The Here I Stand Theology Podcast Ep #12 (Interview with Gabe Rench of CrossPolitic)

Welcome to the Here I Stand Theology Podcast. We are a podcast dedicated to the pointed and spirited debate of biblical doctrine.

We are pumped about being here today. We have a special guest host with us today, a pastor from just up the road.

His name is Aaron Case. Let's go ahead and bring Aaron in and let him tell you all a little bit about himself.

Yeah, it's good to be here, Claude. Thank you for having me. It's good to be with you, of course. Yeah, my name's

Pastor Aaron Case. I'm a pastor here in Seymour, Tennessee. I'm just thankful that the

Lord has brought Claude and myself together. He's just been a blessing to me.

I'm so thankful for this podcast and just all the truth that comes out of it and just who

Claude is. This is a special time for me to get to hang out. Anytime we get together is good.

We praise God for that. I'm just thankful for Reformata Church and for this podcast and just everything it stands for.

Aaron, I would echo the sentiments, of course, and we're not here to shower each other with praise, but I truly do.

I love Aaron. I love and appreciate him and his ministry, his work. He is pastor at Eden Chapel Baptist Church.

That's in Seymour. If you're looking for a great church, solid biblical doctrine, great preaching, go to Eden Chapel.

Praise God. Thank you, brother. All right. Aaron, we have a very special guest on with us today.

Most of our audience should know who he is, should know the podcast that he's from and the group of men that he works with and goes to church with there in Idaho.

We have with us Gabe Rensch today, but before we bring Gabe in here,

I want to read you very quickly his bio. Gabe Rensch was born in the promised land.

He was born in the promised land. That is Texas. Six states later, he's now in Moscow, Idaho.

He is now in Moscow, Idaho. I'm going to move you to the center screen there, Gabe. He graduated from the

University of Idaho. He also attended Greyfriars Hall, the pastoral training program at Christ Church.

Gabe is a media and marketing consultant. He is the co -founder of the

Fight, Laugh, Feast Network and one of the hosts of the CrossPolitik TV show and podcast.

Now, in case you don't know, CrossPolitik stands for Christ over politics.

They mix the taboo formula of faith, culture, and politics in order to bring clarity, the clarity of the gospel into model

America. So Gabe, as you come into our audience here, there's a couple of things we want to do for you.

First of all, there was a gang waiting for you. You can't see that, but that's a standing ovation.

If we watch the podcast in video form, I want you to notice, I'm not sure if it was, but it looked like it was

Oprah Winfrey right in the front in that standing ovation. So one last thing here.

I know you only get a sound bite of it, but we're going to play you in with this. Yes, sir.

Hey, it's so great to be on with you today, Toby. I'm sorry. We looked very similar.

It's weird. We saw Knox there back in the back. Are you going to ask the question,

Claude, the very important question before we get into everything? So Gabe, we want to set the stage with a very important question here right off the bat.

Right off the bat, we want to ask this question. It's really to get you and our audience focused in on who you are.

Okay. So my question is this first thing. So if, let's say, for example, if you,

Toby and Knox had to arm wrestle, who would win? I don't know.

I can't be against my pastor. And then at the same time,

I can't be against Knox because he makes me look good on TV.

I think I would lose. Just not you, you would say.

Just not me. I'm pretty sure, though, there's not a biblical injunction against arm wrestling your pastor or arm wrestling your friend.

He just has to work with them, though. My guess would be actually Knox because he's got all that leverage.

He's got the short arms and the leverage. That's a key. It may be an add on a latter part of that.

So if you saw that one of them were winning when you were arm wrestling them, would you kick one of them in the shin underneath the table to gain advantage?

I'm a pretty competitive guy. There you go. That's what I was looking for.

You play basketball, right? You play basketball. That's right. I play basketball. I might step on her toe. I don't know. Talk a little trash.

Well, if you wouldn't mind, just tell us a little bit and tell the audience about how CrossPolitik got started.

How did it begin? Yeah. So in 2016, actually, it actually goes back to 2015.

CrossPolitik started in 2016, but in 2015, I was looking at my church, kind of scanning my church and looking at the gifts.

People know my community well. They know Pastor Doug Wilson and they know Canon Press. We have a really good preaching ministry here, teaching ministry,

Canon Press, book writing, author ministry, a lot of blogging around here.

So we got all these gifts that I don't really have. So I was kind of looking around at my church and like, where could

I maybe contribute? Where could I help? I serve as a deacon at my church, but I had some more desires beyond that.

And I looked around and I was like, well, no one's doing radio. And so my initial dive into this was actually just to try to get into the radio business and just do my own radio show and kind of through research and through various,

I applied to like our local, what, NPR news radio stations here.

And of course, when I put Jesus Lord over the show, the show title, I would never hear back from them.

I'd call all these local stations. I'd call these local stations. They'd be like, oh, we got all sorts of hours. Please, please propose a show to us.

And so they would never get back to me. And so I started researching podcasts. I think it was about three or four radio stations that I submitted a show proposal ideas to, and all of them at some level were saying, yeah, we got availability and never got back.

So I started looking into podcasts and found some good examples like Apologia and found some other good examples of podcasts that I wanted to, you know, that I said, okay, this could work.

This could be a good medium for declaring the Lordship of Christ over, over all of life.

And, and then, so I even started doing my own interviews all by myself. I interviewed Chief Justice Roy Moore before he got defrocked from the bench in Alabama.

It was a great time with him. He's, you know, very articulate. Interviewed a couple others on my own and started kind of learning about myself in this, in this process and where my gifts lie or we're at.

And I realized, I don't think I could carry an audience by myself for an hour. And so that's when

I was like, well, I need a co -host. I need someone to help. And so I tapped

Pastor Toby and Toby was instant, easy to talk into doing this. He's like, oh yeah,

I'm in let's do it. And then it took about four months to talk

Knox into joining us. If you know any of Knox's backstory, he produced

Todd Frill, The Wretched for seven years. He'd been in the business for a long time. So he knew what it took to, to go somewhere.

And me and Toby were just thinking, hey, we're just going to hang out and talk on the mic with each other. You know, that's all we're going to do. But Knox knew what it would take to go somewhere.

And it was, he knew how long of the process it would take to get to be a, an established show that people would actually listen to.

And so Knox, I think at first just said, no, like I asked him, he said, no, I don't want anything to do with it.

Leave me alone. Don't call me about this ever again. He was actually really nice about it. And so me and Toby, you know, in our planning process, we, we started, we realized we really did want a third person.

Knox was a good fit for that. So we kind of went back to him and brought, this time we brought Knox into Toby's office, his past, the pastor's office.

And if you know the weight of what it means for a black man to walk in the pastor's office, it's a heavy process for them.

And so Knox came into pastor's office. And so we, basically, man, we spent the first 30 minutes, 45 minutes just talking about the show concept, what we want to do.

And we all had a really good dialogue. I mean, it just became really natural, really quick.

And so when Knox, after Knox talking to us for 45 minutes, I think he started being convinced

I need to participate. I need to do this. It was just such a natural fit for all three of us. So Knox decided to start

CrossPolitik with us. And we wanted to start CrossPolitik specifically because the church, we don't think the church has done a very good job, at least in my generation,

I'm 42 years old. So at least in my generation has done a very good job discipling at the church and how to think about politics.

All the Christian discipleship about politics has been happening outside the church, either through like the moral majority in the 80s or through some sort of weird conservatism with Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, all these guys kind of became like the political pastors for the conservative movement.

And Christians were not hearing about discipleship of politics from the pulpit. And so that's why we specifically started

CrossPolitik because we wanted to kind of, we want to declare the Lordship of Jesus Christ over everything, politics, family, life, culture, sports, every topic.

And particularly, I think politics was really lacking discipleship. So that's why we wanted to hit that specific issue and topic.

And we hope to do it for the rest of our lives as God gives us time and ability to do what we're doing with CrossPolitik.

So that's how CrossPolitik started. It dropped, its first episode dropped in September, 2016.

And I still have not mustered the courage to go listen to the first couple of episodes. Oh, are you serious?

You've not listened to them? I've not re -listened to them. I can't do it yet. Someday. Someday you'll do it.

Well, I remember you all saying though, previously, a year or two ago, about folks that you're all bringing onto the network, throw away the first five episodes that you do and pretend like they don't exist, right?

Something to that effect. And we didn't do that. So those episodes were after we threw away the first five episodes.

Oh, we did. Yep. So would you say, I mean, just in our experience as well, have you noticed that it just seems like most of the church honestly just kind of unplugs from the whole politic area?

It's like the church is here. We get out of the church, then it's the world. And it's like these whole designations where we're not really proclaiming

Christ's Lordship. Have you seen that throughout your ministry for the most part? Yeah. And I think there's a number of factors that are playing into that,

I believe. But I think kind of one of the basic factors playing into that is that the church has certain

Bible verses that they're embarrassed of. And so if you're embarrassed about certain texts, if you're nervous about what certain texts say and the implications of what it means to follow

Jesus because of those texts, then I think there's going to be certain topics out in the world that you're going to be hesitant to apply the

Bible to. Give us a poor example. Well, I mean, gosh,

I mean, there's a number of texts, you know, homosexuality, the text on homosexuality, the church is very hesitant to talk about homosexuality.

Bible verses on headship and submission. The church is very hesitant. I mean, every time

I hear a sermon on Ephesians chapter five, I think I feel like the pastor spends the first 20 minutes apologizing for the text, but then says, but this is what it says, husbands, you're the leader of the family, kind of thing.

And then I think, I mean, this is a hard one,

I think, for people to swallow. Our Baptist brothers tend to view this a little differently. So I think there's some room there, but not very much.

The faithful children of pastors with faithful children. I mean, how many PK children have a name for themselves because there is a problem there?

How many pastors have unfaithful children in their house or raised unfaithful children and are still in the pulpit? We've basically interpreted that verse to have no implications on pastoral qualifications.

Because if he's in the house, he's not an unbeliever. If he's acting up, he's not really an unbeliever, he's still in the house, but then he leaves the house and it's not an unbeliever anymore.

And then we say, well, he's of age, he's of his own age. So at no point does faithful children really play into the qualifications of an elder or pastor in our church.

And so we're dealing with, I mean, women in the military, women in leadership.

I mean, the laundry list is long and now you can add to that plagiarism.

Yeah. Oh my goodness. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's been a mess.

I mean, I don't know what's going to happen with that. I'm not sure if anything is because it's such a, it's such a political mess, but how in the world someone survives that?

I do not know. Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, this just goes to show you that the church can't even deal with their own politics well.

The only, you know, that should be easy to deal with. I mean, when you plagiarize a sermon, you should, I mean, you're doing a number of things there and it is connected,

I think, to the moral ability of the pastor to deliver God's word on Sunday. I think you should step down.

I don't think it's not that hard to me to make that decision, but you're right.

It's political. And there's, I think the other layer to the Southern Baptist Convention is you have factions that are vying for power.

And so that's why they would rather have the power with the plagiarism, uh, than lose the power.

So that's, that's what they've chosen. Sweep it up under the rug. Yeah. When there's so many other sins involved, there's theft, there's lying.

I mean, it goes on and on. It did deception. Plus, what does it say for the man that's supposed to be shepherding that flock?

The man that's supposed to be looking out for the souls of the, of the men, the women, the boys, and the girls that he's overseeing.

It shows a lack of concern and a lack of care for them. Well, and what was amazing was if you actually take time to look at the sermon, there, there are illustrations that J .D.

Greer had used himself, you know, as personal. And, and Ed Litton used them as if they were his, like,

I don't know how I could stand up and take a message you wrote, Gabe, and tell it as if I lived it.

I mean, that, that is the ultimate deception to take the pulpit and to use it that way. I mean, even

Greer though, even Greer was lying about his personal experience in that. If you've, if you've looked into that, he was taken,

I can't remember who it was. Yeah. Paul trip, a story Paul trip told and making it his own.

And of course he claims he's been in the same spot, felt the same emotions and all that stuff. So I'm happy to listen to his explanation and just say, until I have more evidence,

I won't think otherwise. But the plagiarism thing, I mean, you're this pastor supposed to be cooking and preparing meals for your congregation and you're calling up dominoes to bring the pizza.

Yup. Yup. Yup. Exactly. So what, what would you say, Gabe motivates you guys to just keep pressing on with the tough issues that are coming up almost daily?

What, what motivates you guys to just keep going and being faithful? Man, I, I'll never forget.

So I grew up in the PCA church, Presbyterian church, had a pretty good foundation, but my heart wasn't really,

I was always a Christian, but I wasn't all out for Christ really until I came to Moscow.

When I came to Moscow, like God just put all this theology into my heart.

I had all this, um, kind of knowledge in my head and it wasn't even that coherent of a, of a biblical worldview, but just sitting under the pastor or the teaching of pastor

Wilson really, um, assembled a lot of the parts for me and put some meat on my bones. And one of the things he said that was so simple, this is back in like 2002, 2003.

Uh, one of the things that he said was resolved to never have a problem Bible verse resolved to never have a verse that you have to apologize for.

Now, um, you might not know how to understand the whole Bible. Some of Paul's writings were pretty tough as Peter said.

So there's, you know, some, there's some verses in the old Testament that are pretty tough to understand, but don't apologize for it.

Maybe you don't quite know exactly what the Bible says or what that verse is saying, but at least don't be embarrassed of it and don't apologize for it.

And that for me was really helpful just to, just to anchor my teeth into that principle.

So when something does happen or some, some unbeliever brings up a crazy Bible verse that is crazy, uh,

I, I'm not embarrassed of it. I'm like, yeah, God, God said that he put in his word, I need to figure out what it says.

Um, but I'm not going to apologize to an unbeliever about it. That's for sure. And so when we know that we're standing, and so that, that applies to kind of and all the controversies we've been kind of wrapped up into or all the fights we've been in.

Um, well, I'm, I hope every step of the way I'm standing on God's word and I'm not embarrassed of God's word.

I'm not apologizing for it. I'm leaning into it. And, and we're seeing the evangelical world just is, is kind of getting embarrassed of the

Bible. They have to deal with verses on homosexuality. And now you have the transgender movement and now you have this big movement based on feelings and you hate people if you don't accept them for who they are, you know, kind of thing.

So, so standing on the word of God, you know, it really is a blessing and a protection. And so I don't,

I don't think we don't really cross politic. We don't really, um, I think consider the calculation of what the world would think.

And we, we, what we do is we want to consider what does the Bible say and then let the chips fall where they may because that's where I'm going.

Yeah. Well, that, that comes through in basically everything you do. And I, and I have to say,

I know for myself and many folks at our church, um, you guys are such an encouragement, you know, to stand.

And I mean, my goodness, when, when you guys had the guy on from revoice, you know, yeah, man,

I mean, you could, you could cut the tension with a knife and there you are. I mean, you know, Toby's are just giving him the gospel and just,

I mean, for, for people who are age, I I'm exactly your age. And so I, I relate in this way, you know, feelings have become our guide rather than sacred scripture.

And so when we can see examples of godly men who are not apologetic towards the scriptures, but instead stand upon them, that encourages a whole generation.

And I just, I mean, I know you, you get that at the conference and you get that. I'm sure you get some encouragement, but I just want you to know that your, your reach goes everywhere and you are a blessing to many brother.

Thank you. And we've said this on the show before, um, courage begets courage.

And, and that, I mean, first our foundation for courage is found in the scriptures found in Jesus going and dying on the cross for our sins.

You know, the courage, courage from Christ, courage from God's word, really does beget more courage.

And then when you see, you know, like James Coates or pastor Tim Stevens, just stand up.

I mean, like how courageous do you feel when you see that brother go into jail on your behalf, on, on the, on the behalf of Christ's body?

Like that's, that's very, um, uh, encouraging and it's really plants courage into other believers as they watch this, this man of God, take a, take a huge stand.

So when I, I'll never forget that moment when Toby on that show told Greg, Hey, you need to repent and not host this conference.

You need to shut that conference down and, you know, just sitting there next to Toby and I'll get another little, yeah,

I'm bragging on Toby a little bit. Um, when I got arrested last year for singing Psalms and protesting and exercising my first amendment rights, which is still crazy to say, uh, when

I arrested last year, I'm, um, you know, got handcuffs on, I'm fixing to go in the back of a cop car and Toby, uh, walks over to the police officers and just starts rebuking them.

Like, like I'll never forget that moment because most pastors would probably have been apologizing.

Hey, we'll work this out later. Don't worry, Gabe. Um, you know, well, you know, officers, we appreciate your service here on the streets.

Thanks for everything you're doing. We want to back the blue. Um, and, uh, you know, what a blessing to know your pastor has your back.

Like I can't imagine what that's done for you, you know, personally. I mean, obviously, you know, you love them already, but just to see the proof in the pudding, when you, when you're, when you need your pastor, he totally stood up for you.

Like, what a blessing. Well, I know, I know going to go into that gel that night. I, you know,

I, I didn't think I was going to be in there for 36 days, like James codes was. So I wasn't, I didn't, you know, suffer for the kingdom in any sort of extent, like James or, or pastor

Stevens out, but I knew going even in that moment, um, the way pastor Toby was talking, um,

I was going to be okay. I was going to be backed up and my family was going to be taken care of. My wife was going to be called, you know, all those things.

It's very, just that small little kind of, uh, rebuke that Toby was doing with the police officers was just had enormous effect.

Praise the Lord. I mean, I think, I mean, you, one thing else that before you, before you go on,

I've got to just say this, but like another thing that I appreciate that I've, that I've heard in your response is, um, the beauty of the way

Doug paints a Christian worldview that reaches in every area of life.

Like, you know, I heard about, you know, when you were talking about how your views grew, um, that's what it's done for us too.

Like, you know, when you grow up and just plain Baptist life, you know, this is, this is this container where you put church, you know, this is how you act here.

This is how you act here. But he has shown many, and I can't imagine what a blessing it is to sit under him.

You know, just the fact that Christ does deserve Lordship. He has purchased that Lordship in every area of life.

Yeah. That decompartmentalizing Christianity, uh, that's a term I've thought of for throughout the years.

That's so important because our Chris as Christians, we're not just, we don't just affect our family.

We affect the people we work with. We affect the people that we go to school with. We, we affect the people we go to Walmart with.

We affect everybody in our choices and our decisions that we make on a day to day basis have eternal value.

But so few people consider that. So few. That's right. That's right. Amen. All right.

So speaking of, um, so, you know, you, you, you, you were posing all those challenging, uh, uh, scriptures that, you know,

Christians are veer away from and themes and topics, speaking of challenging topics.

So y 'all are going to be doing a, uh, having another conference, right? Fat life feast conference.

So real quick here, we're going to play the promo that we made, um, for the conference.

And when we come back, Gabe, if you would, uh, just give us the, uh, the why that, uh, of the politics of sex.

Sound good. Very good. All right. Let's play it.

Yeah. So the sexual revolution was an explosive, explosive revolution.

He was not simply a rearrangement of the furniture. That's a great beat you had there.

Thanks for putting that together. Hey, you're welcome. You're welcome. Thanks for letting us use it. Um, uh, so why, why the politics of sex,

Gabe? Yeah. So, um, sex applies, it matters in every area of our, our lives.

I mean, just from, you know, he being here, cause my, my parents, right. Um, to, uh, what happens, uh, out in the world, you know, now

I'm, uh, my, my parents had me, um, through covenantal marriage and faithful marriage.

They raised me in the knowledge of fear of the Lord. And then, and then now I'm having, um, kids with my wife and we're raising our kids and knowledge

So it, it has, it's just, um, very practical in what it means to the world.

And, and Christians have forgotten it in some sense, uh, for Christians to take over, you know,

Knoxville. Um, all you gotta do is have faithful kids. It's, it, it should technically, you know, of course,

God's blessing needs to be upon it, all that stuff. A work of salvation needs to be happening in your children's life. But just, you know, from a, if you think about if parents are faithfully raising their kids, well, the world doesn't really have kids.

They, they might have two kids. If that they, if they don't have kids, they're aborting their kids.

You know, like it should just be a pretty easy numbers game for Christians to take over Knoxville or Moscow, Idaho.

Um, so from, uh, we need to reestablish kind of a practical vision of what it means, um, of what faithful covenantal marriages look like.

In addition to that, um, uh, the, the, um, uh, negative uses of sex, the sinful uses of sex have ramifications all over the world, right?

I mean, from homosexuality to transgenderism to, uh, you know, um, the world's view of sex is fruitless.

Homosexuality is a hundred percent fruitless. Transgenderism is a hundred percent fruitless. They, they cannot take over the world.

And so we need to recover, uh, the politics of sex, sex is inherently political.

What happens in your bedroom will come out in the streets, either through faithful children or unfruitfulness.

So that's why the politics of sex conference, I think is so important, uh, to what is going on in our current cultural context.

So what are some of the, uh, the topics that's going to be addressed at the conference? Yeah. Um, so pastor

Toby, he's going to kick off the conference on Friday morning. So we, we, we kick off all our conferences with beer and Psalm sings and punch for the kids and stuff like that.

That's Thursday night. And then, uh, it's a great time learning to sing Psalms, learning to sing with the, with the church, with the people of God and, um, eating food and drinking beer and punch for the kids.

It's a blast. So, but Friday morning, the conference will kick off with pastor Toby's talks called Molotov family, you know,

Molotov cocktail and the family really is in a nuclear explosion. And, uh, you know, how we view the family in that, in that, with that idea in mind that your family should be an explosion of faithfulness to the world.

Um, so Molotov families, uh, really, uh, that's a great title. We had some other titles that we can't make public on that.

You're going to be announcing some of them, right? Yeah. Votie Votie is next.

He's coming on after, after Toby and his, his topic is critical sex theory, how to keep Marks and Freud out of your bedroom.

And that we're trying to, you know, Votie's lane that he's been in this last year has been critical race theory.

And we wanted to get them out of that lane. And so, but we thought critical sex theory is, is a great way to kind of tie everything together.

He's been doing this last year, but really hit it, hit a new lane with talking about sex and family and so forth.

He's the man. He's a good one. Bring it around town. When I texted

Votie that, that topic, he just, all he sent me was a laugh emoji. He didn't even know what to say. He's like, all right,

I guess I'm doing it. Uh, and then we got Doug TenNapel. I don't know if you guys know who

Doug TenNapel is. He's kind of a, uh, uh, he's a, our artist Earthworm Jim.

He invented Earthworm Jim, a number of video games, a number of, uh, um, uh, anime. Um, he's a real, uh, intelligent

Christian artist. And so he's going to talk about lies in the prophetic poet.

Art is full of lies. Um, art has impacted everything. Um, I'm probably summarizing his talk wrongly based on what he's going to do, but, uh, but, um, our, we've been lied to consistently in our culture.

And in the last year, the lies are just mounting like crazy, um, with everything, how we understand the pandemic to how we understand voter

ID is racist somehow. Um, you know, so, uh, uh, lies and the prophetic poet really excited about Doug TenNapel.

He's gonna, he's just got a great angle on things. Um, and really interesting. And you've got, uh, Greg Bonson, David Bonson, not

Greg, his dad's Greg, David, David Bonson coming in to talk about, apparently.

So the first conference we had him speak at his talk was, um, uh, uh, uh, punk rock, something, something punk rock.

And, and in this conference, we're having him speak on punk rock economics. So every, every conference we're going to have him talk at, it's going to have some, something to do with punk rock, punk rock home economics.

Um, uh, you know, the family is the foundation for all economic activity.

And the family is just, you know, Molotov family. It's, it's such a powerful means of how

God, uh, calls Christians to take over the worlds through family, through the gospel, through family.

Uh, and so, um, economics has everything to do with that. So it's going to be, it's gonna be really good. And then lastly, pastor

Wilson is going to come and talk about gay pulpits, the politics of, of sodomy, transgenderism, uh, feminism and unfaithful children.

It's that unfaithful children I talked about earlier, uh, in, in, in, uh, elders and pastors in the church and everything.

So that's the first day. The second day we're doing what we call SWAT talks, strategic weapons and tactics talks.

And the goal is we got, you know, two or three people are going to be on stage with various backgrounds, but we're pairing the topics, pairing the presenters in a way where we really want the topics to have a lot of meat ground level application for our, our people.

We want people to come to the top and come to these kinds of conferences. We want them to feel overwhelmed, encouraged, and excited about how to go home and impact their local cities and churches.

And so the SWAT talks are kind of geared towards that. We have sheologians talking about feminism. We have, um, my friend,

Rob, Zach Latenschlager, and, uh, Dennis Sofarty, um, talking about, uh, all people matter, but it's, it's a very, um, interesting way of talking about that issue because it's talking about right now, we're experiencing a demographic decline in our country and in the world in a lot of ways, because we aren't having enough babies to, to eventually we're going to hit a moment where we weren't going to have enough babies here in America to be able to keep our own demographic, um, uh, presence here in the

United States. And we're going to have to import in, you know, other cultures, import in other people to be able to maintain the demographic presence that we need based off our tax burden, based off our military, all that stuff.

So we have a real problem here in the U S with kind of what we call a sans dimmick. And of course, abortion is connected to that.

And then political strategies are all connected to that. So really excited for Rob, Zach and Dennis on that.

So that's a number of SWAT talks, a number of interesting angles, um, for Saturday morning.

And then we're going to do a live show with Votie Barkham, Pastor Wilson on Saturday afternoon. That'll wrap up the whole, the whole live cross politics show.

That'll wrap up the whole conference and everything. And then we're going to end with a big dinner, big Sabbath feast on Saturday night. We've got a bunch of food trucks pulling up, uh, on Saturday night and everyone, um, we'll have a, hopefully a good time eating food and hanging out together.

So Amen. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I think this is obviously much, much needed in the topic is,

I mean, it couldn't come at a better time. I, I just think personally when, when I do premarital counseling, when

I'm talking to young couples, it's, if there's so many wrongheaded ideas of sex, you know, even

I've always got to fight like there, there's the, um, there's the parents who have been, you know, very rule -based and the, and the kids are afraid of, you know, what that means.

And then there's also the others who just don't, don't understand the gift that it is. So it's when I tell them that it's, that's our spiritual worship when it's done in the correct context that it honors

God and that we're to be fruitful and multiply. Right. It, it's almost like their eyes open big because you know, they've had this distorted view to where sex has been used to sell a cheeseburger their whole life.

You know what I mean? And they've, or they've been ashamed and they're so afraid of it. So it's been, I just going to say,

I can't imagine how well -timed this is. And I think it's going to be a blessing for the body. Yeah. They've, they've been basically taught that sex, even though, uh, is desired, it's ugly, but sex is beautiful.

So according to the scriptures. Well, and one of the things, I don't know how you guys practice at your church, but, uh, one of the things that we do at our churches, we have a family integrated worship service where we have the toddlers in there.

We have, we don't have a nursery really at our church. We have a room where mothers or fathers might need to go if their kid gets a little loud, but, um, uh, we don't really, we have family integrated worship and that's our conferences are geared that way.

And, and it's super important, even on the hard topics like politics of sex, we want the whole family to be there.

We want parents to be discussing this with their kids. We want, um, what better way, what better place for the kids to learn about sex through their parents.

And so we want to create a family integrated conference in such a way that it encourages. So we've had a lot of parents ask,

Hey, can I bring my kid? It's like, it's, it's all, there's no double X stuff, triple X stuff going.

Yeah. It might be PG 13, but you need to explain that to your kids anyways. You know?

Um, and so, uh, I think, I think you're exactly right. You know, I want my kids to grow up in a culture where it's like, man, we just been talking about the biblical worldview of sex my whole life.

And it is what it is. Yeah. All right.

All right. So, um, thank you for sharing about that real quick here. Let's, let's take a, another, about a one minute break and we'll come back.

We'll close our time together. You got about 10, 15 more minutes. Are we good? 10 to 15 more minutes.

Yes, sir. All right. I will go ahead and play this and then we'll be right back. So we are back and we, this wouldn't be a complete episode if we didn't interview all and talk to talk, talk to cross politic, talk to Gabe branch, talk to Chuck Knox, talk to Toby Sumter, talk about Doug Wilson.

It wouldn't be complete unless we bring up post -millennialism, right? So important.

So, so let's talk about, let's talk about why the post -millennial view of eschatology is the correct view for Presbyterians and reformed

Baptists, as well as all other denominations. So can you, can you speak to that game?

Just name it and claim it. Well, because practically speaking, um, uh, everything that God has set us out to do is a post -mill command.

So when God calls us to be fruitful, multiply and have children, we, we do that because we're actually post -mill in practice.

When God calls us to plant churches, uh, disciple the nations to go door to door with evangelism, uh, we're doing all that because we're actually post -mill in practice.

We believe the promises of God. We believe that the meek will inherit the earth.

And so we go and disciple the nations. You know, God promises the meek will inherit the earth.

What is, what is that? That that's post mill. And we, when, when I, when we raise our kids and the knowledge and fear of the

Lord, when we disciple our children, we're doing that because we believe the promises of God and we believe that the gospel is effective not only in my children's hearts, but in this world.

And so when God commanded or when God promised Abraham that your descendants will be like the sand on the seashore, um, if Abraham came back today, what do you think?

Do you think he would be post -mill? He had one child and look at the, look at the, you know, there's about 2 billion

Christians here on this, on this world now, you know, think of, think of Paul when, when, um, you know, he's talking, you know, um, you know, he's spreading the gospel throughout all of, you know, um,

Judea, Samaria and beyond. And, and, and then if he came back today, hands down, he'd be post -mill.

I mean, he would, there's a, you know, I'm, I'm from Texas originally. And there's, there's a church on every corner of the street, practically in Texas.

It's like Starbucks. And if, and if Paul's walking and seeing all these, you know, um, synagogues all over the place, all these churches all over the place, he, he would not be thinking like, oh man, we're losing, you know, we need to just get our frozen chosen and get out of here.

No, he would, he would be looking at all these churches. Yeah. Man's fallen. The church is not doing,

I think the church is not doing very well right now. I think we're, we're in a, we're in a definitely in decline for sure.

But, um, if you trace, you know, from when Jesus died and looked at how many

Christians there are now, you know, Jesus left this earth, but there's maybe, you know, a couple hundred Christians on this earth when Jesus left.

And then look at now, we would say that's, that's a post -mill vision of the gospel. There's billions of Christians on earth now.

Um, and, and God's word is being fulfilled before our eyes over this historical context.

Yep. And, and I would, I would go so far as to even challenge the statement that you made, the condition of the church.

It's that probably, I think there's a distinction that needs to be made there. The, the, the true church is perfect.

It's in perfect health. It's the, it's the false church. It's those who are, um, um, placating a false

God of their own imagination that is really, really facing the issues.

The true church of Jesus Christ, of course, you know, it, and that's the post -mill view. We are so certain of the gospel of, and because of what

Jesus said that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. And probably the heart and the root of, uh, of,

I would say a good, solid post -millennial view is just the basic understanding above all else that Jesus Christ is

Lord, not that he will be, but that he is Lord.

I think in the same way that I said earlier to, you know, resolve to have no problem passages in the

Bible. Um, that was what my pastor taught me. Um, you know, when I first got here, um, you know,

I credit him for that. I don't credit credit Ed Litton for that quote, um, you know, have no problem passages in the

Bible in the same way. Um, we need to resolve to believe God's promises. I feel like we, as the church have been gun shy on God's promises, um, in, in, in a way that it's, um, hindering us.

We got a rock in our shoe, walking down the street with a rock in our shoe. Uh, and we need to get that rock at our shoe and give, give, you know, uh, fully trusting

God and what he's doing in this world. And that his way is the right way. His, his way is the way to, you know, is the way the knowledge is going to spread like the waters cover the seat.

Exactly. And well, and the problem is we've discipled the world, right? You know, you know, with that rock in our shoe, rather than having a full, you know, gospel, uh, view of the world and the way it should operate, you know, we've, we've discipled them and we've discipled them.

Well, that church is secondary, you know, that fellowship doesn't really matter. Purity, you know,

Puritanism, that kind of idea is, you know, is old school. Um, so, so it's going to take some work, but I, the thing that was so attractive to me, even when

I was wrestling, I think everyone comes, you know, out of the oven pre -meal. I think,

I just think that's how you start, you know, and when you start listening to Pastor Doug and part of the fall of man, yeah, but the thing that, the thing that I loved is, is again, just how

Christ Lordship affects everything. And, and I know I remember telling my fellow elders and we're kind of wrestling through eschatology.

Um, I don't know, like if I can work through all these things with post -meal, but it's just the most fun.

Like, I just love it. It just encourages me. You know what I mean? And it just makes me want to attack.

I want it to be true. I don't, I don't even know if I can work it out, but I'm going to be this, you know.

But once you've, I mean, it's, it's, it's just like all the truths of the scripture.

Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. It's like the doctrines. Yeah. The doctrines of grace, so on and so forth.

You can't, you, once you, once it's there, it's there. And so you, I mean, it's virtually,

I mean, you have to be a full on stubborn, mule headed individual, whether you're man, woman, boy, or girl to, to look at the, at the futurist perspective in the premillennial view and say, that's, that's what the

Bible's saying. Well, it's, you can't do that. And it's sad because what you see is eschatology matters because you see people who are like, why rearrange chairs on a, you know, on a ship that's going down.

And it's so defeatist when, when the Christ, when Christ's kingdom is nothing but victory.

Exactly. Well, and it, you know, I think Knox, we haven't quite came up with Knox is doing a

SWOT talk with Gary DeMar and possibly a couple others. And it probably the, one of the working titles we've been kicking around is the eschatology of sex.

And, and include sex in there. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

And, but, you know, eschatology is really practical. What we view about the future, uh, well that has,

I think, um, uh, Charles Spurgeon said, if I knew the Lord was going to come back tomorrow,

I would plant a tree today. Yeah. In other words, you were supposed to be faithful where we're at right now, regardless of what happened might, might happen tomorrow.

If Jesus comes back tomorrow, we don't know the day and hour, but if Jesus comes back, well, that shouldn't have any bearing on what

I'm doing here on Tuesday afternoon. I should be planting a tree. I should be faithful because my, my

God, my commander's given me orders and I need to be a faithful soldier right here, right now.

And so we've actually allowed our eschatology to even impact on how we view

God's commands here and now in our lives and Christians. And this is why the family has become gotten so much in the background of how the

Christian should be viewing the church in the world is, is because what the church is doing, because their premium theology, they just want to get and rescue whoever they can all the men before Jesus returns, as opposed to raising children for 18 years.

That's a long time. That's a lot of work. You don't see fruit in that until, you know, 30 years old.

Um, and, and so instead of doing the hard work of raising family, we've allowed our eschatology to put us in the path of least resistance that most men tend to tend to veer off in.

Um, and, and then not, you know, they tend to veer off that way anyways, but then you give them a theological reason to do it.

And, and no wonder where we are, where we're at. Yeah. Well, with, with also eschatology, we think of something else that, um, that you guys proclaim, you know, intertwined with Jesus's Lordship over all things.

So why, why would you say in regards to theonomy, why does that matter?

Why was it, why does a view like that matter and how can it affect the church if it's adopted correctly?

Yeah. Um, I, now I understand the theonomy has that word, that terminology has some baggage with it and, and use that baggage is wrapped up in people's character and a movement's character.

And, and I understand that. Um, but I would say, you know, put all that aside, put the people baggage aside, um, from the word theonomy and, and just, you know, look at it in the sense of when we talk about theonomy, all we're doing is talking about God's law,

Theo Namas, God's law. And, and so, um,

I, God's law, David talks about God's law in Psalm 119 is just a blessing, like a blessing to him.

And it's a blessing because what other law would we want to live under? Would we want to live under man's law?

No, I want, I want to live on. God's law is a blessing. It's a protection. It's a, it's a, it's justice for the good and for those who are doing wickedness.

Um, so now I'm not, I'm happy to have discussions. Okay. How do we apply the old

Testament in light of Jesus' resurrection? That's a legitimate discussion. Um, you know, there's some good arguments and conversations to have around that.

But what I, I want to anchor my principle in, uh, my principle is that God's law applies to my whole life.

And with the right time comes someday, hopefully, Lord willing, God's law would apply to the city of Moscow.

Um, uh, you know, eventually in my post mill world, um, theonomy,

God's law will matter to Moscow, Idaho, to the mayor, to the cops, to the chief of police.

And, and, and that law will be the biggest blessing for our political structure.

Yeah. And God's law is a blessing. Exactly. And the, and the challenge does come,

I think for a lot of folks and, and I would have to say probably for all of us from time to time is that, uh, the general equity, the application of the general equity there, that's the, that's where I think a lot of folks have that, have that problem and have that challenge.

And, and, you know, it would be good for folks to just actually, you had mentioned the rock and the shoe and all that in Chesterton in orthodoxy.

Um, I think he's chapter four of orthodoxy. He makes a reference and a comment about, you know, how people think and how they act and the rock and the shoe is a good thing because it spurs us to keep going, right?

We get the rock out of our shoe and we keep going rather than thinking, Oh, I've got a rock in my shoe and I'm just going to stop where I'm at right now.

So how do I know, how do I know I'm being faithful to God? Well, I read his

Bible, you know, how do I know I'm obeying God as I read his Bible? How do I know what sins

I need to confess and seek forgiveness of? I read his Bible. And so, um, uh,

I think a lot of Christians in principle, if, if they were, if, if this conversation with, if you, once you strip out a lot of the baggage, a lot of the people baggage, a lot of the movement baggage and everything,

I think the conversation is really practical and really helpful and really good for Christians to be, to, to be having these conversations because we're getting into,

I mean, there's no way to solve the social justice problem without God's law. You can't do it.

And this is why a lot of Christians are getting all their tongues tied and getting all stuck on how to sort through this problem because they aren't really defaulting.

They aren't really leaning there. Their standard is not God's law. And, and so they're getting caught up in kind of this social justice movement because they don't have a way of sorting through reparations or sorting through racism or sorting through, uh, you know, um, systems that have been problems in the past and even presently.

Well, it's a, it's a fear of man over the fear of the Lord, right? Like it just seems like it's, it's taken over.

So, so in regards to all of that, all that we've spoke about, all that your ministry is about, all you're about, um, your church, everything, what advice, uh,

Gabe, would you give the church and also specifically fathers?

Like, what would you say as an encouragement to fathers maybe who've, you know, who've, who fell or, or just need some encouragement or, you know, direction?

What, what would you say? What's a word that you would give? Yeah. God, you know, um, lamentations, God's mercy is new every morning.

Amen. And God's, uh, forgiveness is, is new every morning.

God's grace is new every morning. So, you know, as a father, when you're coming to a realization that, man, maybe

I should be doing a better job discipling my family, or maybe I've dropped the ball on how I've loved my wife or led her or, you know, whatever convictions may be

God's stirring in your heart, confess it. And, and, um, you know, rest in God's mercies that are new every morning and then obey, you know, don't, don't wallow in your sin.

Don't wallow in your guilt. Give that over to God. Some sins are big, um, which require a lot of work here on earth to deal with and gain trust and so forth.

But, um, you know, set about, um, working and, and giving every day over to the

Lord, giving all your works, all your, all, everything that you're doing and offering it up to God, uh, and, and let him use you with your gifts and your abilities and where he has you at.

You know, not everyone's called to be a pastor. Not everyone's called to start a podcast. Not everyone's called to, you know, um, lead a conference or whatever.

Um, but you know, we need to recover. Christians need to recover the beauty of God's simple calling in their own lives with, with the gifts that God has given them and knowing that the kingdom is being worked out through you and where you're at and where God has you.

Um, but that can't happen unless if you're, if you're living in sin, um, you, well, you got that rock in your shoe.

If you're living in sin, you aren't going to be able to do this well. And so confess your sin.

God is faithful just to forgive and let that, that, that, uh, culture of grace, um, resonate in your family and come out and what you do

Monday through Saturday. Amen. Amen. Amen. Well, Gabe, we, uh, we want to thank you again for being with us.

Um, we're going to close here. Aaron's going to share the gospel in, in a minute and a half.

All right. And so, and we're going to, we're going to close out, but after Aaron shares the gospel here,

Gabe, uh, we'll play our outro. And if, if you, if you don't mind kind of hang on for just a minute and we'll stop the recording and we'll say our goodbyes after that.

Is that okay? You got it. All right. So Aaron, you go right ahead and share the gospel brother. Yes, sir.

Well, obviously we've talked a lot, uh, tonight about the brokenness of our world.

And I, I think all of us see it no matter, uh, if we're in church, uh, if we've never been in church in our entire lives, there, there's never been a time of depression and hurt like we've been going through now.

And there's an emptiness in our world and the church has the answer.

And then our, our prayer as pastors is that the world would turn to Jesus Christ.

Um, I thank God that he sent his son into this world, um, with the sovereign plan to not simply throw out a potentiality, but to come into this world to save his sheep, to call his children to himself.

And I would just encourage everyone, um, under the sound of our voices to turn to Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sin turned and experience his

Lordship through the forgiveness of sin that can only come through the cross of Jesus Christ, because he rose again to bring us victory so that we would not simply wait, uh, for a coming hope, but we can live today in that hope, sharing the gospel with others, sharing the good news that there is hope alone in the name of Jesus.

So what I would encourage all of us to do is to trust in him, turn from our sin and find the only freedom that there truly is.