:10:11

I'm getting to here, is I said, well let me help you with some stuff that would be important to start as a new believer, and so I got her to the

01:10:17

Forgotten Trinity, Dr. James White, some other works, but then I got her Covenantal Apologetics, because I think the work is a blessing, number one, it's encouraging, and it's also just fantastic to firm you up, to give you a good foundation, and to arm you as a believer as you go engage the world with apologetics.

01:10:39

So, Westminster Seminary, if I am correct, still has this, has the iTunes thing, iTunes

01:10:47

University, and I do believe, unless you've removed it, there is your, I think you have an apologetics course that's up there now, that's available to anybody for free.

01:10:58

Yeah, so you guys can go get that, and just, you'll see what I mean by how important this stuff is, and I would really encourage everyone to get

01:11:05

Covenantal Apologetics, and to look more into Dr. K. Scott Oliphant. So, thank you brother.

01:11:10

Thank you so much. God bless you. Possibly.

01:11:21

There's the music. All right. Are we going to break now? No, no breaks. Yeah, you got to hold it.

01:11:29

This is a first, this is a first. Every break for Apologia Radio is for me, so you guys know.

01:11:44

So, you guys will all know when you hear a break, there's a reason for it. Yeah, what's that? I said it pays the bills, unless you use the restroom.

01:11:51

That's right, that's right. All right guys, so you guys having a good time? Yeah? Is that awesome?

01:11:59

I mean, some people can say like, oh, I went to class, and I learned from, like, I don't even know if Bonson had, like,

01:12:05

I lived with Cornelius Vantill. Like, I have lived with Scythe and Brutoncate. Yeah.

01:12:11

Not at all the same kind of experience. Not at all. No, I doubt it. So, we're going to move on now.

01:12:20

How are you doing, Joy? Great. Yeah, tattoos are sinful, by the way. So, you notice, well, the crowd here is really,

01:12:30

I was talking to Darren about this earlier, the crowd here is really interesting. You have a crowd of a lot of younger people, youngish people, and some of them have gauges, and tattoos, and from people from around the country.

01:12:43

I mean, you have Alaska, you have Indiana, Florida, California, Colorado, Utah. I'm missing,

01:12:51

Texas, New York. How you doing? How you doing, New York? What's that?

01:12:58

Toronto. Yeah, we have some foreigners from Toronto joined us. And so, it's just a really diverse crowd, and I think this is what

01:13:07

I love so much about ReformCon already is that you've got

01:13:12

Presbyterians in the house. Presbyterians say what? What? That's the best a

01:13:17

Presbyterian could do. You're like, try to get height. They're like, ah. And they're fighting the whole way.

01:13:25

You see, they're like, ah. They feel guilty about, yeah.

01:13:31

Reform Baptists. Yeah, see? You see? You see?

01:13:37

I don't know how to fix this problem, guys. I mean, what's that? It's even, okay.

01:13:43

Any other Reform folks, any other denomination? Anyone pretending to be non -denominational denomination?

01:13:49

Okay. All right. But it's a really diverse crowd, and I love that there's an essential unity between us.

01:14:00

Not everyone here is on the same page eschatologically, baptism, issues of law.

01:14:09

However, there's this essential unity here, and just this blessed fellowship, and I think a commitment to all the core things that really matter a lot.

01:14:18

And I love that this crowd is so willing to fight and to engage, and it's just such a gift, a tremendous gift to see that essential unity that we have amidst diversity, but the willingness to get into the world and to spread the gospel and the truths of the

01:14:33

Reformation. Amen? Amen. All right. So, with that, one of the reasons

01:14:39

I bring that up is we wanted ReformCon not to just be, you've got to have a conference, right?

01:14:45

Talk about Reform Theology, and we did our conference. We wanted something that would equip people and be a long -standing resource for people, but also that would teach people to get flesh on Reform Theology and to get it out into the world and get out of our ghettos and start moving in the world.

01:15:04

So we invited Darren Doan and Nate Wilson. We love these guys a bunch, and they've had, for me, they've had such a tremendous impact on me.

01:15:14

Like I said to you guys earlier, I don't know if this conference is for you or for me. I mean, but we wanted to be able to provide people some foundational things to get into the world and start teaching and heralding.

01:15:25

Also, Leah. Leah. Where is Leah? Is she not here right now? Leah, just fantastic help with marketing and different things and teaching how to get things out into the world.

01:15:36

So let's invite our good friends Darren Doan and Nate Wilson.

01:15:42

Yeah. All right.

01:15:54

You got your microphones? You got some coffee in you? Good. Check one, two.

01:15:59

So this is Nate Wilson and this is Darren Doan. Nate Wilson, a little bit of feedback.

01:16:06

Ooh, ooh, hot mic, hot mic, hot mic. Nate Wilson goes by the name

01:16:12

N .D. Wilson. He has written some fantastic books, 100 Cupboards, the series.

01:16:19

His newest book was, I saw on Amazon, and I'm not sure exactly how to say this right, but when

01:16:24

I went to order it, it was already listed as a bestseller on Amazon before it was actually released.

01:16:32

It's a trick I have. Okay. Why'd you a lot? Yeah. Sorry about all that hot mic situation.

01:16:42

And so the, and I'll just, and just the last thing I'll introduce here. I mentioned it earlier. Notes from the

01:16:48

Tilta Whirl was my first introduction to you. I, of course, I know your dad. We've had him on the show just a bunch of times.

01:16:54

I love your dad. He's just really blessed my life. And so I didn't know a lot about Nate.

01:17:00

And then I get ahold of Notes from the Tilta Whirl and it was first the movie itself.

01:17:09

No, that I, that I watched. Yeah, but you did it in the intro. I know I did. Yes. Yes. What's wrong with you, man?

01:17:14

I know. I know. It's the only thing I saw. I didn't know a book really existed. So it was the film first and you have

01:17:19

Stinkin' Baptist. You got baptism in the wrong order and you got everything in the wrong order.

01:17:27

So it really blessed me so much that I was like, Hey, we're a new church, people coming out of addiction.

01:17:33

They need to learn to live and love God and enjoy his world and stop trying to enjoy these things over God.

01:17:39

So in line with what everyone needed to know in the beginning of their relationship with Jesus that most of them hadn't even like been into a church.

01:17:48

It was all a new experience. And so it was just such a great help for our church at the very, very beginning.

01:17:53

And so I actually got Notes from the Tilta Whirl the book, started reading that and it just rocked me.

01:17:59

And your talk today was very much in line with that. So I'd love to talk about that. And then Darren, his film

01:18:05

Collision, Free Speech Apocalypse, all that he has done really just inspires me because you guys are actually in the world, interacting with the world.

01:18:12

So it's just a gift to have you guys here. It's fun to be here. It's great to be here. Good. Great to be here,

01:18:17

Jeff. Okay. Thank you, Darren. So do you want to, you want to open up? I just want to say like one thing

01:18:22

I admire about you, both of you is you guys are not, and you've talked a lot about this at the convention, is you guys don't you're not like, like you're not just doing the

01:18:32

Christian thing. I don't know, brother. You don't. So, so I guess

01:18:37

I just want to ask, like, have you guys sold out? Well, yeah. I sold out a long time ago, but the check bounced.

01:18:55

Think about that for a moment. It didn't count. So I noticed in the tilted end that they could just have on file because they were getting so many concerned, stressed out people saying, why are you publishing this guy?

01:19:19

Don't you know, he's a total freak? He believes these crazy things. So my editor at a secular house, the biggest secular house there is, ran them out and said, this is really embarrassing, but could you please write a statement and say that we could just have on file to send out when we hear from angry people, to say, you know, this is what he thinks and send it out, because that was hilarious.

01:19:40

So, yeah, I wrote it for him, but then I thought that basically people were thinking they had, that I was keeping a secret, that my face was a secret that I was trying to hide.

01:19:48

They were trying to, you know, sniff it out and reveal me, uncover me as a

01:19:53

Christian. And so I knew it was time to kind of just write my manifesto of faith, put it on record, put it out there.

01:20:01

And that was Notes from a Tilted World. Just to kind of like yell clues at everyone.

01:20:08

Yes, I am. This is what I am. There's no secret. There's no secret to uncover.

01:20:13

I'm not hiding this. This is who I am. Anybody who reads Notes from a Tilted World or reads Death by Living and reads my fiction can see that it's all the same thing.

01:20:22

It's all one piece. That's good, because there's a lot of hostility towards Christian artists that do things that aren't like specifically evangelistic or ministry driven.

01:20:36

I could never get a Christian house to publish them. Yeah. I mean, that was actually before.

01:20:44

You know, it's not that I sold out and went secular. It's just that I submitted my novels to Christian houses and they said, no, thank you.

01:20:51

I thought I was trying to play in the minor leagues and then make it to the major leagues, do the crossover with Michael W.

01:20:57

Smith later. I thought it was, if you cross over, make sure you bring the cross over.

01:21:11

What? What? Is that what

01:21:19

Amy Grant told you that? Amy Grant. Actually, I think it was a story

01:21:26

I heard that someone said that someone told P .O .D. that, like, hey, man, or men, whoever they were back then.

01:21:32

Right. Well, I mean, you do stuff all the time,

01:21:38

Darren, for just completely non -evangelistic, non -Christian. I mean, like, if people knew the music videos that you've done, they would all know, like they would all know.

01:21:48

But then they would be mad at you for doing it, but they listen to the music. So, like, how can you as a

01:21:56

Christian? I can't judge their heart. It's kind of a salvation issue. Right, right.

01:22:01

Well, you're saying, like, how can you, how can, how do you defend doing, I mean, because people have those questions now, especially like Lecrae, and he's, you know, just got bought by a major publishing deal from Capitol Records and stuff, and everybody, like, freaked out and was like, holy cow, like, he's just sold out and he's done.

01:22:23

He's, you know, and he's going to hell now. He's like, all that stuff is coming up. Are people really saying that? People are really saying that.

01:22:29

I'm just glad that we're not in that world. I know, like, it sounds crazy. It's an actual conversation that's happening right now.

01:22:35

It's how can a Christian do non -Christian stuff? We don't.

01:22:43

We don't. I mean, everything I do is evangelism. I mean, everything.

01:22:52

I mean, so, and I understand what people mean when they say— How is that t -shirt evangelistic right now?

01:23:01

Because, well— I'm not making a claim. It's my home, and it's evangelistic because Jesus Christ is

01:23:06

Lord over it. Amen. It's just one more statement. I pulled that out, huh?

01:23:13

Back off, Marcus. How is it evangelistic? Jesus? Just throw Jesus in there? I understand what people mean, especially since I sort of came to Christ in the

01:23:26

Christian music boom, you know. How did that happen?

01:23:32

You know, and— I really faith alone. Ready or not. I'm in. And so, everyone was, you know, as—

01:23:40

It's so funny. I mean, I became a Christian, I was 16, 17 years ago, and I remember— I remember being with Christian artists, going on tour with them, and promoters coming out and being like, you cannot talk about Jesus when you come in.

01:23:54

I mean, it was— It was hostile. I mean, it was— It was crazy. And then within 10 years, it was just like, there was—

01:24:03

There was no more issue, you know? But I remember during those 10 years of, you know, when

01:24:09

I came to Christ, you heard the narrative, and it's well—

01:24:15

And there's— I'm a— You know, I think we heard it yesterday when, you know, what was her name,

01:24:22

Leah? Leah? Leah. Leah said, you know, that she's a musician that happens to be a Christian, you know? And I heard that as I was sort of growing up as a

01:24:30

Christian, in that I heard that line a lot. And I understood what people meant by it.

01:24:35

And then one day, I was like, oh, hell no. I'm a

01:24:41

Christian artist. I'm a Christian. I'm a Christian everything. I'm not a person who happens to be a

01:24:48

Christian. I'm a Christian. Like, no, everything that I do. Yeah.

01:24:53

I happen to write. I don't happen to be a Christian. Yeah. Yeah. And I just— And there was something—

01:24:59

Like, maybe it's that contrarian in me. Maybe it's that old punk rock thing. As everyone was kind of going with this safe—

01:25:06

It's like, no, I'm a Christian. Everything I do is Christian. And so I would push back a little bit on that.

01:25:14

And I think, in the spirit of the Reformation, I think that needs to be pushed back a little bit on. It's like, no, we are unapologetic.

01:25:22

Like, no, I'm a Christian. Everything I do is Christian. I go make a music video for Kid Rock. I'm making a

01:25:27

Christian music video. For Kid Rock. For Kid Rock, right? And he has to adhere to my standards.

01:25:35

Yeah. Or else I don't do it. And that's actually how I ended up doing a Kid Rock video. I met him doing a Zac Brown music video.

01:25:41

We were hanging out. And he had said, hey, man, maybe we should do a video at some point, you know? I was like, as soon as you're ready to take stripper pulls out of your video, call me.

01:25:50

And it was like, two years later, I get a phone call from his manager and he says, Bobby says he's ready to take stripper pulls out of his videos and said to call you.

01:25:58

Oh, man. That's how it's done.

01:26:04

That's right. That's how it's done. You're going to follow up. I was like, when people clap, you have to stop. Well, that's what we try to communicate often.

01:26:15

And we're not perfect at doing it. It's just when we talk about the Lordship of Jesus Christ over every realm, I think a lot of people's response to that, believers,

01:26:23

Christians will say, well, of course. But we go, no, no, like, really?

01:26:28

Like, really? Like, infect the message of Jesus and the biblical worldview to every single area.

01:26:38

That, you know, you brought it up. This is, no, you did. We all brought it up today. This is God's world that he's given to us.

01:26:44

The meek shall inherit the earth. Abraham's descendants will inherit the world. This world belongs to Jesus Christ.

01:26:50

He has all authority over it. He's given it to his people. And this is ours.

01:26:56

It's ours. If you're not in Christ, you're visiting. Right? And so, film, whether it's music videos, whether it's movie, television, writing, whatever it is, like, believers should realize that God cares about that.

01:27:11

He cares about it a lot. And we ought to really be taking ownership of it for the glory of Jesus Christ.

01:27:17

And when you have Kid Rock take a stripper pole out of his video, because he so values your work, that he says, well,

01:27:24

I have to stop sinning to get that quality. Then I say, we win.

01:27:32

That's dominion. That's dominion. And that's what we mean. And it is. It is. It's not, I wouldn't say it's winning.

01:27:39

It's assuming the center. It is dominion. It's asserting your standard, God's standards over there.

01:27:45

So, I mean, as far as it goes, I'm really sympathetic to the whole situation when people are trying to shake off a brand.

01:27:53

They're trying to shake off Christian as a brand, which has been created by marketers, you know, to actually sell to a particular demographic.

01:28:02

And Lecrae is trying to say, I'm not just selling to that brand. I'm trying to sell to everybody.

01:28:09

That's fantastic. I've had no problem with that. But that's not walking away from the cross. That's walking away from life way.

01:28:16

Or just selling in life way. Come on Chick -fil -A, stop selling to everybody. Yeah, exactly.

01:28:22

Stop selling to everyone. You know, when the Israelites were told to go steal all their neighbors' gold and then run, you know, just, hey, could you go to your neighbors?

01:28:32

Say you need to borrow that necklace. Everybody borrow your neighbor's gold. And then we're taken off.

01:28:39

You know, plundering the Egyptians really means something. But we are far more in the situation. We're now in the promised land.

01:28:45

We're not running from Egypt. Like we're in the promised land. Is there happen to be giants here? Will you go over to them and you say, thank you for this land?

01:28:54

This is ours now. Thank you, Capitol Records. Fantastic. These are some wonderful grapes that you have that are now mine.

01:29:06

Hey, friend. So I have no problem. Now, if he says, oh, I need to change my song.

01:29:12

I need to stop being me. And that used to be the CCM crossover, right? I'm going to do some poppy songs.

01:29:19

I'm going to shift from the Jesus song to the boyfriend song. That's a different issue. But if McRae raps about his car,

01:29:26

I have no problem with that. Because his car belongs in God's world. If he raps about mowing his lawn or anything else or barbecuing with his friends,

01:29:35

I'm fantastic with that. It doesn't have to be the gospel explicitly stated in every song.

01:29:42

Because God didn't write the gospel in your grasp. And he still made the grasp. And the grasp is still his.

01:29:48

So I mean, his dominion extends over everything. And we can celebrate his artistry and his ownership of all of it all the time.

01:29:56

I think I missed, but Marcus was telling me Leah said something cool. He's like, if I'm a plumber,

01:30:02

I don't just pick Christian toilets. Right, yeah. Right. Right. And so that's kind of the idea.

01:30:08

Like, so McRae can only sell to Christians, you know, or whatever. Hey, what's up, Judah?

01:30:13

What's up, Judah? Say hi to the world. So, um, you, yeah, joy, joy.

01:30:26

We got this. Well, real fast. Someone made a comment here that on IMDb, Notes from the

01:30:36

Tilt -a -Whirl has an 8 .3 out of 10. Whereas the Big Lebowski has only an 8 .2

01:30:41

out of 10. So you beat the, but you beat the Dominion. Speaking of Notes from the Tilt -a -Whirl, if you have my, also, those are all the same voters on IMDb too.

01:30:53

Yeah. Exact same people. Uh, Joy, do you want to say something?

01:31:01

I was just going to say, I really want to hear the mowing the lawn rap. The mowing the lawn. Does anyone have that? She said if McRae wants to write a rap about mowing the lawn, does anyone want to hear that?

01:31:11

Maybe if I tell him, I'll write him one. I would just make the video for it.

01:31:18

It's also, it could be really great. Be really shaky. The world will think it's all about weed, but it's just about as long.

01:31:29

Let's call it grass. And we're good. Call me Lecrae. Well, this is kind of along the same lines.

01:31:43

When we, uh, our Wednesday night vocab was doing a talk on Star Wars and Christian theology.

01:31:50

And we had in the live comments, a certain gentleman, whoever said you can't have fun with theology.

01:31:59

And which was a really ridiculous statement. And I was, my response was, how can we be salty if we have no flavor, right?

01:32:06

You can't be fun with, with theology? Yes. You can't have fun. Anything theological has to be.

01:32:12

Oh, got it. Yeah. Okay. You guys know your Presbyterian. Yeah. Well, Presbyterian just means that we, like we drink bourbon and you drink light beer.

01:32:26

Theologically speaking, that's theologically. It's a metaphor.

01:32:33

Anyways. Anyways, I was hoping you guys could be serious.

01:32:44

Theology, uh, is not fun. Like, um, you know, we. Serious all the time.

01:32:50

Like it's a serious matter. Which, which brings, which if you didn't get a chance to see it, if you're watching a live stream right now, on our channel right now is

01:32:57

Nate's talk from earlier today. And so it's all about that. I mean, Nate, talk to us about enjoying

01:33:05

God and his world in light of somebody who's, who says theology can't be fun. Well, I think that the problem is a fundamentally reductionistic philosophy that's trying to boil the flesh off of everything and just find the bones and then try to like disintegrate the bones and just find the essence of the bones and, you know, the blueprint of the bones.

01:33:29

And that's what they think of when they mean theology. So theology is the skeletal structure, the architecture of truth.

01:33:35

So if we're, if we're pursuing the architecture of truth and God's truth in the world, then we're talking about theology, right?

01:33:41

Yeah. It's like talking about, you know what, physics can't be fun because it can't be fun. It flies airplanes, you know, like dragonflies are using it.

01:33:51

It's, it's fantastic when you, when you put the flesh on it, the way God intended, when you actually like you have incarnational theology, you have your architecture that's found and you figured out the architecture of God's truth of the world, you're discussing the theology.

01:34:05

Now let it run. Now let it fly. Like put, put flesh on it and mean it. So what

01:34:10

I was talking about today was meaning what you said. Yeah. Don't just stay on the blackboard where you say, yes, ex nihilo creation.

01:34:16

Yes, sovereignty, like push that out until you see it moving around in the world. So it has flesh on it.

01:34:22

Yeah. So theology kept on the blackboard, just on the blackboard and never pushed out into the world.

01:34:30

I agree. That's not fun. It's like, it isn't, if it doesn't go off the blackboard, if it doesn't mean anything about what's happening out in, in the actual real world, it'd be pointless.

01:34:40

It would just be riddles and, you know, Sudoku, which I kind of enjoy. So I like theology.

01:34:48

I love theology, but I love theology the way I love a ribcage, you know, the way

01:34:55

I like, you know, quadriceps and what they can do. So it's like, if you, if you put it in action, it always, you have to take it out into the world and let it move.

01:35:05

I got a theology story for you. Okay. We have time. Are we still just, are we just rolling? Yeah, we're just going. To me, this is a good example of why

01:35:14

I think theology is fun. However you, however we're defining theology. But I think what most people mean by theology is being really geeky into the

01:35:22

Bible and trying to like learn all these doctrines and, and, you know, dig into things. And so earlier as I was talking,

01:35:33

I, you know, somewhere around my junior or senior year in high school, stopped drinking, stopped partying, all that stuff.

01:35:38

And so I didn't drink forever. So when, when I became a Christian, I didn't drink. And I was like, even better.

01:35:44

I'm like double holy. I remember thinking like, not only did

01:35:49

I just become a Christian, I'm like, I'm like super moral. Yeah, I'm like,

01:35:55

I'm like double anointed portion. Like I don't drink, you know, like this, this is fantastic.

01:36:02

And I didn't drink. And so I was the sober guy. And years later, because I love theology, every year

01:36:12

I would sort of pick something to kind of dive into. And one year I picked wine.

01:36:18

I wanted to just kind of, you know, Jesus does like, you know, I'm wine.

01:36:23

Like I'm wine. Like maybe I'll kind of dig into the Bible on wine. Just kind of look into wine. You know,

01:36:28

I spent almost a whole year just going through the Bible, looking at wine, how it's used.

01:36:34

When you start digging into something, I mean, it gets super fascinating. When did wine first appear? When did fruit first appear?

01:36:40

It's back in creation. You've got the first, I think it's end of day three. I think that ties into day three,

01:36:45

Jesus' resurrection. And there's really cool things going on there. What is wine? Wine, you actually have to take grapes and you have to kill them.

01:36:52

You have to smash it. You have to kill it. You have to bury it. You have to put it in somewhere dark. And then after time, it comes out.

01:37:00

It's totally new. It's glorified. You've got this Jesus picture thing going on. It's like in theology, all of a sudden, it gets fun.

01:37:06

It gets really cool when you're going through this stuff. And all of a sudden, you've got, you know, what was the Nazarite vow? And okay, you can't have even grapes or wine.

01:37:14

All of a sudden, the Bible's making these distinctions between grape and wine. All of a sudden, I'm talking to my Baptist friends at that point going like, people say, well, grapes, you know, and, you know, wine or grapes do the same thing.

01:37:22

Well, I don't know, but the Nazarite vow actually makes it very clear, like, not to touch even grapes or wine. It seems like they are different.

01:37:29

Theology gets you thinking about that stuff. I'm digging into it. I'm going through it. And then something hits me because at that time,

01:37:37

I'm thinking about communion because that's what theology does. It does everything. It hits, it rolls, it starts going. You start seeing this. It's this paradigm shifting.

01:37:43

Like all this stuff begins to happen all because of theology because theology is just boring, right? But it starts to move.

01:37:48

And all of a sudden, thinking about communion, well, the Bible does say take, you know, maybe we should be communing every, you know, on every

01:37:55

Sunday. I'm not quite sure how anyone gets around that. Especially people who are all into the Word. I mean, we're talking reformed people about the

01:38:01

Word, Word, Word. How do you dance around not taking communion every time you gather? Well, we have some extra biblical concepts and ideas of why we're not going to do that and blah, blah, blah.

01:38:09

Okay, theology gets you thinking about that more and more and you're going and you're going. And then all of a sudden it hits me that wine burns.

01:38:23

I take grape juice. It's sweet. It's fun. My kids love it.

01:38:31

When you take wine, woo, it burns. It's fire.

01:38:40

God is a consuming fire. And then you go, oh, well, Darren's on the skinny branches right now.

01:38:46

He's just, he's just reaching. Then you go back and you look at fire all throughout the Bible. That's what theology does.

01:38:54

You're doing another Bible study. And I'm still not drinking yet. I'm drinking, but all of a sudden

01:39:00

I'm reading and I'm going like, man, like I, I, man, I'm, I'm sober. I don't drink.

01:39:06

I'm a Christian. And, and I, but man, there's wine everywhere. God's a consuming fire.

01:39:14

I want, and then I'm up in Idaho. This is why I'll be probably move there. This is the part of the story

01:39:20

I thought was going to be told. Yeah. Well, no, I said, see, that's what theology does. You just start going.

01:39:26

You always end up in Idaho. Yeah, and that's why I wore the shirt. And, um, I'm leaving in a,

01:39:32

Nate and a good friend, Aaron Wrench, and we're there. And, and, uh, they, they kind of know my position that they know I'm all for drinking, but I don't drink.

01:39:39

And the Bible talks about, I'm leaving, might get on the airplane and Aaron Wrench looks over and goes, Hey man, I just, I know we have a good time here and stuff. I know you don't drink and all, but you're all for it and blah, blah, blah, and this and that.

01:39:47

But if you don't drink, he says, who's going to teach your daughters to drink? I was kind of going through like the security.

01:39:54

I was like, teach my daughter. All right, bro. Later. And I got in the plane. I was like, teach my daughters to drink. Why would

01:40:01

I teach my, I'm not opposed to drink. So my, so they're going to look at me.

01:40:06

I'm, I'm, I'm the Jesus guy in the family. I'm dad. And they're going to look at Jesus in the Bible. And he's like,

01:40:12

Jesus drank wine. And, you know, but you could say, well, there's no verse that says Jesus never drank wine. Well, there's no verse that said

01:40:17

Jesus never drank water. So ease up. Um, that's what theology does.

01:40:23

You start getting into all that stuff. And then I was like, wow, I'm going to,

01:40:30

I need to start drinking. I need to learn how to do it. Be responsible. Because I want to be a part of this theological picture

01:40:35

God has created and designed. And he's got this thing out there. He said, I am wine. I came home, my wife,

01:40:41

I said, honey, I need to learn to start drinking. And she was like, oh, thank you, Lord. I have a way better marriage now.

01:40:51

But that's what theology does. Theology makes things better. Theology gets you drinking.

01:40:57

Theology gets you dancing. Theology gets you just celebrating things, enjoying food.

01:41:03

That's what theology does. And for all you married guys, you know what I'm talking about. I mean, it makes it better. It makes, that's what theology does.

01:41:10

And if it's not doing that, you're gay. Mark that.

01:41:17

Mark it. Mark that. Just mark that. So, by the way, happy birthday to Len Armstrong.

01:41:27

Theology's gay if it's not doing that. Happy birthday to Len Armstrong.

01:41:35

He actually says that if we announce his birthday on the show live, he will convert to post -millennialism.

01:41:44

So happy birthday to Len Armstrong. So, yes. And welcome. Welcome to optimism.

01:41:51

I think Nate has something to say. He'll say, Len, if that's what it takes, we don't want you. You have to mean it,

01:41:59

Len. So... I was such a sucker for that.

01:42:05

I was like, yeah, I'll let him. Nate was very Presbyterian. Hold on.

01:42:10

I would just like to say that... How serious are you? He put his face down to the stream and said, what's in the water? I'll go home.

01:42:18

You make this world a better place. That's what theology does. Better jokes.

01:42:24

Better jokes. If you're theologically informed. The perspective is different here.

01:42:36

There's a difference between Presbyterians and Baptists, but there's this real connection that we all have and understanding we have to where the world is going, right?

01:42:48

And it's different. It's different than a lot of modern evangelicals in the West. Even with our differences...

01:42:54

This is important to talk about. Even with our differences between Presbyterian and Baptist, right here, there's this real essential understanding that we have.

01:43:04

We're like, I know, we know, we know when it comes to law, when it comes to justification by faith, when it comes to the future of the world.

01:43:13

So our perspective sounds different to a lot of people. I mean, I got attacked this week. I got messages, bombarded with messages.

01:43:19

People saying critical things about what we say on apology or radio in terms of like the culture being transformed.

01:43:28

I mean, I said, I said, well, here's what I mean by that. I mean like Jesus, great commission, make disciples, teach them to obey.

01:43:36

I said, when people are converted to Jesus, I believe sanctification is a real thing. That their lives change and they love

01:43:43

God. And so because their change, they love God now, the culture becomes different.

01:43:48

You go from, Henry Ventil said, culture is religion externalized.

01:43:55

So I think that's a good definition. Culture is religion externalized. So if the religion of the people changes, then that means it's the culture of Christ now.

01:44:04

So we're talking about gospel transformation and change. But people say, no, like you're thinking like too big and long -term.

01:44:12

God doesn't care about this mess. But here you have Presbyterians and Baptists talking about, no, He does care about this a whole lot.

01:44:18

And He's doing something about it. He did something about it at the cross. And now that work is now getting legs on it around the world.

01:44:25

And we're talking a lot about that. So it does sound peculiar to someone who's tuning in. After tuning into the last 50 years of pessimism and abandonment of culture, they hear

01:44:36

Presbyterians and Baptists talking about, no, let's get in it. So I just want to talk about it.

01:44:43

Can we talk about women? I want to talk about, we have a perspective that is long -term and it's invested.

01:44:51

I'm going to tee this up because I just talked a lot. I'm going to tee this up for Nate, whether you like it or not. I'm going to tee it up.

01:44:58

Do it. One thing I love about being around Nate is I can ramble something like, and I just throw it to Nate and he'll wordsmithies it up.

01:45:07

I think the reason why we're seeing that now, one is we're seeing that Calvinism was this great thing for the last 20 years that it convinced a lot of people in Christendom to be like, yeah,

01:45:18

Jesus is Lord over everything. That's right. And then what happened is eventually they started having kids. And they were like,

01:45:25

I remember, I mean, I was as nine -point Calvinist as you could get. And before I had kids, we actually bought a house.

01:45:33

I remember thinking like, there's a public school right there. It was amazing. We bought a house, a little greenbelt for the public school.

01:45:41

Then we had kids and I was like, we're going to send it. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Oh, wait, hold on, wait.

01:45:49

And I think what we're seeing right now is this generation right now is having kids. We're raising kids.

01:45:55

And all of a sudden, Baptist, Presby, whatever, whatever else is left out there.

01:46:01

We don't even know. What else now? Lutherans, with a list.

01:46:09

I was praising for a second. Once you start realizing that you have kids and those kids need to be raised, and how are they going to be raised, in what environment, it changes everything.

01:46:26

And where we're at in the culture right now, those decisions have never been hotter than they've ever been in the last hundred years in this country.

01:46:35

Nate, finish it up, please. Yes. Well, it's what your dad did and your dad saw this.

01:46:43

Yeah, so it's very, the decisive strategic point for the culture wars, to use the old political phrase, is children, is the next generation.

01:46:58

Because I'll tell you a secret. People who really hate

01:47:03

God a lot and are living for themselves completely are not reproducing.

01:47:10

They're not having kids. That's right. Yeah. They aren't. Christians and believers, Muslims and Christians, basically, throw the

01:47:18

Mormons in there. Believers of different stripes are the ones having children. And those children either get consumed, taken into the government pipeline, and indoctrinated in a certain way, and made, you know, weaponized, really, as instruments of pop culture.

01:47:34

And they accelerate the decay, belong to the zeitgeist and everything else. And evangelicals and Christians have continued to just be the breeding cows for the decay.

01:47:47

Like, that's it. That's it. I remember being 12 years old, standing at a homosexual rally up against the wall.

01:47:59

It was the kind of thing that happens when you're a desolated kid. And we had arrived, and there's the

01:48:06

Dykes on Bikes were there, and the Lesbian Avengers, and all these different groups had showed up to be here hostile and attacking.

01:48:15

And that's a real group, the Dykes on Bikes. That wasn't just a slur, that was a real group.

01:48:21

Yeah. And so they're there, and it's standing room only. They've pre -packed the room. Everybody's chanting, angry.

01:48:29

And my dad gets there, we get there. There is a lot of spitting going on at the entrance.

01:48:35

And then he just writes a note, please call the police, or please call 911.

01:48:41

Tucks it into his pocket to be ready, and goes up on stage. And tells me, like, go hang out by the wall.

01:48:48

Like, just go over there. I'm over on the wall, watching people scream and spit and chant.

01:48:53

And one of the things among lots of obscenities that got said was somebody was screaming, your children are ours, guys, your children are ours.

01:49:01

And I'm standing here up against the wall. They said that was their cue. But that was the big repeatable one.

01:49:08

So that's the only thing I can repeat, but that was what they were saying. But your children are ours. And my dad's up on stage, and he just starts laughing.

01:49:15

Like, there's a couple hundred angry screaming people, flipping them off and chanting and stomping.

01:49:21

He's had to write a note to call the cops, just to be ready in case they come for him. I'm out in the audience with them, and they're chanting that they have me, that they have my sisters.

01:49:32

And he's laughing, I think. He's just up there laughing. And he just, he finally, they die down, and he just goes, yeah, not mine.

01:49:44

You know, it's like, it's not, not at all. And so he's been instrumental in the education movement since 1981. Tens and tens of thousands of kids now are educated through Christian curriculums that he helped design and pioneer in schools that he, he started the one in Moscow, Idaho.

01:49:59

There's now a couple hundred in imitation, you know, schools in France and Indonesia in imitation, northern

01:50:05

Iraq, you know, schools all over the U .S., 40 ,000 students in the actual association, tens of thousands more in homeschool curriculums based off of that.

01:50:14

Africa's got a couple hundred a day opening. So it's just, I mean, it's essential that we raise kids to be jovial, jolly, unintimidated warriors who celebrate the glory of their father in a completely unintimidated and unafraid way.

01:50:32

So part of that is learning history. When you take education away and you say, hey, so we're just going to let

01:50:39

Caesar tell all the stories. Let's let Caesar tell the stories. Guess what? Stories aren't going to be about Boniface or St.

01:50:45

Patrick or Augustine. Stories aren't going to be about Ridley and Cranmer.

01:50:51

Stories aren't going to be about Luther or Athanasius. Like those stories won't be told. Now, if you, if you start to be pessimistic about the history of the world, in order to not be a post -millennialist, for all you non -post -millennialists, in order to not be a post -millennialist, you have to not know anything about history.

01:51:10

Like I really believe that. You have to have not paid any attention at all to what has happened since 12 dudes were told to go subdue the nation.

01:51:20

12 dudes. Hey, just go take care of it. That was awfully intimidating, especially when they started getting burned and stoned and lit on fire.

01:51:29

And then you have different points in time. We've got one guy. We've got Martin Luther, like all the decay. 500 years since Luther.

01:51:37

Yeah, that's not, we have no reason for optimism. One, one dude with a hammer and a piece of paper at a church door and look at the fruit that's born.

01:51:46

It's like one guy taking a stand and what God does with that spark and what he does to push it through. So when you look at history and you look at the rise and fall, you look at these, the rise of faithfulness and the fall under decay.

01:51:58

And you look at the next generation that comes up in the ruins. It's like, and you look at the next generation to catch a fire.

01:52:04

You never know when Spurgeon's going to show up. And Beast Spurgeon, you never know when

01:52:09

Bunyan's going to invent dialogue in the Christian novel, The Children's Progress. It's like, and here it is.

01:52:15

And now an entire new art form was created by Christian evangelism. And it just, it goes and it goes and it goes.

01:52:22

So when you look at the numbers in Korea and Africa and all around the world, you look at the conversion rates. And you, and basically what we have is people who get pessimistic because United States politics is, is kind of, you know, in the outhouse.

01:52:36

Yes. Like, yeah, there's phases that are in the outhouse. But there's been other times when there's been one guy with a rope belt, like in Germany, telling people to stop human sacrifice.

01:52:48

And that guy with the rope belt saying, I'm going to chop down your sacred oaks. And he does. He goes into the sacred groves and they sacrifice the kids.

01:52:56

He's like, this is done. By the way, I don't care about private property rights. These trees belong to Jesus. No. And in the name of Jesus, I'm chopping them down.

01:53:05

But our God's going to kill you when you get to the tree. Yes. Like, you're going to die. And Boniface chops them down.

01:53:11

Chops down all the sacred oaks. Like, no more. You're done. Germany, like fast forward, you got

01:53:18

Martin Luther there. You had to have massive Christianity, even in order to get to the point of decay.

01:53:25

Like just to get to the point of decay, you had to have huge conversion. And then you slowly fall away.

01:53:31

And then you have fire and huge conversion. And then fire. Read the stories God tells in history.

01:53:37

Like all the stories from the early church fathers on. And then look at where we are right now.

01:53:44

And I'll tell you this. This is the ultimate proof for post -mill optimism. Would I rather live right now or in 1880?

01:53:55

Would I rather live in 1880 or 1710? Like, would

01:54:01

I rather live? And just start hopping back. Like, and further and further back. Now, there's years and decades and periods of these.

01:54:07

Like, I don't want anything to do with the Spanish Inquisition. No, thank you. I'd rather just hop over that part.

01:54:15

But when you look at the advance of the gospel and what it does when it frees men. Or like, when it makes men brothers.

01:54:22

When it erases racial animosity. When it breaks down the boundaries of nationalism. When you look at what

01:54:28

Christianity does over time. I don't see how you could possibly be pessimistic.

01:54:33

Like, the gospel is going out. How can you be pessimistic? Jesus is not going to lose. It's not going to happen.

01:54:40

Ooh, amen. I was just going to add. I recently, I've been reading through Family Shepherds by Boddy Blockum.

01:54:47

And he has a really great quote that's perfect for this. And he talks about Adam and how Adam's job was to take dominion.

01:54:52

And he says he was to expand the boundaries of Eden. And make everything like Eden.

01:55:01

Which I love that idea in that picture. But then at the end of the quote, he says basically, this cannot be done without family discipleship.

01:55:09

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So when I raise five kids, I've got five. I want them to be more dangerous.

01:55:16

Like, more equipped. More scary and unafraid than I am. Like, I want them to be out there.

01:55:23

I want those going. Which is a very scary concept. Yeah. So that's, but that's the goal.

01:55:28

And then you want them to be unintimidated and fearless. Which means training. Which means history classes. Which means linguistic ability.

01:55:36

You can't just be like, we're just going to teach character. And, you know, good attitudes. What? Great.

01:55:42

That's fantastic. But logic, formal logic. Like, I mean, I remember getting in trouble in the college classroom.

01:55:50

Which happened more than once. But getting in trouble in the college classroom, when a professor called on me and said, what do you think of this thing on the board?

01:55:58

Because I love philosophy. Theology. And I said, well, you know, it's a basic. It's a real fundamental object in philosophy.

01:56:06

And he said, did you have logic last semester? You know, my first semester of freshman year. I was like, no,

01:56:12

I did not. He's like, where did you get the Latin name? Like, eighth grade? You know, it's like, so, okay.

01:56:22

You know, we've, my dad and I just did a book called A Beastie Area of Adorable Fallacies. Just walking through, identifying all these different cultural logical fallacies that people use all the time.

01:56:34

Identifying them. We actually have these little cartoon animal monsters that go with each one. And a little picture. Look it up.

01:56:39

World Wide Web. Please look it up. Adorable fallacies. And we did it for eighth grade. Junior high kids.

01:56:46

Because we want to inoculate and immunize them against these particular types of fallacies.

01:56:51

We want them to be clear -eyed and scary and ready to go out. So you can't just say, we have to raise our kids right without weaponizing them.

01:56:58

Without giving them the equipment to do it. Without teaching them history honestly. Getting them an ability with words.

01:57:04

An ability with language and communication. Critical thinking. Formal logic. Like, it's hard. Raising the next generation.

01:57:11

But since 1981, it's been being done. My father's been involved in it. And it's grown every single year.

01:57:17

It's been expanding. And the more rotten the public school system gets, the more people kind of wake up.

01:57:23

And start to pull out and try to really equip their kids to deal with this world we're in. Right on.

01:57:31

This has been awesome. You guys blessed? Good. All right, guys. So we're going to wrap up this program now.

01:57:39

First live episode of Apologia Radio. Darren Doan. Give him a round of applause, guys. Thank you. Nate Wilson.

01:57:48

Thank you guys for joining us. Everyone on the live stream. We still are streaming tomorrow.

01:57:54

First session's at 9 AM. Am I right about that or 9 30? 9. OK. Yeah. Somewhere around 9 or 9 30

01:58:00

AM. I'm teaching first tomorrow. I'm teaching on the importance and necessity of Sola Scriptura.

01:58:05

But it's going to be more of an epistemological discussion, which means it's ultimately about this. How do I know? Because God says.

01:58:12

That's why. And so that's kind of the goal tomorrow to get that across.

01:58:17

Also, we have tomorrow a live broadcast of the reform podcast.

01:58:27

With Les and Tanner. Hopefully, pray for Tanner's flight. He's coming in tomorrow. So it's like he lands and then we're going to grab him and throw him on stage.

01:58:35

Kind of how it's going to happen. So that's what's up. Thank you guys for joining us. We're going to get set here for our concert with Eshaun Burgundy, Ivy Connerly, and Four Known.

01:58:43

God bless you guys. Thank you for joining us for Apologia Radio. Hey, guys, the pizza is on.