Wimpy, Weak, & Woke W/John Cooper

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When the scribes and Pharisees asked our Lord about the greatest commandment, He replied, You shall love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.

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So, why do we hear some of today's most prominent pastors saying things like this? It had everything to do with how we talk about the

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Bible, and specifically, or along with that, what we point to as the foundation of faith, which for most

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Christians, unfortunately, is the Bible. We need to do better.

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We need to love God with all our hearts, and stand unashamedly on the rock of His Word. We need to love the

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Lord with all of our souls, and respond to the worldview issues of our day with the wisdom and discernment that comes only from Him.

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We need to love the Lord with our minds, and understand the calling of God's people in every area of life in God's world.

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We need to love the Lord our God with all our strength, and face the work of building a life -giving, God -honoring culture.

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

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Christian thinking to every area of life. Non -rockabotas must stop.

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I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it! Are you gonna bark all day, little doggie, or are you gonna bite?

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You're being delusional. Delusional? Yeah. Delusional's okay in your worldview. I'm an animal.

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You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional. So you calling me delusional using your worldview is perfectly okay.

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It doesn't really hurt. Is he hung up on me? Yeah! What? What?

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

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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,

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Pastor. 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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When the wicked increase, transgression increases.

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But the righteous will look upon their downfall. How's that for a promise? Discipline your son, and he will give you rest.

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He will give delight to your heart. Where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint.

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But blessed is he who keeps the law. That would be Proverbs 29, verses 16 through 18.

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What is up, everyone? This is an unusual Apologia Radio episode today, because I am flying solo.

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Mine also, plus our guest. But, I've never done this by myself today, so I'm kind of excited.

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And I'm excited for this conversation. I'm trying to bring up some background music here, if I can get it right.

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There it is. I don't know if the guests can hear it or not.

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This happens to be my favorite, I think my favorite, solo song. Before I get to our guests,

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I'm going to mention our sponsors real quick. I'm very excited. We have a new sponsor.

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I'll get to quickly because my guest does not have all that much time today with us.

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If you guys heard any of the shows we did with Bill Rapier, he is a legendary, legendary

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DevGuru Navy SEAL. Guys that I know that are current

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SEALs highly admire this man. He's been on twice. He's become a good brother of ours. He's doing some really awesome work.

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And for a living now, he does training for shooting.

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So Amtack Blades, I'm very, very excited to be partnering with them. The bill is amazing. That brings me to my guest.

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John Cooper, what's up, my dude? What's up? How are you doing, man? Good. How are you?

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Good. I was thinking, if I was just watching this show, I don't think I would think that you look like a

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Christian. Have you heard that before?

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No, I'm just saying, look at you. You're so scary looking, man. You're mean looking.

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You got these tattoos. And I just don't know. You got that crazy artwork in the background.

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It looks like blood dripping down. Is that what that is? What's wrong with this show, man? And you're talking about blades?

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You're selling knives and you have blood dripping down everywhere? You know what's funny is the

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Trinity symbol we have in that, like every so often we get somebody in the live chat that's like, that's a symbol of the devil,

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Celtic, blah, blah, blah. And we're like, oh my goodness, not this again. We literally had to make a video to show people that no, actually, this is a representation of the

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Trinity. So anyways, yeah, thanks for that. Thanks for bringing that up. Well, it's always difficult when you move on.

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Good to be here with you, though, Luke. I got only you. So now it's just me and you.

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We can do our thing. We don't have to worry about any of these other people that probably also look like they're not really safe.

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I don't know. I don't know who they are. Yeah. Yeah. Jeff. Oh, yeah, that reminds me.

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Jeff is in that state, again, that I'm not allowed to mention, and with those twin babies.

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And actually, one of them is for sure being released this weekend and hopefully the other one right after that.

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So they should be bringing them home very quickly. I'll tell you, twin babies that they're adopting out of a state you're very familiar with.

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I knew that. I knew that. I think it's awesome. It's such a cool story. Yeah. Oh, man.

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Some people in the chat think you were being serious. All right.

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Let's start. Can we start the whole show over? And I'm going to say this, like, Luke, I think you look.

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Jesus is concerned about the outside of the bowl, not the inside. Don't clean the inside. Don't just.

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No, wait, wait, wait, wait. No. I'm sorry. It's the opposite. Jesus is concerned about the inside of the bowl, not the outside.

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So you know what, brother? I know that you love. You have the light of the Lord shining outside of you.

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How many times? Just shining out. How many times have you heard someone say, talking about you, or maybe to you, like,

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John must have got those tattoos before he was a Christian? Well, I've been playing music for so long.

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Most everybody knows that I didn't have them until, like, later on in my career. So there probably will be people that may think that I get all kinds of crazy stuff.

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It doesn't even really bother me. Of the things that bother me, that just isn't one of them.

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I never get bothered by people. They're like, you don't even look like a Christian. I'm like, oh, it makes me sad for them, you know, because it's such a misunderstanding of what the gospel is all about.

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And I just go, oh, I really wish that. I hope they get it. I hope they get it soon. I hope they get it. Yeah, no, it's funny.

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I think I texted you one day. We were, my kids were watching. It was like they were watching, like, a skillet marathon or something on YouTube one day.

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And, like, we were, like, tracking your tattoos through the videos. Like, I didn't have any there.

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And then he had one there. And he got another one here. Anyway. That's not creepy at all.

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No, it's not. It's not making me want to end the interview or anything like that. It's actually another example of why you might not actually be saved.

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You force your kids to have a skillet marathon. That's either the best parenting thing

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I've ever heard or the worst. I don't even know which one. For the record. I can't even discern. They were doing it on their own, for the record.

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Oh, okay. I happened to walk into it after I heard skillet playing for, like, three hours.

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I was like, what are you guys doing? Anyways, you know, I almost sent you a video yesterday. Okay, this is going to get you more weird.

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I almost sent you a video yesterday because I was getting ready in the morning. I was making breakfast, and I heard my daughter in the shower.

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And I heard skillet playing while she was in the shower. And I was like, that might be weird if I send them that video. She's rocking out.

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Shower is the best place to listen to music and sing along because you convince yourself that no one can hear you.

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So you just kind of, like, really go for it. And then later you're like, oh, that's embarrassing. Everybody can hear.

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But so for people listening that don't know, so obviously you and I are friends. So we send each other stuff all the time.

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And you're particularly been very helpful to me on issues of, you know, when

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I ask about things about the pro -life movement or in abortion now. What's the difference between these things?

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What is the kind of law of God say about X, Y, and Z? You've been such a real encouragement to me on those things.

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I appreciate our friendship. And, of course, I have friends with one of your co -pastors, James White, who is a good friend of mine.

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So anyway, I appreciate you a lot. And for anybody not sure if I was being mean to you at the beginning,

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I was joking. I know you're a Christian. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. No, I appreciate that a ton.

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I feel the same. So yeah, man, I'm excited. We've had this show planned for a while.

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And so why are we having you on today? What's going on with you? You're just living life.

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Why are we having you on today? Well, man, I released my new book. I told you

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I have it right here so I can show what it looks like. Look how gorgeous that book is. America.

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It's dense too, America. There's an American flag. You must be a Christian nationalist. We can talk about that if you want.

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Anyway, yeah, I released the new book, Wimpy, Weak, and Woke, about two weeks ago. And I'm so very excited about the book.

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And we can talk all about it. And that's why we're here, man. I'll tell you what.

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We really need to do everything we can do to train

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Christians to understand that we really are at the precipice of the end of Western civilization.

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It's not even being pessimistic. It's just like that's actually where we are.

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I believe the gospel is going to win. I'm not shaken. I just want people to know that we're kind of at the precipice.

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And if you like the idea, if you like the idea of being able to raise your kids in the fear and admonition of the

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Lord without government recriminations, then I think you should be aware of where we're at.

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And you might want to stand up. If you think that it would be really wonderful, even if you don't send your kids to public school, if you think it would be great for your public school not to have drag queens come in to read stories to your children, to teach them radical gender theory and things like that, then

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I think Christians should understand this is what's happening. You have a chance right now to speak up.

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Why wouldn't you speak up? Because it's going to lead to really terrible results, not just for Christians, for all kids.

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And if you really believe that God cares about people, then

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I don't know why you wouldn't stand up. And that's sort of what the point of the book is about. Well, it's really good, y 'all.

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It's really good. I didn't read it, but I listened to it. I made sure I clarified because you're like, wow, I can't believe you actually read it.

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I was like, well, to be fair, I listened to it. But I listened to it on this cool app.

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I forget what the app's called, but I listened to it with this cool British professor voice. It made it sound even way more intelligent.

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But for real, I'll see if I can find the voice for you. It's great. No, seriously,

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I'm not just saying this. I wasn't sure what to expect going into it, other than the conversations we had.

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Dude, you did your homework. I mean, you start getting into Hegel and all this philosophical stuff.

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And I was like, dang, because I've taught through some of that stuff. And that is not easy stuff to grasp.

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So the fact that you were able to grasp it and then write about it in a way that dum -dums can understand was really awesome.

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And I'm not calling you a dum -dum. But you made it so the common folks can read it and understand it.

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So guys, seriously, the homework, the amount of time and prep you put into it was evident.

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It's not just what you're thinking and feeling.

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It's like you've done your homework. You've laid out the foundation, essentially, for where we're at in our culture.

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Well, that's cool to hear. Yeah, and I was going to tell you, you wrote that like you were one of the evangelical elites.

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Like I am one of them. Well, from one dum -dum to another. No, I appreciate it.

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I mean, the reason is because I've got 650 footnotes in the book.

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Yeah, the reason being that what I've noticed in the last few years, one of the things that I find that whether we're talking about the

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Christian progressive left or whether you're talking about just the progressives in general, one of the tactics they use against us is when we say something like, hey,

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I don't like critical race theory because it's a Marxian worldview.

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It comes from Marxism. I always get pushed back, and they always say things like this.

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You don't even know what critical race theory is. Marx never said that. So -and -so never said that. That's not from the sexual revolution.

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They just keep going. Or if you ever say anything about American history, they always push back.

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That's just – that's Christian nationalism. They're always saying that people like us don't know what we're talking about.

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And the truth of the matter is – and I don't even mean this arrogantly. I actually meant it from one dum -dum to a whole bunch of dum -dums maybe listening to this show.

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I don't know. The truth – this isn't arrogant at all. The truth is, is that our opponents in these philosophical arguments, they are not arguing in good faith.

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For the most part, they truly do not know what they are talking about. They have never read or understand the philosophies that they are pushing onto us.

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They only – they just believe it in a sort of religious way, sort of like a blind religious way that they are doing something good.

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Because they were taught this by celebrities or by their – some college professor or because that's what cool people do on the internet.

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And so they're regurgitating things that they've heard people say such as, Luke, you don't even know what critical race theory is.

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It's not a good faith exercise. They just want to win an argument. So I thought, you know what? I'm going to put the original quotes from these people.

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So when I say something like Karl Marx hated God and when they go, you don't even know what you're talking about, you people who read my book will know exactly what

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Karl Marx had to say. And you'll understand how demonic these philosophies are.

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These people hated God with just a vehement passion. Karl Marx, I think he said it.

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He didn't say the image of Christ on earth, but he would say the aroma of Christ on earth.

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And what he meant was is that there's all these institutions that are basically – they would say the image of Christ is on, the aroma of Christ is on.

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And we need to just break all of them down so that there are no vestiges of Christianity anywhere.

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So that would be like something like the family, a man and a husband, a wife raising a child.

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He would say, no, we need the family gone because the family is a representation of Christ on earth.

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That's kind of his language. If Christians understood this, they would want nothing to do with anything coming from Marx.

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Yeah, absolutely, man. I'm just curious. How many books do you think you read in preparation for this? Oh, man.

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I don't even know. I have a picture that I've been meaning to post on social media. Maybe I'll do it this week. So everybody listen, an apology.

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Within the week, I'm going to try to post this picture. It's got to be 40, 50, 60 books of just the books that I quoted.

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And that's not including digital books that I may have quoted or other books

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I had read. So only the books I quoted. There must be 60 books in there. I don't know. It was so much work because I kept delving into it.

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And there's so much to pull from. There's so much proof that I just I wanted to expound on it because, like I say,

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I'm just tired of people saying you don't even know what they even say. Well, if you read my book, you're going to know exactly what these people had to say.

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Yeah, that's great, man. And that's I mean, that's something we've learned from from James from Dr. White is just you need to understand the opponent's argument better than they do.

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So you've definitely done that. Are you able to read while you're riding on the tour buses or do you get car?

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See, yeah, I can do that. I could. Yeah, you know, really read a street sign without getting sick. No, no,

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I do a lot of reading on the road. The first thing I would just mention is it's interesting that James White says that that when is

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James going to learn a good argument for a thing? I'm just joking. That was a joke.

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Yes, James. Yeah, thank you. You're going to get comments now. He's mad now. He's making fun of.

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No, James is a great friend of mine and an absolutely brilliant. But, yes, James is great. He's like, you have to understand what the best arguments of the other side are so that you can make an argument.

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And so I'm like, yeah, I've got to understand. I don't want to know just what Votie Bauckham has to say that Mark said, even though Votie expounds it very well.

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I want to know what Mark's had to say. But, yeah, I do that reading on the road. I love to read. And the truth is, is that I just got really passionate about it because the times are so confusing.

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And the truth is, is that there were too many Christian people. In my opinion, there were too many

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Christian leaders sort of trying to find that third way with people like Mark's.

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I remember seeing on somebody's – I won't say who's, but a Christian leader who is Orthodox. He was getting – it was in 2020.

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He was getting sick of people like Votie Bauckham saying, you guys, this comes from Mark.

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Stay away from it. Critical theory comes from Mark's. Critical race theory comes from Mark's. Stay away from it. I think that this guy was getting sick of it, so he tried to do that third -way thing, which was, guys, just because something comes from Mark's doesn't mean that it's all bad.

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And then he did one of these – Mark's cared for the poor. And, yes, he didn't do it in a biblical way, but he did try to care for the poor.

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So we can't just say we hate Mark's – sorry. I shouldn't say hate. We can't just say that everything Mark said was wrong.

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I got so sick of that because I don't think that that person that wrote that even believes it.

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I think he just was annoyed at people like Votie or whoever or Durbin or James White or me or you.

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I think he just was annoyed, but he can't possibly believe that. And so I started reading all these books, and I'm like, no,

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Mark's didn't care for the poor. Mark's hated everybody. I mean he hated everybody.

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And so that's why I started reading so many of those books on the road. That's amazing. I mean not amazing that you had to do that, but that you've been able to do that.

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Just curious, how often during the day when you're talking do you say something and then you realize it's one of your songs that you just said?

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Like you just said, sick of it, like five times. And now I have the – like anytime I hear that now, someone says, sick of it.

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And you say it a lot on Cooperstuff, by the way. And then I'm like, well, of course he says it a lot because that's one of his songs, and now it's in my head for the next 24 hours.

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So thank you. I have never considered that, and I didn't know that I do that, and I didn't even know that I say that a lot.

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Well, you've had a lot to be sick of lately to be fair. Well, since the 2020s, everything is – what is the – there's the term.

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Did you read the book, The Boniface Option? No. Do you know of that book?

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I've heard of it. OK. I know that Doug Wilson has reviewed it. Is it

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Andrew? Is it Isacar? Isacar or something like that? I can't remember his name. Anyway, in his book – it's a fantastic book.

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But he's got a term he uses called Trash World. I think it's the best way to say it.

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Since 2020 is when my eyes opened up to Trash World, and yes, I am sick of it.

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I like it too. Hey, real quick. What? What? I was going to say if people can only buy one book for Christmas, don't get

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Andrew Isacar's book. Get my book. Go to johnlcooper .com. johnlcooper .com

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and get my book. And then if you can get two books, you should also get The Boniface Option. There you go.

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Well played. You can also get some cool shirts and stuff from John L. Cooper, like smelling commies and stuff.

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Here, I'm hoping you can hear this. This is that voice that's been listening to your booking. I'm starting to realize that this is going to be a long conversation that has the potential to hurt our friendship.

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But I cannot be the one to end it because I don't want to send the signal that I'm not willing to.

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It's amazing, right? That is absolutely crazy, hearing my words through that voice.

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I'm like, did I just get into a Winnie the Pooh cartoon? It's like,

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I've got a rumbly tummy. Yeah, it's very, yeah. It just makes it sound.

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It's just wimpy and weak and woke. Yeah, there you go. You got it. You already got it down. It just makes it sound so much more astute.

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Yeah, I know we've been talking a lot, even the last few days, about some certain individuals and their wokeness.

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We're not going to mention by name, we decided. But I will say, I want to go back to the verse that I read at the beginning, as we get into this conversation a little more.

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And again, that was in Proverbs 29. You mentioned we're at this precipice. I agree.

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We've talked a little bit about this, but what we're watching before us is society. It is reaching this point where it's going to crumble.

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And it already is starting to turn on itself, because there's no objective standard for any of this nonsense.

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It's just everyone for himself. I talk about Proverbs 29 .18

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all the time, which is where there's no prophetic vision. People cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law. But I went up a couple today, and it's just I love verse 16.

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And this is, like I said at the beginning, this is a promise. This is for us faithful Christians. When the wicked increase, transgression increases.

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That's what we're watching, right? But the righteous will look upon their downfall. And that post -Milbo.

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So, yeah, we might be in some awful times. We might have to endure some pain and suffering from all the nonsense.

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But we will look upon their downfall, because this will all be put under the feet of Christ.

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And I think I got this from James, actually. He was saying, like, this is how

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I've been thinking about it. Just watching all this unfold before us, I think that God's allowing—and

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I'm not trying to be prophetic here. I mean in the sense of making a prophecy. But I think that maybe

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God's allowing all this to play out to the fullest, right? So that it crumbles upon itself, so we can look back in history when it's been put under the feet of Christ and say, man, that was a silly time.

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Wasn't that silly? That was silly, what they were saying. And then everyone laughs at it, because it's like, what a bunch of dumb -dumbs.

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Why would you think like that? But it's like it has to be played out to the fullest for it to crumble.

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Otherwise, there's little glimpses of hope here and there. And even with communism—we're talking about socialism, right?

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It was tried economically. Major failure. I think you might have even talked about this.

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Major failure. But now it's like it's crept into society, not necessarily economically, but in the social structure.

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And it's like it's going, again, at some point it's going to just not work. They tried it. It was fun.

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Good try. Didn't work. Go ahead. Yeah, I think that's a great point. I think it's an interesting way to say it like this.

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Let me see if you know what I'm getting at. So we believe, of course, in the providence of God.

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We believe in sort of this spiritual promise that God says the righteous will see the downfall of the wicked ultimately, right?

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So we know that. But I think a lot of times as Christians we don't necessarily think about the fact that God has created a world that is rational, actually.

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It's logical. It's not arbitrary. And so the downfall of the wicked, of course, is a spiritual, providential thing.

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But in some cases it's also just logical. And what I mean by that is, for instance, 2020 is the first time

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I ever heard of defund the police. So you have all this stuff happening. You have these really wicked, wicked ideas about defund the police being birthed out of this sort of critical – really a critical whiteness study saying that basically

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America is oppressors. Men are oppressors. White people are oppressors.

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The system is oppressing. And the way we're going to fix it is to defund the police.

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We're going to let criminals out of jail. No bail. No cash bail. And all these things so that we can stop disparities for people of color, these terrible outcomes for people of color.

29:30

Well, anybody that knows anything about anything knows that is going to hurt the very people that you say you want to help.

29:38

I can't think of anything that's going to hurt these communities more than literally getting rid of police.

29:43

And so part of what happens is that these things just logically – they can't work.

29:52

And so because they don't work, well, what do you see? Here we are three years later. I'm sure you've kept up.

29:58

But even one of the people in Minneapolis on the council, one of the people saying we got to defund the police, get rid of the police because it's a racist organization, let people out of jail.

30:08

I don't know if you saw about three months ago. She got carjacked and beat up really bad. I miss her.

30:13

And she – oh, this is like real. And she's selling her house and moving out.

30:21

She's leaving Minneapolis. And she was one of the main people on the council doing it. Now, of course,

30:26

I'm not happy that happened to her. I don't want to see any evil and violence happen.

30:32

But the point is, is that, yes, the righteous will see the downfall of the wicked eventually.

30:38

It's a promise of God. And God, in his sovereignty and his – he's going to do these great things. But also these things just don't work.

30:45

So if you have queer – there's a group called Queers for Palestine in America.

30:51

Queers for Palestine, they are fighting for people in the Gaza Strip because they hate

30:58

Israel because they believe in this sort of oppressors and oppressed thing, and they hate Western civilization.

31:03

And you're thinking about it. You're thinking if you get what you want, like this would be way worse for you.

31:11

Do you not know how bad this could end? So the thing, I guess – I mean that's a bit of a weird –

31:17

I don't know why I brought that in except to say that I guess what I'm trying to say is that people are sort of – they're sort of – they're delusional.

31:26

They don't even really know what they're fighting for, but they're just pushing for something. But naturally it will have a downfall just like communism – and a lot of Christians still don't understand that communism really did set itself up as a rival god against Christianity.

31:45

And we don't even mean that in an apologetic sense. Like in apologetics, sometimes you say, well, they set themselves up as a rival god, and we mean it philosophically.

31:56

No, the communists actually said it. They actually said we need to tear down Christianity because we have an all -inclusive system that is going to cause man to evolve into a god, into a superhuman.

32:13

And they tried it, and in the end it was so destructive. It was so – they murdered over 120 million people in the last century alone from Marxist regime, 120 million people.

32:27

And by the way, that makes Nazism – I mean Nazism seems – they're not even playing in the pros.

32:35

Trevor Burrus 11 million was the Nazis. Paul Matzko Yeah, exactly. So that's not to diminish the evil of Nazism.

32:41

It's just to say they're not even in the pros yet, bro. So I think that in my book

32:47

I'm explaining that these things don't actually work in reality because God gave us a moral law that coincides with a moral universe that he created.

32:58

And when you obey the law of God, you find that your outcomes are good because of the blessing of God but also because it works in the good world that he created.

33:11

Amen, man. And the result, a perfect example of what this looks like was

33:16

Chaz in charge, right, in Seattle. I want

33:22

Chaz in charge of me. Like it didn't work, right? It lasted like a minute, and then we're like, yeah, dummies, do you think that was going to work?

33:31

That's just like a microcosm of what we're talking about. If it's played out into an entire society, that's what will happen.

33:38

It's just moral anarchy, and it's just complete destruction. So I'm thankful I live in a conservative state.

33:46

I'll say that. Yeah, I mean it's pretty crazy. One of the things

33:51

I just wouldn't mind mentioning is that I'm sure everybody listening knows this, but obviously we're not even arguing about right and left anymore.

34:01

You know what I mean? This isn't even like, guys, abortion is on the table.

34:08

I mean of course abortion is. Of course it is. This isn't like tax policy, border policy.

34:17

It's not even that. This is kind of broken down to do you think that the principles of America are worth preserving?

34:26

Are they good or are they evil? And that is what is happening now.

34:31

And that's the reason really why I think that the Israel -Palestine thing has really opened a lot of people's eyes into realizing there's no way we can have, quote -unquote, unity in America when half the country wants to destroy the founding principles.

34:48

And then the last thing I'll say about this is I wrote it in the book. This war against America that we're talking about is a war against Christianity, not because we believe that America and the kingdom of God are synonymous.

35:03

We're not saying that America is the new Israel or something dumb like that. So you're not a

35:08

Christian nationalist. It's not Christian nationalism, everybody. What we're saying is that the principles that people hate about America come from the

35:19

Bible. I did something interesting. I've never said this in a podcast, but check it out.

35:25

You'll think this is interesting. So do you remember in 2020 when the Smithsonian came out with their chart of whiteness for the

35:34

Museum of African -American History? Do you remember the chart of whiteness that came out? I don't.

35:40

Oh, dude. Google Smithsonian whiteness chart.

35:47

And in 2020, because of all the race stuff, so it was the Museum of African -American

35:52

History for the Smithsonian. And they list this thing about the attributes of whiteness.

35:59

And even if you're a person of color but you value these attributes, it means that you have internalized whiteness.

36:08

Wow. They got a ton of blowback. So I took that chart. Then I looked up one of these government things.

36:17

So there's a government site, and I can't remember. I think it's called – I can't remember. It's called Help Something Immigration. I can't remember.

36:23

But it's a government site for people who want to immigrate to America to tell them what the values of America are so that they can integrate better.

36:33

So it's a government site. And, dude, if you take the attributes of whiteness and you take the government chart that says what

36:42

America is like, they're literally 95 percent synonymous.

36:48

Wow. They call it things like the Protestant work ethic. Apparently the Protestant work ethic is whiteness.

36:55

The belief in monotheism, individualism, pulling yourself up from your bootstraps.

37:02

They call it rugged and all these things. So the point I'm making is that the war against America is a war against Christianity, and Christians have got to realize that that is not being, quote -unquote, political.

37:17

That's not being a Christian nationalist. It's to understand that when these people want to tear down America, it's not

37:23

America they're really trying to tear down. It's Christian values. Yeah, amen. I remember that now that you said that.

37:28

I remember the Protestant work ethic when I remember. I was like, what? I was like, so we're just all supposed to be a bunch of lazy bums?

37:35

I mean, that's the result. Everyone's been living off of Uncle Sleepy Joe's COVID bucks for years.

37:44

I know plenty of people, not anybody at my church, I can tell you that, but I know people that just literally could have gone back to work and they're like,

37:54

I'm making more money sitting on my couch. It's like, OK. Oh, yeah. Here's your Protestant work ethic.

38:00

And eventually, like we said, eventually those things, it will become very clear that they just don't work.

38:07

And then what's going to happen? I believe you're going to have the people of God who have been living out the word of God, the law of God, commands of God, whatever you want to call it.

38:18

We've been working that out, and so the wicked and the ones who are rejecting the created order of God and the law of God, well, their stuff is just going to keep getting worse because it don't work.

38:31

But Christians, what are we going to do? We're going to be having children. We're going to be raising our children in the fear and admonition of the

38:38

Lord, so our children are going to be – they're going to have less mental health issues. They're not going to be on medication like the rest of the world.

38:44

They're not going to be gender confused. They're going to know how to work, and then people are going to be like, well,

38:51

I think I'd rather have that kid that knows how to work than some other kid that's complaining because he's not getting enough entitlement sitting on his couch.

38:59

But booyah. Exactly right. Now you really sound that post Mill. No, I've been saying that.

39:04

I got this from Joe Boot, who's now one of your friends as well, and I've been saying this for a while, but we're going to literally just outlive this.

39:16

Maybe not us personally, but our kids, maybe grandkids, maybe great -grandkids. We're going to – our prodigy is going to outlive this nonsense, right, again, because it's all going to be put on the feet of Christ.

39:28

They're not making babies, and if they are, they're killing them. They're all – half of them are gay.

39:35

They're just not – they're not going to produce offspring, and so just by sheer numbers, and maybe a generation or two generations down the road, we will outlive this, us, the

39:46

Mormons, and the Muslims, and so we're going to have a different battle on our hands.

39:52

What you just said, the world doesn't even want to have kids.

39:58

I mean they think that we're getting to the place where they're actually saying it out loud, as you know, that kids are actually sort of oppressive, sort of a bummer.

40:08

They keep me from my dreams. You're actually a better person if you don't have kids because kids – we are killing the earth, and you're actually a more virtuous person if you don't.

40:20

Here's what I want to say, and here's the call to the church. I feel it. I feel that Holy Spirit rising up in me now.

40:26

Here's the call to the church. As you just said, we are the ones having children.

40:31

The world is not having children. Then why aren't we making more of a difference now? Here's where I believe the kind of prophetic challenge to the church comes.

40:42

We are supplying the very living human beings that are causing the secular revolution to happen because Christians are losing their kids in college because we are not prepared in the word of God to understand the philosophies of the day and how we train our children to say no to those things.

41:06

And here's another prophetic – I hope prophetic challenge to the church. We should be already outliving the world.

41:14

Why are we not? Because we believe that we are not to be drunken with wine.

41:20

We're to be full of the Spirit of God. So if you live your life not drunk, hurting your body with alcohol, hurting your body with drugs, hurting your body with sexual promiscuity, hurting your mind with pornography.

41:34

We go down all the list. We should already be far outliving the world.

41:41

And here's where the challenge comes in. Why are the levels of pornography in the church so similar to the world?

41:47

Why are the levels of drunkenness so much similar? We can go down that list. If the church would just live like the church, well,

41:55

I think we'd already see that disparity that you're already talking about. I believe we just need to train the church to live as the

42:04

Holy Spirit -filled people that we are. And I believe that that disparity between the delusions of the world and the kingdom lifestyle, oh,

42:15

I just think it's going to be huge if we can just train people to do it. Amen. I appreciate that a ton.

42:20

I mean, that's a good part of your book there is you lay out the societal issues, but the problem that we are facing ultimately is it's infiltrated the church.

42:33

And you're exactly right. And I've been saying this as well since 2020, and I think you agree, is just that God's been trimming the fat, right?

42:43

The tares are being pulled out from the wheat, and the frauds are being exposed within the church and our culture.

42:52

And so have the numbers within the churches shrunk a lot? Yeah, but it's a good thing because we're getting rid of the dross, and it's like Gideon's army.

43:03

God's getting it down to the faithful 300 that are ready to fight. And that's how revival starts.

43:08

And so, yeah, I agree totally. And just, I mean, we've been talking this week just about the stupid, stupid stuff that is infiltrating the church and Christians.

43:23

And I'll be careful because last time you were on here, I got you in trouble. But, you know, I'll mention

43:29

Derek Webb. I know you already got yourself in trouble with him. But, you know, here's a guy that's still making probably some decent money from Christians, right?

43:38

Off his music for a lot of years and showing up at the Dove Awards in a dress. Like, just stuff like that where you're just like, you look at it and you're like, this is so stupid.

43:48

Like, there's no logic behind this. You know, and they look foolish. He looks foolish.

43:54

Those people look foolish. It's like, OK, you guys are cool for a minute. You're doing the in thing. And you got some more likes.

44:00

You know, you've been kind of quiet for a while. OK, good job. You wrote a new song that's really dumb that mocks

44:05

Christ. And, OK, and you look like an idiot. Like, that's all there is to it. I know what you mean.

44:11

You know what I think is going on, man? It's sort of like the church has become, like, extremely pacifist.

44:21

I think that's what it is. Now, of course, I'm not even getting into, like, actual pacifism.

44:28

So let's put that on the side. OK, I'm not talking about lockdown and yada yada. Move that on the side. It's like our posture.

44:35

Our posture is so wimpy. And that's actually what I mean when I say wimpy, weak, and woke. That's the wimpy side.

44:41

We're so wimpy that I think that most Christians don't even really get upset about.

44:48

I think they're sort of like, of course the world is doing that. Why are you surprised? No big deal. And while I can appreciate the side of it, of piety, to understand, hey, a pagan is going to peg.

45:02

I get that. But that's not what's going on. When you have a

45:07

Christian musician, an ex -Christian musician, go apostate, who decides to routinely mock the

45:16

Lord Jesus Christ, I don't understand why that doesn't bother Christian music listeners.

45:21

Are you serious? That doesn't bother you at all? Just like I don't really understand why the number one cause of death –

45:31

I'm preaching to the choir here. The number one cause of death in America is not people starving to death.

45:39

It's not because we don't have enough food to go around. It's not because of cancer. It's not because of diabetes. The number one cause of death in America is abortion.

45:47

A third of all of the babies that are born in this country, that could be born in this country, or 25%,

45:56

I should say, a quarter, are murdered. I don't understand, for a

46:01

Christian, why you could be like, guys, pagan's going to peg. What's the big deal? I honestly think we've just become so pacifist that we don't want to say anything about anything, and we think that we're being more pious.

46:13

I just would challenge people in love. I would just challenge people, and I have challenged some

46:19

Christian leaders in this when they've pushed back on me. They've said, John, I think that you're the problem.

46:26

They've said, John, I think that the way you come across, the things you talk about, I think you're doing more harm than good.

46:33

And I have just said to them nicely, do you believe that you would have been standing against slavery?

46:44

Do you think you would have been standing against Hitler? Do you think you would have – would you have been standing?

46:49

And they all go, well, of course I would. And I've just said to a few people nicely, brother, if you are not willing to stand in the 2020s against the totalitarian regime trying to teach your kindergartner about radical gender at the school, radical gender theory, and then telling your kids that they can change their gender without their parents' knowledge.

47:17

Having drag queens come to the school to read to your kids, if you're not standing against the gender mutilation of 13-, 14-, 15 -year -old children in this country or you're not standing against the mass murder of the unborn in this country, then you need to stop playing and lying to yourself.

47:37

You would not have been marching with Dr. King. You would not have been standing with Frederick Douglass in 1850 to end slavery.

47:45

You would not have been cheering on Dietrich Bonhoeffer for standing against Hitler. You would have been the pastor telling

47:52

Bonhoeffer, shh, you got to keep it about the gospel. You're getting too political. That's what you've been doing.

47:59

So you got to either own it or you need to wake up and join the battle and speak the truth in love.

48:05

Come on, brother. Amen. That's just the prophetic vision that we're talking about in Proverbs 19. That's all that it is.

48:11

And so the church has failed to do that. We've gotten lazy. Pastors have gotten lazy. And I'll be the first.

48:16

It starts in the pulpit. It starts with the pastors. We've gotten lazy and we've stopped engaging the culture and telling the culture to repent and telling the culture to kiss the sun lest you perish in the way.

48:29

And yeah, I mean, goodness gracious, I know we're running out of time. You're going to get me going again.

48:34

We got about four or five minutes here and John's got to do a sound check. So I'll end on this.

48:39

Again, there's someone we were just talking about I won't mention, but just this whole deconstruction language that this was getting me fired up this week that is crept into the church.

48:55

And that's a socialistic term. It's from socialism. It's not just a cool term that all the cool kids are doing now.

49:03

It's straight socialism that the church has adopted. And just to kind of bring tie everything together here.

49:09

Like the person we're talking about was talking about how they deconstructed. Right.

49:16

And and when they did that, you know, he's this person's like, well, I was just going to start from the beginning and rebuild up, you know, and God was always the center of things.

49:24

But in reality, what happened is when he deconstructed, there was no he had no objective standard for morality and truth and all went out the window and it resulted in drug abuse and resulted in like really bad things.

49:42

And that's what happens when you throw out any objective standard of anything or morality and truth.

49:50

It's there's there's nothing to live for at that point. It's in its darkness and its moral anarchy.

49:57

And so Christians that are trying to like bring that terminology and try to make it

50:04

Christian, like it doesn't work. And so we're saying just knock it off. Stop it.

50:09

It doesn't work. Yeah. You know, there is a lot of this happening. I talked to a friend of mine who's a pastor and he does a lot of things all over the nation youth groups.

50:17

And he's like, dude, he sent me a thing. He's like, there's this whole youth movement going on in a group of churches and they are calling they're going through a program to go and they're calling it deconstructing your faith.

50:30

Oh, my goodness. But they but they mean it in a positive way. And I said, is it a progressive church?

50:35

He's like, no, no, no. They are saying that this is the way to come back to orthodoxy. They're trying to use the terminology and twist it into a good thing.

50:44

I've been standing on this ground and I'm still standing on it. I will give one small caveat.

50:50

Is it possible that there is someone out there who's who uses deconstruction and is orthodox now?

50:59

Yeah, of course. Of course there is. I'm not saying there's not a person. What I'm telling you is in my opinion, in my experience, 99 % of the people that use the term do not mean it in a good way.

51:11

Right. And it is not a good thing. And the easiest way to test it is just to say this.

51:17

After that person deconstructed and then they, quote unquote, reconstructed, do they now hold opinions that are more offensive to the world or less offensive to the world?

51:33

The easiest question. I've never met anybody to say, oh, I deconstructed, came back to my faith and and now

51:38

I hold these opinions that are super unpopular. That rarely, rarely ever, ever happens.

51:46

Now, there are some people who were maybe deconstructing their faith and God saved them.

51:52

But those people don't usually use the words deconstruction as a good thing. They usually say it was horrible.

51:59

Stay away from it. And that sort of thing. So I guess one of the ways you could tell you just say this is no, no, deconstruction was great for me because it brought me back to the true gospel.

52:08

Then you can just ask them, OK, where are you at on biblical sexuality? More than likely, they're not going to give you a clear answer.

52:18

That is what we would consider orthodox. Where are you at when it comes to the unborn? They're probably going to give you an answer that's not really what what you would like it to be.

52:28

Right. So I think the danger in this is and I do write about deconstruction in my book very, very briefly.

52:36

The truth is this deconstruction, even though people will send you people right now are going to send you comments saying that I'm wrong.

52:44

I know they will. But it's fine. And that's just totally fine with me. No, don't know.

52:49

It's fine. Send the comment. I don't mind. But I'm standing my ground on this. All of this is interconnected.

52:55

Christian deconstruction is connected to secular deconstructionism in the postmodern world.

53:02

It just is. They want to inject. They don't necessarily even care if you reject everything.

53:10

They want to inject skepticism. They want to say, all right, wait a minute. Well, whose interpretation is that?

53:16

And where is the power dynamic in that? So Apologia told me that the interpretation of this scripture is

53:23

X, Y and Z. But the question is, is why does Apologia want me to think that?

53:28

And were those men or were they women? Were they white people or were they people of color? Were they heterosexuals or were they homosexuals or LGBT?

53:37

Were they tall people or were they little people? You can just keep going down the whole thing to find out what would be your motive in telling me that thing.

53:48

And then I can begin to dissect it and give some alternatives. One of the things

53:54

I write about in my book is this postmodern philosopher called Michel Foucault. And a lot of people don't know the name

54:01

Foucault, but I will tell you he has probably influenced your life in ways that you don't even know.

54:08

Foucault basically said this. He's postmodern. So since we can never know absolute truth, all that there is is power.

54:16

And so when you look at interpretations of history, for instance, he says we need to create fictions.

54:25

He calls them fictions. He says we need to fiction the past. And what he means is that nobody could ever know the absolute truth of history.

54:34

But when you learn history, you've got to ask yourself, who's telling me this history? Is it the oppressors or the oppressed?

54:40

And if it's the oppressors, then we need to fiction the past. We need to give alternatives. And it doesn't matter if those alternatives have any merit.

54:49

You could literally make it up. And we see this in Christian deconstructionism as well, don't we?

54:54

We see people say, well, you know what? When Jesus said that, it could just mean

54:59

X, Y, Z, and they just make something up because they don't have to believe what they mean. They are fictioning a new biblical interpretation.

55:09

So deconstruction, in my opinion, is something you have to stay away from. And the last thing I'll say about it, this, and I think it's pertinent to the discussion that you're talking about that you and I had.

55:18

One of the new things in deconstruction over the last two years, in Christian deconstruction, is to people to say, oh,

55:26

I'm not deconstructing my faith. I am decolonizing my faith. And so what decolonizing your faith means is basically a similar thing.

55:38

They're basically just saying, Luke, your apologia interpretation of those scriptures is probably a

55:47

Western Eurocentric white interpretation. And that's just used to have power over people.

55:55

But I don't want a Western interpretation. I want to know what the real interpretation is, and I'm going to decolonize it.

56:01

And all that it is is a new way to inject skepticism into it and look at it from a different viewpoint.

56:08

That different viewpoint is going to be from, you know, what they would call your standpoint. Your standpoint could be based on your race, your gender, your sexuality, your nationality, et cetera.

56:21

Whew. Amen. Thank you for that, bro. I know you got to get going here. You got a sound check,

56:26

I think, for your next show. So I'll let you go, and I'm going to play a song here. You know what song

56:32

I'm going to play? My favorite Skillet song of all time. I don't know it, but play a thing, man.

56:37

Come on now. You hate it, I think. I can't hear it, so I don't know.

56:42

Oh, you can't hear it? Sounds good to me, because I can't hear nothing. Oh. It's I Can.

56:49

It's still my favorite. Oh, man, you're going old school. I love it. It's still my favorite. Your first song. It's still my favorite.

56:54

I love it. It's so cool to hear. Well, I appreciate it. I sure do appreciate you having me on.

57:00

I know I told people already, go to the website johnlcooper .com, but I'll mention one thing as I'm leaving.

57:06

The reason you can only get the book right now at my website is because a lot of people don't know, but if you're doing publishing, even with Christian publishers, like let's say that James White wrote a book, and then

57:20

I wrote a book, and let's say I was going to slam James White in my book, which I wouldn't do, of course, but let's say

57:26

I was going to do that, and I was going to say, James White is a moron that always wants to wear those ugly sweaters and talk about his bicycling or whatever, and let's say that we had the same publisher.

57:39

My publisher would come back and say, you're not allowed to say anything about James White because we do his books as well.

57:46

Well, what if James has said something or whoever, Tim Keller or whoever, let's say that they're saying something that really, really needs to be challenged.

57:55

These publishers won't allow you to do that, and I think that it's created an environment where Christian leaders can't challenge other

58:07

Christian leaders' ideas in public depending on their publisher, and I just don't want to mess with any of that.

58:13

So I published it myself because I want to say what I believe, and that's why you can only get it.

58:19

So if you want the Kindle version, you can get that at Amazon. Otherwise, you've got to go to johnlcooper .com.

58:25

Get it for a friend. Get it for somebody that does not believe that culture is on the precipice of destruction.

58:32

Two chapters in, they're going to say, okay, I see what you're saying. I didn't realize you did that. So that's awesome.

58:39

Good on you for that. So yeah, also check out Cooper Stuff, one of my favorite podcasts that I never miss.

58:47

Well, thank you, brother. I appreciate it. And John's been going Nuclear John lately, which is my favorite, as he knows.

58:57

There's a lot happening in Trash World, okay? Trash World. Oh, man. Well, thanks, dude.

59:02

I appreciate your time, man. I know you've got to get doing some sound checks. You too, man. We'll catch up later. Yeah, keep up the good work.

59:08

You know I love you guys. I appreciate you. Thanks for watching, everybody. Yeah, likewise, bro. I love you too, man. We'll catch up.

59:13

All right, later. Later, man. Whew, that was a good show. Well, I'm going to wrap this up here.

59:21

I love that dude a lot. Pastor James. Dr. White. I connected with him a few years ago, and I've been able to get to know him really well.

59:27

He's a great dude. I love what he's doing. I'm just going to play some more skill here. This is a really old song, by the way.

59:35

So I'll just end here with a couple things, and I'm going to do an after show, so if you are all access, please stick around, and we'll go into the after show in a few minutes after I end here, and see if you guys got any questions

59:49

I can answer, and continue the conversation. So, yeah.

59:54

Thank you again, all access. You guys, you make this happen. You turn on the lights. It is almost

01:00:01

Christmas time, as you all know, and you know because we've been saying that for a while. So I just want to remind everyone to go to shop .apologiastudios

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.com. This is one of our new shirts that I designed. Fear God, not the mob. Some cool shirts on there.

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If you're looking for Christmas presents, you can also get that pre -sip coffee. If your loved ones love some good coffee.

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And Isaac sent me a message, he wanted me to remind everyone of the

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Advent stuff we're doing here. Whoops, I accidentally just lost it. Hold on one second. There it is. So if you guys have seen in the past,

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Jeff's done the Advent readings for each day, I believe starting the 1st of December through Christmas.

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This year we're doing a little bit different. He did some new ones. So Isaac wanted me to tell you this.

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Christmas time is here, so that means our Advent series, Let Earth Receive Her King, will be available to you and your family once again. This year we are doing things a little bit differently and adding value to the 25 -day

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Christmas devotional. We are going to be hosting the devotional on our website. So starting tomorrow,

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December 1st, at ApologiaStudios .com, you can go and join and celebrate the Incarnation of Christ the

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King. So you just go and get a free account. It's not going to cost you anything, and then you'll have access to all of those videos.

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And I just saw some of them that look really great, so we did some new ones. I think that's all

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I got. So next week we will be back. I'm not sure if Pastor Jeff will be back or not.

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We shall see. But then we only have, let's see, two more shows this year.

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Actually, next week will be our, I believe our 11 -year anniversary.

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I've got to check the dates for Apologia Radio. I believe next week will be 11 years. So that's cool.

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We'll have two more the rest of the year, and then we'll be celebrating Christmas. So yeah, thanks again, everyone.

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I know Zach was here, and thank you for supporting Abortion Now. We've got a lot coming up, 18 states in this next year, so we need your help, and we need your support.

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And those that are already supporting and participating with us, thank you so much. You're the best.