Evangelical Elites React to Q Anon

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Welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast. We are going to talk about something that I'm a little late to the party on, and that is

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QAnon. Yes, it was popular in August, early September, I guess

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May, I saw some stories. But I think it'll probably come up again, and if not, conspiracy theories themselves will come up.

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And so I wanna talk about this topic more so from the vantage point of why it's attractive to some, and why elites especially, evangelical elites being no exception, are concerned about it.

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So what's the apprehension and the concern and the fear that some have because of it, and people following it?

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And then what's the attraction that some people have because of it? So that's what we're gonna talk about, and it's gonna be a pretty quick episode.

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Before we get to that though, let's talk about something that hopefully you're enjoying. You can tell me if you enjoy this in the comments, or if you don't, you can tell me that too,

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I guess. But I've been showing you books and movies and things that I've been enjoying lately, and disclaimer, if you have

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VidAngel, I would say watch this. If you don't, I'm not endorsing you watch this, because it does have some profanity in it, and I watch it on VidAngel, so I didn't get to hear any of it, which is great.

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I love the fact that there's something like VidAngel out there. It's an app, for those who don't know, that cuts out profanity and other scenes.

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So there's a movie, it's called The Peanut Butter Falcon, and it was on Amazon Prime, and my wife and I watched it the other night, and here's why

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I wanted to talk about it. I think it's a cultural kind of, it's a cultural commentary.

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It's very popular, it was rated very high. And I think Americans, they tend to go back to this nostalgic, kind of a

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Southern, down -home sort of sense, and it's not just, it doesn't have to be

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Southern. I mean, it's this Norman Rockwell. He was in Massachusetts, I think, and that's part of it as well.

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But I think in the South, there's more of a rootedness. A lot of the things we think of as American are actually

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Southern, whether it's music, like jazz music, blues music, country music, rock and roll, a lot of foods that we think of as American are actually

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Southern, fried chicken and barbecue, and some of that down -home food, apple pie and grits.

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Well, I guess grits is regional, but there's just a lot of things. I could probably think of more if I really thought about it.

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Even the founding, even people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, they're Southerners, they're Virginians, they're rooted in the soil kind of people.

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You know that if they weren't successful politically, that's fine, they just went back to their farm. They were farmers, that's who they were.

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They managed the land, they were attached to the land, and they had a sense of place. And Americans often, when they don't have a sense of place, they go back, they retreat into that.

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It's not a retreat, they conjure up that nostalgia again. And I think this movie does some of that because it gives you a sense of place.

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I've heard it said that in the South, life is like a farm. You got the pig and the mule and the horse and all sorts of different animals, and they're all different, they're all peculiar in their own ways.

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And life is dirty, but life is good because life is about living, and heaven doesn't come till later anyway.

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You're not there to make utopia. But in the North, in the deep North especially, I have some experience growing up there, the life is like a stagecoach.

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Everyone must conform, they must get in the game, they must pursue a goal.

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There's a top -down centralized authority. We're going to bring in something good, right? And you accomplish things.

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Protestant work ethic. And so there's pros and cons, I guess, to both of those things, but we draw more comfort,

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I think, from the farm. The sense of home, the sense of place, the sense that there's really not a whole lot of expectations, and let's live life by the sun instead of by the clock.

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And this movie, I think, actually does a good job in something that Hollywood is very bad at generally, which is capturing that kind of a culture, that Southern culture.

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And I'm not gonna do spoilers, but it's got a number of characters, Southern archetypes in there, and they're all peculiar, they're idiosyncrasies, but yet there's a moral, there's a moral.

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There's a sense at the end that there's some kind of a providence that is directing activities on the real world, and things that you didn't think you needed, you find in someone who you didn't think you'd like.

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And there's a lot of, a brother figure, a father figure, a friend, a spouse, those kinds of things.

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And it's in life's journey, which honestly, you gotta get outside to have the journey. You gotta get outside to take some risks.

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And there's gonna be villains, and there's gonna be dangers, but that's what life's made of.

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And I think during this time of COVID, we're all staying inside, and we all wanna be safe, and the centralized authority knows how to make sure that we're safe and keep us secure.

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We're longing for something more real, tangible, rooted in a place, and a real life that can actually hurt you, but it's in the risks that you find something worth living for.

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And so anyway, that's my recommendation to you. Peanut Butter Falcon, I'm not usually impressed.

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I'm not usually surprised. I think most of the movies coming out are terrible, but I enjoyed this one. Just make sure you have

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VidAngel if you're gonna watch it. So there you go, that's the fun part.

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Let's talk about QAnon a little bit. And then I'll answer some questions. I have a bunch of questions

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I've been working through. So QAnon. So here's the thing that, well, you know what?

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Let's do this first. Let's go to, I went to QAnon once a few months ago, and I didn't get it.

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I'll be honest, I didn't get it. So let's just go there now.

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Let's just see what we're talking about. I'm not an expert at this. I don't know a lot about it. So if you're getting your info about QAnon from me,

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I'm not the place to get it. That's not the purpose I'm making this video. I wanna look at the reaction and the attraction.

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The reaction, evangelical elites and elites in general have to QAnon, why they feel threatened, the attraction.

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Why do some people, why are they attracted to QAnon? Because I think it says something about where we are.

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So here's Q, I guess. QAnon, this is

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QAnon, I guess. So it's just some posts. A story here, another story.

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Looks like a prayer. Looks like there's a Christian prayer here of some kind. Forgive my sins.

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Wow, okay. It's almost better theology than the Gospel Coalition. I'm sort of half kidding.

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Anyway. What else is here? We got, this is a whole

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Twitter thing. I don't really get it to be honest with you. I still don't quite get it. Pictures, I mean this could be like a 16 year old's

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Twitter almost, Twitter feed. Like what's this? Rig for Red Q. Like that's the stuff

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I don't like. That's the stuff that I'm like, it seems like a riddle. It seems like a waste of time.

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If you have something to say, just say it, right? That's kind of how I am. Sometimes I realize you gotta lead people down the garden path.

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But Rig for Red, yeah that's, I mean that's so ambiguous.

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So I can see this being a place to waste your time if you get too deep into that stuff.

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So, all right. So that's Q. Let's look at some of the reactions that we've been seeing from evangelicals.

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In fact, before I do that, let me look at some of the reactions from people in the world, if I may.

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We're gonna look at, see here if I can pull it up. So I, this was a few weeks ago that I had looked up, okay what are people saying about this

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Q thing? Because I started seeing evangelical publications talk about it and, let's see if we find it here.

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Okay, here we are. So here's some headlines for you.

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So just the way that elites and the media are treating Q. Is QAnon the new

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Christian right with evangelicals fading? A new insanity. That's not biased against Q at all.

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Washington Post, analysis, QAnon, the conspiracy theory creeping into US politics. The Atlantic, QAnon is more important than you think.

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Hmm. New York Times, what is QAnon? The viral pro -Trump conspiracy theory, pro -Trump.

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So we have media elites that are certainly not, they don't like QAnon.

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It's negative to them. I mean, just so you know, when media elites compare you to the Christian right, not a good thing.

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And that's what's going on out there. Now what's going on in the church or in Christian publishing and all of that, the whole

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Christian industrial complex? Christianity Today, you better make sure that you're listening to the right voice.

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This is the other thing that I think comes across in scripture. Whose voice you listen to determines what kind of embodied actions you're going to take, which determines what kinds of things you're going to understand, listen to.

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The wrong voice is the problem in the garden. It's actually the only problem that's identified by God in that scenario. Okay, so this article, basically, we're going back to the

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Garden of Eden, right? Really, QAnon, that's pretty epic, right? Listening to QAnon, that's like listening to the serpent in the garden.

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Okay, all right. That's May 20th, 2020, the same day, Gospel Coalition, Joe Carter.

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In many ways, the QAnon phenomenon is a revival of the satanic ritual abuse panic that originated in the 1980s.

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That was a conspiracy that wealthy and powerful elites were kidnapping and breeding kids for porn and sex trafficking and satanic rituals.

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And the problem, he says, is that promoters of this theory were accused of allowing an unsupported theory to distract from and downplay real cases of child sex abuse.

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Okay, that's bad. If you are distracting from a real problem, and you're, you know, so you could be fighting child sex abuse, but you're not because you're sitting online looking at Q, I guess that could be a problem.

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But how do you, I don't know how you quantify that. Yeah, that's really not quantifiable. So here's one from the briefing.

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This is Al Mohler's podcast. But one of the most dangerous issues here, the big warning light for Christians is that those who hold to this often hold to it in a way that is impervious to logic.

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They resist any kind of evidence that might be to the contrary. They simply argue that any evidence to the contrary rightly understood as evidence for the conspiracy.

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So he's saying this is, it's a problem. You don't hear him, here's the thing.

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Do you ever hear Al Mohler talk this way, like about CNN, New York Times? I mean, he knows they're liberal, but that's how liberals treat those things.

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And think of all the conspiracies, like CNN, Russia collusion, conspiracy hoax. Never apologized for it, but years of spinning this thing.

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Think of the systemic racism in 2020 in America. Whenever a police shoots someone, we just immediately assume it's systemic racism.

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That's a conspiracy. And it's also one that happens to be killing people and burning things down right now.

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So, I mean, if you're gonna be concerned about something, I don't think people who follow QAnon are going to the houses of supposed pedophiles that they think, because Q told them that they were, and burning them down.

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You have the whole COVID thing and the government overreach based on what now we're finding out was really pathetic evidence.

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I don't know. I mean, this could lead to mass immunization and government overreach and the loss of civil liberties. And we see what's happening in California.

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And I don't know, Al Mohler's not. He's, you just, equal weights and measures is what

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I'm saying, not seeing it here. So, that's Al Mohler on the briefing about Q on August 24th.

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Christianity Today. Again, QAnon is a wolf in wolf's clothing. Picture of a guy with a big

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Q. QAnon may not be an error to which CT readers are prone. So he's saying, yeah, if you read

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Christianity Today, you're sophisticated enough. You know, you're not gonna fall for this QAnon stuff. But, but what

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I find deeply worrisome about this movement is how insidious it has become. The more Pentecostal moments of my upbringing didn't stick well enough to make me confident in diagnosis of demonic activity.

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But QAnon sure seems devilish. Hmm. So he's saying, you know, this is, I don't,

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I'm skeptical of Satan being involved in things, but QAnon, if he's gonna be involved, it'd be QAnon. It deliberately preys on well -intended concern about the real issue of sex trafficking.

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So casual viewers may not realize it mixes truth with malignant lies. So you're just casual. You're going on the internet, just casual, you know, and all of a sudden, you know, you're concerned about sex trafficking, and all of a sudden,

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Q gets you to believe something that's not true, like elites are involved in sex trafficking, and Jeffrey Epstein's plane had people on it who were going to his island for purposes that weren't nefarious.

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Okay. Still, the equal weights and measures thing. I mean, does

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Christianity Today do stories about CNN like this? Religion News Service.

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Look at this. It's the same guy. It's the same exact guy that's holding the

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Q. It looks like at the same event. This is, you can't make this up. So if it's such a wide -reaching, just everyone's getting involved in Q, these two articles use the same dude at an event, and no one's paying attention to him.

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So Religion News Service. My fear is that Jesus would be co -opted by conspiracy theories in a way that leads the next generation to throw

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Jesus out with the bathwater, that we're not able to separate the narrative of taking back our country from Jesus' kingdom narrative.

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Now look, this is used every single time anyone in the church wants to push, more so liberals in the church, want to erode tradition, go with the culture on something.

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I mean, look, your music needs to be updated or the kids will leave. You gotta make sure that your sermons are dumbed down or else the kids, they're not gonna understand.

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They're gonna leave. You gotta make sure that you're for social justice or the kids will leave. I mean, it's everything.

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It's because the kids will leave. And what I found is when you actually start talking to the kids that leave, you find out that those really weren't the reasons, generally, they leave, because, well, man, if you just didn't talk about that Q thing,

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I don't even know any pastors who were talking about it. If mom and dad didn't talk about Q, I wouldn't have left the church.

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I mean, come on. No, it's more like they see hypocrisy and they see the gimmicks and they realize, wow, these people don't actually believe the

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Bible's enough. So why would I believe it's enough? Why would I go to church? That's usually the thing that, the contributing element.

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Obviously, behind that is people who aren't actually believers in Christ and they're, what does 1

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John say? They went out from us because they weren't of us. But anyways, Religion News Service seems to think, yeah,

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Q's gonna drive young people away. Others are concerned that theories will become grounds for more mistrust. Young people are exiting the church because they see their parents and mentors, pastors and Sunday school teachers spreading things that even at a young age, they can see through.

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Yeah, those young kids, they're so much smarter than their pastors and their parents. They just see right through it, that wisdom they have.

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Gosh. So, maybe we see where they're coming from. Definitely, not liking

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Q at all. Ed Stetzer in USA Today, right? Wow, he got a gig at USA Today. Years ago,

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Mark Knoll wrote about the scandal of the evangelical mind. Yeah, I've read that book. It's a pretty terrible book, actually.

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I don't know if I, maybe I'm over, no, I'm not overplaying. It's a terrible book. If there is anything that represents the scandal of the evangelical mind right now, it's the gullibility of Christians who need to be disciplined.

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Disciplined into critical thinking about how to engage the world around them. Mr. Stetzer, where do they learn that?

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Didn't pastors used to teach this kind of thing? Can't they learn that in church? Or have the sermons been dumbed down?

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I'm just saying there's a solution here. They could learn these things. We need to be able to see through the bias and discern conspiracy theories that have risen to the level of messianic religion.

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Messianic religion. Mr. Stetzer, do you think that those who promote this idea that there's these woke saints, victims of police shootings, they're basically equivalent to saints, that there's a born again experience called getting woke, that there's sociologists who have like a priest -like quality about them, that there's this future state almost, this utopia we're supposed to build called equity, that there's these holy books that we're supposed to read, like Color of Compromise and Woke Church and The New Jim Crow and White Fragility, and the list goes on.

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Do you think maybe the woke movement, maybe social justice is a religion? Maybe that's, maybe we should be looking there.

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But Ed Stetzer doesn't talk about that. In fact, if anything, he's for that. But where's

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QAnon? Where are the parallels with QAnon? I mean, I just showed you what it is. It's like, it could be a 16 -year -old's

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Twitter feed. Now, I guess you can religiously follow anything, but I mean, you have like a full -fledged religion forming right in front of you on a national, international scale, and you're gonna go after QAnon for a messianic, who's the messiah?

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Is it Trump, I guess? I guess it's Trump. Trump's the messiah. So this is a knock on Trump, that's what this is.

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But anyway, if you want people to think critically, preach, preach exegetically, preach, go to authorial intent, teach them what that is, teach them about original languages, and the original audience, and how to treat a primary source, and how scripture interprets scripture, and how there's only one meaning, and it's the meaning that the audience would have heard, and teach them how to do research.

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You can teach them that by showing them an example on how you preach. Just saying, if Christians are getting into this, and EdSets are so concerned, where are they learning their methodology from?

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I'm wondering. Here's the ERLC, Ethics and Religious Liberty Foundation for the, sorry,

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Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention. Story by Josh Webster, August 5th.

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For different reasons, the pandemic has fueled the spread of conspiracy theories and misinformation, especially through social media, particularly alarming to me was a recent article in The Atlantic about QAnon conspiracy gaining significant traction among many evangelicals about which, thankfully,

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Joe Carter, yes, we're thankful for Joe Carter. He's written a very helpful explainer for the Gospel Coalition. He's alarmed.

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This is horrible. Not, funny enough, the ERLC doesn't seem that alarmed about what's happening in California to John MacArthur, and I mean, literally, it's in their mission, religious liberty, but no, we're not concerned about that.

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We don't talk about that. But what we do talk about, QAnon, that's a real threat.

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Equal weights and measures, guys. So a few things I wrote down, I'm just gonna go over with you real quick, give you some commentary.

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What's the harm? That's the question I have. What is the harm of QAnon? In other words, what are they afraid is gonna happen?

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So you have some people in your congregation that follow QAnon. What's the worst that's gonna happen?

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I mean, are they gonna show up at some celebrity's house? And just, I'm gonna just tell you, in case you don't know, this is what

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I understand through trying to make heads or tails of all this and talking to some people who know more about QAnon than I know.

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Basically, QAnon has, this source has spun a theory that Jeffrey Epstein has this log, right?

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We already know that, that's true, and there are a lot of celebrities who went to his island. Now, his island is weird. If you go, look, you can look this up.

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It's got like a Temple to Moloch where he supposedly played his piano. Now, I don't usually play my piano in a Temple to Moloch, right?

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Just a weird kind of thing to do, but Moloch, I think it was

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Moloch, yeah, or Bale, I think it was Moloch. So Temple to Moloch, and you have these pizza gate, this thing, you can look that up if you want separately.

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Of course, it'll all say it's a conspiracy, but there is some fishy stuff there because it relates back to the emails, the

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WikiLeaks emails with Hillary Clinton, and there's some weird stuff. There's just some odd stuff in some of that, and there's suspicion about satanic things going on, these weird dinners.

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You can find some of that online. I'm not digging deep into this stuff with you guys right now. That's not the purpose of this, but here's the thing.

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I'm gonna just tell you from my perspective. I grew up with family that had some connections to Hollywood in California and just lived in the area as well.

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It's been known that in Hollywood, there's pedophilia and there's satanic occult practices.

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Not everyone in Hollywood, but it's way more common in Hollywood, and that's been known way before Q, this

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Q source. All right, so if that's what the Q source is saying, it's like, hey, there's pedophiles and people into satanic stuff in elite circles, then yeah, a lot of people have known about that for a long time.

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That's not new, and here's the thing.

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When you look at, actually, I have on my phone. It was blowing up, so I threw it down, but now

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I need it. I had screenshotted a few things that were interesting. So you had in the news recently,

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Prince Andrew reportedly met with the Queen over Jeffrey Epstein scandal, New York Post.

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California bill to lower penalties for sexual relations with minor heads to Newsom's desk, Governor of California.

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Bill to lower penalties for sexual relations with minors? Huh. You have what just happened with Netflix and cuties, which

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I don't advise you to look up, and I have not seen the trailer, and I don't want to. People are looking around them, and they're seeing, hey, pedophilia seems to be becoming normalized, and you know what?

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We saw the gay marriage decision. We saw how that started. We saw what happened this year with transgenderism being, the civil rights laws being applied to transgenderism.

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We're looking around us, and we're saying, what's the next step logically? It's not because of some fake world.

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It's not because of what people don't know that they're following QAnon.

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It's because of what they do know, because they're looking around them, and they're saying Epstein, Clinton emails, news items about celebrities concerned about the

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Epstein thing, Bill in California, cuties on Netflix. It just, it really does seem like pedophilia is going to be normalized, and if you look around you, doesn't seem like a lot of people are really that concerned, even in big evangelical circles, like the sources

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I just read for you. You don't see a lot of concern. Maybe Al Mohler's mentioned it.

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I'm sure he has. I don't think the others have. At least it's not, they're not banging the drum about pedophilia like they are about QAnon, and how concerned they are about QAnon.

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So you're not getting it from mainstream sources. You're not hearing it from Christian leaders, and this

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Q source is trying to explain what you are actually seeing in the real world. That could be part of the reason some people follow

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QAnon. But what, so what's the harm? Let's go back to the question. What's the harm then? What are they afraid of? That people are gonna be more concerned about sex trafficking?

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Or that they'll like Trump? Because in the Q conspiracy, Trump is supposedly aware of all of this, and he's gonna round all these bad guys up, and he is rounding all these bad guys up during COVID.

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And that's apparently, from what I understand, one of the reasons for the COVID pandemic was all the studio acting stopped, and the shows went on hold, and Trump had an opportunity to go in there and round up all the bad guys, and he's in the process of doing it.

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Now, I don't see evidence for that. It's all, it's coded stuff. I can't trust coded stuff, right?

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I mean, you know, I don't endorse QAnon. I'm not saying all that QAnon says is false either, though.

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And I haven't researched it enough. I can't make a very, I can't give you a very intelligent assessment of that, and that's not what the purpose of this video is.

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But that would seem to be the danger in the minds of these more left -leaning evangelicals.

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That's what would happen. I'm just asking, what's the result of someone who follows QAnon? I'm not talking about someone obsessed.

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You can get obsessed with anything, but someone who just uses that as a source of information, what are they gonna do based on that?

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Well, they'd probably like Trump more. They'd probably think Trump's a hero. Probably be more concerned about pedophilia, right?

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I mean, they might believe some lies if they're undiscerning, but how do you solve that?

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You're not writing articles about pastors. How can you address this with your people, and how can you teach them how to be discerning with information?

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No, they're just browbeating people who would, or demonizing people, marginalizing people, right?

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Organizations that say they'd never wanna marginalize anyone. They'll marginalize people for following Q. Meanwhile, CNN's push

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Russia collusion, and COVID, systemic racism, and stuff that's actually having a real impact.

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I mean, think about it this way, too. You're a normal guy, and all of a sudden, 2020 hits, right?

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And they're talking about taking away your civil liberties, forced immunizations, possibly. You're hearing things about it, at least.

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You're seeing cities burn down, civil unrest. It's a nutty year, and you've lost faith in probably every institution.

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You know you can't trust CNN. You know you can't trust most of the media. You know you probably can't even trust your pastor at this point, for most people, unfortunately.

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You can't trust sports. You can't trust any institution you trusted in before. It's gone, it's dead.

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You've lost all trust. That's why so many people look to Trump the way they do, I think, is they're trying to look for something that's a solid foundation.

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And the pity in all this, the tragedy, is that we have a foundation. We have the word of God.

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We have something that we can root ourselves in. And where is that?

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Where is that language from pastors and from these people in evangelical organizations saying we're gonna produce content to comfort you, to give you a firm place to stand?

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I mean, they're watching the peanut butter falcon to get a sense of nostalgia.

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They're looking at QAnon to try to understand and interpret the world when we have the word of God.

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It's so frustrating, because that should be the takeaway from all this, is, hey, pastors, it's a wake -up call.

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Teach your people. Get out there. We have the good news. You know, I tell people when they say, hey, there's this big conspiracy, the

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Masons or whatever the case may be, I usually tell them, you know, I believe in something way more, way, way bigger than that, way, way more nefarious.

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You know, cloaks and daggers, that doesn't, I'm talking about invisible stuff. Talking about demons and angels.

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I'm a Christian. I believe in that. Look at Daniel. Look at the glimpse into the political world.

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Demons and angels. Prince of the power of the air. He's subverting the purposes of God.

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He's taking glory from God. He's involved. You think he's in the halls of Congress? Absolutely. You think he's in the White House?

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Absolutely. You think he's on your television? Absolutely. I'm not saying there's a demon behind every bush, but maybe every other bush.

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There's, your flesh is sinful, but there is a spiritual war. Maybe we've gotten away from talking about that.

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That blows Q. Q Anon doesn't know the first thing about how epic that war is,

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I'm sure. Maybe the, I mean, I don't know. There seems to be someone with some

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Christian understanding behind it because we saw that prayer. I don't know how orthodox they are, but I'm just saying there really is a conspiracy, a real one, a spiritual battle.

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And James 4, 7 says, submit to God, resist the devil, he will flee. Jesus says, in this world, you'll have trouble.

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Be of good cheer. I overcome the world. Can we not go to people who have had the rug pulled out from under them?

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Who can't make sense of what's happening to their country? Who feel like they are the citizen of a country that no longer exists because it doesn't anymore.

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And they're trying to find something to hold onto. Can we not go to them and say, you wanna understand what's happening?

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Read this book. There's a darkness, a real one. It's called the devil. It's called sin.

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It's called the world system. And there's a light and it's called Jesus Christ. Come to him.

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He will protect you. Submit to him. Resist the devil, he'll flee. And Jesus says that those who come to him, he will no wise cast out.

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Why can't we offer them hope? Real hope. The hope that there is a sovereign plan.

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Just like I was talking to you earlier about that movie, that peanut butter falcon movie that, hey, there's a providence.

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It just, it's works out. There's some kind of a sense that there's a plan. Well, we know there actually is a plan.

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It's not just happenstance, not just circumstances coming together and wow, that's interesting.

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No, it's we know that there's an author, a creator, a decree. So here's the thing.

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There wouldn't need to be a queue if we were addressing these things.

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And when I say we, I'm not trying to browbeat the church either. I don't do that. I'm not, the church is the bride of Christ.

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I'm saying, I'm saying for we, as in those who are trying to influence other

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Christians who are in Christianity, who have a lot of Christian followers. Look, if we're giving them the hope of the truth of God's sovereignty and his commands,

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I think the comfort maybe people are trying to find in a queue, the stability, the trying to find something to hold on to, you wouldn't have that as much.

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You'd have more of a firm foundation. There's a lack of faith in the institutions right now and it's showing.

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And I think people in big evangelical and big elite circles in general, they know it.

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They know that people are starting to not trust them and queue is a threat for that reason.

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That's why they don't like queue. That's why they'll fight queue harder than they'll fight CNN because CNN is not a threat like that.

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They're in the same club as CNN. Queue is in a different club, you know, and Trump's in that club.

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I'm seeing the populist versus elite line kind of come out of this whole thing. The issue ultimately is not the conspiracies.

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That's not the issue. The issue is people losing faith. In their institutions and trying to find faith, some kind of stability in something else.

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The issue is that there is a devil who does rule and it's time for pastors and church leaders,

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I think to talk more about him, to talk about the

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Holy Spirit, to talk about the invisible things. You know, I pray sometimes, Lord made the invisible world be more real to me than the visible world.

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So I just wanna be aware because I know there's a battle going on. All right,

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I've said enough about that, I think at this point. I want to answer a few questions that I've gotten. I've been working through some questions.

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What are your thoughts on Vodibacham? I just heard this interview with Ali Beth Stuckey where he praised

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Neil Shenvey, so disappointed that Shenvey is not biblically solid. Well, here's the thing.

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If you mean by biblically solid, Neil Shenvey is not a theologian. He'll probably tell you that if you asked him,

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I would think. That's not his area. He has read a lot of secular sources on critical theory.

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But I mean, he goes to J .D. Greer's church. If that's a sample of the kind of teaching that he's getting on a theological level, then you can do with that what you will.

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So if that's what you mean, I get what you're trying to say. In fact, I kind of realized that later.

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I thought, you know, I should probably have talked to him more about what false teaching is.

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I just sort of assume I'm on the same page with people about that. So Vodibacham says some kind things about Neil Shenvey.

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Well, so has Doug Wilson. So a lot of people have. Let me just back up.

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This isn't about Neil or Vodi. This is actually bigger than that. All of a sudden, people are waking up to the fact that there's critical theory.

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And that's motivating somehow the riots and everything. And they don't know what it is.

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And so they're looking for a Christian source, something that's going to explain this to them. And they find a source. And it says a lot of the right things.

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And so they think, oh, this is great. Well, unless you're examining it closely and you're really paying close attention to what's actually being said in its totality, you're not probably gonna sense, you're not gonna find some of the problems

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I've found. So I wouldn't blame someone like a Vodibacham from saying, hey, there's someone who's trying to oppose critical theory, maybe not realizing that the entire critique is not an adequate critique.

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But hey, the fact that someone's even doing it is a positive in the minds of most. So there you go.

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I don't, I think Vodibacham, from what I know, is great. I don't know him well.

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I've talked to him. I've had a sit down with him before. Just, we've talked a little bit. But I can't, based on one conversation, tell you everything about Bodhi.

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I've listened to some of his sermons. I think the ones I've listened to have been fantastic. I love the content on history.

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Another question. Do you have any thoughts on David Barton? I really like some of his content. I'm gonna get in trouble because I probably have people on both sides of David Barton.

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So I'll say this. I know someone who worked for him. Very nice man, from what I know. Very smart man as far as memorization and soundbites.

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As far as his historical work, I was reading a book by him about Masons, speaking of conspiracy theories, and he was, it became evident to me he was not a trained historian, and he'll probably tell you that.

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The way he treats sources is a little suspect sometimes. He'll use a dictionary as a primary source, and a dictionary is not a primary source.

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He's gotten in trouble, I think, a few times in the way he uses sources because he's used some sources,

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I think, that weren't completely authenticated. Every historian makes mistakes, but David Barton, I think, has made a little more than most, and it's gotten him in trouble at times.

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Now, that being said, I can't stand the people that look down their nose at David Barton. I'm thinking like the

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George Marsden, Nathan Hatch, Mark Knoll, Thomas Kidd types, just Christian nationalism.

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No, there really are, this country really was founded on Christian ideals, and I would use

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Daniel Dreisbach or Mark David Hall's book over David Barton's book to show that, but it doesn't mean that David Barton's getting everything wrong.

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He gets a lot right about the founding. I think once he gets past the founding, especially as he approaches the

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Civil War, the wheels just start falling off, and he kind of adopts the Republican myth of American history instead of trying to find a paradigm that makes sense of all the information, but that being said,

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I don't have any issue with David Barton. Personally, I not, I can't remember a time

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I was really annoyed by David Barton. I just see him for what he is. He's not a historian as much as he is, and he does, he is, he deserves that to some extent.

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He does have, he is a historian on some level, but he's more of a speaker,

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I would say a motivator. Yeah, I just don't, I don't use his sources for most things just because I have to kind of double check him, and I don't like usually double check.

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I do double checking enough when I'm doing this stuff, so those are my thoughts on David Barton. All right, what do you think of Jesse Lee Peterson?

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Funny. I don't know him very well. I've heard he's a heretic. I don't know how. I don't know what he believes, but I've seen his like man on the street interviews and they're pretty funny.

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He just kind of says outrageous things and watches people react. All right, so those are some of the questions, and hopefully that was beneficial for you.

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Listen, just to kind of end this, I don't want to freak anyone out about, if you are someone who is not a

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Christian, please, you know, reach out to me. I would want to hear from you.

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If you're freaked out, if you came here because you saw QAnon in the title and you're hearing me talk about even a greater conspiracy of demons and Satan and sin in the world, and look, we have a

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Savior who's conquered that, and we know what happens because we have the end of the book, and Satan does not win.

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And so God calls us to repent of our sin. He calls us to put our faith completely in Christ and not our works or our decision or anything we can do, but solely in the work of Christ.

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Christ has made a way that we can be right with God, and that is the good news of the gospel.

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And so that's the message that I proclaim, and I just felt like I needed to end on that note. So God bless.