Christians Obtaining and Wielding Power is Good, Actually

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Welcome back to the channel. I hope you had a good weekend, a good Lord's Day, a good everything.

That's right. That's right. If you missed it, if you're not on Twitter, you should follow me on Twitter because I'll put some videos up on there.

They're usually like two minutes a piece. Every now and then, when something just kind of comes to mind,

I'll just do a quick video on my phone. I did three two -minute videos all about all of the concern surrounding antisemitism and that kind of thing.

Why are these people that I know and trust talking about Jewish influence? Why is other people that I know and trust so concerned about antisemitism and all that kind of thing?

I did some videos on it. I thought they were pretty good. A lot of people agreed. If you're interested in that topic, go to Twitter and watch those videos.

I might do a video here on YouTube about the same topic. We'll see. We'll see what happens. What I wanted to do today was

I wanted to just quickly show you a section of one of John Harris's most recent videos that he did with CJ Engel.

John Harris's podcast, if you don't know, most of you do, it's called Conversations That Matter. I've said this many times.

There are not many podcasts where I watch a lot of episodes. I don't watch every single episode, but I watch most of them, almost every single episode.

John's podcast is probably the only one that I do that with. I find it very helpful.

He talks about very interesting topics, and this is no exception. He's talking to CJ Engel about right -wing woke and the new antisemitism laws.

Right -wing woke. This whole thing, it's about an hour and 15 minutes.

The whole thing is worth watching. If you don't watch John Harris every time he puts a video out,

I recommend that you seek this one out. Right -wing woke. CJ Engel is very insightful and very helpful.

He's the kind of person that can bring kind of heady topics and bring them down to earth where you can understand them kind of thing.

Very, very good. I highly recommend you watch this. There was one section that I wanted to comment on, and they're talking about, well, you know what?

Let me just do this. I'm going to play it, and then I'm going to give you my commentary on it, because I think it's very helpful.

Let's go. The neoconservatives, they were kind of like,

I think originally somewhat, you could call them rebels or what's the term used today?

Dissidents. But they eventually, in the early 90s, I would say especially, became just kind of like the polite people who went along with the

Republicans for the most part. And that is a critique you hear from the left quite a bit. But one of the things I think the advantage of this gives them in denying a critique of the order in which they live is they can hold out hope that if we just have a revival, that everything will be smooth, that everything will be fine.

I saw this in Virginia a few years ago. There was a rededication of the

United States to Christianity, and Glenn Beck was there, a Mormon. Go figure. David Barton was there. Michelle Bachman was there.

It was supposed to be a Christian event. But they thought, hey, if the people just come back to God, then the leaders will essentially follow.

And you can also rage at your people. You can also go to them and say, you know why this happened? It's because of you that this happened.

Maybe that does happen sometimes. There's judgment because people are wicked and we get the leaders we deserve and that kind of thing. But I'm just saying,

I think I agree with you that there's this advantage that you don't actually have to criticize those in power as much in that kind of a setting.

You can blame yourselves for why Biden is in office. He just is a reflection of us.

And if we get our act together, then everything will be well. And I'm not so sure I buy that anymore. And I used to,

I think, somewhat buy that. And I don't think that's most of it.

We have to get good leaders. We have to actually go about the work of trying to secure and wield power before we can actually see the structures of society.

I did my best Sean DeMars impression there. It just came out. I don't know. I don't know what to say. Maybe I'm just watching too much

Sean DeMars. Yeah, so this is,

I thought this is so interesting, and CJ is going to answer this in just a minute, and it put something in my mind that I thought was a pretty good example of what

CJ is talking about. But this is a common thing, right? You know, the leaders are a reflection of the people, right?

God judges a nation, and he gives them wicked leaders. And the Bible says this, actually.

So you can't deny this whole cloth, right? But I think that the story is a lot more complicated than that.

Because here's the thing, we'll talk about this in just a second, but God does what

God does, right? And he tells us how he acts in history. And of course, we can kind of extrapolate that into the future.

And there, of course, there are certain promises in the Bible that we don't have to really even extrapolate. We just kind of can see what he's promising to do, and we can expect, you know, him to do it.

Because God keeps his promises, right? He's a covenant -keeping God. He's a promise -keeping God.

And he's the same today as he was yesterday. So this is all true, right?

We understand that. We understand that. But you see, there's a couple ways that—I mean, maybe there's more—but there's a few ways that God works, and one of those ways is he, you know, supernaturally comes and makes something happen.

Something that's very improbable. Something that you don't expect to happen. Something that is unusual, right?

He does miracles, and we understand that. You know, God, you know, parted the

Red Sea, and the Israelites just walked right on through, right? And then he covered the

Egyptians with the Red Sea when they tried to come on through. Those are things that are real.

They really happened, and they really can happen again. But also—and this is the part

I think a lot of people will often forget about—God also works through his creation and through the natural order, because God invented the natural order.

He created the natural order. So things work normally the way God intends them to work.

And so everything is God working, right? You know, God does miracles, and that kind of does things outside of the natural order, but also

God does the natural stuff, too. He created people to operate a certain way.

He created cause and effect to operate a certain way. He created minds to think a certain way, and that's still

God acting. It's just in a different kind of a way. It's not the way we traditionally think of as miracles, but it is something that God has put into nature.

And so things will often work a certain way, and when they don't work that way, and it's obviously, you know, a move from God, we can call that a miracle.

You know, I just watched this video, and I've seen this video before, where there's this pastor who's, like, lost his voice, and he got sick, and his voice box was, like, all jacked up or something like that, and he didn't talk like this, and he could not talk any other way, and the doctor said, that's just how you're going to be from now on.

And so they had him preach a sermon about the healing God, and he's talking like this, and then he talks about how he still believes that God does miracles, and as he's speaking, that God still heals.

He still does miraculous healings. As the words are coming out of his mouth, his voice comes back, and it's like, man, that's awesome.

That's awesome, and God does that kind of thing. And also, God can also work through more natural means as well, and so this is something we obviously apply to healing, and we're going to talk about that in just a second, but it is true that God, you know, does judge nations with bad leaders.

He does bless nations with good leaders, and he can do this sometimes outside of the normal way that things work, but that's not the whole story, because God also works through the natural ways, and again, he invented the natural ways, and so planning and plotting to gain and then wield power, it's not just enough to gain power.

You also have to wield it. You also have to use it for good. You have to have the will to use that power.

That's a more natural means for God to bless a nation, and that is something we should go for as well.

We should pray for the more supernatural kind of thing, where God does this mighty work, and we've got massive repentance, and then because of our massive repentance, you know,

God blesses the nation with a wonderful leader who's after his own heart and all of these things.

We should, of course, pray for that, but that does not excuse us from planning and plotting and using our influence and our resources to get the leader that we want.

This is a very, very obvious fact that I feel like a lot of Christians don't even consider.

In fact, they consider that quest, that mission, that natural order, the way it naturally works, they consider that unholy or unchristian, and that is a huge detriment to us.

Let's continue with the video. The legal structures change. Yeah, I mean, one of the great contributions,

I mean, first of all, this came about in the 19th century with John Calhoun. It came out in the 20th century with James Burnham, but they emphasized the fact that no well -wishing, no ideological fortitude, no logic, none of these, the conversion of the masses, none of these things can really confront power.

The only thing that can actually confront power is other holders of power, and the only thing that can stop power is not like this believe in the constitution or, you know, rediscover our, you know, the propositions that made

America great. None of these things actually can confront, they're not capable, just based on the dynamics and reality of politics itself or power itself, they can't actually do anything to confront the left in power.

The only thing that can confront bad power is other pockets of power. This is what you're seeing with the

Israel and Palestinian crisis. It's too... Let me stop there right for a second, because, you know, it could, it would be very easy to say, well, what

CJ is saying is actually the opposite of what you're saying, AD. He's actually denying what you just said about God doing things, you know, you know, blessing the nation with good leaders because of the repentance of the people.

And actually, I don't think it is the opposite of what I'm saying. I really don't, because what he said was the only way you can confront power is with power, right?

That's the only way you can do that. And when God works miraculously, you know, to save his people, right?

God is wielding power. So it actually fits in exactly with what he's saying.

He's wielding power. God has ultimate power. He's the one from whom all power comes from.

So when he drowns the Egyptians in the Red Sea, that is power confronting power.

And the Israelites were the beneficiaries of that power, but it's still power against power.

And even if you look at how God judges the Egyptians before he dunks them in Red Sea, right?

Every one of the plagues is the power of God confronting the power of these demons that they worshiped.

And each one, one by one, is felled by God. He's completely dominating them with his ultimate power.

And the demons, they do have power, but compared to the Lord, it's nothing.

So God easily just defeats one after another, after another, after another. All these gods, the

God of the Nile, the God of the sky, the sun, all these different gods that they worship, these demons, are defeated by God.

And God does this supernaturally, yes, but it's still power confronting power.

And the thing is, like, the Israelites would have been doing well if they were planning and plotting to overthrow

Egypt, to escape slavery on their own. It wouldn't have been bad for them to do that.

But they couldn't, or they didn't, and they didn't understand when Moses came and killed the

Egyptian, they didn't understand that they were being saved by Moses. They didn't get it. And then God kind of supernaturally comes in and defeats the power of Egypt.

And that's how it happened. And God does that sometimes, right? But it doesn't mean that we have no choice but to just wait for the

Lord to do that. God will do that, but we've got stuff to do now. We've got stuff to do now.

So I don't think that what CJ is saying actually contradicts what I'm saying. It just, it's just got to be like, no, no, we've got work to do, and God is going to do

His work, and we can pray, and we can believe, and we can have a strong faith, and we can have, you know, correct theology, and we can have a good ideology there.

We can do all those kinds of spiritual things, but also we've got work to do in the here and now.

So I don't think he's actually contradicting what I'm saying. Two groups in power that are confronting each other.

No one's, no one in power, very few in power, I should say, are representing like the heritage American ethos.

You know, you could point to someone like Thomas Massey, or, you know, Paul Gosar, you know, people like that for sure, but they don't really have any power.

And so only power can confront power. And that's one of the facts of, that's, that's political realism.

That's Machiavellianism, is it doesn't matter how good, how, how firm you, firmly you believe in liberal democracy, or how committed you are to the

Constitution. None of those things can actually confront the left. And I think that when we talk... That's exactly right.

That's exactly right. That's why you get people that make fun of others that, you know, basically their plan is, we must hold fast to the

Constitution. We must believe, go back, return to the Constitution. And that's all well and good.

But that's not even close to enough. You have to, if you believe the Constitution is the greatest document ever produced by mankind, okay, that's fine.

But you also have to seek out and then wield power, because your enemies do not care about that Constitution.

And it's just a piece of paper. Unless you have the will to actually do the things that are necessary to, to, to bring that to that, that's now the law again.

That's now the law again. So that's going to take a lot of will, that's going to take a lot of planning and plotting and action and, and, and wielding power for good, if that's what you believe.

Talk about what it's actually going to take to confront our political enemies. I think that's

I get the impression that like, people think that, you know, if only 51 % of people really believed in the

Constitution, everything will be okay. That would do nothing. That would do nothing, because our enemies are wielding power against those people.

And so you, no matter what you believe, you get the, you get the commercial, where, or not the commercial, the, the meme, where there's those two guys, and they're, they have their hands behind their back, they got a gun to their head.

And, and someone says, don't worry, this is unconstitutional. And it's like, we're about to get shot.

What the heck? What are you talking about? Unconstitutional. Center, those in, you know, the cozy conservatism get very uncomfortable.

So let me ask you a question, CJ. I agree with that. Although the Machiavellianism thing, that, that's the thing that also scares people, right?

When you bring that up, and it, I might just give you the floor before I get to the point I want to make. But when you hear people push back at you for that, what do you say to them?

I have my own way of thinking about this. But what do you say to people when they're, hey, you're unprincipled, you're Machiavellian, you don't care about the truth?

Yeah, I'm not, I'm not saying that you have to do that. I'm not like, maybe, maybe, maybe we should be principled unto our death.

But I'm describing political reality. That's the key. That is the key.

CJ, when he says this, is dealing in reality. This is how politics are.

This is how it works. Okay, this is the reality of the situation. It does not matter if a lot of people believe in freedom.

If the leaders don't, they will use that. They don't, they don't care.

They don't care what you believe. They will use that power to their ends. And so you can believe in whatever you want.

It doesn't make a difference unless you are willing to seek out, attain, and wield power against your enemies.

And that can look like different things. There's not one method for doing this, but there's, but that is the reality.

That is the reality. What forces, what stops evil is good actually doing things.

And it's like, well, that's not, that's not pure. That's not ideologically pure. And, and, and we just have so many examples in the

Bible of righteous men wielding power correctly. And it makes a lot of, you know, evangelical leaders uncomfortable.

Like I, I mean, I always bring up Nehemiah. I'm just going to do it again. Nehemiah saw a problem.

The Israelites are intermarrying with the pagans. There's, they got pagan women as wives. They're raising pagan children.

That's a problem. That's a problem. And Nehemiah was the governor. And so what did he do?

He wielded his power. He started calling them out. He started pulling them out.

He started beating them. He started pulling out their beards. He started beating them. He made them swear oaths.

You're not going to do this away. Send your wives away. These are, these are, these are, these are not legal unions.

You know, this is not the way it's ought to be. Swear right now. You're not going to do this anymore. And he was wielding power.

And then of course you had Ezra who sees the same situation and he's a priest. He's not the governor.

And Ezra's reaction is totally different. He's praying about it. He's pleading to God, God do something.

And he's pulling out his own hair and like, it's, it's, it's, it's night and day. It's a contrast, right?

And so I think that, and what, what, what, what Ezra was praying for was some kind of a supernatural intervention.

Lord, do something, you know, pulling out his hair. And then

God sends Nehemiah through natural means wielding power naturally doing the things that he felt he needed to do in order to make this happen.

And that's how God did that. Now, could God have, have, have, had snapped his finger and then all of the people repent of their, of their marrying pagan women and raising pagan children and, uh, and done the right thing on their own?

Yes. God could have done that, but he didn't. Instead he worked through more natural means.

He worked through Nehemiah who, in my opinion, was, um, I think if, if, if he were to be a leader in these days,

I mean, we'd have people wringing their hands, talking about, oh, tyranny, he's an authoritarian. And it's like, okay, okay.

But see, this is the thing. So, so what, what CJ said there is exactly right.

And I think we see this kind of thing, at least a lot of reform Christians, when it comes to like, when it comes to health issues, right?

Like, like imagine with me, if you will, you know, you've got a family in your church and they're, uh, maybe they come out of charismatic circles and they're, they're a well -off family.

You know, they can afford, you know, any surgery, any, any treatment. And then their son is, is ill and has a disease and, you know, it can be, it can be cured or at least treated with a very expensive surgery, but they can afford it.

It's, it's not, not a problem for them. You know, they, they've got a lot of money and they come to you and, and they say, you know, like from our charismatic days, like, you know, we don't really believe in doctors and, um, we're just like, we just feel like if we have enough faith,

God will heal our son. And, um, and, and, and you're talking to them and you're like,

I mean, on the one hand, I mean, yeah, they're demonstrating some faith, right? But you also know that God works through, you know, natural means, right?

And this surgery, there's nothing immoral about it. It's a, it's a good surgery. You've got doctors who can do it and they can afford it.

Would you not recommend that they do the things that are within their power to do that, that God can heal them that way too?

Would you not say that? Some people wouldn't, but we understand as reformed

Christians, we understand. Well, no, I mean, yes, pray for, pray for healing, but then do the things necessary to heal your son.

You can afford it. It's within your means. It's not even risky. It's a, it's a, it's a routine surgery and you can, you can, your son can be healed and you can understand that, look,

God's blessed you with money, resources, doctors, everything that you need to, to heal your son.

There's no need to only rely on God supernaturally healing him when

God can also heal him through natural means. God invented nature. He created nature.

He created cause and effect. He can do these things. We all see it when it comes to something like that.

We all see it when we understand like, like, uh, I want to, I want to be fit. I'm going to pray to God to make me fit.

But then you don't do anything. Like you don't, you don't work out. You don't, you don't exercise. You eat, you know,

Cheetos all day. Like we understand that there's, there's a problem there. There's something going on there.

We all get it. We all get it. But in the political realm, we really don't get it.

CJ is talking about political realities and obviously you're not able to sin in politics.

Like it's not, you don't get an excuse. Oh, it's just politics. I had to sin. Obviously not. But I have,

I think that we've got a lot more tools in our, at our disposal than we think we do when it comes to politics.

Like I really do think that Nehemiah, a lot of evangelical leaders would, would, uh, would be writing strongly worded letters to the

Atlantic about how we're selling their soul because Nehemiah is doing this thing. And you know, we, we, we, we were, we're taking the, we're using the ring of power, you know, we're, we're giving in to Lord Sauron and all this kind of, you know, uh, alarmist stuff about Nehemiah.

They would. I think a lot of these evangelical leaders would prefer Nehemiah wasn't in the Bible. I'm serious.

I'm serious because that's how they act. That's how they act. They act like power and using power in and of itself is sinful.

And we have to get over that. We have to deal in reality.

Ideology is fine, but you have to eventually touch grass. You have to eventually deal in reality.

You can read all the parenting books in the world. You can go to all the parenting conferences in the world.

You can listen to Ted trip talk for 20 hours a day. But if you do not deal in reality, it's all completely worthless.

This is a big deal, man. And honestly, like I, I know that I for a long time in my life did not deal in reality, especially politically, but in other areas too, you have to deal in reality.

That's what CJ is, is, is, is, is talking about here. Sure. Pray the people that are going to pray, pray, but there are lots of other tools at our disposal.

There are other ways that God blesses a nation. There are other means that God uses to bless a nation.

There are natural things that are naturally baked into the cake. God baked them in there.

He put them in there. He's the one that added the ingredients and decided what the end result would be.

We should use that. I just saw a really good tweet from Anthony. Let me see if I can find it.

Hold on one second. Yeah, here it is. This is coach Anthony deal. He's like a fitness coach, you know, he's a totally jacked guy, just like a, like a strong man kind of guy does those competitions, or at least used to.

And here's something that he said that I thought was just so interesting. And I commented on it because I thought it was interesting. He says, another reason pastors should be fit is because many of the men in their congregations are tough, gritty blue collar dudes who can't respect a man with soft hands.

This wasn't an issue in generations past when ministers historically were warriors, farmers, tradesmen, go read

Exodus. The Levi ordination was a battle. Somewhere along the way, being a pastor became a cushy job done by ivory tower elites who look like puberty barely touched them.

If you want gravitas, gravitas as a speaker, a spiritual leader, look and act like a man.

This is good advice. This is good advice. And then I could already hear the chorus of, of, of, of, of wimpy looking pastors and wimpy sounding pastors that say,

Oh, how could you, this is not how it ought to be amongst Christians. Gentlemen, this, this, this is a physical fitness profits little.

We must look on the inside. God looks on the inside and the, yeah, there's some truth to that.

There's some truth to that, but those people are not dealing in reality.

Men really are like this. Men really are like this. So you can wring your hands and talk about how this is not how it ought to be, or you can, um, have faith in the

Lord. You can trust God and you can deal in God's reality. Because in God's reality, this is how men are in reality.

And you can accept that and say, man, I want to win the men. I want to speak to men.

I want men to, to heed the word of God. And because I, I, I, I deal in God's reality.

I love God's reality, how he created people. I'm going to get fit.

I'm going to, I'm going to work with my hands. I'm going to have calluses on my, on my, on my hands, because that's what

I need to do. That's my job. My sons, the other day, you know, they went to, they went to their ninja class.

They've got like one of those ninja setups at the YMCA. And my son came home, you know, so, so proud of himself and he wasn't proud of himself because he had done like this certain thing.

Although he did do that thing. He, he, he did something that he had been working towards. He couldn't figure it out and finally did it.

And he came home. He was so proud. And, um, and what he was proud of is that he, he, he noticed on his hands, he's got little calluses just like dad.

And then I was like, oh, how'd you get them? And then he told me about how he did the thing that he was been trying to do. And I was proud of him because of the things that he was trying to do.

He's proud of himself because he's got the calluses on his hands. That's what

I'm talking. That's what, that's how guys are. Some guys are, man, you can accept reality, or you can try to work in the

AstroTurf fake garbage trash world that we have where softness is somehow a sign of spirituality.

You got to deal in reality, man. I'm going to stop there. We've been at this for 30 minutes. This entire video is worth watching, but that one point about dealing with political realities, that is, that is so important.

And the reason why I, I know it's important is because I know for a fact that that's not been how

I've operated for, for a long time, for very long time. Anyway, I hope you found this video helpful.