Laborers' Podcast- Christian Nationalism

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June 16, 2023

Please join us as we get to the truth of what Christian Nationalism is. Is it good or bad? Should I be a Christian Nationalist?

00:02: Welcome to the Laborer's Podcast. Thank you for joining us again tonight. Tonight we are going to be discussing
00:09: Christian nationalism. Was it made up by rich old white guys?
00:16: Is there a negative connotation to this that we need to be wary of? We're going to try to get to the bottom of Christian nationalism tonight.
00:23: We hope you'll stick around and join us. Welcome to the Laborer's Podcast, which is a part of the
00:30: Truth in Love Network. Join us as together we strive to grow up together in all things into Christ.
00:38: Subscribe and follow the Truth in Love Network on Facebook, YouTube, Rumble, Spotify, and iTunes.
00:46: Now let's join our laborers for tonight's broadcast. Welcome back to the
00:55: Laborer's Podcast. I am with Claude Ramsey, the Happy Calvinist, the Here I Stand Theology Podcast, Big John, Real Talk with Big John, Jay, the
01:04: Reformerican, and Tyler, the Brother Word Podcast. And I think we can have an announcement tonight.
01:13: I feel like if you guys feel like there was agreement within our chat group, I thought about announcing officially our conference theme for 2024.
01:24: I've got to download throughout the podcast. At some point, I need to download the photo, but you guys feel like we can announce that tonight?
01:33: Go for it. Nice. Yes, sir. I think we can. Awesome. So be looking forward, be looking ahead to the 2024
01:41: Laborer's Conference. It's going to be in Knoxville, Tennessee at Reformata Baptist Church. Tonight, we're going to be talking about Christian nationalism.
01:50: The comment line is open. And we do apologize. We were talking about this prior to coming on live that some people do not get their comments through when they make them while the shows are live.
02:05: And it doesn't just happen here. It happens in other podcasts. So we apologize if you make a comment and it doesn't come through and we don't see it.
02:13: We hope it does because we want to hear from you. So let us know if you have any questions, critiques, comments.
02:18: We would just love to hear from you and at least say hello. Let us know you're watching. How are you guys doing?
02:25: Doing well. Doing good, brother. Doing good. Doing good. Awesome. Awesome. So, yeah, like I mentioned in the opening,
02:33: I think Christian nationalism has a lot of mischaracterizations, caricatures, misrepresentations.
02:42: And I really hope that we can get down to the bottom of it because what I've seen, what
02:48: I've looked into it, it is maybe simple to me and biblical.
02:59: I don't think that you have to hold to a certain type of eschatology or soteriology to be a
03:06: Christian nationalist. I just think it's plain biblical if you understand it rightly.
03:11: And I think some of us will be pulling from the statement of Christian nationalism.
03:21: You can find that online statement of Christian nationalism. I think it's a good statement so far from what
03:27: I've seen of it. So let's jump into the questions and find out what this is all about.
03:38: Jay, let's start at the bottom. I know this was a topic that you're interested in a lot.
03:46: What is Christian nationalism and how is it defined? Sure. Well, I would consider myself a
03:53: Christian nationalist. I'm just going to put it out there. So I am biased when it comes to the answers that I'm going to give, but I hope that people will give me a chance before writing me off as a heretic and never watching my channel ever again.
04:10: So I would say that Christian nationalism is really just the understanding that biblical truth is the only truth and that it's in a nation's best interest to establish biblical laws and to have a biblical culture.
04:31: That's honestly the simplest way I can put it. But I want to give a chance to everybody else before I go off for like 30 minutes.
04:38: So if you guys could define it in your own way or from your own studies, what have you come up with,
04:50: Tyler, Claude, John, Christian nationalism? Well, just to speak to,
05:00: I guess, the definition of the two words in the subterms, Christian and nationalism.
05:08: Nationalism, we often associate that with political theory. Claude and I did an episode on that a couple years ago that was quite interesting and actually came up with the idea of nationalism and how that fits into the way we look at things like Roman 13.
05:23: And the idea of nationalism in a nutshell is the framing of ideas around the best interest of a nation as opposed to, say, globalism, this idea of looking at things in light of the world.
05:42: Let's frame our decisions in politics, in economics, etc. according to what's in the best interest of our nation.
05:52: And so we funnel that through the term Christian, which we get that from the book of Acts, those who are like Christ.
06:04: And so what we mean by Christian nationalism is a version of nationalism, a version of looking for the best interest of our nation in a way that is
06:15: Christ -like. Well, I'll be honest with you,
06:24: I haven't got very much input probably for the topic of Christian nationalism.
06:30: A lot of the statement that I read that was sent to me the other week, and I just looked it back up to make sure
06:37: I was referring to the same thing, I didn't see anything in there that I didn't agree with.
06:44: I think a nation that, I think a collection of people living by God's standards are always going to be better off than people that don't.
06:54: Furthermore, I think that the whole concept of, I suppose the only thing that I would think that would, no,
07:05: I don't think I want to bring that up yet. There's other questions that are drawn to that. I'm going to yield my time to the man from Tennessee.
07:11: You can kind of bleed in too, Claude, with number two, because I think they relate. What are the key beliefs, principles associated with Christian nationalism?
07:20: Kind of the same question. All right. Well, I'll just, so we can keep going around,
07:27: I'll give you the basic definition. Without the adjective, just nationalism, the definition of nationalism is an ideology that emphasizes loyalty, devotion, or allegiance to a nation or a nation state, and holds that such obligations outweigh other individual or group interests, just to keep that black and white.
07:54: That's a good, straightforward definition of nationalism.
08:01: And as to whether it's good or bad to add the
08:06: Christian adjective onto that, describing that, that's what we're going to be talking about tonight. Hey, I just want to say,
08:15: Claude promised that he would tell us what his stance on Christian nationalism is, because, has he told any of you guys on the side?
08:27: Because he hasn't told me. I've been texting him, harassing him. He won't answer me. So let me go ahead and tell you.
08:33: So here's… And that's all
08:42: I've got to say about that. Thanks for that, Calvin. This was planned.
08:48: Yes, it was. He just pulled a Forrest Gump on us. Oh my goodness. All right, so I am in the negative against Christian nationalism.
09:08: Disappointed. Well, that's very interesting. Listen, I think
09:15: I found my mission for tonight's podcast. Is that a strong negative, or is it a,
09:24: I could be persuaded? Well, no, I don't think so.
09:31: But in any case, we'll talk about that. And I think that if we're going to be talking about Christian nationalism, and we're going to use a defining, definitional terms, specific,
09:49: I think we have to look at the statement, right? Because it's easy to pull from different people what they're saying about it.
09:56: But if we're going to look at it, we should look at the statement on Christian nationalism.
10:02: They do have a definition. Yeah, section by section. And then they've got affirmations and denials, which, you know, it's pretty straightforward what
10:14: Christian nationalism is. I think as far as clarity there, they've done, you know, they've done their due diligence to lay out
10:24: Christian nationalism. And then it's just for individuals, individual believers to make their decision on.
10:33: So can you repeat your definition one more time? I want to get it in my mind.
10:39: Of just nationalism? Just nationalism, yeah. So nationalism is an ideology that emphasizes loyalty, devotion, or allegiance to a nation or a nation -state and holds that such obligations outweigh other individual or group interests.
11:01: Okay. So to say, to call it
11:06: Christian nationalism by definition would be to say that the Christian, that the nation -state should hold to the
11:15: Christian view and it should outweigh all other individual or all other group interests.
11:23: So you can kind of split that definition in half. The first half is I have an allegiance to this particular nation.
11:31: And for this particular nation, I think the influence should be this particular dogma or religion over everyone else.
11:45: Okay. All right. So let me read the – I'm kind of going off script, but let me read the definition from the website and see if there's some meshing or some head -butting there with the definitions.
11:58: So their definition says, So I can see how there's some matching there with that definition.
12:32: Because you have your bias there at the forefront, which is
12:39: God the Father and Jesus Christ who rules with Lord and King. That should be our influence over everyone else, over all creation.
12:51: And then it also influences the rulers over that nation, those who lead over that nation and what they should do.
13:05: Yes. So, I mean, the definition that they use there at the top is very straightforward.
13:15: It's very clear. It's in the outworking of that statement that I find challenging personally.
13:26: Gotcha. Which is kind of getting into question number two and maybe even touching on question number three if I'm looking at the right outline.
13:34: Am I right in that, Brother Robert? Yeah. Go ahead with either one of those. So I was going to, before the man from Tennessee said it,
13:45: I was going to say one of the things that I found concerning about some of the definition.
13:51: If there was anything, let's go to Scripture right quick. John chapter 18, 28.
13:59: Then they took Jesus before the office of the governor's headquarters in the early morning and did not enter into the headquarters themselves.
14:06: Otherwise, they would have been defiled and then they believed the Passover. Then Pilate came out to them and said, what charge do you bring against this man?
14:14: And they answered, if this man weren't a criminal, we would have handed him over to you.
14:20: So Pilate told him, take him yourselves and judge according to your law if it's legal for you to put anyone to death.
14:25: And the Jews declared that it is so that Jesus' words might be fulfilled signifying the sort of death he was going to die.
14:32: Then Pilate went back to the headquarters and summoned Jesus and he said to him, are you the king of the Jews? And he said, are you asking this of your own or for the others about me?
14:42: Pilate speaking now, he said, I'm not a Jew, am I? Pilate replied, your own nation and the chief priest handed you over to me.
14:50: What have you done? My kingdom. This is Jesus. My kingdom is not of this world. Jesus said, if my kingdom were of this world, my service will fight so that I wouldn't be handed over to the
15:00: Jews as it is. My kingdom does not have its have its origin here. He said, you are a king, then
15:07: Pilate asked, you say I'm a king. Jesus replied, I was born for this and I've come into the world for this to testify the truth.
15:17: Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. I read that entirely for context sake.
15:24: The part of me that has a hard time rationalizing. What what are what
15:31: I believe it's application is is going to boil down to this. Christ is king, regardless of the country that you're in and regardless of the politics of the country, regardless of the leadership of the country.
15:45: So while I do support people, obviously, in leadership that are
15:51: Christians, promoting Christian ideals, promoting Christian teachings, I think that we all should. And I do support the idea of of anything this book saying is immoral, being dubbed immoral by society.
16:07: No problem with that whatsoever. I suppose I'm looking at a time when the
16:15: Jewish people were living in their own city, state and their own form of nationalism under a king.
16:21: And they screwed this thing up so bad that they don't recognize God when he walks among them. And and I suppose
16:28: I'm fearful. I'm fearful that in the ideology of it sounds great.
16:36: But the application of it by such fallen creatures is impossible to be carried out correctly.
16:43: Is that fair? That's fair. That's fair. Now, I am noticing that we're going to have a bit of a debate here.
16:52: So let me go ahead and just I'm going to lean into it.
16:57: That's OK. Go for it, man. Go for it, brother. We all love each other. We all family here.
17:03: That's right. That's right. So, you know, you guys would agree, right, that that we as Christians have primarily a responsibility to share the gospel with all people where we are at.
17:16: Yes. Correct. Right. To call civil magistrates to do the only justice, which is biblical justice, to tell everybody what is right and what is wrong, according to God's word.
17:28: Correct. Yes. All right. So if we agree on that, what is it that you're not applying from Christian nationalism?
17:40: Like I said, the ideology of it is fine. I'm more worried about the practical application of it.
17:48: And I say that based. So. I would like to see an example in history of mankind where it's been successfully done.
17:59: Well, I got no problem succeeding or conceding to the fact that I may be wrong.
18:05: I reserve the right to be wrong at any time. I just if somebody can show me an example of where Christian nationalism is applied in a way that holds to the truth of Scripture always and never to the to the biases of the people that are in charge.
18:23: So be honest with one another. You're reformed. I support you. I love you. I'm not.
18:30: Right. I don't deny God's sovereignty or any of that. And my worldview is is is is going to mean that when
18:43: I speak to people about Christ, I'm going to I'm going to act as if though they have a choice to follow him or not to follow him.
18:51: And there will be some maybe more Harper Calvinist out there than maybe y 'all that would that would believe that choice has already been made entirely before you walk up to that man.
19:02: And this is merely a going through the motions of sharing the gospel. I would say that that that man has has some choice he's making.
19:10: He has to surrender to Christ to some degree. And I know we're getting into a little bit of the differences between Armenianism, maybe in and Calvinism.
19:20: But if that were to if if. If we were to have a nation that was ran by Harper Calvinist or Harper predators, then
19:30: I can see a recipe for. For problem inside the church, right?
19:36: I can say that I'm not saying the idea is wrong. I'm not saying that I don't agree that the the ideology around it doesn't sound great.
19:45: I am all for justice being served. We're commanded to seek justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our
19:51: God. All of that. I'm whole hog in that man. Just never seen an example in the history of mankind where it's played out.
20:01: So let me let me ask you a question. Are you saying that your concern is that a particular church is going to be running the government or is that maybe not?
20:13: I suppose that could that could be looked at that way. But if I'm if I'm understanding it correctly and mind you,
20:20: I may not be. OK, if a if whoever the powers that be are adhere to a doctrinal belief in this and they wind up becoming dogmatic in their doctrinal belief and they make the minor things, the major things and wind up alienating different members of the church based on their dog, their ideology or their their doctrine.
20:45: Then you run the risk of having people really being a part of the same bride and the same the same church.
20:51: OK, and not be able to walk together. And you serve to cause more harm than good in that case.
20:57: Right. Does that make sense? It does. It does. So this is what
21:02: I would say to that. Where are we at now? Who are the powers that be and what have they done?
21:11: Is it better? No, no, no. All right.
21:16: The people that are in this country, the ones that are smart are demonic. The rest.
21:22: Yes. Are stupid. And both respond.
21:28: And yeah. And and those that don't speak out against it have no backbone. Yeah. So you have to keep in mind.
21:38: I mean, I will I will grant that there are different flavors of Christian nationalism.
21:44: OK, my particular flavor of Christian nationalism is one that would be. What would be the best term for this?
21:57: Multiprotestant, I guess you could call it. Right. We would we would surround ourselves around laws, principles, ideas that would apply to all
22:08: Protestant Christians. And the reason I say Protestant, not Catholics. Well, we can have a debate as to whether Catholics are
22:14: Christian or not, but that's not correct. That would be a very good idea.
22:20: Right now. We're going to move on from that.
22:26: And, you know, when we talk about things like laws.
22:33: Right. I think I think that. For the great majority of.
22:40: Of most laws, Christians across denominations will pretty much agree.
22:46: Right. If they're being biblical, biblical, excuse me. So, for example, should marriage be between a man and a woman?
22:54: Yes. There you go. So we're going to make laws that acknowledge marriage as only between a man and a woman.
23:01: Right there. Right there. I don't see any reason whatsoever that man gets in, gets an opportunity to try to define something
23:15: God's clearly laid out in Scripture. Well, I mean, if we're being honest, God, God determines that this is marriage, right?
23:23: Yeah. God has set up the family. These matters have been settled for eternity in heaven. We can agree with God and we should agree with God.
23:31: Right. So totally on board with it being a law that only one man and one woman can be can be married.
23:41: Totally on board with that. I got you'll get no disagreement from me on it. The thing that I want you to that I want you to listen to, though, is this is all ready established.
23:54: Oh, well, absolutely. So if we need to go about carnal means to force people to do things that God has asked us to do willingly, then what you wind up having is people honoring
24:07: God with their lips, but their heart being far from me. OK, so so what you're saying,
24:13: OK, are you concerned that are you concerned that if we were to say,
24:23: OK, we're going to recognize this as law, right, that a man and a woman makes marriage, that then what we're doing is we're creating a culture where we are setting people up to almost like believe they're
24:38: Christian because they live in a Christian nation, but not actually accept the gospel.
24:43: Is that your concern? That's not my only concern, but it is a concern. I've been told piles and piles and piles of times in my life that if we would just get back to where we was in 1950, then this world would be so much better when everybody come home.
24:56: Then people never got divorced. Kids listen to their parents. The people that were raised in the 50s were the same rebellious lot that had the 60s happen.
25:04: And there was a generation of moral morality that wasn't moral, nor was it majority.
25:11: I say moral majority that wasn't the majority and it wasn't morality. It was some kind of facade they were putting on.
25:20: My caveat to it is that if the church is not spineless, to quote
25:25: Brother Rob, if we can continue to work and see the gospel spread, you don't need laws when people honor
25:33: Christ as king. You can have laws that forbid murder. Those are on the books already. And you can have laws that forbid divorce.
25:40: I'm fine with that. You can have laws that forbid all this other stuff. But if you can see the church win over the neighborhoods, you don't have to worry about calling to have a gay bar closed down whenever all the gay people get redeemed and follow the
25:52: Lord and walk away and repent of the lifestyle of homosexuality. You don't even have to make these things laws.
25:58: Okay. So here's the thing. There's so many ways that I could answer this.
26:10: If you have a nation where you say, listen, we don't need to tell the civil magistrate what to do because God already established it.
26:21: Wait a second. Let me interject here. We're not saying that we don't tell that.
26:27: We call everybody to repentance from the bottom up, top down, backers and siders.
26:35: We call everybody to repent of their sin and we proclaim the gospel.
26:42: Right. So it's not the negative stance is not saying that we shouldn't call political leaders to repentance or we shouldn't call higher ups to repentance.
26:54: It's not saying that at all. The standard is we call everybody regardless of who they are.
27:02: So we can't to read that assumption into the argument is false.
27:10: Okay. So clarify it for me. Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. What? Well, for me, the question that leads to, and I've got a lot piled up in my mind, when it's my turn to interject,
27:23: I'll be happy and peachy. But based on what you were just talking about, the next question that your statement leads to is, do we just call those, for an example, magistrates to repentance?
27:39: Are we also calling them to obedience? Yes. To submit.
27:45: It's accountability. Right. Right. And so if Christ is King and Lord, are we also calling them to submit and submit their decision making and their thinking, their mindset on obedience to Christ just in their personal life or also in their?
28:07: Okay. It's all areas. You can't defend, you can't dissect your life into work life, home life, church life.
28:15: I can serve God at work and at home or at church and home, but not at work. You can't do either in or you're out.
28:21: Right. So that bridges us a little bit closer. Yeah. Yeah. And please don't misunderstand me,
28:27: Brother Jay. No, you're good. You're good. Yeah, I can hear you. I have no problem with the idea of an entire nation bending their knee to Christ and serving
28:41: Christ and enacting constitutions and laws that forbid ungodly behavior from happening.
28:47: None whatsoever. Right. The problem that I could see is its application not being carried out that way.
28:58: In a perfect world, you don't need laws altogether. You don't need magistrates altogether.
29:04: The Lord writes his law on your heart and you don't sin against him in a perfect world. That's the new heaven and new earth.
29:10: We don't live in that one. Right. So we do have magistrates and things like that that have been elected by people.
29:15: Or in some cases, they're born into power according to which country you live in. And the only reasons that we listen to them, according to Romans 13, is in areas where they're actually using the sword for justice.
29:28: Whenever they're using the sword for injustice, we disobey and throw off that kind of subject. That's how the abolitionists existed in the
29:36: South and why they exist in terms of abortion. That's why you had Christians standing up for Jews during World War II.
29:43: That's why people died all over the world for what's right and what's wrong, regardless of whether it was lawful.
29:49: You understand? John, I'm going to interject just for a second here. Sure. Because I'm trying to follow you.
29:57: I'm going to say something. It's not that I'm making this assumption. I'm just going to say that this is what it sounded like to me. Go ahead.
30:03: And you can clarify for me. You're saying, yes, we need to call the civil magistrate to repentance.
30:08: Yes, we need to call them to seek justice, biblical justice. Yes. My concern is how they're going to apply it.
30:16: Is that what you're saying? Perhaps. Perhaps. I don't know that I'm fully understanding how you're saying it. Okay.
30:22: If we look at history as an example, we have piles of Christian brothers and sisters who were murdered for defending their faith in supposed
30:36: Christian states. Okay. Right. Well, so let me answer that real quick because if you go on, then
30:43: I'm going to forget, and I want to make sure that I address that. That's because there was no separation of church and state.
30:51: Okay? So I want to make it clear that as a Christian nationalism, or as a
30:57: Christian nationalism, excuse me, I would not say that we shouldn't have separation of church and state.
31:03: The church should not be ruling over the state. The state should not be ruling over the church. I absolutely agree with that.
31:09: What I am saying, though, is there's no separation of God and states. Okay. And some people would say it's
31:15: Christ and state, but you get the idea. Our government, whatever laws it is doing, whatever motions it's making has to be submitted primarily to the word of God because if you do not do law, if you do not make laws based on what the word of God has to say, then what you're going to do is you're going to make subjective laws.
31:43: And subjective laws have gotten us to where we are now. That's Christian nationalism applied to the civil magistrate in a nutshell.
31:54: Will that look perfect all the time? No. It will never look perfect because it's like you guys said.
32:01: We live in a fallen world. Right? And I'm postmillennial and theonomist, and I'm all those things, and I can still acknowledge those things.
32:08: I can acknowledge that we are in a fallen world, but that doesn't mean – and I'm not saying that you guys are saying this.
32:15: I just want to put it out there for anybody watching this. That doesn't mean that when we say, well, the world is just going to be the way the world is and there's nothing we can do about it.
32:22: No. We call them to repentance. Our goal – and actually I'm kind of skipping here because one of the questions is what is the endgame of Christian nationalism, but it kind of needs to be said.
32:33: The endgame of Christian nationalism is to fight injustice, to bless your family, to bless your neighbor, to bless your nation, and to have a culture that is conducive for the church to preach the gospel and disciple people and do what is right without fear of persecution.
32:55: Will that look perfect? No. It will never look perfect, but that's why it's an ongoing battle.
33:03: So hopefully that answers that aspect of your question. I'm sure there's more, but go ahead. I'd like somebody else to talk for a minute.
33:10: Okay. If this is my opportunity to interject, I would be glad to. So I can give you what
33:18: I've compiled in my mind, and you guys can respond to it to see what you think about it because I think it – to me it helps bridge a lot more of the differences.
33:29: I think that there's – in this debate, in this discussion, I think there's three different compartments.
33:34: I think there's one compartment that we more likely, most certainly, have a lot of agreement, and that's the middle compartment, and this is what's in my mind.
33:47: This is how I see it. So this middle compartment is what Christian nationalism looks like or, in other words, the definition.
33:58: All right? So it doesn't matter – in my mind, it doesn't matter what our eschatology is.
34:03: All of us believe at some point there's going to be either an ideal
34:09: Christian nationalism happening or a perfect Christian nationalism happening. It doesn't matter what your eschatology is.
34:16: We're winning. We've won. It's being applied, or we're going to win. At some point,
34:22: Jesus is victorious no matter what your eschatology is, and so we all have that down pat, and there's no argument there that Jesus is going to reign supremely, perfectly, and we're either working towards that or it's going to happen.
34:39: We just see that in different ways. But there's two compartments that get all jumbled together, and they're not separated, and then there becomes misunderstandings, caricatures, misrepresentations, and where I think we speak past each other and lose one another, and those two other compartments are the application compartment and the how do we get there compartment.
35:09: And I think those two compartments need to be separated and be two separate debates.
35:17: How do we get there debate and application debate? Now, I think the application debate – this is just me speaking of the conclusions that I've made.
35:27: I think the application can be a later debate, one that we discuss as we get there, but it can be a more later debate because once we get there, it's going to look more like Big John's describing.
35:48: Every knee is going to be bowing, or the majority of all knees are going to be bowing, however you want to look at it.
35:53: And so therefore, you won't have to – the fact that there's laws there won't be as necessarily important because as a believer, you're already submitting to Christ.
36:06: And so the fact that there's laws there are somewhat irrelevant because as a believer,
36:12: I'm submitting to Christ. So the application – and hopefully you can see how we get the – how do we get there and application debates intermingled and mixed up.
36:27: But the application will kind of take care of itself once we're there, I think, more or less.
36:33: There still needs to be some things worked out. But the debate that I think is most relevant to us is how do we get there.
36:41: And I think where a lot of the misconceptions come from is we want to take over with the fingertips or literal, with torches, swords, however, and take over the nation and force it upon everybody else.
37:00: And I think that's the misconception, the caricature, when in reality, the viewpoint is we're looking to the fact that this is going to happen.
37:12: We all believe it's going to happen eventually in some form or fashion. And so – and, of course, my post -meal is sliding in here a little bit.
37:23: But I think that we – yeah. I think we're moving in that direction.
37:30: So the gospel is our sword. And the word is our sword.
37:40: The gospel is what we use to get there. And so we're on the same page there. And as the gospel wins, more
37:51: Christians submit. And so, therefore, we're working our way towards that idealistic
37:57: Christian nationalism. I really think the key, key problem in places that we're lacking in this situation that we're in is training believers how to be believers in their everyday life, like you were talking about, guys, applying their
38:19: Christianity in every aspect of their life. So we've got
38:24: Christians who, fortunately and wonderfully, have chosen to become politicians or civil magistrates.
38:33: We have those. They claim Christ. That's a good thing. However, this is – and I hope that I don't get into – can you use somebody else's voice, or is this – we can claim this for educational purposes.
38:49: Do it. Do it. Educational purposes. So we're not training our politicians that claim
38:56: Christ to form their decisions, their legislative decisions, their voting, based on this.
39:03: Who says you have to compromise? Just say no. Right. So if you're a
39:09: Christian, you don't have to compromise. You can just say no, and other Christians will see your strength and come alongside you and just say no along with you.
39:21: We don't have to compromise on abortion. We don't have to compromise on these things. And so once we train our young people, our
39:29: Christians in our congregation, to – this is how a believer behaves as a politician, we'll be heading in the right direction.
39:44: So do you all see where I was coming from with the three different compartments and how we intermingle the conversations sometimes?
39:51: Tyler. Sounds a little bit like incrementalism, doesn't it, Rob? My goodness.
39:59: A little jab. A little jab. Rob's fired. Wait a second. Where's his mute button?
40:04: Oh, wait a second. I've got a question. I'm going to ask a question pertaining to you,
40:10: Postmale Boys. So everybody else, just hold on. He says – same scripture
40:21: I was reading. He says, I'm King, Jesus replied. I was born this way. I've come to testify this truth. Everyone who's in my truth listens.
40:28: Oh, man, it's not in this chapter. He says, if my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight so that I wouldn't be handed over to the
40:37: Jews. As it is, my kingdom does not have its origin here. So now I know the way
40:46: I've always interpreted and listened to this scripture, right? So in your postmillennial mind, how does this look and how do you – do you conflate this with your view of Christian nationalism?
41:03: If you do, how? And if you don't, what do you do with that text and what do you think
41:09: Christ is saying there if you even need to use your eschatology to define that?
41:16: So from what I've read on postmillennialism, I was in that camp for a very brief stint.
41:24: But what I came across largely was that that text could be interpreted within the context that the millennial kingdom hasn't been inaugurated yet at that point, that Christ is still in the process of conquering sin, conquering the grave, conquering the devil.
41:45: And so it is true for him to say my kingdom is not of this world. Most postmillennial guys
41:53: I've interacted with or read would make the case that the millennial kingdom was inaugurated either at the resurrection, at the cross, or at the ascension, at which point it's a little different.
42:07: Thank you. Inaugurated, not consummated. Right. Or 70
42:13: AD. I've also heard that. That's the cool preterist. Oh, no, no, no, no.
42:19: So I'm not talking about full preterism. I mean, that has to do with preterism.
42:25: But some would argue that the end of the age, right, was at 70
42:32: AD when the second temple was destroyed. I just realized this is going to take us down a very, very long path.
42:41: That's what I was thinking. Listen, I'm just going to stop right there. So I would say to that passage, okay, and I'm going to bring this back to Christian nationalism.
42:51: I would say to that passage, you're welcome, Christ's kingdom is not of this world, but it doesn't mean that it's not currently in this world.
43:05: Okay, so Matthew 28, 18, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
43:10: All authority in heaven and on earth. Agreed. Agreed. So he doesn't just have some authority over the church.
43:20: Come on now. He has authority over every single piece of land, every single individual, every single molecule that exists.
43:32: Okay. True. There's no exception to that. Agreed. And, you know,
43:38: I know you don't have to be a post mill to believe that, but it helps. Agreed. It helps because, you know, when we say, and I'm not saying that you guys are saying the opposite, please do not take this this way.
43:54: But when we say the gospel will go out into the nations, we believe it's going to work. We believe that the gospel is going to conquer those who are in rebellion against the king.
44:08: Okay. So does that play into Christian nationalism? Absolutely. It's not a coincidence that most
44:16: Christian nationalists are also post millennial. It's not a coincidence. However, I know
44:22: Christian nationalists. I know at least one Christian nationalist who is dispensational pre millennial, which is really interesting.
44:29: I know several Christian nationalists who are amillennial. Why? Because they agree.
44:38: They agree. They assert, hey, it is better to push our nation, to push for our nation to hear the gospel and to obey the law that God has given us and to push for a culture that is conducive and favorable to Christianity.
44:58: The whole idea that cultural Christianity is bad. I reject that assertion. What I would say is when cultural
45:05: Christianity is prevalent, there's a risk. I'm not saying that it always happens, but there's a risk of the church becoming lazy.
45:15: But the church is always, always, always called to preach repentance and faith in Christ, no matter the condition that it's in, whether in the middle of many enemies or in a very
45:30: Christianized society, it doesn't matter. There will always be sinners because even if you have perfect laws and no one is breaking them, right?
45:38: Let's hypothetically say that that's happening. Guess what? People are still breaking them in their hearts. And so we still got plenty of sinners that need to repent and believe in Christ.
45:47: So the whole idea that cultural Christianity is negative.
45:54: No, I would say where we're in now is far, far worse. Okay. So I'm going to interject something with that line of reasoning.
46:03: I grew up in cultural Christianity and the most blinded, massive amount of hypocrisy that I've seen in my entire life exists in the region that Claude and I and Robert and Tyler live in.
46:22: I don't know how far south it exceeds anymore. We call it the Bible Belt. Yep. But you were born a
46:28: Christian here because somebody in your family says so. As far as I know. Yep.
46:33: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Is the Bible Belt full of Pato Baptists? No, it's a whole different thing.
46:42: I know. This might be why I feel strongly about this as I do is because I was purposely pronounced saved in a
46:51: Methodist church when I was actually a Baptist church when I was in like the eighth grade. I didn't know
46:56: Jesus no more than I knew the man in the moon. I won't get into how we found ourselves in that position.
47:02: However, that false narrative was bolstered my entire childhood by well -meaning
47:09: Christians who in hindsight I see were massively not
47:15: Christian at all. They were raised the same way I was. And every time there was some little bit of conviction that came over them, it was put to bed by saying, you done did that.
47:28: You don't have to worry about going to the altar again or something like that. Right. And there had never been repentance in my heart to begin with.
47:36: Right. And I was raised to believe that we were right. And I was going to hell every day
47:44: I got older just a little bit sooner. And only by God's grace was I redeemed. Only by God's grace is anyone redeemed.
47:52: But my point is, is that I was saved of that. And to me, this is my fear.
48:02: The idea of it I love. Please don't misunderstand me. Sure. I got you. I've just seen the practical application of the
48:11: Bible belt being the hardest place in the world to witness to lost people. So I'll interject.
48:17: I'm sorry. No, you go ahead. No, you go ahead. I'll wait. Yeah, I'll wait. Okay. So I think to combat that type of thinking, and maybe to rest your mind a little bit,
48:31: John, would be this is to remember something that Jay said a little bit ago, and that was that there's different spheres of authority, and they don't go on top of one another.
48:43: So the government has their sphere and the church has their sphere, and one's not over the other. And so from a
48:50: Christian nationalist perspective, we want to limit government. I'm all about that.
48:56: And a Christian nationalist, their ideal of Christian nationalism would not affect or promote this cultural
49:09: Christianity. The church would still be having this responsibility to combat and fight against cultural
49:19: Christianity and reform itself. Well, let me say one thing about that.
49:26: Again, I want to make it clear that cultural Christianity in and of itself is not bad.
49:32: The problem is exactly what you said, John. The church failed.
49:38: The church failed you. But that's what the church has to, like Robert is saying, has to reform.
49:46: You can't just be telling people, oh, for sure you're saved, you don't need to do that again, you were born in Disney, you were born in here.
49:52: No, absolutely not. I'm not saying that the state has anything to do with that. The church has a responsibility to preach.
50:00: That's why I said it has a responsibility to preach repentance and faith in Christ. And I'm not saying that this is unique to the
50:09: Reformation, but that's part of why I love Reformed theology is because there's an emphasis in daily repentance, in daily reflecting of like, are you honoring your
50:21: God today? Are you striving for perfection? Even though you recognize you clearly cannot ever make it on your own.
50:31: That will never happen this side of heaven. The church has a responsibility to tell everyone, hey, do you follow the law perfectly?
50:42: Great. Are you breaking it in your heart? What kinds of thoughts have you had?
50:49: Have you truly repented of your sin and trusted in Christ? And are you continuing to repent?
50:57: What I find funny about the Bible Belt is that most churches fail to do exactly that.
51:03: But it wasn't because of cultural Christianity. It's because of what I said. They relaxed. The church is relaxed.
51:10: We have so many churches nowadays, whether it's Methodist, whether it's Baptist, whether it's non -denominational, where what do they say?
51:17: They say, hey, Jesus loves you, man. Come just as you are. You're perfect just the way you are.
51:23: Where in the Bible does it say that? That's not a cultural Christianity problem. That's a church problem, not adhering and standing on the word of God.
51:33: Sure. Brother Paul, you were going to say something. Well, I don't want to jump in and break your all strain of thought.
51:47: So I can wait if you all want to. How long do we have? We can always make a part two.
51:54: So I'll just go ahead and jump in.
52:00: So I came out affirming in the negative right at the beginning, and I didn't really explain why.
52:07: So this is my why, even after hearing all the conversation. So I would say, number one, the term
52:16: Christian nationalism is an unhelpful term. And because of this, because as has been conversed about here tonight, it's not a new idea or it's not a new ideology that needs to be set forth as the standard.
52:36: It's the church's job. It's the church's responsibility to proclaim the gospel, to call people to repentance.
52:43: Yes, it's been said. Yes, over and over. Amen, amen, amen. It's the church's job.
52:48: But it is not done through political power, which is, if you look at the statement on Christian nationalism, which is the focus.
53:01: For example, so I'm going to, again, I'm just going to state facts. If we read
53:07: Article 5, it says, We affirm that in addition to possessing the titles of Savior, Messiah, and many others,
53:13: Jesus, the Son of God, who is truly God, is also the King of all earthly kings.
53:19: Amen. The Lord of all earthly lords and the lawmaker for all earthly lawmakers. Amen. He is the possessor of all heaven, all authority in heaven and on earth.
53:30: Amen. We know that. That's the Scripture. That's the truth. Only an idiot would deny that.
53:35: We affirm that as God, Jesus Christ is preeminent over all creation. Yes. Sovereignly rules over all things visible and invisible in heaven, earth, hell, and ordains all things according to the counsel of his perfect will for the good of those in him.
53:51: Amen. We affirm that in his mediatorial rule, Christ rules by his spirit and word through the saints in their earthly authority.
54:00: We also affirm that as sovereign king of kings, Christ has commanded all civil authorities,
54:06: Christian and non -Christian alike, to execute his will on earth to orient humankind toward himself through the moral law.
54:15: We affirm that Christ alone, through the blood of his cross, grants repentance and forgiveness of sins to reconcile sinners to the father.
54:23: All right. You can't help but say amen, amen, amen, amen through that.
54:30: So they go on in the denial and they say, we deny any theology which would seek to segregate sacred aspects of life.
54:37: Again, this is what you all have been saying, where God's word is authoritative and supposedly secular aspects of life, where the
54:45: Christian must operate by a standard other than God's word. We deny any theology which claims that bringing
54:52: God's word into the civil sphere is unwise, unfruitful, sinful, or anything other than fitting and required.
54:58: We deny that Jesus kingship and lordship are merely heavenly, or that his word is only authoritative over confessing
55:06: Christians. So they're saying, yes, it's over everybody. We deny that solely by virtue of their claims to authority or the claims of those who support them, any human or group of humans who claim to be civil authorities, we deny that in actuality they are recognized by God to be civil authorities.
55:26: So Romans 13 .1 states, every soul be subjected to the higher powers, for there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.
55:40: As far as moving toward a better society, it's going to come through the proclamation of the gospel.
55:50: It's not going to become a better society by folks adhering to the law.
55:56: Because the more folks try to adhere to the law, the more they're going to realize they can't adhere to the law, and they're going to get frustrated.
56:04: So going on, again, I'm saying Christian nationalism is an unhelpful term, and here's another reason why, because in essence when you look at the statement on Christian nationalism, aside from all the conversation about it, you just look at the statement.
56:20: When you read through the statement, you can see in Article 5, utopian language is used, as though society is going to become a utopia.
56:31: There is going to be no heaven until Christ consummates the kingdom, until heaven and earth, the new heavens and the new earth are created.
56:41: What Christian nationalism does is it moves people to assume that society is going to become better and better, and we're just going to float off on into eternity with things getting better and better, but there's no way that will happen because sin is still in the world.
56:57: So moving on, moving on. I'm taking my turn here. It orients humankind through the law, right?
57:06: Article 7, in the second affirmation on Article 7, the duty of civil authorities.
57:13: We affirm that civil magistrates have lawful authority to punish civil crimes like assault, murder, rape, theft, fraud, man -stealing, false witness, and to ensure proper due process through the civil courts.
57:24: Payment of liability for verifiably proven harm.
57:31: Oh, here's another big word. Dad, blame it. And proportionality of punishment.
57:36: So moving on in Article 9. Article 9 particularly, if you read
57:42: Article 9, let me make sure I'm reading it right in the Roman numerals here. You ain't even
57:49: Roman. Yeah, in Article 9.
57:56: So let me find the statement here. Okay.
58:09: All right, so somewhere in Article 9,
58:14: I can tell you this. It uses a statement under the Christian faith. Going on,
58:20: Article 10. Article 10, if you read on nationalism and policy priorities, it said we affirm that nations possess an inviolable right to establish justice and safeguard the peace and prosperity of their own citizens.
58:34: We affirm that implementing Christian nationalism in each nation will pursue punishment of each nation's great evils and promote each nation's thriving.
58:44: We affirm that the specific short -term priorities of Christian nationalism in the context of the
58:51: United States are to call our nation in her laws formally to acknowledge the Lordship of Christ, to declare solemn days of humility and repentance, to abolish abortion, to define marriage as a covenant of a union of biological male and female, to de -weaponize the federal and state bureaucracies which target
59:09: Christians for censorship and persecution, to secure our borders and defend against foreign invaders, to recapture our national sovereignty from godless global entities who present a grave threat to civilizations our miles across, like the
59:25: United Nations, the World Health Organization, the World Economic Forum, et cetera, and to exercise restraint in an international military intervention and adventurism overseas.
59:35: So moving forward very quickly. So to that, to Article 10,
59:41: I would say we have something for that. It's called the Constitution. Yeah. We have that.
59:47: It's not anything extra that we need. The church just needs to step up and do her job.
59:53: The individual believers should repent of their sins, get their hearts right with God, and then go about their lives standing on the truth of God's word and refusing, like Rob's quote said there, refusing to acquiesce and to just say yes to everything that goes on and to say, no, we're not going to deal with that.
01:00:19: To this, again, I'm going to go on here. So by definition, a group of Christian political ideologies that seek to institute a nation that is governed by Christians and based on their understandings of biblical law, extensive rule and ways of acquiring governing authority are varied.
01:00:39: For example, dominion theology can include theonomy but does not necessarily involve advocacy of adherence to Mosaic law as the basis of government.
01:00:49: The law is primarily applied to groups of Christians in the United States. So I affirm in the negative against Christian nationalism because it's just dominionism repackaged.
01:01:03: And here's the thing on dominionism. Everybody talks about the dominion mandate.
01:01:09: God gave that mandate to Adam in the beginning. Adam, as a federal head of humanity, failed.
01:01:17: And the only one who ever had dominion over heaven and earth is
01:01:24: Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact, we like to quote that verse, Matthew 28, 18 through 20.
01:01:32: All authority is given unto me. Who said that? Jesus. Jesus said that.
01:01:38: It's not us. It's not our dominion. It's not our authority. It's his authority.
01:01:44: And that's how we live. That's what Rob says at the end of every show. Go live in the authority of Christ.
01:01:52: But again, it is Christ. It is not ours. And I think what's going on with Christian nationalism is that the church, church people, is getting too big for its britches and assuming too much of themselves.
01:02:08: And they're taking on more. They're biting off more than they can chew. And it's going to take a fall for them to realize it.
01:02:15: We don't—history, we're doomed to repeat it if we do not learn from it. There has not been a movement that has succeeded in this ideology.
01:02:28: Some folks will say, oh, what about Constantine? Yeah, what about Constantine? He declared a nation godly.
01:02:35: He declared a nation Christian. Christ did not do that. And only Christ can make the hearts and the souls of men and women right in the sight of God.
01:02:46: It's not going to be done through political power. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but they are mighty through God.
01:02:54: To what? To the pulling down of strongholds and casting down every imagination that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.
01:03:04: So that's, in a nutshell, why I affirm in the negative for Christian nationalism.
01:03:13: I ain't got no organ, Claude. How much time do we have left? Well, I know
01:03:21: Claude's ice cream might be calling pretty soon, so I don't want to— I'm good with y 'all if y 'all want to go on. I'm good.
01:03:27: Okay. Yeah. Oh, go ahead, Robert. I've spoken a lot.
01:03:34: Well, I would just say in a knee -jerk response to that, not having a whole lot of time to think through all that.
01:03:44: So the application, like living out that victory that we're talking about from someone whom
01:03:57: God has saved, whom Christ is fulfilling His dominion mandate, will change a person, and therefore will influence their living, their decision -making.
01:04:14: And therefore, if they are a civil magistrate, then it will lead to how they govern.
01:04:29: Yeah. And the Scriptures say that God raises up leaders and God puts down leaders.
01:04:36: That's right. So if the gospel is winning, if Jesus is fulfilling
01:04:42: His dominion mandate, then He will be changing people. Those changed people, those who have come from death to life and born again, take political positions, then they can't help but submit to Christ in those political positions.
01:05:00: And so it will be reflected, and this is just my form of Christian nationalism, looking at what
01:05:09: Jesus is going to be doing, how He is fulfilling His dominion mandate, like you correctly asserted.
01:05:17: So when He saves somebody and they become politicians, He raises them up to be politicians.
01:05:24: They're influenced by their submission to Christ, and so therefore we don't have a constitution that is neutral, which is not really neutral.
01:05:40: We have a constitution that is submitted to Christ. We have a constitution that says
01:05:46: Jesus is Lord. We already have that. No, the constitution doesn't say anything about Jesus at all.
01:05:51: What I'm saying is, there's a constitution that says He is the authority of the land. Well, that could be any
01:05:58: God. No, it says the people. Well, that's true. The U .S. Constitution says the people.
01:06:03: Right, that's why I said it's not neutral. So if the church… The people are the
01:06:09: God. Huh? In the United States, people are our
01:06:14: God because we get to rule and make the decisions. We submit to the people.
01:06:21: So the constitution is… When it comes to who the deity is, it's neutral.
01:06:29: You can choose whatever you want, but as far as who our God is, it's we the people. I see what you're saying.
01:06:36: My point is that the highest authority the constitution lays out is the people of the
01:06:47: United States in terms of authorities, right? So after changing a nation by changing out the rulers of the nation, it's the people in the
01:06:58: United States that have to be one. You don't seek to change the framework.
01:07:04: The framework isn't really all that bad. If you seek to save, to see the people saved, then the people will rule themselves in a manner according to scripture.
01:07:13: And you wind up not legislating every little thing. And again, we're talking about hypotheticals and imperfect world scenarios now.
01:07:25: One of the things I want to say, and then I'm done because I don't have no more knowledge on the matter in the first place.
01:07:31: And I got to get up at four in the morning. I want to encourage you to think about a couple of things.
01:07:39: Again, I've been pretty clear. My problem isn't with the idea so much as it is with the application and how historically we've never seen it succeed.
01:07:48: Right. I've said that. I don't know how many times I've said that in so many different ways. When I see
01:07:55: Christ on earth for three and a half years preaching the gospel, I see him walking amongst lawless people who claim to have the law of the
01:08:02: Lord as their governing stance. Not walking in the truth that they're supposed to be walking in because they cannot see it.
01:08:11: They cannot see it. Right. That really ain't their fault entirely because they don't have eyes to see it or ears to hear it.
01:08:18: They're not there. They're being led of their flesh. Right. We see Christ attack the kingdom of hell directly and the battleground is always the individual.
01:08:30: The church on the front lines throughout all of history is always under attack or under assault from the world and always thrives in that condition.
01:08:43: Every time throughout history that the church has been given an opportunity to let somebody else bear the load and to have at ease in Zion, they have dropped the ball over and over and over again because they stopped advancing.
01:08:59: My concern is, again, in the application. If the state and the church are separate, both are run by the same people, you're not going to have a church full of people and a state full of different people.
01:09:10: They're going to be run by the same people. You're going to have the same Sunday school teacher be the mayor or whatever. That's fine.
01:09:16: Who polices the police? If everybody winds up falling by the wayside and there's nobody to cry, repent, listen, because they have no authority in church or in the marketplace.
01:09:27: So am I hearing you correct, affirm or disaffirm this statement?
01:09:33: Because people are people and because people are sinful. As long as people are involved, there's going to be screw ups.
01:09:41: I can agree with that. There's going to be a constant thing. And to that fact, that ultimately
01:09:49: Christian nationalism would have to have the ultimate end. You can't play it out to its logical end.
01:09:56: You would have to say if Christian nationalism becomes a reality, then there has to be a governing body that guides and directs that, who dictates.
01:10:07: Can I say one thing? Because I keep hearing a lot about it'll never succeed.
01:10:14: Well, that depends on how you define success, I think. I'm not saying it'll never succeed.
01:10:19: I'm saying it's doomed to failure. Okay, so let me see.
01:10:28: How are we defining success, though? Because John did say, I don't see how it'll succeed.
01:10:36: I mean, as a Christian nationalist myself, I'm not saying, hey, we're going to set up a utopia here.
01:10:44: That's not what I'm saying. I just want to be clear on that. No, you're not saying that. But the statement itself, when you look at it objectively, that's basically what it's moving toward.
01:10:53: Well, let me ask you a question. So when you preach the gospel, is your ultimate goal to convert every single individual that you meet?
01:11:04: My hopes is that they would be. Your hope, correct. Because otherwise it would be futile to preach the gospel.
01:11:12: Exactly. My hope is that the gospel reaches every single individual that I preach to.
01:11:18: I know it doesn't, but that's the goal, right? I don't see how that's different with Christian nationalism, when it comes to Christian nationalism.
01:11:30: I know that we're never going to have a perfect nation.
01:11:35: We're never going to have a perfect world until Christ returns. That's right. Right? But it doesn't mean that we don't.
01:11:45: That's not the aim, right? You're aiming for perfection. It's kind of like in our own personal lives, right?
01:11:51: Sanctification. We aim for perfection every single time, knowing fully well that we'll never fully reach it.
01:11:59: But we do understand what is progressive sanctification, which is that we move further and further away from sin, little by little.
01:12:07: Do we have huge drops, huge failings? David did. And David was a man after God's own heart.
01:12:17: So I would say that if you just raise your hands up and say, well,
01:12:23: Christian nationalism is just doomed to fail, I don't agree. I don't agree because it depends on how we're defining failure.
01:12:31: Let me be more articulate. I'd say Christian nationalism is doomed to fail, but Christianity is destined for victory.
01:12:43: Why do we need to start a whole new thing, call it Christian nationalism, when it's just Christianity?
01:12:51: We need to just live Christianity, proclaim Christianity. That's similar to what
01:12:59: I said at the beginning. It's just biblical Christianity. Yeah. So that's why
01:13:04: I say the term itself is unhelpful. It's an unnecessary tag. That's why it's so bad.
01:13:13: It's unnecessary. I think what people are trying to do with Christian nationalism, and you may be right in a lot of ways,
01:13:19: Claude, but if we have the mindset that Jesus won, he's winning, and he's going to win, just like our sanctification is, our salvation is, then how do we apply, and as I mentioned before, how do we train believers as they're growing their sanctification that are going to hold a political position?
01:13:44: How do we train them in the church to behave when they become a politician? We want to teach them to live out their victory in Christ.
01:13:51: Right, but it's not just training them to be politicians. It's training them to be human beings.
01:13:57: Right, right. And how do we do that? The application is quite simple, that pastors and elders in the churches do like what
01:14:06: Paul told Titus, teach. The older men need to teach the younger men.
01:14:12: The older women need to teach the younger women. They need to teach them to love their husbands, to want families, to so on and so forth, right?
01:14:21: That's biblical. That's where it happens. That's where it happens. It begins in the church.
01:14:27: It starts in the church, and then folks just live it out. The problem is folks don't want to live it out for whatever reasons they may have.
01:14:38: Right. But the application is given to us in the scriptures. Right. We teach men and women.
01:14:43: For those people that are not living it out, so I've got three points to respond to what
01:14:49: Claude, you, and John had stated. So the first one is, you know, as you look at this statement of faith, and I've not, you know, dissected it to see if I'm fully on board yet or not.
01:14:59: But, you know, as you read it, I can't help but think to myself, well, this statement is just a wordier way of what you earlier affirmed when you said we should call all civil magistrates to repent and to bend the knee to Christ.
01:15:15: This is just a wordier way to say that. In my opinion. Yeah. Yeah, in my opinion. But then the second thing is, so who's that governing a body to keep
01:15:26: Christians accountable? My first thought would be the church.
01:15:32: You know, first of all, if they're in a political position and they do something they're not supposed to do, first of all, they shouldn't be in office.
01:15:40: We get rid of them. Just like, let's say I'm the, I'm the founder of Truth and Love Network, as an example.
01:15:50: Or, you know, as you state on Here I Stand Theology podcast, this is a ministry of Rep Ramada Baptist Church.
01:15:56: We're under the authority of the elders. So as a representative and founder and leader of Here I Stand Theology podcast, if you do something sinful, you're going to be accountable to your elders.
01:16:07: And I think that may be the way it would work in that position as well. You do something sinful in your political position, you're voted out, you're kicked out, whatever.
01:16:16: But then you're also accountable to your church elders. And then third, to where John was feeling uncomfortable about society, it made me think of Israel in the desert.
01:16:30: So not every individual, not every individual Israelite had the faith that the
01:16:38: Bible ascribes to Abraham. Right. Sure. But while they were in the desert, who all benefited from the manna?
01:16:47: Who all benefited from the serpent? Okay. So there are benefits of living within the, by Christian principles.
01:16:56: How many people suffered whenever the majority went with the 10 bad report? All of them, sir.
01:17:03: Right. Whenever the 12 spies went out, 10 came back with a bad report, only Joshua and Caleb.
01:17:09: The majority went with the 10 and the whole nation suffered, even those that weren't even old enough to have an opinion.
01:17:16: Right. So if you're going to go by everybody ate manna in the wilderness for 40 years, remember why they were there for 40 years and not directly walked into Canaan.
01:17:24: I'm fine with that. That's a two -edged sword and I'll lay on it with you, brother. I will bleed together. I'm just saying that you got to make sure that there's a check and a balance, that there's somebody to police the people that are in charge.
01:17:42: And I would say that would be the elders of the church. And I'm fine with that. So long as there's some kind of, uh, whoever's checking on the, see,
01:17:50: I did my, in my view, the church, it answers to a higher authority than the state. That's true. Yeah.
01:17:56: And, and my, my point about the Israel in the wilderness is that overall, just like with the
01:18:01: Proverbs, you know, they're, they're not law, but they are principles for living and you will benefit better.
01:18:08: Right. If you follow them. Oh yeah. Yeah. I think I opened with, I think everybody. I think my opening statement was
01:18:14: I'm totally on board with everybody living a Christian life and think that it would be better for the whole nation.
01:18:21: But before I said anything, as in terms of any further, I yielded my time to the man from Tennessee.
01:18:27: Hey guys, I have a confession to make that I think will make Claude really happy. Um, because he, he finds the term
01:18:37: Christian nationalism unhelpful. Claude, it's not my first choice.
01:18:43: Okay. So I thought, I thought that might make you happy. So let me explain. I'm happy anyway.
01:18:49: That's true. You are the happy Calvinist. It's late boys. It's getting late.
01:18:55: All right. I'm going to say this really quick. So, um, I lean into the term because that's the term that we're being given.
01:19:04: Okay. That's the term that we're being given. And so I'm like, I'm going to lean into it. You know what I'm saying? Um, with that said though, uh, you said, well, you know, that term is unhelpful.
01:19:15: We, we can just call it Christianity. Well, amen. Absolutely. We can also call the call of abolition of abortion.
01:19:24: Christianity. Correct. We can call that Christianity, but we still call it abolitionism. Sure. Yeah.
01:19:31: So I'm just, that's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah. That's a very good point. Or we could call Calvinism Christianity.
01:19:39: Urgent did. Urgent did. It's just the nickname for the gospel. Yeah. Oh, sorry,
01:19:44: John. Sorry. I'll pray for y 'all tonight. Don't worry about it.
01:19:50: Sorry. I love you anyway. In the face of great adversity, I stand here in truth and in love. I love you boys.
01:19:58: Ain't nothing you can do about it. That's right. That's right. Well, I think we did a good job.
01:20:03: I think we, we talked about some good stuff and we got pretty deep with it and we had some good back and forth.
01:20:10: So I really appreciate you guys. Tyler, do you have any last words? I want to give you opportunity to chime in if you've been holding anything in.
01:20:26: I mean, I think you guys did pretty well with me on mute. Honestly, it was great to see you guys flesh that out and just kind of sit back and pop my popcorn.
01:20:38: You was popping popcorn? I'm so glad it caused that. A little bit of humor, but that's one of the things
01:20:44: I love about this network is that would have been a very heated debate on Twitter.
01:20:50: Yeah. And you might not have been friends at the end of it. But at the Truth and Love Network, it was a conversation between two believers.
01:21:01: Amen. Five believers. Yeah, I was about to say. Who are you calling an unbeliever?
01:21:10: According to Rob, I'm the one that's on here. Well, it was mostly Claude and Jay. So Jay, you and I are the unbelievers tonight.
01:21:20: Well, at least, hey, the remnant. We are the remnant. Sorry, Tyler.
01:21:28: You go ahead, buddy. We're just messing around. And this is – honestly, it's a conversation that needs to be had.
01:21:35: It needs to be had honestly like this, more like the roundtable kind of let's think this out.
01:21:42: This is a complicated issue. It's a difficult issue. But it flows out of what we believe
01:21:48: Christianity to be or to not be. What has he shown us is good.
01:21:58: What does the Lord require of us? That is – I think that's the question here.
01:22:04: What has God beckoned us into? Repent and believe.
01:22:10: I've heard some articulate as repent and obey, to act like he's Lord. This is the path.
01:22:17: Now let's walk in it. If we live by the Spirit, let's keep in step with the Spirit. And so ultimately when we strip off all the isms and all of the technical terms and all the political, philosophical everything, what we're left with is let's walk with Christ.
01:22:37: If the world welcomes it, let's walk with Christ. If the world doesn't look like us, let's walk with Christ.
01:22:43: Come on, my little brother. And with that, I yield my time.
01:22:51: Well, Tyler, if you would graciously be so kind, just keep on going and talk to us about the gospel.
01:22:59: And Big John, will you close us in prayer when he finishes? Absolutely. Well, I think
01:23:05: Big John hit the nail on the head very early on that Jesus has a kingdom.
01:23:12: That we have a king who is not of this world. The Bible talks time and time again about God as a great king, as a gracious king, as the only wise and immortal king,
01:23:24: I think it says. Amen. And that is great news, except that we are not great people.
01:23:33: That at the end of the day, as we've talked about, this thing we call the law, what God requires of us is a bunch of things we can't do.
01:23:41: In our own strength, we cannot be good. Time and time again, many of us have found this.
01:23:47: If you live long enough, you will find out that you are very good at lying. You are good at cheating. You are good at all the things you shouldn't be good at.
01:23:56: I'm good at all the things I shouldn't be good at. And so, we have a good king, but his subjects are not good people.
01:24:05: And so we have this big problem. We've got this disconnect. And so the remedy was provided when this gracious king stepped down from glory, became a human being, entered our filth and our mess and our brokenness, and died.
01:24:24: In the place of sinners, Christ died. Amen. But because he was
01:24:33: God, he didn't stay dead. Amen. So he rose from the dead because he is
01:24:39: God, and he has conquered the grave. He has conquered sin. That's right. He is over those things.
01:24:46: And now he sits at the right hand of the Father. That's right. Having entered into that kingship, regardless of where we sit with millennial questions,
01:24:55: Christ is king. That's true. Amen. And so every single one of us who has broken that law, who cannot be good, is beckoned and invited and called to a good and gracious king.
01:25:10: Amen. To find forgiveness, to find reconciliation with a good and gracious king.
01:25:16: Amen. Amen. Father, we come unto you in the name of Jesus, the name that is above every name.
01:25:29: From a grateful heart, I freely confess that among men,
01:25:36: I don't know any more wicked than I've been. God, I'm thankful for your salvation.
01:25:43: I'm thankful for your continuing sanctification work in me.
01:25:49: I'm thankful for the relationship these brothers have, not just on the air, but through text throughout the week, through prayers that go on and people don't see.
01:26:00: I'm thankful for the brotherhood that I have with these men, that they care about you and your word and the truth that is broadcasted out for the society and for neighbors and other countries, wherever it goes,
01:26:15: Lord. I'm so very thankful. I want nothing more than you be exalted the way that you're supposed to be,
01:26:24: God. I want nothing more than your kingdom to grow and to be fulfilled on earth as it is in heaven.
01:26:33: I pray for nothing more than the salvation of all those who don't know you. Lord, I pray that you bless the men that are on this podcast, whether they're here tonight in person or whether they're at home, prayerfully supporting us.
01:26:48: I pray for their churches as they prayerfully support the ministries that go on. That you strengthen the churches,
01:26:54: Lord, and that they overcome the neighborhoods that they're in with the love of the gospel and that this world be changed because of your saving power, through your blood, through your grace, by your spirit.
01:27:03: In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen. Hallelujah. Amen. All right.
01:27:09: Just as promised. Here you go. And then I'll close it out with our little video outro.
01:27:16: But as promised, there you go. Boom. Boom.
01:27:22: Empowered. 2024 Laborers Conference. Hope you guys have a good evening.
01:27:31: Thank you for joining the Laborers Podcast. Remember, Jesus is
01:27:36: King. Live in the victory of Christ. Speak with the authority of Christ. And go share the gospel of Christ.