Pastors Preaching Against Christian Nationalism

This is Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host, from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

Psyche, it is not Andrew Rappaport. It is I, Drew. Matter of Theology, Dead Guy Reader Society, which by the way, we have not done an episode in quite a while.

Chris and I were talking about this. We need to get back on that. We need to get back on that. I'm hoping Chris can also jump in at some point today, at least the first part of the show.

He probably won't though. But nevertheless, Apologetics Live is a podcast ministry from Striving for Eternity.

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I'm sure there's a button there somewhere. But we do have a special guest that I'm going to bring on.

And isn't that just like Andrew, to invite a guest on and then not be here and travel down to D .C.

to the Bible Museum? Anyway, I'm going to bring on our guest, John Harris, Conversations That Matter.

We go way back to like 10 seconds ago. John, how are you doing? Good. How are you doing,

Drew? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Thanks for coming on the show. I can hear you all right.

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Glad you're here. So why don't you take a couple of minutes?

I know this audience is actually pretty familiar with you. Andrew has directed them to a lot of the

Conversations That Matter podcast episodes. But go ahead for people who might not know who you are.

Just, you know, give a little bit, tell a little bit about yourself. Yeah, so most people probably know me from my podcast, which

I started in 2019 in January. And I talked about the social justice movement and how it impacted the seminary

I attended, which was Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. And that went mini viral.

And it's one thing led to another. I ended up being featured in Enemies Within the

Church, which is a documentary on the social justice movement in Christianity.

And I kept talking about the issue. And then 2020 happened and that gave me a boost because there were a few

Christians talking about it. And I wrote a few books on it. In 2020, I came out with Social Justice Goes to Church, which was really more of a historical book, tracing the social justice movement into evangelicalism.

And then in 2021, the next year I came out with Christianity and Social Justice, which is more of an apologetic and I guess explains and refutes the movement.

So I've been talking about those issues off and on since then. I've branched out to some other things now, but still something even today when

I did the podcast earlier, I talked about it. So that's what a lot of people know me from. Great. So January of 2019, wow, that's actually when when me and my buddy

Chris, when we started Matter of Theology, the exact same month, the exact same year. So that's that's pretty impressive.

You know, you started it, went mini viral, talking about social justice, which at the time, huge thing.

And then, of course, we saw you had the George Floyd stuff and then you saw people like Louie Giglio bringing on Dan Cathy from Chick -fil -A and Lecrae and Dan Cathy basically bowing at the feet of Lecrae, cleaning his shoes and things like that.

That was crazy times when we look back on that and they're just getting even crazier.

Yeah, yeah. They're still around. In fact, today I was talking about some Christian institutions that are still trafficking some of this stuff in, like Crewe and even surprisingly, a big university like Liberty University, which has a lot of different views represented there and always has.

But I showed some class assignments from a theology class there, and you can only assume that they're coming from a very social justice vantage point.

So I think the situation right now, things have quieted down on the streets and people aren't quite as radical with the rhetoric, but this stuff is drilling in very deep into Christian institutions.

It's probably more of a threat now than it was in 2020, but it's quieter. So I don't think

Christians tend to, I mean, most people don't tend to focus on something unless it's in their path and it's right there in front of them blocking them from something.

So we're in kind of the quiet phase. And then I think, who knows, anything could set it off this year with the election.

But I'm sure if the election doesn't go, let's say, the way that some of these guys want it to, you're going to see a big, probably on the streets, a big resurgence.

Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Golly, you mentioned

Liberty. I got my undergrad and my graduate degree from Liberty, but I was just finished my master's degree right when all that stuff started taking place.

So I didn't have to deal with any of that stuff inside Liberty. At the time, it was Jerry Falwell Jr. and his just grotesque nonsense he was doing.

But not long after that is when all that stuff started taking place. So I missed it by that much going through there.

I was there at the time. Were you online or are you on campus?

I was online. You're online, okay. So yeah, I was on campus. I remember their first LGBTQ plus protest against the school.

Yeah, a lot of wild things happened on the campus during that time. And then a lot of them got overshadowed by,

I think what you're talking about with Jerry Falwell and then the COVID reaction that they had. Liberty is sort of a microcosm of every strain of evangelicalism.

It's got the Charismatics, the Pentecostals, the Calvinists. Everyone's there. Everyone's there. I even remember seeing there's two folks walking around with their

Mormon elder badges at the school, being very blatant about it.

I guess they were trying to fit in, but you're going to find some conservative professors.

You're going to find some liberal professors. So I don't mean to slam Liberty, but there's definitely some social justice stuff going on there.

And there's another class I know that's using one of my books as a textbook. I don't know how to make sense of all of this, but I think parents have asked me, where should

I send my kids? What's a good school that's not woke? Or if I'm going for seminary, what's a good seminary?

And I always tell them the same thing. You're not going to escape it. I don't care if it's the most conservative place.

You're going to encounter it somewhere. You just got to be prepared for it wherever it is. Yeah. Yeah. And there's lots of resources.

If you're a parent listening, there's lots of resources that you can grab in order to prepare your kids ahead of time.

John mentioned he's written some books on the topic. Of course, you've got Daryl and Virgil who have written books.

Votie Bauckham done a lot of work in this area. So, you know, you've got plenty of resources to be able to grab, be able to teach your kids before you even send them off.

So, yeah. So you're a Liberty alum. Yeah.

All right. The Liberty boys are in the house tonight. Yeah, I did a history degree there.

Okay, great. Yeah, I had a professor tell me I can't use Calvin as a source, which was really odd.

That must have been in the theology department. It was. The history department is almost, from what I remember, a lot of the faculty, it's almost entirely a

Calvinist thing. It's kind of weird. Yeah. Yeah, it was in the theology department. I wasn't allowed to use

Calvin as one of my historical sources. And I went back and forth with the professor and he said, well, well, it doesn't cover this.

This isn't this. And I said, actually, Calvin is his institutes is one of the staples in systematic theology that's still referenced today.

He talks about this theological topic, which is what I'm talking about. And so it's very relevant.

Yeah, I took a course at the seminary and had the same exact thing happen. It wasn't Calvin, but it was a

I was graded down for assignment because they said it came from a I was citing a pastor.

I don't remember why, but they said it came from a Calvinist church. So I was like, it was threw me for a loop.

But there's still some of that there. I'm assuming that's changing. But so we brought you on, of course, to talk about this

Christian nationalists. I don't know that we can call it a sermon. It's not a sermon at all.

He uses no text. But before we get in there, are you aware of all the stuff that's been going on on Twitter with new

St. Andrews, the Johnny Cash? I just talked about it today. Yeah. OK, perfect, because I wanted to open the show with discussing some of that.

And I told Andrew we were going to probably discuss some of that. And here's here.

Here's one of the things that I'm starting to notice that's coming out now myself for a while.

I would have aligned very much with this group, the fight left, the fight, fight, laugh, these guys.

Right. General equity, theonomy, Post Mill, which

Andrew still rails me about. And then when you get Andrew, Justin and Jim together, I never hear the end of it.

So there's there's a lot of things that I would agree with them on. But then the behaviors that they promote in terms of language.

These gestures like Johnny Cash's favorite finger. You know, it's almost encouraging people to do those acts.

Now, I heard a I heard kind of Johnny Cash fan, you know, so I'm more, you know, not more, but I'm I'm defensive of Johnny Cash here.

He did that when he wasn't a Christian. Right. At San Quentin Prison. And the photographer asked him, do you have a message for the warden?

And that was his response, which probably satisfied the inmates he was playing to.

And I don't know of any other pictures of him doing that. Certainly not after he was saved.

And so to refer to that as to associate that one picture, that one snapshot before he was a

Christian with his favorite finger, as if that characterizes him. Right. To me, Johnny Cash is a brother in the

Lord. And I think if he was here today and probably was asked about whether or not he'd appreciate that characterization, he'd probably be a little embarrassed, in my opinion.

I'm so glad you said that, because being in the South, I'm a Johnny Cash fan as well.

We would look at Johnny Cash as one of the the true country artists. Right. And not what we see he's seeing here on the radio today.

And so that there is a young Johnny Cash and then there is a old

Johnny Cash. And the old Johnny Cash is the Johnny Cash that we hear that narrated the

Bible. Right. And I would agree with you. He's a brother in the Lord. But to take this one snapshot as though it characterized who he was is it's ridiculous almost.

And then to tell young men that this is kind of what they need to strive for. This is how they need to act in terms of idolatry.

And then when you get some of these guys that try to justify it and say, well, in Scripture, we see this.

And in Scripture, we see this taking descriptive texts that explain a situation, what's going on, and then try to use that as a prescriptive text.

That's mishandling Scripture and that's leading people astray. Yeah, I haven't seen all the justifications.

I did see Fight Laugh Peace was doing it. A podcast where it was titled,

I just saw it on X because I was on there like an hour ago. And it had something like titled about using the middle finger.

And I just thought, man, you like you got yourself into a real bind when you have to do a whole show on the use of the middle finger.

The whole thing is kind of silly to me. I guess some people I understand it offends sensibilities and some people are taking it seriously, very seriously on both sides.

I just I look at it, I suppose, as somewhat silly. That's what I said on my podcast. Like it reminds me of like a homeschool kid who learns a bad word when they're young.

And they want to say it because they think it's pushing a boundary and they're not supposed to. And then they have like the other kids say you're not supposed to say that word for me.

Like I live in New York right now. And I mean, I see the middle finger all the time.

I hear the words associated with that quite frequently. So there's no boundary in my mind that's being broken.

The only boundary that's like as far as like I'm desensitized, right, because it's just around me. I can't avoid it.

But the only boundary being broken, if you want to think about it as edgy, is the

Christian bubble or in the Bible Belt, some of these more traditional areas where that's not accepted.

And I guess the question I have is why would you want to be edgy for those people? You're going to be edgy if you're going to break barriers.

Let's break the barriers of the wicked. The wicked have their own their own things they're offended by.

Let's offend those things because they're offended by righteousness and they can be offended by strong language.

If we say you're going to hell without Christ, that's very offensive. That breaks their boundaries. Why break the boundaries of Christian bubbles and traditional people who, frankly,

I'd love that to be intact. I want a place to go when I have to escape New York that I don't have to see middle fingers and hear the

F word. Right, right. Yeah. So that's my take on it. Yeah.

No, I mean, one of the things that I constantly and we saw this was with Driscoll, too, is why do you want to bring the world and the gestures of the world, the language of the world into the church as though that's an acceptable thing when we're called to be different from the world?

The one thing I never hear these fight, laugh, these groups talk about is holiness and growing in holiness and pursuing holiness, being the holy man of God.

I always hear about wanting to flip tables and needing to be this rough and rugged guy.

Look, I've worked blue collar jobs my whole life. Only now am I in a job where I sit at a desk.

Right. So I understand rough and rugged and actually being in the ditch. But I understand what it means to pursue holiness.

And I would rather my son look at me as a Bible man than someone who was trying to be edgy or use the serrated edge as they would like to say.

That, I think, is actually pushing the boundaries, because who is pursuing holiness and who is teaching those things?

Because that's what Scripture teaches, the pursuit of holiness and being Christ like.

Yeah, I don't listen to them enough to know whether I would hope and assume, I guess, they speak about holiness at some point.

But, yeah, I feel myself agreeing with the sentiment as far as my children.

I don't want my children knowing about that, you know, till they're older and ready to handle it.

I want to keep them innocent for as long as I can within reason. And as a man of God, I do have to be guarded.

I do think, I mean, I say things that are offensive, but I want the offense to be something that I wanted to offend the wicked.

I want it to offend the world when it's appropriate to do so. I don't want to just offend to offend either.

If someone believes something sinful is good and I contradict that, then I want that to be offensive.

So, yeah, it's hard though, because I don't want to make, I don't want to get too over, like, it's silly.

That's what I keep saying, I guess it's silly. Like, I don't want to get too, like, take it too seriously.

The actual, like what they're actually advocating, like an actual word or an actual gesture. But like what you're getting at,

I think, is like the mentality behind it. Like what's motivating this? And that is a more serious discussion. And I don't know exactly what could be motivating all of it.

I think that's part of my problem. Yeah, yeah, that's part of the dilemma that I run into.

Because for a long time, like guys like Doug Wilson, I've appreciated a lot of his writings.

And a lot of the things that he's discussed in terms of the Christian worldview, the culture, how we need to approach the culture, atheism.

Right? Like government, politics, all these things. I've appreciated a lot of those things.

But then when I see things like this, my first thought is, what's the motivation behind that?

What's the purpose? Is it necessary for me to do that? Yeah, necessary. And approach it in that way. Yeah. Yeah.

So, great first discussion. Yeah. We agreed on something. Well, Andrew said this next thing we'll probably agree on too.

You know, once we start talking about this guy with Christian nationalism.

I don't know if you've seen this video. Have you seen this video? Yeah, I think I saw it a while ago and commented on it.

I haven't watched it recently, but they're all the same to me. So, I'm probably, yeah, just play it.

I mean, I don't need to see it. Yeah, yeah, I'll bring it up. Let's play some of this.

I've been a member. Just for the people listening, this is James Tallarico.

I guess he's standing in for his regular pastor who's not there.

And he was asking him, you know, what's something he can speak on. And he gives him this text message about beer.

I don't quite get the connection. I'm like, okay. But then he goes into this talk about Christian nationalism.

And this is where we end up. Of this church since I was two years old.

And now I'm in seminary studying to become a minister myself. My faith means more to me than anything.

But if I'm being very honest, sometimes I hesitate for telling someone

I'm a Christian. Okay, let me pause right there. John, have you ever, in your walk, had a moment where you hesitate to tell someone that you're a

Christian? Well, I might not answer this the way you want. The answer is yes, when I've sinned.

That's a good one. If I just did, you know, I was a furniture repairman for ten years.

And sometimes I'd be in people's homes servicing warranties. And there were frustrating situations that would arise.

And sometimes people who wanted to sue my company, especially in New York. I never got that anywhere else. But, you know, those were times

I probably wouldn't have wanted to drop in there. Hey, by the way, I'm a Christian. But other than that, yes. Yeah, I would have.

I mean, I can't think of situations where I mean, that's an opportunity to witness. Right.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. That was my first thought. Exactly. I'm glad you said that. There is a cancer on our religion.

Until we confess the sin that is Christian nationalism, and exercise it from our churches, our religion can do a lot more damage than a six -pack of Lone Star.

Okay, so I always, whenever someone mentions Christian nationalism, my first question is, what do you mean by that?

What do you mean by Christian nationalism? So I think it was maybe a year ago. I had some friends.

I was doing the show. Andrew wasn't here. I had some friends on to talk about Christian nationalism. And some guys who are kind of along the same lines as myself,

General Equity, Theonomy, Post Mill. They do a lot of work in the abortion movement. And we were talking about Christian nationalism.

And it was, what do you mean by that? Because everyone sees something, and they attribute

Christian nationalism. If you're a patriot, Christian nationalism. If you're a Christian, Christian nationalism.

If you don't like Trump, but you're going to vote Republican, Christian nationalism, right?

They just, they throw it across the board. Just this term, Christian nationalism. Yeah. So is that something that you've kind of had to deal with as well?

Yeah, there's different versions floating around. And different people want to appropriate the term for their own ends.

And it seems to me that the basic common thread through all of it is that self -conceiving of a country or a government as Christian gets you labeled

Christian nationalist. And so Trump is often linked to this in mainstream media stories when he'll do things like say we should say

Merry Christmas again. Or can you believe Joe Biden just allowed Easter to also be the transgender day of visibility.

Or when he held up a Bible in front of a burnt down church in 2020. That's where you see the term come up.

And they say he's trying to signal to these Christo -fascist types who want to take over the government.

And I think what it ultimately comes down to is something very basic. No matter which version of it you're talking about.

There's more aggressive strains and less aggressive strains. But ultimately I think it comes down to do you think that there should be like do you consciously conceive of a government or society as being

Christian? Like you would say there's a Christian school, a Christian family, a Christian publishing company, Christian music.

Do you also think you should have a Christian government? And would you work towards that end? Which means promoting

Christian values and those kinds of things. So I think it's a low bar.

Like when someone talks about it, like they could be talking about something more aggressive. But more often than not it seems like when it's a leftist talking about it, that's all they mean by it.

That it's scary that Christians want to exert some influence or power because we should be the ones that only do that.

They should just keep their religion private and not allow it to influence anything.

Which is odd since we are supposed to keep our religion quiet, private, within the walls of the church or within the walls of the home while they are allowed to ram their religion down everyone else's throats and we must comply to it.

And if we don't comply to it then we're evil, we're some kind of phobic, which they misuse that term all the time.

You know, it's very odd to me. Very odd to me. Yeah, yeah.

I think it's the new boogeyman. They need something to motivate their voters and they need an ever -present threat or they don't get support and they don't get the change they want, the restructuring and overturning of the old and in with the new.

So Christian Nationalists, I think, serves that. It's not,

I mean, what did they say before? Like in 2016 it was white nationalists. That's what you heard all the time. Yeah, white nationalism and alt -right.

And it seems like they realize that that's probably, anyone who's using those terms or advocating for that is probably a pretty small group.

They don't have a lot of influence or power. It's hard to get people, or harder. People are still motivated against it, but it's harder for people to take it seriously.

But you start talking about Christianity, well, that's 70%, more than 70 % of the country, supposedly.

So Christian nationalism might sound more scary. That might be a more powerful threat.

And then all you have to do is turn on TV and you see pastors. They might be heretics, but they have big churches and they seem to have money and influence.

So I think it serves a political purpose for them to vilify Christians in this way. And then, of course, it creates an incentive for Christians to try to distance themselves from whatever that is and do the bidding of the leftist regime.

So I'm sure this guy probably does that too, where it's like there's these evil Christian nationalists and that's them, but this is us.

We're authentic Christians, not those evil Christian nationalists. We're not trying to disturb anyone in their sin.

We don't want to take power or influence the government in any way. We are the safe Christians that you can trust.

And so, yeah, it does create, I think, schisms in the church as well.

But those lines were already there. I mean, we already kind of knew the difference between a lot of these guys who are more heretical, frankly, but they're social justice guys primarily.

I mean, the same lines that you saw with the social justice debate are pretty much, I think, very similar lines here.

The same group of Christians that would say, oh, we're for social justice is the same group of Christians who say, oh, we're against Christian nationalism.

And I'll say one final thing, is the weird part to me too is like, something

I don't want people to miss. They will, almost without fail, start talking about how they want to influence society and in Christian ways.

Like Richard Mao just did a piece of Christianity today along these lines where he called for theocracy. And then when you got into what he meant by that, he was saying, oh, like we should pursue racial justice.

And it was like this left -wing agenda kind of stuff. But this isn't specific to Christianity, though.

This is universal to all people. But as a Christian, you have a duty to support this universal mission.

Whereas Christian nationalists, what he excoriates, they are very specifically

Christian. They're not, they don't say like, oh, there's this universal moral agenda that we should all pursue.

They're very adamant that, no, I want a Christian agenda, like uniquely

Christian. And that is supposed to, that contradicts the multicultural society they want and it makes us big.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, there is a statement. It's not whether, but which, right?

So it's not whether you will have a theocracy, but which theocracy will you have?

So it's not whether you will have God's laws. It's which God's laws will you have and will you be subject to?

So are we going to pursue the God of the

Bible or are we going to pursue the God of the culture, the God of leftism, the

God of progressivism, the God that says evil is good and good is evil, right?

So it's not a matter of whether you serve a God or whether you have a theocracy, but it's which

God are you serving? Yeah. Now, at any point, if you hear something, just let me know and I'll stop it.

Sounds good. All right, let's bring it back up. There is nothing

Christian about Christian nationalism. It is the worship of power, social power, economic power, political power in the name of Christ.

And it is a betrayal of Jesus of Nazareth. He told us we would know them by their fruits.

Jesus includes, Christian nationalism excludes. Jesus liberates,

Christian nationalism controls. Yep. Yeah, so he said, what did he say?

That Jesus unites and Christian nationalism divides, something like that. Yeah, Jesus includes,

Christian nationalism excludes. Sorry, yeah, yeah. It includes, excludes. Yeah, I just want you to notice though, like who's he's excluding in this.

So he's saying that Jesus is inclusive, which I think is the multicultural element I just mentioned. But what this pastor is doing simultaneously to saying that is he's excluding Christian nationalism.

He just got done saying we need to excise them from the church. So in other words, we need to exclude them.

We need to get rid of them. Like that's his whole point is we need to exclude Christian nationalists. And then he's turning around and accusing them of excluding others.

So it's a form of hypocrisy and it's just interesting that people don't seem to see that.

But there's a binary that he's creating. And there's one people on one side of the fence and one people on the other.

Good guys, bad guys. And Christian nationalists are clearly the bad guys. So by his own standard, he's not like Jesus, I guess.

Right, right. It's those people that say don't judge a lot of what follows as a judgment upon you.

Yeah, same thing. And so, but you don't have to go very far in looking at the words of Jesus where he is excluding people, where he says these people will not inherit the kingdom.

Right? So Jesus himself does exclude certain types of people if they continue in certain behaviors and don't repent and come to him.

Right. So there is an exclusive nature, an excluding nature to Jesus. He doesn't just include everyone.

Right? It's almost like he, and I feel like later he's going to get into what sounds a little more like universalism than actual

Christianity. But when he says Jesus liberates, right? My question is, what is it that Jesus liberates us from?

Jesus doesn't, like, he doesn't liberate just to liberate. Right? He liberates us from the bondage of sin.

But that bondage of sin, so we're a slave to sin, it moves us into being a slave to something else, which is a slave to Christ.

So we go from one bondage to another, but in the bondage of Christ there is freedom in pursuing

Christ. Right. Yeah, it's funny when you just kind of break this down and draw out what he's saying and then match it up to scripture, and you go, it's almost like he's not talking about Christian nationalism.

It's like he's going to start speaking against biblical Christianity, in a sense.

Yeah, yeah, sounds like it. Jesus saves from what

Christian nationalism kills. Jesus started a universal movement based on mutual love.

Christian nationalism is a sectarian movement based on mutual hate.

Okay, this is what you were talking about. This is that boogeyman, got to find something where we've got to find something to rebel against, to come against.

When he says Jesus loves, okay, what do you mean by that? And what we're going to see is what

I call the deification of God's attribute of love.

And especially it's later on in this video where he says that love, essentially love is

God because God is love, right? And so you see this deification of love where all you have to have is love.

And if you're loving one another, whether it be anyone, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, whatever, then you are fulfilling the will of God.

Jesus came to transform the world. Christian nationalism is here to maintain the status quo.

They have co -opted the son of God. They've turned this humble rabbi into a gun -toting, gay -bashing, science -denying, money -loving, fear -mongering fascist.

And it is incumbent upon all Christians to confront it and denounce it.

Amen. You hear that amen in there? Okay, Jesus was,

Christian nationalism is gay -bashing and Christian nationalists have turned Jesus into a gun -toting, gay -bashing fascist.

Does scripture anywhere speak about the sin of homosexuality?

Yeah, quite a few places. I can't help but think of the first cover of, it was called

The Post -American, but it became Sojourner's Magazine. Jim Wallace was the founder of that magazine.

And you can go to sojourners, I think, .com today, and it's all a bunch of leftist, supposedly

Christian talking points. But in the first cover, the first issue,

Jim Wallace is kind of like the social justice Christian, quintessentially, like the original founding father or among the founding fathers.

In that cover, it was Jesus with a crown of thorns draped in an

American flag. And one of the complaints that, I mean, he had this, but so did other social justice activists from that time.

One of the things they thought was that Christians were making Jesus into being a Republican. And he wore a suit and he wasn't the raw

Jesus that overturned the money changers. And that, which is funny, because you were talking about this before with, I guess, guys who are like with cross politic or something.

You mentioned guys who want to talk about Jesus overturning tables, but the social justice guys talked about that stuff quite a bit.

Like they didn't want this manicured Jesus. And it's always been a little odd to me because I don't know, like if he was going to come up with references for this, what would he cite?

Like what pastor do you know of? What conservative pastor is saying that Jesus is a gay bashing fascist or all the things that he just described to Christ?

Like we try to accurately present who Jesus was and he came to take our sins.

Yes, of course he did overturn tables. He also though, he said, let the little children come. Like he's a person and he's also

God. And so I don't know where he's drawing this from, but this has been a narrative for a long time that if you have a certain political view yourself personally and you're a

Christian, they assume you must be thinking Jesus, like gun -toting

I think is one of the things he said. So if you're a second amendment advocate in the United States in 2024, in a very specific situation in history where we have gun rights, which is not across the board, it's not universal.

It's a very specific context. They think if you hold that view as a Christian, you must also think that Jesus holds that view or that Jesus, like he's with you on that or like that's part of who he is.

And he was for that when he was on earth. And it's just a curious thing to me because these are category conflations that I don't think most conservative

Christians make. Like I can support gun rights and I don't, like, there's nothing in my mind about like, well, you know,

Jesus probably, he likes himself a shotgun too. I bet he would go shooting with me. Like I'm not, I don't need that justification.

All I need is, I'm supposed to protect my family. And that's the connection I suppose is that like I've been given an opportunity to do that.

So I'm gonna take advantage of it and I wanna protect that opportunity. But these guys seem to think that like everything has to be filtered through some religious, like I've seen this with the social justice guys.

Like everything has to be justified in some kind of a moral play where their version of Christianity supports every political position including up to abortion, which is kind of wild.

But I think they're the ones that are doing what they're accusing us of doing. Like they're taking Jesus and making him this passive meek and mild, gentle and lowly man who like, they wanna color with one brush.

And then if we ever go outside of that and say, well, look, he's also the one that said he came to bring a sword.

He's also the one that divided people against each other. He's also the one who did overturn tables, but it wasn't, you know, it wasn't for a leftist agenda.

It was because his father was being, his father's reputation was being tarnished in the temple.

Like they start thinking that we're recreating Jesus or something. And it's like, no, we're not recreating

Jesus and Jesus is in his proper place. They're, I think, the ones that are engaged in idolatry, taking this one flavor, this one version of Christ and then making that all of who

Christ is and only who Christ is and then trying to justify everything that they do based off of this very lenient kind of,

I don't know, passive version of Jesus who just doesn't want any power. Did they read that he's coming back with a sword?

I mean, it's like, come on, man. That's my rant, sorry. Yeah, no, that's good because,

I mean, before you said that, that's exactly what I was thinking, right? And I don't know your eschatological views.

It doesn't really matter, but in Revelation, it does speak that he's coming with a sword, right?

And he's not coming to butter any toast with that sword, right? He's going to kill people, right?

I mean, it's very heartbreaking, right?

I almost want to laugh to keep myself from crying at how just ridiculous that this guy sounds, but the

Jesus he's talking about is not the biblical Jesus. And you're right.

We do, if we hold to the Second Amendment, we're viewed as though Jesus must have that view also, right?

Jesus carried a shotgun. I don't know anyone that would say that. I don't even know anyone that likes having a beer that would say, oh yeah,

I know Jesus would be sitting here with me drinking a beer. I don't know anyone that would say anything like that either.

But you did mention something, and I kind of want to touch on it. In terms of politics, right?

The Republican Party is typically viewed as the ones that have this Christian nationalist view.

And myself, I look at the Republican Party, the conservatives, and I say, they're actually not conservative enough for me.

I look at the leftists, and I say, well, I can't side with the leftists because their platform is the sins of Romans 1.

But now I look at the Republican Party today, and I go, they're not far off from the platform of the sins of Romans 1.

Because a lot of them who even were, you mean like Ted Cruz, right? Who when he ran for president, he touted himself as this big

Christian guy. He's come along and supported LGBTQ rights and all these things.

I mean, the pro -life movement, right? You've got a lot of pro -lifers in the Republican Party that think abortion should be legal 10 weeks, 13 weeks, right?

That's an acceptable time to kill a baby, you know? So I see those things.

I'm sure you see those things. Why is it they don't see those things that we're seeing about the

Republican Party? Because we wouldn't look at it and say, okay, that's the party of Christ. Well, they probably see us as one of the coalitions that are involved in getting

Republicans elected, which we are. So we have a seat at the table in the Republican Party. We don't have any seat with the

Democrats. And they don't want us to assist in, I mean, the Republicans are opposed to what they stand for.

So even though we can look at it and say, well, the Republicans are compromised and they're going in the wrong direction, which they are on many things.

Although I do think there are some things they might be going in the right direction about. But the headline today, of course, is

I think Trump said that he thought six weeks was too early. Yeah, it's like bonkers.

But anyway, all that to say, the left keeps going harder and harder and harder left.

And so the Republicans are still their sworn enemy. I mean, they want unregulated abortions nationally.

The Republicans, I mean, if you're just going off of Trump, he wants a federal arrangement where states make the decisions on what they do with their abortion policy.

And he seems to personally want more lenient abortion policies and exceptions. So that may be a, both may be compromises in our minds, but in their minds, no,

Trump is like far right fascist way out there. And we're just part of,

I think, the constituency that tends to vote for him because frankly, we don't have another option. So we're part of, this is a political thing.

Like we are political enemies and he's identifying as his political enemies in this particular speech.

He's trying to tell the people at that church, beware of these guys who they say they're

Christians, but they're really not. And there are enemies because of political views.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to get into the abortion thing because he does touch on that.

Let me bring it back up. Christian nationalism is on the rise.

Two years ago, Christian nationalists stormed the US Capitol killing police officers while carrying crosses.

Okay, hold on. I forgot about that part. So do you remember that? Carrying crosses?

Okay, please. Can you give us a firsthand account of that? Yeah. Yeah. First of all, no one, no one killed any police officers that day.

There was a police officer who killed one of the protesters, but there wasn't, and it's certainly not anyone killing police officers with crosses.

So I don't even know what he's talking about. That was a big crowd. There was about, I think it was probably about a million people.

I think the estimates have been dumbed down. That was probably one of the largest gatherings that has ever happened in DC.

It was insane. And I think it was a very small percentage that ever made it into the

Capitol. I was not one of them. I was right outside. And I've told my story before on what happened in more detail.

But, you know, you did see groups of like, you did see some nuns, you know, like they're

Christian garb. You did see, I'm trying to think like there was, there was like way more

Trump flags than there were Christian symbols. There were Christian symbols. There definitely were, but it wasn't,

I would say, characterizing the whole audience. And he seems to make it sound like this was a

Christian nationalist event or something. I mean, we just talked about the profanity thing earlier, but with the amount of like F, or not

F, sorry, yeah, I think there were some like F Biden, but there were also some like, some just really profane, like flags that were like, you know, stop the bull

S, you know, elect Trump kind of stuff. Like I did not get the impression that it was a bunch of Christians.

It was a conglomeration of a lot of different people. So yeah, he's just like totally off. I don't know why he would say the murder thing too, or that we killed police officers.

That's just ridiculous. Yeah. When I heard it, I thought that was odd. Cause my thought too was,

I don't remember any police officers dying that day. No, they'll say later that there were some who like,

I think they have a count of like three or four, they say died, but it's, it's, it's stuff that happened later.

It's unrelated, or it's like, or they'll say like the stress of the event gave them pro, but no, no one directly killed any police officers that day.

And the only person that died was one of the protesters. So if the violence went in the opposite direction, if you have lethal violence, at least.

Yeah. Yep. All right. I forgot about that part. I wanted to get to the abortion part.

And then he, that part came up and I was like, Oh, we got to hit that. Wow. And signs reading

Jesus saves last year, Christian nationalists on the U S Supreme court overturned

Roe versus Wade, allowing States like ours to outlaw abortion, even in cases of rape and incest.

Okay. So he speaks about the overturning of Roe v. Wade as though it's a bad thing, right?

Yeah. As though the idea of stopping baby murder is a, is a bad thing.

Yeah. I don't know. I don't really have much to say. I mean, it's kind of like just play the clip and obviously he's off.

He's I mean, if you try to get inside their heads, they're my study of the issue is most of them assume that it's a social justice issue.

And by that they think that it's, it's a woman's healthcare issue and people need deserve access to it.

And it ruins their lives. If they don't get an abortion or the life of that child, when the child is born, it could be ruined.

And so there's this window of opportunity before the child's born, that you can terminate it without actually some of them think you're not killing anyone.

If they're Christians, they at least try to hold onto that, that it's not a life yet, but there's a lot of Pagans now though, or just people who are secular, who seem to be fine with the idea that, yeah, it's a baby and yeah,

I'm going to kill it. Right. But, you know, I don't know that this guy's in that camp, but, but yeah, like it's just, they, they have to tell themselves lies to justify that kind of thing for that to be like the default setting in that room.

Like everyone. Oh yeah. Everyone's on board with that. We all know, you know, Roe v. Wade abortion. So, yeah,

I don't have much more to say. It's terrible. Yeah. I mean, so when he's talking about the, the

Supreme court overturning Roe v. I don't know if you've done any study into what led to Roe v.

Wade, but there was actually several Supreme court cases that paved the way for Roe v.

Wade to come into effect. And they were all voted upon by Republicans, ironically, on the

Supreme court and Roe v. Wade was, it was adopted under NS.

What's what they call an assumed right to privacy. I think it was this under the 16th amendment.

14th amendment. Yeah. And, and it's, or an implied right to privacy is what they called it.

And so the constitution doesn't speak about abortion.

And so in issues where the constitution doesn't speak on, then it is supposed to be the states who have the right to make their laws regarding situations such as abortion.

So what the states did, or what the

Supreme court did is they overturned Roe v. Wade and just gave that power back to the states so that this state, if they want to have abortion, they can have abortion.

If this state wants to outlaw abortion, they can outlaw abortion. And if you want an abortion, you have to go to that state in order to get it.

Right. I mean, that's, that's nothing new. That's actually kind of how it was designed to operate.

Every state has its own state constitution that outlaw that outlines its laws and parameters of how they're going to govern that state.

And then the U .S. constitution is supposed to be kind of the referee.

Right. But the federal government can't impede on a state's rights. Correct. Yeah, that's my understanding.

I think the only time they get involved in murder cases is when it's like drug trafficking across state lines or it's on an

Indian reservation or federal land or, or it's a hate crime, ironically now.

So, and that's a pretty recent, some of that's recent. I think that's all 20th century. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like 20th century developments. yeah, typically murder. And even now, most murders are just handled through the state.

So abortion, the pre -Roe default was that this was something the states handled and a lot of things were things states handled.

But now as the government's grown and taken on more of these social issues, abortion was one of the first.

And it's kind of strange in a way that it was reversed, that that was not something that I expected.

I think a lot of people didn't expect, but it wasn't because of Christian nationalists. I don't think it wasn't, you know, there was

Christian influence involved, but you mean, look at Trump, Trump is the guy who got this done.

And I think Trump got it done because he had, he did have Christians as a strong constituency and he had, they had a seat at the table.

But it was really just, he had a pretty decent Supreme court picks, not, not perfect, but decent.

And, you know, they, they were in, they ended up making the decision.

And I don't even know what the religious affiliation of all of them are. I'm assuming, like Amy Coney Barrett's Catholic.

I know that. So is, now

I'm blanking on his name. The black guy, Clarence Thomas, Clarence Thomas, my favorite of all of them.

Yeah. Yeah. I think he's Catholic as well. So I don't know the others and where they line up, but I don't know.

Yeah. It's just, it seems like everything that happens, if they, it's something that progressives don't like, they can just blame it on Christian nationalists, whether or not, you know,

Christians were thinking in terms of like, oh, we're going to make this country Christian, like not having baby murder is not like, it isn't the most overtly

Christian thing. You know what I mean? Like I'm saying, hey, we're against murder. Like the moment that becomes a uniquely

Christian thing, then like only the Christians would be for that. Then like, it's like, we're in real trouble.

Like I'm pretty sure there's like a bigger coalition that would be against murder than just Christians.

So that can be inclusive there. There's Muslims who are against that. Well, Catholics, they would probably include in Christian nationalism, but there's, there's

Mormons who are against this. There's all kinds of different people who are against abortion. There's even atheists. Yeah. Yeah.

So just to blame the Christians as if this is all just the Christians. Yeah. Christians probably did have some influence because that's a big part of the country, but I know

I don't buy the idea that this was like a self conceived, like, we have a plot to make the country

Christian. And that's why we did it. I really think it's people who just thought this is bad legal decision.

It makes no sense constitutionally. And we're going to get rid of it. You know, it's funny. They give.

So, so with a lot of my dispensationalist friends, not

Andrew and Justin and Jim or any of them, but some of the ones local here, when they start talking about like Satan and stuff,

I say, wow, you give Satan a whole lot more power than he actually has. This, this guy's giving

Christians a lot more power than they actually, he's attributing to them a lot more power than we actually have.

Right. Yeah, that's exactly it. I'm like, I don't, I don't know anyone that's got that level of influence that is a

Christian. Yeah. It's hard. I'm like stretching to think like, you know, is it,

I don't know. It's you know, Mike Pence was pretty evangelical, you know, as far as being,

I guess at a high place in the white house. But yeah, it's just, it seems like it's a conclusion without an argument.

They can just, they can stretch that over anything they don't like. And as long as they're doing the friends, enemies thing and showing you, these are our enemies over and over and over reinforcing that.

Then they can try it. They can discredit and vilify. And really that's what's happening is

Christians who are, want to have influence are being tart and feathered for it.

Yeah. And it makes people want to sit down. I think that's what it's intended to do. Like don't ever take your

Christianity into the voting booth or into the halls of power. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, you've got, so you've got a history degree. This guy clearly doesn't know history.

And in terms of abortion, the Supreme court, I always make mention of James Wilson, James Wilson.

And I don't know if your degree is American history or world history. Yeah. Okay. So, so for our listeners,

James Wilson was one of only, I believe six men to sign both the declaration and the

United States constitution. He was one of the first Supreme court justices that was appointed by George Washington.

He was, he lectured on law and he, his lectures on law were attended by George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.

And he said of the baby in the womb, he said, constitutionally, they are protected from all forms of immediate evil or immediate danger.

And so when I, when I look here, someone like this, say

Christian nationalists on the Supreme court overturn Roe V. Wade, I'm going, that's not a new idea to say babies are protected constitutionally.

And I wish I actually wish our Supreme court, instead of just turning it back over to the States would have said something like babies have the right to life.

Right. I think that would, you know, kind of put an end to that argument. Babies in the womb have a right to life.

And that's the end of that. But this idea that babies are protected constitutionally, they have a right to life is not a new idea.

It goes back to men like James Wilson, who was a founding father of this country.

That's fascinating. I was actually just reading James Wilson on another issue earlier this week, but I did not know he had said that.

That's interesting. Yeah. I learned that. Oh goodness.

10 years ago. And because Hillary Clinton had made the statement, she made something like the unborn persons are, they're not protected by the constitution.

And I always found it fascinating that she called them unborn persons. And so, so I was like, surely someone has said this.

And it was actually listening to Jeff Durbin and Apologia that brought that up.

And so I went and researched that and I was like, huh, he sure did. He sure did say that, you know, go figure.

That's fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's. Yeah. So, I mean, what you're saying though is that this isn't a foreign, like he treats

Christian nationalism as some like foreign influence that's coming in and disrupting what we have going on.

And you're saying, no, this isn't foreign. This is just a, it's, it's actually the foundation really. So. Yeah.

Yeah. Let me bring up this, this, this statement by homo clay. He says, it doesn't matter what

Christians or conservative speak leftist will gaslight and project you are evil.

Sounds about right. I agree. Let's see what we can get.

And as we speak to Christian nationalists, billionaires are trying to replace public schools in Texas with private

Christian school, the horror. We are closer than we think to a Christian theocracy.

How did this happen? The first followers of Jesus didn't call themselves

Christians. They called themselves the way. So I can't recall that in scripture.

I know they are called disciples and they are called apostles. Paul refers to himself as an apostle, but they didn't refer to themselves as the way they were referred to as followers of the way.

Right. Right. Yeah. He was saying something before that though.

What was he saying? Oh yeah. Like we're close to a theocracy and you look around you and you're like, what are you talking about?

It's, I don't know. It's just that he's on a different planet. I don't even know.

How would we even have a conversation? It's kind of like you go back even 10 years.

You don't have to go back 50, just go back 10 years and look at how things in culture, in government and society have become less and less

Christian. And for him to say, we're on the precipice of a theocracy is really weird to hear.

So weren't they first called Christians in Antioch? In Antioch.

Yeah. They were first called Christians in Antioch. They didn't even call themselves Christians. It was, if I remember correctly, it was supposed to be a derogatory term.

Yeah. Little Christ. Yeah. It sounds like he's, he's a youth pastor.

That's the kind of speech I hear from a youth pastor who thinks he's being super clever and guess what kids, we're really cool.

You don't have to use this churchy language. He's the Andy Stanley in the making is what he is.

Yeah. He doesn't dress the part, but he should change his wardrobe. His message is already there. Yeah.

Yeah. I can just see him after this saying, the 10 commandments, those are not your commandments, right?

You only have two commandments. You know, the, the people, the, the disciples of Christ, they did not have the

Bible. Okay. They just didn't have it. And it's like, sit down, dude, used to use the middle finger.

I'll probably say that. That's a Christian symbol or something. Yeah. Their crucified teacher taught them a different way of being human.

And they intended to follow it. The early church was a revolutionary community built on radical love, a peculiar people who shared all their possessions and refused to participate in the economy, the military or the culture.

Okay. Yeah. Almost all of that's wrong. Right. Thank you. So, so the, the part that really stuck out to me,

I've got a gnat flying around like crazy. Um, but the part that stuck out to me, hold on.

Jesse says it right here. If I can bring it up. Ah, yes.

Socialism. So if you remember a couple of years ago, uh, the gospel coalition, they put out some articles that they didn't say they were promoting socialism.

But if you read them, you go, are they saying Christians should be socialists?

That what I get paid, this person should get paid. What I have, this person should have, and I should give it to them.

Right. I mean, that's what it sounds like here. Yeah. It's a lot of, uh,

I mean, liberals always talk about coded dog whistles that right wingers say to communicate with racists and misogynists and so forth.

But, um, really I think what they do when they say that is their, it's projection. They're accusing us of doing what they do.

And this is, I think a good example, uh, of someone doing that. Like he, he's using a lot of, uh, broad language, but an audience who's more on the left is going to infuse that language with their own, uh, assumptions and, uh, radical love, you know, a different way to be human.

These are all kind of odd sounding phrases. They're not, you're not going to find that really in the Bible. Right.

Um, I think what he means when he's saying those things is that, you know, they were, uh, essentially they were rebels against the status quo, that the status quo is evil.

They refuse to participate in it. And they wanted to overturn the status quo and make things, uh, more fair, just equitable, equal.

And that's really the radical love part of it. It's, it's a, um, they confuse love in categories from scripture, uh, like love with, uh, their own egalitarian mission.

And, uh, and they'll use that to overturn very specific passages like on homosexuality or women in pastoral roles, things like that, that great against those egalitarian sensibilities, they'll just insert love and say, well, love dictates that you have to accept those things.

So, um, yeah, I think it's, it's very clever. If you think about it, like we have a, uh, a book, we have the

Bible and it's very solid as far as the text doesn't change. You can't edit it. You there's different translations, but like these guys are so outside the scope of it.

And yet they're somehow able to go back and reframe it, recharacterize it. Uh, it's an amazing thing that people go along with it, but it's, it's people who

I don't think want truth, but they still want for some odd reason, some of the veneer of Christianity, whether that brings them comfort or it's just a habit.

That's what, uh, mom and dad did. So they're at church. Um, but I don't know if you've been to like mainline churches, but they're filled with, uh, people like this where there's a lot of formality, but, and, and I think that's great, but it's dead man's bones and there's just not, uh, they're like, why are they doing it?

There's really no point anymore. They're operating on habit and, uh, and they don't even believe what the book says at this point.

So, um, I think maybe it can give them some kind of a moral justification. They feel like they're justified in their political positions and everything, and their sin choices.

Uh, if, and if they call it Christian, maybe it'll make the, you know, spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.

But, uh, but yeah, I, I think he's speaking, he's speaking leftism. He's speaking from a different religion and just syncretizing it with Christianity.

Right. You know, it's at its simplest form. We've seen it where if we speak out against sin, the person who's sinning says to us, well,

Jesus doesn't judge or Jesus loves me. Anyway, Jesus is just love. Why can't you just love me?

Right. That's at its simplest form. We've seen that right. Whenever we're evangelizing. And so he's trying to take it to a broader scope and talking about homosexuality, abortion, on the, on the, the political sphere.

And as though Jesus would accept these things. And if you come against these things, you're not being like Jesus and you're not being ruled by love.

Uh, you know, you're, you're, you're just not a real Christian. Yeah, that's it.

That's it. Let me pull up this, uh, this comment by Jesse. He says they misunderstand willful giving for forced giving.

I think that's a good comment because when we're talking about giving in the

Bible, right, even, even in terms of tithe, right, we are to give joyfully.

We are to give not under compulsion. That's an important part right there.

Not under compulsion. If we see a brother in need and we have something that we can give them that they need, we give it right.

We're not, we're not stingy. At least I'm, I'm not with my stuff. I know a lot of people who, uh, would give the shirt off their back for, for someone, whether they're a believer or not.

Right. They would just give and give and give. I've seen people who, um, that I'm even related to.

They get talked down to all the time, but yet they're always the person people run to and they just give freely, ask nothing in return.

Right. That's the Christian heart of love. You know, I'm still going to love my enemies.

Whereas what the left is trying to do, this progressive movement is saying, no, you must give.

If you have this, you must give it. You must bring them. And here we get into that kind of social justice thing, right?

The equality. We must, everyone must be equal in terms of outcome. Yeah. Or, or yeah, equity,

I guess they use now. Yeah. Yeah. He probably is tracking with all those things.

He hasn't really said it explicitly, but I'm sure, you know, he probably goes there.

It would be playing him. Yeah. Yeah. Let's bring him back up. Book of Acts tells us that the first Christians were persecuted for turning the world upside down.

But 300 years after Jesus was executed, is that why they were persecuted?

I'm telling you, things together. Yeah. Well, not just that, only that he's making things up, right?

Yeah. Christians weren't persecuted for turning the world upside down. They were persecuted for preaching

Christ. Well, yeah, he's taking where it does say that they turn the world upside down and then somehow conflating.

Yeah. It was their radical love. That's what people were just so angry about. I guess they just, they're like, you need to come participate in our economy.

It's just really weird thing to say. But yeah,

I don't know. I've had much more to say actually about that. I think that his knowledge of scripture is probably about an inch deep.

Yeah, which is, I mean, he did say at the beginning of the video, he's going to seminary to become a minister, which

I'm curious as to what seminary he's going to, because all they're probably going to do is feed into this nonsense that he already believes.

He's going to the master's seminary in Sun Valley. No, I'm just kidding. He would be run out of there quickly.

he probably wouldn't last too long. He would not last. By the

Roman Empire, Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official state religion of that very same empire.

Constantine was the first Christian nationalist. And ever since the powers that be have been taming

Christianity, domesticating it, diluting it into something more pro -war, pro -wealth, pro -white supremacy.

That original counter -cultural movement became a tranquilized, privatized, weaponized religion, the official sponsor of Western civilization.

I don't even know what to say to that. Well, at least we got to the heart of what he really hates, which is Western civilization and that Christianity is bad.

the Christian nationalism is bad because they sponsor it. Yeah, Constantine, I think Constantine gets way too much blame for this stuff.

It's probably Justinian that actually started merging these, these, you know, ecclesiastical and magisterial power more.

But Constantine just gets the blame for it, that he was the first one to merge state and church power together somehow,

I guess because he called with the Council of Nicaea or he was part of that.

So it's like, that's, that must be. But even let's say that's all true.

Let's say that his history is right on that. Is that really what we have going on right now in the

United States in 2023 or 2024? Whenever this is, is it, are there really

Christians running around saying like, we're going to have a doctrinal dispute in a council to solve it.

And we'd really like Trump to be there, or I guess in this case, Biden to be there to, you know, make sure that things go peacefully or whatever.

it's just, it's so bonkers. if, you know, Constantine was the first Christian nationalist,

I guess we're all doing a very lousy job of it. Right. Especially since so many of these Christian, I mean, even on the

Supreme court, you know, is, is the biggest Christian nationalist Clarence Thomas. I mean, is he the one that he,

I mean, he had the most aggressive opinion on the Dobbs decision. And yet,

I mean, is he, he's not really for white supremacy. I don't think I'm pretty sure he's not. So he just conflated a bunch of, or he just added a bunch of things to a bunch of ingredients to a recipe.

And like, these are all the things you fear the most. These are all the things you think that are going to ruin the country.

And guess what? This is the sum of all fears, Christian nationalism. It's like his way of saying all those, those soup, those villains that you know about, like they're all, they've gained their power from this super villain, which is really the

Christians. They were the ones behind all of it the whole time. So it's, yeah, it's playing on a lot of fear and worry.

And yeah, I don't know. It's just, I keep saying it's weird. I don't know what else to say, but it is weird that these people do this because any common sense reading, like, like just walk into a

Baptist church, any Baptist church in town that Sunday, that's more on the conservative side. You're just not going to see any of the things he's talking about.

In fact, if you started talking about like, Hey, we should really merge state with, you know, state power and ecclesiastical power.

They would probably oppose you more than anyone else and say like, we don't want that. The government's going to corrupt our church or something.

Right. We view these as separate institutions, but we do think that Christian morality applies to the state.

It's not a neutral or like multicultural, like dead zone where you don't have any morality and, and there's no religion that like, there's going to be a religion that's going to end up setting your social mores and your laws.

And that's all the Christian nationalists, according to the leftists, I think like, like the baseline of who they're talking about, that's all they're saying.

Like, there's going to be a morality. Right. Christianity is the true morality. That says nothing about the conflation of power or white supremacy.

I don't even remember what else he said, but yeah, they seems like it all comes down to Western civilization's evil.

It has all these oppressive mechanisms within it. And Christians are the ones that have, I guess, cheerlead that.

Yeah. Evil Christians, bad Christians. Let's see.

Let's see what else we can. We're, we're five minutes in. We're just five minutes in.

Were we supposed to do the whole thing? I have no clue. We're probably not going to get through the whole thing.

I mean, I could just be quiet and let you play like 10 minutes or 15 minutes. I don't mind. Well, I mean, there, you know, there's always with guys like this.

Let me just say this on this show, whenever we've come to play a video and critique a video, we've never made it through the whole thing.

Not once. I mean, even ones that are like, Not with Andrew. Not with Andrew, you're not.

Well, well, yeah. Andrew. Yeah.

He's got a lot to say about a lot of things. So do I. So I'm not judging.

That's okay. That's okay. A religion of sharing became a religion of greed.

A religion of peace became a religion of violence. I don't remember that one.

A religion of forgiveness became a religion of judgment. It says a religion of ego transformation became a religion of ego affirmation.

Today, Christian nationalists. I don't know what that means. Obsessed. I'm just saying,

I don't know what that, I didn't know what that last one even meant. Yeah, I don't either. That's like, he's going on the, these kind of compare and contrast numbers here.

And I'm just, I'm like, I don't know. It's all come down to one thing. And that's domination.

That's what it sounds like. Like Christians were really peaceful. They were living in a bunch, you know, in a field of flowers and loving each other.

And then all of a sudden they wanted to stroke their egos and dominate others and war.

And just, you know, all the masculine, uniquely masculine traits that domination came to be.

So that's what it sounds like. Yeah. I have to bring this comment by Melissa, since we were talking about Andrew, she says,

Andrew talks more than most women shots fired. Wow.

And I see someone in the background that I have to bring in Mr. AM Brewster.

How you doing, brother? You're you're muted. Let me unmute you.

Oh, I can't. You have to. I'm hiding behind a little thing, at least on my screen.

It looks like I'm hiding behind. Are you in your camper? Listen, okay.

Listen, people are living life in the house. I need to, I need to come out here because it's too loud.

I need to, I need to take this banner off so we can see it. There we go. Much better. All right,

Aaron. Yeah, my earphones though. So if we get any weird feedback, he sounds, let me know. Okay.

So I don't know how much of the show you've caught. I don't know if you've met John Harris. This is

John. John Harris. This is Aaron. Yeah. Yeah.

See already old friends. Aaron, I don't know how much of the show you've caught.

If you've seen this video. I will assume it's been nothing.

Do you have any comments thus far in your nothingness of watching the video?

You know, I see the words obsess over people's private parts. I think

I know everything I need to know right then and there by a guy like this standing in a place like that being watched and critiqued on this show.

And those are the five words that I see. Something tells me that I'm going to disagree with him about the important that people's private parts play in the identity that God has given us.

But I might be wrong. Well, I think this particular part and we can play it, but I think he's talking about Christian nationalists who obsess over people's private parts, meaning

Christians who have a problem with transgenderism.

And that's isolating themselves. You know, I thought it was abortion, but maybe.

Yeah. Yeah, I think I think I think he's moved past abortion. I don't think I don't think he talks about abortion again in this, but yeah,

Aaron, you've you've missed quite a bit. Quite a bit.

I know. Next time you need to get earlier. Okay. We need some of that. Some of that AM Brewster wisdom.

Okay. I mean, I mean, we can't expect John to do it all. Okay. I'm not that smart.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm not that smart. So John's been having to really bring in, you know, the wisdom of this show.

I got all cylinders. Do what? I said,

I got all cylinders fired up. Yep. That's it. All right. Let's let's continue.

Let's see if we can. Let's see if we can make Aaron a little queasy here. Yes. Over people's private parts.

While the planet burns. Eight men own as much wealth as 3 .6

billion people. And Christian nationalists are boycotting Barbie. The Bible doesn't mention abortion or gay marriage, but it goes on and on about forgiving debt, liberating the poor and healing the sick.

Aaron, I see you made a face. See, me and John have already talked about some of these things that he mentioned earlier.

Now it's your time to come in. So. I think one of the reasons

Angela having me on the show is just that from time to time, I, I, I come at things from a very different perspective.

Like it's obvious. This guy's an idiot. Or either that, or he's deliberately deceptive.

I'm, I'm side with the idiot. Give him the benefit of the doubt. This. Obviously the

Bible has stuff to say about abortion. Obviously the Bible stuff has stuff to say about. Gay marriage, right.

Or gay unions. So where my mind goes though, how do people get to that place?

They would attend that congregation of whatever that is, that they would sit under that type of teaching or that they would themselves believe that enough to teach them.

That's the question from my perspective as a biblical counselor, as I sit down and I listen to people talk,

I so often think to myself, how on earth did you get here? And the reason that's so important to me is not just from the standpoint of trying to help people to come back from that or to, or, or to, you know, to recognize the truth for the first time.

That's important to me also in part, because I want to be humble enough to admit that by the grace of God, there go

I, and that the same things that led that guy to believe lies, to believe things about God that are not true,

I could potentially do in the future and, or potentially even now I've got my hobby horses.

I've got my things that I believe about God, whatever. And that I speak with as much confidence as that guy did.

And I could be just as wrong as he did. So those are the questions that go through my mind. How does a person get to that?

How do we get to that place where we so blatantly, I mean, obviously there's not knowing the scriptures, but in the place where he's standing,

I'm assuming he opens the scriptures pretty frequently. So how on earth could he come to the conclusion? Has nobody ever presented him with the scriptures that, you know, that deal with abortion, that deal with homosexuality?

Of course people have, I have to assume that people have, and yet he still stands there and says that. Why? And my friends, please listen to what

I'm saying. Everybody listening. Andrew talked a lot about your hermeneutic, the tools by which you understand the

Bible, you interpret the Bible. And it is desperately important to recognize that nobody's hermeneutic is unflawed, that nobody's hermeneutic can fail them.

And it is desperately important that we search the scriptures about the scriptures, to interpret the scriptures, that we, we, we search for what

God intended to communicate the scriptures, or we are no better than that guy.

When we things that are patently false about how God works and what not in this life.

So that's kind of, that's as exactly where my mind goes when I encounter people like that, because I want to figure out how did you get here?

What, what lies are you believing? What is it going to take to help you to recognize that those are lies?

And so often you can't do, and you can't do it because they are being consistent with their hermeneutic.

He sees the scriptures about being about love as he defines love, not as the scriptures do.

He sees the scriptures about, about justice as he defines justice, not as the scriptures do.

He sees the scriptures more emphasis on debt relief and money than he does on identity and sexuality, but he comes to those conclusions, not because he doesn't know those verses exist, comes to those conclusions because of the way he interprets them.

So often we're yelling at each other across the aisle. We're yelling at each other saying, you know, it means this.

And they're saying, no, it doesn't. And we don't get past that. We don't understand what type of apologetic we need to bring to that conversation to help them realize that their hermeneutic, the way they're approaching, understanding the scriptures is completely wrong.

So I'm going to stop there because I've been talking for a while. But that's, you asked where my mind goes. That's where my mind goes.

You know, listening to you, it, I was talking with my buddy, Chris, earlier today, and we were talking about frameworks, right?

When I listened to this guy speak, it sounds like he's bringing a particular framework to the text rather than allowing the text to shape his framework of God, right?

So he's bringing a particular position, a particular worldview, a particular belief system, a particular hermeneutic to the text rather than actually sitting down with the text, opening it up, going through it, and then allowing the text to lay his foundation for him.

And right. It's, it's putting your theology on the text rather than drawing your theology from the text.

Hey, can you throw up Eric's comment there? Right, right before mine. This is a really great point.

It's not grammatically accurate, but he's saying, we're talking about believers with poor hermeneutics or nonbelievers who've crept into the church.

And I answered his question in the, in the comments. I said, it can be both. I mean, it's a super important for us to recognize. And oftentimes it can be very difficult to identify.

If it's a believer with a poor hermeneutic, or if it's a nonbeliever who clearly has a poor hermeneutic, it will be wolves in sheep's clothing for sure.

But I just want to, I just want to say, I'm not saying that Eric is making this, this, this statement, but I do want to say that there, I've met a lot of believers who kind of, because they're

Christians, they kind of have this, this, this idea that they, it's impossible for them to misunderstand the

Bible. Like if they've been taught to them or they've written, they've come to a conclusion about it. Well, of course that's true, you know, because we know about the indwelling of the

Holy spirit. We know about how he, I wouldn't not inspired. He illuminates us to truth.

And so we just assume, well, of course we're understanding it correctly. My friends just want to push us. I want to push us to humility.

We can't know what the Bible says. I'm saying that we sit back and go, Oh, we can't know what the Bible says. So they might be right.

We might, you know, I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that we just need to be humble enough to recognize that we have got to, we have got to go to the script.

As you said just a second ago, that we have got to be certain that what we're drawing is coming out of the text and not forced to it because man,

God forbid, heresy be taught in a church because of believers with a bad understanding of the scripture.

May it be the wolves and sheep's clothing. May we be able to identify them because they twist the script. John, do you have any thoughts?

No, I think that was said. Well, yep. I concur. I concur.

Let's see. Let's see what else we can, we can dig up here. Christian nationalists like to say, this is a

Christian nation. Not only is that historically inaccurate, not only is that theologically blasphemous, but it's also just not true.

Look around us. If this was truly a Christian nation, we would forgive student debt. If this was truly a

Christian nation, we would guarantee health care. Okay.

Explain. I am. Okay. So I'm not a Christian nationalist. My, my ancestors came over on the

Mayflower. My, my ancestor, William Brewster was like the pilgrim pastor for all intents and purposes.

Hold on. Hold on. If your family came over on the Mayflower, then you are most certainly a

Christian nationalist because it was, it was the pilgrims and the Puritans who founded this country.

Okay. So don't give me that. You're not a Christian nationalist. I know you are. So, yeah, because you're like,

I've got, I have a right. I've got a right to this country. Like I was one of the first. No, but I mean, so I say that to say, you know,

I, I recognize the important parts that my ancestors put into helping this nation to be what it eventually became.

But we're not a Christian nation. On Theology Throwdown a year or so ago, we had a good discussion about this.

People talking about, you know, we need God's blessing back on this nation. One of the questions that was asked was when exactly did we have

God's blessing on this nation? How do you define it? Biblically, you know, what, what make an argument for that from the

Bible about that? I am thankful for America and I praise God that a lot of the founding fathers turned to a ton of biblical material to craft the founding documents.

And I, and I praise God that there are far more people back in America that were either genuinely believers or at least moralistic nominal

Christians are in America today. But I am,

I'm not a Christian nationalist. I am not fighting to create God's kingdom on this earth.

So what are you saying about this not being a Christian nation? You know, just that being pretty obvious.

I agree with him on that, especially because a nation can't be born again. A nation can't be saved. Like sure, we might have rules that are based off of biblical concepts, but a nation can't be

Christian and citizens can be Christians. The argument could be made if a hundred percent or a very large percentage of the nation were

Christians, then use that term. But that's not even the case here. Cause like what percentage of the nation claims to be

Christians and then what percentage of them, you know, actually are, you know, it's, it's, it's a very, it's a relatively low percentage.

So anyway, I was agreeing with him all the way up until that point where he then said, he said about debt forgiveness and so on and so forth.

So that's why that was my comment. Hmm. Gotcha. You got anything you want to add,

John? Yeah. And I, I think that I, in principle, I agree with what

Aaron was just saying, like nations can't be saved because they're not souls.

They're it's like saying a family can't be saved because the family is an entity that is composed of multiple people.

It's not a soul itself, but wait, so you're not a Presbyterian? I'm not. No, I go to, but, but I do think that when we say, when we talk about a

Christian family, though, like Christians aren't ready to jump up and down and say you're a heretic, because we know what that means.

It's a family that has Christian habits and mores. And so when

I talk about Christian music or a Christian church or a Christian conference or a

Christian school, Christian, anything, I don't think people generally confuse that with your, you must be saying that that institution is born again or has a hundred percent born again, membership.

It's just saying that there's a self -conscious identity that institution has because, because of the values, because of the default settings, the assumptions that it brings, that kind of thing.

So, so I'm perfectly comfortable with using language like Christian nation.

I don't think it has to be overused. Like, I think there are some guys particularly

I'm thinking of like Peter Marshall and like David Barton and some of these guys who will overplay that a little bit.

And if you look at the language of the founding and even before that, it was more or less assumed that it was a

Christian people. If you even read like George Washington's farewell address, he talks about all the commonly shared things

Americans have one of them's religion. And, and so it wasn't a controversial thing.

Like he was talking about Christianity. Most of the States had some kind of an acknowledgement in their constitutions during the time of the national constitution being ratified or their charters, if they still had a

Royal charter that did specifically require or commend

Christianity in some form. I think Pennsylvania might've been the loosest on that.

And even in that one, it's, it's from a very Christian point of view. So my family also came over on the

Mayflower, but I have another line that traces to Jamestown and Jamestown. If you read their 1606 charter, it says that it talks about Christian princes, if you can believe it, and that that was not an uncommon thing to in documents from that time, really, really it's almost from a medieval world, but they're talking about the purpose of the colony.

Part of that being to spread Christianity and, and to cooperate with other

Christian princes who might be doing the same thing. So, so I see this Christian flavor, but I mean, so, so I don't know.

We may, I may agree with Aaron. I may disagree. I'm not exactly sure where all the lines are, but I certainly agree.

If what this gentleman is saying is that there's a hundred percent, you know, salvation.

There's a hundred percent commitment to Christ and the, the nation itself can be somehow saved in a, in an actual salvific way.

Then obviously that's not true. Like nations don't, you don't get justified in the same way that individuals do, or I shouldn't even say in the same way individuals get justified.

Nations don't, but, but nations can certainly have a cultural impact from a religion, which is,

I think that's what people mean when they say a Christian nation. And I think that's what he's actually, I'm assuming we haven't played the rest of the clip, but it sounds like that's where he's going is like,

Hey, we would have these values if we were truly a Christian nation. So we must not be. So he's,

I think he's thinking of it in terms of values, which is the same way I kind of think of it in terms of. Yeah.

I, I just saying, John and I, I don't disagree with anything you said. Definitely.

Like, like and I praise God again for the fact that America was founded by a bunch of individuals who to a large degree, obviously none of our, none of their theology nor our theology is ever perfect, but they were striving very hard to, to make a big deal.

Christ. I'm very thankful for that. I think, and I do agree with the statement he made and what the bet you just made.

If we, and then J three 16 ministry said it too. He said, the only ones who refer to America as a Christian nation are severely misinformed, immature believers or nominal

Christians. And then he says, a nation would not have abortion. Wouldn't have the breakdown. In fact, if we looked at it, we look at a church that professes to be, you know, filled with a bunch of Christians who support abortion.

We are all very quick to go. That's not even a church. We're all quick to go. You can't be saved.

If you support homosexuality, if you support abortion. Now I'm not, I'm not quick to use that terminology, but a lot of people who

Christian Christians that I respect do say those types of things. So you cannot be a

Christian and support the democratic talking points. And I do tend to agree with that one.

So if we're, if we're so willing to make those statements, I think it's very easy and very fair for us to say, this can't be a

Christian nation because of all of the things that are legal, all of the things that our country supports, all of the things that our country celebrates.

But I think when people say that, and I would include even like Peter Marshall and David Barton, who I just criticized a little bit,

I think when they say that, what did they often what in the next breath, they're talking about something historical.

So they're not usually looking around in the present. They're, they're trying when they it's a shorthand for saying we're historically

Christian or we have a Christian heritage and that we should live up to this. We should try to conserve that where it still remains because it does remain in many places.

And I think Stephen Wolf has made this point that in localities, that still in the

Bible belt regions where you still have like a majority going to church. And there are still some small towns like that.

I was actually in one in Grant, Nebraska where I just amazed, like I felt like I was transformed to a different world where they're just very like simple people.

COVID didn't even affect anything like they're, they just keep living their lives. And most of them, I think go to some, some kind of a church and you know, in those kinds of communities, how should they think of themselves?

And maybe you could say the name, like the empire, I think of America more, it's an empire than a nation, but you know, they, they might not think of it a whole empire that way, but when they do behave in Christian ways, they're tapping into something.

And I think that's what David Barton and those guys mean there, there there's something we're tapping into. That's part of our

DNA at the core, at the ground level that was Christian and it still has an impact, but we're obviously in transition and we're going from secularism to paganism of some variety.

and so, yeah, like, I think your point is still valid. Like you look around and you see like that, these things don't match

Christianity, but at the same time, we can also look around and say, okay, like everyone seems to still honor

Christmas in some way, in some capacity, there's still in God, we trust in our court buildings.

We still have a blind lady justice there. And there's still invocations even at the democratic national convention.

Right. So there's these kind of like vestigial organs in many that we still live with that meant something at one time and in some small towns, they still do mean something.

So I'm just saying it's like maybe a little more complicated than like an all or nothing. Like I think certain parts of the country still are pretty

Christianized. Yeah. And I'll, I'll actually, I'll totally give everything that you just said, right to you that that's, that was well spoken, and I suppose, and we're obviously not at this point, very much off topic from where the video was, but I guess from my perspective, the question

I would ask is if from a historical perspective, claiming that America is a Christian nation.

I don't, I don't have any problem with that. I think everything I've said lines up with that. My struggle would be who cares.

Well, here's why, well, here's why if come to me and you're trying to get me to become a

Christian, you're, you're evangelizing me, right? And your main motivation is that, well,

Aaron, your grandfather was a Christian. Your great grandfather, we can trace your

Christians all the way back through William Brewster, Gabriel over the Mayflower. They were all Christians. You got this as your heritage.

It's your foundation. I mean, it's, it's, it's not just your country. It's your family. If that's how you're going about it,

I would say that you are coming. You're, you're, you're presenting in front of me a very bad motivation to become a

Christian. And I would argue that I tell parents this all the time. So I'm, I'm, I am consistent with what

I'm about to say. What I tell parents is that it is really pretty foolish for us to lean so heavily, heavily into our parental authority when we have a far greater authority to whom we can, we can point our children.

I have to play the dad card because I said so. I think that that's either in a very extreme situation.

And it really should never be my starting place. I need to be, Hey, listen, we do this in this family because of God.

And in a similar way, the connection between this and what I was saying earlier is that if we're going to argue that America needs to be different, who cares what we were in the past.

That's not a motivation for being, if we were a terrible country, it wouldn't matter who we were in the past.

What would matter is that we need to glorify God. We need to be biblical in our lawmaking.

Our government needs to reward righteousness and punish evil because that's what

God wants for all of us. You know, have that impact and we need to be working toward glorifying God by being a biblical nation.

And in my estimation, believing everything that I believe about who we were and how our laws were made, it's just going to seem to me to be a waste of time to try to dangle that out in front of somebody as a reason why we should go back to that.

Because that's just, in my estimation, it's just a poor motivation. I wonder what the, why that is an important argument when we have such a greater argument ahead of us that forget the past, forget all the millions of people who lived in America.

What does God expect from us right here, right now? I don't know. Maybe I'm confusing the conversation, but that's kind of where my mind went.

Yeah. I mean, I'll let Drew decide if he wants to continue this or go back to the video. Great.

This is what people tune in for, the back and forth. Yeah. So I would say I think it does matter.

So it's not in an evangelism context necessarily, although I can see that being used in an evangelism context.

And I have seen people, especially later in life, come to the Lord because of Christian experiences when they were young and stuff.

So that's not necessarily the moral foundation, but it, I think it does contribute.

I think the video that we were watching and the discussion over Christian nationalism and all of that is more of a political and social thing.

So it, the argument is we should, we should keep these specifically

Anglo -Protestant, Anglo -Protestant traditions in our country, because that is part of who we are.

It's also the universal things that are unique or, or I should say, you know, common to all

Christians. We should like punishing murder, for example. We should obviously implement that when it comes to issues like abortion.

But there is, I think in our country, a specific type of Christianity. It's not like we're not

Eastern Orthodox, right? We're not Roman. Well, there are a lot of Roman Catholics now, but like at the foundation of the country, it wasn't primarily

Roman Catholic. I think there was one Roman Catholic who signed the declaration of independence, Charles Carroll from Pennsylvania.

And there was two who signed the constitution, but very small minority. It was mainly

Protestants, Anglo -Protestants, people who, from English denominations, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Anglican, congregational.

So that brought with it, I think a certain type of Christianity, and we still live with the vestiges of this.

And we're going to, I think Drew made the point well earlier that we're going to have a default setting for religion of some kind.

There's going to be civic, our calendar is going to be filled with civic celebrations. And now they're being filled with pagan civic celebrations, right?

New holidays are being invented to celebrate DEI and sexual perversion.

And so this is all a religious thing. And it's, it's showing up in my shopping center.

When I go and take my kids to the grocery store, I have to see all this junk in the month of June, for example.

Right. So I don't, I'm not down with all that stuff, but this is like the environment.

Now I swim in and that does affect my kids. So, so those who are saying like, Hey, we're Christian. Like we, and we're this certain variety of Christian and we have traditions that we can, that still some of them exist and we should tap into them.

I think Trump did this famously with the, Hey, when I'm elected, we're going to say, Merry Christmas again. You remember that 2016?

And Trump of all people, right? Like we could look at him and be like, well, he's not, you know, he's not an Orthodox Christian, but he saw the importance and the identity that it confers and the stability.

It gives to have that moment when everyone slows down and says, we're going to celebrate this holiday.

And this holiday does have a religious significance to it. Without that.

I don't think we can really even hardly be a people. We're going to have some kind of religion, even if not all the people follow it, there's going to be a civic.

Kind of recognition. So, so I'm not saying we rest the moral foundation for the truth of Christianity on the fact that it's a heritage.

I don't think that's a great apologetic argument, but I do think that just like in my family,

I'm sure like, you know, Andrew, like, or Aaron, sorry, like the fact that your ancestors were pilgrims, it probably means something to you.

You wouldn't have mentioned it if it didn't mean anything. So like where my dad lived, who he was, my grandfather going back generations, like that does mean something that does say something about who

I am. There is an attachment. And I think God did design it that way. So I don't want to just like poo poo that and say like, well, that doesn't, that doesn't really mean anything.

It certainly does. And it affects not just our civic celebrations, but I think even the way we greet each other, what do we say when someone even sneezes?

Right? Like it's just, it's so ingrained in a million ways that we probably can't even quite detect. And, and I think that's the, the mission of the social justice warriors in part is to try to drill down as deep as they can, find all these things and then eradicate them.

Even when it comes to basic things like gender now, you know, I, that's, that's now a uniquely

Christian thing. It seems like it's the Christians who want to uphold this gender binary. Right. And even if you're not a

Christian, that's like people who culturally think Christianity still has some authority that want to uphold that. And I think that's good for all people.

We should, we should continue the tradition of upholding that, you know, and not overturn those things.

So that's my response. You mentioned

Trump of all people, right. Not being, not being Orthodox and, you know, but coming out and saying, we're going to say

Merry Christmas. Right. You know, that idea kind of took me back to someone like Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin was not a Christian. In fact, if you look at kind of how he lived his life, right.

He was especially being a statesman who traveled around to various countries all the time. France, he had a lot of mistresses, but when he was here, he liked listening to George Whitfield preach.

Right. He saw a value in the Christian religion and the role that it played on the founding or the shaping of the country in terms of its laws and its structures and, and a

God who punishes evil, gives justice to evil, and then rewards the righteous.

Right. So we do see some of that in, in our founders, right.

The, the appreciation for Christian morality, Christian law, Christian rule.

And then I, I like what I do agree with your criticism on David Barton.

I used to be a huge, huge David Barton fan, but I do think he kind of drenches it a little much than, than needs to be in terms of the, the historical

Christian. Well, I might, I can probably be briefly parsed that for you.

David Barton was at a rededication, a re -covenanting of America, like two years ago in Virginia, where they, unfortunately it was, it was based on something that they were, they seem very sure about, but it's historically dubious.

I spent forever trying to take down this quote from Robert Hunt, the first Anglican pastor to land at Virginia beach.

And he set up a cross, which is true. But we don't know what he said that day because all his papers burned in a fire, but David Barton seemed pretty sure,

I guess of what he said. And it was this grand, you know, dedication of America to God.

And that's when we covenanted with God and all the immigrant groups who came later were part of this covenant.

And, you know, the problem now is we've, we've lost the covenant and we need to re -covenant. So they had this ceremony for,

I guess, donors. It wasn't a big group to re -covenant with God. And that's the kind of stuff that I, you know, that's cringey stuff like that.

So, so what you're, you're talking about, cause like I said, I used to be a huge follower of David Barton and I still think he does some good stuff, right?

Wall builders and stuff. I think it brings, it does bring some value in terms of talking about constitution law, things like that.

Cause he's got a lawyer there with him that knows the law, but he actually got in trouble for this years ago with a book that he wrote

Jefferson lies. Yes. Yes. Where he made these claims. He's outlandish claims that could not be, uh, uh, supported.

Someone called him out on it and he ended up having to pull the book. Yeah. Yeah.

I remember that. I think that's why I, I recommend guys like Daniel Dreisbach or Mark David Hall. They make some similar arguments, but I think it's a very different thing to say,

Hey, we have institutions built on Christianity. If you pull that out, if you just eradicate the

Christianity, everything falls apart. Right. Which that's, that's, and I agree with that. Like this is so intrinsic to who we were.

And it's like, you're looking at a complete social revolution that will change.

It'll be chaos. If you just rip this all out. But, uh, David Barton's, I think saying something, he might be saying that, but he's also saying something different in that he's saying that America has a unique place, kind of like Israel has where the country covenanted with God.

And, uh, and you know, just like Israel covenanted with God, the United States, it's an easy explanation because you can say they're not, we're not living up to any of those promises.

And that's why we have Kamala. That's why we have abortion. That's all the ailments and maladies that America has is because we broke the covenant.

And so we just got to, you know, if my people are called by their name, get back on your face and pray and you, you can get everything back.

And a lot of people cling to that, but there's just no reason to think that America is anything like Israel and that we,

I don't think we covenanted with God in that way. The Puritans might've thought along those lines more, but they weren't the only group coming in.

And, uh, and they, and within a few generations, they all secularized. It's, it didn't last. Um, you know, there's still some

Christian things about new England, I suppose, but it's, you know, it's, it's vestigial. It's, it's, uh, it's like the king and queen of England.

Right. In a way, like they're still the king and queen, but their decisions are almost meaningless. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

They don't, they don't do anything. Yeah. Yeah. Parliament does everything. Yeah. But there's still important symbolically, but less important every year.

Like they're just, uh, they're becoming archaic. So, um, so anyway, yeah. Like, that's what

I would say, I guess is like, Hey, Christianity is important. And you gotta build, if you want to have a successful society, you know,

Christianity needs to be there, but, uh, that that's different than saying like, and now we are in this pact with God where he's required to bless us if we bless him.

And if we don't, then it's on us because we broke the, like, I don't see any of that. Right.

I agree. Yeah. Aaron. I like a lot of what was just being said.

I, I don't follow Barton or any of those people. Those other guys, my, my time is spent digging into a lot of different, uh, other, other topics than this.

Um, yeah, I think, I think it's desperately important for us to pursue glorifying the

Lord because that is what he commands of us. And that is going to affect the impact that it's going to impact us individually, our families, our churches, our communities, our government.

It needs to do that. If Christians are doing what God has commanded us to do. Um, I know this wasn't part of, uh, the comment.

I just, I would just say, I, I'm just arguing that I don't think the Lord is, uh, the scriptures have commanded us to, uh, specifically set out, as you said, covenanted with God to create this nation that, um, is going, uh, that, that has to be a theocracy or that is going to, um, yeah, just a

Christian nation. I think biblically speaking, uh, that's impossible because narrow is the way that leads to life.

Broad is the way that leads to that. The majority of the people are always going to go in that direction. And I don't think that we can, we can only help the direction our country is going in many ways, but that doesn't mean that we don't try.

It's like a, a Calvinist who believes in the supremacy of the sovereignty of God. If he takes that next step and says, well, we don't have to evangelize.

People are going to get saved. You're going to get saved. They're denying clear biblical teaching. Um, and in the same way, um, we would be denying clear biblical teaching to say that we shouldn't, uh, fight to have

Christ honoring laws. Um, but, uh, we just have to be careful that we don't, uh, cross that next line into believing that God is, uh, we are, we are

America. We are this, uh, shining nation that, um, that is our, it's our

God to be as our, our, uh, country's goal to be the, the moral compass for the world and so on and so forth.

But. I totally agree with that. Yeah. You know, uh, I wonder if, you know, like you guys were talking about, uh,

America being this country that covenanted with God and all the, the stuff that you were saying,

John, that David Barton was saying people who come to that conclusion, do you think that they are confusing

God's providence and working in a situation or in a time say like the

American revolution with God's blessing? Because if we look at the American revolution, we would probably say there's no way that we should have won the

American revolution, but that doesn't mean God's providence isn't working in that in order to, uh, maybe have a nation, not for himself, but let these people have a nation.

Uh, and so they, they kind of take God working in a situation and then say, well, that's

God's blessing. Therefore God covenanted with the people of America. What's so short sighted,

I think really ignorant and foolish about that opinion is that, uh, there have been historical nations that were wicked, wicked nations that really did prosper and prosper for a long time.

And America is an infant country compared to so many of these. And to say that, you know, that was

God's blessing on the Assyrians or the Persians or the Babylonians or whoever else is, is absolutely, you know, that it's, it's wicked to even say it, but I think you're, so you're right.

The difference here is that, you know, with, with founding documents, uh, that were very biblical in nature, um, then obviously

God's providence that allows us to thrive as a country is his blessing. But this is where I think, um, people show their hands.

Uh, and this goes back to the question of hermeneutics and understanding what the scripture is saying. How do we define blessing?

That's a huge question. We're obviously not going to answer the next one. Um, but, um, basically if we just define blessing,

God's blessing me because something good happened in my life. And he only blesses people who he's pleased with all of the choices that they're making.

This is how we, we, uh, come to really superficial conclusions like this. Uh, cause we look at it from a very human, uh, lens.

I'm doing everything right. And that's why this good thing happened. Well, that's not the biblical definition of blessing.

In fact, uh, for the new Testament believer, um, the vast, I would,

I, I want to say a hundred percent I could be wrong and I want to leave the door open for the fact that I could be wrong.

I want to be humble like that, but I'm going to say easily over 90 % of the promises made to God's people for the blessings that he is going to give

God's people in this day and age are spiritual blessings. They're not tangible.

It's not related to our wealth. It's not related to our weather. It's not related to our health. They're spiritual blessings outside of that.

I think, I think most people do exactly what you said, drew. They see God's providence is working as his sovereign will.

And they just say that the things that they like are God's blessing, the things that they don't like aren't. And that's how they oversimplify it.

How would you like, uh, interpret blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. If those aren't, um, are those not physical blessings or does that not apply to, is that just supposed to be for Israel?

I'm just curious. Uh, what's the passage at the top of your head? Cause I'm not remembering. It's in, it's in Proverbs.

I'd have to look it up. Um, blessed, blessed is the people whose God is the Lord or nation.

Um, cause I've been reading through Proverbs and there's a lot of principles in there that, that are about blessing that seem to indicate that your behavior,

I guess it's in Psalms. Okay. Psalm 33, 12. I thought it was in Proverbs for some reason. Um, blessed is the nation whose

God is the Lord. So maybe it is just talking about Israel, the people he has chosen in his inheritance. It could be.

Oh yeah. There's still a, there is still a blessing though, because the

Bible also, I think it is in Proverbs somewhere. It talks about how, um, the children of righteous parents, this is a terrible paraphrase, but children,

That's fine. Terrible paraphrase. Um, but, um, part of that.

Blessing is the fact that your parents are righteous. If your parents are, are Christ honoring people who love you and are teaching you the truth, that in and of itself is a blessing though.

I would argue it's not so much a, the tangible blessing that most people like to point out like I got a good parking spot and we have good weather and God blessed us because we on our wedding day.

It didn't rain, you know things like that Right, or the fact that we won the Revolutionary War Okay, lots of wars and lots of battles have been won and by people who are terrible wicked people, you know so I would even say that yes that there is a

You can argue that if the vast majority of a nation are Believers and they're living as salt and light that is a blessing to the nation and isn't necessarily going to have anything to do with our financials or You know the land that we have or the weather that we have and how well our crops grow

That's the only point I would say about that particular question in that particular verse But I think that particular verse was talking about the nation of Israel.

Yeah, I'm just I guess yeah The larger point I'm thinking is that there are wisdom principles in Scripture that seem to like when you apply them

Saving money, for example or thrift, you know looking to the ants and not sinking into laziness

But acting instead like the ant does you're going to gain a reward and I think it is talking about like physical rewards

That's a blessing and what we say that that's just like a consequence, you know equals a reaction type of That's what

I'm pointing out there there is a cause and effect like you obey God's law and things will generally go well for you

It's not a like these are proverbial truth. So they're general truths but I mean, that's how I look at the

United States is like I do think that the Lord has probably It's hard not to look at it this way

Like we do this with our own lives right when we like like if I look back at something in your life Aaron I'll just use myself like if I look back at things that in my life and I'm like wow

Like look at these circumstances and like could I prove that that's like It would be hard.

It's something that I think God's wired into us and as a nation. I think it's easy to do that I'm not defending it necessarily.

Like I'm not saying that Like the Spanish Armada was defeated by England and then the pilgrims

Wow They what are the chances that they were able to get here the way like I'm not saying that that's all directly

God I'm suspicious of doing history that way too because It often like it brings in an element of bias that isn't good for historians to engage in but It is a human nature thing.

That's all I'm pointing out. Like it is human nature to say Like we've been favored even in pagan societies like the gods have favored us

So, I don't know. I'd love to explore that more. I don't have the answers on all of that But America seems to be doing or not now

But America in the past has seemed to be fairly prosperous and some of it I would attribute to the fact that there was this

Protestant work ethic we had We were able to You know economically there was a lot of things that went on to like we were able to get like we had a we had a

Western Territory that was developed very fast by large groups of immigrants which made just a lot of You know money was created in a very short period of time

So there I know there's economic things that don't always you can't all trace them back to some kind of a

Christian thing But there were Christian things involved in that like that is I think part of our story

Immorality really does ruin a society right and so husbands and wives with families intact and Making wise decisions for the next generation.

That's gonna The cumulative effect of that is going to be a society that's

You know better off than a society without that So like like look at I mean,

I got to be careful how I phrase this like look at a lot of countries in the third World, I'll put it this way and you know the religions that those countries have and And how those religions can keep them in bondage my brother was in Mozambique as a missionary for a little bit and Like he was just explaining to me the way these people live and it's so inefficient.

It's like in general not Everyone but mostly it's inefficient. It's immoral

It's terrible and it comes down to like all these superstitions and witch doctors and like crazy stuff that in the

United States We just haven't had it. We've recognized I think an order because of our Christianity, right?

And so I don't know is that blessing with like what would you call that I don't know

I Think those are all fantastic questions and great observations, and I think maybe it does bear burnedown to Not semantics, but maybe just understandings of different words because I do see that, you know,

God's sovereign Sovereignly working in this world Providence if you want, that's fine, but that he is actively at work, you know, the pilgrims didn't think coming across to America because God Didn't will that for them?

Okay, so that that I recognize that but what I say that's a blessing and Maybe I'm very very likely wrong on this because these are kind of these are new ideas

These are these are superficial ideas that I've had throughout the years and I'm just kind of bringing them up again But I've never really taken the time to dive into it.

It seems to me I could be wrong It seems to me that a lot of the of the things that are identified specifically as blessings

Besides the terminology like bless the Lord because that's something that we also struggle with how God we understand how

God blesses us How do we bless God, you know, so there were different Meanings to how these words were used just like there are in English um, but a lot of the blessing from God were things that it didn't matter what

What I did was not going to produce this. So here's an example. There's nothing that Sarah could have done

That would have made capable for her to have a child at the age that she was but the bible says that God blessed her

And she gave birth to a son What he told the old testament Israelites, you know, you obey me you'll have good weather you will have good crops.

Well, their obedience is never going to produce good crops in this and the the blessings that God promises us, uh here in the new testament of you know,

If we rejoice in the Lord and let our moderation be known to all men and we think correctly and we take our anxieties To him he will give us a peace that passes all understanding.

I don't believe that that is just the natural Formulaic conclusion if I do this this and this

I get peace That is that is that is something that is coming from God. So I would argue maybe again very ignorantly um that uh that perhaps a blessing is a category that um is different than just cause and effect it's different than just we live in a world that God created a universe that God Created for every action.

There's an equal and opposite reaction. So there are a lot of good things that happen Um that obviously are part of God's sovereignty, but am

I Aaron Brewster going to call that specifically God blessing my life? I have a hard time doing that because There are a lot of unsaved people who are doing the exact same thing.

They're saving their pennies They're being good of their money not to God's glory. They're way wealthier than I am.

So did God bless them? Is God blessing all of these unsaved people more than he's blessing me his child?

When I'm doing a lot of the same things that those guys are doing It starts to break down.

We start having a real issue there. So I think we need to get Me you need to get a better handle of what really is the doctrine of blessing?

What are what is what does it look like when God blesses an individual or blesses a community or blesses a country?

Is it just because things are going our way? Oh god's blessing us or is it something else?

I'm not sure Hmm It's a good question Maybe that's your son

Oh, go ahead. Sorry I was just gonna say that that's probably a good topic for a future show in terms of what is blessing

What does it mean when God blesses you or bestows blessing? Yeah, yeah,

I was just gonna joke and say like if you take your son fishing and uh like you catch a lot of fish that day and it's like a really good day on the lake like Like like I don't know what would you say at the end?

To get around that I feel like you'd have to almost be like the atheist to be like wow Look at the cause and effect of like I think it's just natural.

You know what I mean? You know what I'm saying? Like well, yeah, I would say I would totally say praise god, but i'll give you a real life example

My children were much younger. Um They were I don't know. Maybe my son was eight at the time.

So my daughter was six And my wife grew up playing yahtzee and we're sitting around the table we're playing yahtzee right and yahtzee is it's there's some strategy

There's a lot of luck because you know, uh, because you're tossing dice And I was my some of my children were having some.

Um, a bad attitude about Their roles and I said, hey the bible tells us that god is in sovereign control even over the role of the die

Um, so let's not have a bad attitude. Let's not complain because we're not in control of that. God is right What was hilarious is that in?

In quick succession shortly after that conversation my son rolled a yahtzee my wife

Rolled a yahtzee my daughter my six -year -old daughter rolls a yahtzee I get it.

It was a terrible role. I end up having to take it in chance My daughter looks at me my six -year -old looks at me and she goes daddy.

I'm, sorry. God doesn't want you to win this game But her theology

Was accurate Sovereignly speaking from a from a from a god's uh, god's working in this world

It was not his will for me to win that game. And you know how I know because I didn't win the game And um, and so that's the opposite side of what you're saying

Um, you know to say that yes god did work in this was he cursing me?

Why I lost the game because he was blessing my family. Is there just kind of this middle ground? There's blessing and there's cursing and there's just ambivalence like he didn't do anything in regards to me

Or was I cursed, you know, whatever else? I just have a hard time. I I say, you know, i'm you're right

You're probably right. I might easily use the terminology Uh, you know god blessed us. We had a good haul or whatever else but even

I know that when I say that because i've said it before and i've caught myself saying that from a cultural standpoint and I and I go

I just twinge a little bit inside like she said that I do strive to communicate in other ways

I say let's thank the lord for this because you know, this is something that uh, he's obviously allowed for us um

But yeah, you're right. I think culturally that what else do we call that? Of course, it's a blessing I guess you could say divine favor or I don't know hand of providence, right?

A lot of the founders talked about providence all the time capital p But well, it's really important for us though to be able to say that technically

Since all three of us and everyone listening to this right now at this moment The only thing that we deserve is to be burning in hell for all eternity

I and I and I told that I used to work at a boy's home for at -risk teens and to get this idea I told us all the time listen guys because I deserve to be burning in hell right now

If for the rest of my life god ordained that all that I would be allowed to experience

Is to be repeatedly hit over the head with a folding chair That would be better than I deserve and arguably

I could say would be a blessing If we're going to define blessing in that type of a way better than I deserve

Is a blessing so in that case and I don't want to I don't want to drag that idea through the mind and say well

Everything's a blessing Well, first of all, that would be a really good idea if we looked at that because we whole lot less complaining um, but second of all,

I I do believe that there is a special category of god's blessing that is that is beyond and more uh than Uh, then the way that we tend to look at it is just things that we like are happening

Interesting Well, hey, how long does the show go out of curiosity? Well, it usually goes till 10.

So we're a little bit past that Oh, we are. Okay We're into that was it andrew's time what is it anthony time anthony time anthony time anthony time um

But uh, so I mean we can we can start wrapping up. Uh a little bit if you guys want Uh, I do have to mention some sponsors.

So I have to mention My pillow, uh, if this talk tonight bores you for some reason,

I don't know why it would Go get a my pillow use, uh promo code sfe and you get a percentage off of your pillow

Uh logos bible software, uh, john, do you use logos? I do.

Yeah Aaron, you use logos? I I used to it's a long story.

I want to again. No, I want to again it's just I got it when I was in college and they were all on disks and I was using a

Windows machine and now that I had skates later and i'm using it's just how do I how do I? Do they even know

I have an account? I don't know You know, i'm sure andrew has someone he could get in touch with about that for you

But but basically what you're saying what i'm hearing you say is like a lot of people that go

I really want to read my bible. I just uh don't have time, you know

Uh, it's easily accessible. You just got to do it. Okay, you just got to go to the website

I wanted I just wanted it to to count like what my purchase from the past I just wanted to come out to start all over again.

That's what it is I want credit for for the disk program that I bought. Yeah, and then squirrely joe's coffee.

Um, Apparently, it's pretty good. I've never had it. But I mean other people have had it they like it

I brought them home from the conference. I don't drink coffee Um, but everyone in my house who tasted it said it was really good coffee.

So That's what they said. I believe them Yeah, I believe I believe when other people tell me stuff all the time, too.

I don't drink coffee either I'm an energy drink kind of guy would so i'm probably going to die sooner than everyone else that drinks coffee

But also, uh andrew mentioned last time I started a company as well

Using men's fragrances. This is the first fragrance i've put out. You can't really see the sticker, but it's casino noir

Got a shopify up that you can get your pre -orders if you go to timeless fragrances dot store

Use the code launch at checkout. You can get 15 off and those orders will ship out october 1st uh, so, uh

My two guests here john and aaron if you want one, just let me know. Uh, i'll send you a full -size sample

I don't know if y 'all wear any smell good cologne or anything like that You know my wife said uh, because I I don't wear it much

But I i've been given it in the past to wear it for special occasions, but she said I don't know what there's some chemicals in it.

She was worried about that So, you know, I don't know if yours is like organic or I don't know So so one of the things because I work in in the fragrance industry

That's what actually got me into doing it. And one of the big things that everyone talks about is phylates

I think that's what it was. Yeah Phylates the thing is is with phylates you can find studies that say they're bad

You can find studies that say they're not a big deal, but we can actually Where I work we can reformulate we can make things phylate free prop 65 compliant which has to do with California laws and regulations.

I believe this one Is phylate free? I'll have to check my sds

And ingredients But I believe this one is phylate free But I can send you can send you a full size.

I sent I sent a sample here to jesse He says great fragrance, I love it.

Thank you for that But my wife and I are also doing another company called farmstead cottage

We're doing things like room sprays So this is farmhouse caramel apple holiday cottage.

We're also doing carpet and upholstery deodorizer as well as Wax melts that we're going to be doing as well.

So Never would have got into this if I didn't start working in the fragrance company, huh?

Yeah, you guys are so entrepreneurial I know it Um, but it's you know, it's one of the things that once I started doing it

I was like this is pretty fascinating and it's pretty easy to get into and especially things like wax melts

Room sprays, it's low startup costs if you want to start a company doing it very low startup costs

So those are things that we're getting into As well if you guys are interested in maybe some smaller samples of any of that just let me know um,

I would be interested especially with what you said about the number one, uh bnl, um,

I don't want to be offensive, but if you know band bnl from the from the 90s and 2000s, uh, their their name is kind of A little offensive, but they wrote a song and uh

And they talk they had a little line in there about uh perfume or cologne being being poisoned um, and I always

I always laughed at that, but if you've got something that is free of that that actually They interest me because otherwise

I would I tend to wear essential oils. I'm that guy Um, I I love essential oils, but um,

I haven't worn a good cologne in a long time And if it's not doesn't have the bad stuff in it, man That'd be that'd be really cool.

That'd be a huge selling point for everyone listening. That's that's the kind of cologne you want Yeah Yeah, yeah we do a a lot of Reformulations and stuff because that's the big thing now, right?

Everyone Wants what we would call carefree carcinogen free Uh for their candles their soaps

You know body oils everything they want all that to be safe Uh, so we we do a lot of reformulations for people like that So a lot of the stuff that we carry is uh is what we would call carefree so Can I make can

I just make a quick for anyone who's still listening? Yeah, go for it so, um, my uh, my first book

Is uh at the printer and it is uh going to be arriving Here at my house lord willing in a few weeks

And we're getting a big shipment coming in because I have the opportunity to speak at the association of certified biblical counselors

Annual conference here in october. So i'm taking a bunch of books there but for Those or i'm, um on the evermind app, uh for my ministry

Uh, people can download not download but people can access a digital copy in the app

The book is called quit how to stop family Good, and it's a short accessible read.

Uh, and the digital Copy, uh is again available on the app So if you guys have the evermind app you can go in there and you can see it you can sign up for it

If you don't have the evermind app, you can go to evermindadministries .com And you could just click the link right there download the evermind app for free

And then see the free content we have and the paid content and you could lord willing Uh that book and have it be a blessing to you.

It was the germ for that idea started Back in the boys home because family strife was my daily experience when you're working at a home for at -risk teens and by god's grace, uh some studies that I did with some guys who are very strife creating individuals

Um ended up into this book and i'm really hoping that it ends up being a huge blessing to people Great.

Great. John. Is there anything you want to promote while we're in this? Uh promoting all of our stuff I Probably should i'm supposed to be promoting the 1607 project which is a documentary that I uh directed and produced uh for the

The Abbeville institute so you can go to 1607project .com and check it out, but it's uh

Uh, it's sort of an american history lesson and probably not the kind that you've ever encountered

Great. I know i'll definitely be checking that out as I love american history Uh, so with that we want to thank uh, our guest john harris conversations that matter uh for stopping by going through this video this painful video

That we just endured I want to thank him for his insight and of course his time and of course am bruster stopping by uh

I mean, you're just a regular now, you know I mean, you're you're part of striving for eternity as a speaker and all this other stuff

I never get asked to do anything like that, you know But uh, you've made it you've made it well,

I i'm the one guy who just kind of shows up when I when I can't get the tail end throw everything into a tizzy and then just Walk away and then walk away

That does happen from time to time. Yeah, that does happen But we want to thank you for tuning in listening to apologetics live