News Roundup: Kirk Cameron on Hell, Public Schools, Christian Nationalism, & More

and Kirk gave his honest thoughts, indicating that he finds the view known as conditional mortality or annihilationism to be both compelling and possibly biblically supported.

While it certainly seemed, from some of the things Kirk said on his podcast, that he was indicating that this is now his official view, when

I spoke with him personally on the phone, he told me that while he believes the Bible appears to point in the direction of this view, he's not settled on the matter and has asked for further discussion.

We think of God as a just God, he is a just God, and we believe that the punishment should fit the crime.

And so if the punishment was cruel and unusual punishment that went far beyond the severity of the crime, that would no longer be just.

So is that really just? An eternity of conscious torment for a limited lifetime of sin?

Matthew 10, 26 through 31 says, so have no fear for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known.

What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops, and do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.

Rather, fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell.

Ooh. Ooh. You know, that's a really interesting concept right there. Right. Because if we believe that hell is eternal conscious torment,

Yeah. Why would it talk about your soul and body being destroyed in hell?

Yeah, because the soul can't be destroyed. The soul lives forever. Exactly. Right? Yeah. So does that mean something else?

Or does it mean that the soul does not live forever? I think we as Christians have a idea that the body will perish, but the soul is eternal.

Yeah. That's what I've always heard. Through my research and through my understanding, although it may be limited,

I have not found that. I have not found that the soul is necessarily always eternal.

What do you mean? The Bible does not talk about the eternality of the wicked.

All I've found is the eternality of the righteous. Yeah. When you look at God's judgment upon individuals or on nations, cities, empires, he says they're gone.

Like the symbolism is scorched earth, destroyed, gone, and their name is remembered no more.

You know, the jackals and the owls will come and inhabit their land, and they're not coming back.

It's like forever, which really is a better description of dying, of perishing, not being granted eternal life so that you can be tormented forever.

Speaking of the goats, the unrighteous, the unsaved, the wicked, he says, and they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go into eternal life.

And so the argument goes, there you have it. Whatever it is that the righteous are going to, which is eternal life, which is life that lasts forever, the opposite is true of the goats, of the wicked.

It's punishment that lasts forever. And so there you have it. And in the book of Revelation, John actually says that hell itself is thrown into the lake of fire.

So we often think of hell as the fiery place of torment, but hell is really that holding place of the grave, the realm of the dead, like you talked about.

The wicked are put there in that place of torment. We see that with Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16,

I think it is. But the whole thing, Sheol, hell is thrown into the great lake of fire, which

John says is the second death, which then brings up a question about what is the first death. But the second death is the lake of fire, which consumes even hell.

So not even hell sticks around forever. I used to hold the position of conscious eternal torment because that's just what

I was taught by people that I love and trust. I've learned that there are other positions and a very robust argument can be made for conditionalism or annihilationism, as Edward Fudge posits here.

And it fits the character of God, in my understanding, more than the conscious eternal torment position because it brings in the mercy of God together with the justice of God.

It doesn't leave judgment out. It is just, but it also fits with the

Old Testament picture of the fate of the wicked, which is to be destroyed. It is to die and it is to perish, not live forever in an eternal barbecue.

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. Those are some clips

I wanted you to see before we start the podcast off from Kirk Cameron's latest podcast with his son.

And I started it off with Ray Comfort. Ray Comfort, of course, the head of Living Waters, the host of the

Way of the Master television series, which Ray Comfort was, I'm sorry, Kirk Cameron was also part of the first,

I think, three seasons. And that's the basis for many churches in this country and their evangelistic programs.

They'll use Way of the Master. I know my church does. And it's Kirk Cameron and it's Ray Comfort going out on the street, teaching you how to do evangelism, essentially.

And of course, Kirk Cameron, along with Ray Comfort, said that hell is an eternal lake of fire.

It's a place that you don't want to go to, because once you go there, it's not just temporarily uncomfortable.

It's uncomfortable for eternity. And now he's changing his view on that, or so it seems.

But Ray said at the beginning, he's not quite settled. And so I don't know what is more disturbing to me.

And I say this to someone who has used Way of the Master stuff and respected

Kirk Cameron in the past. And still, to some extent, I suppose I would still respect him.

He came from Hollywood. He got out of that whole industry and is raising,

I mean, his son seems to get along with him. He's raising a family. He's doing it right. I have a respect for that, obviously.

But I am disappointed. And I do not know which is worse. The fact that he is changing his position on something that is considered a solid teaching of the church.

We'll get into that for the last 2 ,000 years. And going into something that I believe is error.

Or the fact that he isn't certain about his position, but he decided to go there on the internet as an authority.

Whether he thinks he's an authority or not, people view him that way. And just throw it out there like, well,

I'm just asking questions. That seems very irresponsible to me.

That would be something I would hopefully apologize to you for if I ever did that. And it's not like you can't ever ask questions about anything.

But the things you should be asking questions about as an authority figure publicly are things that need answers.

Are things that you don't have the information for. You're seeking to get that information. You're seeking to persuade people to give up that information.

You're seeking to call out something and draw attention to something. To apply pressure for a political purpose because you think the information needs to come out.

If you act like you're confident about something, you do a whole podcast on it, and you argue for a particular position.

And it's a position that you don't need more information about. It's not that kind of a question. The information is out there already.

You just haven't sorted through it deeply enough. But it's out there. And maybe your position is you won't have a position because you don't think there's enough information.

But we have the canon of scripture. And it's been out there for a long time.

And if you come out without having studied that deeply enough, you haven't come to a conviction about a very fundamental doctrine, or at least an important doctrine.

And you just say later on, well, I'm asking questions. I'm not really sure. You have just persuaded a lot of people in your audience not to take you very seriously.

And it's because this is such an important thing. For Kirk Cameron especially, a guy who for years was publicly advocating this particular doctrine, eternal torment in hell, conscious torment.

And then to come out and act like you've switched your position on it, to argue for a very different position, but then to reel it in and say, well,

I'm not really sure. That's just irresponsible. That's all. I don't really have another word for it.

I think that disappointed me more, actually. I am sure. That disappointed me more than changing the position.

To act like, well, I'm just open to discussion. I'm just talking through things.

I'm just, what are you doing? You're persuading people on something that you held to,

I don't know how long ago. I'm assuming in the very recent past. And why don't you come to a position first, right?

And this is one of the things I think that is dangerous about online influencers in general. Is you can be on an arc.

You can be changing so quickly. And I know people like this. I see this even with the top podcast in the world right now.

I might, depending on how much time we have, go into some of the history of Candace Owens. You can change things so quickly.

And it's like, it doesn't really matter, right? Because it's about, you're just having conversations online.

And it's like, what is this online internet space anyway? What are we really doing here?

I'll tell you what, I do take what I say here seriously. For you guys, it doesn't mean

I won't make mistakes at times. It doesn't mean there aren't matters I might shy away from because I simply don't have all the information and I don't want to pretend like I'm sure about something

I'm not. But I'm not going to trot something out there to try to persuade you for 45 minutes on a podcast that's so important, so fundamental, so intrinsic to just basic Christian teaching when

I haven't thought through it. And then later come back and say, well, I'm not really sure. That is not something that I hopefully,

Lord willing, will ever do because it would be thoroughly irresponsible and embarrassing.

So that might be an angle you haven't heard. And I don't know if some of the guys closer to Kirk Cameron, I don't know if Todd Freels even weighed in on this.

I know Ray Comfort is going to if he hasn't yet because he said he's going to have a podcast where they talk about it.

And if I were them as a friend, I probably wouldn't say what I just said. I would be at least more nice about it because I don't have any personal attachment to Kirk Cameron.

And I think if I did, I would be trying to persuade him behind the scenes pretty strongly.

What are you doing? But I don't have any of that. And so I feel like I can say that. And there won't be negative personal repercussions.

And I don't know if the people closer to him are thinking it, but I'm assuming they have to be. I'm assuming they have to be thinking, what are you doing, man?

If you're not sure about this, what are you going out there tinkering with these very basic doctrines?

That's a scary, dangerous thing. And it just makes me not want to listen to someone on theological matters if they're just thinking out loud, figuring things out like that.

It's an important deal. It's an important deal. It's one thing if you're like in an interview and you're kind of caught off guard and on the spot.

Okay, well, I have to talk about this. Wasn't planning on that, but here's where I'm at with this. Okay, it's another thing, too.

I specifically premeditated a podcast on the topic. I've got a thumbnail that's got hell in the background.

I'm questioning whether it's really eternal. I really thought this out and wanted to make a presentation only to say, well,

I don't know. I don't really know at the end of the day. Okay, well, that's where I'm at. And we're going to go through an article

I just wrote on the subject. How's that for a bang for the beginning of the podcast?

We have a lot of stories to talk about. We're going to get into the Gospel Coalition and what they said about Christian nationalism and maybe

Kevin DeYoung's article if we have time. And what's happening around the world. We're going to talk about Pope Francis's comments on immigration.

And there's so much, so much more. Is public school a sin? That's another controversy we're going to weigh in on.

And like I said, so much more. But let's start with this. I want to start with the Kirk Cameron stuff. Chektov says, what have you changed your mind on,

John? I don't know why I highlighted that. It got highlighted, though. What have I changed my mind on? That's a good question.

I'm sure I have changed my mind on some things. I think everyone does change their mind at some point on some things.

The question is, are they fundamental things? How quickly are you changing your mind?

What are the reasons you're changing your mind? Is it superficial? Are you just kind of casually walking from one really serious position to another really serious position?

Positions that actually matter. This is a theological position. It matters. Are you just kind of nonchalantly like, well,

I read this book now, and I'm thinking this today. That's what I'm talking about.

If you're going to change your position, you really want to think about it. You really want to develop a conviction.

I think on the online world, you're not seeing that as much with some influencers.

There's not a motive, honestly, because of the short attention spans, because it's so driven by image.

It's not an information -driven medium as much. It is like right now even.

You're not just hearing me say things. You are seeing an image of me.

You're hearing my voice. A lot of it's timing. It's the need of the moment.

It's about the kind of voice you want for a particular setting, and you can do it in real time on the internet.

I can just instantly click a button that says live stream, and there

I am, and thousands of you are hearing me. It's not like a presentation.

I'll use a Sunday sermon. It's not even like a Sunday sermon where you are thinking through, mauling over for days, sometimes weeks, months, and even years, depending.

It's just a new age. The kind of thing that you used to have casually with a friend, and it wasn't widespread.

You're saying to your friend, well, I'm thinking through this right now. I'm not persuading a lot of people. You're just talking to the one person you trust.

That's now happening daily by the minute online to mass audiences with millions of people.

And that's the kind of thing generally when you have such a wide audience and they take you seriously that you think,

I need to be careful what I say. I need to be responsible, but because you don't see them and you're just looking into a camera.

And I think because they, I mean, the interaction we're having right now, I can see some of the comments you make, but I can't see your faces.

I can't in real time that the peer, well, I was going to say peer pressure, but the accountability mechanism that would normally be present does not exist.

If you were going to say some things on a Sunday morning from a sermon, it might shock everyone. You would see instantly.

You don't have that online. And if you don't have institutions that, let's say, if you represent a university or a church or a ministry and you go out there and you start saying stuff, you got to be careful what you say because now other people are going to feel pressure applied if you say something wrong.

You're going to damage the reputation of an institution. That doesn't exist when you're just a talking head, right?

It's something I'm very mindful of, by the way, on this podcast. I realized I can just say anything I want. And I have to be very careful about that because there's great freedom, but well, a

Spider -Man, right? There's great responsibility too. And the motivations and the standards of adjudication and peer review processes and the rules of journalism and academic pursuits and all of that, those don't exist in this egalitarian environment as much.

So I wasn't planning on going a whole thing on that, but I do think that's different than having a conversation with a friend about, you know,

I read this article and I was thinking this. When you go online and you're talking to thousands of people who take your voice seriously, you have to take that influence seriously.

That's what I believe. And I think Kirk Cameron damaged that with pulling this.

So no, it's not like you can't ever change your reputation, but you want to be responsible when you do change your position.

So let's keep going, though. Let's talk about the article. So I wrote an article against what you just heard because I really wanted to think through it, and I wanted there to be something.

I didn't see any substantive pushback. I'm sure there was. I just wasn't aware of it. And so here it is.

This is on my sub stack. And the title is Kirk Cameron's Annihilationism, God's Justice is

Eternal Judgment. I'll just read it. And as we go, comment.

And if you have questions, you can throw them into the chat here and I'll try to get to them. Kirk Cameron recently released an episode of his podcast titled

Are We Wrong About Hell? In it, the popular actor known for his roles in the 1980s television show Growing Pains and the way the master evangelistic training videos explains and defends his new beliefs about the doctrine of hell and its ultimate end in the annihilation of the wicked rather than an eternal conscious torment.

Cameron's views are most popularly associated with theologians such as Edward Fudge, whom he cites, and John Stott. I remember interacting with Stott's position in seminary.

Their conclusions are not only out of step with the biblical picture that emerges when the passages on hell are considered together.

They're also out of step with a Christian tradition. The Athanasian Creed states, those who have done evil will enter eternal fire.

And that's, what are we talking, probably 500 AD there. The Westminster Confession, obviously we're talking now much later, says the wicked shall be cast into eternal torment and punished with the everlasting destruction, indirectly related, the

Second Council of Constantinople condemned a form of universalism that advocated for temporary conscious punishment, as annihilationism does.

It says, if anyone says or thinks that the punishment of demons and of impious men is only temporary and will one day have an end, and that a restoration will take place of demons and of impious men, let him be anathema.

So, of course, there's a form of universalism there. But this is something that,

I know that there will be people who will go to early church and try to find someone who advocates something similar to this view and then use that as, well, look, there were people, there's always been people around who think this.

This is not the mainstream view at all, widespread view, common view of the church, not one bit.

This is fairly innovative. And I would suggest to you that there's a motive behind this.

And I think Kirk Cameron demonstrates this, as we'll see. On the podcast, Cameron explains why he, who has a history of defending the eternality of hell, has come to his new position.

And I wrote this before Ray Comfort came out. So I assumed that this is a new position, right?

Now I'm annoyed because literally like an hour after I wrote this, Ray Comfort is saying, oh, Kirk's telling me on the phone.

He doesn't really know. So I would pray for Kirk. I mean, if he's trying to figure it out, let's pray that he comes down on the right side.

And he then says, look, I'm going to tell my audience I was wrong.

I shouldn't have done that. And that's the right approach. And of course he's forgiven for that and everything.

But that's why I said that. It seemed after watching the episode, which I did, that he was definitely coming to a new conclusion on things.

First, Cameron suggests that conscious torment for eternality is out of proportion with the sinful actions of human beings.

Second, he argues that various scriptures support the idea that hell is temporary. Third, he maintains that annihilation aligns more closely with the mercy of God than eternal torment.

Let us examine each of these objections. So those are the three things that he brings up. Is eternal conscious torment just?

That's the first objection. Well, it just doesn't seem just. Would a just God really torment someone for eternity?

That just doesn't seem fair. Cameron asks if the punishment was cruel and unusual punishment that went far beyond the severity of the crime, that would no longer be just.

So is that really just an eternity of conscious torment for a limited lifetime of sin? So you hear the comparison here.

If you don't live for eternity, so your sin only lasts as long as you're alive.

So why would you then be punished for eternity? Well, Scripture gives many examples of God punishing wickedness.

So first of all, we have examples in Scripture where from our human perspective, it really does seem like that intensified, right?

That escalated quickly. Uzzah in 2 Samuel 6. Remember the story of Uzzah?

God strikes him down because the Ark of the Covenant is about to fall off the back of an oxen cart. And he tries to stop it.

He touches it and he dies. And the reason he dies is because despite what seemed to be good motives, he actually disobeyed what

Numbers 4 .15 talks about. That even the Levites were not to touch the holy things.

So he disobeys Scripture and he's done. I mean, you could say the same thing about things like Sabbath breaking, right?

Or children who are more than disrespectful.

I'm trying to think of the word for it. They are very condemning of their parents and rebellious.

And why would God create laws that these people need to be? And we're actually, it's really not children in the sense of young children.

I think it's, if I remember the construction in Hebrews, they're actually a little older, but still it's like one of those laws where like that seems harsh.

Why would God do that? Why would he wipe out the Canaanites the way he did? In the

New Testament, Ananias and Sapphira, right? They do the right thing, don't they? They give some of their money to the church.

Isn't that what God wants? And yet they die instantly because they lie to the Holy Spirit about how much they're giving in comparison to how much they have.

Ultimately, God sets the standard for what constitutes a just punishment. So that's the first thing. That's up to God to figure out what justice is.

That's not up to us because he is an infinite Holy God. He is far more violated by sin than we are.

He is more offended. This sin looks more evil to God than it does to us. And it is not because he is evil that he sometimes punishes with severity, but because he is good.

It's because of how good he is, how offended he is. Now, furthermore, and this is important to me, without redemption, the mindset in the flesh remains hostile towards God, Romans 8, right?

So if you are not redeemed by Jesus Christ and you continue to exist forever, what happens to that person?

What happens to them hypothetically if they were on earth, right? You just live forever and you're never redeemed through Christ.

You're going to sin. You're going to have a lifetime of sin, right? You're going to have a forever lifetime of sin. Jesus describes a punishment in hell as a place where they'll be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And that word gnashing of teeth refers to a seething anger that accompanies the suffering of the wicked.

Sinners do not cease to sin after their sentencing. They continue in their rebellion for eternity. So I think that's very key to this whole thing, or important,

I should say, at least, because I think without it, we would still have a good case to be made here.

But with it, it bolsters it. Human beings, when they go to hell, who have not repented, are not repentant.

That's the idea here. They're still in their sin. They're still blaming God. They're still rebels. So this is not like the way

Kirk Cameron frames it, like, oh, they only sinned during their lifetime and now they're punished for eternity because of that.

They're sinning for eternity too. I guess it's important to remember that. Like, they don't stop doing that.

It's not like now they're all of a sudden good and God's punishing good people who don't sin anymore.

So let's put it in proportion, all right? If we're gonna put it in proportion, I think that we have to admit that the sinning continues.

Is hell temporary? Cameron and his son, James, who joins him on the broadcast, also cite a handful of verses they believe demonstrate that hell is temporary.

And I'm just gonna stop there for a moment and say this about James. I don't know James. I didn't realize

Kirk had a son that was older. It made me feel a little old. I thought his son was a lot younger. He's an adult now, which is great.

I don't know if every podcast is with him and his son, James, but I did think it was a little odd to have a 22 -year -old, not that 22 -year -olds can't ever give opinions at all or don't have worthwhile things to say on things.

I was 22 not that long ago. Maybe it was longer than I realized, but it wasn't that long ago. And anyway,

I just wouldn't want to be put in the position of talking to large crowds about things

I wasn't sure about if I was 22. Because when you're 22, you hopefully have some primary convictions about things, but there's generally a lot you're still learning about life and about the world.

And you better be pretty sure. That's all I'm saying. If you're going to go out there and talk about things at that age.

And if you are, that's great. But if you're not, if you're still figuring things out, it's not a great position to put someone in.

I wouldn't want to do that to my children. And I don't know exactly what was behind all that. I know people have speculated about this, like wondering, did his son change his view and then

Kurt Cameron changed his because he wanted to relate to his son or something? And we don't have any answers to that.

I don't think there's any reason to go down that road. I think what's obviously in front of us though, is you have a father and a son who are discovering something together in their minds.

And there, Kurt Cameron seemed more sure about it in my mind when

I was watching the podcast and for him to say that he's not even sure, that makes me wonder if his son is.

But his son was on the podcast and sharing about this as well, seemingly coming to the same conclusion that I thought his dad was coming to.

And the verses they bring up are things like Matthew 10, 28, do not fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell.

Matthew 3, 12, that God will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. Psalm 37, 20, but the wicked will perish and the enemies of the

Lord will be like the glory of the pasture. They vanish like smoke. They vanish away. These passages are used to support the idea that the punishment of hell is temporary.

As Cameron says, regarding Matthew 3, 12, the fuel is destroyed. So in other words, this can't go on forever because of the imagery that's used, right?

Haven't you ever had a fire? Fires go out when they don't have fuel. So Revelation 20, 14 even says that death is thrown into the lake of fire.

Cameron cites that. He cites Matthew 25, 46, which states, these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life as evidence that whatever happens to the righteous, the opposite happens to the wicked.

So if the righteous are experiencing eternal life, then the wicked must be dead forever and therefore not conscious or tormented because that's our experience with death.

Augustine, in contrast, concludes from this passage that as the eternal life of the saints shall be endless, so to the eternal punishment of those who are doomed to it, they shall have no end.

So, and this is the way that it's typically been taken in church history, that no, when

Jesus says that those will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life, the comparison there is there's two eternal things happening.

One is everlasting punishment. The punishment doesn't end. One is the life experience in heaven doesn't end.

That's the comparison. But Cameron wants to take that and say, no, like it's gotta be death where the person is not conscious for it.

They're gone. They've been eliminated. If all we had were these passages, it might be reasonable to assume that annihilation is possible, but these are not the only passages we have on hell and neither are they inconsistent with an eternal process of active punishment.

Second Thessalonians 1 .9 says, these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction.

Robert Louis Dabney asks regarding the annihilationist perspective on this passage, how can punishment continue when the subject of it has ceased to exist?

And this is kind of the nub of the whole thing. If they're being punished for eternity, as it is so often communicated to us, punishment for eternity, how can they be punished if they're not around?

How does that exactly work? If someone receives the death penalty for a civil crime and they're dead, are they still being punished for that civil crime?

Is it now hundreds of years later after someone dies because they murdered someone and they were hanged?

Is John Brown right now being punished? No, that punished ended, at least from a human standpoint, the civil court punishment is gone.

There isn't many punishment anymore. It ended the day that he swung from the gallows and died.

So that's the thinking here. It does not seem to cease for the devil either, right?

Revelation 20, 10 says the devil will be tormented day and night forever and ever. Revelation 14, 11 also says that for those in hell, the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever.

They have no rest day and night. Smoke here does not refer to the aftermath of a fire, but an ongoing fire with negative consequences for those in the midst of it.

Robert Peterson says on this point that when scripture refers to the fires of hell, it does so in order to focus on anguish, not extinction.

The imagery of Mark 9, 48, which states their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched points to a process of perpetual decay.

In other words, the fuel never runs out. Cameron's explanation for why

Christians traditionally hold to a belief in the eternality of hell is that Plato's view on the immortality of the soul, even for the wicked was somehow uncritically important in imported into Christianity.

And this would mean the greatest theologians of the church were not motivated by scriptures teaching, but rather subverted by a pre -commitment to platonic philosophy.

And if this is true, one wonders what other influences Plato has on Christians and whether we know it. Now, this is silly to me.

And I think this is what Edward Fudge says. But look, I just, I feel like I just dismissed this. I don't even feel,

I know I dismissed this right away. Plato believed in the pre -existence of souls. So these

Christian theologians who are believing in hell being lasting perpetually forever, are they also believing that your soul continues into the past, not just the future?

And the answer is no. But if they were really influenced by Plato, that's what they would be believing.

And secondly, you're going to tell me that guys like Augustine and Calvin and Spurgeon and go down the list, that they were all really just influenced by Plato, not what scripture actually says on the sub.

That's not the thing. They're not just reading the scripture and coming to this conclusion. Because that would be the most logical, that's

Occam's razor, right? Like that's the most logical conclusion to draw. To try to create this conspiracy in a sense, like, well, all the

Christians who came to these conclusions and wrote confessions and creeds with the belief in everlasting hell, they were really just motivated by Plato.

It's like, well, what other, Plato must have a really strong hold then on them.

They must have a lot of other ideas that are coming from Plato then. What are they? I mean, that's going to, if that was true, then it would seem like there'd be a lot of other error to talk about.

And it's kind of, I mean, that almost would seem to put you outside of orthodoxy somehow.

Plato is really pulling the strings. Is God merciful? Is God merciful?

This is the last, and I think this is the motive, honestly. I think this is why most people go this direction.

Kirk Cameron affirms that the mercy of God and the necessity of repentance and faith in Christ in order to avoid judgment to come, even if he believes that judgment is temporary.

Yet one of his major reasons for rejecting the eternality of hell is his belief that it would imply that God is not merciful.

So not, again, like God can't, isn't just, now God's not merciful. He states, God is not some megalomaniacal person in the sky who all he wants to do is punish those who sin against him.

He also admits that it is easier to speak with non -believers who struggle with the idea of eternal punishment if one can assure them that God does not engage in such punishment.

It is true that mercy triumphs over judgment. In James 2 .13, it says that the same verse also says judgment will be merciless to the one who has shown no mercy.

Immediately after teaching that breaking God's law at one point makes a person guilty of all. The mercy of God is extended to sinners only through the merits of Christ.

Ephesians 2 .4 -5 tells us, but God being rich in mercy made us alive together with Christ.

Nowhere in scripture do we find the mercy of God applied to sinners after their guilty verdict, though he shows them mercy throughout their earthly lives by withholding judgment and providing repeated opportunities to repent.

So I just conclude by saying that it is tempting to go down this way because it's not popular, especially in the modern world, to have a belief in something like hell.

And if scripture might, there's an opening there to say it's not real,

I can understand wanting to take that route. However, the doctrine of hell and its eternality are doctrines the church has affirmed since its inception.

And they flow from the plain reading of this text. The second death is presented as an eternal process compared to the eternal state of glory

Christians enjoy. And this should really motivate us to be more active, I think, in evangelism.

It is what makes grace even more amazing. It's a doctrine that actually does matter in the grand scheme,

I think. And I don't always understand what goes through people's minds before they die.

When someone dies and there's no indication that they were saved, especially if they're a loved one, it's one of the hardest things.

And I take comfort in the fact that God is truly good.

I don't know what that person was thinking in their final moments. And my hope is always that there's a deathbed conversion.

Right? And I don't know what people are thinking. And so I can't ever really be sure completely where someone is because of that.

But I know that in heaven, every tear will be wiped away. I know that there's going to be a time when we're changed into understanding from God's perspective and concluding, along with him and the angels and everyone, that he is good.

And that's the way I have to live. I have to live trusting in God. And I know he gave us this time to be busy about the work of evangelism and to tell others the truth, the good news about Jesus Christ, that he did come to give his life to make a way that you could be reconciled with his father because you violated his law.

That's the message of the gospel. It's a good news. Otherwise, we're all going to hell. That's justice. That's justice.

Not all of us will, though. That's mercy. So I'll get to some questions. That's my response to the whole thing.

What's the second death per the annihilation, guys? Okay, Kirk Cameron, I think, talked about that in the beginning.

He thinks, I think there's a conflation going on. He's taking the grave or the sheol, the place of the dead, right, where you have it divided into Abraham's bosom on the one side.

You see this in the story of the rich man and Lazarus. You have a holding place, Abraham's bosom, and then

Hades. And this place of the dead is a holding place until after the great white throne judgment, new heavens and new earth.

And so when people say, like, you die, you're going to go to heaven or hell, true.

But I think of it this way. You're on a trajectory to one of the two places.

Your immediate place that you go, at least at this stage, I believe. Now, I know there's different eschatological positions.

Some people believe this has already happened and it's immediate, heaven or hell. But you are going to judgment, but it is a holding place until the final judgment.

And so you are uncomfortable in Hades and the place of the dead and sheol.

But Kirk Cameron seems to think that that is hell, that that temporary holding place is hell and that the lake of fire is something different, that there's the

Gehenna, and that that is where... So it's like you die, let's say, if you're in your sins, you go to hell, which that's how he describes it, at least.

That's the holding place. And then because Revelation says that death is thrown into the lake of fire, which

I think is communicating the idea that those who have violated the law, who are guilty and so forth, especially the demons, that's where this was made for.

But the beast, the image of the beast, these things go to the everlasting punishment.

Cameron seems to think that's where everything's annihilated. It's game over for everyone. They cease to exist.

So Gehenna is like the fires of hell that we think of as the fires of hell.

That's not actually hell. That's the final endpoint where it just all gets consumed.

Hell is that temporary stage where you go after death. That's my best understanding, but all

I have is one podcast and he's not even sure. So I don't know exactly. But all the other annihilation guys like John Stott and those guys, you know,

I don't know if they would hold that position. I think from reading what

I have about John Stott, I think, I believe, if memory serves me correctly, he thinks that the hell is, the lake of fire is hell.

And it's just a, you're there, but it's a process of like decomposition.

Like you're not there long, you expire. And so you will be punished and judged there, but it's not forever.

I'm pretty sure that's what he believes. So a cosmic treason says, basically the final judgment of the wicked can't be something that all the righteous also experience.

I don't know if this is attached to another comment. We are all cursed with death, spiritual separation from God through Adam and Eve in that state until we are justified.

When we are restored covenantally, we still experience the decay. The death of the wicked can therefore only be the spiritual death of the separation from God after mortal death.

And since they therefore still exist, annihilation isn't false. Yeah, yeah. So the second death is the separation from God for eternity.

That's, death is separation. The day that Adam ate, he died. Well, he still lived.

How could that be? Well, there was a spiritual separation that he had from God. The second death that John talks about is a separation from God for all of time.

So Seth says, also look around at your neighbors. Many people live in hell of their own making on earth today.

Figuratively, I'm okay with people saying you make your own, like you're gonna experience the natural consequences for sin.

And sometimes the special consequences God has put into your life because of sin, that is true.

Even if you're a Christian, God chastens those whom he loves. I am uncomfortable making that to, that poetic kind of comparison too often because I think that hell is a very bad place, right?

People say like war is hell and stuff like that. I get it, I understand. Okay. That's not literal hell.

John Mark Comer does this, right? Some people are in hell now. They're just walking around in hell.

No, no. I remember years ago we had this, I think they're called the covenant players.

There were these actors. They did Christian acting and they came to my church and they did this skit.

And it was a skit where someone gets anything they ever want. Everything to their heart's desire, they receive it.

And you don't know where they are. It's a, they're like confused and they, but they just start saying they want things and they get it.

And at the end of you, it's a big surprise you find that they're actually in hell. Hell is where you get everything you want with no limitations.

No, no, it's not. It's not going to be a big party.

It's not going to, none of those things are true. And these are all ways, I think we try to console ourselves into thinking, well, it's not as bad.

It's bad. I don't know how bad, but it's bad. That's what we're presented in scripture. Jesus talked about it more than he did have.

All right. Let me see if there's other questions. And then we had a lot of other things to get to. I needed to open with this was Kirk trying to steal man.

The annihilation case has checked off, just trying to articulate the position as opposed to subscribing to it. No, he didn't present it that way at all.

He presented it like this was a new view that he held. So Cameron may have a dumb motive, but not everyone does.

He has nothing to apologize for concerning his opinion on hell. I said, if he realizes that he gave bad information, if he's still figuring this out and he comes to the conclusion that everything he just said on the podcast is essentially an error,

I hope he apologizes. He does have a reason to apologize. He just misled his audience on something that's pretty basic to Christian belief.

So, yeah. Like if he was presenting it as here's a description of the annihilationist position because this is a show where we just describe theology or something, right?

That's not what he did. He was on a podcast giving his opinion. It's his personal opinion podcast and very much giving a pro -annihilationist position.

That's a lot different. Yeah. Who says it has to be completely intentional?

Okay, what has to be intentional? It sounds like Cameron wanted some internet attention and have others do his theological work for him, get all the feedback and then weasel out of it if it goes badly.

That's a theory. I don't know about that. I think he was sincere, but he probably got a million phone calls maybe and he's rethinking it.

Who knows? AJ says he can influence multiple thousands of people instantly.

He supposedly been a Christian for 35 years and he's just now questioning this out in the open. I know. I know.

This is a popular thing though. Like people switching, not just denominations, but they're switching religions.

They're switching to other sects of Christianity or Christendom, I should say.

And not only switching, but becoming authorities. I've seen this,

I don't know how many times with pastors who are in a denomination and then it's like one day they just switch their core beliefs.

It's like I'm for infant baptism now and not just that, I'm also for, I'm now

Eastern Orthodox or something. And then it's not a drawn out process of seeking to root oneself and find one's own convictions.

It's like an instant, I'm now with these guys and sometimes hired by these denominations and organizations, which

I think is very stupid. Don't hire someone right away who just changed their position on something.

I'm totally, look, I have great Presbyterian friends and Episcopalian, well,

Anglican tradition friends. I'm in a Baptist setting. I always have been.

If tomorrow I told you, you know what? I've changed my views on ecclesiology. I've changed my views on baptism.

I am now a Presbyterian. And not only that, I have a degree from a

Baptist seminary, but I want that degree account toward being a pastor in the

PCA. And I'm gonna start putting out applications tomorrow. I just came to this position.

Wouldn't you say that's a little bit rushed, right? Doesn't there need to be some time? You need to ground yourself to make sure this is really your position.

You've really thought through this. You've turned over all the rocks. You've gained a confidence in it or vice versa, right?

Someone who goes the other way. That's what I'm talking about. I'm saying that I don't remember this as a kid.

Like people change positions like they would change their clothes today. Like they put on a different shirt because the styles have changed today.

They've adopted new political beliefs. I might be in a bad position here.

Not bad, just a different position because by the time

I was maybe 15 or 16 years old, I was pretty grounded in just about everything

I still believe. There's very few things I can think of where I've changed. I can think of things where I've developed.

I've expanded. I've grown beyond simplistic understandings to more mature understandings of certain things.

There's not much I've changed on. If I thought about it long enough, I'm sure I could come up with a few things.

Well, here's one. I just thought of it. I used to be very big into presuppositional apologetics, cage -stage presuppositional guy.

I really did not like anyone from the classical tradition. And I had listened to a lot of classical apologetic stuff and a lot of evidential stuff, but I had really gone hard cage -stage into the presuppositional stuff.

I'm at a point now where I appreciate a lot of presuppositional stuff, but I also appreciate a lot of classical stuff as well.

And that took place over the course of years that I got from A to B in that point.

And that's not a very drastic change. That is a change though, where I'm now open to classical arguments and I don't see them as innately, like the

Thomistic arguments, I don't think that those imply that someone has autonomy necessarily.

I used to think that, right? I think it made, I can attribute that to common notions. God is placed within all of us.

So, and some of you might disagree with that, but that's a new position, I suppose you could say, that I've changed my apologetic stance slightly.

And I did not though, when I changed that, and I started that process really began in 2017, actually.

So now I'm looking at that's nine years ago, but, or I guess eight years ago, right?

But I didn't come out right away and start to advocate, here's my new position and I'm a leader in it and I'm gonna be an apologist.

I've actually cooled off quite a bit. I just didn't talk about apologetics for a while because I really wanted to marinate in this and make sure that I was in the right way of thinking on this topic.

Yeah. I don't wanna use myself as the good example here, but I just,

I think if something you don't know, I've said this before about eschatology, right? I've interviewed some people on different eschatological views.

I still have plans to do more of that. I do have some core convictions on eschatology that I've had forever.

Well, for a long time. I, as far as how it all, like, am

I committed very strongly to an actual position where I can say, well,

I am a premillennial dispensationalist or I am a historic premillennialist or I am a pre -wrath, whatever.

And obviously those are all in the premillennial camp because I am premillennial. I'm not willing to come out publicly and start advancing one of these views.

And the reason for that is simple. It's not that I couldn't argue for them or it's not that I can't pick one and say, that seems the closest and I'm going to argue.

It's that I know I have a podcast where thousands of you are listening to me and it may change your view.

And if I'm not really certain about this, because I haven't done enough of the homework, I really don't want to persuade you towards that and give the impression that I'm more sure of something than I am.

We can't be experts on everything. That's why this podcast is not going to, I'm not going to be able to talk about everything.

There's also going to be episodes where I'm interviewing someone and it's for the process of, you're learning along with me, something

I think is important to learn. I don't have all the information on it. I remember when

Putin went into Russia in 20, when was that?

2021? There was 2014 and then fast forward to,

I want to say 2021 or 2022 maybe. And I put out a podcast on it. Anyway, I remember thinking,

I really don't know anything about this topic. I can't do a podcast on this.

There's no way I can responsibly do it, but it's a topic that actually matters a lot to me. I really think that this is important.

And I just sensed it at the time. Because it seemed like our foreign policy is such that we were going to get involved in this thing.

And we did obviously, but maybe even more involved. And I was like, if we're going to go to war,

I really need to probably know this topic a little better. And so I did a bunch of research on it.

Just like I did earlier this year, actually on Iran. I was like, I don't know a lot about Iran.

So I'm going to read everything I can on Iran. I did the same thing with Russia. And then

I felt confident enough, okay, I can put out a podcast on this. I understand the situation. But if I was just weighing in it, if I was just saying what the crowd wanted me to say, if I was right, that would be wrong.

So that's kind of how I think about this. And I don't listen to podcasts where people are just making stuff up or being really sure about things that they've only learned a few talking points on.

They haven't actually done the deep research. I really am convicted that you, if there is not a process to keep you accountable, like in a journalistic process where you have peer review and there's rewards and punishments, depending on whether you get something right or wrong, you have to apply that yourself and your audience should expect it of you.

They're not expecting it right now, people like Candace Owens. And that's why I think she's a problem, which we'll talk about maybe later on in the episode.

I have some things queued up about it. All right, let's keep going here and talk about a bunch of other things that we have to get to.

I know we're like an hour in. This is going to be a long podcast, so that's just how it is. It's how the cookie crumbles. I need to let you know that if you are in the

Princeton Seminary area, I will be there with filmmaker Robert Orlando, who, speaking of hell, just wrote a book called

The Divine Tragedy, Karl Marx. And it's a book about basically fusing

Dante's Inferno with Communist Manifesto and 2020 riots. And I'm going to be with him.

He is Roman Catholic, so I don't know exactly where the conversation will go, but he has written a book about Marxism and I've been asked to speak about Marxism and have a conversation with him at Princeton Seminary.

And I understand there will be some important people there. So I would love to see you there.

If you are going to come, though, you do have to let Rosalyn Verone know, and her number is on the website here.

You go to my website, johnharrispodcast .com or johnharrismedia .com. If you go to my speaking tab, you'll find the link for this.

Rosalyn Verone, 917 -301 -3439. Or you can email her, rdjmverone at yahoo .com.

So we'd love to see you there this Saturday afternoon. All right, well, let's talk about some other things here.

I want to talk about this. This is a video that was put out there by someone named Sarah Stock. And the title here is

My Christian University is Shutting Down My Turning Point USA Chapter.

Take a listen. Most of you probably don't know this, but I'm actually about to graduate college from Vanguard University of Southern California.

It's a private Christian school in Orange County, California. Overall, I've had a great experience there.

But unfortunately, this semester, the administration has made the decision to shut down the TPUSA chapter that I founded on campus.

This is because of a new rule that the administration says they don't want any political, ideological, or religious student organizations on campus.

So of course, my chapter is very disappointed in this decision. The current president,

Sadie Burnett, has put an article on Substack that I'll link detailing this decision and why the students are so upset about it.

Adding to the reason why students are upset is that there are still cultural or heritage -related clubs, such as the

Black Student Union and the Asian Pacific Islander Club allowed on campus. But Turning Point USA is not allowed.

I had a conversation with President Michael Beals about this, and he said the main reason for this decision is that the school does not want

Christian students to base their identities on political convictions. And that's sort of the base of the reason for this decision.

My chapter and many students and parents at Vanguard disagree with this sentiment.

We think that Christians should be involved with political activism. And this has sort of been a pattern in recent years.

Even just this semester, Point Loma Nazarene also shut down the Turning Point USA chapter at their school.

And we think it's quite concerning that Christian students are being discouraged from being involved in political activism because that just leaves all the activism to non -Christian students.

And then Christian leaders wonder why our culture and our country is the way that it is. Well, maybe it's because Christian students are not being encouraged to be involved in politics.

So I completely disagree with this decision. While I've had a great experience at Vanguard, I would really like to see the administration reconsider this.

So yeah, please share this story far and wide and take some time to read Sadie's article about the situation.

All right, Vanguard University is a private Christian university in Costa Mesa, California.

I don't know if they have a fundamentalist background initially because it was, I think, a Bible Institute. They may have.

I know at one point it was affiliated with the Assemblies of God, but it is a private Christian university. And the argument here sounds like they just don't want any controversy.

They want to sidestep anything that could be political, but they have these heritage groups. So my suggestion for Sarah would be that maybe if they're not gonna let you do that, you could always start like the

Anglo -Protestant Club or something, see how that goes over, right? It's just a heritage club, right? You may not wanna,

I mean, yeah, I know. Insert joke here. But I could think of a lot of offensive heritage -related titles for clubs that liberal schools, even

Christian liberal schools, would have a hard time with. But hey, if you're gonna let the Black Student Union and other of these cultural groups in, why not a cultural group that's centered on,

I don't know, European stuff? So aside from the joke about it,

I do think this is serious. I think it hit me because I'm aware of another school as well that I think is probably much more conservative that seems to be resisting having a

TPUSA chapter on their campus. And I just think that's wild. Why would you not want that?

Why, especially if you have other student groups, that's the thing. Like if you open this up and there's student groups, why not a

Turning Point USA student group? I think it shows you the emperor has no clothes at that point.

No, they're trying to specifically ensure that they don't have groups that are going to be political on the right.

That's, I think, what we likely suspect. And when push comes to shove, that's the answer that I would assume is going to be coming for that.

But I do wonder now, this other school is not public in knowledge, but I wonder how many other schools out there like this where they're even

Christian schools and they're not wanting to have a Turning Point USA chapter even though they have other student groups. If you're in a position like that, reach out to me because I think that's nuts.

At a Christian school of all places, what's the point? Why go to a Christian school? Why don't you just send your kids to a four -year state university?

It'll cost you less and find the Christian groups on campus they can be part of. And a TPUSA chapter, because it's probably there.

Why not just do that rather than assume that you're going to get a Christian education at one of these places and then you don't get it?

Speaking of public education, speaking of public education, this is a good time for me to talk about this.

There was a controversy that took place. I think it was more last week, but I'm just getting to it now.

So Doug Wilson put out a post and he says, millions of evangelicals still have their children in government school systems.

Get them out now. Having Christian children in the government school system is what theologians of another era would have simply called synody, syn, syn.

Not a little smidge of synody either. Not really a debatable matter. Stop it. Crash the system.

If there ever were to be a true reformation among us Christians, leaving the public school system would form a refugee column that would make the

Mississippi River look like a solitary tear running down Horace Mann's cheek. He does have a way with words,

I have to say. My question is a simple one, but I will divide it into two questions. In order for all

Christians to get their kids out of this government school system, what would it take?

How many outrages, et cetera? And then how far down this wormhole do we have to go?

Sometime away in the future, the last holdout, some Baptist deacon in Tennessee will finally acknowledge that when the public school system refused to allow his daughter to opt out of the lab for pole dancing class with the football team as the practice audience, they really had gone too far.

So he's joking. But this was followed up. I guess

I missed that post. I actually had to ask someone. I was like, where did this come from? And someone said, oh, that was the post that started it.

But Brian Suve, who's a pastor out in Utah, said it is sinful to send your children to public school in our day.

We would discipline a member on this point. So you're gonna face church discipline if you did this. Now, fortunately for them, they did build a

Christian school that doesn't charge tuition to remove any excuse. Barring custody issues, all of the children in our church receive a

Christian education. So, I mean, I really appreciate the fact that they're doing that. I think that's a great thing for churches to do.

Now, Zach Garris wrote an article about this in 2017, the biblical, the masculine guy.

I've had him out for events and he's a good friend. He basically, to summarize his article, he says it could be.

It could be a sin issue, right? It depends on circumstance though. It's really a wisdom issue ultimately. Is it a sin for a

Christian to send their children to public school? He says, maybe. There are many different circumstances out there.

Consider a wealthy Christian family who has a great Christian school in town, but they choose to send their kids to public school just so they have more money to buy a new boat.

Well, that would be wrong. The question of where to school children is a wisdom issue and there are several factors at play.

So, I'm with Zach Garris on this. I'm also with my brother on this.

My brother wrote an article. My brother is a public school teacher. So, he actually has, I think, some knowledge on this.

And for truth script, he wrote a piece. Is it a sin to send your children to public school? Not necessarily, but let me explain further.

He says, I've been a teacher for a decade. Eight of those years in America's public school system. I'm very familiar with their inner workings.

I've worked in the urban, suburban, and very rural schools among most demographics in the US. Interestingly enough,

I was homeschooled myself. I knew the system was brought with problems, though, and not the homeschool system, the public school system.

I didn't realize how foundational the issues in our schools were. Buildings falling apart, widespread violence, a complete lack of discipline and respect, and copious amounts of sexual grooming through young adult literature and allied teachers.

But that was in an urban district. After a few years, I was in the middle of American heartland at a K through 12 school where each of the problems mentioned above was far less pronounced.

It was then that I woke up to the academic issue of the good schools. Children are so often reduced to a number on a data sheet.

Standardized testing is the law of the land and really the only important academic factor. Long hours are spent sitting, looking at screens under demoralizing fluorescent lights that do not make anything better.

All this to say is that I fully realized the issues of our public school system. In fact, I would spend hours talking about issues you likely don't even know about.

So, yeah, he's pretty... He knows a lot about the bad stuff.

I have no plan to send my children there, even a good one with teachers I trust. The education format itself is detrimental, so he goes into all this.

If we raise the level of something to a blanket sin, though, then we had better be sure that it is always in all circumstances.

Sin is serious. So it's got to be universal. In other words, it's got to be every single place that every single circumstance that your children could go to a public school.

It has to be a sin. Sin is serious. Accusing other Christians of sinning is equally serious.

I would posit that what some have identified as sin may actually fall into the category of wisdom. So I'm with him too on this.

So he goes into the Bible verses on this, really what we're all working from, train up a child in the way he should go.

Even when he is old, he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22, Ephesians 6. Fathers, discipline them in the instruction of the

Lord. Deuteronomy 11, 19. Teach them to your children, talking with them as you're sitting by the house and you're walking by the way when you lie down, when you rise up.

And he talks about the fact that the Proverbs also speak to imparting wisdom in general.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge of the Holy One gives insight, give instruction to a young man and he will be wiser, teach a righteous man and he will increase in learning.

The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself still shames his mother, et cetera.

Consenting your children in public school be sinful. So he says, look, if you understand the risks, dangers and detriments of doing so and don't care, then yes, it very well could be sin.

You have a responsibility to raise up your children. Many parents choose comfort, convenience and the maintenance of a specific standard of living. So they prioritize the wrong things.

It should be recognized that the entire social fabric of our civilization promotes public schooling, though. In countries like Germany and Sweden, homeschooling isn't even an option.

So you can't even do that. You have to remember that family years ago who was trying to flee to the

United States for the freedom to school their kids. Crazy, because in Germany, you're not allowed to do it.

You're just not allowed. Not an option. So you're going to have to just deprogram them when they come home, basically.

I've been privy to dozens of conversations concerning homeschooling and I've heard scorn, ridicule, demonization emanating from public school staff, university faculty and teachers union representatives.

OK, so he gets into more of the negatives. There's a lot of negatives here. Sweeping generalizations without context are not helpful, though.

Situation for each family is different. It may vary depending on region and circumstances and ability financially and all that.

So if you're living in Utah near this church, that'd be great. You have an option. If you are not living near an option like that, what do you do?

What do you do if you're a single mother and you have no options, right? There's a lot to consider on this.

And it's more of, I think, an issue for the church counseling office. It's not an issue for making rules that fit many people but not every person and then universalizing them for everyone.

There's a lot more to this article. David's got a lot to say about this. So you can go to TrueScript if you want to read the rest of it.

It's up there. But I would just say this. Look, we have principles in scripture on this. I'm very glad that people are putting pressure on Christians to avoid public school.

That's a good thing. We really shouldn't be sending our kids there in general. That's a general truth, a general wisdom.

It doesn't mean that every single circumstance is going to allow for that. For example, those in Germany, right?

Is it better for mom and dad to be in jail and the kids be given to someone else and still go to public school or for the parents to then try to deprogram their kids after class is over?

That's the only option the parents have. Is it a sin? Well, you could say, well, maybe they're not the ones sending the kids.

It's the government forcing them or something. I don't know. What if you're in the United States and you're in a rural district that still...

I mean, I've heard of this. I know it still exists. There's actually public schools out there where the teachers will gather to pray before class.

And almost all the teachers are there, including the administrators and stuff in rural southern areas.

There's still places like this. Is it wrong to send your kid there when you know the people that are working there and personnel's policy?

Even though they have some negative things coming down, the kid can still get a decent education and maybe you don't have the bandwidth to be able to provide the same level of education.

That could be possible. There are situations. I will grant you there are less situations like that every day.

But it is the responsibility of the parent to educate their child ultimately. And if they want to have someone that answers to them, that they're over, help with some of that, whether it's internships or schooling, private school, public school, then it's really within the purview of the parents to make that decision.

Often, I think it's going to be homeschooling. And I know people, by the way, that would not be satisfied with some of the answers that I read for you initially to this.

Well, you just go to the private school. So you don't have to go to public school. There are some homeschoolers I know that would say that is wrong.

That's a sin because parents need to do it. You can't send them to any school. So there's sort of a spectrum on this.

I don't think parents have to be directly involved with every single aspect of their kid's education.

I don't think a parent who doesn't understand trigonometry is going to be teaching their kid trigonometry, but they are going to be overseeing and ensuring the education of their child.

And especially when it comes to spiritual matters, that's something they should definitely have a direct influence on because those are the things that matter for character.

So any questions on that, I will be glad to entertain them. But I figured I would just talk about this because I do care about the difference between a wisdom issue and then a sin issue.

And I think these things get conflated an awful lot on other matters as well.

And I think very often it's tempting to go to a rules -based system on everything because it's just easier.

But there are things that are more in the realm of wisdom. They are more circumstantial.

And the circumstances may be different from person to person.

And I think this is one of those things. Okay, Russia bought for Christ. Wow, we got a

Russia bot. Says for $10. Respectfully, you have clearly read and therefore know nothing of what annihilationists believe.

We believe in eternal... I've read nothing. Not one thing apparently. We believe in eternal punishment and judgment and God's own, not humans' eternal unquenchable fire.

Yeah, but the judgment is... So Cameron even said that in the interview that they are...

It's not conscious. So it's judgment because they're gone. So eternally gone.

And that's why I made the analogy of like... So did John Brown got hung hundreds of years ago?

And is he still being judged? Is he still experiencing the consequences of his actions?

No, he's gone. He's into the next world. So that's the difference.

So I don't know if you caught that part of the podcast or whatever, but you could follow up if you want.

It sounds like you're not happy of the way you think I represented annihilationism. I'm not saying

I'm an expert on everything annihilationist, but yes, I did have to read John Stott when I was in seminary. We did have a class on theology, and this was one of the topics.

And so I did consult my John Stott articles before I went out there just to make sure that Cameron wasn't off somewhere.

Cameron seems to be more relying on Edward Fudge. I am not as familiar with Edward Fudge. I have read critiques of Edward Fudge.

I have not read Edward Fudge. John Stott I have. But there was,

I think... Was it the Evangelical Theological Society? There was... John Stott did this famous...

I guess you could call it a debate. It was a discussion. It was like three hours long. Back in, I want to say, like the late 70s, early 80s, on this topic.

And it shocked the conservative theologians who were there that John Stott had come to this position.

And that was kind of like the introduction in the evangelical world, the popularizing of the idea of annihilationism.

You really didn't see it that much before that. It obviously is around.

Robert Dabney's critiquing it in the 19th century. But that's where it starts becoming more mainstream.

Because Stott was an influential figure, just like Kirk Cameron is. Okay. Reshabbat for Christ follows up.

You mean judgment of death. Like Christ bore. That was not a punishment. I don't know what that even means.

I'm sorry. I'm not exactly sure. I'm trying to figure out what that question means.

And I don't get it. Christ bore the wrath of God for us.

God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God. He drank the cup of God's wrath.

So yes, Christ experienced judgment. But as Isaiah 53 says, it's for his sheep, right?

So he, what sinners are experiencing in hell, the judgment for their sin is what we would all experience, except for some of us who are in Christ.

Christ experienced the judgment for us. And I mean, that's just basic Christian theology.

I don't know where to go on that. That's just what, that's what the confessions say. That's what the Bible teaches.

All right. Well, let's keep going here. Cosmic treason doesn't like what my brother said.

My brother was punching right. The managing both side strategies, very reminiscent of TGC articles.

TGC. We do not have an epidemic of public school parents having their consciences bound.

The epidemic is rebellious parents, defiantly public. Here's the thing, cosmic treason, and anyone else who's listening.

This punching right thing, I guarantee you, my brother probably disdains the public school system more than almost anyone, any of us know.

Okay. As far as like what he's seen there and the pitfalls and the traps and all of that.

He would be like, if we're thinking left, right, which I don't know if every issue is left, right, but we're thinking left, right.

My brother's like way out in right, as right as you can get on this topic of whether the public schools are good or bad.

The issue is not that though, right? If we make every issue political and it's like, well, someone's saying something and they're going too far because they're making a wisdom issue, a sin issue, but because they're on the right doing it, we can't say anything.

And then if we critique them, we're the ones now on the left somehow, or we're punching right. It could be that there's a theological matter here that needs to be sorted out.

What is sin? That's the issue, I think. And so if it's not a sin, if it's a wisdom issue, then we don't want to put that in the wrong category.

We don't want to condemn people and say they're in a state of sin when they're not in a state of sin and then bind their consciences.

That would also be wrong. It would be perfectly fine to say, I think most people, because of the circumstances they're in are sin when they send their kids to public school because they have other options or something.

I can see that. But if you make a universal claim, that's wrong. That's not, I don't believe that's scriptural.

And that's the argument he's making. That's actually an argument from the right. That's an argument from, here's what the

Bible says and let's use the biblical categories, right? It's, I mean,

I see this so often because in the apologetics world, I know there's a tendency to try to paint, especially from a liberal perspective, hierarchies that used to exist as intrinsically sinful, right?

So you have like the monarchies, the king versus democracy, you have slave economies, you have patriarchy.

These things are all, like the liberal theologians will all look back and they'll be like, well, that stuff's all sin, right? Because I can point to an abuse here, here, and here, and that's all sin.

And I've said before, I think that you can make critiques about social systems and apply wisdom principles and say, this isn't wise or setting it up this way has problems because it opens you up to abuse here, here, and here, whatever.

But you cannot put that in the category of sin. And this is how we've, I think, seen for a long time, our

Christian ancestors so often are maligned as if they're a bunch of sinners that we've progressed beyond and they were in perpetual states of sin because they were racist, they were sexist, they were homophobic, et cetera.

And one of the first things that I try to dismantle in any of those conversations on any of those issues, if I'm talking to a

Christian is what is sin? Okay, let's be clear about what sin is first and then we can move on because so often it's trying to take things that are at best wisdom issues and then putting them into the categories of sin and making it a universal.

So I think that defending the categories of sin that are in scripture, that's always on the right.

If we're thinking of on the right as subscribing to God's order, the natural order, what scripture teaches, that kind of thing.

So, all right. Let's keep going here on the podcast.

I would love more interaction on these things. That's my opinion, obviously you're free to, if you still think it's a sin and can be demonstrated from scripture,

I'm probably not gonna change your mind, but let's talk about, oh, speaking of the gospel coalition, what

Wicca's origins teach us about Christian nationalism. Okay, it's by the one and only

Joe Carter. So he starts off talking about an

Egyptologist named Margaret Murray, wrote a book, Encyclopedia Britannica entry that claimed the witch trials of the 16th and 17th centuries had targeted real witches, okay?

People who believed Murray's invented history started acting as if this spiritual movement was real and the

British occultist, Gerald Gardner, even claimed that he was initiated into just such an ancient coven.

What he actually did was build a new religion from Freemasonry, ceremonial magic, and Murray's fabrications, and it was called

Wicca. I mean, I've heard this stuff before, right? Like all these ancient supposedly pagan practices are more recent.

As sociologist Gabriel Rossman explains in a recent review, Murray's theory became performative.

It wasn't true when she wrote it, but people who believed it and they started acting like it. And something similar is happening with Christian nationalism.

So I'm gonna just say from the beginning, if this article is legitimate, right?

As we're going through it, look at the title of it. What Wicca's origins teach us about Christian nationalism.

What did you think this article was gonna be about, right? Is this just clickbait? Is it like that it's gonna be comparing

Christian nationalism to Wicca because Wicca is so evil. It's gonna be on like a moral scale, right?

And now we're saying, no, it's just in the way that initially it developed. It's just like the origin story of these viewpoints.

And I mean, it's not even apples and apples because you're talking about a religion versus a political strategy, right?

It's not like Christian nationalists are saying, at least at this point, I haven't seen any version of Christian nationalism saying, we wanna reinvent

Christianity. Maybe some people think they're doing that, but it's a political strategy. It would be like saying, hey, what

Wicca can teach us about federalism or state sovereignty or something.

It's like, well, what are you talking about? Hey, Wicca happened to have a kind of a disingenuous origin and so does federalism or something like that.

All right, so it keeps going. Gardner -Juon -Marie's debunked scholarship. We know that, all right. David Barton, here we go.

David Barton has been thoroughly discredited. You know what? I don't know of one person who calls themselves a

Christian nationalist who at least in the circles I've been in who is a fan of David Barton.

I'm just saying, but now he wants to make the origin story Barton. Barton's narrative is on the founders that they were devout

Christians. The problem is that that version of America never existed. Oh, here we go.

Jefferson produced his own Bible, but no, he didn't. That's not what that was. Franklin, he didn't think it.

I don't even, I don't have time for this. This is stuff I've covered on other episodes. Franklin in his autobiography admitted that while he believed in God, he seldom attended any public works.

They always go to Jefferson and Franklin. Washington avoided taking communion and never explicitly affirmed

Christ divinity. Never explicitly. That's a hard one too.

I think you could say we don't have a public record of him verifying his belief in Christ divinity.

This is the thing with history. You have a record that is not everything.

Everything these people did, especially at that time, it wasn't being recorded. I think

Joe Carter's taking some license on that one. It would probably be better to say we don't have a record today that he explicitly affirmed or something like that.

Anyway, this isn't to say America was secular. The culture, okay.

The culture was Protestant. He cites Kevin DeYoung, which we're going to talk about in a moment.

And then the label Christian nationalist comes into being and the greatest generation had to die before it happened apparently.

The generation of Americans who fought against actual nationalistic movements. As DeYoung notes, until recently, no one was actually arguing for something called

Christian nationalism. It's funny that he says this though. The greatest generation, were they, what do you think?

More or less Christian in the public sphere? Would they expect more Christianity and culture or less?

What do you think? The guys who fought in World War II, probably more. They were more to the right, more conservative, more biblical friendly than the people today.

Yeah, probably. But I guess they had to die to get out of the way for Christian nationalism.

I don't know. I feel like a lot of Christian nationalists or the people who take the term would be kind of lamenting the passing of, they wish those guys were still around.

Okay, so he keeps going. The reason the label matters is that nationalism isn't a neutral term. So he gets into nationalism, the 18th and 19th century and how it's basically nativism and the scary friend enemy distinction.

Yeah, okay. There's different ways the term nationalism is used. For example, I just use the term nationalism in critiquing

Lincolnian nationalism in the federal period of our country, which is 19th century. And that's the idea that the states are not their own peoples, that it's one monolithic people dictated to by Washington.

And so I critique that. That's a bad nationalism, right? But that's what that was talking about. When you hear the term today, yes, it could have different meanings.

Often though, it just means you would believe that nations actually exist and are, they're real things, just like families exist, nations exist.

This shouldn't be rocket science. It doesn't mean that everyone who uses the term is necessarily the national socialists or something like that, like the

Germans were. When Christians casually adopt the nationalist label without understanding its ideological content, they're signing up for a package deal.

They may not realize they're buying. I mean, labels matter. I talked about this with social justice, that the label does matter.

Yes, it's been used by, especially Roman Catholic teachers to refer to Catholic social teaching.

They're not talking about the same thing that Marxists are talking about, but you have a century of that term being used to describe

Fabian socialism, essentially, and different iterations of socialism and communism.

And so to use that term to describe what your project is, when that's not your project, it's not wise.

Really, that's what it is. It's just not wise. And I sensed there was a devil in the details when I started seeing it come into Christian circles because the people who were saying it, they weren't quoting

Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk. They weren't quoting conservative thinkers.

They were quoting people like James Cone, talking about social justice.

So I knew that, okay, they're borrowing this term as well as the concepts. And so I think it's wise to spot terms, but you have to be careful on this too because there are times someone uses a term differently.

And one of the reasons I have not taken the term Christian nationalist from the beginning, I've always been consistent on this, is because it was most commonly used for socialists and the

Fabian socialists in Bellarmine clubs in the early part of the 19th century.

You can go look it up. They wanted things like social security before we had social security and free healthcare.

And I thought, I know that people today who call themselves Christian nationalists aren't doing that.

That's not what they're saying, but it's the historian in me. It's like, I just don't, I don't know. I don't know what it means.

Christian nationalism means exactly. I know this. I know every iteration that I've ever seen seems to think that the government and the nation or the entity, the empire, whatever, should conceive of itself as Christian.

That's the common strand among all of them. But when, after that, I don't know. There's different versions. And it seems like the media is the one that came up with this word and owns this word.

And that also makes me suspicious. And that's why I don't wanna use the word, but I'm not, I don't have a problem with other people using the term. In fact,

I think the smart ones will say, so that term doesn't really matter. What matters is what's behind it.

What do we mean by it? So all that to say, Carter here is talking like, this is

David Barton's, a combination, I guess, of David Barton and nationalism of the 19th century and the 20th century.

So like, which was like so far from David Barton, which is hysterical to me. David Barton would not,

David Barton like really does not care for national socialists. So it's,

I guess it would have to be a fusion of these two very different things for, in Joe Carter's world. Why nationalism contradicts

Christianity. So he's gonna make a case that there's neither June or Greek. And so in the church, you have every tribe and nation and this divides us.

Again, that's, I don't know. That's just a sloppy. I mean, what are you gonna say? There's, we're part of the family of God.

You don't have a family anymore. I don't know. Well, there's no male or female anymore. Cause that's just, that's just a low, kind of just not even worth interacting with.

Why nationalism contradicts Americanism. Americanism. Cause the declaration grounds human rights in universal truth.

While this document was written to the Americans, the truth, read the document, read the whole document.

Almost the entire document is about specific violations that parliament made and the

King did not protect them against. That parliament made against American colonies. That's the document.

It's very specific. It's very traditional. It's very, I mean, it talks about that.

There's very un, is that even a word? Unegalitarian. There's very hierarchical things that would be very offensive today's egalitarians at the end of that document.

Things like the King is fomenting war against us using fomenting, you know, insurrections among the savages and slave insurrections.

I mean, yes, I've, I've talked about this before. I talk about it in my book against the waves, the preamble, which is what's most often quoted for the declaration of independence was the common understanding of the time that in a state of nature, we had, there is a certain kind of equality.

We can, you can think of it this way. Even you could, from a Christian standpoint, we're made in God's image. We're equal in that sense.

When you enter a state of society, there are rights that are given up and there are hierarchies that form.

And there are rights that are then also protected in that community.

And it's one of the things that especially libertarian thinkers do not get that you can have individual rights in a social situation.

In fact, that's the only place you can have individual rights. You can't just have like, you can have individual rights in a state of nature in an abstract kind of way.

That's universal. But every person when they're born enters a state of civilization and it's in that state of civilization where you have people that want to violate your rights and so forth.

And so this is why hierarchies and mechanisms and governments form to protect people.

And there's a great essay by Richard Weaver called Two Types of American Individualists on this. I would recommend anyone listening where he goes through, basically comparing the libertarian, more transcendentalist kind of idea of rights and then a more sort of agrarian

Southern view. And they're both talking about individual rights but they mean very different things.

And so when you read the Declaration of Independence, when you read those, no one thought those were controversial.

This was just kind of standard boilerplate stuff that yeah, of course we, it's a secession document.

They're saying we're forming a new thing. We're separating ourselves. We already have local governments here.

We're gonna submit to them, not to the king. And we are embarking on kind of a new group of political entities here that have a separateness that didn't exist before.

And in so doing, as they take their stage among the nations of the earth, they enter into something equivalent to in a philosophical way, a state of nature again.

But immediately they are, it's not, they don't ever actually pass through that state. They are immediately in a new arrangement where these local entities, these committees of correspondence at that time are making rules and Congress is making rules.

And so government never flees the scene. You still have government, but the

British realm had violated all their rights. I'm going on too long about this, but it's just sticks in my crawl.

Yes. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Governments are established governments for these things.

And guess what? Your government's violating these things in the way that those things are mediated through the traditions that British people have.

We are gonna do our own thing and have our own arrangement that protects these things. That's what they were saying. I don't think that's, that's what

Americanism is. Americanism is essentially federalism. Americanism is, if you want to say there's an ism there, it's that your state, your locality, your region, and are there to protect yourself government.

That's, it's the smaller is beautiful kind of thing. Smaller level. That's what separates

America and makes America different. It's not that America was doing such a novel thing that like it's never happened before in the history of the world.

And so America is this great experiment where we're gonna try freedom for the first time. That's not, I know that's part of so much of what we hear today.

That, that, that is not exactly the, the unique thing. And especially in the declaration of independence, that's, it's a secession document, okay?

That's why it was written. When some Christian nationalists appeal to European ethnic identity to worry or worry about demographic changes in ways that prioritize ancestry over creed, they're not recovering some lost

American essence. Well, look, the declaration, Thomas Jefferson would have been against Joe Carter. Come on. I almost feel like we should pull up the declaration right now and just start reading it.

Thomas Jefferson is writing about British subjects in North America.

And he's writing a letter to British subjects in England. It's two, two

British, two groups of British subjects. And he's saying, we have guarantees in your system and you're not upholding your end of the bargain.

You violated the arrangement that we have. That's what he's saying. He's not like, he's very specifically drawing lines, right, between peoples.

I mean, Joe Carter's logic works here. I guess we should never have driven a line, right? I mean, British people and us, we're the same, right?

We shouldn't even have recognized what was happening. We shouldn't have recognized that there, the

King was trying to foment slave insurrections and quote unquote savages, according to the document on the frontier to attack us.

Because these are divisions that you see don't exist in the church. You know, please, you have at that time there were people worshiping in Anglican churches, loyalists sitting next to patriots.

And yes, it did rip apart some churches but there were still churches where you could have both going to, because they were still one in Christ, even though they were on opposite sides of this political divide.

I don't even want to read the rest of this article. I'm kind of annoyed. I'm not going to lie. Cause it's just insulting to our intelligence.

All right, the danger of performative. Now everything's dangerous. Everything's, I mean, the problem is like if he has any merits, any actual problems that he can highlight, which maybe he does.

Maybe there's, there are people who take things way too far and they, they don't have guard rails and they start going down paths that,

I mean I've seen this online lately. It does seem like there's guys who are really going towards a kind of like a

Nazi German socialist kind of scheme thinking that's the way forward or something. Okay, we can critique that.

But the problem is if there is any critique, Joe Carter is probably coming from a liberal standpoint on this stuff anyway.

He's casting a net so wide. It's like, well, if you think that you're an actual entity like a separate nation, separate groups, separate empire whatever, separate from these other groups and you believe in nationalism as in like, you know for our people and we're going to divide over the fact that we have our own you're just fighting against the natural order buddy.

Like people are different and people form groups. Have you read history? Have you looked at how people operate?

That's just the story of civilization. And furthermore, God divided the peoples up by language.

So you're, you're fighting against forces that are far liberalism can't do anything to come.

It can try and can do damage but it can't actually change the fact that humans are like this.

So Kevin DeYoung also talked about Christian nationalism. This has already been talked about.

I think in other podcasts and stuff but he says he has six questions for Christian nationalists.

And I guess I'm not obligated to answer these, but I will. So let's see.

He doesn't really put these in a easy form. Does he? Let me see if I can find,

Oh, continue here. Okay. I got to go to continue. Let's see if we can find the six questions. Okay.

Here they are. Do you unequivocally renounce anti -Semitism, racism and Nazism?

Well, you have to define what you mean by those things. Right? So here's, that's not a very long paragraph.

Do you hold on to any of the following? A disdain for Jewish people and a belief that a secret cabal of Jews are responsible for a litany of evils in our world.

Two, a disdain for non -whites and a belief in the mental and spiritual inferiority of blacks and an appreciation for Adolf Hitler and a belief that Nazis were the misunderstood good guys in world war

II. Okay. At least he admits this. He says, I know I haven't provided technical definitions for these isms or sought to substantiate my insinuation that all three are sinful and abhorrent but that's the point.

Most people don't need a lot of nuance to condemn anti -Semitism, racism, Nazism. Okay. So he's commending actually

Doug Wilson, which is funny for calling out some of these things. So that's the first question for Christian nationalists.

Do you unequivocally renounce? I think that there's an issue that he's tapping into.

Like I just said a moment ago, I do think there is there are definitely people who are getting into things like biological reductionism and or racial essentialism.

Those are the two terms that I favor that I see being bandied about on this topic. There are people who think that Jews are

Jewish power and sometimes they can inflate this with Israel which is just kind of a low status thing in my mind to think that, but they they think that that's where they're responsible for everything.

Every problem seems to be rooted in and that's an ideological thing because it's not argued for as much as it is just assumed.

I do see that. And, you know, Nazism is,

I mean this is something that existed in a time and a place that we are not in now, but I think most of the time when people bring that up they're talking about the final solution.

They're talking about the mechanisms Nazis use to try to solve the

Jewish problem in their minds. And I think it's, it should be easy for anyone who's a

Christian to say I don't buy into that stuff. Like I don't, I don't buy into cause

I have original sin already. So I know that not everything is like Jews. There are people that are not

Jews who are very capable of doing bad things at the same time, you can all you don't have to like suspend your reason and not notice the fact that there are a lot of Jewish people who have gained tremendous amount of influence, they're high performers and especially secular

Jews who have used their influence to do destructive things. Usually Hollywood is brought up.

Usually porn, porn companies are brought up. Even though I think most of the major porn companies at this point are owned by non -Jews but there has been an outsized influence of Jewish people in some of these things.

You don't have to suspend that. You can admit that we're about the truth. It doesn't mean that they're responsible for everything, right?

So even there, the separation I'm making I don't know how that fits. Is that anti -Semitic? I think a lot of people would think say

I'm anti -Semitic for saying that there's a high proportion of Jewish people compared to other groups that are involved in evil activities that are subversive.

And I cited Hollywood and the pornography industry. Again, though, I'm not saying that there's a lot of non -Jews, obviously non -Jewish people in those, those fields that also do evil things.

And you could take all of the Jewish people out of our country who do those things and you would still have the same problem.

Essentially. You'd still have evil people wanting to give your kids bad things but I'm not going to just deny reality, right?

Racism. I don't, what do you mean? Right? Like we've just been through how many years of you're a racist because you're white.

You're a racist because you benefit from global trade patterns. You're a racist because you have privilege. You know, if you're talking about hatred of other people, then sure.

Yeah. Every Christian should say, I do, I disavow that or I'm against that or my, my the

Bible doesn't allow me to go that direction. People are made in God's image. And as a result,

I can't just hate them because of who God made them to be. So, and yeah, and I, and it goes with it should go without saying, but I'll say it.

Yes. Obviously murdering mass murdering people without a biblical directive to, to kill people.

It's not murder. And if it's a biblical directive mass murdering people is, is wrong.

There you go. That's against just war standards. So even on that question, right?

I have to like, I have to unpack it because it is so it uses buzzwords.

And I think that's on purpose, honestly. Like, I, I really wish we could have more fine -tuned discussions about these things.

I don't know that it's possible with more liberal minded people. I, I, I'm not sure

I, I noticed. So Piers Morgan did this whole thing with Nick Fuentes the other day. He did an interview and it was, it went exactly the way you think it would go.

Right. I cannot stand Nick Fuentes, but Piers is a liberal and Piers thinks he's like, well, do you like Hitler?

And Nick's like, yeah, I think he's cool. I'm tired of pretending he's not cool. And Piers thinks this is a slam dunk. Like, well,

Hey, look, I just exposed them. Everyone. And I'm like, Piers, you don't get it there because you're offended by it.

That's the reason that people like it. They literally like it because you're offended by it. They see you as the enemy.

You're a boomer. So if you don't like it, it's going to be more popular. You're actually helping fuel the fire when you do these kinds of things.

Right. But that's the way that I I've seen this conversation go with people who actually do believe very vile things and have said very vile things.

It's like, well, do you fall into this category? And then it's a label.

It's like, well, yes, I do or I don't. And then it becomes wrangling over the label. And admittedly, we have to use terms, but it's hard to get beyond the terms.

And how many years have we been discussing quote unquote Christian nationalism only to still be wrangling about terms like this?

I can define anti -Semitism in multiple ways just because the left has wielded this tool against people by defining it in in ways that are broad that sometimes even incorporate just basic Christians who think things like, well, the

Bible does say the Jews, the religious Jews, which is normally in the Bible.

When you see the Jews, it's talking about Jewish leaders in the religious sense. It's not talking about, anyway, the

Bible says that. And then there's a lot of people who think, oh, that's anti -Semitic. You can't say that. Number two, when and how does a nation act as a corporate moral person?

When and how does a nation act as a corporate moral person? Well, you could ask the same. It's always easier to boil it down.

Do families act as corporate moral entities? Yeah, I guess. I mean, they live at a particular place.

They have particular rules. They have, you know, people, whatever the management structure of the house is, they act as a unit because if they don't, they can't have a house.

And it's the same with a nation. I'm gonna go through these a little more quick. What is the purpose of civil government?

Well, the purpose of civil government is primarily protection. It's also to reward those for good behavior.

We see, I think, a picture in the Old Testament about what the government should be doing and protecting its people is a very primary thing.

And the laws concerning the alien and the stranger reflect that there were barriers that they had.

Even the proselytes, there were barriers. They could not gain influential positions.

They could not own land. They could not enter parts of the temple and partake in some of the things.

Anyway, so who is gonna enforce that, right? Civil government is the arm of force that a people have to defend themselves.

What does it mean for the civil magistrate to promote true religion? I think this is gonna, this is a more of a wisdom thing.

I think this is gonna vary depending on tradition and arrangement and circumstance. But the promotion of true religion actually happens all the time.

It's inevitable. We just happen to have a government that for most of our lives has promoted the religion of secular humanism.

So we don't think of it as promoting true religion because we think that's neutral and it's not. A government that promotes things like my body, my choice and celebrates monuments at places like Stonewall.

This is a government that flies trans flags, right? That's promoting a religion.

It's just not Christianity. So I think the argument is that governments are going to operate based on a moral system that comes from religion.

Governments inevitably are going to have ceremony, pomp and circumstance, some kind of way to communicate the hierarchy that they are important, that they're doing things that are important and significant.

So who do you have open up for you when you have a solemn ceremony?

I mean, we're all gonna have death. We're all gonna have civil gatherings.

Is it a pastor that comes and prays? Like, what is it? What do you do when you go into court?

Where does the laws that you have violated, where do they stream from and on what basis are they applied to you?

Is there an in God we trust in the courtroom building? You see, all these things are religious.

What are the displays that during holidays that your town, your local town puts up?

You know, are they religious? Right? I mean, would you like them to put up Hindu symbols or would you like them to put up Christian symbols?

We already promote religion. It's just a question of to what extent, where, how, what was the first, was the

First Amendment a mistake? No, I don't think the First Amendment is a mistake, but you gotta realize the

First Amendment limits who? Who does the First Amendment limit? Congress. First Amendment limits the general government of the

United States. It does not place limitations on states or local governments who had the authority to a greater extent, promote true religion.

But even Congress is hiring chaplains that are Protestants, is promoting biblical

Christian education and the Northwest ordinance is doing all kinds of things that the same

Congress that's giving us the First Amendment is thinking, well, no, we can, we can actually promote

Christianity. So what did they mean by the First Amendment? Right? Well, the historical context gives you a clue.

They just broke off from a country that had an official church and it favored one denomination. That is what the

First Amendment's about. All right, number six, what is the historical example of the political order you would like to see in America?

Okay, that's actually a very good question. I appreciate that question. So if you can go back in time, what kind of government do you, would you like to see?

And obviously circumstances change. So there's no perfect answer to this, but I think for me,

I'm, I think the founding generation was brilliant. I think that the,

I mean, no, there's no time that's perfect, right? Obviously there's no human government that's perfect.

There's no arrangement that's perfect. But I do think before we had a national bank, when we were running surpluses, when we had a government in DC that was much smaller, when we had states that had official religions, when we had anti -blasphemy laws,

I think those were all positive things. I do. So there you go. Doesn't mean every arrangement at that time is necessarily good or should be brought back or anything, but it does mean that I think there, there have been times when, where there's true and valuable things and examples that we can learn from.

So there are my answers to the questions. I guess I'm not obligated, right? Because I don't use the term of Christian nationals to myself, but there you go.

All right. Chektov says, what are your nation's holy days? Yeah, the nations, people are going to have, they just by nature are going to celebrate something, right?

It's going to happen. It's to identify the friend, enemy, friends will just say, yes,

I denounce, and enemies will say, what do you mean by that? Okay.

I think I see what Stormy Squad is saying here, that DeYoung is trying to figure out who the friends and enemies are,

I guess. So friends would just, they would automatically without any clarification, just say, yes,

I denounce these things. Whereas an enemy in DeYoung's mind has to receive further. I think that's actually shrewd.

I think that is how it reads. Like if you have to ask me for further articulation of what a

Nazi is, for example, you must be an enemy because you should be able to just denounce that. And there is this part of me that's like, well, yeah, obviously we know the problems associated with that regime.

We should be able to just say no to that. At the same time, I have to recognize the left has wielded this word in the most irresponsible ways for years.

So I have to first know who Kevin DeYoung is and know that Kevin DeYoung's not doing that. The left thinks that you're a

Nazi if you just love your people, right? And you don't want illegal migrants coming across. That's enough for them.

Like, oh, that's a Nazi right there. Trump's a Nazi. I think that's a very shrewd point,

Stormy Squad. I agree with you there. How far are we from being required to publicly denounce

Islamophobia or Hinduphobia? I know, I know. I feel like this all the time.

Off topic, what's your favorite Christmas cookie, John? Oh man, this is actually a more pleasant question than any of the things

I'm talking about today because like I can taste it. So I like candy cane cookies and I don't get them much.

I really like them though. There's this thing, and I don't know what they're called. My mom made them when

I was growing up though. They use these Red Hots. I love the Red Hots. And there's a spicy Christmas cookie that she would make.

I don't know what it's called though, so I can't give you any information. You know, normally my wife and I do the chocolate chip, especially if it's got a little walnut in it.

I love chocolate chip, but that's not really a Christmas thing. I think at Christmas, I want more like cinnamon cookies.

I will say this. I dislike peanut butter cookies. And I like peanut butter, but I don't like peanut butter cookies.

I don't know why. I also like the coconut cookies. Those like coconut balls.

Those are so good. I love coconut. So those are the few cookies. I don't know what they're all called.

Candy cane cookies, everyone knows that. Those are so good. Okay. Let us continue on.

Let us trudge through the podcast as we talk about David French, the voice of David French.

It's always good to hear from good old David French. Dealing with is the fruit of a kind of Christianity that really has been taught in evangelical churches for 30, 40 plus years.

Absolutely. And that is fight the world Christianity versus love your neighbor Christianity. Yes. If you come up from the beginning to sort of say, you need to get ready for the coming persecution, you need to know that the world hates you.

You need to put on the full armor of God in the sense of like getting ready for culture war.

What that's created is a kind of fight or flight church where everyone is alert for danger, alert for persecution, alert for oppression.

And so then what does that do? What that does is it creates that friend enemy distinction that is antithetical to scripture.

And so it creates this friend enemy distinction. And at the end of the day, you begin to get to this point where, for example, empathy is beginning to leave the church.

There's actual attacks on empathy as a concept. It's a sin now. Because how dare you try to manipulate us by exposing us to the suffering of other people that we might be causing.

What on earth are we talking about here? But that's the fight the world Christianity.

And so when fight the world Christianity meets the ultimate pugilist in Donald Trump, then like calls out to like.

And that's how you see that bond that is. Okay. I can't do it anymore.

Here's the thing. This was David French on the Holy Post and Phil Vischer's podcast. David French doesn't seem to have empathy for Christians who are suffering sometimes.

He thinks there's like a persecution complex or something. And I just thought,

I thought of that right away. I was like, he's doesn't like us. He's saying there's Christians who don't want to feel sorry for groups of people.

But what if Christians actually are suffering? What if there really is persecution? What if, or at least what if we were close to it?

And then Donald Trump actually pushed back on a lot of it. Do you remember what was happening before Donald Trump got back in?

Do you remember the discussions we were having? It was all about transgender bathrooms and it was causing all kinds of problems.

We don't even hear that kind of conversation much anymore. It, I think

David French has a problem obviously, but he has got a holier than thou kind of mindset.

And it's the same thing that I've seen with Russell Moore where they will go out publicly and start saying the majority of Christians are bad because A, B, and C.

And it usually comes down to some kind of illiberal instinct they have.

They actually want to survive. They want to preserve. In fact, maybe that's the common thread here with Joe Carter, Kevin DeYoung.

And I'm not putting them all in the same category, by the way. I know Kevin DeYoung is far better than David French, but David French.

They're all condemning a particular kind of Christianity they see as way too politically minded and focused on winning cultural battles and not focused on what they should be focused on.

Now for David French, that means I think political action more on the left at times. For Kevin DeYoung, I don't know that it means that.

I think for Kevin DeYoung, it's, I always viewed him as more of like an establishment Republican type. I think it's, he probably believes in the spirituality of the church.

I think they're all recognizing something similar and it may be, and this is kind of a sobering take, but I'm going to give it to you.

It may be the death knells of a civilization. It may be that we are in the throes of, it's time to get the

Lakota ghost shirts or something because we're in for it.

We can see the demographic decline. Our people in this country who have traditionally been here for a long period of time aren't having kids like they were.

Our religion is diminishing. Our way of life, it feels like it's leaving the scene and someone like a

Donald Trump, even though he's not a born again Christian, doesn't want to see the trappings of that civilization end.

And so we're willing to side with him. We're willing for him to be a bulwark, as it were, against the forces that want to stop that on a social level.

And we're then chided by Christian leaders for this. We're compared to Nazis.

And I think inevitably you start, you do that comparison too much. There's guys that when they look and they see

David French and they see an enemy, they say, this guy, he doesn't care if we're defeated.

He doesn't care if we cease to exist. Inevitably, if a guy like that keeps calling you a

Nazi, let's say, eventually, if you're someone who doesn't, you know,

I want to say know a lot about the Nazis, but I think there are a few people who do know a fair amount that still embrace it.

But let's just say you're someone who you've been lied to about so many things. And you think those are the kinds of guys that are lying to me.

Yeah, you're tempted to start adopting the label. You're tempted to start, you know, whatever offends that person is must be good.

And I, obviously I counsel against that. I think we root the good, not in what our enemy thinks, but in a positive vision that we've thought through.

It's one of the reasons I'm doing the great book series. I'm going back. I'm trying to trace back. Here are the names of people that you don't know.

Anyone know about John Taylor or Caroline? That was the last one we did. You don't know this person.

You should know this. Some of you did, but you should know who this person is. You should know who John C Calhoun is and what his significance is past.

Oh, he had slaves. Like I'm trying to trace a thread back to give you something as much and to give me something that's rooted.

That is something that we've already maybe a muted form. We've had passed down to us that we need to retain.

We have a tradition already. We just, it's a, it's a garden that's got weeds in it. We just need to go back and we need to take the weeds out.

We need to cultivate once again so that the plant can grow. I'm not into just creating negative standards because of our enemies have this standard.

So we're going to, but, but I understand it. I get it. And I think that these guys are doing a disservice.

Our energy should probably that here's where I see it on a political social level.

Okay. Our energy should be putting in, put into surviving, protecting, meeting challenges and threats.

That's one aspect of this. And then another aspect is as we do that, ensuring that our positive vision is maintained, that there's order in the ranks as much as possible.

We don't fall into pitfalls that we can actually do this. And that is going to require spiritual reliance on God.

We should be in prayer. We should be in our Bibles. If we don't have virtue, none of it will work.

Anyway, we have to cry out to God. That is part of this whole thing. And I would love to see those guys put their energies towards that to recognize there's real threats to our civilization.

We are in civilizational ending stuff. Even right now, even as Trump's in office, the marriage rate and the birth rates for Gen Z are looking really bad right now.

That's like civilizational death stuff. So if you're a leader,

I would just think through what can you do to solve these problems? That's the number one thing on a social level.

Now I understand some of these guys are pastors. Yes, you keep doing the ordinances. You preach on Sunday. You need to do those things, right?

But if you want to get dabble in the social political world, that's where your leadership is needed.

If it's always perceived that you're chiding those who want to meet these threats. I don't think that the people who are interested in preserving their civilization are going to listen to you.

And I'm very interested in preserving what I can of an Anglo -Protestant civilization that's been passed down to me.

And that's good for everyone. So there you go.

That was David French. Let's get through some stories here real quick that I wanted to just not get into big detail on, but just highlight here.

Pastors accused PCA of demonizing LGBTQ, sidelining women and spiritual abuse. A petition written by a group of ethnic minority pastors within the

Presbyterian church in America went viral. And it claims that the

PCA is spiritually abusive, sidelining women and demonizing gay people.

We write as ethnic minority pastors and leaders within the Presbyterian church in America with hearts full of grief.

We have a lament. There's a schismatic culture. Well, is this not a schism? I don't know. In the

PCA there's a deepening culture of suspicion, gracelessness, self -righteousness.

All right. So theological gate, theological gatekeeping. Is this all against Michael Foster? Cause he's revealing how many women pastors are in the

PCA. I don't know. Elders shepherdesses. Some have described the denominational environment as emotionally or spiritually abusive.

In part, there are people in the PCA demonizing the LGBT community. All right.

Well, this is the initial signers were 12

PCA pastors, including, yeah, no, no surprises. Duke Quan, Reverend Irwin Ince.

Let's see who else is of note here. Those are the two main ones, I guess. It's got mixed reactions on social media.

So they start quoting some people. William Wolfe is quoted in this. I thought

Sean McGowan was quoted. Maybe I skipped past it. Yeah, there he is. Reverend Sean McGowan. He's a friend.

The 10 is too big. He says, yeah, well, when you got shepherdesses, the 10 is too big, but just a reminder, there's still social justice problems, even in these supposedly conservative denominations.

Not as bad though, as the pastor who announced this week, in my state, state of New York and Rochester, in a

Methodist church, during a service, that he is giving up pretending to be a man.

And this was an announcement from the pulpit. So the Methodists are tolerating this kind of stuff, because they have no standard by which to fight it anymore.

They gave it up when they gave up the gay marriage stuff. Crosswalk reports that young men are reading the

Bible more frequently. The overall number of adults who are reading the Bible, on a weekly basis, has increased to 42%, which is a 12 point jump from 2024.

In 2024, that number was at a 15 year low. So we'll keep an eye on this. That is, now just because they're reading it, does not mean they believe it, but there's an interest in the

Bible. And Christian Today reported that Isaiah 41 .10,

is the you versions Bible verse of the year. And it says, so do not fear for I'm with you.

Do not be dismayed for I'm your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Maybe people are afraid.

Maybe people are worried. Maybe people are seeking comfort and encouragement. And this is something

I got to take to heart. It's one of the reasons I put out the video I did on Monday, or yeah, Monday it was on being single and not wanting to be during the holidays.

I'm realizing this more and more. People, you need encouragement. You need to know that there's something worth living for.

God put you here for a purpose and there's a work for you to do.

There's a place for you and you're doing a good job. So many of you, and it might not feel like that sometimes, but you are right where God has you.

You may feel sometimes like you're not significant enough because you don't have an online platform.

You may feel like you're a loser because you haven't gotten married yet or you don't have kids yet or whatever it is.

There's something wrong with you, but you've been doing all the things. You've been trying. You've genuinely been out there relying on God.

And I'm here to tell you that you have nothing to be ashamed of, if that's you. You are doing the right thing and you just need to keep doing it.

And I think this kind of sobered me when I saw that that was the number one verse. People are looking up. They need reassurance that God's out there still.

Has he left us? I think people are feeling that. Has he left us? Has he abandoned my civilization? He's abandoned my life.

Where is he? Well, he's still there and he's still working. There's still people being saved.

Yes. I mean, as the Christmas carol says, I'll probably not quote it perfectly, but hate is strong, right?

The one by, I think it's by Longfellow. Hate is strong, but then the song of peace on earth, goodwill to men.

That's what we have to remember in this season in particular. God penetrated this world. He became a man.

He suffered and died. He made a way for you to be right with him. He's still saving people and he has a plan.

I don't know exactly what that plan is for our civilization. I know though that he put us here for a reason and we're going to fulfill our duties to him.

And there's still plenty of places and plenty of things to be grateful for. America's not gone, okay?

America's still here. They're still, and they might exist in pockets, but those pockets still exist and you can go reinforce those pockets.

Global news. I wanted to highlight the fact that, let's see.

Oh, there's someone, is this the one? Yeah. Someone sent this to me. Pray for Canada. The liberals in Canada have made a deal to eliminate a longstanding criminal code safeguarding for freedom of expression and religious freedom in the expansion of the block supporting

Bill C -9, which is, okay. What is Bill C -9? So Canada's hate speech laws currently say people cannot be prosecuted for expressing in good faith an argument or opinion on a religious subject or based on a belief in a religious text.

So there's a exception for religious people on the speech laws and they are going to get rid of that.

That's what they want to do. So pray for Canada, pray they don't do this. Oh man, how hard it would be to live in Canada.

Almost as hard as living in Ireland. Ireland, now Enoch Burke has been on this podcast before.

He is facing the possibility of life in prison. And my understanding is the reason for it initially came from, he was not going to use as a teacher preferred pronouns.

And I think now it's the fact that he has, when he has been released from prison, he returns to his job.

So it's, you have to stay away from your job. That's my thumbnail understanding of it.

So they want to, I think this is like a graduated trespassing type of thing.

But still, I would just ask you pray for Enoch Burke. This is hard for his family.

I mean, the genesis of this whole thing was a brave stand he made not to use preferred pronouns.

And I'm going to try to, as the case unfolds, bring you more and get into more detail.

I don't have time right now, unfortunately, because we've got to end the podcast. We've been going over two hours. Archeologists in Turkey believe they have discovered the tomb of Saint Nicholas, later famously known as Santa Claus.

So I figured I'd just bring you a little Christmas news. Santa Claus is real. He's just, he's in heaven, presumably.

He's not here on the earth, experiencing eternal life in heaven. He's real. The Pope, the

Pope criticized Catholics who view Muslim immigrants to Europe as a threat to Christian identity, stating, fears are created by those who oppose immigration and seek to exclude those who might come from another country, from another religion.

Well, that's great. The Pope is not on the side of even Catholics in Europe, as far as seeing their influence diluted and seeing the rise of Islam, which is filling the gap left by secularism.

There was a Chick -fil -A that waffled on wokeness. And I guess the national organizations has too.

Most corporate America wisely took the temperature of angry consumers and backed away from the woke politics from a few years ago.

The shock of fans on Wednesday, when a Utah franchise posted a gushing set of photos of two men, and it said, congratulations to the happy couple.

So you have a gay couple. Most Chick -fil -A's chains are run by local operators. The fact that any location would do this is surprising.

There was backlash. And I don't, from this article,

I don't see where the national organization has weighed in on this. So it is a local franchise, but still if it's not cracked down on this, it gives leniency for other franchises to go that direction.

I wanted to let you know about some good articles out there. If you're looking for some good, there's a article by Mike Sabo at American Reformer called

Trust the Plan, Always Chimp. And basically it's about the Trump administration and kind of the challenges they face, why there's some blowback or some critique of them among even those on the right.

And I think it's a fair and balanced piece. So it gives you some understanding of what they're up against. I think if you understand that, you're not gonna be as hard on them, but there's also reasons to be kind of upset about some of the things going on.

And so I thought it was a fair article. I just wanted to let you know about that. Also Modern Age is a great article on the spirit of a gentleman.

I thought this was such a good piece by Luke Foster. Check that out. I'll read you the Edmund Burke quote.

Nothing is more certain than our manners, our civilization and all good things, which are connected with manners and with civilization in this

European world of ours. They depended for ages upon two principles and they were indeed the result of both combined.

And I mean the spirit of a gentleman and the spirit of religion. What's Western civilization? It's a spirit of a gentleman and the spirit of religion.

That's what it is. And there's an article on National Conservative on becoming the based black girl about Candace Owens just posted yesterday.

It goes through her history. The only reason I wanted to let you know about this, I don't wanna get too deep into it, is this.

You know, Candace is out there saying, and I actually have, man, I have Erica Kirk's video cued.

I'm not gonna play it. Candace Owens is out there now saying that there's this trip that Charlie Kirk took to East Asia that has some explanatory power for why he was assassinated.

She has jumped all around. It's been Israel. It's been

France. It's been the deep state and the administration and the people at turning point who turned against him and betrayed him.

And she's insinuated even Erica. She's now saying there's an

East Asia connection of some kind. She's volatile. She is not,

I mean, I've already written about this, so I don't need to go into much detail, I guess, but she is a threat from the standpoint that people actually vote who listen to her.

And it reminds me of the QAnon thing a little bit. Like you consume this stuff and there's other productive things you could be consuming or doing.

And I just think it really is a reflection of where we're at, that she's got the number one podcast.

This article goes through her history. I did not know a lot of her history going back. And I wondered whether scam artist is too strong a word.

I think it might be. But to say someone who has selfish ambition, who's very much a ladder climber and uses manipulative techniques, yes.

I would say that would describe Candace Owens, unfortunately, over the long view. And someone who has changed her views in a very short period of time as well.

It's not always bad, but it should give you some pause when someone has these fundamental life altering changes.

I mean, it was only, what, 10 years ago. It's not just that she was woke, she had a firm. She was a business for reporting hate speech so you can get people fired.

I mean, it's quite the change. Anyway, I mean, her position on Israel, obviously, has changed very quickly.

Her, I'm not gonna go into the details of the article, but she had very much of a more leftist leanings and very much more of a focus.

Well, an ability and a willingness to do things that I wouldn't say are necessarily ethical.

So check it out if you are someone who is skeptical about these things. Maybe you listen to Candace, maybe you're,

I would just look at the trajectory, look at her life, see if this fits.

That's all I'm really saying. The story caught my eye. And I think that's about it for the podcast.

I just wanna let you know, once again, if you are in that Princeton Seminary area, please come out.

I thought I had it pulled up. Maybe I got rid of it. You can go to johnharrismedia .com

though and go to speaking and find the website to sign up if you wanna be there. I will take a few comments and then we're off to the races as they say.

Jesus thought in friend -enemy distinction. Yeah, spiritual level, I suppose so.

I mean, he thought of, you know, well,

I don't wanna get into this right now. I don't wanna get into this. It wasn't, I'm not gonna say it was Carl Schmitt's friend -enemy distinction, but yes, did

Jesus recognize there were friends and there were enemies of the ministry he was doing? Yes. This was an interesting comment.

I really like this. You were never so English as when you broke from England. The Englishman takes his ancient rights with him wherever he goes.

Amen, amen. Spoke directly to my soul right there. That's what American is. That's right.

It was a conservative move to retain our Englishness, our arrangement. Well, God bless.

I hope that you all have a wonderful weekend. I think I have one more podcast. No, two more, one more.

It'll be released on Friday and then I think on Monday, Keith Foskey. So look forward to that.