Dr. Joe Boot of the Ezra Institute on Christianity in Canada and Two Kingdom Theology

Alpha & Omega Ministries

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

Comments are disabled.

00:33

And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. We have a special guest with us today.

00:39

Dr. Joe Boot is up in Canada. I'm not sure if I should mention that because someone might get offended by that and then they'll pull the plug.

00:46

I'm not sure if that's how that works these days or not. But Dr. Boot, no one is gonna listen to anything you or I have to say until we get one thing cleared up.

00:58

And since you are a native of the United Kingdom, England itself, and hence are guilty of white supremacy and colonialism.

01:08

Can you explain to us, please? We Americans, we're just simple farmers. You know, you call us colonials.

01:16

Could you please help us? What are we to think about Meghan and Harry? Wow, that's a tough one to start me off with.

01:28

Uh, well, I think that, I think that Harry is a grave disappointment to the royal family.

01:38

Yes. And, well, let me just say that I was none too impressed with the

01:43

Oprah interview. Difficult to paint yourself a victim when you live in a castle off the taxpayer.

01:51

Yes, the memes that that created were pretty impressive. I did not mean to throw you a curve there.

01:58

I figured after, now here's a question for you. Let's see, this is a real test.

02:05

Who is the popular American atheist that you and I have both debated?

02:15

Dan Barker, maybe? Dan Barker. And so what I was gonna say was, that was as mean of me to ask you about Meghan and Harry to start as it was to ask you to do a debate after getting sick and having a car accident.

02:30

All right before doing a debate. I mean, how in the, do you even remember doing that debate or do you have to go back and look at the video and go, oh, okay, yeah, that actually happened.

02:41

Yeah, it's all a bit of a blur, but I was unwell. And the debate was about four and a half hours from where I lived.

02:50

And on route, I got involved in a car accident in the snow. So. I shouldn't laugh,

02:57

I'm sorry. But it just seems like a comedy of errors. Well, it made me late.

03:04

That was true, I was very late to the debate. And the subject,

03:09

I think, as I recall was, is there life after death? So I think I got up and said something on the lines of I've been in a car accident and I can assure you that there is in fact life after death.

03:20

Actually, you claimed two minutes of brain death. And I was watching Dan because he and I have debated twice.

03:27

And in fact, if you count the programs we did on a radio station,

03:34

KFYI in Phoenix, with a shock jock by the name of Tom Likas, it would be much more than,

03:40

I think we did like three times, all the way back in the 1980s. I had hair, it was skinny, it was great.

03:47

But just the look on his face when you made that claim,

03:54

I think he was actually going, okay, if he really claims that, then how am I gonna respond to that?

03:59

You didn't really follow up on it like that. But yes, that was, I'm not sure if you've seen my debates with Dan, but in the second debate, he actually objected to the moderator because I was quoting from a book that he wrote.

04:15

Yeah, I've seen that one. Yes, yes, that was great. That was exciting.

04:22

Now, you are a Brit living in Canada. Now, I have friends down in Australia who are

04:29

British, who live down there, and they have special terms of endearment that are not really all that endearing, but terms of endearment for folks that live down there.

04:41

Do the Canadians have anything similar for you folks, or are they too nice for that? Canadians are a little too polite.

04:52

The Aussies and the English have a much more, well, they share a sense of humor,

05:01

I think, typically, that is sort of mutual fun -taking and ribbing and sarcasm is very

05:09

British and Australian. Oh, yeah. So we have lots of slightly insulting phrases for each other, but for whatever reason, that actually didn't carry over to Canada.

05:20

I'm not aware of any typical expression that the

05:25

Brits will use about Canadians or vice versa. Well, that's just because you haven't been listening to Ryan before you got in the room.

05:34

So we'll let you all figure that one out. And also, you don't have the ashes.

05:41

You don't have that going on all the time, so I suppose. Well, that's actually really important in all of this.

05:48

Some of the Commonwealth countries, like Australia, share the

05:54

English sports, like cricket and rugby, and have tremendous enthusiasm for them.

06:03

Both of those games are largely played only by immigrants in Canada.

06:10

There's a little bit of rugby, but it's very small. It would be more Canadian or American football.

06:16

Is that because the United States has infected them, or it's just too cold to play outside? Yeah, it's probably a mixture of both.

06:26

Canada is deeply affected and shaped by, despite it being part of the

06:33

Commonwealth and the Queen being the head of state and it being the dominion originally of Canada, it has been, over the years, very shaped by the

06:42

United States. Although most Canadians, after living here for 18 years, I've learned, will often define themselves as not

06:50

American. So Canada is a country with a bit of an identity crisis. We're not really British anymore.

06:56

We're not French, because you probably know a bit of the history there with French Quebec and after basically the war between England and France and North America falling into British hands.

07:11

For a while. Yes, there's a bit of an identity crisis that's afflicted

07:18

Canadians. And so they are very attached in more ways than one to the

07:25

United States and shaped by its culture, as well as the English culture to a degree. But we're not

07:32

American. That's one of the things that Canadians seem to pride themselves in saying.

07:37

I've never quite understood it as a Brit, because I greatly appreciate America and my

07:43

American friends. The American is, as Winston Churchill said, the Englishman left to himself. That's a good way of putting it.

07:51

I'm not sure that the colonials would have. I think that's exactly what the colonials were saying. Yeah, leave us alone.

07:58

That's what they would say. A lot of the loyalists went north into Canada.

08:03

Right, right, right, right, definitely. Well, speaking of all of that, was it yesterday or the day before yesterday?

08:12

We had a decision in Scotland, and I'm very Scottish, have spent many, many weeks up in Scotland ministering there, love the place, love the people.

08:27

But you had tweeted yesterday about, seemed quite excited about the decision that took place there.

08:37

Tell us a little bit about it. And do you think that it will have any impact in the situations that you all are facing there in Canada?

08:48

Yeah, so basically some, actually, friends and colleagues of mine at Christian Concern in London, in England, and their

08:57

Christian Legal Center, and I think ADF was intervening as well, took the case of about 27

09:05

Presbyterian Baptist independent ministers in a case against the

09:13

Scottish government. And again, for all of you, my American friends,

09:19

Great Britain consists of four countries essentially, which have a certain amount of devolved jurisdiction.

09:26

So England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland. And so even though the church in England, because of a threat, just the threat of legal action has been legally open almost without restriction since the beginning of the year, that they were not included in the lockdown at the beginning of 2021.

09:51

Scotland, with a certain amount of devolved power, actually banned in -person worship services, made them effectively a criminal offense to gather for worship.

10:02

And of course, I mean, Scotland over the past 60 or 70 years, it's been a tragedy to watch

10:08

Scotland. Scotland of John Knox, you know, that sent more missionaries per capita around the world than any other nation has sunk into a terrible decline.

10:22

And there's strong nationalist movement there now as well that wants to separate from the

10:28

United Kingdom, break up the oldest political unity in the Western world. And it's sort of neo -Marxist socialist drift has been really striking and considerably worse than England.

10:42

So this was a really important case. And certainly my friends and colleagues at Christian Concern were nervous about the way it was gonna go.

10:53

But the QC made a very interesting case. The lawyer basically said, look, you know, the position of my clients is that Jesus Christ is

11:02

Lord and that there is an irreconcilable conflict here now between obedience to God and obedience to the state.

11:09

And in this instance, this particular judge, thankfully, recognized that, recognized that constitutionally there hadn't been that kind of religious persecution since the 17th century and the covenanters.

11:22

And also recognized that the European human rights law basically would prevent this kind of, or would regard this sort of stance as discrimination.

11:37

So both in terms of Scottish constitutional history and in terms of the European Court of Human Rights, he said that this is illegal, it's unconstitutional.

11:47

And interestingly enough, he also said that whatever gathering around the computer on virtually may be, it isn't worship.

11:57

It's amazing how many Christian pastors and leaders seem to have struggled with that, but this judge understood what

12:02

Christian worship was too. So the, and he said that his ruling had to take effect pretty much immediately.

12:11

So the ban on in -person gatherings has been lifted legally in Scotland and government will have to comply.

12:21

The executive branch, I should say, will have to comply. Now, as to whether it's relevant for Canada, well, we share the same head of state, of course, because Canada is a constitutional monarchy.

12:35

And of course we have a governor and we would be thought of as a comparable jurisdiction.

12:47

So even though we had our own charter in 1982 in Canada, a sort of very bad attempt at writing a constitution, it doesn't afford the same protections as the

13:00

American constitution. We didn't need one. We had the British North America Act here, but Trudeau Sr.

13:05

wanted a charter and they've been browbeating Christians with it ever since. But it is a comparable jurisdiction.

13:14

We're part of the same Commonwealth. The decisions of major Western courts, including the

13:20

US Supreme Court, of course, would have an influence on Canadian jurisprudence. So I immediately sent the ruling to a friend of mine who's an

13:29

MPP in Ontario and asked him to put it in front of the nose of the Ontario premier. I hope he does.

13:36

But these rulings, this is the first major ruling about this ban being illegal.

13:42

I know the US Supreme Court has, in a couple of instances, looked at some local cases, but this is a very significant ruling in Scotland.

13:50

And hopefully it will set something of a precedent. But whether it's taken seriously here obviously remains to be seen.

13:59

Now, obviously, everyone down here is familiar with Pastor James Coates and the situation up there in Canada.

14:07

I think his trial, I believe, is in May, if I recall correctly, early May, something along those lines.

14:13

He's still facing one charge from the Crown. I'm not sure what the possible outcomes of that situation are.

14:24

But I've listened, of course, to your webcasts and your seeking to encourage believers in Canada, specifically leaders of churches, to be clear about the lordship of Christ over the church, the importance of meeting as the church.

14:47

And of course we know there's, here in the United States, there's tremendous resistance to that even within church leaders and very large organizations.

14:56

And I get the feeling there is a tremendous amount of resistance in Canada as well, even within the church, from church leaders along these lines.

15:07

And will this decision possibly, in some way, assist and aid in the movement to continue to have the church to meet and to have the freedom to meet?

15:23

Do you see any progress along those lines? Or is

15:28

Pastor Coates' release more of a public relations thing? How are we to understand what's going on and what does it feel like on the ground right now?

15:40

So on the ground, I think among the leaders in the churches that were already emboldened to resist,

15:54

I should say, who were already resisting, I would say that the brave and courageous resistance of Pastor Coates and unwillingness to call his heels in jail and then his subsequent release has certainly emboldened those who were already resistant.

16:13

I would say it would be premature to say whether there's any broader effect from it.

16:19

There has been a very, very disappointing overall degree and level of resistance in Canada to this.

16:26

The vast majority have gone along. It's interesting that even in England where the churches are legally allowed to be open, almost unrestricted, the

16:38

Evangelical Alliance there says in the region of 80 % of churches have remained closed.

16:45

Astonishing. And here, I would say that generally there are pockets is the best way of describing it, pockets of resistance in the church.

16:56

Now, with respect to James Coates' case, from what I understand, I mean, I do know his lawyer,

17:02

James Kitchen, personally, but I haven't spoken to him recently. But from what

17:07

I understand, the last charge that hasn't dropped, they wanted that particular charge retained because they want to press this issue through the courts.

17:21

I think that what happened, it seems anyway in this case, is that in Alberta, which is supposed to be the most conservative and the most libertarian in Canada, so this was tremendous shock, what happened.

17:36

It seems that a lot of political pressure was brought to bear on the premier, Jason Kenney, and that in all probability, behind the scenes, pressure was placed on the courts and on the prosecution to withdraw or to drop these charges.

17:57

So it seems to be, it's difficult to say at this point as anything more than face -saving.

18:07

The provincial governments don't seem anxious for these things to go to the courts or to go beyond the lower courts.

18:16

I think government is worried about what higher courts will say constitutionally on this, because we have these two sections of our charter, section two are where the basic protections for us in the law are of assembly and worship and speech and so on, but section one puts a caveat around those in terms of, well, if the government deems it necessary, demonstrably justifiable to take away these freedoms or restrict them, it can do it.

18:49

But it doesn't seem as though the government is that anxious to have this dealt with before the courts.

18:56

And so the charges against, most of the charges against Pastor Coates were dropped.

19:02

So you could look at it as an act of intimidation of the church and of pastors. You could look at it as a sort of PR exercise, as you've said, it just doesn't look good to have a law -abiding pastor who's just trying to care for his flock in prison for being a pastor.

19:24

That doesn't look good on the international stage. And it could be that in part that they're not anxious to have this go through the courts.

19:31

At the moment, it's too early to tell what impact this might have in Alberta or other jurisdictions.

19:37

Now, a lot of us have heard about Bill C -6 in Canada.

19:45

And we've also heard about the legislation going through in Victoria, in Australia, which seems to have a lot of,

19:53

I don't know, I think if we did some digging, we'd probably discover a lot of similar people, organizations behind both of them, since they seem to have a lot in common worldview -wise and things like that.

20:08

What's the status on C -6? And what should

20:13

Americans be praying about for their Canadian brothers and sisters in light of whatever the situation is right now with C -6?

20:24

Well, Bill C -6 is a bill to ostensibly ban what's called conversion therapy.

20:33

And what comes to mind when people say that or use that expression is sort of electric shock therapy or some other kind of coercive practice, which nobody practices.

20:46

So it's a red herring in that regard. The target of this law is not what it appears on the face of it, because this notion of coercive barbaric practices, just nobody does that, nobody's doing that.

21:11

So it was from the beginning a highly suspicious piece of legislation. It was first introduced as Bill C -8, and then because of a new sitting of parliament got a new number.

21:22

Basically what happened is that it was voted on initially, which took it into what they call committee.

21:30

And it was hoped that during this phase in committee, adjustments could be made to the legislation, because basically what the legislation says is that any treatment or service that seeks to lessen same -sex desire or what clinically

21:52

I guess would be called gender dysphoria as well, anything that seeks to lessen that kind of behavior or to change or alter a person's desires or behavior, who is a minor, excuse me,

22:14

I apologize for that. No problem. Who is a minor, so somebody under 18, that would actually be a criminal offense, carrying up to five years in prison.

22:28

Now, by the way, that includes, so this is not just, we're not talking now about simply psychiatrists or psychotherapists or professional counselors.

22:36

We're talking about parents, pastors. So if you were a parent, let's say of a 16 -year -old who is struggling with unwanted same -sex attraction, and you went to a counselor, a

22:50

Christian counselor, or to a pastor for a series of counseling sessions with your child to try and address that, that would be a criminal act under this piece of legislation, and you could go to prison for up to five years.

23:05

The same would be true for pastors offering any kind of service to minors.

23:12

And then even with adults, it would be a criminal offense to advertise or make it known that this kind of service was offered.

23:23

So that to offer counsel to an adult even by making them aware, whether it's by a website advertisement or an advertisement on your church website or a brochure or anything that help for unwanted desires of this kind was available would under this legislation be a criminal offense.

23:49

So it was hoped that while it was in committee, conversion therapy could actually be defined because it really is just not defined.

24:01

It's so vague, you can drive a bus through it. So that at least the law, even though they didn't seem there would be any stopping it because of the liberal government and their support within what they call the

24:12

NDP here, which is even more radically progressive and left, that there could at least be amendments made that would give a very clear definition so that parents and pastors trying to help their own children or young people in their own church with struggles around their identity or struggles about desires, that there's some of the desires that they're having that are unwanted.

24:40

Instead of it being this being done, the bill just got worse. And gender, I think gender expression,

24:46

I'm not a lawyer, I should remind the listeners, but there are some articles on the Ezra Institute website on this, some of which have been written or informed by lawyers.

24:55

So it tightens up on some of the detail. But I think that the issue of identity is in there as well.

25:07

And so the bill has actually gotten worse in committee. It is not law yet.

25:15

I think it would have to go through the house one more time and then be ratified by the

25:21

Senate. But everyone that I'm talking to in law who presented in committee, the lawyers who were involved from, whether it's the

25:32

ARPA, the Association of Reform Political Action or the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, they're saying that they won't listen to, and this is going to be passed into law.

25:41

This piece of legislation will become law pretty much as it is now written. And it's just gonna be a case of it coming before parliament again, and then going through the

25:54

Senate. It is without doubt, in my view, the most threatening, the most dangerous piece of legislation ever tabled for the

26:02

Christian and the life of the church. In the United States, we have the mechanism of the

26:08

Supreme Court that can analyze such situations and overturn such legislation.

26:18

Is that the same situation there? Is that, would that be the next step once it became law or is that the final word?

26:28

Yeah, so that's a great question. So when this becomes law, which

26:33

I am certain that it will, the only way to put a stop to it will be a legal challenge, a charter challenge.

26:45

I mean, if you think about it this way, in this country, you can, under this same legislation, a pastor, if somebody came to them and said,

26:58

I'm struggling with this or that sexual desire, a pastor could counsel that person to view homosexual pornography, could counsel a child to go and have hormone therapy and surgery to mutilate their genitals.

27:16

That would be fine. And it's totally fine under the law for you to change in that direction. So that's perfectly acceptable.

27:24

You can move in that direction, you can change in that direction. It's interesting that it's conversion therapy because what this really amounts to is a form of Western conversion law ban, the like of which you might see in parts of India.

27:37

It's an anti -conversion bill because you cannot effectively even,

27:42

I mean, in the Australian version, I believe even prayer counseling, even praying with somebody around this issue, preaching may even be captured within this bill.

27:52

So I think that given the contradictory nature of it, that really what this does is actually limits people's choices.

28:03

It limits people's free will and free decisions. If I want today to be a woman as a biological male, then

28:13

I can go and get counsel, go and get surgery, go and get hormone therapy and have the taxpayer pay for it.

28:19

But if I'm a male struggling with some unwanted desires, I can't get help for that.

28:25

That would be, or at least nobody could advertise it to me. And if I was a minor, it would be illegal and my parents or pastor would be criminalized.

28:32

So I think what's gonna happen, James, is pretty much as soon as this is passed, it's gonna get challenged very rapidly in the courts.

28:41

And I suspect we will be in a process now for a year or two once Bill C -6 is passed of a legal challenge that will go right to the

28:51

Supreme Court. And at that point, we'd be appealing to the

28:57

Supreme Court to overturn the law as unconstitutional and a violation of people's charter freedoms. How that would go is anybody's guess.

29:06

You may have heard about the Trinity Western University case where the

29:11

Supreme Court basically overturned itself. There was almost an identical case 18 or 19 years before with respect to Trinity Western's College for Education to educate and prepare teachers for teaching in Canadian schools.

29:30

And their right to have that was challenged all those years ago, and they won in the Supreme Court. An almost identical case with respect to a proposed law school, the

29:40

Supreme Court basically overturned itself and said, no, you can't have, and essentially you can't have a

29:46

Christian lifestyle document. You can't have a Christian institution, basically.

29:52

It has to be open to all those people who would want to practice any other kind of sexual practice while they're on your campus and part of your college and part of your university.

30:05

Otherwise it's discrimination. So they overturned themselves. So it's a very progressive court. So it's very difficult to know how the court would rule in a constitutional challenge.

30:15

So here now, and obviously the American system was not designed to function the way that it is now, but here now the selection of Supreme Court justices is political nuclear warfare.

30:34

I mean, there are no survivors left. I don't know why anybody honestly would want to put themselves through the process.

30:44

It doesn't matter how great your credentials are or anything else, you will be absolutely run through the ringer, as my mom used to say.

30:56

But is it as much of a political thing there in Canada, the selection of these justices, or has it not quite gotten to that level of circus theater that we have?

31:08

Yeah, well, I mean, this may sound really strange, James, but we could only wish that we had that kind of theater because at least your theater demonstrates that there is a genuine radical cultural conflict.

31:29

And it's recognized that much of that conflict is taking place in the juridical sphere and in the courts with activist judges, and that the balance of courts can change the shape of the future, and there's conflict around that in the

31:46

United States, which is as awful as it is to watch terrible things like what happened to Brett Kavanaugh.

31:54

There is no such controversy here. Of course, our justices are political appointees like yours.

32:01

They're not elected. But it's largely a who's who of liberals.

32:09

It's shades of red. There is no cultural public controversy around Supreme Court picks in this country.

32:15

That is foreign to the Canadian landscape. I wish it were not.

32:23

I certainly don't think that it's ideal the way that the radicals in the

32:29

US have now turned the appointment of Supreme Court justices into heresy trials, but at least it manifests there is a cultural conflict left.

32:40

In Canada, we don't see that. That's not part of the public discourse.

32:46

It doesn't make its way into the public media. Most people would be thoroughly unaware of it.

32:55

I wasn't gonna spend that much time on this, but was this sort of a straight line?

33:03

There had to have been ups and downs. Canada hasn't always been like this.

33:09

How could there be such a complete overthrow of even having the public dialogue and debate where it's just, it's an echo chamber politically now?

33:20

How did that, I mean, that's what they're trying to do here. Maybe it was the same process. I don't know.

33:26

But how did that happen? Well, there's

33:33

Canadian historians have asked that question. I think Mark Knoll wrote a book called

33:40

What Happened to Christian Canada. And it's a very interesting question.

33:51

I mean, I would say that there are Canadian historians who would argue that originally

33:56

Canada had perhaps an even greater claim to being a

34:01

Christian nation, distinctly Christian nation than the United States.

34:08

That could be disputed, but some have claimed it, that it was a very organically

34:17

Christian, socially conservative culture for a very long time.

34:26

It was Psalm 72 verse eight, in fact, is on the

34:31

Canadian coat of arms. He shall have dominion from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth.

34:38

When I took my citizenship oath and became a Canadian citizen,

34:44

I'm allowed to keep both my British and my Canadian citizenship. Behind the judge when we were being sworn in is the

34:51

Canadian coat of arms and it's Psalm 72, eight. There was a vision for the dominion of Christ, God's dominion from sea to sea.

35:03

And it was a culture that inherited, of course, it's Christian, deep

35:09

Christian traditions, largely from England. And in Quebec, of course, you had the strong influence of Roman Catholicism.

35:17

Quebec went first in the direction of radical secularization, but this really has been a process largely since World War II of the gradual creep of the state of basically social democracy, socialist democracy,

35:37

I should say. Christian leaders, even some of our most well -known

35:43

Christian leaders championing state education, state -funded education. That was in Ontario, a

35:49

Methodist minister. A famous politician here, Tommy Douglas, championing socialized medicine.

35:57

He was also in his early part of his career, a champion of euthanasia. But most of this change has happened since World War II.

36:08

And I would say that a real tipping point for Canada was the introduction of the

36:13

Canadian Charter, which was our own sort of new constitutional document. And although this is vociferously denied by the justices, what's really happened is there's been the creation gradually of a hierarchy of rights under the

36:28

Charter where really freedom of religion and freedom of speech, because we're subject to various hate speech legislation in various provinces here as well, has gradually come to the bottom of the pile.

36:46

So this sort of critical race theory, basically cultural Marxism, radical progressivism, whatever label you want to give to it has created a hierarchy of rights.

36:58

And so at the center of the wheel of oppression, as Foucault would have, I think, had it, you've got the white male middle -class

37:06

Christian and the Christian family. And everybody else on the edge of that is a victim of oppression.

37:15

And Canadian politics in large measure, especially over the last 20 years, has sort of taken upon itself to reverse that and make the oppressed, the oppressor, the oppressed.

37:32

And that seems to have basically been what's happened in the courts. I mean, I regularly talk to Christians now who are seriously thinking about fleeing the country.

37:42

Lots of young families, there's a family in my own church, young family looking to leave for Texas, a lot of Canadians think,

37:48

Christians thinking of going to America. You're absolutely right, it wasn't always this way. Canada was never perfect, of course, never wholly consistently

37:58

Christian, but you can go back a hundred years and read the debates of senators around the importance of, from both parties, around the centrality of the 10 commandments and the importance of both tables of God's law for Canadian politics.

38:16

And there was still a battle in the early 80s over the Lord's Day Act because of Sabbath laws, as recently as the 1980s, where the

38:26

Sabbath was protected, whatever we want to make of that. So the change has been the takeover of education fundamentally by the state and it's radical, progressive, and increasingly a neo -Marxist agenda.

38:44

There's been periods of slowdown. What tends to happen here is liberals get in and if they get pushed out of government, which they do periodically, the pause button gets pushed on the radical drive to overturn every

39:01

Christian norm and every historic Canadian tradition and idea.

39:08

And then when the Conservatives are out, well, the Conservatives never actually pushed back ideologically.

39:14

So liberals just pick up where they were before because all the Conservatives have done, because they have no basis for pushback, is they press pause.

39:22

And then, so there's another period of time where you get pulled even further left. It's all since the

39:28

French Revolution, of course, we're being dragged further and further that way. And all we ever do with a

39:35

Conservative government is now we're just shades of red. Canadian politics is shades of red. There isn't even fiscal conservatism really left in Canada.

39:44

Now, there are small pockets of resistance within conservatism and I think some significant developments may actually come in that regard this year.

39:54

So there are glimmers of hope. I'm involved in working with and talking to some politicians in that regard at both the provincial and federal level.

40:05

But it's been, James, basically the invasion of all the cultural institutions. It's the same story that's going on in the

40:12

United States right now, but we're maybe 10, 15 years ahead of you. And the biggest driver of it has been state education.

40:20

Yeah, same thing here, obviously. Here's a theory for you. Let me see if this will help us to transition.

40:28

Here's a theory for you. I think it's due to Tim Hortons because I think they put something in the donuts and that would explain why every corner in Canada, there is a

40:43

Tim Hortons. And what do you think of my theory? Well, he's certainly a famous individual.

40:49

I mean, maybe there was something in the donuts. I've been asked whether Tim Hortons is the prime minister of Canada.

41:00

I think he probably would have done a better job than our present prime minister, but maybe there is something in the water.

41:08

It's so sad. It's just so sad, James, because the surrender of what was the true

41:16

North strong and free and in our national anthem, if you look at the verses of the

41:21

Canadian charter, we stand on guard for thee. It's God keep our land glorious and free.

41:30

And we've lost any real sense. And it's been especially seen, been made so painfully obvious this past 12 months that the idea of glorious and free, the true

41:42

North is really just words at this point.

41:47

There's no substance left to it. Right. Well, I've started commenting. I first visited

41:53

London in 2005 and have spent a lot of time there.

42:01

And in fact, I was gonna ask you which terminal at Heathrow is your favorite?

42:09

Terminal two, probably. Really? Okay. All right, all right, all right.

42:14

I'm sort of a - Queens terminal, they call it. Yeah, I'm sort of a three, five guy because I did a lot of flying with B of A and I know where everything is, especially in five,

42:24

I could get there in the dark. So, but I've spent a lot of time there, a lot of time running.

42:31

I think London is fascinating. I stay at the Royal Horse Guards Hotel down there along the

42:38

Thames. And if you get up early enough, if you're willing to run before sunrise, you got the place to yourself.

42:45

I mean, I could do laps along the Thames past the eye and I'm the only person running.

42:52

They're all looking at me like, must be an American. This is just so weird over there. I love it, love the whole place.

43:01

But I noticed from the start, you're passing by all these testimonies to a

43:09

Christian past chiseled in stone and the vast majority of other people walking past don't even know what those things mean anymore, let alone, does it have any meaning?

43:20

It's just part of the landscape. It just doesn't connect to life anymore. Yeah, well, I lived in London for a number of years.

43:27

In fact, my first pastoral assignment was in London. I lived on the

43:32

Fulham Chelsea border, my wife and I, when we were first married. And I lived right on the edge of the

43:38

Thames. And London's an amazing city. It's a beautiful city, it's an amazing metropolis.

43:46

Prior to these current restrictions, I would be typically in London four or five times a year for the

43:56

Institute working with partnering organizations in London, Oxford Circus, Christian Concern there.

44:04

And it's amazing, even when you walk past the Houses of Parliament and you can probably see over my shoulder here on this side, no, this side, no, this side, there, this side, here it is.

44:17

That's Oliver Cromwell right there. And there's a statue of Oliver Cromwell holding the

44:25

Bible. And of course, there's statues of William Wilberforce. I mean, you see these figures, they're absolutely everywhere in London.

44:34

And of course, that's why we've seen movements recently like Black Lives Matter seeking to, and by the way, there is a review going on right now under the

44:44

Islamic mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, of all the statues and road names, or this is what's going on.

44:53

There's gotta be a review apparently of all of this history.

45:00

But that's why, of course, they want to tear them down and pull them down and deface them because this is what we're in revolution against.

45:09

We're in a cultural moment of perpetual revolution. This is, you know, it's

45:14

Marxist to the core. Of course, it's following on from the ideas of Rousseau, but it is perpetual revolution.

45:22

We've got to throw all of these people into the sea and start history all over again.

45:29

And it breaks my heart when I'm back in England because I knew what we once were.

45:38

Right, right. Yeah, and it is, you know the old statement that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, but the continuation of that that I've seen that is even more poignant for me is, and it's the curse of those who know history to have to sit back and watch it happening again and again because no one will listen to them.

45:59

And that seems to be really the issue that we're facing today. A lot of this, obviously this all, you know, we can talk history all we want, but we're talking about humans here and we're talking about what truly motivates human activity and human behavior.

46:19

And what we're thinking about when we think about the Bill C -6, the legislation down in Victoria, the

46:26

Equality Act here in the United States, it's funny, it's happening everywhere. Germany, every place, they're all having the exact same revolution taking place.

46:37

And the places where it's being resisted really stand out. Poland, Hungary, places like that, they're saying, no, we're not going there.

46:45

But it all comes back to ultimate authorities and how a culture derives its law, its understanding, its meaning, which then determines language.

46:57

And of course, language is the big area of attack these days. You have to redefine everything. Right now on the

47:03

Ezra Institute webcast, you have started a series that when you dropped the first one last week, you remember

47:13

I texted you and said, oh, you're really trying to be popular, aren't you? Which was meant to be somewhat sarcastic, but you're

47:22

British, so you understand that. It wouldn't necessarily work with Canadians, but it does work with the

47:28

Brits. But you're talking about God's law. And in fact, you just dropped one, I think today or yesterday, where you're continuing that discussion.

47:37

That really does get to what we're talking about as to why all of this is happening. There has been such a massive shift in Western thought as to the source of law, the source of meaning, the source of right and wrong.

47:54

Tell us a little about your series you're doing and how it's relevant. Yeah, so,

48:02

I mean, related to this, this links right back into what we've just been talking about because what we can easily miss, what most people tend to miss, is that what we're going through right now in the

48:16

West is in fact an indirect, and in some cases, very direct engagement with biblical law.

48:27

If there's one thing that is guaranteed to get steam coming out of the ears of any modern liberal in the church or the wider culture, it's to say that biblical law has something to say to the issues of our time.

48:45

But if you look at actually what's going on, when you look at the repealing of what were essentially, what were blasphemy laws in our recent history,

48:59

I talked about the Lord's Day Act as well back in the 80s. If you look at what's going on in criminal law, the repealing of death penalties and so on and so forth, what's actually happening culturally right now is a form of engagement with biblical law, but it's the repeal of Christian law and biblical law.

49:20

And if there's two things that help us to discern the religion of a culture, it's law and it's education because our cultural institutions are the things which pass on our cultural values and communicate them.

49:41

Law is a teaching device. It isn't just a procedural thing for courts to work through.

49:50

Law, because it's precept and of course sanction, those things together teach values.

49:58

So whenever you see a revolution going on in law, what you're witnessing is the outworking of a change of gods in that culture because all law rests upon a principle of ultimate sovereignty.

50:15

In other words, a lawgiver. You can't have law without a lawgiver. So who is the lawgiver?

50:21

And what is the basis of the authority of the lawgiver?

50:28

And so what's at work is a principle of sovereignty that might be Vox Populi, Vox Dei. It might be the voice of the people.

50:35

It might be the voice of the state. So popular sovereignty, state sovereignty, or it's going to be the voice of God.

50:44

And so what we're seeing right now in the law and the reason we think that this series of three podcasts we're doing on God's law is so relevant is that really this attack on God's law and the antinomianism even that's invaded the church now is a reflection of the change of religion in the culture and where we abandoned

51:09

God's law in the church. It's the problem of syncretism in the church. We're trying to blend.

51:15

We're trying to bring together in an unhappy synthesis the cultural religion of our age and biblical

51:24

Christianity. And of course, behind all of that lies what we are really seeing now.

51:30

You mentioned the attack on language, James, but it's fundamentally an attack on the very idea of creation, creational normativity, because of course, everything

51:44

God says is law. And the Bible begins with the command promise, if you will, of that things are let there be.

51:57

The very constitution of things, the holding of all things together, if you will, is the law word of God.

52:05

And God calls things to be, and because of their continuance and because they're after their kind, there's a promise involved in that command to be.

52:18

And so all of God's word is command and promise. And as human beings, we are called to respond.

52:28

We respond in being, responding beings to the normativity that God has established within creation for human life and human society.

52:37

And of course, the inscripturated word of God brings that to focus for us.

52:44

So every word of God is his law word. And so what we're really witnessing now when

52:49

I talk about the idea of perpetual revolution is we're trying to repeal

52:54

God. We're trying to repeal the creator and any notion of creational normativity.

53:00

So you've got judges who do not know the difference or who pretend not to know the difference between a man and a woman, one of the most basic creational distinctions established by God at creation.

53:11

So there's no law or norm for being a man and no law or norm for being a woman in the view of these people.

53:17

So you've got the most basic, the most fundamental attack on God's law order.

53:23

And this is why we think right now the discussion about God's law and in particular

53:29

God's revealed law in scripture is so important. I had, I've commented numerous times that without a creator, all you have really once you boil it all down is going to be chaos.

53:45

You only have creatures who are insufficient in and of themselves to function as the epistemological center.

53:52

And so all of man's philosophies, all of man's systems that will not begin with the creator.

53:59

And of course you can have a creator if he doesn't communicate that really doesn't accomplish anything either. So the triune

54:05

God of the Christian faith is absolutely necessary for everything that Western culture had built and that is now being attacked and destroyed right before our eyes.

54:18

And what it will lead to unless there is a tremendous revival and repentance is frightening, especially for those of us who have gotten to the age where we have grandchildren and we think a lot about what type of lives they're going to be facing and what type of situations they're going to be facing.

54:37

Very challenging times, no question about it. But obviously in evangelicalism, especially in the

54:43

United States, about the only verse on the subject of the law that is well -known is you are not under law, but under grace.

54:54

And therefore, since you're under grace, you don't even have to give a second thought to this issue of law.

55:00

And I personally have had to smile a bit over the past year, a little more now, as a number of well -known individuals, many of whom

55:14

I know personally, are all of a sudden, after it started about six months ago, started saying really strong things about, oh,

55:25

I don't know, the Lordship of Christ over his church and over government and all sorts of stuff like this that honestly

55:33

I would not have expected to have heard coming from them literally only a year earlier.

55:39

All of a sudden there has been a focus and it's caused division. I mean, you know as well as I do, you put out almost any statement whatsoever challenging governmental actions today and you're gonna have

55:55

Romans 13 thrown back at you as a brick bat. You're gonna have just all sorts of folks just saying you're a terrible, horrible radical and things like this.

56:05

So it has illustrated some fundamental weaknesses and divisions at that point.

56:13

But for a lot of other folks, I think there has had to be a reorientation, a rethinking and a realization, you know what, we've gotten along for a long time in the

56:25

United States anyways with the ability to just sort of assume that there is a peaceful non -animosity between the government and the church.

56:36

And that was foolish. If we have a biblical anthropology, we should have known that that's not the case to begin with.

56:42

But now we're just now taking up arms, which is a little bit late and digging into our own armory, that is the scriptures to find out what they actually teach about these subjects and discovering that lo and behold, people in generations before us had said a whole lot about this.

57:03

You seeing some of the same things? Yeah, I mean, first it is of course tragic that it should be so controversial or stir up so much animus and animosity to speak about the thing that David in Psalm 119 sings about, that Jesus upholds in his great exposition of the gospel of the law as the greater

57:36

Moses when he goes up onto the mountain in Matthew five. That that reality law, which is the condition of life because God's law for creation and the lawfulness of creation, the lawful response to God, God has a law order and structure for every aspect of our lives.

57:56

This is the very condition of our lives without God's law for our life. As you've said, everything would just be chaos.

58:02

Everything would fly apart. And the idea that the beautiful unity of God's creation word, his inscripturated word, the incarnate word, and the unity of what the word of God has to say about God's law word, that that should be a subject of such controversy and that those who raise it, the objects of hostility in the

58:30

Christian church, I think shows you how far we've come and the degree of syncretism and antinomianism in the life of the church.

58:40

I mean, if you think about it, James, you'll know this better than I. If you look at the liturgies of the church historically, they are filled with the law.

58:50

Many of the reform denominations here still will recite the law of God every

58:58

Sunday. The 10 Commandments used to hang on the walls of our churches. They are on the walls of my own church,

59:05

Westminster Chapel in Toronto, but very few churches today display the 10 Commandments. They used to hang on the walls of all of our crown courts.

59:15

And you don't see them so much today either. So yes, we're seeing the same kind of a pattern.

59:26

And it's interesting that this past 12 months has to some degree forced the issue.

59:35

And it's been very interesting to me because I noticed that a couple of months ago, people here began to, some people here,

59:43

I should say, we've got those who are really grateful for our ministry and the fact that we do talk about this subject a lot, but I noticed that people started to attack the

59:55

Institute and attack me personally because I was speaking about the freedom of the church and I was involved as a primary drafter of something called the

01:00:09

Niagara Declaration about the freedom of the church under the Lordship of Christ here. And the attacks started coming, but interestingly enough, they began to manifest themselves as attacks against God's law.

01:00:24

And you might think on the surface, well, what's the connection? Well, there is an obvious connection.

01:00:30

The issue that many Christians today are concerned with is that, well, if we speak about the

01:00:38

Lordship of Christ and his law, well, doesn't that mean then cultural transformation and dominion and all these boogeyman scary words that we want to impose upon a culture?

01:00:55

What they don't realize or are often not thought through is that the fact that we haven't had these battles with the states, as you put it, until very recently is that we were able to presume upon for now actually centuries in the

01:01:11

West, a broadly imperfect, but a broadly Christian law order that recognized male and female as normative, that recognized marriage and protected it, that recognized the value of life and protected it, that recognized the value of women and protected them.

01:01:32

In fact, in Canada, you could be sentenced to death for rape until 1950 as a maximum penalty.

01:01:41

The protection of Sabbath laws as freedom from basically slavery, from being forced to work by your employer seven days a week.

01:01:50

And we were able to presume on basically freedom of speech and freedom of worship and all of these things.

01:01:59

And that was because of the influence of biblical law. It was because of the character of biblical law in the

01:02:07

West, right back to Alfred the Great and his wittens and his efforts to begin the codification of English common law, the 10 commandments, passages from the book of Acts and the epistles.

01:02:19

For these men, by the way, in the past, there was no radical juxtaposition and an antithesis between law and gospel.

01:02:27

They recognize that what Paul says in 1 Timothy chapter one, as Paul articulates something of the civil applications of the law there and says and talks about anything else being resisting anything else that would be contrary to his gospel.

01:02:48

These forebears of ours did not see a radical antithesis between law and gospel.

01:02:53

They recognize that the Lordship of Christ, the good news about the kingdom of God has implications and that God has a kingdom charter and it's called his law.

01:03:01

And that if we want to live in peace and freedom, then his law will be important to us.

01:03:07

And suddenly, as you've said, some prominent figures have suddenly recognized that what these maverick, almost wingnut type characters like James White and Joe's boot on the fringes of evangelicalism have been saying about law and culture, or maybe that has some relevance after all, maybe

01:03:31

Christ and culture and his Lordship is a subject that's important after all.

01:03:37

Well, and then there's that really, really weird guy in Moscow, Idaho. We can't even mention his name without the entire internet going completely insane.

01:03:46

So, which I understand you're gonna be doing something and we're actually gonna allow you to cross the border into South Dakota coming up here in a little while.

01:03:56

Yeah, I have a plan to sneak across and sneak back in. I don't wanna divulge it on this show, all of the details lest our enemies be watching.

01:04:09

But yeah, I'm looking forward to being in South Dakota at the end of April, beginning of May for a freedom rally and Doug, I think the infamous, as you mentioned.

01:04:20

Doug the infamous, we'll just call him Doug the infamous. We'll be there, looking forward to seeing him.

01:04:27

And yeah, it's encouraging to see that there are at the same time, an increasing number of voices who are speaking about these issues openly and they're willing to face the music from some of their own

01:04:45

Christian brothers and sisters and uphold the Lordship of Jesus Christ, even if they are accused of being

01:04:53

Constantinian and dominionists and so on. Yeah, I was supposed to be up in Moscow, I think it was

01:05:02

March or April of last year, I think it was March. We had to cancel it because everything was falling apart at that time.

01:05:10

Nobody knew what in the world was gonna be going on, but Doug and I have actually debated a number of times.

01:05:17

He and I debated in Los Angeles, I think in 2004 on the issue of baptism and the title of the debate was our

01:05:33

Roman Catholics, our brothers, sisters of Christ. He was basically saying, you grab them by their baptism,

01:05:40

Trinitarian baptism, and so on and so forth. And really we were dancing around the whole paedo -baptist issue which we, but I was supposed to go up there last year and we were going to have two debates and then do all sorts of other things together.

01:05:56

I'm not sure if you've seen any of the sweater vest dialogues we've done where we're just talking about various and sundry issues.

01:06:02

But we were supposed to debate paedo -communion, which a lot of people still want to hear that debate and I'd still like to see that happen because I think it would be quite interesting.

01:06:13

And then I don't know if you've seen, Doug and I, we actually did a debate book. I think about 12 people saw it.

01:06:21

But we did a book where we debated the textual issue because he's a ecclesiastical text guy.

01:06:30

And we had actually debated in the pages long, long ago of Agenda Credenda, Credenda Agenda?

01:06:37

Yeah, whatever it is, and on the same subject. And so we were going to do that live while I was up there.

01:06:45

So we're going to have to make that happen. It's just, it's a long drive from Phoenix. And that's how

01:06:50

I'm getting anywhere these days right now is on four wheels. So it takes a little while, but -

01:06:57

I thought it was all two wheels most of the time on your bike. Well, you know, while that would be a fascinating ride, it's really hard to carry much in the way of clothing on a bike.

01:07:09

That's, yeah, no thanks. Now you, we didn't talk about how long you were going to be on.

01:07:16

You've been on for over an hour already. Do we have time to touch on a couple of those quotes that you sent or is your schedule full or what?

01:07:23

No, I'm happy to stay as long as you need me, James. Okay, good. So I have in my hand a little pamphlet you did called

01:07:33

The Mission of God, just under 700 pages for the pamphlet.

01:07:39

And in the course of reading through that book a couple of years ago,

01:07:48

I should be honest in telling you, I was basically forced to read it. By Jeff and Luke and Zach, my fellow pastors at Apologia, who basically said, this is sort of like our manifesto, so you need to read it.

01:08:03

So you can thank them for forcing me to do so. And as you know,

01:08:09

I actually listened to it as I climbed mountains and rode hundreds of miles on my bike, that is how

01:08:17

I did that. In fact, now thinking about it, I do remember listening to it in the car as well. So I was going over to California for something and listened to some of it there.

01:08:26

But you address many, many issues, obviously in The Mission of God. How would you, this is sometimes hard when people ask me to do it with any of my books, but do you have a summary statement?

01:08:41

What is the thesis for The Mission of God? I mean, it's so broad that it might be difficult to do, but if someone were to ask, what's the basic thrust here?

01:08:53

How would you describe it? Jesus Christ is Lord and his kingdom rules over every aspect of life.

01:09:00

Okay, that's - It's a work of some would say cultural philosophy, some would say cultural theology, but it's intent.

01:09:15

I deliberately use the language of the discipline of contemporary missiology, the idea of the missio

01:09:23

Dei, The Mission of God, because my hope was to try and smuggle it into that debate. I'm not sure how successful I was.

01:09:30

It's very much a Trojan horse into what is often shaped by a sort of almost a neo -Marxist liberationist paradigm in contemporary missiology.

01:09:42

But the goal was to articulate a reformational view of the

01:09:50

Lordship of Christ and the kingdom of God over the various spheres of life, which is why there's chapters on law and education and culture and the church and evangelism and apologetics and so on.

01:10:04

There is a study of it that has just started as part of Apologia's offerings during the course of the week.

01:10:14

My son -in -law, Eric, led the introduction. So I did tell him that if he had any specific questions that he wasn't sure where you were going, that I might have some back channels to get him some responses on that.

01:10:30

Are they forcing him to read it as well? Because I think sometimes my wife thinks the only way to get people to read Mission of God is to put them under the thumbscrews.

01:10:38

No, but actually, I bought, personally, I purchased a case and have been handing them out to folks.

01:10:46

So I'm doing my best, especially because they're hardbacks. I mean, come on, who does anything in a hardback anymore?

01:10:55

You're a good friend. You're too kind to me. I appreciate it very much. So, all right, I have a quote on the screen.

01:11:01

It's probably too small for you to see, but Ryan sent it to me. Well, you should be able to see it there. Here's the first one.

01:11:09

Discussing the theological perspective often called two kingdoms or reformed two kingdoms is for most people like walking into a foggy room where you are not entirely sure where the furniture is.

01:11:20

Now, I just need to stop right here. There is no such thing as a foggy room in Arizona, okay? So maybe this works in Canada, but fog, what is that?

01:11:29

I'm not even sure, but that's okay. We'll let that one slide. This is because, especially in recent years, various doctrinal streams, some mutually exclusive, have used the term two kingdoms to describe their theology.

01:11:42

The task of analysis is made quite difficult due to the sheer quantity of the popular literature generated with different emphases and the regular equivocation with terms like kingdom, church, sphere, age, and realm that the two kingdoms advocates tend to engage in, especially when making an effort to recommend their view to a more historically reformed and covenant literate audience.

01:12:04

Now, I would point out that that last sentence, while being descriptive, was actually an argument too.

01:12:13

You snuck that one in there. So it was interesting that as we were talking about law just now, the natural question then is, well, what impact is this supposed to have as to the church's interaction with the state?

01:12:33

What's the church's message supposed to be? Especially now that we are in a day where literally, my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, but is there not a man in prison right now in Canada for using the wrong pronouns for one of his offspring?

01:12:53

I think it's his daughter and she wants to be a boy or something along those lines.

01:13:00

And my understanding is he's in prison because of that. Does the church have something to say to that or are we left to go, well, this is all spiritual issues.

01:13:13

We can't really address what's going on in the world. Well, your question contains the answer, doesn't it?

01:13:21

Yeah. And you would think it would be obvious that it does. There is a man in British Columbia right now on the

01:13:31

West Coast who has been charged with family violence by courts for speaking about his 14 year old daughter's desire to transition and doing so in the wrong way or in a way that the courts don't like.

01:13:48

And he's been put away for it. That's my understanding. I mean, it's almost too surreal to contemplate.

01:13:59

You're talking about a thought crime, a speech crime where somebody has gone to prison for affirming the normative creational norm of male and female as laid out in the

01:14:14

Torah and affirmed by the Lord Jesus with regard to his own daughter.

01:14:23

The invasion of the state there, the overreach of the state there into the family, into religious conviction is astonishing.

01:14:36

But this is the point that we've reached. And if I'd have even offered that as a potential outcome 10 years ago,

01:14:45

I would have been laughed at here. And I have been warning about these things for many years here.

01:14:52

And sometimes I have experienced the no platforming within the Christian version of it, but this is where we are.

01:15:01

So the power and relevance of the law of God today could not be more obvious.

01:15:10

I think the problem is that much like dispensationalism tried to dispense with the law and new covenant theology, it's kind of replacement seeks to dispense with the law, the fullness of the law.

01:15:30

And the way some of the Anabaptists sought to dispense with the law.

01:15:36

Here with the sort of two kingdoms idea, which is becoming more popular, although its roots are really in Aristotelianism and the

01:15:49

Roman Catholics scholastic thinking about nature and grace.

01:15:55

I think that's certainly true of David Van Droon and one of the most important representatives of this position.

01:16:01

They're very keen to defend natural law and very much this scholastic scheme.

01:16:08

But ultimately the cultural, and we could talk about that at some length if we had the time, the way in which that was worked out.

01:16:14

Different two kingdoms. The reason I say it's a bit like a foggy room, what I mean by that is that there are now such a variety of two kingdoms versions that it's not always easy to know which one you're addressing.

01:16:27

I've debated Matthew Tuninger, for example, and also spoken with him at a conference in Australia, maybe a couple of years ago now,

01:16:39

I think in Melbourne. And in the debate, which was in Canada on two kingdoms theology,

01:16:47

I came because he was a student of Van Droon and I came prepared to refute Van Droon's position and Tuninger didn't want to defend it and sort of pivoted to some kind of new version of two kingdoms based on his reflections on Calvin.

01:17:04

So for him, the two kingdoms are two ages. There's the present age and you can put education and law and politics and family and all of those things into the present age and then there's the age to come.

01:17:17

So the kingdom and therefore the charter of God's kingdom really is shunted off into the future.

01:17:25

The only place that the kingdom really is manifest, the upshot is always the same. The only place the kingdom of God really manifests itself is in my heart and in the church, in the ecclesiastical sphere.

01:17:37

He frames it in terms of ages. David Van Droon and the more traditional advocate of it talks about a common kingdom and a redemptive kingdom.

01:17:46

And in the common kingdom, which is based on natural law principles and is common to all humanity, in his view, you've got, which he tries to make an argument based on the

01:17:57

Noahic covenant, which I seek to critique in my book, Gospel Culture, where I do a detailed critique of two kingdoms thought.

01:18:07

He tries to build a case around the Noah's covenant as some sort of general covenant with basically all of humanity, a very, very general idea of common grace, but there's no special grace in his view involved in it.

01:18:24

I critique that. His idea is you've got a common kingdom where education, law, politics, all these things happen.

01:18:30

That's reason, natural law, that's the domain for all of that. And then you've got a redemptive kingdom, which is based on the kingdom of the new age, the new creation, if you will, not the old creation now, but the new creation.

01:18:44

And this is inaugurated by Christ and it's got new principles. It's based on new things.

01:18:50

And its relevance is only really in the redemptive kingdom in the life of the church.

01:18:58

And so the upshot of these various versions of two kingdoms thought is that the word of God, special revelation is not brought to bear upon culture.

01:19:11

It's not brought to bear upon the state. It's not brought to bear in political life, educational life.

01:19:17

There's no such thing as Christian education or a Christian view of politics or a

01:19:23

Christian approach to anything. These are all common kingdom things. And that common kingdom is lesser, it's lower, it's transitory, it's passing away.

01:19:32

It's just not that important. And so the basic idea is that you and I can agree with our neighbor.

01:19:40

We can agree with the average person down the street on the vast majority of things, but we have this disagreement about spiritual things, about salvation, about heaven, about eternal destiny.

01:19:51

But basically we can build common consensus in a essentially religiously neutral way around all these other subjects based on this idea of the old creation and a common kingdom rooted in natural law.

01:20:06

And without going into all the details, I just encourage people to pick up gospel culture and maybe for mission, a couple of my books there, they're shorter ones.

01:20:15

They're not 700 page investments to sort of unpack that. But the upshot is always the same.

01:20:23

You don't need to challenge the culture. You don't need to challenge the state.

01:20:29

You don't need to bring the word of God directly and the Lordship of Christ directly to bear outside the life of the church.

01:20:35

In other words, you ecclesiasticize the gospel. And the Bible also becomes an ecclesiastical book.

01:20:43

It's not a book for the world. It's not a book for the nations. It's not a book for kings and governors to submit to, which is what historically, as you well know, the oath of office was taken on the

01:20:53

Bible in the United States, still is. It used to be taken on an open Bible to the blessings and curses in Deuteronomy 27, 28 there.

01:21:02

The coronation oath of Queen Elizabeth in the tradition, of course, in England and for Canada is about the royal law and the oath to uphold the law and gospel of Christ and so on.

01:21:13

None of that for the two kingdoms people is allowed. They don't have any appreciation of what

01:21:20

I would call in the, within the reformational Kuyperian tradition, sphere sovereignty, that there are various spheres of life, the family, the church of the state being three that are directly under Christ and his rule and kingship and have independence and that they are to be governed in terms of the word of God and in submission to the

01:21:40

Lord Jesus Christ. That's all anathema. Any talk of transforming culture, any talk of the transformation of political life or cultural life with the gospel, no, those things are out.

01:21:51

It's a common kingdom. And of course, this is completely implausible.

01:21:57

It's not only implausible philosophically and theologically, it's implausible socially and culturally because try telling that to a

01:22:04

Christian living in Pakistan where my family were missionaries for 17 years, my parents, that you can just go next door and have general agreement on the vast majority of things one neighbor.

01:22:15

No, you can only in America and Canada in the past have a broad agreement over most things because our nations have been evangelized and saturated in the gospel for centuries.

01:22:29

And as we're seeing that decline and the influence of the gospel in steep decline, well, now you can go next door to your neighbor and not agree on whether there are two genders, male and female.

01:22:40

So the whole argument, I think on that, just from that point of view falls to pieces that the only two kingdoms that the

01:22:50

Bible recognizes are the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light. It's the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan.

01:22:56

It doesn't divide up creation into various domains so that if you flee from one domain, an evil domain into the other, now you're gonna be safe and now you're in the kingdom of God.

01:23:08

I know plenty of churches that are a very, very poor manifestation of the kingdom of God.

01:23:13

And in fact, some of them are synagogues of Satan. Going into the church institute does not take you out into a domain of righteousness and away from a domain of evil.

01:23:24

So this whole idea that creation can be broken up into parts in that way, into these various domains and different terrains, essentially what it does is it radically separates creation and redemption.

01:23:40

It says that the creation itself and the scope of the fall are different from the scope of redemption.

01:23:50

Whereas we would see from a biblical point of view, I think creation, fall and redemption in a historical continuum as the new creation is about the release,

01:24:01

Romans 8, from this creation's bondage to corruption and its total renewal, its transformation, its transfiguration, if you will.

01:24:10

The two kingdoms thought essentially abandons this creation and therefore culture, what man does with creation.

01:24:19

And the upshot is the ecclesiasticizing of the Bible. And what happens is when you ecclesiasticize the

01:24:25

Bible and you ecclesiasticize the faith, what do you get? You call forth the secularization of the world.

01:24:32

So if you won't apply the word of God outside of the life of the church and your own two ears, then you are in ecclesiasticizing the gospel, you are secularizing, you are calling forth the secularization of the world.

01:24:48

And so in a certain sense, the position becomes entirely self -defeating because you will then find that you will no longer have the common agreement with your neighbor that you thought you had.

01:24:59

One of the quotations that I had here, I'll look at real quickly here.

01:25:05

It says, the 2K advocates tell us that the first realm, the common kingdom is governed by natural law and originally stoic concept filled with difficulties, the actual content of which nobody seems to grasp any clarity.

01:25:17

And the second kingdom by God's special revelation so that Christians must live life playing musical chairs between a common and a redemptive kingdom.

01:25:25

And it is often unclear which one you are standing in at any given moment. It would seem to me that the current cultural moment has shed a fair amount of light on that.

01:25:36

And as you just got done saying, I can see how someone, it wasn't called radical two kingdom or two kingdom or reformed two kingdom in the past, but in my own fundamentalist circles as a younger person, this same concept did exist.

01:25:58

It did not exist flowing from any type of covenantal concept or anything like that.

01:26:04

But it was all based on the fact that we lived within a context where there was still general respect of the

01:26:12

Bible. There was still a general Christianized cultural understanding of male and female and marriage.

01:26:18

And I mean, I'm old enough to remember when a, it was still brought up when

01:26:25

Reagan ran for president, that he was divorced. That was a big issue.

01:26:32

That was something that people still talked about. Now, no one would give it a second thought. Now you have anybody who runs for president needs to have used drugs and done all sorts of other things in the past.

01:26:43

So things have changed a lot, but that cultural consensus is long past.

01:26:50

Noah or otherwise, the foundational assumptions that you can attribute to common grace, as I watch almost any commentary made today, if you make the most simple statements about male and female, family, et cetera, et cetera, in social media, you will discover very, very quickly that consensus does not exist any longer at all.

01:27:20

And so you're either left with nothing to say or you have to re -examine the very foundations of this entire assumption that people have glommed on to.

01:27:32

Yeah, that's a powerful analysis. That really does sum the situation up.

01:27:38

I think that the two kingdoms thought falls under its own weight. It may be true that in the leafy suburbs of Escondido, although I increasingly doubt that, that you can find this common consensus with people.

01:27:51

But when you look at the covenant with Noah, the covenant that, my covenant that God talks about there is clearly something that pre -exists.

01:28:02

It doesn't get invented with Noah. And it's obviously a covenant of grace, not some common covenant.

01:28:10

And it's particularized as well because it involves blood sacrifice of clean animals.

01:28:17

There's a kind of world sacrifice that's going on there. There's many components to it, but of course in the covenantal structure of scripture, it's one that's expanded on.

01:28:29

And it says that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. So it cannot bear the weight that certainly

01:28:39

Van Droonen wants to place on it of being the foundation of some generalized concept of morality and some generalized concept of culture.

01:28:48

It simply comes down to this. Creation is the good creation of God.

01:28:54

All of it, every aspect of it. That's what the Bible is crystal clear about. All of creation has been called into being.

01:29:02

When we look at Colossians one, and we see that everything has been created by the

01:29:07

Lord Jesus Christ, and it was declared good. Then of course, in the structure of scripture, we know that the fall comes in because of sin and rebellion, and that affects the root of man's being, his heart, and a curse comes on the created order because of man's relationship as the

01:29:24

Lord of creation, as a being who's given lordship. He's a vice -gerent or a vice -regent, if you will.

01:29:32

I prefer a vice -gerent, under God. And so his fall and rebellion affects the totality of creation.

01:29:40

And we Calvinists would talk about total depravity because it affects every aspect of our being rooted in our hearts.

01:29:48

And then redemption is as wide as the scope of the fall. So everything has been touched by sin and everything can be subject to the redemptive work of the

01:30:00

Lord Jesus Christ. And it begins with the new creation of if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.

01:30:08

And he's now given us, scripture says, a ministry of reconciliation. And this attempt to overthink and try and find these artificially constructed domains within creation, instead of recognizing that we're called, as the

01:30:27

Lord Jesus put very simply, to pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, where on earth as it is in heaven, that he's come preaching the gospel of the kingdom.

01:30:38

He didn't come preaching the gospel of two kingdoms. He came preaching the gospel of the kingdom. And that's what

01:30:44

I mean by this musical chairs. When you start introducing multiple kingdoms and multiple domains, rather than simply recognizing that the idea of the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness is a structural idea.

01:30:58

Sorry, it's not a structural idea as though it's domains in creation. It's a directional idea. It's to do with whether we are living in covenant keeping obedience to the

01:31:08

Lord Jesus Christ in every area of life. So if I'm living in obedience and faithfulness to God and his word in my family, there the kingdom of God is.

01:31:17

If I'm living in faithfulness and obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ and his word in the school, there the kingdom of God is.

01:31:23

If it's in the university, there the kingdom of God is. If in my vocation as a doctor or a lawyer,

01:31:30

I'm subjecting myself to in willing subjection in obedient response to the Lord Jesus Christ.

01:31:36

And I live in terms of it. There, however imperfectly, is a manifestation of the kingdom of God.

01:31:41

And when we can go further, we can say that when countries, when states, when governments have willingly surrendered themselves as once famously with the

01:31:50

Solemn League and covenant in England, which was actually I think ratified as well by Charles the second, when we willingly submit ourselves to be governed by the

01:32:00

Lord Jesus Christ and his word, there the kingdom of God is. And in the church, only if we willingly surrender to the

01:32:08

Lordship of Christ and his word, there the kingdom of God is. Every area, every aspect of life, that's the beauty and the simplicity of the overarching theme of the

01:32:21

Bible, which is the kingdom of God. Everything created is good. Everything is fallen due to sin and Christ is redeeming all things by his work and everything can participate in that kingdom life as we bring it into subjection to Christ.

01:32:38

That's the obvious reading of the Bible. And I think whatever other of these schemes you look at that try and liberate us from the obligation to apply the fullness of God to his word, the fullness of God's word to his world, you're finding something that is strained and artificial.

01:32:58

And anybody who reads the two kingdoms advocates will find this. And I would commend, people take a little bit of time to look at that and see that actually sometimes simplicity is elegance and there is a simplicity in scripture with respect to this message of the kingdom of God, the rule and reign of Jesus Christ over every aspect of life.

01:33:27

It is interesting. I sent something to you yesterday. There seems to be some struggles as to how two kingdom theology is going to navigate these treacherous, mind -filled waters of critical race theory and intersectionality and everything that is challenging to us today.

01:33:51

Because all of that just does away with the neutral kingdom,

01:33:59

Noahic stuff. I mean, this is everything about, if I were to summarize the fundamental effect of critical theory, it is to destroy anything that could possibly unify anything in God's creation.

01:34:18

Of course, it doesn't believe there's such a thing as God's creation, but it breaks everything down. It destroys any type of unification.

01:34:26

And if you're going to get rid of the one thing that could provide that unity, which is found in God's revelation,

01:34:35

God's purpose is what he's doing in this world, what else do you, what are you going to say outside of just promoting personal preference if you even dare to engage the society in what it's saying?

01:34:49

We don't want, we can't be silent. This is, I mean, we may be silenced, but that's not the same as being silent.

01:34:58

We fight those that are seeking to silence us, but for a period of time and only a period of time, they may succeed in doing so.

01:35:08

But the reality is at least we have a message that we are, we want the world to know when this flimsy house of cards they're building up collapses in upon itself.

01:35:21

That doesn't mean that there isn't any purpose left in the world. You abandoned it a long time ago.

01:35:26

Let us tell you all about what you should have done and where redemption is to be found. So it just strikes me that especially amongst reform people, this should be an issue that should be fairly straightforward, but we all have our challenges.

01:35:43

We have had you for over 90 minutes. I appreciate you giving so much of your time to us.

01:35:50

How can people, especially how can people keep up with Ezra Institute and what's going on in Canada and especially the webcast and things like that?

01:36:01

How can they track you down and get you into there? We're telling everybody it's one thing because I have my

01:36:08

Apple podcast things set up and all that thing. That's fine, but we need to have websites and we need to have the old fashioned

01:36:17

RSS feeders set up because eventually this is all gonna be considered hate speech by the people who are launching the attack on language.

01:36:32

So how can people keep track of Joe Boot and Ezra Institute? Well, thanks

01:36:37

James. So yeah, we have a lot of resources available at our website, which is ezrainstitute .ca.

01:36:47

Ezrainstitute .ca and Ezra Press, you can get our books and resources there.

01:36:55

Of course, Amazon carries the vast majority of them as well, but you can see all of our resources there. There's sermons.

01:37:02

We would really encourage people to tune into our podcast, which is Worldview Wednesday.

01:37:08

It comes out every Wednesday. So people can actually subscribe to our podcast where we basically deal with one of these worldview or cultural issues every week and try and unpack it a little bit for people so they can access that.

01:37:23

And then of course people can follow me on Twitter. And I'm fairly new to that world.

01:37:31

And as you've said before, James, yeah, they can follow me for now. Let's use the platform while we still have some kind of access to it.

01:37:40

But as you rightly point out, we need to be building these resources on our own platforms as much as possible because the cancel culture is coming for us.

01:37:51

That is for sure. But as you pointed out, creational normativity, ultimately God's law word cannot be finally overturned.

01:37:58

So we will win, but this culture is gonna take a while to burn itself out on these things.

01:38:03

And so hopefully these resources, Mission of God, some of my other books will be useful to people.

01:38:09

And I'm very grateful that you've given me an opportunity to share, be part of your program and also to highlight some of those resources.

01:38:17

Oh, I should add just very quickly that we do have some residential programs that we offer where people can come for some in -depth, short -term teaching.

01:38:26

Our flagship, our main program is called the H. Evan Runner International Academy for Cultural Leadership.

01:38:33

We just call it Runner Academy. And that's a two -week intensive training program in the summer that we love to have our

01:38:39

American friends and students up for that. And we also have Worldview Leadership Camps for Teens. So all of that information can be found on our website.

01:38:47

Now, obviously, because of current situations at the international borders and things like that,

01:38:58

I know in 2019, Jeff Durbin got to come up and be a part of the academy. And I was supposed to get a chance to do that in person, but even now, it's hard to say how that's gonna be working this year.

01:39:15

So we're definitely gonna be doing something as far as, you know, I've got this little studio here, might as well use it, you know, type of a thing.

01:39:25

Yeah, you're joining us remotely even if you can't be with us in person. That's right. That's right. It's very important to find that.

01:39:30

In fact, I looked at a map and your location is like, what, how many miles from the border?

01:39:38

I mean, it's just across the border, isn't it? It's a stone's throw. Where the institute is is a stone's throw from the

01:39:43

US border. We're right near the border at Niagara Falls. So you're probably gonna get one of those,

01:39:52

I shouldn't say this, you're gonna use a little rocket thing to just shoot yourself over the border back in both directions, because it's so close.

01:39:59

It may yet come to that. If I go over in a barrel and somebody's there ready with a broom to sweep me onto the

01:40:06

US side, I may at some point need to escape this regime. We'll see. We'll see how it goes, James. Yeah, I looked at the map and I'm like, wow, that is so close.

01:40:15

You can smell the freedom. But yeah. Well, thank you so much for spending so much time with us today.

01:40:23

I hope folks will pick up the mission of God and listen to the webcast, as I mentioned

01:40:30

I was this morning, and keep track of those things. Thank you so much. God bless your work up there and look forward to doing something with you this summer, especially with the academy.

01:40:41

And maybe someday get to cross borders again without injecting yourself with experimental genetic vaccines and things like that.

01:40:51

We will see. The last time we saw each other was it in Phoenix a year or so ago?

01:40:57

Yes, ReformCon in 2019. So, right. Well, actually it was early. Was that early 2020?

01:41:03

I think it was right before all the lockdown started or something like that. I forget where it was, yes.

01:41:08

But we had a great time there and we will hopefully see each other again. You're a young man.

01:41:14

So I'm the one that's more advanced in age. So we'll hopefully still run into each other in the future.

01:41:21

But thank you once again for joining us. Thanks so much, James. All right. Thank you. God bless. And thank you for watching

01:41:27

The Dividing Line today. We will be back next week. I have a very important discussion to the

01:41:36

Pope. The current Pope has said Mary is not co -mediatrix with Christ.

01:41:44

John Paul II said she was and the current Pope says she isn't.

01:41:49

And that is an interesting discussion. We will work on that next week.