Election Thoughts and New Poll: "Churchgoing Biden Voters Question the Bible at Alarming Rates"

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. If you'll excuse me a moment,

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I'm enjoying a very nice mug of some warm cinnamon apple cider.

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That is so good. It is good for your throat. It's good for your health. I mean, an apple a day keeps the doctor away.

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So putting it in liquid form and adding cinnamon to it, I mean, you don't get any better than that.

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It's awesome for fall. I just have to say, as I'm getting older, fall is becoming my favorite season.

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It was summer. I still love summer. It's kind of close. Fall is great though. And I realize things are dying in the fall, but it's so pretty.

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The colors are just great. The crisp, clean air. I love looking and seeing for miles.

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So love the fall. But every four years, fall can be a little tense at this time, can it?

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And today is no exception because we are just hours away from the greatest, most significant, important election of our lifetime.

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And the question really is whether or not we will accept the Great Reset. I really think that's what's going on.

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And if you don't know what I'm talking about, watch the last video I made on why I'm voting for Donald Trump in 2020 when

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I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. You'll see what I mean. Man, that stuff's good.

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We're gonna talk a little bit today. I'm gonna give you my last minute pitch kind of why I vote for Donald Trump.

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We're gonna talk about a few things I've seen online over the past few days from Kamala Harris, from Joe Biden. I may even play, you know what?

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We'll probably start with this. Well, I'm gonna play a little clip from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary as well that I saw, and we're gonna talk about pietism a little.

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The pietists are out in force today. They are, when you hear something like, well, it really doesn't matter who's in the

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White House because Jesus is king. Well, look, Jesus is king, but it does matter who's in the

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White House. Or if you hear something like, Donald Trump isn't your savior, Joe Biden's not your savior.

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Well, of course, we know that. Does anyone really think that Donald Trump is taking away our sins, expiations going on because Trump's in the

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White House? No, I've never met one person. So it's like a straw man, but it's kind of a pietist kind of over -spiritualization of an issue that doesn't need to be over -spiritualized.

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So we'll talk a little bit about that. And last but not least, this is super important. This is really the reason

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I'm doing this today. We have a guest who is a political consultant who actually helped, kind of was the brains behind a poll that came out, which asks some questions that I've wanted asked for a long time.

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Is there a connection between theological conservatism and political conservatism? And I've always known the answer is yes.

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I mean, and we've even seen polls in the past. Evangelicals tend to be right -wingers, et cetera. But this year is different because we have several prominent conservative, quote unquote, evangelical

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Christians, theologically. That's what they claim at least. And they're telling us, no, you can be

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Biden, you can be Trump, you can be liberal, you can be

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Republican, conservative. It doesn't really have an effect somehow on whether or not you're an

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Orthodox theologically. And this poll might suggest a little otherwise. Now, of course, we have to bring in our interpretive understanding and biblical understanding of ethics, et cetera.

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But I'll just put it this way. It's definitely true that the more

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Orthodox you are, theologically, the more politically conservative you are. It's just a fact, guys.

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So we're gonna talk a little bit about that. Let's do some other things though first.

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I'm gonna start out with something that I saw yesterday. And I'm gonna just play for a minute of this.

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I don't wanna go into super deep analysis, but this is kind of just like, guys, look, we can't ignore the seminaries.

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Don't think for a minute. If you're a Southern Baptist especially, don't think for a minute that the social justice, the woke, that whole issue is dying.

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Or that was a year ago, that was two years ago. That's gone. I mean, I've had conservatives tell me, oh, some of these woke professors, they've apologized to no one else.

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Public remarks they made were heretical or wrong. And then they secretly will say, recant them.

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I've heard this stuff. I've never seen any evidence for any of it. And then that's not the way that you correct a wrong teaching.

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But this is a clip. I just wanna show you this. There's many other clips I could show you, but this is one that I saw yesterday.

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Woke Preacher Clips, Woke Preacher TV on Twitter exposed this, and it's

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Walter Strickland. He's a professor at the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He's the one that was talking a few years ago about teaching

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James Cone liberation theology kind of stuff. And there's many quotes.

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I've shown you one of them. I actually even have here where he talks about basically understanding the gospel is loving

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God and loving neighbor. Well, no, that's the law. So he conflates the gospel and the law and then credits Dr. James Cone with allowing him to see this new vista, this new space, a new avenue to allow the gospel to be made manifest.

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So he helps, James Cone helps this heretic, James Cone, helps

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Walter Strickland understand the fullness of the gospel. And here's a clip. This is from June of this year, guys.

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This is June. So this is not ancient history. This is a few months ago. This is what Walter Strickland said.

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One of the things, this talk is a mess, but here's one of the things. Christianity and race in America were intertwined at its inception because Christianity was the thing used to be able to say, how can we enslave these people yet evangelize them?

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And so how is it that we can construct or imagine a faith that sets somebody's soul free but keeps their body belonging to us?

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Not exactly a rallying cry, is it, for being a Christian? Hey, become a

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Christian. We're the religion that was set up to manipulate and subjugate people because it could be used that way.

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The gospel that we have is used to oppress people. Come be a Christian. That's one of the reasons

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I say that the woke church is the last stop, generally, before someone just leaves the church altogether, leaves

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Christianity. Why would you wanna be part of that? You really have two options. Option number one is everyone who came before you, just about, they were not

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Christians. They were all fakers using Christianity, and that's it.

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Or number two, they were Christians, but the gospel's just not enough. You need something else, gospel plus something in order to have a truly just society, et cetera.

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So that's kind of the two directions that social justice warriors will go in inside of evangelicalism and Christianity in general.

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Marxists tend to do this, though. They tend to look at everything as a top -down, artificial power grab of some kind that's, it's a pre -plan because Marxists tend to do this.

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They tend to, they're always looking, it's projection. They're always looking at doing power grabs and how to implement things from the top down.

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That's how they think. But not everything's like that. In fact, culture's not really like that. Culture develops organically.

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And in this case, in the case of American slavery, you have slave ships coming to different areas at different times, and people are making different decisions about whether, how to preach the gospel.

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And what this does is it gets into the motives of people preaching the gospel to slaves.

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And it says, in a blanket statement, just whitewashes them all and says, well, they were all doing it just to subjugate and oppress.

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Now, this is historically inept. It is. It's just, it's stupid, is what it is.

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But this is the kind of thing you'll hear from a James Cone. You'll hear it from a number of liberation theologians.

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They take something that's complicated. They make it into a cartoon. And the cartoon in this case is that the gospel itself is somehow used as a tool of subjugation.

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Now, I want you to listen to this next section very carefully because it's important.

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Here's what Walter Strickland says about the gospel. But the issue is, is that as that gospel was preached to slaves to keep it in check, the people who were propagating that gospel to them actually took it on themselves.

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And so now we have a gospel that's a half gospel that says, you know, your soul can be free, but your body doesn't matter.

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A half gospel, all right. There's a lot of other terrible things that are in this, but a half gospel, a half gospel.

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So in other words, you don't have the full gospel if the gospel that was being preached that motivated the black churches and missionary movements and et cetera, those kinds of things, the things that Booker T.

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Washington says he was grateful for, though he did not like slavery, he was grateful that, hey, I learned the gospel.

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That wasn't a true gospel because it was a half gospel. So what's the other half of the gospel?

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That's the liberation theology. It's some kind of political liberation. Now, let's be clear about what the gospel is.

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The gospel is, it is salvation from slavery to sin, which separates us from God.

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Jesus came, someone who knew not sin, to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God.

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He made a way that we could be in a right relationship with him. And as Paul says, regardless of whether we are male, female, slave, or free man, that's what the gospel does.

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It transcends that, those social relationships, and it makes a way that we are all equal in the sight of God.

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We're all equal in the sight of God in the sense that we have the Imago Dei in us already, and we're all equally in need of salvation.

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But in the church, in the institution that represents the people of God, the social differences that exist in the outside world, they don't matter in the sense that it's not like if you're rich, you got, well, 90 % gospel.

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And if you're poor, you got 10 % gospel. It doesn't come in percentages. You're either redeemed and in Christ, or you're not.

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And there's examples I can give you. I've done them in some other episodes. I've brought some of this up. But there are examples of churches where you had slave owners, you had slaves worshiping together.

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And look, this isn't a defense of all the abuse that took place during slavery.

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It's not a defense of the laws that regulated it. Many of them were unjust. It's wrong to say, you can't. Our state says we don't want slave insurrections.

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Therefore, you can't teach slaves to read because they'll read some radical abolitionist literature that will inspire them to have an insurrection.

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Well, that's wrong. And I'm glad that people like Stonewall Jackson rebelled against that and said, I'm teaching them to read.

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They need to read the Bible. So yeah, there's a lot of wrong things that happened. But don't you dare take the pure gospel.

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And when it's being preached, say, well, it's just a half gospel because it was just spiritual. It did not bring about some kind of political change, a political revolution.

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Political, it didn't throw off all the, it changed the political order somehow. Therefore, it just must have not been the gospel.

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If you go down that path, what does that say about the Apostle Paul and all the oppression against the Jews from the

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Romans and Roman slavery where there were gladiators? They didn't have those in Alabama. Where sex slavery was something normalized.

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Where the temple prostitutes, everyone just went in Corinth to the temple prostitutes.

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I mean, you wanna talk about some bad systems, some bad religions, some bad oppression, some bad colonization.

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Let's talk about that. And how did Paul deal with that? How did Jesus deal with slavery in his parables?

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How did the Mosaic law treat it? If you're not careful, you're gonna start saying that a lot of these people, they were just preaching a half gospel.

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We know better than the Bible. That's the danger of this. And that's why I'll say it again.

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The woke church is the last step before someone just leaves Christianity altogether. Because they look back in the past and they say, wait a minute.

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There are all these Christians that were part of a country in which women couldn't vote. And all these Christians who believe that arranged marriages were fine and the divine right of kings, they just accepted that.

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And slavery and man, all these horrible Christians. And then pretty soon you realize, well,

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I guess the gospel doesn't have any real power. Didn't accomplish what it was meant to accomplish. I guess

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I'll just ditch this thing. Because I'm looking for something that's gonna create a political revolution and get rid of Trump.

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And I'm sure Walter Strickland is a nice guy. Don't have any personal problem. On the contrary, I wanna see this guy repent to say, you know what?

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That was wrong. That is false teaching. This is what the true gospel is. And it's not a half gospel. I'd love to see Southeastern publicly apologize for this kind of thing.

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But it's been a couple of years now and I haven't seen that. And people that keep defending it, saying, oh, they've changed secretly or something.

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Well, this is from June of this year. Now, how does this relate? Well, I'm gonna show you something. This is from July 21st of this year.

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Biden calls for a public credit reporting agency. Now, if you are under the impression, if you're a social justice warrior evangelical and you think, well, gospel is not enough, or it's a half gospel.

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If you're just preaching what scripture calls the true gospel, salvation from sin, that's just a half gospel.

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Cause you need salvation from some kind of oppression. And we're gonna think about oppression in the social justice sense.

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Then you're gonna need something more than the true gospel. You're gonna need something like what

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Biden called for, a public credit reporting agency. Yes, this centralized authority will ensure that things are fair.

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Let me read for you the relevant portion. This is the theme of unity.

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The document is the country's income inequality gap, no doubt spurred by the recent protests after the killing of George Floyd and others like Breonna Taylor, but also a persisting and complicated issue our country faces.

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The unity task force members foresee the closing of the income inequality gap by creating a new agency within the

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CFPB that would provide an alternative to the three credit bureaus. The public credit reporting agency is an attempt to provide a non -discriminatory credit reporting alternatives to the private agencies.

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The policy announcement said, it would require all federal lending programs to use the public credit report agency to evaluate borrower's credit worthiness, including for home lending and student loans.

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Two of the most enabling factors when acquiring wealth in our country today. Of course, under the

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FCRA, this is current status quo, the three credit bureaus cannot see the race of consumers nor sex or sexual orientation.

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How they will determine the race of individuals is yet to be seen, but perhaps a rewriting of the FCRA or other governing laws would be a means to do so.

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Now, let me break this down for you, what this is saying. You can get a loan, but external factors like your sex, who you are, male or female, or now the

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Democrats think there's hundreds of genders, et cetera, who you are is not going to be the thing that determines necessarily, and it is not disclosed, it's not allowed to be disclosed publicly, your credit score.

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So really, and this is how we've been running things, it's been based on responsibility, on merit.

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Are you responsible with your money? That's the kind of thing that's going to determine your credit score. That's not fair though, because there are barriers that certain people face in this society, because it's, let's just face it, it's a racist, sexist, homophobic society, right?

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That's what social justice warriors believe. And so we need a way to adjust for that, because there's disparities, the disparities somehow prove.

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And of course, they don't always prove that. You never hear about whether, if there's an income gap between straight people and homosexuals, you never hear about that, do you?

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But when it's to their advantage, they like to echo it from the tops of houses, that there's a problem because there's this gap, and the gap proves that there's an injustice going on, we're gonna correct it by using another injustice, because that is an injustice.

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Rather than looking on your merits and just, are you responsible? We're gonna look at, hey, you're a male, you're a white person, you're straight.

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Well, you're not gonna be able to take advantage of some of the programs, or you're not gonna be able to have as high of a credit score as you would have if you were in some disenfranchised group.

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Now, the reason I bring this up, not just to say, hey, this is where the Democratic Party sweeps in and takes advantage of social justice evangelicals and said, hey, your gospel's just a half gospel, we got tools for you to really make things fair, but this relates to the last podcast

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I did where I talked about the Great Reset. And I think I might've mentioned in that China's social credit score,

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China already has something like this. Now, of course, they have a different barometer that they use, but they even have facial recognition software in major cities, and you walk around and it can recognize who you are, and it can drop your credit score if you, let's say, cross the street at the wrong time, that kind of thing.

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So, look to the future, look to China if Biden and Harris get in. That's not gonna happen necessarily right away, but it can happen quicker than you think.

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And this will subvert justice. How long before this kind of thinking gets into law? Someone's standing before you while they stole a car.

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Wait a minute, though. Take off the blindfold from Lady Justice. Are they in some kind of a disenfranchised group?

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You know, maybe they were gluten -free and because of that, they had to pay so much money for their food, and so they were in need and they needed a car and they stole it.

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Let's make the sentence less severe. You think I'm joking. Now, I mean,

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I am a little bringing up gluten -free because that's not exactly a protected group, but the victimology thing is so,

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I mean, it's whatever the sociologists say is a victim. There's nothing scientific really about it.

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You have to start off with assumptions and then you create a system, which is supposedly scientific. So Biden is for this kind of thing.

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Now, let me show you one more thing. Here's Harris. Check this out. Equality suggests, oh, everyone should get the same amount.

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The problem with that, not everybody's starting out from the same place. So if we're all getting the same amount, but you started out back there and I started out over here, we could get the same amount, but you're still gonna be that far back behind me.

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It's about giving people the resources and the support they need so that everyone can be on equal footing and then compete on equal footing.

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Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place. Looks so nice.

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It's gonna be utopia. You get a good view of the stars. Here's the thing, guys. What if you're a

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Christian and you don't believe in sleeping your way to the top, like certain Democratic vice presidential candidates does that mean you have a disadvantage?

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Of course it won't. Of course it won't. Now, instead of starting the race where everyone is supposed to start and we all have barriers of some kind, even being rich can be a barrier because let's face it, a lot of people who are poor rags to riches stories, they'll tell you it's because I was poor because I had disadvantages,

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I worked hard. Some people squander the money that they're given because they were born with a silver spoon.

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So look, everyone's different. Everyone has different barriers. Everyone has different challenges that they have to excel in.

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And the United States has been about equality before the law. Well, this is the reverse of that. This is ushering in unfairness in the name of fairness.

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And whenever you hear equity, diversity, inclusion, just realize that the diversity and the inclusion mean the opposite.

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Diversity does not mean diversity. Diversity means conformity. People that think like us.

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Inclusion means exclusion. Get rid of the bigots. And equity means not equity.

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It sounds good. It sounds like everyone's gonna be fair, but you end up having to create an unfair system to try to supposedly make things fair.

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This is calling good evil and evil good is the opposite of what they say it means. And Kamala Harris is totally for this.

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This is the social justice movement exactly. And that's what we're looking at tomorrow, guys.

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Are we going to have the same understanding that we've had for now over a thousand years of English common law tradition that's been inherited in the

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United States and in our laws? Are we going to have the constitution? This doesn't work with the constitution.

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Are we going to have the great reset? And if Joe Biden gets in, we'll most likely go that direction.

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Here's an article. There's several of these saying that there's a sign that evangelical support for Trump is waning.

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And we'll see what happens in the exit polls and everything. But I don't trust necessarily the mainstream to understand what an evangelical is, but I would not be surprised if self -described evangelicals are going for Biden more now because of what you just saw from Walter Strickland and all the other professors and evangelical elites who preach similar things, who sound like the

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Kamala Harris video you just saw. There's one reason. And of course, look, there's dangers in this.

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You start going down this path of redefining justice. I just want to talk about the orthodoxy and the political conservatism, religious conservatism,

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Christian conservatism, orthodox theology, that kind of thing. If you start going down the progressive path politically and you're going to accept the social justice stuff, then that changes fundamentally the definition of justice, what justice is.

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Because if someone has a need in the minds of the sociologists or the economists, et cetera, it's the responsibility of those who are able to supply that need to supply it through forced coercion usually.

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So if that's true, what's the greatest need of all of human history? Well, it's salvation in Christ.

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So does that mean God owes everyone salvation that they must all, if it's within his power, that they must receive the gospel, they must go to heaven, this is their need is to be forgiven of their sins.

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God must owe them forgiveness. No, of course not. And an orthodox person says, wait, hold on. But if you're gonna be consistent and you accept the social justice teaching and you apply that definition of justice to the gospel, that's the kind of thing you're gonna get.

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The other problem is if you add works to the gospel, if you start saying, well, poverty is a gospel issue of some kind, this part of the gospel is poverty alleviation or something like that.

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Well, careful because you could wind up in the Galatian heresy really easy because what you're ending up doing is you're adding something to the good news that Jesus has saved us from spiritual enslavement.

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That's the other danger and that undermines orthodox theology, undermines biblical ethics because you're gonna take in Marxist ideas and smuggle them in underneath biblical terms, but they're actually

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Marxist conceptions of justice. You're going to undermine the idea of truth if you accept the standpoint epistemology of the social justice movement that, well, certain demographics have different levels of oppression so they know more about something.

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So we're gonna interpret the Bible through the lens of the experience of prisoners who live in Milwaukee because they know more.

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They didn't have Greek or Hebrew, but they know more because of their lived experience. Well, that just undermines objectivity.

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You don't have the truth anymore. You can't go to someone and say, thus saith the Lord, because you're gonna have to say, well, thus saith the Lord based on my white male hermeneutic.

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So that's the danger of this movement. It undermines orthodoxy. I've gone over this many times. But it turns out there's a relationship.

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There is a relationship. So we are going to talk to someone who knows more about this than me.

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And you can find the poll that we're gonna be talking about here by Luke Macias. It is a story about the poll.

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Church -going Biden voters question the Bible at alarming rates. Here's Luke Macias.

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Welcome, Luke Macias. It is good to have you. Luke is a political consultant and a

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Bible -believing Christian. And Luke, you are gonna talk to us today a little bit about polls and a poll that you just were part of or you helped kind of, you were someone who helped a firm figure out how to answer a question that is important to all of us as believers.

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So I wanna just get down to the nitty gritty with you here. What do you think, first of all, about the national polls?

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They're tightening up this week. A week ago, it looked like Trump had no chance. All of a sudden, Trump has a chance.

25:39

What's going on there? No, that's a great question, John. And I'm grateful that you had me on here.

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You and I talked about how I've followed your show for a little bit of time and enjoy the work that you've been doing.

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As far as the polls go in general, yeah, they are tightening up a little bit. But if you were to ask the conglomerate of pollsters what they think, they would definitely tell you that they think that it's most likely that Joe Biden will win the presidency tomorrow.

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I think it's gonna largely come down to North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Those are just probably the two most important states.

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And so we shall see, and everybody's used to pollsters being wrong from four years ago.

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So I'm sure everybody is having a little PTSD going into election day with polls showing all favoring one candidate in general.

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We really wanted to ask a different question, right? Coming into this election, I think all of us have seen the last several weeks, evangelical leaders, people who have been strong theologians and Christians talking differently about politics, in my opinion, than they have in the past.

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And so that kind of caused the question to be asked of, what are the differences within the church when it comes to our political views and our theological views and how those line up?

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Yeah, and that's what I wanna talk to you about because I remember a couple of years ago when I was at seminary, I thought, man, if we keep preaching the social justice rhetoric, this is going to have an effect on the electorate.

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And have you seen evidence that evangelicals or so -called evangelicals, according to polling data, are they starting to go left?

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It's a good question. So I wanna break down for your listeners very quickly and easily, the difference of our poll in comparison to most political polls that were done today.

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So in most polling, you are an evangelical if you say you're an evangelical, okay? That's basically how you identify yourself.

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And so you've seen Pew Research and other entities basically do polling over the last several years that have shown that, first of all,

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Christians identify at a lower and lower percentage rate, right?

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In 2009, it was like 77 % of America identified themselves as a Christian. And today it's probably a little over 60%.

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And then if you break that down to Protestants, Protestants used to be a majority of America, even in 2009 they were, and now they're in the 40s, low 40s.

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And so we're seeing a decline in general identification, but here's the truth, right?

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I think we would all know that if 40 % of America says, I am a Protestant Christian, that doesn't necessarily make you a

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Protestant Christian, right? I mean, nothing in the Bible says, if you believe in your heart, confess with your mouth and tell a pollster in America, that you're an evangelical, then you shall be saved.

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It's actually, is Jesus Christ Lord, right? So that's really the difference, what we went in with, and then pollsters primarily then divide church goers,

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Christians into two camps, those who go to church and those who don't. So, and then we evaluate these groups differently.

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So what we did was we conducted a poll, we did it just in Texas, we had an opportunity to decide what region, and because I'm in Texas and a couple of the people paying for this were in Texas, we decided to just do it in Texas.

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And then we decided to limit it to, we decided to limit it to all

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Christians who were attending church actively. So essentially what that did was, it was about 20,

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I've got to remember the cross tabs, but essentially we've got, the largest chunk are Baptist and non -denominational

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Christians. So I think those kind of fit in the evangelical realm. There's about 25 % Catholic in here.

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And then you also have your kind of confessional denominations Protestants, Lutherans, Methodists, those three churches make up about 12 % of the sample.

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So it's a sampling of Christians who attend church. If you tell us you don't attend church, you don't get polled in this poll.

29:30

Okay, so tell us a little bit about your poll that you helped, you were kind of behind and you conducted or you had a polling firm conduct.

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What does it tell us about evangelical Christians as best as we can figure out and their views on politics?

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Yeah, so we basically went through and said, do you attend church? And they said, yes or no. And then we went through and asked them several theological questions.

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One was, do you believe the Bible is without error? Very basic Orthodox belief of the church.

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And then the second one was, do you believe people who reject salvation through Jesus Christ are in danger of hell?

30:09

Yes or no. And then we said, do you believe actively practicing gay and lesbian church members should be allowed to share in leadership roles in your church?

30:17

Yes or no. And then we asked them several political questions about border security, about abortion and about health insurance.

30:25

And then we said, who are you gonna vote for, right? And so then we go back and compare

30:30

Trump voters versus Biden voters in the pews, right? So we found a couple of things. First and foremost,

30:37

I wanna point this out before. It's important to recognize that at least from the data, we would probably have to determine based on Orthodox beliefs of these people, what they're saying.

30:47

They believe that there are some people who hold Orthodox beliefs that are voting for Joe Biden.

30:53

And there are quite a few that are voting for Donald Trump, right? And of course, it probably doesn't surprise a ton of people that more people who hold

31:01

Orthodox views with the church are voting for Donald Trump. So of those people in church that said,

31:06

I'm a Trump voter, 81 % said they believed the scripture was without error.

31:13

13 % said they thought it had errors. And then 6 % said they didn't know.

31:19

But then when you went to people who are Joe Biden voters, you found that 45 % said that the

31:25

Bible didn't have error. 39 % said it did have error. And 19 % said they didn't know.

31:33

And again, that's kind of a fundamental question. It's pretty important. The next one we asked was a real basic one.

31:40

Do you believe people who reject salvation through Jesus Christ are in danger of eternity in hell? And again, I mean, that's basically

31:46

John 3 .16, right? It doesn't take an MDiv or seminary to teach you the right answer to this question.

31:53

But 78 % of Donald Trump voters in church pews said yes. Rejection of Jesus Christ potentially sends you to hell.

32:02

14 % said, no, they don't think that. 8 % said, I don't know. When it came to people in the pews voting for Joe Biden, 41 % said, yes, you can go to hell.

32:13

36 % said, you can't go to hell. And 23 % said they don't even know.

32:20

So the larger conclusion, which is something that I believe, is that people in church who are standing in the pews who are also planning on voting for Joe Biden, a majority of them are either rejecting fundamental

32:34

Orthodox teaching or questioning it. And there's correlation and causation when you talk about polling, right?

32:40

And we're not really talking about causation here as much as we're saying that it should be an indicator.

32:45

And for those of us in the church, if we're concerned about people's eternal salvation, which is the most important thing when it comes to the body of Christ, then we should have discernment when looking at people's political views and recognizing how they change or how they are an indicator to their theological views.

33:06

Okay, that's interesting to me. And this is something I would have suspected anyway, that those who hold more conservative political beliefs, or I should put it this way, those who hold more conservative theological beliefs are going to have more conservative political beliefs.

33:20

Yes. Why is that? And then this is a chance for you to just give your personal opinion on this. Yeah, no, it's a really good question on why it would be the case.

33:29

I think the truth is that you cannot separate many of the intrinsic truths that we hold when it comes to our biblical understanding and how those line up with politics.

33:40

So David Platt recently wrote a book called, Before You Vote. I don't know if you've read it, but I bought it and read it.

33:45

And I was concerned with the conclusions that it came to, because it largely talked kind of a Tim Keller pitch, which was,

33:53

I'm gonna give you a bunch of ideas, but here's the good news. Vote Republican, vote Democrat, vote independent, third party, don't vote.

34:00

We all have a conscience and under Christ, we can come back next Sunday and we'll all be united. Now, I think we all want unity in the church.

34:07

And I know you've talked about that a lot, about desiring unity within the church and within these different denominations.

34:13

Here's the interesting thing though. In Platt's book, he goes into several fundamental truths that we do know in scripture.

34:19

So I'll give him credit here. He says that abortion is the taking of innocent life. And that is a truth that is taught in scripture, black and white.

34:26

He then says that gender is binary. It's designed by God. That's what he says, right?

34:31

This is designed by God and it's for his glory. And then he says that marriage is a union between a man and a woman, okay?

34:41

Now, then he talks about all these other issues, healthcare, immigration, and says there are these secondary issues, but they also matter.

34:47

And so we can't know how a Christian weighs all their decision making through this. Well, I think people would have to admit that today it is much harder to be a fully pro -life

34:59

Democrat than it was 10 years ago, right? So it would make sense that those in the pews that are still voting for a presidential candidate who has reversed his position on taxpayer funded abortions and said,

35:11

I want to pay for those abortions, who has reversed his position on there being two genders and said just recently in a town hall that we need to help transition eight and 10 year olds to the opposite gender.

35:24

It would make sense that people who are tending to believe in that presidential candidate are more than likely, well, first of all, we know obviously, even according to David Platt, those people are not aligning themselves with three very basic truths we know in scripture.

35:39

So then guess what? They're also either denying or questioning other basic truths in scripture, right?

35:45

Which is, is the Bible without error or can you go to hell? Yeah, that's a good point. And I have read the book.

35:51

I did do a whole review, probably about an hour review. I'll have to go back and watch it because I really enjoy that.

35:57

Yeah, well, basically it comes down to my opinion, and this is the logic that not just David Platt, but Tim Keller, I think even

36:03

John Piper to some extent are offering us is that pro -life is one issue.

36:11

We can take, and that's usually the one they focus on, but we can take conservative issues that are important to Christians and then just kind of segment those off, marginalize them, put them in a box and say, okay, that's just one of, let's say, 10 issues that should matter to us.

36:28

And somehow we have a moral equivalency between that and let's say access to healthcare, free healthcare, socialist healthcare, something like that.

36:35

So it seems to me that they are perfectly willing to apply biblical principles in one area, but then they're unable to see the connection between thou shalt not steal on private property and what socialist medicine would be.

36:51

And so they will say that that's an issue of loving your neighbor, and they kind of smuggle in socialist ideas under the veneer of these

36:59

Christian principles. And go ahead. So we asked church tenders about their different political perspectives, right?

37:08

It was interesting because there are people who are voting for Joe Biden, which was a little higher than I would have suspected to be honest, but there is a percentage of people that are voting for Joe Biden that believe in border security.

37:18

In fact, I think 38 % of his voters said that they believe that the United States should enforce strict border security to keep people from illegally entering the country.

37:27

Is this ignorance? Is that what this is? Some of it? Well, again, the way we ask the question, right?

37:32

We don't say, do you think there should be a wall? We don't say, do you think that, we shouldn't give out more, let more people enter legally, right?

37:41

So often what the battle is between some people in the church, I think, is about how many refugees we let in or not.

37:47

Does that make sense? So we could have asked the question differently, but we really wanted to just go, do you think we should have a border?

37:52

That's really what that question is, right? Do you think we should have a border? And 38 % of Biden voters said, yes, we should.

37:58

41 % said, no. And 21 % said, I'm not sure. And the interesting thing is those, that answer very closely lines up with the theological answers, right?

38:08

From a percentage breakdown. Now here's where it gets really different, okay? One is on abortion for Trump.

38:15

Only 2 % of Trump's voters who are in pews think that abortion should be legal.

38:22

That is staggeringly small. I would have thought it was gonna be a little bigger. Now I will tell you about 30 % believe that there should be rape and incest exceptions.

38:31

And that's a whole, you know, we don't need to have a whole abortion apologetic here, but that's inconsistent when it comes to, you know, the value of human life.

38:39

But only 2 % said, yeah, it should just be legal and safe. 45 % of Biden's church attending voters said it should be legal and safe.

38:47

But where we also saw a huge gap was in healthcare. And I would have thought that immigration and healthcare were gonna be much more similar, but they're not evidently.

38:56

And I think that's something for us to recognize. So we said, do you believe that we should have a universal healthcare system that ensures all

39:04

Americans have health insurance? And this is universal healthcare, right? Do you believe in universal healthcare?

39:10

This is a position that is to the left of Joe Biden himself. He hasn't even said he believes in universal healthcare.

39:16

Kamala Harris has, but not Joe Biden. Only 4 % of Biden's voters who are in church pews says they oppose universal healthcare, 41%.

39:27

91%, it was probably the largest, it was the biggest issue which people were most in agreeance on regarding Biden voters is universal healthcare.

39:36

Okay, so this is fascinating. And I didn't know that when I brought up this kind of dichotomy, because I've heard this comparison.

39:42

Okay, abortion, healthcare. Yeah, these are kind of on the same level. This is the Ann campaign.

39:48

This is the pro -lifers for Biden, you know. But that's a real thing. One side really does value free healthcare and one side really does value pro -life values, yeah.

39:59

It is interesting, right? And it isn't to say, look, there are a handful of, this is the funny thing when you actually get digging into all of the data, right?

40:07

So I will tell you this, 14 % of Trump's voters said there should be universal healthcare, which shows that there are some people in the church who still according to church teaching, and I've been to churches before where they start talking about why we don't insure everybody, right?

40:22

And the pastor starts talking about that issue. And you can see that there are people in church pews that are probably pro -life, that believe scriptures without error, that think that people are going to hell, but think universal healthcare is okay because of either what they've received in the church or what they've received in the rest of the world.

40:39

There's still a small segment, but the contrast is huge, you know, and it's something to recognize.

40:45

So it is a pretty distinction, big distinction. The other thing I was gonna talk to you about, because you have talked a lot about the, not only social justice issue, but specifically the issue of critical race theory, right?

40:56

And that's something that I think you have brought to light more than other people. And so what we did was we took people's theology and who they were voting for and their race and lined them up, okay?

41:09

And I found this one really fascinating. So do you believe the Bible is without error was the question, right?

41:16

So the most conservative group of voters, theologically and racially, are black

41:23

Trump voters. 84 % of them said the Bible's without error. The next one is very close, it's white

41:30

Trump voters. 82 % of white Trump voters said the Bible is without error. And then Hispanic Trump voters, 72 % of them said the

41:39

Bible's without error. So you have black, white, Hispanic. Then when you go to Biden voters, the most conservative group of Biden voters, theologically, are black

41:52

Biden voters. 63 % of black Biden voters say the scripture's without error.

41:58

Only 48 % of Hispanics and then 30 % of white Biden voters, 30%.

42:03

And so we're looking at this gap between whites in their voting patterns and theology compared to blacks was

42:12

I think really fascinating. Because the point is 82 % to 63 % isn't actually that far off if it makes sense, right?

42:20

Meaning black church attenders generally have conservative theology and you actually see that they're not way apart from each other in this situation.

42:29

And then you look at the white church attenders and it is like Trump versus Biden is, it's almost two different churches to be completely honest.

42:38

And I find that interesting when it comes to Mark Devere, Tim Keller, John Piper, a lot of these different theologians and former pastors or current pastors that they preach predominantly to white congregations, right?

42:50

And so you see that clearly within those congregations, there's probably a pretty big divide that you could see within people's race and their politics.

43:00

Yeah, that is an interesting and I'm sure there's a lot more that could be said about analyzing that data.

43:06

I was telling you before we started recording, I just literally minutes before we started got word that, confirmed word that Mark Devere, Tim Keller are both registered

43:16

Democrats. I'm not sure about some of the other big evangelical leaders, but I think a lot of people are wondering in 2020 with everything that's happened with COVID and the church shut down with Black Lives Matter protests, et cetera, whether or not some of the voices that they've been listening to for years are actually

43:35

Democrats or politically to the left, but they've been hearing Bible teaching, so forth and so on from them.

43:43

Why do you think 2020 is, or the past four years we'll say, why do you think that all of a sudden masks are coming off or we're hearing this kind of logic, this kind of, hey, it's okay to vote for the

44:00

Democrats and be an Orthodox Christian. We didn't really hear that a lot.

44:06

I don't remember that during the Bush elections. I don't remember that even when McCain and Romney were running as much, but I am hearing it now and I'm hearing it a lot.

44:15

What makes sense of this in your mind? It's a really hard thing to understand. First and foremost,

44:21

I say this in the article that published this poll on Texas Scorecard. You can go to texascorecard .com

44:27

and all the polling is there and a big write -up on it is made. We're gonna actually release the full poll, by the way, later this afternoon, this is

44:34

Monday, and then we'll probably write a couple other articles on some other tidbits that we pull out of this poll because these type of research projects bring a ton to light, right?

44:43

So it's gonna be really fun dissecting it and looking at the cross tabs and being able to pull even more information as we go throughout the week.

44:51

In that, I always wanna clarify, clearly the data shows that there are some

44:57

Democrats or Biden voters who are Christians according to their theology, right?

45:03

I mean, we can't judge one person or the other person or any others, but it is very possible to be a

45:11

Democrat and say that hell's a thing and you need salvation in Jesus Christ and scripture is without error and abortion should not be legal, right?

45:21

And actually it shows that about one in five Biden voters believe that.

45:26

I mean, and that's an interesting reality in church. Now, what I've seen in - Church attending Biden voters. Church attenders, that's right, church attending.

45:33

Okay, I'm sorry. I should have clarified that one. So church attending Biden voters, right? The most conservative group of Biden voters we'd assume exists are the ones in church.

45:41

So one in five of them is Orthodox in their Christian beliefs and says abortion should not be legal.

45:49

Okay, we can deal with that group of people. What I think Platt and Keller and these other people have taken is they've acted as though that's, they've taken that one in five and made it look like the five in five, right?

46:02

Just because somebody is voting for Biden doesn't mean they don't hold these things. Well, that's true, but it's only 20 % of them that actually hold this position.

46:12

In David Platt's book, you remember where he talks about this pro -life guy in Virginia that he knows that's gonna vote for Biden, but he believes that more children will be saved in Virginia as a result.

46:21

And so when he describes this, I go, I'm not denying that that guy exists. I'm telling you he's the exception to the rule.

46:28

And it's naive to act like there's not a bigger problem here. So why is it happening?

46:33

Probably because Donald Trump is a more overtly arrogant person.

46:41

And Piper talks about this in his write -up. There were a lot of things that Piper said that one could agree with, right?

46:48

When it comes to, and I think Al Mueller said this in his podcast last Tuesday, when it came to,

46:54

I'd probably rather have Joe Biden as my neighbor, but I'm pretty sure I'd rather have President Trump.

46:59

In fact, I know that I'd rather have President Trump as my president. And I think the reality is that pastors were having a harder time dealing with an overtly arrogant person.

47:11

They had an easier time voting for Mitt Romney, a Mormon who honestly looked the part and seemed much more humble from the outside.

47:20

John McCain, George W. Bush, these people, even if they didn't really do that much for the values that we hold as a church,

47:27

I think George W. Bush largely just spoke to the church, didn't act for the church, and we gave him a lot of power over the evangelical vote because of the way he talked.

47:39

And so that set up a precedent that said, if you don't talk like this, we've got to push back to that.

47:44

So I've heard someone call this the virtue tradition, which is this idea that there's a decorum, there's a modicum of decency the president has to have, and it's internal virtue.

47:54

So it's more of a pietist kind of way of looking at this, which Piper is a pietist, so that would make sense.

48:00

He's looking at it saying, all right, that means a lot to me to have someone who looks the part and seems respectful.

48:08

And Trump is a bull in a China closet, and populists like that because they think that you need to sock it to the media and they're the bad guys and that kind of thing.

48:18

So that would make sense of some of it in my mind, yeah. And Piper is a little bit of an exception to the rule in the idea that he's never been that gung -ho for any presidential candidate.

48:27

And I just think that's a little thing worth pointing out. When he never endorsed Mitt Romney, he said something to the effect of,

48:34

I'll keep it simple because I know our time is short, but he said something to the effect of, if Christians all show up to vote, then they will largely swing the election, therefore they should probably vote.

48:43

And if they look at the two predominant candidates and think one of them is more likely to uphold the values than the other, even in a small way, then they should probably vote for that candidate.

48:52

And that was essentially his endorsement of Mitt Romney, which is by no means a ringing rally cry to go vote for Mitt.

48:59

So Piper has always tried to, I think, stay a little out of politics, but going back to your point,

49:05

Trump's - Well, he used the lesser of two evils argument with Bush in 2004. Yes, correct, exactly.

49:11

So now that doesn't apply anymore because Trump is arrogant. Yes, yes, but to your point, lesser of two evils included arrogance within the calculation, right?

49:21

I mean, so that's the funny thing is if I say, this is the lesser of two evils, I've already recognized that both of these people are evil.

49:27

One of the people that I really respect pastorally told me, I would never want my sins described in the

49:34

Greek as Piper did. And his whole point was, if you took every one of George W. Bush's flaws and described them in the

49:43

Greek, it would be really bad. I mean, you would not walk away going, I'm gonna vote for him over Gore, right?

49:49

And so it just goes to how much do you wanna describe I think Piper's version is, well, he's the one who's really outspoken about his arrogance.

49:58

Therefore, I'm gonna be more severe in my description of it. I don't think that's necessarily helpful. Here's the bigger point that I've tried to make in what we've done.

50:07

This is not a rally cry for Donald Trump. And I voted for Donald Trump. I have an explanation on my podcast that talks about voting for Donald Trump and why.

50:15

It's probably similar to Mueller and other people's kind of thought processes in that, and that's fine. But this is more about the fact that if our goal in church is to be unified, then what brings us together is unity in Christ.

50:29

I mean, when Paul would write letters to the church and talk about the disunity that was happening was because Christ was not at the center of the church anymore.

50:36

And the problem is many of these pastors have let Donald Trump distract them from what unifies the church.

50:43

And instead they're focused on making sure that all of us are okay with Biden voters in the pews.

50:48

And I am fine with a Biden voter attending church and believing all the things that are gonna lead them to eternal salvation.

50:55

But you know what's probably naive is to assume that there's nothing wrong that in no way indicates.

51:02

That's the way I would say it. Is it a sin to vote for Joe Biden? Let's not even get there. Does it indicate that you are likely either rejecting fundamental orthodox views or questioning them?

51:15

Yes, it's a major indicator. So if you and I are there with four people in our church and if Mark Dever, Tim Keller or David Platt are having a bunch of people in their church, tell them they're gonna do this before worrying about changing their vote.

51:29

Why don't they focus on saying let's teach strong biblical truth? Because guess what?

51:34

You know what's more important is that this person fundamentally understands that rejecting Jesus Christ puts you in danger of going to hell.

51:42

And the word is that the question wasn't even asked in an absolute way, right? It didn't say are going to go to hell.

51:47

It was like kind of ambiguous, could go to hell. And you have a large group of people and a ton of Biden voters that are just either rejecting or questioning that truth.

51:56

Well, very interesting, Dave. I'm glad you asked these questions. Where can people go to find your information, your poll or what you do?

52:05

Texasscorecard .com is where they can go to find the write -up on the poll. They can find the data there.

52:10

Like I said, we're gonna probably publish a number of other articles that expose more information on that poll. And then we will, you can go to LukeMessias .com

52:17

to show the weekly podcast and show that I do. And John, I'm gonna just take this video and share it with our viewers as well because I really enjoyed this conversation with you.

52:26

And I'm really grateful for you bringing me on too because I think the more we talk about this as a church, then the more we can be united.

52:34

One of the points within this division and unity conversation is, if unity is the body of Christ, unity actually doesn't include everybody who attends church.

52:44

I know that gets into another conversation that I've been thinking through with this, but often whenever you hear these pastors talk about the need for unity, they're talking about everybody that's within the church walls, not everybody in the body of Christ.

52:55

And what this shows is that there are probably, there are people voting for Donald Trump and Joe Biden in your church that are not members of the body of Christ.

53:01

More of them are Biden voters. That's just the truth. But the reality is that unity is about the body of Christ.

53:08

Unity is not about anybody willing to walk into four walls in church. Gotcha. Well, hey,

53:14

I appreciate it, Luke. Very, very good points. Very good information. And you can find those websites in the info section of this podcast.

53:22

Wanna go check out Luke's work. So God bless you, Luke. Hey, thanks, John. Bless you too. Yep, have a good day.

53:28

Now, as stated before, there are those who are leaders in evangelical Christian circles who are pulling for Democrats.

53:35

And they've accepted, at least on some level, some of this social justice rhetoric. Two of them that I would say would be, probably fit into this category somewhat, would be

53:46

Mark Dever. Here's one. And look, the reason I'm saying this, this is enemies within the church information.

53:51

I just saw this this morning. Mark Dever is a registered Democrat. So, you know, that's who he is on some level.

54:01

He was registered as a Democrat since 1994. That's the information at least

54:06

I'm getting. If there's a correction or anything, then I'd love to hear it, but this is on the public record now.

54:12

Mark Dever is a registered Democrat. You also have, here's Tim Keller. Tim Keller is a registered Democrat. Let's see if it tells you since when.

54:21

No, it doesn't tell you since when, but he is currently a registered Democrat. So this is information from, you can go to,

54:28

I'm assuming, enemieswithinthechurch .com, or maybe the Facebook group for enemies within the church. I'm looking at the director of the movie.

54:34

Jud saw his Facebook page right now. He took these screenshots this morning, and it just makes me kind of wonder who else in evangelical circles is a registered

54:46

Democrat, and maybe that explains some of the reason we're seeing what we're seeing now. But that's one way to think about this.

54:54

Now, there's something else that's going on, and this is, in my opinion, kind of a softening of the evangelical conservative vote.

55:02

That's political conservative vote that used to be there more than perhaps it is now, but it's still there, and that is there's a pietist strain that I'm seeing.

55:12

I'm not gonna name names on this. It would take me a little time. I could come up with a bunch of them, I'm sure, but I've just seen over the last few weeks certain

55:21

Christian leaders saying things almost like the election doesn't really matter because it's just not a spiritual thing, and, oh, man, it's just, there's so many things.

55:35

I could spend a whole episode, and I can't do that right now, but I think the bottom line for me is right.

55:40

That would be my response, right. It's not a spiritual thing in the sense that this is going to call into question whether or not our salvation is secure, or Jesus is reigning, or does anyone really believe that?

55:57

I don't know of any person, but so when it comes to heavenly realities, remember the kingdom of God, the heavenly realities, it doesn't touch those.

56:05

Of course it doesn't touch those. I don't think anyone thinks it would touch those who's a Christian, but it is a moral question, and in that sense, it is spiritual.

56:16

In that sense, we do need direction from pastors, and there's a lot of pastors who are very hesitant about giving too much political direction,

56:24

I think, and this is my own understanding because of a pietism of some kind. It's not our area.

56:30

We can't get involved in this, and look, it's true enough that pastors are called to a different kind of responsibility, but you have right now a political religion infringing on the church.

56:42

That's the issue, so if you're just gonna stay in your lane, you're gonna have to address it, and then you have people in your church who also have other responsibilities.

56:50

Do you, I mean, you have to give directions on fathers and wives and husbands and children, and I mean, we also have responsibilities to understand morality and how that morality might apply in a situation where now we have a republic where we get to make some of these choices, so you have individuals who are wearing more than one hat.

57:08

They're not just attendees at a church. They have to go out and practice biblical morality in their jobs and when they vote, so we do have a responsibility as Christians to think in terms of how morality applies to politics, how the character of God as distilled in his moral law is then applied to politics, and so I see a lot of these kind of strawmans.

57:31

Jesus is the only savior. It's not, Trump's not a savior. It's Biden's not your savior.

57:37

Jesus is your savior. Does anyone really, is anyone looking to Donald Trump for the expiation of their sins? I don't think so.

57:45

I've never heard that, but these pietists online that are mainly where I see this seem to act as if there's some big group of people who are in some cult to Donald Trump where they're worshiping

57:58

Donald Trump and relying on him to take care of their sins or something. Now look, it's possible to get way too much

58:05

Trump syndrome and think he's so much better than he actually is and put him on a pedestal, and I get that, and I understand there could be problems there, but no one that I know of, especially in Christianity, is saying

58:17

Donald Trump is Jesus. Donald Trump is gonna be somehow taking away our sins or some such nonsense like that.

58:27

You do have, and I'm not gonna go into detail because I've said this before, but you do have on the other side of political religion that is trying to take away the sins of those who are born with the original stain of sin of being white or male or straight, et cetera.

58:41

So you do have that on the other side, but you don't have people doing that to Donald Trump or, in my opinion,

58:48

I've never seen it on the evangelical political conservative side. Mothers and fathers aren't saviors either,

58:55

I should mention. It's fine to love your mom and your dad and say, hey, we're gonna do Father's Day, world's best dad.

59:02

It doesn't mean you're replacing Jesus or something. That's perfectly fine, and to like the person that is in a position of authority over you or has some kind of a privileged position because of who they are, it doesn't mean that automatically you're making them

59:18

Jesus. And the thing is, this election does matter.

59:24

It should matter, and I wanna make this pitch to the pietists and then a more general pitch to everyone. This election does matter because if you want to keep sharing the spiritual truth that you care so much about, then you are going to need to ensure that something like the

59:40

Great Reset doesn't happen. Because if you want that freedom to practice your religion, to share the truth, to evangelize, then there is a political party right now that will threaten that and is threatening that, and they can't wait to get into power to stomp out the pietism that you enjoy so much.

59:58

So that's my pitch to you guys. If you want to, and I know some of you are,

01:00:04

I'm looking forward to going to prison kind of stuff, or I don't care if I go to prison kind of stuff. It's like, well, look,

01:00:10

I'll go to prison if I have to, but I'm gonna fight so that not just, it's not even for me, it's not a selfish thing.

01:00:16

I'm gonna fight to make sure that the kids that I have grow up in a world where hopefully they're able to enjoy those freedoms, and they're able to practice their faith.

01:00:23

It's not a good thing to live in a society that puts Christians in prison. And the idea that that's just gonna spread the faith, not necessarily.

01:00:33

Look, God's the one that grows his church. That's not up to us, but it is up to us to, let me put it this way.

01:00:39

Is it a Christian thing to mismanage the country when it's under our management? We're the ones who vote.

01:00:44

We have a say in this. Would it be a Christian thing, let's say, to mismanage your family? No. So why is it a

01:00:50

Christian thing to allow your country to be mismanaged when you have a say? It's not. That's our responsibility.

01:00:56

We need to make sure that we have the ability to continue to practice our faith in public.

01:01:02

And if that's taken away, so be it. But we don't just say, so be it before it's happened.

01:01:08

Say, give up, and well, it doesn't really matter. Well, you can say that it doesn't matter as much after it doesn't matter when it's taken away, if it is.

01:01:19

But until that time, we have a responsibility here. And we need to fight. We need to fight.

01:01:25

And this is my final pitch to you guys before the election here. I don't look,

01:01:31

I was realizing this this morning, I don't look at electing President Trump as electing a president. This is the first time

01:01:36

I've ever seen this as, and of course, there's other offices right now you need to be aware of. Religious freedom, though, is on the line.

01:01:44

And the White House, and unfortunately, I'm a localist, so it bothers me, but the reality of the situation is the federal government, the national government, the general government is where these decisions are being adjudicated.

01:01:58

And without the White House and without Congress right now, then they will go into a direction of suppressing freedom to worship.

01:02:08

Some sins are gonna be off limits. We're gonna start to go the direction of England and then it'll get worse. And I don't look at Donald Trump, I don't look at some of the people that I'm gonna be voting for for Senate tomorrow as I'm sending you because you're a great civic leader.

01:02:23

No, I'm actually electing a general. I'm electing, these are people that are going to be at war in the culture siege.

01:02:29

And it occurred to me yesterday, I went to a rally, a political rally, with a friend who invited me.

01:02:36

And they had like a train of vehicles with like American flags and some had some

01:02:41

Trump flags and things going to this thing. And I saw several people just angry screaming and flipping them off and all this kind of stuff.

01:02:53

And the thought occurred to me, the pagans right now, those who are most wanting to suppress the church, suppress any righteousness in this society, those who are most likely to do this, see the

01:03:06

Republican Party as a bigger threat than they do the evangelical church in America. It's true.

01:03:12

And that's a sad thing. And that's something to ponder. Why is that? Now, I'm not gonna get into diagnosing it right now, but for whatever reason, the

01:03:23

Republican Party, and I think you know the reason, is a bulwark against this stuff from taking place, happening, gaining control, suppressing our religious freedom and our other civil liberties that are protected because they're

01:03:41

God -given rights. Republican Party is a bulwark right now against those things. It's a barrier to those who would want to enact evil even further.

01:03:50

And just because there's people in the Republican Party, just because even Donald Trump, let's say if he had his druthers, he'd make our castle look different.

01:04:00

Maybe he'd destroy it from the inside. The point is, he's not ruling from a castle right now.

01:04:06

He's ruling as a king on the battlefield right now. All right? If you wanna put it that way, I know we don't have a king, we have a president, but it's the analogy

01:04:12

I'm drawing here. It's, we're electing a general. We'll stick with the general. We're electing a general to go to the battlefield, not to sit on a throne in a castle.

01:04:22

And it's because we are being, we are on the defensive. It is a culture siege, and the war is here whether you want it or not, pietist.

01:04:28

You don't get a choice to just, I'm gonna sit this one out. It's coming for you. I think

01:04:34

James White said it the other day. For those who are taking this more pietist approach, it just kinda doesn't matter.

01:04:40

You get the bad bunk beds when you get to the gulag. Because you know, they're gonna come for you guys.

01:04:47

They're just gonna come for those like me first because I'm more outspoken against it. But, and people like James White.

01:04:53

But the thing is guys, we are at a critical moment right now and if we have a siege going on and there's someone in our, you know, on our hill who's gonna fight with us and is good at fighting, we're,

01:05:11

I think it's why people are electing Donald Trump who don't agree with everything Trump has stood for, especially in the past. Because they don't see those things as relevant to the job that they're electing him to do.

01:05:21

He's elected to fight, to fight to stave off this siege that is coming against them.

01:05:28

That's why he's being elected right now, to get a job done and that's the job. It's not a normal situation.

01:05:34

It's not a normal election year. So I would encourage you to think in those terms. Don't think in terms of just electing a regular, someone to run the country.

01:05:41

This isn't electing someone to run the country. This is more than that. This is electing a general to stave off the siege of people that want to do us harm as Christians, as political conservatives.

01:05:54

If you are a political conservative, I assume most of the people listening to me are. And just as, even just as traditional, people who are part of a traditional family.

01:06:04

You're under siege. Your kids are under siege. So let's pray for the best.

01:06:10

Let's prepare. Obviously, God is in control. I believe that to the core of my being.

01:06:16

We can trust in him. We can rely on him. And even if things don't work out the way we would like them to work out, then we can still trust and rely on him.

01:06:25

That is absolutely true. But it's not that it doesn't matter, because it does matter. So get out there tomorrow.

01:06:31

Vote. Talk to your friends. Talk to your family. Tell them to vote if they haven't yet. And I don't think

01:06:37

I've ever made a pitch like this. So it's kind of new for me. But hopefully while you're doing that, and now

01:06:42

I'm out of apple cider, but hopefully it's fall where you are and you get some good apple cider tomorrow, no matter what happens.

01:06:49

And enjoy that. Make sure you put some cinnamon in it though, because God has still given us some really good gifts.

01:06:55

Even if we have socialism, I think we still have some apple cider and cinnamon. So God bless on a little lighter note.