Doug Wilson

Mister Wilson Burns Bridges

Show Notes

Join me for a post-election & "No Quarter November" livestream special with Pastor Doug Wilson.

We'll be discussing the election results (however they may be at the time), plus current events, and one of his favorite books, "Idols for Destruction" by Herbert Schlossberg.


Show Notes

Join me for a post-election & "No Quarter November" livestream special with Pastor Doug Wilson.

We'll be discussing the election results (however they may be at the time), plus current events, and one of his favorite books, "Idols for Destruction" by Herbert Schlossberg.


Show Notes

Join me for a post-election & "No Quarter November" livestream special with Pastor Doug Wilson.

We'll be discussing the election results (however they may be at the time), plus current events, and one of his favorite books, "Idols for Destruction" by Herbert Schlossberg.


Show Notes

Join me for a post-election & "No Quarter November" livestream special with Pastor Doug Wilson.

We'll be discussing the election results (however they may be at the time), plus current events, and one of his favorite books, "Idols for Destruction" by Herbert Schlossberg.


Mentioned Resources

DO THE READING "Idols for Destruction": https://a.co/d/bWE7xRr

Mentioned Resources

DO THE READING "Idols for Destruction": https://a.co/d/bWE7xRr

Mentioned Resources

DO THE READING "Idols for Destruction": https://a.co/d/bWE7xRr

Mentioned Resources

DO THE READING "Idols for Destruction": https://a.co/d/bWE7xRr

Transcript

0:02

[Music]

0:16

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

0:24

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

0:37

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

0:42

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

0:49

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

1:06

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

1:33

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

1:44

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

1:52

very uh gratifying what it was apparent to me

1:57

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

2:05

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

Election 2020

2:12

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

2:23

California Arizona too the the thing that um it the thing

2:30

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

2:35

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

2:50

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

3:03

force on Election integrity and um and like best practices

3:11

for uh for election for elections that cannot be

3:16

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

3:22

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

3:35

bunch of new procedures uh for voting um mail in you

3:41

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

4:01

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

4:10

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

Missing Democrats

4:16

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

4:23

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

4:28

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

4:59

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

5:05

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

5:12

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

5:17

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

5:24

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

5:42

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

5:59

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

6:07

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

6:44

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

6:51

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

6:58

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

7:18

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

7:42

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

7:51

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

7:56

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

8:02

some collisions uh within the Trump Coalition

8:07

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

8:21

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

8:35

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

8:42

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

8:56

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

Trumps deal with evangelicals

9:02

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

9:21

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

9:26

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

9:32

Trump is a transactional businessman he believes in deals and he

9:38

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

9:52

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

9:57

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

10:03

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

10:08

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

10:15

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

10:21

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

10:26

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

10:32

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

10:39

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

10:45

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

10:59

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

11:09

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

11:17

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

11:23

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

11:31

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

11:39

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

11:47

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

11:52

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

12:05

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

12:11

go against what we believe so a question about that but

Most excited about Trump presidency

12:16

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

12:22

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

12:28

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

12:34

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

12:40

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

12:46

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

12:51

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

13:00

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

13:11

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

13:23

explosion of a good kind uh um where I

13:29

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

13:35

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

13:43

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

13:52

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

13:59

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

14:07

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

14:14

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

14:19

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

14:31

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

14:37

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

14:43

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

14:52

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

15:35

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

15:47

which was a you know just a typical leftist thing

15:52

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

15:59

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

16:05

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

16:13

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

16:19

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

16:26

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

16:32

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

16:43

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

16:51

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

16:58

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

17:19

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

17:55

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

18:01

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

18:09

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

18:16

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

18:54

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

Transcript

0:02

[Music]

0:16

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

0:24

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

0:37

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

0:42

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

0:49

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

1:06

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

1:33

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

1:44

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

1:52

very uh gratifying what it was apparent to me

1:57

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

2:05

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

Election 2020

2:12

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

2:23

California Arizona too the the thing that um it the thing

2:30

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

2:35

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

2:50

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

3:03

force on Election integrity and um and like best practices

3:11

for uh for election for elections that cannot be

3:16

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

3:22

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

3:35

bunch of new procedures uh for voting um mail in you

3:41

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

4:01

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

4:10

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

Missing Democrats

4:16

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

4:23

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

4:28

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

4:59

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

5:05

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

5:12

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

5:17

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

5:24

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

5:42

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

5:59

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

6:07

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

6:44

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

6:51

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

6:58

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

7:18

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

7:42

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

7:51

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

7:56

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

8:02

some collisions uh within the Trump Coalition

8:07

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

8:21

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

8:35

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

8:42

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

8:56

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

Trumps deal with evangelicals

9:02

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

9:21

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

9:26

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

9:32

Trump is a transactional businessman he believes in deals and he

9:38

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

9:52

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

9:57

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

10:03

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

10:08

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

10:15

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

10:21

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

10:26

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

10:32

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

10:39

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

10:45

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

10:59

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

11:09

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

11:17

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

11:23

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

11:31

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

11:39

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

11:47

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

11:52

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

12:05

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

12:11

go against what we believe so a question about that but

Most excited about Trump presidency

12:16

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

12:22

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

12:28

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

12:34

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

12:40

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

12:46

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

12:51

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

13:00

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

13:11

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

13:23

explosion of a good kind uh um where I

13:29

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

13:35

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

13:43

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

13:52

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

13:59

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

14:07

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

14:14

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

14:19

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

14:31

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

14:37

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

14:43

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

14:52

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

15:35

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

15:47

which was a you know just a typical leftist thing

15:52

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

15:59

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

16:05

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

16:13

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

16:19

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

16:26

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

16:32

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

16:43

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

16:51

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

16:58

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

17:19

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

17:55

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

18:01

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

18:09

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

18:16

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

18:54

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

Transcript

0:02

[Music]

0:16

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

0:24

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

0:37

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

0:42

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

0:49

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

1:06

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

1:33

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

1:44

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

1:52

very uh gratifying what it was apparent to me

1:57

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

2:05

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

Election 2020

2:12

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

2:23

California Arizona too the the thing that um it the thing

2:30

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

2:35

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

2:50

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

3:03

force on Election integrity and um and like best practices

3:11

for uh for election for elections that cannot be

3:16

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

3:22

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

3:35

bunch of new procedures uh for voting um mail in you

3:41

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

4:01

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

4:10

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

Missing Democrats

4:16

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

4:23

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

4:28

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

4:59

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

5:05

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

5:12

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

5:17

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

5:24

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

5:42

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

5:59

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

6:07

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

6:44

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

6:51

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

6:58

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

7:18

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

7:42

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

7:51

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

7:56

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

8:02

some collisions uh within the Trump Coalition

8:07

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

8:21

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

8:35

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

8:42

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

8:56

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

Trumps deal with evangelicals

9:02

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

9:21

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

9:26

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

9:32

Trump is a transactional businessman he believes in deals and he

9:38

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

9:52

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

9:57

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

10:03

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

10:08

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

10:15

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

10:21

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

10:26

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

10:32

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

10:39

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

10:45

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

10:59

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

11:09

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

11:17

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

11:23

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

11:31

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

11:39

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

11:47

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

11:52

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

12:05

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

12:11

go against what we believe so a question about that but

Most excited about Trump presidency

12:16

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

12:22

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

12:28

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

12:34

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

12:40

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

12:46

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

12:51

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

13:00

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

13:11

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

13:23

explosion of a good kind uh um where I

13:29

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

13:35

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

13:43

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

13:52

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

13:59

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

14:07

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

14:14

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

14:19

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

14:31

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

14:37

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

14:43

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

14:52

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

15:35

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

15:47

which was a you know just a typical leftist thing

15:52

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

15:59

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

16:05

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

16:13

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

16:19

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

16:26

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

16:32

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

16:43

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

16:51

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

16:58

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

17:19

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

17:55

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

18:01

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

18:09

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

18:16

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

18:54

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

Transcript

0:02

[Music]

0:16

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

0:24

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

0:37

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

0:42

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

0:49

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

1:06

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

1:33

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

1:44

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

1:52

very uh gratifying what it was apparent to me

1:57

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

2:05

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

Election 2020

2:12

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

2:23

California Arizona too the the thing that um it the thing

2:30

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

2:35

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

2:50

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

3:03

force on Election integrity and um and like best practices

3:11

for uh for election for elections that cannot be

3:16

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

3:22

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

3:35

bunch of new procedures uh for voting um mail in you

3:41

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

4:01

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

4:10

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

Missing Democrats

4:16

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

4:23

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

4:28

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

4:59

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

5:05

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

5:12

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

5:17

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

5:24

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

5:42

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

5:59

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

6:07

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

6:44

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

6:51

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

6:58

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

7:18

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

7:42

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

7:51

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

7:56

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

8:02

some collisions uh within the Trump Coalition

8:07

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

8:21

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

8:35

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

8:42

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

8:56

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

Trumps deal with evangelicals

9:02

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

9:21

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

9:26

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

9:32

Trump is a transactional businessman he believes in deals and he

9:38

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

9:52

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

9:57

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

10:03

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

10:08

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

10:15

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

10:21

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

10:26

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

10:32

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

10:39

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

10:45

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

10:59

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

11:09

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

11:17

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

11:23

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

11:31

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

11:39

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

11:47

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

11:52

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

12:05

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

12:11

go against what we believe so a question about that but

Most excited about Trump presidency

12:16

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

12:22

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

12:28

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

12:34

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

12:40

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

12:46

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

12:51

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

13:00

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

13:11

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

13:23

explosion of a good kind uh um where I

13:29

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

13:35

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

13:43

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

13:52

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

13:59

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

14:07

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

14:14

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

14:19

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

14:31

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

14:37

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

14:43

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

14:52

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

15:35

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

15:47

which was a you know just a typical leftist thing

15:52

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

15:59

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

16:05

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

16:13

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

16:19

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

16:26

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

16:32

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

16:43

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

16:51

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

16:58

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

17:19

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

17:55

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

18:01

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

18:09

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

18:16

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

18:54

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