News Roundup: Rings of Power, GCC, Those Austrian Economists!, & What's up with Moscow?

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, for a rainy day in upstate

New York. That's right, it is green outside for once. It's been brown, and so I'll probably have to cut my leaves, cut my leaves, ha, rake my,

I'm already raking leaves because trees are just dying, but I'll probably have to cut my grass later this week. It's been like a month and a half.

It's good also because we had a forest fire like 30 miles from me, and the rain,

I'm sure, is probably putting it out right now, which is great. So thankful for the rain, not thankful for my allergies.

I don't know why I get them worse in the fall, but when the rain stops, I start sneezing. And so right now, it actually isn't raining too much, so I'm actually feeling it, but hopefully that dissipates.

So that's what's happening near me. I also, on a personal note, spent most of yesterday working on my house with my dad, which is great.

He tends to do the things that I don't like to do. I don't like to do electricity, and I don't like to do plumbing. I don't know why.

I work with wood, like mechanics, wood, great. I don't know what it is about water and electricity, but if someone else can do it,

I totally let them do it. But it's always good for everyone who's a homeowner to know, every man, really, to know a little bit about those things.

So anyway, so that was good. And I meant to, after I was done working on the house, to do a podcast last night, and that got away from me.

And it got me to think about something because I've told people on Patreon that the podcast is like an iceberg.

There's more under the surface than below, and which is why I'm thankful for so much of your support. I spend a lot of time doing consulting, helping people through situations, working towards common objectives, giving advice to other people who are in this battle.

And there's some really great people, I wanna say, in this battle against social justice and evangelical circles.

But I am disappointed that there are, unfortunately, people who are on the more conservative side of this who have a very hard time, it seems, working with others.

And I've thought about this in the last day, just because I've been dealing with, last night, at least,

I was dealing with a situation that caused me to reflect on my own naivete, that when

I got into this in 2019, I was pretty wet behind the ears. I didn't understand exactly how evangelical,

Big Eva, if you will, both the conservative and more the leftist side, but how just this hierarchy, whatever this evangelical industrial complex is, how it works.

And I have realized, just because someone holds some core convictions you have,

I mean, I used to think, years ago, I used to think, hey, as long as they believe in predestination, that was a battle, it was a big battle.

I've learned since then, just because someone holds some core convictions with you, it doesn't mean that they have necessarily the same motives.

I can be selfish and prideful, I know I'm human, I know I sin, I know I have weak and blind spots.

Before God, though, I know in this battle, my motive from the beginning has been, my name doesn't matter, deal with the truth, okay?

May Jesus's name increase, may my name decrease, may the truth of God's word go out there, may people flock to the truth.

And I don't know that that's the motivation of everyone in this particular battle,

I hate to say it. And one of the ways in which I think this manifests itself is the left is very,

I don't know if you've noticed this, but the left, even in evangelicalism, is much different than the right when it comes to working together.

The left works like a well -oiled machine. They also reward those who are, we would consider, the worst actors among them.

The most aggressive and extreme in their views, leftist views, are rewarded. They are defended, they're given safe haven.

The conservative side doesn't do that. We're very much on the conservative side, wanting to throw others overboard to make ourselves look good, to look to our right flank and to criticize that more heavily than we do our left, to make sure that there's someone to our right and to our left, so we can at least believe that we're in some sort of a moderating center somewhere.

The people who take risks exposing things or really get out on a limb and do some heavy damage, let's say, to leftist intrusions and evangelicalism, social justice intrusions, they don't tend to be rewarded on the conservative side.

In fact, they tend to be distanced from. We let the left do a lot of our own gatekeeping for us, which is strange to me.

I don't understand completely why that is. Maybe someone can put in the comments. I have theories, I have thoughts on it.

I've read some people's thoughts on it, but I would be curious to hear yours. Why is it that the left tends to work like a well -oiled machine?

They tend to attack at the same time. They tend to defend their worst actors, yet the right tends to be, it's like a football game where the left can work like a team, but the right tends to be all over the field.

Some of them are trying to score on the wrong side. It's just, what's going on?

Why is it that way? And I had this thought, and I wanted to share this with you. There is an exception in my mind to this.

There is an exception to this. And it's the groups and associations connected to Moscow, Idaho, to Doug Wilson.

And I've said before, I haven't talked about Doug Wilson a whole lot publicly on this particular podcast, but I have, in the past,

I've said some complimentary things about some of his articles, some of the political stance, social stance he's taken.

Recently, I was somewhat critical of a statement he made that I've heard since then, he's actually made some further clarifying statements, which have been really good, about proximity and love and how love ought to be applied.

So he said something recently, I haven't heard it, but someone told me that he had said, "'God calls us to love our neighbor, not the world,' which is great.

That's exactly what God calls us to do. It's not loving some abstract principle or God loves the world.

God's capable. He's a being that has the capacity for that.

We don't, we have a limited capacity. And so we love our neighbor. We love those who we're in close proximity to.

And so anyway, and I appreciate Doug Wilson said that. I might actually play a clip from him later on on Two Kingdom Theology, which

I thought was actually really good. He made some very good distinctions. So if we have time.

But one of the things that I've realized about that whole group, they,

I want to phrase this right, because they're not leftist. I'm not saying they're leftist. They operate a little more like the left in the sense that they are, they don't apologize for Doug Wilson, right?

And there's a lot of different controversies Doug Wilson's delved into. In fact, some of them,

I'm not even prepared to comment on the podcast just because I feel like I need to do my own due diligence to understand them better if I was gonna comment on them.

I'm more familiar with his social views, some of his social views at least, and some of his apologetics things.

Because I think the first time I listened to him was, oh man, maybe 15 years ago or so, maybe 12 years ago,

I got a copy of his debate with Dan Barker. And I listened to that thing like five or six times and really enjoyed it, and really was trying to understand presuppositional apologetics more.

And Doug Wilson definitely helped in that process. But anyway,

I've noticed though, and this isn't like an endorsement or I'm not taking away from these guys either.

Just no, I'm just making an observation, that's it. So reading into it, anything more than that, please don't. Those guys don't apologize for Doug Wilson though.

They don't, they actually platform him. They have him on their shows.

They invite him to their conferences. I'm talking about like County Before Country.

I saw he spoke there. I'm talking about Fight, Laugh, Feast. I'm talking about, even to some extent, I guess the

Apologia guys. There's a whole kind of network. I'm talking about Cannon Press. Those guys don't apologize.

They just, and they use it actually as kind of a badge of honor, their associations. They'll post pictures with Doug Wilson on Facebook, right?

And they have, one thing you can't accuse people in that group of is they have some convictions.

They want to move the ball in a particular direction. Now there might be, just like in any group, there might be people out for themselves, right?

That's just that you're gonna expect that with any group, but they are working towards, I think, a common goal.

Now, some of that, those common goals are like the theology they believe in, like post -millennialism.

And I know, so there's some Reformed Baptists kind of in this orbit, but as you get closer to the center of this group, paedo -baptism becomes part of this.

There's certainly, I think, a commitment to presuppositional apologetics. And at one time,

I would have thought One Kingdom theology. Now I'm realizing that I think there's some more nuance and complexity here, and I'll play you that video, hopefully later, from Doug.

But they work in tandem a lot better. And it's the way the left tends to work.

And you know what the result is? I just wanna, this is the observation. Their movement seems to be growing.

It does, it just, it seems to me that there is a lot more optimism. And some might say, that's the post -millennialism.

Okay, well, put that on the shelf for a minute. I think even without that, there is some, a bit of optimism, a bit of just, it's, you're not always looking over your shoulder, right?

You're accepted if you're, if you kind of hold to the same things the group holds to, you're kind of accepted.

There's not like this, I'm saying in general, there's not like this always wondering, is someone gonna throw me overboard?

Can I really trust this person? Are they friends with me today, but tomorrow it's gonna be?

There's sort of a band of brothers thing going on in that particular movement, if you wanna call it that.

And I think the left has that, to some extent. They have a band of brothers thing going on, right? I don't sense that the vast majority of conservative evangelicals have that.

And this is, these are observations that are coming out of now years of observing and being involved in this particular fight.

I definitely have some really good fellowship with some brothers who are involved in this, but this is, these are very broad observations

I'm making. So what do you think? Put it in the comments with you. I really am curious, what do you think accounts for this?

Or are you just, you know, John, are you, what are you, what are you on, John? This doesn't make any sense.

You can say that too, you know. If you think my observation's flawed here. But I think it's a worthwhile observation.

I think it's worth digging into more, and I'm only at the precipice of even considering it. But I can't help but sense there is something there.

So, just wanted to mention that. There are a number of things to talk about today.

And I'm gonna do kind of a news roundup, I guess. I wanted to just say this to get started here. Lamentations 3, 22 through 23 says this.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end.

They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. It's Lamentations 3. We need to remember this, that no matter what happens out there, no matter how bad things get, no matter personal life, political happenings, whatever it is, the love of the

Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. There's some stability in the universe. And it's not ultimately even our human relationships, as strong as some of those might be.

It's the love of God. And every morning, even on bad mornings, they're fresh, they're new, they're there.

He doesn't treat us the way that we ought to be treated. He treats us far better. And so we can be thankful for that.

So I just wanted to say that from the get -go. Something I needed, and something that I suspect many of you out there need, with all the troubling things that are going on.

And sometimes when I get ready to launch into, here's some troubling things going on, which some of these podcasts are, because it's necessary.

These things need to be exposed. If people have influence and can do something about it, it's good for them to know. And sometimes on this podcast, people listen and they do know, and they do have something they can do, and they are in a position.

So that's part of the reason I talk about it. But we need to remember the hope.

And it's one of the reasons too, for those who haven't heard yet, I am gonna start doing some more positive things as far as book studies.

In fact, if you wanna follow along, I would get the book, Ideas Have Consequences by Richard Weaver. We're gonna be reading that book and, well, discussing that book.

And I'm considering a way to do this for patrons. So it's gonna be for patrons. I don't know how to do it yet, but I think what we'll do is probably do a live video.

And anyone who's a patron on Patreon, and I'll put the link in the info section for this video, if you wanna become a member.

It's like, you can become a member for like a dollar, I think if you want, or five bucks a month or whatever, but you'll be able to participate.

You'll be able to ask questions. You'll be able to be part of the discussion. And then what we'll do is I'll upload it publicly on YouTube so everyone can see it.

But you're not gonna participate unless you're on Patreon. That's probably what we're gonna do. But get that book, Ideas Have Consequences.

And we're gonna be going over some more things like that. Some books, some to teach, to know, some positive things.

I wanna do some bios of some Christian heroes. We need that inspiration. So anyway, let's now get into the weeds, shall we?

Let's start here, if I may. This is just a few things that people sent me.

This is an individual who works, this is just a follow -up actually to Grove City College. And this is something, little things like this get put on my desk.

And I just thought, you know what, I'll share this. This is an adjunct professor, Ligo Carla, Spanish adjunct professor at Grove City College, okay?

And it's been there, I guess, 15 years, according to LinkedIn. Someone just sent me, I didn't take these screenshots.

Someone sent them to me. And this is her social media presence.

You got the rainbow bow there. And it says, Spanish associate professor at Grove City College in Spanish.

And I guess this is a profile pic with the LGBT flag in the background.

So it's again, Grove City, Christian conservative college, right? And anyway,

I'm not gonna go over this whole thing. This is a wall of words you can't even read now on the screen. But anyway, this is a post from Cedric Lewis, I think it is.

And it's basically the summation of it is, him saying that he was, back in April, it was an inquisition almost.

People came and they wanted to know about his teaching, his CRT teaching. And he doesn't teach CRT, he just teaches the

Bible, which is the classic answer from those in Christianity, Christian circles who are teaching CRT or CRT adjacent thinking, they will do this kind of thing.

They will end up saying it's no, basically their CRT principles are based in scripture, their social justice principles are based in scripture.

Anyway, that's kind of irrelevant to the point. The point is, I guess it was shared or liked by this particular individual.

And it caused someone who saw this post to ask who is this? And it's like, wait a minute, you have someone like this working at Grove City College.

Now here's the question is how many professors like this are at a place like Grove City College? And I've wondered because people have sent me similar things in the past about other

Christian colleges. And it's, I don't know how good their vetting is. I don't know if they even are aware, but this is clearly a problem.

And I think it's a problem on a few levels. One of them is academia is so overwhelmingly leftist.

I mean, so overwhelmingly on the left politically that I mean, it's like 35

Democrats to one Republican in many of these fields.

It's so tipped that finding people who share the college's mission is extremely hard.

And when you have people who need jobs, they can be chameleons. That's why vetting needs to be a lot better.

And that's really the only point I wanted to make is vetting's gotta be a lot better here. When you have things, I mean,

I've seen things from Grove City where they have, like a Democrat club on campus that basically has held events supporting

LGBT type things. And when you have that going on, you have to ask yourself, where is it coming from?

How is this getting in? Who's the advisor for this group? How are they? This is supposed to be a conservative

Christian college. And I think it's just inevitable unless you take very aggressive stands against social justice.

And you're very thorough in your questioning, you are gonna end up downstream with problems like this.

You hire someone because, man, they have a relationship with Jesus. I mean, they said, they have a, I mean, I like he's a good personality.

Those are the kinds of things that end up getting the jobs. They have a connection, whatever, but questions weren't asked.

Questions weren't asked. And they can't be, are you woke? They have to be questions like, do you think we get better interpretations of the Bible the more minority voices represented in the interpretation process?

They have to be questions like, is it a sin to have, is same -sex attraction a sin?

They have to be more thorough questions. And once you are able to fine tune and get some thorough questions and put that into the hiring process, then

I would think that some of these issues would be abated, but maybe I'm wrong, maybe

I'm wrong, but it certainly wouldn't hurt. So I just wanted to make that point, let you know about that.

In that same vein, I wanted to, let's see. I kind of skipped ahead.

That wasn't the first thing I was gonna talk about. There was another college here I wanted to mention, another

Christian college, if I can somehow pull it up. I think

I deleted it. I don't know why I did that. Well, oh, here it is, this is it.

Okay, it's Biola University, which is also a Christian college. Now, Matt Hall, who was, for those who don't remember,

Matt Hall was a provost at Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, Southern Baptist Flagship Seminary.

He had said a number of things that were critical race theory infused. And then he tried to say he didn't teach critical race theory because after all, he rejects the critical race theory conception of, or atheism that it rests upon.

But he never actually said anything to retract the statements he made that were in line with critical race theory.

So he is now at Biola. I'm not saying this is his doing, but I'm just saying that might give you a clue.

And he's apparently, I guess, he's in the same position he was at Southern, is that it was a lateral move, he is at Biola.

And I remember Sean McDowell made a public statement about it, it's a big win for Biola to get Matt Hall to come out.

This was, and I never talked about it in the program until this was sent to me from Leon Harris.

Now, I don't know if we are related, but we could be. Leon Harris posted this on his

LinkedIn. Now he's, I guess, a professor, assistant professor at Biola University. This is what he posted.

"'Happy news for me and hopefully for others too. "'Biola will announce this soon, "'but I know y 'all and I couldn't wait.

"'I've been accepted into the fellowship program "'at Biola's Center for the Study of the Work "'and Ministry of the Holy Spirit today.

"'I will spend part of the next year "'working on the following topic.'" And get this, theology of liberation as a holistic healing balm.

That's right, theology of liberation as a holistic healing balm. Now, I'm not sure what's more concerning about this.

Is it that we're now teaching liberation theology in a positive way?

And generally, just to initiate some people who might not know this, liberation theology is generally the term applied to Catholic liberation theology.

Gutierrez. Theology of liberation, I know it sounds the same. It pretty much is, but that's usually what's applied to more

Protestant versions of liberation theology. And there are many examples of this.

And I have a whole book, Social Justice Goes to Church, where I give you examples of this. Now, theology of liberation, liberation, it's basically the same thing, but that's just, it's usually those different words are used for different parts of different places in Christendom where it's being applied.

That's concerning. But the holistic healing balm thing, I don't know what to say.

I want to kind of laugh at it. Is that serious? This is an academic class or a fellowship?

Theology of liberation as a holistic healing balm? I mean, could you do this about anything else?

Like women's studies as a holistic healing balm, physics as a holistic healing balm.

What other disciplines could you apply that to? It's weird. It's just strange to me.

It sounds new agey, but I'm not saying it is, but I don't know what to say. I will have the opportunity, it says, to study pneumatology, so that's doctrine of the

Holy Spirit, and healing of great thinkers and pioneers of Christian thought in the persons of, get this,

James Cone. Yep, black liberation theology. Gustavo Gutierrez, liberation theology.

Juergen Moltzmann, and An Buhang Mu. So these are all liberation theologians of one stripe or another.

Different iterations of it, but. So he says, so thanks to Oscar Merlo and the committee.

I'm looking forward to working with people like Carmen Imes and others in the fellowship. I'm quite expected.

I am quite expectant to see what the Holy Spirit allows me to discover about the divine healing of God's good creation.

Well now, this, if this doesn't tell you where Biola might be headed, I don't know what to say.

I thought maybe Matt Hall going there would tell you what you need to know, but this is like, this is nuts.

This is, on like a couple different, okay, so I can see, even at a conservative university, we need to study even air, like liberation theology, sure.

But as a holistic healing balm, in connection with pneumatology, I don't even, how do you connect?

Now we're gonna find out how you connect liberation theology with the Holy Spirit here, but this is meant to just to heal you somehow.

It's so odd, I don't even have words really to say here other than Biola needs to,

I don't know, Biola, something needs to happen at Biola. This is very strange. So, I figured

I would give you that news. We have this as well, breaking

Arkansas, oh, this is, man, I'm so out of order on the podcast here. Let's save this for the end.

Let's go to this next. I wanted to share this with you about the Matt Chandler situation.

Someone shared this with me, and I don't know exactly what to make. It's from 2015, Jen Wilkins, Jen Wilkins is a woman speaker, leader at the church that Matt Chandler is pastor of, and her blog here for Gospel Coalition is

Three Female Ghosts That Haunt the Church, and she opens with this. I will never forget the first time I met my pastor. Our family had been at the church for two years before a meeting with another staff member threw me into his path.

The first words out of his mouth were, Jen Wilkins, you've been hiding from me. A giant grin on his face, he draped me in a friendly hug, and then proceeded to ask me about the people and things

I cared about. He kept eye contact. He reflected back what I was saying. I was completely thrown off.

I don't remember what books were on his desk or what artwork hung on the walls, but I left his office that day with a critical piece of insight.

This room is not haunted. And so she talks about the ways that women,

I guess, interact with men, the usurper, the temptress, the child, and then she closes with this.

My most recent meeting with my pastor stands out in my memory as well. He's often taken the time to speak affirming words about my ministry or gifting.

On this occasion, he spoke words I needed to hear more than I realized. Jen, I'm not afraid of you. Offered not as a challenge or a reprimand, but as a firm and empathetic assurance, those are the words that invite women in the church to flourish.

These are the words that put ghosts to flight. So I guess these are the words that keep you from wanting to be a temptress or a usurper or a child.

So it's really trying to convey that Matt Chandler, her pastor, right, views her in a sense on equal footing.

She doesn't have to do these other things that women often do to gain a man's attention or gain power or gain something from a man.

There's a very open relationship there. Now, someone sent this to me just to basically point out if this is the way

Matt Chandler, if this is the relationship he generally has with women at his church, then is it any wonder, right?

And I think it's easy to go back and you could look at a lot of different things and wonder, well, it could have been this, could it have been this?

But, and I was on the verge of not even sharing this on the podcast, but I do have to say after reading it, it does hit me a little weird.

I think that, because what's being said is that, or communicated is that Matt's reaction is what prevents a female from taking these other routes to gain influence.

Matt's already allowing the female to have influence and Matt's letting them know, I'm not, you know, you don't scare me,

I'm not intimidated by you. You've been hiding from me. So very open, very welcoming, making the woman feel important.

The question I think that the person who sent this to me was wondering, I'm sure is, should

Matt Chandler have been a little bit intimidated? Not because there's a powerful female at his church, but should there have been a caution there and a mistrust of himself or a, if I'm too overly familiar with other women who aren't my wife, if this crosses a line somewhere, then, or is it possible that this could cross a line somewhere, what could happen?

Did that question cross his mind? And I don't wanna speculate, I don't know. But I can't,

I was thinking about pastors that I've been under. I can't think of any of them, good pastors, having this kind of thing said about them.

Now, and they would equally, someone could say they're friendly, they're welcoming, but they're not the kind of person that is going to have meetings.

At least, and I don't know if these were, maybe there were more people at these meetings, I don't know. But they're certainly not gonna be having these like one -on -ones.

They're not going to be, they're not gonna be teasy. They're not gonna be teasing necessarily.

Like, you've been hiding from me. I mean, it's not, I don't have a Bible verse that I can draw on to say this was sin or anything.

It's not, I'm not saying that. It's just the interactions between men and women at this point in our history are very confusing for a lot of people, even myself included at times.

There used to be social mores that guided these kinds of things. Those are long gone. They're long gone.

It is very difficult. In fact, things that would have been considered not sexual years ago are now considered sexual.

So there's kind of a list of things, of do's and don'ts, but it's different for every person.

It's just very hard to know what these, what good platonic relationships look like that are brother -sister and not, nothing romantic there.

And so I want to admit the hard part of navigating this.

But in a situation like that, I think you become a little more careful when those lines aren't very well -defined.

You just become more careful, especially if you're a pastor. You don't want to go near that edge.

You don't want people getting the idea that they, without any trust really being built here, without any previous, we can just kind of jump into a very chummy kind of relationship.

I think that's just wisdom. But again, not building a church on any of this.

It's just after the fact, could this have been something that contributed? That's maybe a clue.

I'm not sure, but it might be. Here's a bigger thing though with the Matt Chandler thing. Revoice founder says he knows

Matt Chandler's situation is overblown and will still speak at conference this year. This is from September 2nd.

This was published at the Dissenter. A traditional independent press.

So this is probably Jeff Maples or someone else, but it says earlier this week, we reported that Acts 29 leader and pastor of Village Church Matt Chandler has stepped down in accordance with their recommendations of elders for inappropriate texting relationship with a woman that wasn't his wife.

We talked about this. To be clear, it was always our contention that either the situation was overblown or something that wasn't adding up.

And so it goes on. It says one blogger, Elizabeth Prata, went as far as to accuse

Chandler of adultery, even though there was and still is no evidence of such. And I would say, yeah, there isn't any evidence at this point.

While we disagree with Prata on this, we do understand that Chandler's elders decided that his coarse joking did rise to the level of sin worthy of disciplinary action.

But not all coarse joking is necessarily sexual. And we believe patience is a virtue when leveling accusations against anyone, especially an elder, whether or not we believe that elder is disqualified for other reasons.

Yesterday, a close friend and associate of Matt Chandler, who is also the founder of a gay Christian organization called

Revoice, Preston Sprinkle, published an open letter on Instagram further detailing the Chandler situation. Now, we talked about Preston Sprinkle here very recently because he did that whole podcast affirming preferred pronouns.

And so we just went over that. It's fresh in many of our minds if you listen regularly to this podcast.

But the article goes on. It says, in the letter, Sprinkle stated that he'd looked extensively into all the stuff involving Chandler and that he'd talked to Matt twice and talked to a woman who's been on staff at the church for over 18 years.

He said that not only has the secular media portrayed this in a bad way, but even the church has framed it in terms that could be misconstrued.

Sprinkle said that the woman Chandler has been texting told Chandler, don't you dare apologize. You did nothing wrong. And that both

Chandler's wife and the woman's husband were fully aware of the texting situation and neither was concerned. The course joking,

Sprinkle said, had nothing to do with sexual or lewd jokes, but rather was about alcohol. According to Sprinkle, it was a woman's friend who followed a strict

Billy Graham rule who became upset and confronted Matt. All this to say, I have no problem still having

Matt speak at the Exiles Conference this year, Sprinkle said in this letter. I mean, if we applied the same standard to all the speakers,

I'm not sure I'd be able to have any speakers at the conference. So that's the gist of it. Now, the whole thing is so strange to me because it's like, you have two options.

Either Chandler here did something innocuous and they're making a big to -do about it because something bad was gonna happen.

Someone had dirt, someone was gonna release something, something to avoid further damage, they had to do damage control here, but they really shouldn't have apologized.

But so there's something else that hasn't been revealed or it was bad, he did something wrong and he had to come forward and fess up, but he didn't wanna really admit what it was, so he was so cryptic about it.

I don't see another option here. The way that, and all I've seen is the video from, I mean, I'm not talking about in the mainstream press,

I haven't really looked at that. I've just seen the video from the Village Church, Matt Chandler, and then the pastor who comes out and explains further, that's what

I've seen. And it's weird. That's the best construction

I can put on it. There's a lot of blame shifting, there's a lot of justification. It's not a really a real apology, even though that's how it's supposed to come across.

It's, you have the church cheering for him at the end. It's weird, it's just strange.

And then you have combined with it, some of the observations people are now making after the fact, like that Matt Chandler being maybe overly chummy with female members of the church.

And was this just characterized his life of someone who frankly,

I mean, Preston Sprinkle, I mean, wouldn't that be false teaching? I mean, just the podcast that I played of Preston Sprinkle, where he's approving of preferred pronouns and he's really approving of transgenderism on a certain level.

I mean, this is someone that is close to the situation and also chummy with Matt and it seems, it's just strange, the whole thing is weird.

What are the lessons that we can, what are the practical things that can be pulled from this? Other than Matt Chandler isn't handling this right.

Well, I think one of them is we, especially for ministry leaders and pastors in particular, we have to be really careful about the relationships we have with other females.

And I'm not a big, I'll just say this, I'm not a big Billy Graham rule guy.

And I don't judge people who have that rule, but I'll never be with a woman alone. I mean, I think there are circumstances where you have to give someone a friend, maybe that you've known for a while, a ride or something.

Like, I can just think of circumstances in my own life where I wouldn't necessarily hold to that.

But in general, I would say, yeah. I mean, in general, there's some wisdom to being erring on the safe side.

What should be the relationship that pastors have with people even that they're counseling? That's a big question.

And some of this is driven to some extent by cultural factors.

We have biblical principles, but they're distilled in these cultural ways. So how is a hug taken in our culture?

In our culture, in the culture that I live in, in upstate New York, I'll just give you an example, where there's a lot of Italians in this area, it's not really taken as anything other than a hug.

When I moved down to North Carolina and Virginia, that was taken. Unless you have a lot of familiarity with someone, you don't really hug them.

Especially someone that's your own age, it's just, in some of the circles I was in at least, that's just not really done.

It's not a natural greeting. It's taken as something more. So in that context, then you don't really do that.

Because really it comes down to what are you communicating? So what are you communicating to other females?

If you're a male pastor, what are you telling them? And you have to think through these kinds of things.

You can't just approach it cavalierly. You can't approach it, they're not your bros. Can we just sum it up with that?

They're not your bros. You don't make lewd jokes with them. There shouldn't be locker room talk.

There shouldn't be, I'm not saying you can never joke with a female. I'm just saying there is a line and guys out there know what

I'm talking about. It's easier to see and to spot than to articulate, but they're not your bros.

And the kind of relationship you have with your wife, and I'm saying emotional, not just physical, but emotional, needs to stay with your wife.

So I think that's something we can definitely pull from this. So anyway, I wanted to just kind of put a cap on that to some extent, maybe give you some food for thought.

Hopefully that's helpful. More news. I wanted to share this because I mentioned it last week. Enoch Burke, who's been on this podcast, has been sent to prison in Ireland after being found guilty of contempt of court.

And it's for not using preferred pronouns. Now here's the interesting thing to me. Here in the

United States, we have Preston Sprinkle running around supporting preferred pronouns. Christians should use preferred pronouns.

Preston Sprinkle, who's apparently close with Matt Chandler. And then in Ireland, just across the pond, as they say, we have a brother in Christ who's going to prison because, and it roots back to a disagreement over using preferred pronouns.

This is where, do we not see this? Do we not see where things are going? Are we, all the infighting, all the drama, even the things that I mentioned before, that even theological conservatives who have a hard time kind of working together against social justice, do we not see this?

Even if there's differences, even if there's little things here or there, even if there's disagreements over baptism or something, can we not see this threat?

This is my heart in this. This is so basic, it's so fundamental, so fundamental. And we can have disagreements over other things.

It doesn't mean we have to agree with each other on everything or support everything other people do, but we need to, in general,

I think, support people who are gonna take a stand against this because this, we're not far away from this.

Other things, let's see. There were some tweets. Someone sent this to me this morning.

I guess it was a tweet from Jamar Tisby. I just thought this was interesting. And I want you guys to put in the info section or the comments if you want me to talk about this more because I had a thought.

Anyway, here it is. The head historian of religion on Twitter.

It's, that's probably a negative. I don't even know who this person is.

They're a communist with MSNBC. So there you go. I mean, it's MSNBC and has a book on white evangelical racism, ooh.

So she posted this thing against Tom Woods. Tom Woods wrote this book,

The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, which I think I actually, I might have that book. I have a few of the pig guides and it's got a picture of Stonewall.

Is that, no, I think that's James Longstreet. I think that's Longstreet, it's Confederate General on the front.

And it's a very dashing picture, I might add. It's, I really, I admire this. I like the hat, especially.

I wish I had a hat like that. So it's on the front of this book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. And this person from MSNBC is attacking

Tom Woods. And because, or Grove City, really, because Grove City, their economics department hosts an

Austrian economic student conference and they give the Thomas E. Woods Award to the best student paper. Now, Tom Woods is an

Austrian economist. So that would be appropriate. But Tom Woods also gets this kind of treatment of he's a quote -unquote neo -Confederate or lost cause enthusiast, or whatever pejorative they're using to try to, their new

F scale, you know, that they're implementing. And so in this particular situation,

Tom Woods is the punching bag. And Jamar Tisby, who's wrote The Color of Compromise, he's kind of a woke evangelical guy, comes out and he says this.

The way leaders at Grove City College treated me, and even worse, their own staff, was never about historical accuracy or biblical fidelity.

Oh, really? It was about maintaining a revivified lost cause narrative. This is so, only someone affected by CRT or social justice thinking would do this.

It is ideological thinking. It's textbook ideological thinking in my mind, from a social justice standpoint.

Because it's taking something really unrelated and connecting it. And that's what

CRT folks can do. I mean, they can take something, within two or three steps, they can connect anything to racism if they want to do it.

And that's what he's doing here. And of course, you have to then further make the connection that, you know,

Tom Woods' view of history, which Jamar, you have to connect that to whatever the lost cause narrative is, which they have their own idea of what this is.

And it's kind of silly. And then you have to connect that to racism somehow.

And there's so many connections, but then you have to connect Grove City's giving this award out as an indicator that that must be the motive.

It's questioning the motive. Because they give this award out for something on Austrian economics, which makes sense,

Tom Woods, Austrian economics, because they give this out, it must necessarily mean that the whole motive behind the way that they're treating

Jamar Tisby must be because secretly deep down, they're just lost cause enthusiasts.

That's the kind of thinking that we're in right now. It's just, it's insulting. But people on the left, they buy this kind of thing.

And it makes a lot of conservatives run for the hills because what could we possibly have that we're connected to?

I mean, how about this? Any of the founding fathers just about, how about that of the country?

If you want to have a patriotic group, good luck. If you want to have a reformed group, good luck trying to, with the

Puritans or the reformers or really hardly, there's so many people in your history that would have views that would not be in accordance with today's egalitarian views, social justice views.

So good luck trying to maintain any of your traditions or your heritage. You're not gonna do it. That's the whole purpose.

This stuff is an acid and it's working to some extent. This is ridiculous, this is stupid. Then he goes on, the revivified lost cause narrative now often appears under the heading of white

Christian nationalism. Really, really? So the lost cause, and for those who are, what's the lost cause?

I know there's a few of you out there who might think that. Basically the way that the South interpreted the war between the states, the civil war, whatever term you want to use for that conflict, the late unpleasantness, that's the term that gets used.

And for good reason to some extent, because there was a book published in the, after the war on, using that title,

Lost Cause. And so, but this is, in academia though, especially among people infected by memory studies or CRT, this has now become a pejorative and they have their own very narrow definition of what lost cause means.

It's modern mythology. It's taking, it's ultimately racism and it's trying to baptize racist ideas with the robes of honor.

And so, I mean, it's ridiculous. To make their heroes more heroic than they actually are. To make their,

Robert E. Lee's military victories more epic than they actually were.

To try to put a veneer of honor on something that was so dishonorable because it was all about racism and slavery.

That's really the lost cause narrative in their minds. And so, then he does the jump of connecting that, his conception of that, to Christian nationalism.

Which I'm like, it's funny to me because you could trace, some aspects of Christian nationalism, you could trace to honestly, not the lost cause, but really what would be the alternative to the lost cause.

The righteous cause. More than a Northern interpretation of that conflict.

A lot of the Christian nationalism stuff is based in this kind of nationalism that's very Lincolnian.

It's Lincolnian nationalism. That we're a one nation, undivided, indivisible, dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

That that's what the founding actually means. That we're just living out the promise of equality. And Christianity, of course,

Christian nationalism is part of this, but we're one nation. And of course the lost cause, the correct interpretation would be that it's, social contract or compact really, social compact theory.

It's compact theory. It's that states should be stronger, that individual states would be more akin to what we conceive of today as a country.

That it's a loose alliance. That's really what federalism was supposed to be. It's more of for the purposes of trade and protection that we come together in the union.

And so you have two different conceptions of the union going forward. And one of them gained ascendancy, which was more the

Lincolnian nationalist idea. But apparently, and Christian nationalism is certainly draws from that tradition, but apparently no,

Christian nationalism is now, it's part of the lost cause. It's insulting. It's really so insulting academically.

Just anyone who knows history, which you aren't, we should know at least enough to know that that's a weird take, but there you go.

And then he says, we produced this video. Yeah, anyways, on the Grove City thing, he advertises his video.

Now here's the thing I'm gonna put out there and you can put in the comment section if you want to see more of this. I am willing,

I've thought, the thoughts crossed my mind before, but I am willing to do a show, maybe a series of shows on that particular historical debacle on the lost cause narrative itself.

Just to find, just showing you what it is. Cause I'm seeing an uptick in this language that that's now the new word, the new term to smear.

And that anyone associated with it must be racist or something, which is obviously not true. But I would be willing to take an academic approach to just show you, this is what actually this is.

I'll give you the primary sources of the lost cause writers, what they were trying to communicate. And we'll talk, we can also talk about what they were trying to oppose.

And we can talk about Lincolnian nationalism and how, I don't know exactly to what extent

I would go, but I'm willing to do that cause I've already studied this to some extent and I have material I could draw from.

But I've thought before, I'm kind of reluctant to do it because I'm just like, is this really a big deal?

Maybe it is though, maybe it is. Maybe it could become that. And it would be fun for me cause

I like history. And that's one thing that I thought would be interesting to delve into.

But this is the CRT mindset. This is the ideological mindset. It's impervious to reason, in my mind.

You just can't reason with someone like this. If they're just gonna make these tenuous connections and multiple tenuous connections, and they're so aggressive that these connections therefore define, these define exactly what

Grove City is or what an individual is, that they're racist, they're a horrible racist, or they're lost cause, whatever, devotees, that because of this string of just tenuous connections, you're gonna see that a lot more.

And I mean, that's the same thing we're seeing in other realms of cancel culture. We're seeing this with the

Me Too movement. We saw this with the COVID craziness to some extent. It's like, we saw this with the

Ukraine stuff. I mean, like, if you didn't denounce Putin, if you said something like I said, where I was just like, well, look,

I'm not for Putin. I'm not for what's happened, what Ukraine, some of the things they're pushing. Like, it doesn't seem like there's a clear cut good guy.

It was like, oh my goodness, you're a Putin apologist. I literally had someone call me that. That's the cancel culture ideological thinking that I refer to in my book

Christianity and Social Justice. And I flush it out a little bit more in that. But it's insulting.

It would be considered childish thinking in decades past, but we're not there anymore. That childish thinking now works to cancel people.

So how do we form a hedge against this? How do we think like adults? How are we able to actually try to understand someone accurately before representing their views?

That's the big question I have. And I don't know that there's an easy answer. It really does start with in the home, but it also starts with how you educate, how children are educated, how they're trained to think.

We don't really train people to think. And it's sad. It really, really is. And I saw that firsthand with this.

How's this for a transition? I wanna talk about this real quick. This is the Lord of the

Rings, the Lord of the Rings. And so as you can see,

I'm not holding anything back. I put a ha -ha on this post. The Rings of Power review, Lord of the Rings show is a triumph.

I put ha -ha because I thought that was pretty funny. So I did, I was more probably aggressive on this than I have been on a lot of things.

But this is what I wrote and I'll follow it up and I'll tell you what the reactions are to what I wrote and what I think now, because I've now watched the whole first episode.

But here's what I said. I said, I just submitted my review for Rings of Power. I got 20 minutes into the first episode and couldn't take it anymore.

It depends on CGI. The dialogue is subpar. The one main character, a female elf, is unrealistically 10 times as skilled as all her male counterparts at physical activity, including fighting.

And her name is, if I can pronounce it, Gladiel. You see, I can't even pronounce her name now. I had it and then

I lost it. Anyway, she's the same character from Lord of the Rings. And I just read through all the

Lord of the Rings books too. But I, for some reason, anyway. She, this female, here's her picture right here.

Would you want to mess with her? She is 10 times as skilled as all her male counterparts.

There's no mystery, no sense of transcendence, way too many details, way too quickly, no character development. Hobbits apparently all look ethnically different, though they live in a pre -modern world that's integrated.

There are too many things that jar you out of the fantasy and make you realize it's just the creation of some woke Hollywood elites.

It's garbage. Now, I don't say garbage about many things, but let me explain. I came into this and my expectation was

Tolkien. Now, I'm not a Tolkien scholar. Clearly, I can't even pronounce the name of this female elf. But I have somewhat of,

I mean, it's a fantasy. It's a story. I'm not crazy about it. But I would say that it's a good story.

It's a good fantasy. And there were a lot of replies, let's just say to this particular.

And I did this at another post and got the same thing. So I followed it up. I said, against my better judgment, I finished the episode since some seem so sure it got better.

It didn't. And it's true. It didn't get any better, guys. Because people were saying 20 minutes and you can't.

So I was kind of mocking some of the people. I was like, what do you have to do? Stick your head in the garbage longer? I was mocking some of the responses.

But of course I was called racist in the course of this. Of course I was called a misogynist in the course of this.

And I just think it's funny that it's like, this is what they have.

So here's the situation. Amazon is holding reviews of the show. Like my review isn't even posted on Amazon.

I submitted it to Amazon. And I'm, just so people know, I canceled Amazon. I have no intention of being part of Amazon Prime.

Apparently there was a free trial I didn't know about though. Let's just say someone I'm close to decided to sign us up for.

It's like, hey, it's a free trial. Let's just use it for like a month. And so in this little window of time,

I was able to go on and watch the first episode. But I would not continue this at all.

Everything I said, as far as I'm concerned, is true. And my expectation was high. I wanna see Tolkien stuff.

It's not Tolkien. And that sense of transcendence is gone. But one of the things, and to connect it to what we were just talking about, that I thought was interesting as I was reading some of the comments, was how even some of the

Tolkien nerds out there who are just like, hey, no, this is canon. Here's her name,

Galadriel. Okay, I think I'm pronouncing it right. Being athletically superior to most elves is canon.

And not really. She's a wizard. I mean, she's strong.

But you gotta see the first 10 minutes of the film to see like, it's ridiculous. It's so ridiculous.

Like this cave troll can take out her whole group. It's like five guys are already dead.

And she just effortlessly, with a dagger, can take out the cave. It's so ridiculous. But some of these reactions, though, are interesting.

I don't know how character development works. Of course, it's not woke, or I'm racist.

And it just, it dawned on me. This is the thought that dawned on me.

We, when you lose truth, when you lose truth in other areas, you start devaluing not just truth, not just,

I'm saying like propositional truth. I'm not just what's said, what words are conveying.

You also start to lose other things. You lose art. You lose the truth of art. And that's one of the problems here.

It's not truthful. Now you say, John, it's a fantasy. That's what a lot of people said. You can do anything in a fantasy. Okay, you can create parallel worlds.

I get that. But fantasies are supposed to bring you into those parallel worlds and make those parallel worlds believable.

These aren't believable parallel worlds. And that's why I said it's a pre -modern society. So in other words, people aren't moving around.

There's not global moving for jobs or something. They're living among, for centuries, living together. And yet they all look different.

That would never happen. Everyone should look the same if they're having children and they're intermarrying, but they don't because it's woke.

But that's not truthful. That's the problem. And there's probably a number of things I'm not even picking up on that just aren't truthful.

And when you lose truth, you lose art. And it's social justice that's making us lose truth because now we have to have forced diversity.

It's no different than other things I've seen, other shows. There was one

I saw not too long ago that was a trailer for, and I'm not saying this is all wrong, but it was for a play, for actors,

I can understand this to some extent, but if you're trying to be historically accurate, this is the point, and you want people to really become involved in a story, you can't have a

David and Goliath story where David is a black guy from Sub -Saharan

Africa. Goliath is a white guy from Europe. And you're gonna do this steampunk thing maybe where David wears a hoodie or something, or wears modern clothes.

And I understand there's a statement being made. I understand you could even have some good acting, but let's just say you're pulled out of the world of David and Goliath when you watch something like that, because the whole point is to try to make it believable.

That's what pulls you in. That's what makes you kind of forget everything else going on around you, and you're pulled into that world.

When you see things that just aren't accurate or don't line up with the story, it distracts from the story.

And I've seen some good plays where, I mean, there were actors who weren't ethnically, now sometimes you don't have that availability.

You can't match, you know, but I've even seen people try to play girls who were boys and things like that.

And I'm not saying there's no place for that ever, especially with like high school plays and stuff.

I mean, you're limited to what you have, but the whole point here is that it's not, it's actually an effort is specifically being made, an extra effort to make it unrealistic in these senses.

A special effort is being made to make Gladriel. You know, you say, I lost your name again. This is gonna be the hardest thing for me is

Gladriel. Gladriel, okay, there we go. Making Gladriel this really just strong, independent, 10 times stronger than any of the males around her, physically superior, confident, aggressive, all the rest, all those male traits, you know, she has an abundance when the other males don't.

That kind of thing is forced. That kind of thing is, those decisions are made on purpose. And that's the point I'm trying to make.

When you do that, when it's not out of necessity, but it's, or even convenience, but it's because of an agenda, you'll start losing truth and it doesn't make for good art.

And then, you know, it's like a Marvel movie. If I went into this thinking, oh, it's a Marvel movie, I probably wouldn't have been disappointed as much.

Okay, it's a Marvel movie, but the attention spans are lower. So like the scenes change really quick.

You're almost like launched into a climax. Like it's like without any character development, you don't know who these people are.

You're like in the middle of action. You don't quite understand, but it's gotta be that. It's gotta be like constant action.

It's gotta be, keep your attention that way. And these are kind of cheap ways of, in my opinion, in art, keeping your attention.

I so wish Roger Scruton was around to watch this and give us his take on it. Because I think he would probably have some very brilliant comparisons between why

Tolkien's work is interesting and why this actually isn't as interesting, but it's trying to be interesting, but for all the wrong reasons.

Instead of getting deep, drilling down deep into the human condition. And it's a, hey, look at the explosion.

That kind of thing. So I figured we would do this. Let's go to Google. Now, I don't normally go to Google, but we'll go to Google this time.

And let's do a search. Let's do a search for rings of power and racism or sexism.

I could do both. And you see, yep, okay.

Hollywood reporter, Lord of the Rings. Rings of power sparks racist backlash. The Guardian, the backlash to rule them all.

Everything controversial about it. Let's see. And in the article, there's plenty of evidence that Tolkien, okay. So I don't know where this is going.

I'm just looking at the headlines. The rings of power team fears backlash against cast.

They worry about racist and sexist stuff. Forbes, the

Lord of the Rings. The rings of power is not woke. Really? What do you call all that forced diversity then?

What is that? Rings takes a colorblind approach to race. Really?

I mean, do we do that with any, like what about that movie? There's a movie coming out on, is it about a queen or something, but it's about an

African queen. And it's apparently it's inaccurate. Okay, which doesn't surprise me. But are they casting like Africans tribesmen as woke and Asian characters?

No, because they're probably trying to be at least somewhat accurate. We do that with Wakanda, you know, but it's okay.

Obviously this is dumb, but the rings of, let's see, opinion backlash against race swapping in the rings.

So this is like a whole discussion. If you go to news, yeah, there's even more here. So this is what's, how these terrible reviews,

Rotten Tomatoes, I think has this at like 38. Rotten Tomatoes, rings of power. Let's see what it is.

Has it gone up? It is at 84%.

Wow. No, that's not, 84 % for critics, 39%.

So it's gone up a little bit. 39 % for audience score.

So that's pretty bad for a billion dollar franchise here. And in order to hedge against this, basically they're calling the people who don't like it racist, which isn't true.

Maybe there's a few races, people who don't like other races out there. You know, count them on one hand. That's not the reason that this thing is at 39 % because you've left

Tolkien's whole vision. And so the only point I'm making is really, this is what happens to art.

When you start going down this forced diversity, equity, and inclusion, when you start subverting reality itself, force it into a mold that doesn't really exist in the real world, you produce bad art.

And it's gonna keep happening. So anything else?

Let's see. I think we're probably, there's a few tweets

I was gonna talk about. I was gonna defend William Wolfe on this because an SBC pastor, Dwight McKissick, goes after William Wolfe.

Here, I'll just say this really, really briefly. William Wolfe quotes from Paul Miller's book on Christian nationalism, which

I haven't read, but apparently, Paul Miller says, "'American Christian nationalists believe "'that the United States' rightfully predominant culture "'is

Anglo -Protestantism and that the U .S. government "'should promote and protect this cultural heritage.'" Now, most people throughout our country's history would say, yeah.

Well, of course, that's all bad now. And William Wolfe says, he agrees with the majority of people in our country's history.

He says, yes, of course I believe and want that. Dwight McKissick says that Anglo -Protestantism as the rightfully predominant culture is, let's see, where does he say it?

Basically, it's racist. Okay, so here's the guy he retweeted, someone named

Francie Jean Philippe. He says, "'Until the mid -1900s, "'the majority of Protestants in America "'were in the mainline denominations.

"'They committed theological suicide. "'So which Anglo -Protestantism is this guy talking about?'

Dwight McKissick then retweets this, this whole thing that I just read to you, and says that this is racism, that it needs to be recanted.

It's textbook racism, funded by the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Again, this is just like Jamar Tisby's thing.

This is like all these tentative, tenuous connections and then slapping them haphazardly together and hoping the charge of racism will stick.

So let's just talk about a few of them. William Wolfe is on the payroll. Okay, so you have a guy who's like an intern as a student.

Okay, on the payroll, sure. So as if this is something that the

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary approves of. No, this is William Wolfe's personal comment, and he's an intern there.

I mean, I could see maybe where someone would say, or ask, is this something that, is

William Wolfe exercising some kind of influence at the seminary along these lines? But as far as I know, he's not in an influential role there.

He's learning. So maybe something, I mean, I don't disagree necessarily with what he's saying, but if there was something actually a problem, something to maybe keep your eye on, but this isn't like, it's just funny.

It's so, this is like what is being, it's not even like what I just read to you earlier from Biola, where like literally, they're doing this ridiculous theology of liberation as a healing balm with actual professors there.

They're promoting this. Like that's so different than a random guy who's an intern at Southern Seminary, and then saying that this is what they promote.

Okay. Anglo -Protestantism, that this is textbook racism.

That's the other thing here. Anglo -Protestantism, well, what is Anglo -Protestantism?

It's Protestantism coming out of what? The Anglo tradition, English tradition. That's all it is.

So, and this guy Franci Jean Philippe wants to say, well, which mainline denomination? Right.

That's why it's Anglo -Protestantism. You're talking about Baptists. You're talking about Presbyterians. You're talking about Episcopalians.

Those would all be included in Anglo -Protestantism. I don't know why this is hard for people.

It doesn't mean you have to be, if you're not white, you can't be a Protestant or something stupid like that.

But Dwight McKissick is taking it in a really weird way. And then he's saying that that's textbook racism.

And so, it's just, this is the kind of thinking that we're dealing with. And you can't negotiate with this kind of thinking.

You can't negotiate with Jamar Tisbee. You can't negotiate with Dwight McKissick. You literally just have to oppose this kind of thinking.

You have to say, that's ridiculous. You have to just dismiss it. Ignore it, dismiss it, reprimand it. Encourage the faint -hearted, right?

I don't think Dwight McKissick's in that category. Help the weak. I don't know if Dwight McKissick's in that category, but what are you supposed to do to the unruly?

Admonish. That would be, in my opinion, what you do with someone like Dwight McKissick here. Admonish this kind of thinking.

This is ridiculous. But this is where we really need some people with backbone, unfortunately, in the conservative side of evangelicalism and more of them.

It's interesting Calvinist is trending right now. I don't know why that'd be trending on Twitter. That's interesting.

Okay. Well, that, I think, is a wrap. There's other things that I wanted to talk about, about the

NAE and some other stuff, but we didn't get to the Doug Wilson thing on two kingdoms. I'll have to save that.

He did a very short video and had some good things to say that I thought were clarifying for some of the people who were a little upset about what my interview with Thomas Accord and Stephen Wolfe on two kingdoms.

So we'll have to wait though for that. But anyway, I'll just close with this. If you are a guy and you want to come out to a great retreat, please consider coming to this particular retreat,

Adirondack Men's Retreat with Dr. Russell Fuller. I try to mention it like every podcast, but you can go to the link in the info section and there'll be more there.

It's 176 bucks for two nights, five meals. You're going to meet some great guys. You get quality time with Dr.

Fuller. I just talked to him the other day and he said, I want to make sure I have face -to -face time with as many people as possible. I don't think you're going to get this opportunity often.

Honestly, this is not a conference where there's a thousand people clamoring for someone's attention.

This is going to be smaller than that. You're going to actually get some quality time with people. I'm going to be there.

Eddie Robles is going to be there. Edwin Ramirez is going to be there, another podcaster. There's going to be a number of pastors there.

So it's going to be fruitful and I'm looking forward to it. So God bless. Go to that link in the info section if you want more info.