Highlight: Against Doomsdayism

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This is, oh, this just got dropped, August 23rd, 2022. You may recognize

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David Bonson from his many appearances on national media,

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Fox News, Fox Business. Here is a recent example. I saw your piece titled

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Against Doomdayism. Why did you feel compelled to write that? Why do we need to hear that right now?

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Yeah, I added a segment to my daily market commentary. So inside the DCtoday .com,

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there's a piece called Against Doomsdayism. And I'll tell you why I had to do it, because too many people have adopted the religion of doomsdayism, both left and right.

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I happen to be a movement conservative guy, but I hear too much pessimism and doomsday talk from my friends on the right as well,

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Charles. The world is not ending. People use it as a sort of therapeutic medicine.

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It's a coping mechanism for them to feel negative all the time. It goes against the facts of history.

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It goes against the reality of the great blessings that God has given us that we're living in right now.

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And ultimately, economically, pessimism never pays. You have points in time where traders can make money being pessimistic.

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But long -term, I want to be long humanity. I believe in the animating spirit of free enterprise and the capabilities

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God gave mankind to steward creation. We monetize that in a free market economy and being doomsdayist all the time is silly.

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All I can say is amen, brother. Thanks so much, David, appreciate it. David sounds there like he was raised by like a post -millennialist or something.

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Something. Like a post -millennialist talking about optimism against pessimism. Bleeding it.

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I like it. Fox Business talking about God and God's standards. David Bonson from the

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Bonson Group, welcome to Apology Radio, brother. It's great to be back with you. And I gotta say,

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I'm talking to some post -millennialists there too. I know. Who, you know what I'm saying? Yeah.

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Yeah. A lot of pessimism sometimes, even from those who ought to know better eschatologically.

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Right. So we know, well, two points, and this will lead us into the discussion, talking about economics, talking about money, talking about God and his standards, talking about the world today and culture.

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Two things. Number one, Matthew 28, 18 through 20, there's a standard right there. Prop it up. Jesus has all authority in heaven and on earth.

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That means all authority. And so the goal of the gospel is to win all the nations to Christ, baptize them and to teach them to obey everything

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Jesus commanded us. But he's the one with the final authority. He's the one with all authority.

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And so that's the first thing. The second thing is when we talk about the future of the world, we're talking about Christ putting all of his enemies under his feet.

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And so we have hope. We've got the one who is Lord of all. He's the one who's the center of all of revelation and all of history.

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He has all authority, and we know where the world's going. It's going under the feet of Jesus. And so that's underneath us.

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So those are our presuppositions. There's the foundations. And so - Yeah, you know, Pastor Doug Wilson and I started some correspondence about a year and a half ago, just privately between the two of us about this very subject.

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And we were talking about some of the sociology of a lot of Christians that want to kind of buy some gold and hide away and stock things and sort of take a survivalist mentality.

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And I think it is somewhat doomsdayist. And I think it is somewhat retreatist.

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But we were talking about where it comes from, sometimes theologically, but economically and whatnot. And we ended up taking the correspondence,

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Canon Press did, and they just took it and put it into a book form that they sell at Canon Press called

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Misinflation. And my underlying thesis is that when people give into a doomsday mentality, usually for some benefit of retreat.

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Now, we could be talking about dispensationalists who don't want to engage in the culture, or we could be talking about an

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Anabaptist view of cultural engagement. And we could even be talking about people who claim to be post -millennialists that just feel more comfortable hiding in the hills somewhere.

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But also on a micro level, I think a lot of people in their own lives and families and situations take comfort in being doomsdayist.

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They don't have to deal with the difficulties in their marriage if they just assume all marriages are doomed anyways.

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They don't have to deal with pains in their relationships, with struggles, with their jobs.

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Right now, I think about half of my frustration in cancel culture is with the employers doing the canceling and forcing people into an

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HR Gestapo. But half of my frustration is with the Christians that won't stop whining about it.

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Just fight back. Just do something. Deal with it. Formulate a strategy. Get wise.

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Get bold. That could mean different things in different situations. I don't have all the answers in this 10 seconds, but I do know that whining about it, retreating, assuming all is lost, the big bad so -and -so has got us beat, it isn't

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Christian. And by the way, as I said to Charles Payne, the entire testimony of history says otherwise.

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And so I simply reject any fatalistic sociology as much as I reject a fatalistic theology.