Episode 134: Voddie Baucham Reflections and Legacy (Part 2)

Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom

I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

Jesus in a local, visible congregation. Yeah, with MacArthur, it was like, okay,

I'm seeing the end of the movie, I get it, and the movie's concluding, and it has a nice little conclusion, and it's like, okay, but have you ever seen a movie or something, and you're like, all of a sudden, it just ends.

It just ends abruptly, like, wait, what, that's it? And that's kind of how

I feel, you know, in a reverent, and hopefully, you know, hopefully that analogy makes sense, but it's like,

I'm watching Vody's life, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not, I'm not ready, he did finish well, amen, but it was like, it's like, here, it's gonna stop here, and that, you know, that probably, not just me, hit us all pretty hard.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and to your point, you were mentioning earlier, you know, MacArthur, I looked it up, it was

July 14th, MacArthur passes away on July 14th, and then you have Charlie Kirk on the 10th of this month, and then

Vody yesterday. It's just kind of been this, like, whirlwind effect, you know,

I think with, like you mentioned,

MacArthur, we kind of got to watch it happen, you know, it wasn't a super big surprise, he's been having health issues for the past couple years, more frequently, but with Charlie, obviously, being such a young man, it's just so jarring, and then immediately after that, you got another younger man,

Vody, and it's kind of just like, taxing to us, you know, but I remember yesterday,

I say that to say, yesterday I heard the news, and I just couldn't really, it didn't seem real, you know what

I mean? And the first thought that I had was,

I hate death, I hate sin, I hate death, and, you know, praise the

Lord, that our brother opened his eyes yesterday to see his savior, immeasurable glory, and, you know, we should envy what

Vody is experiencing right now, but like you mentioned earlier, there is a proper time to grieve, and death is a wicked thing, it's brought on by sin, and, you know, we get confronted with those things, especially in today's world, we try so hard to ignore death.

I really think it's a grace of God, when he's kind of not letting us forget it right now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was reading just this morning in Matthew's gospel, and when

John the Baptist died, it says that Jesus, you know, withdrew, basically, it kind of reads like he was trying to get alone by himself, but he wasn't able to, it's when the crowds came, they ended up beating the 5 ,000 up, and then

I think after that event, he got some time alone, but as you just think about that, you know, it's like, amen, amen,

Vody opened his eyes in glory. But at the same time, there's some things, it just, yeah, it hurts, and we've got to process, and we've got to grieve, and that's just part, yeah, it's like death is not, there's something in us, as Ecclesiastes says, that God's put eternity in man's heart, and there's something in us that understands that death, even in the best case scenario, death is not what this world was originally created for, and so we have to process those things, and it's especially hard when you have somebody, oh, well, with Charlie Kirk, Charlie Kirk was hard just because of the way that that happened, and then, of course,

Vody, like I said earlier, just still kind of getting over one, and then you have this other, and in a sense,

I think you're right, we want to look at it from God's sovereign hand and perspective. There is a mercy and kindness of the

Lord to remind us all. We must live every day for His glory because He knows that our days, but we don't, and so we need to ask

Him to teach us the number. Yeah, amen. Yeah, and I was, when you were talking there,

I was thinking of John 11, where Christ weeps, not because Lazarus died, but because death, because of the people around Him's unbelief, and because of this thing that ought not be.

He's seeing the impact of it. He's seeing the effect on everyone else, and it's

God giving us a picture of kind of like the perversion of death.

Death ought not be, but it's something that we have to face, and it's an enemy.

It's the final enemy of Christ, right? He's already conquered death, but we are still, and our mortal bodies have to encounter it, so it's,

I think, a grace of the Lord just that we, in a world that is so quick to put it off, like we're just, we're constantly distracted.

We have every remedy and supplement and workout, and we're health gurus to keep us from dying, but it's something that's coming for all of us, and I think it's just a grace from the

Lord that we are confronted with at times, and it sounds weird to say that because you're like, why would you be happy that there's death occurring, but at the same time, it's a tool that the

Lord uses in his economy to draw people. I think about Charlie Kirk's memorial service, and say what you will, there was, it was quite the ecumenical display, but ultimately, the gospel was proclaimed, whether in pretense or in truth, the gospel was proclaimed, and we rejoiced in that, but what it was is a whole nation setting their eyes to this thing that just occurred, which is death, and it's coming for all of us.

I don't know how familiar you are with Ray Comfort or if you're into his stuff at all, but he also was a big, big voice in my life as I was being saved, and that was one thing that he shared in his testimony, is he just realized one day,

I'm gonna die, and so is everyone else around me, and we need to do something about this, basically, and that's just such a powerful tool and something that we need to have the right understanding about, so I think that's a grace from God, not that people are dying, necessarily, but that he uses that as a tool to confront us with this reality.

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Just to, yeah, I agree with all of that.

I think, I don't know, I can't speak. I mean, I don't think any, none of us can speak definitively on this because we don't have, we don't have revelation on this from the

Lord, but I'm just curious about what God is doing in our world today, and because one of the things is, there was a lot of excitement to see,

I agree with you about the funeral. There's some things I wish. I wish it wouldn't have been on a Sunday.

I wish that certain people wouldn't have spoke or whatever, but all the nitpick aside, millions of people heard the gospel, the true gospel, and in that, we rejoice and we are encouraged, and so with this great loss that we felt from Charlie Kirk's death, all of a sudden, you're kind of beginning to turn and think, wow, maybe the

Lord is gonna do something beautiful and merciful in our nation with revival, and then all of a sudden, that kind of grieving, but your hope, and then all of a sudden, you run into just the complete, complete unexpectedness of Votie Bauckham's death.

I wanted to segue a bit.

It's kind of really going back, and talk a little bit about some things that he impacted in my life.

So when I first, I told you the book I read, Family Driven Faith, when I first came across Votie, I was already adhering to the

Doctrines of Grace. I was not, and we've made distinction on this podcast, the difference between a

Calvinist, a Baptist who holds to the Doctrines of Grace versus a Reformed Baptist, so at that point in my life,

I was not a Reformed Baptist, so he didn't help me, he did not help me understand the

Doctrines of Grace so much, though, I mean, there's things I listened to him that I would share and that gave me in and learn and grow, of course, but his influence was really with, helped me with ecclesiology, so for example, he was one of the main adherents early on in my life to hear about family integrated, or is your guys' church family integrated?

What do you mean? Yeah, so Votie, so with family, so we're not fully family integrated, so we still have, for example, we have a couple

Sunday school classes and Wednesday night classes where kids do break up and they're taught by faithful teachers, but our

Sunday morning, so when I first encountered Votie, this is funny for people who knew

Votie, when I first encountered who Votie was, I was a youth pastor, and you know

Votie's position on the youth pastors, and so I was like, oh my, so it was part of a paradigm shift for me of that youth ministry, and I didn't just jump out of it right then, but it was like, okay, the way that we're doing youth ministry is not right and it's not helpful, and so that kind of began some things changing in my life, but the family integrated is the idea that your family, you know, that all the children, the kids, the youth, everybody's together basically at every point, you know, so I didn't know if you had encountered that before or learned any of that, or did you wanna make a comment about that?

I'm not super familiar with the term, but yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.

Yeah, I am. I certainly wouldn't agree. Our church is not currently family integrated.

We have a, you know, like a kids ministry. During worship,

I actually am, I wouldn't be considered a youth pastor, but we don't have service on Wednesdays, but Wednesday nights, me and another brother of mine do like a team youth group sort of thing, so it's not during church worship or anything like that.

It's just kind of like a come hang out. We're reading through the Bible right now, so we, you know, read through the

Bible and we'll hang out, play games, whatever, but as far as worship goes, we do have like a separate kids ministry sort of thing, so I'm sure

Brody would probably - Well, no, he was very gracious, and I think the other thing too, brother, is this is not about, you know, this is not an episode about all that.

It's just the idea of him helping me see, you know, the way that I grew up in youth ministry was spray the whipped cream on each other's face and throw

Cheetos and like that, and it was like minimal on the teaching, heavy on the stupidity kind of stuff, and -

Yeah, for sure, and that's obviously not something - That's true. I was asked to do this a year or so ago.

We've been doing this teen ministry at our church, and that was something that we were very staunch about.

Like we are not doing, you know, eat the Cheez Whiz through the sock or something like that.

I'm aware of all of that, and it's certainly, you know, something that we actively try to avoid, and I really, you know,

I think it's a great thing for a lot of these kids. For one, it's something for them to do throughout the week that's at church and with Christians, and we're speaking about God, and we're teaching through the

Bible and all of this, but like I said, ours is sort of like an additional thing, kind of,

I wouldn't say like a para -church thing, but it's not directly connected to worship on the

Lord's Day or anything like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I'll just say in my own life, Vodi was influential in that, and influential in homeschooling, and influential in the really in fatherhood, dads being the primary disciple makers of the home, and that really, that translates into all these things you're talking about, homeschool, and youth ministry, and all these things that, you know, it's the family that has a, the parents have a responsibility to their children, and raising them up in the nurture and admonition of the

Lord, particularly the father of the home, and leading, and the authority, and all that, and then just, you know,

I would listen to his sermons from there at Grace in Houston, and I remember listening to some of his sermons on Joseph, I think he, some in Exodus.

I remember early on, I remember just seeing his love, you know, for the church.

I remember being sad when he went to Zambia, not because it was wrong or anything, but it was just like, man, he's going over there, and I liked him being close.

We need him here. Yeah, that's right, yeah, that's right, that's right. I got to meet him a couple of different times.

So I think it was like probably about three or four different times I got to shake his hand, but there was a lot of times that I was at a venue that he was at, and I just kind of got a little bit overdone on the celebrityism with, you know, not his fault.

I'm just saying everybody just kind of lining up, and I'm like, this brother has to be exhausted. I'm just not going to stand in line and take his time.

So I probably could have met him a couple more times, but I just, you know,

I just, I don't know, I get kind of weird like that. I don't just jump over people to kind of get in line, that sort of thing.

Yeah, sure, we totally get that. I'm sorry, go ahead. No, no, no, no, no. The last time

I got to shake his hand, he was preaching at Grace Baptist in Cape Coral right after Founders Conference, and that was actually this year.

And here's a beautiful thing that's kind of special for me, is that my whole family was there. So there's times that we get to go to conferences and stuff, but maybe not all of us for various reasons.

But we all went to Founders, myself, my wife, and our six kids, and we all stayed over for the

Sunday worship at Grace Baptist in Cape Coral, and he was preaching.

And so it's special to me, and it was special. You know, my kids were sad when

I talked to them about it, you know, because they knew who he was, and they had got to shake his hand.

So it was, yeah. The time before that, though, that I met with him was with Tom Buck.

And I just briefly got to say hello, introduce myself there. But he was going to be the, he was nominated for the

Pastors Conference President at the SBC. And this was kind of a turning point for me, but when he was like overwhelmingly rejected and people were like making all these weird things about him in the

SBC, and just completely like, they didn't want anything to do with him. He wasn't the, he didn't say the right things, he didn't behave, you know, he stood his ground, all that.

And people just, you know, a lot of people, a lot of higher -ups in the SBC were like, no, we don't want any part of this.

We don't want any part of that. And they just rejected him. I was like, okay, it's time for me to really begin considering how to get out of affiliation with these people.

And that started a journey which we just, we just got out of the Southern Baptist Convention, officially voted recently as a church.

But yeah, he played a role in all that. Anyway, brother, I've been talking for a minute. So maybe in all that, there's something that you want to say.

Oh yeah, no, that's totally cool. Yeah, and I'm familiar with your guys' church situation.

I was talking about, praise the Lord, his faithfulness in your guys' church and just what's been going on there.

I remember when, when did Tom Buck, was that this year or was that last year?

That what? He was going for president or whatever in SBC. Oh, Tom Askell, that was 2020.

Oh, I'm sorry, Askell, that's right. That was 2022. 22, okay. Yeah, because I remember as people were floating

Votie's name at one point, like, oh, he can still, he still qualifies because of this bylaw and whatever, whatever.

And, you know, I think we were all like, man, that would be so awesome to see. You know, God bless the guys who are sticking it out and kind of doing the

Puritan thing in the SBC, trying to reform it from within. But yeah, man, it's just, it's a shame to kind of see what's been going on in the past few years.

It really, like you mentioned earlier, when Votie went to Zambia, in one sense, you're like, man, praise the

Lord. Like, they're gonna be so blessed by this man of God. But on the other hand, you got this compartment in your heart where you're like, well, we still need him here, you know?

So I just think like, if they would still have some influences from him like that, just what a great thing it would be.

You kind of touched on earlier, too, just to loop back a little bit, Votie being an influence in homeschooling for you guys.

And we had the same thing. There's, of course, that famous quote, we cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans.

I had heard that and me and my buddies in my Bible study group had been talking about homeschooling for a long time.

Because when I was saved, I was 26, I think, 26, 27.

So what that entails is, I already have all of my life set up in a certain way.

We're doing public school. My wife's working full time. All of our bills and stuff are set up according to that.

So you're confronted with these things and it requires you to be like, okay, well, Lord, how am

I going to restructure my life in order to do this thing?

Which, I mean, I think that's the obedient thing to do. And I say that to say

Votie was a big, big player in getting us into homeschooling as well. So we very much appreciated his influence and his teaching in that area.

But I remember, I had heard that quote before. That's, of course, like the famous quote that everyone talks about, right?

I had heard it and then like a year or two later, my wife comes home. She was hanging out with some sisters and she comes home and says that quote to me and she gets kind of emotional about it.

She's like, we gotta start homeschooling. And I'm like, that's what I've been saying for years now.

And it kind of speaks to that quote specifically, just his way to kind of like communicate.

He's kind of like a punchy sort of guy. And tells it like it is. And I just,

I so much appreciated his range of insults and those things.

Like he's such a good, a good voice to be. Yeah, if you can't say amen, you gotta say out.

Yeah, I probably won't want. You know, and just the way he handled the text, that was encouraging, that helped me.

I know it has shaped my preaching. And I think that's, so again, I keep bringing this up, but you know how there was people of other theological camps that liked him.

Well, I think one of the reasons for that is not because he was soft, but because he just would open the Bible and say, how can you, you know, he didn't say how can you disagree with it per se, but the way he taught it and preached it, you were like, well, how can you disagree with that?

Because he just laid open the text. And that was, you know, he preached how we ought to preach.

And it was, you know, and I know that, I can't remember one time in my life where I was like, okay,

Votie said this, now I'm gonna do it this way. But it was just more of like listening to so many of his sermons.

And I got to be in some of the same venues as him, as far as an attender, he was a speaker, obviously, of, you know,

I remember, I think I've heard him live at G3. I got to hear him at my friend, Jeff Johnson's church in Conway, at Founders Conference, at ShepCon.

Like I said, that venue over in Memphis. And just, you know, what's sad is, in the midst of those things, you don't really realize sometimes how blessed you are.

I just think about who are we that we got to live in a time period where there was an

R .C. Sproul, there was a John MacArthur, there was a

Votie Bauckham. We were blessed with really such richness and accessibility to gospel preaching that we honestly, or may

I'm just speaking for myself, kind of took it for granted at times. I think you're right.

I think a lot of people feel that way. And you know, that has such an effect.

I mean, just think about the Reformation, right? So you have like the first generation of Reformers, like a birth to the next generation of Reformers and the next generation of Reformers and so on.

And it kind of in the same way, like we have these great men of God who, to your point, it's not like because they say, go do this.

It's because of the way that they exposit God's word and they reveal the truths in scripture that are so convincing.

And that sparks that flame in the next guy. And then he goes and preaches in the next guy.

And just the lasting effect of not only like just being there while these guys are preaching, which you're absolutely right.

What an enormous blessing that we all take for granted a lot of the time. But not only that, how much that's gonna impact the generation after us and so on, not only in America, but all over the world.

Because I mean, you know, Sproul, Vody, Arthur, all these guys have such a broad range, like an international, you know, reach.

It's just such a crazy thing to think about. And one day, you know, when we're in glory and we kind of see more of the scope of things, how big of an impact those things have in life and in the church, just how that influences so many people that has a lasting effect.

So with, you know, with that being said, you have like Founders Ministry, you have

Master's Seminary, Ligonier, all of these things. It's kind of in this internet age, kind of the modern printing press, if you will.

It's got such a impact right now. Just what wisdom of God to set up these guys, give them these big platforms at the time when the internet's big and you can share the gospel across the world at the push of a button, you know.

I just think we do take it for granted, like how big of a deal that is for us and how much our faithfulness right now is gonna be used by God in the future and how many lives that can impact now.

Yeah, that's good, brother. You know, kind of the next thing, maybe the last thing, but I kind of wanted to talk about, okay, where do we go now?

Who is the next John MacArthur? Will there be a next John MacArthur? Who is the next

Charlie Kirk? Who is the next Voddie Bockham? I mean, in one sense, they're irreplaceable because, you know,

God only makes one. There was only one Charles Spurgeon. There was only one Martin Lloyd -Jones.

There was only one Jonathan Edwards. So there's that truth.

To another extent, though, to another aside, another side is the best of men are men at best.

And even as Paul Washer said, not to come across, you know, harsh or unkind, but I think we would all agree with it.

Voddie would agree with it. Washer said there's no such thing as great men of God, but there is such thing as a great

God who uses weak and dependent men. So I just want to talk about for a minute on, you know, where do we go from here?

Because on one side, I would say I absolutely treasured the public leadership of men like John MacArthur.

I don't know. I mean, I think we're going to feel his loss, you know, in the coming years. I treasured the public leadership of men like Voddie Bockham.

And of course, what Charlie Kirk did on college campuses is just amazing.

But I guess what I'm trying to say, Jay, is yes, may the

Lord raise up a thousand more of these men. At the same time,

I want to make the argument that it's not so much that we need people out there trying to be like these men.

What we need is in the sense of trying to be... So what I see, especially in social media, brother,

I see a lot of people that are trying to build a platform. But what if we said, let me model the faithfulness of men like these and let

God use that as he will? Is what I'm saying making sense? Yeah, absolutely.

I think that's very apropos. And I think that all of those men would agree with that.

It's in the current social media age, there are people who just want to build a platform, right?

They just want to have the influence and the reach. And in one sense, it's not wrong to have those things.

That's good by the grace of God to have influence. But it starts with your faithfulness, right?

He who is faithful over a little will be faithful over much. So I don't think the goal should be the big ministry and the big

YouTube channel and all that stuff. But if God is pleased to bless you with that,

I think maybe putting the cart before the horse in some cases is going for that before you worry about your own personal sanctification and obedience and these sorts of things.

And I was listening to some

Bodhi Bhakta last night, of course. And there is a sermon by Paul Washer that popped up that I was listening to.

And in it, he was talking about, you know, you have these quote -unquote famous preachers.

I think that's an appropriate word to use. It's not a bad thing necessarily. But you have these well -known preachers who

God is pleased to raise up and they are faithful men. To your point, they're men though, right?

And they'll be the first ones to tell you that. But God is pleased to raise these guys up, give them a reach and an influence on people.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that those are like the best guys. Paul Washer has this excerpt, and I'm kind of paraphrasing here, but he says, what's the best sermon you've ever heard?

And he says, well, the best sermon ever, I'm sorry, he's like, what's the best sermon ever preached?

And he's like, the best sermon ever preached was probably only witnessed by like five or six people. And he was talking about the, it is sometimes the pleasure of God to make a beautiful rose and put it in the middle of a forest where there's no trail and no one's ever going to see it.

But him, if he looks at it, if he gets glory from it, if people are blessed by it, but it's not the guy who's going to be blown up on, you know, social media and whatever else.

My wife, on her maiden side, her family were early settlers in Kentucky, and they've lived there for generations.

They live in, it's actually spelled Hollow, but down South it's a

Holler, but it's the Jones family Holler, and they have this little tiny

Baptist church in that Holler where her family's lived for all of this time, and they have shepherded that little tiny church.

I mean, it's, you know, it's like a garage -sized thing. It's a little wooden church in the mountains of rural

Kentucky. It's like a one -lane road to get there, top of a mountain, and the first time

I ever stepped foot in there, I just felt like in love with that place. Like, I'm at home.

They don't have microphones. They don't have a band. You know, none of their sermons are ever going to be heard on YouTube or X or anything like that.

But to just think, over all these generations, these men have loathed to faithfully shepherd their flock at that church where no one's ever going to hear about them or see them.

It's just, it's really cool to think about that. It's not always, it's not always the guy who's blown up out there who's the best preacher, you know, whatever that means, but God is receiving glory all over right now by having these men planted in,

I'll name -drop here, in the rural church, and, you know, they're faithful in shepherding their flock, and I think that's just such a, something that maybe we overlook today.

Not, you know, you necessarily, but kind of, guy is my age, and it's all about the social media thing.

I need reminded of it, too. Of course, brother. You know, you made a comment. I never, I'm going to circle back to it now because I never asked you about it.

You said you live in a small town. That's a relative. So how big, how many people live in this small town?

Good question. Let's see. Let's say, I guess, 60 ,000.

Oh, 20 ,000, I'm sorry, I'm way off. So it's, there's, it's kind of gets dicey because in Ohio, the towns and the counties kind of blend together.

So you can have a tiny little village of a town, but it's got a huge population because it's spread out over a giant, you know, county, country.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, 20 ,000. Yeah, go ahead, I'm sorry. No, that's a city.

That's a city in Arkansas. Yeah, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, no, it's, you're,

I'm on the same, I mean, I'm tracking you. What you just said is all, I mean, it captured my thoughts so well, so good, exactly.

You know, I think, do we need men to fill these men's shoes in a sense? Well, sure, but God will raise those men up as he will.

And what we can do is seek to just be faithful where we are, whether you're working in, you know, some company on an assembly line and you are going home, clocking out every day at five and you're eating supper and you're leading your family in family worship and you're being just a faithful, active church member.

Like, don't despise that, like, don't be like, well, I wish I could do something great.

Like, no, that's wonderful, you know. And I'm not saying there's not more we can do.

I'm just saying work where God has planted you, you know, work in the spheres of influence that you have.

I think some of the most impactful people are not the people who start out trying to be an influencer, but start out just trying to be faithful and then let the

Lord use you as he will. You know, I, or let the Lord, you know, like we have that choice, but you know what

I'm saying. But, you know, I've just resolved a number of years ago.

In 2021, actually, I had a hard year and I was like, we're just, we gotta be done here.

And the Lord, it's just, it's not working. The church is not reforming. And I almost hit the eject button.

You know, I actually, I tried, but God didn't let me. And where I've gone now in the last few years, 2022 was a hard year too, but it was, it turned into a beautiful thing.

And I'm just like, look, I just, this is where I wanna be. This is where I wanna be. It's where I wanna serve.

We're in a town. We are in a small town, brother. We've got like less than 1400 people.

Yeah, you gotta speak. Yeah, so that's why this is called the Rural Church Podcast. Yeah, yeah.

But I'm just resolved to just be here with these people. And I pray that God would grow us. I want him to grow us.

I want our church, I want our church to be bigger. But at the same time, it's like,

Lord, if it's five or if it's 500, just let us be faithful. Let us endure.

Let us love and prize the local church. And let us do this all for your glory.

And I think this is one response, not the only response, but I think it's one response that we can think about the last few months that we've had.

What do we need to do? Well, it's not panic, okay? Because none of these things took God by surprise.

So it's faithfulness. I think it's also using our days wisely.

Stop, I mean, look, we have to understand with this leftist stuff. I think for many years, we kind of tried to play nice and try to be like, okay, well,

I'm not going to say anything. Well, like, you got to stop. Be bold like Charlie. Be bold like Votie.

Be bold like John. Stand for truth. I mean, these things, these ideologies are not just like neutral, they're demonic.

So stand against them. But stand against them upon the truth of the word of God, upon the gospel of our

Lord Jesus Christ. Be vocal and be faithful. And don't worry so much about a platform.

Just worry about being faithful where God has you. And I think that's the kind of legacy that these brothers would have wanted to leave.

I don't know if you have any thoughts or comments on that. You said it perfectly,

Pastor. I totally agree with you. Well, we have,

I'm almost confident, brother, that between the last call and it got cut off and the time

I'm looking here, that this is going to be two episodes. So we've been talking a long time.

I appreciate your time. I've had a good time. It's helped me. It's been a little helpful from my own heart and mind.

It's, you know, we're just still processing this, you know,

I say terrible in the sense that death is terrible. But of course, maybe we'll close with this great hope, you know, we cannot imagine the things that Votie Bauckham is experiencing now.

And he said that great line, that sermon's being tossed around social media too.

It's like, one day you're going to hear that Votie Bauckham has died. Don't you believe it, you know, and he's more alive than he's ever been.

And he's in the presence of Christ. And so we hurt here, but we also rejoice and we glory in the great hope of the gospel.

It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. Do you have any closing thoughts? Anything you want to say?

Just a yes and an amen. Encouraged by your words. Again, thank you.

Thanks so much for having me on, man. I'm honored to talk it out with you. And, you know,

I'm a big fan of the podcast as well. So it's just an honor and pleasure to be able to contribute something.

Yeah, that's pretty much all I got. I hope that we can just continue in, you know, being able to, when these events happen, just being good witness for Christ.

And that's just kind of what the Lord has been putting on my heart. And we've got this string of, like you said,

I mean, it is tragic. It's a terrible thing that's happened. But we don't grieve like those who have no hope.

And when those things happen, the world should be looking up at the church and saying there's something different about them.

There's something different about the way that they're raised. So I just pray that we would all have that in mind and be ready to give an answer for the hope that is within us.

Amen. That's good word. If you want to know more about Jay, check out Things Above Us.

So it's thingsabove .us. So check that out. Jay, thanks for being on with me today on the

Rule Church podcast. We're just a couple of unknown folks, but hopefully we've offered something in these two episodes that have been helpful and encouragement to believers.

Hopefully it's been honoring the life and legacy of Votie Bauckham and as well as these other brothers that we've talked about as well,

Charlie Kirk, John MacArthur, others. Well, I hope you guys will join us next week on the

Rule Church podcast. With that, we'll sign it off. If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

God's doing. This is His work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the poemos, the masterpiece of God.