The Misplaced Zeal of Cultural Transformation | Theocast

Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, Justin and I continue our conversation about end-times theology. And this time, we're talking about something that, well, tends to be more optimistic. Transformationalism, Christian nationalism, really a misplaced zeal, where we are thinking the culture should be changing and progressing towards Christianity, but is that what Scripture really teaches?

Justin and I want to look at this from a Reformed and pastoral perspective. We definitely bring in two kingdoms as a play in the opposite direction. We hope this is encouraging to you. Stay tuned.

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Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ. This conversation is about the Christian life from a Reformed, pastoral, and confessional perspective. If you want to know what we're trying to do here, we are trying to clarify the gospel and reclaim the purpose of the kingdom, and that's a big one today, kingdom.

So stay tuned for that. Your host, Justin Perdue. Your host, sir. Man, I'm struggling. Here we go. Your host, sir. Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. And I'm John Moffitt.

I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. There we go. It's like I've never done this before.

You got it out, John. Proud of you, man.

Episode two for today.

John, you know what you're doing right now.

What's that?

You're over there sensationalizing, man, making it look hard as it is.

That's right.

Man, we're excited. This is good. A couple of announcements, this new stuff coming. We've got TheocastU, which is part of our SR membership.

The app's growing.

What else? Go to the website. There's a lot of stuff. There's two new podcasts, Outside Eden. I do with my wife. And then I have one called Kingsman. We're trying to produce more and more material available.

Justin wrote an article recently, which is in our Theonomy podcast. If you haven't read that article, post it on Nine Mark's website. So cool stuff coming our way. And you and I are getting together soon.

By the time this comes out, we might be getting together.

Close to it, anyway. Late June.

Going to come down and see you and your new house and your family. So I'm excited. All right. Enough is enough.

We're going to do some work because we always do work when we get together.

Yeah. Kind of the point of the trips. I'd like to just do a trip where we just hang out. That'd be fun, but we haven't done that yet.

We haven't. Maybe one day.

You know what? We'll do that in glory.

Nice segue, John. Last week's pod, we talked about the fact that so much of the conversation around the end of time and the return of Jesus is fear-based and fear-driven. And how the New Testament actually presents a different perspective on the return of Jesus in particular.

That when Christ returns, that's going to be the realization of our hope. Christ coming back is a hopeful thing for the believer. In fact, the certainty of his return and the certainty of our salvation in him when he returns motivates us to action now.

So that was last week's pod, and we refer you to it. Today's conversation is related. We're kind of considering eschatology again, the end of all things, the last things, the end times, that whole arena.

That's right.

And in a sense, are considering kind of an opposite error. If there is this super fear-driven kind of, man, everything's bad, any thought of the end times, all that governs that conversation is we should be afraid, and that's our motivation.

Then today we're talking about an opposite kind of perspective that effectively says that through our faithfulness and through our diligence and our working, we are going to transform this world. And there will be a kind of golden age ushered in where the nations more or less are Christianized, and the world is just a much, much better place than perhaps it's ever been, and that will occur through the ministry and the work of the church and the ministry and the work of Christians.

And then at the end of all of that, Christ will return. So in one sense, we're talking today about a particular flavor of post-millennial eschatology, meaning Jesus will come back at the end of the millennium.

But this is a very hyper-optimistic perspective. So this is not necessarily the post-millennialism that's existed through history. It's a very popular perspective these days, this hyper-optimistic post-mill view.

It often comes packaged with Christian reconstructionism, where we're going to reconstruct, rebuild Christendom, where we're going to build a Christian society. And sometimes it comes packaged with theonomy, which we've done a couple of pods on recently.

We would refer you to those. Sometimes it comes packaged even with Christian nationalism, though we want to be fair to people that hold these particular views. So I'm not saying that that's always the case or necessarily even the case.

But this has a lot of implications. Why do we care about this? And we're going to get into this, especially in the second half of the pod. Why do we care so much about this conversation? Well, we're convinced that the mission of the church and the clarity of the gospel are at stake.

And these errors can produce a lot of fallout for individual believers and for churches as institutions as well. So we think it's a worthwhile conversation. So let's begin, John, by talking a little bit more, maybe in depth, about this view of a golden age to come and even this hyper-optimism and why, for us, it doesn't hold biblically.

Because we don't think it does, just laying our cards out on the table.

The Millennium, the Last Days, and the Hope of Christ's Return

We've kind of added an element to the Theocast. We've been really emphasizing resting in Christ, which is to clarify the gospel part. Without the clarity of the gospel, it removes the rest of Christ. And then after that, I think believers can slip back into a lack of joy and really pietism when we don't understand the purpose of the kingdom.

We're now focusing on the wrong thing.

Yeah.

I would say some of the issues with this. Someone asked me the other day, are you an optimistic amillennialist? And I said, you're going to have to clarify what you mean by that.

Do you want to explain what amillennialism is real quick?

Not really. It's a different pot for a different time.

It's that we don't understand. So we are redemptive historical guys. We understand that prophecy works in certain ways in Scripture. We uphold typology. Basically, the way that revelation works, we do not understand that there is a literal thousand years, but that the millennium, like the age of the Messiah, is inaugurated with his first coming, and he will come back at the end of history, and our redemption will be consummated.

And it's already not yet, all those things.

It's an unfortunate title, because ah means none. And we don't not believe in a millennium. We do believe in a millennium.

We think we're living in it right now.

That's right.

We think it's typographical, like a lot of things are.

It's metaphorical and typological.

Metaphorical and typological, yeah.

Which is true of, like you said, many things in the Bible.

Right.

We would be historically post-mill from its perspective, but a more modern-day clarification, which is amill. And this is why this particular individual asked me, are you an optimistic amill? And I said, no, I'm actually not.

I'm a pessimistic amill.

I would just say I'm a realistic amill person.

And what I mean by pessimism is that the world does not give me anything to hope in.

Right.

No, I hope in Christ, but the world, that's why there's pessimism in me, or realism is a good way of saying that.

Yeah.

And here's why. When you read the New Testament authors, the epistles being given to the churches, not just once and not in just one area where there might have been persecution, but the other churches don't have to experience that.

You see in multiple churches in multiple locations where Paul or Peter or John are giving the concept that the return of Christ is preeminent. It's near. It's right on the edge. That's how they're supposed to live their life, for it is at hand.

I love that illustration. As close as your hand is to you, this is how close Christ's return is. That's the expectation. You should live every day with the expectation that it returns today. Well, and that makes sense if a world is in a constant decline and slide down.

When it talks about in Romans, is it Romans 8, that the earth is groaning, waiting for its final consummation and restoration. The reason we would struggle with some of the views of a transformation of culture or a progression of culture is that one requires time.

Number two, it's been 2 ,000 years, and if you want to say we've made progress, we've made progress in science, we've made progress in human development, meaning we can live a little bit longer than you did 200 years ago, but has the earth itself and humanity made progress?

No, I would not see that. I would say whatever progress we have seen is not relevant to what the text tells us. That would be my initial setup, Justin. It's just the reason why this is important is that if you're placing your hope and expectation on life becoming easier, and the world is becoming Christianized by a majority, if that's what you're expecting, then you're going to be putting your hope and energy into something that we're going to argue is not in Scripture.

Justin Perdue. Yeah, exactly. The title of this pod is The Misplaced Zeal of Cultural Transformation. We trust people mean well, and there is a lot of zeal and a lot of energy and effort expended to see the culture transformed and to see this world changed.

We would argue that there's a lot of things that we put effort into in terms of the kingdom of Christ on earth, but to transform the world itself is not where those energies and efforts need to go. We're going to get into that more in a minute.

I do think, just listening to you, I have a number of thoughts in my head. I agree with you. I think that humanity has always been the same. I think that there's nothing new under the sun. In that sense, in God's common grace, there have been a number of things that have occurred and some progress has been made, common grace level and common kingdom level.

I'm not even going to diminish the common grace effects of things like the Protestant Reformation. That's all entirely good and right.

Hospital systems, medicine, all that kind of stuff.

All of that stuff is good, and we should be concerned for common grace and the common kingdom. We may get into redemptive and common kingdom considerations later. From the perspective of the cause of the kingdom of Christ, you and I would both agree that the gospel has gone to the ends of the earth.

The Lord said it would, and it has. There are people from all corners of the globe who have heard the message of Christ and have received him in faith and are now united to him. We praise the Lord for that.

God is saving his people, and he's going to continue to do that until Christ returns, and we rejoice in that. But the idea, like you said, that there's going to be this golden age where things are going to continue to get better and better because of the influence of the church and because of the Christianizing, effectively, of the nations.

Not that everybody becomes Christian, per se, but that there's going to be Judeo-Christian principle that's going to rule the land, universally speaking, and that's going to produce all this good. I don't think the New Testament even— I mean, forget the Old for a minute, but I don't think the New Testament lends itself to that understanding that things are just going to continue to get better until the return of Christ, finally.

If we're faithful, then that's what we're going to see occur. You're going to talk in a minute about 1 Peter. You already alluded to Romans 8. I think that's an important text, that there is a subjection to futility that occurs with respect to the created order at the curse.

When Adam falls, breaks the covenant of works, the Lord ends up cursing the creation on Adam's account. That curse still exists, and that curse is not going to be reversed until Christ comes back. Even as we sing, like in Joy to the World, for example, He comes to make His blessings flow, far as the curse is found.

That's about the second coming of Christ. When He comes back, that will be true. But until then, the creation will groan, and it will continue to be subjected to futility, and it is longing to be freed from its bondage.

That will only occur when the Lord comes back and our bodies are resurrected. That's what Romans 8 says. We want to hold on to that. I think that's a piece. Even in the Olivet Discourse, Jesus is speaking on multiple horizons there.

He's answering several questions, some about the immediate near term, some about the end of all things, and some about the interim, between now, when He's going to ascend and when He's going to come back.

It's very clear in His language that when He talks about wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes and all these hard things, it's very plain that those things will characterize the entire era of the Messiah.

For you and me, as Reformed AMIL guys, aka the era of the Messiah, is the millennium, the last days, right? The Hebrews 1. In these last days, God has spoken to us through His Son. We're living in that time, and the entire era between Christ's ascension and His second coming, we would understand, will be characterized by strife and suffering and difficulty and hardship, and then the end will come.

These are the birth pains, right? Ultimately, the birth, so to speak, the return of Christ, will come at the end. We don't think there's any reason, biblically speaking, that we should expect things to just get better and better and better and better and better to where there's not this kind of strife and suffering in the world, and then Christ will come back.

Jon Moffitt. That's right.

That's not to say that there hasn't been times where Christianity has been a predominant religion in a country, and that country has benefited from it.

Justin Perdue That's sort of what I meant by even the Protestant Reformation, the benefits of it, for example.

Jon Moffitt I think the United States has seen benefits from there being a lot of people. Justin Perdue. Much of Europe. Jon Moffitt. Yeah, everyone has. We're not ignoring the fact that Christianity can be powerfully beneficial to a culture.

Much of the university programs that are here in the United States, the hospital programs, have all built a birth out of the Reformation, which we're super thankful for. But there's a difference between….

Jon Moffitt. And Roman Catholicism, too. Let's be honest, right?

Justin Perdue Yeah, so we can be thankful for the outcome. Go ahead.

Jon Moffitt I would say that's kind of making the point in one sense because there are many people anyway that do not hold a Reformed understanding of theology that are motivated for education and health care and other things, too.

I can acknowledge that Christianity can have a massive impact on culture and benefits for God's glory and be thankful for it and be involved in it and celebrate it. But there's a difference between….

Jon Moffitt. As a citizen of the common kingdom.

Justin Perdue. That's right.

This is what God's doing at this time, but this is not what is to be expected for the entire planet.

Jon Moffitt. Right.

Justin Perdue We mentioned this back in the Theonomy pod, where you do have entire countries now that once used to be dominated by Christianity that you can't even hardly find it there anymore.

Jon Moffitt. No, that's true. I was just going to say, I think that whenever we see the common kingdom benefit of Christianity that does exist when it becomes predominant in a land, whenever we see that as inextricably linked to the mission of the church, that's when we have a problem because the Lord is building His church.

That has never stopped, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. That has always been true and always will be. The ebbs and flows of nation states and how those nation states are doing when it comes to common grace and the common kingdom, that can come and go, but the building of the church will remain.

The nation of China is a great example. That is a land that is communism, materialism in terms of a worldview, oppression of people, all kinds of things. That's true of the nation holistically, and the Lord is building His church in that land.

To conflate the kind of common grace, common kingdom peace that might be an outflow of the resurgence of Christianity in a land to conflate that with the mission of the church proper is a problem, and we're going to get into that.

The End of All Things Is at Hand

Jon Moffitt. So I think that it's healthy to think about how the New Testament writers wanted the readers to live life with the future in mind. I mean, let's just go to, I've already mentioned this last week, but I'll do it again this week.

1 Peter 4, 7, the end of all things is at hand. So he's coming down to the end of the letter, therefore be sober, self-controlled, and sober-minded, right? So he's like, because the end is here, you don't have time to waste.

You don't have time to be intoxicated with worldly ideologies. You don't have time to sit around, because Satan understands it's coming to an end, so he's on the attack. We're in a war for the gospel.

We're trying to put down the kingdom of darkness, bring up the kingdom of light. James says this. I got like two things going over here, two, a laptop and an iPad going on here. But James 5, 8 says, you also be patient.

I know.

Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Establish your hearts on what, right? Everything that he said before, which James is talking about, the establishment of the heart, they're bickering and fighting each other about temporal stuff.

He's like, what are you doing? The end is here, and you should be establishing your hearts in the hope of Christ, in the gospel, finding unity, self-sacrifice, and yet you guys are worrying about what's happening here.

It's like, I love my brothers who teach these things because they do have a genuine desire for the gospel and purity and holiness, but it does take your eyes off of the vaporness of your life and the permanent, right on the edge of Christ's return, where you live every day on that expectation of this could be it.

And again, we already talked about this last week, not out of fear, but as a joy. Like, all right, he may come back today, I can endure this. He may come back today, I can endure this. That is the language Peter gives.

That is the language that James gives. I think that's the language that Paul gives. So to live in a life where you're enduring suffering, you're enduring trials, and you're like, okay, but I don't have to do this much longer because he's coming back.

That is the feeling that he gave them.

The Mission of the Church and the Two Kingdoms

So let's talk a little bit, John, about what we would frame as method and messaging of the church. We'll take this in two pieces. We'll begin with method. And so here, I think really we're having a conversation about the way the church operates and what the church focuses on and even institutionally what its mission is.

And a brief comment on Two Kingdoms doctrine before we even go here, because I think it's good for us to just lay these cards out. John and I would both affirm.

If you don't know what that is, we've got a link in the description.

Yeah, great. There you go. Yeah, we did an episode with David Vandroon a while back. So John and I would both ascribe to what's known as a Reformed Two Kingdoms doctrine. And that's the Two Kingdoms being the common kingdom of the world and the redemptive kingdom of Christ.

The common kingdom of the world, in brief, is established by the covenant God made with Noah. And all human beings, believers and unbelievers alike, are citizens of the common kingdom. God sends the rain on the just and the unjust and causes the sun to shine on the evil and the good.

That kind of stuff, right? But then the redemptive kingdom is unique to God's people and is established by the promise and the accomplishment of the covenant of grace. And so effectively now, in the new covenant era, the institutional form of the kingdom of Christ on earth is the church.

And so we are, as members of the church, citizens of the common kingdom of the world and we are citizens of the redemptive kingdom of Christ. But when it comes to the mission of the church, we're talking about the mission of the redemptive kingdom.

What is that? And so this is the perspective that John and I bring to this conversation. And we have a lot of concerns. If you have this hyper-optimistic understanding that the church is called institutionally to work to usher in a golden age that will be the precursor to Christ's return, that's going to affect how you think about a lot of stuff.

And I want to be really clear. John and I both affirm, you heard John say this a minute ago, we should, as human beings, citizens of the common kingdom, and as Christians living in the common kingdom, we should engage in civic duty and civic responsibility of all kinds.

We should pursue justice for all of our neighbors in as much as we're able to do so. But those are things that we're doing individually as the Lord gives us opportunity and giftedness, aptitude, et cetera, to do that stuff.

But it's a very different conversation when we start talking about the church as an institution. Us together as the local church, what are we called by God to do in the scriptures? That's what we mean by method.

So, John, do you want to wade into these waters a little bit about the method of the church?

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Yeah, Justin, I think this is even connected to Calvinism. You and I both are believing in the sovereignty of God and salvation. So because people are dead in their trespasses and sin, we understand how God saves someone, which is using the Spirit from bringing them from death to life.

So we understand the method of salvation. So that's going to dictate how we proclaim the messaging of the gospel, right? We're not trying to persuade people to change their mind by means of evidence. We rely on the power of the gospel to change their heart and mind, because that's how God has determined that.

We extol Christ and then trust that the Lord will use that.

Right. When it comes down to the function of the church, the way in which we have described it in the past is that the church helps people die with dignity and hope, right? So we're here to care for the saints, make sure they grow in their faith and love, keep their eyes off this world, right?

Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things, which is what you eat and what you drink and where you live, will be added to you in the new eschaton. Don't worry about that now. I've got, I go, I love this.

I go to prepare a place for you and yet we're trying to prepare it here. We know you said that, Jesus, right? So the method is, we believe that God's taking care of the next place, our next home. He's got that whole thing.

He created it in the beginning. He can recreate it again. He even tells us, I'm going away to prepare something for you. I need you to do what, right? Seek first the kingdom of God and that kingdom isn't a physical kingdom that's evident here.

So the method is, we understand it's what's to come. Therefore, our messaging is going to follow that. So we are encouraging the saints. We're building them up. We're helping them be strong, love and care for each other so that we can be salt and light in the kingdom and the message of the good news of the kingdom is spreading to the globe.

So there's where you can see your method is driving your messaging. You get the method, a different method. I've seen it change, where Justin, we are more concerned about politics and culture and that's what we end up emphasizing than when Peter says, rest fully on the grace to come.

So our eyes are looking towards something that is not here. Whereas if your method is pushing you to do culture transformation, then your messaging is really focused in on what's happening in the here and now.

Justin Perdue. No, it's very true. And like you said, you end up getting cultural sermons rather than gospel sermons. You're spot on about that. And it's not that we can't ever talk about anything that's cultural or culturally situated in the pulpit.

That's not what I mean to say. But I think we need to let the text drive that, rather than seeking always to say all of these very culturally informed things and apply the scripture so much through the lens of we need to change the culture and here's how bad the world is and here's what we need to do to make it better, rather than preaching Christ for sinners in the midst of a world that's fallen and broken and in need of redemption.

I think what's critical for us to remember...

Jon Moffitt. Can I have one more thought to that?

Justin Perdue Yeah, please.

Jon Moffitt. Some people ask me, don't you want to create this place to be a safer place for your children? I'm like, well, yeah, I'd like my children to all be saved and not die. That's exactly what I wanted, but that's not the world we live in.

This is why Peter, even in, I go back to 1 Peter, but James, I mean, how many times has James talked about suffering? But he goes, even though you suffer for a little while, and he means, I think, the suffering of spiritual persecution and also physical persecution.

And I think that little while is lifelong.

Jon Moffitt. Yes, yes. So this is why there is a hope that's beyond the grave. There's a hope beyond the current life. And when you take your eyes off of that and you become optimistic in many ways, I think you're changing.

Like, Justin, you and I, we've done funerals. We've had to walk through people losing their children to cancer. You know, we've got people with cancer in our church. It's like there's just a lot of suffering and pain.

And this messaging often can get, for me, I think it becomes discouraging because you're not experiencing that which is being proclaimed versus I am suffering, and this suffering is for the sake of the elect, like what he's just said in Thessalonians, for a little while until God is done redeeming his, and then he comes back.

So anyways, I was a longer thought than I wanted to interject there.

Justin Perdue. That's okay.

I'm in agreement with you, man, and I think that certainly we care about our neighbor and we want to love our neighbors well. I've already said that. So don't hear what we're not saying. And at the same time, there is a very kind of earthbound perspective that's wrapped up in all of this, and there is an overemphasis on this world.

And there is, I know we've used this word a lot, there is a kind of hyper-optimism about what we can turn this world into. Nobody would ever use this language, but it comes across like we can kind of turn Babylon into the new Jerusalem, and we can work and really make this darn close to like heaven on earth if we do our job right.

And I do not find any biblical warrant for that and any biblical merit for that. In fact, it seems, as we've said so many times already, that the suffering and the difficulty and the persecution and all those kinds of things is what we can and should expect in this life.

And the church is always going to be a counterculture. It's not going to be the majority culture, it doesn't seem. It certainly wasn't in the first century. It's certainly not how the apostles write. They don't seem to indicate that we need to be striving for some kind of worldly and political influence, but rather what we need to be doing is preaching Christ in light of the world to come.

And so the emphasis is always future-looking. It's life after this one, the life beyond the grave, the world to come. And this is where you and I rejoice in the otherworldliness of confessionalism because we understand our job as pastors is to prepare people for that life and that world that's coming.

And we want to love one another and build one another up now and care for one another now in light of that. But we don't assume that we're going to work in such a way that this life here becomes the goal.

And I fear that with the best of intentions, that's where the zeal can be somewhat misplaced because we get so concerned with transforming this world and this culture that some of the otherworldliness that's inherent to the church's mission and that's a direct implication of the gospel message, some of that stuff gets lost and obscured.

I know I've read this verse before, but to me it's so helpful and clarifying. This is, again, we did most of this last week in 1 Peter, but I want to retrace and just do this again, 1 Peter 1 .13, therefore in response to the inheritance that's waiting for us, therefore preparing your minds for action.

So Justin, sometimes people say you guys are radical to kingdoms. By the way, throwing the word radical in front of something doesn't...

You can basically dismiss anyone.

That's right. So you guys are radical, meaning that you're bunker down, you don't care about culture. Yeah, you don't care about anything. And no, we're actually arguing for the exact opposite. We're praying that God gives us greater boldness, more self-sacrifice, more clarity on the advancement of the gospel because the more people who hear the gospel, the more hope there is in the world, right?

So this is why he says, guys, therefore, gentlemen, men and women, therefore preparing your minds for action and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Guys, I'm not trying to be isolationist. I'm not trying to be a biblicist, but I don't know how else you interpret that in light of a lot of passages that say the similar phrase where you are called to action because of what God is doing, right?

So he's like, I am preparing for you. I've got this set for you. Keep your focus here. And that's what's drawing your actions. So this goes back to the method of messaging. So we're getting ready. We're protecting our hearts.

We're protecting our minds because, Justin, we are looking for a new heavens and a new earth. We're not transforming this one. Now, you guys are like, man, you guys are really just belaboring this. Well, look, for whatever reason, Christian nationalism and transformationalism and NAR, N-A-R.

Reconstructionism and all that.

Yeah, all of that is like on the rise. And I think it's pulling our eyes off of the emphasis that we should be. Man, it's like all of a sudden we're becoming self-righteous. There's this thing about transgender people reading in libraries.

It's like the whole hot topic. And you guys don't care about this. And you're just going to sit back. And then we get accused of like, oh, well, you're just going to let women be pastors and you don't care about homosexuality.

It's like, whoa, what happened? Why are we turning the boat upside down?

Well, yeah.

And it's all because of a perceived lack of cultural activism, you know. And I would just make this observation. I've never said this out loud before. And I'm thinking this. To me, I mean, theonomy is its own conversation because that's like a theological stream of thought.

And I understand that there's a lot of that behind Christian nationalism as well. But it strikes me that the reconstructionism stuff and even Christian nationalism as well, they are so uniquely American in our day.

Now, they may have been concerns of Britain years ago, centuries ago. I think Britain was prone to the era of British Israelism, you know, where you kind of see the plan of God uniquely through the lens of your nation.

I think the UK, that was true. I think American Israelism is real as well, where we tend to kind of see so much of Scripture and the plan of God and the work of God in the church and the society through the lens of America.