Owen Strachan Mess in Full Flower - Part 5

All right, we are back, we are back with part five. Part five, we're gonna launch into some

Greek, which I know excites everybody. I probably won't have too much to say because after all,

I went to public school, we didn't learn Greek in public school. And so, yeah, we'll listen to them and hear them out and maybe

I'll comment here or there, but I did wanna point you to the previous video and there's a comment here that I thought was worth pinning and worth talking about.

So if you go there, it's the very first comment, I pinned it. This is from Eric Eagle.

Eric says, I read Wolfe's book and I think it's a mischaracterization to say that he thinks it's the church's job to quote, take

Rome. Not at all, the church's role is always ministerial. However, Christians go into the culture and do things in all sorts of different spheres, that includes public and civil spheres.

It seems that the subtext under all this mainline evangelical hand -wringing over Christian nationalism is a terror that their holy doctrine of our democracy may in some way be jeopardized.

Yeah, I think so. This is a really good comment because if you remember Owen was saying, oh, there's guys out there like Stephen Wolfe and Andrew Torba and they think it's the church's job to take

Rome. And you see, this is the thing, you gotta understand, to Owen and to many other people,

Andrew Torba and Stephen Wolfe, they're like the boogeyman, right? And there's definitely an effort underway, and this has been going on for the last year or so, where they wanna isolate

Torba and Stephen Wolfe and say that brand of Christian nationalism, that's that far -right evil stuff.

And then of course, there's good brothers in between and stuff like that. That's why often if you notice, one of the ways that they'll criticize someone like me is they say,

I don't denounce Andrew Torba, I don't denounce Stephen Wolfe, I don't denounce their racism and antisemitism.

And that's like their linchpin. They think that they can isolate those guys and say, if you don't denounce them the way

I do, then you must be suspect as well. This is a very common tactic. I mean, we've seen this for a long time with the woke church.

Owen, he's pretty much woke himself. A lot of people are doing this that aren't woke too.

It's just a very manipulative kind of tactic. And so, a very good point. That's not

Stephen Wolfe's position. That's the thing about these videos, right? Like Owen, every time he speaks, he says like 10 things that are completely wrong, completely mischaracterized, completely made up.

And it's very difficult to address it all. So if I addressed it all, this would be like a 20 -part series instead of a 10 -part series.

So anyway, yeah, that's right, that's right. And he's right. I mean, Eric Eagle is right here that it's really all about a threat to what we're taught in elementary school about our democracy and how important it is and how it works and how it ought to work and what's bad, you know, things like that.

We learned some things in elementary school, from public school, that weren't right. But some people, like Owen, are unwilling or unable to get out of that mindset for just a moment.

And you don't have to agree with Christian nationals, but you have to understand that what we're saying is actually not crazy. It's only crazy if you assume what you learned in elementary school civics class.

Anyway, great comment, Eric Eagle. Keep them coming. Let's dive right in. You could run circles around me with the

Greek. I know enough Greek to be dangerous. Isn't that what they say? Systematic, man. Yeah. So looking at the

Great Commission, though, can I get you on record as saying that the New American Standard Committee was wrong when they said to disciple the nations?

No, I'm not clickbaiting. But, Owen, like, obviously, you got New American Standard says to disciple the nations.

The ESV says to disciple nations. And really, a lot of that's where, obviously, that's just a definite article.

But a lot of the language is gonna come into what are you discipling in the Great Commission? That's kind of what you're intimating at with baptizing

Sweden or taking Denmark out to coffee, those sort of things. So walk me into that a little bit, and maybe we can get some back and forth on that.

Yeah, so Owen's gonna launch into a point that says the technical Greek does not allow you to baptize nations.

Like, you're not gonna take Sweden and put them under the water or even sprinkle, if you're a Presbyterian.

You're not gonna do that to Sweden. And the Greek doesn't allow you to do that, to say that.

And, you know, so, okay. I mean, yeah, you're right. The Greek doesn't say to take

Sweden, which is this entity out here, outside of the people, and dip it underwater.

Congratulations, Owen. You are a true Greek scholar. My hat is off to you. Looking at my screen, which is why there's a white glow.

Are you sick of having issues with your webinars, wasting tons of time on troubleshooting with attendees?

The ESV says to disciple nations, and really a lot of that's where, you know, obviously that's just a definite article, but a lot of the language is gonna come into what are you discipling in the

Great Commission? You know, that's kind of what you're intimating at with baptizing Sweden or taking

Denmark out to coffee, so walk me into that a little bit, and maybe we can get some back and forth on that. Yeah, I'm looking at my screen, which is why.

I'll say this, too. I don't get it. I don't get anywhere with these videos. But Josh Howard, I really appreciate that.

You know, this is pretty savage, too. I mean, you know, I've been making fun of Owen for the Denmark, taking

Denmark to coffee, baptizing Sweden under the water and stuff, and Josh Howard just says it in a very straight, kind of like he takes it seriously, but in the taking of it seriously, it shows how ridiculous it is.

Like, I could make fun of it, and you could see how ridiculous it is, or you can do it Josh's way and take it very seriously with a serious face on, and you can see, it actually sounds almost more ridiculous when you say it like that.

So hats off to Josh Howard, for real. There's a white glow in my glasses, probably. But my friend

Jeff Moore, my colleague here at Grace Bible Theological Seminary, has made this point, and so I'm working off of his original research, extremely helpful research.

He's pointed out that in Matthew 28, 19 in the Greek, you're to disciple all the nations, panta ta ethne, and then you're to baptizing, you're baptizing them participle, baptizing them in the name of the

Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And pa ethne and autos, the them, all the nations and them are different reference.

So they're not, it's not the same group in question. So you do, you do go to all the nations, you do make disciples of the nations, but you don't baptize the nations.

It's a different reference in the Greek. It doesn't work, like it literally doesn't work. This is so, when

I first heard this, I just thought it was so weird. Weird.

Just very weird. Because it really does kind of reveal that he thinks, like he actually does think that what

Andrew Torba is talking about is you gotta go out there and you gotta go over Sweden and you take the water, like,

I don't know, maybe you would get some of those airplanes or those helicopters that they put at forest fires, and they just dump gallons of water on the forest fire.

It really does feel like he's saying, Torba's saying what we gotta do is get some of those airplanes to dump water all over Sweden so we can baptize

Sweden. Because he's making this weird distinction.

He's like, sure, sure, sure. You're discipling the nations, but you're not baptizing them.

And that is the key. It's a different Greek word there. You're discipling them, sure, sure, but you're not baptizing them.

You can't baptize Sweden, but you can disciple Sweden, I guess. So it almost, the way he says it there, it almost kind of refutes his own point about taking

Sweden to coffee, because I guess you kind of can take Sweden to coffee, because it says it right there in the Greek.

That's a different category, though, than the baptism. So you can't baptize Sweden, but you can disciple Sweden, which he just got done saying earlier in this conversation that the discipleship happens over coffee.

So you can take Sweden to lunch, or I'm sorry, to coffee, but you can't baptize Sweden. This is all a convoluted mess.

I mean, I don't believe any of this, but it's just very weird that he's like, oh,

I'm drawing from this very helpful research that says these are two different groups, so you can disciple. Didn't you just get done saying you can't disciple the nations?

Very strange, very strange. Yeah, I listened to, and that was the G3 pre -conference,

I think, that GBTS did. Yeah. Yeah, so I watched Jeff, who

I've got a lot of respect for Jeff and appreciate his work. And again, I'm not a Greek scholar, but just looking into the text there, so you've got mathetucete, which is, you know, our verb for disciple making or making disciples, and then pantataethne, all of that.

All the nations. There's two things that stuck out to me from that, and I bring these up, number one, if you've got pushback, you know,

I would welcome that, but also just to bring these two things up to set up kind of my take on it, would be number one, you've got what's called constructio ad sensum there in the text.

So that little phrase is where the phrase itself is considered, and the grammatical construct is not necessarily definitive.

So you could have, for example, neuter and masculines playing along with each other. The expositors

Greek New Testament kind of susses that out. You've got examples in Acts and in Romans and many other places. So number one,

I don't think that that prohibits it from meaning the way I would take it, which is to be to disciple the nations.

But then the second thing would be, I can't find any other case where you have a transitive verb, which, you know, mathetucete in this case, which is combined with the accusative of pas, which would be pantata ethne.

I can't find any such construction where you can take the meaning of out of or from.

So whenever you have that direct object receiving the action of the Greek verb there in the accusative, it always lends itself toward the direct object.

It's not referring to something coming out of or from it. That's kind of my technical spiel, but like, and again,

I welcome your pushback, but my thought behind that, and help me out here, Owen, is that it would be like, well,

I mean, just to put it bluntly, I would think if one was to say that it does not indicate the nations, but only those from the nations,

I think the burden of proof would be on proving why it can't mean both. Because I think most of us would agree that obviously if you're gonna disciple a nation in whatever regard, of course you're discipling people.

Like I can't preach. I'm just gonna stop him right there for a moment. I have nothing to say about the

Greek constructions and stuff like that. I know like first year Greek, right? So I know basic constructions, basic words, basic grammar, all that stuff.

So I have nothing to say about that. But just, just, just, just nations and people can't be separated.

Nations are made up of people, okay? There is no weird thing out here that's a nation.

It's just like, it's just an idea. The nation is just an idea. No, no, the nation is the people.

It's a people group with a shared experience, a shared culture, shared traditions, shared values, shared oftentimes ethnicity.

In fact, that's literally what the word means. And so it's just a strange thing where you're, okay, for this one,

I'm going to separate them to make this point in defense of my democracy, which

I believe in, which Peter never, the disciples never promoted, which the disciples never, I don't see the disciples in that.

Where democracy, is it even in Acts? I don't know. I don't know. You know, it's interesting that in the

Bible, when democracy is referenced, it's always negative.

It's always negative. It's always because they were doing something bad. They decided as a people group to get together and to do what the will of the people was bad.

Even in the New Testament, we see Pontius Pilate. We give the power to the people.

Pontius Pilate says democracy. This is a democracy. What should we do?

You want to have Barabbas or you want to have Jesus? And what are the, what was the will of the people?

I mean, that's not like a technical point, but it's just interesting that democracy becomes the thing we must defend as Christians, because after all, we're not theonomists.

But you don't see the apostles promoting theonomy in Acts. You also don't see them promoting democracy, and democracy is always negative in the

Bible. Interesting. How that works. Without actually having a person in front of me, right?

There's people involved with any of these things. Nations are made of people. Yes. But I would think the burden of proof then would be on the one who says the nations, which is the, in my estimation,

I think the clearest reading of the text. That's not in view in that case. But give me your pushback on that.

Yeah, those are interesting Greek observations. Sounds like worth chewing on.

I'm not persuaded of your case. I think it's a different referent.

And so it makes perfect sense. Objection. On what grounds?

Because it's totally devastating to my case. And there's a strong trajectory of Christians who would agree that there's no way in which we baptize nations.

I don't know how we baptize nations. I don't see the apostles in the book of Acts even trying to baptize nations.

They are baptizing disciples who profess faith. That's exclusively what they do.

So there's no call on the part of the apostles in their writings to get

Greece baptized or something like this. They're going to everyone they can. They're preaching the gospel to everyone they can based on the authority communicated to them through Christ, the authority given him by the

Father. And they are seeking to make disciples. They're seeing who God brings to them to make disciples.

And those disciples, you know, collating texts together per our conversation, those disciples who emerge are part of the holy nation.

That is the Christian nation we're trying to build. That is where the church has the keys to baptize.

It's not the state that has the keys to baptize or to do church discipline.

It's - Have you noticed that nobody has made the case, and I mean nobody, that the church has the keys to baptize.

I'm sorry, that the state has the keys to baptize or that the state has the keys for church discipline.

Have you noticed nobody has made that point? And it's so interesting that like none of what he says

I would have to disagree with and reject Christian nationalism. They're spreading the gospel.

They're seeing who God's bringing to them as disciples. They're baptizing them. None of that is wrong, but it fits right in to Christian nationalism.

It fits right in. So much of what

Owen says is totally irrelevant to the discussion. It's not - He thinks he's making these points against Christian nationalism, and he's just not.

I had a friend, Josh Waller, he's a minister in Tallahassee. He's one of the guys that's propagandizing me to move to Florida.

And he says, this is what he says. He says, in the last video, he says, I think Owen says the phrase,

I believe that the New Testament gospelizes everything because it makes it sound like we're not applying the gospel in Christian nationalism.

He said it a few times as him believing that in contrast to what we believe. And it's like, yeah, he's trying to pretend like we actually don't believe that the apostle's job was to make disciples and to see who

God brings and to use the gospel to do that. And we're just not gospelizing enough.

And it's like, no, no, no. Christian nationalism believes in all of that. We believe in all of that. That's not where the debate is.

He says, it's pretty annoying. I think it's supposed to sound profound, but after I began understanding pietism, it just sounds really lame.

Yeah, that's right. It does sound really lame. He's trying to contrast Christian nationalists and then his gospel -centered whatever.

And it's like, well, we believe all of that stuff too. And none of what you said excludes the reality of Christian nationalism or the push for Christian nationalism, none of it.

That's the holy nation, the new nation of the church. That's the holy nation. Right, I'm a part of it, but guess what?

I'm also an American. The gospel and my citizenship in the holy nation of the church does not, by definition, renounce my citizenship of the

United States. I'm still an American citizen. On my passport, when

I come back into the country and they ask me what my nationality is, I'm an American. It doesn't erase that.

Owen's an American, I'm an American. Josh Howard's an American. Yeah, we're all part of the holy nation, but we're also

Americans. Church that has been given the keys, that the mandate of government -

Do you see how he's trying to draw this contrast? The church has been given the keys. Yeah, we know.

And so does Stephen Wolf. And I'm assuming Andrew Torba knows that as well. I mean, I haven't talked to him and he's written less about this stuff, but I'm assuming he believes that as well, that the state shouldn't be church disciplining you.

The state does not have the keys to the kingdom. The state has the sword in service of the kingdom.

And as well, just while we're trying to talk all this out, lots of complicated matters. Right, right. Mandate of government is not in any way to oversee the church.

The mandate of government in Romans 13, one through seven is the opposite. It's actually quite limited.

It's to be a terror to evil and to spur good. So the state is given to us by God -

Not disconnected to Christ though, but not disconnected to Christ. So the state has the sword to be a terror to evil and to promote what is good.

And it's not like that Christ just said, you're on your own, figure it out for yourself.

No, Christ is King of Kings. He's the Lord of Lords. They're not disconnected from Christ. They serve

God. And so Christian nationalists are saying the state should do that in a self -conscious, overt way serving

Christ. They should be like that Supreme Court justice from Alabama recently, where he said that these embryos, they're people.

They're human beings that deserve protection. And why did he say that? He said, because they bear the image of God.

That's what the Alabama - That's some severe overt Christian governance, right?

That's some Christian nationalism for you. These embryos bear the image of God and we cannot destroy them without a facing that image in some way.

That's what we're talking about. That's how it ought to be done. The state rules and reigns as a terror to evil doers and promoting what is good, connected to Christ.

That's what the way it should be. It's so often not the case that they operate in that way. But that's how they should operate.

The sphere that oversees justice among humans.

That's what the state does. Its mission is fairly limited, honestly, over against big government thinking today on lots of spheres.

The state is not, the magistrate does not in any way from any direct commission of Christ or his apostles hold the keys of entering into the church membership in the church or excommunication from the church.

And there's no sense in which the state goes, the church goes to the state, excuse me, and baptizes the state.

And then the state gets transferred the ability to somehow be involved in the disciple -making process.

He is so wrong about this. And he's just not willing to see.

He just sits back there and says, I'm unconvinced. After all, Ms. Jeffries, my second grade teacher told me that democracy, it's just unbelievable because he's fighting something that isn't there.

There's no Christian nationalist that says the state has the keys to the kingdom. The state does church discipline.

The state is the one in charge. That's just not out there. It's not out there.

And there's nothing about Christian nationals. There's nothing about theonomy that would require that. Nothing, nothing.

The magistrate has no call whatsoever to make disciples.

It's not the state's mission. It's literally not its sphere of authority. The authority of Jesus is cosmic and unlimited, but it's concentrated in the church.

And elders are the ones who first hold the keys. And they are the ones who bind and loose.

That's where the authority of Christ is unlimited, but it's concentrated in the church.

So sure, we can put on our coffee mug that Jesus Christ is the king of kings, but he's really not concerned with those kings.

He's concerned with the holy nation and the elders and the deacons. That's what he's concerned with.

Yeah, I know it says that the state is the deacon of God. And I know it said he's the Lord of Lords and the king of kings.

I understand all that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's not really concentrated there. It's concentrated in the church.

So what you end up with is king of kings, Lord of Lords is a coffee mug verse. It doesn't really mean a whole lot.

That's what you end up with. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's unlimited, tip the hat. But that doesn't mean they should do anything.

I mean, obviously. You think righteousness exalts the nation? It's not concentrated in the state.

So we've got a good amount of agreement on what you've just presented, I think. And the reason we have agreement is because none of what he said is excluded in Christian nationalism or theonomy.

I think, I'm not sure if Josh Howard's a Christian nationalist. I think he's a theonomist. But none of what you just said is foreign to us.

We all agree with all of that. The disagreement, of course, is this weird thing where it's like, yeah, yeah, sure, king of kings, but not really, is essentially what it boils down to.

And by the way, just for those who are gonna watch this, if I would again commend to you, christoverall .com,

check out Andy Nacelli's, he did a taxonomy, what was the, seven categories, I think he did, of Christian nationalism.

I'm trying to remember the title, but anyway, it was a taxonomy of essentially Christian nationalism slash Christian political engagement, those sort of things.

But that'll help explain kind of why Owen's being so careful and why I'm trying to be a little bit careful because there's a lot of perspectives on this.

But in general, I'm thinking back to what you just said, Owen, and if we were to not go the route of state enforcement of church matters, if we were not to go the route of, for example, if we were to kind of avoid some of the pedo credo, divisions and conceptions of what can be baptized, what it means to have a household or a family baptized, those sort of things.

If you were to have, for example, an evangelist come into a town and he proclaims the gospel, he's keeping the gospel message central, he's seeking to see people regenerated by the work of the

Spirit, all these things that we would keep central to our message, and he sees, let's just say, 90 % of that town repent of their sins and believe in the

Savior, and he was to classify that as that town having been baptized and taught to command all that Christ has commanded them.

Or if you were to see 75 % or 99 % or even 100%, is it those sort of differentiations that you're saying kind of hold you back?

Because I'm trying to think through why a nation cannot be baptized in that sense.

If you were to come in and see a nation on the whole, not every last individual, but let's just say on the whole repent and believe, could that nation be classified as having been baptized or taught to observe all that Christ has commanded them?

Like, what would your thoughts be on something like that? That's a good question, because he's trying to get Owen to try to say, there's different ways to use language here, and I'm not talking about this weird entity out here that's

Keene, New Hampshire, that we actually pour water all over Keene, New Hampshire and declare them baptized in the name of the

Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. That's what he's trying to do. And so let's just see how Owen responds. Yeah, I understand the point.

I'd love for people to respond to the gospel at those levels. That'd be wonderful. But no,

I wouldn't use that language, and I wouldn't then set up, if this happened in Conway, where I live,

Conway, Arkansas, I don't want Conway to proclaim itself a Christian town. I don't want the magistrate now to be overseeing, the city officials, that is, to be overseeing the affairs of the church.

There's no sense in which Conway, Arkansas gets baptized. I'm totally -

He's just unwilling to actually think this through in any kind of a nuanced way. And again, nuance is a bad word here a lot of the time, but it's not a bad word, actually.

It's actually a good word. And so he says, if Conway, Arkansas was to declare itself a

Christian town, then that means they're overseeing the affairs of the church. We can actually pull those apart. That doesn't actually have to mean that.

It doesn't actually have to mean that. They can still maintain their sword instead of the keys and leave the keys to the church and still operate as Christians, both groups.

The city could be a Christian city and the church can be a Christian church. And it does not mean that the city is now in charge of disciple -making and church discipline and all of those things.

It doesn't have to mean that. But Owen is unwilling to even entertain such a thing.

To him, it's one and the same. And it's just not. It's just not. I mean, he's all high and mighty on the constitution and democracy and stuff like that.

And the state worked and had blasphemy laws and things like that, and Sabbath laws when it was created.

And somehow it did not mean that they were now in charge of church discipline as well. It didn't mean that.

It didn't mean that. They still had their sphere. It was the sphere of civil justice. It's very, like, again,

I ask you, I had a lot of people comment on their opinions on whether he was just this foolish on this topic or if he was just trying to trick us.