Dead Men Walking Podcast #134 Joseph Spurgeon: What is Christian Nationalism?

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Exploring Theology, Doctrine, and all of the Fascinating Subjects in Between, Broadcasting from an

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Undisclosed Location, Dead Men Walking starts now. Well, hello everyone.

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Welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking Podcast. We appreciate you being along for the ride, your support over the last two and a half years.

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Now that we've got the business out of the way, let's get to our guest. I'm excited about this one. It is a, he's a, the lead pastor, excuse me, of Sovereign Christ Church.

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He's Mr. Joseph Spurgeon. How are you today? I'm doing very good. It's Sovereign King Church, by the way.

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What did I say? Sovereign Grace? Yes, you said Sovereign Christ. Oh, I'm sorry. Sovereign King Church.

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I go to Christ the Word, maybe that's why I put Christ in there. Sovereign King Church. He is sovereign. He is sovereign.

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Yep, overall, absolutely. I saw you snicker there when I said that and I went, oh, did I say something wrong?

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I was just flowing right through there. And sometimes when you talk fast, something comes out wrong. But Joseph, it's so nice to have you here.

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Why don't you give the listeners a little bio of who you are, what you're all about, so they can get to know you before we get into our subject today?

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Yeah, yeah. As we've been talking, I'm the pastor of Sovereign King Church. We are a

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Presbyterian church, a reform, like very conservative Presbyterian in southern

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Indiana, right across the river from Louisville. We're part of what's called Evangelical Presbytery.

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And kind of what makes our church a little bit unique is that we do have both

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Credo Baptists and Paedo Baptists in the same church and same leadership as well. And so we allow for charity on the issue of baptism.

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And so it makes for some good fellowship, makes for some good arguments.

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We like to fight about it. And I would say another thing that sets us apart is our commitment to pastoral care.

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Not only preaching truth in the pulpit, but out of it and face to face with our members of our churches.

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And also being, you know, preaching the whole word of God and in the streets as well.

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So everywhere we go. So that's the church I pastor.

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I'm also married to a beautiful Filipino woman named Rowena, and we've been married for 12 years and we have seven children.

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My oldest is nine and my youngest is four months. Awesome. Full quiver.

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I absolutely love it. So you guys have some of that R .C.

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Sproul kind of MacArthur stuff going on there with the Credo and the Paedo Baptist and the, you know, friendship, but lively arguments,

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I assume, huh? Yeah. Yeah. It's fun. And, you know, what that's funny you bring that up is because, you know, they would do debates and things or you think of,

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I mean, when it used to be good together for the gospel conferences and stuff, you'd have all these

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Baptists and Presbyterians working together. But the one thing they would never do is actually serve together in the same church.

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And they would like, you know, de facto excommunicate each other from taking over supper, being members.

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And so it's not that we think that baptism is unimportant. It is actually, it's very important.

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I mean, it's in God's word, but we do think that brothers on both sides are attempting to argue from scripture faithfully.

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And we hold a whole lot in common about the gospel. So we, and we have a lot of common enemies and we have a common

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King. And so we're united around Christ and we will work out and figure out baptism as we go.

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Yeah. I would say being reformed and conservative is enough of a battle in and of itself. We can disagree on some secondary doctrinal issues, right?

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Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. So you're a pastor, you have a family, you're also host of the

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Patriarchy Podcast. Can you tell me a little bit about that for our listeners in case they want to check it out? And I know you're on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network as well.

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Yeah, I'm glad you bring that up. Cause every time I go on another podcast or do an interview, I always forget.

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And my co -host always like, he's like, you didn't plug us. And I'm like, oh, I'm sorry. So yes.

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So we do a podcast called the Patriarchy Podcast. It's on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network. We started that what's been two, three years now.

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And started that out just seeing how

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God is working in our lives, myself and my co -host named Tony Duponti to strengthen us in our calling as men, as fathers, husbands, even as pastors and citizens.

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And we wanted to be helpful to others as well along the growth.

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So we're not experts as if we've made it to the level of, we're the top and you look at us as what to be a man is.

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But as we are growing and learning, we want to bring you along in that journey and help you to grow.

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And so we are very interested in encouraging men in the stations of life that God has given them and in particular, leading their homes and being faithful there.

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Amen. Amen. So will I be seeing you at the Fight, Laugh, Feast conference in Knoxville that we're live podcasting from this fall?

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Are you going to have a cigar with me afterwards or what? If I'm there, I will. Yes. I'm not sure yet if I'm going to be able to make it or not.

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There's a whole lot of stuff going on right around. And it seems like that time is just a huge time for a lot of things going on with us.

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We have a presbytery meeting. We have in October, this giant feast festival that we do at our church for All Saints Day and Reformation Day.

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So it's very busy, but I'd like to, I've been at them in the past and have enjoyed them.

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Well, if you make it down there, we'll have to meet in person. So before we get into what we're talking about tonight, we're going to be talking about Christian nationalism.

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And I'll get into why I want to bring you on and talk about that. Would you stick around for a few minutes and comment on some news from the headlines?

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Sure. Let's do Newsy News. All right.

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We do have some news. So we just have a couple of stories here. I want to get into it. The first one I picked up on Christianity Today, and it says,

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Assemblies of God ordains record number of women. There's work to do. And some of those

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God has called to do are female Pentecostal leadership says, if you look at their internal documents, they reference equality among the sexes that we should have just as many female pastors as male pastors.

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And they're really using some kind of woke leftist terminology to essentially try to prop up their biblical doctrine belief that there needs to be more women in leadership and pastoral roles.

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And I was just wondering what happens when we have a major denomination like that using that language and using that perspective and worldview to then not really use a biblical reason, and I don't think there is a biblical proof text for women in pastoral roles, but using almost equality and a progressivism as their reason for doing this.

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What do you think about that, Joseph? Are we just too far gone in some of these denominations? I mean, what's happening here?

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This is the battle of our day, I think. So you think about in the early church, the battles they were fighting over the doctrine of God, Trinity, the doctrine of who

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Christ is, and we praise God those battles were fought and won. And there's always people who want to attack those doctrines, but they have been, they've been won, and Orthodox Christians hold to them.

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And then you have like the time of the Reformation, the strong doctrine of Sola Scriptura and Soteriology, which is, you know, salvation by grace.

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And if you listen to preachers, or I mean, you read preachers from that time period, they're just constantly hammering home these same things against the abuses of Rome, and they're just constantly nailing it down.

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Or if you go back to the early church, they're constantly nailing down against the heretics and for the

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Trinity. And so I firmly believe that in our day, the battle is on human anthropology, and on two fronts, life, standing up for the preborn and the elderly, because probably a little known secret is that just as we have borne as many babies, we kill many elderly people in our nation through the medical process.

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Yep, so we got to stand up for life there. And then another aspect of anthropology is biblical sexuality.

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And this is where the battle, I think, lines. And so faithful shepherds, faithful pastors, and Christians, fathers will probably sound like a broken record, but we've got to constantly go back to God's Word, God's order, how

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He established things, who He is as Creator and His right to call us and design us as He will, and the right for how beautiful femininity is.

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And this kind of stuff is not a promotion of femininity, it's an attack upon it.

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It's we think that in order for women to have value, they have to be like men.

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Yeah, it's perverted. Yeah. And we also think for men to have some kind of virtue, they have to become womanly.

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And so we look for effeminate men who don't have a fight in them. They're tame, timid, and we think that's virtuous.

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And so we look for all the things that somewhat come naturally to women to be in men.

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And on the flip side, for women to have value, we think we got to throw them into office in a place that they're not supposed to be.

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And it is a, I think it is both a judgment upon the church and a great sin in the church that this is happening.

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It's not just like, you said that was the assemblies of God? Yes. Yeah, it's not just like, so, you know, they're out there anyways, on a few other things.

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Sure. In fact, actually, they may have been started by a woman. So it may not be too far off, but it's in solid reform churches where you have the undermining of biblical sexuality.

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And a lot of it happens with, you know, even big patriarchal families in which dad is a figurehead for the leader who is really mom.

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So the rooster rules the roost while the hen rules the rooster in a lot of places.

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And what we need to reclaim is that when a woman is a helper to her husband, when a woman is a helper, that is beautiful.

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It's what God created. And it works. It's not a diminishing of a woman that she's not to preach.

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It's a protection of her and her value. And it is obedience to God who designed us in certain ways.

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And so some of the things that compared to men are weaknesses for women are actually strengths for women long term.

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So, you know, like they're physically weaker. They're also more easily deceived, which is what

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Paul speaks of. And one of the reasons why they're not to exercise authority over men, but that easily being deceived is not really, it is a play off one of their strengths, which is their relationship.

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Sure. And empathetic and things. Yeah. Yeah. And God created them to come along and follow a man in building up a place, a building up a home.

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So yeah, this is a failure probably on both men and women in this denomination.

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Yeah. I've said it many times in the podcast, but the older I get I'm 41 now, but I just keep seeing repeated within the church that the church of Christ keeps bowing to culture instead of bowing to Christ.

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And that really what it comes down to. And you can't serve two masters, right? You're going to love one and hate the other.

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And at some point, like you said, this is probably one of the biggest issues in Western church anyway today.

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All right, let's move along. We just got one more. We're going to switch to politics. You scared to talk politics? You want me to read something

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Trump related? You okay with that? Or something Trump related? Well, we have to talk about it.

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He was raided down in his house down in Florida. First time ever, a former president has been raided.

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They said there was some documents dispute over what was classified and what wasn't. Historically, presidents are allowed under the executive branch to say what is classified and what isn't.

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And then come to find out the judge who signed off on the warrant actually represented a lot of the Epstein clients.

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So there's a weird connection there. Yes, he donated to Obama in 2008 and stuff like that. That could be political, but all very strange that the

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Epstein thing is connected to it. It's very historic. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think this is a historic moment in the

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United States? Or do you think this is just, is it political backlash? Is it justified? Or is it, it's not that big of a deal.

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There was probably some documents there that he mishandled and this is what the FBI does. I mean, what's from what you know of it, what are you thinking when you look at a story like that?

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Yeah, well, let me give my bona fides here about Trump is that I didn't vote for him in the first election.

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Okay. It was because I didn't trust that he would do what he said he would do. And I eat my words on that.

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I actually think that he did much better than I anticipated.

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And God used him, right? We got Roe v. Wade overturned. Yeah. And so if I had a magic time machine,

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I'd go back and vote for him in the first one. But I said that I would crawl over broken glass to vote for him in the second one.

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So I did. And it is not because I think he is this godly man, or even that he's really that much that conservative.

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There's a lot of things that he does that makes my eyes twitch and agreed. You know, so that said, ever since he miraculously won that first election.

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Yeah, they have come after him every way there possibly is. I mean, it's it's they're just itch to find some kind of thing they can charge him with.

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And so you know, whether it was Russia, going after people, he was going to nominate his cabinet members spying on him the dossier, sure, whether it was impeachment over a phone call to Ukraine, which we're seeing how

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Ukraine stuff is playing out now. And it's January 6.

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And so taxes are going after it in. And then now you have this. So that that's just supposed this thing is justified, that it is justified that, that, you know, he stole documents.

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Sure. Or classified documents out of a location he was not supposed to. Yeah. Yeah.

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Well, I mean, that'd be all good and wonderful. And it'd be easy to believe if we hadn't already experienced all the other things.

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Yeah. And so it's really makes me skeptical. I mean, I believe in being just and not partial, trying to be impartial and justice.

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So I want to be able to hear all the facts of the case before making a judgment. But on the same thing, this is pretty unprecedented.

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It's unprecedented in that the president has been raided after his term, especially by the person who defeated him, or supposedly defeated him in the previous election.

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Yeah, yeah. So this is going to become political. And we won't linger on this too long. But it does smell funny, right?

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I'm agreeing with you that because of the history over the last four years, and how things were politicized and weaponized against that administration, it does it does smell funny.

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We'll have to wait and see. But yeah, pretty, pretty crazy news. And we'll keep keep you updated on this, guys, on the podcast as more news develops as well.

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All right. That's all the news we have. Let's get on to the show. And that was the newsy news.

18:38

Cool. So you know, a couple weeks ago, I saw on your Facebook page, Joseph, you posted something by a gentleman named

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Andrew Torba. And I'm not familiar with him. But you just said, you know, I think I agree with this statement.

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Now. Now's your time to say if you fully agree with everything, but I think you posted it. So you agree. I'm gonna read it really quick, because this is what got me thinking.

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Our enemies keep getting one thing wrong about Christian nationalism. They think that we believe America is some chosen country or something favored by God.

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We are not idolaters of America. We actually hate what America has become. America just happens to be our home.

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Currently, America is wicked and sinful nation. We can and will change that. But the vision is much bigger.

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We also want to help Christians in every single nation on this planet take dominion over their countries to for the glory of God.

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That's the mission here. The Great Commission, all nations, including Israel, by the way, smiley face. So I tended to agree with this, too.

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But I'm also not extremely familiar with the actual definition of Christian nationalism.

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And I was hoping you could bring some of that to light for me and our listeners. What is the definition of Christian nationalism?

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Well, that's the that is a hard question to answer, because it is. It's one of those titles that can mean several things to different people.

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OK, so there might be multiple definitions. Yeah. Yes. Well, there's there's straw men of it and there's the bogeymen of it.

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And Andrew Torbo, he's the guy that created Gab. Oh, OK. So and kind of runs that, by the way, he he's pointing out.

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So you often see, like the Gospel Coalition or, you know, even people more left them right against Christian nationalism.

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Sure. And they often have like two targets in mind and they'll use the more easy, simple target to take out the heart, the harder.

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OK, so this is what I mean by it might be multiple definitions. So Torba is pointing to the fact that there's that, you know, there are some you remember with what was the crazy conspiracies theory with Trump and.

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Kill. Yeah. Yeah. QAnon and all that going on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, there are some people that have treated

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America as chosen by God. And so you kind of have this civil religion, actually, which is being is attacked.

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But the civil religion in our country's history was actually much of that was the work of liberals and progressives.

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So, you know, like you go back to the 1800s and as they as liberalism comes in and leaves

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Christianity, just hanging out without facts, the basis truths of Scripture, like they deny the incarnation of Christ and all these things.

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There's still a great urge for the social programs and those type of things.

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And as they see America growing, there becomes this like sense of patriotism.

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But then it goes beyond like we're a chosen country and God bless America. And so politicians of all stripes play play to this.

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If you listen to any about any political speech, whether it's even Trump or Biden, the way they talk about it is if America is the hope on Earth.

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Right. And and and so a Christian nationalist view would play into that thinking that somehow

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America is plays a special part in God's history of the of the world as we are like wholly different than the other nations.

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And what you see is actually that America begins to supplant Christ in this kind of view.

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So it is that's a, you know, idolatry. Sure. But I don't know anybody that calls himself a

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Christian nationalist that holds to that. But so I'm giving you really that's more of a civil religion kind of view that is really taken off.

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And and I have met and I have met people like that. They won't say that word, but it's like, you know, it's it's

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America, eagles, guns, God, church and beer. And it's like and it's very surface level, but it's more patriotic and civil than it is religious or theological.

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So, yeah. So, yeah. So you put it to more and you might have called like the lower lowbrow version of that or like more.

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That's what I'm good at here. I make everything. We got to bring people like you guys on. No, I mean, the more like conservative kind of country guy.

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OK. Right. But if you even go back and you read like JFK, so you wouldn't accuse

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JFK being the lowbrow country guy. But his speeches speak of America in such a way of like this, you know, or Ronald Reagan as being a city on a hill.

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Sure. OK, which was actually who's described to be in a city on the hill. We hear that.

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Well, that's Christians. That's unsure. Yeah. So the idea is you supplement

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America for the church. And really, I would say the inheritors of this are not so much the kind of redneck guys.

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Yes, they have a distorted version of it, but it is more of the progressives, even those who would not use the word

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Christ or God. But they view America as, you know, the.

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The hope and they view it as essentially it has to be multicultural, multi -ethnic, we're the ones who can police the world and that kind of thing.

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And so and then the civil government then becomes the arbitrator. What's right and wrong in many ways has unlimited power to say that's where our rights would come from.

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We can create new rights. And so you have the right to health care, the right to a house, all these things.

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So. Yeah. So is that the straw man or the boogeyman definition you're giving me, you think? Both. Both. Is there a different definition that you might think is a little clearer or a little more biblical or a little more or I don't know, or just different?

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Yeah, I'll give you the one that I would hold to. And I'd like to say like Christian nationalism as a term is probably pretty new.

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Yeah. And so there's always the danger of these things being somewhat faddish, because really what

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I would argue with what is now called Christian nationalism is nothing more than Christianity, which is simply the fact that all nations ought to repent and look to Christ.

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And that as Christians, as people are saved, they're redeemed out of darkness, they're redeemed out of out of sin, their lives begin to change.

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And that begins to impact not only their individual lives, but their families, impacts the church, their local churches, and then it will impact their jobs and their civil government.

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And so Christianity is always taught that, you know, part of being a

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Christian is then living and producing fruit and discipling the nations.

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So I would say that Christian nationalism, it comes straight from the

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Great Commission to go into all the world and disciple the nations, and to teach them to obey all that Christ has commanded, baptizing them, teaching them.

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And so what we're saying is that we want our nation to follow and worship

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Christ as a people, and even in our civil laws. We want God to be honored there.

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And so this is nothing different than what, you know, Christians have always believed, really.

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You go back to the very early church, and you see the

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Apostle Paul in the book of Acts is actually traveling, he's confronting many civil magistrates as he goes.

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And there's a record in the book of Acts of some of the first civil magistrates being converted.

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There's a record of him speaking, you know, to Felix and others.

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And then the book of Acts even ends with Paul on his way to Rome. So going in the whole idea is that he's going off against the empire or the emperor, but calling them to repentance.

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And then so the early church continues that. They're calling their people to obey God. They're calling, and by nation, we often mean not, that's another word that needs to be defined in this.

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Maybe I'll come back to that in just a minute. But we see like the gospel being spread.

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We see people preaching to the civil magistrates that they need to obey

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God. The first apologists are writing letters. All of their apology, you know, the apologetics, they write them and give them to the emperor or to a local civil magistrate to defend the faith, for one, so they wouldn't be persecuted, but also in the hopes of calling them repentance.

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And then you see Constantine and what happens from there. But the gospel continues to spread throughout

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Europe. And you get to the reformers, you get Calvin, they're preaching the gospel to their people, to their nations.

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We see the French Huguenots doing the same. You know, John Knox famously says, give me

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Scotland or I die. And so he wants to see his nation converted to Christ and obeying

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Christ. And the pilgrims, when they came here to the colonies, they came with the whole idea of establishing a

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Christian community. So let me ask you this then, because I've talked to some people and even believers, and you say the words

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Christian nationalism to them. And the first thing they think is more like a theocracy. Like, are you stating that when we are a

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Christian nation, we go back to Mosaic law and things like that, or are we talking about a

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Christian nation being biblical rule and biblical law? Is there an undertone of theocracy in Christian nationalism in your view, or is that a straw man, or is that part of it as well?

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It depends what you mean by theocracy. I mean, I would want to argue that any country, every country is a theocracy.

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So there's always going to be a God over the system, and a God that gives the laws and that the people answer to.

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So even in our nation, the secular humanist, you know, we're pluralistic, multicultural, separation of church and state, there's still a

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God over our nation who's making the laws and whose laws will be withheld and upheld.

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I think as a Christian nationalist, we argue that Christ ought to be honored, that our nation ought to declare that Christ is king.

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And so, yeah, we would be opposed to this idea of like, I think that you could just have no

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God, or that we should just somehow keep God and government separate. But I don't think that that means the end of a separation of church and state, which is what a lot of people think when they think theocracy, they think the

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Pope or a church is running the government, pastors and elders.

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And really, separation of church and state is a Christian notion, in that God has created the church, and he's created the civil government, and the family.

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And he's given each of these different authorities, different responsibilities.

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So he's the one who gives authority, he's given it to the church, he's given it to the state, or the civil government, and he's given it to families.

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And each one has their own jurisdiction. There is some overlap, but they have their different responsibilities.

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So the civil government, for example, exists to punish evil, and to protect the good, defend the nation.

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The church is to publish the gospel, to preach the truths of God's word, to administer the sacraments.

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And the civil government then doesn't have the authority to take on the church's role and begin administering the sacraments, doing church discipline, determining exactly what will be preached.

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And on the flip side, the church doesn't come into the civil realm and interfere and say, we're going to start punishing people.

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I can't start locking people up as a pastor, and I've not been giving that. And I also, you know, fathers in their home have their own unique authority.

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But it doesn't mean that just because there's a separation in our spheres, that somehow

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God then is separate from the government. God is over all of those, and they all answer to him.

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And so when you come to like, well, are we going to go just go to the Old Testament and plug and play Old Testament laws into the

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New Testament? Well, I think what we have to recognize is that there is a moral order,

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God's moral law that he created that comes from his very nature. And all people everywhere are beholding to that moral law.

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Thou shalt not murder, all people will answer to that. Scripture is very clear about that, that all people are to obey

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God's moral law. And in fact, you know, some of the promises of the

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New Testament or the New Covenant is that the nations would start to do that. But, you know,

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I have this verse I wanted to share, it's Psalm 72, 11. It says, let all kings bow down before him and all nations serve him.

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So there's like, if you just read through Scripture, you can't read through the Psalms, for example, without seeing that the nations are called to obey

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Christ and his commands and his moral law. So you might want to ask about like, okay, what about the civil law in the

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Old Testament? Because there's a thing called theonomy or Christian reconstruction is to argue, you might have to take all the

34:12

Old Testament civil law and immediately apply that. Now, like you just kind of, right.

34:18

And I'm kind of speaking in broad terms, and I'm not quite being fair. But I believe, and I believe this is what

34:26

Scripture would have us, is that that civil law was given to the nation of Israel, and is a perfect application of the moral law to a specific people.

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And it takes into account their time, the area they live, it takes into account who they are, all those things in God's providence, and it perfectly applies that to those people when it created a civil government for them.

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So when we get to the New Testament, that civil government has been abolished, or they sinned,

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God sent them in the captivity, they came back, the Romans took them over, that civil government that that law was given to does not exist.

35:17

And so just as, for example, if something were to happen, God forbid, to the

35:23

American government, and like China took us over, we wouldn't still be beholding to the code, the legal code of the

35:32

American legal code, if our government ceased to exist. But the moral principles that are in that code apply to all people.

35:43

And they just have to be worked out. And this is where civil magistrates use God's wisdom to apply

35:48

God's moral law to their particular people and their particular circumstances.

35:56

So an example for how this works out, for example, is like, in the Old Testament, there was a law for parapets around the house, it's like a little fence around the top of the house.

36:08

They did a lot of entertaining company up there, it's a good place to do that.

36:17

And if somebody fell off, you endanger their life. Well, if you think we have to just, you know, rip that out of the

36:26

Old Testament and plug that today, then we all need to put little fences on the roof of our house. Well, I would argue that we do have that today in building codes.

36:34

Yeah, so that's what I'm about to get at. So what we've done is, but it's not the fence itself, right? It's the moral principle, principle and concept behind it.

36:42

Okay. Yes, that's what I was trying to get at the moral principle behind that is applicable to our civil law now.

36:50

And so as Christians, that's all we, when we call our civil managers to obey God, we're calling them to obey his moral law and to enact justice and to enact just laws that go along with who

37:03

God is and his moral decrees. And in doing that, they'll punish evil and protect the good. And that will encourage and strengthen the church.

37:14

You know, one of the promises from Isaiah is that of the New Testament is that Kings would be nursing maids to the church.

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So, and it's from Isaiah 60 says foreigners will build up your walls and Kings will minister to you.

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And then if you keep going along, so it says, you also suck the milk of nations and suck the breast of Kings.

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Then you will know that I, the Lord and your savior and your redeemer, the mighty one of Jacob. I think the big thing there is how do we think that becomes accomplished?

37:48

Some would argue and have a more nihilist view and go, well, let's wait, wait for it to happen. God will do it. Some will say we're more proactive and we preach the gospel and we advance the kingdom.

37:56

I mean, where do you lie in that promise and what span, where are you at? Yeah. So, you know,

38:02

I'm a Calvinist, so I believe in God's sovereignty. Yeah. And, and yeah, I also believe in man's responsibility.

38:08

Yeah. I was just preaching this past Sunday and Calvin, I was quoting

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Calvin in which he said, like, if somebody does not enter into the kingdom of God, it's their own fault.

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It's their own, it's because they, it's not because they can't obey God, it's because they won't.

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And so he completely affirms man's responsibility, which is what the scriptures do.

38:37

So God is sovereign and yet we don't just let go and let God, that's silly.

38:42

We have responsibility. Now, this is where I think there's actually a ditch that can occur when we talk about this whole concept of whether the church should preach to the civil government, whether Christians should be worried about the civil government and all that.

38:59

And so the one ditch is like, like you said, we'll just do nothing. We'll let God do it.

39:04

Or that's politics. We got to stay out of that. Or, you know, the kingdom's not of this world.

39:10

You'll hear a lot of excuses, but the other ditch, I think, and it's very vulnerable for young men in our day.

39:18

It is, is like you just become hyperly focused on this and you step out of your stations in life.

39:27

So one of the reasons that we, going back to, we talked about with the assemblies of God thing, one of the things that's so gross is because it's a stepping out of the station that God has given women and it's harmful.

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Even if you can make the case that like, you know, there's no men to fill in this place.

39:47

And so these women are just trying to do what's right and step into that place. There's still something twisted in all that, in that it's flipping over the order.

39:57

Well, the same thing applies in our nation is we flipped over the whole order of things and whether wives not submitting their husbands, children not obeying their parents, church members not submitting to their leaders and obeying their leaders and us not submitting to the civil authority.

40:17

And so we, the scripture commands us to live and obey every governing ordinance, every human ordinance in first Peter.

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We're to obey our wives to obey their husbands and children obey their parents.

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And we are to obey the civil magistrates. And that is a command from God.

40:40

The problem with the ditch is you start to focus on the exceptions. So, you know, we don't obey when they command us to do something contrary to God.

40:49

Right. But then we start to focus on all the exceptions and that's where we want to stay.

40:56

And then we start to become just, I don't want to say rebels.

41:05

We become rebels too. And our focus becomes on just constantly berating and talking about how wicked our civil government is, which you can go on forever to do.

41:15

Sure. But you're contributing to the problem because you're getting out of order. And also what happens is a similar problem is that we like as very temptation for men to focus on battles that we can't have any impact on over the battles that we do.

41:40

So what I mean is like, we'll spend a lot of time talking about national politics where, whereas really, you know,

41:51

I have a podcast that gets lots of views and stuff, but I don't have any influence really over the federal government, like Joe Biden doesn't listen to me.

42:01

So if I spend all my time calling him out on Twitter and stuff, you know, like, whereas what about my influence over my city council?

42:12

Sure. Or even more, let's go even more basic. What about my influence over my children?

42:18

My family? Yeah. Yeah. My family, my home, my own body. If I'm not self -controlled,

42:23

I'm like, you know, a city with his walls torn down. Yeah. And, and so I think the,

42:29

I think the danger of talking about Christian nationalism is it just becomes another one of these hobby things that Christians talk about.

42:37

And it's a fad, it lasts for a little while, and then there'll be some other fad. So why do you think it's become so popular recently?

42:43

Why? For two reasons. One is that the left is talking about it because they hate

42:51

Christians. And so they've taken the boogeyman and they've painted everybody about it.

42:58

So anybody that wants to see abortion ended is now a theocrat that wants to kill all the heretics or something like that.

43:08

Right, right, right. And so, but they also rightfully, I think, recognize that an abortion is not just an issue about, it's not a secular issue only.

43:21

It is, it really, at its foundation is, it's even more foundational than when does life begin?

43:30

It is who gives us life. And, and so who gets to define that? And that is very issue is an issue about God.

43:37

Yeah. And so it's very, you know, this is fresh in my mind, because in my state,

43:43

I went up to the state house, we were testifying on the issue of abortion in Indiana, we just, they just passed a bill about abortion.

43:54

And all those who were pro -abortion, either were full on, you know,

44:03

God haters, or they were people who claim to be Christians, but they're like gay and effeminate.

44:08

And they're the ones who don't have any allegiance to God's word. And, and so it was really an issue of, has

44:17

God said, even there in a state house. And so you have politicians saying, I'm gonna honor God.

44:22

And that's Christian nationalism right there. I'm going to honor God and obey him. Or other people saying, no, you can't do that.

44:28

We, we, we have this other God, which says that we can commit murder and kill babies.

44:34

Sure. And so, you know, it's the boogeyman from the left.

44:40

I think, I think another reason is popular. Have you heard of a guy named

44:48

Aaron Wren? No. Well, it sounds familiar. He's got, he's got a newsletter called the

44:54

Masky Witness. It used to be, I'm not sure it's called that anymore. But he has a helpful way of looking at probably the last 30 or 50 years.

45:04

And he calls it three worlds. Okay. He calls it the positive, the neutral, the negative world.

45:12

And the positive world was probably when I was a kid was probably a tail end of it, was that being a

45:18

Christian was considered a positive thing in our culture. Yeah. So it was, you know, you know, if you went to church, that was a net positive for you, you, you were considered good, you know, only evil people didn't go to church and that kind of thing.

45:34

Sure. Somewhere within the 90s to 2012, we moved from that to what you might call the neutral world in which going to church was neither positive or, or bad.

45:51

It was just something you did. And, and, you know, there was kind of tolerance for that. It didn't make you morally good in the sight of your neighbor so much.

45:59

And, and then I would say since 2012, probably maybe even earlier, we've moved into the negative world in which being a faithful church member is not seen as a positive good or as a neutral, it's can seem, seem negatively.

46:16

Yeah. And because of that, our tactics have changed as well.

46:23

So a lot of the, when you lived in the positive world, the idea of separation of church and state being a very strict and like not needing to talk about Christ in the civil realm, you can, you can speak on more neutral terms was more, was effective and more popular because you had already in that background, a shared worldview.

46:46

You're living off the fumes of Christian influence from before. Yeah. But then as we moved into the neutral thing, you, you would try to be a little bit more,

46:57

I guess, conciliatory and, and, and, you know, principled pluralistic about things because, you know,

47:07

I have my beliefs and that's a neutral thing you have yours and that's work for the greater good kind of deal. And, and then as we've moved to the negative it's very clear that the, the, the lines between good and evil were a lot more clear.

47:23

All right. You're either, there's not very many people that are neutral on the issue of homosexuality or, or abortion or, you know, even

47:35

Trump or something like that. I'm not saying that I'm not putting him as a level of that, but I'm just trying to say there's, there's this stark difference.

47:42

And I think as Christians, then we just have to be clear. We stand for Christ over and even above our constitution, not saying the constitution is necessarily a bad thing, but we, our governing document is

47:54

God's word. Yeah. And, and we need to call all those around us to repentance.

48:01

We need to start repenting and we can't pretend like there's this neutral ground.

48:06

There's not a, we live in a place, a time when many people hate

48:12

God and they hate what they think Christianity is and they make mockery of it and that kind of thing.

48:18

Yeah. Awesome. So one more question is we put bookends on this and wrap up.

48:25

This is just a question that popped up in my mind when you were talking. So you were talking about men who tried to fight battles that they can't win and, and maybe, you know, just posting about politics all day.

48:36

And, and I actually was, I've talked about it before on the podcast. I was caught up in that to where, you know,

48:41

I was saying, Hey, look, I'm coming from a biblical world, reformed world view. I'm speaking the truth.

48:47

But then I was realizing I was running to my news sites and to my social feeds and the Lord revealed to me that, well, it's just an idol in your life.

48:54

That's just a way to escape into an idol to rat to rail against things that you don't agree with, whether it's right or wrong.

49:01

But on the other side of that, you know, I do, I do do a lot. I'm a, I'm an elected official. I'm a

49:06

County commissioner here in my County. I tried to you know, legislatively in the

49:11

County make decisions that are biblical and fall within the moral guidelines of God's law.

49:18

I heard that you are going up to the state house and talking on behalf of maybe bills or abortion bills or whatever that was.

49:25

So I just wanted to say, are you saying not, you're not saying not to be proactive in civil government or or trying to maybe possibly change laws or even

49:37

I was a legislative liaison. I helped write bills, abolition bills, things like that. You're not saying not to do that.

49:43

Are you saying, Hey, as a young man, you shouldn't pay any attention to that or you should pay it or just should be in balance.

49:50

No, I'm talking about balance. And I'm also talking about in one sense, knowing your station in life.

49:56

So if, if you, we, there was this group that I was a part of and we went to an abortion clinic and some police came and they started protecting the clinic and it was, it was wicked with the police were going, they were pushing back against pro -life voices.

50:16

And there was like this, I don't even want to say 12 year old boy on our side that started just really railing and yelling at the police.

50:27

And we had to, I had to pull him aside and say, dude, this is not right. There are older men here. There's our fathers, there's pastors.

50:33

If anybody needs to rebuke the police, let's let people that are in authority do that. And you maintain your station.

50:40

So this really goes to what Paul says, right? To Timothy. There's two things. Don't let anyone look down upon you because of your youth, but on the same hand, don't rebuke an older man harshly, but treat him like a father.

50:54

And we have to try to maintain ours.

51:00

And this is why we have to maintain our station because if we're ever wanting to see something good, it won't come by us doing the evil to get there or us undermining the created order and undermining what is good to get there.

51:15

So we just have to maintain that. And so what I would encourage like young men is work on your home, do things that are within your purview, like vote.

51:25

You can go speak at a, if there's a way for you to speak to the civil magistrates, testify.

51:33

I mean, that's certainly allowable thing, but sitting around just on your laptop or tweeting all day, it's not work.

51:44

It's not actually accomplishing thing, but it can give you the sense of accomplishment.

51:52

And in a similar way, it's like video games, like video games often take people out of real battle into fake battle.

52:03

And it uses like our drive, manly drive to battle. So am I saying that video games are always bad?

52:10

No. I family member or something and relax and play one.

52:15

But if you're always living out these fantasy battles, you're not being useful for the kingdom.

52:23

So the two ditches don't step out of your station going around acting a fool.

52:30

Maybe encourage your pastors. So this is the thing where like, I believe if anybody's going to rebuke civil magistrates ought to be pastors and those

52:39

God has put in a place of authority for the church. And then, or fathers in the home as well.

52:48

So some place that has an authority, but on the, so that's the one thing.

52:54

And on the other hand, also be effective, do things that matter. What will bring us a

53:02

Christian nation is Christians being Christians in where they're at.

53:07

So, yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Christians being Christians in word and deed, you know, absolutely.

53:16

Pastor Joseph Spurgeon, thank you so much for being on the episode today. Why don't you throw out social media and where people can get ahold of you if they want to know a little bit more about you or your church or whatever you got going on.

53:28

Yeah, you can go to sovereignkingchurch .com to find out about my church. And we have an app.

53:33

You can download our church app if you want and listen to sermons and stuff. And then check out the

53:39

Patriarchy podcast on the Fight Left Feast Network. So we have an app for that as well.

53:45

And also you can get that podcast pretty much on any podcast catcher there is.

53:52

And then if you just want to send me a message or something like that, best way to get ahold of me is on Facebook. So, Joseph Spurgeon on Facebook.

54:01

I live in Southern Indiana. You'll see me and my big family and lots of little comments and posts and stuff trying to encourage each other in the church.

54:12

Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on. And we'll make sure we link all of that up to when it goes out onto the pod chasers and I promise we won't run it as the great, great, great grandchild of C .H.

54:27

Spurgeon. So we get more clicks. Okay. I'm surprised you didn't ask.

54:34

No, I had to save it to the end. I'm sure you get it enough. So I didn't want to start with that, but we'll make sure we link it up guys.

54:40

Thanks so much for listening to another episode. I know we kind of weaved in and out of Christian nationalism, a little bit of activism, all that kind of stuff.

54:46

It was government civil magistrates. It's a good discussion. We hope you appreciated it as always guys.