How Shall We Then Vote?--Session 3--Panel Discussion and Pastoral Charge

First Baptist Church Travelers Rest

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for being here. Really enjoyed both of those talks and grateful to have a little bit of time for some interaction and looking forward to hearing from each of you.

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Let's start with the obvious question, the elephant in the room that is before us, and that is we have a presidential election coming up in about 12 days, and on the ballot are

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President Trump and Vice President Harris. And so, William, from some previous conversations,

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I know that you are planning on voting for President Trump and advocating that others do so.

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Also from previous conversations with you, Matt, I know that you are not. I don't know if you're advocating one way or the other for others, but I know for you that you're not.

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And so I would just love to hear you guys talk about some of your reasons for voting or not voting for President Trump.

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William, will you start us? There we go.

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So I will be voting for Trump for a third time, and I am going to do so fairly enthusiastically.

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I think that Trump gives us, in light of everything that I was just talking about, the best chance to keep the lights on and to keep fighting.

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And, you know, I came prepared to answer this question by phoning a friend, which would be

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John MacArthur. Ever heard of him? Great guy. Like him a lot. And John MacArthur, he was actually asked the same question recently, and I thought it was such a great answer, and I would agree with all of it.

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It was very well said. So let me read some of this for you here. He said, in this kind of election, you know, you cannot be on that side.

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So he's talking about Democrats. I think everybody here would agree you can't and shouldn't vote for Kamala.

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But he said, to put it negatively, we should ask ourselves, who would do the most damage to the family? Who would do the most damage to children, to the culture, to morality?

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Who would put us in the most insecure and unsafe position? The government is designed to protect law -abiding people and punish evildoers.

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I mean, it's a clear -cut choice. Are the Republicans everything they should be? Of course not.

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But you vote, in a sense, preventatively to stop something. So that's the best that can be said about this election.

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And there's a clear distinction, and I don't think it's hard. So that was MacArthur sort of abbreviated, and I agree with him.

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I mean, I think, at the least, you should, you know, hold your nose and hold the line and vote against Kamala with an effective vote, which

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I really was trying to get on what an effective vote is, and I do not believe a third party or a write -in is in any way an effective vote against Kamala, at the least.

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And at the best, I actually do believe that Trump's leadership of the Republican Party has made some very important changes on some of the issues that they are focusing on.

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I'm sure Matt will talk about some of the ways that there have been changes that are not great. But the emphasis in the new

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Trump -led Republican Party on the American working class and the interests of America as a country and a people over and against globalism and corporate interests and mass migration and endless foreign wars, these were things that we were not particularly well represented on under Bush and Romney and McCain if they had won.

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And so I think that I like the direction that the Republican Party is heading on some major issues, and they're not with us on some other very important Christian priorities as much as we'd like them to be, but I will close by saying this.

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I really don't think the Republican Party of old was really with us either. They just did a better job pretending that they were.

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And I kind of like that about Trump. Trump is more honest than some of the people who have pandered to Christians before, and I'll really close with this.

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Trump will give Christians a chance to thrive and flourish in a way that Kamala just certainly won't, and so I'm going to vote for him.

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Thank you. Matt, same question to you. Can you just talk a little bit about your reasons for not voting for Trump?

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Yeah, well let me start by saying I am not going to say that it is sinful or wrong for someone to vote for Trump.

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That's not my position. I do know people that are saying that. I'm not prepared to defend that. I don't believe that. I do believe it's a matter of conscience.

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I think we're going to talk about that a little later, but where I'm coming from this thing really rests in two points.

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The first point is I believe that I have to honor the integrity of the organization that I'm running in South Carolina, Equal Protection South Carolina.

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One of the things that we pride ourselves on and one of the lines that we're holding is the line of consistency, so I talked about partiality tonight.

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One of the things that we urge these legislators to do is either abstain or actually oppose any bill that compromises or shows partiality or falls short of what

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God has decreed about child sacrifice, and as an organizational leader, I feel as if I give them any ammunition by saying, well, wait a minute.

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You voted for the lesser of two evils. Why are you now not endorsing my campaign because I did the same thing with pro -life legislation?

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Why are you able to do the same thing, but yet you're calling me out for it? That's hypocritical, and so there's the organizational element of it that I believe that I have a duty to hold that standard just for organization's sake and the work that we're doing here.

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More importantly, point number two is I mentioned earlier that there are three things that we see

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God judging nations for in scripture, blasphemy, sodomy, and child sacrifice, and in President Trump, and by the way,

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I'm not a never -Trumper. This is the first time I've not voted for Trump. Trump is championing two of those three things that God judged the nations for.

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He champions himself as the most pro -LGBT president in the history of the United States, and not only is he saying with his mouth that he is going to continue to protect the rights to sacrifice children, but he's actually using his influence even now, not being an elected official today, but he's using the influence and the clout that he has now to go backwards in Arizona.

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He did that just this past spring. He loosened up on abortion rights in Arizona, so here we have a man who is saying two of the three things that God judged nations for,

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I'm championing, and so for me, I, Brother William mentioned something in his talk, and he said, which one of these candidates is, or a vote is a say in which direction the country is going to go, and in this particular election,

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I see the destination as being the same destination because both of them are placing themselves,

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Kamala and Trump, are placing themselves in the path of the judgment of God because they are championing child sacrifice.

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One's championing it a little less harshly than the other one, but still championing it nonetheless, and both of them are championing prosodomy, and so I believe the destination for both of those is the same.

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I would rather hold my vote and keep the blood on my doorpost so that when God brings judgment for those things, perhaps he would have mercy on my family and leave us as a remnant to rebuild once this whole thing implodes.

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Thank you. William, do you agree or disagree with those destinations are the same?

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Yeah, I certainly disagree with it. Okay, can you expound on that? Can you maybe just give us a picture of what's at stake between the two candidates?

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Well, yeah, so Matt and I are working out of certainly a theological difference here.

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I just, I do not, I do not subscribe to this idea that we know we are participating in the judgment of God in America in a similar way to the way that the judgments and the promises given to the

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Israelites, particularly in Deuteronomy, you know, and as they went into the promised land, apply to us today in the same way.

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So that's definitely a point of departure. I don't think that is applicable.

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But then in terms of are they headed in the same direction, well, I mean, Trump's first term is what

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I think we can judge him on, and then we can also judge Kamala on this previous term, right? So I worked in the administration,

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I worked at the State Department and the Department of Defense, but I was privy to everything else that was going on in the administration.

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One of the things we did at the State Department in the Trump administration was, you know, one of the very first things we did was we stopped funding for abortion access through the

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State Department around the world. It's called the Mexico City Policy, and then we expanded it further. We went after,

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I don't know if you know this, but many of your tax dollars get run through the federal government through the State Department into grants that get sent to NGOs, non -governmental organizations in countries around the world that do things like reproductive rights and women's health care, which is just a code name for funding abortions in Uganda and, you know,

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Brazil and things like that. So when Trump got into office and had the power of, you know, the chief executive officer of the federal government of the

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United States, he stopped things like that. My friend Roger Severino worked over at Health and Human Services and did everything he could to turn off spigots of millions of dollars in funding to Planned Parenthood.

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Trump was the first president to ever, ever, the first president ever to go speak at the

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March for Life. Now I understand that our brothers should come from the more, like, you know, the more,

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I don't want to say explicitly abolitionist camp, because Equal Protection Camp, they don't view the March for Life as being such a great thing, but symbolically in many ways

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I think that is. And Trump also stopped the embassies from flying the rainbow flag overseas as well.

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And so this is the distinction, I think, that we need to draw between sort of what Trump's personal opinions are on things, which he makes known sort of randomly and quite frankly unhelpfully sometimes, and what his policies actually were in his first term as president, and then hopefully what we could trust his policies would be again.

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And on how Trump is using his platform, I'll finish with this. You know, on the

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Arizona law, right, so they repealed the law that was on the books or got struck down, so this old law, really good law actually in many ways, was sort of brought back up to bear that was much stricter on preventing abortion and even providing,

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I think there were criminal penalties for those who would seek an abortion or provide an abortion. And so then you get, but Trump before that had already said what

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Trump thinks about this issue, and Trump has never pretended to be a card -carrying pro -lifer really, let alone an abolitionist, so he's been remarkably consistent on that.

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You know, you get Trump on a tarmac one day after he said what his position should be, which is essentially 15 weeks exceptions for rape, incest, life of the mother, it's pretty standard pro -life stuff, which

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I think is weak and abhorrent in many ways, but it's essentially a standard pro -life talking point. You get Trump on the tarmac asking him about the

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Arizona law, and Trump just off the cuff says, oh, well, I think it goes too far, right? Is that Trump really using his platform to fight the pro -life policy, or is it just Trump on the tarmac saying what he thinks his positions are on this issue?

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So I think sort of parsing Trump, this might sound funny, and I do not mean to be sycophantic on this at all because nobody's paying me to do it, and people have asked me if I'd work in the second

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Trump administration, and quite frankly, if you follow my Twitter, I don't know if they'd ask me to work there again with everything

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I've said, but understanding how Trump speaks about things versus what he actually does

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I think is very important. Thank you. Let me ask one more question, William, to you as it relates to abortion, and then

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I want to expand out to some other issues as it pertains, but one question that we had come in, and Matt just mentioned it again, the three sins that draws the judgment of God on a national level being blasphemy, sodomy, child sacrifice, and Trump's compromises on those.

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By God's standards of scripture, how is God honored by a vote for him when he has expressed pro -LGBT stuff, pro -abortion stuff, things of that nature?

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By God's standards of scripture, how is God honored by a vote for him? That's the question that came in.

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Yeah, okay, well, I mean, to that I would essentially say, see those six points I made in my talk in terms of other things we need to think about as Christians in terms of what is important for our civic life together, defending the inheritance we've been giving, voting for a future for my children,

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I mean, so, like, I actually, I genuinely believe I'm honoring the Lord with a vote for Donald Trump as best as I can, certainly imperfectly, when

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I look into the faces of my three boys, and then I go vote for that. You know, I don't,

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I do not want to, and vote against Kamala, right, I mean, I didn't get into this in my talk, but, and I don't mean to be a fear mongerer, but, you know,

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I lay awake at night thinking that if Kamala Harris wins, how long will it be until somebody's knocking on my door from the federal government, from the

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FBI, because of the things that I say publicly about where I think this country should be going, what it's doing wrong, what

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I believe as a Christian, and, you know, and I know of a guy who was recently essentially swatted because, you know, he was talking about Kamala publicly to one of his kids, and one of his neighbors called the police on him and lied and said he was leading his kid around the neighborhood by a leash, which certainly wasn't true, but they overheard him, right, and it's like, this is what we're dealing with, and so,

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I mean, I think voting against this great evil is a way to honor

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God with the civic duty that I have in this country. Thank you. I want to give this question to both of you.

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We'll start with you, Matt. How important, when you vote on November 5th, how important, how crucial is it to support a candidate that you trust will safeguard the future of our republic?

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Let me find this real quick. So, I don't often, you mentioned it,

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Rhett, but I had no intention of mentioning it in my talk, and I rarely do because it doesn't really apply when

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I'm preaching, but with regards to safeguarding the republic, let me say that I'm not only here speaking to you as a brother in Christ tonight,

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I'm speaking to you as a retired Marine who has two combat deployments under him, who has nine stars tattooed on his left arm representing brothers in arms that died overseas.

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I am a patriot. I love this country. I drive a big Ford truck. I've got a lot of guns.

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My house is the safest house in Spartanburg County when it goes down. I love our freedoms.

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I love our history. This is the greatest nation the planet has ever known, and I do want to see it preserved.

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And it is for that exact reason that I do not believe casting a vote for either candidate is a wise decision.

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I view America right now as the Titanic, and whether you're trying to scoop out water out of the kitchen or scoop out water out of the dining hall,

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I believe at this point the ship is going down, and quite frankly, I believe it is the hand of God that is bringing it down.

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We are not so special that we can escape the judgment of God for our tolerance and apathy towards child sacrifice, towards sodomy.

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Again, these are things that God judged nations for, and I do believe that we are not just heading towards judgment.

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I do believe that we are in it. We've got kids walking around believing that they're animals. Ding, ding, ding,

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Nebuchadnezzar. I believe we're there, and I believe that the only way that this nation is going to course correct is through repentance, and I do believe that repentance, when we read scriptures, unfortunately typically for a lot of hard -headed people like Israel, like ourself, at this stage in the game is going to only come on the hills of judgment.

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Now, do I believe that we should go vote for Kamala to fast -forward that process? Of course not.

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But I'm just convinced that that's where we are, and when that judgment comes,

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I would rather, again, lay my head on my pillow at night knowing that perhaps God may have mercy on my home.

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Let me push back on that or just ask a follow -up question. If you're not advocating voting for Kamala, do you accept the premise that a third -party vote or a write -in vote or an abstention is an effective means for accomplishing anything there?

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So, two points to that. Do I believe it's going to be effective in this election? No, because there's not been a large enough concerted effort to get a third -party write -in.

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Brother William would be much more intelligible on this point than I am at this point, but correct me if I'm wrong, but if a third -party gets enough votes, does something happen in a general election or, like if enough people vote for Mickey Mouse, does something,

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I've heard someone say before that I've usually got a friend named Bradley Pierce who's an attorney that I run this stuff by.

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He's not here, so I can't phone a friend at the moment, but if enough people get a third -party and there's enough people there, does something take place or am

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I misinformed? I really don't know. I mean, the only way it could possibly matter this year is if there was a third -party candidate that actually won enough electoral college votes to deny one of the major candidates the 270 threshold necessary to win, and I would wager all three of my boys on the fact that not a single third -party candidate is going to win a single electoral vote.

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So, maybe that's what Bradley's talking about in a future where a third -party candidate actually wins states and gets electoral college votes.

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Gotcha. I will say real quick. Then it would go to the House. Okay. That is the practical point of that. I do believe that there is a way that it can be done if the effort is concerted effectively, but besides that, who am

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I going to write in? I don't know. I may write in Dusty Devers. I might just write in Jesus as king. I don't know, but what

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I do know is I'm not putting my vote on a man that is pro -sodomy or pro -child sacrifice.

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William, I'm going to ask that same question to you, but I have another question that came to mind. So, I've heard a lot of people who are not voting for Trump talking about they're going to abstain because they want to teach the

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GOP a lesson. They want to withhold votes in order so that their voice by negation can be heard so that the

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GOP will go back to a more anti -abortion party platform.

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You worked in D .C. politics. Can you just talk to us a little bit about presidential elections and then elections in general, and what does it take to actually teach a party a lesson?

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Does withholding a vote, does it accomplish that? Well, I don't think so at all.

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I don't think there's like, I mean, there's really, it's really hard to discern how and why, you know, a candidate lost, right?

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Like they do these autopsies, right, after a candidate loses. So, when Romney lost in 2012, like the official

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GOP autopsy was essentially that the GOP needed to like double down on being like more pro -immigration and more pro -free trade, and then

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Trump came in 2016 and did it like the reverse of the 2012 autopsy and then won, right?

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And so, like, you know, it's, you're not, unless there's like a critical mass, which brothers and sisters, there just isn't.

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There just isn't. You're not teaching anybody a lesson. Now, I'm not saying your vote doesn't count.

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It certainly does. I actually live in a town where our mayor of Monroe, North Carolina, was finally decided by a coin flip.

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I kid you not. It was a tied election, and he was decided by a coin flip. So, your vote does count for sure and certain, and, you know,

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Christians have a bad history of sitting out elections. We're seeing data showing that maybe 32 million

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Christians would sit out this election. But, I actually do wonder, I'm quite concerned if it works in reverse in our current

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American political situation because Trump appeals to a lot of people that are not born -again evangelical

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Christians or particularly church Christians or even what you could call card -carrying conservatives.

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Trump appeals to many people who were Obama voters before they were Trump voters because they're voting on these issues like trade and immigration and the economy against wokeness and things like that.

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And so, if a bunch of Christians sit out to try to send Trump a lesson and teach

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Trump a lesson, and he wins anyway, the lesson that the GOP is going to learn is, actually, we don't need you guys.

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You know, that's one possible option there, and I would hate to see that. How crucial is it to vote for somebody that's going to secure the republic when you vote on November 5?

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William, he's already answered it. Yeah, so, I mean, we can't really get into this, but, you know,

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I would actually push back on Matt and say that the logical conclusion of his conception of America being under judgment would be to actually go vote for Kamala.

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Like, if you think that we're being judged for these things and that there's no way out of it other than sort of a burn down and a rebuild, and if you think that's actually, you feel like you can discern that that's

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God's sovereign plan for us, then I think the logical conclusion is to go do it.

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But, see, I'm just not that confident. I don't think America is, you know, so special it can't escape

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God's judgment. It certainly can't. But I don't think it's determined at all. Like, I do not,

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I can't search the pages of scriptures and see that God is not planning for there to be revival and renewal of the

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United States of America. I don't know that. Maybe not, but maybe so. But I can use my wisdom and my prudence to discern what conditions in our country would make it more likely that those things could occur.

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And I'll tell you, one of those conditions would be that churches stay open and that Christians can be involved in the public square.

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And Kamala was just on an NBC interview saying that she doesn't even believe in abortion exceptions for religious doctors, you know,

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Catholic hospitals. You know, if she got her way on that, then essentially

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Christians start getting forced out of the public square almost entirely, shredding the First Amendment. I have no doubt that she would weaponize, as Biden already is weaponizing the

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FBI to go after Catholics in particular, that, you know, they will label us as domestic extremists and they will seek to shut our churches down.

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You know, and it's not saying that the church can't thrive under persecution, it certainly can, but the church thriving under persecution does not in any way necessarily equate to any sort of civic renewal.

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And so, you know, this gets back to just using principles of reason and prudence and the faculties that God has given us that I'm going to vote for more time here in this country and hope that with more time under a

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Christian -friendly Trump administration that God would be gracious to us and pour out His Spirit on us in repentance.

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And I just, like, I really can't say that I'm confident I know that the judgment that America is under, for whatever reason, can't be reversed.

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We've talked a lot about abortion. I want to focus on a few other issues. What are some of the other issues that you see are at play in this election and how should

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Christians be thinking about those? Whoever wants to take that first. Take this last one and then

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I'll follow up. Okay. All right. I mean, so there's some other really major issues too. And let me say, there's so much that can be said here.

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Thank you all for so patiently listening. But we live in, I would say, fairly unprecedented times in recent

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American history. And we have had a luxury, I think, in many ways of being sort of what we could call single -issue voters on issues like abortion in particular.

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And I think that luxury is sort of slipping away from us pretty quickly and it requires for us to think hard about what it means for Christians to exercise political power.

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I mean, that's what a vote is. It's an exercise in political power. And so, are we saying as Christians that if we only, if we do not have, say, like an equal protection style choice running at the presidential level, that we need to exercise zero political power and say on who's going to occupy the

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Oval Office? I'm not confident that that's the decision that we need to be drawing as Christians, right?

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The idea that unless we have an equal protection candidate, we cannot cast an effective vote in a presidential election.

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I do not agree with that. So that brings in other issues that we need to consider. And I've said this before and I'll say it again because this is so important now and it's immigration.

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Brothers and sisters, we are not going to be able to abolish abortion at the state levels when millions and millions of illegal immigrants are being brought into the

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United States under Democrat patronage and then being rewarded with citizenship such that the roles are so bloated that you get sort of permanent blue party rule in more and more states across America.

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I mean, look at what's happening in Texas right now. Pay attention to Texas on November 5 and see how close that margin is and that should concern you.

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But then look at Florida and see how, like, the steady hand of a strong Republican governor can actually help sway things as well.

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But immigration, I'm telling you, is a major issue right now. It is, quite frankly, a question of national suicide if we do not stem the flow of illegal immigration here.

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And then the second thing, too, would be foreign policy. I think it's really important, something also that a lot of just regular conservative

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Christians don't tune into that often. You also cannot abolish abortion if we have a nuclear holocaust, right?

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And it is not fear mongering to say that under the Biden administration's leadership and even worse under Kamala, I mean, have you watched

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Kamala on these interviews? Can you imagine her negotiating with Putin or Xi Jinping or with Iran?

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I mean, and particularly with what we're doing in Ukraine, which is volatile and dangerous and the way that they approach

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Russia and Putin in particular is of serious concern for me.

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So I'd say immigration and foreign policy. And last one, last one, is ending wokeness in the federal government.

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And there are other deeply anti -Christian policies at play here all across our federal government, DEI, which is significantly impacting our military's lethality and its readiness.

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I mean, we have generals who are doing drag shows on our aircraft carriers instead of figuring out how to crush our enemies, right?

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And so it's like, you know, rooting out DEI at the federal level is a huge thing, too. I mean, there's so many that have risen, but immigration, foreign policy, and crushing wokeness at the federal level are three that I would say at least are there for me.

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They're worth getting my vote across the finish line. Matt, what other issues do you see at play? I would actually agree with what

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William just said. Again, I think my approach to how to fix these things is different. I'm a simple guy.

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You know, I wasn't even doing this five years ago. I was building furniture, knew nothing about politics, knew nothing about abortion legislation or any of these things.

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I just picked up my Bible, read what it said, and went. And so I look at things very simply. I appreciate

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William's expertise on this. I really have learned a lot tonight and look forward to listening to you more. But again,

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I'm just a simple man. And I read the prophet Amos in Amos chapter 5, starting in verse 21.

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This is Yahweh. This is our triune God speaking through the prophet Amos. And he says,

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I hate and I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,

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I will not accept them, says the Lord. And the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not even look upon them.

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Take away from me the noise of your songs to the melody of your harps. I will not listen.

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But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever -flowing stream.

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Did you bring to me the sacrifices and offerings during the 40 years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? You shall take up Sikoth, your king, and Chion, your star god, your images that you made for yourselves, and I will send you into exile beyond Damascus, says the

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Lord. I agree wholeheartedly that immigration is a massive, massive issue.

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I've got daughters. It does keep me up at night wondering what this could look like if this goes off the rails.

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But when I read Scripture consistently in the Old Testament, what

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God is talking to Amos, saying through Amos to the people there is, I'm not worried about anything else that you're concerned about.

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I'm not even listening to your prayers and your worship. So long as you're allowing child sacrifice to go on in your midst.

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And so I almost think it's a mute point to talk about immigration, to talk about foreign policy, to talk about the economy.

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I don't think raising these things up as issues to God while we're being tolerant and apathetic towards child sacrifice is going to matter at all.

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When we read in Isaiah, when we read in Exodus, or Isaiah, when we read in Ezekiel, when we read in Jeremiah, we do see people outside the covenant people of God coming into the camp of God's covenant people to judge them, to take them captive.

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But what you also see is God strengthening their hand against His covenant people because of child sacrifice.

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So again, to take it back, I believe this is such a big deal to God that nothing else really matters outside of this point.

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William, do you want a 30 to 60 second rebuttal there? And then I have one more question for each of you.

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But I can see you pawing at the ground here. Yeah, well, so the issue here, and I appreciate

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Matt and everything he's doing. And it was wonderful to hear the work he's doing. And I agree morally and politically that equal protection under the law for the unborn is the standard.

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It's the goal. But theologically, I do not agree, and I do not think that the

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Bible teaches that America is God's covenant people. We are not in a one -for -one position with the

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Israelites here. So America as a nation is not a wholly covenanted people with God such that if we are not following the procedures for worship and life that were given to the

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Old Testament Israelites, that God is turning His ears to us in the exact same one -for -one scenario.

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In fact, the passage I was thinking of in the New Testament that is probably most akin to this is

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God's new covenant people is the church. And in the church's community, we must be righteous and living according to God's laws and His standards.

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And when I was thinking about how Paul was instructing the believers in 1 Corinthians on how they're taking the

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Lord's Supper, and even his warnings on not to take it in an unworthy manner. He says, this is why some of you have died.

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That, I think, is a much more faithfully interpreted theological parallel, what we do in the church, particularly as it pertains to the

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Lord's Supper and other things like that, than applying it to our civil life in America today.

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You want to respond there? Yeah. You have 30 seconds, and then I'm getting to the last two questions.

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I need your phone number after this. So, first off, let me say I do not believe that America is in covenant with God by name.

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However, I do believe that when Jesus said that all power and all authority in heaven and earth are

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His, I do believe America was part of that proclamation. Amen. Okay. I also believe that in Romans 13, that God says that our magistrates and our legislators are

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His ministers of justice, and that they are to establish justice, reward good, and punish evil. Where if they're commanded to do that, what standard of righteousness and wickedness, what standard of right and wrong, good and bad, wicked and evil, are we supposed to be holding them accountable to, if not the

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Old Testament case studies given to us in the Old Testament? That would be my question for folks to think on.

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Thank you. Let me zoom out just a little bit. I have one question for each of you. I'm going to start with you,

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Matt. Since you are involved particularly in a particular state here in South Carolina, I want you to talk about local politics just a little bit, and just how can

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Christians be effectively engaged in local politics, and by local politics

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I mean counties and state level. Yeah, I would say network in those individual districts.

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Learn who your legislators are. Know who your house reps are. Know who your state senator is.

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And not just that high level, know who your county council members are. Brother William mentioned earlier that there are different spheres of government that God has ordained and established, and I would agree.

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I would add one more. We've got the home government, right? We've got the church government, and then we've got civil government.

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And I kind of view those things as checks and balances, if you will. So, you know, the

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Lord calls my wife to submit to me as to the Lord. However, is that unconditional submissal?

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No, it's not. And when I overstretch my hand in that authority that God's placed me in, it is the duty of my pastors and elders to hold me accountable to the

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Word of God. When my pastors and my elders, am I supposed to submit to them according to Scripture? Absolutely I am.

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But if they tell me that I've got to give half my paycheck to them to go pay for their fancy car payment, am

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I called to submit to them? Sure I am. But are there stipulations? Yes, it's the Word and the law of God.

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And so the same thing goes for the civil government. They are His ministers and deacons of justice.

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Are we to submit to our local authorities and to our government? Yes, we are. Unconditionally? No. They have standards.

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They have guardrails. They have parameters that our holy God has placed over them. And when they overstretch those things, just like in the church realm and in the family realm, it is not only our encouragement, it is our duty to defy them and draw them back in to the

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Word of God. And so keep check on your local delegates.

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So on that, G .K. Chesterton once said about local politics, you ought to keep your politicians close enough to kick them.

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So without inciting violence, what are some ways we can metaphorically kick our politicians?

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And by that I mean apply pressure. Yeah. So first off, know what God says is a righteous law.

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And, you know, do your homework there. And then pick up the phone. Call them. All their information is public.

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Their address is public. Their e -mails are public. Just let them know. And, hey, listen, don't just be a bad pebble in their shoe.

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They don't need to just hear from us when they're doing bad things. They need to hear from us when they're doing good things.

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You need to pray for them. They're human just like we are. They're not robots. They're humans. They have struggles in their home.

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They have struggles with their families. They have struggles in church. They have health issues. These are people that need to know that you're not just out to abuse and use them, but you're out to love them and hold them accountable as a professing brother and sister in Christ, especially here in South Carolina where most of them profess the name of Christ.

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Thank you. William, I have a national politics question, and maybe this is just a little bit of personal curiosity.

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But you worked in D .C. You worked in the executive branch. What can you tell us about what's known as the deep state or the administrative state?

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Ooh, ooh, ooh. What threats? What is it? What threats do they pose?

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And how much power does the president actually have in relation to it? Yeah. I mean, that is a great question.

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And, I mean, it really gets back into why I am, like, pretty happily voting for Trump on November 5 again.

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And so there's a great book out there. It's called National Security and Double Government. I'm blanking on the author's name, but National Security and Double Government.

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And in it, the author talks about how both in England, in particular is what he looks at, and in America and in sort of like a post -9 -11 world, the national security apparatus has been so built up that it functions as a double government that continues on and on regardless of who is elected.

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And remember I said, you know, we are the sovereigns. We're supposed to be able to pick our elected representatives. You know, he used a case study where he said essentially, remember

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Obama ran on a platform of having a different foreign policy than George W.

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Bush did. Right? But then Obama really didn't. Why is that? Well, because there was all these unelected bureaucrats in the national security apparatus who essentially bullied the president in these private secure meetings into going on with the policies that they've had forever.

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And so all I have to say is it is real and it's a major threat. I don't know if you know this, but 90 % of the federal government workforce are

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Democrats. Right? So it's like this massive machine that hums along, you know, when we put a

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Democrat in, but when you put a Republican in, it revolts against it, like a 9 to 1 ratio.

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In our constitutional system, that's not how it should work. The president is the chief executive officer and everybody in the federal government, not just the political appointees, which

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I was, serve at the pleasure of the president. And because he is our duly elected representative to enforce and enact the agenda that we put him in office to do, he has the constitutional authority to fire any one of them at any time, just frankly because he doesn't like what they're doing.

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Now, if Trump wins, he has put forward a policy proposal. It's called Schedule F. There are these different schedules of like civilian servants in the government that would give him sort of a much greater ability to fire sort of rebellious bureaucrats with ease.

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And let me tell you, brothers and sisters, if Trump wins and he goes through something like this, you are going to see headline after screeching headline saying that Trump is breaking our constitutional order in America, which you just have to remember everything they say, just flip it on its head.

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And it means he's actually restoring it. And whether it's the Department of Justice and the FBI, the

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CIA and the NSA, wiretapping our phones, looking at our e -mails and our communications, whether it's the way that the

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Department of Defense is sort of insubordinate to the president.

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Mark Milley was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which is the highest ranking military commander position in the

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United States of America. And he was essentially engaged in rank insubordination against Donald Trump in the closing months of the administration.

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All across the board, these people pose a real threat. And when the crushing power of the federal bureaucracy comes after you, whether that's at the federal level or the crushing power of the state bureaucracy comes after you, the process is the punishment, putting you through years of lawsuits, taking away your rights, treating you as guilty until proven innocent instead of innocent until proven guilty.

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And, you know, we didn't even get into this until just now, but this fourth branch, these unelected bureaucrats, are frankly one of the biggest threats to the perpetuation of the

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American constitutional republic as we know it. And I'm confident that if Kamala gets in, it's only going to get worse.

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And I think Trump is just mad enough, maybe, after being politically prosecuted the way that he has been in the last year to get in there and start mixing things up.

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All right. I can't have a discussion about politics without asking for a prediction. So as we close, just really quickly, who do you think is going to win the presidential election?

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And when are we going to know that? Matt, you first. I have no idea, but I will say contradictory, seemingly contradictory to everything that I have said,

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I do hope Trump wins for obvious reasons. Our way of life is under assault, and there are threats to our liberty, prosperity, and frankly, normalcy around every corner.

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And so we have a lot of work to do. Now to be certain, not all of that work is to be found in the public or political sphere.

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Much of that work must be done in those other spheres of government that God has given to us in the church and the household.

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But even then, faithless there will have public effect. And so I charge you to be faithful in your homes as husbands and wives, as fathers and mothers, as children.

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Be faithful in your churches, coming before the Lord for worship each Lord's day. But just because not all of our work is to be done in the political sphere, that does not entail that none of our work is to be done in the political sphere.

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So I charge you, as the Lord gives you opportunity to engage in the political realm, do so.

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Do so joyfully, do so cheerfully, do so effectively. Don't see politics as so icky that we just leave it for our enemies to have free reign there.

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So engage. Whether that is voting, and you should vote on November 5th or before early voting.

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Whether that is calling a legislator, becoming an expert advocate on a particular issue, volunteering on a campaign, running for office, attending city council or county council meetings, do it.

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And like all things that you do, do so for the glory of God. As you engage in the political sphere,

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I charge you to do so with two things in mind. The first is spiritedness. We live in an age of mass demoralization.

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It's like our entire society is designed to have people go about life in a stupor.

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Because going about life in a stupor, people who do that, they don't fight back. And so we need a reinvigoration of the

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American citizen. We need a reinvigoration of the American Christian. One who engages in all of life with spiritedness.

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That love for all that is good, true, and glorious. And that eagerness to secure and defend those goods.

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And so don't be demoralized, but cultivate that fighting spirit that is within you. And approach public life with courage and an indomitable spirit.

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And Christians should be the most spirited of all among us for we have the

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Holy Spirit dwelling in us. And then we couple that spiritedness with agency.

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I want you to remember that you have agency. We don't live in a world where things only happen to you.

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You live in a world where you can immediately take action. And take action, we must.

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We must stop being a passive people and start rebuilding the country that we desire to live in.

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The type of country that is worthy of our fathers. But it won't just happen. We must build it, we must fight for it, we must work for it.

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And the good news is, we can. But we have agency. We live in a time where the left is assaulting everything that we hold dear and true.

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And that means we live in a time where the right must win. And for the right to truly win, we must win the right with the gospel.

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So this is even more reason for Christians to be engaged in the public and political sphere. We can't abandon it to the left, or they'll destroy everything that's good and true and glorious.

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And we can't leave the work solely to the unbelieving right. For that was pulled into destruction by other means.

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Rather, we must faithfully engage with the world by both earthly and heavenly means.

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And so we must preach a white -hot gospel that Jesus Christ lived, died, buried, resurrected, ascended to the right hand of the

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Father. Where he currently, now, rules the world as King. And he invites all into his kingdom.

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If they will repent and trust in his Son. Where they will receive forgiveness of their sins. And they will rule

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Christ. And then on earth, we must not be afraid of political power.

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But we should pursue it to be used for the good of our neighbor, as God divides good.

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And for the glory of God. I don't believe the question is whether we have the numbers to do so.

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The question is, do we have the will? And my answer to that is, by God's grace, we will.

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By God's grace, we can win. By God's grace, we must win.