Bronze Age Masculinity w/Andrew Sandlin

In Matthew 16, Jesus chastised the Pharisees who could interpret the appearance of the sky but failed to interpret the signs of the time in which they lived.

Who are the Pharisees of our day? This strong hold of sort of whiteness and white identity and pristineness is really part of what keeps us from making progress.

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We're being delusional. Delusional? Delusional is 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.

Is he hung up on me? 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.

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

When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child.

When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. That is 1 Corinthians 13 11.

I love that verse. I've been talking a lot about that recently. There's a reason why I brought it up today. We'll get into that here in a minute.

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Almost there. What have we got, a week and a half? Not even. Exciting.

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Just how to be most effective. In the states that God has given us to work in. Whether we're doing it or helping other people do it.

Exactly. We're just going to keep remaining faithful. Trucking ahead and trusting the Lord.

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I should do that. Anyways, we got those out of the way. Welcome everyone.

Today we have one of my favorite people in the world. I mean that. Andrew Sandlin.

What's up brother? Good to be on my friends. Appreciate you guys at Apologia.

It's a great blessing to my heart and to thousands of others. Appreciate that brother. Appreciate that.

What are you up to these days? Well, Center for Culture Leadership the foundation

I lead is going into its 25th year. We just had our 24th annual symposium.

Sort of like a small conference we have every year. It's just outstanding.

I always have it in the lovely conservative Bible believing orthodox city of San Francisco. Our view is let's go right into the belly of the beast.

Exactly. That place needs Christ, right? They need the gospel. They need it desperately. Anyway, it was outstanding.

Thanks for asking. It's been a fun couple of months, huh? Well, some of us as we'll get into for better or worse been pushed into the vanguard of protecting against and arguing against some severely distorted and false teachings that have arisen not out in the world at large necessarily but in the reform camp.

I guess that's what we're going to talk about today. I'm excited to get into this because I'd love to hear Andrew's thoughts.

Obviously we read the article that we're going to be talking about today. It is

The New Right -Wing Paganism Bronze Age Pagan Masculinity. I can't wait.

I have questions. I know because that's been kind of an observer of this and we've been having to fill them in.

Being involved in the background has been challenging. Let me ask you this, Andrew. How long have you been in full -time ministry?

You know what? I believe, let's see. Well, 42 years.

Where does this controversy rank in like as far as difficulty in 42 years of ministry?

Well, I wouldn't say it's right at the top but it's fairly high.

I will say this, of all controversies in which I have been involved involving not only professing

Christians but also unbelievers, I don't believe I have ever encountered those on the other side of the controversy that have been any more acerbic and cruel and in some cases downright vile than this one.

Not even so -called progressives and liberals. It really is stunning and staggering to me.

Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, it's been so stressful on you. You lost 70 pounds. Yeah, as we'll talk about, they're not really into fat shaming and they can shame me for my looks from now on I guess and not my weight.

Well, like I said earlier, they'd be just slandering you if they were going after your looks. Okay, thanks.

I'll tell my wife that. She'll appreciate it. Alright, so Yeah, let's get into this.

Zach is chomping at the bit. One thing I love about Andrew and I've said this to him, Andrew is incredibly scholarly at times and this article was scholarly.

Scholarly kicking off. When you sent it over and I started reading it I was like, wow.

You've done your work on this conversation. This is a conversation that was new to me and so it's been really helpful.

But what I also love about you is you can take something super scholarly and make it digestible for dum -dums like me.

So let's do that just to give a brief understanding of the article.

Dumb that down for people. What is this bronze age masculinity that you're addressing? Yeah, why'd you write it?

So yeah, this is a book actually a cult classic written I think in 2017 or 18 written anonymously.

The author calls himself Bronze Age Pervert. Yeah, that's what he actually calls himself.

So he's an anon. Exactly, he's an anon. And other things

I could say. Anyway, we're pretty sure we know who the author is. Not 100%, but probably a young Polish scholar.

And he's essentially writing against a lot of the very things that we as Bible -believing

Christians would also be against. Homosexuality and gay marriage and transgenderism and radical feminism and all of these things that Bible -believing people would necessarily oppose.

However, his answer to this problem is not to restore the biblical faith not orthodox

Bible -believing Christianity but rather ancient paganism. And that's explicitly.

And that's just not tongue -in -cheek. He lists reasons in the book why. The book has been remarkably influential.

It's not technically a bestseller, but it is a big seller. A lot of the younger male interns working and staff working in the

Trump White House and the first administration read it. A lot of the younger folks of the so -called

New Right have read it and been influenced by it. And one reason

I wrote the article, guys, and it is online and available to read, just type my name in and the title

Bronze Age Mindset and so on, is that I noticed that a number of younger reformed guys, and not a few, but a lot, were using the same arguments and the same language as he was using.

And it occurred to me that while most of them had not read the book and certainly would not agree with the paganism, nonetheless were being influenced by his way of thinking.

And so that's why I wrote the article. And essentially I'm trying to show people how this has influenced a lot of younger people, understandably, because the book is very pro -masculinity, but it's very pro -masculinity in a pagan way.

You mustn't get the idea that Christianity is the only faith that stresses masculinity.

And it certainly does. There are non -Christian faiths. Islam, for example, stresses masculinity.

And ancient paganism. So that's kind of why I wrote the book. The article, rather.

Excellent. And we did link the article in the description. It's on EzraInstitute .com So tell us what is kind of the premise of this

Bronze Age masculinity then? So his basic premise is that the best way to combat all of this stuff that I talked about, the homosexuality and the gayness, and he's one of the first guys, by the way, to use the term gay not so much descriptively.

It's just to make fun of anybody who I'm not talking about that. In the modern world, the way to handle this is, and please read the, well,

I'm not recommending you read the book, but if you read it you'll see that what I'm saying is true. The solution to this problem is to raise up a group of young men who essentially live off sun and steel.

That's his language. By sun he means they're out in the sun a lot and they take most of their clothes off and get very bronzed.

And steel means of course weight lifting. And this becomes a central theme in their life.

And in this way they become and there's the key things guys, beautiful and strong, beautiful and strong. Beautiful, strong, muscular young men that other people look up to and they are sort of the vanguard that is the leader of society.

And their view toward women is women are beautiful young women are basically a distraction.

And if necessary, you have sex with them to procreate, but you don't spend too much time on them because they'll distract you from your goal, which is basically leading the world.

Conquest. And you lead the world by, what's that? Conquest. Conquest, yes. It's a conquest.

It really is a perversion of the biblical, the Christian notion of our view is conquest by godly obedience and dominion by the preaching of the gospel and prayer and the law of godliness is actually physical conquest.

They are utopian. They believe that one day there will be a return of these gorgeous young men who sort of join together.

They have their own conclave and they live all of them live together. I must say, though he doesn't say it, there's almost a hint of homoeroticism in some of this.

And if you look at his again, don't look at it, but if you look at his Twitter feed, it's thousands upon thousands of followers and they all love to send themselves pictures.

Pictures taking their clothes off and how buff they are and so on. And this is, by the way, a pagan idea.

Some of you have seen a lot of the pagan busts and sculptures of the male body.

Anatomically correct with the male organ and sometimes erect and so on. I won't go into detail but that is definitely a pagan idea.

The world should be run by these young pagans. And of course his view too is that as people get older, that these old men basically keep young men down and old men must be gotten out of the way physically if necessary so that the youth can run the world.

He uses advanced terms like you have seen a global homo and the genocracy world being run by women.

This has an immediate instantaneous appeal to young men who are of course put down in modern culture.

He's also very pro -white and it's very much the white young men and the white pagan culture has been essentially eradicated or their attempts to eradicate it and therefore there's the racist element.

There's also the antisemitic element of the Jews. Now he doesn't explain what happens when these great, beautiful, bronze, muscular young men grow older.

I guess they just are put out. The younger men then put them out. But another point that I think,

I'm not sure if I say this in the article guys but it's very clear. He tells these young men when you're arguing against these older men or not just men,

I guess women too, don't really argue with them logically but mock them. The important thing is using media to mock them.

We see that of course in a lot of their memes and we joke a little bit about their red laser eyes and the truth.

But that's straight out of bronze age mindset. They're not to be argued with they're to be mocked.

Mock them for their bad looks or mock them for their age or mock them for their weight or mock them for the fact that they're slower and can't get around as well when you of course are so muscular and quick and fast and strong.

That's kind of what, and a lot of this stuff has I've noticed and I think many of us that look at it objectively will acknowledge that's what's happened to a lot of younger men.

That's why I wrote the article and that's kind of what his book's all about. There's much more stuff as you guys know if you've read the article.

Nihilism, they follow Nietzsche the existentialist philosopher. Some of that can get technical but that's kind of the basis of it.

I have a lot to say so go ahead. I want to be balanced in this here. So one of the things that you point out at the beginning is in contrast to the leftist ideology of the egalitarian feminist mindset.

There seems to be with the introduction of this philosophy kind of a counter resurgence on the other side.

So you have a reaction going the other way now. And I see what you're saying. Anyone I think who's been on social media in particular the

X platform over the course of the last several months now sees this type of language being used.

Sees the types of emphases that you are pointing out. The emphasis on cultivation of physical strength.

The emphasis on using political power to destroy the left.

Once we gain enough power, political power, we can use that to crush our enemies.

There's an emphasis on waking up to all of the atrocities all around us.

Things that we didn't quite see before but now we see now that we've been lied to our whole lives. And so now we're throwing off those past restraints because the elites and so on don't want us to be free.

They don't want us to take care of ourselves. They don't want us to get healthy. So I see from the verbiage that's been used on social media, everything that you're talking about.

I think my first question is this. What indicates to you that these things have been imbibed by the reformed community?

Whether Baptist, Presbyterian. Because I see men talking about wanting to get strong so that they can be here a long time to take care of their families, for example.

So that they can serve their churches and serve their people and they want to get a baseline of established nutrition so that they can start eating better and being stronger.

And they want to be more involved in their communities and they want to have a strong Christian presence and build things and do media and politics and all this thing.

That's what I see. Which I don't think are inherently bad things. So what in your mind has convinced you that they are imbibing this kind of neo -pagan resurgence that is right -wing, if you will?

Yeah, good question. The first thing is the very suspicious timing.

So Luke asked earlier, I've been in the ministry for 42 years and the idea of needing young men to be strong, godly young men to press the faith, the kingdom, the gospel.

It's not a new thing. But it is odd that only in the last few years, since I would say basically about 2015, 16, 17, 18, at least

I have heard this, it's come about remarkably. So correlation is not causation.

But when they're using the same language, that's sort of, to me, indicative that there is at least an indirect

Bronze Age influence. There's the other problem of, so Zach you mentioned rightly, guys, and this is nothing wrong with,

I want to be strong, I want to be physically fit so that I can keep my family, advance the kingdom, live a long time.

I might add, though, that when Jesus was training His disciples, when

Paul was speaking to Timothy and to Titus and others, though they would not certainly have disagreed with that, this did not seem to be a point of emphasis.

This certainly was not a point of emphasis in Jesus' teaching. It was not a point of emphasis in Paul or John. They acknowledged bodily exercise does profit.

Not being a couch potato, but this would, but profit a little bit. Godliness is the great gain.

So it seems to me that it's highly suspicious that this would have come around at the same time, particularly when a lot of that same language is used.

So to me, and if you've read the book, I think you will, and again,

I'm not recommending anybody read the book, but if you do, you'll say, my, my. And then another angle here, another reason,

Zach, is just the utter mockery. I've just been stunned by the utter mockery.

This kind of derogatory speaking of elders and so on and so forth. That's the nicest one they've used, nicest term.

It is. It is, and I saw, I was just,

I guess not surprised, but some of you guys saw just a vicious and vile caricature of physical image, caricature of Dr.

White and Douglas Wilson and some others that it's just beneath what any

Christian would do. Now here's the thing, guys. I can understand, and by the way, this Bronze Age mindset has really influenced a lot of non -believing or non -Christian conservatives.

So certainly I'm not saying that there is a massive number of young Christian guys and a small number of others.

No, the number of non -Christians who follow this I'm sure is much greater than the Christians. I guess

I could understand it because modern pagans will act like pagans, won't they? Doesn't justify it. It's still evil.

It's still sin. But when you have sort of this Christian veneer over this stuff or a synthesis trying to join these two things.

That's what I was going to ask about. And by the way, you may have noticed how this coincides very well with the revival of natural law.

I was just going to ask you about that. You're smart. Genius loves company, Zach. That's where I was going.

There seems to be a lot of emphasis on the natural law.

Obviously they wouldn't come right out and say many people trumpeting this.

Let's just be real. A lot of quotations by Aristotle are flying around. And Greek thinkers.

Where does this come from? And why is this being emphasized right now? This emphasis on natural law?

You get a cue from these guys by the fact that when I push back like I did a few minutes ago,

Zach, and say, what about Jesus, Paul? And they'll say, well, they did say bodily exercise prophets and we're not

Gnostics and they're right about that. The body is important, the temple of the Holy Spirit, and we all agree on that.

But this is not a major emphasis of the Bible. It's not that the

Bible is unconcerned about the body and physical things. That's a false Gnostic. We're not Gnostics. But the

Bible also doesn't teach that there should be this constant emphasis on being in shape.

A consistent emphasis on if you're too fat, you can't be in the ministry or something.

Or we won't listen to you. Or we won't listen to you because you're overweight. I think we need to make, by the way, a distinction there.

And I think Dr. White, I saw one of his statements in the Dividing Line. He did a great job on this. Gluttony is a sin and a serious sin that must be dealt with.

Obesity is not a sin. Show me in the Bible where obesity, I know of men, and Dr.

White pointed this out because of some heart problems. He has to be very careful. He can't do the exercise. He's a little heavier now than he was before.

He can't ride the bike as much as he used to before. Well, there are physical problems and there are genetic problems that cause some people to weigh more than others.

Can that be an excuse for people being overweight? Certainly. Of course it can be.

But be very careful. I think you and I know. In fact, I'm thinking of some right now. I know of some gluttons that are real thin.

It's just the way their body is. So there's no big emphasis in the Bible on this.

You look at the qualifications. Let's look in Titus and Timothy for the qualifications. Is there a weight qualification?

No. I'm not saying this is unimportant, but this is not a central feature of the faith.

I don't want to interrupt your thought, but what is the root issue there of gluttony?

It's self -control. That's what I was just thinking. So you look at the qualification for elders and deacons to be self -controlled, and that's the issue.

That's why, like you just said, a skinny person can be a glutton because they have lack of self -control. Continue. Yeah, that's right.

Now the irony of this self -control is a lot of these young guys are quite good at pointing out self -control of some who somewhere in the ministry that can't control their eating the way they should.

But these young guys seem to really have difficulty controlling their tongues. And fingers. And their fingers on the keyboard.

So there is a big element of hypocrisy here.

And the other thing, and I think Dr. Wye pointed this out,

I'm going to predict not because I'm a great prophet, that when these guys are in their 50s and 60s, they will not hold precisely the same position on this.

I was thinking that same thing this morning. That they do today. So the mockery, and we have not even gotten into, and though the issue of anti -Semitism and racism is not logically connected, for some reason it does seem to be connected.

A lot of the same guys that have this obsession with masculinity often are

I don't know how to say it, they're either racists or they're very tolerant of and coddling of racists and anti -Semites.

Now, I want to acknowledge that the left accuses anybody who believes in Christianity or Christian culture as being a racist.

Well, you guys, you guys at CCL, you believe in Christian culture, and it was white

Christian culture so you're obviously racist. Well, that's a lie. That's just a libelous lie.

It's just false. But the fact is, yes, there are people today talking about dominion over theonomic post -millennialists, and guess what?

They're also racist. That is true, and they have demonstrated that, and the language they've used of our

Black brothers and sisters in the faith, the idea that their view of nature is that, you know, we should be closer to those of us of our own skin color than believers who have dark skin,

Black, African -American, Asian, or Hispanic, whatever. That's just false. Yes, in fact, my good friend,

Yuri Brito, and one of them, and I won't even mention, you guys know, the most prominent racist in anti -Semitic, quote, reformed ministry now, he showed me,

I saw him at our symposium, he showed me, they called him a demon. Yuri Brito is a demon. That's the kind of language that is being used, telling him to go back to Brazil, and that's just one example.

But I would say, guys, this is dangerous stuff. So they often talk about red -pilling, and if you'll think about it, and whenever I criticized that, people were really strongly pushed back.

But we all oppose, or at least I hope we all oppose, wokeness. What is wokeness? Why is it called woke? Well, originally it goes back to the

African -American community, and how a number of them became leftist, because we kind of woke up one day to the fact that we're oppressed.

We're systemically oppressed in this white society, because the whites basically control everything, and yeah, we're not physically slaves, but we're kind of slaves, because we're held down by this systemic white oppression.

Yeah, that's a false idea. But the right -wing version of this, of course, is red -pilling, which comes, of course, from the movie

Matrix, and Neo, and so on. I won't go into that, but we took the red pill. Now, we're awoke to this thing that these leftists have controlled culture, and the women have controlled culture, and the old fat guys have controlled culture.

Well, it's basically sort of the right -wing version of wokeness, and that's why some people are correct, I believe, to call a lot of it, at least, right -wing wokeness, this sort of red -pilling.

What's the Biblical answer? Well, we do have, if we're going to even use the language, red -pilling or wokeness, genuine in the

Christian faith. It's called regeneration. We're awakened from our spiritual death by the

Spirit of God that awakens us to read and understand God, and the Word of God, and the truth of the Gospel.

But it has nothing to do with this racism, and this sort of pagan notion on the right, or this sort of systemic racism and nonsense on the left.

A pox on both their houses. Yeah, and I'm having to block people in the chat because of what we're talking about.

They're coming here just mocking. It's just, take a hike. I have a lot to say, so I don't want to...

One more thing. Yeah, I don't want you to... I'll turn you loose, but by... I keep coming back to this natural law. It seems like there is an emphasis, in particular regards to our political theory and our development of our political engagement and ethics to emphasize this, perhaps over and against Scripture is the ultimate foundation for the authority that a

Christian wields. You know, we go before civil magistrates all the time in regards to protecting the unborn, and what we're giving magistrates is the

Word of God, and we're calling them to repent in terms of obeying that law. Just like if we go out on the streets and we're trying to reach unbelievers with evangelism, you mentioned regeneration, right?

God's Spirit opening the eyes, giving new sight, giving a new heart, and that happens through the proclamation of the

Word and the Gospel. And so, it seems like there is a tendency to de -emphasize the role of the

Word of God and the primacy of the Word of God and the potency of the proclamation of the truth in terms of political engagement in favor of these natural law theories.

And by natural law, we wouldn't mean, of course, God's Word speaking at creation, right?

That Scripture distinguishes. We have the inscripturated Word of God in the pages of Revelation, Divine Revelation, and then we have

God's Word spoken, and creation is an instantiation of that Word. So we would distinguish between those two, but I do see that there is sort of a tendency now to where—I wouldn't accuse any

Reformed brothers of saying Scripture is not sufficient. I know they would affirm that with all of their hearts, but practically outworking this and seeing the way that the political realm is being engaged, it does concern me a bit.

Yeah, and I've got a theory about that, and I'm not speaking of natural law scholars. Roman Catholics are strong in a natural law.

I disagree with them strongly on this point, but I'm not saying they're in this category. In this category,

I'm referring to some whom, when they bring up these various ideas, racist ideas and these other pagan ideas,

I'll point to the Scriptures. Where did Paul or Jesus say that? And they will say, well, we need to go by nature also.

Now, I think the reason that they say that, Zach, quite honestly, is they can't find their unique views in the

Bible, and therefore they have to retreat to some other authority, which they call nature. Now, let's distinguish between creation and nature.

Nature, as it's understood today, as they often use the term, is a human construction. It's not actually natural revelation.

It's a human construction of how they, with their depraved minds, are able to warp what they say is in nature.

Let us remember that Adolf Hitler believed in natural law. He did. He believed that nature will teach you that the

Aryan race is superior to Slavic races and to those of darker skin, and therefore we should let help nature take its course in getting rid of them.

So, while most of them, of course, Mike, our opponents on this point would certainly abhor that, they will find in nature a constructive idea of reality that will support their views when the

Bible won't. There's another dualistic element here, and Stephen Wolf will sort of acknowledge this.

He will say, yes, the Bible's the authoritative, sufficient Word of God. We need it in the Church. We need it for the

Gospel and so on. But in the quote, natural realm, in the realm of politics, then we need nature.

We need Aristotle, and we need Aquinas, and so on. Why? Because you can't get in politics what they want to get in politics by appealing to the

Bible as your final authority. And that's why he will say we don't want theonomy. It is.

It is. And you'll have some of them today. This is the irony. We believe in natural law theonomy.

Well, that's a joke. Now, deny theonomy if you want to. That's fine. There have always been those who have, and have made arguments against it.

But there's no such thing as natural law theonomy. Read what well, the main author of the book, of course, was

Greg Bonson, Theonomy and Christian Ethics. What is his point? That natural law, so -called natural theology, is not sufficient.

It is the Bible that is sufficient for everything, all of life. Not that creation doesn't have a testimony, a glorious testimony.

Not that there isn't evidence. Cornelius Van Till said there is nothing but evidence. Everywhere we look, there's evidence.

The problem isn't in creation. The problem is in man's distortion of his interpretation.

And that's why we always need the Word of God. So that's why I think there is, in many ways, that's why there is a revival of the natural theology and natural law, because it can be twisted and distorted in a way the

Bible can't. Can the Bible be distorted? Sure. We read about people, warnings in the Bible not to distort it.

But it's much easier to distort nature because it's not propositional revelation. You mentioned the

Christian vitalism in your article, too. Yes. Yes. So this, correct me if I'm wrong here, this is what you're referring to when you talk about an apparent syncretism between the

Biblical faith and pagan worldviews, correct? Yes, one of the things, yes. What this looks like as expressed.

There seems to be a perennial temptation for Christian thought to merge with Greek thought.

I mean, you just pointed out dualism as one of the manifestations of it. But it's interesting that, again,

I'm trying to be careful here, because I don't want to accuse good Reformed brothers of just imbibing this, and they would accuse us of saying, well, you're saying we don't believe the

Bible is the Word of God anymore, and that it's this all -sufficient standard. That's not what I'm saying. But what you're articulating here, and the things that you have been seeing for months now, is that there seems to be syncretistic underpinnings going on in the way that even

Christians think through engagement in the political sphere, the way that we apply the

Bible and the Christian faith in all of life, and an intersection between what we hold to be

Biblical Christianity and Greek orthodoxy.

I mean, Greek thinkers. There seems to be this temptation that we have to syncretize the faith, to kind of mix in and create a new version.

I know that's what, you know, Aquinas and other thinkers were trying to do. They were trying to syncretize

Christianity with Greek thought. And so, it just seems like that that's coming around again, in a sense.

Oh, it is, and Zach, it's a perennial problem, as you know, and as some of your listeners will know. That started very early in the history of the

Church, not in the Bible itself, but in the Church Fathers. That's what the

Reformed apologist, Corleonius Vantill, argued against, and those also in the Reformed tradition, like Herman Dweyverd and various others.

They pointed out this danger of trying to synthesize Christian thought and pagan

Greek thought, particularly those of Aristotle. I mean, Aquinas did that. Did Aquinas say many great things?

He did. Did he say some bad things? He did. And so, this revival today is really a sad thing, and when one asks, why?

Why now? Well, for one thing, people like sort of academic and scholarly respectability, and the

Greeks in many cases are respected, whereas the Bible, well, the Bible is just God's Word and has offensive things in it.

But if we can show that this is philosophically coherent with the great Western Greek tradition.

But another reason is, I think I noted this earlier, if they're forced to rely only on the

Bible, they can't come to some of the conclusions they want to come to about physique and about race and about civil government.

Many of them don't want civil government based on the Word of God. Let's call it a biblionomy, not just a theonomy,

God's law, but a biblionomy, that is God's biblical law. They don't want that.

They also want a state that's stronger and more, quote, here we go, muscular. Well, the

Bible won't permit that. Biblical law actually applies very narrowly in politics.

It does apply in politics. But actually, if we had a state and civil government governed by the

Bible, there would actually be very few crimes, because most sins in the Bible are not crimes. But they don't want that.

They want a strong muscular state that can do lots of stuff. Well, you get that in Greek philosophy.

Aristotle, read just the first chapter, friends of Aristotle's politics. Immediately, the state is everything, and the family is subservient to the state, and we're born into the state.

The state does everything. He also defends slavery, by the way. It's remarkable. First chapter. Read the first two, three, four, five chapters.

I mean, what does nature teach us? Aristotle says, well, some are meant to be masters, and some are meant to be slaves.

Well, you won't get that out of the Bible. That's just a false teaching. But that, I think, is—and

I could talk more about that, Zach, but that's kind of what we have going on here. Okay, sorry.

I'm about to go preach here. Go for it. One, let me be very clear, because I'm getting some comments in the live chat here that are setting me off.

Let me be very clear. What we're talking about here is a cancer within the church, specifically within the

Reformed church. You want names? Start with Taylor. Start with the

Stone Choir. Start there. Go to X. Look them up. It won't take you very long to figure out where this is coming from.

We're being criticized for not giving names and saying it's not very masculine. You want some names? There's some names. Start there. Here's the problem.

Most of the people that are doing this are these anon dudes who are living behind a fake name.

Red face, blue eyes. No one knows who they are in real life. No one knows where they go to church. Nobody knows who their pastors are.

It's kind of hard to name those names and call those people out to mark them.

Again, start with Corey Mailer. Start with the Stone Choir. It won't take you very long to figure out who we're talking about.

Sorry. Thank you, Matt. I'm worked up here. I said in the chat, because we're being accused of being petty.

This isn't a real thing. We're giving it legs. I call bull crap on that. It's in our churches.

I said our churches. I said all of our churches. By all, I mean our who we're addressing.

Those who are seeing this as an issue and are addressing it. It's in our churches. We've discovered it in Apologia Church.

It's people under your care, too. This is a real thing. This isn't some make -believe thing that just exists out in the atmosphere.

It's a real thing. It's a cancer within reformed churches. I'll say that. I can say that confidently. It's in CRE churches.

There's proof of that. There's evidence of that. It's in solid churches. We're trying to address it because it's a cancer that has to be rooted out from our churches.

It has to be sent back to hell where it belongs because it's awful. The stuff we're seeing is despicable.

It's disgusting. It needs to be put to death. Hopefully, I'm clear in saying that because that's the truth.

Andrew's seen it. I've seen it. It's unbelievable. Anyways, deep breath.

All that to say, I've been keeping track of thoughts this whole time.

Your questions were great, so I wanted you to get them in. What's crazy, and Andrew, I think you can back this up, the majority of where we've seen this is in white males in their 30s.

Do you think that's accurate? Or younger. I've talked to multiple people over the last month or so who have just called me up and been like, what is going on?

I talk to so -and -so, they're saying this stuff, and I'm like, it's someone in their 30s.

It's a white dude in their 30s. It's crazy. There's this demographic of white males in their 30s or younger, and everything that Andrew's been saying, it's there.

It's all over X. You might say, well, it's just only on X. Again, no. It's in our churches.

We're discovering it. We're trying to root it out. That's where a lot of this is coming from.

It goes right in line with everything Andrew just got done saying, especially trying to get rid of the older, the boomers.

I used the verse at the beginning in 1 Corinthians because it's childish. The stuff

I'm seeing, I'm going to be 44 here in two months. The stuff I'm seeing, I'm like, what are we in junior high again?

Are we 14 years old calling people fat, making fun of the way they look?

Andrew mentioned it. I wanted to address this. I've seen this from reputable pastors, reformed pastors.

If they don't like the stuff that you're saying, they're like, that's gay. You're a 30 -some -year -old man.

You're not a 14 -year -old boy in junior high. Why are you calling stuff gay? This may get a shutdown on Twitter, or on YouTube, I mean, but it's crazy.

Why are you calling good people like Andrew Sandlin, who's been serving the

Lord for 42 years, the fruit of his ministry is incredible, and you're calling him gay because he's saying, hey, you shouldn't be saying stuff like that.

That's the kind of stuff we're talking about, and that's why it has to be rooted out. Again, you want names, start with Corey Miller, start with the

Stone Choir. You can get lost in that real quick, and you can see the vileness that we're talking about.

Again, we keep going back to social media, but the comment sections of these posts really do speak for themselves.

There's a ton of vitriol, there's a ton of awful things, and of course, the problem, as you pointed out, is that a lot of these people don't have names or identifiable pictures associated with who they are, so there isn't that level of accountability.

There's just kind of a mob tendency going on there, too. Did you have a question you wanted? Well, yeah, and it's funny.

I wore the shirt they forgot not to mob, because that's what's happening. I'm not even going to read these comments anymore, because they're irritating me to no end.

I've had to block probably 15, at least, friends that I've been friends with for a long time that have supported our ministry because of their behavior on social media.

It's people that I've known forever, that I've worked with, that I've partnered with for the gospel, and they're turning on us and saying some of the most awful things, slandering us, making false accusations with no evidence whatsoever.

We're like, what are you guys doing? Why are you behaving like this? It goes exactly back to what

Andrew's talking about. It's this idea that when you think someone's wrong and you disagree with them, you just start mocking them.

It's okay to slander. Guess what this is? This is called idolatry. We become what we worship.

I'm going to back up for a second, because there's something else I meant to say. We kind of touched on this at the beginning. There's a lot of people, the younger group that we're talking about, they're questioning a lot of things.

They realize, especially after COVID, they're literally saying we've been lied to about everything by everyone.

Instead of trying to seek truth objectively, they swing the pendulum all the way over to the other side to an extreme where everything is wrong.

Everyone's lied to us. Then they start questioning everything, including their pastors who've given them no reason to be questioned.

What happens then, there's this idol that's formed. This idol of truth.

Again, even if they've never read this Bronze Age masculinity book, that's the idol we're talking about.

It's this idea that we're talking about. Then what happens is everything in their lives start to bow down to this idol.

Verses about loving your neighbor, honoring your elders, forget it, because that doesn't bow down to their idol.

You start to see behavior from these guys who claim the name of Christ, guys that you've known and loved and worked with, all of a sudden throw out those verses in the

Bible because you're disagreeing with them and it doesn't jive with their idol. All of a sudden, they can start mocking you and slandering you and saying false things about you, denigrating your ministry, ad hominem attacks, who's on the list?

That's the kind of stuff we're dealing with. That's what needs to be addressed. It's a real problem. Guys, I'm sorry you think this is petty.

It's not. Nine months ago, I thought it was petty. That's the truth, because I wasn't seeing it.

Dr. White was saying, guys, you've got to see this stuff. I'm never on Twitter.

I hate Twitter. Twitter's a dumpster fire. I understand it's a good tool. I'm on there now.

I'm not advertising it. I'm on there only so I can read this stuff. I found you. You can find me if you try.

I don't want to participate in all that junk because it's exhausting. I don't have time for it.

I signed on just so I could read these threads because I'm getting sent all these links and I can never read them. Anyways, I'm getting way off track here.

I forgot where I was even going with that. Sorry, I'm all fired up. Go ahead. Jump in. You made yourself clear.

I think, Andrew, going back to your article, there is a reaction.

I wouldn't even disagree with a lot of the things that are being said. I think that we do live in a time that is disproportionately feminized in our society, in our culture.

There is a need for a resurgence of godly biblical masculinity. I think you point that out in your writing, and I know you've said that elsewhere.

One of the things that you said that I'd like you to fill out a little bit more to is, you said, masculinity is not a role to be recovered, but a natural existence.

I'd love to hear you talk a little bit more about that. A lot of the proponents of these types of views will point to those sex -specific commands in Scripture.

Act like a man, be strong, courageous, in order to recover that masculine piety because that's what they think is the need for the order of the day in order to win the culture back from this.

I don't disagree with that, but I want to know what you mean when you say that masculinity isn't a role to be recovered, but a natural existence.

What do you mean by that? That's a very important point there. It can be a little sophisticated, but I'm glad you asked about it.

The Bible is clear that one of the creational norms is male, the distinction between male and female.

The Bible is not an egalitarian book. Let me state that emphatically, and I state that emphatically in that article.

Here's a problem though. When you have an egalitarian culture, it's often thought the solution to that problem is to sort of figure out.

We need to figure out what masculinity is and sort of teach people to be that.

Well, that certainly is understandable. The difficulty is it's not something that in essence can be taught.

It's part of who a man is, what a male is. Jesus Himself said, from the beginning,

He created them, what? Male and female. They're two and only two. In saying that, what

I'm suggesting is that to the person who is regenerate, and even in some cases, because of God's common grace, to those who are not regenerate, if they are not feminized, if they have the right kind of dad and mom, guess what a boy is going to grow up to be?

He's going to basically grow up to be a good man. We know this is true even of some unbelievers.

It doesn't get them saved, but nonetheless, we would say that's a man's man. That's a godly man. He's responsible.

He works hard. He's chivalrous towards women. He does what he says he's going to do, and so on.

Of course, he's not as great as if he's God's man, and that happens only, of course, by regeneration and growth in grace.

That's the point that I'm making. But when you get to this point, and this is very important. I'm glad you brought that up.

When we have all this egalitarianism and all these guys saying, well, I don't know what it's like to be a man, you have people jump in and say, well, let me tell you, here's the role you need to play as a man.

You need to be pumping iron all the time, or you need to be sunning yourself, or you need to be really rough.

You need to have rougher language than other people. Now, I will acknowledge to you, that's not true.

A lot of people who do this would not go that far. They would say, you need to work hard, you need to pay your bills and all that, and that's fine.

What am I saying, though? That's just saying what the Bible says. Now, you pointed out sex -specific.

I'd like to point out that 95 -98 % of the Bible's commands are not sex -specific. What does the

Bible say? It says, act like a man, be a man. Isn't that true? But you know what? That's a general statement.

That's also true of godly women. No, it doesn't mean that they're supposed to be men. In some cases, they're supposed to be persevering and so on.

So the point is, if we follow the Word of God and we act according to what we are, what

God created us to be, then apart from sin, we'll be where we're supposed to be. But in an age that has become radically egalitarian, then masculinity becomes a role to play.

It's a costume that one puts on. And I've got to tell you, I think a lot of the stuff that goes on on Twitter and X and so on, what are these guys doing with all the laser -eyed memes and all of this?

It's a costume they're putting on. The AI -generated images of muscle -bound figures and so on.

This is how I become a man. You know what? Let me make a counter -proposal, guys. And I did put this in the article,

I'm almost certain. If I didn't, I should have. We have in our Bibles, right almost in the middle, one whole book of the

Bible that was written from a wise father. It was written to his son. Not his daughters, although there's a lot of truth to daughters there, too.

One book. You want to know how to be the right kind of godly man, young man? I would exhort you to read the

Book of Proverbs. But let me tell you something. I have not seen maybe you have seen it, guys, on Twitter or elsewhere.

I have not seen one of these guys that has argued against these things that we're saying. Not one of them

They'll speak about nature. They'll speak about masculinity. Not one of them said what we really need as young men to do is to return to the

Book of Proverbs, which tells us what it is to be a wise, godly young man. Not one of them

I've seen say that. But that is God's revelation. You want to be a godly man? Read the

Book of Proverbs. I had a very godly man, a godly father. Thoroughly godly. Not perfect.

Plenty of sins, but a godly man. He trained me when I was young. He said, son, there are 31 chapters in Proverbs.

God's arranged it. You read one a day. The proverb corresponding to the day of the week. Today is the, what, 12th,

I think? So I would read Proverbs 12. At least one time a year, guys, I go through an entire month, and I do that.

Because even though I'm an older man, I still need the wisdom of the Book of Proverbs. So I would recommend that, rather than playing the role of being masculine, master the

Book, and the rest of the Bible, too, of course. Master that. Why don't you find men that are true godly men?

Look at Jeff Durbin. Look at Luke. Look at Zach. Look at good, faithful pastors.

They might not be perfect. They may be slightly overweight, but if they're godly men, you follow them.

That's how to learn to be a man. To be a godly man. Thank you, brother. I appreciate that. I will add, because this was the other thought

I had. I mean, I've been talking a lot about biblical masculinity and what that looks like, how we define it.

That's why I started Yesterday Was Easy. If you guys have had a chance to check out any of those episodes, I think I have six out now.

That's what I'm addressing with that show. We need to be balanced in how we approach our masculinity.

What we're talking about is men who've become incredibly unbalanced, where they put the majority of time and effort into being bronze and being buff and all that.

I would argue that part of our responsibility ... I like to use Vody's four

Ps. We're to be a prophet, priest, provider, protector. I would argue that to be good protectors and providers for our family, we need to take care of our bodies.

If we die of a heart attack at age 45 because we weren't good stewards of the bodies that God gave us, that's not good.

That's not living up to one of the responsibilities God's given you as a man. You can't protect your family if you're not taking care of your body.

There's an aspect to that where it's appropriate, yes, but it should never overshadow ...

Proverbs does say the glory of a young man is a strength, for example. It does matter. It should never overshadow

Andrew's saying you should also be the priest and prophet of your own. You should lead your family in worship. You should lead your families in prayer.

You should be able to answer biblical questions for your family, for your kids. There's a balance there.

Anytime any of these become unbalanced, there's a problem. I would say that if you spend all of your time being priest and prophet, which are good and holy things, but you neglect some of the other things, and then you do become obese because you don't do anything physically, that's also unbalanced.

That's also a problem because you could be the most ... You could have the most amazing understanding of scripture ever, but not be able to get off your couch and not be able to ...

Not be there to take care of your family. That's not biblical masculinity. It's all about being balanced.

Anytime you become unbalanced in any of these, it's a problem. What we're talking about, though, is, again, this extreme unbalanced in the physical realm, in the physical physicalness of these duties and responsibilities.

I just want to throw that in there. I know, Andrew, you've got to go here. Any closing thoughts from you, brother?

By the way, we're going to do an after show. Andrew's got to go. Zach and I will stick around for the after show, so I'll let you give me closing thoughts.

Though it hasn't been mentioned, some of you know that a number of us hammered out a statement, some of the

Antioch Declaration dealing in detail with some of these things. Some of the guys here were ...

Luke was one of the initial signers. I was one of the initial signers. Dr. White and a number of other men, if you agree with this,

I would urge you to go ahead and sign that. Unfortunately, we've had a number of guys get on with putting on fake signatures, which

I guess in these days they do. Some of it's very mocking and disgusting, really. It's a good statement.

I hope that those of you young men will join us in this quest, not in being feminized.

That would be dead wrong, but in knowing what genuine manliness is, which you can get by reading the

Word of God and following examples of godly men. I would urge you to stand against all forms of genuine racism.

I know there are false racisms, but I mean genuine racism. I'd recommend one more thing.

In the last, I guess, 60 days during this controversy, I imagine I've read the book of Galatians 20 or 30 times.

That Antioch Declaration came from a statement in Galatians where Paul says,

I stood face to face against Peter because he basically was allowing his Jewish race to take a superiority over the

Gentiles that were on the same plane, biblically on the same plane as all of those trusted in Christ.

Anytime you see a racial element that is introduced into the faith and into the

Christian life, that is diabolical. I was thinking about this, guys, and then

I'll run. We know that Paul, in writing his letters, criticized a lot of churches for a lot of things, but I don't know of one of them that he brought under a curse as he did in Galatians 1.

Think about it. In Colossians, it's basically kind of Gnostics that he's attacking. In Thessalonians, it's heirs and eschatology and the coming of the

Lord. In Corinthians, it's sort of classical pride, pride in our rhetoric and all of our learning and all that stuff.

He soundly criticized all of those, but he didn't criticize any as strongly as he did the

Galatians and this heresy that we can create sort of external racial barriers that would separate us, that would separate brothers and sisters who are truly brothers and sisters in Christ on the basis of their race.

It's a powerful thing. I would urge everyone to read it. I think one of the most powerful things about what you're saying, too, the ability to distinguish whether or not there is true, genuine ethnic partiality being shown is the law of God.

You have to have the commandments of God in order to be able to tell whether it's happening or not. That's what we're seeing is in these guys that are acting this way, they're starting to abandon the law of God.

That's a valid point. It's evident. They're not saying as much. Anyways, thank you, brother.

I know you got to go. I did not plan on getting so worked up today, but I think it was needed.

We really appreciate you coming on, brother, for all your work on this and just filling out that article, too.

It was a blessing to me, just to be able to ask you questions about it. God blessings to both of you. You, too, brother.

I hope you have a Merry Christmas. I want to mention, of course, Reform Con. Up from the

Ashes is the theme. We'll be in Tucson at the end of April, 24th to 26th. You can get your tickets.

I believe the early bird may still be up. I'm not sure. We just talked about this. They may still be up.

Andrew's going to be there. Doug Wilson. Of course, Jeff. Joe Boot.

David Bonson. Toby Sumter. Some phenomenal speakers. It's funny, because Andrew's like, what should my theme be for my talk?

The way things are going, it's kind of up in the air, because we might have to be responding to some stuff very timely around that time.

Anyways, you can go down to reformcon .org and get your tickets. They make great Christmas presents as well.

Brother, thank you so much. I appreciate you a lot. I'm grateful for you. Take care.

Why do I hear talking? Is that me? Oh, that's me, sorry.

I don't know how I did that. I didn't even know I did that. Time to head on over to the after show.

Yes, we'll be on the after show here in a minute for all you All Accessors. And, of course, as always, thank you for all you

All Accessors for subscribing and making this happen. It just sounds funny when you say All Accessors. Thank you to the

All Accessors. If you haven't signed up for your Bonson U, speaking of David Bonson, you can get his dad's

Bonson U for freezies. Free 99 at apologyostudios .com

and we're grateful for you all. So we're actually going to have Lord Willing.

We'll probably have another show next week. Normally we wouldn't. Normally we would take the last two weeks of the year off for Christmas and stuff.

We were supposed to have a special guest on the day. I'm not going to mention who, just in case it falls through. But we were supposed to have a different guest on the day that had to cancel at the last minute.

So Lord Willing, he'll be back on next Thursday. It's tentatively rescheduled, so he'll be looking for that.

But if not, I'll just say Merry Christmas to you and Happy New Year in jail.

Go on home, they're waiting for you. I know it's a movie and I'm supposed to know it.

You should know it. I'll think of it. It's a wonderful life. Only the best

Christmas movie ever. Hard to argue. Merry Christmas everybody. We'll see you hopefully next week or N25 next year.