521. EPIC MASHUP: The Problems Facing The Church

Summary

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Apologia Radio Ep. 521

EPIC MASHUP: The Problems Facing The Church
Date: May 1, 2025
Host: Jeff Durbin (Apologia Radio)
Guests/Panelists: Doug Wilson, Gabe, James White, Knox, Virgil, Joe Boot, Toby

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Overview

This episode brings together leaders from Apologia Radio and CrossPolitic for an energized, deeply theological roundtable on the critical challenges facing today’s Church. The panel addresses the need for biblically-rooted engagement with culture, the pitfalls of trend-driven Christianity, and the overdue resurgence of theonomy (the authority of God’s Word over all of life). Woven with camaraderie, humor, and hard-hitting critique, the discussion is packed with practical exhortations for Christians to move from academic sanctuaries into bold, faithful action amidst rapid cultural and political shifts.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Church’s Cultural Blindness and Call to Action

00:01–01:39

• Identifying Modern Pharisees: Toby parallels the Church’s current situation with Matthew 16—skilled at interpreting academic theology, yet blind to the “signs of the times.”
• White Identity and Barriers: Gabe notes that a stronghold of "whiteness and white identity" limits cultural progress within the Church.
• From Ivory Towers to Cultural Engagement: Toby critiques how theological scholarship often fails to incarnate its truths practically:

  “The church, rich in theory… has lingered in academic sanctuaries and ivory towers, failing to translate its lofty doctrines into a tangible and practical cultural apologetic.” (00:28 - Toby)

• Worldview Youth Academy: Introduced as a bridge to train Christians for real-world apologetic and culture-shaping work.

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2. Public Theology: Why the Church Can’t Stay Silent

01:39–02:59

• Gospel Mandate for Public Square Action: Doug insists:

  “If the authorities didn't want us involved in the public square, they ought not to have crucified Jesus.” (01:39 - Doug)

• Refuting Modern Political Lies: Doug challenges euphemisms around “reproductive freedom,” emphasizing the Gospel’s power and Jesus’ lordship over all.
• Exclusivity of the Gospel:

  “…there's only one way… Through Jesus Christ. And the gospel is about repenting of sin, not celebrating it.” (02:45 - Doug)

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3. Unity, Humor, and Deep Roots Across Denominations

03:12–07:25

• Apologia & CrossPolitic Partnership: The teams recount mutual support and origins, with inside jokes on theological differences (Baptist vs. Presbyterian), and an emphasis on unity:

  “What matters to us is Christ and his kingdom and serving Christ together… loving each other, showing brotherly affection, and serving Christ together.” (06:25 - Doug)

• Modeling Fellowship Amidst Disagreement: The panel stresses the importance of brotherhood, even amid “serious” theological differences, as a witness to an increasingly fractured Reformed world.

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4. The 2020 Shakeup: Theonomy, Political Action, and Real-World Application

07:25–15:12

• Rise of Theonomy: Previously sidelined ideas about applying God’s law to the public square have been vindicated, especially post-2020.

  “Watching 2020 happen for me has been a shocker because a lot of us… have been arguing… that maybe we should have something biblical to say about what the civil magistrate should be doing.” (07:35 - James)

• Shifts in Pro-Life Engagement: More Christians demand the state “not just protect life, but punish the people who are taking life” (12:01).

• MacArthur’s Public Shift: Doug tells how John MacArthur modeled a public theological change during COVID, moving to a theonomic, postmillennial stance.

  “When he turned, he got it right… praise the Lord, praise God. And he's with us now: sphere sovereignty and, you know, at the law of God.” (11:38 - Doug)

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5. Conservative “Vibe Shift” vs. Deep Biblical Conviction

14:09–24:46

• Rise in “Red Wave” Conservatism: Gabe observes it’s now “cool” to say traditionally Christian things, but warns:

  “…I'm not sure yet it's actually cool to be a theonomist.” (14:57 - Gabe)

• Problem of Trendiness: Jeff/Knox warn—what happened with “Young, Restless, Reformed” now threatens conservative/theonomic circles:

  “If it's a Christless conservatism, it's accomplishing nothing, it's changing nothing… that movement dies because it's not rooted in the word of God and the truth.” (23:18 - Doug)

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6. The Word of God vs. Respectable Arguments

24:46–28:37

• Supremacy of God’s Revelation: Gabe/James urge Christians to stand not on church history or natural law alone but unapologetically on Scripture:

  “…history is more respectable than God’s law… But the Word of God is our gold. The Word of God is our nuke.” (24:46–26:12 - Gabe)

• Practical Theonomic Application: The courage to say “thus says the Lord” is highlighted as the crucial differentiator for real cultural renewal.

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7. Cultural Moment: Growing Hunger for Christianity Outside the Church

28:37–32:59

• “Even Joe Rogan Says Go to Church”: Panelists describe non-Christians and cultural figures (Joe Rogan, Richard Dawkins, Tucker Carlson) recognizing Christianity’s social glue.
• Opportunity in the Crisis:

  “Whatever’s going on… is 2020 shook them up and pulled out the foundation from under their feet. And now they're like, I think we need Christianity back.” (30:28 - Knox)

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8. Simple Faithfulness as Culture-Shaping Strategy

32:59–36:01

• Low Bar, High Impact:

  “How do we make America Christian again? Well, worship God on Sunday, confess your sins, and love your family…” (33:25 - Knox)

• Winning by Demographics & Education: Using Moscow, Idaho as a case study, faithful community-building, large families, and Christian education breed long-term, generational impact.

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9. The Book of Acts Blueprint for Societal Transformation

36:01–41:37

• Gospel-Driven Cultural Change: Doug lays out how early Christians changed the world:

  “They went into the public square with boldness, with love, with humility, with the truth. And they preached repentance and faith. They commanded people everywhere to repent and believe the gospel…” (36:01 - Doug)

• Contemporary Application: Today's church should emulate their prophetic, uncompromising public witness, not merely aim to “shave off moral problems.”

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10. Critique of Pragmatic, Biology-Only Arguments

41:37–49:05

• Abortion & The Bible: Panel sharply critiques pro-life efforts that avoid explicit appeal to Scripture and the Gospel:

  “You can't use the Bible when you do this… Let's just focus on biology. And you got 50 years of over 65 million dead bodies right piled up underneath us.” (41:37–43:08 - Doug)

• Real Change from Faithful Preaching: Grassroots, biblically-centered activists have had more legislative and cultural impact than massive, pragmatic, biology-focused organizations.

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11. The Distinctive Power of Prophetic, Scriptural Authority

47:26–49:05

• Natural Law vs. Divine Mandate: Joe Boot clarifies why only God’s authority can close the gap between what “is” and what “should be”:

  “…you can't close that distance between what is and what should be without an appeal to a transcendent authority… I'm simply coming in the name of someone else and commanding them to adhere to that and align their entire lives and their office with his mandate.” (47:26 - Joe Boot)

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12. On-the-Ground Public Square Experiences & Racial Dynamics

49:24–52:19

• Testimony from Georgia Legislature: Virgil and Doug recount being attacked with ad hominems (including accusations based on race), highlighting the need for fortitude and grace in public witness.

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13. Practical Steps: Personal Dominion and Real-World Change

52:22–56:32

• Gospel Works Outward: The panel challenges the “just preach the gospel” passivity:

  “No, the gospel bleeds its way out through your fingertips into society…” (52:42 - James)

• Debts, Wealth, and Kingdom Building: Christians are urged to get out of debt, accumulate resources, and build parallel institutions—practical financial dominion as a biblical mandate:

  “Because when you can deploy capital, you have power… When you own companies, you don’t shut them down because they’re yours.” (55:17 - James)

• Proverbs Wisdom as Strategy: Gabe links this approach to biblical wisdom—living free, generationally minded, and ready to bless others.

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14. Essential Resources & Final Exhortation

56:37–59:48

• Study & Action: Jeff emphasizes leaning on “the shoulders of giants” (Bonson, Rushdoony, Dr. Joe Boot) rather than reinventing the wheel.

  “Some of the best writing has already been done. We don’t need people to write new books on this stuff, big tomes. We need people to fight and do.” (56:48 - Doug)

• Mission of God: Dr. Joe Boot’s “Mission of God” is specifically recommended as a definitive resource for Christians serious about cultural transformation.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“I’m tired of seeing Jesus presented as a weak beggar. He is a powerful savior. And the Gospel is not a suggestion. It is man.”
— Doug (01:39)

“If the authorities didn’t want us involved in the public square, they ought not to have crucified Jesus.”
— Doug (01:39)

“History is more respectable than God’s law… But the Word of God is our gold. The Word of God is our nuke.”
— Gabe (24:46)

“If it’s a Christless conservatism, it’s accomplishing nothing, it’s changing nothing…”
— Doug (23:18)

“Worship God on Sunday, confess your sins, and love your family. You want to take America back… That’s how you do it.”
— Knox (33:25)

“No, the gospel bleeds its way out through your fingertips into society.”
— James (52:42)

“When you can deploy capital, you have power… When you own companies, you don’t shut them down because they’re yours.”
— James (55:17)

“Some of the best writing has already been done. We don’t need people to write new books on this stuff, big tomes. We need people to fight and do.”
— Doug (56:48)

“Russell Brand’s quoting Joe Boots, so… Maybe the rapture is coming now.”
— Doug (59:01)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:01–01:39 – Modern Pharisees, Church’s cultural blindness
• 01:39–02:59 – Necessity of public theology and Gospel boldness
• 03:12–07:25 – CrossPolitic, Apologia partnership and denominational unity
• 07:25–15:12 – Theonomy’s resurgence, post-2020 shifts, John MacArthur
• 14:09–24:46 – Trendiness vs. rooted conviction
• 24:46–28:37 – Supremacy of God’s revelation and courage in application
• 28:37–32:59 – Revival of Christianity among “outsiders,” opportunity in crisis
• 32:59–36:01 – Faithful families and the Moscow “math problem”
• 36:01–41:37 – Acts blueprint for societal change
• 41:37–49:05 – Critique of pro-life pragmatism; power of Scripture in public square
• 49:24–52:19 – Testimony from Georgia legislature, race and public witness
• 52:22–56:32 – Practical financial dominion, escaping debt, parallel institutions
• 56:37–59:48 – Key resources, final exhortations

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Tone and Takeaways

The conversation remains upbeat, sincere, and bracingly direct—with humor and inside jokes punctuating bracing calls to repentance, unity, and public faithfulness. The overriding challenge: Reject trend-driven, surface-level engagement. Instead, let every part of life reflect the bold, prophetic, and practical vision of all-of-life allegiance to King Jesus—rooted not only in learning but in living, building, and sacrificing for the next generation.

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Transcript

[Toby]

In Matthew 16, Jesus chastised the Pharisees who could interpret the appearance of the sky but failed to interpret the signs of the time in which they lived. Who are the Pharisees of our day?

[Gabe]

This stronghold of sort of whiteness and white identity and pristineness is really part of what keeps us from making progress.

[Toby]

We need to do better. The church, rich in theory, theological scholarship, has lingered in academic sanctuaries and ivory towers, failing to translate its lofty doctrines into a tangible and practical cultural apologetic. At the Worldview Youth Academy, we bridge this critical gap. Here, theological depth is not an end in itself, but a means to engage with contemporary cultural issues for the glory of God and the expansion of his kingdom. Our mission is to cultivate thinkers who can articulate and apply Christian truths within contemporary societal challenges. So embrace this call to worship God with all your heart, all your soul, and with all your mind. We will do better as this next generation tears down the idols of our modern culture and works to build a brighter future toward Christendom 2.0.

[Doug]

I would say if the authorities didn't want us involved in the public square, they ought not to have crucified Jesus.

[Gabe]

In the public square.

[Doug]

These humanistic principles, same idea, same hint. I would say. What's the problem with stardust bumping into stardust in the cosmic picture? No, there's no problem in the cosmic picture. It won't matter. No, Mr. President, you are not protecting reproductive freedom. You are authorizing the destruction of freedom for one million little human beings every year. I'm sorry, my friends, but I am tired of seeing Jesus presented as a weak beggar. He is a powerful savior. And the Gospel is not a suggestion. It is man.

[Gabe]

Reverend Mola, don't you sympathize with that?

[Doug]

I sympathize with every single human heart wishing to know the one true and living God. But I believe there's only one way that that can happen. Through Jesus Christ. And the gospel is about repenting of sin, not celebrating it.

[Jeff]

Right now, you're on the threshold of an amazing adventure. We will explore the spiritual abyss.

[Gabe]

You have not experience this before.

[Jeff]

You're going to love it.

[Virgil]

All right, that said again, two of my favorite podcasts. The home team let's bring up apologia. And the visitors team cross politicians.

[Doug]

Thanks, Virgil. Thank you, Virgil. Let's give Virgil on applause, everybody. You guys enjoying yourselves? Praise God. It's awesome to have you all. So what do you guys want to talk about? You gotta hit the red button.

[Knox]

Yeah, yours is on it. Should have been green.

[Jeff]

I Thought you did this for a living.

[Gabe]

Check.

[James]

Check, too. There we go. Why does Virgil get a pass not to be up here?

[Gabe]

Mike check. Mike check.

[Doug]

Why? Yeah, do we need another black guy up here?

[James]

I didn't know that you were going that way.

[Knox]

That happened quick.

[Doug]

Wow.

[James]

I guess we know. We know exactly what we're. Pastor Wilson found one.

[Doug]

We're. We're fine with that here. This is not Trash World Conference. I'm just telling jokes, people.

[Gabe]

Yeah.

[James]

Getting a little bit spicy.

[Knox]

It was.

[James]

I was just asking questions.

[Doug]

Just to ask a question.

[Joe Boot]

You were just noticing.

[Doug]

What are we gonna talk about?

[Jeff]

I think we just lit that.

[Doug]

All right, we just ruined this. Let's start over again. Let's go back. Let's go back to one.

[Knox]

Everybody reset.

[James]

Virgil's so happy he's not up here right now.

[Doug]

What do you want to talk about? What we're talking about in the green room.

[James]

Tell everybody what we were talking about in the green.

[Doug]

Okay, so we. You. They came in. We haven't seen each other. We love each other. We have such a good relationship. Tell them. Tell them, though, real fast, though, what you said about apologia and cross policy.

[James]

Oh, yeah.

[Doug]

So when you came in, a lot.

[James]

Of people don't know this, but they should know this.

[Doug]

Wait, is your mic on? Say it real loud.

[James]

Okay, turn me up. Jeff wants this part loud. So we consider apologia the mothership. There was two people who helped launch Cross politic. Pastor Wilson, when I say launch, like, supported us in what we did and definitely apologia. These guys did something most podcasts don't do, which is they ran our ad for another podcast in the middle of their show.

[Knox]

That's right.

[James]

And so we have a lot of love for you guys and appreciate you very much. We. We grew exponentially fast because of the blessing of you guys. Are you happy, Jeff?

[Doug]

I'm. No. The reason I wanted to say it, actually, y' all can let my wife go. Was to get to a. A principal point, actually. Yeah. In terms of something the guys were taught the old. Well, the old guys were up here a little bit ago.

[Gabe]

The old guys.

[Doug]

Yeah. The principal point that we all want to live by, and that's that for us, we're just brothers. We're serving Christ together. You know, we're Baptist. You're Presbyterian. We're right. You're wrong.

[James]

Y' all laugh way too hard.

[Doug]

We're about to have a revival.

[James]

It wasn't that funny.

[Joe Boot]

It really is the home team here.

[Doug]

No, no, but that. Those. Those distinctions and differences in the end.

[James]

God didn't like that.

[Doug]

That's what that is. That's judgment coming right now. But those distinctions, differences didn't matter as much to us at all, because what matters to us is Christ and his kingdom and serving Christ together. And so for us, it never even crossed our minds that we love these guys. Everyone needs to hear what they have to say. So, of course, you know, making sure that you guys get on your feet and promoting you guys, and we still promote you guys. We. We love you guys. And so I think we talk about, like, unity in the faith. It's one of the things I think that I've learned so much from is that Gabes, from Pastor James and Pastor Doug, specifically the two of them and their relationship over many years of being able to disagree with each other and be serious about it over what we see as these are consequential issues, These are important issues, but still loving each other, showing brotherly affection, and serving Christ together. I think it's one of the most important things we need to hang on to right now, especially when you see so many fractures in the reform world.

[James]

I absolutely agree with you. There's something else that I think that was unique is that there wasn't a whole lot of people at that time that were theonomous about 10 years ago.

[Doug]

Right, right.

[James]

This is. Watching 2020 happen for me has been a shocker because a lot of us have been arguing for a long time with our evangelical elite friends that maybe we should have something biblical to say about what the civil magistrate should be doing. And we were shut down. Not really willing. Nobody was really willing to have the conversation publicly. They would talk about it, but not talk to us, talk about us, but not name us. And all of a sudden, after 2020, it really was.

[Knox]

I mean, John MacArthur became Korean in 2020.

[James]

Right.

[Knox]

You remember his letter?

[Doug]

Who did?

[Knox]

John MacArthur.

[Doug]

Oh, yeah, yeah. In 2020.

[Knox]

And he became Kirian.

[Doug]

Yeah, yeah. That was amazing.

[Knox]

Originally, he had kind of gone with the sh and then wrote a letter, and then two months later came out and said, hey, basically, I'm Korean. We got divisions in government that God's given us.

[Doug]

Right.

[Joe Boot]

So hands off my Fresca.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Knox]

What did he say?

[Doug]

He said, hands off my Fresca.

[Knox]

Oh, yes, yes.

[Doug]

Yeah. Well, that was. That was actually a powerful moment because when. When Covid had happened, we almost got stuck in Scotland. We were. We were working end abortion now in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and in Scotland. So all the COVID stuff was just going mad when we were In Scotland. And I remember being in. I had just taught at a church in a Covenanter, hardcore Blue Blood Presbyterian Covenanter Church in Scotland.

[Knox]

Did he have paint on his face?

[Doug]

Oh, it was amazing. I mean, just the best, best Christians, the Covenanters, just amazing. So I, I remember, I just spoke and I think Luke was up teaching. And so I was hungry and so I went to this little convenience store across the street and, you know, it's all over the newspapers. And the guy behind the counter was saying, you know, do you hear what's going on? They may actually shut down the airports. And I was like, oh, no, we got to get home. And people were talking about shutting down international air travel and stuff. And so we did, we just, just made it home by a week. Yeah, when they, eventually they did shut down air travel, so we had to make decisions. Our governor was saying, you know, things about shutting down churches that was happening across the country. And so we met as elders for a good period of time, meditating on the scriptures, going to the law of God, saying, what is God? What are God's rules for Christ? Quarantine? How do we apply the biblical rules to this situation? We looked at the data and we saw problems. And so we essentially said as elders, we cannot in good conscience stop the people of God from gathering and worshiping and coming to the table. We won't do it, whatever the consequence. And so we came out and we, we did a message, all the elders did a message together one Sunday to go over different points as to why we were resisting that kind of tyranny and saying, no, we don't care about the consequence. You're not going to stop the worship of God in us gathering. And so we took a lot of heat for that. I mean, I remember we put that up and on social media, people were posting, you guys don't love your neighbor, and things like that. Christians were saying this to us and people were even sending us a link to a video that Brother MacArthur did when the first, when it first kicked off, where he was essentially saying, you have to yield and you have to do what the government says, Romans 13 and all that. And so we just states we didn't want to create any division in the church or fracture in the church. So we said, well, this is our position. We love you and the Lord bless you. And we're not going to respond to any of that. So we didn't really say anything. And so we got vilified. And a lot of people sent us that message from MacArthur. And so it was months later, after the tyranny, when MacArthur had that amazing change of mind and heart. And it was so refreshing to see, and I don't know what that was. It was so refreshing to see and to see him in that message. The elders, we watched that together, and all of us had the same thing. Is he a theonomist now? Yes. Is MacArthur a theonomist now? At least for the moment? He is. And I say, glory to God, pass the biscuits. It was amazing. And so all we said was, praise the Lord, praise God. And he's with us now. Sphere of sovereignty and, you know, at the law of God.

[Knox]

And, and to Doug's point, he's post mill because he's building universities and practically speaking.

[Doug]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. And MacArthur is, is, I think, ultimately responsible for helping me to, to understand the gospel, truly, after my addiction. And, and I think truly, if that's where I truly came to Christ, it was there after MacArthur. So he's a better pastor, better man of God than I'll ever be. And so. But he was. He was wrong at the beginning, and then he did turn, and when he turned, he got it right. So. Right. And I was so thankful for it.

[James]

Well, it seems like a lot of people eventually got it right. That's one thing. There's just two things that's been interesting to me, especially in the podcast world, is watching a lot of people who wouldn't have engaged in the political conversation, especially with, you know, the church and what was Christian's responsibility and duty in the state are now moving that way. And one of the areas that I'm really picking up on it is the pro life movement. The new move of the pro life movement. You have guys who are reformed that are now standing up and saying the state needs to protect life, and not just that, but punish the people who are taking life. And so you have this kind of weird change. Where did these guys come from? And I'm happy to see them. I'm happy they're here. I don't want to poop on anything they're doing. I'm grateful for that. But we've had not just a swing.

[Doug]

In.

[James]

From COVID but a theological swing to say, no, we actually have to be engaged and bring the word of God to every situation. It was radical for me to hear guys who have been teaching ethics in seminaries finally say, I've never thought about how the civil magistrate is supposed to engage with lockdowns, or how they're supposed to engage with pro life, or how they're supposed to engage with, oh, I don't know, Leviticus, 18 laws.

[Doug]

Right.

[James]

All of a sudden, those conversations have become forefront, and Pete and Christians are having to come to terms with that, and pastors are having to deal with it. Almost any podcast now that has its weight in gold is dealing with political issues. And what does the Bible have to say about it?

[Knox]

Even Virgil's.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Knox]

I said even Virgil's.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[James]

So you can't. It's inescapable right now. And I love that. I love that I can almost retire in one sense, because that's all I wanted.

[Doug]

Yeah. Just to be able to get Christians to say, by what standard are we going to pursue this, engage with this, and to have Christians actually, finally, they're going, maybe we're supposed to be saying something to this that's consistent with God's law word and with. With the authority of Jesus Christ. I mean, that's the main thing we want to get across.

[Knox]

It's got to be green.

[James]

It's racist.

[Knox]

It's got to be green. Show them, Knox.

[Gabe]

I'll use Noxus. Isn't that kind of still, though, part of the challenge that we find ourselves in this moment with? There's a. People are calling it sort of the vibe shift, the Trump thing. It's cool now to say that boys are boys and girls are girls. I mean, the president is saying a lot of things out loud that for a lot of. For many years, it was supposed to be kind of embarrassing to say out loud. For all of his foibles and flaws, he's saying a bunch of things out loud that are true. And so there's this sort of shift. And it's kind of cool to be conservative, but I'm not sure yet it's actually cool to be a theonomist. You know what I mean?

[James]

Yeah. They don't want to say it by name. Thank you, Gabe. I appreciate that. We're just going to pass that around. No, no. Because nobody wants to have to defend it all the way yet, but they know that they don't have a defense against what's going on unless they use the enemy.

[Gabe]

Well, yeah, but I think what's happening, though, is. Is while this is happening, so I think Apology has been doing this. I mean, are the boomers that were up here earlier have been doing this?

[James]

Did you guys win James White over. Was it. Was it y' all that moved him to the theonomic position?

[Doug]

To the theonic. Yeah, Praise God. No, no, here. Well, here's. Okay, I'm sorry. Toby, hold the thought.

[Knox]

Actually, just call him a theonymous and.

[Gabe]

Just be done with it.

[Doug]

Okay, well, actually, here's what's interesting. So years. Years ago, years ago, probably 20, 14, 15, James and I were. Were sitting down and having lunch together. And if you know James, you know what he was eating?

[Jeff]

Tacos.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Jeff]

No flavor.

[Doug]

Quesadillas. And he does love taco time. Nobody loves taco time. After taco time, for sure. But anyway, so we're sitting down and at the time, and James has said this publicly in terms of the issue of theonomy. Like, you had the 90s fights and all this stuff going on there, or actually pre 90s fights, the issue of, like, when Westminster finally sort of organized their faculty to fight against something, it was against theonomy. And so they wrote a response to theonomy. And so James would be the first to admit. So he sort of looked at that and was like, okay, okay, they're. They're opposing it. He didn't really kind of understand maybe some of the issues that were going on. So James and I were having lunch, and he. He knew the issue was the enemy was something that we taught and promoted and were on apologia about. And there was some big controversies arriving, arising out of that. And so James asked me to sort of define theonomy. Like, what. What. What do you mean by it? And I said, remember when you went through the Old Testament law? You taught at prbc, you taught through the law of Moses at. I mean, every verse he went through years, he did this. And he was like, yeah. I said, that's theonomy.

[James]

And he always listens to his own argument.

[Doug]

He was always there.

[James]

Yeah.

[Doug]

If you listen to Pastor James, listen to the amazing studies he did on the law of God and how he. He. He unpacks. He exegetes the text. Here's what it says, and here how his. Here is how it was being applied, and here's how you'd apply it today.

[Gabe]

Yeah.

[Doug]

And he was taking the general equity and applying. Here's how you would take this and apply it today. I said, when I want to help somebody understand maybe the law of God, I'll send them one of your sermons. When you went through the holiness code and whatever else you did there through the law. And so I just remember he looked at me. He was like, interesting. And. And so. But I mean, in the end, I think, yeah, he's. He's sort of.

[James]

He's always been there.

[Doug]

Now he's been at apology at church, as an elder, of course, you know, he's he's theonomic and he's post mill and all of that. And, you know, I like to say it was Jesus that converted him through a little bit of my help.

[Knox]

Well, I, I think one of the. When I moved to Moscow in 2002, I remember one of the most simplest things that Doug said from the pulpit was, you know, just resolve in your life to have no problem Bible verses. And that went so far in this, in my head. And as you're reading through Old Testament, Leviticus and all these and just don't have any problem verses now, you might not maybe understand it yet, but don't fade away from it. Don't be shy from it. Lean into it and maybe ask Pastor Toby or something, but study the word in such a way where it's like, this is my Bible. This is God's word. This is what I believe.

[Gabe]

The point I'm raising is. It seems to me that your point is well taken, Knox. I think Covid was an enormous gift from God in so far as God raised a bunch of questions that his people needed to answer. So what is the magistrate's job? What is the church's job? What is, what is a health commissioner's job? You know, all these things we, you know, no, no, none of us knew we had health commissioners, right, until, until health districts, all these districts and stuff. But he raised a bunch of questions and then he also lowered the bar. So in order to be a thriving church in 2020, you just had to be open, no mask, open, open, no masks, and just worship the Lord. And, and so God just gave us an enormous gift. And basically the people who studied the Bible and said, well, the Bible says this, so this is what we're going to do have been winning. But what's happened is alongside that is there's this, there's this Trump thing, which I take is also an enormous gift. God giving us room to breathe, space to breathe. The alternative would have been disastrous. But. But we've got room to breathe. But the question I'm raising is, so apology is doing theonomy. The.

[Doug]

Our.

[Gabe]

Our sweater vest. Older brothers have been doing theonomy for decades, whether they knew it or not. But there's this vibe shift and a whole bunch of people are jumping on this sort of red wave, whatever you want to call it, you know, now it's cool to be Republican. And I'm not sure that everybody's jumping on the yay, God's law for all of life yet. Now I think there's an opportunity because I think a whole lot of these people jumping, saying, okay, you keep transing our kids, you're trying to shut down our businesses and our churches. You know, you're. This, this LGBT jihad, we're done with it. And so I think there's an opportunity still of people asking questions, by what standard? But I'm not sure that all the people that are offering answers are saying the word of God.

[Doug]

Exactly. Toby, you bring up a great point. I was talking to Doug about this earlier. Is the problem that I think all of us have seen in the last, what is it, 15, 20 years, like the new Calvinism stuff, young, restless reform kind of thing. I remember seeing all that happen. I was already Reformed before that happened. And so seeing it was kind of exciting, like, oh, people are getting this. Right? People are getting it. And so you had sort of this, this, you know, kind of cultural, Christian cultural move towards Reformed theology. And Reformed theology all of a sudden became cool. And like, that's. That's the club to be a part of. And it wasn't like that when. When I, you know, came to know these truths. And it's. But what do we know? What was problematic about that is that it was. It was. This is. This is acceptable now and cool now. A lot of people.

[Knox]

It was a trend.

[Doug]

Yeah, it was a trend. A lot of people wanted to become Reformed not because they saw it in the text like most of us have. You know, you saw it. There's no way out of that. John 6. You can't escape it. That's. There's. He's preaching five points Calvinism. It's all there in John 6, John 10. There's no escaping. And so the convictions are rooted in the text. This is what God says. So this movement happens with the young, restless reform. I think many of those people saw this cool vibe of like, you know, slightly kind of hipster ish, guys with beards. Oh, you can drink whiskey and smoke cigars. Reformed. I'm down with that. Let's. Let's do that. And so then you started to see a shift not long after that where many of those people, they're a part of things like reform pub and stuff like that. You know, just, you know, super, super impressed by Calvinism and into Calvinism. All of a sudden now you start seeing people dropping off to Roman Catholicism, swimming the Tiber, going to Eastern Orthodoxy. Oh, I never believed that. Anyway. It wasn't biblical. Anyway. It's like. Well, it's interesting because when you see him talking about coming out of Calvinism, they say Things that demonstrate they never were really in it in the first place. They didn't ever believe these things. And you're seeing some of that right now in some corners of people who even said over the last five years, six years, I'm post mill, I'm theonomic, I'm presuppositional, and immediately getting swayed by really bootleg argumentation about natural theology and natural law, those sorts of things, talking about issues that they should know better, as presuppositional as you should have known this, like, this is stuff that's like, bottom shelf, you know, week one of Bonson's lectures kind of a thing, and easily abandoning it. I think the reason is because you might have seen for a period of time, God was doing powerful, powerful things with just convincing people of those truths. By what standard that matters? Has God said something to this? And the word of God is supposed to be the standard and the reference point for all of us. And all of a sudden now like, okay, that's doing something and it's providing answers that we haven't been giving answers for. But then many people are abandoning those things now, I think, which demonstrates they never really believed it in the first place, but gets to the political issue of people saying, yeah, it seems rather obvious that boys are boys, girls are girls, we shouldn't let guys into girls bathrooms, and we can resist that. And it's like, but if it's a Christless conservatism, it's accomplishing nothing, it's changing nothing. Because the movement eventually, like the young, restless and reformed and the quasi presuppositionalism theonomists, eventually that movement dies because it's not rooted in the word of God and the truth. It's not convinced by God's voice. And so this, I think, and I think, Toby, you're nailing it in terms of like, the questions that swirl around this. It's like, are we just waiting for two more elections when the next bad guy, real, real bad guy gets in? When all of a sudden the movement's not cool anymore and the next movement gets stronger. There's no root to it all. And I think we have to get to the place, as Christians were willing to be bold enough to say, look, the fundamental answer to every aspect of this, to the family, to gender, to sexuality, to justice, to morality, period, in the public square and at home, central answer is the word of the living God. And we have to be brave enough to say that it's because Jesus says.

[Gabe]

And I think this. And this is. And James said this a little while ago. Dr. White said this a little while ago. That First Corinthians one, though, just, I think really should be underlined. If I was into tattoos, that might be something you should tattoo. But I'm not. So. But. But the. The wisdom of God is folly with man. The. The wisdom of God is foolishness to the world. And I. And I think that. And so we so quickly get off the point. And so one of the things I'm really grateful for is actually there's been a lot of people that suddenly started reading a bunch of church history. Turns out these are not questions that we're the first generation to ask. That's right. They've been asking these questions since Jesus came. And, you know, the Jews had. Were wrestling with these issues before that. And. But in the Reformation in particular, this got hammered out. Like these jurisdictions were being worked out in Calvin's Geneva, in France, while they're being slaughtered in England, in Scotland with the Covenanters and John Knox. And that's how our country got founded. And so I'm really grateful for that history, that historical work that's being done. People are going back and they suddenly are reading Samuel Rutherford and they're reading the work of the French Huguenots and they're reading Calvin on his Institutes and what they did in Geneva. I'm grateful for that. But. And this is the thing that the gentleman said earlier is the temptation will be history is more respectable than God's law. And so it's more respectable to quote a reformed divine. It's more respectable to quote Turretson or Samuel Rutherford. And like this father said, this Westminster divine said, and we should honor our fathers. And we have a lot to learn from them. But I also think we have to remember and recognize that there's something inherently foolish about simply saying Leviticus 18 says, and everybody has a little bit of the cringe factor because, like, would you. And that goes back to your point, Gabe. God's words, like, that's our gold. God's words are gold. God's word is our sword. And all the ways in which the Church has echoed God's word faithfully, those are actually. They're good arguments, but they're lesser arguments. In fact, I was teaching a. This will mess with everybody's hair in different ways. Teaching a philosophy class at Logos School this year. And part of working my way through philosophers, I got to Thomas Aquinas, and so I pulled a bunch of sections out of Thomas Aquinas. And Thomas Aquinas himself says that he says that the only absolute authority is God's word. And all the other church fathers are lesser authorities. I have Roman Catholic in my class, and I said, ask your priest what he says about that. But that's. But the Word of God is our gold. The Word of God is our gold. The Word of God is our nuke. And I think that's why this matters. So when we talk about theonomy, it's not about some movement in the 80s. What we simply mean is the authority of God's Word over all of life. All of Christ for all of life. But that requires a kind of courage. Why can't we trans the little boy? Why can't we let the men and the ladies rest? Because thus says the Lord.

[Knox]

That's right.

[Gabe]

And you say that and a whole bunch of conservatives start sidling a little bit away from you. They're like, well, you know, let's talk more about nature. No, I'm fine with nature. Yeah, it's also against natural law. It's also against the way God made the world, obviously. Obviously. But it's fundamentally wrong because God has spoken. He spoke clearly in Genesis to Revelation, and you need to deal with it.

[Knox]

Well, and we mentioned earlier that 2020 really shook a lot of people. And outside of our reformed ghetto, there's a lot going on that I think is really healthy in the conservative movement. That it's immature. It's. Some of it I got some major questions about. But I went to Charlie Kirk's conference and in. In Phoenix back in December last year, and he had 20,000 people there, kind of young, old, I mean, the whole. The whole range. He's doing a pretty good job there. And multiple times the crowd asked Tucker, Jack Brosobiec, Michael Knowles.

[Doug]

One other guy.

[Knox]

I can't remember his name, asked him, how do we make America Christian again? How do we.

[Gabe]

How do you make America Christian again?

[Knox]

Yeah, yeah. How do we, you know, take America back for Christ? I mean, you know, versions of that question, and most of the. Most of the answers boil down to sadly, well, we need to fix immigration. You know, we need to, you know, get Trump in the. Or Trump was already in. We need to. What was some of the other issues I can't remember they brought up, but there's all these kind of, like, political responses. Hey, we need. Well, we need to fix these things so we can make America Christian again. Was kind of basically the, you know, what they were trying to, you know, argue for. But a lot of this. In this theonomy world, I think looking at Charlie's conference and all these. You know, some are conservative, some are probably pretty libertarian. It's a mixed bag. But whatever's going on in this broader conservative world is 2020 shook them up and pulled out the foundation from under their feet. And now they're like, I think we need Christianity back. I mean. I mean, guys like Joe Rogan are arguing for that now.

[Gabe]

Like, we're Gabe. Gabe and Knox. You guys might have seen this clip of Gavin Knox. I come into the studio one day and we do a show, and they're showing me this clip, and Joe Rogan is on his show, and he's got, like, Google Maps open. And he's like, looking. He's like, there's another Baptist church, and there's another Baptist church. And he's like, you won't. If there's a church by you. You need to go to church. He's like. And he's like, dropping F bombs and, you know, all in the middle of it. And you're like. You're like, yay.

[Doug]

Yeah. You know, well, I'm like, like.

[Gabe]

And then. And then he's like, the green room is my church. So, you know, he's all kinds of. But, like, when Joe Rogan is telling his audience, you all need to go to church, something's changed.

[Doug]

Changed.

[Knox]

It's the Richard Dawkins phenomenon.

[Doug]

The Dawkins. Yeah. He wants. He's a cultural Christian. He wants to be. He wants to be in a Christian nation.

[Knox]

Because they all realize that there was some glue holding our previous society together.

[Doug]

Yeah. That they don't have.

[Knox]

That they don't have now. And they're like, oh, it's Christianity.

[Gabe]

And that's. And that's why we. We need to be outspoken.

[Doug]

Right.

[Gabe]

That it's Christ and it's his whole word Genesis to Revelation, and. And I think we've got it. We've got to just keep beating that drum because we're going to. A lot of the people. I mean, you know, Tucker's like, I started reading my Bible and like, praise God. Praise God. You're reading about. Keep reading your Bible. Keep reading it. Genesis, Revelation. But, you know, and he even knows. He's like, I'm an Episcopalian, and the Episcopalians suck. You know, like, amen.

[Doug]

Every Reform person is like, amen. We all started speaking in tongues when he said that.

[Gabe]

We're like, but even Tucker knows that his own church is like, this is gay. This is not it.

[Doug]

It's gay.

[Gabe]

And, yeah, but, like. But we need.

[Doug]

Super gay.

[Gabe]

We need. But it's I think in some ways, the, the lesson that God gave us in. In Covid. The lesson that God gave us in 2020, it's still the same lesson. It's like doors wide open, teach the whole word of God, apply the whole word of God to all of life, and then repeat. And I think that's. That's the. It's. There's like. And that will, that will sift out the trendiness, the people that are there because it's hip and trendy. Well, you know, we're just going to go Genesis to Revelation, and then we're going to start over again. We're just going to do it again, and we're going to keep applying it to our lives again and again, better and better, but we're going to apply it to all of life. But I do think that's like, that's the low bar. It's like, that's all you have to do. And I think because all these people are like, what do we do? How do we make America Christian again? Yeah, that's the answer.

[James]

Go ahead.

[Knox]

I was just going to add. I mean, you know, so think about this. If someone asks you that same question, how do we make America Christian again? Or how do we take America back for Christ? That kind of thing. And oftentimes, this is why the low bar is such a helpful part of this discussion is because we want to complicate things so much when the answer should roughly be, well, worship God on Sunday, right? Confess your sins and love your family. You want to take America back. That's how you do it.

[Doug]

We're in.

[Knox]

You know, we're kind of this weird little test case in Moscow, Idaho, where, you know, Doug's been laboring for 40 years, and then a couple scraggly guys like me and Knox kind of come into the community, and then we get more people kind of moving in and. But what's happened over time is, is, is Doug's. I'm not, I'm not embarrassed at all of you if you're. Let's go. If Doug's teaching on raising kids has gotten so entrenched into our community. We love raising kids. We love having kids. We love baptizing them. And.

[Doug]

Scoot back over. You do. Okay. And it's cute. I will acknowledge it's cute.

[James]

It's a winning argument.

[Knox]

But what's happening is we're in this blue dot. Moscow is a blue dot, red state, and there's about 25,000 in population. There's. There's more. When the students are in not. But there's about 25,000. But now, after 40 years of Doug laboring, we have about 2300 people in our churches. King's Cross, Moscow, Christchurch, and some plants that we have going around in smaller towns. So do the math.

[Doug]

Well, we're.

[Knox]

We're about 10% of the population almost now. And what's gonna happen is liberals don't have kids or they kill their kids or their kids grow up. And it's not cool to go to college in the same town as your parents. And we keep, Lord willing, if God continues to bless the faithfulness. Faithfulness just eventually becomes a math problem, right? And then you know what's gonna happen another 10 years. My brother's daughter voted this last year. You know, Toby's son started voting, what, two years ago or something like that. My daughter's gonna vote in three years. I mean, it just becomes. Faithfulness just eventually becomes a math problem. I don't want to dilute, like, you know, what God is doing in the broader. In the bigger picture, but just being faithful, having kids, you know what's happened. I'd say one of the failures of the baby boomer generation is that they didn't take their kids out of public school when the Bible was taken out in 1963. That's, of course, I'd rather take them out further than that, but I can at least point to some concrete things. Okay. The Bible was taken out, and then prayer came, got taken out, okay? And now we have trannies in the bathroom. And our generation has learned the principle, don't take your kids out of public schools. That's what's happened. And so we've raised a generation. That's what we're kind of dealing with right now. In a lot of ways. We're raising this apathetic conservative generation where we've been taught not to make the hard decisions in 1963. And now we got trannies in our bathrooms.

[Doug]

That's good, right? So I was going to say to. In terms of, like, how do you make America Christian again? America has to obviously repent and believe the gospel. So we have to do it the way the apostles turn the world upside down. I think, you know, Acts is an amazing. It's one of the best sermons, by the way, I ever heard on the Book of Acts was you at Reform Con. I think it was so good. I remember that chance to hear that here. That was such a blessing. So I think that the Book of Acts is an amazing thing to immerse yourself in. Of course, all the scripture is. But in terms of, okay, I want to see how do we faithfully transform the world through the proclamation of the gospel by God's spirit. Okay, look at how God did it. And here's how the spirit of God moved in the early church leadership of the church to bring the truth to a pagan world that, let's be honest, in many respects, looked a lot worse than within the blessings of the gospel that have transformed so much around us. And so I want to say, well, let's look to that. I mean, they were surrounded by pagans and idolatry and resistance, hot resistance to the gospel and the Christian message. And so how do they do it? Well, we have the same God, the same gospel, same spirit. So we do what they did, and that's that they went into the public square with boldness, with love, with humility, with the truth. And they preached repentance and faith. They. They commanded people everywhere to repent and believe the gospel. That's how we turn any nation Christian. And so when we talk about we need to shave off this moral problem, this moral problem, the whole thing is a moral problem. And so you have to repent and believe the gospel. And I think that in the midst of that, and I don't have all the answers, but I know what the book of Acts says, in the midst of that, you see the call to repentance and faith, and you see a consistent prophetic voice coming from the church in all areas of life. And so the church stands as a witness in the public square, giving the gospel the call to repent and to believe, turn to Christ, come to him as Savior and Lord. But also you see this strong prophetic witness of the church and of course, in the ministry of the Lord Jesus, where the word of God is being brought boldly to the world around without apology. That's what I love so much of what Doug just said, too. I love that. I want my kids to get a hold of that. Never apologize for what's in the Bible. Never apologize for what God says. And I think that we have to do that. So just one example, hopefully, is an encouragement. I'm going to get it to you guys to speak to this. And that is that, you know, two examples, quickly. One, Matt Walsh's documentary on what is a woman so fun? Such a great documentary. It genuinely was. I was, it was. I was so entertained by it. I enjoyed it so much. But of course, I know what we all felt as you walked away from that was, where was the Bible? Where was the testimony to God's? Own revelation, because we all get it. Yes, natural revelation, general revelation gets through to us and is shouting to us. So when the guy is standing in front of you wearing a bra and panties and a skirt and he's got a beard on, you can say your own body is testifying against your profession.

[James]

Right, Exactly.

[Doug]

You should look down and then maybe.

[Knox]

At what.

[Jeff]

Max looks confused.

[Doug]

And then maybe, maybe you will know just by nature testifying to you. You know, God's already built it into, into your DNA, you know, so there's that and that's obviously there in natural. That's all screaming at us, obviously. But Romans 1 says that people know God, they suppress the truth about God and unrighteousness. They don't want God in their knowledge and they do what they know is against nature. It's shouting to them. And that's the moral issue of that sexual form of depravity. So anyway, so Matt Walsh does a fine documentary exposing what is obvious to every image bearer of God. This is not God's way. It's not how it's supposed to be. The only problem is that it misses the very voice of God. In special revelation gets to the strong detail of shouting to people from the voice of God. He made them male and female. So where was that? And everyone's afraid to say it. Like we can't bring the Bible into the discussion. Let's just do biology. If we could just point to the obvious. And have we noticed that when you're talking to a dude in a dress and a beard, he does not care about biology. You're going to try to make a biological argument to a guy that the problem is not his biology, pointing it out to him, saying hey, look down for a second. His problem is rebellion and sin. You don't crack that by pointing out his biology. The two gay dudes that are doing what they do, the shameful things that they do, their biology is shouting to them every single time. In that perversion, it is shouting to them. It's so obvious. The problem isn't point out the biology. They know the parts don't fit. The problem is rebellion against the God that they know. And they need to call to repentance and faith. So this is interesting. So that issue leads into the abortion issue in terms of boldness in the public square with a prophetic voice from the church. We were told when we got into this, look, you can't use the Bible when you do this. You can't fight against abortion at the legislature with the Bible. You can't use the word Jesus. You can't. You call to repentance and you can't quote scripture. That's not how you do this. You need to be more practical and pragmatic than that. Like, you just need to focus on the issue of biology. And the pro life groups all were doing that. They're saying, if we could just convince these poor women that what's inside of them is a unique human life and that it is their baby. If we could just convince them that it is a unique life from the moment of fertilization, then we can change the minds of the culture. And my answer to that is, you have not spent any time outside of an abortion mill.

[James]

That's right.

[Doug]

They don't care if you're saying that they just don't know or they're all just victims and that they don't understand what's inside of them. I encourage you to spend two weeks outside of an abortion mill. Maybe your mind will change when they're yelling back to you. I know it's my baby. I have the right to murder my baby. I don't care. They're celebrating. When we were in D.C. for the Supreme Court thing, women were taking plan B pill, pills, pills, downing them in front of us, swallowing and celebrating that they're killing their babies. They know it's not a biological issue. It's a rebellion and a sin issue. It's that those who hate me love death. And so we were told, don't bring the Bible into the legislature. And interestingly, the pro life camp and organizations, that whole machine had 50 years to work out their, their methodology. Let's not use Jesus. Let's not call to repentance. Let's not use the word of God. Let's not do any of that. Let's not make it about the gospel. Let's just focus on biology. And you got 50 years of over 65 million dead bodies right piled up underneath us. The church comes in, the church comes in and says, you know, I think I want to appeal to scripture and the word of God and the authority of Jesus Christ. I'm going to trust God. I'm going to go in here boldly and with love and with humility, but with the truth. And I'm going to go to the legislature and I'm going to say to these Christian legislators, your king is Jesus. This is the word of the Lord. You know this is true. Do something consistent with it and criminalize this. Call it murder, give equal protection, and lo and behold, the church with no real Money to speak of pennies in comparison to the millions of dollars that the pro life establishment brings in. Just starts going lowly. Nobody Christians starts going to their legislators and saying, hey, this is the word of the Lord. Here's what God says. You have to have allegiance to Jesus. You got to do what he tells you to do. Save these babies, establish justice in the name of Jesus. And all of a sudden, one legislator goes, you're right, you're right. It has to be done. One brave legislator starts putting it in doing it. Controversy swirls. More churches, more pastors start going, hey, I'm going to the legislature now. And now since that time, dozens of bills of abolition and equal protection across the country. And that didn't come from saying, let's talk about biology. That's right. And you know, it's amazing. You know, the last word, I was saying this. Show me. I'm going to, I want you to. I want to show you the difference between the Christless conservatism not using the word of God, not speaking the law word boldly in the public square. Look at those people with decades of experience before the legislature on the issue of abortion. We're not mentioning Jesus. We're not calling to repentance. We're not using the word of God. And, and no, no gospel. No call for forgiveness and reconciliation, peace with God. Over the last 10 years, the church gets involved. And I want to encourage you all, go watch the hearings where the church has showed up. Pastors, ministers of the gospel, women, children, children, 10 year olds going to legislators. They baptized, huh?

[James]

Are those kids baptized?

[Doug]

If they were in our church. If they were in our church.

[James]

I like it, I like it. I just want to make sure.

[Doug]

Yeah, yeah. And they're calling the legislators to repent and turn to Jesus or they're gonna face judgment. The last legislature we went to, Virgil was there. If you haven't seen it, listen to Virgil's testimony at the Georgia legislature recently. It was fire. Praise the Lord for that faithfulness. But you had pastors going before the legislature, calling them to repent because there is a day of judgment coming and do right before God, obey his word, establish justice for these children. It was unbelievable. Christians filling the hallways of the Georgia legislature and the hearing room to the degree that they had to call the fire marshal in to have everybody removed from the hearing room. And as they removed them, the Christians continued singing worship songs to Jesus. The legislators in Georgia said in 30 years had never seen at one hearing that kind of support and anything like that, where people are singing songs to Jesus. It was a powerful moment. Babies are being brought in. They were the result of rape, put as flesh before the legislators. Look, look, look, your argument is ridiculous. And using the word of God. So I want to say, was the success in terms of visible success found in the compromise or the faithful proclamation of the truth? Where's the success? And every time, it's their faithfulness. Yeah.

[Jeff]

So I think they answer your question. How do we make America Christian again? That can be summed up in one verse in Proverbs 29, where there's no prophetic vision that people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law. Yeah, Right. So there's, like Jeff just said, there's been no prophetic vision to speak of. Doug's done a fantastic job in Moscow. But, you know, I mean, like, the church has neglected its prophetic vision into the culture. We're literally watching the people cast off restraint. So how do we fix that? Blessed is he who keeps the law. Right. And so that's how. That's how we remain faithful, is keeping the law, proclaiming the gospel. And my fear, we talked about this last week on Apology Radio. My fear is that because Trump won, right? And everyone likes all the winning that's been happening, it feels good. Right? My concern is that Christians are going to sit back and just coast and take it easy. Oh, Trump's. He made it. We got it. Now conservatives are in control. And it's like, no, no, no, no. Like Toby said, we've been blessed with at least two years.

[Doug]

Oh.

[Jeff]

At least two years to musical mics, at least two years. Hopefully longer, but to actually do something. But the only way that's going to happen is if we don't sit on our butts and just expect, you know, Trump to do it. It's got to come through the church. It's got to come through the gospel. And that prophetic vision.

[Doug]

Dr.

[Joe Boot]

Boot elucidated this last night and the distinction between the natural law theology and then an appeal to Scripture and the closing of the distance between the is and the ought. Right? You can describe reality. You can define reality. Even fallen creatures can do that by way of creation shouting at them. But you can't close that distance between what is and what should be without an appeal to a transcendent authority. And that's what the conservative movement, by and large, is missing and is absent of. And one of the things that I'm grateful for as any opportunity that I've been given to minister to anyone on the street or to Magistrates in authority is. I'm just an ambassador. The authority that I possess does not arise from my own worthiness or from my own accomplishment or from my own merit. I am nothing more than a product of grace in every facet, in every category. And so I don't have to appeal to something that is within me. I'm appealing to something that is independent of me. I am sent with his message. And therefore, what's missing from that side, the conservative side, is that authoritative call you must obey. If you only have the ability to define, then you have no ability to call someone to obey the authority. And so I'm thankful that that doesn't rest upon me. I'm simply coming in the name of someone else and commanding them to adhere to that and align their entire lives and their office with his mandate.

[Gabe]

Amen.

[James]

Virgil, standing over there, I don't know how much time we got left, because I did.

[Doug]

I did want to. Let's talk about practical things that we can point people just quickly. Virgil, do we have five minutes? Virgil? Yeah. Virgil, come take a seat. Come take a seat.

[James]

He said we got more time, Virgil.

[Doug]

So, you know, do you have space? We have. We have room. Scoot over. Come on, Big Bear. Let's go. Bear. I don't know. Virgil, actually, could you speak to that? I mean, you were in Georgia with us. You've. You've seen what took place the last couple of years that we were trying to build in Georgia. Talk to the churches from the very beginning to what happened. I'd like to just sort of fill everyone in on that, because everything Toby was saying, I think is so important in terms of a prophetic witness that's consistent, that's on the word of God. Just talk about that.

[Virgil]

I. I want to talk about something that. That happened in the room while you were giving your testimony, because I was sitting right behind you, and I was wishing you would have tagged a brother in.

[James]

A brother.

[Virgil]

A brother. And. And I mean that in every sense of that word, because he was getting heckled by this legislator who was, you know, black female, just so happened to be. And she was upset because you had responded by using the analogy of slavery and how people are diminished and not seen as fully human as a result. You were trying to make the point that that's exactly what we're doing with the issue of abortion, and she raised the big, big stink about it and told you that you had no right and no authority based upon the lack of melanin in your skin to talk about that issue in that way. And I was right behind you, like, bruh.

[Doug]

Yeah, yeah, can. Well, you know what I wanted to do? Okay, listen, Emory. Emory asked us, okay, you're gonna go hard today. He's like, so be very gracious, be very gentle. And he sacrificed so much as a legislator to do this. So I was like, absolutely. My full commitment to try to just be faithful, make it about the truth, and don't go overboard. And I always want to try to resist that. Anyways. And so when she said. In that moment, when she said, do you identify as African American, everything in me wanted to say, actually, for the purposes of your question, I currently identify as a strong black woman. But I knew Emery. I know Emory might not be happy about that, so I just did the gracious. I share a different count of melanin. Yeah, yeah. It was.

[Virgil]

I was. I was behind. Behind you. So you were turned focused on a different direction. I was like, bro, I'm right behind you.

[James]

I got you.

[Doug]

I know. I was hoping you would bring that up in yours. For sure. Yeah.

[Knox]

I just want to point out that this chair set up now is like, kind of a typical Baptist interpretation of baptism. Everything you do just doesn't quite fit.

[James]

Virgil should have cut the bikes off when he came in first.

[Doug]

All right, thank you, buddy. We're done.

[James]

He should have just cut the bikes off right there. That was your mistake.

[Doug]

Oh, wait. So we're all Baptist here. So we, like, normal. We. We outnumber you, Presby.

[James]

That's true.

[Doug]

That's true.

[Gabe]

That's true.

[James]

I want to speak real quick to what can we. Some practical things that we can do, Because I think one of the things that we get hit with, especially from people who are further to the right than us, is there has been a group of people that have use the gospel as a way not to act.

[Doug]

Right?

[James]

Come on, now. Somebody out here got. Can I get an amen? All right. Where they have said, well, you just need to preach the gospel, and it'll sort itself out. Don't worry about the engagement. Just preach the gospel, and the gospel preaching will be the thing. And they've hid behind the church in the gospel instead of using it as a tool, as a weapon, to engage. And so I think this is really important to deal with. Like, no, no. The gospel bleeds its way out through your fingertips into society. And so the more that we are saturated with the gospel in our homes, with our family, with our children, with our work and our businesses, they touch everything else in society. And so we're not making an argument here to be very clear that the gospel is just going to sit here in this little thing and then we're just hoping that it gets out. No, no, it works its way out. When the gospel can change a heart, it changes the man, it changes his wife, it changes his family, it changes his environment, his whole home, changes his business, changes his community, changes his state, changes his nation. Right. So this gospel works. And one of the things I think is really important practically, that Christians have to remember is when you're in a world that is antithetical to the Christian reality, don't be like them. We're in a nation right now that is full of debt and people can't move and they need the federal government in order to be able to do anything. We have to be the kind of people that don't live in that kind of world that are free from debt. Look over there. Dominion. Yeah, this is what this is for, y'.

[Gabe]

All.

[James]

How many Christians right now are not debt free and can't operate with their freedom, don't have money to invest, don't have the ability to operate powerfully because we are so busy accumulating things and not taking care of the thinking about the future and preparing for them. We don't have wealth. Christians, I would. Who in here wouldn't start and give if they had 100, $250 million to start Christian Hollywood, we would love to do that. Guess why we can't do it? Because we owe the man, we owe the banks, we owe somebody else. So we can't build anything. And so part of what it's going to take for us to build is to get serious over the next 12 years, get our debt completely ripped out from underneath. Let's pay it off and start accumulating the kind of wealth that we can say, all right, we were just doing, we just did a show with Bitcoin Dominion wealth guys.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[James]

And then Alps Precious Metals, gold. And one of the things that was really striking was, I think it was Josiah from Dominion said you, you need to have 50 to $70,000 of money in your hand right now.

[Doug]

What hand in your hand? Your hand.

[James]

Your hand, not your hand that you have. Because when you can deploy capital, you have power, right? When you own companies, you don't shut them down because they're yours. When you have many companies and you own a block, that block can bless many people, right? Because they can still work and you say, we're not going to shut down, they can, you can give them a chance to create, have good paying jobs so they can save money, which they can deploy their own capital. We have to think about what is the way for us to actually take dominion in our own families. And one of the ways is to get out of debt. So go see dominion and let them help you. So that over the next 15 to 20 years, we got Christians who have capital to deplore and be able to take dominion so that we're not looking to the pagans for all their help and getting loans from their banks. We can loan each other money.

[Gabe]

And just in case you think Knox is getting off the point, that's what the book of Proverbs is all about.

[James]

That's right.

[Gabe]

Proverbs is the word of God. And you're like, yeah, that's good advice. No, that's dominion. That's how to be a free man. That's how to be a free woman.

[James]

That's right.

[Gabe]

And you can find more about dominion at Reform Money.

[Virgil]

Join me in thanking these men.

[Knox]

Thank you.

[Doug]

Can I just point one thing out, since everyone's here now. This is not a speech he said, this is my conference. That's right. Virgil, sit down.

[James]

Virgil.

[Doug]

Tag me back in. Thank you. So just wanted to point out is here. So a lot of people might be new to sort of the overall perspective that we're saying. All of Christ for all of life, spirit, sovereignty. Christ is king over everything. The law, word of God being foundational to all that we're doing. There's so many ways. I think you guys would probably make great recommendations. We would. In terms of like, sort of piecemeal, like we're dealing with this subject, Reed Bonson, by this standard, you got to get that in you. And you need maybe this aspect of presuppositional apologetics. You need to get that to understand the epistemological issues. Maybe would say, you know, read this thing from Rush Dooney. This will help you in this area. There's a lot of reading, a lot of very helpful stuff. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Much better men than us. They've already done the work. And I want to say this. I think God obviously, you know, calls us to do certain things, and there are men who still need to write things. But I'll be honest, I think that some of the best writing has already been done. We don't need people to write new books on this stuff, big tomes. We need people to fight and do. And I truly believe that. But if you want to have a work that's going to bless your life, you're going to Love reading it. And you're going to really get an understanding. You got to get Mission of God by Dr. Boots. It's sort of a one stop shop for sort of the whole package and understanding. It'll bless you, it'll inspire you. We used to give it out for free at Apologia Church. Early on we're building a church plant. We want especially our young men to have this in them. So we'd give out Mission of God. If you don't have this in your library, sell your shirt and shoes and, and get this in your library. It'll truly bless your life. I, I genuinely mean that. I don't talk about books a lot like that at all. Get Mission of God. There's a whole bunch of them here by Dr. Joe Boot. One of my favorite Christian books. And who was it that started reading it and talking about it? Who was it that famous Russell Brand? Like, I'm just watching this clip of Russell Brand professing faith in Christ and then opening the Mission of God. Was it with Tucker? It was with Tucker. Tucker Carlson. I'm just watching him going, wait, rewind. He's talking about my friend Joe Boots book, Mission of God. I'm like, this isn't happening right now.

[Gabe]

But Russell, that's a great example of everything we're talking about.

[Doug]

Yes.

[Gabe]

They've got questions and the Word of God has all the answers.

[Doug]

Russell Brand's flipping through it to his favorite page and like underlined, and he's quoting Dr. Boot. I'm like, huh, we won. Maybe the rapture is coming now. It's like it's going to happen in a moment. Death's about to be defeated. I don't know. Russell Brand's quoting Joe Boots, so. But anyway, seriously, you're here, you're here to grow, to fellowship, to learn, to be encouraged. And I just want to give you a resource. If you don't have it in your library, get in your library. And the reason I'm recommending this, I think if you have this in you, the truths that are in this book in you, the scriptures he points to, the history points you to, if you have it in you, you're going to become a devastating tool in this generation for the kingdom of God. It's these truths that transform and so get the kingdom, Mission of God. Get it.

[Gabe]

Thank you.

[Knox]

Okay, Virgil.

[Virgil]

Thank these gentlemen.

[Joe Boot]

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