A Warrior Mindset W/Former DEVGRU Operator Bill Rapier

The Greatest Commandment and Loving God with All of Life

When the scribes and Pharisees asked our Lord about the greatest commandment, He replied, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.

So, why do we hear some of today's most prominent pastors saying things like this? It had everything to do with how we talk about the Bible. And specifically, or along with that, what we point to as the foundation of faith.

Which for most Christians, unfortunately, is the Bible. We need to do better. We need to love God with all our hearts, and stand unashamedly on the rock of His Word. We need to love the Lord with all of our souls, and respond to the worldview issues of our day with the wisdom and discernment that comes only from Him.

We need to love the Lord with our minds, and understand the calling of God's people in every area of life in God's world. We need to love the Lord our God with all our strength, and face the work of building a life-giving, God-honouring culture.

Join us for 10 days at the Runner Academy for Cultural Leadership, as we consider how the gospel influences all of life and culture, and the role that we have to play in applying foundational Christian thinking to every area of life.

Non-rockabotas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it! Are you going to bark all day, little doggy? Or are you going to bite?

We're being delusional.

Delusional? Delusional is okay in your worldview. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional. So you calling me delusional using your worldview is perfectly okay.

It doesn't really hurt.

Is he hung up on me?

No!

What? What? Desperate times call for faithful men, and not for careful men. The careful men come later, and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives. Right. Don't go into the world and make homies. Right. Disciples.

I got a bit of a jiggle neck. That's a joke, Pastor.

When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

God Trains His People for War

Blessed be the Lord my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle. He is my steadfast love and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, and he in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me.

That would be Psalm 144, 1 -2. I bet you were going to bring up that verse, weren't you? I was. I knew it. I'm like, he stole it. He had it locked and loaded, but I beat him to the punch. What's up, everyone?

Returning from Germany and G3

Welcome back to another episode of Apologia Radio. It's been a couple weeks we've been off. We were in Germany for a week. I'm trying to remember. And then we were in Atlanta for a few days for G3. Had a really good time there.

Really blessed time in Germany. We're so thankful for the opportunity God gave us to go there and help them start an abortion now in Germany. Nobody's doing anything to stop abortion there. Just a really cool opportunity.

I was personally very blessed because I'm half German. 48 .2 to be exact. You've got a lot of German in you, too.

I do.

It was kind of cool because I learned a lot about myself being there. I was like, oh, that's the reason I am that way. That's why my mom does that and stuff like that. It was kind of cool. We'll have more coming from there.

Our talks and stuff we'll be putting up soon.

That's kind of helpful because sometimes I just look at you and say, why are you the way that you are? And now you're figuring that out. That's nice.

That's what my wife says to me all the time. It's true and you know that. She says that to me every day. Jeff is Arkansas. I had to think about it. He's in Arkansas right now. We have a rally actually there.

I don't even know. I think it's Saturday. I don't even know what day it is. I don't even know what day. I know it's Thursday because we're recording. I'm still half jet lagged here. He's there in Arkansas.

We've got another bill going on there. We're super thankful for that as well. Before we get into this, I want to, of course, thank our sponsors. We saw the video. If you're on here with Ezra Institute, we're grateful for them.

We're partnering with them. Of course, Ion Layer. I'm waiting for my next package to arrive. It's pretty awesome. I don't even remember the code. I'm just failing miserably today. I think it's just Apologia.

I think you just go into Apologia and you get a discount. It's awesome. Check that out. IonLayer .com, I believe is the website. That was horrible. That was just the worst possible sponsor mention I've ever had.

All that to say, we're just going to get right into it. I don't even remember when this post was. It was a while ago. It was months ago. Does it have a date on it?

No, it does not.

Sorry, I'm feeling bad today.

Bill Rapier’s Background and Life After the Teams

Welcome, Zach.

Thank you.

Howdy.

Appreciate you being on today.

Yeah, absolutely.

Another provoked Apologia collab today. I was like, hey dude, Bill Rapier is going to be on. He was like, oh yeah, sign me up. Now I introduced our guest. I'm just going to go ahead. Guten Tag, Bruder Bill.

Vielen Dank. Sehr gut hier zu sein.

That's all I got.

Thanks for having me on, guys. Bratwurst.

That's it.

In case you didn't know, we had Bill on before he spent much of his childhood in Germany. You were more fluent in German before English, correct?

I was.

I learned to read and write German before I did English.

That's crazy.

How much of that have you retained?

Most of it.

That's awesome.

It's a little bit frustrating because I can't share the gospel or talk politics in German. At least not very well. I can ask if you want to play tag and go skateboarding really well.

Dude, those words over there, because you know this, they literally just smash three or four words together into one word. You're like, I don't even know where to start with this word. What was that? What was that?

It was just funny seeing some of those words. There was one word that just killed me. It was on a crosswalk and it had three T's in a row. One, I think, ended with two and one started with one T. There were three T's in the middle of the word.

I was like, what is happening here? They literally just smash words together. It's a very descriptive language, which actually I think if you understand it helps because it's like you know what you're talking about because the name of whatever it is, it's in the description in the word itself.

What's skateboard?

Skateboarding.

See.

There's words like that where they just throw a da at the beginning or something.

You call it fedoyching. Germanizing a word.

Okay. Yeah. Fedoyching.

They were stuff like that where you just throw this little word in front of it and then it's just English. That's funny.

It's a beautiful language. Very aggressive language.

I'll tell the story real quick. It sounds very angry. When I was preaching, I was using David and Goliath. I was trying to read some life into this verse where David's confronting Goliath. Then my interpreter read it in German and it was just so much more angry.

I was just like, yes. I was like, let's fight. I'm ready to go to war. That was incredible.

Hearing.

Mighty Fortress in German was just phenomenal. It just changed the whole song.

Ein Fechterburg ist unser Gott. That's all I can remember. We actually sang that as a family the other day. It started in German. My folks were over for dinner. We started that hymn in German. I think all of us, after the first line, switched to English.

That's hilarious.

Thanks, Brother Bill, for being back on. I've gotten to know Bill fairly well since we had him on. I don't remember when it was. I guess it was probably about a year ago, maybe. For those that don't know who you are, Bill, why don't you just give a quick introduction to yourself.

Guys, I'm Bill Rapier, follower of Christ. I grew up as a missionary kid. I lived in Germany for about eight years. I lived in Southern Africa for a couple of years. I went to high school in Colorado.

I joined the Navy the day out of high school. I spent 20 years in the Navy. The majority of that time in the SEAL teams. We got to know a bunch of really cool stuff and work with a bunch of really cool guys.

I then retired nine years ago. Now it's crazy how fast time is moving. We moved up to North Idaho.

And.

Continued having children. I'm married. I have seven children now. My primary business now is Amtec Shooting. It's a training company. We go across the country and teach good Americans how to protect themselves and their families better.

We also have a knife company, Amtec Blades. We sell blades also for combative and backcountry use. Also, super involved with our church.

I love this guy. Most guys that were 20 years as a Navy.

SEAL are like, I'm a Navy SEAL.

He's like, I'm a Christ follower. I love the humbleness. We talked about the last time you were on just identity and that's who Bill finds his identity. It's Christ. It's like, oh yeah, I also did some cool stuff as a Navy SEAL.

You just did. Well, no. Let's see how I'm going to tie this in. Talk about the Modern Warrior Conference you did back in May. It's going to come into play with the conversation today. Tell us what you're about to do next week, I think you said.

The Modern Warrior Conference is something that Amtec Shooting has hosted. It has not been exclusively an Amtec Shooting event. SAG Tactical is involved with that. Warrior's Way is involved with that.

Master Jim who runs some Jiu-Jitsu schools and MMA schools up in New York area. We're friends. We all come together and do a conference where we get to train shooting and fighting and blade stuff. Just a bunch of really.

Cool.

Manly warrior arts in that setting of an actual conference. They're long days. We're starting in the morning. We're going until 10 or 11 each night. It's just a good time to get the guys together and do some training.

You said next week in Georgia. Tell us about that.

The next thing we have coming up is called Developing Solid Christian Men. This is our first overt Christian event. Basically, as part of our business teaching good Americans how to protect themselves and their families better, we talk about mindset.

Every time I teach a two-day class, we talk mindset. About an hour, hour and a half long talk. At the end of that, we talk about readiness for death. The industry buzzwords now, dying.

Well.

It's a great opportunity. I get to tie that in and share the gospel and talk about. The only way that we actually die well is being right with God through his son,.

Jesus.

One.

Of the things I try to do once or twice a year is just think about, am I serving highest and best use for the kingdom with my life? You start thinking about, if I have a sold-out class, I've got 14 dudes, probably more than half those.

On average, half those guys are believers already. Maybe half the guys, seven, eight dudes are hearing the gospel.

Just.

Looking at it, it's a fairly limited audience. You have to really be into training. You have to have time off. All these things. The reach isn't that far. I just started thinking and praying about, we'd like to reach more people.

Since so many of my students that host me already are believers and have home churches, we started thinking about, wouldn't it be cool to do something that is super cheap? Basically, we're charging $50 and it's just so that people will show up.

Then right underneath the $50, it says, if the $50 is keeping you from coming, email us. We'll work something.

Out.

More guys can go to it. This event is going to start with a little bit of the gospel and just talking about what are we supposed to be doing as Christian men? Then what does the world tell us that we're supposed to be doing?

That'll be.

A short 15 -20 minute talk. Then we're going to go into smashing things. Learn how to throw elbows, headbutts, knees, move people around, do a little bit of blade stuff. We'll do that for a couple hours and we're probably going to do something.

Hard.

Something that gets everyone's heart rate up. A little bit of teamwork, something along those lines. Guys are sweating and breathing heavily at the end of that. Then sit them down and really just go.

Through.

Very practical things. What are we called to do as men? Number one is love God.

Then basically,.

I get to mini-sermon underneath that. Then love your wife. Mini-sermon. Love your kids. Mini-sermon. Just go through a bunch of specifics that we should be doing as men. Then we'll do a call to repentance at the end of that.

Definitely talk about nominal or cultural Christianity. We're not saying magic words in a prayer. This is a true repentance. If you're convicted, this is going to be true repentance. If you're making Jesus Lord of your life, this is not the light thing.

Then we'll break bread together. Have some meal. It's in Georgia, so it'll probably be barbecue. I'm excited. It's going to be good. Please be praying for that. It'll be Thursday afternoon into evening East Coast time.

That's awesome. How many people do you have signed up for that? Just curious.

We've got 22 guys signed up right now. There's still slots available. That's awesome. If you're in that area,.

Come on down. That'd be so cool.

Amtechshooting .com is the website to go sign up.

I just saw that on the website. Bill's going to be leading our man camp this year, which I'm super, super stoked for. I'm very, very excited about that.

Are you going to work us out?

I think it's going to be the similar type format. Just more in-depth with the different combative skills. We probably will get some fitness in. Get some high heart rate stuff in. We had a couple guys.

A couple years ago. Come.

Bill knows them. I hooked them up. They know him.

We were sore for like a month.

That was two years ago now, wasn't it? Almost two years. I was pretty sore for a while. I give those guys a hard time because they're starting the ministry. Well, it's hammers and spears. I can mention them.

They were at ReformCon. Their little brochure they put together for it was Jeff doing some karate ninja stuff with them. You're looking all super awesome working out. I'm in the background.

Like,.

Out of breath. I was like, guys, really? You had to put that picture of me?

I was dying 99 of the time.

The way they caught you looked like you were just killing it.

I was fooling them.

I looked like I was being killed.

Anyways,.

We want to talk about the warrior mindset today. Bill would be an expert in the warrior mindset. What started this was. I started to mention this earlier and I got completely rabbit-trailed. Zach sent me a screenshot from a friend of ours.

I'm not going to mention his name because we love him very much and he's a faithful brother. I don't want him to feel attacked or attack him, but it's one that addresses.

Us.

What he said and the mindset of what he said. He said, I've been a full-time street evangelist for 19 years. Something that has made me a better evangelist biblically speaking and something for which I am very thankful is when God, His gracious and kind providence allowed me to mature to the point of repenting of and dropping the warrior mindset, the warrior persona and the warrior vernacular.

What he replaced it with is a love for God's enemies imperfect as it is. They would rather see my blood dripping from the end of an enemy sword than his blood dripping from the end of mine. It's too easy as an evangelist when donning the warrior mindset to forget that the war is not against flesh and blood.

It's too easy to fight with men instead of engaging in a compassionate fight for souls. It's too easy to find joy in crushing your opponent instead of loving him. It's too easy to sacrifice others instead of sacrificing myself for others.

Thinking, talking, acting, and pretending to be a warrior for Christ is easy. Loving like Christ is hard. In my life, this monumental changes in perspective and personality would not have happened if not for the place and authority of the local church.

My local church in my life, which this is one thing we're very thankful for with this man is his love for the local church. We'll just stop there. When I read that, I was like there's so many things in there that I feel like he's promoting that I would say, well, that's part of having a warrior mindset.

I just want to hear, Bill, I want to hear your initial thoughts on that and then we'll just go from there.

Warrior Mindset, Soldiering, and Staying on Mission

I think, number one, if you're equating warrior mindset with doing things in your own strength, then I would agree with him. If that's your definition of warriors trying to do things in your own strength, then I would say, yeah, we shouldn't be doing that.

I don't look at that as, for one, I think we also need to draw the distinction between warriors and soldiers.

Yes.

As I've always looked at it, there are.

Historically.

Soldiers defeat warriors. It is good when some of your soldiers are also warriors, but as I look at it, the warrior might be an amazing fighter, but he may or may not have discipline. If you are a soldier, by definition, you must be disciplined.

I look at the examples of the Romans, the five-foot-five guy fighting a giant Germanian that was probably a full foot taller than him. A Germanian was a better warrior than him, but the Roman fought as a unit, as a disciplined soldier.

Therefore, the majority of the time.

Was victorious. I think it's good.

To differentiate that. As I was getting ready for this, I think the Bible has examples of guys that were not just soldiers, but they were also warriors. If we talk about some of the mighty men of valor, those guys were soldiers as well, but those guys are also warriors.

If you're fighting for so long that you can't even let go of your spear anymore because you've been holding on to it for that long,.

Those dudes are warriors as well.

When you first sent me that text, I was looking at it and I'm like, there's so many good, solid things that I agree with in this statement, but I think his view of what a warrior is, or at least a warrior for Christ is, I think is wrong.

I would say that a warrior for Christ, absolutely, you might be called.

To lose the physical.

Battle. He references this, the verbal battle or wanting to win an argument. Sharing the gospel is not about winning arguments. It's about us being faithful to the scriptures and presenting that. It's the Holy Spirit that's going to lead people to saving faith anyways.

We're just vessels.

That have the privilege to be a part of that. I would look at that as part of the warrior persona or the soldier as being disciplined. The Bible is full of examples of a soldier type vernacular. When he says, endure as a soldier, the farmer, the soldier, the runner of the race, all those things.

There's all sorts of times. It's never mentioned in a negative thing. We also don't see a call to repentance from soldiering. That's another. Just looking at Luke 3 .14, soldiers also asked him, and we, what shall we do?

He said to them, do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusations and be content with your wages. He's not telling them to quit their jobs. He's just saying, be content with what you have.

Be honest in your dealings.

Looking.

At that text, he's definitely, his heart is in the right place. I just think he has a misunderstanding of what the warrior.

Virtues are.

It's been a hard thing for me to think through as a believer and as a guy that teaches people how to protect themselves and their families. I do talk about killing and whatnot. There's absolutely a time to protect yourself and your family.

I do believe there is a time to say, the lawful authorities are going to arrest me for being a believer in Christ. I'm willing to lose that one for the.

Sake of Christ.

If we look back historically, that's what the early church did.

The.

Gospel spread like wildfire because these guys, I think in Fox's Book of Martyrs, one of the centurions, after seeing the faith of the Christians that he was getting ready to execute, went to his commander and said, hey, I am now a Christian as well.

He immediately steps over.

To me,.

These are warrior.

Virtues.

If you're thinking warrior virtue to always win an argument or to be the tough guy or any of those things, those aren't warrior virtues to begin with.

Exactly. That's machoism. There's so many things I want to say. Even the verse I read at the very beginning, that's again Psalm 144. That was David. That's the dude that killed Goliath as a boy. Talk about a warrior mindset.

He didn't come before Goliath and just be like, oh, kill me. I get that our friend is saying we shouldn't approach evangelism like we want to slay the enemy. I get that, but that's why when I first read this, my initial thought was and I've gotten this from hanging out with you guys, Bill.

I feel like.

It's a holistic approach to life, having this mindset. What I mean by that is there's times where you might need to resort to defending yourself or your family, but that's the last.

Step.

You need to be aware of your surroundings. There's a time and a place for everything. I feel like he's compartmentalizing this one aspect of being a warrior when really in all of life, in that holistic view, you should have this mindset of all of life and know your surroundings, know what situation you're in, knowing what the proper time and place is for certain things.

We can have this mindset and go preach the gospel and not want to kill the dude.

We want.

Him to come to Christ and want to share the gospel with him, but again, that's part of that mindset. I'll just let you guys talk about that. Zach's nodding his head, so I know he has some thoughts.

You stole everything I was going to say, Bill. No, I think it's an unbiblically pacifistic type of mentality here, especially when he says, I thank God that I'm not a warrior anymore, because like you said, there's warrior, military, soldier vernacular that the scriptures are commanding us to put on, right?

Things that are transferable from a soldier to a civilian, I guess, in a spiritual sense, like wage a good warfare. I mean, put on the armor of God, Ephesians chapter 6. So I think, and especially for me, learning from the military, it's been beneficial to get through hard times like when we're counseling people and they're going through incredibly hard times.

We talk about putting on the mentality of a soldier which is self-disciplined and strong and knows how to deal with hardship and is skilled. That battle, that kind of understanding that we're in a battle, that's so good for a person as they're going through, especially spiritual warfare.

They don't know what's going on and it's just God's ordained time for them to go through this and to say to the men and women through the years, hey, let's be strong. Let's be warriors through this. Let's understand we are in a battle.

We do have an enemy who's a roaring lion and he wants to devour us. I mean, that's absolutely crucial for them to put on those type of thought characteristics and mentality, for them to kind of weather the storm and the fight that the enemy wants to throw at them.

What I'm saying is we better not take away a warrior mentality when the scriptures are commanding us to have one. We better not take away the soldier's mentality because that's God's prescription for us to put on for an absolutely God-glorifying purpose and a sanctifying purpose.

I think when you say things like this and you don't quantify it like you're saying, you kind of throw the baby out with the bath water. I can understand if you were to say, hey, when you go out evangelizing, and I've had to do this too, especially at the abortion mills when I got somebody spitting in my face or something.

I have.

To not go into warrior mentality. You want to bite their face off when they spit you in the face, spit in your face, but you have to back off and say, no, I have to respond in humility. Like the scriptures say, Jesus was reviled, but he didn't revile.

That's important. I think if you just went in and maybe surgically edited this a little bit better, I would be cool with it, but again, I just see some errors.

Bill, I'm going to ask you a direct question in a second because I actually got this from you. Stay on mission.

Right?

That's part of the warrior mindset is you stay on mission. You're talking about being at the abortion mill. What's your mission there? It's to preach the gospel. We know this. We don't carry weapons when we go to the abortion mill.

We're going there to possibly die. We're going to take a punch. Whatever. The mission is the gospel. In that moment, that's part of that mindset is staying on mission. Now, you might be in a different situation where you are armed and someone attacks you and you have to defend yourself.

As our friend said here, that's not the time and place to be like, well, I'd rather have the sword go through me than.

Him.

You know what I mean? Again, it's just knowing where you are, knowing what your mission is.

Yeah, exactly. He says what.

He replaced.

With is a love for God's enemies and that would rather see my blood dripping from the end of an enemy's sword than his blood dripping from the end of mine. I'll tell you one thing. If a guy breaks into my house and he's accosting my wife and my kids, I'd rather see his blood dripping from my sword than mine.

If a guy comes into our church and wants to harm any of our flock, there's no way I'm just going to lay down and say, oh, you know what? This is a spiritual war. We're not fighting against flesh and blood.

In that arena, in that category of life, no. You and I, we're going to absolute war in this situation.

It'd be cowardice not to. It'd be totally cowardice.

We would not love our sheep. We would not love our family if we just said, you know what? I'd rather you die than me. No, we're going to war to protect our people. And you see that all throughout church history too, especially the Covenanters.

I mean, they did everything they could to abide by the law, but when it got so bad that they were going to kill their wife and kids, they picked up the sword and they went to war.

Yeah, and so, I mean, we can go a number of directions, but I mean, Bill, I've even heard you in interviews talk about loving your enemy like you're literally praying for your enemies before you go to kill them.

And so, anyways, I want to hear you talk about staying on mission, because you had sent me a sermon, I think, and you were talking about that, and I was like, oh, I'm going to steal this for sure, because it was such a good point.

Yeah, so, staying on mission, I mean, we just have to always go back to what is the purpose? I mean, that goes back to what's our identity? What is the most important thing? Why are we doing this, right?

If you are, to go back to this guy's statement, if you're doing street evangelism to win an argument, and I'm not saying that this is what he's doing, but if that's your mindset, if that's your approach, then you're not following God's law to begin with, right?

We are supposed to love our enemies. I mean, that's part of a warrior mindset, would be to be, you're right, if I acknowledge that the number one most important thing in my life is Christ, right? That's the most important thing.

And so, therefore, if that's going to be more than just words, I better study what God's word says.

And.

Dig into it. And so,.

If I.

Then do something counter to that, right? I'm not, I'm going off mission, right? It has to, you know, I mean, this kind of ties somewhat into the whole persona piece, right? That, yeah, not in a schizophrenic type way, but we all have different personas, right?

My persona is the top one, follower of Christ, then it would be husband, then it would be father, then it would be, you know, involved with our church and, you know, I get to do cool stuff and train people.

Like, all those things are parts of it. If you allow, say, your warrior, you know, I'm the protector, the sheepdog for the people that like that analogy, right? Like, if you allow that one to be higher than any of the other ones that are more important, right?

Your life ends up falling apart. Right? So, it's super, super important to just stay on mission. Always ask yourself, like, could I, whatever you're saying, could you defend it biblically? Could you defend it before the Lord?

You brought up a great one, I think, talking about the difference with the abortion laws and, like, and I'm going to screw this up a little bit, but, like, the concept of kind of incrementally chipping away at abortion laws versus just going, you know what?

I can't stand before God and say that a heartbeat law is just, because it's not. Because at the end of the day, they're still killing babies, right? So, we have to, like, so we should be able to argue everything that we're going to do.

So, if you're saying, yeah, I think it's, right, I think the taking of human life is not always immoral, right? And I would go back to, you know, just looking at this recently, again, like the, you know, what do the Ten Commandments say?