Looking at our world from a theological perspective. This is the Theology Central Podcast, making theology central. Good morning, everyone. It is Friday, May the 28th, 2021. It is currently 1055 a.m. Central Time. Coming to you live from the middle of nowhere, Texas. Coming to you live from the Sanctuary of Victory Baptist Church. Coming to you live from behind this microphone where I am all the time. I feel like I spent a good portion of my life right here. behind in front of this microphone. And if you're listening to me live today, as always, hit the little chat icon on the Spreaker app. You can say, hello, good afternoon. You can ask your questions, your thoughts. Thank you. If you did not hear part one of this, well, please go back and listen as soon as you can. I think I will get you caught up and we'll have this all make sense so that you can listen right now if you're listening live. and I think it will all make sense. You still need to go back and listen to part one because there's a lot of things we discussed, all right? So, here's what we're going to do. I know it's Memorial Day weekend, so I hope everyone has a great weekend. I know doing a live broadcast and doing podcasts over the Memorial Day weekend, probably not the best idea because most likely people are not going to be listening to that many podcasts over the Memorial Day weekend. So it will be here whenever you come back, whenever you find us again, whenever you come back from doing whatever you did Memorial Day weekend. So if you hear this Tuesday of next week, well, thank you. You're a little late to the party, but thank you. Now, whenever you listen to this, thank you so very much. And feel free to email me at any time. Now, I know this is somewhat of a controversial issue. Well, you know what? Let me take that back. This has the potential of being controversial, but I think if people actually listen to how I'm approaching this, I'm not being controversial in any way, shape or form. What we are doing is we're taking, basically, if you listen to part one, we have two concepts, theonomy and post-millennialism. And according to the podcast that we are reviewing, critiquing and listening to, they have stated that Dr. James White from Alpha and Omega Ministries from Apologia Church in Arizona, that Dr. James White has come out and has acknowledged that he now holds to theonomy and he holds to the post-millennial view. I'm not here to argue whether that is 100% accurate or not accurate. I'm not here to get into that. What I want to do is use this discussion about Dr. James White, theonomy, and post-millennialism to get us to talk about theonomy and post-millennialism. So what we're doing is we're taking a podcast from, I think it's called The Particular Baptist Podcast. I found it on the Edify Christian Podcast app. I'm taking their discussion really just as, because they're offering their thoughts, they're listening to Dr. James White critiquing what he's saying, so I'm taking all of that information, bringing it here so that we can build on it and just see where it takes us. I'm not really interested in the controversy about Dr. James White, what he believes or doesn't believe. That's not the issue here. The issue is theonomy and post-millennialism. The issue is, as a Christian, this is really the issue. As a Christian, when you look at a world that seems to be turning its back on God, abandoning God's law, rebelling against God, doesn't want anything to do with God, people are leaving the church in large numbers. It appears that I would have to look at one of the statistics. I think there's something about more churches are closing than are opening or being established, how many people are leaving the church and no longer attending. All these statistics are showing that things are going in the wrong direction. Well, when everything's going in the wrong direction, what should a Christian do? Should a Christian just focus on, listen to that term, focus on simply preaching the gospel, discipling people, and living out a Christian life? Should that be our focus? Or should our focus be on somehow trying to fight the moral, the cultural decay, the moral decay? I've got to fight losing my voice here. That would be bad. Losing my voice in the middle of a live broadcast, that would be bad. Or do we focus on fighting the moral and cultural decay by seeking to somehow impose the divine law of God upon society through establishing through either political means, passing laws, protests, boycotts, and is that, do we try to establish basically God's kingdom on earth as Christians? Do we try to establish that through the imposition of divine law upon society? Now, clearly, my viewpoint is very simple. I believe things are gonna get worse and worse and worse and worse. Things are not going to get better. I do not believe as Christians we can bring about the kingdom of God on earth in a practical sense. The spiritual kingdom of God is present now, and people become a part of that kingdom by repentance and faith. When God brings them to salvation, when God opens their eyes, regenerates them, brings them to faith and repentance, when God does that, they transfer them from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light, and they become a part of that kingdom of God. And then I believe if there is a future kingdom, like if you believe in a future kingdom, let's say a millennial kingdom, a literal millennial kingdom, that will be future and God will establish that future literal kingdom on earth himself. I don't believe that's our job. I don't believe things are going to get better and better and better. And there's going to be some golden era of Christian dominance that ushers in the kingdom of God on earth. I don't believe that. I reject that view completely. I know others do. So it really comes down to these issues. Theonomy, in fact, let me just go back and give you some basic of the definitions of theonomy. Let me just give you some of the basics here. Theonomy comes from theos, God, nomos, law. God's law, basically. Theonomy is the idea of God's law. It's a hypothetical Christian form of government in which society is ruled by divine law. Theonomists hold that divine law, particularly the judicial laws of the Old Testament, should be observed by modern societies. The precise definition of theonomy is the starting presumption that the Old Covenant judicial laws given to Israel have not been abrogated, therefore all civil governments are morally obligated to enforce them, including the specific penalties. And furthermore, that all civil government must refrain from coercion in areas where Scripture has not prescribed their intervention. This is called the regulative principle of the state. All right, now, I went through that really quick. We could take all of that part, but the basic idea, for a theonomy or for someone who's a theonomist or holds to theonomy, they want the society to be ruled by divine laws, and this is very important, and this is very important, And that the governments are morally obligated to enforce divine law, including the specific penalties. So you go to the Old Testament, you find the Old Testament law, the government should impose it, and then impose those exact same penalties. Now, they obviously don't believe in all of that law being imposed, because they would usually reject the ceremonial law, saying that that was fulfilled in Christ, but then they want to hold to somehow the moral civil law, not just being for Israel, being for the government today, and it should be imposed, and Christians want to somehow re-establish that, then that will bring in a golden era of Christian dominance, and then bring in the kingdom of God. That's the post-millennial aspect of it. I'm not saying all, I cannot, I'm not gonna be dogmatic about this. I will, I'm gonna just say. Theonomy is one thing, post-millennialism is another. How often they meet, do they always meet, I'm not gonna get into that debate as of right now. But the point is, the podcast that we are getting ready to go back and listen to, they have stated that it came out that Dr. James White now holds to theonomy and a post-millennialist, and they say it's controversial within reform circles. I'm not here to get into that controversy. I just wanna talk about theonomy. I want to talk about post-millennialism, and I want to listen to them critique Dr. James White, hear Dr. James White give his view, and then from all of that, see how far we take this series and build our own discussion on it, all right? So this is just starting as a starting point. And our last broadcast, we made it to like, what? 14 minutes and 36 seconds into the podcast that we are reviewing. We're not going to back it up in any way, shape or form. We're not going to back it up. So we're just going to jump in here in the middle. And that's what we're going to do. All right. So here we go. Hopefully all of that makes sense. I know that was a quick review, but I wanted that's nine minutes. So that's as quick as I can make it. So are you ready? Here we go. And then, um, Dr. White also brought up the fact that, um, currently in the current culture of the West, you have things such as, um, a father in Canada, who's, was he in jail or he's at least not allowed to call his, um, uh, his son by, um, his proper name and proper pronouns. And that's true with the way the culture currently is. A lot of evil is permitted. But having a Christian or Christianized culture doesn't prevent persecution. No. Did medieval Europe, you could at least say, had a much more judicial law that was much more based on the Bible than current Western culture is. But did that prevent people like Fritz Erba from being thrown in a hole for eight years? For those who don't know, Fritz Erba was an Anabaptist minister that, because he would refuse to give up his views on baptism, was thrown in a castle hole for eight years until he died. Let's stop right here. This is very important. Let me state it again. If you want to establish some kind of theonomy, some kind of idea of God's law, divine law being ruling and reigning, who gets to decide which, like for example, if God's divine law, does that include punishment against theological error? Does that involve the punishment of theological error? If that also involves the punishment of theological error, well then which Christian's view is going to dominate the divine law that's ruling the government? Right? In other words, if it's Catholic, then Catholics would say divine law has to rule and that part of that divine law is the punishment against false teachers and against heresy. And guess what? All you Protestants? you're all false teachers, you're heretics, you're going to be punished and you're going to be killed. You see what happens when you try to establish divine law like that? Which Christian group gets to establish the divine law? The Baptist? The Church of Christ? The Charismatics? The Catholics? The Greek Orthodox? Who gets to do it? How about we just do this? Everyone has freedom! Civil government rules and reign, and I just want the ability to preach the gospel. But these are questions you have to get to with theonomy, right? I mean, like, there's an example where you go back into church history, whenever you merge church and state, someone, usually some other Christian group, gets persecuted and killed. This is the way it always works. But hey, we're trying to impose divine law, your concept of divine law. And then you're like, here's the divine law. And those are the heretics. Those are the false teachers. Those are the false prophets. And according to divine law, they should be punished and killed. I don't ever want to go back to that. That's frightening. And I'm not saying all theonomists would go that far, but man, once you start down the path of wanting to establish divine law as the law of the land, it almost always involves the punishment of those you deem to be heretics. I bring this up because Dr. White likes to use him as an example. But ultimately, it didn't help him. It didn't help, say, Felix Mons, another Anabaptist who is martyred for being a Baptist, or a Credo Baptist, at least. then move on to Puritan New England, right? If there were any place to be a reflection of the civil law of God applied to a culture, you could probably say, well, Puritan New England would be a good place to look. And yet you have people like Roger Williams, again another Baptist, driven out from there. Just because you have a civil law, it won't protect you against persecution. Because ultimately, as the person who did the tweet alluded to, that doesn't change people's hearts. The law was never meant to change people's hearts. It was never meant to make people righteous. Certainly, it can prevent unrighteous things from happening, but you're not going to be able to avoid it by putting the civil law or trying to make the current laws that we have in our nation reflect the laws given to the nation of Israel in the Mosaic Covenant. Yep, and you even see this with the particular Baptists. They refused to capitulate to the Church of England. Some of them were put to death. Some of them were thrown in prison. They were spied upon. There was persecution there. And that was really a theocracy to some extent. You had a church-state mixture. You had the state enforcing religious practices, but it did not prevent the persecution of God's people. And Jesus makes it very clear that it's going to be normative for the Christian church to be persecuted. They're going to hate you. They're going to... Stop right there. And if Jesus said it's the normative thing, the church is going to be persecuted and Christians are going to be hated, if that's the normative way it's going to work, then clearly that's not a theonomy. That's not divine law ruling and reigning. That would be No, the world is going to be ruled and reigned by a system that hates Christianity. That's the normative system. That's the way it works. The church is going to be the small minority, the light in the middle of the darkness, the salt in a world, and it's going to be hated and it's going to be persecuted. And what is our job? Do everything we can to submit to government as much as humanly possible, live peaceably with all men as much as possible, but at the same time, preach the gospel In fact, three things. I will say four things. This is the fourfold mission, I think. To preach or teach evangelism, baptize, bring into the church, disciple, and equip saints so they're no longer children tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine. It's evangelism, baptism, bringing into the church, discipleship, and the equipping of the saints, which would have an overlap with discipleship. That's what we're called to do, not running around going, we're gonna fight this cultural issue, and we're gonna fight this cultural issue, and we're gonna fight this, and we're gonna try to get people elected, and we're gonna try to overthrow this, and we're gonna call for a recall for this governor, and we're gonna run around, and we're gonna do this, and we're gonna talk about elections, and how elections were stolen, and we're gonna find ourselves in conspiracy theories, and we're gonna, All of that is chasing the wind. You're never going to catch it, and even if you caught it, you can't do anything with it. It's going to slip right through your hands. What's tangible is preaching the gospel. And I just think that's a very important point. If Jesus says you're going to be hated, why would you be hated? If what he's telling you to do is go establish a theonomy, to establish God's divine law as the law of the land, then you wouldn't be hated. You would only be aided until you accomplished the theonomy, until you accomplished the divine law ruling and reigning over everything. It's never going to happen. And anytime it does happen, quote unquote, people are still persecuted. People are still killed. Why? Because whose Christianity is establishing the divine law? Whose Christianity? Whose interpretation of Christianity? Catholics? Again, you've got places where, hey, we're establishing basically a theonomy here in this area, whether it was in New England, wherever. Oh, your Christianity is not accepted here, you're gonna either be punished, killed, or we're gonna run you out of the town. Well, wow, what a great... Gotta love that, isn't that wonderful the way that works? And a lot of times it was Baptists who were being killed. So yeah, and so if a Presbyterian was to establish a theonomy, they would probably go after the Baptists because of our views on not baptizing children. I would refuse to have my child baptized. I'm like, no, I don't care if the Presbyterians are in charge. No, I'm not following, I'm not gonna listen to you because it goes against scripture. So yeah, all right, here we go. speak out against you. These things we see in Canada with these brothers who are being arrested, put in prison because they refuse to stop religious worship due to the COVID regulations. That is a form of persecution. Stop right there. Okay, now I don't know if they're referring to a different case, but in some of the cases in Canada, they were not being arrested for refusing to stop religious services. They were being arrested for refusing to conduct religious services according to the guidelines established, which was what? 20% capacity, wear a mask, social distancing, whatever it was. They could have all the religious services they want. They could have 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 100. They could do 24-hour-a-day church services. You just have to maintain the number of people. I'm so tired of that story being told that they were persecuted for not stopping religious services. Now, maybe there were some cases where they were are arrested for not stopping. But in the cases I'm aware of, they were arrested not because they didn't stop, it's because they continued not following the guidelines. Let's just make that clear. They could have church services, mask, certain percentage of capacity in the room, social distancing. They could do that. You could be having church Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. You could be having church at eight in the morning, at eight o'clock at night. You could be having church at one in the afternoon, at one in the morning. You could be having church all the time. So let's just keep that in mind. I just, that narrative keeps getting pushed. Now there may be cases where they came in and said, nope, no religious services at all. Okay, now we can talk about that. But in other cases, because we've talked about at least one of the cases in Canada, I read you the rules and the rules were very simple and straightforward. And there were churches all around that one church where the person ends up getting arrested that were conducting services and had zero problems. No issues, and they continue to have services. When that pastor went to prison, those other churches continue to have services. Why? Because they just simply follow the guidelines. Now, you may not feel like the guidelines are fair. You may feel like it wasn't right for the government to impose those restrictions. But the point was, just state it accurately. not arrested for not stopping services, arrested for not conducting services according to the way that they were told to do so. Now, you can argue that's not right. I'm not here to argue about that. Just saying, whenever you state the situation, state it accurately and correctly. Now, they may be referring to a situation different. They may be. I just want to make sure we understand that each situation where someone was arrested, you have to look at exactly what occurred and describe it in accurate language. because they are wanting to continue to worship God in the way He is prescribed and not let the state overstep those bounds. And so there is persecution. It's not going to be taken away just because we institute God's law in the land. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be aspects of God's law instituted in the land, as we've said already, but it's not going to solve the problem. We're not going to be able to squash all these problems that we have in society just by simply changing the government that we live around. It's just not going to happen. We are to continue to live as peaceable Christians, submitting in as much as it's consistent with God's commandments to the government, living peaceable and quiet lives and telling others the gospel as God gives us opportunity to. That is our job. And we can certainly influence the government. We can call for the end of abortion because they are to be upholding order and punishing those who are evil. But we're also not to become consumed with changing our government to the point where we miss where is our real calling. Is it here? Are we establishing a kingdom on this earth? Or are we looking forward to a coming kingdom in Jesus Christ? that is really where we have to push. And unfortunately, our theonomic brothers seem to miss that. And you have to understand that theonomy and reconstructionism is ultimately tied to an eschatological worldview. It is. I don't know how you can be a theonomist and not be a post-millennialist because they don't, they're not consistent with one another. You have to really, if you're going to be consistent, you have to hold to both. Alright, so there, there, that's, that's, I was trying to avoid saying that because I cannot be, I don't, I've tried to be very careful being dogmatic about something that I don't feel that I have complete knowledge about, but I agree, at least from the outside, I don't know how you can be a theonomist, hold to theonomy, and not hold to post-millennial. I think you have to have both. And I'll tell you right out, I am not post-millennial. I am not any way, day, shape, or form. Could I ever embrace post-millennialism? I think it's a broken system. So if post-millennialism is connected to theonomy, and if you hold to theonomy, you have to be post-millennial. I can never hold to theonomy because I do not hold to post-millennialism. Things are not gonna get better. We're not going to subject the world to basically a golden age of Christian dominance. It's not going to happen. Things are not going to get better. They're going to get worse and they're going to get worse. The church is going to become completely apostate. It's going to get worse and worse. I want to say the church at large is going to become completely apostate. Just look at what's happening. That's where we're headed. So I, yeah, it's insane. You can sit there and yell and scream and go stand in front of abortion clinic and yell and scream and try to pass laws and pass laws. You go fight it all. It's a battle of futility. It's not going to happen. It's just not. All right, let's continue. They're not playing a lot of Dr. James White. They only played like a few minutes, and they're 19 minutes into this, and they've not done a lot of actually listening to Dr. James White. I'm kind of interested to hear Dr. James White give the other side here as why we're listening to this. Here we go. Because they go hand in hand, although there might be theonomists who aren't post-millennials and vice versa. But yeah, so we have to be careful to make these proper distinctions. All right, so he did acknowledge there may be those who hold to theonomy who are not post-millennialist, but I guess he seems to say that that's an inconsistent perspective. All right, so, but I could not, look, I can't be a post-millennialist, that's just guaranteed. There's no way, I just don't see it, I don't get it, don't understand it, just no way. Theonomy I'm willing to at least consider, but if theonomy releads you to post-millennialism, then I cannot become a theonomy because I can't get around the post-millennial view, I just can't. when we're talking about God's law and how Christians are to relate to the state. I would push back a little on that. I can understand how somebody could be post-millennial without being theonomic. It's just a different type of post-millennialism. Because all we see in the modern day is a lot of the theonomic post mill. So that version, I completely understand why it's consistent. But more of the pietistic, Postmills would not necessarily have to be theonomic theonomic. Although I will agree that to be a theonomist it almost requires postmillennialism Mmm, okay Because otherwise, what are you? Well, I don't know. Yeah That general light of nature thing ain't working too good because here's the problem That nature needs to be understood in light of God's revelation as to who man is. We now live in a society that has secularized to the point where you have a majority of people who view us as ugly bags of mostly water. As stardust. And those people, again, are suppressing the truth that they already know through God's law written on their hearts. As fizzing chemicals, whatever other terminology you want to use. All right, just to me, put this all back together in case you missed part one. Dr. James White is arguing that the law of nature, God's law written in nature, God's law that's just kind of there, that general kind of revelation concept, it's not working. It's not sufficient. In other words, it's not working to stop the moral decay and the cultural decay around us. So therefore we need something else. And his solution is not the preaching of the gospel. If he's going with theonomy, which it appears that's where he's going, then you need to then impose God's divine law upon that society because just simply the law of nature is not cutting it. Well, I don't think the New Testament has ever caused the church to try to fix the cultural demise other than simply preaching the gospel. That's what we're called to do. I don't get all the cultural battles that Christians engage in. I don't get it. What do you hope to accomplish? Hey, we're going to impose divine law. So that means, look, no more movies that takes God's name in vain. We're going to stop artistic freedom. We're going to stop freedom in music. And if you make these kind of movies or music, you're going to be punished. You're going to be condemned. You're going to be thrown in prison. You can do that all day. But that's not saving anyone. In fact, you're going to create a bitterness against the gospel, because you're forcing them to live according to God's divine law. So when he says it's not working, he's saying, and I agree that that doesn't ultimately work, because the Bible says that they're going to always repress the law written on their hearts. They're going to push it down. They're going to fight against it. and they're gonna have a downward spiral. That's where society goes, a downward spiral. But our job is to preach the gospel. It's the power of God unto salvation. That's what we are to do. We're not to fight it on a cultural level. I don't know why Christians get into all these cultural battles. I don't get it. What do you hope to accomplish? Force lost people to live like they're saved? What does that accomplish? It didn't do much for Israel, did it? By the way, I preached a sermon Sunday night. And it was a tough sermon. It wasn't a fun sermon. It's not a happy, clappy sermon. It's not a, I feel so much better about myself sermon. I don't think anybody felt very good about themselves over that sermon. But I would direct you to it if you have been thinking about what foundational work you can be doing to try to be prepared to deal with horrible, persecution in the future. Especially persecution where you would be separated from other believers and from everybody. Because they're doing that to believers in China. Isolating them. That's what communists do. That's what we did in the Stasi prisons. They're doing it in China. And if you can't see that there are many people in our society and in our government today that would say it's best for the public health that we help these people by re-educating them, then you're missing it. Because that's what they're gonna do. So at this point, I would want to ask, okay, so what's the solution to that? Because the solution in my mind is preach the gospel, that they would turn from their sin and be saved. It's not, well, we need to institute a culture based on God's law. Yeah. Yeah. That's not the answer. Right. Yeah. Not only that, if the culture is persecuting you and going to do all these horrible things and we're going to be isolated, thrown in prison, and all these warning signs that people are keep warning us that it's coming and we're going to be all locked up, how do you fight against that from a theonomy point of view? How are you going to impose divine law upon a society that is persecuting you? Do you take up arms? What do you do? Do you fight a war? Do you take guns? I mean, what do you do? How are you going to impose it? Hey, you're persecuting us. I want you to know that you're wrong. God's law, that's what you should be following, and we're going to fight you, and we're going to impose God's law upon you reprobates. I mean, how does it even work in a theonomy system? How are you going to impose it if they're persecuting you? Are you talking an actual war, an actual physical altercation so that you overcome and then rule and reign? I don't know what the solution would be. Certainly to some extent part of it, but not going to solve the problem. That shouldn't be the first thing we think of when we are thinking about persecution, right? Yeah. It shouldn't be the first response. First response should be, we should seek to teach them the gospel. And even, you know, a lot of this, a lot of this stuff came, from the Constantine era, right? Before this, and Mark Knoll, in his book, Turning Points, it's a book on church history and different events in church history. He talks about this, that before, for the first three centuries of the church, there was this pilgrimage mindset, right? We're living in this world, we're not of this world, and we're looking forward to what's to come. It was after Constantine, mixed church and state, that you started to have this mindset that the church and state must go together, There's this emphasis on the here and now with regards to government and law and how the church's relation to the state is to really play in. Now let me just again state my position. I 1 billion percent oppose the merging of church and state. When church and state merges, people die. I hold to the view that we are pilgrims and strangers here. This is not our home. We are to live out our Christian faith here, but my citizenship is in heaven. I am to preach the gospel, be salt and be light. And that, but that the way my job is, is again, evangelism, baptism, bringing them into the church. discipleship and equipping, not trying to fight the cultural decay through the merging of church and state and trying to overcome the state's rejection of divine law to the point that then I can impose divine law upon the state and then the state imposes divine law upon all of its citizens. I reject that completely from a biblical ground, philosophical, every way. I completely reject it. Completely, completely, completely reject it. Before that, the church was just living, at least generally speaking, they were living with a pilgrimage mindset. We're looking forward to what's coming, we're not of this world, we live as Christians quiet in this world. So I think that's important to point out as well. Anyway, I dealt with that Sunday night, Anthropology at Church, so you can find that on their YouTube channel while it's still there. And I gave five foundations of things to work on, five things you can focus upon in the darkness, in your solitude, if you are isolated as a believer, to attempt to stay strong when someone's attempting to break your faith. And it's something I've thought about. And every time I talk to my fellow pastors and stuff, they've thought about it too. And so I addressed it. Sometimes I address stuff that isn't a whole lot of fun to address, but there you go. Okay, anyway, so as people are recognizing that the church's ceasefire with culture has not worked, we need to have a word from God. I would like to know what he means by church's ceasefire with culture. I don't, if he's talking about in the sense of his, in light of his theonomic worldview, I think that's not a very good argument because if a church is preaching the gospel and we're engaging the culture in that sense, then you're obviously not ceasing fire with culture. We're seeking real ultimate change with culture through the gospel of Jesus Christ. So I would like more clarification on what he means by that, but I think he's probably going with, you know, not engaging the worldview that the scripture gives with the culture, and not necessarily just the gospel. Yeah, I don't get that either. Like, what do you mean, you know, the church's ceasefire with culture? I don't care to fight with culture about anything other than to preach the gospel. Now, I will stand against, now, when I say I don't care about fighting culture, let me make it very clear. I will stand against some of the things culture believes and what it does, but I'm not trying to get the culture to live like Christians. This is not a perfect example, but let me give you an example. When I was a teenager, the rock band Poison was playing at the Taylor County Coliseum. Now, there's a part of me that wanted to go to the concert, but I thought, well, there's going to be all these kids lined up in front of the Coliseum because back then it was general admission. If you don't remember how that works, you bought your ticket and it just gave you the ability to get inside the building where you stood or where you decided to find a seat. That was up to where you were in line. If you were up in front, you could choose wherever you wanted to stand or sit. If you were at the back of the line, then who knows? No guaranteed seat, so guess what? No guaranteed seat, so guess what? No guaranteed place. In other words, you were guaranteed to get into the building and have some place to stand or some place to sit, but which seat was not on your ticket? Like, hey, you're gonna be on row two, seat three. Some of you may remember this, some of you may not. Okay, but so as a result of general admission concerts, you always got to the concert, like, I mean, literally, like, I would get to the concerts, you know, Noon, one o'clock in the afternoon, two in the afternoon, and the concert, the doors wouldn't even open to six or seven at night. And why did you want to be there all of those hours so that you could get in and pick where you wanted to sit? Because if not, it was crazy. Well, a lot of times it led to a lot of bad things, people trying to rush in, people getting, you know, trampled and dying, a horrible thing. I think it was in Ohio where it happened, a Who concert, it was horrible. But the point is, people got there in line and had no place to go. So I'm like, okay, well, all these teenagers are gonna be standing in line. This'll be a great chance to go and try to hand out tracks or present the gospel to them, just talk to them about religious things and fine. So we get there and we're gonna start talking to people. And the next thing you know, we have a news team saying, hey guys, what are y'all doing? We're like, well, we're out here to witness. Oh, you're here protesting the concert? No, we're not protesting the concert. Oh, you're here condemning rock and roll? No, we're not here condemning rock and roll. Oh, do you think the band is satanic? What are you talking about? We don't care about the music. We're not here to protest the music. I'm not here to fight the evils of rock and roll. I'm not here to condemn music. I'm not here in any way, shape, or form. I'm just here to talk to the kids about spiritual matters, handing them a track if they want to talk. If they don't, we're going to leave them alone. We're not going to bother them. You know, maybe offer them a Bible. And that's it, we're just gonna move on. We're not gonna bother them. We're not here to protest. We're not walk around going, you know, poison is a bad group. But see, they viewed that we're there for a cultural fight. I'm like, no, we're not there for a cultural fight. We're not. These are human beings creating the image of God, who are many cases are not Christians, are not saved, and we wanna present the gospel to them. It's not about fighting about music or rock and roll or cultural battles. That's the difference. I'm not there to fight cultural battles. I'm not there to overcome that. Now, I may have to stand against what the culture is teaching. I may have to say that we disagree with it, that we're wrong. I may have to say, I believe homosexuality is a sin and culture may not like that. So in that sense, I haven't declared a I haven't declared a ceasefire with culture, but I'm not gonna be running around fighting cultural battles going, oh, I gotta get this person elected, we gotta do this, we gotta impose this law, we need this bill, we need to do this, we need to, I'm not there fighting those cultural wars trying to overcome the culture through political force. I don't wanna overcome the culture through political force. If I'm gonna overcome anyone in culture, it's through the preaching of the gospel. Very different approach. So when he says a ceasefire with culture, yeah, what does he mean by that? so so all right let's continue to a society that has completely lost its collective mind and certainly its way and so the question of theonomy is unfortunately has been inappropriately um framed 30 years ago Man, I wish I had this. I need to make a note to myself somehow. I need to track down Bonson's response to Westminster's book, because I've never seen, I've never seen Bonson spit flame like he did in this. And basically what he said was, given what's happening in our society, given what's happening in regards to homosexuality, and issues like that, isn't it astonishing that when Westminster Theological Seminary can finally get all its professors together to write a book, to take a stand on one issue, it's not about homosexuality, and it's not about marriage, and it's not about any of those things, it's against God's law. That's the one thing they can all get together and say, that's a bad thing. Now, I have a problem with this. Yeah. So, as mentioned before, the real issue of this discussion is not whether or not someone who criticizes a theonomy or a particular view of theonomy means that they believe God's law is a bad thing. The brothers at Westminster, I highly doubt when they wrote, and I think I know what book he's talking about. I think he's talking about the book, Theonomy, a Reform Critique, which came out in 1990, which was a critique of Bonson. And I think maybe Gary North, but I could be wrong, but I think it was at least Bonson. But it was a critique of theonomy. as this issue of Reconstructionism was swirling in the church at the time, and Westminster thought it would be a good idea to do some writing on it, critique the position. But to say that these brothers had a view of God's law, they thought it was a bad thing, I think is probably not true. I mean, Westminster Theological Seminary is a reformed, confessional, conservative, Christian seminary who obviously believes God's law applies for the day. I don't think that they would say that God's law itself was bad. And this is the distinction that I think our Theonomic brothers, at least Dr. White here failed to make is it's not about whether or not God's law is bad, it's about the application of God's law. How is God's law applied to today? I think it's very important. If your position is theonomy, then you can't just immediately, I guess you can, but I think it's just disingenuous to say, oh, if you don't hold to my view of theonomy, then you hate God's law. You're opposed to God's law. I mean, what you should be doing is out there saying we need a divine law imposed against homosexuals, which I guess results in them being locked up and I guess what, put to death? I guess that's what you want? Well, before we start going after homosexuals, how about we go after fornicators and adulterers? Why don't we go after all the people in the church? I guess we're going to have them round up and killed? What do you want? How about maybe people are like, wait a minute, we're going to deal with homosexuality, how do we deal with it? Now, theonomy wants to impose divine law upon society and then bring the punishment with it. I think that's crazy. So, that doesn't mean I hate God's law. That just means I don't believe that that civil law that was imposed upon Israel is to be imposed upon people today. And I don't believe Jesus ever called for that or the Apostle Paul or anyone in the New Testament. They don't seem to say that. Just go preach against that sin. and call people to repentance and faith. So, I don't believe it means someone hates the law, I agree with them. It just means that you have, here's the law, what do you think we should do with this? How should this law be applied to today? And should these Sabbatarian laws, should the Sabbath law be instituted as a divine law and then people are punished for working on, I guess we go back to a Saturday, so people are punished for violating the Sabbath? Or, no, that one doesn't count. See, so you impose which law, who imposes the law, what penalties are associated with it, and who gets to determine how that works. And then you just start making a list of all the people who are getting ready to be put in prison and killed. I guess, I don't know. But it doesn't mean that someone hates God's law. It means we may have a difference in opinion on what to do with God's law. And I think that means that demonstrates all sides probably try to love God's law. It's like, what do we do with it? And so I think an argument like this misses the point of the entire discussion. God's law is absolutely applicable for today, and every true Christian who is a Christian believes that we must obey God and submit to his law. If you don't, you aren't a Christian. John makes this very clear in 1 John, 1 John 2, 3, by this we know we have come to know him if we keep his commandments, right? Whoever says, I know him, but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. Keeping the commandments of God, keeping God's law is absolutely crucial for the Christian. But it's how it's applied from the judicial sense, primarily, that's really where the sticking point is. How is that to be applied for today? This is where you have to get covenant theology into the discussion. This is where you have to understand the tables of the law, right? Or the, as we would hold the three tables of the law, the moral, the judicial, the ceremonial. How does that all apply for today? You mean the threefold division of the law? Yeah, the threefold division of the law. Yes, yes. So the threefold division of the law. So that discussion is key to understanding this. And I think that our brothers who are theonomists tend to broad brush the issue. It tends to be God's law in general, and then it's not very clear on what they mean by that. You know, Dr. White, I know he doesn't believe the ceremonial applies for today. Otherwise he would be a heretic if he believes that the ceremonial applies for today in the sense that it did back then. is still, when you're talking about these other aspects of the law, it's not very clear on what it's meant. And we see this historically with theonomists as well. Rush Dooney, who is the father of theonomy and reconstructionism, was like this as well. He is, in his introduction on the Institutes of Biblical Law, which I have right here, He's not very clear on what God's law is. He just talks about God's law versus antinomianism, but there's not really a distinction made between the ceremonial, the moral, or the judicial. It's just God's law in general. And I think that's a problem because even if you say somewhere else that the ceremonial doesn't apply for today, But then you just, in your primary writings on the subject, you talk about God's law, God's law, God's law, without making those proper restrictions, I think it creates confusion and can lead to people misunderstanding you, or it could lead to other implications that are not good. Bonson was known for this, for not being consistent on this. For instance, he talks about, I think it was either a lecture he gave or a radio show he was on or something like that. It's called The Law to Criticize or Obey. He says, so basically what I'm suggesting, it's the thesis of my book, and I think it's the way the Bible would have us break down the commandments of the Old Testament. I'm suggesting that we have moral and ceremonial law, moral and restorative law, and that all laws of God are binding today. The substance of every law given in the Old Testament is binding today. This is what Jesus teaches in Matthew, the fifth chapter. Jesus says, every jot and tittle, and he doesn't allow us to draw lines and seams and divide God's law up into what we'll accept and what we won't. I do not believe the restorative law as we're aggregated. So when you read that on its face, it seems like that Bonson is saying all of God's law, including the ceremonial applies for today. He's very explicit about that. But then in other places, he'll make distinctions in God's law. that doesn't seem to be this all-exhaustive, all-inclusive language that he was using elsewhere. So even among Bonson, there's this lack of clarity and, quite frankly, inconsistency in his view of God's law. So this seems to be a general theme from our Theonomous Brothers. There's just this lack of clarity with what God's law is, and this broad brushing of God's law without making the clear distinctions that need to be made. One, so you're clear on what you believe, and two, so others don't go down the road that they shouldn't with regards to God's law. And you know, to be fair, this is an ongoing issue within American Christianity, and it has been forever, and it always will be. Here's the Old Testament, you have all these laws, thou shalt do this, do you don't do this, don't do this, if you do this, this punishment, this, this, this, you can't do this, you can't, la, la, la, la, la, and then you get to the New Testament, and you're like, okay, now what does that still apply? Okay, well, we always throw out the ceremonial, okay, so no more animal sacrifices, no more this, no more that, okay, we throw that out, we say that was all fulfilled in Christ. Okay, now, now we have two laws, Two more, and again, divisions of the law, not tables of the law. Divisions of the law, because when we say tables of the law, we refer to the Ten Commandments, and the Ten Commandments, we refer to them as the two tables of the law, one dealing with our relationship with God and others dealing with their relationship with other people. threefold division of the law. Again, I would challenge you to go to the London Baptist Confession of Faith, read its section on the law. I really would, and I think that'll give you a broader perspective on this discussion. But this is a relevant discussion because every one of you who listen to this, you have some view on this. You may not know what theonomy is, you may not know any of these theological terms, but you have a view of what Old Testament law is applicable today and how it should be applied. Not only is it applicable, how it should be applied. Some people believe the Old Testament law about, say, homosexuals being killed should be applicable today. But then they will say, well, wait a minute, these other laws about maybe a child who does this should be killed or an adulterer should be killed. All of a sudden, they don't want those same laws applied. So everyone does this. They grab an Old Testament law and go, see, it's applicable today. You have to follow that. And then over here, they're like, well, that one doesn't apply. How do you determine that? So if you're a theonomy and you want divine law instituted, you've got to be very precise on exactly which laws you believe should be instituted as the judicial law of the land, and you have to explain why you are throwing out other laws. For example, how about the Sabbath law? Well, the Sabbath, that doesn't apply anymore. Okay, well, so the Sabbath doesn't anymore, but what else does? What other laws do? I could argue that Christ is our Sabbath, that we have perfect rest in Him. I could argue that. I believe the Old Testament, even the moral law, is ultimately fulfilled in Christ. He fulfilled the moral law on my behalf, so I'm not condemned by that. That moral law condemns me, but in Christ, I am not condemned by the moral law because that's fulfilled for me in Christ Jesus. We can do a lot of discussion here about law and a lot of ways of looking at it, but I'm just saying, if you're going to be out there saying, hey, we need the divine law instituted, Because the general law written in nature doesn't work. You've got to give me that list. And again, does it involve heretical or does it involve theological error as being punished? What are the laws that you want instituted and what are the punishments? I think it's very fair to ask those questions. All right, here we go. And those distinctions have to be made within the law of God. Yeah, I guarantee you that of all the people that were teaching at Westminster Seminary at the time, if somebody had gone to them and said, hey, we as Christians need to make sure that the culture is circumcising its children, or we as Christians need to make sure that there's a temple system in Jerusalem that's offering Levitical sacrifices, And obviously every single one of them would have condemned that immediately as is inappropriate and at worst legalistic. And not a single theonomist would go to them and say, well, don't you love God's law? Because ultimately, it's not about whether or not it's not about loving God's law or not. It's about how is it applied? And we know that God's law or that aspect of it, what we call the ceremonial law, Was for specific people and a specific time. So, when we talk about the judicial laws, we view that in a similar way that that was also for specific people. For specific time, and that's it is not binding in the same way today that it was back then. And, um, there's, uh. I don't know, it's just, it seems that theonomists seem to treat it in the same category as moral law, whereas we would treat it more in the category of ceremonial law, something that's a positive law, a.k.a. it's not universal, it's for a specific covenant, in this case the Mosaic covenant. And once that covenant is done away with, that doesn't apply to us, at least in the same way. Because ultimately, we would say that the way the New Testament treats judicial law, it does apply within the context of the church. But we may get into that discussion a little later. But it truly is just a matter of how does this law apply today? It's not about, oh, you don't like God's law. Yeah, I think that's really probably a red herring argument. It distracts from the real issue, right? Yeah. It's not really dealing with the problem. It's more going around the problem and trying to put up some other argument to try and deal with something that really isn't the issue. Yeah. There is a distinction made between moral law and positive law in the scriptures. We don't equate the ceremonial law with the moral law, or we would have to obey the ceremonial law. We don't equate circumcision with moral law, or we would have to obey, we would have to continuously, in a moral sense, be circumcised, but we don't have that. And actually, Dr. James Renahan talks about this distinction. He did a lecture at, I think it was a Founders Conference, on the law of God in the 1689. And he used 1 Corinthians 7 to prove his point of this distinction between moral and positive. It's 1 Corinthians 7, 17 through 19. It says, only as the Lord has assigned to each one, as God has called each, in this way let him walk. And so I direct in all the churches. Was any man called when he was already circumcised? He is not to become uncircumcised. Has anyone been called an uncircumcision? He is not to be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. But what matters is keeping the commandments of God. So the context here is talking about marriage, whether to pursue marriage or remain in singleness. and he uses the principle of circumcision to prove his point. But he makes a distinction here. In verse 19 he says, So he makes a clear distinction between the commandments of God, which would clearly be the moral law, and circumcision, which was commanded of God, but is no longer binding upon the people of God. It's positive law. It's extra law that's in addition to the moral law. So even Paul was making this distinction in other discussions. So if we keep that proper distinction, the failures that our theodemus brothers make are much harder to fall into. And if we are consistent with it, you won't fall into it because you'll understand that there is a distinction in category between the two and to conflate them is to lead to all sorts of problems. And these brothers will make those distinctions to some extent in positive law, like for the ceremonial. James White will say, absolutely, the ceremonial does not apply for today. And that's positive law. That's not part of the moral law. But when it comes to judicial law, it becomes a little bit more difficult to make that distinction. And those tend to be equated with the moral law, or they're emphasized to an extent that they really shouldn't be. And for, if you were to ask any reformed person, where's the moral law summed up? They immediately know the Ten Commandments. Ten Commandments, right. Ten Commandments is the summation of the moral law. Now, while the Ten Commandments does lay out some of the law that we would see in the judicial law in the sense of what's to be punished. It doesn't lay out the punishments. It says adultery is wrong. It doesn't prescribe what the government is to do in regards to adultery. So there's a distinction there. And so the judicial punishment is not necessarily part of the moral law itself. Ultimately, we do know that while adultery is worthy to be punished, if it doesn't happen in this life, if a government fails to punish adultery, at least by execution, Is the people, are the people responsible for not carrying out that punishment? Are they gonna be on the day of judgment held accountable that? I would say, no, it wasn't part of the moral law. It wasn't part of the law written on their hearts. And they weren't given in the moral law a specific punishment for adultery. They won't be held accountable, at least for that aspect. We are to be held accountable for the moral law today. And the judicial law is a guidance for us, but it is not necessarily binding. Right. Positive law was really just a specific way in which the moral law was applied. That, I think, is very important to keep in mind. It is not the moral law itself. The law of the parapet is not the law thou shalt not murder. It's an application of that law to a specific place and time. which is where we get the concept of general equity from. But we can maybe have that discussion a little bit. And I've admitted I was influenced by that book. I graduated from seminary right at that time. And so I heard all this stuff and I imbibed all that stuff. Now we're living in a day where we literally are in a culture that wants to make it evil to use words like father, mother, husband, wife, child, family, male, female. All the common grace stuff is gone. Okay, that ain't working. All the natural law stuff, you have to have a mind that recognizes there can be a source of coherence to have natural law. We're past that. That source of coherence, again, is already there. It's written on the hearts of men, that men suppress it. Men know that they should not be engaging in homosexual behavior, but they do it anyways because they twist the created order of the creature. They have that coherence. They don't have every, maybe every, metaphysical implication worked out about it, but they have the basics. God's law is written on their heart, they know what they should and should not do. That influences their actions, and they are held accountable for that. And this seems to be a common theme that he harps upon in this video. the pushing away from natural law and focusing more on this prophetic word for the culture that we need. And because he's distinguishing himself from non-theonomists here, right? I can't imagine he would say that non-theonomists don't preach hard against homosexuality or adultery or abortion or whatever the evil of the culture is. We do. Not everyone, obviously. There are people that let these things slide and they shouldn't. But I come hard against those things because they are evil. I have no problem saying that. But coming against those things, hopefully, immediately after that, what I'm gonna do is give a gospel presentation, because it's not enough to just leave them with the law and expect them to like, okay, well, there's the law, go fix yourself. It needs to be followed by a gospel presentation. and that is the only way that we change if the hardest change they will if if you are in Christ you're going to try and keep the law not perfect you're not going to be able to do it perfectly but you will try to keep the law and that's the only means the only prescribed means that God has used in order to better I guess the nation if you want to say it like that yes God hasn't told us to institute the judicial law around in order to make our nations better. I don't see that command anywhere. I don't see any Old Testament example of the Jews were to go forth into the pagan nations and bring the law with them. Their law was to show the Gentiles the goodness of their God. It's true, absolutely. But I don't know. Yeah, no, and I think it goes back to having a solid covenant theology, which Dr. White has made very clear in the past, it is not an overly important topic for him to invest his time in, is a solid covenant theology. Back in October, Dividing Line Highlights posted a clip where he critiqued 1689 federalism, And he made it very clear in that clip that he did not, and this was from a Dividing Line episode, he made it very clear that covenant theology was not something that was overly important to him. And I think that shows. And Rush Dooney and I think Bonson, Rush Dooney especially, they had a high view of covenant theology. And Rush Dooney tied his covenant theology to his view of God's law. And I think that is very important because they saw the connection there between God's law. In Rushduni, he even called God's law a covenant, really with man, that God has made. And so there's this understanding that covenant language is necessary to this discussion. don't really see that here with Dr. White. He may very well take a covenant theology view, but that doesn't seem to be front and center when he's talking about God's law. But underneath all of that, there is assumptions about God's law, which is tied specifically to the Old Covenant. that you have to make in order to hold to a theonomic worldview. Whether or not you overtly talk about covenant theology, you are talking about covenant theology to some extent. But that's important in not falling into some of these pitfalls, or to the pitfall of theonomy in general, is having a solid covenant theology. All right, we'll stop right there. We're 44 minutes into this. I'm gonna write this down. I don't know if we're gonna come back to this. What I may do, 44 minutes, 13 seconds. What we may do is I may take, embed this podcast at the TheologyCentral.net blog. Go to TheologyCentral.net, look at the blog section. I will try to embed this podcast there. So it'll come from their feed because the Edify Christian Podcast app gives you the embed code. So it'll be pulled from there. So they'll get the count and they'll get the download. In other words, we're not going to take their podcast and just steal it. We'll, we'll just, it's going to bet it with the embed code, either from YouTube or from edify. It'll be right there. and then you can listen to the rest. You'll want to fast forward to the 44 minute, 13 second mark, 44 minute, 13 second mark. You will have 48 minutes left. So there's a lengthy discussion left. I think we've kind of done a pretty decent job at letting kind of know what theonomy is. And, you know, there's probably, there's a lot more we can say about this. We will return to the subject of theonomy and post-millennialism some way, some shape, some form. somehow, I don't know when, but we will turn back to that and hopefully we can really add to this discussion. I'm going to do a lot of waiting to see what questions you have. If you're confused, what you understand, what you don't understand, that will kind of show me what I need to cover and what I shouldn't cover or don't need to cover, and then we will proceed from there. But I wanted to bring this to everyone's attention. Again, the issue is not Dr. James White. The issue is not Dr. James White. That's not my focus here. My focus is on every Christian who reads the Bible sees God's law. What do we do with it? And how do we understand it? And how do we respond to the world in which we live? What do you think the way the approach is? My approach is God's law. is not to be imposed upon the world in some judicial sense. I don't believe that. I believe God's law ultimately is to point us to Christ, that God's law was fulfilled in Christ. He fulfilled it all. He fulfilled every bit. He fulfilled the moral. He fulfilled it all. And I think the civil law was for Israel. And I just think that the Christian focus is not fighting cultural wars, not changing culture through force, through politics, through policy, but our job is to simply preach the gospel and live out the Christian life, and that's what we're called to do. There's a lot more we could say, but I think we'll stop right there. We're over an hour. I'll look forward to hearing from you. You can email me at newsifatyahoo.com. Be checking the Theology Central pod page throughout the weekend. I'll probably be adding stuff to the blog all weekend. Just anything I think is interesting, I will embed it, you know, podcast and different things there so that you can listen. Remember, I post things that maybe I agree, maybe I disagree, but they're there, and there's a good chance if it ends up there, we'll be talking about it here. Thank you for listening, everyone. Have a great day. I'm going home because I'm starving, so I need food. So, everyone have a great day, and look forward to hearing from you, and everyone have a great Memorial Day weekend. God bless.