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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We have a guest with us today, Pastor Jason Garwood from the Cross and Crown Church in Warrington, Virginia. And the Warrington Declaration is a document that came out, oh, what, about a month ago or so?
Yeah, just a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. A couple of weeks ago. And it was kind of birthed, for lack of a better term, in the Cross and Crown Church there in Warrington. And I'm pleased to have you, Pastor Garwood, to talk about this because I've had a few people reach out to me who are listeners and say, hey, you really need to get someone to come on and talk about this Warrington Declaration because there's not a lot of para-church ministries, organizations, even big names that are saying clear things to help the church navigate some of the issues that we faced in the last year in regards to shutdowns and masks and all the rest of it.
So I'm hoping you can provide a little clarity for us today. So thank you so much. Yeah. Thanks, John. I appreciate you having me on and I'm excited about this. I've been doing quite a few interviews on it.
So it's exciting to see it kind of take off and it's encouraging to see a lot of people pick it up and sign it and help us share it. So it's worthwhile for sure. Yeah. Well, that's awesome. So that's a good thing to start off with.
You're seeing some fruit already that a lot of people are getting passed around and people are actually getting excited and signing their names and using it to think through this. Yeah. LifeSite News picked it up and did a really nice article on it, which is kind of funny because it tends to be more Roman Catholic.
But a lot of people in the comments section and people that I've seen share it have said, oh, this is great, even from the Protestants. So it's kind of funny to see that. But also I did an interview with Alex Newman from the New American and he helped pushed it up, pushed it out there, too.
He has quite a quite a big audience. So it's neat to see Tim Brown from Sons of Liberty Radio as well. Yeah. So it's I praise God for the opportunity for sure. Yeah. Well, we're hoping to bring more attention to this because, I mean, it looks like you're doing some pioneer work here in a way, and it's work that a lot of people don't want to do.
And we maybe we can get into that, why this is something that a lot of people are shying away from. I think it's kind of obvious. But you say what the declaration says in the preamble, it says the warrant.
Let's see here if I can. It's maybe I should get some context. The last two paragraphs talking about the mandates, policies, etc., that have been going on in regards to covid. And then it says to this end, the warrants and declaration on medical mandates, biblical ethics and authority was created.
And is the purpose in order to provide clarity on these issues, moving forward to equip local churches and their officers in providing clarity on where they stand and to assist individuals who are being mistreated in their churches with a well-ordered summary of belief in this regard.
And I say amen to that. We need that. So why don't you help us out here? Let's just kind of like take the 30 ,000 foot approach here. And briefly, in the last year, we've seen churches shut down. We've seen the government impose restrictions in churches.
You can't sing. You need to wear masks. You need to have all this social distancing if you are going to meet. But in Canada right now, you can't even really you can barely meet. The restrictions are so outrageous in some places.
I think there's a sense in which many Christians feel like this is wrong. This isn't normal. This feels off, but they can't maybe articulate biblically why they they feel that way or why they think that way.
Could you give us just kind of like the from the 30 ,000 foot view? What is off? Why do people feel off about what's happened in the last year? Sure. Yeah, that's a good question, because if in some ways I kind of liken it to the child who goes to college and walks away from the faith and the parents are wondering, you know, what happened?
How did the how did college ruin my child? And I heard this somewhere. I can't remember where, but they said, well, it's not so much that they lost their faith. It just revealed what was there. And I think that the COVID situation, the lockdowns and the medical mandates discussion and all of these things sort of took everybody by surprise because of the fact that we hadn't really won.
We never really had to think through it before. It's something that's been unprecedented for us in our in our generations, even older generations. It's been, you know, 100 years since we've had something like that with the Spanish flu.
So we're sort of I think we were caught flat footed mostly because it's something we just don't think through much, but it's it's it's telling. I think it revealed a lot of where the church is and where she should where she wasn't when time came and where she should be and that sort of thing.
And Peter says judgment starts with the house of God. So I want to be careful because I'm not trying to disparage or besmirch the people of God at all. I just think that we need to be thinking through these issues.
And and part of the problem, honestly, is I think it's we have sort of a neoplatonistic dualism that has crippled the church, mostly through a form of pietism, where we sort of elevate the, quote unquote, spiritual things, things like Bible reading and prayer and church attendance and those things, which are, again, good things and pious things we should be doing.
But we elevate them and thus we have really no meaningful things to say about the material part of the universe. And so the church has been not involved in these discussions for a long time. And in this medical crisis, this is something I've been preaching on for a while.
I wrote a book, Health for All of Life, that came out last fall trying to deal with these issues because I had seen them in the vaccine discussion. I don't mind being dubbed an anti-vaxxer. I just don't.
I think the science is faulty. The COVID vaccine, if you can even call it that, is a problem, too, for various reasons we can get into later, I guess. But I bring that up because this is stuff that we've had to think through as a church as well, is how do we how should we be thinking about health?
You know, if we preach and teach a faith for all of life, which is what what we do at Crossing Ground, we should be involved in certain things. Maybe the Bible does say something about the prison system or the drug war or immigration.
You know, how do we take the Bible that we've been giving? And we know it's inspired by God. We know it's profitable for teaching and training and righteousness and reproof and correction and all these things so that we can be equipped.
So if that's true, then where do we go with it? Maybe we need to be having a discussion in the health arena. And I think we've already seen a problem with the medical industrial complex anyway, with pharmaceutical companies making billions off the backs of people having really no cure and answer for things like heart disease or things like cancer and so on.
So it's kind of a situation where we've sort of just not been involved in it. And now it was put it right in our lap and we have to deal with it. So I think it just took people by surprise. So when you so crafted this, I'm just going to pull a line from it here.
It says that we affirm the scriptural jurisdictional limits of delegated human authority are established and they're good and necessary. So you're affirming, hey, there's a government, there's a place for government here.
But at the same time, you warn about ascribing total jurisdiction to any human authority. And you call that idolatry. So you can explain that to people. How did you did you see examples of that in the last year where you think, OK, there's churches or Christians who are treating maybe the government like an idol?
And what does that look like? Sure. I think pietism breeds statism. Statism is the that's the word I would use that we were getting at with that sort of language is ascribing total jurisdiction, total infallible jurisdiction, which belongs to God and the triune God himself.
God himself is infallible. And without not only does he not have any errors, it's not possible for him to err, which is part of the doctrine of scripture. And so this idolatry, though, of elevating the state and giving it basically unending power where they can do whatever they want and say whatever they want.
And it's not like all of a sudden that just happened either. It's sort of like the Marxist discussion about the critical race theory discussion where they show up to these school boards, which is funny because, well, the public school system is the 10th plank of the Communist Manifesto.
So you're arguing against Marxism in a Marxist system. So it's kind of funny, but it didn't just happen. And that's the thing. It didn't just happen. All of these things were allowed to happen, permitted to happen.
Churches sort of rolled over and said, yeah, OK, we should just do whatever the government says. And I get it. Maybe early on, people just wanted to see, OK, what is this thing? This is new. Maybe we should take time.
And I think there's wisdom in being judicious and trying to be shrewd about things. But at the end of the day, is this sort of too weak to flatten the curve, two years to flatten the economy thing sort of spun out of control.
We really reacted poorly. We didn't show up in time. We were a little bit Johnny come lately here on these issues. And so statism itself is really I see it. Think of it like this. We sort of gave birth to statism throughout the years, maybe even pre Lincoln, but especially after the Civil War, sort of a centralized federal power.
Right. And it's just grown and grown and grown. And now here we are and we have to eat the ugly fruit of it. So, yeah, it is an idol, though. I think it's a huge idol that we need to be preaching against.
And that is statism itself. I remember I heard a preacher years ago say when a tragedy happens or something that people are afraid of, like a hurricane or something, that's when people cry out to their gods.
And lately, the God does seem to be the federal government. Somehow FEMA come rescue us. And it's there's not there's diminished or less of calling out to the one true God, the Triune God of Scripture, and a lot more even professing Christians calling out for help from from the government.
And certainly so we can see this probably we can chart this if we probably had had the resources to go and do all the research and find examples over the course of years, this slide. But this last year, we probably see a big acceleration in the blind faith given to government and just the ascribing of good, pure motives to them.
And the vaccine you just mentioned or the non vaccine, I don't even know quite what to call it because I know it's not really technically a vaccine the way the vaccine is supposed to work. It's a new RNA technology.
But many Christians from like the Gospel Coalition and from many parachurch organizations, people encouraging Christians that this is what you need to do. This is what it means to love your neighbor. This is what this is part of your duty as a good Christian in society.
What would your response be to them? Because all they're trying to do, it sounds pure, is love their neighbor, right? Loving your neighbor is trying to prevent an illness from spreading. And why would you be against that?
Yeah, well, I'd say I'd be against that for two reasons is one, you don't get to just define love willy nilly. We know from Paul in the book of Romans chapter 13 that right after his description of what a civil magistrate should be, he's prescribing the role of the magistrate.
And he goes on and around verse 10 and he says, look, love is the fulfilling of the law. So love is love and law go together. It's something I preached on recently. Love is not love. You've seen the sign right in this house.
We believe love is love and we really should be saying, well, no, we believe love is law. And because the apostle Paul ties that together throughout the letter to the to the to the Christians in Rome.
So love, love is the fulfillment of the law. So I wouldn't and this is sort of toward the end of the declaration, but we don't want to just say, well, because the CDC said you need to get Vax, that's loving your neighbor.
I reject those presuppositions completely. I've seen the Gospel Coalition stuff. We've interacted with Joe Carter or tried to attempted to. There was some foul play, I think, in some of our interactions and just trying to get an honest discussion on this issue of vaccination, especially mandatory.
You're in Virginia. I'm in Virginia. The health commissioner, Oliver, he was trying to. He was talking like they were going to try to mandate it in Virginia. I even testified to the Senate committee a couple of times and said this is unlawful.
You can't do it. So when you treat the commandments of men or the traditions of men rather as the commandments of God, then we have a problem. So I would I would I would reject that definition that loving your neighbor means you have to do this.
It kind of goes back to I mentioned my book Health for All of Life kind of go into these presuppositions where, you know, if we have a Darwinian view of the world, man is basically a machine, right? He's a machine to be tamed and controlled.
There was a video on CNN of I forget her name now all of a sudden escapes me. But the former president or CEO of Planned Parenthood was talking about how we need to make life difficult for the unvaccinated.
And here is a naturalistic person who believes in Darwinianism saying freaking out about a virus. And now she's bullying everybody else. And so that sort of worldview, though, is there. So we're not talking about just the vaccine.
We're talking about the worldview that's behind it is man made in the image of God. Did man create an immune system, a lymphatic system, a circulatory system? Did he create these things for us so we could be healthy and so on?
Then, yes. And if that's true, then I reject the germ theory of disease. I I'm in a terrain theory. I'm in. I'm not in the Lewis pasture camp. I don't see any reason to hijack your immune system with a vaccination, which we've seen is destroying people's lives like crazy.
The VAERS reporting system, over 10 ,000 have already died in worse months. We still have so much more data that that's being collected. To kind of bring it back, though, to the to the issue of loving your neighbor, that's in the declaration.
It's not loving your neighbor to hold them to a standard. That's something other than God and his law word. And that's where it gets really tricky, especially with the masks. Yeah. And I think, you know, as I read through this, you don't get into that stuff that you were just talking about from your book, the germ theory of disease or vaccinations in specifics.
It's more about the jurisdiction of the church, jurisdiction of the civil authorities, responsibility before God, their scriptures all throughout this. And I guess what I would want to pick your brain on, because this is the main really object, I think, of this declaration is this whole Romans 13 defense of we must do whatever the state says, because the state was given by God to for our own good and to punish evil.
And, you know, it's evil to spread a disease, these kinds of things. So it is our duty. And I've been told this by I don't know how many people, especially towards the beginning of the covid stuff, the lockdowns that I was because I was kind of bucking the system as well and just saying, look, this is not right.
What we're doing is not not only is it not biblical, this isn't constitutional, this is just way outside of where we should be. And that was the response that I got from a lot of Christians. I'm glad to see a lot of Christians have reversed their thinking on this, but that thinking is still out there.
So kind of in short form, how do you respond to that when people just bring up Romans 13? Well, you know, I that's that's really why we wanted the declaration to be educational. That was part of the goal is to educate people because because of things like that, like what you just asked about loving your neighbor.
Well, isn't it just loving your neighbor? Do you want to kill them? You might breathe on them and cause them to die in sort of dramatic fashion. And then Romans 13. Exactly. It gets brought up all of the time as if as if somehow that is is the only passage for one that we need to look at.
But I also respond to people and say, have you read it? Because the first two verses, I think, are overlooked, especially when we have Paul describing the fact that the magistrate exists because God says it should exist.
So it's God's institution to start with. That's just the first presupposition. Right. It's God's God's institution. So he gets to decide what that looks like. All authority in heaven and earth has been given to King Jesus as he sits enthroned right now in his current session is to be ruler and judge of the nations and bringing them to their feet through gospel proclamation.
This is you know, you can't just isolate Romans 13. But even if you do, clearly the authority, unending authority goes to to God, not man. And so those authority, those authorities that exist, Paul says, exist because of God.
And so he puts them basically on a tight leash, even even fathers and elders in a church. They're all on a tight leash. They don't have unlimited authority. So they all need to obey in their current jurisdictions, obey God, knowing that he's the one who has full authority.
So even Romans 13, you just can't you can't use to say, well, whatever the CDC says goes, the CDC isn't even technically a governmental institution. It's certainly not a not a constitutional institution.
We have a lot of a lot of institutions that aren't constitutional, unfortunately, that are exerting a lot of control. One of the things and I thought this was interesting. The declaration even gets into this is Leviticus 13 and 14, because I don't know why, but my mind went to that when when this whole debacle started last year and I thought this was going to be used a lot more.
It wasn't as much. It was usually Romans 13, but Leviticus 13 and 14 does carry instructions in the Mosaic Law about how leprosy is treated. And so the the statement even gets into that the declaration.
What can you tell me about that? Because there does seem to be some kind of a or I don't know, for lack of a better term, a precedent, I guess, in scripture for some kind of health regulation. How come that doesn't apply to the situation we're in right now or does it and how does.
Yeah, this is this is actually we're finding some people have had trouble with the declaration. Just truth be told, they they love it. They just say, well, we differ a little bit on that point. And I have to say that it's been somewhat disappointing engaging with some on the issue because they sort of just assume, well, the priest told the man with leprosy to go outside the camp in quarantine.
Therefore, the civil magistrate has that authority. So it's based on a couple of assumptions. One, it's assuming that this is primarily a health crisis and it's it's not even Calvin in his commentary talks about this not being this is not a health crisis issue.
I'm paraphrasing. You can read his commentary for yourself on that on that passage. But he's talking about ritual purity. This is about a judicial covenantal obedience thing. It's not biological contagion.
So the faulty interpretation also hinges upon some sort of one to one direct connection with the Levitical priest to the civil magistrate. If anything, you have Levitical priest ideas being instituted by Paul, even in the end of Romans 15.
He sort of taught calls himself a priest and bringing the Gentiles to the to the Gospel. And other than that, you really don't have any sort of inclination that the Levitical priest was acting in a magisterial role.
It was a ministerial role. Now, by Yoshi Kaiichi, he is a professor of Old Testament in Tokyo. I think it's Tokyo Christian University. And he has a commentary on Leviticus that I was digging through, thanks to my friend Martin Sobre from the Kelsey Foundation.
He and I were talking about this. And it's interesting some of his take, because he's he argues that this this leprosy, leprosy is is actually mostly meant to be a portrayal of what uncleanness looks like.
It's it symbolizes hiding yourself. He makes the connection to Genesis three and the skin language. Remember, Adam and Eve, God made skins of the animals and clothe them. And so there's this connection about shame and sin and hiding yourself.
And so Leviticus 13 and 14. It's interesting in Leviticus 13, 12 and 13, the man appears to the priest and he is covered in head to toe with leprosy and he's pronounced clean and sent back into the community.
And that's just glossed over. So the point there is, A, you can't even use that to justify the magistrate's unending authority. And even if you did, they certainly can't mandate and quarantine the healthy.
But I'm not I'm arguing that passage has nothing to do with biological contagion and can't be used. Yeah, when I heard well, I don't even think it was that many people, but people who did bring that up because I know there were a few I remember thinking like, so are you like a theonomist now or like because are you going to start going to all the other passages and in the Old Testament and want to apply them in the same way today?
And most of them would they would run as far away from that as they possibly could. They don't think that the Old Testament law should be in effect at all, but it's very selective. And so is there a point, though, and I'm just asking you this personally, when the government does, whether that's state, local or federal, have a responsibility in a maybe a public health crisis of some kind to step in and implement some kind of regulations.
And I know so this is maybe going a little past the statement itself or the declaration, but what this is kind of that slippery slope that that people, if they can kind of get their foot in the door and say, well, that's acceptable, then the rest follows in their mind.
So what would you have to say to that? Is there any responsibility there? No, I don't think that they have any authority at all. If they want to raise the sound, the alarm fine. But this is connected to a larger issue of your theology of the state, which is something that Christians have really underdeveloped.
And and for me, I see local government judicial system primarily. We don't need legislators creating new laws. We have the law of God to enforce contracts, to punish murders, those types of things. So it is kind of it is outside the declaration.
And I'm happy to sort of explain that as brief as I can. But I do think that the government, civil magistrates have zero authority in implementing any sort of any sort of things. And any theonomist will tell you, you know, I'm very much a rushed unionite.
I love Christian Reconstruction. I'm open to, you know, growing and learning as I go on a lot of those things. And so even theonomist, though, will say, look, we see, for example, Leviticus 13 and 14 is couched inside of other things about menstruation laws.
And there are all these purity laws that are meant to talk about holiness in the camp. When you're in the camp, you're closer to God. But when you're sent outside the camp, it's because there's a sin issue that you're trying to hide.
And so, again, that passage shouldn't be used. And when you remove that passage, I don't see any other place in scripture where you have a magistrate given that authority. So even Paul says in Romans 13, they're there to punish evil and praise the good.
So, you know, if anything, the government might want to put out an emergency message and say, hey, this is a problem, take precaution. But it's the responsibility of families and individuals to use caution and use care.
Yeah. And that's how I think it's been primarily. I mean, there's been maybe certain times in which there were lockdowns and stuff. You mentioned the Spanish flu. But primarily when there's been quarantines for even back in the day, like mumps and measles and things like that, it was just kind of an expected social convention for lack for, you know, the way the society functioned.
You didn't need police going out and making sure, you know. So that that seems to be a cultural shift that that that self-government, that responsibility that people used to take just kind of as a courtesy and as a caution.
Now we expect this authoritarian central authority to do all the thinking for us and the implementation. And I mean, I guess at some point it's just going to be some algorithm in a computer that's going to let us know whether we can even open our door that day.
I don't know. Yeah, I I'm half serious, you know, because things have changed so fast in the last year. And when you look at the social credit system that's happening in China and some people who want to implement it here.
I mean, I could see some crazy things happening in the next 10 years as we give seed civil liberties. So this statement is a hedge against that. That's and it is pretty it's pretty basic in my mind. I know it gets into details like we just talked about from Leviticus.
But this is like a lot of people who disagree about a lot of things could sign this, I think, just basic Christians from cross denominationally. In fact, I'll just ask, I mean, do you have a lot of people from different denominations?
You mentioned LifeSite News. Kind of a wide appeal. I ironically, I think we had a Buddhist sign it, which I'm like, well, we're affirming the authority of Christ over all things. So I don't know. I mean, certainly a gospel witness, no doubt using it.
But, yeah, there's been a lot of Presbyterians, Baptists, reformed, non-reformed. And we've had we've had a lot of great feedback from people because, like you said, it should be we wanted to be unifying in the sense of, look, we we want to believe the Bible and we want to deal with this situation.
So, I mean, we're trying as best we can to get it out as much as we can. So I'm thankful for you allowing me to talk about it. Yeah, but it some people people just need to either print it off, give it to their pastor or pastors, print it off and give it to your church people.
I mean, it's that simple. And really tighten up on this theology so that we can have a good response. Well, it's really helpful, I think, for just a Bible study in general. There's so many verses in here to think through.
Daniel and Colossians and Matthew and Proverbs and Isaiah. And I mean, there's just so many Romans to just look up all these verses and just for yourself, you know, those who are watching right now just to think through, OK, how do I view this topic?
It's very helpful for that. So I'm grateful that you all put it together as a guide there. And then people can go to Warrington Declaration dot com. It's very easy to sign up. And there's many people who have signed.
How many how many right now have signed it? Do you know you have a number? I actually don't have any updated numbers, but I think we're at a thousand and growing. OK, but I don't know that for a fact.
So gotcha. Lots of pastors, though. And and I'm just glad the discussion's happening, to be honest with you, because I was getting a little not afraid, but just concerned, I guess, that so much of the time there's just no discussion on this.
And especially coming from the perspective of being suspicious about the overreach of the civil government, et cetera. I think there's a lot of fear out there. I mean, is that what you attribute it to pastors who run away from this topic?
Do you think it's just fear of the government, fear that they're going to be on the record as opposing the government? Yeah, and maybe the same motivation for why they don't preach against abortion or, you know, deal with other social issues that the church should be leading on.
I mean, it may be, you know, that they don't want to lose their tithe money and their livelihood. And I understand that. But but we need to be on the front lines and not not waiting for this stuff to come to us.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I certainly appreciate you talking about it, Pastor Garwood. And any I know you mentioned your book. I mentioned the website. Anywhere else you want to send people? Sure. Cross Ground Church dot com.
Jason Garwood dot com. If you guys want to people want to keep up with what's what the latest is going on with us, we're very active here in Northern Virginia. So there's a lot of things going on. But, you know, it's definitely go to the site.
That's really what we want to try to emphasize. Go to the website, Warrington Declaration dot com and please sign it and share it as much as you can, wherever you can. And social media, texting people.
We really want to get the word out because it's super important. Yeah. Awesome. One final question that I forgot to ask earlier, I mentioned, were there medical doctors also? And you can be vague about this if you need to be.
But were there medical doctors involved in the crafting of this as well? In consultation or sort of I've made some connections mostly through my work and research with the book. And so a lot of that is kind of connected to developing that theology.
So I guess maybe indirectly, we've had definitely, definitely several people involved. I'm connected with the Children's Health Defense with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and and Mary Holland, who's there. And so we've, you know, try to make connections with a lot of people who are in this.
So not not necessarily a direct this is mostly a theological treatise. Some input was involved with some, but largely it was kind of more on the back end, I should say. Yeah, I like reading it. I figured it looked more theological, but I just wasn't sure.
And I know that some people had that question probably in the back of their minds as they're listening. Were there any medical? And sometimes we treat the medical community as if they're their own priests and they're not.
But but I know that that knowing that there were some doctors involved or some people in the medical community does spark curiosity in some people and maybe a willingness to go and check it out more. So go check it out.
Warrington Declaration. You can search it in Google. It'll come right up. But it's Warrington Declaration dot com. And once again, thank you, Pastor Garwood, for your time. Thanks, John. I appreciate it.
All right. God bless.