Should Christians Move to Red States?

Conversations That Matter

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Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, as always, and here with my good friend,

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Joel Webben. We have been on each other's podcast a number of times, so I don't know that he needs much of an introduction, but he's a pastor, he's an author, he's a podcaster.

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Are you a super intendant of a Christian school too? Is that one of your habits? I'm on the board. Lord willing, we'll be launching

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St. George Classical Academy in the fall of 2024. So I'm not the tip of the spear with that endeavor, but I'm involved and certainly see it as a commendable project.

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Are you? So that's St. George as in St. George and the dragon. Yeah, exactly. It's I mean, there is a historical

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St. George within, you know, Catholic tradition, but it's it's more of the Knights of the

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Red Cross King Arthur that we're we're using the mythical St. George that basically the whole idea is that like he goes up against this, you know, juggernaut of a dragon and gets defeated.

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And then, you know, but in God's providence, he falls under this tree and that has a healing balm, you know, kind of thing and is revived.

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And then instead of just walking away with his life and saying, thank goodness, I'll never do that again, he faces the dragon again, falls into a river that has healing properties and the damsel in distress is not just a damsel in distress, but she's praying for him.

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You know, it's very Christianized and it's her prayers and God's providence and nature and creation, even the cosmos working with him.

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And eventually, basically, you know, he defeats the dragon. But it's more than just that. It's that the dragon is terrorized because the dragon in his perception is

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I'm ten times the size of this little puny knight. But this is the immortal knight. It's the knight that will never stop coming.

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And so, you know, raising little, you know, little knights that that are outmanned in many ways,

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David versus Goliath. But but they'll just they'll never stop coming. We'll keep. I love that. That's symbolism. So people can find if they don't already know your podcast on YouTube, I assume iTunes as well.

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Right. Response Ministries. You came out with a book recently. Here it is. It's called

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Flight by Flight. And I was talking to you before we started recording.

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I said, hey, I thought this book was like I just come out or was coming out. But apparently it's been out since it looks like late

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April, according to Amazon here. But May, I guess, is when you could probably get it. And you can go to Amazon. Is that where you want people to go if they want to purchase this?

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Yeah, they can get a cheaper copy. I think it's three dollars cheaper if they go to right. Response Ministries dot com.

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Right. Response Ministries dot com. But if they go to Amazon, that helps. But it depends on who you are.

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If you hate me and hate the concept, then go to right. Response Ministries dot com and appreciate the discount.

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If you like the concept and you support the endeavor, then go to Amazon and leave me a positive review because it's half and half right now.

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It's like there's no four star, three star, two star. It's just five star, one star because it's a polarizing, you know, polarizing.

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Well, that's what I want to talk about. And one of the reasons I was like I wanted to have you on anyway to talk about the book when it came out.

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But I guess that was my fault. I missed that somehow. And so then when I saw the controversy over the last few days, I thought, well,

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I need to have you on now to talk about it. Let's start with just the positive message here, though.

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What were you trying to communicate to Christians in general? I'm assuming that's your audience about the we talked about the great sword in this podcast before people from red states move or sorry, blue states moving to red states or blue areas moving to red areas.

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Why are you advocating that? Why do you want Christians to be part of that? Well, because I think on I'm arguing from a national standpoint, but on a global stage,

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I think that that's precisely, you know, not there's no singular cause, but I think it's one of many factors of precisely why we're in the trouble that we're currently in.

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So the SBC would be a great example. I think they sacrifice their kids on the altar of global missions.

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I really do. I think that that modern evangelicalism, certainly the boomer generation for the last,

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I would say the last 60 years or so, it has been very, very popular to go in the name of of being a missionary in the name of evangelism, to to send your dollars, your resources, you know, all these different things to to places that are unreached to places that are godless.

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So like the subtitle of the book, Fight by Flight, why leaving godless places is loving godless places.

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And there are a host of exceptions that we can get into. Missionaries is a legitimate biblical category.

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My problem is that the sentiment that says everyone's a missionary. Yeah, all Christians should faithfully do the work of an evangelist.

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But but that line, it sounds good. That's a boomer line. You know, everyone's a missionary. It sounds good.

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And there is a truth in it. That's why it does sound good. But there needs to be a bifurcation between capital

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M missionary proper and the normative Christian life of doing the work of an evangelist wherever God in his providence has stationed you.

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Those are not the same things. If everyone's a missionary, then why doesn't why doesn't NAM fund anyone who makes a profession of Christ to go and be a missionary?

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Right. And I guess they do, you know, sadly, but you know, like that. I mean, of course, we have categories here of thinking of, yeah, the normative

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Christian life being a missionary and evangelist where you are versus this mentality of going into dark, godless places.

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And all I'm arguing is that for for that second category, missionary proper capital M, just like being a pastor,

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I think that there are some clear biblical criteria that's not for your average normie Christian. That is for a high character, high competency, a high gifting individual who's been uniquely equipped by God to go to a place like the

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Sudan, to go to some of these godless, progressive, difficult places. And and that not every

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Christian should be doing that. But yet we have 16, for instance, just California, where I came from, 16 million professing

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Christians in California. My whole assertion is that out of those 16 million Christians professing

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Christians in California, 42 million total population. I don't think that even 90 percent of those 16 million meet the

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Bible's criteria for being a missionary and that they and their children, their families would fare well better.

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And even the global advance of Christ would be better off if they would momentarily and tactically retreat from the mission field and find a place where they can raise their kids in the fear and admonition of the

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Lord. That's the premise. So, I mean, there's so much to talk about here, and there's some common sense, so I just want to emphasize that it just seems like it's common sense.

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You're saying, take your family to a place where you can protect them better from not just even the spiritual dimension.

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And of course, these things are related, but the crime and just the physical things that are going to impose themselves on children who live or grow up in a godless place.

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So that just seems like it's good parenting, right? It's good stewardship and responsibility. There's going to be maybe we'll jump to this first.

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I was going to save this for last, but I think it just is naturally flowing in our podcast. You're talking about 16 million

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Christians in California. Let's just pretend they're all at least cultural

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Christians. Even if they're not all saved, they at least respect the Bible or something. So you take that number.

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Where do you dump them? Because they're also Californians. They're not just Christians. They have a certain way of living, talking, thinking, ways of life, patterns, traditions.

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If you put them in Idaho, you overwhelm the population of Idaho. If you put them in South Carolina, you overwhelm the population in these areas.

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So explain to me, how do you preserve cultural stability in certain regions while advocating this reshuffling?

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Right. Well, a lot of my argument, I opened the book by talking about the California dream.

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And so I talk about how the gold rush, historic California dream was a psychological thrust that you could manifest destiny, that you can move from sea to shining sea to the

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West Coast, the Pacific Ocean and strike it rich. That you could gain something that's tangible in terms of monetary increase.

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You could be rich, but you could also gain notoriety and fame and those kinds of things. And I'm just basically arguing that the

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California dream, I think in many ways is still alive and well. And now it would not just be the West Coast, but the East Coast as well.

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Our coastal environments and cultures, I think they still lure young people, especially with dreams and ambition and all those kinds of things saying that you can be one of the tech giants, or you could work for some nonprofit, whatever, and save the world.

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Or you could be an actor with or, and this is how I was brought into this, or I think that Big Eva has put their own

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Christian missionary spin on that saying, you can do urban city ministry, that you can be a church planter.

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And if you're going to be a church planter, Driscoll even did a lot of this. He was integral in this, that the pagan is the one who lives on the farm, rule ministry.

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But if you to do real Christian ministry, you go to the city, you go to Seattle. And so my point is that for me,

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I was born and raised in Texas to get to your question. I was born and raised in Texas, but I wanted to do something big for God.

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I wanted significance. And I look back now and I realize that I think there were some genuine motives and certainly

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God was sovereign in all of it, but there were some sinful motives as well.

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It was like the rite of passage within the Messiah tribe, that you got to go off alone, you're becoming a man with your wits and a spear, and you got to kill a lion.

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And the bigger the lion, the bigger the man. And I think that has been in evangelicalism with global missions, with church planting.

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You go into a big city, if you can plant a church, that's already saying something, because it's hard to plant a church.

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But if you can plant a church in this blue progressive city on the East Coast or the West Coast, then man, you made it.

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And you're the guy who's going to be invited to speak at the conference. You're the guy who's going to have notoriety. And so my whole thing was,

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I wasn't just going as a Californian to Texas. I was a Texan going back home, realizing that I made it.

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A lot of what I'm advocating for is, sure, guys who were born and raised in California, their kids are actually in danger because of whatever particular city, then sure,

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I think you should consider a move. But a lot of what I'm arguing are people who are in some of these blue cities, blue states, godless places that actually were raised in the

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Midwest, in the South, that were raised in flyover country, that moved to these places because of someone like Tim Driscoll or Tim Keller, or they did it to be a missionary, but their family's suffering.

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And it's not really accomplishing what they thought it would. Yeah, that's a really good point.

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I didn't even think of that. But you're right. In California, and I was born there. My parents are from California. Actors aren't a big deal when you're out there.

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Everyone else gets kind of like stars in their eyes. But when you live there, that becomes a common thing. And the people who do come out that are waiting tables at the restaurant you go to eat at, they have aspirations of being an actor like 80 % of the time, right?

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Right. And they're just doing this until they can meet that goal, at least if you're in LA County. So I think you're right.

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There's a lot of people there who are from other places. And that's certainly a worthy cause to get them to think about maybe you've left your roots somewhere else.

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Maybe there's somewhere where it's a better, more safer, but also just there's a richer heritage to give your children if you go back.

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What about the people who are genuinely Californian? I mean, they've been there for a while. Let me give you an example of this to make it concrete.

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I was in Alabama. And this wasn't a California thing. This was someone from Michigan, right, who was conservative, voted red, thought,

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Michigan's going off the deep end. I'm going to move to Alabama where people think like me, right?

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And politically, they voted for Trump. I voted for Trump. I have more in common with them. So there's this small town in Alabama, and this guy gets on the board, the town board.

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And he's a conservative. So he thinks it's going to go smoothly. Well, he becomes one of the biggest,

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I guess, enemies of the people, the conservatives who were there before, because he's thinking in terms of what's good for business.

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Let's do what's good for business. And the people in Alabama are thinking, let's do what's good for our people or our tradition or our area.

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We don't want the big one. Right. And so it's this conflict of like they actually have different versions of conservatism that's creating like a problem.

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So I know there's like probably 100 examples of similar things. What advice do you give to someone who genuinely is

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Californian? Should they, let's say, go to Texas and like, let's just impose our

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California ways, even if we're conservative, or should they instead try to integrate and learn from and become part of the communities they're in?

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Yeah, they should. Absolutely. If you're going to move, you need to take some time.

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You need to sit a couple of plays out and take some time and see what the Lord is doing in this place that you just arrived in 15 minutes ago.

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God has been doing something long before you showed up. And so yeah, you should take note of that.

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But I'm not going to say that, well, if you're born and raised in California, and California is going to hell in a handbasket, and it's taking a toll financially, politically, culturally on your family and your children, well, because, you know, in the sovereignty of God, you were born in California, then you must stay in California, because that would be, you know, cultural appropriation to move to Texas.

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No, that's the whole story of our nation. That is America, is that people moved here that were born and raised in God's providence somewhere else.

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And there were people living, I mean, John, you know this better than anyone, there were people living in America, and we came in, you know.

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And so I think that that's perfectly appropriate. It should be done well. And I think that the

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Puritans and the Founders and Covenanters did do it well, that they tried to come in and learn from Indigenous people and to partner with them and not be violent, all these kinds of things.

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Unfortunately, it wasn't always mutual. And there were some wars and things like that. And then a lot of things have just been exaggerated by all the woke guys who, you know, who just hate white people.

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But all that being said, same principle applies, whether it's coming from Europe, you know, to America or whether it's coming from California to Texas, same thing applies, is that, one, yeah, come humbly, come to learn.

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Two, though, you are allowed to come. I think that biblically speaking, I just want to, you know, not just start with the practicals, but start with the biblical premise.

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Fleeing is a thoroughly legitimate biblical category. You are allowed to flee from persecution.

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And especially, and just for the record, we're not just talking about some single 24 -year -old white guy who doesn't have a wife and doesn't have family, and he's fleeing with his tail between his legs just to secure his own personal safety.

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Not even that that would be inherently wrong. I'm not saying that that would be wrong. But primarily what I'm talking about, the premise in this book, is

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I'm talking about husbands, fathers who represent households, wives and children who are not running for the sake of their own individual safety, but they're running in a moral obligation to their duty to protect and provide for their families.

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I have a hard time saying that that is not biblically permissible.

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But I'll tell you who doesn't have a hard time saying that that's not biblically permissible. A few guys on Twitter. Yeah. Well, let's talk about that.

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Let's go to that right now. So this is the first one. This is that I saw at least from Nathaniel Jolly, who

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I know he's affiliated with G3. I think he's a pastor in Alaska, which is a red state.

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And he says, Christians have always gone into godless areas to proclaim the gospel. This is what real

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Christians do. This modern idea of retreating from blue states is nothing more than a modern day version of monasticism.

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We are called to be salt and light, not huddle in safe cities. And then he says, that doesn't mean there aren't cases where it is not wise for a family to move.

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But this should not be the Christian mentality in general. Just imagine if missionaries had this attitude.

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Imagine if the apostles had this attitude. You and I may not have come to know

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Christ. So you're trying to prevent people from coming to know Christ there, Joel? Right.

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Well, yeah, it's just it's funny because the apostles kind of did have this attitude. Yeah, sure.

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The 12 remained in Jerusalem. But the apostle Paul literally said, I'm no longer going to minister to the

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Jews. Because one, they've hardened their hearts in unbelief and have rejected their

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Messiah. And I'm hoping to rouse them to a godly jealousy by ministering among the Gentiles.

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But it wasn't just that. It was also that the Jews continually and relentlessly persecuted Paul. Was he persecuted by Gentiles?

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Yeah, but not like the Jews. And so Antioch, the whole idea of Antioch, if you look at the book of Acts, the first half of the book, the first 15 chapters, give or take, is following Peter, primarily

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Peter. And the central stage is Jerusalem. But the whole second half, now it switches from Peter to Paul.

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And now the epicenter has switched from Jerusalem to Antioch. Why? Because they cared about every tribe, tongue, and nation, because they wanted to be culturally and ethnically diverse.

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Because if I was still in Acts 29, that's the sermons that I used to hear at the conferences there. But what

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I would say instead of that is that, yes, we do want to win every tribe, tongue, and nation. But the main thing that got people into Antioch is that Antioch actually had on the books, it had some provisions for worship.

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It had certain allowances to where they would not be persecuted to the same degree as Christians were being persecuted by the

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Judaizers in Jerusalem. And so the reason why they went to Antioch was in the providence of God.

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God used persecution to push them out. And so the irony is that I would actually say that persecution, historically, using the apostles as a case study, and not just them, but then the

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Puritans and all a whole manner, I mean, a litany of examples throughout the last 2 ,000 years of biblical and church history,

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God has used persecution as one of his chief providential instruments for missionaries, for getting the gospel out, for the spread of the gospel all around the world.

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And it's literally one of the commands of Jesus. He commends martyrdom.

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He does not commend suicide. And I think that a lot of evangelicals have blurred the lines.

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There is a very clear line between martyrdom and suicide.

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Jesus could discern the difference. A lot of evangelicals in America today cannot discern the difference.

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Jesus gave express, not just allowances, but it wasn't just permission. It was a command.

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If a town rejects you, they do not receive you, then shake the dust off your feet and leave that town.

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Now, there's a whole conversation that can be had about when exactly has a town rejected us and how do we discern that?

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And that's all good and right. But not only does Jesus allow for it, the

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Bible actually commands Christians to flee from persecution. The Bible commands it.

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Even the apostle Paul, when the prophetic word is given by Agabus, the whole church, and I don't think the church was wrong in this, but the whole church is saying,

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Paul, don't go. If you're going to be bound hand and foot, if you're going to be persecuted, please don't go.

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They were weeping and breaking Paul's heart. The general consensus was don't do that.

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And I don't think it's because the church was compromised. I don't think that this is meant to be a demonstration of how the whole church was in sin and that Paul was the only one that was righteous.

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Paul was operating underneath a divine ordinance from God. He knew that he was supposed to go, but he wasn't saying, hey, church, listen,

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I'm going to go because I'm on a suicide mission, and you guys are compromised for not going with me. We should all be bound hand and foot.

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That's just not the Bible. Yeah, and Jesus escaped the Pharisees at times, passing through the crowd and avoided the conflict.

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So that was one of the tweets. I don't know, actually, if I have all of them queued up.

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You probably saw others. But the other one that caught my eye was this one from Gabriel Hughes, who's in Texas, also a red state.

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And he says, hearing some post -millennials telling Christians to leave blue states is kind of strange.

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Wouldn't post mills want to go into those blue states and Christianize them?

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Nathaniel Jolly says, I've asked the very same question. So as a post -millennialist who's very proud of that and wants to see post -millennialism advocated and so forth, is this a sneaky attempt in your book to try to get

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Christians to be post -millennial or something? I'd just be curious to hear your response. Yeah, there is a section where I talk about how the shift in my eschatology also helped me to shift in my thinking of where I should raise my family geographically.

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And so eschatology influences, I believe it influences the way that we live. It's not the only common denominator though.

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If it were, then you and I would not have that much in common, but we have a ton in common.

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And I have a lot in common with Stephen Wolfe, with William Wolfe, with Jeff Wright, a lot of guys who are solid, solid brothers in Christ that don't necessarily, they're all millennial or they're historic pre -mill or they're very, very, very, very leaky dispensational pre -mill.

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And so I think the biggest common denominator is in terms of who's going to fight and who's not, what side are you on is just really in terms of your view of Jesus' Lordship.

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What does it mean for Jesus to be Lord? But eschatology, so I say all that to say that I don't want to say,

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I don't want to go so far because I think I've done this and people have been rubbed the wrong way. And so I'm trying to auto -correct a little bit here and just say, yeah, eschatology is a big deal and I'm not going to stop banging that drum.

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However, beggars can't be choosers. We need every fighting man we can get. And so I'm going to link arms all day long with guys who aren't post -mill if they're willing to fight.

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And a lot of guys aren't post -mill and they are willing to that set. The way that eschatology shaped my thinking on this is that if you believe two things, if you believe that Jesus is relative, he's going to return relatively soon and that God has so ordained that the world is going to continually get worse until Jesus comes, then a lot of your mentality becomes the only thing that we can do with any eternal value is just snatching souls from the fire.

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And if that's it, then why not go where the fire is the hottest? Now, a lot of these guys don't actually do that and neither did

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I. I was a hypocrite because I settled for California. If I really was committed, I would have gone to North Korea. I really was selling out.

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So I really, Joel, just California? I mean, Jesus is returning next Thursday. Everything's going to get worse until then.

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Starting a school is a waste of time. Trying to win an election is a waste of time. The only thing that we can do is the work of an evangelist, plant churches, and make converts.

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And we need to go where the fire is the hottest. And if I really was going to be faithful, I should have gone to Venezuela or China or whatever.

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And so that's one mentality. And I do think that part of that comes from eschatology.

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The Post Mill guys, and I understand what Gabe is saying. And by the way, I like Gabe. I've had him on the show. But yeah, but we would differ theologically.

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And so I think the reason why it seems like an irony to them or hypocrisy to them that Post Mills would retreat is because they're looking at one side of post -millennial eschatology that we believe we win down here.

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We all believe Christ wins, but the post -millennial believes that Christ is going to win progressively and gradually throughout human history, not despite a weak and dying church, but through an increasing, building, expanding church.

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I think that's one of the core distinctions. But they get that. They get that we believe that we win down here.

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So they're like, well, why are you retreating? The thing they don't get about the post -millennial eschatology is that 99 .9

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% of post -millennials do not believe that Jesus is going to return soon. So no man knows the day or the hour, but you talk to 99 .9

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% of post -millennials and they don't believe that Jesus is going to come back in our lifetime. In other words, they think that we have time.

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And when you begin to think with a longer time frame, then momentary, not forever, not indefinite, there is no true indefinite surrender, but momentary tactical retreats for a season is strategic.

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The thought of we're going to pull back the troops here because we're losing on this front. And rather than just let these men die and subject their kids to godless indoctrination, we're going to pull these troops back here and we're going to forfeit that battle for now.

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And we're going to pull them back. And it's not just a retreat, it's tactical, it's momentary, it's temporary, but it's also an advance to the rear because we're not just pulling these troops out to sit the bench.

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We're going to pull them out here so that they can reinforce troops over there. And in this battle of Bunkers Hill that right now, it could go either way.

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We're barely hanging on. So Texas is not the deep red state that it once was. Texas in many ways is purple.

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And so the idea of, all right, we're going to get out of this blue state. We're going to go to this not just deep red South Dakota, but this purple state and secure a win here.

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And then what someone like Gabe Hughes doesn't understand is that the post -millennial doesn't believe Jesus is coming back next

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Thursday. So my disposition is that we'll send our grandkids back into California and then we'll go ahead and secure that also.

27:03

We'll take that land also. But the last thing I'll say is an illustration that I've used is it's like fighting on, you have to look at the climate, the terrain.

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So if you're fighting in Siberia, Russia, you're fighting in a frozen tundra. And let's say, you're trying to take out an army that's indigenous there.

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That's where they live. That's where they're stationed. And to be able to fight successfully, you've had to bring in all, pipe in all these resources from HQ back in a place that's actually livable.

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And so you've set up storehouses and you've got supplies, you've got food, you've got weaponry, artillery, all this kind of stuff in this very inhospitable climate, the tundra.

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And you're fighting, let's say, it's hard, right? So you're picking off one or two Russians every couple weeks.

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But the rest of the time, what's happening is that once a month or so, the enemy that you're fighting, your adversary is sacking one of your storehouses and stealing your supplies.

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Well, you could keep staying there at a great cost with all these supplies having to be piped in.

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You could keep staying there and picking them off one by one, and maybe eventually over a long haul, you win.

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Another thing you could do is you could just pack up the storehouses and go home and let the tundra kill the enemy.

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Just let them start. My point is this. Yeah, you might be fighting, but if you're willing to take a brutally honest look, you might realize that you're fighting, but your funding is outweighing your fighting.

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Your mere presence through state taxes, through that, through your business, you're actually, in a sense, you are funding and your funding might be outweighing your fighting.

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What if California could just beat California? What if instead of Christians beating California, what if you just let

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Gavin Newsom do it? He's been trying to destroy California for years. Just let him do it.

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Let him do what his heart desires, what he's been so diligently trying to do. But the reason why it hasn't worked, not fully, it is getting worse.

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Gavin Newsom's definitely putting a dent in the state, but part of the reason that it hasn't imploded faster is because the salt of the earth are propping it up.

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But if a bunch of people who fear the Lord, your blue -collar, hardworking, salt -and -light people were willing just to pack it up and leave,

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California would implode. It would be done. Then we could take the reinforcements, win over here, battle of Bunkers Hill, the purple thing that could go either way, a place like Texas, some of these purple states, swing states.

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You could win here, let California beat itself, and then send your children or your grandchildren back in when the lay of the land has changed a little bit, when there's actually some more opportunity, and then secure a victory over here.

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The reason why Gabe Hughes or guys don't get it is they understand one side of post -millennialism, the we win down here side.

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They don't understand the other side of post -millennialism. Jesus isn't coming back next week. Ah, I think that's interesting because I think it's escapism that you're reacting to that.

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You're saying this escapist mentality, you can't have that. That's not going to work. That would actually make sense to stay in California if you think that Jesus is coming back next

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Thursday, I suppose, because why go to all the work of packing everything up and going to another state?

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I was looking for this tweet, and I couldn't find it, unfortunately, but I'm just going to try to relate a concept to you if I can.

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I totally forgot about this until you were talking. There was a critique, and I'm sure it was directed at you somehow because it was in this whole controversy.

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Basically, it was that this great sort, this national divorce language, that that is playing into the hands of the great reset, the

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WEF. They want that to happen in order to, I guess, contain us in these red areas.

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That's the best I can come up with as to why someone would think that that's something they want so that they know where to track us, where to find us when it does sometime to round us up.

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They're not going to go to California. They know to go to Texas because we're going to already do the sorting for them.

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What do you have to say to that objection? Well, I mean, part of what I would say to that objection is, in true

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Texas fashion, come and take it. What do you mean? They're going to round us up? They're going to round us up in this puny, weak, little place called

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Texas? What world are you living in? If all the conservatives leave

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California and move to Texas, California is not going to be rounding up Texas. They can try.

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California will get decimated by Texas. You take the conservatives out of California, you have no

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Navy. You have no military. You have no fighting men. You have women of both sexes, male and female women.

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That's all you've got left in California if you take out the conservatives. The idea that we're doing the

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WF's homework for them, that we're rounding ourselves up. I'm sure somebody probably has tweeted the

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Balkanizing. No, I think that that's strategic. I don't think that that is a loss.

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I think, again, that's a boomer mentality. When I say a boomer mentality, I'm not trying to be disrespectful to our elders.

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What I'm trying to say is, I'm not saying that's an old view and you should get with the new one. No, when I say boomer mentality, that's the new view.

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That's post -war mentality. That's what you would say, John. It's probably a nicer way to put it. But that is a very recent way of looking at the world, looking at theology.

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A lot of the views that we've had in the past few decades do not keep in step with the mass bulk of church history.

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So this idea of what I'm getting at is, I think we've spread ourselves too thin. So I'll just name a couple of things.

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Global missions. Global missions, for the record, I think part of that comes from eschatology. It's the mindset of, okay, look, the world's going to get worse and worse until Jesus returns.

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I think dispensationalism is under there somewhere. The world is going to get worse and worse until Jesus returns.

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He's going to return rather quickly. And no man knows the day or the hour, but if there's anything we can do to speed up his return, because that's what we're looking for.

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That's the relief. If there's anything that we can do to speed up his return, it's getting the gospel out to every tribe, tongue, and nation.

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It's not until the four corners of the earth, until everyone hears and then he'll return.

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So we're trying to speed up the return of Christ because things are only going to get worse. So let's do a rapid detox.

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Let's push through the pain as quick as we can by getting the gospel out to the nations. And so global missions was a thing.

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In the 90s and early 2000s, it was the gospel coalition and Acts 29 and sojourner, and it's the church planting thing.

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But same thing with church planting. It was a lot of young guys leaving their traditions, leaving their upbringing, leaving their home, red state, leaving their churches.

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And I'm going to go do something that's significant and I'm going to go to a coastline place to do it.

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And so it's planting, it's global missions, it's all these things. But here's my point. I think one of the reasons why we've been taking it on the chin as Christians lately when it comes to the culture war is because we have spread our ranks so thin.

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You've just got guys like you, John. You've got guys like me, and I'm one of them. You've got some solid, high character, high competency guys, but a lot of them are alone.

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That's why I think Doug Wilson, what he's doing appeals to so many people. It's not just because Doug Wilson will say hard truth. It's not just Doug Wilson.

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It's Moscow. He's assembled a team for 40 years and it wasn't just every time

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I've got a solid guy that I've raised up, I'm going to send them somewhere else. No, I'm going to keep them. I'm going to keep them.

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And it's not a sin and it's not selfish. It's okay to have a bunch of awesome Christians in the same town.

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It's just okay. In fact, it's okay. And I know this sounds like sin coming off the last few decades.

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It's okay to have multiple biblically qualified men, each of them able to preach.

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Each of them could easily be a senior pastor and have them not just in the same town, but in the same church.

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It's okay. But right now what we have is we have spread out our troops so thin.

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And then what happens is that one by one, they get picked off. And one random guy that was one of us, all of a sudden he goes woke.

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And then this random guy over there, he packs it up and quits ministry because it's just hard and he's exhausted.

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And then this guy black pills and he doesn't go woke, but he's just, you can, he's like Theoden and just under a spell and just everything's doom.

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And he's just mad. He's angry. And now he's cussing online and starts an Anon account and goes buck wild.

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And then he gets ousted by some guy pretending to be a conservative who always punches right and tickles left. And you know this,

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John, we know these guys. And I think part of it is because guys, they're just isolated.

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They're so alone. They're so disenchanted and so disheartened and discouraged.

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And I think a big part of it is because of the global missions, church planting thrust that said, basically you're not allowed to stay with people like you.

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You're not allowed to have community. You're not allowed to have family. You're not allowed to have safety. You're not allowed to build something to last.

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It's just go into the fire, snatch a soul. Jesus is coming back next week. Go into the fire, snatch a soul.

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And now we've got all these guys with third degree burns who can't, who can't fight anymore or won't fight anymore or who joined the other team, the enemy.

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And we're like, what happened? What happened? And so now we're for the first time, just using a little bit of common sense and saying, maybe we pull back.

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Maybe we join forces. Let's assemble an Avengers team and just isolated superheroes all by themselves.

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And then you've got guys who are conservative warning about balkanizing. Get out of here.

37:28

Get out of here. Well, I put a tweet out there just making the observation that it seems like there's a high percentage of guys who criticize what you're advocating, who happened to live in red areas or red

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States. And so they're enjoying the blessings of cultural Christianity to some extent, but there, there's a criticism of those who would be coming from a blue state,

37:50

I guess, to their area, which I just find that rich, I guess that you're enjoying this.

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Like you of all people should know, but I, you know, I don't know. I don't want to psych a lot, psychologize it too much and get into like why they might think that, but we don't know their motives, but we don't know.

38:04

Yeah, exactly. But it just, it's an observation. And yeah, I remember when I was in seminary, cause this just rings true with what you're saying.

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I was in admissions class and it was required for all the seminarians. And I raised my hand at like maybe the third to last meeting of the semester.

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And I just said, professor, is it okay if I just want to stay in America and go be a pastor at a church?

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Is that okay? Because it was just, it was like this guilt trip almost every week for why aren't we suffering somewhere across the world?

38:34

Was your professor David Platt? No, but a radical was one of the textbooks for, they used right.

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Yeah, I know. It's just on multiple levels. I don't know why, but they used, yeah, that book was one of them. John Piper's book on, on missions was one there.

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It was like a lot of the pop Christian reform books. And I just remember he said the right thing.

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I mean, he's like, oh yeah, of course it's okay. But the entire class was just set up to make you really feel like God's moving in all these other places, not where you are.

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And so you need to go to these other places if you want to see God move. And of course that makes you a better Christian, a braver

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Christian. None of these things are explicitly said, but it's in the water and it's just, it is how people tend to think.

39:18

And I'm so thankful for missions, right? I want missions, but I think what you're saying resonates with me in that that's a unique call.

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It's a unique call, that's all I'm saying. Yeah, it's a legitimate biblical category, but I just think it's silly when guys are like, what they're essentially saying is everyone should be a missionary.

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And it's like, I know what you're saying. And that's true. That's like me saying every man should be a pastor in his home.

39:44

Amen. So there's a sense in which all of us are priests, all of us are Kings, right? A kingdom of priests, all of us are shepherds, right?

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And shepherd and pastor are synonymous in many ways. But man, you better give a couple of disclaimers there, or you are hurting people.

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You are sending people off on a suicide mission. So yes, missionary is a legitimate biblical category, but we would never tell every

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Christian man that he should be at one. Actually, we did. That's exactly what we did for the last few decades.

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It's so every Christian man, if he cared about theology, if he cared about the things of God, he should go to seminary and be a pastor.

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So actually it's starting, I'm talking myself out of it. It makes perfect sense. Every guy should be a missionary in the same way that every guy, if he cared about theology, he should get out of business, get out of politics, get out of medicine, get out of the arts.

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The reason why we lost so many of these institutions is we took our best and our brightest Christians that were high up in these institutions and told them that they really cared about the

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Lord. They would sacrifice that paycheck and sacrifice that influence. And they'd go to Southern seminary and become a pastor.

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And it's the same thing with missionaries. And again, what happened, what I believe happened in all this is that in order to get more victories abroad, we actually lost those battles and we surrendered the victories that we actually had.

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So we're now, it's just like, we're just losing. It's just L after L after L.

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And so what I'm saying is like, could we just win one battle? Could we just take a generation, just 40 years, and just pull back and win something?

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And then you find out that we don't win down here. And I mean, it's crazy right now. The conversations

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I'm having with people, everyone should be a pastor. Everyone should be a missionary. And also we're supposed to lose down here.

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And I just, all I want to say is I just want to draw people to understand these things are not random. It's a straight line from everyone should be a missionary.

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Everyone should be a pastor. Also, we lose down here. Losing and everyone being a missionary, it's like that meme where Pam from The Office is like, it's the same picture.

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It's the same picture. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Fascinating conversation. I wish we could talk more.

42:07

If people want to find your book though, they can go to Right Response Ministries or they can go to Amazon. Anywhere else you want to send people?

42:13

No, that's it. Okay, cool. Well, thanks Joel. Check out Joel's podcast. If you're a podcast listener, iTunes, you can go to YouTube, Right Response Ministries.

42:24

I want to play something for everyone in closing here. This is a video of myself with Josh Abattoi, another friend who wants to encourage

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Christians to move to the red state of Kentucky to form a community there. And I went down there,