The American Churchman: Evangelical Elites and the Trump Era

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Welcome to the American Churchman podcast, where we talk about all kinds of things, but things pertaining to men who are

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Christians in the United States and want to live their faith. They want to know the Lord Jesus Christ better.

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They want to serve their neighbors, and I am joined today with Pastor Tom Rush. Thank you for joining us once again.

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I think this is the second time on this particular podcast, and we appreciate it. Yes, sir. Glad to be here, John. Thank you.

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And for those wondering, Matthew Pearson had a lot of homework this week for seminary, so that is the reason that he is not with us today.

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So Tom graciously said he could fill in. And we're going to talk about what we usually talk about.

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We're talking about the attributes of God. We're also going to talk about an article that we kind of co -wrote on reactions to the election from evangelicals, and then also pontificating about what evangelicalism might look like in the future, given the results of this election.

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And yeah, so those are the main things. And before we get to all that, though,

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I just want to let everyone know that this podcast is sponsored by TruthScript. You can go to truthscript .com

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if you want to know more. And if you want to donate to our cause, you can scroll down to the bottom.

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We actually have the monthly donation option now, as I understand it. So you click donate, and yeah, you can do a one -time or a reoccurring.

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But that helps us pay for conferences and everything else we're doing. Some of you are enjoying the content from our men's retreat, and that was paid for by TruthScript.

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So the honorariums for the speakers, the production of the videos, that wasn't included in the price to come to the conference, like most conferences charge.

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We figure we want to get it as low as possible so men can come, and then TruthScript covers the rest.

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So if you're interested in helping us, that's what it goes to. And we do have another conference coming up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, pretty soon.

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It's actually in Selinsgrove, if I'm pronouncing that right, which is right next to Lancaster, to be able to know

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Lancaster more. But it's Christianity and the Founding Conference, Christianityandthefounding .com

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if you want to know more. Those are our speakers so far, and we are going to introduce,

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I don't have it yet, we have a rough schedule, so it's going to be a Friday into Sunday morning.

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But we do have a dinner we want to do as well, and so I'll be announcing that later on.

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That would be an extra cost if you wanted to do a speaker's dinner with us. So looking forward to that next

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April, and I think those are all the announcements. So yeah, let's talk.

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Yeah, so how's everything going? The election happened, and I've been happy every day.

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I mean, I just can't stop smiling. I'm just overjoicing at the goodness of God in this process.

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With the article, we talked a little bit about the lesser of two evils, but I had a pastor tell me today, he said,

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I didn't vote for Trump because I thought he was the lesser of two evils. I thought he was a good man for the job. Yeah, I feel the same way.

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I reject that line of thinking personally because I just don't think that way.

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I think there's a task, and I only have a limited amount of options, and Trump was, after the primary process, the only alternative we really had, the serious alternative to Kamala Harris.

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So I'm very grateful, and I'm just happy in general. It's hunting season.

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I actually only went out once, which was today, for like two hours. It was pathetic, but I just love sitting in the woods.

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Are you a hunter at all? I don't know if you - Well, yeah, I have been. My preference is hunting birds, quail and pheasant, but I just really haven't had much opportunity to do that.

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I lived out West in New Mexico, and we could hunt the birds out there. I really enjoyed it.

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But Georgia, the only pheasant hunting we have here now is the farm kind of thing.

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It's not really a fair fight. Well, they say that the American grasslands where the pheasant used to hide have disappeared, and that's kind of destroyed their ecosystem they live in.

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That's what I've heard. I don't know if that's true. Yeah, and that's true. That's why West Texas, New Mexico is where I did that hunting.

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There's still a lot of milo and corn and all that stuff out there, so there's a lot of ground cover for them.

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To me, the best thing about going bird hunting is watching the dog quark. Watching the what?

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Oh, the dog. Oh, okay. Dog quark, yeah. Yeah, I've never done that kind of hunting, and I've always thought that would be fun because of the relationship with a dog.

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Of course, this is American Churchmen, and these are very manly things. I think every man should go hunting at some point, and if you have a yard, you should have a dog.

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I mean, that's kind of... If you can. Not everyone can. I can't right now, but I want to.

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Yeah, I have a pit bull, and these pit bulls, they get... You see the pit mix, but they get this bad reputation.

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He's the sweetest dog in the world, and anytime... Because we're kind of in a drought right now down here in Georgia.

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We need rain pretty badly, but anytime we have a thunderstorm, he climbs under my desk shivering.

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He's probably... I've never seen a pit bull do bird hunting. He probably couldn't do that. No, no. He's not a hunter, not at all, and of course, he's too old for that anyway, but you need a good bird dog.

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He definitely would not make a good bird dog. My uncle had a pit bull, and it was a huge thing.

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It was dangerous. He really was, but he named a mouse, which is just funny because it's a huge thing.

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Anyway, well, let's talk about... I almost forgot. We start with an attribute of God, so we need to do that, and today, the attribute of God that we want to discuss is

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God's omnipresence. So any thoughts before I read some scriptures on that, Pastor Tom?

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Well, yeah. I mean, it's a tremendous thought. I think the mistake sometimes we make,

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John, when we talk about the attributes of God is we sometimes ascribe to the devil attributes that only belong to God, and omnipresence is one of them.

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Some people have this idea that the devil's everywhere. He's not. He's a single being. He can only be in one place at one time.

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I think we could conjecture that he could move as fast as lightning. That's because Jesus saw him fall from heaven like lightning, so he may be fast, but he can only be in one place at one time.

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God is everywhere. He sees everything. You know, the last time we talked, we were talking a little bit about the idea of private or secret sins, and the reality is if God is omnipresent, there's no such thing as a secret sin.

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God sees them all. Of course, scripture is very clear about that as well, that God sees and knows everything we do.

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If that's the case, he has to be everywhere. Yeah, and that is a good point about the devil, and we've been dividing the attributes, so this is a non -communicable attribute.

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There's no other being that exists that is omnipresent. God is the only being that is omnipresent.

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So here's just a few verses about that. Psalm 139 is one of the go -tos.

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Verses 7 through 10 says, Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there.

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If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, you are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will lay hold of me.

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Proverbs 15, 3, The eyes of the Lord are in every place, watching the evil and the good. There's so many of these verses, we could just spend a long time reading them.

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Acts 17, 27 through 28, Paul talks about how the pagans, that God is patient with them, wanting them to repent, that they would seek

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God, if perhaps they might grope for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and exist.

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As even some of your poets have said, for we also are his children. I don't know if that's, you know,

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I don't actually, that's one that was in my list, but I'm not certain if that's actually about the omnipresence of God.

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Maybe, because he is not far from each one of us. Maybe that's that proximity. Yeah, I think that would indicate that if God's not far from you, he's everywhere.

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He's watching. His eyes run to and fro throughout the whole earth, the scripture says. I've got a sermon that I preach out of Proverbs 30, which

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I title, you know, what's a man to do, but sometimes I'll apply it to what's a church to do.

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And it's where that wise man that Solomon knew, named Agur, is talking to Ithiel and Yucal.

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We don't know if those were two men that just had some questions for him, or maybe they were his two sons, but he's giving them advice about what to do.

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And, you know, what essentially he tells them is, is that we need to teach and train our children about the things of God.

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But he refers to himself as a stupid or brutish man, because he doesn't have the knowledge of the

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Holy One. He's very self -deprecating. And what he's essentially saying is, I don't know as much about God as I ought to.

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And as men, that's a big part of our problem. We don't put the time in with God.

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We don't spend time with God. I mean, I think pastors oftentimes, I know I've been guilty of it in my ministry, is that, you know,

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I want to count sermon preparation and writing Sunday school lessons and things like that.

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But I sometimes skip that devotion time with the Lord, where I'm just communicating with God and hearing from God.

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And so when he wrote this, he says, I've not learned wisdom nor have knowledge of the

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Holy One. But then he asked some questions that fall right into this idea of God's attributes.

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He says, who's ascended into heaven or descended? Who's gathered the wind in his fist? Who's bound the waters in a garment?

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Who's established all the ends of the earth? What is his name? And what is his son's name, if you know? And so to me, that indicates, you know, the omnipresence, the omnipotence and omniscience of God, all in one.

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You know, I use an illustration in this sermon about my dad. When I was growing up, my dad was an electrical engineer and very successful at what he did.

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But I always thought that my dad should have been in law enforcement because as a kid,

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I couldn't get away with anything. You know, in fact, I'd be standing around with my buddies, and they'd be wanting to pull some prank or something.

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And somebody would say, well, we can't do that. And somebody else would say, why not? Well, because Rush is here. Well, what's that got to do with it?

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His dad will catch us. So, you know, my dad was just like, he had like eyes in the back of his head.

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He knew everybody in town. Well, my illustration is if my dad could know that much about what

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I was doing as a boy, how much more does God know about what we're doing? He's everywhere. His eyes run to and fro throughout the whole earth.

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And so the omnipresence of God should be a comfort to us.

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And it also should be a penchant against sin. We ought to recognize that God is watching.

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God is listening. Yeah. And Jesus talks about this too. When he says that not even the sparrow, right?

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Falls to the earth without your heavenly father knowing. And he knows the hair is on your head.

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So there's intimate knowledge about all things that he's created as part of his attributes of being a creator.

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I would ask you this. So this is apologetics question. So the Eastern religion, some of them at least posit that, well, there's pantheism and then there's panantheism, right?

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So in pantheism, everything, God is everything. And in panantheism or entheism,

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God is in everything. Right. So which are like, so one's equivalent,

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God and everything are the same. The other one is there's like an infusion of God. And I actually hear that a lot more in some of the new age stuff that there's a little

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God in you. And so that's obviously not the same attribute that we are talking about because we're talking about a personal deity, the creator of the universe.

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But I do see this similarity in that they believe that you can't ever escape

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God. That God is everywhere. And so I do think some Christians, I don't know if you've come across people like this, they will take that concept from these other religions and they'll infuse it or import it into Christianity and say, that's what

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God's like. He's everywhere because he's in each of us. And that's not what we're talking about.

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So I don't know if you can put some further description on what you're saying, because like God doesn't literally have eyes when

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I walk into the grocery store or in my bed. I don't see physical eyes there, but he has a knowledge of it somehow.

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Right. Well, I mean, he's a spirit. He doesn't have a body. God manifests what he was like in the person of Jesus Christ.

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So he came to demonstrate for us so that we could better understand it in an anthropomorphic way what

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God is like. Jesus was God in human form. But you mentioned it at the beginning.

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It's personal. God is a personal deity and we establish a relationship with him.

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So it's not just that there's this little divine spark in you and there's the presence of God.

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And there are, I think, different aspects to the presence of God. While God is everywhere, knows everything, hears everything, sees everything.

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There is a sense also within Christianity where Jesus said,

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I'm going to send the Holy Spirit. He's going to indwell in your life. And so the Holy Spirit's living inside of me.

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The old man's been done away with. I'm a new man. I've put off the old man. I'm a new man.

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Now I'm still stuck in a body of sin and in the fleshly body. So I have to fight the flesh, the world, and the devil.

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But as a Christian, I'm a new man in Christ. I have a completely new nature. And it's not that the new nature is fighting the old nature.

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The old nature is gone. The new nature is fighting the flesh. There is a place where God specifically dwells.

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You mentioned for Christians, He dwells in each believer. We also find in Scripture in multiple places that God dwells in the heavens and that to be damned is to be separated from God.

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So how do those things square? Where God seems to have an actual dwelling place and you're separated from Him in hell, but at the same time,

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He's omnipresent. Yeah. I think the reality of the presence of God, when

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I travel away from home, I'm not physically present with my wife, but I still sense her presence.

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I talk to her on the phone. I mean, it's just kind of like I keep her in my mind even when

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I travel. And so I've always said to people, the worst thing about hell is not the torment and the fire.

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And the best thing about heaven is not the streets of gold and all those kinds of things. The best thing about heaven is that's where Jesus is.

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And the worst thing about hell is that's where He is not. So there's not that infused indwelling type presence of God that we know.

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And yet in hell, there will still be the reality that Jesus is who He is. And it's kind of an overruling, ominous kind of presence in hell.

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It's not that they don't know Jesus exists. He's there. He controls hell. A lot of people,

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John, I think get this idea that the devil's sitting down there in hell on the little throne by the thermostat and people get thrown in.

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He kicks it up a couple of degrees. The issue is that that's the devil's forever house.

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It's on fire and he can't get in to put it out. He's going to be thrown in there and banished there.

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And so I think you have to separate the kinds of presence of God. God is everywhere and in control of everything.

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But we want to be in His presence to worship Him and glorify Him forever. That's what we look forward to.

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I think of it too in the terms of the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament that God dwelt, the

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Shekinah glory was there in a special way. They would take the Ark into battle to gain victory.

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But it's not like God wasn't aware and wasn't also still in control when the Ark wasn't present on the battlefield.

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So there's a mysterious nature to some of this that is very honest. You mentioned the

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Ark too. Hollywood made a big deal about the Ark being lost, but God doesn't lose

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His stuff. I know exactly where the Ark is. And if you want to find out, read

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Revelation 11. It's right there in heaven. I thought it was in a warehouse somewhere in a government facility.

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Yeah, it's in God's warehouse. It's in God's warehouse. All right. Well, with that, that was excellent.

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Thank you for discussing that. And we already have some questions coming. I'm wondering maybe we should just answer these before we get to the article.

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So if you have other questions, please send them in on X or YouTube or Facebook.

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And I will get to them at the end of the program. But since I see some questions already,

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I'm going to go to some of these. And one of them is definitely tailored for you,

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Pastor Tom. I'll start if I can find it again. Let's see. Yeah, I'll start with that one. Would you encourage your child to join any branch of the military as a

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Christian today? You're an ex -chaplain from two branches. So maybe you would have some insight.

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Well, sure. I had a wonderful 28 years in the military.

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I'm so grateful for the doors that God opened for me to serve. Unfortunately, the military is a very different organization today.

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But that said, as a Christian, you need to take Jesus with you.

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No matter what area you go into. Would it be good for Christian parents to encourage their child to go into education?

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Would it be good for them to encourage them to go into banking? Well, yes, it'd be good to encourage them to go into any field that is not utterly and completely contrary to Christian ministry and Christian faith.

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Take your Christianity to the military. There are men and women in the military. It's a mission field.

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One of the things that I learned about being a chaplain is I got to go places that pastors didn't get to go.

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When I was in Afghanistan, there were no pastors over there. I was the pastor. And I got to minister to the men and women who were serving there.

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And of course, at that time, that was back in 2004 and 2005 when I was there. Just tremendous opportunities were open to me to share my faith and talk to people about the

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Lord. And you can do that. You don't have to be a chaplain to share your faith.

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And in fact, that may be a detriment to sharing your faith because all of the chaplain corps now are corrupt.

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And so if you're going to go into the military as a chaplain, you're going to face some real difficult times,

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I'm afraid. Yeah, I actually considered that. And ultimately, talking to chaplains,

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I heard some good stories. People who are surviving, depending on what branch and where they were.

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But there was enough bad stories that I thought, I don't like where this is going. Well, that's the reason

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I ended up in the Air Force is I got crosswise with the Navy Chaplain Corps. And they were saying, well, you can't pray in Jesus' name.

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And my response to that was always, hey, when I'm praying, I'm not talking to you. Don't worry about it.

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That was my response. And so but if you do that, you get a reputation and the

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Chaplain Corps control promotions. But the bottom line is I ended up transferring over the

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Air Force. They treated me very well. And I finished my career and I wouldn't change anything about it.

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And in my case, I knew when I went in, I had been a regular Navy officer. I was a ship driver and missile shooter.

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And God called me to preach and went to seminary, shifted over to the Chaplain Corps. I knew when I went in that it was probably going to be a window of ministry opportunity because I knew

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I wasn't going to compromise. And so take your convictions with you.

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And so, yeah, I would encourage a kid to pursue the military. Great training. It'll create great.

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If you don't stay for a retirement in the military, you get tremendous training. It opens a lot of doors.

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Wherever we work in the secular world, we just need to take Jesus with us. Now, I have a clarification question here from Alan.

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He says, the flesh and the sinful nature are separate things, question mark. I will think about that. Did you say that?

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Did you say the flesh and the sinful nature were separate? Well, I said the old nature is gone.

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So it depends on how you want to define the term sinful nature. You're a new man in Christ.

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And Paul says, you're a new creation in Christ. All things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new.

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We're new creatures in Christ, but we're in a fleshly body. And that fleshly body is going to cause us to tend to sin.

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So we still have to fight sin. Okay. All right. Yeah. Yeah, no, I understand that.

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I think one of the analogies that helped me with that was you have clean garments, you know, and you're justified.

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You're going to, that's a guaranteed conclusion there. But as you walk in this world, you get your feet dirty.

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Sure. So that helped me for some reason, understand that whole dynamic. Why do

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I still sin? You know? Right. Right. All right. So I need to clarify real quick. This won't take long, but Chip Seal says

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Christ died and rose. And it turns out that there is no other way for sinners to rise again. Apart from him, make America great again.

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Are you serious? Apart from Christ, there is no hope. So just to clarify for everyone, neither Pastor Tom nor myself are saying that Donald Trump is a

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Messiah figure or can save your soul from hell. That's only Jesus Christ.

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We are only saying that Donald Trump was a preferable option for the executive branch of our government.

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And that's it. Just like a surgeon or any other, you know, authoritative figure in our lives who might not even be a

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Christian. We want competency in those fields. And we're not looking to those people as Messiahs.

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Yeah, we're electing a president, not a pastor. That's right. We're looking at policy, not necessarily personality.

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And if you've ever voted in any election, you voted for a sinful man. That's right.

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That's right. Because we're all sinners. And Michael wants to know why I'm excited about him appointing nothing but neocons.

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And I'll just say, I share the frustration. I'm still just happy that Trump's making these decisions and not

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Harris. But, yeah, I've seen some of the picks. And I'm wondering why some of them are like what

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Kristi Noem, I think, was today. I think he picked her for was a secretary of defense. And, you know,

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Kristi Noem has some issues from like caving to the transgender sports thing in her state and then having this affair and things like that.

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So, yeah, I see problems with some of this. But I'm just hopeful that, you know, this is better than what could have been.

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And I am waiting to see what happens. I don't know if you remember. I mean, obviously, we both lived through it.

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But in 2016, Trump fired so many people that he hired for these positions.

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And I do think the pool is small. I do think that is not making an excuse for him necessarily.

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But it is a more of a challenge. The Democrats can field tons of people to fill these roles.

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And when Trump gets in there to find America first, you know, not swamp creatures to fill these roles, that's a tough challenge.

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So let's pray for him. Well, I mean, one of the things that we want to see happen is for the government to get smaller.

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The government is overwhelmingly large. And a lot of these positions don't need to be replaced.

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They need to be eliminated. Like the Department of Education. Exactly. I was so happy when I heard he wanted to get rid of that.

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Yeah. But there's a whole lot of other departments that need to be gotten rid of. I think I saw today

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Kennedy already plans to fire 500 employees from what is it?

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Is it not? Is it the NIH? Whatever. I can't see we have so many of the departments. I can't even keep them straight.

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It's hard to keep them straight now. But FDA, NIH, whatever. Yeah. All right.

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So let's go to our article. And we'll get to other questions at the end here.

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So this article was written actually over the course of a few days because it started,

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I think on, I don't know, it was Saturday night, but I was on my way back from. Let's see here if I can pull it up.

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There we go. I was on my way back from a trip and I was just on my phone as my wife was driving the last stretch.

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And I started putting some thoughts down. And then Pastor Tom added some thoughts. And then I went back and added some more thoughts.

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And I think we should just talk about this category by category. And then for those who have already read this, maybe you've listened to my podcast on evangelical reactions.

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I am going to play a video and I haven't talked about this before. This is new material, but I'm going to play a video from Michael Ware and Justin Giboney of the and campaign and their reaction to the election.

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So we'll get there. But first, the title of this article, the evangelical church is not dead. And it starts out, we basically say that this was more than just a referendum on the establishment in the government.

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This was also a rejection of what many evangelical elites, if you want to use that term,

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I don't know what other term to use, but people who have been influential like Russell Moore, like David French, even

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I mentioned John Piper. He didn't push to vote for Democrats, but he was very much open to it.

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I remember, and I think it was 2016 when he talked about this and even said there were people on his staff who were voting for Obama.

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So actually, that would have been 2012. And he tweeted out his reaction, which was that God has delivered us from one evil, but now test us with another.

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So that was his reaction. Russell Moore chalked Trump's victory up to an infatuation that Americans have with entertainment.

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David French encouraged Christians to stand courageous in the face of MAGA. You can see that there has been, if you've been paying attention, a rejection of Trump from the elites in the

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Southern Baptist Convention and evangelicalism more broadly. It takes different forms. But in 2020, evangelicals still voted for Trump at about the same rate, 81%, but Trump didn't win.

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So they still had, I think, some credibility perhaps. But this time around,

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Trump did win by some pretty thick margins. Evangelicals in the pews have not followed their leaders, and this is bad for them.

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So I point out, look, this is a rejection of the ruling class in the evangelical movement.

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So that's the first part. I don't know if you have any comments on that. But I do find that intriguing that you have organizations that at the top are so opposed to this guy, but their followers can't get enough of them.

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That's fascinating. Well, I'm just going to say this. I think to some degree, the people out there sitting in the pew are tired of paying twice what it's worth for eggs and gas and every other commodity that they're purchasing.

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I think sometimes that even evangelicals have enough sense to know that if we run out of money, we're all in trouble.

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If the economy dies, we're all in trouble. Our missions efforts are in trouble. I mean - Building new planting churches.

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Everything that we do in the evangelical world in terms of ministry for Christ costs money.

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I'm sorry. It just does. And, you know, we need to take care of our pastors and our church staffs and all those sort of things.

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And so I really think that the economy had some to do with it. But I also think that people in the pew are not as ignorant as our evangelical elites would like to think that they are.

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I actually think that we've got a lot of people in our churches that can actually think for themselves and they see the danger of this.

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And I think that there are more pastors that are speaking out against these evangelical elites.

30:19

I know, you know, we've been told for years. I know when I came into the ministry back in the early 80s, you know, you were kind of told that you couldn't talk about politics in the pulpit.

30:31

And, you know, and I started studying a little bit of history and I realized that if pastors hadn't talked about politics in the pulpit, there would have never been an

30:39

American revolution and we'd still be English. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, and so and the other thing, you know,

30:46

I would tell folks, look, I didn't surrender my first amendment rights when I was ordained to the ministry. And so I think pastors have to challenge people to do the right thing.

30:57

And I think more of them are doing that. I think folks have had enough. And that certainly seemed to be evident in the election.

31:04

It was by all rights a landslide. Yeah, when the

31:09

Republican wins the popular vote and wins the electoral vote pretty well by a landslide and you got to figure you're losing

31:18

New York and California right off the bat. I mean, that's almost 100 between those two states.

31:23

Yep. You're a third of the way there if you get those two states. So I think

31:29

Trump's victory was magnanimous in that regard. Yeah, yeah. Well, you had some thoughts on the whole lesser of two evils thing.

31:38

We already touched on it. But I point out that Karen Swallow Pryor, Thabiti and Abuele both wanted to support, at least from their tweets, third party options here.

31:50

And I saw a lot of that people mostly talking about the American Solidarity Party, which from I did a whole podcast on it.

31:57

You can go watch it from a few years ago. But basically, hey, we're pro -life. But also all these pretty much socialistic policies should be part of our

32:06

Christian witness. And so people will vote for them. And I think some people,

32:12

I got the impression, did take some gratification from the idea that they're above the fray, that you have these two terrible candidates and all of you are wallowing and being fooled by them.

32:25

And look at us who have seen this glorious third way. You talk about this so a bit.

32:32

And I'll just let you, we can either read this section or you can just speak from the heart about what you think about lesser of two evils logic.

32:40

Or as we said at the beginning of this, the best person for the job. Right. Well, as I mentioned in the article,

32:48

I had a conversation with my friend Jody Heiss, who's my former congressman. He was congressman eight years in Georgia's 10th district.

32:57

And we got to talking about the election and this whole idea of the lesser of two evils.

33:02

And he had another politician that he had talked to. And that man had said, really, what we want to do is vote to lessen the evil.

33:13

Not necessarily vote for the lesser of two evils, but vote for the person who will lessen the evil that we're having to deal with.

33:21

And I thought that was a very good way to look at it. But listen, you have to face the lesser of two evils in every area of life.

33:31

I live on one side of Atlanta. My church is on the other side of Atlanta. I have 10 evil choices every time

33:38

I get in my truck to drive across town. There's no good way to get there. Atlanta traffic is horrible.

33:44

And they're doing construction on one of the interstates that I have to travel every time when

33:50

I go. And I've had to find alternate routes, obviously. You know, I'm going to choose the route that at least appears from the

34:00

GPS information I have to be the better choice of all the ones that I'm facing.

34:06

None of them are good. You know, in the medical realm, if you go to the doctor and the doctor says, well, you've got cancer, well, what's going to happen?

34:15

Well, you're going to die. Well, is there anything we can do? Well, yeah, we can come up with a plan of treatment.

34:21

But it's going to include surgery. It's going to include radiation. It's going to include chemo. Well, what's that going to do?

34:27

Well, it's going to hurt. It's going to be painful. And it may or may not save your life, but it's the only choice you've got.

34:33

What you can't just sit back and not make a choice. Not making a choice is choosing the worst option.

34:40

And I think what has bothered me, John, about so many people that I've talked to that have chosen that sort of third way kind of thing is that they're proud of it.

34:52

They're pious about it. It's kind of a holier than thou sort of thing.

34:58

Well, I didn't vote for him because he's a bad person. You've never voted in an election for a good person.

35:06

And so I think that you have to be wise in this process.

35:11

And I put it this way. I'm a pastor and a patriot.

35:17

I'm a Christian and a nationalist. And as a Christian, anybody that's a

35:23

Christian, whether in ministry or not, be a Christian and a good citizen. I think of Jeremiah writing to the captives in Babylon.

35:32

Build houses, take jobs, raise children, and seek the best of the city where you are.

35:38

And in America, we have that opportunity as citizens. We get to vote. We get to be. We, the people, are the government.

35:46

And a lot of times we get what we deserve. I have run across Christians all the time that brag about the fact that they just don't vote.

35:55

And I think that's terrible. Yeah, I do too. It's not good

36:01

Christian citizenship. And it's not in a political context necessarily at all.

36:06

But I do see examples of this in scripture. And most notably when Jesus, he's talking about if your right arm causes you to stumble, cut it off.

36:16

You know, is cutting off your right arm, is that a pretty, I don't know, would you say that's evil?

36:22

I mean, it's a bad, it's a harmful thing. We wouldn't want to do it, right? And of course, he's being figurative here,

36:29

I think. He's saying take drastic measures. But in the face of this greater, this evil of actually losing your soul in hell, it's a small thing to cut off your arm.

36:40

And so I think we make a lot of choices that way, just instinctually. How you have to live life, just like you said with traffic.

36:51

We look at the range of options available to us. We can't choose the ones that aren't available. If there was a great

36:57

Christian leader who was on the ballot, who could actually win, like that's an option.

37:03

And we should all choose it, but we don't have that option. So we choose the best option that God's in his providence has given to us.

37:11

It's very rare that we have that kind of option. I can remember one time going to the polls and voting and believing that I was voting for a godly man who would do the right thing no matter what.

37:26

I voted for some candidates that I thought were good men. But by and large, as we said, every person you vote for is a sinner.

37:36

They're all going to make mistakes. Nobody's perfect. Jesus has never been on the ballot. Right. So you are choosing a sinner.

37:45

Every person that you put in office or that you vote for to go into office is a sinner. The problem is some are a whole lot worse sinners than others.

37:54

What we do is we kind of make good one of these relative things.

37:59

Good is not relative. Good is absolute. It's evil that's relative. None of us are good.

38:06

There's none that does good. No, not one. That's what Paul says in Romans 3. He's very clear about that.

38:11

None of us are good. Good is an absolute, a standard that was set by Jesus that none of us live up to.

38:18

Evil, on the other hand, is relative. We all have the capacity for evil within us.

38:25

Thankfully, many of us are not nearly as bad as we could be. Right. Right. Let's move on from this just because we are short on time.

38:36

I'd love to talk more about that whole lesser of two evils thing. But reactions from evangelical elites,

38:43

I think, is the next major section here. Right. I just go over some of the examples that I've looked at.

38:51

I don't know if you see this. Where did you say you were today, the Georgia? George Baptist Convention.

38:57

Convention. I don't know if you sense in maybe even the interactions today a sea change a little bit, but I've noticed that there's been an attempt to, without apologizing, without taking any responsibility for some of the social justice damage that's been done, some of the worst actors have decided that they want to signal a little bit more right.

39:19

They want to shift towards being more moderate. And so I saw I noticed that J .D.

39:24

Greer, who has been critical of Trump for years, tying him to nefarious elements.

39:32

And even this year, I mean, and I think rightly, this is actually a critique from the right more, but he he betrayed the heart of the pro -life movement.

39:42

Before that, though, it was mostly like racially insensitive things and immigration related things that he was critical of Trump for.

39:51

But Trump won and he said there's much to be hopeful for, which I, you know,

39:56

I opened my mouth and my jaw, you know, started went down. I thought J .D.

40:01

Greer said that, you know, that's which I'm grateful for that. At the same time, I know he hasn't apologized for any of his previous trafficking and social justice stuff.

40:12

And I have no reason to believe it's all stopped. But there's I don't know if there's a realization that, hey, the people in the pews aren't they're not going with us.

40:22

I don't think they're buying it, John. And it's this this happened several years ago.

40:29

But one of our, you know, SBC some somewhat in an elite position had made some ridiculous comments about racism.

40:38

And when I challenged him on it, he his response was, well,

40:44

I should have chosen my words more wisely, you know, because he realized how how poorly they they impacted the audience, so to speak.

40:54

And I thought to myself, well, this would be a real good time to choose wiser words. But he never did.

41:00

And he didn't say what I said was wrong. I'm sorry for what I said. I repent for what I said.

41:05

He just said, yeah, I probably could have said that better. And I think that's what you're looking at with with Greer and some of these others.

41:12

It's sort of like they're eating crow. Yeah. Now, Greer, I think right after that, congratulated a

41:19

North Carolina official who was a Democrat who won and stuff. You know, I I at least see this attempt at some kind of a moderation going on in certain sectors.

41:30

I thought it was interesting. I think I I wrote about this somewhere.

41:35

Well, I'll just go off memory. I don't know where it is in the article, but it was interesting to me that. Oh, there it is.

41:42

Nathan Finn, who I knew actually at Southeastern, he's a professor now at North Greenville University, and he's active in the

41:48

SBC. He was on a podcast that Southeastern sponsors and he's with Daniel Darling.

41:54

And I think Benjamin Quinn was the host of this particular podcast. And I listened to it and he had been active.

42:01

I remember when I was at Southeastern and signing petitions that tied Trump to nefarious racially insensitive actors in movements during his first term.

42:10

You know, you had eight years of Obama, nothing like that. But all of a sudden, Trump's elected and, you know,

42:16

Southeastern kicks into gear, either writing some of these statements themselves or just a lot of the professors and admins getting involved in supporting statements.

42:27

There was three of them, I remember, in fall of 2017. And so and Nathan Finn signed at least two of them.

42:33

Anyway, so I remembered that and I'm listening to this podcast. And again, it was it was like the

42:38

Greer thing. He starts talking about he says demographics are not destiny, first of all, that, you know,

42:45

Trump had made inroads into some of these groups, which I find this hysterical because that's what all of these guys have been trying to do is diversify their churches racially.

42:54

Right. And here's Trump who comes along. Right. And he's he's the problem.

43:00

He's the one that's preventing us from diversifying our churches. Meanwhile, what does he do? He has a more diverse voter base than previous

43:10

Republican candidates, which is hysterical. It's just it is hysterical. In fact, I don't know where exactly, but I heard this on one of the

43:19

Newsmax or Fox or somewhere. Twenty four percent of black men in Georgia voted for Trump.

43:27

Wow. And I'm and I'm meeting them. I'm talking to them. You know, my church is diverse.

43:32

And I pastor in a mostly black community. And, you know,

43:38

I'm listening to those people. And there's there's definitely a change going on there.

43:45

And there's not a feeling among that group that we're putting a racist in the White House.

43:50

Not at all. Yeah, which creates a big problem, I think, for the people who for years were tying

43:56

Trump to these elements and then pointing and saying, that's the problem. We need to get away from him as quick as possible so we can diversify our churches.

44:04

The churches aren't any more diverse from what I understand. I mean, I know Nam's put all this money into trying to plant in these diverse areas and so forth.

44:11

But, you know, Trump's made more significant progress, if you want to call it that, in that direction than than these guys have.

44:19

And so Nathan Finn says, hey, demographics aren't destiny. And then he says socioeconomic factors were more determinative of the outcomes of the election.

44:27

So now it's not so much racial separations, it's income, socioeconomic status.

44:34

And then he pivots and says churches need to be welcoming to members of different economic and by implication, political groups.

44:40

So I just thought, well, that's the same strategy before. Before it was you need to welcome all the

44:45

Democrats and be sensitive to them because of anti -racism. Now it's you need to welcome all the Democrats and be sensitive to them because of socioeconomic.

44:53

It's like to me, it's the same thing gets you to the same destination. Well, the Democrats have been lying to poor people all along.

44:59

They keep telling poor people, we're going to make you better. But actually, all they want them is pawns for their political power.

45:05

Yeah, no, they promised them the moon and they, you know, they give them a piece of moldy cheese.

45:11

Yeah. Yeah, sad. And then Dean and Sarah was the other I listen to a podcast.

45:18

Surprisingly, I went to the Gospel Coalition. I went to Nine Marks. I went to Christianity Today. I went to all of these different outlets trying to find,

45:27

OK, what are people saying? There's hardly anything out there. It's like the same thing, John. And it's like crickets.

45:34

Yeah, they don't want to weigh in. Right. Which is different, which is interesting. But Dean and Sarah did weigh in.

45:40

And I think this was, if I'm not mistaken, a podcast sponsored by might have been Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

45:48

Don't quote me on it. But it was a Southern Baptist podcast. And in the podcast, he essentially says that, hey, you know, as Christians, we got to be involved.

45:59

And he knocks the third way approach. I mean, it sounded pretty good. A lot of what he was saying. And I thought, is this the same guy who was knocking conservative

46:06

Baptist Network a few years ago because they were too political? And sure enough, I look back and it is. I thought, well, how what happens, you know, so there's a pivot going on in some of the we would have said were the woke friendly crew in evangelicalism.

46:23

I see that they're trying to now calibrate their image.

46:29

And I don't see apologies. I don't see retractions. But I do see an attempt to make it out like they've been sort of with us all along, you know, like, which

46:40

I think that's a problem. I think the people in the pews are probably going to see through a lot of that. Most of them will, at least.

46:46

I hope that they'll have pastors that will help them see through that. Yeah, it's it's it's hypocritical, really, if you think about it.

46:57

But for them, I think it's more about power and money. You know, one of the things that we've been fighting for a long time in the

47:05

Southern Baptist Convention is that wanting more transparency for where our mission dollars are going.

47:13

And, you know, finding out that some of our elites are making north of six hundred thousand dollars a year,

47:21

I think that that's a little concerning when we're asking people on fixed incomes to tithe their income to support, you know, the church and to give to those mission offerings.

47:32

So we need more transparency. And I think that the SBC elites, you may have heard this before, but in the

47:41

Southern Baptist Convention, there's the 11th commandment. Yeah, right. And, you know, the 11th commandment is thou shall not speak evil of another

47:48

SBC leader. And I think we need to hold people accountable. And I think there needs to be a greater transparency.

47:56

And that's the same problem with the Democrat Party. Nobody's held them accountable and there's no transparency.

48:03

You know what they're doing behind closed doors. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I hope that organizations like CBN and now the

48:12

Center for Baptist Leadership and what else? Founders Ministries. I know they were involved at one point.

48:20

I think now it seems like Center for Baptist Leadership has been the most aggressive about these things, but I hope that they can provide some of that accountability.

48:31

All right. Well, we have a few minutes left in the podcast, and I want to get to some reactions to a podcast.

48:37

I know I said at the beginning we'd play some of the clips from this, but this is a podcast with Esau Macaulay, who

48:43

I try to remember. I think he's at Moody or Wheaton. Now I'm trying to remember. I'm going to look it up, but he's a professor and he wrote a book called

48:52

Reading the Bible While Black. I talked about it a few years ago. I actually think there's false teaching in it. I think that it's it's a bad book.

48:59

We'll put it that way. And anyway, so he's it's at Wheaton College. That's where he is. So he's hosting this podcast, and this is on Phil Vischer's Holy Post channel.

49:09

So Phil Vischer, I guess, somehow sponsors what Esau is doing here, and he decides to interview

49:15

Michael Giboney. No, sorry. Michael Ware and Justin Giboney. Now, these two guys started something called the

49:22

Ann Campaign. The Ann Campaign is a social justice.

49:28

They're blatant about this, by the way. They don't try to hide it. They're a social justice Christian organization that attempts to help

49:37

Christians steward their votes in the way that they want them stewarded. And Michael Ware was a faith advisor in the

49:43

Obama administration. And I know Judd Saul has done some expose work on this, but it might even been enemies within the church.

49:51

But he basically says, guys, these are Democrat operatives. They see an opportunity with evangelicals to try to flip some of them.

49:59

That's who they are. And so I thought this would be a curious thing to hear some of what they said about this election, because we're seeing a pivot in the

50:07

Southern Baptist circles to some extent. But there are your hardcore social justice guys who are sticking with it.

50:14

They're not going anywhere. They're not trying to pivot. And they do still have influence, I think, in some sectors of evangelicalism.

50:22

So with that, I'm going to play a few different clips from this. Let's start about 23 minutes into the podcast.

50:32

And this is them talking about voting for Trump. I might play.

50:37

I don't know how many clips we'll get to. There's a clip later on in the podcast where they give away the farm and kind of admit Trump wasn't their pick.

50:43

But so that should be obvious. But it's like 43 minutes in by the time they actually say something about it.

50:51

Yeah, they're trying to remain neutral and just be passive observers. So here's what they say about 23 minutes in.

51:00

Let me skip ahead here. And we'll play that and then talk about it. All right.

51:06

And they started talking, pointing me. And I'm like, bro, like, this is me who we're talking about.

51:13

Like, so like you can't create a policy that's for like for the poor and human flourishing that I'm not going to support.

51:19

Like even if it's bad economics, it might help given the tech. Like I'm going to do it. I can

51:25

I can say that and still say I have the I have these other concerns and the idea that like if you weren't completely on board, you were like on the other side.

51:33

So I do think that that we he's saying just to give a context here, if you're not completely on board with voting for Harris, I think in this context, he's reacting to that like or so.

51:46

So I'm going to keep playing the clip here apart to death. I want to ask you this other question, though. One of the key narratives that we had here, and I think we may have gotten to it around it was that if you were a

51:58

Christian, and this is probably mostly on the Trump side, that if you were Christian, you had to vote for Trump.

52:05

And when I was asking people, what should I pull my to like political experts is

52:12

I know the election is over. But how do you do you feel like there is in every election a candidate for whom

52:21

Christians are morally obligated to support? And the answer is no.

52:26

Like, how do you decide what are the limits of human conscience where you say, OK? Yeah, maybe

52:32

I'll maybe I'll leave it that way. Is there a candidate who in every election to be a faithful Christian, you must support that person in every election?

52:40

No. Rarely would that ever be the case unless you're talking about like somebody who's enslaving people or something like that.

52:47

Yeah. What the Bible gives us is a framework and that framework does have some boundaries.

52:53

But within that framework, we can have disagreements. We can emphasize and prioritize different things as Christians.

53:02

And I've said this before. Now, can I completely say, OK, I'm going to vote Democrat now dismiss the whole sanctity of life issue?

53:08

No, that's when I think you're unfaithful. If you completely dismiss it, but you don't always have to prioritize the exact same thing, depending on your context, something may be impacting your community even more.

53:21

And you might want to speak to that. I mean, there's a lot of reasons somebody might have different priorities. I got to I got to just jump.

53:27

So I just got to say something you just heard from Justin Giboney. And this is by the way, this is the play.

53:34

If you're new to the podcast, we've talked about this so much, but this is the play that keeps getting run because evangelicals, 81 percent went for Trump.

53:41

So what you keep hearing is. There's this middle way, third way, way to transcend these this party divide and be a

53:50

Christian, and then there's a massaging of issues to make you sometimes even subconsciously start veering left.

53:59

That's what we've been seeing for years now. If you just come out overtly and say, I'm from the Harris campaign, they turn you off.

54:05

So there's been this strategy in place. So what you you just heard it. He said that there is a moral obligation for Christians if it was the issue of slavery, then

54:14

Christians have to vote for a particular candidate, the one who's against slavery. They have to vote for him. You have no there's no way out of it.

54:21

That's your obligation. But then he said, I don't know if you caught it with abortion. He said, well, you can't you have to care about the issue.

54:29

But look, you can prioritize other issues over that issue in order to justify voting for Harris.

54:35

Did you catch that, Pastor Tom? Yes. And what they're doing is they're taking a cafeteria style approach to the

54:45

Bible. I'll select what I like and I'll discount what I don't like. And I'm going to go through the line.

54:51

And if I like what Paul says here, I'll keep it. And if I like what Jesus says over here, I'll keep it.

54:56

But if I don't, I'm not going to let that impact how I vote at the polls or how I live my life.

55:03

You know, one of the things we said in the article is we gave a link to a comparison between the

55:10

Republican Party and the Democrat Party platform. All you have to do is read the platforms. And I don't see how, as a

55:17

Christian, you could possibly vote for a Democrat. They want to murder babies up to and beyond the point of birth.

55:27

They want to mutilate children. It's just a horrible platform.

55:36

And if you're just going to look at it from the standpoint of, you know, what's the policy?

55:42

What's the platform that these people stand on? I think the choice for Christians is easy.

55:48

But now I'm using a standard. OK, I've got a Bible here. I'm using the

55:54

Bible as my standard. And they don't talk about the Bible. But they don't really stand on the truth.

56:04

Yeah, I I really I just I scratched my head when I heard that. And I thought, you know, that's because they're they are saying they're implying at least, yeah, you could have voted for Harris.

56:14

He could have voted for Trump, hence what you prioritize. Right. And and they made an argument for at least being able to with a good conscience vote for Harris.

56:25

Now, we don't have time to get to all the clips, but I'll just briefly tell you sort of how the rest of this podcast went or at least the high points.

56:32

So they say that at one point, about 10 minutes after that clip I just played, that churches should serve economic needs.

56:39

And this was all in the context of how more Latinos voted for Trump because of economic concerns. So churches now need to step up their game and start providing for people's needs, because clearly there's needs out there.

56:50

But it's inspiring people to vote for this guy. So if churches filled that need, I guess you wouldn't have to vote for Trump.

56:57

And then, yeah, they talk about the over vilification that the Democrats.

57:03

So like calling people Nazis and stuff that that wasn't helpful, that turn people off, which

57:08

I thought was interesting. I didn't have time to check out if Justin Gibney or Michael Ware had ever compared conservatives to the

57:15

Third Reich or Nazis. But that happens so often on the left that I was I was like, well, that's a curious thing, because that's usually the go to comparison.

57:24

But they're trying to dial that back. And I think a lot of leftists have realized after this election, like, hey, maybe we overdid that.

57:31

Oh, yeah. Yeah. They definitely overdid that. Yeah. And Biden's comment that everybody that votes for Trump is garbage.

57:43

That wasn't helpful. They needed to keep him in the basement longer. It's like every election.

57:49

Yeah, the deplorables comment. And it's like always some comment about that. That's yeah.

57:57

MAGA people are trash, that kind of thing. You don't have any substance to your argument.

58:03

You know, when your argument doesn't have substance to it, when you can't talk about the issues, then you start name calling.

58:09

Right. Yeah, absolutely. This was an interesting part. So at about 40 minutes in, they talk about this tells you.

58:20

Well, let's draw the conclusions after I play it. We'll see what it tells you. But I found this right here to be kind of interesting.

58:28

There needs to be a turn towards one another and a link.

58:34

So they're talking about after the Trump victory. What do Christians need to do so that we need to help one another?

58:41

So this is what Christians need to do. Down of our interests and cares and and bearing the burdens of those that we're in community with and pastors can encourage that they can without diminishing the seriousness of political consequences and political decisions.

59:00

I mean, I am particularly, particularly concerned right now.

59:05

I think we can anticipate we could pray that it doesn't come true.

59:11

But we should already be working now around issues of migration and and immigrant communities.

59:20

I mean, I think I think it's safe to for us to anticipate that world relief is going to need some support and the kinds of people that that world relief supports.

59:31

Sister Norma Pimentel. All right. So that's all I wanted to play. I thought that was interesting because world relief has

59:39

Megan Basham. I think you've talked about them in her book, Shepherds for Sale. I mean, they've been big on the refugee resettlement, taking government money to do that kind of thing.

59:47

They're invested. I remember I think it was the first term they took out a big ad in the Wall Street Journal, I believe it was.

59:54

And a bunch of they got a bunch of guys to sign this thing. And they were very concerned about this anti well, they framed it as an anti Muslim ban, which was really just, you know, countries that have terrorists and they don't vet can't come here for a temporary period of time.

01:00:11

But that was world relief. World relief gets involved in the politicking and the lobbying the government.

01:00:19

And this is what I think they just reveal what they're actually invested in. This is what Christians need to do now that Trump's in office.

01:00:27

We got a rally to world relief. We got a rally to the immigrants. Well, what are they really saying?

01:00:33

What's Trump going to do? Is Trump going to stop all legal immigration? No. We know what that means.

01:00:39

Trump's going to deport people who are here illegally and probably criminals mostly. So that's what they're saying

01:00:47

Christians need to fight on now. So that's the I just want to say pointed out the abortion.

01:00:52

You just heard about abortion. Now you're hearing this. All Christians need to be like rallying to that issue. Yeah. Well, you know, the duplicity with this is unbelievable.

01:01:03

You know, going back to 2016 and, you know, Trump's election, if you remember, the

01:01:10

Pope criticized Trump and said that if he built a wall, he could not possibly be a

01:01:16

Christian. Now, I'm not going to comment on whether we think Trump is a Christian or not. That's not relevant to this.

01:01:22

The Pope lives in a fortress and has an army. There are no immigrants living in the

01:01:27

Vatican. The Jerry Brown, who was governor of California at the time, said the same thing.

01:01:34

And yet he lives in a he lived in a governor's mansion that has a fence around it. Now, it would have been a whole lot easier to get over the fence than to get into the

01:01:41

Vatican. But that's not the point that all these Hollywood actors that have, you know, kind of hollered about immigration and we need to let all these people in.

01:01:52

They don't have any of their mansions out there in Hollywood. They're not opening their doors. They're not doing anything for them.

01:02:00

So it's an awful lot of duplicity in that regard. They want to use the immigrants the same way that they wanted to use the poor that were already here, and that is as pawns for their power.

01:02:13

They're power brokers and they need immigrants and they need to be able to get them to the polls because they're going to promise the immigrants are going to do all these things for them.

01:02:22

And to some degree they are. And they're going to do that in exchange for their votes. Because they want to remain in power.

01:02:29

Yeah, that's how it's been working, at least. I did check, by the way, Justin Gibney, 2022.

01:02:35

Christian nationalism isn't about the gospel. It's about conservative cultural power. Given the racist history of a large part of the

01:02:41

American church, Christian nationalism would never even be desirable for many Christians. Civic pluralism is a much better way.

01:02:47

So I'll just I mean, and there's other, you know, even from this year, he calls Charlie Kirk a racist.

01:02:53

So, yeah, I don't know if he's taking his own advice necessarily on that vilification, you know, lamentation he has about the

01:03:02

Democrats over vilifying. But and then I don't think we have time to play another clip now or over an hour now, but they do land the plane at the end of the podcast talking about the black church.

01:03:15

And that's the term they use. And that the black church has been this force of resistance in America during times of slavery and segregation.

01:03:24

And so that's so this is the interesting thing. Now that we're in a Trump administration, we have to to follow their lead.

01:03:31

We have to be like the black church and be a resistance power, just like under the conditions of segregation and slavery.

01:03:40

So this is where the left, the true dyed in the wool, leftist evangelicals who aren't pivoting, this is where they still are.

01:03:48

And I'm just encouraging people don't fall for this kind of thing, because it does sound the way they cloak their words.

01:03:56

It sounds a bit moderate. It's not. They are there on the left, pure and simple.

01:04:01

They're they're operatives for leftism. So, all right, we'll take questions and then we will end the podcast.

01:04:09

So we have a question. Well, we have actually discussions going on in the chat that are not quite about this particular podcast or their their rabbit trail.

01:04:19

So if you have anything that's about what we talked about, let us know and we will get to that.

01:04:26

Dr. Bob says the black church is apostate by and large, been liberal heretics for 100 years.

01:04:33

You know, I I live in an area we do have in New York. Well, in New York City, you certainly have.

01:04:38

But in my area, there's a few. There's not as many because there's not a high black population. But there are some black churches around.

01:04:46

And in fact, I saw one of the pastors from one of the local historically black churches not long ago at a restaurant.

01:04:53

Really nice guy. Impeccable bow tie. The way they dress puts us to shame, to be quite honest with you.

01:04:59

It does. I can say a lot of good things. And I actually attended a black church when I was in Virginia.

01:05:04

And I have nothing but good things to say about that experience. But I and it was it was for one.

01:05:10

I think I wasn't a member there, just to be clear. I went there for one Sunday. But it was the pastor even said all lives matter from the pulpit.

01:05:18

It wasn't maybe your typical black church. But I will say that there's a reputation.

01:05:24

The local black church in my churches in my area have for political.

01:05:30

Sermons, I guess I would say like they're they're kind of viewed as a political institution more than a religious institution.

01:05:37

I would I think I'm safe saying that they have special Martin Luther King Jr. Sundays and civil rights celebrations and these kinds of things.

01:05:47

That's their priority. And I don't know when that started. I don't know.

01:05:53

You know, I know that there's been Marxist and liberation theology infiltration into some of those places.

01:05:59

But, you know, where you live, I'm sure there's a lot more of that. Well, it started where I live in the south.

01:06:07

It started with the civil rights movement. I think that's where black churches began to be a gathering place for political action.

01:06:14

And what I've always found kind of odd is, is that the black church have been talking politics from the pulpit since that time.

01:06:21

That's 60, 70 years now. They've been using their pulpits for political action. And yet the rest of us are told, well, you can't talk about politics.

01:06:30

And as a pastor, you can't say who you're voting for. I don't think a church needs to take a vote to say that we as a church support this candidate or the other.

01:06:40

But I don't think that any pastor surrenders his right to state, you know, what he thinks is the right thing to do for the members of his congregation and to follow his lead in terms of what he's going to do at the polls.

01:06:55

But you get this political action going on. Harris herself went to a black church and essentially started quoting scripture.

01:07:05

She didn't do a very good job with what she said. And I really believe, John, that they realized that they were going to lose the election.

01:07:16

And I think they were pivoting at that point and trying to move her to more of a centrist position and to try to give her the appearance of being a

01:07:26

Christian. Now, there's an awful lot of people that call themselves Christians that are not. In fact,

01:07:32

I think the majority of people who think they're Christian probably are not genuinely saved.

01:07:38

And I'd say that's true in the evangelical church. And so it's certainly going to be true in other churches.

01:07:44

So this was a pivot on their part to try to make her look more centrist, more moderate, and even to some degree

01:07:51

Christian -ish. It didn't work very well, I don't think.

01:07:57

But I think that's what they were trying to do. She's not a very good public speaker, and she's certainly not a very good preacher.

01:08:04

And there's been similar attempts with Trump. But I think the difference, at least from my vantage point, what

01:08:10

I've seen, Trump doesn't get up there and start preaching, which Kamala Harris was doing or Kamala Harris.

01:08:18

Someone corrected me recently, Kamala Harris. Anyway, he pretends with everything, to an extent.

01:08:30

If you're a construction worker, Trump's a construction worker. If you're a fisherman, Trump's caught the biggest fish. That's just who

01:08:36

Trump is. If you're a Christian, he's going to try to say, I grew up Presbyterian and I have this

01:08:41

Bible. Trump doesn't change his accent and try to, at least from what

01:08:48

I've seen, try to blend into the point that Kamala Harris was. She's not even a practitioner of the

01:08:55

Christian faith. Not in any sense whatsoever. No, not even remotely. Trump at least has a cultural

01:09:01

Christian background to appeal to, somewhat. Someone asked, and I don't know if you know the answer to this question,

01:09:10

I'm not familiar, but Donnie Swaggart, someone's asking us about, what do you think of Donnie Swaggart's comment?

01:09:18

I did a Google search and I guess he said, this is the son of Jimmy Swaggart.

01:09:23

I didn't know he was a preacher. He said something about the black church has a lack of biblical values.

01:09:29

I haven't seen the clip, but I guess it's, yeah, I don't know. You haven't seen the clip either, it sounds like.

01:09:35

No, but there's a lot of churches that don't have biblical values. You can't press that on the black church.

01:09:42

There's a lot of good black churches. There's a lot of bad ones. There's a lot of good churches that are mostly

01:09:48

Anglo and there's a lot of bad ones. We need our doctrine to line up with the word of God and our doctrine, what we believe, is going to determine how we behave.

01:09:59

All right, last question, Pastor Tom, and then we're going to end the podcast. Dr. Bob, again, he asks, how do you think the large

01:10:08

Big Eva megachurches will respond to the coming mass deportations? All right, so what's your prediction?

01:10:14

How will J .D. Greer and David Platt, how are they going to respond when ICE starts rounding people up?

01:10:20

I don't think they're going to respond very well to that. I think that they're going to come at it from a standpoint of, you know, we're

01:10:27

Christians and these are people and we need to be gracious to them. And I don't think they're going to respond well to it.

01:10:37

But we need to be a nation of laws. And, you know, are some people are going to get swept up in it that are not criminals?

01:10:46

Possibly. But if they entered illegally, they have broken the law. And, you know, one of the things that keeps getting repeated is, well, we're going to separate families.

01:10:57

Every time we send somebody to prison, we separate a family. Unless the prisoner has no family, we're separating the family.

01:11:07

That's just the reality of life. That is a consequence of actions. And it is this mass influx of people in our country.

01:11:18

We can't handle it. It is bankrupting the country. It is hurting

01:11:23

American citizens. And the system needs to be fair. Most every other nation in the world has a system of laws about how you can get in and get out.

01:11:33

I mean, I've done mission work in a lot of places around the world. And you have to have permission to go.

01:11:40

You have to enter the country legally. And people should have to come into our country legally. And the folks, the immigrants who have come from all over the world legally to this country are being hurt by this.

01:11:53

But I don't think Platt, Greer, and that crowd are going to respond well at all to mass deportations.

01:12:01

Maybe I'm cynical because I've looked at this thing for years. But I think this is a blow to their pride to some extent.

01:12:10

The fact that their constituency, the people they claim to lead, rejected them. And even more so for Russell Moore and David French.

01:12:18

I mean, those guys just, you know, Curtis Chang, I mean, those guys just are beside themselves,

01:12:25

I think, especially Curtis about this. Like they're seeing the evangelical, people that they, you know, their tribe, the church in their minds, go the opposite way of them and not listen to their advice.

01:12:38

And if they get a little inkling that they can come out back into a moral high ground position, they're going to love it.

01:12:45

I think they're just waiting for it. And certainly all it takes with this too, is one mistake.

01:12:52

And you know, with that many people, there's going to be a mistake somewhere, right? Someone's going to, there'll be some story about someone who should not have been deported, who was detained.

01:13:02

And maybe it was a sad story. They went through something they shouldn't have. And maybe legitimately you and I would say, oh, that's terrible.

01:13:12

But whenever, and it could even be fake. It might not even be that. It's just the media makes something up. And when that happens,

01:13:18

I, I sense those guys are going to be there. I think they're kind of like careful. I think they're, they're going to test the waters a little to see how far they can go and get away with it.

01:13:28

That's my gut. But I think they're going to, they're waiting by to tell all of us again, how they were right the whole time.

01:13:35

And yeah, I think that's an accurate assessment of how they're going to operate when that happens.

01:13:41

And, you know, I would encourage people study your Bible. The Bible is very clear about walls and borders and strangers and how all that works.

01:13:52

I wrote a blog back in 2017, where I just went through all the things the

01:13:57

Bible says about ancient landmarks and God, you know, setting the boundaries. God's the one who determines the boundaries of nations.

01:14:05

And there's so much in the old Testament about boundaries and landmarks.

01:14:10

It seems pretty clear that God's, you know, straightforward about that. And of course, you know, one of the things that you'll hear people say is that Jesus was an immigrant.

01:14:19

Well, study your Bible because no, he wasn't. Oh, because he went to Egypt, right? Yeah. Yeah. Which was part of the

01:14:26

Roman empire at the time. Yeah. One part of the empire. That's like going from New Jersey to Colorado.

01:14:32

Right. Well, all right. Well, with that, I appreciate, Tom, why don't you give everyone your

01:14:37

Twitter handle so people can follow you on Twitter. It's at Terush33.

01:14:44

All right. So go follow Pastor Rush on Twitter or X as they call it now.

01:14:51

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01:14:58

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01:15:05

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