Should Governments Obey Jesus?

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00:00

Non -rockabotas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it!

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Are you going to bark all day, little doggie, or are you going to bite? We're being delusional. Delusional?

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Delusional is okay in your world view. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional.

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So you calling me delusional using your world view is perfectly okay. It doesn't really hurt. Is he hung up on me?

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What? What? Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men.

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The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

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

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Right. Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle neck. That's a joke, pastor.

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

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Take an amazing journey so you will never be the same again.

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Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the royal son.

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May he judge your people with righteousness and your poor with justice.

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Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people and the hills in righteousness.

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May he defend the cause of the poor, of the people. Give deliverance to the children of the needy and crush the oppressor.

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May they fear you while the sun endures and as long as the moon throughout all generations.

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May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth.

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In his days may the righteous flourish and peace abound till the moon be no more.

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May he have dominion from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth.

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May desert tribes bow down before him and his enemies lick the dust. May the kings of Tarshish and of the coastlands render him tribute.

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May the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts. May all kings fall down before him.

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All nations serve him. You did a good job. Usually you have a hard time with that one.

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Which one? Tarshish. There's a lot of like shish and sus. I gotta say though, hearing that red with that background music.

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Isn't it great? Pretty epic. Yeah, Tarshish. The kings of Tarshish. Yes, Sheba and Seba. It's a lot of shish -shish.

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And Tarshish also. Hey, welcome back everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Apology Radio.

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This is the Gospel Heard Around the World. I'm Jeff. They call me the Ninja. That's Luke the

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Bear right there. And that's Ziggity -Zach Conover over there. And you can get more at ApologiaStudios .com.

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We even did an Ask Me Anything on the road while we were in Louisiana on Tuesday.

03:39

We made sure that we were on the streets doing what we had to do for EAN. And we made sure we got to the hotel to do a live

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And so do sign up. If you're not signed up, you are missing out. Bonson U at Apologyistudios .com.

05:03

So we're back. We just got back in last night. Some of us on our team got back last night from Louisiana.

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And we flew into New Orleans and drove to Baton Rouge.

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I'm trying to say it all right so no one makes fun of me. Baton Rouge. And we were there Tuesday.

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We had a big jumbotron playing photos of the murdered children in D .C.

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and the actual videos from our friend A .J. Hurley who was there. And information was on the jumbotron telling everyone about the rally we have on the 30th and about our bill

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HB 813. It's the bill to abolish it in Louisiana. It is the bill that calls what's in the womb an image bearer of God and protects all humans with equal protection from conception.

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It is a Christian bill through and through based upon the law word of God. And so we were there.

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We had it in one location at first in front of the Department of Health. And lots of cars, people going by. Then we moved the jumbotron to the

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Capitol itself. And we got engaged in some conversation there but also were able to let people know. I will say that it was a very different feeling.

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I mean obviously we know that in Louisiana the numbers of people who are professing pro -life are really really high.

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But if we were to do in Phoenix what we did in Baton Rouge I think we would have been in some trouble.

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But in Baton Rouge people were driving by. They were honking their horns. They were cheering it on saying thank you so much.

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They were thumbs upping and people would walk by and stop and stare at that awful jumbotron and say thank you.

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It was shocking. Did you get any birds? What's that? Any middle finger salutes?

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No, no. It was all like actual encouragement. We had one detractor. We had one person that was there to fight.

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And we had a good time talking to her. But I think that was recorded as well. We just got back last night.

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I want to encourage everybody. You oftentimes wonder how can I help with this ministry?

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How can I serve in this ministry? Maybe I can't go to the mill. I can't do this or that. How can I help? Well number one, and you know

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I'm going to say it. Please pray. Please, please pray. In particular pray for the legislators' hearts in Louisiana that they would be courageous and bold and they would establish justice.

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Pray for us. But you can also get involved by showing up on the 30th, 10 a .m.

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in Baton Rouge at the state capitol. If you're in South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, wherever you're at, around or in Louisiana, show up.

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Tell your church, show up. We need you there because we need to let the legislators know that they can be courageous.

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They can do the right thing and get the support of the church in that state. So we need you. We need you. And we need you to call the legislators in Louisiana.

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Let them know that you expect them to do the right thing, to not compromise, to establish justice. That's how you can serve with us, alongside of us right now.

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And I will say that I think the people in Louisiana are just a tad bit crazy.

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And I'll tell you why. And I don't want to spend too much time talking about this, but I think you're nuts because we flew into New Orleans and flying over it, it's like, hey, there's nothing but swamp here.

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We're flying over water. This is all swamp. And then you get into New Orleans and isn't it below sea level?

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Yes. So it's by an ocean and it's below sea level. And so people were like, this is a good spot to set up.

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I mean, every five years I'll lose everything I love. Hurricane, shmurricane. Yeah, no big deal. I'll lose everything every five years.

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But man, Mardi Gras. All right, that Mardi Gras though. I don't know. So we land there and we got to drive from New Orleans to Baton Rouge.

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And dude, it's crazy. Like, you get out of the airport area and you are driving.

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There's nothing but swamp everywhere. I mean, swamp, swamp. Do you see any gators? No gators, but you know they're there. Gator folk? You know they're there.

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And I will say that I thought, this is crazy. Like, who thought, like, on the one hand you can go, well, let's just scratch the idea.

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It was clearly a bad idea to build a city here in the swamp and right next to the ocean. So instead of doing that, they said, well, why don't we just keep things as they are and we'll just build a bridge for 30 miles through the swamp.

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And so it's like, it's just miles and miles and miles and miles and miles of bridge on the water.

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That sounds nice. Because all there is is water. And I don't know, I just feel like, you know, maybe if you had a

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Christian worldview and some wisdom, you'd say, hey, maybe God doesn't want anyone to live here. You know, sort of a thing.

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But the common grace is that the bridges did hold. Yeah, they did hold. They weren't far away from. You'll see. We're going to drive.

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You'll see. You'll be like, why would anybody do this? How much did it cost to build this bridge? Probably a lot. How much work? And you told me about this before because I think you and I were talking once and I was like, how do you do this in water?

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Yeah. Because the water eventually erodes things and the water's constantly moving. You go down to bedrock.

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They go down to the bedrock, but they had to do that for like. A long ways. A long way. And so how much money did that cost?

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So rather than move and say, scratch it, let's just move up to. Let it be. Let it be and we'll just build bridges over the swamps.

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Right? No, thank you. And you guys are just a tad bit crazy.

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Encourage everybody to go to reformcon .org.

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Get your tickets for ReformCon. It is Reformation Day weekend here in Phoenix.

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You're going to be able to hang out with us, get a fellowship, get some great teaching, and you're going to get encouraged with some of the best of the best in their field.

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There's going to be performances and talks from some of the leaders in their field that are believers who are standing on the word of God in their area of expertise, and they are leading in those areas or have led in those areas.

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And so whether it's art, whether it's education, whether it's economics, the title of the conference is By This Standard.

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We have some amazing speakers, but it's not just the speakers you want to come for. It is truly the experience we're trying to build for you.

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It's not a church service. It's a Christian conference, and so we're trying to highlight believers who are leading and leading with the word of God and with their testimony in each individual area.

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Like I said, whether it's a church, whether it's government, whether it's state, whether it's economics, arts, whatever, sports, all that stuff.

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It's going to be just an amazing time together. We even have time to hang out. There's an after party. There's time for fellowship, and it's going to be a good time.

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So reformcon .org. Get your tickets now because it's limited seating, and when it runs out, it runs out. That's it.

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We cannot show any mercy and say, well, you can come anyways. If you don't get your ticket now, you are not going to get in once it's full because we only have room for 1 ,000 seats, and so when it's out, it is out.

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And right now, the early bird tickets are still up. I believe if it's not up, it'll be up soon.

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There are family pricing as well, and then very soon, probably next week, we will have because a lot of people have been asking, we're going to have the sponsorship page ups if you want to advertise or sponsor anything, and podcasts.

12:12

That will all be up next week. The after party, like you said, those tickets will be going up soon.

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There's limited 250 people for that, so that's going to be pretty sweet. And there is a link for the hotel on the website that you can get a special rate at the hotel.

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Yeah. So I'll be speaking there, Dr. James White speaking there, Dr. Joe Boot is speaking there, Andrew Sandlin is speaking there,

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David Bonson is speaking there. We've got a lot, and you don't want to miss it.

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It's going to be a very, very great time together, not just time for teaching and instruction. We don't want to pound you with messages just the entire time.

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We want you to get fed and get encouraged, but we also want to just create a place where you can connect to other believers, get excited, fellowship, just have a great time, and even, at points, be entertained.

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Because if we want to show that you can be a leader in a particular area, we want to show that, as Christians, you can do that.

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You can lead in all these areas, and you can do it in a way that is inspiring and motivating, all of that. And so it's the one conference you don't want to miss this year.

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You'll notice that I wore what's left of my rowdy Christian media shirt from the

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Fight, Laugh, Feast conference. Let me just say, I wore it. I was going to wear something else. I was like, I'll wear this.

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I'm going to talk about ReformCon, because you can see how this is all faded and pretty much irrelevant now. That's pretty much how we feel about other conferences this year.

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Wow, that's a statement right there. It is a statement. You were intentional about that. Some people like to hold conferences and cattle arenas and treat people like cows and not have security at the door checking tickets and have screens where you can't even see the speaker.

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People do that, and they expect people to fly out for it, and that's what they deliver to them. Apparently, they provide handmade shirts.

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Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Some people have just a different mindset. That's all. How many times have you worn it?

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Or maybe you wear it a lot. 10 ,000. I have the same shirt, and mine does not look like that. The 10 ,000. Yeah.

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10 ,001. 10 ,001 today. So ReformCon .org,

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and I'll kick it over to Luke. Luke, let everyone know. So today I have an IFAC kit from our sponsors

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AR500. IFAC stands for Individual First Aid Kit. It's pretty sweet. And I'm just going to tell you what's in this, because there's a bunch of cool things.

14:29

That's pretty neat. It's got a SWAT tee, the compact twin chest seal, EMS, responder bandage, compressor gauze, trauma shears, duct tape, bear claw gloves, casualty card, and a marker.

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And a tourniquet. Does it include a training to tell me how to use it all? I think it has a tourniquet, yep. No, I don't think so.

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Okay. But we love AR500. You know what's really cool about them? Because they make tools of liberty.

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Yep. And they say no king but Christ. That's right. And it's pretty stinking amazing.

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Here's the great thing I love about them. Not only do they deliver amazing products, but they are unashamedly

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Christian, say things like no king but Christ. They are an amazing business that does a great job.

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They are killing it right now. Oh, yeah, they are. And they're providing a really, really good and important tool to people, and they're doing it all under the flag of Christ's authority and lordship, and they're not ashamed of it, and they're super successful.

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And that's how things should be done. And so this will lead us right into the discussion.

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We have Dr. Joe Boot with us today. I'm going to introduce him here in just a moment. He has a new book.

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By the way, I'm going to say, if you have not gotten into your library Mission of God yet, you have to get

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Mission of God by Dr. Joe Boot into your library. Get it from the Ezra Institute. Get it soon.

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Get it quick. Sell everything you own until you get it. Ruler of Kings, new book. We've been waiting for this for a long time.

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You know who I think is probably the most excited? We all have been excited. But the most excited is probably James, Dr. James Whiting. Couldn't wait for this to get into the hands of people because he's just been moved by so much of this.

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Ruler of Kings, Toward a Christian Vision of Government. And this would be a good lead into it. So we were at Baton Rouge doing the live stream to let people know what's going on and how you can partner with us and you can be a part of what's happening there.

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And somebody, like I said, I don't usually see all the comments, but somebody made a comment and they were basically dissing it, saying just preach the gospel.

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This has got nothing to do with Jesus. Come in there and bring in the word of God, the law of the word of God.

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Abortion has nothing to do with Jesus? Right. And this isn't within the realm of our responsibility to speak against something like this and really work like we're working in that state.

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And all I just said, because I don't usually make comments back or even pay attention to them because there's tens of thousands a day probably that come in, all

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I said was you should read Isaiah 1. Like try that.

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God rejecting the worship of his people because they tolerate and put up with and even engage in the injustice all around them.

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And he says cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, and bring justice to the fatherless.

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And that's right before, that's right before, literally right before, he says, come let us reason together, says the

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Lord, though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. That's right in the context of him rejecting the worship of his people, saying it's a burden to him.

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And he says, now stop doing this, seek justice, repent of your sins.

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And so apparently God does care and he has an unchanging character. So he does care as to whether there is injustice and evil around us.

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And he does care that his people have something to say and do about it. And so Christian view of government, especially after the tyranny we've just been under the last two years, well, not just two years, more, like a lot more than that, but in particular the highlighted tyranny of the last two years.

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It's ramped up a little bit. It's a good conversation to be having, and we're having it with the right man.

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He's one of our very, very favorites. And what were we saying about him this week? He was probably one of the greatest living theologians today, most important for our day.

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Not even embarrassing. One of the most important. I'm not going to dispute it. Joe doesn't want us to be saying this about him right now, but what you and I were saying behind his back was that he's one of the greatest, most important theologians of our day.

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If you don't know him yet, you should get to know him. Dr. Joe Boot, Ezra Institute, welcome to the show, brother. Great to be with you guys.

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Thanks so much for having me as always. And it's always entertaining listening to you. I could just listen to this for the next half hour.

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Good. Well, if you want to hang on, we'll just keep talking. Okay, so Dr.

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Boot, this is an important discussion. Obviously, you've written so much about this.

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You've spoken so much on this subject. It's important because we live in the context of an evangelical

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West that doesn't understand the Word of God on these issues in a coherent way, and doesn't even understand the history of the

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Christian Church on some of these issues. They don't understand how the Puritans viewed this, the

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Huguenots. They don't understand how historically Christians have viewed the authority of Jesus over every realm of life, every sphere, the government and all that.

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So we live in a time where people will say, well, that's not a gospel issue. Like government is government.

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That's over there, but it's not a gospel issue. So we really don't need to have any concern over whether the government obeys

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Jesus. And you wrote a book, Ruler of Kings, Toward a Christian View of Government. I think this is a highly controversial book in our day.

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It's very, very important. It's highly controversial. Because, Joe, let's face it, you are facing a tidal wave of opposition in terms of how the evangelical

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West views government today and the authority of Jesus. So why would you write a book like this that is so controversial in terms of against the stream?

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Why would you write this book? Well, of course, one of the tasks of those who are seeking to be faithful to the

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Lord in each area of life is to be willing to go against the flow and to bring prophetic witness, which is how

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I view the task of Christian apologetics and a Christian cultural philosophy, is we are countering.

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Essentially, it's a form of prophecy. We are countering the false prophecy of our age, of the philosophers and thinkers of our age.

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It's been embraced so much by the church and by our radically secularizing culture.

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We're confronting that with with Christian prophecy. And actually, some of the some of the most influential thinkers of the last few hundred years, like Karl Marx, understood their task as being their philosophical task, as being essentially prophetic and changing the world.

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And, of course, you'd have to ask prophecy in terms of who, whose word are they telling forth?

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And so the prophets were never that popular, Jeff, as you know. Even in Israel, Jesus reminded the

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Jews of his day, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you. So you guys know better than anyone that Christian cultural prophecy in terms of the word of God isn't going to win you any popularity contests.

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And it does involve going against the flow. And that's the that's the countercultural nature of the kingdom.

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And we are in a time, as you pointed out, where the Christian church is in the grip of radical secularizing and paganizing tendencies.

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We have a synthesis gospel, a synthesis Christianity that is trying to broker a deal, a peace treaty with secularization and indeed repaganization.

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And in fact, is even trying to synthesize the Christian faith with it. And that's why you get the kind of responses that you were just talking about there, where people think the abortion issue or the issue of politics or government has somehow nothing to do with the gospel.

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That's because there's been an attempted synthesis of the freedom motive of the radical freedom, autonomy motive of modern culture with Christianity and the church has largely bought into it.

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So we can't see our we don't tend to see these issues clearly in the modern church.

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And that's why I wrote the book. I'm just seeking to be faithful to the

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Lord Jesus Christ. I'm standing on the shoulders of giants and trying to, you know, as sometimes for your own age, obviously, the giants whose shoulders you stand on lived in a different era.

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And as history moves forward, you need to see that a little bit higher over the next over the next peak.

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So you need to stand on their shoulders. And so that's all I'm trying to do is apply the word of God and the message of the gospel in its fullness to our critical cultural moment.

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Excellent. Thank you, brother. So I'm going to pass it to the guys here in a moment. But I want to lay a solid foundation for those who may be new to this sort of discussion.

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When you hear us saying that Christ has authority over these United States, that Christ has authority over the

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United Kingdom and the governments of the United Kingdom, it can be kind of a shocker, like a jolt, like, well, yeah, in theory,

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I agree with that. But for real? And we would say, yeah, really? Like, you know, just think about the title of the book.

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The book is titled Ruler of Kings Toward a Christian Vision of Government. And somebody might say, well, this is interesting.

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Let me take a look at this. You open the first page and there's a verse there. See, it's a verse. Oh, I like that verse.

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And that's where the title of the book comes from. Title of the book is, I mean, it's kind of plagiarism, to be honest with you,

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Joe. Ruler of Kings. It says, Jesus is the faithful witness, the first among those raised from the dead.

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And here it is, Revelation 1 5. He is the ruler of the kings of the earth. Now, if I'm being facetious here, but if you didn't know that was written in the first century, so that was written really not too long after the resurrection and ascension of the

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Lord Jesus. So according to the apostolic witness about Jesus, Jesus is the ruler of the kings of the earth today.

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Not he will be the ruler of the kings of the earth someday. He is the ruler of the kings of the earth today.

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Now, that's also in the same book that uses the famous phrase, king of kings and Lord of lords.

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And every Christian affirms that, like in theory, yes, he's the king of kings today,

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Lord of lords today, but there's even more. He's the ruler of the kings of the earth today. So why is this discussion controversial?

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Well, it's controversial for a number of reasons. I think in terms of being discipled by the culture and being taught, your space,

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Christian, is over there in the church stuff. This is our space over here. So we've been discipled better by the culture than we have been by the church and the

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Word of God in many ways. And so the culture says, this is your sphere, and let's stay over there with that Jesus talk.

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But also eschatology is an issue in terms of a couple things. Number one, if you think that the ultimate is just to get raptured out of here at any moment, because the worse it gets, the better it is for us, we're just going to get taken out of here.

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You won't care, ultimately, really what's going on around you, the degradation of culture, the darkness that's coming in, the light that's fleeting away.

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You won't really be so concerned with it, because any moment you're getting taken out of here, and all goes to hell anyway, so what's the big deal?

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What's the point of polishing brass on a sinking ship, people have said before? Why bother thinking about three generations deep from now, and what you can invest in that?

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So that'll really mess with your daily life and your methodology and those sorts of things.

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But there is something else, Joan, I'd like you to address this, and it has to do with the overall thematic issue of Scripture from Old Testament to New Testament.

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It has to do with the rule of the Messiah, the authority of the Messiah, the scope of His rule and reign.

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I've often said, and I'm going to have you respond maybe to this, Joe, I've often said that when we have a bad eschatology and a bad view of the authority of Christ over all things, we deliver to the

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Orthodox Jews, the Jews who actually believe the Torah and the Tanakh, they actually believe in a literal coming

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Messiah, when we say, yeah, Jesus is the Messiah, but nothing's really going to change here, and He's not really ruler over the earth, and no one's really accountable to Him today in every single realm.

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The Jews, I think, can just laugh at that and say, well, then He's not the Messiah, because that's not the vision of the

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Messiah from the Torah and the Tanakh. It's a much different vision, and so I think the key issue here, for those that hear ruler of kings,

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Christian view of government, is this. Is Jesus king on His throne today?

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In other words, is the kingdom really a reality today?

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Because then most people say, well, yeah, Jesus is king of kings, lord of lords today, but it's a now and not yet situation.

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What they really mean is now, but not really. Now, but not really. So the question is, is

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Jesus actually ruler of the kings of the earth today? Is His kingdom actually a present reality?

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Is the whole world expected to be in subjection to Him? Dr. Boot? Well, yes, according to Psalm 2, which

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I think is one of the most critical texts with respect to this, a messianic psalm about the rule and reign of the

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Lord Jesus Christ, scripture commands that all kings and rulers and magistrates, judges, kiss the son, submit to him, lest he be angry, and they perish in the way.

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That whole psalm is about the present rule and reign of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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You make a really interesting point when you say, talk about eschatology, because eschatology people tend to think is just about last things, but it isn't.

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Eschatology is about the direction of history. It's about the meaning of history as a whole.

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And the keynote of the Bible is often missed. I think you've touched on it, Jeff, but modern contemporary evangelicalism is basically caught up in what

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I would call gospel headlines. We have message fragments. Jesus died for your sins.

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Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Jesus wants to save you and take you to heaven and so on.

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And properly interpreted, there's nothing wrong in context with those statements.

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The problem is many Christians, increasingly a majority, and certainly the world into which we're bearing this message, doesn't know the backstory.

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Those message fragments come without any kind of framework. And the framework of Scripture is the message of the kingdom of God.

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That is the keynote of the Bible. The prophetic witness of Scripture is about the kingdom of God.

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The calling of the patriarchs, of the kings of Israel, of the prophets is always in terms of the kingdom, the rule and the reign of God in the earth.

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And, of course, the coming of Christ is about the king, the coming of the king to establish his kingdom.

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And therefore, the New Testament speaks of the gospel of the kingdom, the gospel of the kingdom.

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In fact, the Bible talks, the New Testament speaks far more about the kingdom of God than it does about the church.

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Now, this might be a shock to some people because we've churchified the Christian faith. Most people believe in churchianity today, not

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Christianity, because they limit the reality of the gospel to the four walls of the church.

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But the Bible talks, the New Testament talks over a hundred times about the kingdom of God, the

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Basilea of God. The church has just mentioned a handful of times. That's not because the church, the ecclesia, is not important.

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The church, as the called out congregation, has a vital role in the kingdom of God in that as institutionally, anyway, we preach the word, we administer the sacraments, we exercise church discipline.

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But the function of the institutional church does not exhaust the biblical idea of the

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Basilea of God, of the kingdom of God. And that is the keynote of scripture from Genesis to Revelation.

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It's about the rule and reign of God. Our first parents are called in the garden of God to rule and subdue and exercise dominion.

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So the creation is turned into a God glorifying culture. And we know that they fell into ruin and rebellion and sin.

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And we talk about the fall. So we have creation fall. And then there's our first parents were given that kingly priestly role to serve

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God, to to to work and to serve. And that that role, that role of of the kingly priesthood is restored in us in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. So he is our prophet, priest and king. He is the in a sense, we could take the image of the garden.

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Creation is God's garden. Christ, Christophany, the second person of the Godhead, walked with our first parents in the garden of God.

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We're given a hint of the restoration of the garden in Canaan when a people is called out to be a royal priesthood.

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That's what the Book of Exodus tells us, that the Jews were called to be a royal priesthood again to serve the purposes of the kingdom of God.

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They failed. They rebelled. They're dispossessed. And then the king of kings comes, the truly obedient son, the true

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Israelite, the true gardener comes to his garden. And he speaks about the reality of the gospel of the kingdom, the restoration of the kingdom of God.

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And from the garden of Gethsemane to the garden tomb at his resurrection, where he's mistaken for the gardener, the resurrected

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Lord, the firstborn from the dead, restores us as the head of a new race, as the new Adam, as the head of a new people, to our kingly, priestly calling in terms of the kingdom of God.

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So the whole of the Bible, Genesis to Revelation, Paradise lost to Paradise regained. The keynote is the kingdom of God.

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And I think what's that what's happened is that we've we've we've lost the the all we've actually set aside or even don't at least don't fully appreciate today in the modern church, the significance of the

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Basel, the kingdom of God we've replaced or we've conflated the church institute and the kingdom of God.

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And so that basically means that we say to ourselves, well, if the kingdom of God and church institute are basically the same, they're identical with one another, then the only place that Jesus Christ reigns is inside the walls of the institutional church.

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And so, therefore, what's going on out there in politics, in law and education, in the arts, in business, in the economy, in medicine and all these things, that's just some separate realm of natural of nature, where natural law and neutral common principles hold sway.

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But it's got nothing to do with Christ and his kingdom. I mean, yeah, God created it. Sure. And in some abstract sense, he's sovereign over it at all.

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But in a real sense, Christ does not rule and reign there. His word does not have a bearing there because we have ecclesiasticalized the word of God.

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The church, instead of being in service to the word in the world, makes the Bible in service simply to the church institute.

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So we end up imprisoning the word of God in the institutional life of the church, where eventually the world itself says, well, actually, even the church cannot have that word.

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So as we ecclesiasticalize the Bible and the message of the gospel of the kingdom and conflate it with the church institute, we call forth the secularization of the world.

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We're responsible in large measure for it. Yes, because by imprisoning the word in the church, we call forth the secularization of every other area of life.

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And therefore we apostatize from the king of kings and the lord of lords. We actually are in rebellion against the command of the king, even in the church.

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It sounds like a present day reality that we're witnessing before our eyes. Joe, I'm in the middle of the book right now,

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Ruler of Kings, and on page 108, just in line with what you were just saying, you say, we need not only

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Christian lawyers, but a Christian approach to law. Not just Christian artists, but art rooted in a scriptural world and life view.

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Not merely Christian doctors, but a Christian philosophy of medicine. Not only teachers who are

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Christian, but a truly Christian curriculum. Not just Christians in politics, but a scriptural political philosophy.

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In other words, we must apply our faith and organize against pagan secularism.

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And I think what we witness all the time is we try to be faithful in areas of public influence, civil matters, civil authorities, realms of politics, law, everything that we're involved in right now, trying to protect children at the state level.

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That's what we're trying to institute and apply are the scriptures to this particular area of life.

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And what we're coming into contact with is a world, and even professing Christians, that have called forth the secularization of the world because they've limited the authority of Christ over the church realm.

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And they have surrendered this realm, the political civil realm, over to the world.

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And one thing I love about the way that you break it down in the book, I saw that there was some overlap, as you describe the utopian kingdom of man from the mission of God and that whole discussion, and brought it over into this, is we think of secular as realms in which

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Christ and his authority are absent. And so there's just nothing left, right?

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There's no view of God and it's just kind of neutral. And how the church has unwittingly adopted that, but they haven't adopted any neutral belief in that area whatsoever.

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It's actually a revitalization of a pagan spiritualism.

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And they're calling forth actually a different worldview to take ownership of that place, when it ought to be the

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Christians applying the word of God in that space. They think this is just a common area, it's secular, it's a common kingdom in which we can engage on these neutral principles, but it's not neutral.

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They're actually abiding by and endorsing a pagan worldview as superior to their own

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Christian worldview that they themselves are professing to have. Right. That's what's madness about it. That's very good. I'm glad you brought up that point.

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It's especially clear the last two years with the lockdowns and the oppression and pastors getting arrested and just the tyranny perpetrated upon the public throughout the last two years, no matter where you've been, whether it's

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Australia, across the United States, or in Canada, or over in England. It doesn't matter.

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Everyone sees and feels it. And so the response of Christians is they sort of like intuitively know, because of the presuppositions they already carry with them really in family and in church, that this isn't right, it's immoral, we can't treat people like this, you don't have that kind of authority.

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It's like, well, you're only feeling that because you know what the Word of God says about these areas of life. You really know what it ought to be like.

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But you're feeling it because we have surrendered that area, and we thought, we thought, if we surrender this area, then it's just going to be a neutral zone.

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Right? Like when people say, like, don't, Christians shouldn't be involved in politics. It's like, okay, let's try it.

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When politicians legislate, when they do that, what is legislation?

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Law making, right? Does law have anything to do with morality?

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What do you think? Does law have anything to do with morality? And I would actually argue, well, law is only about morality.

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It boggles the mind. Christians are like, law has no religious component whatsoever. You're saying, these legislators are telling you what ought to be the case in your state and in your county or in your town.

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They're saying, this ought to be what we do for other human beings, and you ought not do this to another human being, on and on and on.

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You don't see the moral component in that? And if somebody says, okay, well, yeah, I do see that we're dealing with morality.

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Great. Okay, simple question. Does God have anything to say in His Word about morality and law?

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Anything at all? And so when you tell me that the Christian church has nothing to say in the area of the government, what

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I see in that is that you have now said, surrender this realm, but what you have to recognize, again, is that it's not neutral, and it should be patently obvious to all of us it's not neutral, because, well,

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Supreme Court, gay mirage, Supreme Court, Roe versus Wade, all of what happened the last couple of years in terms of arresting pastors, opening for worship, all the rest, you recognize that, oh, wait, it's not actually a neutral zone.

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Nobody's morally neutral. Oh, they're just serving their gods. Oh, we handed this realm to them, and what they're doing really is that they're propping up their idol, and they're giving it the supremacy and the glory, and they're saying, our gods will tell us what is right, what is wrong, what is a moral ought, and what is a moral not.

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Like, that's what'll take place there. So what you're seeing is exactly that point. You surrender that realm and say it's not under the authority of Jesus, God has nothing to say to that.

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Then what they do is they actually create their own religious centers, and they say, we'll rule over the church, we'll take care of this area here, and you guys, we'll let you live here in the land a bit.

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We made you think we were neutral in this area, but in reality, it was just to lead to your excusal from the public realm.

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Exactly. That's what we wanted the whole time. Right, and I'm going to hand this over to Luke. I think one of the things that was so eye -opening to me, just because of how he communicated it, was

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Doug Wilson years ago was doing a lecture or something, and it's just how he communicated it, I was like, that's perfection.

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I hope that that impacts Christians. He was talking about blasphemy laws, like people dissing the blasphemy laws of the

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Old Testament and things like that, like you can't blaspheme God's name and those sorts of things. People secularists are like, you really think that it should be illegal, blasphemy should be illegal?

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It's like, well, blasphemy laws are an unavoidable consequence. Everybody has blasphemy laws.

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Tell me about gay hate speech. Tell me about transgender hate speech. What is that?

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It's a, you shall not say that. You will not utter these words of blasphemy against what?

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The protected gods. Don't take the name of our God in vain. Right, who's the protected God here? It's the LGBT community, it's transgenders, it's this.

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Don't speak against these gods, or you're going to be punished, or you'll be in jail.

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I mean, we've got a friend, we've got a friend, close friend, who was in England. He was just standing on a street corner in England.

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He was being super respectful. He wasn't a street screecher. He wasn't yelling. He wasn't being abusive to anybody.

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All he did was he stood on a corner in England and he read from Romans chapter 1.

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And then someone passed by and heard him reading the word of God in Romans 1 about God giving them over to degrading passions.

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Men with men, women with women. Someone heard him saying that. They contacted the authorities and they said, he's blaspheming.

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Only they used a different word. They said, hate speech. And all he was doing, brothers and sisters, was he was reading the word of God.

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And so all of this is unavoidable because you're living in God's world. You're an image bearer of God.

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You're going to worship the true God or you're going to worship something else. And all image bearers of God feel deep down, because they're made in God's image, a sense of justice.

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But only if you're worshiping the wrong God, your sense of justice is going to be connected to the false

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God and his character that you have. So if your God is perverse, so is your sense of justice.

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But the Christian worldview says that God's justice, his law word, is actually a display, an outpouring of his own character, his own eternal character.

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So Christians have a view of the ultimate and we have a view of what is right, what is wrong, what is true, what is lovely, what is beautiful.

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And the point is that Jesus has all authority in heaven and on earth today.

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So Luke? Yeah, I actually stole this from Joe, I think. But he always said that the law is nothing more than legislative morality.

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And the question isn't are you going to legislate morality, but whose morality are you going to legislate?

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But I do have a question for Joe, but I really want to hear his take on what we just talked about before I ask that question.

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I'm sure he's sitting on a wealth of British -sounding amazing thoughts, so I'd love to hear that.

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Well, the discussion there about the law I think is a critically important one because, of course, your source of law is the source of sovereignty.

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It's where you ultimately ground the law is your principle of sovereignty for that society.

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So if law is merely positive law of the state, then the state is sovereign and lawed.

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And the difficulty that I think you've highlighted is that this attempt by so many

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Christians to keep politics out of the church is what has produced a politicized church.

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Because if you do not bring the word of God to bear on every area of life in the pulpit for the life of the

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Christian, then the believer will simply go their own way in all those areas that you refuse to address.

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So if you refuse to bring the word of God to bear in the life of the family, the family is going to go its own way. If you refuse to bring the word of God to bear in political life, people's thinking about political life is going to go its own way.

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If you refuse to bring God's word to bear on the issues of human identity and sexuality, people will go their own way there.

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And so actually what's happened is with people trying to say, well, let's keep politics out of the pulpit, all that they've done is radically politicized the church with people who have basically humanistic and pagan views of political life and of law.

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And so we have a schizophrenic church. And that's essentially the issue you were highlighting.

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We've got a Christian people and thereby actually, in the end, a culture that doesn't know whether it's coming or going.

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And you've also highlighted, I think critically, that when you deny sovereignty to God, you deny that God is the ultimate lawgiver.

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If you deny the doctrine of authority or infallibility to God, you don't get rid of the need because, as Jeff says, we're image bearers of God.

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You don't then dispense with the need for a doctrine of authority, a doctrine of sovereignty, a doctrine of infallibility.

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The reality of those things in human life, they're simply transferred. So you will transfer law giving authority, ultimate sovereignty to the state.

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You'll transfer infallibility to the state. These ideas, these characteristics that truly belong to God will be actually transferred to an idol.

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So it's never the living God or a neutral perspective.

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It's always the living God or an idol in every area of life. And I think you, with those illustrations that you gave,

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I think you reinforced that point incredibly well. I just think that it's vital that we understand that if we don't, we don't eliminate political opinion from the life of the church by not bringing the word of God to bear on politics in the church.

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You just politicize the church with humanistic and pagan ideas of politics. And this is,

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I think, one of the critical issues now that we're facing as the people of God in the

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West is that we have a Christian community that is largely, well, they're hybrids at best.

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We're schizophrenic. We actually don't have a Christian world and life view dominating the

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Christian church. And therefore we think, well, politics, there's loads of different opinions, law, there's lots of different opinions.

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There's no one Christian position on the law. There's no one Christian view of politics because they bought into the pluralistic, humanistic and secular ideas of the age.

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And that has made space as access for basically the radical imposition of neo -pagan law and authority and view of the state upon our culture today.

48:30

Awesome. Thank you, brother. So here's here's a version of a question we get a lot, and you probably receive this a lot as well.

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I think it's more of a practical question, but, you know, so here in the States we have Sleepy Joe just literally wandering around the

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White House aimlessly. Half the time has no idea where he's at. And Kamala Harris on him like an utter buffoon at space camp and saying just nonsense.

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And, you know, you got false dough, true dough up there and up there in Canada, literally just doing whatever he wants.

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Right. So we have all these liberal leftist morons just trying to cram as much tyranny as they possibly can at one time.

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And so the question we get a lot is, how can you say that Jesus is ruling in rain? How is he ruler of kings when we look at just look around, look what's happening?

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And so I know the answer. I know what I give, but I would love to hear your response to that question. Well, of course, the writer of Hebrews tells us very clearly that all things have been made subject to the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And Jesus himself makes that claim, of course, in Matthew 28, all authority in heaven and earth is mine.

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That's why we can have the audacity to go and disciple nations, because Christ has all the authority and we are in Christ.

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But what Hebrews also tells us is that we don't yet see everything in subjection.

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So the bringing of all things into subjection is a process. So we can say that in principle, the work has been complete.

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We know that because Christ stripped principalities and powers at the cross, making an open spectacle of them.

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He stripped them of their power. But in the course of history, it's a task of his royal priesthood to essentially apply the crown rights of Christ the king, as he, by the power of the

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Holy Spirit, brings all things into subjection. And that is a process. And part of the the rule and the reign and the kingship of Christ means that he is the judge of all.

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And in his sovereignty, he brings all things into judgment. He's bringing the nations into judgment. And this is why we see the blessings and cursings on nations in Deuteronomy 27 and 28.

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And I believe that historically, the U .S. president used to take the oath of office on an open

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Bible. Yes. To the blessings and cursings in the book of Deuteronomy. Yeah, on that very section. Yeah.

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Invoking the blessing and cursing of God on the nation for obedience or disobedience. So I would say the reason you've got the the kind of people that you've just described in power right now is an aspect of Christ's judgment upon the nations.

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It's an aspect of his judgment upon our culture. We get the kind of leaders we deserve.

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And we've we've we've seen in the last couple of years. And I think it was Jeff mentioning it earlier that that the mask has really been torn off.

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Some people have sort of said, well, you know, look at the changes over the last two years. Actually, what's really happened is that what's been there all along for a number of decades has been truly exposed in the last two years, that we actually have now a pagan totalitarian view of government and totalitarianism, which which conjures up images of Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini.

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And people say, oh, no, how can Sleepy Joe be an expression of totalitarianism or Trudeau or whatever?

52:16

Is this because we're actually misunderstanding the meaning of totalitarianism? The totalitarian impulse, which, of course, ultimately goes back to the

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Tower of Babel. But it's it's there in the the foundation of Western philosophy. And Plato and Aristotle essentially sees the state as the totalizing, organizing principle for all of society.

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So the state can tell you about when you're going to have an abortion and how many children you're going to have. And it's going to control the economy and it's going to be ruled over by an elite.

52:47

The philosopher kings, the Greeks used to talk about who are the only ones who are able really to rule this kingdom.

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Remember, we talked about the if you don't have the kingdom of God, you don't destroy the need for a kingdom. You just transfer the idea.

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And so utopianism, totalitarianism is the kingdom of man, basically.

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And what it does is it treats all the other aspects of society, the family, the church, businesses, the economy, associations and so forth, as though they are in a parts to whole relationship with the state.

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So the state sees itself as the all encompassing, totalizing idea that subsumes everything else and treats even the individual as though we are merely parts of the greater whole.

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Whereas, in fact, the true parts of the state, if you take the federal government in the United States, for example, the parts of the state are the

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US states in Canada provinces and then different municipalities. These are the it's a territory.

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So these are the true parts of the state. Just because a church or a family or a business resides in a given territory doesn't make it a part of the state.

53:57

And so what we've seen, I think, in this last couple of years is a tearing off of the mask, the smiling face of totalitarianism, where we actually the state is treating all these other aspects of society, all these other institutions, all these other spheres as though they are lesser parts of itself and thereby usurping the role of God, of the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and then denying the right of the family or the church to obey the king of kings and lord of lords, which is

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Jesus Christ. So this, I think, is what we're fundamentally up against.

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And it's why over this last couple of years, there seems to have been an acceleration because it's just exposed what's really there.

54:44

That's one of the things that you highlight, too, in your discussion of utopianism, how the kingdom of man, because of the inescapable nature of the religious nature of all things, will actually acquire or irrigate to itself the very attributes of God.

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So love, unity, justice, wrath, all of those things are part and parcel to the humanistic state.

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And it'll actually take those attributes because of the image of God. It's inescapable. We can't avoid it.

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But it actually assumes those things for itself. And when it does that, things become terrifying. Absolutely.

55:22

That's why I asked him that question. No, it's good. It's important. Because I wanted to. That was good. That was amazing.

55:28

Thank you. Joe, what's going on with you right now, though, in Canada? You're moving.

55:35

Are you fleeing, becoming a refugee somewhere else? What's the story?

55:41

What are you up to right now? This utopian impulse, as Luke pointed out, it's at different degrees in different nations.

55:56

We've got the same challenge pretty much right across the West. But there are different territories in different areas where it's where it's stronger than others.

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And, you know, we are as a culture, I do believe, under the judgment of God in the

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West. And that means that we have Christians have to think clearly and strategically about how they're going to respond, how they're going to react, how we're going to react for our families and our churches and our institutions and our organizations and so on.

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So it's given the Ezra Institute a lot of time to think and reflect.

56:29

You've probably seen that up here in Canada, the truckers convoy property was seized.

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People have been thrown into prison. Pastors have been thrown in prison. Pro -life charitable organizations are facing revocation of their status and so on.

56:44

So Christians right across Canada are asking themselves a lot of questions now about what is the direction? Where are things really headed?

56:52

And what has actually happened? Interestingly enough, ironically, is that this past few years, although it's been negative in one sense, of course, in that we've seen the mask come off, the the statist agenda, the the growth of utopianism often going under the euphemism of global globalism and so on, is that the interest in the ministry of the

57:13

Institute has exploded. I mean, the the biggest resource sales months in the history of our organization happened at the beginning of this year.

57:21

In the last few months. Wow. We've never seen more interest in our training.

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We've never seen more demand for our for our ministry. And just like we're seeing in Canada, faithful churches that remained open, that push back against statism, they've exploded.

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They've their numbers overall. Evangelical churches have actually declined in Canada numerically by 20 to 30 percent.

57:43

But the churches that were faithful and resisted state overreach have exploded.

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And we've seen this this interest in our ministry grow almost exponentially.

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And it's actually so the cultural moment has given us, yes, a lot to think through and a lot to be concerned with.

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But but for us, a massive open door to spread the message about the ruler of kings, the mission of God, the lordship of Jesus Christ, the need for a total world and life view.

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And so Ezra Institute is expanding and we are opening additional offices in the

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United States and the United Kingdom this year. In fact, those institutions are organizations are being formed as we speak.

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And so we're not we're not abandoning Canada. Our ministry will go on here and it's and we've got training in British Columbia in Western Canada this year as well.

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But we we recognize the need to to grow and expand. And also strategically, that also means diversification.

59:01

So instead of having all our eggs in one basket, let's say this is obviously common sense in a in a time of great political turmoil of cultural, social upheaval and increasing pressure on Christians that you guys are very, very familiar with.

59:18

It's not a brilliant idea to have all our eggs institutionally in a single basket.

59:24

And so we're we're diversifying, we're expanding, we're growing and we're very excited about the fact that we are going to be in the

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US. Our office is probably almost certainly going to be in Tennessee, but we will be doing training.

59:40

Our worldview training programs. We have a lot of Americans who are very interested in what we do.

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Many have come up for training up here, but we're seeing the demand for it down there. And we've got a whole team of fellows in the

59:52

US, including Jeff and James White and Andrew Sandlin and others who we're looking forward to having actually teaching at our programs based in the

01:00:01

States. So we're coming to the US and we're also coming to the United Kingdom.

01:00:07

And I will be moving between the three locations for all the teaching and training programs, as well as working with our fellows in those locations.

01:00:18

So ironically, the last two years have been culturally probably the worst time that I can remember in my lifetime.

01:00:26

But from our ministry's point of view, it's accelerated us in a way that we have not really thought possible.

01:00:34

Praise God. I think that's what many, many have been saying over the last two years. Like basically tripled in size, staying open through the lockdowns and resisting and speaking out against the government tyranny and overreach.

01:00:49

And I know of a number of churches who have experienced exactly the same thing. And so, yeah, while in some sense there's some sadness to what you see around you in terms of cultural decay, but there's also some excitement to say

01:01:02

God still has a remnant. He still has his people and he always changes the world through a faithful minority.

01:01:08

That just got me thinking. It's really in vogue. And Joe, you bring this up in the book. It's really been in vogue for Christians to start talking like this.

01:01:15

Like we live in a post -Christian culture, a post -Christian society. And I'm just thinking about that to myself.

01:01:23

And then I saw that you wrote about it. If we have a victorious view of the future, where God's gospel and his

01:01:30

Messiah actually does conquer the world and the nations are discipled, I don't see how that's a tenable thing to say or a position to hold, given what we believe about the future.

01:01:41

You hear how bad things are. You experience it right now. But if we're really as optimistic in our outlook of the gospel's progress as we say that we are, the future, as dark as it may seem initially, it's very, very bright.

01:01:57

Well, if you believe 1 Corinthians 15, you will never say there's never going to be such a thing as a post -Christian world.

01:02:04

Right. We're going back to the garden and then some, the garden city. I think it's interesting.

01:02:11

I think there's a couple of things wrong with that whole post -Christian narrative, which you've highlighted there, Zach. One of them is the fact that actually it's impossible for the

01:02:20

West to shed its Christian history and heritage. It's in our language. It's on our buildings.

01:02:27

It's in our laws. It's in our literature. They can do everything they can to try and expunge it and try and remove it.

01:02:33

But we do not even have an alternative public discourse to the one given to us by the

01:02:40

Christian faith. So that's a kind of mythology. Of course, when we can talk, we can talk about declining church attendance and secularization.

01:02:48

But the whole idea of being post -Christian isn't really something that is possible. And second of all, I would say that in many respects, we are still pre -Christian in the

01:02:58

West, in that we had a synthesis.

01:03:04

I would argue that the Western culture to date, even in its Christianized form in Christendom, with its ecclesiastical culture coming out of the

01:03:15

Holy Roman Empire, was really a synthesis culture. It was an attempt to synthesize the religion of Greece and Rome, the

01:03:22

Greek philosophy with Christianity. And it brought with it, because Christianity was in there, was part of that synthesis.

01:03:32

It brought with it many, many blessings. But it wasn't consistently

01:03:37

Christian. I think we're yet to see that in Western history. And I think that is what lies ahead, is a consistent

01:03:45

Christian expression of socio -cultural life, where the gospel of the kingdom not only transforms the heart, but instead of thinking through a secular, pagan philosophical lens informing our thinking about so many areas of life, and then trying to blend that with the

01:04:01

Christian view of creation, fall and redemption, we have actually a consistently biblical, scriptural view of all of these areas of life.

01:04:09

That's yet to be seen. We've seen pockets of it, moments of it. But I think that still lies ahead, and that's why it's so exciting to be alive right now.

01:04:17

So what you're saying is the best is yet to come. I think I heard that. All right,

01:04:22

Joe, how can everybody buy 50 of these each? How can they do it?

01:04:28

Well, they can, of course, go to our website and go to the store there. But if they'd like quantity, just write to us.

01:04:35

You can write to us through our website, and we'll give you a discount if you want quantity. We can figure that out. Of course, it's also available through Amazon if you want to avoid some of the shipping costs for single copies.

01:04:50

But try and order them through the Ezra Institute. That does help us. And we can help you with quantity for sure.

01:04:57

We're grateful that you guys have given us the opportunity to just talk a bit about the book today. It's really encouraging.

01:05:04

We've got training coming to the U .S. in 2023, and we'll be able to share more about that soon.

01:05:11

And looking forward to partnering with Apologia with some of that. Absolutely. And we're looking forward to having you at ReformCon.

01:05:19

ReformCon .org, guys. ReformCon .org. Go get your tickets and come and meet with Dr.

01:05:25

Boot and with the rest of us. Reformation Day weekend, Dr. Boot, thank you so much for joining us, taking the time, brother.

01:05:31

We appreciate you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I appreciate you guys. God bless. Absolutely. God bless you. And he's teaching that Sunday for us, too.

01:05:37

Oh, yes. We get double dose. Nice. Nice. Two boots. Very good.

01:05:43

It'll be a bootiful weekend. So everybody, thank you so much for watching today.

01:05:53

I wanted to leave you with an example. So we're talking a lot today about the prophetic witness of the church.

01:05:59

Prophetic witness of the church, bringing the law, word of God to every realm. We have so many videos on this.

01:06:05

I won't play the longer one. Fairly recently, we were in Denver, Colorado to testify on behalf of our

01:06:11

Bill of Equal Protection before the legislature there. We called them to turn to Christ. We told them about the peace that's in Christ.

01:06:18

We pushed the law, word of God right before them. Check that out. That's somewhere in our recent feed.

01:06:24

I think it's titled, let's see, Pastor Confronts Colorado Lawmakers.

01:06:30

But I'm going to play the shorter one. Here's an example of what it might look like to be prophetic in a culture like this with the word of God consistently.

01:06:39

Here is Pastor Zach Morgan speaking to the city council,

01:06:46

Phoenix City Council, about the issue of you know what. I'll try not to use the word very much so we don't get suppressed.

01:06:52

Well, my name is

01:07:03

Reverend Zach Morgan, and I'm an elder at Apologia Church. I come to you again with respect, love, and serious concern.

01:07:11

Just so you're aware, we're going to keep coming to bring this issue to your attention again and again and again, simply because innocent people are being executed every single day in our city.

01:07:22

Fighting for the oppressed, our pre -born neighbors, is the right action to take. They have no voice, so we must speak for them.

01:07:28

They can't defend themselves, so we must come to their defense. Regardless of how you may self -define abortion, please listen again very carefully.

01:07:36

Abortion is the premeditated killing of innocent pre -born human beings, developing in the wombs of their mothers with malice aforethought.

01:07:44

Abortion is murder. And if you're repelled by that statement, and all that's been said already today, and you continue to support child murder, you must hear loud and clearly, you are on the wrong side of history.

01:07:55

Isn't it unimaginably mind -boggling that 150 years ago, African Americans were murdered, tortured, butchered, and horrifically oppressed?

01:08:03

And I think we would all agree that what they endured was absolutely evil, abominable, and unjust.

01:08:09

But why were they treated in such a way? It's because they were deemed less than human by the majority populace.

01:08:14

And I think we would all agree in here that the majority populace was in serious error and wound up on the wrong side of history.

01:08:21

They were wrong about African Americans being less than human, and it caused unimaginable suffering that we can't even conceive of.

01:08:29

Now, we have a very similar situation, in which our pre -born neighbors are erroneously defined as less than human, and are being murdered, tortured, butchered, and horribly oppressed.

01:08:39

And this is bringing devastating consequences on every single one of us. Because our nation has unlawfully sanctioned the murder of babies, we are a nation that our

01:08:48

God is in the process of judging and dispossessing. Listen carefully. If we are a nation under blood guilt, we are guilty of shedding innocent blood, and God hates it, and is responding in punitive judgment.

01:09:02

God is a gracious and loving Heavenly Father who is altogether righteous and holy. Therefore, He views child murder as abominably wicked and heinous.

01:09:11

Our land is literally polluted by the blood of these murdered innocents, and we are all staggering under the consequences.

01:09:19

Abortion unleashes compounded destruction, not only on the mother, but all involved, and every single one of us.

01:09:25

What's our only course of action? It's one word. It's repentance. You must change your minds about abortion as God's word is presented to you.

01:09:35

Then you must change your ways. You are given the sacred trust of protecting innocent life, and with all the respect and love that I can muster, you are failing to fulfill your primary duty.

01:09:46

Forty innocent human beings are in the process of being executed while I say this today, and if we don't act, forty more will tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day.

01:09:57

God's word says that the shed blood of innocent humans cries out for justice, and mark my words, they will have their day in court.

01:10:06

That was Pastor Zach Morgan, one of our fellow elders here at Apologia Church, speaking consistently, without neutrality, without compromise, to the

01:10:16

Phoenix City Council. Praise God for the members of our church. We had so many go, men, women, and children, go before the

01:10:24

Phoenix City Council to bring the word of God to bear, and to call them to repentance, and to point them to Christ.

01:10:30

And notice there how Pastor Zach actually reminds the civil magistrate of their duty before God.

01:10:38

Not just some God, but the true God, and told them to repent. And so this is what it looks like.

01:10:45

This is what we're talking about. Being consistent, standing on the word of God, it's the reference point, and we're bringing

01:10:51

God's revelation to these image bearers of God who are all under his authority. So in summary,

01:10:58

Matthew 28, 18 through 20, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

01:11:03

By the way, can I just say this very humbly and respectfully? There's no haughtiness in this at all. It's just me, one

01:11:09

Christian, two other Christians. We all, I talked about intuitively understand this.

01:11:15

What I meant by that is if we have the word of God, if we're praying through the word of God, if we're meditating on the word of God, we already have this basic assumption.

01:11:25

And it's sort of like, it's like the bottom level of Christian thought and practice.

01:11:31

For example, well, my relationship with God is I'm redeemed, I'm reconciled to God. I have this daily intimate relationship with God.

01:11:39

God says pray without ceasing, and so prayer is a big part of my life. And so what does that look like? Well, I think all of us hopefully have received some basic instruction on prayer.

01:11:48

There's lots to say on prayer, but how about this one? Jesus taught us how to pray. And in the

01:11:53

Sermon on the Mount, he tells us, he says, pray like this. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

01:12:00

So Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, tells us, you pray like this to the Father. God, may your name be holied everywhere.

01:12:09

And so Jesus says, pray like this. When you talk to the Father, you pray like this. God, let everyone holy you.

01:12:16

In Africa, in the United States, in Canada, all over the UK, all over Russia, in Australia, everywhere.

01:12:25

In China, let everyone holy you. You're being told by Jesus, pray like this.

01:12:30

Have this as the focus of your mind. And then he says, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth.

01:12:40

On earth, as it is in heaven. And so we're being told by the Lord to pray that God's will is done here in this place, like it is in heaven.

01:12:52

And I ask this often when I talk about this. Just how rigorous do you think is the commitment to the obedience to the will of God in heaven?

01:12:59

Pretty rigorous? In everything? Always? And if the answer is, well, yeah, that's how it's in heaven.

01:13:06

Well, Jesus tells you to pray that it would be the same way down here, here on earth.

01:13:12

And so when I say intuitively understand this, I think if you pray the Lord's Prayer every day, you'll think consistently in these areas.

01:13:21

I mean, there's all kinds of great ways to tease this thought out and to say it in a very delicious British accent in ways that will just bring true inspiration.

01:13:29

And I mean that sincerely with Dr. Boot. But in reality, it's as simple as the

01:13:35

Great Commission. In reality, it's as simple as the Lord's Prayer. And I think, again, if we pray that prayer and we mean it, we will understand this completely.

01:13:45

And then we'll understand the need for Christians to speak prophetically in the public square and everywhere, like even in the chamber of the city council or the legislature of these

01:13:56

United States to be able to bring the word of God to bear against senators and congressmen and representatives and say you have a duty before the

01:14:03

Lord Jesus Christ. He's the king. You are accountable to him. You must obey him. And if that sounds radical to you, man,

01:14:11

I just think we need to read our Bibles more. And if it sounds radical to you, stop reading the modern evangelical smut and start reading some of the

01:14:20

Puritans. Like maybe take a break, like a year -long break from the Kellers and the

01:14:27

Chandlers and all the rest and just maybe just start reading the Puritans for like a year and see if like your mind starts to change in terms of how you talk about the authority of Christ and God's purposes in the world.

01:14:41

I think it'll change. I really do. I think it'll change dramatically. Amen. That's Luke the

01:14:47

Bear. Peace out. I'm Jeff. They call me the Ninja. And that is Ziggity -Zack

01:14:53

Conover. See ya. I don't know about the nickname. Yeah. I'm just thinking of something for today. A little punchy today.

01:14:59

Tired from traveling. Please join us April 30th, 10 a .m., Baton Rouge at the

01:15:05

Capitol. We need you there. Get on the ground with us. Let's speak to the culture around us about Christ. Let's tell everyone about his supremacy.

01:15:11

Let's try to save these lives. Love our neighbors. Don't forget your tickets for ReformCon at ReformCon .org.

01:15:17

When they're sold out, they are sold out. And so you got to get them soon. Get them quick. We'll catch you guys next week right here on Apology Radio.