Election Madness!, a Woke Evangelical Response, & Practical Advise for the Future

Conversations That Matter

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00:00

Welcome comrades to the Conversations That Matter podcast. Is that too soon? Should I say comrades?

00:06

Anyway, my name is John Harris and the reason I'm making this podcast, one of them at least, is because I think it is too soon to say comrades.

00:14

We are still in the middle of a presidential election. Whether you like it or not, I know it's stressful for some.

00:20

I remember the Bush -Gore thing. This is like 10 times that. This is so irregular. There's so many instances of deceit and fraud and ballot harvesting, et cetera, that it's staggering at this point.

00:35

I mean, I'm pretty confident Trump won this thing to be honest with you. I'm confident Trump legally, like we're talking about legal votes,

00:41

Trump won. Now, if we're just talking about every vote, the fake ones included, the votes from dead people, the votes from elderly people who when they got to the polls were told they had already voted, the votes that were just made up, the votes that didn't count because Sharpies were used.

00:56

I mean, these kinds of things. That all adds up. When you have certain areas reporting more votes than registered voters in that area, you know, something's just, it's a little fishy.

01:07

Just saying. So don't think this is over. If George W. Bush was in the

01:13

White House and this had happened, it probably would be over. But George W. Bush is not in the

01:18

White House. Donald Trump is in the White House. And Donald Trump is aware of a lot of these things.

01:23

He is sending lawyers out. He's doing the best he can. And if you're concerned for our country, which we should be, just because it's close is enough to be concerned.

01:33

But if you're concerned, the thing is to pray. My advice would be to stay off social media if it's getting you too discouraged.

01:41

Stay off the media. I mean, if you remember at the beginning of this year, when we had the COVID stuff, the Black Lives Matter protests, et cetera, if you remember, you had every voice in society in lockstep saying the same thing.

01:53

All the media, social media, your business you frequent, your business you work for, even your church in many instances saying the same exact thing.

02:01

Who was the outlier? Donald Trump. Much of the time, it was Donald Trump. And as maybe pathetic as some of you think this is, somebody's shocking to me, oftentimes

02:14

Donald Trump was actually the voice of common sense. And right now, Donald Trump is the voice of common sense right now.

02:24

Literally everything is stacked against him. People in his own party are against him. But the reality of the situation is this election has been really, really fishy.

02:33

And there does need to be some investigation into this.

02:39

And once, if these investigations can go through, if there can be a fair election where legal votes are counted and not illegal votes, then

02:49

I'm pretty confident. I'll be honest with you. Now, I don't know if that's gonna happen. That's the big question in my mind.

02:55

Are we going to be able to get to the bottom of differentiating between legal and illegal ballots or not?

03:02

If we can't do that, if we are blocked from that, then yes, we are taking a big giant leap towards, we already have actually, but we're solidifying our giant leap towards becoming kind of like a banana republic.

03:17

The corruption, kind of as Stalin said, a lot of people are re -quoting, re -posting this quote from Stalin.

03:24

It's not the ballots that are counted, but who counts the ballots. And that is true. So we need to fight this now.

03:32

This is, our country does hang in the balance. And how do we do that? How do we do that? So I wanna get practical with you.

03:39

I wanna talk about some things, whether Trump pulls this off and is able to be able to determine what the legal versus illegal votes are, or whether he's blocked and Biden is there.

03:50

They say that Biden's the president, even when there's questions about whether he became president legally.

03:55

We wanna talk about those implications. We wanna talk about what the path forward is for us as Christians, as religious conservatives, or I should say theological conservatives, as political conservatives, because we're theological conservatives.

04:10

We wanna talk about what this means for us. And that's what we're gonna do today. We're gonna get practical.

04:16

We can't just sit down and refresh social media. That's not gonna help anyone. I will tell you what

04:22

I think we should do on social media, and we're gonna get there. So first things first, though. Let's start with kind of what happened, a review of what happened in the election.

04:33

And I think everyone's kind of already familiar with this, but I wanna ingrain it in our minds.

04:38

This is what happened, guys. Do not disbelieve, do not believe anything you're hearing to the contrary.

04:45

This is what, we lived it, we saw it. There were early calls for Biden in states like Virginia, like Arizona, where they didn't even have the votes yet to determine whether Biden had won there, but they're already calling it for Biden.

04:58

Fox News notoriously called Arizona way too early for Biden, which perhaps even suppressed the vote in Nevada.

05:05

I mean, this is irresponsibility, but yet took them forever to call places like Florida for Donald Trump.

05:14

And the way things were going last night, you would have thought that Trump at about midnight, one o 'clock should have been able to have a victory speech if we're playing by the rules that the media, we thought normally plays by, but that didn't happen.

05:30

And the counting stopped in many of these states controlled by Democrats that are swing states.

05:37

That doesn't happen. I can't remember that happening ever. So you just stopped counting. So we stopped updating.

05:45

And then all of a sudden there's these, really what people have questioned is there ballot harvesting going on?

05:51

Because all of a sudden these big dumps of all these ballots for Biden exclusively, or the overwhelming majority for Biden, that doesn't happen.

06:02

And then there's suppression on social media. The president is suppressed, many of his tweets.

06:09

I'm noticing weird things on social media, even with things I'm tweeting, that there's just a lot going on there.

06:17

And you guys are well aware of that. So I don't need to probably wax long, but there's just been a lot of suppression on social media.

06:23

And then there's a circling of the wagons. And that's where we are right now. We are living in the middle of the circling of the wagons.

06:30

To isolate Trump, to put him on an island, his view is crazy, he's kooky. Everyone knows that Trump is wrong.

06:37

Don't buy it, don't repeat it, don't post it. Don't support the overwhelming narrative at this point.

06:44

Unless you think you can really, you got clear, solid proof, don't go with it.

06:51

Be very critical of that because that's exactly what they want you to do. They want you to isolate Trump more.

06:56

They want you to put him on an island and they want to sew this thing up and coronate Joe Biden.

07:01

And there's a lot of fishy stuff going on. We can't just coronate someone if we don't know that they actually won.

07:10

So here's some just things that I've seen that are frankly, well, they prove, in my mind they prove that there's some fishy business.

07:21

And I'm gonna go over a bunch of them. Ballot dumps. Why were there dumps for Joe Biden where Joe Biden's receiving all these votes and Donald Trump's either receiving no votes or like a minimal amount that is insane, like statistically impossible.

07:38

Here's a few things. This was yesterday night. Two more batches of Pennsylvania votes were reported.

07:45

23 ,277 votes in Philadelphia, all for Biden. About 5 ,300 votes in Luzerne County, nearly 4 ,000 of which were for Biden.

07:56

With 83 % of the expected vote in, Trump's lead in Pennsylvania is now just below six points. So 23 ,277 votes, all of a sudden, boom.

08:07

Hey, we got a bunch of votes and it looks like all of them are for Biden, every single one. I'm sorry.

08:16

Here's another one. Analysis, seven Milwaukee awards reported more 2020 presidential votes than registered voters.

08:24

Biden nets 146 ,000 votes in the city. This is Milwaukee City Wire. This is local news.

08:30

You gotta go to the local news at this point. I mean, so many, I mean, even a lot of local news outfits are controlled by major media companies, but major media is not doing their job, in my opinion, right now.

08:41

And so this is where we are. Wisconsin turnout, and this was an interesting one. So Wisconsin turnout, the highest it's ever been, it looks like, from 1960 to 2020.

08:53

Well, you know, 2016. The highest it's ever been was 72 .99

08:59

% in 1960. In 2016, it was 67%.

09:05

In 2020, it's over 89%. Excuse me.

09:12

That, now, is that possible? I don't know if it's possible, but the likelihood of that is, that's insane.

09:21

How, you went from 67 % to 89 % participation?

09:30

Who are all those extra people showing up? We know that Trump people showed up. We know that in areas that Trump, many areas that Trump won, he expanded his base.

09:43

So who are these extra people? And this is the question that's been going on. Here's the graphic that got censored on Twitter, but, and they're saying it's a glitch.

09:53

I mean, this needs to be investigated, guys. Michigan, Donald Trump's up in Michigan, right?

09:58

And then there's an update. And in the update, all of a sudden, Joe Biden goes from 1 ,992 ,000 to 2 ,130 ,695.

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And that's it, no votes for Trump. Not one single vote for Trump in that update. I'm not buying it, guys.

10:22

Something is up. Here's two charts that you should, this shows the dump.

10:29

Here's Wisconsin, Republican votes, Democrat votes. Republicans are above Democrats, you can see that.

10:36

And you can see the Trump vote, right? And all of a sudden, this total presidential votes for each party so far with 89 % of Wisconsin's expected vote counted as of 6 .23

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a .m. on November 4th. Republicans are winning. And all of a sudden, a straight vertical line.

10:54

And it's all Biden. And all of a sudden, Biden tightens it up with Trump. What's that about?

11:04

It's steady, steady, steady, and whoop, straight line. No Trump votes, just a bunch of Biden votes.

11:11

What's that about? Here's what people are reporting on the ground. And this first person, now, there was other people that I know, at least who are fans of this show, et cetera, who were saying similar things.

11:22

I'm just taking this one guy. This is on Facebook, comment he left.

11:28

I'm gonna read this to you. Bubba Sheffield, my sister took my mom and dad to vote yesterday in Albany, Georgia.

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And when they ran my mom's DL, they told her she had already voted. There were 30 to 40 others there that had been told the same thing.

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My sister's friend in town, about 50 miles away, said the same thing was occurring at their poll.

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These were all older white voters. When my sister posted this on Facebook, the fact checkers told her it wasn't true and was fake news.

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She replied and asked how they could possibly know it wasn't true. And they threatened to suspend her for her reply.

12:10

The left is trying to steal this election. My mom got to vote after about an hour and after they canceled the other vote.

12:19

How many people are willing to wait an hour to cancel a previous vote they never cast? This is in a swing state, supposedly, a state that Biden is, there's no way in my mind

12:31

Biden won Georgia, but this is a state they're trying to win. Here's someone from Michigan.

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I know my state of Michigan. I am also an election official. I know that any of the votes cast after eight on election day are not valid.

12:44

We had our machines tabulated and results in to our clerk by 10 p .m. Any votes counted after midnight are fraud.

12:50

Please fight for Michigan. Trump crushed it in our state until mysteriously at 3 .30

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in the morning. Kerry Sheffield, breaking as yesterday,

13:02

Trump filing Georgia lawsuit says GOP poll observers saw 53 late absentee ballots illegally added to a stack of on -time absentee ballots in Chatham County.

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We will not allow Democratic election officials to steal this election. And here's the suspicious activity.

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You'd think with all this going on, and this is just tip of the iceberg, and we, it really is.

13:28

If with all this going on, you'd think there'd be some kind of like an attempt to answer these things, to be open and transparent.

13:37

But here's the scene at Detroit's absentee ballot counting center yesterday. The windows were covered up.

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Allegations of violation, Secretary of State says she welcomes challenges. Really, she welcomes challenges in Detroit when you're covering up the windows of where they're counting the absentee ballots.

13:55

And people have said they've seen fishy business, and you're just gonna cover the windows. Interesting.

14:02

Voters in Arizona complain ballot marked using Sharpies were rejected. This is one, there was a video that went viral two days ago of folks in Arizona.

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They said it happened at a number of different polling sites, and they showed up. And some of them were, you know,

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I think it was some Republicans trying to hand out ballpoint pens. You gotta use pens, ink, to make sure that the machine reads it.

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And they were being confiscated by election officials and told they had to use Sharpies, which the machines don't read, apparently.

14:34

Here's another one. Ballot of Cure canvassing training, Democrat Party of Georgia.

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Someone posted on Twitter, anyone in Georgia, Team Joe needs people to go door -to -door helping voters fix their mail -in ballots so they count, sign up.

14:50

What's that about? After the election? This was yesterday on the 4th.

14:57

Fixing their vote? It's interesting. Okay. We are, we are really acting like we're two countries at this point.

15:10

Some of these social issues that we found in these initiatives in certain states show kind of where we're at and why we are a country very divided right now.

15:19

It's like we have two countries. Colorado, restore gray wolves, passes. Yes. Over 50%.

15:27

Ban late -term abortions? No. Over 59%.

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So we wanna restore the gray wolves, but we don't wanna ban late -term abortions. Well, that says it all,

15:39

Colorado. In Virginia, I'm gonna just read this from the

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Virginia Flaggers. Tonight, the citizens of Virginia overwhelmingly voted to keep their Confederate monument in every locality that allowed them to vote on the matter.

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Major victories in six localities. This is an interesting thing because the elites all say that this is, everyone thinks these are racist.

16:00

They need to be gotten rid of. They don't reflect who we are, et cetera, et cetera.

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And when the voters get the chance to actually address these issues, not the town board, not a court, not protesters violently ripping a monument down, the citizens wanna keep them.

16:18

So that's, you know, that you could say, wait, that's way out of step with the mainstream. Well, it's not the mainstream, it's the elites.

16:25

That's what it's out of step with. It's elite thinking. Here's another one. Louisiana voters overwhelmingly back pro -life amendment to state constitution.

16:35

And a bit of good news for the pro -life movement, Louisianans have voted overwhelmingly in favor of a constitutional amendment that would prevent courts from finding that the state constitution contains a right to abortion.

16:45

So chipping away at abortion. And I'm sure there's more that I could have listed here, but you get the point.

16:54

There's a wild difference, especially that Colorado one. There is a huge difference between voters in certain areas and voters in other areas.

17:04

It's a night and day. And that's the kind of country that we are living in right now.

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And in some ways, that's a scary thing. I wanna show you something. Now, I'm gonna bring the encouragement.

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You gotta wait for it though. I gotta show you something here. So this is super interesting to me.

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We're gonna go online. I'm gonna show you, this is Michigan.

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And we're going to do a search here. I'm gonna do it live. Well, I uploaded, I'm doing it right now as I'm recording this video.

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Search for your voter information. So we're typing in a name here. This is William Bradley. Birth month,

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March. Birth year, 1902, 48207. 1902, all right?

17:50

This is William Bradley. And remember, Michigan's a swing state. Let's see if William Bradley voted in the last election.

17:58

Election date, 11 -3 -2020. Application received on 9 -11 -2020. Ballot sent 9 -19 -2020.

18:05

Ballot received 10 -2 -2020. So let's get this straight. Someone who was born in 1902 voted in the election in Michigan.

18:15

And you can see all the proof right here. We'll see how long this kind of thing stays up and how long you're able to go check whether or not you voted in the election in some of these states.

18:26

So there's funny business going on, guys. There is no doubt about it that there is a whole lot of funny business going on.

18:33

All right, moving forward, I wanna talk to you briefly about the evangelical reaction to what's going on here.

18:40

And I woke up to this. This was interesting. SCBTS, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, filed a copyright claim against me today, which is totally legal under fair use.

18:50

I played less than two minutes of a talk, a library talk that they did, called

18:56

The Lingering Effects of Lynching. I was supposed to show how our preaching should be somehow impacted by the legacy of racially motivated lynching.

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And one of the statements made in this, and I played it in that clip, was a professor who was invited to come to Southeastern who said that Donald Trump, because of his immigration policies, rhetoric, et cetera, he insinuated that he's carrying on the legacy of lynching.

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And Danny Akin, the president of the school, went on Twitter and said it was a fine talk. He just wished they talked about abortion, but it was still a fine talk.

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Didn't take issue with that. And this is just my opinion. I think at this point, places like Southeastern, it's not just Southeastern, they realize what they've done.

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They realize people are gonna remember things like that. They're gonna remember things like, another thing that was scrubbed a while ago, but you can go on the

19:50

Wayback Machine and find it. There was a statement made in 2017 called Unifying Leadership, I think it was the website.

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And I think it was written in part, at least by Bruce Ashford. There's a CNN article that's still there. Bruce Ashford talks about this.

20:06

And it's against the alt -right in Trump's administration. And it insinuates Donald Trump is harboring alt -right people and basically

20:13

Klansmen in his administration, he's white supremacists. So it's an accusation, it's a backhanded accusation.

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Well, people are gonna start remembering things like that. And they're gonna say, hold on, did you do that? Did you soften the evangelical vote, in this case in North Carolina, where Southeastern is, could you have maybe softened the vote there?

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I mean, it was pretty close. Would maybe your actions against Donald Trump that were unfair, I mean, there's things to say about Donald Trump, but if these unfair actions, he's somehow carrying on the legacy of lynching, he's harboring white supremacists in his administration, these kinds of things.

20:48

Could that have softened the evangelical vote in North Carolina? You bet it softened the evangelical vote, not just in North Carolina, because there's a lot of institutions doing the same kind of thing.

20:59

And I think right now, evangelical institutions are there getting sensitive, because they realized what they did, and they know that there are a lot of people like me who remember these things.

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And regardless of who wins, the fact that it was this close is gonna put pressure on them from the pew sitters, from the people that are helping fund these institutions, in part, there's outside money coming into, which we've talked about.

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So that could be the motivation behind this, I don't know, but it is very curious that a video from January, this morning, is the time that they've chosen to file a copyright claim, which this falls under fair use,

21:38

I'm sorry, and it's been re -uploaded. You can go to Capstone Report, you can see the clip. I even uploaded the clip that they're complaining about on Twitter, you can go see it there.

21:49

So that's my prediction, that's what I expect moving forward there's gonna be a lot of, now here's the thing, some institutions went over the cliff, some organizations went over the cliff, and they may be just doubling down on the woke stuff at this point.

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Angry at all the Trump voters, the evangelicals that decided not to follow them, that's probably gonna be happening too, but I think there's gonna be some that realize, wait, our base, they are a little more conservative, and we went too far, and they're remembering it, so that's my prediction.

22:19

So I wanted to show you this, because this, remember, I showed you this clip, in the last episode,

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I showed it to you, from Walter Strickland, a professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. I'm gonna play a portion of it again.

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I talked about it, I critiqued it, I went through it, and then I wanna play you another clip that's related to the election.

22:41

And I'm gonna show you how this social justice stuff actually practically works, so here we go.

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Christianity and race in America were intertwined at its inception, because Christianity was the thing used to be able to say, how can we enslave these people, yet evangelize them?

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And so how is it that we can construct or imagine a faith that sets somebody's soul free, but keeps their body belonging to us?

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All right, I critiqued this in the last video that I made, the last podcast, so you can go check that out.

23:17

I wanted to remind you of that, and then I wanted you to see this clip. It's about two minutes. It's from Charlie Dates, and he's spoken at Southeastern.

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I'm not sure where he is now. He's, let's see, senior pastor, and oh, he's a professor at TEDS, which is the

23:36

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Okay. I didn't know what reform was.

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I didn't realize that reform would later become a kind of political movement within evangelicalism. That's a whole nother thing, but I was just taken by the fact that this guy, this pastor would go and like catechize members within his fellowship, and he would pay particularly close attention to how people were developing, and I thought that was remarkable.

24:02

It wasn't until later that I realized this guy was rather sympathetic to slaveholding.

24:10

Not only him, Ibram Kendi does this for us in Stamp from the Beginning, draws a line between Richard Baxter and Cotton Maidner, a kind of theological line.

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Cotton Maidner becomes the most well -published theological person in Massachusetts during the colonial period, and there are several decades between Richard Baxter and Cotton Maidner, but they become the kind of theological architects, the framers, as it were, of American Christianity in a real sense, and what you discover is that Cotton Maidner owned slaves.

24:44

I'm not sure that Richard Baxter did, but Cotton Maidner owned slaves, and the problem for Cotton Maidner and Richard Baxter is that they felt like the slaves needed to be evangelized, but in order to evangelize the slaves, they had to actually admit that the slaves had souls, because what are you gonna evangelize somebody for if they don't have a soul?

25:06

So they had to construe a theological framework that honored the soul component of slaves, and yet could commoditize the black bodies of slaves, and this is very important.

25:25

I think even to where we are as I'm watching election results down the way in my study, there has been this bifurcation ever since from curse theory to climate theory to whatever you wanna call it to justify the greed,

25:41

I think, of broader American evangelicalism, the racism in broader

25:47

American evangelicalism that will affirm the spiritual lives of black and brown people, but will demean black and brown bodies.

26:00

All right, so this is related to the election, and remember,

26:07

I played you the clip from Walter Strickland. Walter Strickland is basically saying the same kind of thing. He goes on to say that it's just a half gospel if you're just preaching the gospel that saves from the slavery to sin, but doesn't save from physical slavery.

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That's just a half gospel, which I guess Paul was just preaching a half gospel to them if that's the case.

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It's not a good path to go down, and you have to do some crazy eisegetical hermeneutics to try to make

26:34

Paul say something he wasn't saying, but Strickland makes this argument, and this is a liberation theology thing.

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I said, look, I've read this in Cone. I've read this in other deotist Roberts, black liberation theologians.

26:48

Charlie Dates says essentially the same thing, that there's this bifurcation. You have the bodies, right?

26:54

That sounds almost Foucaultian. There's the bodies, and then there's this spiritual side, but not only is it slavery, these guys invented evangelicalism.

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This is historically so messy to just like Cotton Mather invented evangelical

27:09

Christianity in the United States, and here's where we are, voting for Donald Trump because of our racism and our greed.

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That's what motivates evangelical Christians. This is inept. This is not historically, you can't prove this historically.

27:26

You're hearing philosophy. You're not hearing history, and theology, really. This idea that you must not have had the gospel or somehow had this shrunken gospel, this incomplete gospel, this form of Christianity, which just was so deficient.

27:47

It wasn't even really Christianity because there was some kind of oppression that existed in the fabric of the hierarchies of the society you inhabited, which was,

27:57

I mean, at that time, that was the way the world was. I mean, the world has mostly been acted with some kind of slavery, whether that's a feudalism of a certain kind.

28:07

I mean, you didn't have the option. You were born into it. You stayed in it. This is human history, but now in modernity, we have, through technology and the

28:18

Industrial Revolution and the great advances that have happened in science, we have the ability to, at this point, that could change, guys, but we have the ability to jump from career field to career field with relative ease.

28:33

People do it all the time. People can move to different parts of the country. They have mobility.

28:39

We have technology that helps that. There's so many things that are different today. You don't have to rely on the

28:44

Lord of the land so you can eke out a living on his land, which was the case for most of European history.

28:52

It's a different time, but you take those historical realities and then say, well, because these historical realities existed and the people who had the same

29:01

Bible we have today were trying to apply that Bible and say, what does it say about relationships between masters and slaves?

29:07

We need to evangelize them, but because somehow they didn't free their slaves,

29:13

I mean, it's ignoring the practicalities of that, whether that was even possible in some instances. It was a bad

29:19

Christianity, and we've inherited that legacy, so this is how they do it, guys. This is how they blame you when you say, oh,

29:25

I never owned any slaves. This is how they blame you for it. This is how they say, well, it doesn't matter. You're following in the footsteps of slaveholders.

29:33

You're following in the footsteps of oppressors, and when the Me Too thing starts up again, it's gonna be you're following in the footsteps of these horrible, misogynistic theologians who founded our country as well.

29:43

I mean, they'll pick anything, and they can relate it, and this is how Marxists work.

29:48

I've said this. They'll call you some kind of an abuser, racist, sexist, homophobic, whatever, in two steps or less.

29:55

They can do it. It doesn't matter. It's worse than the associationalism fundamentalists used to have, where they said, well, you talk to someone who talked to someone who talked to a heretic, therefore you're a heretic.

30:05

This is worse than that. Your whole life can be destroyed. You can be canceled from all your social media and your job even, your way of making a living for your family if they're able to somehow attach you to something that's attached to something that's attached to something which may have been possibly racist.

30:23

That's the way that they do it, and they don't have a problem making huge jumps, leaps, passing over hundreds of years of history irresponsibly to do it.

30:32

They just don't, and so you're seeing that there. Now, the theology of this, the idea that, well, there's your body, and then there's your soul, and this idea that they manufactured a theology, it almost seems like they were in a smoke -filled room, and they decided, man, we're just gonna come up with this theology that we can enslave these guys, and this is what

30:50

Strickland said in the last video I talked about. We're gonna come up with this theology where we can vote for Trump, so bad things will happen to minorities, because that's our motive.

30:59

That's what we really want to have happen. I mean, this is impugning the motives of people without evidence.

31:04

It's just assuming it. We're gonna come up with this theology, and then, though, we gotta cover ourselves and pacify our minds so they're gonna get their eternal salvation.

31:14

There's no evidence for this. Tell me, where in Richard Baxter do you find this? Where in Cotton Mather do you find this?

31:21

Show me the texts. I quote Marxists. Look, you read my book, Social Justice Goes to Church, The New Left and Modern American Evangelicalism.

31:30

If you've read that book, you know I'm quoting Marxists, new left thinkers, new left evangelicals, in their own words.

31:36

I wanna accurately represent them. Show me in Cotton Mather where he says this. I'm gonna make a bifurcation.

31:42

Fact is, he doesn't. It's an unargued -for premise, and it's being imposed on us and because it justifies those who wanna vilify political conservatives.

31:54

That's their motive. That's what you wanted. When you voted for Trump, that's what you were thinking. You wanna go home to your church where you can pretend that you love all kinds of people because you believe they have souls, but you can abuse their bodies by buying their products that are made in sweatshops and voting for Donald Trump who puts immigrants in cages and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

32:19

None of it, it's not argued for. It's not sophisticated. It's not interesting, but people fall for it because it's emotional.

32:27

It's an emotional thing, and that's the only appeal it has. Recognize it when you see it and point it out.

32:33

Say that's a bully tactic, and you're not appealing to argument. You're appealing to emotions. That's not what we're supposed to do as Christians.

32:39

We're supposed to be about truth as Christians. You know, prove it to me. Show me in Cottonmouth where he says this, what you're saying.

32:46

So that is my, in case we hear this more from the super woke, that is my advice on how to handle that.

32:55

Now, I wanna bring this to kind of an encouraging and practical conclusion, and I think you're gonna find this helpful.

33:01

This is maybe the most helpful, I think, part of the video, so keep listening. A few verses, number one, that came to my head during this cycle.

33:11

Psalm 105, for the Lord is good, his mercy is everlasting, and his faithfulness is to all generations. Absolutely true.

33:18

Hold on to that, but that's not the only thing that we should be thinking about. Number two, Leviticus 18, 28.

33:24

So that the land will not vomit you out should you defile it, as it has vomited out the nations which were there before you.

33:33

Now, this is talking about the Canaanites. They had participated in all these evil sexual practices that were to eva, meaning abominations to God, and they defiled the land, and God judged them for it, and he brought

33:49

Israel in. So are we to that point? And I'm going to let that question stir in your mind, and I wanna answer it myself in a moment.

33:56

But here's the next verse, Psalm 11, or sorry, Proverbs 11, one. A false balance is an abomination to the

34:02

Lord, but a just weight is his delight. All right, so these are the three verses that I've been thinking about.

34:07

The first one is, you'll hear this from a lot of evangelicals. Hey, look, God's faithful to all generations, not just those who this was written to initially, but to us as well.

34:17

Very true, God is faithful. We can rely on him. People have raised families and functioned even in communist societies.

34:24

Some of them died, but some of them were able to raise families, and we just need to keep obeying

34:29

Christ and focus on eternal things and realizing the Lord is good and his mercy is everlasting. And this is not all there is to reality.

34:36

There's an eternal reality, very true. Okay, Leviticus 18, 28. Are we to the point though, in this reality where we live, we know that there's a heavenly reality, but where we live right now in the temporary realm, is it possible that we've reached the point where the land, where we're just so characterized by immorality, sexual immorality, that God is judging us and will judge us?

35:03

And I think, yeah, the answer is yes, but, and I'm gonna talk about why I say yes, but in a moment.

35:09

And the idea of false balances and weights is being put on display right now by one of the parties in this country.

35:17

There is a party in this country that the Democrat Party, who will try to win by any means necessary.

35:24

And this is a classic Marxist tactic. If Trump is literally Hitler, then you must use any means necessary by which to defeat him.

35:31

And lying, preventing people who want to check up on you to make sure you're not lying, those kinds of things are perfectly permissible in this moral framework, because N justifies the means, and everything is about keeping the bad guy out, the guy who wants to trample on equality, inclusion, and equity, et cetera.

35:49

So the guy holding us back from utopia must be stopped. It doesn't matter if we lie, cheat, steal to do it.

35:56

And that characterizes one of the political parties in this country. We're finding that out right now.

36:02

So that's, I think, kind of where we're at. These are the things stirring in my mind.

36:07

Okay, God is good, eternal things are true. I can trust in him. But right now, our system's breaking down because it wasn't made for people who are this willing to break the law and this deceptive.

36:19

It was made for people who are moral and religious. And we're not that anymore, not in one party, at least.

36:27

And we may be reaching the point where the land could vomit us out, that we have just exceeded the sins that God's willing to put up with.

36:37

Now, I think many of you are with me on this. You see the same thing. I wanna give some practical advice, and I wanna talk about how

36:46

I think churches are handling this. And I'm gonna come back to this idea of whether or not we are beyond the pale as I go through this personal advice here.

36:54

So practical personal advice. Number one, don't uncritically repeat the news, okay? We know that there's a party that is trying to hack this election.

37:05

They don't want anyone coming in and supervising their accounting.

37:11

They don't want any kind of authority over them.

37:16

They want to be able to make sure that this election goes in a certain direction. Now, the news media, I think, is complicit with this.

37:22

Don't just repeat what the news is telling you. You can't trust them. Don't give up on responsibilities, priorities, and transcendent truths, right?

37:30

God is faithful. So don't give up on the things he's told us to do and his law. You're a dad.

37:36

If you're a dad, you're a dad. You still have that responsibility. You still gotta go to work. Transcendent truths, yeah, like God is who he says he is.

37:45

We can trust that he will be the same tomorrow, that the same person he is today and was yesterday.

37:53

Now, here's the thing. Here's where I want to start introducing an idea to you, and this is my localism, and I talked about this before.

38:01

I'm not a nationalist in the sense that rah, rah, rah, America, and that's what being conservative is and being an

38:08

American is, is apple pie, root beer, and 4th of July fireworks, and the Pledge of Allegiance. No, those are good things.

38:14

Those are great. I love all those things, but we don't want to have the outward trappings of some really things that could be antiquated if they're just tradition.

38:25

There's no basis for it, no moral understanding or reasoning. It's just, this is where Americans, we've always been this way.

38:31

I went to a rally the other day. Here, let me show myself, show my face here. I went to a rally the other day, and it was

38:40

Republican, and it was rah, rah, rah, America, great, but there was nothing about being

38:45

Virginians. There was a little bit about Christianity. You would never hear that in New York, but in Virginia, there's still, hey, we need to keep our religious freedom.

38:52

They had a guy who was a pastor who was up there, a patriot pastor. I don't know what that meant.

38:59

So there's some good things. I'm not knocking it. What I'm saying is there's something missing, and I went away with a little bit of a,

39:07

I was like, this is encouraging, but there's an empty feeling. Why are we here? Is it just rah, rah, rah,

39:13

America, or are there some actual real principles that come from some, not just principles hanging out there, floating around, that, well, we just like border security because we like border security, and it reduces crime, and we make sure that jobs go to Americans, and our culture isn't completely defeated by large groups of people coming in, and okay,

39:38

I get that, but what's beneath that? What's the base for that? Why is that? Why is it so important to preserve

39:45

America? Why is it so important to make sure that our jobs aren't taken away?

39:51

And that's just one issue, but there's a lot of issues out there. Why, why? Ask the why question.

39:57

Eventually, it's gotta get back to something that is firm and transcendent. We've gotta be about eternal truths.

40:04

We've gotta be about who God is, what he's done, what he expects of us, and how we apply that to our practical daily existence, okay?

40:18

I think that the nation of Israel represented this in a way. They knew who

40:24

God was. They had his law. There was an international identity. They remembered who they were, but there was a local identity as well, different tribes, so family groups.

40:33

They had a history. Hey, look at those rocks. Look what, reminds me of what God did when we crossed the Jordan, that kind of thing.

40:38

They had, they knew who they were because they knew who their God was, and they had a record showing them who their

40:47

God was. And what I'm concerned about in American conservatism, and I've been concerned about this for a long time, is that we have the outward trappings, but not enough meat, all right?

41:03

And the meat is not going to come necessarily at just a political rally. The meat's gotta come through education.

41:10

It's gotta come through our churches. It's gotta come, we have to get the meat from other places.

41:17

And then when we go to a political rally, I think it'll enrich it when you know that the person next to you, they understand why the founders, why they wrote the

41:28

Constitution the way they did. They understand the Christian principles they were working off of. They understand why people fled from Europe to the

41:35

United States initially, well, before it was the United States. There's an understanding of the history, of the principles involved.

41:46

I mean, we have such a rich history. There's an understanding of biblical law, what

41:51

God has required, what he expects. That's the most important thing of all this. I don't always get that impression. And I don't always get the impression that we know how to apply all that to our local daily existence.

42:02

In other words, are we living these things at home? Do we talk to our children, to our family members, our friends about these things?

42:12

Because they are so dear and important to us. We believe in private property because we believe we must fulfill the responsibilities that God has given us.

42:21

And we have a responsibility to take care of those around us. That's why we believe in private property. It is our duty to something greater.

42:29

There's a transcendent truth behind it. I hope I'm making sense. So that being said, the two things, really three, three things along this line, practically speaking, we can do right now.

42:42

And I'm gonna tell you what those are. Number one, get off alternative social media platforms.

42:48

This is like a really simple thing. Now, I wanna put a caveat on this. I have mainstream social media platforms.

42:54

You're probably watching this on YouTube or Facebook or something. So realize when I say this,

43:00

I'm not telling you that you must. This isn't an imperative for me that you have to get off completely.

43:06

These are tools. But the tools are being used against us now. That is so clear, especially

43:12

Twitter right now. I've been thinking about Twitter. At the very least, what

43:17

I'm gonna do after this all clears up, I'm waiting, is I'm going to reduce the amount of time that I'm using

43:24

Twitter. And I'm going to bring, I think most of my stuff, I was debating, is it gonna be Gab, is it gonna be Parler? I think it's gonna be

43:29

Parler for me for now. There's Gab as well. There's other, you know,

43:35

Mines and other social media sites. We'll probably see more pop up. But I'll put the links in the info section.

43:42

Start, if you're gonna spend time on social media, you might wanna just start spending more of it on a different media source.

43:48

Get on Parler or something. Don't use Twitter as much. Don't give them that power to censor you.

43:56

Don't just look through censored, filtered information when you can go somewhere and get it and support the advertising at a place where they don't have that.

44:06

So that's one thing that I wanna encourage you to think about doing. And it may look different for everyone. And I know there's some people who say, well, there's still a battle on Twitter.

44:13

We still need to fight it on Twitter. Everyone's on Twitter. So it's a great place to do it. I get that. But if we all keep thinking that way, then we're not gonna make the exodus we need to make.

44:22

We need to destabilize places like Twitter, all right? And I'm fine helping lead that exodus. So that's one of the things.

44:32

Rumble, I actually just got a Rumble account today. That's like a YouTube alternative. So I'm looking at all this stuff.

44:39

The other thing is think local, act local. In your local community, starts with your family, but your local community, so your restaurant that you might frequent, don't just go to the fast food place, the corporate chain.

44:52

It's not wrong. I mean, look, I love going to Texas Roadhouse. I love going to Bojangles and stuff.

44:57

I mean, it's not wrong to do that. But try to encourage the local businesses in your community.

45:05

There's no reason when you go to Burger King you should have a rainbow flag on your cup. But they're playing to this national audience.

45:12

So it's one size fits all for everyone. The guy in San Francisco is making the decision for the rural guy in Alabama on what he wants on his cup.

45:23

Why do that? And here's, and I said I would come back to this. Here's where I wanna try to answer this question, or at least give you another thought to think about.

45:32

Have we reached the point of no return? Are we to the point that the land's just gonna spew us up because of all our immoralities?

45:40

Well, who is the we? That's what I wanna challenge you to think about. Who is the we?

45:46

When I say we, am I saying me and a guy in Silicon Valley who's left of Stalin?

45:52

You know, is that, are we, how much do we share in common? Remember, my wife and I traveled, we were in San, I'm from California originally, so I can say this, but I haven't lived most of my life there, but I have still a family there, and we were traveling there, and went to San Francisco, and we went, there was this art festival thing, and we walked in, and I mean, just the whole experience in San Francisco, but this was the epitome of it.

46:13

I just thought, this is like traveling to another country. So different than Virginia.

46:21

And in diversity, different foods, different flavors, and different dress, and I mean,

46:28

I get that, and that's nice, but there's a different worldview going on, a different religion going on, and I'm not convinced that we're one nation in the sense of,

46:40

I know the Pledge of Allegiance says this, but we're not one nation in the sense of, like George Washington said, we have a common, in his farewell address, common heritage, common religion, we have common language, right?

46:54

That was kind of what held Americans together, and even then, there were a lot of differences between people in the North and the South, in different states, et cetera, but those things aren't necessarily holding us together much anymore.

47:04

We don't have those things in common, and so when we say, are we as a nation gonna be spewed up, and well, maybe, but who's the we?

47:15

And this is why I think it's important to think local and act local, not to, it's impossible to function the way that we're functioning.

47:21

We can't sustain this, unless there's some kind of jackboot totalitarianism that just forces everyone to conform, we can't, we have nothing in common, so those of us in certain areas and those of us in other areas.

47:36

I mean, you look at an electoral map, it's the cities that Tim Keller loves so much that are making the decisions for so many of the states, and there's a divide, there is a huge divide, and a lot of it comes back to a religious divide, at least base fundamental first principle assumptions about reality, and so I think if you can restore power to the local community, then you can do way more than even winning a national election.

48:06

If we could ever get back to that point, and I don't know if we will, but if you're just a construction worker or you say,

48:12

I'm just a plumber, why not run for the town board? Why not figure out a way to try to support local businesses, put time into your family, you gotta make your personal choices where you're at, but less time and less money on the rah, rah, rah

48:29

America, more time on educating the people in your community, more time on putting into actual tangible people in your area, and then if that works itself up and now you can run for, if you're political, let's say you run for a higher office, do it.

48:43

We need Christians in these positions, we really do, but what makes your area special, your family, your area, where you live, what can, what sets you apart from other places?

48:54

Take pride in that, in the sense of make, that's part of your identity, and I think that can, that's a hedge against the internationalism that the

49:07

Democrat Party wants to enact on us, we're all just humanoids, carbon figures walking around, carbon machine, because now they want to join machines with humans, watch the fourth industrial revolution video.

49:21

Get back to the things that matter, the tangible things, the local things, the ties to the land, ties to, even if you don't have land, ties to your local area, right, that's, if there's anything that is a takeaway,

49:34

I hope you hear me when I say this, and I just think that that's the way the founders intended it, we used to have real federalism, it was more important who was elected governor than who was elected president, more important who was elected mayor than who was elected governor, because those people had more control over your life, and there was more accountability in that.

49:54

We don't have accountability, you can't reach out and talk to your president, but you can talk to your mayor. So these are the kinds of things that I think, you know, social issues especially can be adjudicated on a local level, and I understand, you know, the things that the federal government, the national government, the common government was created for, the general government, was mainly for defense, for interstate commerce, for trade, these kinds of things, but a lot of these issues that we're fighting about now, these can be adjudicated on a state and local level, they really can, and they should be.

50:32

I don't know if we'll ever get back to that, maybe I'm a dreamer at this point, but I think that it's important for us to get involved on a local level, and everyone's different,

50:43

I mean, look, in my podcast, look, I'm talking to you guys all over the world, I get that there's an issue that's affecting you on a local level, and I'm speaking into that, and we need that,

50:52

I'm not trying to be a hypocrite here, but I'm just trying to show you what I think in general the emphasis ought to be moving forward for conservatives.

51:03

So we can do that, there's practical ways that we can do that, to de -center some of these big corporations that are going woke, and et cetera.

51:13

The other thing is the churches, look, if you're going to a church and it's woke, or they're just teetering, they're not taking stands, solid stands on things that matter, that you can't trust them, because you saw what they did during COVID, and you're not gonna be able to trust them during a

51:27

Biden administration. I mean, look, in England right now, apparently it's illegal to go to church. You gotta start another church, you gotta find another church.

51:34

I don't know what else to tell you on this. I am, I've said this for a few weeks, I've been working with some guys, we have a website now, and I think they're waiting on me right now,

51:44

I've been really busy the last two weeks, but I'm planning on, today or tomorrow, trying to work on, okay, what are we gonna put up, at least for a route of entry, initial statement of faith, these kinds of things, and it's gonna be a platform for you guys to get on there and find each other.

52:01

If you're in a town, and it's got 40 people that have left their church, you don't know each other, this will help connect you guys to each other.

52:07

So that's one thing that is practical. Now I wanna leave you with this.

52:13

This may be one of the more interesting things to you. This is how

52:18

I divide up the churches, and how they think about these issues, political issues specifically.

52:26

And there's ecclesiastical churches where the, in other words, the church is the most important institution.

52:33

We know that God gave us the church, the individual, the family, and the civil realm. So there's these four kind of institutions

52:40

God gives us different responsibilities and roles to. There are churches, and I've seen this, where the ecclesiastical thing's the most important.

52:48

What does that look like? Well, as long as you got a church that understands what elder qualifications are, and exegeting the word of God, and making sure that you get people into those positions that can technically exegete the word of God, and there's accountability with the elders.

53:02

And that's like the most important thing. We don't really talk about other issues as much. Okay, that's, I've seen, it's an emphasis thing, but I've seen this.

53:10

There's other churches where your individual relationship with God is just the most important thing. We don't talk about ecclesiology, elders, church government, civil government.

53:19

It's just, hey, do you have a personal relationship with Jesus, right? Pietism. There's the kind of family -first churches.

53:28

Sometimes family -integrated churches can sort of be along those lines, where the family's the most important institution.

53:34

And all the emphasis is on the family. And oftentimes, a lot of those churches, they don't reach out or do evangelism or hold events as much.

53:41

They're just trying to get together with like -minded families and the father is the priest of the home and stuff.

53:48

So there's that. And I've been to churches like that. There's also churches that are where the civil realm is the most important thing.

53:56

Woke churches can be like this, but also the raw, raw, raw American churches, your grandparents' church that might be like that too.

54:03

Some fundamentalist churches can be like that. And constantly talking about national issues. Now, here's what

54:08

I'd like to suggest. All of these things are important. Every single one of these institutions is important.

54:15

And preaching and pastors and churches that understand that,

54:21

I think do the best. And I think at the founding of our country, I think there was actually, there was people that thought, okay, the law of God applies to all of life, but there are different roles that different institutions have.

54:34

And so you would have a lot of political sermons, outright political, naming the candidate.

54:39

I mean, this was so common. I mean, go read the, there's a book called the, I think part of the title is the

54:45

Black Robed Regiment. I have it on my bookshelf somewhere, but look at some of the sermons from the colonial period and you'll see this.

54:53

So there's an understanding that the church has a specific role, but because one of those roles is interpreting and applying scripture, it's going to instruct on these other roles.

55:04

The church is gonna do that. Why am I bringing this up? Because I think this is going to be very important moving forward.

55:12

If we are getting what I think we're gonna eventually get if Biden ends up pulling this off, if we are gonna get the great reset, we are gonna be in kind of a crisis for a few different reasons.

55:27

Reason number one is, did Biden actually legitimately win this election? If that becomes shown, if it's shown that he did not win this election, fair and square, we have a crisis because, does

55:39

Romans 13 now, which the misuse of Romans 13 has now been all too common. I think

55:45

Romans 13 is talking about a function of government and the office is for the function of government.

55:50

That's why it's there. Does it justify a tyrant? Someone who actually broke the law or got into the position they're in because might makes right.

56:02

Does it justify a Christian submitting to that person? It's gonna be a big question.

56:08

And if you look at the four kinds of churches, the emphasis, a lot of these churches,

56:15

I would say the ecclesiastical ones aren't probably, they're not equipped at this point to probably give you a great answer on that.

56:22

The ones that only focus on an individual relationship, they're not gonna be equipped to give you a good answer on that. The ones where the family is just the most important thing.

56:30

They may not be as, that may be a reason. Now, maybe they will, I don't know. But churches that have that emphasis that haven't thought through these questions, they're gonna have a problem because there's a lot of questions that are gonna be coming up.

56:44

A lot of things are gonna be nationalized. The church is gonna be expected to be conforming. I don't even know what all to yet, but there's gonna be a lot of calls for the church to conform to certain things.

56:53

And there's gonna be a crisis if this happens. And it could be halfway into the Biden administration, but there's going to be a lot of questions about what authority the government has from people who don't understand a lot of civics, unfortunately, because that wasn't their emphasis.

57:10

So be aware of that going into, and I'm just encouraging you, this isn't to bash any particular church.

57:16

It's not, if you're a pastor who's listening and you say, hey, man, I see myself in one of these categories.

57:22

I don't know a lot about civics. You're gonna have to be able to understand civics. And that means, that doesn't mean just reading your

57:28

Bible. You're gonna have to understand, okay, what is American law to an extent? And what, okay, what does, start by reading the constitution, read the

57:36

Federalist Papers. Understand though, where you live, understand your local constitution, read that for your state, for your local area.

57:46

What are the kinds of things? And you don't need to know every single detail about everything, but be able to apply the word of God to this field.

57:53

Cause it's gonna be important real quick. I believe it's already important.

57:58

And I think we saw the deficiency because most churches aren't, they're just not equipped for this kind of thing.

58:07

So that's kind of like my encouragement to pastors and to you, if you're not a pastor, to perhaps start asking some harder questions.

58:20

Start asking, hey, what if the new administration just nationalizes social distancing?

58:27

Cause there's a flare up of COVID, COVID -20 and going to church is illegal. What would you do in that case?

58:34

Ask a question like that. Have you thought through it? What about the constitutional ramifications of that?

58:39

Have you thought through that? I think more and more churches are starting to think through these things, but there's a lot of questions that are gonna be coming up.

58:48

So hopefully that breakdown was helpful for some of you in understanding kind of why I think a lot of churches who may even have very similar faith statements, but why their emphases are different.

59:01

I've been a part of, I would say, or at least I've visited, I think, churches that would fall into all of these categories.

59:10

The civil realm, yeah, cause I've been to some woke churches. So I think I've been to churches that actually fall into all of these categories.

59:17

And so my encouragement is to be balanced in that way. So some practical advice for you, a breakdown of how different churches could be responding to this election thing.

59:30

It doesn't mean we submit to Joe Biden if he's an illegitimate president. You might wanna start thinking about, hey, if you're a pastor, what does that mean?

59:39

What does the Bible say about this? Does it give us instructions? One person asked me, final thought here, which goes along the theme of the

59:45

Think Local, Act Local. One person asked me on Patreon, hey, can we secede?

59:51

Like, what about secession? And I haven't responded yet, but I'll respond here. I mean, if you understand civics, if you understand the founding of this country,

59:59

I mean, this country was born out of secession from Great Britain. We seceded then from the

01:00:04

Articles of Confederation. And the treaty that was made after the war with England was made to each individual 13 colonies.

01:00:13

It wasn't, there wasn't one treaty. It was 13 separate treaties that were made, peace treaties. People, but before the civil war, it was commonly thought,

01:00:22

I mean, look at the Hartford Convention. New England wanted to secede. And, you know, this is something that has been in American, you know,

01:00:32

American thinking for a long time. There's a book called The View of the Constitution by William Rall. Use a standard curriculum at West Point, the

01:00:40

Civil War generals would have read it. And it blatantly says, yes, secession is a viable option in certain circumstances.

01:00:48

Nullifications, another one. Can states just nullify federal law? Or a court action?

01:00:55

I think there are reasons to do those kinds of things. But if you haven't ever studied any of that, if you don't know what

01:01:00

I'm talking about, then you're gonna have a hard time when you start trying to apply scripture to a system that you don't understand.

01:01:07

So that's my encouragement. At least understand some rudimentary basics. I hope that helps.

01:01:15

God bless. And let's keep praying, guys. Let's pray for the president. Let's pray for our country.

01:01:21

Let's pray for our local area. And let's pray for each other as Christians moving forward. So God bless.