Transcript: Episode 0003

“Christian Nationalism Is Submission to God”

This transcript:
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  2. Has not been checked for errors.
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00:00:00 – 00:00:06:	This part is for you guys zu stay tuned!

00:00:30 – 00:00:44:	Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. I am Corey J. Moller, and I'm Woe.

00:00:44 – 00:00:49:	So today we're going to be talking about Christian nationalism. This is a subject that has been

00:00:49 – 00:00:56:	hot and heavy in the news very recently. The number of books have been published. There's a lot

00:00:56 – 00:01:02:	of chatter online about it. It's a subject that you and I Corey have been talking about for a number

00:01:02 – 00:01:07:	of years. It's something we've both written about. To some extent in the past, and frankly we know

00:01:07 – 00:01:11:	more about it than a lot of people, just because we've been thinking about it for a long time.

00:01:12 – 00:01:17:	And so this is well-trodden ground for us. We're not going to... This will be more of a conversational

00:01:17 – 00:01:22:	episode hopefully than the last couple, just because we can freewheel this and we're going to do a good

00:01:22 – 00:01:30:	job because this is our home turf. And the reason is because it is so vitally important to

00:01:31 – 00:01:40:	recognize that a Christian nation is what God desires. Christian nationalism is what God expects

00:01:40 – 00:01:47:	from us. And we're going to talk at some length initially about the definitions of both nation

00:01:47 – 00:01:53:	as in nationalism and then Christian, because those are the reflections of what's commonly called

00:01:53 – 00:01:59:	the two kingdoms in theology, the kingdom of the left hand of God and the kingdom of the right hand

00:01:59 – 00:02:04:	of God with the left hand being political and the right hand being spiritual or soteriological,

00:02:04 – 00:02:11:	basically church and state, or state and church. The reason that this is something that

00:02:11 – 00:02:16:	there are a number of historical reasons why people sort of go off the rails when they tackle these

00:02:16 – 00:02:21:	things. But first, we're going to talk about why the words themselves, particularly the word

00:02:21 – 00:02:30:	nation and nationalist have been so profoundly subverted. As we go on in the series, listeners will

00:02:30 – 00:02:36:	recognize that we are frequently spending a lot of time defining terms. And I hope that that

00:02:36 – 00:02:43:	never comes across as gimmicky. It's not something that we're just doing to be spurgy or to kind of

00:02:43 – 00:02:51:	weedle and make bizarre points. The reason for discussing the the etymology and the origins of words

00:02:52 – 00:02:57:	is specifically because so many words have been intentionally subverted by those who seek the

00:02:57 – 00:03:05:	destruction of godly things. This was one of the premises of 1984 was that when the language

00:03:05 – 00:03:13:	itself is captured, it's possible to render certain thoughts literally unthinkable as in the human

00:03:13 – 00:03:21:	mind can no longer process a thought contrary to the desired dogma. And they do that by redefining

00:03:21 – 00:03:26:	words until there's no word for the thing that you're trying to say anymore. Because if you can't

00:03:26 – 00:03:32:	if you don't have a word for it and you can't say it, you can't think it. And it's a weapon. It's

00:03:32 – 00:03:38:	something that's weaponized and it's being done deliberately in certain words in language and

00:03:38 – 00:03:44:	nation and nationalism are a prime example. So I would for anyone listening to episode three,

00:03:44 – 00:03:49:	this episode, I would first recommend you go back to episode two and spend about the first 15

00:03:49 – 00:03:58:	minutes or so listening to Cory's monologue talking about genealogy in scripture and how god uses

00:03:58 – 00:04:08:	genealogy of man be getting man throughout time in particular places to god's ends. It's worth

00:04:08 – 00:04:15:	noting that when Adam emerged from the garden, he was a father or as he was a husband, he soon

00:04:15 – 00:04:22:	became a father. He was also king. He's the king of the world despite having been, you know,

00:04:22 – 00:04:28:	demoted from from his perfection through his through his sin. He remained king. And when he had

00:04:28 – 00:04:34:	children, he was their father, he was also their king. He was also their priest. And he was he was

00:04:34 – 00:04:40:	a religious leader as he was a thief. The reason that god repudiated his actions in the garden

00:04:40 – 00:04:46:	was that he listened to his wife instead of controlling her sent her inclination to listen to

00:04:46 – 00:04:54:	the serpent. If Adam had faithfully upheld his role as husband and as priest, that air would have

00:04:54 – 00:05:01:	been set right. And we don't know how human history would have played out. The same circumstances

00:05:01 – 00:05:07:	repeated when Noah stepped off the ark. He was father. He was husband. He was king and he was

00:05:07 – 00:05:18:	priest and is only as the expansion of those families occurred again that the role of priest and

00:05:18 – 00:05:24:	king became separated. And that's we're not suggesting that that's a bad thing. It is perfectly

00:05:24 – 00:05:33:	godly for the political to have its sphere and the religious, the Christian do have its sphere.

00:05:34 – 00:05:40:	But to say that the Christian sphere is separate from the political sphere, he is too fundamentally

00:05:40 – 00:05:44:	with misunderstanding what it is to be Christian. So that'll be the second part of this podcast. So

00:05:44 – 00:05:50:	we're going to begin with nation. Nation is a word that came into the English language around

00:05:50 – 00:05:55:	the 1300s from French. The French word I'm not going to pronounce because I'll butcher it.

00:05:55 – 00:06:01:	But the definition is the same as it is for us. A race of people, a large group of people with

00:06:01 – 00:06:08:	common ancestry and language from the old French for birth rank descendants. And if you trace

00:06:08 – 00:06:16:	that back even further, it goes through Old Latin and it ends up in the Proto-Indo-European

00:06:17 – 00:06:21:	gene, which means give birth and beget. I think it was in the first episode we talked about that as

00:06:21 – 00:06:27:	well, that maybe the second is an episode. We're going to talk about this over and over again because

00:06:27 – 00:06:37:	it's so fundamental. The genes, the natal nature of beginning of people, it's how god operates

00:06:37 – 00:06:45:	in creation. It's one of the things that separates mankind today from mankind in heaven. In heaven,

00:06:45 – 00:06:51:	we will be like the angels and that there won't be any more reproduction. All of the names that are

00:06:51 – 00:06:58:	in the book of life will be born in a fallen world. There won't be any more people coming after

00:06:58 – 00:07:06:	judgment day. The creating aspect of God's history will come to an end with judgment day. No more

00:07:06 – 00:07:12:	giving birth, no more begetting. The genealogy, the lines, the beginning will all be locked in.

00:07:12 – 00:07:17:	But for this time, for our lives, all that we know, we don't know before the fall and we don't

00:07:17 – 00:07:24:	know judgment day or after it. We know that right now, this is how God operates. The reason I'm

00:07:24 – 00:07:30:	pointing first to the definition of nation is to make clear that it is explicitly racial.

00:07:31 – 00:07:39:	And that's a vital point because today, nation and country are used as synonyms to say that

00:07:39 – 00:07:43:	something is a country or it's a nation. People virtually always mean the same thing.

00:07:44 – 00:07:48:	You say the United States is a country. You say it's a nation. No one's going to think you're

00:07:48 – 00:07:54:	talking about two different things. When the United States was founded, when the colonies were

00:07:54 – 00:08:01:	founded and then the United States was formed from that, it was a nation. This was New England.

00:08:01 – 00:08:08:	It was founded over 400 years ago by people coming from England to New England.

00:08:08 – 00:08:14:	They were not immigrants. They didn't leave one place and go to another place that was different.

00:08:14 – 00:08:19:	They went to a new place that was empty and they recreated as best they could

00:08:19 – 00:08:25:	from once they came. They recreated England. Now, not as a perfect copy because that wasn't their

00:08:25 – 00:08:32:	desire. Frankly, three quarters of my ancestors were here by about 1650 because they were so sick

00:08:32 – 00:08:36:	of what the English were doing nearly 400 years ago. So while they brought the language and they

00:08:36 – 00:08:43:	brought the subset of some of the religion, they brought cultural mores. They were also seeking

00:08:43 – 00:08:49:	to do their own thing, but it was not in rebellion. It was simply, let's go live in peace among

00:08:49 – 00:08:53:	ourselves and continue to be English in a manner that doesn't violate our consciences.

00:08:54 – 00:08:59:	And of course, that was the case for all of the European people groups who came over here.

00:08:59 – 00:09:05:	You had the Spanish. You set up colonies and attempted to remain Spanish to different

00:09:05 – 00:09:10:	degree from the English, perhaps. And then you had, of course, the original name of New York

00:09:10 – 00:09:15:	to Amsterdam. They were setting up extensions of their nation. They were not

00:09:15 – 00:09:22:	creating some new experiment to mix everyone together and create a new nation or realistically a

00:09:22 – 00:09:28:	new bubble. Exactly. And it was the case in Canada. It was mostly French, Louisiana and North

00:09:28 – 00:09:36:	who was mostly French. And some of those marks even exist to this day. And when people come to a

00:09:36 – 00:09:42:	new place, there will naturally be some degree of intermixing, particularly when you have so much

00:09:42 – 00:09:49:	in common 20 years ago, if an American went to most Western European countries, apart from the

00:09:49 – 00:09:56:	language difference, most of it would feel very similar. The customs vary, but they're not

00:09:56 – 00:10:03:	completely alien customs. They're just variations on themes that are familiar to us because we have

00:10:03 – 00:10:10:	that shared culture, which is a part of our shared ancestry. They're inextricable. And

00:10:11 – 00:10:18:	as we, as we look at what nation means, you know, you had mentioned the intermingling,

00:10:18 – 00:10:24:	when we skip forward 150 years from the founding of the colonies to when the United States

00:10:25 – 00:10:31:	rebelled against England and became its own political entity, I want to point to the preamble

00:10:31 – 00:10:36:	to the Constitution, which used to be memorized in school. I don't know, it probably isn't

00:10:36 – 00:10:41:	anymore, but it reads, we the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union,

00:10:41 – 00:10:47:	establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the

00:10:47 – 00:10:54:	general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity do ordain

00:10:54 – 00:11:00:	and establish this constitution of the United States of America. Now, the reason the word that I

00:11:00 – 00:11:07:	want to highlight there is ourselves and our posterity. When they said that, they meant it,

00:11:07 – 00:11:12:	when we hear it, we don't hear anything. Posterity is really kind of an archaic term that's not used

00:11:12 – 00:11:18:	anymore. So I want to take a look at what where that word came from, what it meant when they wrote it.

00:11:19 – 00:11:25:	For the discussions I'm using and we'll put the link in the show notes, there are two websites

00:11:25 – 00:11:29:	that I recommend everyone look at whenever you want to have any conversation about what a word

00:11:29 – 00:11:39:	means, go to two places, go to edamonline.com, that's ETYM as in edamology. It will give details going

00:11:39 – 00:11:45:	back to where the word first entered English and then its origins in previous predecessor languages.

00:11:46 – 00:11:53:	The other website that is invaluable for any of these discussions is Webster's Dictionary 1828.com.

00:11:54 – 00:12:00:	It's a full copy of the original Webster's Dictionary as it was published nearly 200 years ago.

00:12:00 – 00:12:07:	The reason this is important is that, as I said, these words are under attack by those who are

00:12:08 – 00:12:15:	trying to change the very fabric of existence for us and they do that by making us unable to

00:12:15 – 00:12:20:	discuss certain things by removing the words or redefining the words that we would use for those

00:12:20 – 00:12:27:	discussions. When you look at what those words meant 200 years ago, it gives an indication when

00:12:27 – 00:12:33:	we're talking about the original American context, what those guys mean, but it's also valuable just

00:12:33 – 00:12:39:	because it well predates almost all the subversion that has occurred in language, especially in

00:12:39 – 00:12:43:	I mean, dictionaries are changing every year at this point. You can go back five years and you'll

00:12:43 – 00:12:48:	find a dictionary that doesn't say what it does today and it's contrary to what it says today

00:12:48 – 00:12:55:	because they're being so aggressive about destroying these terms. Now, 1828 was still under the

00:12:55 – 00:13:02:	thrall of the enlightenment, but beyond the enlightenment, there was not a lot of subversion present in it.

00:13:03 – 00:13:07:	So we're going to look at the definition for posterity from the preamble.

00:13:08 – 00:13:14:	Comes from Latin. It means descendants, children, children's children, etc. And definitely

00:13:14 – 00:13:20:	the race that precedes from a progenitor, the whole human race are the posterity of Adam.

00:13:21 – 00:13:28:	Now, that's in the constitution that it's racial. That's not you and I being racist saying,

00:13:28 – 00:13:34:	we hate people and we want to exclude them. We're simply saying when the people who founded this

00:13:34 – 00:13:42:	country did so, they understood that it was explicitly racial. I just want to re-briefly the race,

00:13:42 – 00:13:49:	part of the definition for race also from the 1628 or 1828 Webster, the lineage of a family

00:13:49 – 00:13:55:	or continued series of descendants from a parent who is called the stock, a race is a series of

00:13:55 – 00:14:01:	descendants indefinitely. They're synonyms. They mean exactly the same thing. posterity and race

00:14:01 – 00:14:08:	are interchangeable unlike country and nation. So the reason for pointing to this first is that

00:14:08 – 00:14:18:	when we look at the United States in 1791, it was both a new formed country and it was a nation.

00:14:18 – 00:14:24:	It was a pre-existing nation because those roots were genetic roots from their fathers going

00:14:24 – 00:14:34:	back six generations. This is an important point because by calling it racial, it is implicitly

00:14:34 – 00:14:40:	excluding some groups. It's excluding Indians who had lived here beforehand and were by and

00:14:40 – 00:14:47:	large pushed aside or God killed them with plague. There's also the Africans who were enslaved by

00:14:47 – 00:14:55:	other Africans, sold to Jewish slave traders, put on Jewish owned slave ships, brought primarily

00:14:55 – 00:15:01:	to southern colonies where they were sold almost exclusively to Jewish plantation owners where

00:15:01 – 00:15:10:	they were kept to slaves and used as labor sometimes under brutal conditions. When those men were

00:15:10 – 00:15:18:	emancipated from their slavery in 1865, they did not automatically become citizens of the United

00:15:18 – 00:15:25:	States because it was still understood that although they were now legally emancipated, they were not

00:15:25 – 00:15:33:	not posterity. They were not the American posterity. They were unjustly brought here from Africa and

00:15:34 – 00:15:39:	equally importantly, they were still African regardless of a language they spoke. They were

00:15:39 – 00:15:45:	Africans in America and when you and I discuss these subjects, I never want anyone to hear that and

00:15:45 – 00:15:51:	think that we're being insulting or derogatory to say that someone is African. I don't think

00:15:51 – 00:15:56:	that's an insult. I think that if you're African, you should be proud of your African heritage.

00:15:56 – 00:16:02:	Whatever it is, find the best parts of whatever you came from and be proud of that. You know what?

00:16:02 – 00:16:07:	That's obedience to the fourth commandment. To honor your father and mother is not limited with

00:16:07 – 00:16:15:	your immediate parents. It goes back in time and where your ancestors or do better, where they were

00:16:15 – 00:16:21:	wrong, be right, but be proud of whatever good they did. So when I say you're not American, you're

00:16:21 – 00:16:28:	African, it's not hateful. It's simply precise and it's precise in a way that has been destroyed by

00:16:29 – 00:16:36:	taking the word nation and turning into a synonym for country. There are a lot of people listening

00:16:36 – 00:16:40:	right now that probably hate hearing that. They probably think that's nonsense. That's completely

00:16:41 – 00:16:45:	false. I will prove to you right now that you actually believe this and it's in the Bible.

00:16:46 – 00:16:54:	When the Hebrews moved into Egypt and over the period of 400 years, became slaves to the Egyptians

00:16:54 – 00:16:57:	and grew to the point that there were more Hebrews than there were Egyptians and they were

00:16:57 – 00:17:04:	overwhelming them. They never stopped being Hebrew. They didn't become Egyptian even after 400

00:17:04 – 00:17:09:	years in that country. They still had their own language. They still had their own race. They

00:17:09 – 00:17:13:	weren't intermixing with the Egyptians by and large. They still had their own culture.

00:17:14 – 00:17:22:	They saw their own norms and mores. They were still Hebrew. It didn't matter where they live and

00:17:22 – 00:17:29:	that wasn't. Yes, it was the case that God was preserving them as a vessel for the promise of the

00:17:29 – 00:17:35:	Messiah. But that would have been the case even if God didn't care about the Hebrews for that

00:17:36 – 00:17:42:	purpose. Even if they had not been shuttled about and bobbed around in the ocean of history

00:17:43 – 00:17:49:	as part of God's plan, they would still have been Hebrew. Just going somewhere else doesn't change

00:17:49 – 00:17:56:	your nature. If there's a tiger in a zoo in Des Moines, it's not an Iowa tiger. It's a Bengal tiger.

00:17:56 – 00:18:02:	It's a tiger on the wrong continent. Now someone will say, well, you're a white guy. You don't belong

00:18:02 – 00:18:09:	here either. I will tell you this. My ancestors have been here 400 years. I don't

00:18:09 – 00:18:16:	the only ancestors of mine who came through immigration came from Germany in 1870. All the rest

00:18:16 – 00:18:24:	were here before was a country. Now, yes, they came from England to New England, not as immigrants,

00:18:24 – 00:18:31:	but as people who built this country from nothing. There's another illustration that I use often to

00:18:31 – 00:18:38:	demonstrate that the idea that someone moving to another place doesn't mean that they are

00:18:38 – 00:18:46:	never native. Look at New Zealand. New Zealand today has the descendants of the English conquerors

00:18:46 – 00:18:53:	and you have the Maori who were called the natives of New Zealand. When the English showed up in

00:18:53 – 00:19:00:	the, I think the 1600s, the Maori lived there. And so we say, well, automatically, those are the

00:19:00 – 00:19:07:	natives. The Maori got there. They were between about 131350. So they'd only been there about 300

00:19:07 – 00:19:13:	years when the English showed up. They all came from somewhere else. And they moved to a place

00:19:13 – 00:19:19:	that they took over. They made it theirs. And then someone else showed up, moved in, took it over,

00:19:19 – 00:19:26:	made it theirs. Are the Maori native to New Zealand? Sure. Are the European settlers who have lived

00:19:26 – 00:19:32:	their 400 years native to New Zealand? Yes. I am a native of North America. And if you say that I'm

00:19:32 – 00:19:40:	not, after 400 years, you must necessarily say that the Maori are not natives of New Zealand.

00:19:40 – 00:19:48:	Now, the difference between me and my ancestors moving to North America and the Hebrews living in

00:19:48 – 00:19:55:	Egypt is that that was never their country. God didn't give it into their hands. God gave this

00:19:55 – 00:20:00:	country and do my ancestors' hands and probably into many of your ancestors' hands. When the white

00:20:00 – 00:20:05:	man showed up, almost all the natives were killed by disease. And today, because we have germ

00:20:05 – 00:20:09:	three, we're like, oh, well, that was just totally random. And, you know, maybe even some cases,

00:20:09 – 00:20:14:	the Europeans tried to kill them with with germs. They had no idea. They didn't know. That was a plague.

00:20:15 – 00:20:25:	Plagues come from God. That was God's will that those European settlers not have to deal with

00:20:25 – 00:20:30:	millions and millions of Indians who were trying to kill them. I have numerous ancestors who fought,

00:20:30 – 00:20:37:	and in some cases were killed by Indians in the first, in the first half of the 16th century.

00:20:38 – 00:20:44:	Because they lived next door. And it wasn't that they were in open combat. It was just that

00:20:44 – 00:20:50:	the Indians wanted them gone. And fine, that's, I don't fault the Indians for trying to kill them,

00:20:50 – 00:20:58:	but my people won and we took this land. And I'm not ashamed of that because it occurred by God's

00:20:58 – 00:21:04:	grace. And that is how the United, that's how the colonies became nations which formed the

00:21:04 – 00:21:12:	United States. And over time, it became an empire. It became the sort of multi-ethnic empire with

00:21:12 – 00:21:21:	different people coming from different places, not losing their distinct properties. Because if

00:21:21 – 00:21:25:	it's a racial distinction, you don't lose it. I don't stop being European just because I live in

00:21:25 – 00:21:31:	the United States. If I colonize Mars, I'm a European on Mars. I'm not a Martian. If my kids are

00:21:31 – 00:21:37:	born on Mars, they're not Martians. They're Europeans born on a Martian colony of Europe.

00:21:38 – 00:21:44:	That's simply how God propagates the genealogies of his people throughout time. And it hasn't

00:21:44 – 00:21:49:	changed in the last century just because we think we're clever and we have new more enlightened

00:21:49 – 00:21:58:	ways of talking about these things. And when it comes to the idea of someone being, you know,

00:21:58 – 00:22:05:	X because he was born in X country, ultimately you can trace that back and it's clearly ridiculous

00:22:05 – 00:22:12:	because if we're all X because we are originally from or born in X and it only belongs to the people

00:22:12 – 00:22:19:	who were natives, well, there were all natives of Ararat. And none of us own anything else because

00:22:19 – 00:22:23:	well, that's ultimately the place we're all originated from because of course that is where the

00:22:23 – 00:22:33:	arc landed. And so the idea that the native population can't change is it's a really

00:22:33 – 00:22:38:	mercenary idea. If you actually look at the genesis of the idea to go back to the idea that

00:22:38 – 00:22:47:	the source of things matters because how is it actually employed? It's employed purely as an

00:22:47 – 00:22:56:	argument against colonization and modern conquering of heathen nations. It's never used historically

00:22:56 – 00:23:01:	to argue that historical conquest should not have happened. It's not used to restore, there's

00:23:01 – 00:23:08:	not an irredentist argument with regard to older areas that were conquered, but it's just

00:23:08 – 00:23:15:	the European colonization because what is the ultimate genesis of that argument? Well, it's Satan

00:23:16 – 00:23:24:	because Satan hated colonization because colonization was European Christians taking Christianity to

00:23:24 – 00:23:33:	other parts of the world and driving out Satan and the pagans because that is how God works. God

00:23:33 – 00:23:39:	drives out and destroys faithless nations and he uses sometimes faithful nations to do it,

00:23:39 – 00:23:44:	sometimes faithless nations, sometimes God punishes one faithless nation with another.

00:23:45 – 00:23:48:	That is how God wishes to work and he can do that if he wants to do that.

00:23:50 – 00:23:57:	But in the case of colonization it was European Christians faithful Christians driving out evil.

00:23:59 – 00:24:05:	And those European Christians became Christian in exactly the same way. It was not that

00:24:05 – 00:24:11:	evangelist went to every single European individually and said, hey, let me share the gospel with

00:24:11 – 00:24:18:	you and let me baptize you. He was the kings who ultimately converted and when the king converted,

00:24:18 – 00:24:25:	his nation converted. I'm actually descended from the woman who is directly responsible for all

00:24:25 – 00:24:33:	of us being Christian. I was reading last night about Clotilda and her husband Clotilda. Her

00:24:33 – 00:24:39:	Clovis. Yeah. And she was Christian. She basically bullied her husband, King Clovis, the first,

00:24:39 – 00:24:48:	her second, first, into becoming Christian. And that was the genesis of what Wikipedia calls

00:24:48 – 00:24:55:	Nicene Christianity in Europe. If you look at a map of quote unquote Christianity in Europe prior

00:24:55 – 00:25:03:	to about 600 AD, the only actual Christians were in the East. It was all Aryans in the West.

00:25:03 – 00:25:12:	Now, Aryanism is fundamentally not Christian. It sounds mostly Christian and they did speak the word,

00:25:12 – 00:25:17:	the word of God was spoken among them. So surely some of them were Christian. But the Aryan

00:25:17 – 00:25:22:	confession itself is explicitly not Christian because it denies that Jesus is fully God.

00:25:22 – 00:25:35:	So Clotilda, her convincing Clovis to become Christian, him building a cathedral in the center of

00:25:35 – 00:25:43:	his seat of power and his influence over the Franks to become Nicene Christians as opposed to Aryan

00:25:43 – 00:25:50:	not Christians was the entire reason that Christianity proper spread in all of Europe. It's the reason

00:25:50 – 00:25:56:	the word Christian today. We may well be Aryans and not be Christian at all if not for that, if not

00:25:56 – 00:26:04:	for a King converting. And if you look back in scripture, it's completely normal for there not

00:26:04 – 00:26:13:	to be a separation between the religion of a nation, the King of a nation and its people. And

00:26:13 – 00:26:20:	this is even reflected in the fact that so many, especially ancient pagan nations, the King

00:26:20 – 00:26:27:	was treated as a God. Now while this was obviously, it was idolatry, but in a sense, it was actually

00:26:27 – 00:26:35:	an accurate reflection of the godly form, not the King is God, but that the King is the representative

00:26:35 – 00:26:41:	of God in that place. And the fact that the pagan nations said, you know what? There's no God

00:26:41 – 00:26:47:	above our King. Our King is the God of all of us. That was a year usurpation going up, but

00:26:48 – 00:26:55:	from the King on down, it wasn't anything more than a misdirection because the King is the

00:26:55 – 00:27:01:	God's representative over his people for their benefit. And that is the left hand Kingdom. And

00:27:01 – 00:27:08:	so the notion that there would be a distinction between what the King believes and what the people

00:27:08 – 00:27:14:	believe doesn't make any more sense than if it happens in a household with a father who's faithful

00:27:14 – 00:27:18:	and a wife and mother and children who are unfaithful, it should not happen.

00:27:20 – 00:27:25:	And we have an example of that closer to our time. We had the whole reason we're called

00:27:25 – 00:27:32:	Protestants is because the emperor went back on the promise to allow individual princes to determine

00:27:32 – 00:27:38:	which version of Christianity would be practiced within their realms, whether they would be

00:27:38 – 00:27:45:	Lutheran or they would be Papist. And of course, the emperor went back on that because his

00:27:45 – 00:27:51:	advisors changed basically and the influences on him changed, but we protested that. And that was

00:27:51 – 00:27:58:	natural because the prince, the head, the King within that region determined what his subjects

00:27:58 – 00:28:02:	believed because that is the natural course of things because as you mentioned, the father is

00:28:02 – 00:28:08:	the head of the family. The father makes the decisions. Well, the King is the head of the nation

00:28:08 – 00:28:15:	and so the King makes the decisions. And so yes, most of Europe was converted because a few key

00:28:15 – 00:28:22:	people were converted. King's advisors, whoever happened to be, they converted those who were in

00:28:22 – 00:28:30:	a position of headship and that affected a conversion of the people as a whole. And that is what

00:28:30 – 00:28:36:	it means for a nation to be Christian. Yep. And right now there are a lot of people in the audience

00:28:36 – 00:28:41:	probably howling at the premise because there were so many abuses in history where this was done

00:28:41 – 00:28:47:	incorrectly. And that's absolutely the case. And that's where the two kingdoms distinction is useful.

00:28:48 – 00:28:57:	When Clovis became Christian, he built a cathedral, but it was a bishop who ran the cathedral,

00:28:57 – 00:29:03:	was a bishop who taught the people. Clovis said, I'm Christian, strongly suggested his people

00:29:03 – 00:29:10:	should be Christian, but he was not directly over the church. What went wrong in Roman Catholicism

00:29:11 – 00:29:18:	is not that they spread Christianity, but that they became political, which is not what we

00:29:18 – 00:29:23:	are advocating. And that is not what Christian nationalism is. Christian nationalism is not the

00:29:23 – 00:29:32:	notion that the church becomes a political force unto itself. The church is responsible for

00:29:32 – 00:29:40:	satiriology. It is responsible for the salvation of souls and for the preservation of doctrine and for

00:29:40 – 00:29:47:	the proper use of the word and sacrament among the people. That's not the realm of the government.

00:29:47 – 00:29:53:	That should not happen that the government is dictating which sacraments are practiced or how.

00:29:54 – 00:30:00:	We don't believe that. And it's not necessarily a part of Christian nationalism to suggest that.

00:30:00 – 00:30:03:	So when someone says, Oh, you just you're going to end up with Baptist running everything.

00:30:04 – 00:30:08:	I don't care because you know what? Baptist don't want babies to be murdered.

00:30:08 – 00:30:15:	Baptist don't want their children to have their genitals chopped off. Baptist don't want Muslims

00:30:15 – 00:30:21:	raping their daughters just like I don't. Baptists are not going to be in charge of the sacraments.

00:30:21 – 00:30:26:	If this were a Christian nation again, they can still be Baptist and we can still be Lutheran.

00:30:27 – 00:30:36:	But what will stop is the evils that have befell all of us by ceasing to be overtly Christian,

00:30:36 – 00:30:40:	which is fundamentally the purpose of Christian nationalism. It's not necessarily to say,

00:30:40 – 00:30:44:	okay, this is the correct, this is the correctedomination. Everyone's got to be this denomination.

00:30:46 – 00:30:55:	For a Christian to be a participant in a nation politically is to bring how his conscience is

00:30:55 – 00:31:02:	informed by God through Scripture to his other duties, to his other vocations as a husband,

00:31:02 – 00:31:10:	as a father, as a neighbor, perhaps as a mayor or as a sheriff. If he knows that God doesn't want

00:31:10 – 00:31:17:	people to be murdered for things to be stolen, for people to be harmed, that's going to inform

00:31:17 – 00:31:21:	his conduct in his role in preserving earthly order.

00:31:21 – 00:31:28:	Of course, we should be careful to distinguish that when it comes to papers, they do exactly

00:31:28 – 00:31:36:	want to return to Roman hegemony. So in the case of those who are Roman Catholic, Catholic

00:31:36 – 00:31:42:	and quotes, of course, they do want the conflation of the two kingdoms. They don't want any

00:31:42 – 00:31:48:	differentiation because they see the king as inferior to the Pope as opposed to being

00:31:49 – 00:31:55:	Christ's left hand and the leader of the church being his right hand or the leadership whatever

00:31:55 – 00:32:00:	it happens to be the organization in the right hand kingdom. Because that's a part of what we

00:32:00 – 00:32:06:	tend to drop when we're speaking about these concepts these days is we don't say the left hand

00:32:07 – 00:32:12:	of Christ, which is what the left hand kingdom is. We use that shorthand, but we're assuming that

00:32:12 – 00:32:18:	people understand something that people no longer understand. It is the left hand of Christ

00:32:18 – 00:32:24:	and the right hand of Christ. These both belong to God. We're not talking about

00:32:24 – 00:32:31:	two separate entirely distinct things. We are talking about how God interacts with the world

00:32:31 – 00:32:36:	in two distinct ways. And when we advocate Christian nationalism, we are saying that

00:32:38 – 00:32:45:	the state should uphold Christian values. Now that's distinct from Christian doctrine and this

00:32:45 – 00:32:50:	shouldn't be complicated for people, but somehow it is. Yes, there are historical abuses.

00:32:50 – 00:32:58:	Yes, there are some like the papers who would seek to restore political hegemony over countries.

00:32:58 – 00:33:05:	Not going to happen. That's the fact that someone might do something bad with something good

00:33:05 – 00:33:10:	is not an argument against the good thing. And this shouldn't be difficult for Christians to

00:33:10 – 00:33:18:	understand. When we're talking about Christians ensuring that their own nation, which should be

00:33:18 – 00:33:26:	under God, properly, the triune God, not the deist God, this country evolved into upholding

00:33:26 – 00:33:32:	from the top down incidentally, when all the deists overthrew the articles of the confederation

00:33:33 – 00:33:38:	and basically came up with a new government and secret at the constitutional convention,

00:33:38 – 00:33:43:	and they were putatively the representatives of the people, but by and large they didn't represent

00:33:43 – 00:33:48:	the people. They represented landed interests. They represented traders and the wealthy. And many

00:33:48 – 00:33:53:	of them were not Christians. Many were, but there were many non-Christians participating.

00:33:53 – 00:33:58:	And some of them did terrible things like Thomas Jefferson as a direct result of their not being

00:33:58 – 00:34:06:	Christian. But because they won politically, they wrote the history. And so now everyone thinks

00:34:06 – 00:34:11:	that all these guys are heroes. And because they were at the top and because they won,

00:34:12 – 00:34:20:	deism spread. When you look at 18th century America, Christianity began to die in large part.

00:34:20 – 00:34:28:	Now it mutated as it died. You had an explosion of cults. You had an explosion of the transcendentalists

00:34:28 – 00:34:33:	and other things where people just sort of wandered off in the nature and did bizarre things that

00:34:33 – 00:34:41:	tried to find God outside of Scripture. That was a result of their leaders not being Christian

00:34:41 – 00:34:47:	and taking the country in a direction, in a nation in a direction that was not Christian.

00:34:47 – 00:34:52:	And the subsequent fruits of those decisions are still with us to this day.

00:34:53 – 00:34:58:	Yeah, I think when the second part of the conversation we want to have today is what is a

00:34:58 – 00:35:08:	Christian. And we've been kind of answering it all along. But there's this goofy stereotypical

00:35:08 – 00:35:14:	behavior that I see emerging even among people who are good Christians. They intend to be faithful.

00:35:14 – 00:35:20:	They're trying not to cross lines that they believe are present. But they do so by saying,

00:35:20 – 00:35:27:	in effect, I can only be Christian in church stuff. And I don't want to impose on anyone else

00:35:27 – 00:35:32:	the rest of my time. And like I mentioned last week, you got an hour in church, you know, maybe

00:35:32 – 00:35:37:	two or three hours of Sunday school. And then the other 160 odd hours, you're off on your own.

00:35:38 – 00:35:42:	How many of those hours are you a Christian? Is it when you're in church or is it all the time?

00:35:43 – 00:35:50:	Now the what is a Christian question is one that makes a lot of Protestants uncomfortable. Because

00:35:51 – 00:35:58:	Protestant doctrine, the solas have basically been collapsed into I love Jesus. I'm going to

00:35:58 – 00:36:02:	heaven. Everything else is going to be fine because he paid for my sins. It's all okay.

00:36:03 – 00:36:09:	It's it's happy, clappy boyfriend Jesus crap that while in isolation, those individual

00:36:09 – 00:36:15:	statements may be true. If that becomes your ethos, you're toast. I

00:36:16 – 00:36:20:	there's there's something that I think I recommend in the first episode. And I'm going to say it over

00:36:20 – 00:36:27:	and over again because I think it's really vitable right vital. Go to esv.org and click on the little

00:36:27 – 00:36:33:	gear. Uncheck all the options, turn off the footnotes and the cross references, turn off the headings,

00:36:33 – 00:36:40:	turn off the verses and turn on red lettering for Jesus, which is going to make some of the

00:36:40 – 00:36:44:	Lutherans in the audience freak out because there are people who say that you can ignore the

00:36:44 – 00:36:51:	Bible unless it's in red. Absolutely not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is do that and then

00:36:51 – 00:36:56:	read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John just reading the words in red. Don't read anything else. Just

00:36:56 – 00:37:01:	read the words in red. That is not to say that the rest is not equally important. It's not to say

00:37:01 – 00:37:06:	that the rest is not also the inspired word of God. That's not my point. My point is this.

00:37:07 – 00:37:15:	If you read only Jesus preaching, it's almost all law. There is gospel there, but it's thin.

00:37:15 – 00:37:22:	And there are oftentimes where he lays it on hard and he ends hard. When he performs a miracle

00:37:22 – 00:37:28:	for someone, he says go and sin no more. Now was Jesus stupid? Did he set that person up or

00:37:28 – 00:37:34:	did he think that they would actually be able to not sin anymore? Or did Jesus tell him what his will,

00:37:34 – 00:37:40:	what God's will is for each of us, to go and sin no more? That is the Christian life.

00:37:41 – 00:37:46:	And yes, we fail. And yes, Jesus paid on the cross for the fact that we would and will continue

00:37:46 – 00:37:54:	to fail. That doesn't mean that we don't try. And the sanctified Christian life is about living

00:37:54 – 00:38:01:	more and more in God every day, about spending time in God's scripture, about contemplating

00:38:01 – 00:38:08:	his wisdom and then about living all 168 hours of our week in a manner that is consistent with

00:38:08 – 00:38:15:	God's will and pleasing to him. And when these guys only want to talk about the gospel, quote,

00:38:15 – 00:38:22:	unquote, and Christ sacrifice, those are incredibly important things, but that's not the entire

00:38:22 – 00:38:29:	Christian life. The Christian life begins at baptism and continues until you die. And most of your

00:38:29 – 00:38:36:	days, most of your hours, most of your minutes are not spent reading a word or taking communion

00:38:36 – 00:38:42:	or hearing preaching. And that's okay. That's God gave us other things to do, but they should be

00:38:42 – 00:38:48:	done in a manner that is pleasing to him. The Christian life is obedience to God. And that means that

00:38:49 – 00:38:58:	the left hand kingdom where there is what we call political activity must necessarily be

00:38:59 – 00:39:04:	in obedience to God every bit as much as what goes on in church. Just as much as we care about a

00:39:04 – 00:39:11:	faithful application of sacramental doctrine, we should care about the proper exercise of the law.

00:39:12 – 00:39:19:	And to fail to do that is to fail to be a good Christian and to be indifferent to that is to

00:39:19 – 00:39:26:	risk ceasing to be a Christian altogether. Well, we know what happens when Christians are

00:39:26 – 00:39:33:	indifferent to the left hand kingdom. Satan takes over because Satan is not indifferent to the left

00:39:33 – 00:39:38:	hand kingdom. And so if Christians are indifferent and do not involve themselves in the left hand

00:39:38 – 00:39:43:	kingdom and do not behave as faithful Christians in the left hand kingdom, the left hand kingdom

00:39:43 – 00:39:50:	will be ruled by pagans will be ruled by Satan. And so there are only two choices. This is not

00:39:50 – 00:39:55:	something on which you can be indifferent because if you're indifferent, you're just condemning your

00:39:55 – 00:40:00:	grandchildren, great grandchildren, whatever generation it happens to be, you are condemning them

00:40:01 – 00:40:07:	to live in a pagan nation instead of a Christian nation. This isn't an option where we have, you know,

00:40:08 – 00:40:14:	Christianity on one side, Satanism and atheism on the other side, and some sort of neutrality in the

00:40:14 – 00:40:22:	middle. This is black and white. You're either a Christian nation or you are an anti-Christian nation.

00:40:22 – 00:40:27:	Yes, there are different degrees of being one or the other. You can be more or less Christian and

00:40:27 – 00:40:35:	you can be more or less atheist or Satanist. But you can't be neutral. There is no neutrality. There's

00:40:35 – 00:40:43:	no middle. There's no third way when it comes to this question. And you mentioned about the rise

00:40:43 – 00:40:52:	of deism in the US. And really, the modern Christian, many of the churches anyway, are basically a

00:40:52 – 00:41:00:	half-step above morally therapeutic deism or more holistic therapeutic deism. It's just, it's that

00:41:00 – 00:41:05:	with Jesus slathered on top of it a little bit, just a thin layer, a little bit of Jesus butter

00:41:05 – 00:41:12:	on top there. It's not really Christianity anymore. It's just, it's that one hour, the 90 minutes,

00:41:12 – 00:41:18:	whatever it happens to be on Sunday. And then I live the rest of my life as if I'm, you know,

00:41:18 – 00:41:24:	just another member of this society. And I do whatever society tells me to do or not to do.

00:41:24 – 00:41:27:	And so I have Jesus in it. Yeah, exactly.

00:41:28 – 00:41:33:	Yes, football is actually a great example because how many people spend their 60 minutes,

00:41:33 – 00:41:37:	their 90 minutes, maybe they go to Bible study and maybe they spend two hours, whatever it happens

00:41:37 – 00:41:42:	to be. They spend that little bit of time for Jesus on Sunday. And then they go home and spend

00:41:42 – 00:41:48:	four, five, six, I don't know how many hours on football or basketball or baseball or whatever it

00:41:48 – 00:41:54:	happens to be. And then they spend so much of their time thinking about and posting about and

00:41:54 – 00:42:01:	arguing over that. Well, what's really important in their life? I'm not saying you can't have hobbies

00:42:01 – 00:42:05:	because of course you can have a hobby. You can have a hobby that absorbs a ton of your time even

00:42:05 – 00:42:11:	as long as it doesn't become more important to you than the things that are actually important.

00:42:12 – 00:42:18:	And for a lot of people, it seems like sports have become more important than God because you'll

00:42:18 – 00:42:25:	have even pastors who spend their Sundays posting about sports. Why on earth are you doing that?

00:42:25 – 00:42:31:	This is supposed to be the day that everyone inherently knows is dedicated to the Lord.

00:42:31 – 00:42:36:	Maybe say something about the Lord on that day, particularly if it is your vocation to do so.

00:42:36 – 00:42:42:	If you spend all of your time posting about sports, the people who are looking at that who are

00:42:42 – 00:42:47:	watching you are going to think that, well, maybe God isn't so important because he's posting about

00:42:47 – 00:42:53:	this particular sports team. He likes a lot more than God. And so it matters what we do,

00:42:53 – 00:42:58:	how much time we spend on it, how important we make it seem in our life because often how important

00:42:58 – 00:43:02:	we make it seem is merely a reflection of how important it actually is.

00:43:03 – 00:43:07:	And so our witness to the world is in part how we live our lives.

00:43:08 – 00:43:13:	Are you a Christian when you're in the left hand kingdom? Are you a Christian when you're not

00:43:13 – 00:43:21:	in the sanctuary? You should be. In sports, I specifically mentioned professional sports because

00:43:22 – 00:43:28:	that is where the subversion is occurring culturally. It is not simply that these professional

00:43:28 – 00:43:36:	sports were erected on Sundays, Sunday mornings, on weekends to consume people's money

00:43:36 – 00:43:41:	in their time and their passion. And we're not making the argument against

00:43:43 – 00:43:49:	spending your time poorly versus spending your time well. We're making the point that

00:43:49 – 00:43:58:	the NFL is evil. The NFL has done tremendously evil things. They have promoted tremendously

00:43:58 – 00:44:04:	evil things. They do it every Sunday. It is one of the key things that they do. It is one of

00:44:04 – 00:44:12:	their purposes is not to sell advertising, not to throw the pigskin around. It is to promote

00:44:12 – 00:44:18:	societal change along avenues that are contrary to Christian doctrine. And the fact that

00:44:18 – 00:44:24:	so many pastors and other Christians are either blind or indifferent to it is terrifying.

00:44:24 – 00:44:32:	If you are living a sanctified life, if you are spending your time consuming godly things,

00:44:32 – 00:44:41:	when you're exposed to something that is ungodly, that is not wholesome, it's physically repellent,

00:44:41 – 00:44:50:	it's disgusting. You physically revolt. I spent years being completely indifferent to most of

00:44:50 – 00:44:53:	these subjects. I was a Christian, but I didn't really care. I was a Christian on Sunday and the

00:44:53 – 00:44:58:	rest time, whatever. I knew it was Christian, so it was sorted. I was a Lutheran. I definitely

00:44:58 – 00:45:02:	was confident in my baptism. Pretty much everything else was taken care of.

00:45:04 – 00:45:10:	In the last couple of years, as I started to spend more time in the word and less time consuming

00:45:10 – 00:45:17:	garbage, when I would be then exposed to things I used to love to songs and to shows that I used

00:45:17 – 00:45:24:	to just I ate them up. It was it was part of who I was. There are many cases where I had a

00:45:24 – 00:45:33:	I to I now have a visceral repulsion to those things. And it's not rooted in some sort of

00:45:33 – 00:45:38:	pietism where I'm like, oh, this is dirty. Like I didn't relisten to that song expecting to find

00:45:38 – 00:45:44:	something gross. I relistened because I missed the song and found that what I used to love I now

00:45:44 – 00:45:52:	hated. Now that is something I'm not saying that everyone needs to have exactly that experience,

00:45:52 – 00:46:01:	but I am saying if you never feel revolted by things that are contrary to God, or if you never

00:46:01 – 00:46:06:	even if you can't even tell that things are contrary to God, you have a spiritual problem.

00:46:06 – 00:46:12:	You have a deep-seated spiritual lack of discernment. And although discernment is a gift

00:46:13 – 00:46:17:	as a matter of degree, it must be present in every Christian or how are you going to

00:46:18 – 00:46:22:	stay Christian? If you can't tell the difference between Christian and not Christian,

00:46:23 – 00:46:28:	you're toast, you're lost. And that's the reason we keep talking about Sunday morning

00:46:28 – 00:46:34:	verses the rest of the time is that so many of these arguments that are made mostly in good faith

00:46:34 – 00:46:40:	by Christians who rightly want to prevent problems that have occurred in the past when people

00:46:40 – 00:46:47:	have done things wrong, they end up collapsing the Christian life to Sunday morning. And the rest

00:46:47 – 00:46:52:	is just, oh, remember your baptism and go do whatever. I can tell you from personal experience

00:46:52 – 00:46:58:	that doesn't work. It's a terrible idea. It is an idea that leads people to hell. And

00:46:59 – 00:47:07:	more than that, this isn't just about saved or not. That's one of the things that we lose when

00:47:07 – 00:47:13:	we think about sanctification as we don't really think about sanctification at all. When all the

00:47:13 – 00:47:18:	focus is on the sacraments and God's gifts to us, which are blessings, I'm not demeaning those in

00:47:18 – 00:47:28:	the slightest, so please don't hear that. When we issue godly living, godly wisdom, obedience to God,

00:47:29 – 00:47:36:	we end up missing out on the good life that God wishes to give us. When you obey God, you are blessed

00:47:36 – 00:47:41:	in this life. This isn't prosperity gospel. It doesn't mean you're going to win a million dollars.

00:47:41 – 00:47:45:	It doesn't mean you're not going to lose your job. It doesn't mean you won't go hungry. It means

00:47:45 – 00:47:52:	that you will be blessed by God in ways that he sees fit. And whatever God's blessings are for you,

00:47:52 – 00:47:59:	you should be thankful for them. And as much as we want to emphasize that not every blessing

00:47:59 – 00:48:06:	necessarily looks like a win at the time, most of them are. Most of God's blessings are just

00:48:06 – 00:48:11:	normal blessings that anyone can see. If you don't engage in contraceptive behavior,

00:48:11 – 00:48:17:	God will bless you with lots of children. It happens automatically. You get it for free. God

00:48:17 – 00:48:23:	just gives it to you. When you rebel against God, you don't get those blessings. Now,

00:48:24 – 00:48:28:	when those things are sinful, Jesus paid for them, and you will still receive salvation,

00:48:28 – 00:48:33:	but you will not have the temporal gifts that come to those who are obedient in this life.

00:48:35 – 00:48:40:	When it comes to football, I'd like to make a sort of practical argument that may reach

00:48:40 – 00:48:46:	some members of the audience who would not otherwise listen to us. Now for a religious audience

00:48:46 – 00:48:53:	undoubtedly, we're going to have some familiarity with a certain section of the IRS tax code,

00:48:53 – 00:49:00:	and that would be 501c. And the reason we'll have that is because, of course, 501c3 is where you

00:49:00 – 00:49:07:	get tax exemption for religious organizations. Now, what most people don't realize is that

00:49:08 – 00:49:15:	scroll down a little bit from 501c3, 501c6, football organizations are exempt.

00:49:16 – 00:49:24:	Now, as a general rule, our government does not do things that are for the good in the greater

00:49:24 – 00:49:30:	sense of the term good, things that are in line with Christianity, in line with Christ.

00:49:31 – 00:49:36:	And so you would, of course, be hard-pressed to find an organization that is more evil than

00:49:36 – 00:49:40:	the IRS. There are some in our government, of course, but they're certainly at the top.

00:49:41 – 00:49:44:	So if the IRS has preferential treatment for an organization,

00:49:46 – 00:49:51:	you can generally assume that it's one of a handful of reasons why that is the case.

00:49:52 – 00:49:58:	You have either it is too much of a hassle or it becomes too entangled or there's a legal

00:49:58 – 00:50:02:	restriction. That would be the case for religious organizations, several of those arguments.

00:50:02 – 00:50:08:	We won't get into them here. You have particularly moneyed or powerful individuals who can

00:50:08 – 00:50:15:	write their own laws by proxy, of course. And then you have things that are being pushed for

00:50:15 – 00:50:22:	particularly destructive purposes to destroy society. Often, reasons two and three tend to overlap

00:50:22 – 00:50:28:	a lot. That's a Venn diagram with a great deal of overlap in that middle section. But the reason

00:50:28 – 00:50:35:	that you have the NFL getting such preferential tax treatment and legal treatment and subsidies

00:50:35 – 00:50:41:	and everything historically is that those who are pushing for this have a very clear agenda.

00:50:41 – 00:50:50:	And that agenda runs counter to Christianity, as was mentioned. That agenda does all sorts of evil

00:50:50 – 00:50:57:	in our society. And it's not just the NFL itself. It's the things the NFL shows. It's the things

00:50:57 – 00:51:03:	the NFL advertises. It's the things that it does in its press releases and the way that it

00:51:03 – 00:51:10:	advocates for changing society and laws. It's the half time shows it's extensive.

00:51:11 – 00:51:17:	This is an organization that exists to undermine what is good in our culture. And many Christians

00:51:17 – 00:51:22:	are supporting it not just with their time and their attention, but also with a significant

00:51:22 – 00:51:28:	amount of money. And that's not to say that it's not entertaining too, but that's the problem.

00:51:28 – 00:51:33:	The entertaining aspect is the hook. The fact that you've maybe played college ball or like

00:51:33 – 00:51:38:	you've always had been into it doesn't change the fact that what it is being used for today

00:51:38 – 00:51:44:	is overt evil. And when people don't recognize that, we have a real problem.

00:51:45 – 00:51:52:	I think it's important before we wrap up to make a positive case for what Christian nationalism

00:51:53 – 00:52:00:	would look like. What would a Christian nation look like? And I think to start, we have to acknowledge

00:52:00 – 00:52:11:	that while on the right hand kingdom there is not necessarily permission for the church to

00:52:11 – 00:52:19:	forcibly baptize or forcibly convert separately from that question. On the left hand politically,

00:52:19 – 00:52:29:	a Christian government has a positive obligation to God to prevent false religions from spreading

00:52:29 – 00:52:35:	in its lands. If we were a Christian nation, there would be no more mosques. There would be no more

00:52:35 – 00:52:41:	synagogues. There would be no more Jehovah's Witnesses, Kingdom Halls. There would be no more

00:52:41 – 00:52:48:	more modern tabernacle. These things, the Christian science reading rooms, these things which are overt

00:52:48 – 00:52:56:	religions, which are, which are antithetical to God would not be permitted for the very same reason

00:52:56 – 00:53:03:	that when God gave the Hebrews new lands, he told them to cast down the idols of those lands to

00:53:03 – 00:53:12:	destroy them. That wasn't political guidance. That wasn't, oh, that was then in this is now. If

00:53:12 – 00:53:19:	you're a faithful Christian, you have a positive to desire to destroy that, which is evil, that

00:53:19 – 00:53:25:	which will cause people to go to hell. And if you're a Christian, if you actually believe what

00:53:25 – 00:53:30:	Christian doctrine teaches, then mosques and synagogues and Christian science reading rooms

00:53:31 – 00:53:38:	lead people to hell. They cause damnation by their existence and they would not be permitted.

00:53:38 – 00:53:44:	And that is why we will continue in virtually every episode, God willing, every episode.

00:53:44 – 00:53:49:	We will attack the Enlightenment by name and we will give details about why the Enlightenment

00:53:49 – 00:53:55:	was a perversion and an assault on God's order because the notion of the separation of church and

00:53:55 – 00:54:03:	state, which has nothing to do even with the initial implementation of the Constitution itself,

00:54:03 – 00:54:07:	but was was deemed later on. But it was an Enlightenment value.

00:54:08 – 00:54:14:	The idea that will the state can go in one direction and the church can go another and they don't

00:54:14 – 00:54:18:	need to step on each other's toes. There are cases where that's true and there are cases where

00:54:18 – 00:54:25:	that's false. And if you have a Christian nation, you should seek through the gospel to reach

00:54:26 – 00:54:32:	those who can be reached to give them the good news of God. But you're under no obligation to

00:54:32 – 00:54:38:	permit them to practice witchcraft. You have an obligation to God to kill them if they practice

00:54:38 – 00:54:42:	witchcraft. That's what God says in the Old Testament. And it's not, again, that's not a

00:54:42 – 00:54:52:	ceremonial law. If someone is going to behave in a way that is overtly satanic, the left hand

00:54:52 – 00:54:57:	kingdom, not the right, not the church, we're not saying that the church should be exercising,

00:54:57 – 00:55:06:	exercising force or violence. But the king, absolutely, he has a positive duty to do so and to fail

00:55:06 – 00:55:12:	to do so is to fail to be a Christian kingdom or principality or whatever form of government you

00:55:12 – 00:55:18:	have. It doesn't matter. The bottom line is if it is not upholding the very most basic Christian

00:55:18 – 00:55:23:	premise that over evil, even if it's spiritual evil, even if even if if it's a Satan worshipper

00:55:23 – 00:55:31:	who's not actually openly sacrificing humans, it doesn't matter. They still must be cast out

00:55:31 – 00:55:35:	and they must be stamped out and they cannot be permitted to exist. And if that means that you

00:55:35 – 00:55:41:	have to hunt them the way we hunt terrorists and drug dealers, they're in the same category

00:55:41 – 00:55:46:	only worse because you don't need to fear the one who can destroy the body. You need to fear the

00:55:46 – 00:55:54:	one who can destroy both the body and soul forever. And beyond even that, it's not just that that

00:55:54 – 00:56:01:	individual invites condemnation upon himself invites judgment upon himself. If you actually read

00:56:01 – 00:56:08:	the passages in the Old Testament, the existence of these individuals in a nation invites judgment

00:56:08 – 00:56:14:	on the nation. And so we have this modern conception. It comes from libertarian from enlightenment

00:56:14 – 00:56:20:	thought that well, my neighbor does his thing over on his property. And I do mine on my property.

00:56:20 – 00:56:25:	And as long as I'm not interfering with him, then he can keep doing it. And as long as he's not

00:56:25 – 00:56:31:	interfering with me, then he can keep doing whatever he's doing. And that's just not true. Because

00:56:31 – 00:56:37:	what my neighbor does does directly affect me, particularly if he is worshipping a false God,

00:56:37 – 00:56:44:	because he is inviting God's judgment on himself and on me. I live next to him. I'm part of his

00:56:44 – 00:56:51:	nation. I am not immune to the consequences of my neighbor's evil. Because God doesn't just judge

00:56:51 – 00:56:57:	individuals. He judges individuals, families, and nations. And there are clear examples of this

00:56:57 – 00:57:02:	throughout scripture. This is not something that appears in one place. It appears in many places.

00:57:02 – 00:57:09:	It is very clear that just as God blesses the faithful, he will judge and curse the faithless.

00:57:10 – 00:57:16:	And the inevitable counterargument is, well, what if the government doesn't do it right?

00:57:16 – 00:57:21:	What if they go after the wrong people? That's why we talk about headship. That is why we talk

00:57:21 – 00:57:27:	about the fact that he who is the head faces the stricter judgment. We spend a lot of time in the

00:57:27 – 00:57:32:	first episode different differentiating between those who are subordinate and those who are superior.

00:57:32 – 00:57:38:	If you're in a superior position, you have a greater duty to God. You have a greater accountability

00:57:38 – 00:57:48:	to God. So am I worried that the man who is over my nation politically may err in discerning

00:57:48 – 00:57:53:	the proper Christian treatment of things? Of course. Just as I'm concerned that he may make errors

00:57:53 – 00:58:02:	in terms of warfare or the economy or whatever, sound judgment and wisdom in Godly living

00:58:03 – 00:58:08:	are always driven by God and they're always in proclamation of God's will.

00:58:09 – 00:58:14:	And the fact that someone might get it wrong isn't an argument for not trying. It's an argument

00:58:14 – 00:58:21:	for getting it right and for caring about these things to the point that we stridently pursue them

00:58:22 – 00:58:27:	in a faithful obedience to God. Frankly, one that hasn't been seen for a long time,

00:58:27 – 00:58:33:	when Christian nationalism is condemned by pastors, I didn't mention this earlier, but you need

00:58:33 – 00:58:39:	to understand for someone to condemn Christian nationalism is to condemn virtually all of Christian

00:58:39 – 00:58:45:	history. Christian nationalism is why you're a Christian. I alluded to that point, but I want to

00:58:45 – 00:58:52:	make it explicit. You are a Christian because of Christian nationalism. You're a Christian because

00:58:52 – 00:58:58:	the leaders of the European kingdoms became Christians and their people became Christians.

00:58:58 – 00:59:02:	In some cases, it was more compelled than others, but you know what? Even if you're compelled to be

00:59:02 – 00:59:06:	a Christian, even if you don't really believe it, if your kids are baptized and they're raised,

00:59:06 – 00:59:13:	they're going to believe it. God visits His blessings on those who obey Him. And that's not to suggest

00:59:13 – 00:59:19:	that you can have some sort of pro-form obedience without faith. I'm simply saying that when you live

00:59:19 – 00:59:25:	a godly life, it will bear godly fruit. And that happens at the national level as well. Even

00:59:25 – 00:59:31:	godly heathens are blessed by God to a certain degree. Absolutely. Yes. They're blessed with children,

00:59:31 – 00:59:36:	they're blessed with long life and health. And you see this all the time. And it's one of the

00:59:36 – 00:59:41:	things that makes it difficult to reach them with the gospel because they're living the good life.

00:59:41 – 00:59:47:	They have everything. They're at peace. They don't lie. They don't slander. They do everything

00:59:47 – 00:59:55:	pretty much by the book. And so they feel self-justified. And no one should ever feel self-justified.

00:59:55 – 00:59:59:	Nothing that ever comes out of either one of our mouths should ever give anyone the indication

59:59 – 01:00:06
that we think that we can save ourselves by any of this. All of this is post-seateriological

01:00:06 – 01:00:12:	conversation. We're talking about, okay, I'm a Christian what now? That's the reason that James

01:00:12 – 01:00:18:	wrote his wisdom epistle. James is a book that scares a lot of Lutherans. He used to scare me

01:00:18 – 01:00:25:	because I'd seen the one verse that says you're not safe. There's not the faith without works

01:00:25 – 01:00:33:	isn't a thing. And if you've been inculcated in Lutheran doctrine and not seriously engaged with

01:00:34 – 01:00:41:	sanctified living and what it means to live a Christian life, that does sound scary. But if you

01:00:41 – 01:00:47:	read the whole epistle of James, he was writing to Christians to tell him, okay, your Christians,

01:00:47 – 01:00:53:	what now? I am telling you what the Christian life looks like in Jerusalem or anywhere because his

01:00:53 – 01:01:00:	words were the Holy Spirit's words in their timeless. God gave us the epistle of James. He gave

01:01:00 – 01:01:05:	us Jesus preaching that again, it's not mostly gospel. It's mostly, here's all the stuff you

01:01:05 – 01:01:11:	should do and not do. And Jesus wasn't confused about how you were saved. He knew why he was here

01:01:11 – 01:01:16:	when he came. When he was preaching about obedience to God, he knew that the people who were hearing

01:01:16 – 01:01:22:	him would fail. He knew he was going to the cross to pay for their individual sins as well as

01:01:22 – 01:01:29:	ours. And he said it anyway, it was a feudal. No, it was not feudal because it is the means by which

01:01:29 – 01:01:36:	God wishes to give us his blessings. When you disobey God, housing in a bless you, there are

01:01:36 – 01:01:41:	certain blessings you can receive in those they're mentioned in Scripture. The sun shines and the

01:01:41 – 01:01:50:	rain comes and the food is given to the righteous and to the unrighteous alike. But when you live in

01:01:50 – 01:01:56:	God's word and you live a sanctified life that issues that which is evil and focuses on that which

01:01:56 – 01:02:02:	is good, including what your neighbor is doing, you will have more blessings. You might not get richer.

01:02:02 – 01:02:08:	You might still die from cancer. You're still blessed by God, even if the worst things happen to you

01:02:08 – 01:02:14:	because you are living a life that is in conformance as much as you're able with his will. And

01:02:14 – 01:02:21:	that pleases God. We've we've become afraid to say that obeying God pleases God, which is insane

01:02:21 – 01:02:26:	because it's all over Scripture. You can't open to a page that doesn't talk about a God pleasing

01:02:26 – 01:02:33:	life, pleasing God. We have a duty to please God. And when we talk about Christian nationalism

01:02:33 – 01:02:41:	in particular, we're saying that our government, our nation should be ruled in a manner that is

01:02:41 – 01:02:48:	pleasing to God. And if you have a political environment that is permitting evil, is permitting

01:02:48 – 01:02:55:	idolatry, is permitting gross offenses against creation itself, that is the opposite of pleasing to

01:02:55 – 01:03:00:	God. And you're not only going to get wrath, you're going to be judged for it both in this life

01:03:00 – 01:03:06:	and the next. It is open sin for us to tolerate the government that we have. And we're all guilty

01:03:06 – 01:03:11:	of it. And blogging about it and complaining about it on podcasts doesn't get us off the hook

01:03:12 – 01:03:17:	because it's our government too. And we will pay the price for what it does from God.

01:03:18 – 01:03:24:	And we are certainly paying the price with the state of our society. But to quickly address

01:03:24 – 01:03:31:	the argument to be loose with the term that always comes up that has been mentioned several times,

01:03:31 – 01:03:37:	those who say that, well, because this thing can be abused, it cannot possibly be good.

01:03:39 – 01:03:43:	Well, those who actually have and believe in the sacraments should understand that that is not

01:03:43 – 01:03:51:	the case because we use wine in the sacrament of the table in the Lord's Supper and can wine be

01:03:51 – 01:03:57:	abused? Certainly. Does that mean that wine is evil? Well, scripture is very clear that the answer

01:03:57 – 01:04:03:	is certainly no. It is not inherently evil. And to make sure we meet our Latin requirement for

01:04:03 – 01:04:10:	the episode, of course, that's just abuses, usum, known toilet. The abuse of a thing does not cancel

01:04:10 – 01:04:16:	or make void the use of a thing. Those are two separate considerations. Whether or not something

01:04:16 – 01:04:23:	is good is one consideration. Whether or not a particular use to which it is being put is another

01:04:23 – 01:04:30:	consideration. And so to use another illustration, there was a military commander who was being

01:04:30 – 01:04:36:	interviewed for the news because his base had had some young boys come to the base to learn various

01:04:36 – 01:04:42:	things, one of which was marksmanship, handling a rifle. And the female interviewer asked if that

01:04:42 – 01:04:47:	of course wasn't a dangerous activity. She said, well, you're equipping these young boys to be

01:04:47 – 01:04:53:	killers. And the general's response was very good. Well, ma'am, you're equipped to be a prostitute,

01:04:53 – 01:05:04:	but you're not one, are you? That's what a boils down to. The Christian life requires a Christian

01:05:04 – 01:05:10:	to live it. And the fact that we have so many who are afraid to even say, hey, go live a Christian

01:05:10 – 01:05:16:	life. It shows that we have ceased to be faithful Christians by any measure. You're not a Christian

01:05:16 – 01:05:21:	on Sunday. You're a Christian every day or you're never a Christian. If you can go sit in a

01:05:21 – 01:05:28:	pew and take the sacrament and sing the hymns and love the liturgy and whatever performative

01:05:28 – 01:05:33:	things you do, no matter how much you feel them in your heart, if you then go on with the rest

01:05:33 – 01:05:38:	of your week and forget about it and think that you can engage fully in the opposite direction

01:05:38 – 01:05:45:	from God's will. And it's not even that people do that thinking, well, they don't think it's sinful.

01:05:45 – 01:05:49:	They don't even think, well, I'm going to go sin and Jesus will forgive me on Sunday. They

01:05:49 – 01:05:53:	don't think that they're sin is sinful. And that's the most terrifying aspect of all of this.

01:05:53 – 01:05:59:	It's when we have pastors and other Christians openly attacking Christian nationalism, which is

01:05:59 – 01:06:06:	simply obedience to God. And they do it with a clear conscience. That's what all these things boil

01:06:06 – 01:06:14:	down to. I mentioned last week that just because you're a Christian and you do something doesn't

01:06:14 – 01:06:19:	sanctify what you're doing as itself Christian, you may well do it with a clean conscience. And

01:06:19 – 01:06:25:	that makes it even worse because not only is it very convincing, but you're on repentant when you sin.

01:06:26 – 01:06:31:	And that is why we will continuously point to scripture and what God says jumping over the last

01:06:31 – 01:06:36:	couple hundred years of what's come out of our church or any other church or anywhere in society

01:06:36 – 01:06:43:	because if something is true and it's from God, it is an eternal truth. And you don't need something

01:06:43 – 01:06:49:	that was put on a podcast last week or written in a book last year or published by a sin and 50 years

01:06:49 – 01:06:54:	ago for it to be true. If it's true, you're going to find it in scripture and you're going to find

01:06:54 – 01:07:00:	that it's been practiced by Christians throughout time. And what we find is that Christian nationalism

01:07:00 – 01:07:06:	has been practiced by Christians throughout time until the kingdoms were of Europe were overthrown

01:07:06 – 01:07:11:	and destroyed. And that began with the enlightenment and it began with the revolutions and we are

01:07:11 – 01:07:17:	witnessing the culmination of it now. And as we come to the end of this episode, I want to reiterate

01:07:17 – 01:07:24:	the point that we made last week about the genealogy of ideas. This idea that Christian nationalism is

01:07:25 – 01:07:31:	as I mentioned, there are dozens of podcasts devoted entirely to saying it's evil. Those people

01:07:31 – 01:07:36:	are not Christians. Those people hate God. They're the same people who want to castrate children,

01:07:36 – 01:07:42:	who want to do every manner of evil thing to creation. They also hate Christian nationalism. So

01:07:43 – 01:07:49:	if you're on the fence or if you actively despise it, it's important for you to look to your left

01:07:49 – 01:07:56:	and look to your right and see who your brothers and arms are as you go to war against Christian

01:07:56 – 01:08:02:	nationalism. Because it's not Christians. It's not the Christians of history. It is the most evil

01:08:02 – 01:08:07:	people in this day who are doing the most evil things. Those are the people who are the opponents

01:08:07 – 01:08:12:	of Christian nationalism. And they're accompanied by Christians who are doing in good conscience.

01:08:12 – 01:08:19:	There's a point that Dr. Koons made on the brief history of power podcast last year

01:08:19 – 01:08:27:	the astonishment. It's something I reiterate frequently. When Jeffrey Dahmer was captured and

01:08:27 – 01:08:36:	arrested and charged, it was exposed that Jeffrey Dahmer was a Sodomite, a kidnapper, a rapist,

01:08:36 – 01:08:44:	a murderer, a necrophile, and a cannibal. Those were the charges. And that's what was exposed

01:08:44 – 01:08:50:	about him. He didn't speak in his own defense to say, no, I'm not any of those things.

01:08:51 – 01:08:57:	But when it came out that when observing his victimology, there were blacks and Asians that he

01:08:57 – 01:09:06:	targeted to kidnap and rape and murder and defile and eat. The press called him a racist.

01:09:07 – 01:09:11:	And that's when Jeffrey Dahmer spoke up. He didn't care about the other things.

01:09:12 – 01:09:18:	He cared about being called a racist because being called a racist was contrary to Jeffrey Dahmer's

01:09:18 – 01:09:23:	religion. Not in the religion in the sense that there was a church that was devoted to it,

01:09:23 – 01:09:28:	but in Jeffrey Dahmer's heart of hearts, the greatest sin that he could imagine anyone

01:09:28 – 01:09:35:	committing was to be a racist. And he wanted to set the record straight that I'm not a racist.

01:09:35 – 01:09:40:	Yeah, I'm a Sodomite. Yeah, I'm a cannibal. I'm a necrophile. I'm a murderer. I'm not a racist.

01:09:40 – 01:09:50:	Get, let's get that one thing clear. That goes to the genealogy of ideas because if you hold that

01:09:51 – 01:09:57:	racism is evil or that Christian nationalism or evil, you need to look to your left and

01:09:57 – 01:10:04:	need to look to your right and see who it is that is in lockstep with you. And then ask yourself,

01:10:04 – 01:10:11:	if I oppose Christian nationalism on the basis of God's word, if I believe that I'm being faithful

01:10:11 – 01:10:19:	to God in opposing this thing, you must answer to your own satisfaction and to God's satisfaction.

01:10:19 – 01:10:25:	How is it that the atheist here left and the Jew to your right who is every bit as angry and

01:10:25 – 01:10:31:	hateful as you against Christian nationalism? How did they arrive at that conclusion? Because they

01:10:31 – 01:10:38:	don't have God. They hate God. They seek to destroy God's things and they seek to destroy Christian

01:10:38 – 01:10:44:	nationalism. Why are you in bed with those people? How did that happen? Maybe we're completely wrong.

01:10:44 – 01:10:48:	Maybe all these evil people, they got one thing right or two things, right? Since racism and

01:10:48 – 01:10:53:	Christian nationalism are all part of the same bucket. Maybe they're perfectly moral and

01:10:53 – 01:10:58:	perfectly right with God and they get everything else wrong. But you need to ask yourself,

01:10:58 – 01:11:02:	how did that happen? Because if they didn't get it from God, they got it from somewhere else.

01:11:02 – 01:11:08:	So when you look at the genealogy of where they got those ideas, it's the furthest thing imaginable

01:11:08 – 01:11:14:	from God. And that is the same answer to where you got the idea because you didn't get it from

01:11:14 – 01:11:20:	Christians. You didn't get it from Scripture. You didn't get it from God. And this is a point

01:11:20 – 01:11:27:	we're going to hammer home as often as people will listen because it's so easy in an evil world

01:11:28 – 01:11:34:	to not question assumptions and not question priors and just absorb whatever we're given. And

01:11:34 – 01:11:38:	someone sprinkles Jesus' dust on something and says it's in the name of love in the gospel,

01:11:39 – 01:11:44:	you're morally obligated to do it and believe it. That's the story that we're told.

01:11:45 – 01:11:52:	That's Satan's story. That's Satan's gospel to say, I'm opposed to everything that God is doing.

01:11:52 – 01:11:56:	Here, let me sprinkle some Jesus' dust on it so you suckers will eat it up because I know you

01:11:56 – 01:12:01:	love that. And then you will run wild and do what I want. That's what's happening with all of

01:12:01 – 01:12:08:	these subjects. And I wish the quarry and I weren't the guys who were saying things that are

01:12:08 – 01:12:14:	controversial, but they shouldn't be controversial. 200 years ago, they wouldn't have been.

01:12:14 – 01:12:19:	200 years ago, it would be unthinkable to have this conversation because no one could

01:12:19 – 01:12:24:	conceive of a world where people didn't simply already understand it intrinsically. And yet

01:12:24 – 01:12:30:	today here we are because of generations of faithlessness, the more and more we have abandoned

01:12:30 – 01:12:35:	godly living to the point that when you say live a godly life, Christians recoil. And we need

01:12:35 – 01:12:42:	to undo that. No one would listen to this podcast 200 years ago, even as fiction, it would be somewhat

01:12:42 – 01:12:49:	outlandish. Yeah, I mean, it literally fits the definition of unthinkable. The fact that you

01:12:49 – 01:12:54:	would have to debate over where people come from or whether or not we should obey God and have

01:12:54 – 01:13:00:	Christian leaders. That's controversial in the church today. And it's not because they got it

01:13:00 – 01:13:05:	out of the Bible. They didn't get out of the Bible. And so I just implore anyone listening,

01:13:05 – 01:13:10:	figure out where you got the ideas. Because if you didn't get them from God, you need to go find

01:13:10 – 01:13:15:	some ideas that came from God. And we're here to talk about those. And if you're looking at the

01:13:15 – 01:13:23:	genealogy of ideas a lot of times, you can also look at the progeny of those ideas. Because if you

01:13:23 – 01:13:31:	look at the progeny of the idea that well, we're all one race, the human race, well, we're all one

01:13:31 – 01:13:37:	male and female are just incidental. God rolled some dice and your soul came out as one or the other.

01:13:37 – 01:13:41:	Or maybe it's not even your soul. It's just your body. God stuck your soul in a body that happens

01:13:41 – 01:13:47:	to be male, happens to be female. Well, you start off there and you wind up with transgenderism.

01:13:47 – 01:13:52:	You wind up with sex reassignment, so-called surgeries for children. You wind up with puberty

01:13:52 – 01:13:58:	blockers. You wind up with abortion. You wind up with all of these evils. They all flow naturally

01:13:58 – 01:14:02:	from these things that people believe and don't think are controversial or evil or wrong.

01:14:04 – 01:14:10:	And so just to close out, I'd like to give a quick little summary of a good way for people to

01:14:10 – 01:14:17:	think about Christian nationalism and what exactly it is we mean and want by it. In the right

01:14:17 – 01:14:24:	hand kingdom, our head ultimately is Christ. And so of course our head is Christian being Christ

01:14:24 – 01:14:31:	himself. All Christian nationalism is, is a desire to have a Christian head in the left hand

01:14:31 – 01:14:39:	kingdom. If you're a child, you want your father to be Christian. If you're a wife, you want

01:14:39 – 01:14:45:	your husband to be Christian. If you're a citizen, you want your king to be Christian. And that's

01:14:45 – 01:14:49:	what we mean by Christian nationalism. Amen.