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[Music]

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Pastor Wilson thanks so much for joining me again on the will Spencer podcast yeah good to be with you thank you for the invitation it's a no quarter

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November again and it's probably one of the most exciting novembers that we've had in a while so I think we have a lot to talk about today yeah this is a

0:32

nailbiter well so uh speaking of the nailbiter I think uh I want to real

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quick just start off by going into election election night so I was

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watching the returns uh with a bunch of friends and I was wondering like what it was like in the Wilson household as the

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returns were coming in I imagine that you were having a good chuckle maybe a few prayers of Thanksgiving and

0:54

supplication what was it what was it like for you guys at home as you were watching that uh we were um some some of

1:00

the kids were over dropping in and uh visiting we were checking the returns

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periodically back in the old days we used to turn the television on and just watch the television right but now

1:12

everybody just checks their websites uh periodically probably the most reliable

1:18

one uh being checked was poly Market the bedding the uh bedding site and uh

1:26

around 9 9:30 Pacific time um it which is normally when we go to bed uh it was

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looking it was not cinched uptight but it was looking really good so we felt

1:39

free to go to bed but then when I I got up to use the bathroom at 3 in the

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morning and I went and checked of course at three in the morning okay um so it was a

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very uh gratifying what it was apparent to me

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pretty early on which way it was was going MH and um and it wasn't settled

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but I was um pretty I felt pretty easy about it did you have any concern at all

Election 2020

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when the returns were kind of slowing down a little bit around uh nine o'clock that it seemed like people forgot how to

2:18

count around that time again maybe we're looking at a replay of 2020 yeah just in

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California Arizona too the the thing that um it the thing

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that is just beyond ridiculous to me is back in the day back in the days of

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paper ballots we had the results that night yeah right um from all over the

2:42

country that night and now we have uh machines that are way more expensive and

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not nearly as good it just uh one of one of the things I think that um the next

2:58

president Trump needs to do is there really needs to be a presidential task

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force on Election integrity and um and like best practices

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for uh for election for elections that cannot be

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um easily manipulated or rigged one of the problems last time one of the reason

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I'm I'm convinced there was massive cheating last time in 2020 but one of the reasons it was uh possible is we are

3:30

coming out of the lockdown com coming off of covid and the lockdown and a

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bunch of new procedures uh for voting um mail in you

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know uh early voting and all of the that sort of stuff uh were sort of uh jammed

3:49

on the states at the last minute or certain States and nobody had time

3:55

to uh figure out anything about what to do and this time it looked like there

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was there was um reasonable electoral oversight uh people knew what to expect

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uh so I think that was a trick that just worked one time yeah uh you posted your just a

Missing Democrats

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slaughterhouse take on the election which I want to get to but before that you posted the um you posted that graph

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uh the damning graph and the non nqn post and maybe we can talk a little bit

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about that because it seemed seems a lot of people are talking about the missing Democrats who didn't show up this time

4:33

statistical exaggerations and perhaps not maybe we can talk a little bit about that because it does seem like if Joe

4:40

Biden was so popular last time why was kamla Harris not so popular this time and other kind of kind of big questions

4:47

right you can't say that KLA was not popular because she's boring and tedious

4:53

because Biden was boring and tedious yes he was in other words um and he was he

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was ran his campaign from his basement um at least she was energetic and out

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there and and and talking in a in a way that he was not and so it seems to me

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that you can't say you can't explain why this dog didn't hunt well because then

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you have to explain why the other one did that's right so how like where did uh

Where did the drop off come from

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where did the drop off kind of come from I remember you know I voted in my

5:29

Precinct in here in Phoenix uh Central Phoenix in 2020 and I remember distinctly going into the uh the the

5:35

polling place which was in the builtmore nice part of town and I was handed to Sharpie which I had never been handed

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before in all my time voting it bled through it bled through the the ballot which I had never recalled voting all my

5:47

time in San Francisco that happening and so I was I walked away with the impression that something really funny

5:53

had happened because there was a strange err around the proceedings as well now I didn't feel that this time and I don't I

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don't know if anyone else did but it felt much more solid and much more real which frankly was unexpected yeah that

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that is uh correct I I think this was in the main more like what it ought to be

6:13

than 2020 was and I'm old enough to remember of course the the hanging Chads of Florida what year was that 2000

6:21

something like that bush Gore whatever Bush Gore was and I think I think it was uh I

6:27

think it was in that moment that it was kind of discovered that it was possible to game the American electoral system by

6:32

focusing on just a few key counties which I mean I remember watching the returns this time and I didn't really

6:38

see that happening in quite the same way right right so uh so I wanted to talk a

We have been given a reprieve

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little bit also about uh the schlosberg book with regard to with regard to this election because it seems that we've

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been given a little bit of a reprieve I remember um I think some of your writings had said that uh KLA would kind

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of be the end of the fourth quarter or something like that and uh and Trump would be and Trump would be something

7:04

less of that maybe you can use that you can represent that metaphor accurately for me yeah um the if I remember

7:11

correctly I was saying that uh if we go with kamla we are losing in the finals

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um with if we elect Trump we are winning in the semi-finals uh so if um because because

7:27

Trump has dramatically softened his stance on uh life issues on abortion and

7:34

they're signaling in various ways the uh uh the first lady elect has um put out

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the video on that was uh sort of soft uh pro-choice um and JD Vance backed away

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from his previous uh uh pro-life position for the sake of qualifying uh

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to be the vep um things like that indicated to me that there's going to be

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some collisions uh within the Trump Coalition

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um because a lot of the people in that Trump Coalition were there from the first time and they were there from the

8:14

first time because of Trump's commitment to U appoint conservative judges so um I

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think there's going to be some sort of uh Showdown uh between Trump and some

8:28

Trump supporters and which I trust uh I'm anticipating that that Showdown will happen behind

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closed doors I don't I don't think there's going to be a firefight out in public

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but I think that what we need would be a handful of senators who would say we're

8:48

not going to vote for any scotus nominee uh that's to the left of Alo or or

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Thomas okay so so you so as opposed to 16 where if I recall Trump seemed to

Trumps deal with evangelicals

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make a deal with evangelicals if you vote for me I'll give you Supreme Court Justices that voting happened the deal

9:08

was made he followed through he gave the justices an overturned row and it seemed this time that the Evangelical influence

9:15

was was uh greatly diminished compared to where it had been but you still think that there will be a collision behind

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closed doors around around the life issue yeah you have to um B basically

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the first time around the evangelicals had something to deal with so I think

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Trump is a transactional businessman he believes in deals and he

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doesn't believe in the Life issue or at least not with understanding um but he does believe in deals right um and he

9:46

keeps them so if he makes it if he makes a transaction with with a German bank or

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with Elon or with evangelicals he keeps the deal but in order to make the deal

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in 2016 the evangelicals had to have something to deal with they had to have

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something to offer that might not come through if they didn't offer it and that

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would be their support in the Gen that would be their support in the election um after that first go around and after

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things went hard left on the Democratic side I think that Trump calculated

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pretty fairly that he had the Evangelical vote locked in baked in

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anyway and there was not there was not much for us to deal with what are we

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going to what are we going to offer and I think that um what has to happen is if

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he wants to put forward a a particular nominee for uh a federal court or for

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the Supreme Court uh three three Republican

10:51

Senators could say we're not going to vote for this guy because he's soft on abortion and that would drop I'm not

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sure what the final margin of us holding the Senate is but whatever it would take to drop below U 50% that that withheld

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support from those three senators or th the Gang of Five or whoever it is that would be something to negotiate

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with you know we're we're happy to support your nominees just give us nominees like you did the first

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time so okay so the actual leverage point for evangelicals won't necessarily be withholding the vote uh like it was

The leverage for evangelicals

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in in 2016 it will be more uh leverage applied directly to Senators to hold up the the nomination process for justices

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that will uh maintain row perhaps being at the state level that's seems to be where Trump is at right and that's and I

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believe that he's he's the kind of person who would respect a straight

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up-the-middle offer you know um no funny business no

11:57

games no being cute just saying No this is where we are this is where we've always been this is what we're after and

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we're happy to support you for uh for the office of President uh but we can't

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go against what we believe so a question about that but

Most excited about Trump presidency

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there's there's obviously a lot to be uh concerned about with a trump presidency particularly around the life issue but

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what are you most excited about and and I think um I'm interested in an answer both as a minister but also as a as a

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grand grandfather and great-grandfather so you're looking in sort of your professional role as a shepherd of a

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town essentially and many more but as a as a as a grandfather and a great-grandfather what makes you the

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most excited about a trump presidency or this term the the thing that uh that

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excites me the most about what could be uh happening positively and there are a

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number of them but quite frankly I think the thing that excites me the most is the coming deregulation

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business I think that that this is something Trump has to do to um protect

13:05

the economy because I think liberals will try to crash the economy so uh so

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they can blame him for it yeah and I think that if if the regulations that

13:16

are currently constricting American industry and American Business were lifted I think there would be an

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explosion of a good kind uh um where I

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and I believe it would uh sort of liberate a lot of funds and in the

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kingdom of God we're going to need funds we're going to be we're going to be planting churches planting schools we I

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I believe that we have a window of two to four years here uh to get ready for the next big collision with the left and

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um as my son Nate put it to me once he said money is bullets

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um and so consequently uh I believe that if Trump acts shrewdly and i' I've heard

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that he's committed to in this term in the first term he said for every new regulation imposed you have to remove

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two um and I heard that he had said something similar only this time it's

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four uh for every new regulation you have to remove four regulations uh

14:24

that's the thing that excites me more than anything else yeah I think that was probably that was the thing for me that was the most

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exciting was the economic possibilities that would become open to people that wouldn't be possible under a Harris

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presidency right because I think that that what that does is that uh that

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issue that I care about connects to all the other issues that I care about well okay so it seems to me that

Mindset shift

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we're coming out of an era of evangelicalism which is a little bit before my time admittedly that's that

14:58

has a very different perspective on economic issues with regard to the life of the Christian I'm thinking of the

15:03

book Radical by David Platt which I haven't read but certainly people have been talking about it lately so maybe

15:09

you can talk a little bit about the mindset shift that may be required for some Christians who have been used to thinking about things in terms of

15:14

perhaps a poverty gospel is the term that I've heard or perhaps thinking maybe wealth is too worldly instead of

15:21

thinking of it in earthy terms uh yeah this is actually a perennial issue among

15:27

evangelicals it's the book covers change and the authors change but the debate Remains the Same

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um back in the 70s H the the hot book at that time was rich Christians in an age

15:41

of hunger and by Ron cider and uh which

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which was a you know just a typical leftist thing

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and the first reconstruct the first book that I ever read by a Reconstructionist

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uh was a guy named David shilton and he wrote a a response to David Chilton um

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called productive Christians in an age of guilt manipulators perfect so that's the

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that's the um matchup you either feel guilty for your wealth or you feel

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grateful for your wealth um now the the issue is the I

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mean the Bible's full of warnings about how people can sin with riches and how

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how they can become self-sufficient and and forget God and uh jesuan waxed fat

16:38

and kicked that that that really is a scriptural warning but in scripture the

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issue is never the wealth but rather the heart okay it's the um God blesses in

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Deuteronomy uh God blesses his people with wealth and then warns them you're going to be tempted to forget me because

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you've been dazzled by this blessing that I gave you right uh so we remember uh we focus

17:07

on the gift and forget the giver well uh the Communist mentality the leftist

17:12

mentality the collectivist mentality is always and everywhere a zero Su approach

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uh and it's it's driven by Envy which means that we have a fixed piece of pie

17:24

and that means that if you get a bigger piece of pie that means I necessarily get a small piece of

17:30

pie more for you means less for me more for me means less for you that's how the

17:37

Communists always think and so they say we need we need a sheriff we need uh we

17:43

need someone to oversee the cutting of the pie comrade and so they volunteer to oversee

17:49

the cutting of the pie and then they take the pie and and there we all are um

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so in a free market system which I believe the Bible teaches and encourages

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and Fs uh the pie grows you know uh would I rather have 5%

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of a huge pie or 50% of a teeny pie right Absolut so if we are living

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Covenant under God's blessing uh the pie grows and that means more for me means

18:23

more for you so an employer comes in he's got a great idea he's an

18:29

entrepreneur he implements it and first thing you know he's hiring 15 people to

18:35

man the shop and it's more for him more for them more for everyone uh the rising

18:41

tide floats all the boats so uh this is I think a fundamental issue that

18:48

separates uh the leftist mentality from the conservative mentality uh do we

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believe that we do we believe that God is a scrooge or do we believe that God is overflowing with

19:02

generosity Amen to that uh so I think then the the question becomes uh my my

Eschatology

19:08

question is about eschatology that it that it still seems to be an uphill battle to convince people of sort of a

19:15

maybe a post-millennial hope to say that there is a future worth fighting

19:21

for that is exactly right um and and there's a a hazard in it because um the

19:29

Christians but basically you become a if somebody becomes a Christian one of the first things that happens is the cocaine

19:35

bill goes way down um let's hope right and then he gets

19:42

married he becomes a responsible dad and he's got to provide for his kids and so forth um and so this is this is true of

19:51

every form of Bible believing Christian whether they're postmill or aill or Prem

19:57

or dispensational what whatever um they they live sober decent clean lives which

20:04

generally speaking is conducive to wealth acquisition right if um if you if you

20:12

were if you went into a um an impoverished area in order to conduct

20:17

evangelism and your evangelism was very successful and you established churches

20:23

uh and the people there were getting sober and getting cleaned up and getting married and doing this one of the first

20:30

things that's going to emerge from that is a middle class that that's what's going to happen

20:37

um and so uh that regardless of eschatology that's going to happen the

20:45

the difficulty is when you if you're a dispensational premil Christian uh

20:51

you're you're clean and sober and living a a reasonable life but you don't have a a Theology of advancing the kingdom

20:59

which which would require funds which would require donors which you know uh

21:04

because you don't have a Theology of that and you believe that Jesus is coming back in 36

21:10

months right right um you're not gonna you're not going to want to build a university to use for half of those 36

21:19

months you're you're not going to want to build a multi-generational business

21:24

you're what you're going to do it's G to cause you to shrink your vision shrink your horizon which then for two cents

21:32

becomes selfish you you circle the wagons

21:38

tightly and then it's just taking care of your family now obviously there's nothing wrong with taking care of your

21:43

family but I believe I I'd like to quote Thomas Chalmer the great uh

21:49

Presbyterian Scots Presbyterian U Pastor who said regardless of how large your

21:55

vision is too small yes yes that I remember when we you and

22:01

I first spoke I think it was in 2022 uh and I had just discovered post

22:06

millennialism and it actually made a lot of sense to me I'd never really explored the idea of eschatology very much but it

22:12

seemed to me coming from the new age which also has sort of a premillennial kind of view uh this idea that this new

22:18

era is coming and the leap into hyperspace these are these are real things and so I I had seen similar uh

22:25

discussions of course in the Christian Community from the outside left behind series and something like that it seemed the the same projection of a of an apoc

22:32

apocalyptic vision and it was through you that I discovered postmillennialism and I was like oh that makes a lot of sense to begin moving into the world

22:40

with determination and focus with a with a Godly attitude that seems to me to be a much more righteous way to live rather

22:47

than you know counting down the seconds until the apocalypse right right as as a

22:52

famous primemill preacher once said you don't polish brass on a sinking ship that's right that's right so so uh just

22:59

to go sort of Off Script for a second I guess it seems that there's perhaps a generational or a cultural divide

23:06

there's so many of them between Christians these days and one of them is around the eschatological issue how can

23:13

uh and of course I've watched I think it was your night of uh your night of eschatology that that Roundtable

23:18

discussion which I don't I don't recall how long ago that was what suggestions would you have given that we have this

23:24

four-year window which I think is a very real thing to reaching out and building Bridges with so many Believers in

23:30

America that that just have this preil kind of attitude when we could really use them on board the Builder

23:37

mentality um yeah that that's a that is a very tough one okay because one of the

23:44

features of primemill dispensational thinking is that the world is going to hell in a hand basket and then if you

23:51

look around it's kind of sort of is yes and but people need to reflect that

23:58

Perhaps it is because we're thinking that way right so what's which is the

24:05

chicken and which is the egg um how is it possible for things to fall apart as

24:11

drastically as they've Fallen apart in the United States when the United States is home to Millions upon millions of

24:19

Evangelical Christians um where what what happened Jesus says

24:27

what happens when the salt loses its saltiness when the salt loses its Savor

24:33

uh Jesus says it's only um worth throwing out and being trampled on by

24:39

men so I I think that there are times when the church is persecuted the church

24:46

is vibrant and it's persecuted because it's vibrant but there are other areas where the church is persecuted because

24:54

it's lame and I believe that we've invited a lot of this on ourselves by not taking

25:02

the scriptures as seriously as we ought to have taken them well that provides a a really great transition into the

25:08

schlosberg book Idols for Destruction so I I remember uh at the at the morning

25:14

session on Friday when when you so strongly recommended this book and it's actually it's actually in your email

25:20

signature and I'll just read that really quick from page 304 um it says um the

Gods Triumph Disguised as Disaster

25:26

Bible can be interpreted as a string of God triumphs disguised as disasters and so that's in the that's in the signature

25:33

of every single one of your emails and so for those listening you know that's the significance that you that you lend

25:38

to this book so I'm glad that you provided that transition to speak about this this is an incredible work by the way it really is really is uh what

25:46

schlosberg does and he wrote that book man I forgot the copyright date but it was decades ago 83

25:54

yeah3 83 so he um what he does there is

26:00

in instead of talking about Idols that are U you know like Buddha or yeah um uh

26:07

Stone carvings that you leave baskets of fruit in front of or light candles in front of he's not talking about

26:15

idolatry like that he's talking about um ideological idolatry um mental con

26:23

mental philosophical constructs that we use to shape our worldview

26:28

um and give ourselves to so uh one one of his chapters is an idol of nature

26:36

okay or an idol of humanity um so you you have this idea you're gonna serve

26:43

this Idol and each U each Idol that you serve um this goes back to another great

26:51

book uh by GK Beal called we become like what we worship

26:56

MH and uh in Psalm 115 it says uh it's taunting the idols and it says they have

27:04

eyes but they see not uh ears but they hear not noses but they smell not uh and

27:09

then it says those that make them are like unto them so if you make deaf dumb and blind

27:17

Idols if you worship deaf dumb and blind Idols you are going to become deaf dumb

27:23

and blind if you worship cruel Gods you will become cruel

27:28

if you worship lustful Gods you will become lustful even even more so and uh

27:36

what schlosberg is doing is he is in

27:41

very careful painstaking way he's showing how the assumptions of each one

27:49

of these idolatrous constructs can seep in to a Christian's thinking and

27:58

framework um and I just mentioned this in a sermon yesterday uh at the the last

28:04

line in the letter of First John John says little children keep yourself from

28:10

Idols little children keep yourself from idols and the reason John says that to

28:16

Christians he's writing to Christians but the reason he warns them of that is

28:21

that he knows that they might not yes right there will be intense

28:30

pressures to go along with the idolatrous

28:35

assumptions okay so to to illustrate this U most Evangelical reformed

28:41

Christians if you said hey let's let's go sacrifice a chicken in front of this

28:48

uh painting or in front of this picture or in front of this statue they'd say no

28:53

I'm a Christian I'm not gonna I'm not going to do that but if you look at

28:58

um the the idol of egalitarianism okay uh that the

29:06

assumptions of egalitarianism have crept into the church and have seriously infected vast

29:14

wings of the church right um so for example um to

29:21

that one subset of egalitarianism would be feminism so you could have the most

29:27

conservative Evangelical political action group that

29:32

you can imagine and they could be having discussions on who should we be who

29:37

should we select as our spokesman for our opposition to this uh abortion Bill

29:44

and they say why don't we have suszie QQ do it because she's a woman and she can speak to

29:50

[Music] this so men don't get to speak to murder men men men have no interest in what

29:58

happens to their children men have so what's happened is uh this would be a

30:03

good example of Christians conservative Christians engaged in the culture War

30:09

fighting on the right side em bibing a an idolatrous assumption that if if you

30:18

don't have a uterus you can't talk about these things right yep yeah but but then we've

30:24

gotten to Crazy Town because they'll say if you don't have a uterus you can't speak about abortion and if you don't

30:31

have a uterus you can be a woman if you want to what is a woman after all right what

30:36

is it who knows anymore who knows that's that was one of the conclusions of the book that I thought was so interesting

PostChristian America

30:43

was that he said we're not in a pagan America as in a pre-christian America

30:48

it's actually far more dangerous we're in a post-christian America where the idols that he lists actually have

30:54

adopted Christian language so they've had time to absorb Christian language and and promote idolatry that way

31:00

egalitarianism being one of them right and they um not only do they promote Christian adopt Christian language but

31:07

they will also adopt Christian structures of thought so for example um

31:13

uh the biblical faith is an underdog

31:19

Faith okay um that's a Biblical that's a Biblical idea uh the Christian faith is

31:26

centered on the fact that Jesus Christ is a true victim we we have a victim at the very

31:34

center of our faith and so uh our gener the generation around us the Pagan post-

31:41

Pagan post-christian neopagan generation has adopted with a

31:46

Vengeance victim theology everybody wants to be a victim right and if you can be an

31:54

intersectional victim so much the better if you can be black and a lesbian and

32:01

you know whatever uh you know layer them and then you then you

32:07

yell Bingo um if if you do that that what

32:13

what that they're doing is they're utilizing Christian structures uh

32:19

victimology um is a ripoff from the Christian faith because Christ is the only true victim um and we see the

32:28

underdog favored in scripture David is the youngest of the brothers um Jacob is

32:34

younger than Esau the older will serve the younger um ishmail is older than um

32:40

Isaac uh Cain is older than Abel you know it's just over and over and over

32:46

again well in this post-christian era they're they're making those structures

32:53

work for them and because Christians are not what them they haven't read enough

32:59

schlosberg to see that to see the game that's being played on them this to see

33:05

the play that's being run and this also gets I think to presuppositionalism to to say that like

Presuppositionalism

33:12

well so the the marxists will say this is wrong and you would say well by what standard is that wrong in a materialistic Universe which always

33:18

seems to to blow their circuits and and my question about that real quick is what happened did Christians used to

33:25

learn pres presuppositionalism was that a thing or or is that something that's coming back into

33:31

fashion um that is um the Genesis of that is really interesting um uh

33:39

presuppositional uh apologetics is largely associated with Cornus vantil um

33:46

who was a you know died in the 20th century uh he was a modern Theologian um

33:53

the classical apologetics you might say the Thomas

33:58

ainus um types of proofs for the existence of God are um are called

34:05

classical apologetics that that has a long a longer um history in Christian

34:12

apologetics although if you go to some of the early fathers their um I don't triumphalism sounds bad

34:21

but the you know men like sounds men like athanasius were so confident of the

34:29

uh authority of the Risen Christ that they sound triumphalist to to Modern

34:35

years so the so I think you can point to different figures in church history who

34:43

who You' say well that sounds that sounds presuppositional uh but it wasn't ever

34:49

worked out in detail the thing that is funny about this is

34:55

um back in the early 90s one of the first books I wrote was a little book

35:00

called Persuasions this was pre- internet and pre all of that stuff and

35:06

and it was a a dream of Reason meeting unbelief conversations between a character called evangelist and various

35:13

character he was on the road to the the city and the characters he's talking to are on the road to the abyss and they're

35:19

they have these conversations I sent this book there and used to get I used to get my books the way everybody else

35:26

got their books through catalog um catalog companies so once a month you'd

35:31

get a big new a big thick wat of newsprint with uh eighto font

35:38

descriptions of all these books I would work through it and mark off the ones I want and order them and they'd come and

35:44

that was all wonderful well uh I got the uh I got this book that I wrote Persuasions the people at one catalog

35:51

company were kind enough to pick it up and I was very excited when the catalog

35:57

came I looked up my book and someone at the company had written a copy for it

36:02

and it said this little book is a fine introduction to Van Till's apologetics and I thought it

36:11

is I'd never i' I'd heard Van's name but I'd never read van and I thought oh

36:18

golly what am I doing um what am I doing writing fine little introductions to someone that I've never read um and I

36:27

think well well I so I quick ordered one of vel's books the defense of the faith

36:33

read it and breathed the sigh of relief okay I'm on the okay I'm on the same page with him but then the question is

36:40

if I didn't learn it from vantil which I didn't where did I learn this form of

36:46

argument with this this structure of thought and the answer was CS Lewis so

36:52

uh CS Lewis is both an depending on the circumstance Lewis can reason like an

36:59

evidentialist which is the other apologetic school of thought he

37:04

sometimes reasons like an evidentialist but there are other times when he reasons strictly like a

37:10

presuppositionalist and he's functioning in the classical stream of uh of

37:15

Christian thought so in his book miracles for example he he uh reasons

37:21

like a presuppositionalist when he says you can argue with a man who says that

37:27

rice is UNH wholesome but you need not argue with a man who says rice is UNH wholesome but I'm not saying this is

37:35

true okay um so if I and this is presuppositionalism in a nutshell the

37:41

unbeliever says there is no God and I would say are you saying that because

37:48

that conforms to a state of affairs outside you or are you saying that because you're just meeting bones and

37:55

protoplasm and your thoughts are doing what those chemicals would always do at

38:00

that temperature and with that pressure okay well a materialist has to say the

38:06

ladder well um so if you if I went into an auditorium there's a table up front

38:12

and I shook up a bottle of Mountain Dew and a bottle of Dr Pepper and put them on the table and they both Fizz over I

38:19

turn to the audience and say which one is winning the debate right they they would all say

38:27

rightly they're not debating they're fizzing mhm well the

38:33

materialist that's his position that we're just fizzing I'm fizzing christianly and he's fizzing

38:39

atheistically but CS Lewis pointed out well then you have therefore no reason

38:44

for assuming anything about this to be true you've cut your own throat you've

38:52

you you s off the branch you were sitting on and then cut your own throat on the way down mhm sort of refuting BF

BF Skinner

38:59

Skinner I think schosberg talks about BF Skinner behavioralism that it's all just it's all just fizzing chemicals and we

39:05

should be comfortable and happy to know that that's our nature but primarily I think Skinner's point was that if we are

39:12

just fizzing chemicals then we can be understood mechanically and we can be manipulated mechanically by the Elites

39:19

for their for their higher uh Elite driven ends right now what Lewis points out in his great book abolition of man

39:26

is those handlers the the people who are structuring um manipulating us creating

39:33

the brave new man creating the they themselves are just

39:40

chemicals you you always these people always exempt

39:46

themselves from the consequences of their own philosophy um so I had a

39:52

friend one time who was in a a class at the University here and the professor was English Professor trying to be a

40:00

deconstructionist and he was saying now class there is no objective meaning in words there is no objective meaning in

40:08

the text uh you can you can make the printed text you can interpret it any

40:13

way you want so my friend raised his hand and said so let me get this right you're saying that words have objective

40:19

fixed value right and he said no no no what I'm saying is that you can make words mean anything you want so my

40:26

friend raised his hand against so you're saying that words have absolute value and they can't be changed he said no no

40:32

no and by this time the whole class is tittering because everybody could see

40:37

that he was um exempting his his words from the rule that he wanted to apply to

40:44

all words um you can't you can't Advance an argument that no argument proves

40:51

anything MH that's right so putting some of the pieces together then we're

Christians in occupied territory

40:57

talking about the sort of four years of opportunity we have with Trump we're talking about um the economic

41:04

possibilities that are there available for Christians with sort of a Long View but it also seems to me that in a sense

41:10

Christians are are kind of in occupied territory now that we've become a post-christian nation and you have a

41:17

rising wave of of uh faithful Orthodox lowercase o Orthodox sentiment and so

41:23

maybe there's an opportunity here as well to confront the idols of America over the next four years on

41:29

presuppositional terms right one of the one of the advantages of everything

41:35

being up for grabs um is that you can uh

41:41

introduce forgotten truths that we shouldn't have forgotten but now that

41:46

everything's so crazy people might give it a listen so um so it says in Hebrews

41:52

that God shakes everything up so that what cannot be shaken May remain

41:59

uh so I I have certainly seen I've been I've been talking about these things

42:04

many of these things for decades so I'm I'm in my 70s now and I've been in the

42:10

ministry since I was in my 20s come coming up on 50 years of this and there

42:16

are things that I've been saying for all this time that for most of that time I

42:23

couldn't I couldn't get arrested I you know um I couldn't get anybody to pay

42:28

attention to these things and now people really are willing to give radical

42:36

proposals a listen now the downside is there's bad radical and there's there's

42:42

forgotten radical is seems radical because uh it's a neglected truth and

42:47

there are also radical options out there that are being Advanced by Scoundrels

42:53

and miscreant um and people are chasing after cult lead ERS and they're chasing

42:58

after online gurus but they also there's also a heightened interest in Orthodox

43:06

faithful confessional Christian ministers um because now it seems that

43:13

we're the Bad Boys that's right go figure right right so this morning I was

I will be your God

43:20

actually watching one of your talks it's on the lioner website it's called um I will be your God it was it was posted 9

43:26

years years ago and I was listening to it and I was U so was about a decade old what did you when did you give that talk

43:32

was it a decade ago or was it prior to that oh would have been more than a decade ago yeah so you were talking

43:38

about reformed lurgical worship more than a decade ago and now it's probably

43:43

one of the hottest topics out there I think right I've just to I've just told our people in the sermon yesterday and I

43:50

I sent out a pastor's newsletter every Friday to the congregation uh I I've said our task in

43:57

our community here is to be jehoshaphat's choir uh we want to lead

44:03

with worship um worship is Warfare worship is potent worship is something

44:09

for which the enemy has no countermeasures there you know if we if

44:15

we organize and become an Evangelical lobbying group they have

44:20

countermeasures we might be effective but they they're not caught flat-footed

44:27

but when we worship God in spirit and in truth this we what we're following the

44:33

pattern of the Book of Revelation where the there's two layers to that whole book Worship in the heavenlies and all

44:41

kinds of chaos on Earth you know um the God is worshiped in the heavens and then

44:47

God pours out his judgments and God undertakes on behalf of his people all these things happen on Earth so we um

44:56

one part of my understanding of the Lord's Prayer is thy kingdom come thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven

45:04

so the kingdom coming has to do with reenacting on Earth what has just been

45:11

what what has been done in heaven I used to think that that meant just as the

45:17

Angels obey with alacrity in heaven if God God tells Michael to do something

45:23

Michael doesn't say why no and and I think that's true the

45:28

Angels obey with alacrity and so should we obey with alacrity but I think

45:34

there's more going on there now thy kingdom come thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven our privilege and our

45:41

task is to go into the Heavenly places every Lord's day and glorify there the

45:48

name of Jesus Christ that that's what we're doing um we go into the Heavenly

45:53

places and we worship God the father in the name of Jesus Christ the power of the holy spirit so we glorify Christ's

46:00

name in heaven and then we're in a good position to ask God to do on Earth what

46:05

we have just done in he in the Heavenly places we've just glorified Christ in heaven it will put it this way you

46:12

shouldn't expect God to glorify Christ's name on Earth when his body is refusing

46:17

to glorify it in heaven uh so when we worship God in the Heavenly places we

46:23

can then turn to God and say with a clean conscience now would you glorify his name here in our community as we

46:30

have just glorified it in the Heavenly places in our worship of you one of the things the the the themes

The invitation

46:37

that seems to come up in uh some of your interactions with Evangelical leaders around the country is the invitation for

46:44

them to come to Moscow and see the proof in the pudding right have you have you been feeling more people accepting that

46:50

invitation do you feel like there are some people that are closer to accepting that invitation than they would have otherwise been perhaps lately uh yes

46:57

that is very very true we've had um we've had people um well over the years

47:04

we've made the invitation many times and it was routinely rejected or ignored um

47:10

in the last I would say in the in the covid years post postco years we've had

47:16

more people taking us up on that invitation coming to visit coming to see

47:22

and we've we've even had some secret visitors right so if someone said um hey

47:28

can we come and visit and check things out no microphones No cameras no nothing we'd say

47:35

sure this is not this is not a PR stunt um so if someone is in a position of

47:43

influence and they want to come and check it out and see whether or not we have three heads with two of them

47:51

drooling um they would be most welcome and more and more and more people are are taking

47:57

us up on that that must feel does it feel vindicate vindicating or perhaps you

Vindicated

48:04

know glory to God for for the faithfulness like what what is that like after 50 years in Ministry where you

48:09

can't get arrested and now people want to arrest you perhaps what is what is that feeling

48:14

like it it it is really is encouraging um uh so genuinely

48:21

encouraging because even uh one of the things that that you see happening is uh

48:30

even friends B basically friends of our ministry uh can sometimes think oh i'

48:36

I've gotten your I've read your blog all the time and I enjoy your sense of humor but they they come

48:42

expecting uh you know when they meet me they are sort of braced for me to make

48:47

fun of them the entire time right and and they're pleasantly

48:53

surprised when they come and they've encounter a bunch of normal

48:59

Christians um and it's like oh um and

49:05

this basically what this boils down to uh speaking um frankly is the uh the

49:12

challenges of mass communication um you and and there really is a a challenge there a certain

49:20

kind of kind there's certain kinds of writers that that I read and I

49:25

appreciate and I get their sense of humor when when it's um it's ink on a

49:32

page I can still see the twinkle in their eye but because I get it right but

49:38

there are other people who don't get it at all they just think oh he's being

49:43

mean and and the Bible talks about this kind of U thing uh Paul says how I wish

49:49

to the Galatians how I wish I were with you so I could change my tone with you right so I could I could look at your

49:56

faces and I could see how if I'm communicating and I could change up my

50:01

Approach um and uh John says the same thing I I have lot a lot of things to

50:07

say but I'd rather say it in person I'd rather say it face to face so face-to-face communication is a very

50:14

different proposition than writing a blog post that's going to be read by

50:20

50,000 people so with 50,000 people you can Budget on the fact that a certain

50:27

percentage of them are going to walk away hating you that's right unfortunately yeah that

50:35

that basically um they're going to you tell a joke

50:41

and if you're at a certain sized crowd a certain percentage will not get the joke

50:48

and a smaller percentage will be mortally offended by the joke um others

50:53

will get the joke and be offended other you know BAS basically one of the things I've sought to do as I've traveled

50:59

around the country to conferences and whatnot I've tried to G and people say

51:05

I've appreciated your writing I've read your books one of the things I try to do is gauge what kind of people like what I

51:14

do right um if if they're normal sweet Christian people then I think okay I I'm

51:23

um this is okay but if if if everybody that liked my work looked like a pirate

51:31

and snarled like a pirate and and was just I would say okay I need to change

51:37

something up um so this is basically all of this is a rhetorical issue if I'm

51:44

talking to one one-on-one counseling with somebody I talk one way if I'm

51:49

leading a Bible study with 10 people in it I talk another way if I'm preaching to a 100 people it's different than if

51:55

I'm preaching to thousand people um if I'm writing in in black and white um you

52:02

know for a blog post or a magazine or or a book it's another way if I'm

52:08

communicating face to face uh quote unquote face Toof face with you now this

52:14

this is a new thing right yeah um I I remember preco when Zoom technology and

52:22

all of this technology was pream in and it was

52:28

not reliable at all right but then um the the bugs got worked out during

52:35

during Co when people were working from home no pun intended and then um we

52:42

found a number of people in the last couple of years hundreds of families have moved here and a bunch of them were

52:50

enabled to move here because of covid because of lockdown they proved to their

52:56

employe that they could work from home they could they could work distance and so a

53:02

lot of them have come here moved here having kept their

53:07

jobs so you you make me think of a question there are so many young

Advice for young Christian content creators

53:13

Christian content creators who have just sprung up in the past few years I I'm seeing particularly coming out of the

53:19

new age a mass Exodus or migration into the faith that's been inspired by many

53:25

celebrities but also or an organic searching so you have people with

53:30

communication gifts writing gifts you know uh video editing gifts that are beginning to create Christian content

53:36

what advice would you give to these young men and women who are sincere but there there aren't many there isn't a

53:42

lot of discipleship in terms of Christian content creation because what you just articulated was essentially you're a Christian content creator now

53:48

that's not how I think of you and I don't think that's your primary role and yet it's still something that you do what guidance would you give to young

53:54

men and women who are who are venturing out in this particularly over the next four years I would say if particularly

54:01

if we're talking about young inexperienced Christians people who are new to the faith I would say stick to

54:09

the basics okay um stick to the basics uh

54:14

don't um I'm I'm I've been a Christian for six weeks I'd like to study the Book

54:19

of Revelation um right don't do that that's what V bacham did actually that

54:25

was the first book the Bible he read that's right I yeah um I would start with the gospel of Mark I would start

54:31

you know who is this Jesus that I'm now following you know basic sorts of things

54:38

I would not I would encourage anybody who's in the content creation realm who's been converted to um to to keep it

54:47

simple um keep it simple what are the basic doctrines of the Christian faith

54:53

basic Christianity by John stot it's a good book M Christianity by CS Lewis is

54:59

a good good book just keep it focused that way so that that' be the first thing don't go esoteric um even if

55:08

esoteric is going to get you clicks um right you know if you say if you say I'm

55:14

I'm starting a podcast that's dedicated to the intersection of second Samuel and

55:21

Bigfoot big Bigfoot settings you you might be uh you might

55:28

get more clicks but it's that's going to be a culdesac eventually so that's the first thing the the second thing is

55:36

don't don't become a celebrity right right um yeah you might be and I I

55:44

make a distinction between becoming well known of course if you have a podcast if you're creating content you're gratified

55:51

if people are finding it useful you're gratified if people if you've got traffic there's nothing wrong with

55:57

wanting to see you know how can we enhance the traffic how can we get the message out but there's there's a

56:03

difference between that and becoming full of yourself putting on airs uh renting a limo um

56:12

right in order that you know hiring people to act like Paparazzi when they

56:18

follow you around um you just don't um don't become a celebrity stay a real

56:24

person uh an ual person which is going to be connected to worshiping in a local

56:32

congregation uh in a in a room where you're breathing the same air as the preacher and um and the fellow Saints up

56:40

and down the Pew yeah I was talking to Michael Foster earlier this year we were talking about something similar be an

56:45

offline Christian Christianity is not just what you do online in fact that's that's a distant second Christianity is

56:51

primarily lived in your offline life that's very good yes so to so to go back

Idols for Destruction

56:57

to the beginning of your ministry and uh and Idols for Destruction I was curious as I was reading this book because I

57:02

could see the ways that he may have influenced you can you take us back into

57:07

that moment when you read this book 40 years ago which you would have been in your 30s I reckon so take like what was

57:13

it like reading this as a 30-year old man in the early 80s as you're looking out on a on a future career in the

57:18

ministry yeah so um it's hard to reconstruct all the sensations but I I

57:24

can I can tell you uh uh part of it so uh I read the book initially because it

57:30

was recommended to me strongly by my father um and my uh my father was an

57:38

intensely practical evangelist very he would keep the cookies on the lowest

57:43

shelf uh for people he would just teach respect for parents and how to confess your sins how to be free from bitterness

57:50

that was his bread and butter Ministry he was a very uh he very bright man but

57:56

he was a very simple uh Minister you know just meeting people um where they

58:03

were and he recommended this book to me strongly

58:09

and and it's a it's a headyy book right you know um it's like eating 16 pieces

58:17

of cheesecake in a row right very dense very rich very

58:24

textured in short it was not I would have thought it was not my dad's kind of

58:30

book but it was and uh and the reason

58:35

that book had uh an impact on me and this is my best reconstruction after the

58:41

fact but I had grown up uh I'd grown up in conservative Evangelical churches um

58:48

and generally generically premil circles my dad wasn't necessarily but the

58:53

culture around me was I I grew up in a Southern Baptist uh

58:59

setting and I was conservative Evangelical theologically conservative

59:05

and uh followed was right in line with what my parents had taught me and but it

59:10

was a truncated um a a truncated theology I was a

59:17

Conservative Christian um also when I was in high school I ran across a uh

59:25

book up from liberalism by Will William F Buckley which I read in high school

59:32

and he made an immediate conquest of me I loved how he wrote uh and I became a

59:37

political conser political conservative but these were two different compartments In My

59:44

Head Right makes sense um uh the because it was um worldview thinking was not it

59:53

was an alien idea at the time most most conservative Christians happen to be um

1:00:02

uh happen to be politically conservative but people had no um real mechanism for

1:00:08

connecting the two and I first encountered uh the connection uh with

1:00:15

Francis schaer in his work in the 70s and I began writing a a newspaper

1:00:22

column in 1980 uh Reagan ran for president and I was a Reagan supporter

1:00:29

and I was a Conservative Christian but they were they were in different worlds um and one of the things that uh

1:00:38

schaer did was he introduced those two worlds to one another and what schlosberg and what schlosberg did is he

1:00:47

made it sort of an integrated a densely integrated thing where it was not just

1:00:54

oh these have a passing acquaintance with one another but no this is a rigorous worldview system where I if I

1:01:04

if I read this and grasp this and hold on to this it's going to be

1:01:10

transformative which it was now I'm gonna have to go back and look at the Timeline because when I first when I

1:01:17

first read schlosburg because I didn't become a calvinist until 1988 and so if I read schlosberg before

1:01:24

that then he would have been one of of the major Stepping Stones uh uh toward

1:01:30

me coming into the reformed Faith how's that well simply uh okay if you want all

1:01:36

things to be integrated together you need a God who does that okay right you um one of the things

1:01:45

you have to realize is that the god of the Calvinists is an in-your-face God yes he's not he's not an absentee

1:01:54

landlord he's not clock maker God he's the one in whom we live and move and

1:01:59

have our being and he relates to everything and everything in the world that I encounter relates to him

1:02:08

somehow and that is definitely that is definitely the book and the book lays out this is an all-encompassing system

1:02:15

of beliefs of idolatry that American Christians are embedded within that's what I walked with away with and that

1:02:21

was in the early 80s like he observing six different Idols that had def my

1:02:26

upbringing my childhood my whole life and I could look around and I could see them clearly now and say whoa we really

1:02:33

did majorly dodge a bullet with this election meaning 2024 because it was

1:02:38

reading this book I was actually feeling a bit despairing like we are actually due for judgment for 40 years of

1:02:45

idolatry like it's it it was that profound yeah very much so just one more

1:02:50

quick question if you don't mind don't mind so one of the things that also struck me about this book was was the

1:02:56

bibliography so as I'm going through and I'm reading all of the footnotes and I'm highlighting the the books that he

1:03:02

recommended and I've got an Amazon cart now that's full of 30 more books as if I needed it so but it struck me that the

1:03:10

the titles that he recommended seemed to have a much greater view of what was

1:03:15

going wrong in American culture in the early say 1980s and 70s as the books that he would have been referring to

1:03:22

that Christian culture Christian authors had a really good bead on what was going on that seems to have gotten lost and I

1:03:28

see this as well in Reading in for example about the new age that there were a lot of really excellent books that were written about the new age in

1:03:33

like the early 80s and the 90s Douglas guus is a good example but then between the 90s up until today there's basically

1:03:41

nothing so I'm wondering what happened to sort of what seems like it created an Evangelical Amnesia from like 1990 to

1:03:48

2020 did am I seeing that correctly like what happened there um this would just

1:03:53

be uh uh I'm not being dogmatic here but it's a hypothesis please most uh even though

1:04:02

the homeschooling movement in the Christian School movement took off in the 80s and got established and thanks

1:04:09

be to God millions of Christian kids are um now being educated that way that's

1:04:17

just a tiny fraction of

1:04:22

Evangelical um education um and this is the same period where the

1:04:29

bottom is fallen out of the academic standards in the public school

1:04:35

system when when the uh men were writing when Francis Schaefer was writing when

1:04:40

Carl Henry was writing when the early you know when schlosberg was doing his thing there really was an intelligent

1:04:50

literate population that read you um and now it's cat

1:05:00

videos right right so you think you think Christians have given up on their on their reading and intellectual tradition

1:05:07

uh correct I think that that's um I think that's the center of the

1:05:13

problem well sir that's uh I I appreciate that because you've participated my little um I'm going to

1:05:20

trick Doug Wilson into a private book club because now we've talked about uh the The Ransom TR

1:05:26

with CS Lewis we've talked about men in marriage and mere christom and and a case for Christian nationalism and and

1:05:32

then American milk and honey honey and now Idols for Destruction so I've really I've been enjoying this B book club with

1:05:38

you um is there is there another book you might recommend for our next installment of this conversation series

1:05:43

oh I mentioned it earlier we become like what we worship would be a good one another one a small one and not by a

1:05:50

Believer is uh the basic laws of human stupidity

1:05:56

I think that one I think that one that one must win oh it is a marvelous book

1:06:03

um it has so much explanatory power it really it's it's like a sendup

1:06:10

it's there are certain books like Parkinson's law and the Peter Principle that are sort of satires on people get

1:06:17

promoted to the level of incompetence or work expands to fill the time allotted for it and it's written as a satire but

1:06:24

then you think oh wait that actually happens um and it's that way with this

1:06:31

book the basic laws of human stupidity it really is

1:06:36

powerful very convicting perhaps yes well I look forward to uh picking up

1:06:41

that book and for for our next installment of our little private book club sure thing so would you where would

1:06:47

you like to send people to find out more about what you've got going on right now for a No Quarter November or some of the promotions that are happening the way

1:06:53

we've set it up is the Clearing House for pretty much everything I'm involved in is at my blog dougwils.com and the

1:07:02

name of the blog is blog and may blog dougwils.com and there on the if you open up the front page there's a link to

1:07:08

pretty much everything I'm involved with wonderful well I look forward to our next conversation we'll send everybody

1:07:13

there thank you thank you for your time today s yes