An Alternative to the Antioch Declaration with Joseph Spurgeon

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, and I was just talking to Brother and Pastor Joseph Spurgeon behind the scenes for a little bit.

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I know some of you are wondering, when are you gonna start? We are having a good talk. So we are starting now though, and we're gonna talk a little bit about this

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Antioch Declaration and the response that Brother Joseph Spurgeon has made to this.

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He has an alternative, and we're gonna go over that alternative. And I think it's a better statement. No statement is perfect.

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No statement is scripture. No statement is inspired by God in that way that humans have come up with.

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But I think that this is something to build off of, and it's, I think, framed very well.

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And I'll just say this before introducing Joseph, but he came to me with this,

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I wanna say it was hours after the Antioch Declaration was up there. It wasn't long. And I was really impressed that he had come up with something this good in such a short span of time.

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And so this will help, I think, those out there who are wondering, John, why didn't you sign it? Maybe even

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Pastor Spurgeon, why didn't you sign it? This will help you a little bit more, I think, understanding why we decided not to and what we think would be a better statement if we were gonna address some of the related subjects.

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So with that, Pastor Joseph Spurgeon, welcome once again. Long time, no see. You were on the podcast last week, and here you are again.

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How you doing? Yeah, doing well, man. I don't know if I ever had that many conversations that matter, and so now we have.

01:34

Yeah. Yeah, they do matter. I think the video I made on the Antioch Declaration has like, I don't even know now, with the audio and the video, over 15 ,000 views, and wasn't expecting that, but here we are.

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And I wanted to broaden that discussion because I talked about my personal opinion on all of those things, how

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I think about it. And it was very in the moment, it was very fresh. And I had a lot of people asking me questions.

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We've had time to digest. And I wanna get a second perspective as well, which is yours, and you've thought deeply about this.

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So maybe we'll start there. Why didn't you sign the Antioch Declaration? Let me just start by saying it was kind of difficult in one sense not to.

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And what I mean is I really respect the brothers and the ministries that are behind the statement.

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One of them, I think it was Jeff Durbin, came to me personally asking me to sign it. And I have a lot of respect for Pastor Durbin.

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I would say that when I was in seminary, I discovered Apologia, and I had become post -millennial and discovered them, and there was other people like this.

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And now they're involved in abortion ministry, which I was involved in. And it was just like, it was really refreshing, encouraging, and probably would,

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I'd go as far as to say, I may not even be a pastor of a church if I had not discovered their ministry and been that encouraged.

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So when he comes to me and is like, we got this and we want you to sign it, you feel immediately like, okay, yeah,

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I wanna be a part of this. I love these brothers. But as I read it,

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I, for one, I just was like, there's something, I hate to say it, but there's something off about it.

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And that some of it's just confusing as a statement. It reads like a blog for those who have a lot of inside baseball knowledge.

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Like, I've had so many people come to me, even from my church, in other words, like, what is this thing about? I read this statement and it doesn't make head or tails.

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And I think if you're gonna have a theological statement that's meant to, and theological statements with affirmations, denials, they have a purpose.

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The purpose is to unite Christians and separate them from false teaching.

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There's always unity and division, but if you're gonna have that, it has to be clear what people are signing on to.

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And it has to fulfill that purpose. It has to be able to be signed by true believers,

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I think. And unless it's some niche little thing, like, hey, we all agree on head coverings and we're gonna make a head covering statement.

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Okay, you acknowledge that you're not trying to unite all Christendom around that. But when you're trying to broad statement, it needs to be able to bring in Christians who can agree.

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And it also needs to keep out those who need to be kept out. I think the problem, and I wrote a whole thing about why

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I wouldn't sign it. And this is really the major kind of problem to me is that it's convoluted and simplistic on the issue of ethnicity and race.

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And as sometimes it goes off in the straw man territory and other times it includes things that are just, like, why is a whole section, why does it even start with talking about the

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French Revolution? And so, again,

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I love Doug Wilson and have been benefited from his ministry, but sometimes, and forgive me if people don't like this, sometimes his writing is too cute.

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And he likes a lot of turn of phrases and Chesterton type stuff.

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And it leads to sometimes being, okay,

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I just read a paragraph and don't quite understand what you're even trying to say. Or the thing that you spent 25 words explaining something that could have took two words and left a lot of confusion.

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And I feel like that is in this statement that they put out that it is about as clear as mud in a few places.

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And go ahead, you're welcome to disagree with me. No, I agree. I just,

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I was gonna, you said his writing's cute and stuff. And so it held me back from making my own quips and jokes for a moment there.

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Cause I was just gonna say like, well, you don't have a position on like the French National Assembly and the seating arrangements there.

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Come on, man. Like, so sorry. I was holding myself back for a,

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I guess that's a little bit of mockery and maybe some people will take that wrong, I think it gets to the heart of what you're saying though.

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It is so able to be mocked because of what, like those little quips that like an aside about Aristotle, right?

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Like, where did this come from? What is this about? So for those who are, I know defensive of the statement, cause

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I have some of them reaching out to me and wanting to know more about why I wouldn't sign it and stuff, like we're tracking the same way.

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Like I don't like a statement that's not firm, clear, and you can mock anything

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I suppose, but this makes it so easy. It makes it into a joke a bit. And I don't want to attach myself to that.

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So that's part of it. That's not the whole thing, but that is, I think what you're saying and what I'm saying, so. Yeah, and I think some of those quips and stuff are like things that you might joke about with a friend or they're also include a lot of, again,

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I call it inside baseball, but what I mean is like, and this is another point I made, is there is a context around this statement that is all throughout it, though I know

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Toby and others have tried to, as Toby Sumter, one of the pastors there, have tried to separate it from the circumstance, but I just don't see how it can be.

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And the circumstance is the situation with Joe Webbin and Tobias, German last name, can't remember how you say his last name,

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I won't even try. I think it's Riemenschneider. Okay, Riemenschneider. So I'm not trying to be a jerk about it, just didn't know how to say it.

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But there's that context. There's a context with Stephen Wolfe as well. And Aristotle Thain is kind of a barb at them.

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And I think what it does is, again, the whole point of statements like this is to set boundaries, to set fences.

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And the question is, are they trying to keep out Webbin and Stephen Wolfe?

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And little things like that make me say yes. So it's like, why are you gonna publish his book on one hand and then put a little barb that is, maybe they would say, no,

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I wasn't aimed at him, but it can at least give the appearance of that. And I think we have to be wise about how we do stuff like that.

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Did you, out of curiosity, did you read Doug Wilson, I think it was yesterday, he had a blog that he put out there and he addressed some of this.

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I skimmed some of it, maybe you refresh me what. No, I don't lie. Okay, so I did too.

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And so the substance of the entire blog is not why I'm bringing it up, but there was a section though, someone sent me a section on what you just talked about,

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Stephen Wolfe being a published author at Canon. And it almost,

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I read it a few times that section, it was like one paragraph, where Doug Wilson gives his assessment of Stephen and says essentially that 80 % of the time he's brilliant and fine and good, but there's this 20 % where he's signaling to Nazi revoice, whatever that is.

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And I just thought, he just signed a contract Stephen, did he published it out there publicly that he just signed a contract to do another book with Canon, which is

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I think a shorter version of the book that he put out. So it's the shorter case for Christian nationalism.

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But I can't, if I was an author and I couldn't trust my publisher or I felt like I was being threatened by my publisher or like I couldn't depend on my publisher not to counter signal me,

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I probably wouldn't be publishing with them because that's part, I published a few books with different publishers and part of the point of publishing a book, it doesn't mean you necessarily have to agree, like the publishing company isn't endorsing every little thing you say, right?

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But it's basic and understood that they're not going to be pulling the rug out from under you.

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They're not gonna be putting things over your head. When they agree to publish something, they've agreed to publish that.

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And that is, and you should be able to depend on them to not throw cold water on what you're trying to do.

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They're a partner with you, essentially, like you're in this together, at least to an extent. And it's an odd, odd thing.

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It's odd. It's odd and that's no word for it. It's very odd. It's odd and so, well, I'll defend a little bit that thing.

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So we all have friendships, connections with different Christians and we're united in the church, but we ought to be loyal to each other and yet loyalty doesn't keep us from offering criticism.

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So I'm okay with Doug criticizing Stephen Wolfe on things or Wolfe criticizing

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Doug Wilson. Yeah, and I left out something that I shouldn't. So before you finish what you're saying, I don't know if this will affect it, but it was in also the context of Stephen being a published author with them and whether or not that will continue.

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And I'll be honest, when I read it, it left it open -ended. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's what I'm saying.

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That's what I'm talking about. It's not the disagreement. It is more the, threat seems too strong a word, but that's what

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I kept thinking that, that's the word that kept coming to my mind, like the threat of, hey, if you don't reign it in somehow and it's vague as far as what he's doing, like they don't really define exactly, or Doug doesn't, what exactly he's doing wrong.

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It's a little bit vague in my mind, but then your future with us, publishing with us, well, that's kind of up in the air.

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And so anyway, you finish what you're saying. I'm sorry. I just figured I should - No, no, no, that's there.

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And so again, I'm okay with them criticizing. I'm okay if they determined to say, hey, we're not going to publish him anymore.

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It's within their rights. I think we always have, I believe in freedom of association in one sense.

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So I believe in that. And I believe as pastors, we have to be willing to critique even those that are close to us.

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All that said though, believing that, recognizing that, the point I want to make is this statement is in the midst of all that personal junk and it's dealing with that stuff.

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And I think it's somewhat passive -aggressively dealing with it. And they don't want to acknowledge that it's dealing and that's there.

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But my signing it is me like joining in that conflict between them.

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And I'm - That's how I felt. I'm not, you know, it's not that I don't want to take sides.

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It's that I don't want to be the guy that grabs the two dogs, you know, that are fighting, right?

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I don't want to be the, I just don't want to be in the middle of that. There's a lot of, there's more than the theological issue at hand here.

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In this, there's interpersonal things. And I believe there's sin that's been done against Joe Webbin that needs to be repented of.

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I think, I love James White. I think he has spoken out of turn at times and in ways that have almost become comical.

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There's this whole little clip that I actually, I save and I love

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James White, but it's him saying, sit down and shut up. And I, my kids laugh at that cause

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I play it when they're getting crazy. I'm like, don't let me get James White out. You don't? You do that?

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Yeah, yeah, I do. And we laugh at it. It's kind of funny. They all laugh. Sit down and shut up. I even sent it to my elders saying, this is our new thing when we're in a counseling situation that's going bad.

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Hey, you want to be counseled by James White? Here it comes. And so I love

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James White. That's not to destroy him or mock it, but it is funny that some of this stuff has led to over the top type statements that are sanctimonious and mockable.

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And so I think before I would ever want to sign a statement like this, I need to work through those issues. It's very simple as acknowledging the actual timeline.

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They keep lying about the timeline a little bit, which we all saw and we all kind of know.

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And so there's a lot of stuff. And that doesn't mean that I agree with Joe Webb and have his back on every single thing there is.

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It's simply to say this statement that they put out has all that context. And while they want to deny it, it's in the statement itself with the quibs about Aristotle or left and right.

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And that is the background for it. After the podcast

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I did last week on this, I'm talking to someone who's, we'll just say on the other side of this issue, they signed the

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Antioch Declaration and they very much have opinions about Joel and Stephen and all of these guys, strong opinions that I don't necessarily line up with completely.

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I can see, I understand where the guy's coming from. But anyway, we were talking a little bit about this and that was one of my things is like, why didn't, like, this would have been so simple if that was dealt with first, if the issue between Stephen and Tobias and now it's been

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James White, Joe Boot and Doug Wilson have been roped in because they all shared Tobias' podcast that contained things that I've told

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Tobias directly that I think were very inaccurate about Joel. If they would have dealt with that first and then had this statement, then you might've even been able to get those guys to work with you, at least some of them.

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And you could have had a better statement, you could have had broader support, you wouldn't have had the distraction. Instead, it's released at the worst possible time.

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And it's like if you had two friends and one of them's fighting with the other and say that your friend's a liar, and then without resolving it, they come to you and say, would you sign my petition against lying?

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It's like, well, I'm against lying, and there's little jabs in it that make you think, well, you're talking about my friend, who would sign that, right?

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You would wanna get the situation resolved first and then let's come together against lying.

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And I think that's still the appropriate thing here. I don't know.

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I mean, I don't have any advice for the guys at the top who decided this was a good idea. I don't know what they could do. I don't think they will do anything

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I say anyway. My advice is this. Retract the statement. Put everybody out and say, hey, we wanna go back to work on this thing.

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Let's put a better thing out that's more clear. And we acknowledge that there were things said.

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This whole issue was brought to light, which shouldn't have been brought to light. There's no reason that we should have a million podcasts, and we're a part of it now, but on this conversation with Joe Webben and his parishioner, there shouldn't be all this stuff.

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So they should just simply acknowledge, hey, we screwed the pooch on it. We messed this up.

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We ask your forgiveness, and we're gonna work things through, and we're gonna come back. We're gonna build back better.

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We're gonna - We're in this together. We're in this together now. We're in this together. Yes, but that's what they need to do.

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Now, I think that there are real issues with anti -Jewish sentiment out there.

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I think I've dealt with people claiming that Hitler was a Christian prince and Nazi stuff, and so I'm actually cool and wanna deal with that issue.

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Same. I was telling somebody else the other day at my church, help me navigate this whole thing, and I said,

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I think there were four camps around this whole issue out there, four groups, if I will, and I'm talking about the issue of ethnicity and race and all this stuff.

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There's the woke thing, which we all are opposed to, the kind of, we'll just substitute

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Matt Chandler for that now and just say that kind of woke Russell Morris -type stuff, and so there's that group, and everybody -

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Race is a social construct, that kind of thing. Yeah, and also, you're never gonna get, you can never be set free from it.

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You're white, you got white privilege, you suck, and so there's that, and the other three groups are all opposed to that, but out of that, there was a reaction to that,

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I wanna call the, there is no such thing as race, no such thing, everything, it's colorblind, it's -

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Liberalism, essentially, neutralist, multicultural, yeah. But it's not liberal, it's liberalism, but not what we call liberalists, because our political things get all messed up, right?

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We think liberal, you think Nancy Pelosi, but in this case, you can be a conservative liberal, and that's what you're getting at, right?

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Yeah, so it's conservative liberalism, like, and I would -

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Sorry, no, this is what a lot of guys, when they're saying post -war consensus, that's what they're talking about, right?

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They're talking about those guys, they're saying they have this idea of the world that you shouldn't have nations, that nations are, there's no rooted, tangible element to it, it's really just, it's worldview, everything's worldview,

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I guess, and so anyone can be incorporated based upon acknowledging, as it were, a cultural statement of faith.

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And normally, that statement of faith basically says, I believe in freedom, I believe in equality, you can come here and be an

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American, so. And there are various degrees of it, but I would argue that, and they will not like it, but I would argue that maybe a lot of the framers of this document would fall into that category.

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And so that's a reaction to the woke, and that's a category. I think there's another reaction to the woke, which is the whole

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Nazi guys, well, if they're gonna call us Nazis, we're gonna become Nazis, and Hitler was this great guy,

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I mean, and - Christian prince. He said positive things about positive Christianity, which when you look at what he thought was

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Christianity, he didn't want Jesus that died on the cross, that's too weak. I thought that was a joke, by the way, the first time

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I saw someone saying positive Christianity was a good thing. I thought that, like, they just, they knew what it was and they were mocking it or something, then

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I realized, no, they think positive Christianity, which is de -Judaizing the Bible, even.

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I mean, it went that far. I have a book on it on my show, well, I'd have to find it now, but there's a book that I have on the

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German Christian movement, and it's horrific the way they tried to, not just gut the

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Bible, to take sections out that were too Jewish, but they went after Martin Luther.

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For all these guys who claim Martin Luther, I mean, they took, I think Mighty Fortress is even one of the hymns they took out of the hymnal, but they were trying to take hymns out that were too

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Jewish, and don't quote me on that, because I can't remember quite if it was - Well, they were rewriting scripture, too.

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They even took, you know, when Jesus says, I do not think I came to abolish the law of the prophets, they abolished that verse, that verse is gone.

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Why? Yeah, I'm not, I'm not, but the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on the

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German Church Life was the organization that was, I would say, the primary think tank and advocate for this brand of positive

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Christianity, and there was all the trying to wed Catholicism with Protestantism as part of this, so there is sort of an ecumenical -ish nature to it,

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Corey Maller actually, God bless his heart, did publish the, he published, he published a translation of their, you know, their confession, and this is one of the statements.

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It says, the dispute over whether Jesus was Jewish or Aryan does not touch the essence of Jesus at all.

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Jesus is not aware of human nature, but reveals to us in his person God's nature. That actually, so somebody told me that was them trying to have a consensus, like, we're not gonna say he's, we don't have to matter whether he's

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Jewish or Aryan or not. There were people saying he was not Jewish, some was Aryan, and we're saying that that debate doesn't matter.

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Gee, you had guys like Walter Grudemann saying Jesus was not a Jew. You know, he was, he wasn't even a

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Jew. He was for the destruction of Judaism, so you can't call him a Jew, and it's bonkers.

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Well, this is, this is heretical. Jesus does have a human nature, and human nature, this is the amazing thing about these guys.

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They want to have race realism except for Jews, ethnic

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Jews. Oh, they don't exist anymore. They didn't exist then, and they got all these convoluted arguments about they spoke

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Aramaic, and so they have these language arguments, and it's all convoluted garbage, and -

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Well, it's chalked through with higher criticism, too, to justify it. Well, obviously, that's where Germany was the foundational bedrock of higher criticism.

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Christianity in Germany by the time of Nazism was so aided with liberalism, it's crazy.

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Well, these guys do, like, they'll go after, some of these guys, I'm assuming, who are positive about positive

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Christianity, they'll go after the confessing church. They'll go after Bonhoeffer as a heretic, and when you read about the confessing church, there's two things that'll stand out if you really start digging into them, in my opinion.

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One is they weren't quite as against anti -Semitism as they're portrayed to be, because today, that's the narrative, right?

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There was this strong, stalwart confessing church, and they loved the Jews, and Hitler hated the

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Jews. That's not accurate if you actually go back and look at the confessing church. That wasn't their issue primarily.

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In fact, the Nuremberg Laws happened, and the confessing church didn't have much to say, except they did not want the

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Nazis controlling what they did inside the church. They didn't think they had ecclesiastical authority. That was really the issue that made the conflict between confessing church and the

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Nazi party. So that's one of the things, and then the other thing is, these guys are chalked through with neo -Orthodoxy, you know, which,

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I don't know where you stand on that, but I tend to lean towards, I think you get into heresy real quick with that stuff.

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I don't see how you reconcile that with Orthodoxy, even though - Well, it was a response to the higher criticism of liberalism in Germany, that the church, so you had, that was it.

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You had neo -Orthodoxy and liberalism. You didn't have a whole lot of Orthodox Protestant churches, and so -

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They were gone. Yeah, and so when we talk about, well, Germany was this hotbed of Christianity, yeah,

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I'm not doubting that there were real legitimate Christians there, but I don't think Hitler had this heart to protect

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Christianity, rather to use Christianity, and the positive Christianity was an example of his wanting to use the religion of the people to get to his ways.

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And so, anyways, we're kind of getting off track. We can keep going out if you want, but - That's my fault, sorry.

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No, it's my fault, it's my fault. But the point I was trying to make is there's a category of people that are responding to the woke who are

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Nazis, and the way they, and they can come across very intelligent in their podcast episodes.

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People always say, well, you haven't listened to their podcasts, but I have. They are very autistic sounding, very smart, but it's when they get online and the way they talk to people and they treat other people of other ethnicities that bitterness and anger and hatred comes out.

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It's on display. So - Oh, you're talking about the Stone Choir podcast. Yeah, I'm talking about them. I'm talking about that whole category of, they kind of lead that up.

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And so you have the woke people, you have the racism thing people, and then you have race is everything people with the

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Hitler people. And then there's another category, which I think I would belong into, and is that race is real.

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Ethnicity is a real thing. We can have real natural affection. We don't have to give away our nation. Nations are real concrete things with real people.

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And yet the gospel, the church, unites people of all types of nationality, ethnicity, and race.

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And - Can I put a label on it? Or do you have one? I don't have a label. Put a label on it. I think that what you just described with, and the labels

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I've used are, I think there's social justice thinking, and that's,

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I think also, so liberalism and social justice, I think both use the proposition nation, but they use it from different angles.

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So there's the social justice guys. There's the liberal guys. There's, if you want to call it, some of the guys who want to, and I don't call them

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Nazi guys just because I think the Nazi party died out. It doesn't exist. Like the guys who are reviving some of that are,

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I guess you could say that they're grabbing onto some of the Nazi ideology, but it's still an ideology.

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And so everything I just described, I view as a product of modernity in some ways.

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And that makes some of those guys mad that you would say that, because they think that they're being, they're the alternative or whatever.

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But I think what you described, which is the more, a little bit more holistic understanding of race and nationality, that's the pre -modern view.

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That's the view that would have been assumed, that was assumed by the biblical authors. That's the view that our

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Christian forefathers pretty much all had. Doesn't mean you're not going to find statements where they say, they talk about race in very biological terms, because there is a biological component, but what you won't find is them reducing everything to DNA in a

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Darwinian sort of sense, where everything's nature, and it's all based upon what your

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DNA says. And if you can do an ancestry .com match, I guess that's the one thing.

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Of course, there's like that plays into it, which we acknowledge, but there is a more holistic view of this.

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And I think your statement captures some of that, but I think that's what you are.

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I think you're thinking in more pre -modern terms, and a lot of the guys that you're disagreeing with are really grabbing onto an aspect of enlightenment rationalism, which reduces everything.

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That's why I've called it national reductionists or ethno reductionists, or I've tried to use the term reductionist on purpose, and that's my term.

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I haven't heard anyone else use that just to make that point the central thing. Like you're reducing all of this to something that there's some truth in what you're saying perhaps, but it's not just that.

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And if you just see only that, you're blind to everything else, and that's a problem, so.

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Yeah, I think that actually can encapsulate one of the debates that constantly happens between the different groups is how, in one sense, it's simplistic.

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So you have the whole, who am I closer to and have more loyalty to? Is it to my unbelieving next door neighbor or the born again

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Christian in Zimbabwe, right? And so there's the whole argument, and everybody's very reductionistic about it when it's kind of complex, right?

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And that's what I was trying to get in my statement. So one of the things I, so after I decided not to sign their statement,

31:13

I just thought, well, let me see if I can throw together something. I didn't anticipate it for it to become like this.

31:18

It's not meant to be a, we're gonna put a website, though people have asked me about doing that.

31:23

I may do it, but yeah, you can bring that up and we'll read one of the things. But one of the things

31:29

I - Yeah, I'll bring it up in a second. How do

31:34

I, how do I? Yeah, I'll just pull it up. I am logged into a

31:39

Twitter account. I didn't realize I was logged into somehow, but, you know, whatever. Now we all know you're

31:47

Anon, oh, he just - No, no, no, it's not Anon. No, TrueScript does not approve of or endorse the message that we are giving here.

31:57

So I don't have time to change it though. So there we go. Ignore that. Okay. I thought we just outed you, dude.

32:04

We just, what do they call that? Oh, my Anon account? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no, no. That would be funny.

32:11

Okay, no. Yeah, I'm one of those red, what does James White say? The red, red,

32:17

I don't even know what it is. Blue eyed, red guys. Yeah, no, I'm not one of them. You're like Hitler loves Jesus or something.

32:22

That's the - Oh gosh. Actually, you know what? I wonder, can I make this bigger?

32:28

Is that, can you see that better now? Yeah, yeah, that's great. Well, actually, I don't know about you.

32:33

As long as, oh, I can't do it. All right, we're gonna leave it there. And do you wanna just read through it? How do you wanna do this?

32:39

Yeah, I was gonna highlight one thing with the conversation I was talking about regarding that debate, which is in the deny section.

32:45

I'll just read it and then we'll come back. It says, I deny that competing loyalties and duties can be resolved without wisdom, prayer, and reliance on scripture as the prioritization of these duties depend on the specific circumstances under God's providence.

32:59

In other words, what I'm saying is that whole, like, who am I more loyal to and who do I have more duty to is not a tweet.

33:05

It's a complex thing that has to be decided, right? So we have loyalties to our natural relationships and we have loyalties to the spiritual relationships and we have duties to both.

33:19

And there are times when our duty to our, we'll just say our natural family overrides our duty to the visible church, the spiritual, and there are times when our duty to the spiritual overrides our duty to the natural family.

33:35

And as a pastor, I have to constantly make those decisions. Like, there are times when it's like, you know what'd be really cool? If I spent this evening with my wife and kids.

33:42

You know what's also cool? Is I have to go counsel this marriage that's falling apart. And okay,

33:49

I have to make the decision there. At that point, my duty to the church, my responsibility there overrides that.

33:56

But there are other times when it's like, you know what? That thing can wait because I have responsibility to my family.

34:04

And the whole about which am I closer to is really, in my opinion, just a stupid online thing that causes division when it's way more complex than anybody's making it out to be.

34:21

We have competing loyalties and duties and we've got connections and we gotta have wisdom to carry them out.

34:27

And that's kind of the thing. That's one of the things I was getting that in my statement. Well, that's the Ordo Amoris proximity being the central defining feature of our duties and obligations, right?

34:39

Yeah. And proximity is somewhat complicated sometimes because you might have someone you have shared experience with, who speaks your language, who lives next door, who was adopted from another country.

34:49

And you grew up and your kids, I know people like this. You know, I'm good friends with them. And our

34:55

DNA is different, but they are so similar to me. And in some ways more similar than someone who shares my

35:01

DNA, but doesn't speak my language, grew up very differently. I think it's more often the case that people who are more similar in DNA are going to be similar in these other areas as well.

35:14

But there's exceptions to it. And I probably have cousins in Scotland, right?

35:20

Who are very similar to, they have my last name even, but they're in Scotland, you know?

35:26

And I live in Highland, New York. So, I mean, we both have Highlands, but mine are, you know,

35:34

I'm gonna have a greater duty to the people that are near me. So proximity can be something, it's something you have to really think about.

35:40

And I encourage people to do this. And so before we go on, I know I wanna go through the statement, but I just wanted to ask you,

35:47

I don't think I asked you the last time, you're West Virginian, right? I'm from, born and raised West Virginia, yeah.

35:52

You go back a ways? Do I go back a ways in West Virginia? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got a family farm that's been there for over a hundred and some years, yeah.

36:01

Oh, well, perfect. Okay, so I was just gonna say, like, and this is not the topic of the podcast, but I really sense

36:08

I should say this. I am, so I'll ask you first, you know about the family farm.

36:15

Did you grow up on the family farm? No, but we, so we mainly use it to hunt right now.

36:22

So we go and we go, I normally would be there this week. This, some things came up, wasn't able to go this week.

36:28

And so here I'm with you, but usually I'm at the family farm. Oh, is it my fault? Oh no. No, no, no, it's not your fault, no.

36:33

I wasn't going to be here already, but. Yeah, you could have, we could have done this from the stand, you know, that's where I wanna be right now.

36:38

Yeah, that'd be fun. Yeah, dude, yeah. All right, so were your parents, your dad was raised there or?

36:44

My grandfather grew up there. My dad would go there on summers a lot. My great -grandfather, his father.

36:50

There's a Spurgeon Cemetery. So there's a Joseph Spurgeon already up there. And I like, we'll put mine next to him when

36:58

I get old. That is so similar to my experience. I am three generations off the farm, right?

37:06

So I, there's a special place of connection that I have when

37:11

I go back to Mississippi. And I can see my grandfather before he died, he actually showed me the, where he grew up.

37:20

You know, we got to see like little, like where he put a board into a tree and it grew into it. And, you know, just special things like that.

37:28

And I find a place of belonging, you know, it's, there's a hauntedness to it, not literally haunted, but there's a, you know, walking around there,

37:37

I just sense I'm supposed to be here. This is part of me, this is mine. And so I'm so grateful to have that, but I'm three generations off.

37:48

My dad spent summers, like kind of like your dad. My grandpa lived there and worked it, but you know, here

37:54

I am in another part of the country. I sense that some of the problem that we're, not saying this is all of it, but some of the problem that we're encountering right now is there's a generation that doesn't have that at all.

38:08

And they've been totally deracinated. They don't know who they are. They don't have a place of belonging. I've noticed even with some of these right -wing, you know, super right -wing based, you know, chat groups and groups online, there's a lot of like anime, you know, which is

38:25

Japanese, which I'm not saying that's wrong, but there's a lot of like foreign elements. And I'm not trying to call out hypocrisy, what it's sad to me, it's sad in a way, because I realized that there's a lot of guys my age and younger who don't have what you and I have in that sense.

38:41

That doesn't mean they're less than, I'm not knocking them. I'm just saying they want a place of stability and a place of belonging.

38:47

And you will try to find that in somewhere. I think most of the time guys try to find it in the chat group.

38:54

The loyalty to the chat group seems like it trumps loyalty to race, to be quite honest with you. Well, I think that's kind of what

39:02

Nazi Germany is then to some of them. It's a chat group? Well, no, no, it's this vision of what could be, maybe, if, right.

39:12

So finally somebody's told the homosexuals and the communists to shut up. And there is a sense of which, yeah, that kind of happened, kind of.

39:21

Yeah, but like I know who I am, you know who you are. And we don't ask these questions on a daily basis,

39:28

I think. And there are, I'm just trying to point out that I think there are a lot of guys asking these questions, some of them coming to conclusions that will leave them down a dark, unsatisfying path.

39:39

And they're reacting sometimes against things that are legitimately more deracinating. And they need stability somewhere.

39:45

They need a homestead. They need a place of belonging. They need people that are like them. They need, you know, culture, like real ways of living that with ceremonies and they just don't have any of it.

40:00

So the church doesn't take over or destroy the family, replace the family, but in some cases it does replace the family.

40:07

In some cases, that is our spiritual family and our connection goes back long ways with that.

40:15

We got all kinds of fathers and mothers in the church and connections. And I think a lot of times if their loyalty is to a chat group, well, they need to get and be involved and plugged in and have some loyalty to flesh and blood in the church.

40:29

You know, speaking of West Virginia, I was going to say this. My loyalty to that place, even though I don't live there,

40:35

I live there in Indiana now, is still pretty strong. When my children have been born, they're born in Kentucky Hospital or Indiana Hospital, but they get their foot put into a bag of West Virginia dirt when they're born.

40:49

And so they've touched West Virginia ground before anywhere else. You really do that? You have like a bag of dirt? Yeah, yeah, from West Virginia.

40:55

Yeah, it's kind of crazy. Almost heaven, man. Yeah, dude, you got to get them in almost, get them almost to, we'll get them to almost heaven and then we can get them into heaven after we teach the gospel to them.

41:05

Right. Yeah, no, that's good. That's good. West Virginia is a beautiful state. I don't have any connections there except, you know, the

41:12

Harris's when they were coming from Pennsylvania to Mississippi, some of them left off in West Virginia, but I don't know anyone currently.

41:18

But when I drive through it, man, I think it's a neglected state and you probably want to keep it that way, you know, because it's got this reputation for like hickory and stuff.

41:28

And, you know, but it's such a beautiful state. So if people keep thinking it's a bunch of hicks, maybe they won't come there.

41:34

Yeah, so we can just get rid of the stupid meth and drug problem, get that problem out.

41:40

I hate it. Oh, man. That's what's destroyed that. And, you know, the doing away with coal and natural gases.

41:49

There's an abundant amount of resources in West Virginia. It could be very wealthy if it wasn't being either blocked or being stolen from out -of -state interests.

41:59

But okay, we're not on here to talk about West Virginia. All right, well, I'll let you, do you want to read through it? What do you want to do? Sure, yeah, let's read through it.

42:06

So just the background again, I couldn't sign the other statement and I just thought, hey, what the heck?

42:12

I'll throw this out. And I did not anticipate this or the other one kind of catching fire. At one point,

42:17

I think these had more likes and shares than the original statement, at least from -

42:23

Yeah, it seems more popular. Yes, which I'm glad because it shows then that we could actually unite and still keep out false teaching.

42:35

Because all the Nazi guys keep hating me about it. Like, oh, they don't like this. They don't like that.

42:41

And so, you know, this thing's always open to be editing.

42:46

I'm glad for people to take this and edit it and make it their own. So, but let's read it.

42:53

All right. I affirm that God created man, male, and female in his image that all people share in this divine imprint.

42:59

A pretty simple, basic, what we all believe. I affirm that the gospel is the power of salvation for all who believe,

43:07

Jew and Gentile alike. Again, pretty basic stuff. I affirm that my highest loyalty and ultimate duty are to the triune

43:16

God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who is the creator, sustainer, and redeemer of all things. When Jesus talks about, if you don't hate your mother, your father, those things, he's not necessarily talking about our loyalty to the church.

43:31

He's talking about our loyalty to him. Obviously, loyalty to church flows from our loyalty to him, our connection with him.

43:38

But our highest loyalty and duty is not to family, not to nation, not to even the visible church.

43:45

It's to Jesus Christ and God the Father and the Holy Spirit. Next is,

43:51

I affirm that God ordained natural relationships such as family and nation, and I have

43:56

God -given duties and loyalties to these relationships. You know, it's kind of sad you have to affirm these things.

44:03

To be honest, as I read it, I'm kind of like, this ought to be done. I affirm that God has also established spiritual relationships in his church, and I have duties and loyalties to the body of Christ, which include fellow brothers and sisters in the faith.

44:19

Man, so much of our problems would be solved if we just kept these things going good. That is, recognizing we have loyalty to the church, we have loyalty to our family, and loyalty, affection, a lot of people call it natural affection, really in terms of responsibility.

44:42

It's not just what I prefer. It's what I have to do. Yeah. Okay.

44:48

I affirm that the church relationship does not destroy or negate the duties and loyalties I owe to my natural relationships, but transforms and orders them rightly under God's law.

44:57

By transforms them, we don't mean, again, the smuggle in another way of saying destroys.

45:03

Other words, what I mean by that is, it transforms my ability to keep my loyalties and duties, and puts them rightly not in with sin, but under God's law.

45:14

So it transforms me and my connections.

45:21

I affirm that there are times when competing loyalties and duties arise, and it takes wisdom guided by God's word to discern which relationship or duty must take precedence in a given circumstance.

45:32

Again, we've already kind of mentioned that, but that whole debate about who do I'm loyal to, who do

45:37

I have preference for, and all that, it takes wisdom guided by God's word. I affirm that there are times when my duties and loyalties to the church and the fellow

45:47

Christians override those to my natural family or nation, as obedience to God must always take precedence.

45:55

Like, there are times when - Give an example, if you can. Yeah, here would be one.

46:04

Say you and your family are in the same church, and one of your family members gets excommunicated, what do you do?

46:11

Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, that's hard. You have duties to the church there, and are you gonna side with your brother just because he is your brother?

46:22

Though he's committed an adultery, and he's trying to, and he's mad, now he's trying to get rid of the pastor. Ah, you know, we're family.

46:30

But what's, you've always heard blood's thicker than water, but in one sense, water is also, could be more purer than blood.

46:40

I affirm that there are also times in my duties and loyalties to my natural family or nation must take precedence over duties to the visible church, as God commands me to honor these relationships and fulfill my responsibilities within them.

46:54

Here's one example of the duty to the nation taking precedence over the visible church. And it's not even precedence, it's maybe along with it, but think about the

47:04

American Revolution when some pastors went and joined with the military to help fight and to protect the church.

47:10

Their nation, in one sense, they were forsaking,

47:15

I don't wanna say completely, but they were forsaking their duty as a pastor of a local congregation to go fight.

47:21

And so they made that decision, whether it was right or not, God knows. I affirm that I can love and have genuine concern for believers in other nations while maintaining a greater concern, care, loyalty, and duty to my immediate neighbors, even those who are unbelieving.

47:39

This is, again, that very question, right? We all have love, genuine concern for believers in other nations.

47:47

I have special connections with my brothers and sisters in the Philippines. And yet, and some of them are actually family to me, so I have special connection and duty with them, even though they're in another nation.

48:01

Then some of them, I'm not personally related to, I still love them, I still have an affection for them, and yet I have more duty to my next -door neighbor here.

48:12

If he's in trouble, and some Filipino I don't know is in trouble, but is a believer, I'm going to give my money to my next -door neighbor.

48:21

Yeah, it's interesting, too, that even domestically, if you move, your duties change.

48:28

Because I know my wife and I lived in Virginia and North Carolina, while both our families, our immediate families, at least, were up here in New York, and that affected our ability.

48:43

If there was a problem, something as simple as, and maybe this is a stupid example, or it seems like a far -fetched example, but because it's so obvious, maybe my sister -in -law's car won't start.

48:57

I can't do anything about that when I'm eight hours away, but when I'm local, there's a certain duty

49:02

I have. If there's no one else to help her, hey, I'm there, I'm available, right? So that's just, there's so many components to this.

49:09

I think people should just recognize that. And with you having a family, your wife's family, they're literally across the other side of the world.

49:16

That's gonna limit some of the ability you even have to be involved in that kind of thing.

49:24

So. And you know, the thing about loyalty to a nation over, you know, when it comes to voting, and you can say nation, you can say even race, you know,

49:38

I may vote in a way that protects American citizens.

49:43

I am gonna vote in ways that protect American citizens over non -citizens, right? My loyalty's there.

49:49

Yeah, yeah, that's very true. Yeah, and I would say, I don't know if we said this the last time, but you know, nation, ethnicity, race, like these things are pretty much, these are the same concepts essentially in a pre -modern era.

50:02

It's since then, and since the enlightenment rationalism and everything that we started to divvy and cut these things up more, and also mass transit and that kind of thing.

50:10

But anyway, where are we at with this? I affirm that natural affections for one's own people, one's family tribe or nation, you could say race there, is a

50:20

God -given virtue, greater than the command to love one's neighbor, starting with those nearest to you.

50:26

I affirm that nations like families are ordained by God, and it's natural and right for man to love his people as he loves his own household.

50:34

The instinct to protect one's own is not a sin, but a reflection of God's providential order. Again, a lot of this is just like, do we trust

50:41

God? He put us here, he gave us these connections, so we should honor them. I affirm that the biblical and natural order presents nations, and here's the definition for nations, as people groups with ties to shared lands, language, ancestry, and culture.

50:57

That statement ought to be very familiar to you. Because you wrote it. Yeah, because I think

51:02

I sent it to you, yeah. You sent me that, what did I do? Yeah, I agree with this guy, yeah. Well, and there's a number of ways you can,

51:09

I think, rightly define a nation. The most simple way, and I got to do a chat group where we've knocked this around back and forth, and some people who, you'd be surprised, they're more

51:21

Christian nationalist types, actually wanted, I think, a broader understanding. So I said, nations are just extensions of families, essentially, that's what they are.

51:31

You see the first nations in Genesis 10, 11, 12, what are they? They're families that go out and expand, and obviously, they're gonna have certain characteristics.

51:42

They're gonna have a lineage. That means they're gonna have genetic characteristics. They're gonna have ways of doing things.

51:49

They're gonna have similar languages. We see how God divided people along languages. And so there's, that's one way that I think, you break a nation down into a family and start seeing if your ideas for a nation work.

52:03

That's a really easy way to test them. There is another, I think that it's getting at something, but I wanna say the guy's name is

52:12

Renan, who wrote an essay over a hundred years ago on what is a nation. And a lot of guys have grabbed onto this because he gets into the ethos and the, so think of it this way.

52:25

You're at a 4th of July parade, and you get that tingle going up your spine, and you're part of this.

52:32

You feel a pride for, what is that? What is that? There's a bond you have with the people around you.

52:38

There's a willingness to sacrifice for whatever that is. There's a sense of in -group preference with the people you're with.

52:49

Like I remember from the nineties, especially where I live, I don't sense it as much anymore, but there was, that spirit was still kind of strong in small town

52:56

America, you know? And so anyway, you know, that, some people have,

53:04

I know, tried to define it that way and say like a nation is this, it's a group of people with this shared kind of like, they see themselves as together and their futures is tied together.

53:17

That there's a part of that that's true. I think that's true, but where, what is the basis for that?

53:22

Where does that come from? Well, it comes from proximity to one another. And then those things naturally arise.

53:28

That's the glue. So it can't reduce to just DNA, right? But what happens when you do live in a place and you have similar

53:37

DNA and you look at each other and you're like, it should produce in you the shared sacrifice, the struggles, the heroes, a sense of togetherness.

53:47

So all these things kind of play into that. So I'm probably taking up too much of your time, sorry, but I want people to think through these things in a deep manner.

53:56

And so back to Pastor Spurgeon's statement here.

54:02

Sure. I affirm that assimilation into a nation is possible. So now that we just described it as almost a broader group as a family, families can be assimilated into.

54:12

I mean, we have adoption is one example of how that happens in a, well, you wouldn't call it a nuclear family.

54:18

Even though I don't quite like that phrase, but yeah, you can be adopted in, you can marry into a family.

54:24

I mean, you got the example I use there is Ruth. Ruth, a Moabitess is brought into.

54:30

And one of the ways you know she assimilates is what she says. It's like your people are my people and your

54:36

God is my God. Like she owns them as her own. And in one sense, by doing that, she's casting off her own.

54:43

Same with Rahab. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's good.

54:49

Actually, I use that as an argument for a lineage component to, or an ancestral component to nation who was someone the other day because, and it's interesting you can do this.

54:59

What makes adoption so special? Like that's a question I think is worth asking. Adoption is special because you have two parents who choose, it's not their natural obligation, but they decide that they're going to put what would be their natural obligation onto and make a recipient of that obligation, someone who would naturally be in that spot.

55:25

So, the kinds of rights and privileges that a son would get, they give to someone who's not their natural son and treat him as a son.

55:33

And so he becomes their own, which is, we all look at that and we think that's a beautiful process.

55:40

I mean, most of us at least do. We think that that's a sacrificial thing. That's a big heart. That's love.

55:46

The only reason though is because there is such thing as a natural family. If there wasn't such thing as a natural family and if like ancestral connection didn't matter, we wouldn't think anything of that.

55:57

There would be nothing special about adoption. Right? Yeah. What do you think about even the gospel?

56:03

What is it that the gospel, we are adopted as God's sons. We're not the natural sons because Jesus is in that sense.

56:12

And we get his inheritance where he chooses to love us and we're brought in and we are fully brought in.

56:21

We're fully his sons. We're brought fully in. We're not like half in, half out. We are an assimilation.

56:29

There is a leaving behind and becoming something else. And that's what even you can point to other examples in the

56:35

Old Testament too, of how people would join in and become, begin to get circumcised after take the

56:43

Passover. And in a few years, their children are fully members of the covenant community, fully members of the nation politically.

56:53

And so to deny that assimilation is possible is I think a denial of what scripture teaches and probably even a denial in some ways of the gospel.

57:05

So, all right, let's keep going. I affirm that every nation is unique in its culture, history and place and regard.

57:13

And it's right to celebrate the distinctiveness of one's own nation. So long as those distinctions are not in contradiction to the scripture without disparaging others.

57:22

So like, it's good to be an American. And it's,

57:27

I love America, or I can even narrow it down. Like, it's good to be

57:32

West Virginian or whatever. It's good to be a Spurgeon. I was thinking about writing,

57:38

I have these, it's good to be a boy and it's good to be girl books. So I've thought about writing, it's good to be in a church and it's good to be an

57:44

American. And then people were like, what are you gonna do? It's good to be white. And I think I might. Yeah, yeah, I was thinking that you didn't say that, but I was thinking like, it's good to be

57:53

European. It's good to be white. I was seeing someone, some guy who was being quite the jerk.

58:00

I just, I noticed it. I didn't, I actually started to respond and then I didn't have time and had to go do something and Twitter's Twitter, you lose it.

58:09

But there was someone, I think he was giving Samuel Say a problem, right? Saying go back to Africa or something, right?

58:16

And I was kind of like first thinking you misspelled Canada but that, cause he's from Canada, I think, but then

58:24

I was thinking, like that's a jerky, jerky thing to say to someone to just like,

58:31

I don't like what you're saying. Just, you're not part of us kind of thing. When someone like that, he,

58:38

Samuel Says, I'm sure voting, he probably voted for Trump. I'm sure he did. He's a net positive, much more so than certainly some of the people who live here in New England who share more in common with me genetically but are all on board with Kamala Harris and that kind of stuff, right?

58:56

And that's where this stuff gets complex. But Samuel Say said something that I thought was interesting. He's kind of like,

59:02

I'm not ashamed of the fact that my lineage goes back to Africa. Like I love the

59:07

United States, I love being here but like you think you're shaming me with that. And I realized

59:12

Africa hasn't achieved some of the things that European countries have achieved. I'm still proud of it.

59:18

I'm still, and I thought that was a great response to be honest with you. And it's like Father's Day when, hey, my dad's the best dad in the world that day.

59:26

And that doesn't mean anyone else's dad is, I'm not knocking them when I say that, right? So. Yeah, it's perfectly fine.

59:33

I think to say, it's good to be a white person. God made me white. Why would I say it's not good?

59:39

God made it good. So. Yeah. Yeah, I think Scotch -Irish are the best kind but that's just me.

59:45

All right. We're there together, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Harris, Harris is a

59:51

Scottish name. All right. Did we do that? I affirm that a true Christian seeks the good of one's nation through justice, mercy and humble submission to God, not through racial pride, imperial ambition or hatred of others.

01:00:05

Now let me define, because we just act, people are gonna just say, you were just being racially proud. I think pride is different than appreciation, thankfulness, love.

01:00:16

Pride is an exaltation of yourself and your race. It's taking, and once it's pride is taking something that wasn't yours and now boasting in it, which is what we're all tempted to do.

01:00:30

All of our traits, our good gifts, our graces, our virtues, all these things are gifts from God. And when

01:00:36

I boast in those, that's pride because I'm taking the place of God. And so I think there's a way to have racial pride that is different than racial thankfulness and -

01:00:48

Yeah, it's hard because we use the word pride, the same word to mean different things, right?

01:00:53

Yeah, yeah. And so - I'm open to maybe even a better word to put there than that.

01:00:58

Yeah, I would wanna tighten that up a little too. I'm just thinking about it. Yeah, that might, I don't know how we would exactly.

01:01:04

I was thinking though, to pick the Nazi example again, which I know is overblown, but since that seems to be the thing brought up here, there was this deification of the bulk that, and here's the thing, there is a sense in which there is a national spirit that exists.

01:01:22

I think you could, in a figurative sense, say nations have souls, not in a spiritual, they don't have a spirit like people have spirits, but they do have shared struggles, heroes, aspirations, their lots are tied together.

01:01:37

So in that sense, there's a togetherness that there is, you could say that that's like a soul in a way, but the deification comes in though when that's the highest standard, right?

01:01:51

So whatever is good for the bulk, whatever the bulk thinks is right, that becomes what's right, that becomes what's good.

01:02:01

And there's no standard above it. There's no God who has universal requirements that all peoples are to order their lives by, even within their unique circumstances and dispositions.

01:02:14

And that's, I think, one of the problems you see with totalitarian regimes. And it's not just Nazi Germany, that gets picked quite a bit,

01:02:23

I think, but even in communist countries, you see a sense of this, I think. They'll say they're internationalists.

01:02:29

They'll say that they're universalists, but what is practically happens is that natural instinct that God gave us seems to come out.

01:02:37

And like, look at the Soviets. The Soviets said that they were supposed to be a class -based kind of workers of the world unite type of country, right?

01:02:49

But they retained their national borders. They retained their pride in Russianness and their

01:02:55

Russian heroes. They thought of themselves as opposed to these other countries, but there was no

01:03:01

God. And so ultimately, in their case, whatever the government said, that was the voice of the people.

01:03:10

And whatever the people wanted was right and wrong. It defined everything. And that's, I think, maybe the best, purest example of what you're talking about here with, like, that's a pride that is sinful because it actually rips

01:03:25

God off his throne and says, I'm gonna sit there. I don't know if you're tracking with me.

01:03:32

No, I'm with you. I just need a better word of the way to put that. The same thing with the imperial ambition.

01:03:37

As I put that, I don't quite like that phrase. What I mean is simply trying to subjugate others, basically.

01:03:43

Yeah, well, we're talking about idolatry, essentially. Yeah, is what I'm trying to get at. Hatred of others, attempting of subjugation.

01:03:51

I'm thinking of, like, the idea of Aryan supremacy and other nations submit and fall underneath that.

01:03:59

And so that's what I mean by imperialism. I was gonna say vainglory. Just don't use that word. Well, let me keep going here.

01:04:07

I have made some adjustments myself. I'm gonna read you mine. Okay, go for the next one.

01:04:14

So I have another one that says, I affirm that truthful and proportionate delight in and thankfulness for the excellent gifts of nature and grace given to one's own people does not constitute sin.

01:04:24

And so we've already kind of talked about that. It's just another way of saying, like, being thankful for what

01:04:29

God's done. In the West, like, you know, I think Western civilization is the best. And so it's not sin for me to say that.

01:04:37

I affirm that Nazism was and is anti -Christian ideology that exalts the state as savior and God and the will to power as its law.

01:04:48

Examples of anti -Christian nationalist society, socialist ideology, which I condemn, include denial or denigration of the

01:04:56

Judaic ancestry of Jesus Christ, denial or de -emphasis of the Old Testament scriptures as authoritative and inerrant scripture, and appeals to state authority and national will to justify abuses of state power.

01:05:10

Examples of abuses of state power include rescinding the legitimate civil rights of political dissenters and minorities, unjustified acts of aggressions against neighboring nations, and the intentional killing of civilian non -combatants.

01:05:24

So I tried to expand that a little bit. Whether people will love that expansion or think it covers everything, but -

01:05:34

I know I sent you the tweet that someone could ask me, but, you know, what are the sins? And I was kind of like, well, you have lying, murder, and ultimately an idolatry.

01:05:43

It takes two steps to get there, I think. But the lying is a simple clear -cut win for me because it's based on a

01:05:49

Darwinian theory. And you could say that in the United States, I mean, we certainly have our share of Darwinian theory being taught and propagated.

01:05:57

I wouldn't say our civilization rests on that, or in fact, that's a later innovation that people who are elites are trying to then wed with something that's from a

01:06:11

Christian time and era. And so it's not quite the same thing, but I would say that, yeah, like at a base level, there's a lie that you're building the rest of this arrangement off of.

01:06:22

And that's significant to me. We talked about it in the whole last episode and how it's a different kingdom.

01:06:28

It's a different gospel. And then because of that, it flows out into its ethics and how it's lived out.

01:06:35

And it resulted in the intentional killing of civilian non -combatants, which include

01:06:41

Jews, intentional killing them. There's too much evidence. You know, I don't like how the, whatever the

01:06:48

Antioch Statement says it, it's too cute about the whole historical thing and it throws all history into doubt.

01:06:56

Oh, that was such an odd paragraph, yeah. But I think there's some truth in the sense of like, when we start questioning everything or something like this, and that's so,

01:07:07

I think it's well -documented. Like, where do you stop questioning things? Where do you stop pulling the thread of deconstructionism?

01:07:16

And before you know, why stop with Nazi? What about the founding of America?

01:07:23

Maybe it was wrong, right? Maybe there were, and there were, like you had some that were deist there.

01:07:30

Maybe the whole thing was a bad thing and we should not have ever done that. And then when you start pulling the threads of, before you know it, you can pull the thread of everything, of all of Western civilization.

01:07:42

And I just think that's terrible. There are smart guys out there who I know on the internet who will argue for the righteousness of Hitler and what he did and that kind of thing.

01:07:54

But more often than not, the guys who are arguing those kinds of things, at least that I've seen online, it doesn't seem to me that they've maybe read broadly.

01:08:07

Maybe they've listened to a podcast or maybe they've read one book or I don't know. Maybe I'm not, because I want to assume here and give the benefit of the doubt that there are guys who have read more.

01:08:18

But what I've noticed is there is this instinct, there is this sort of pre -commitment to whatever we don't like, i .e.

01:08:30

the social justice warrior types, whatever the official standard narrative in my lifetime, which is a breath, whatever they say, it's the opposite of that.

01:08:40

And if it's not the opposite, you have to prove it. The standard of proof belongs with you.

01:08:45

So if I say something like, the Nazis killed innocent combatants,

01:08:52

I have to go out and get all the data and the information and try to prove it. And it's questioned every step of the way.

01:08:58

How can you prove that? Well, I have the source material right here, because I've been through this a little bit. And here's what

01:09:05

I write. But a Jew wrote that one, you can't trust that one. Right, it's dismissed for reasons that you could dismiss anything.

01:09:11

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, a Jew wrote that, or we can't trust what you're saying, because you have these opinions.

01:09:18

Like it's less based on an objective attempt to understand the historical record than it is on political, what they perceive to be political friends and enemies.

01:09:28

And I guess maybe it's the, it's probably the theologian in you, it's the historian in me that just says you can't, that's not how truth works, right?

01:09:39

This is not how it works, sorry. So. All right, well, let's keep going. I got a few more that I've added.

01:09:46

So, they're not here? There's a few more affirmations, then we'll get to denials. So, I affirm that the allied powers were guilty of similar abuses of state power, and that the egalitarian ideologies of communism and democratic liberalism, which they promoted are likewise contrary to the

01:10:05

Christian faith. And so. That's good, that's good. Yeah, yeah.

01:10:12

So, you don't have to say everybody, there was a bunch of superheroes versus a bunch of supervillains. There's a bunch of humans versus a bunch of humans.

01:10:19

And there was, were there probably heroic acts by Germans in the war? Sure, absolutely.

01:10:26

Same thing with Japanese, probably, and Italians, also

01:10:31

British, American, Soviets. Dude, the way the Soviets fought to defend, I mean, that was some heroic stuff.

01:10:38

You think about it just from a humanistic standpoint, like, and so, I mean, you gotta admire some of that bravery and the fighting in the winter and all that stuff.

01:10:49

Well, you know, Rommel's probably one of the greatest tacticians in history. Oh, yeah, yeah. And he didn't like Hitler either.

01:10:58

There were Nazis, that's one thing people don't realize, there were Nazis, especially in the army, who did not care for Hitler one bit.

01:11:05

That's why, you know, there was all this friction, too, between the army and the

01:11:11

SS. And it's more complicated once you get into it. Yeah, I think what people don't realize is when

01:11:18

I go after Nazi people trying to associate or like Nazi stuff, I think they are then assuming that I'm saying every,

01:11:26

I'm making a caricature or I'm not willing to say what you just said, that we're not, that we, because I would say there is the post -war narrative aspect, there's the comic book version of it, anything that would not agree exactly where these guys are, they think that we are just affirming that comic book view of it.

01:11:49

Instead of like, this is actually people, people are evil, people commit sins, people do good, people are multifaceted.

01:11:59

And that's one of the banality of evil is that it often is, you can't look at it and just see it immediately, or it just seeps in easy and before you know it, you're engaged in stuff.

01:12:12

I think you've done a good job, because we've said ideology, we've put that word on it. So it's not, we're not saying their uniforms weren't completely awesome, which, frankly, they had the best uniforms, in my opinion, of any of the actors in World War III.

01:12:25

So there's things like that, that, I mean, they had the coolest helmets. Yeah, and the swastika would be actually kind of cool if it wasn't associated with the thing, right?

01:12:34

Like, I don't know, now somebody's gonna, that just got taken out of context, now somebody's gonna quote me saying that, but yes. Yeah, you're in trouble now.

01:12:40

Yeah, you just said the swastika is a great symbol. No, but I've been in homes as a repairman, right?

01:12:47

I remember the first time this happened, and it's happened a number of times since then, but where Indian people have swastikas in their homes, in New York, just hanging there, people who have immigrated from India, who are,

01:13:00

I think it's, I don't know if it's a Hindu symbol or what, but I remember the first time I saw that, and I'm sitting there,

01:13:06

I'm fixing a couch or something, and I look up, and this is a big one, there's a big old swastika on the wall, and I'm just like, where am

01:13:16

I? What is going on, you know? And I didn't even have the courage to ask the, you know, they'd ask it like everything was normal, but that's actually, in local politics, that's been an issue, because Indians will come, and they'll display it publicly, and the

01:13:32

Jewish population gets upset about it, and hey, they don't mean the same thing. There's a Southwestern tribe

01:13:37

I know that uses that symbol. They don't mean the same thing, so anyway. All right,

01:13:43

I'm ready to read the ones off your screen now. I'm done with the extra ones. All right, all right, so we got denials now?

01:13:49

Yep, we'll move quickly through. I deny that the spiritual relationships established in the church destroy or nullify my duties and loyalties to my natural relationships, as God has ordained both for his glory and my good.

01:14:03

I deny that my natural relationships, such as family and nation, are always of higher loyalty and duty than my spiritual relationship with Christ, as loyalty to God must come first.

01:14:15

I deny that my love for the church, including its members and other nations, diminishes my responsibility to love and care for my local community, including my unbelieving neighbors.

01:14:26

I deny that competing loyalties and duties can be resolved without wisdom, prayer, and reliance on scripture, as the prioritization of these duties depend on specific circumstances under God's providence, which is basically a way to summarize those previous denials, is that it takes wisdom to know how to work those out.

01:14:46

I deny ideologies, such as liberalism, that reduce nations to abstract propositions like equality, or Darwinian determinism that reduces nations to biological features alone.

01:14:57

I deny that Hitler was a Christian prince, or that Nazism was a Christian nationalist project. I deny that the crimes of modern globalism or cultural

01:15:07

Marxism excuse or justify adherence to Nazism or its ideals. To fight one devil by bowing to another is the act of a fool.

01:15:16

I deny that the Jewish people are beyond the reach of God's mercy. We proclaim Christ crucified as the savior of all who repent and believe,

01:15:24

Jew and Gentile alike. I deny that one must choose between a love for his own people and a refusal to oppose racial hatred.

01:15:32

One does not need to harbor vain pride or commit injustice to rightly practice or to amaris.

01:15:38

So that's an important one, I think, in that, I feel like there's a group of people that say, if you believe in these things about natural affections, you're a racist.

01:15:50

And then because of that, I feel like some of the people that are wanting to affirm the natural relationship stuff are unwilling to actually admit or call out racial hatred, because it's like, well, there's this one or the other.

01:16:04

And I think we have to be careful of false dichotomies when you can love your people and hate racism, if you will call it that.

01:16:15

I deny the Christian's call is to place earthly nations above the kingdom of God. The church universal is the bride of Christ and no nation can gain supremacy over his reign.

01:16:24

This is really just talking about like my loyalty, the nation doesn't come for my loyalty to Christ and the work of the kingdom.

01:16:33

And it also is that the church is not, the church universal is not subservient to a civil government.

01:16:47

They have to obey, we have to obey civil government, but it's not that the government establishes

01:16:53

Christianity. Christianity, God establishes both the government and the church.

01:17:03

So that could probably be fleshed out a bit more. I deny that natural affection for one's own people is equivalent to hatred or indifference towards others.

01:17:14

A man who loves his family does not despise his neighbors, but loves them more truly because his love is rightly ordered.

01:17:22

I deny that natural affection is synonymous with any form of racial supremacy, imperialism, or unbiblical hatred.

01:17:28

Christ commands us to disciple all nations. And then one more, I deny that the affection for one's nation excuses tyranny, corruption, or injustice.

01:17:37

To love a thing rightly is to seek its reformation under God's law, not its uncritical exaltation.

01:17:47

I think that, I mean, I feel like this is a good statement.

01:17:52

Obviously, I would be glad for some people to come along and be like, hey, let's improve some wording here or there. I threw this together pretty quickly.

01:18:01

And so didn't think it would take off. I got a little bit of help from you on a couple of things.

01:18:07

Joe Webbin actually looked at it before I published it and gave me a couple actually just grammatical things and he liked it.

01:18:18

A couple of other people looked at it and was like, yeah, it's pretty good, put this out. But I'm sure now that it's out there, other people may be like, nah, this can be tweaked.

01:18:27

This can be made better. Yeah, because there's also, it's long, which is fine.

01:18:33

But I'm thinking you could have an entirely separate statement on government policy and how should governments, given these things, operate.

01:18:44

Because governments don't have the luxury all the time of identifying, well, we'll just say organic entities.

01:18:57

So you have to have a firm, for us, we have borders around our country.

01:19:03

There's a firm designation of the people within this range of things are, they're

01:19:08

Americans. But that's obviously been now called into question now that the borders have been weakened and we have people that haven't even gone through the citizenship process who are reaping the benefits of the country.

01:19:20

So I don't know if it would be for your statement, but I am wondering if going through the Bible too and just saying, okay, where did

01:19:26

God draw lines for keeping that core ethnicity?

01:19:31

So I've said, I know you didn't have this in there, but I think there is an ancestral connection that has to be maintained.

01:19:39

And without it, you don't have a nation. So if you experiment, if we've had millions of people, we all, surprise, we do, coming across our border and they settled in, let's say, the

01:19:53

Southwestern United States, where many of them have, and you travel to some of those regions today, regions

01:19:58

I remember as a kid, they spoke English. You felt like you were in America. Now you do not always feel that way.

01:20:04

I'll just tell you straight up. I feel like I'm in a foreign country in the place where I was born now.

01:20:09

I was born in California and it doesn't feel like California. Like not the one that I remember at least, right?

01:20:17

So anyway, as a matter of public policy, how do you deal with that kind of thing? Because we've said that the people who are born here are

01:20:23

Americans. And now many of them who have been here illegally have had children and their children have had children, but they've maintained their connection to this micro -community that won't assimilate.

01:20:37

So those aren't challenges that I know you're addressing. This is more theoretical or abstract, but those are the kinds of questions in the real world

01:20:45

I know will come up that it would be cool to maybe flesh out sometime. Yeah, yeah, I did add a whole appendum or whatever you wanna call it on the issue of interracial marriage that I added to there.

01:20:58

I released that, but there's a whole lot you can go on to say. I think the purpose of a statement like this is to simply be able to show true teaching on some things, unite around it, and then deal with a problem, a specific problem and mark that off and then leave a lot of room for differences among the real brethren.

01:21:25

So brethren are gonna differ on how to go about some of this in the civil government realm.

01:21:35

They're gonna differ on that. And if you're gonna have a statement of affirmation and saying, I don't think it's wise or even,

01:21:44

I think it can cause division by putting down this is the thing that has to be believed in order to be united with us.

01:21:52

And so what I'm trying to do is these are the things that Christianity has taught.

01:21:58

These are the things that I think most Christians can believe and agree on.

01:22:05

And also it keeps out those that are trying to go after ideologies that actually disrupt and move away from the gospel.

01:22:15

And I'm perfectly fine with other people to come out with like, well, here's some statements about how we might go about doing this or that.

01:22:22

I just wouldn't want them to ever become a binding thing. Even this is like, I'm a

01:22:27

Presbyterian. We have a confession of faith. I don't need like 18 million different confessions of faith to add on to.

01:22:35

So I don't even know the binding power other than to say, hey, this is what I believe, man, about this stuff. I'm glad you believe it too.

01:22:41

Let's keep working for Jesus. And so - Policy is also very particular to a circumstance and it changes depending on the threat.

01:22:51

And that's one of the reasons I didn't sign the other thing too is because it was so, again, it's so situational regarding Joel Webben and all that.

01:22:59

As soon as that thing gets worked out or does, their statement kind of poof is of no use.

01:23:05

Whereas I think something like what I've put together hopefully could stand the test of time.

01:23:11

Evergreen, yeah. Well, let me do this since we've been going almost an hour and a half. We have some people who have paid to get a comment or question and I'll just pitch those to you and then we'll end.

01:23:20

Oh, nice, okay. So Christian Ramirez says, Colossians 2 .20, why do you submit yourself to decrees as if you were living in the world?

01:23:31

Hey, why do you do that, Joseph? Why do you submit yourself to decrees? I don't know what he's -

01:23:37

So he's talking about that passage, talking about don't touch, don't eat, right?

01:23:42

So it's talking about though, I think maybe he, do you have a timestamp of when he may have put that out?

01:23:49

That was early on, I'm going sequentially. So that was early on. He could be just talking about why would we submit to this

01:23:55

Antioch Declaration or something like that. That's maybe what he's putting that in there. But the point of that passage is like, there are people that come up with human laws for us to have to submit to.

01:24:06

And why as we as Christians should give ourselves to that? Like, why should we, I just preached about this last

01:24:11

Sunday, what's funny, not that passage, but a similar passage in 1 Timothy, people forbidding marriage and food.

01:24:18

And there is always a way that hypocrites work, John Calvin says, to come up with other laws, other things for us to have to go with and agree to and obey.

01:24:28

And they do that to massage their guilt because they're not gonna give up their greed, their avarice, their sinful lust and adultery.

01:24:37

But if they got, hey, I don't eat these carrots and look how holy

01:24:42

I am. Now they've been able to, they've created a law that they can't obey so they can keep disobeying

01:24:47

God's law. So I don't really quite know how that fits into our conversation, but yeah,

01:24:53

I don't wanna submit to those decrees. I wanna obey God's law. Why isn't anyone rebuking Tobias for his lack of urgency to reconcile?

01:25:01

It is disobedience to Christ, Matthew 5. Actually, I cited this the last podcast. I said, when you're on your way to the altar, your brother has something against you, you stop and you go get it right.

01:25:10

So you could say that I've already done that and I've personally reached out to him. I think he should repent.

01:25:18

Let me just, so this is gonna sound, make somebody mad maybe, but I'll just say it.

01:25:24

I think he is working with a pastoral heart.

01:25:32

I don't think he's doing it rightly. I think he has sin in the process. But God gives pastors, He gives us all

01:25:38

Christians a good nose. So follow your heart, follow your nose. When something smells, you know there's something up and you're trying to deal with it.

01:25:46

As a pastor, you have to have wisdom, but you also have to have the courage to be like,

01:25:52

I know there's something going on here. I can't quite put my finger on it somewhere. And so I'm gonna speak to it.

01:25:57

And you gotta be willing to be wrong and you gotta be willing to apologize when you're wrong. So I can affirm and appreciate and give him kudos for sensing that there are people going down paths or which they say stuff that are hatred towards Jews, hatred towards black people and are idolizing

01:26:15

Nazi stuff. And so I commend him for wanting to engage in that, to have a pastoral heart and have the courage to do that.

01:26:25

He needs to have the courage to also say, you know what, I kind of blew it. I hit the wrong target. And just come out, be very quick to say that.

01:26:33

I think if he did, it would garner goodwill. I have found this out to be true that we always are tempted to think pastors and those in authority, anybody really, that to admit a fault is to destroy our authority or our, what do you wanna say, influence.

01:26:51

I actually think nothing destroys your authority or influence more than refusing to apologize and admit your faults, especially over a long time.

01:27:01

Like when Joel comes out and says, you know that statement I said was arrogant, and he keeps admitting that over and over again, that actually garners to him more authority, not less.

01:27:17

If they were to come out and be like, guys, we are sorry. We blew this thing out of proportion.

01:27:22

We blew it up. Please forgive us. We're gonna work for reconciliation. I just think, dude, most

01:27:30

Christians would be like, amen, we love you. We've always loved you. We'll support that, and we'll get behind what you're doing.

01:27:36

I just think if they did that, that would be the way to go. Yeah, I think I even told Joel that initially, that look, you come out and apologize.

01:27:45

That is the moral high ground if they don't. And I've encouraged for both sides just to apologize for the things that need to be apologized for, but it hasn't happened yet.

01:27:58

And unfortunately, and I mean this sincerely. I don't know if I've said it publicly yet, but every day that goes by without rectifying this, the respect diminishes for the party that is, we'll say, not allowing that to happen.

01:28:15

And in this case, refusing to admit, refusing to own that, hey, maybe not everything

01:28:21

I said was wrong, but I did get something wrong. You have a duty, the Westminster says in the fifth commandment, when you are a superior, and being a pastor is superior.

01:28:30

We're all superior than all you other people that aren't pastors. I'm just kidding. We are considered superiors in that, and we have a duty to maintain our authority.

01:28:38

And one of the ways by our character and our carriage, and that means being able to repent and own your sins.

01:28:44

If you repent and own your sins, people will trust you. That's one of the things about this document, though,

01:28:50

I think that many found troubling is Tobias is supposed to be in this circumstance where he's planning a response, which

01:28:58

I'm assuming is gonna have an apology for what he got wrong. But in the midst of that, this statement's released, and it's got his name as one of not just a signer, but a draftee,

01:29:09

I don't remember what they called it, collaborator. So you're like, I don't know, man.

01:29:15

It sends a signal that this was worth some time or effort. This is worth putting out publicly, but not an apology, not a statement, not a rectification.

01:29:28

My fear is if it comes with an, whatever he puts out will be not a, it'll be an apology with a continued attack.

01:29:37

And that's what I fear. I fear it'll be like, yeah, I said these things, but here's this, this, this, and this.

01:29:46

That'll be a terrible thing. Don't do that. If he does it, that'll lose whatever, yeah, credibility. Just to say, hey, dude,

01:29:52

I blew it. I'm sorry, Joe Webb, please forgive me. You can even say, hey, I still have concerns about Nazi stuff, and I still think that maybe some of the positions you hold could lead that way, but let's talk through those.

01:30:05

People accuse, I was telling somebody the other day, somebody said, well, your position makes it difficult for you to be able to fight

01:30:12

Nazis or racial hatred because of my view on natural affection. And I'm like, dude, you're doing the same thing that egalitarians and feminists do for me about the patriarchy.

01:30:24

I defend the patriarchy. I believe in patriarchal teaching, and I also oppose spousal abuse and rape and mistreatment of women.

01:30:34

And they are gonna say, well, you allowed that to happen because of your positions. If you just came all the way over to where we were at, and it's like, no, no, no, no, no.

01:30:42

The truth, the truth is there. Well, let's sort of get to the end here because we have been going over an hour and a half.

01:30:49

John Carter says, the views you're attributing to Nazi ideology weren't unique to them and were held by the vast majority of Allied soldiers who fought them.

01:30:57

And I don't know what ideas specifically he's, or what views he's specifically talking about there.

01:31:03

Like evolution? I don't, maybe. Did they hold to the positive Christianity in which they tried to deny

01:31:08

Jesus? Yeah, I don't think so. Yeah, that's not right. Yeah, I don't think that, yep. Yeah, I saw that too when

01:31:14

I was saying, oh, well, look, there's lies here. There's, you know, which I already explained. Evolution, there's killing people that aren't, you know, as a matter of policy.

01:31:23

It's not just that you're killing people. It's that this is a matter of policy. We're gonna kill these people who haven't done a crime.

01:31:31

And then also the Volk deification for,

01:31:37

I don't think that that described the American forces. You can see aspects, you know,

01:31:43

I can look at the proposition nation stuff and be like, oh yeah, there's, that's sort of like a deification of, but it's not the

01:31:51

Volk. It's still not the same thing, I guess. But there is this mystical, you know, America is this sort of God ordained, you know, force for good no matter what.

01:32:01

And, you know, I can see that, but I still don't think it's quite the same thing.

01:32:08

And I even said my new statement that I read to you wasn't listed. I did say that Allied powers were guilty of similar abuses and that communism and liberalism are incompatible with Christianity, but the

01:32:23

Allied forces are not on par with the Nazis.

01:32:29

It's a lot like people saying the Republicans and Democrats are the same when they're not. We know the

01:32:34

Republicans have issues, but they're not as bad as the Democrats. And so American allies are not as bad as the

01:32:41

Nazis. I refuse to acknowledge that. There is an article

01:32:47

I wrote for American Reformer called Conservative Nazi Hunters. I would just recommend to everyone go read where I delve into the left or really, you know, socialist communist attack on Nazis versus the conservative critique.

01:33:01

And the conservative critique has pretty much always been since the beginning, Nazism, the

01:33:08

Bolshevism, that these are kind of very, these are similar ideologies, that there are differences between them, but they are both totalitarian.

01:33:17

And because they're totalitarian and they both don't have accountability, like there's not a

01:33:25

God above it that they're being held accountable to. It's a, the state becomes God or takes that position that there's a great potential for evil that they both share and have.

01:33:39

And more could be said. I mean, they're both socialists and that kind of thing, but I think there is a critique there from conservatives, real conservatives, not the neocon types, real conservatives that have been, it's been around for a long time.

01:33:51

I think it's good we pick it up again, you know, with Nazi ideology, with at least some people in a,

01:33:58

I think it's a pretty small corner of the internet, to be honest with you, but at this point, at least, but with some people picking it back up.

01:34:06

So anyway, let's, John Carter's another one. Not remotely an anime fan, but let's not pretend that the past century of Hollywood films and television shows are free of foreign influence.

01:34:15

Oh yeah, I've said this before, like Hollywood, look, I got my family is, still some of them are in Hollywood.

01:34:21

There's no question that there's a lot of mostly secular Jewish people that have a tremendous amount of influence.

01:34:28

They do not share the Protestant values that this country used to have. And so, yeah, of course they're pushing stuff that's evil.

01:34:37

Doesn't mean they're the only ones. They're certainly united with people who aren't Jewish doing the same kind of thing, but yes, that influence is certainly felt in Hollywood.

01:34:47

And I mean, it's joked about there. People know that it's Jewish people primarily that are, you know, controlling, and it's not a conspiracy even.

01:34:56

That's just, you know, you look at the names of producers and like, it's not that hard to figure out. What you gotta do is read the early life on Wikipedia.

01:35:02

We all know that. Yeah, we all know this. This isn't really - But it's a false dichotomy this guy is dealing with.

01:35:10

Oh, if so, if that happens, then it must mean, because this is the same guy. Yeah, right. Yeah, I'm not saying -

01:35:15

It must mean the Nazis are good, because the American media is bad, the Nazis are good. False dichotomy.

01:35:21

There's still some good movies, by the way, that do come out. And there's also directors that aren't secular

01:35:27

Jewish people. There's even, I don't know if I wanna call them like Protestants necessarily, but, you know, there still are guys who are somewhat, have some cultural

01:35:36

Christian leanings. I think of that Reagan movie that came out. Oh, who's the actor there?

01:35:42

Dennis Quaid, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's, you know, he's cultural Christian at the very least.

01:35:48

And I saw Kevin Costner's Horizon movie that had a few things that I couldn't recommend to Christians, but overall, it's kind of like one of these old

01:35:56

Westerns. You know, it's got that feel to it. And he even, it ends with Amazing Grace at the end.

01:36:01

And he was interviewed about that. You know, why did you have Amazing Grace and stuff? He's like, it's part of my culture, man. Like, I'm an

01:36:07

American. The Christianity was a big part of my ancestors going out West. Nice. That's still there, but it's not obviously prevalent.

01:36:16

But so, yeah. One of the things I would say with this is like, okay, then stop watching that stuff.

01:36:22

Stop making your avatar from a movie. Yeah. The little avatar,

01:36:28

I don't think it was him. I think that's from a TV show or something. So why are you, like, none of us have distanced ourself from all this.

01:36:37

Like, we are the product, all of us, of the post -war consensus, if you want to call that, of all the stuff of America.

01:36:45

We're the product of it. Like, do you like music? I'm assuming you don't just listen to music that was not from America.

01:36:53

And if you do listen to any kind of rock or pop music or country music, then guess what?

01:36:59

Black people helped influence the music that you like. Uh -oh. And probably Jews as well.

01:37:05

You're not a racial purist. Well, yeah, I don't know, maybe. Jews would be some producers, probably.

01:37:12

But yeah, certainly with all that stuff, you're absolutely right about the 12 -bar blues. You can't get the music we have in America without the

01:37:20

South. And you can't get the South without heavy Scotch -Irish influence and influence from Africans.

01:37:26

Even the banjo is brought here by Africans. The blues is Africans, 12 -bar blues.

01:37:32

But the Scottish snaps that we hear in a lot of it, that's all, you know, that's Appalachia stuff. So it's like, you know, we created this beautiful blend.

01:37:42

And I think it's quintessentially American, but anyway. I love what you're saying, though, and I would just add to it.

01:37:48

I haven't said this publicly, but I have thought before with all the memes and the references to movies in Hollywood, how subversive that is.

01:37:59

You know, I'm not saying you can never do it, but why not pick up a book and read about some good old American folklore?

01:38:04

Why not get into some Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett or Lewis and Clark or any of the founders or any of the explorers that came here initially or any of the guys who went

01:38:14

West, Kit Carson or Jedediah Smith. Why aren't you familiar with those guys?

01:38:21

You should ask yourself a question. If you really love America, you really love this people and place, you talk about people and place, why is it anime characters and raunchy movies that you keep appealing to, to try to justify your views?

01:38:32

It's like that you're not even German. Most of these people probably aren't. Aren't you? Yeah, Germans, yeah,

01:38:37

I know, that's a, yeah. Yeah, so yeah, let's get back to some real

01:38:44

American stuff here. And I've tried to like, you know, I've been doing the good morning thing on Twitter and I've put like American heroes, you know, and trying, and I know

01:38:54

CJ Engel's trying to do that too. That's his whole heritage America thing. He's trying to center the Norman Rockwell stuff, which he's getting in trouble for, but that's what we should be looking at.

01:39:03

So on heroes and hero worship by Carlisle talks about the pride and idolization pretty well.

01:39:08

Okay, I haven't read it. Maybe that's a good thing to read. And then Ray says, visited India.

01:39:14

The guide walked around a temple adorned with swastikas. So we had questions and learned it was a traditional good luck symbol.

01:39:20

So next time you see a swastika, Joseph, just know that it is a good luck symbol. Wish the person good luck.

01:39:26

You say, hey, good luck, man. You just put your, good luck. Yeah, all right, well, that's it for the podcast today.

01:39:34

If anyone needs to get ahold of Pastor Joseph Spurgeon, they can go to? My Facebook page,

01:39:40

Joseph Spurgeon, Twitter, Joseph Spurgeon or sovereignkingschurch .com. All right, and with that,