Let's Be Honest About "Christian Nationalism"

The Greatest Commandment and Loving God With All of Life

When the Scribes and Pharisees asked our Lord about the greatest commandment, He replied, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.

So, why do we hear some of today's most prominent pastors saying things like this? It had everything to do with how we talk about the Bible, and specifically, or along with that, what we point to as the foundation of faith, which for most Christians, unfortunately, is the Bible.

We need to do better. We need to love God with all our hearts and stand unashamedly on the rock of His Word. We need to love the Lord with all of our souls, and respond to the worldview issues of our day with the wisdom and discernment that comes only from Him.

We need to love the Lord with our minds, and understand the calling of God's people in every area of life in God's world. We need to love the Lord our God with all our strength, and face the work of building a life-giving, God-honouring culture.

Join us for 10 days at the Runner Academy for Cultural Leadership, as we consider how the Gospel influences all of life and culture, and the role that we have to play in applying foundational Christian thinking to every area of life.

This is the Academy. I am Eli Ayala of Revealed Apologetics, and I will be bringing a six-part series on Presuppositional Apologetics. What is this called, the Apology Academy? It's just called THE Academy.

Okay.

What's up, everybody? My name is Pastor Jeff Durbin, and you're watching Collision. Today, I'm going to be interacting with an atheist on TikTok. So here we go.

Unsupervised and unhinged.

Welcome back to Cultus the Aftermath. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Ask Me Anything. You are watching Apologia Radio's after show exclusively for all access.

I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it.

Are you going to bark all day, little doggie, or are you going to bite?

We're being delusional.

Delusional? Yeah. Delusional is okay in your worldview. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional. So you calling me delusional using your worldview is perfectly okay.

It doesn't really hurt. She hung up on me.

What?

What?

Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives. Right. Don't go into the world and make homies. Right. Disciples.

I got a bit of a jiggle neck. That's a joke, pastor.

When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ, when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand, in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him, who fills all in all.

That's one of my favorite sections of scripture, I think, right there.

That's a big one. Welcome back, everybody. This is the Gospel Heard Around the World, Apologia Radio. I am the Ninja, that's the Bear.

What up?

And that's Conover, right there. Is that Conover? Director of Communications for EAN. You can get more at ApologiaStudios .com, A-P-O-L-O-G-I-A-Studios .com. Go there, get more additional content.

You've got hundreds of radio shows, podcasts, episodes from Apologia Radio, to Sheologians, to Cultish, to Provoked, all kinds of stuff there. And if you go there to All Access, you get the Academy, some great courses and lessons in the Academy, and more are coming all the time.

You also have, over there at Apologia Studios at All Access, you have Ask Me Anything Once a Month, a private stream with just you and me at Apologia Studios, where we get to talk to each other, you get to ask all the questions, and we just spend some time together.

We also have the After Show, directly after Apologia Radio, right here, live on YouTube. We're going over to Apologia Studios to continue the conversation into the After Show. You've also got Cultish Aftermath and all kinds of things, including Collision, which I actually just filmed a Collision episode yesterday, responding to Joe Rogan's comments on the Bible and how Constantine put together the Bible.

Yeah.

It's news to me. Yeah, you said it.

I heard.

Interesting. So, anyway, all that's over there at ApologiaStudios .com. You guys can go over there, sign up for All Access, partner with us in this ministry to make everything we do possible. So, whether it's evangelism videos that you've seen that have helped equip you, or public debates, or just sermons, lectures, any on-the-street stuff, everything has been made possible by our All Access ministry partners, just like you.

And so, we want to bless you guys. So, there's stuff going there all the time, all kinds of great stuff. Don't forget to get your Bonson U account, as well. Get the top-tier seminary-level education for free.

Free 99.

Free 99. It's totally free. And thanks to the Bonson family for entrusting Dr. Bonson's life work to us, and so it's all free, and we mean that. Go to ApologiaStudios .com, get your free account, start your learning and get your study on Bible studies, time with your family, guys who are raising up for ministry right now.

You're not going to get a better seminary-level education than what's given to us by Dr. Greg Bonson, and more of those are being dropped all the time. We're remastering, or we remastered a bunch of the audio, because some of it's just old and janky, and we fixed it.

And so, Apologia Studios...

Very technical term.

That's right. Janky is a technical term, just like buttload. It's actually a real... It is.

It is. We've looked it up before.

Yeah, buttload is actually a technical term.

We have actually looked that up.

Yeah, and didn't know that, but it is.

But that was educational.

Yeah, got a buttload of education. Was it in a sentence? Not even a bad word. It's an actual measurement way that you...

Oh, I've got to look it up.

Yeah, look it up. Find out what it was exactly. We did spend time on that before.

We did.

Just to confirm that buttload is a real technical term. So, anyway, there's a buttload of stuff for you guys over at ApologiaStudios .com. And go there, sign up, get your free account from Bonson. You and a partner with us in this ministry wanted to give everyone just a quick note.

I'm going to be in Alabama next week, at the Capitol in Montgomery, next Tuesday with our team. Also going out there with Jason Storms, Darren Stid with OSA, and possibly Bradley Pierce as well with Abolish Abortion Texas.

And that's all going to be happening because we have a bill that's been put in by Representative Ernie Yarbrough, and it is HB 454. That's right, right, Luke? 454?

Yes.

HB 454, Bill of Equal Protection, happening in Alabama right now. And so if you want to come join me at the State Capitol, I'll be there around 11 a .m. We're going to be there just to try to educate people on the bill and hopefully meet with some legislators there.

So that's what's happening in Alabama. Pray for that. And thank you all so much for your support for EAN, making all these bills take place across the country. It happened in helping us to actually support other churches and pastors and organizations that have gotten bills in themselves.

We're grateful for all of you. And so we're back now talking about the Christian nationalism discussion. So last week, we had a sort of mandatory family, elder family time of fellowship and rest. It's been a very difficult last six months of ministry, hard on us, hard on our families.

And so we like to try to make sure we take care of our families and give them some rest. And so we had a week of rest as families. And so we missed Apologia Radio last week. We're going to pick back up where we left off, responding to some of the comments and good questions of our friends over at G3.

And when I say friends, I mean that genuinely. Our friends, our brothers over at G3, they're asking really, really good questions. And I like the spirit of the discussion that they had on their podcast.

But we missed last Thursday's Apologia Radio, and some of you didn't miss it. You saw that there were two strange fellers.

Well, one strange feller.

Well, one strange feller in here last week. It was Isaac Benegas.

But he talked for two strange fellers.

He did. Isaac Benegas and Zachary Conover took over for us last week, did a great episode, really enjoyed it.

It was very thorough.

Very thorough. And you got to learn a little bit more about Isaac. Now, Isaac's been on Apologia Radio before, and he had the same discussion with me before that show that he had apparently with you before your show.

And that is he gets all nervous, and he says, you're going to have to back me up. You're going to have to help me out. I'm like, I'm not going to have to help you out. He's like, no, you really have to help me out.

You've got to back me up. And then as soon as the show starts, he just talks and talks and talks and talks. And there were several times you watched the episode. We're talking about the Book of Revelation.

I tried to get a word in, and I was like, well, he's like, no, hold on. Hold on, let me finish my thought. So I'm like, I'm trying to help you like you asked. But It's not what you asked me to do, but you are doing it.

Exactly. Isaac, I love. He's one of my very best friends. But Isaac will take an issue, will take an issue like this, and he will want to talk about every single point about that issue and make sure

Don't miss any part of this and see how we can extend that out. A conversation will become a six-hour conversation.

Very quickly.

It could have easily been a 30-second conversation, but Isaac wants to make sure. No, we've got to tap this thing out. We're going to tap it out.

Yes.

That is how his mind works.

I mean, he's been telling us, like, you need to keep Apology Radio like 45 minutes.

Say it again for those in the back.

Isaac Benegas has been saying that he wants to keep Apology Radio to 45 minutes. We're like, we need an hour, bro. That's what we've always done. Dude spent 45 minutes on his first segment.

Right.

And I went to point a look over, and Zach was nodding off, I think. He was like, oh, wait, what?

He ordered lunch.

He ordered lunch. And Isaac was talking to himself for a while. But it was good. It was thorough. And he definitely made his point very clear.

Yeah, for sure.

Well, you know, you understand, right? You understand how hard it is sometimes to keep it brief.

Do you remember the infamous Reformation Sunday thing we did with Isaac years ago?

Oh, yeah.

Where we were like, this was when we were at meeting, I guess, Semi Lutheran, and the fellowship hall was basically connected to the sanctuary. And it was Reformation Sunday. We were having this big koinonia thing.

So there was all this food.

And they're cooking.

Everyone could smell it. Everyone's hungry. And we're like, hey, Isaac, can you do like a 10 to 15 minute little thing on the Reformation before, you know, whatever. And it was like 45 minutes long. And everybody's like, there's like people passing out and falling into the aisles.

People are falling out of windows dead.

Seriously. And he just was completely oblivious. He just kept going. And we're like, dude, guy died. That guy just died.

Hey, guy died. He's dead. The ambulance comes. The ambulance is here.

He just kept going.

We're like, Isaac, he's like, hold on.

Hold on.

Hold on. I can't get a word in here. This guy's dead. Hold on. Hold on.

I just thought.

We're just starting. We're just finishing with Huss.

Great.

That's a Reformation era joke right there.

There you go.

If he just was on Huss, we have a ways to go. Okay. Hey, anyway, look, I'm going to play something right now because I think we need to put it in the record, you know, just for historical purposes. People look back and go, oh, hey, they were talking about that.

I'm not going to. I don't even want any commentary. This is really important because I don't want this video to get shadow banned. But what's talked about in this video, I think we can play it and not get shadow banned because it's not us saying anything.

So I think I'll just I'll just play it and just put it in the record. Say nothing because I don't want the video to get shadow banned.

We'll just let everyone hear. Like, is this relevant to the conversation in a way?

Yes. Yes. Yeah.

I wanted to get back to the butler.

Oh, please.

We're getting too serious.

Yeah. Okay.

So a butt load is an actual unit of measurement that has to do with casks.

Casks.

Yeah.

So one butt load is two hogs heads, which is approximately 63, anywhere from 63 to 140 gallons.

So it's a lot.

It's a lot.

It's a lot.

Hence its usage.

Yes.

Yes. Yep. Yeah.

That's a whole lot. You got a butt load.

Yeah.

Yep. Yep.

So there you go.

There you go.

Okay.

I saw the people wondering.

The Consequences of Gender Transition

Speaking of butt loads. We there's a butt load of issues related to this issue of the video. I'm going to play you that people just don't want to talk about all the ways that people want to bring this practice into our world, whether it's with children or adults, the kind of irreversible damage that it's doing to people.

Christians should say something because if you love your neighbor as you love yourself, you will say something when your neighbor is being destroyed. And so, you know, all of the promotion of this stuff, all of this is good.

All of this we should do for children. I just want to play this for you. It speaks for itself. It's only about a couple minutes long, but I think we need to put it into the record. People need to start knowing this.

You need to have access to this in your files in here so you can share this with others in this conversation. As you bring the Word of God to bear against this and you bring the Gospel into conflict with this, you need to also know this in terms of the reality of the situation.

These are the consequences. These are the destroyed lives. And so, again, no commentary. I'm just going to play it and let them speak for themselves.

It has been a decade since my sex reassignment surgery. I had my SRS 10 years ago. It's been almost four years since I had the first stage of my vaginoplasty. I had my second SRS revision surgery. I am getting a second surgery.

After my surgery, I was just in such a dark place and I didn't really want to talk about it. I didn't really want to have to go back into it and feel all those feelings over again. I had a few complications, bleedings, infections.

I've had complications and I've had a hard time. I did have some complications and I did have some, you know, concerns that not everybody deals with. I thought it would make me happier and initially it did.

Was that worth the constant issues I've had? The dilation I have to do for the rest of my life? I'm having the worst time with dilation. I was experiencing a little bit of dehiscence, which is basically when you are so swollen that the sutures that they put start to rip open.

It was as bad as it sounds. I had trouble urinating. I kind of walked around with it for a year before I seeked help. The reason I'm dilating twice a day is because if I miss once, it is so painful. I like dread it so much because it's so painful.

I went to dilate again that night and I think that I moved a stitch. I don't know what happened, but something happened and I was in excruciating pain. It felt like literally somebody had shot me or stabbed me or burned me or something down there.

I had to dilate and I had to try to open my urethra up and it was just like... Yeah, I'm going to start crying. I was bleeding every time. I literally was going to pass out. I threw up because I had so much pain.

I remember bawling my eyes out saying, like, what did I do? What did I do to myself? I fucked myself up. I'm never going to heal from this. My body is constantly trying to heal after surgery since it considers it to be an open wound.

I mean, what can I do except go and have another revision? I remember starting to cry in the surgeon's office because I was like, I'm depressed. I'm in school. It's painful. It's a lot. The issues I had very early on should have been indications to me that I should not have done this, but I hated my male self so much that I needed to.

And now there is no way to go back. You can never go back. When you get out of surgery, it's not always going to go well. If I had known about the irreversible physical damage I caused to my body, then I would have never done any of this.

It's very much a commitment for life. You're going to have to rely on doctors for the rest of your life. Don't be like me and deny problems until it's too late. Rather, address them so you can be happier and live a healthier life.

There you go. All right. So, like I said, speaks for itself, right? Consequences of this worldview and doing these things, irreversible damage. And they seem happy. They seem happy. They seem like they've brought themselves to a place of peace.

Again, you need to not only know the biblical argumentation against this and bring the Word of God and the Gospel to bear against it, but you have to also have these stories on standby. These stories.

These are the irreversible consequences. This is the damage. This is what the end of the road looks like. And it's not the place of peace that you think it's going to be. The place of peace and harmony is in the way that God made the world.

And, you know, I'm not a perfect man. I'm a sinner. But in terms of me being the me that I am and that God has created, I don't deal with any of those problems. I don't have those problems. I don't have to contend with that kind of pain every day of my life because I'm living in the way that God created me as a man.

As a man. And there's no consequences I need to contend with like that on a daily basis. And ultimately, the sad part of it is that these people have been encouraged by the culture and society to do these things, and ultimately they're responsible for doing it to themselves.

Doesn't mean we should vilify them or hate them or be rude or unkind to them anyway. It's just to say, like, this is the consequence of the choice. You make the choice. These are the consequences. Okay.

So with that, which is very much connected to this conversation, this cultural conversation we're in right now, we have been talking about a very important issue. And if you guys are new to the discussion that you picked up on this broadcast rather than the first one we did, just go back into the feed here.

A week or two weeks ago, we started a conversation with our brothers over at G3, Josh Bice, Virgil, and, forgive me, Scott. And sorry, our brains, it's like in neutral today. But I'm doing my best. It's been a long, long week.

We started a conversation about Christian nationalism, and just to do a quick bullet point, we made it clear that we really have no jealousy over the term or title Christian nationalist or Christian nationalism.

What we have wanted to do in engaging this conversation is we wanted to actually talk about how all of this conversation essentially intersects with the conversation that is really more of a historic conversation related to eschatology, and that is the eschatology of optimism and victory, and that would be post-millennialism, and the discussion surrounding theonomy or theonomic ethics.

And so our part of this is we're not coming at this saying, hi, we're the Christian nationalists. Let's debate with our brothers over at G3. No, we're saying, hey, the conversation you are all having, actually, all the main points, the principled main fundamental points are the same conversation that's been happening with post-millennialism and theonomy for, like, forever.

And so...

The questions are the same.

They're all the same questions. It's all the same ultimate issues. It's all landing in the same place. It all has the same hidden assumptions in the debate between post-millennialism and pre-millennialism and the issue of theonomy.

So, like, what we're saying here is that, look, Apology at Church has had a consistent position since the very inception of Apology at Church, and that is that we're reformed, we're post-mill, we're theonomic, we're presuppositional in our apologetics methodology, and so our entrance into this discussion is saying, hey, that's a really interesting discussion.

Don't really care about the title. Christian nationalism doesn't mean anything to us. I know there's some guys that believe some strange things that take the title, so I'm not jealous for it. But, hey, you guys are having a good conversation.

Welcome to it. We've been having it for a while, and we're not the first to the stage here on this. You've got giants before us, whether it's the Puritans, whether it's Jonathan Edwards and his post-millennialism, or whether it was Rush Dooney and Bonson having this discussion, this debate over the last generation, whether it was Bonson against Westminster with his book, Theonomy and Christian Ethics, or whether it was with Rush Dooney's Institutes of Biblical Law.

This conversation has been had and has been underway for some time, and everything in this conversation about Christian nationalism is intersecting with the main points that we have, as post-millennialists and theonomists, been saying for a very long time.

And so, actually, I wanted to make a suggestion. Josh and I were texting. By the way, just in terms of how close we are and how much we love each other and respect each other, Josh and I were texting each other yesterday, unrelated to this issue.

And so we're entering into this as a brotherly conversation that's already in the public square. And so we're having this conversation now, and we're saying, look, you guys are all having an important conversation, and you're asking questions that actually, guys, Bonson did a whole book on that.

You know what I'm saying? So in this Christian Nationalism podcast, episode 75 with G Theory Ministries here on YouTube, you guys were asking questions that I'm going, oh man, this conversation's actually been had, and it's already been engaged with, and it's not with the Christian nationalists, the guys like Stephen Wolf and stuff.

They're kind of newcomers to this. The stuff that you're asking about, like what laws do we apply? How would they be applied? What would it look like? I'm going, oh my goodness, Rush Dooney wrote a ton on that.

I don't agree with everything Rush Dooney said, but he had a lot of valuable to contribute, and he did a lot of phenomenal exegesis and application in his institutes. And Bonson had these discussions, and before that, Christians have been having these conversations for a long time.

How exactly do you apply the law word of God to culture and society as you're evangelizing society? So all that to say, I want to make sure that if you're coming to this broadcast for the first time and you're seeing the Christian Nationalism discussion, I want you to at least get that as a fill-in.

Welcome to the conversation. We're just the standard sort of crusty old post-mill theonomists here going, hey, this whole conversation really just lands on what we've all been talking about. I'm not advocating for Stephen Wolf's stuff.

We're just saying, welcome to the conversation, guys. It's really important that we have it. And I think the last two years of what happened during the vid and the jabs and all that stuff has brought a lot of good opportunity for the Church to actually examine ourselves and say, well, wait a minute.

How much authority does the state have? And are they allowed to disobey God's law? Are they allowed to take control of the Church and the worship of the Church? Are they allowed to be God? So the Church is asking good questions now.

And look, Josh, Virgil, Scott, guys, we have been trying to have this discussion since the beginning of Apology Radio. This has been a major point of conversation for us since the very beginning as we try to apply the gospel and the law word of God to culture and society.

So I'm so grateful that we're having this conversation, and I'm actually grateful for the way that Josh and Virgil and Scott handled it in this podcast. I love the questions they asked, and I think it's going to reveal some good stuff.

I think it's really important to point out before jumping into this that no matter what, whether we're jealous for the title CN or not, or whether we're indifferent to it, the fact of the matter is this, that in our cultural climate, believing what we believe, we're going to be called it, no matter what side of this issue you come down on.

That's Doug's point.

Whether it's eschatological position that they hold, we hold our position on God's law. It's like if you believe the Bible is the standard for all of life, which they do, then they're going to lump us all into the same lump of coal.

Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff, you told what I was going to say. Even in this conversation, you've got G3, you've got Doug over here saying one thing, you've got Wolf saying another thing, and none of them are the same. There's a lot of overlap, but none of them are in the same positions.

I appreciated some things Doug was saying. I listened to Doug and James go talk about this twice on Sweater Vest Dialogues, and Doug's like, look, we're just trying to work through these things now so when we do get to that point, we have answers, which I appreciate that.

He said that. I just listened to a blog today. It was the one you sent.

Yeah. Yeah.

He basically said, which I don't know if I agree with, but he basically was like, we're going to be called that anyway, so you might as well accept it and be able to defend it.

It doesn't mean you have to be a champion of the logo. It just comes to terms with the fact that the world hates you, and if you believe the Bible is true and that everyone should obey it, you're going to get called that name.

Yeah. Yeah.

Just real quick, I'm going to just give a shout out here to ICA Bibles because I realized, oh, I read out of it, and it's right here. First of all, this is the required thing to do with new Bibles.

Is that the one? Yeah.

It's nice. It's pretty. Oh, man, it's nice.

The five syllables on the side.

That is a quality, quality Bible right there.

Is that the shark skin one?

No, it's not shark skin, but, man, the leather is nice.

That would be cool. Have you seen a snakeskin Bible?

Oh, yeah.

I get to see that. That would be poetic.

I've seen it.

I've seen it.

Yeah, I've seen it. I think I saw Robert Downey Jr. had it. No, I'm just joking. John Bon Jovi has one, I'm sure.

I was going to say that's straight 80s butt rock.

Or Def Leppard or pour some sugar on ESV. So the yap on this thing is just phenomenal. It is nice. It is a good yap. The yap protects the pages. ICABibles .com. Man, do they make a good Bible. Now, by the way, they haven't paid me to do this or asked me to do this.

They just sent me a gift. This Bible is a gift, and I'm telling you right now, it is nice. It is very, very nice. ICABibles .com. I want to make sure you guys send me a great Bible. I want to make sure people know about you.

ICABibles .com. Okay, so let's get into it. Here is a very important moment. With Scott in the Christian nationalism discussion. Again, it's episode 75 with the guys over at G3.

Scott Anial is how you say his last name.

Yes, and so this is, I think, a very important. You know, when I say in the title, what's the main issue? Like, what's the main thing? This is it. This is where you finally end up. I'm going to start the show with this.

You finally end up that this is the real underlying issue. It's that we have presuppositions that do not allow us to see our inconsistencies and the whole thing. And so this is, I think, the moment that reveals that presuppositional commitment that Scott has.

That is really stopping him from actually finally going over to full consistency on this. Because he would fundamentally agree with most of everything that we say. But what's stopping him is this commitment right here.

It gets messy. But at the end of the day, the church has jurisdiction over the spiritual realm. Which, of course, involves how we live. The state has jurisdiction over these externals, which are manifestations of the heart.

That's why it's messy. But still, it's important. This is part of the problem. We're unsatisfied with the messiness. We want utopia.

Right?

And I do too. Like, I long for a Christian nation. I long for utopia. I long for this perfect union of church and state. And you know when that's going to happen? When the king is visibly on his throne.

Absolutely.

Ruling with a rod of iron. I can't wait for the day.

Right?

But we live in a sin-cursed world right now. So we have to operate as God has designed for us in this present evil age. And scripture tells us what God has designed.

We don't—.

So actually, hold on.

Let me play that.

It's big.

You're right. It's big.

We need Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, to return. That's what we long for.

There you go. So there you go. That was it. So do you hear what Scott said there? Is that I long for this. This perfect union between church and state. And I long for this picture of Christian nationalism, this utopia.