Responding to a Pastor's "Refutation" of Postmillennialism & Theonomy

Non-rockabodas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it.

Are you gonna bark all day, little doggie? Or are you gonna bite?

We're being delusional. Delusional? Delusional's okay in your worldview. 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 worldview is perfectly okay.

It doesn't really hurt.

She hung up on me!

YES!

What? What?

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.

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

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

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

For to us a child is born. To us a son is given. And the government shall be upon his shoulder. And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end.

On the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness. From this time forth and forevermore the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. What's up everybody?

Opening the Show and the New York Times Article

Welcome back to another episode of Apologia Radio. This is the gospel heard around the world. Get more at ApologiaStudios .com. A-P-O-L-O-G-I-A-Studios .com. I'm Jeff. They call me the Ninja. That is Luke the Bear.

What up?

And that's Joy the Girl over there.

Hello.

Hello, hello.

We're glad to have you guys joining us today. Thank you for everyone joining us in a live stream. Make sure you guys like and share all of this. Make sure everyone gets to hear this and see this content.

Today we are going to talk about, I think, we'll see where we go. But we'll talk about two primary things. We'll lead off with a New York Times article about Apologia Church and our message. And we're also going to deal with just, it's not a very long portion.

We may make it through all of it. We may not. It's about 11 minutes long. It is a pastor, Pastor Emilio Ramos. He did a message, and this is just a clip from a portion of one of his messages. And it's titled in YouTube, if you want to go check it out, Why Postmillennialism and Theonomy Fails the Biblical Test.

So we said a couple weeks ago we were going to engage a bit with that, talk about the kingdom of Christ as a present reality, the ultimate end of the world, victory of the gospel, and the law of God. We're going to engage a bit with some of the comments.

And so that's what's on the schedule for today. But before we get into that and a few things, I'm going to pass it over to Luke the Bear. Bear, you've got, there's a weapon on the table.

There is.

There is a weapon.

I spent my 4th of July watching The Patriot and putting together my battle belt. So I think I accomplished it.

Not to be confused with a fanny pack.

Oh, definitely not. This is definitely not a fanny pack.

That's a manny pack. Favorite part, real fast, of The Patriot. Quick. Favorite part.

When he's with the flag, when he's riding on the horse.

My favorite part is where he's going to save his son, and he's like, he makes it look like there's multiple attackers with his young boys firing at us. I love that scene.

Brilliant. That was that frontier fighting.

Amazing.

That the Brits did not want to listen to.

That's right. Manny belt.

Yeah. My, sorry, I'm getting way off topic here.

My favorite part is Mel Gibson's ponytail.

I didn't even ask you. That was so mean. I was just trying to move fast. I'm sorry. Favorite part of The Patriot.

Mel Gibson's ponytail.

His ponytail. Legit. Okay.

My kids were like, we woke up Monday morning, and they were like, can we watch a show?

It's a holiday.

And I was like, sure. You're going to watch The Patriot. I was like, you're going to, I'm like, they're watching. And I'm like, this is why we're celebrating today. And they were like, okay.

That's a good dad right there.

Anyways. Yeah. This is, I just wanted to show it because I know everyone's, not everyone. I wanted to show it because Republic is awesome. And we're going to try something today, which I'm failing miserably at it.

And that's being structured.

Okay.

So we're not used to that.

We were told by the powers that be, they literally were like, this is how you're going to do it today. You're going to do it just like this. And we are already.

I've completely biffed it.

So we're not talking about that yet.

No, we are. I just wanted to show it.

I'm confused now.

What are we doing?

It is. It's got all the things. I even got my mags ready to go.

If you can't use the stuff in it, just swing it and hit someone in the head.

It would hurt.

They're going down.

This might come flying out.

That's the benefit of a mani pack. You get to carry your man stuff, and you can also hit people with it. It's a mani pack.

Fun fact. Few people know that in 1776, the newly formed United States rented private battleships to help them resist British tyranny. Like in the Patriot, for example, the movie I mentioned earlier. That's right.

Private battleships. I didn't know that, actually.

That means people just had their own.

Like private battle belts.

He's making a parallel.

Yeah.

Okay.

It's stretching, but it's there.

I'm impressed by that, but I'd be much more impressed if next week you had a battleship.

People had like, yeah, I guess I'll rent out my battleship.

Yeah.

Just make sure you return it back to me in good condition.

It was like the Turo of 1776.

Otherwise, I'll have to charge you a deposit.

It was Turo of 1776. They could just scroll through. Nah, this isn't going to work for me. This is a bit too high-end and expensive.

Now I'm imagining Uber, just short term, could just come pick our soldiers up and facilitate the battle.

I think there was an app like, oh, my battleship's not here. Where are they at?

Do I have to buy insurance on this thing, too?

Oh, here it says we can share.

This was supposed to be a 60-second read.

Here it says we can share. We can share the battleship with someone else.

While it'd be another 15 years before the Second Amendment was officially ratified, these private battleships are a glorious example of the right to keep and bear arms, like this one right here. Another glorious example of this right is owning and wearing body armor at the Armored Republic, previously called AR -500.

This is important because this is a name change and mission statement. We stand for arming free men with body armor so that they can resist tyranny for Christ the King. At its founding, Armored Republic's flagship product was the AR -500 steel body armor plate, which was innovatively designed to provide rifle-rated protection at a lower price than any other armor on the market.

Back then, we were named after that plate, AR -500 armor. Now, though, we're emphasizing our broader mission alongside a wider catalog of products, so we're refocusing on the name Armored Republic. Since in a republic, there is no king but Christ, and men should serve God rather than men by resisting tyranny.

Did I read that right?

Mm-hmm.

Okay, sounded weird. Check out our website at AR -500Armor .com, sign up for the email list, equip yourself, join the Armored Republic today.

Is that a real gun?

Yeah, this is—.

You put a real gun into the studio?

I mean, I actually have one.

So did you.

I have one on me.

There's lots of guns in the studio.

I have one on my person. This is my XD -40, which I'm not normally going to carry in here. I'm working on that.

We have a variety of weapons in the studio. A variety. And, apparently, protein powder and chia seeds.

Chia seeds.

Chia seeds.

Armored Republic, y 'all. They love Jesus, and we love them. So, ready to get started?

I'm ready to get started.

All right, so a lot's happened in the last couple of weeks. Obviously, we've done some shows on the overturning of the Tyranny of Ro. We went through those things. We talked about what happened in Louisiana.

I want to let everybody know that coming very, very soon is a piece of content we've been working on the last two weeks. It is—I just watched the finished content this morning. It is fantastic. It's got Tom Askell.

I'm doing a lot of explaining in this piece. It's got a bunch of our friends in it. We've got Pastor Brian Gunter. It's going to really bless you, and it sort of takes a snapshot of what took place in Louisiana with our historic bill that made it to the floor, passed the hearing in Louisiana, HB 813.

What happened when the establishment, the pro-life establishment, came in to kill it and work against it? And we even got some footage of what happened at the SBC annual members' meeting in Anaheim, where Pastor Brian Gunter was then able to go up and ask the ERLC, Brent Leatherwood from the platform, about why the ERLC signed onto a letter opposing a bill of equal protection.

So that's all coming out hopefully next week. I want to just sort of drop that into your ear for a second, so just be on the lookout for it. Hopefully, we maybe even get a trailer out for it before we do.

But I want to ask you very personally, if you would, keep your eye out for this piece of content, and then please share it because the substance of it is the main thing. It's the main thing in terms of what is the greatest thing right now we need to overcome to bring the gospel and biblical worldview into conflict with the issue of abortion and to ultimately establish justice for our pre-born neighbors.

It's the main thing. It's all about the gospel. The establishment doesn't believe it's about the gospel. They will not stand to the authority of Scripture. And because of that false doctrine, their false doctrine, their heretical doctrine, they've been able to infiltrate Christian organizations and churches with heretical teachings that teach that the woman is never guilty for what she does to her child in the womb.

And so this is a gospel issue. It's a word of God issue. It's the authority of Christ issue coming into conflict with abortion. And what's coming out again, hopefully next week, is the substance of it all.

And it's very eye-opening. I watched it. I was like, that was done really, really well. Thank God for our team that works so hard on putting this together and serving Christ in this way. If you have not signed up for Bonson U yet, do it.

It's a free, high-level seminary education, all at ApologiaStudios .com. You can do it with your family. You can do it individually. You can do it with groups. It is fantastic. Dr. Greg Bonson, his family entrusted that his life's work to us, seminary lectures, church teaching, hermeneutics, church history, philosophy, apologetics, law of God, all that stuff.

It's all at ApologiaStudios .com. Bonson U, it is absolutely free as a gift from the Bonson family and us to you. And so that is what you can do there. Sign up for all access. Partner with us in this ministry.

Make everything that we do possible. When you sign up for all access, you're not only a ministry partner with us making all this gospel proclamation across our platforms possible, but you also get additional content from us, including Ask Me Anything, which is once a month.

We get to have a private meeting with each other where you can ask questions. We kind of hang out together. So that's what's up with that. So let's get into what took place in the last week. So an article dropped.

It was an article from the New York Times. It dropped, am I thinking about this right, last Friday? Is that right? Something like that? Last Thursday, last Friday?

It was Friday because we were hoping it was going to be Thursday and it was not.

So article dropped New York Times, the journalist Elizabeth Diaz, and it actually took a little while for that to get done because really the conversation between Elizabeth and myself took place, it was started around Louisiana, which now is a couple months.

And so we started that conversation. Then she actually came out to Arizona because she actually has some family out here, and she was put on this project. And so she spent some time, she came to a church service, and she came to the studio and spent some time with us.

Really, really sweet lady. I'm honored to know her. I had a really good time with her and her photographer as well. Let's talk about the article. It went to New York Times and it was front page of Yahoo for at least a day.

And so it made its rounds.

It made it to New Zealand too, I forgot to tell you.

Oh really?

Yeah.

Made its rounds. I heard that Rachel Maddow actually tweeted it.

I think it had a thousand shares after that I heard.

Yeah, so it's good. Now here's the thing, and I even texted Elizabeth as well. I told her that she's a very gifted writer, and I mean that. And I told her that I was thankful that she really made an attempt to be a faithful journalist.

And when we first talked at church, when she came up to me at church, face-to-face, first talk face-to-face. We talked on the phone before that. I just told her, I said, look, I'm going to be honest with you, and all I'm asking is that you just be a journalist.

Be a good journalist and just tell the truth about what we believe. Just be a journalist. And she committed to that, and I commended her in my text to her after the article came out. I told her that I think she's a very gifted writer, and I said she made an attempt to be a faithful journalist to express what we actually say.

And I said I could tell there were moments where your own worldview was coming through. I could see that. I understand that. And I said, but you did make an attempt to be a faithful journalist, and so I really appreciate that.

And one thing I want to just say to Elizabeth. Elizabeth apparently keeps checking on us and listening. I don't know if she still does, but Elizabeth, if you are listening, I do want to express my gratitude to you, my deepest gratitude.

The issue of equal protection leads to people being treated as Luke from the womb, as me. So equal protection means that the baby in the womb gets the same protection, justice, that Elizabeth does. And, of course, that leads to criminal penalties.

And so it's not just the mother. That's how this gets framed in this debate, is that we want mothers to face justice for killing their children in the womb. Well, yeah, because equal protection. If you kill somebody, anybody responsible has to be held responsible.

That means also we would want the person doing it to be held responsible. We want the people who are the drivers, and are willing drivers, and know they're a part of this whole thing, paying for it. We want not just the woman, but everybody involved in killing a human being needs to have, there's some culpability there.

But what gets left out of this conversation, what other journalists try to do, is they try to remove the hope of the gospel that we're bringing to this. And so I did express to Elizabeth when she was asking me questions about punishments and justice, I asked her, can you please make sure that you express that we want women to know there is forgiveness in Christ for this.

That for us, there's two things we're concerned with. We're concerned with the soul of the woman, and we're concerned with the life of the baby. We're concerned with justice. And, Elizabeth, you did it.

You made sure that in the part of the article where you were discussing how this ought to be punished, you made sure that you put that in there for me, and that I wanted women to know there's forgiveness in Christ for this.

So I'm going to just commend Elizabeth for that. Obviously, there's parts of the article where, like, this is the culture we live in. All this must look weird to people. I think it's maybe near the beginning of the, well, let me just, since I'm already on it here, I'll go ahead and read this part from the article, New York Times, directly from them.

It says, he works in a studio office space behind a door. I'll skip all that. It says, the inside is dark, industrial, and metal. With movie, that metal's you. Yeah, metal. With, I was like, I was like Shanka.

What do I do?

What's that?

Except for my office.

Except her office is not metal. It's very girly. There's flowery things in there, and it looks like a lady.

But Joy does like metal.

I do.

Just for the record. Yeah.

I do.

It says, industrial, metal, with movie posters for films like Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight. Now, just in case anyone reads that and is like, say what? Our studio on this side, actually, one of the things we wanted to do is try to give constant inspiration to our team that, as Christians, we need to outdo the world, outperform the world.

We need to be creating the better art, the better media, all those things. I mean, if you know the history of the church in terms of art and music, is that it's Christians and the Christian worldview that gave the best of the best to the world.

It didn't just end there. It ended with academic institutions. It was with science and medicine and all of that. Christian worldview, we were the movers and shakers. Christians were movers and shakers and culture makers and all those things.

Even the history of modern media and movies and those sorts of things, there's a really cool story about the Christian foundation to Hollywood. That's all gone now. But there's a really cool story in terms of Hollywood itself and the Christians there were trying to create Christian media, good quality art in film and stories.

What we have over here is we have movie posters of sort of epic things, things that overcome past obstacles or that are new and creative and have good stories. People say, why do you have a Quentin Tarantino hateful late movie?

Yeah, I admit, there's stuff in that movie that's violent and totally inappropriate. But we have different films that sort of create new genres or outperform and outdo people. We have Star Wars posters because that was something that transformed movies in terms of sci-fi and graphics.

Stuff with cult following.

Technology, yeah. We've got a hateful late because if you think about hateful late, it's a story, Quentin Tarantino does a story where it's a single cast of characters, not a very large cast of characters in one location, in one spot.

It's just one location. There's no crazy technology involved in the film in terms of, there's no lasers and spaceships and there's no graphics that are crazy. It's just a story with a small cast in a cabin in the middle of a snowstorm and this story takes place over hours.

It's a very, very long film. It's just one of those examples. You don't need to have the crazy technology to create a story that captures people and they can sit there and watch it and be glued to it for hours.

It's like the old, we talked about this before, like Twilight Zone. Twilight Zone. I could sit and watch episodes of the old black and white Twilight Zone over and over and over again and there's nothing to them.

Yeah, they're very simple.

Very simple. It's just small cast characters. There's not a lot of money invested in even the sets and everything else. One of the really good ones, the whole entire episode takes place inside of a cylinder.

They're like a clown, a ballerina, and it turns out they're toys at the end. They don't know why they're in there. They think they're in hell.

That's a great episode.

They're toys in a toy store in a little bucket. But there's nothing to it at all. It's just a good story and it keeps you in it and you don't need to be shocked and see sex and flesh and all that stuff.

It's just, you know. So anyway, we have movie posters to inspire our staff, our team, to create amazing things and outdo the world.

Do you have something you want to say to that?

I was just, the comments. One, I was going to say, someone's going to take us doing the metal sign now and say, see they're doing hand signals to the devil.

Do you not see a joke?

And then old Seamus in here is shaming us because there's cursing in that film and he doesn't find that epic.

Yeah, yeah. No, I don't approve of it. I don't approve of it.

There's other things.

I don't approve of it. The point is, here's what the world is made, I'm not sure why. Christians, Christians have got to be better thinkers, okay? You got to be more consistent in your thinking. If you took that we love and approve of all of these unbelieving things because we have these posters up, then you weren't listening to a thing that I said.

And you got to be better at thinking than as a Christian because what I said was, and I think most everyone heard me, is that here is the stuff that the world is making in terms of creating genres and outdoing the past stuff and we need to be the ones that are creating better content than that.

We need to outperform the world. And so it's sort of saying, hey, look what they're doing. Let's do something better. It is possible to outdo the past. And so that's what that was about. Where was I now?

I lost.

I don't know. There's a lot of stuff coming up in the chat. I'm trying to hold on to for later because it's good when we get to the post-multi-anime discussion.

The New York Times article, and she was describing the interior of the office.

Yes, okay. So there you go. Okay, she then says, tubs of four Patriot emergency food survival kits were stacked nearby. Now she asked me about those and I told her. I said, we're a church. This is our studio space, but it's also our church offices.

And so a lot of churches have food pantries to take care of people who are hungry. And so this is our space that we have. We rent a space from a church to do worship. So this is our space. So we have food.

We have food for families that are hungry. We have food to make sure that if someone's in a tough spot, we have food for caring for families in need. We have food for survival because that's what churches do.

They make sure they're prepared to care for their people. And so that's what that's for. I'm not sure why she mentioned this though. Food survival kits were stacked nearby with water, protein powders, and chia seeds.

There's like three canisters of protein powders right there because we do like smoothies. Like we do juices. We got one little canister of chia seeds there because that goes into a protein shake.

Is there something wrong with chia seeds?

I don't know. That's why I didn't understand.

Maybe she's just describing.

She was just setting the scene.

Maybe she's just describing.

She's just setting the scene.

A metal room with chia seeds.

I mean this is the New York Times. You have to really put us there.

Yeah.

So maybe she just wants to let everyone get a feel for what it's like to walk inside.

Yeah.

Mr. Durbin, 44, has five children as well as three grandchildren and five black belts. Before he was a pastor and online activist, he was a national karate champion who played Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat, the live tour.

He married his wife when he was 20, and she was 18 and pregnant with their first child, and he devoted his life to Jesus after he nearly overdosed on ecstasy, he said. He often tells the story of how they adopted their youngest son after the boy's birth mother sought an abortion when doctors wrongly expected him to be born with spina bifida.

Just to touch on that for just a quick moment, official diagnoses, many ultrasounds. You can see the hole in his spine. We have all that, the hole in his spine. Very serious diagnosis because they actually saw some problems too with his brain because it was all connected.

Spina bifida creates that, and he was on the better end of the worst side of spina bifida. So they're saying he could be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He may have problems with his brain, all that stuff.

And so we have all that stuff, official diagnosis. You see the spine open, all that they expected.

So the doctors weren't incorrect in there.

No, and that's why they were so shocked. The doctors were coming in, and they just kept coming back in and talking to each other like we've never seen this before. And they were referring to the fact that we've got the ultrasounds.

You can see it. It's right there, brightest day. Big old black hole in his spine. You can see in the ultrasound. So it wasn't a misdiagnosis, just so everyone knows that. You could see it with your own eyes.

He came out whole because God healed him. So the article itself tries to explain, well, I'll tell you its title. It says, Inside the Extreme Effort to Punish Women for Abortion. Inside the Extreme Effort to Punish Women for Abortion.

Now, I realize that that's sort of a clickbaity title. It's sort of a shocking title. The Extreme Effort to Punish Women for Abortion. It only seems extreme, however, today, after 50 years of Roe versus Wade.

Because before 1973, abortion was a criminal act in many, many places. As a matter of fact, any nation that was affected by the gospel, where Christians were in their communities, of course resisted the issue of abortion and mothers killing their child in a womb.

So Inside the Extreme Effort, again, only extreme because of the cultural context we find ourselves in now, to punish women for abortion, I would just say to make abortion a crime. I think that's a better way to put it, because anybody involved should have to face justice for killing a child in the womb.

Not just women. We wouldn't want anybody involved in killing a human. So, yeah. You guys can fill in here with your thoughts towards the article. But it's at the New York Times. I think that Elizabeth Diaz did as great of a job as she could as a journalist working for the New York Times.

It's the New York Times. They don't share a Christian worldview. And so there were moments where she said things like, you know, the pastors of Apologia Church, all men. It's almost like, from a Christian perspective, that's stuttering.

Well, there's some other, I mean, basically she stepped into our world, which was very weird for her. But because we live in it, it wasn't weird for us. And it's really, and even historically, our position hasn't ever been weird.

But, yeah. Again, since the last 50 years, maybe.

Yeah, so it just.

And an SPC, apparently.

I just thought that, it reminded me of, what was that one? The Vice one.

Hate Your Neighbor.

Yeah, Hate That Neighbor. But, yeah, it just kind of, there seems to be a pattern every time someone tries to tell the story of what we do here. And, yeah, it's like this, it's like they're looking into a weird Amish community that they can't possibly understand.

But obviously, we live our lives every day, so.

We're just old school, guys.

All men.

Babies and wagons.

I would say, to anybody who read this article, say who's a leftist or pro-abort, or holds that perspective and holds that worldview, if you were celebrating the 4th of July this Monday, you were celebrating it on the shoulders of people who were basically like us.

Believed like us. Theologically, pretty much across the board. And so, if you, I like how Doug says it, if you're thankful for the 4th of July and Independence Day, go hug a Calvinist. Because that's where it came from.

From those old Huguenots and Puritans and those old Scottish Covenanters, the descendants of those Covenanters. So, we look weird today, perhaps, to New York Times, but you have a New York Times because of the Christian worldview.

I think I even mentioned that to Elizabeth, that the New York Times was used as the major piece, platform, when the pastors and doctors were fighting against the abortifacient industry that was rising up after the Civil War.

They used the New York Times as their pro-life platform, and the New York Times was distributing their stuff, and they put down the abortifacient industry, thanks to the New York Times.

I think she forgot to include that.

Yeah, so the New York Times has come a long way.

I think the New York Times is forgetting to include it.

The New York Times used to be for Christian propaganda. I guess you could say. But one more thing here, I wanted to mention this. It says, at a time when church attendance is often shrinking, Apologia Church had so many families on a recent Sunday, about a month before the Supreme Court decision, that it ran out of bulletins.

That's just more irresponsibility on our part.

That's really what it was.

We should have just printed more. Fathers wheeled in children in wagons, and mothers held babies while leading other small children by the hand. A man at the door greeted them in a black shirt that read, Jesus is Lord, pass the ammo.

When I read that, I was like, that's fantastic. That's actually a really good picture of Apologia Church on a Sunday. And that was Mike.

That was definitely Mike.

So good job, Mike.

Although some people might read that and be like, what a bunch of rednecks.

Mike ain't no redneck.

Mike is definitely not a redneck.

Muscular.