I want to bring you back in.

I want to ask you one burning question.

You're a biologist.

I have two biologists here.

I have a burning question that has been asked recently.

I'm wondering if you can help out with.

I know that this has.

It can't be answered by Supreme Court justices.

What is a woman?

Oh, you do not want me to go down this road because sex determination and development.

I mean, Dr.

Jensen is probably more familiar with developmental biology than I am.

But that's a really complicated question, especially.

When you consider the.

The complexities of human biology.

I.

Look, I.

I actually do.

I talk in class about sex determination, chromosomal determinants, hormonal determinants, genetic determinants, what determines.

What determines sex.

I see.

That's a.

That.

There's no short.

There is no answer to that question.

That I could answer in the time.

That we have tonight.

Really?

Yes.

It is a really complicated question.

It is a really complicated question.

So it's not a question of chromosome X versus Y100?

No, no.

You can ask me the question 12 different ways if you want, but you're gonna get the same answer each time.

I don't think it's all that complex.

I would answer it very simply.

A woman is what God who created the women, defines it as God.

God created her.

He gets to give the definition.

So it's a woman is what God calls a woman.

This is Apologetics Live to answer your questions, your host from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rapaport.

We are Live Apologetics Live here to answer your most challenging questions that you have about God and the Bible.

I will say right up front that I'm putting the link to join us down there.

We are still having trouble with the website.

Sorry about that.

So if you are watching on one of the many other streams, you will be able to at least follow along and maybe you could share out where you're watching so that others might know that we are live and that way they will join us.

Unfortunately, our regular website is having some issues, and the webmaster is away.

He's in Hawaii, so I can't get a hold of him for a little bit.

So with that.

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity.

We're here to answer your most challenging questions that you have about God and the Bible.

We're gonna have two guests on with us tonight.

One will be a bit late.

That is John Harris from the Conversations that Matter podcast.

Let me bring in Pastor Jeff.

Pastor Jeff is.

Well, you and I know each other from Long, long ago you had a conference at, at your church and you figured, yeah, we'll throw this guy in.

He's local.

And then you and I kept doing conferences together for several years after.

So, yeah, we had David Wood out there.

We had Matt Slick, your old buddy.

Yeah, we had a number of Eric Johnson from doing the Mormon ministry.

Yeah, those are great conferences.

We need to do another apologetics conference.

I think so.

I think so.

So let folks know who may be unfamiliar, you're pastoring the, the communist country you live in and.

Yeah.

Is it not the rule of Phil.

Murphy over in New Jersey?

Yeah.

So not a very conservative area, but by God's grace, we've been able to flourish as a conservative church in South Jersey.

So it's Cornerstone Church in Mount Laurel, New Jersey.

And for folks who may pick up the similarity, if you listen to my Andrew Rappaport's Rap Report podcast, Pastor Jeff may sound familiar.

We did an interview with him where basically maybe we could just touch on this a bit before we get into why truth might matter and what's going to happen at the truth Conference.

But you were, you kind of stood up for the Bible against some of the pressure of the governmental system during COVID and your denomination welcomed you with open arms.

Would that be a fair statement?

Well, you know, it's a very difficult question.

What are essential issues and what are non essential?

And where do we divide?

Where do we take a stand for truth?

And I think very often we get very divisive over some things that might not be the point where we should divide.

So things with related to eschatology or even Calvinism.

I'm a Calvinist, but I love working with Calvary Chapel pastors who are not Calvinists.

Oh, they are.

They just don't know it.

Especially Joe.

Folks.

I love Joe Fosh, but man, when I hear him teach Romans chapter nine, I feel like he's just a Calvinist in writing.

So a question that's already come in from Calculus man, he says, was Pastor Jeff in the EFCA up until 1 point recently?

Yes.

And that's where the division happened.

That I felt like the elements of critical race theory that were coming into the Evangelical Free Church.

They had Jarvis Williams from Southern Seminary come and give a talk about how all of our churches are built on the backs of black and brown people and that racism is implicit and all of those kind of things.

And not all black folk are woke.

You can tweet that.

So we had Jarvis Williams come and teach and then Sweeney from.

I think it was Ted's gave a talk about all of the systemic racism inside the police department.

He recited Michael Brown and all of the cases that were so famous leading up to the BLM movement.

And then they had other speakers kind of push that same diversity, equity, inclusion narrative.

So at some point I realized that this was becoming a first level issue because it was so divisive in the body of Christ.

You know, a Titus 3 kind of situation where it was dividing the body of Christ by race.

And this was, it was unacceptable.

So I wrote a book called Woke Free Church.

And to answer your original question, Andrew, no, it was not welcomed with open arms.

Things just went from bad to worse.

We never really could sit down and talk about the substance of the claims that I made in that book.

Instead it was just kind of circling the wagons.

It was as if I was attacking these men personally rather than trying to work through the issue that was confronting the Free Church.

And sadly, I feel like much of the leadership of the Free Church has continued along that more leftist route.

Yeah.

So long story short, we got kicked out.

Yeah.

Without any discussion.

Really.

Let me wrong one.

Melissa was asking, she's saying I only see us on Facebook.

I usually watch on YouTube.

Is it available over there?

Yes.

If you go to the Striving for eternity channel on YouTube, you.

You should be able to see this live stream there where you could then see some of the other comments that go in YouTube.

I do apologize for the fact that this.

We have had some sort of problem with the website and therefore those of you who usually go to apologexlive.com to watch there and join in discussion, it's just not working this week again.

So if you go to YouTube, you can watch there, comment there if you want to join in.

I have that on the screen there of the link for Streamyard to join us.

So if you want to join us, that, that's how you.

You go.

So we wanted to talk.

You and John Harris are putting on a conference.

And let me, let me just put that up here so we could take a look at that.

So you're calling it the truth conference.

And as we read here, you know, you put the.

I should put the dates.

So the dates are May 2nd to the 4th, 2025.

We have John Harris, he is going to be speaking along with his brother Dave or David.

Seth.

I do, I met him over a, you know, zoom.

So I've never heard him preach yet.

But Seth, you're, you're gonna be there.

And Craig Chambers, can you give us a Little bit of background on.

On each of these.

Each of the guys that are speaking.

Yeah.

So, of course, John Harris, with conversations that matter.

He has a podcast.

He.

He began speaking against social justice before many others realized what was going on.

You and I, Andrew, were having a conference about this way back in 16 and 17, and John Harris was right there just shortly thereafter as well.

Just really spoke well and shed light on the issue.

He wrote a couple books, Social Justice Goes to Church.

He actually has another book out now called against the Waves, that I just read last week, and it is tremendous.

I'm excited that he's going to be on the podcast here.

His brother started Truthscript, and that's kind of like a competitor to the Gospel Coalition.

No, no, it's actually not.

Because.

Because the Gospel Coalition is not really, you know, in the same league as Truscript anymore.

They have fallen far, far, far short.

Yes.

And, you know, they've still probably got a big readership.

A lot of people still somehow trust them.

Yeah.

But when they called Kyle Rittenhouse of Mass Shooter, that's when I was out.

Yeah.

With the Gospel Coalition.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So Truth Script is very conservative, and it's not going to push the kind of woke social justice narrative that you're going to get from the Gospel Coalition.

Seth Brickley here is a man of God who knows how to research the truth.

So when.

When I was in this fight with the Evangelical Free Church of America, one of his good friends was on the ministerial board, the board of ministerial standing of the Free Church.

And so he had every reason to kind of side with the Free Church in that.

But the more he investigated the case and looked under, you know, every table and turned over every paper and figured out what was going on, he realized that the Free Church was.

Was really not operating justly in the case that they were prosecuting against me.

And he wrote some articles for Truth Script and took a wonderful stand that I was very appreciative of.

So he's just such a good brother.

I want to just point people to his ministry.

Yeah.

And then, you know what?

The.

The fourth guy there, let's kick him out and put you in.

How about that, Andrew?

Only if you insist.

Yeah.

Because if I'm running this conference and I'm one of the speakers, my mind is going to be in so many different places.

So why don't you just come in and just bring the fire, brother?

All right, I could do that.

All right.

I'm putting you on the spot.

You can't say no.

You're on.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

How do you say no?

Yeah, you can't cut that out because it's apologetics live.

We don't edit.

So.

Yeah, good point.

So sub in Andrew Rapaport right there and then.

Craig Chambers is a man who has wisdom.

He came out to California that when I was on trial in front of the Free Church, he was such a support there.

And whenever you just need to understand what's going on, like how are these men thinking and why do they think like they do.

Craig is just a man of wisdom.

He understands people, and he has wonderful insights that he's going to bring about the broader evangelical movement and the truth war that we're in.

So he's amazing.

So, yeah, we've got Craig Chambers.

But I'll tell you what, though, Andrew.

We've got these guys coming, speaking, but we also have a pastor from Florida.

We've got David Whitney from Maryland, who got kicked out of the Free Church.

He wasn't like me in that.

I wrote a book Challenging the Wokeness.

He was just preaching really conservative sermons and calling out these government lockdowns and how churches shouldn't obey the government lockdowns.

He would, you know, he would talk about face diapers instead of masks.

So he was a little edgy.

But somehow the Free Church started listening to his sermons, and they came and gave him the boot at the same time that our church got kicked out of the Free Church, which was kind of wild because he wasn't aggressive towards them, you know, and trying to challenge their direction.

He was just preaching from his own pulpit.

Yeah.

And they came down on him.

No, I, I do.

I said this when you were on my other podcast.

I just find it so interesting because the Evangelical Free Church is.

Well, they're.

They're kind of free, you know.

Right.

They don't really, as a denomination, seem to enforce things all that much.

It's.

You can have a lot of variety.

And that's why I always say when people ask me about an Evangelical Free Church, whether it's a good church, I always go, it depends.

Because there they.

They don't take strong positions on secondary issues, even some things that could be as, you know, even closer to, you know, primary issues.

But I mean, things like Calvinism or not, they don't take a stand.

Charismatic gifts or not, whether they continue don't take a stand.

Right.

There's.

There's a whole lot of things that are very, I want to say divisive, but not necessarily that they're.

That the ideas Themselves are divisive.

But the way people use these doctrines become very divisive.

And even jungle free is open to that.

But this is like.

It just shocked me when.

When I heard you talking.

You were on conversations matter with John Harris, who's going to come in a little bit later, and you were just sharing what you went through.

And I was.

I was kind of shocked.

I mean, I called you right away because I was like, what.

What did I just hear?

Because I was like, they threw someone out and it's over.

Social justice, I mean, that is not a primary issue.

That is not a secondary issue.

Truthfully, I.

I would.

I would.

Well, maybe it is.

I mean, it depends how they're doing it.

I mean, if you're.

If you're saying church must be involved in social justice, then I'm probably going to say maybe it is a primary issue because it's a totally different gospel message.

I mean, a gospel of the Bible is that God himself came to earth and died in our place.

He took the punishment we owe upon himself that we could be set free.

And the message of the social gospel is you must make up for what your ancestors may have done or even people that just have the same color skin as you.

Even if your ancestors were never involved in slavery, you just buy the color of your skin are the proof of it.

And I just saw.

Just before we went live, I saw something on X someone had.

And this is.

Sorry, it wasn't X, it was Facebook.

And somebody professing Christian posted that Karl Kaepernick kneeled down a few times and lost his career.

But Elon Musk does a.

Two Nazi salutes and no one bats an eye.

And I'm like, let me respond to this.

Colin Kaepernick.

Basically, you know, they said they gave him the.

The job as quarterback because he was black.

So he got his NFL career because of the color of his skin.

Oh, and the other part that it said was, this is white privilege.

And so I'm like, yeah, he got.

He got his NFL position because of the color of his skin, and his career wasn't that good.

He actually made more money after he did the kneeling than he did before.

And Elon Musk never did a Nazi salute ever.

So.

And it's so funny to watch how many other people on the left that supposedly did a Nazi salute.

I mean, you find pictures of Hillary Clinton and Obama, and you can find a picture of anybody raising their hand like that.

It's just a gesture.

The question is if that's meant as a Salute by the person who intended it that way.

Correct.

Did not.

Yeah, yeah.

And.

And so the, the idea of churches that are going to, to separate because you're going especially, okay, the social justice one thing, but to, to separate you.

If you take a stand on not wearing a mask during COVID That is not even a, you know, tertiary issue.

If there's a fourth level, it would be there.

Yeah.

Well, they labeled us as Christian nationalists.

They, they filed formal charges against both me and David Whitney as Christian nationalists, yet they never felt a burden to define what a Christian nationalist.

I was just gonna ask you, or.

You know, give any evidence to substantiate the claim by due process to prove that we were somehow guilty of this charge.

Yeah, yeah.

And.

And to, to say, well, we're going to kick a church out over that just.

It boggles my mind.

It does boggle my mind.

Well, it's that whole thing.

I think it might have been John Harris who talked about those who punch right and nuance left.

So there's all this nuance for like someone who might make room for voting for Democrats because, you know, they're pro life in other ways.

You know, the whole, the whole person.

You know, we, we heard a speech from one of the EFCA leaders named Bill Riedel, who's like the chairman of the board, and he talked about how from the progressive side, abortion might be a needed option, but from the right, we recognize, you know, or from the conservative side, we recognize the importance of the life in the womb.

And he left this middle ground that like, well, you got to be accepting of people who see things that way and you've got to be more tolerant.

So there's.

They have so much nuance to accept more progressive Christians, but if I'm to the right of them, well, that's where the, you know, they take the gloves off.

So punch right, nuance left.

And that really describes where the movement.

Has gone, where they are.

Yeah.

Brother John's asking, is this live?

John is up in the 51st State of the United States there in Canada.

But yeah, we are live.

I am sorry again.

I'll just say we.

The website is having trouble.

So that's, I think what the reason some people are confused apologeticslive.com is not.

It's just not updating.

I'm, I'm doing the back end work on it and there's some glitch where it's not going live for folks.

When I test it in my browser, everything works.

So.

So yeah, so if you guys don't mind sharing.

Wherever you're watching, let others know we are live.

We have a troublemaker backstage.

We might as well bring him up.

It is none other than Mr.

Harris himself, David Harris.

Welcome.

David Harris is my brother.

He's the better looking one.

So I just figured we'd.

John, how are you, sir?

Good, good.

How are you doing?

Andrew, good to see you.

Yeah, good to see you.

Jeff, our Canadian friend doesn't think that it's funny to call Canada the 51st state.

I don't know if they qualify as a state.

They'd be a territory.

Yeah.

It'd be too big.

It'd be too big.

The land would be too much.

Yeah, yeah.

But so, John, tell us a little bit before we.

We're going to go through the, the conference schedule, but let folks know a little bit about you.

We were, we were talking about how, you know, you were one of the early folks to recognize this social justice issue.

In fact, I'll give a little, a little background.

You and I, I got to know about your podcast.

I didn't realize we actually had met in New York due an evangelism.

Something you had, you had told me about that.

I forgot about it.

But I got, I became knowledgeable about your podcast because I did a podcast on, on the Rap Report podcast about Al Mueller and how he was making a shift to the left on social justice.

And so many people contacted me saying, oh, so you've been listening to John Harris on Conversation of the Matter.

I'm like, who's that?

And when I listen to your episodes on Al Muller, I'm like, I see why everybody thought that you and I were talking because we both independently saw the same shift and same.

Had the same concerns with Al Mueller.

So what's changed?

I just did a podcast today where I went after Al Mohler again.

So he's changed.

But that's, that's my problem, I guess, is that he changes so much.

So I don't know.

I mean, people will say, like, is he woke?

Is he social justice?

I'm like, I don't really know, to be honest with you.

He's like that.

One professor in like 1991 or two said he was nicknamed Weathervane.

I was like, I'm thinking now that makes sense.

Like, he, he's contradicting the positions he once held.

So anyway, but that, yeah, that's part of what got me into doing podcasting was noticing problems with guys like him who were pushing the BLM narrative and the V2 stuff.

And, and even in some cases, the LGBT stuff in a soft kind of, you know, spoonful of sugar way.

Like not full on, but trying to get you to adopt same sex attraction as a category.

And, and that was January 2019, when I started that exposure.

And I didn't think it would turn into anything big, but I just saw what happened at my seminary and then I had people contacting me from everywhere, saying it's all over the SBC.

And then 2020 happened and people needed answers and I wrote a few books on it and rest is history.

So, yeah, I mean, I have been speaking on.

I didn't know of it as social justice at the time or wokeness, but I actually started speaking about these issues as early as 2010 that I recognized the signs.

And, and the reason I recognize the signs is because growing up, growing up Jewish, we were trained to look for the signs that we would see of a, you know, another Holocaust.

And that is something that just what ended up happening was when you start to see those signs, it's.

Once you're trained to look for them, you start seeing them and they're everywhere.

It just started growing slowly.

But I think you're right.

After the MLK50, it was out there where now all of a sudden, many Christians started seeing what had been bubbling up for years.

I.

I think that.

Would you agree, John, that that was probably like a watershed moment?

Yeah, that was 2018, I think.

MLK50.

Yeah.

I'm kind of curious what you saw in 2010.

I mean, I remember David Platt's radical raising a little bit of an ire with me because I was like, oh, he creates the American dream.

But, you know, I've never heard it framed in terms of like a Holocaust precursor or anything like that.

Like, what did.

Well, what I was, what I was noticing is, was, was the shift in what people were calling evangelism and short term missions from sharing the gospel to just patting yourself on the back because you're feeding the poor, because they're underprivileged, and somehow we as Christians are privileged.

So that was the first shift that I started to notice is more and more churches that instead of sharing the God, instead of doing outreaches where they share the gospel, they're doing outreaches to feed the poor, give clothing to the poor, under the guise that somehow we are more privileged than these people.

Like, it's.

They have no control over.

It's just life the way life is.

They're underprivileged, and we have a responsibility to take care of them.

And that's not what The Bible says is, is the responsibility that we're just to take care of the poor that don't want to care for themselves.

Well, it was the parallel then because one of, I know Hitler's gripes and one of the Nazi gripes was that Jewish people, of course at that point in Germany were privileged in so many ways.

They, they claimed they weren't sending their kids to the front lines to fight with other Germans.

They were you charging usury and making money off of other people's whatever.

And, and you, you, you started to see in, in the culture the, I mean, one of the first things that occurred for the, the Jewish people.

And you, you know, if you look at our culture, you started seeing this against the church as a whole.

But it's the idea, well, if under Hitler, if you were Jewish, they didn't want you in politics where you make laws.

You weren't to be a judge where you can, you know, make decisions about laws.

You couldn't be a teacher where you train up a next generation.

Right.

Those were some early things you couldn't do.

And yeah, I remember Bernie Sanders telling a Christian that he wasn't qualified to serve in government because he believed that Christianity was right and more and Muslims were wrong, which was the irony because Bernie Sanders believed he was right and this Christian was wrong.

Yeah, yeah.

They're like the liberal neutralism doesn't seem to last that long.

It's sort of a transitional stage and eventually people start drawing lines of, you know, the people that believe what they believe need to be in positions of power and those who don't believe what they believe should be subordinate.

And I mean that's, that's kind of all of human history, I guess.

Right?

Yeah, it is.

But, but see, there were people, I'm going to say church in a, in a very broad sense that were defending Bernie Sanders at that time and they were speaking there were there.

I remember reading an article where some, where a professing Christian, he was a, I guess a pastor.

I don't know if we, you know, if you re like he was in a position of pastor, I'll put it that way, whether he was actually saved and an actual pastor.

But, but he was arguing that Christians needed to be more inclusive.

And, and we cannot say that other religions are wrong because they just don't know any better.

And therefore Bernie Sanders was right to say that this person wasn't qualified for office.

And I went what?

Like this is the idea that where it comes in is the idea that we should, as Christians, we should be welcoming them of others.

And we should.

But how should we, we welcome them?

That they get saved by the same gospel message we get saved by.

But we don't get.

We don't be welcoming by saying, well your, your thinking of who God is is just as right as our thinking of who God is.

That we can't do.

And they don't do it.

The Muslims don't think we have the right view of God.

They in, in fact, in the, in the Quran, the one thing it says is that if you believe that God is through three, then you know you can never, you can never go to heaven.

Right.

Of course they say three gods, but that's a problem.

The author of the Quran doesn't know the definition of the Trinity, which I think if the author of the Quran was God, he would know to use proper definitions.

But maybe I'm just.

Silly me.

Yeah, very true.

So we, I'm going to put up the conference schedule.

That wrong one.

There we go.

That you guys have for this.

And this is, this conference is being put on by truscript, which is.

You got a number of conferences now going on with truscript.

But let's take a look at the, at the conference schedule.

Friday, May 2, John Harris, you're going to be starting off the, the conference.

Do you know what you're.

Yeah.

What's your, what's your topic going to be?

You know, I, I was hoping to find that out maybe on this stream.

What, what we're doing.

Well, I, I just found out on, on this stream that I'm replacing Jeff.

So maybe you're replacing Jeff at 7pm on May 3rd.

Jeff.

Yeah, I feel like Jeff should be weighing in.

Right?

Yeah.

Jeff, how about you tell us whatever waiting.

I've been over here waiting to be called on.

Yeah.

So we're still kind of pulling together everybody's messages and figuring out what everybody's going to talk about.

But the main thing that brought this conference together is a bunch of truth warriors who for different reasons kind of are lost from a denomination.

So David Whitney down in Maryland got kicked out of the Free Church.

Other guys like Craig Chambers relinquished his own credential to the Free Church because he saw so much of the wokeness coming in.

And a number of other pastors want to come and be a part of this as well.

And this is more than an ordinary conference just to get together and talk.

We're actually hoping to form something.

There is a pastor out at Landmark Church in Ocean City whose name is Matt Mayer.

And the Lord has used him greatly.

The church is huge.

The Lord has blessed him.

He's spoken at Gary Hamrick's church in Virginia, and he has taken such a strong stand on the cultural issues.

So he's going to be there.

My friend Luke Frazier from Island Baptist Church, who just got his doctorate from Master Seminary, Just a wonderful brother.

Bunch of New Jersey guys.

But then you've got Seth Brickley in Wisconsin, you got Phil Brainard in Florida.

I mentioned David Whitney from Maryland.

You're coming down from New York, hopefully your brother from Tennessee.

So all of this is coming together, where pastors are coming from, all over.

I've got a list here of 20 pastors that I think are planning to be here.

And we're going to talk about not necessarily forming like a denomination, but some kind of network or association that we would like to call the Truth Council.

And it would fill that need for those of us who don't really have a home in a denomination.

So a lot of the truth warriors that I'm seeing in the Truth War are guys like Joel Webbin, you know, the Ogden guys, the guys out there in Moscow, Idaho.

And they tend to be more Presbyterian.

They tend to be maybe post mill, whereas a lot of the guys that I run with are Calvary Chapel pastors.

And they're not cessationists.

Sorry, Andrew, I know you were part of the cessationist movie there.

Andrew doesn't like anyone that you just referenced.

So, I mean.

Well, actually.

Actually, the.

I'll.

I'll say for the record, I was.

I just was in Oklahoma with.

Oh, his name just escaped me.

Gabe.

Gabe Wrench, who is.

He is part of Cross Politic.

He is a deacon at one of Doug's churches, an offshoot of Doug's church, Doug Wilson's church.

And he and I, after the conference, sat in the hotel room talking for hours and just like, just asking each other questions to make sure we understood what each other really believed and why we came to the conclusions we came to.

And it was really refreshing.

We had far more agreement than we would have thought and far more a far better understanding of one another after that.

And.

And I think it really built a relationship that'll probably last for quite a while.

Yeah, I like Gabe.

Yeah.

And so now Joel Webin.

I mean, from what people have told me, I.

I haven't seen it myself, but supposedly he doesn't believe I exist is what I'm being told.

He doesn't think.

Podcast with him.

Do you remember that?

Oh, was that on your.

On your show?

Yeah, there was a while ago.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know how long ago that was, but he, it was on cessationism and stuff because he kind of came from a charismatic background and he wanted to, he wanted to talk about I guess some things in his life that, some, some errors that he made.

One of the things in charismatic churches obviously is like they're very loose on sin and some charismatic churches at least.

And so he came from that kind of a background and he wanted to talk about that, that like he had been involved with some, some serious sin.

But he is kind of developed and now, now, I mean, I don't even know like, like it's same with Doug Wilson though.

Did you know Doug Wilson used to be charismatic?

No.

Yeah, yeah, he was.

Or he was definitely Armenian.

He's definitely Armenian.

But no, he was, I think he was pretty charismatic.

So.

Yeah, it's funny the arc that people get on and no one would associate him with that now.

Yeah, no, I don't think so.

Yeah, but, but you know that, that's a thing where I think what, what you're saying, Jeff, there we can end up having guys that disagree in some areas.

We don't have to all be, you know, I come from more of the fundamentals Baptist movement and one of the issues, I mean in my seminary I had to take a class on ecclesiastical separation, like how we separate from other denominations and churches and where the line is and their line was very close to, you know, okay, basically as long as you're a fundamentalist Baptist dispensationalist.

But you know, maybe we could debate over King James only or not, but barely, you know, since my seminary didn't hold to King James only.

It, you know, and the, the, the issue though is that I, I ended up writing a paper basically being very much against the, the eco, the whole separation issue that they would argue because I, it's like we as Christians, our, our, our fight is not with one another, it's with the world.

That's who the enemy is.

It's out there that those that are unsaved and want to stop the going forth of the gospel and not enough Christians recognize that they're too busy fighting amongst themselves.

Right.

I mean here be an example.

You look at the Democrat party right now, right?

They don't care what the issue is.

They're going to stand together to fight against Trump on everything.

You have a 13 year old boy who's beating cancer, they can't stand for him.

You know, a woman who was killed, a woman that they're all wearing pink because they stand with women, but they can't stand for, you know, and support a mother who's, whose daughter was, was sexually abused and killed because the guy was illegal and because Trump is like, it's just amazing.

They will stay together regardless of what makes sense, because for them it's all about fighting as a party.

And Christians are busy like fighting each other.

Like, let's beat each other up over what is the right definition of Christian national.

Let's beat each other up over if you believe that gifts continue or not.

You know, instead of saying, all right, the real battle is it's whether there's truth in the world.

And there is.

And that's where the fight should be, in my opinion.

Yeah.

The thing I see Christians doing the most, including myself, is not letting Jeff talk.

No, no, but you're saying the same.

In the middle of something and then.

No.

Well, I mean, the concept is that there needs to be a lane, not, not in that I would need to fight against a Joel Webbing or something like that who's kind of anti dispensationalist.

But I would like to find Elaine to be like minded and run together with guys who kind of stand in similar ways.

So kind of, Andrew, you're talking about how we don't need to be fighting each other.

And I agree with that.

You know, I love learning from Doug and from Joel and from the Ogden guys.

I listen to their podcast and I can gain a lot from them.

But I think it's okay to have a different group, you know, because we're not really the same in terms of dispensationals.

I would call myself more of like a modified dispensationalist and pretty big supporter of Israel.

Right.

As a state, as, as a nation.

And a lot of the guys that I run with are the same way.

The Calvary Chapel guys and these free church guys who kind of would like to see the way the free church used to be before it went woke.

There's a whole bunch of guys like that and, and others.

And I think that we need some kind of network or association or truth council where we could work together in, in ministry.

So that's the kind of thing we're hoping to create.

And that's what you have with the schedule that you put together here.

Because if folks, if you're, if you're watching those that are listening to the audio podcast will just describe it, but the, you know, the, there's a 6:00 session, there's a 7:15 session.

Then at 8:00, you have a strategic meeting.

So why don't you.

What is that going to be about?

From 8 o'clock till 9, maybe 10 o'clock, the pastors are all going to sit around in a room and talk about what we're hoping to do.

And I have all these ideas and dreams, but I want to just put it all up on a whiteboard and have a conversation.

We don't need to create it that night, but I feel like we need to get together and pray and seek the Lord's face as to what.

What does that look like, and then just bat around ideas.

This group of men that.

That would like to see the same thing that these other groups are doing, right?

Winning in the truth war, taking strong stands and not capitulating to the culture, not bringing Sam Albery into our churches for revoice.

All the same concerns.

But a lot of us just happen to be more dispensational and some are a bit more continuationist, some are cessationists, like yourself, Andrew.

And that's okay.

Like when, when Andrew came to our apologetics conference back in 2016 or 17, we actually had a debate between him and Matt Slick on the continuation of the Gifts.

And I love that.

It was awesome the way you guys interacted and carried yourself, but you're clearly soldiers together in the truth war.

So that's what that meeting would be about, is just coming up with what's the next step for us.

A number of us have been meeting on Zoom once a month.

First Tuesday of every month, we'll get together and talk for an hour, hour and a half, and there's as many as 10, 20 men involved with that.

And so we just want to get together and see each other and not just be all around the country, but actually in the same room.

So just have some conversations, hang out.

Kind of like we did John in Wisconsin, you know, when it wasn't a session, we're riding around in a car or going hiking or hanging out at that house singing songs and playing guitar.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, that's where relationships form, right?

So, yep.

Yeah, it's.

The landscape changes according to the threat, it seems to me.

So, like, in 2020, when the COVID stuff was a big deal, I mean, I was.

I was having lots of conversations with charismatics because they seem to have opened up their churches before a lot of the more reformed types.

And I.

I don't know exactly why that was, but.

But as that the threats have changed, you know, it's not like I don't talk to charismatics anymore, but like the, the reason for partnership, like, isn't there as much.

Right.

That's.

I, I think any, any group of people that get together from different traditions who wouldn't normally get together, maybe they, it's going to be to meet some kind of a challenge.

And when the challenge is.

Is gone, usually that it.

The meeting ends or the, you know, there, there isn't as much camaraderie.

So, so that's probably going to be one of the things we'd have to talk about is like, so what are the threats if this is a truth war?

Like, that's a big topic.

But what specifically is going on now?

And what kinds of things with the limited time God's given us and resources can we share amongst ourselves to ensure that we maintain orthodoxy and have something to pass down to our kids?

Amen.

I'll give you a couple examples.

A phone call I get from a pastor who heard about the Woke Free controversy, and now his church is really kind of riding him out of the pulpit because he's too conservative for a lot of their people.

And when they band together, they can start beating up a pastor.

Yeah.

And they can paint him as an extremist.

And he looks like, you know, just too far to the right.

They're gonna, they're gonna write him right out of the church.

But if all of a sudden there's all these other pastors that can stand with him and he can appeal to, that gives him strength in the truth war.

So that kind of thing.

Or a young man who might be maturing in his theology.

I'm thinking of an assembly of God pastor right now that contacted me recently, and he's come to believe that, you know what the baptism of the Spirit happens at conversion.

It's not a second work of grace.

And that's right.

He's right.

You know, 1 Corinthians 12, 13.

But he can't remain an assembly of God pastor holding to that.

Yeah.

So, yeah, he's gonna lose his, his job probably.

So that kind of thing where we can come and be a support and a network where, hey, I know this other church down in Ocean City that they're looking for an associate pastor.

Maybe you're gonna end up in that church instead of pastoring in the assembly.

If Chris Leduc could come because he doesn't live too far from there.

Do you guys know him?

His name sounds familiar.

Yeah, he's a, He's a master seminary guy.

I just, I was with him at a conference in.

In Washington, but he's in Pennsylvania now.

And anyway, he's a dispense.

He's like the one dispensationalist I know who's, like, very proud to wear the label Christian nationalist, which I think is kind of funny, you know, actually.

Well, I don't know if you.

You wear that.

Jeff or Seth.

I don't think you guys wear that label as much like.

But.

But Chris does.

Chris is like, oh, yeah, I'm a Christian nationalist and total dispensationalist, but good guy.

Anyway, have you started using that term for yourself at all?

No, I don't really use either term.

Find me.

You can't.

You don't know where I've been.

No, I.

I just.

I.

I don't know.

I.

The dispensational thing, like, I'll tell people I go to a church that's dispensational, and I usually, like, preface it with MacArthur dispensational.

So they don't think I'm John Hagee or anything.

Because people have the wackiest ideas about what dispensationalism is.

And of course, if you get your information from X, you're going to think that, like, you know, Schofield Bible was funded by the Rothschilds and it was specifically to foment, you know, Zionism in Israel.

And like, you know, and the reason that we even have foreign policy the way we do is dissonance.

I mean, it's nutty.

Which.

Some of, Some of that stuff goes.

But.

But I.

So I'm like, I guess I'm careful and I'm still.

That's something I.

I've really been convicted.

I.

I need to do it this year.

I need to really work through that issue better.

But by default, because I go to a church that's.

That way.

I mean, that's.

I don't have any problem with it.

And I'm.

I'm totally like, you know, my dad's actually going through revelation right now, so we're going to be hitting on this stuff.

I.

I think that there's.

It's rational.

I don't think people are crazy for thinking that the promises made to Israel belong to Israel and that there's continuity and discontinuity between the church and Israel, that they're both separate being, you know, separate entities.

That the difficulty, I'll be honest, and I don't want to derail this totally, but the difficulty that I want to help myself navigate is I understand the grammatical, historical, hermeneutic I had master seminary hermeneutics.

We went, it was all dispensational.

But the historical argument that like this is a very new novel idea has always bothered me that because I, you know, I think to myself, like if it was 1900 years of church history, no one believed this.

That's a really big red flag in my mind.

That's suspicious.

But I've had guys assure me that, you know, it did exist in Achilles form.

It just was sort of undeveloped, it wasn't systematized.

Yeah.

Much of ours, I mean you can read.

I did a paper in Revelation looking at, you know, just from Augustine and he, he believed in a literal thousand year kingdom.

He just thought he was in it.

And so millennialist I thought, or people.

That'S the whole thing.

Because what people make the mistake of thinking that the early Church Fathers had all of the theology nailed down and they didn't.

I mean much of our theology is really refined when error occurs.

And so when you look at his writings, he believed in a literal thousand year kingdom.

He thought he was in it.

The, the Catholic, I think it was Pope Innocence ii, I think was the one who actually is.

It was the first to start saying that the thousand years was spiritual.

So amillennialism, the way we think of it didn't exist where it's a spiritual kingdom until after a thousand A.D.

when and everyone was like, hey, where's the kingdom?

Like it should have been over.

So, so you could look at, at Augustine and he writes about a literal kingdom.

Right.

And so this is what you end up having is that people think, well if it's, if it's old somehow it's right.

But the reality is that the Catholic Church kind of went far astray because it was run by men rather than godly men.

And so their theology was going off.

And so the Reformers were what they were reforming in the 1500s.

The error.

And so dispensationalism is just a continuation of that reformation of looking at it and saying, okay, let's take a step back from where the Catholic Church looked at it and step back from that and exist.

Examine how should we interpret scripture, how should we view these things?

And so you see some of the same principles of core principles of dispensationalism in the very early church.

But there wasn't the error to force people to have to define it.

I mean the, the Trinity didn't come about for a couple hundred years because it, it came about when someone was denying the deity of Christ.

Right.

Or Sorry.

Yeah.

The deity of Christ.

Right.

And you know, now you had to work out the deity, the humanity.

Well, that's what brings about some of these things.

Yeah.

And I would add to that.

It would.

It would have looked like a novelty in 1500, 1517.

The Solas of the Reformation would.

Would have looked that way.

Yes.

And then dispensationalism in.

In our day might look a bit that way because it's.

I think it is much older than 1900.

I think there are even precursors to it.

There are people speaking that way before Darby.

There's a book.

Yeah.

Dispensationalism before Darby.

Yeah.

And I've.

I've never.

I've never read Darby.

And though I had two copies of Schofield Bibles, I never read.

Read those either.

You use the term modified dispensationalist.

Okay.

Yeah.

And, you know, let me give credit to that.

There's a guy in Connecticut named Dan Earhart, and he's part of this group of pastors that I'm talking about, a free church guy.

He was actually on the board of ministerial standing, but super conservative.

Right with us.

But he coined that term and he's actually going to be giving a presentation on it next month on our zoom call that we're going to record.

Yeah.

Modified dispensationalism to distance from the extreme stuff and the problematic stuff in Darby and Schofield.

But also another point about this is if you look at church history in terms of the number of believers rather than the number of years, it's significant that so many Christians, genuine evangelical Bible believing Christians, have believed this doctrine.

And I think the explanation for that is that it really is in Romans 11 and in a more grammatical, historical reading of Revelation and Daniel.

I think that the number of believers worldwide now, isn't it more than the covenant theology theologians?

And doesn't that.

And when you talk about how many believers there are within evangelicalism.

Yeah.

In South America and across Africa and China.

You know, I'm thinking of my Dallas seminary friends, and one of them was a missionary.

Well, he was actually Indian.

And just talking about what people believe in India, So many of them are dispensational and you don't have a lot of covenant theologians teaching there.

So in the scope of worldwide Christianity.

Yeah, it's less in years, but numerically, is it all that much less?

I don't know.

Yeah.

But I mean, we also got to take a look at.

And this is just.

This is one of the realities of it.

Dispensationalism is usually tied not so much to denominations like Presbyterian.

Right.

It's.

It's going to be more the independent Baptist type.

And I'm just saying Baptistic, you know, whether the Bible churches, the Calvary chapels.

But, you know, a lot of your Assemblies of God, your Pentecostals, your, you know, they're, they're all going to be in that same thing.

But then when you consider, I mean, just because of that independent nature is why I think you have so many of the wackadoos that will be in the dispensational camp.

People think it's because of dispensationalism, and I think it's more because of the independence because, you know, a Benny Hinn is not going to be able to be part of a Presbyterian church.

Right.

The denomination would have kicked him out long ago.

And not having a denomination, I think it allows people that would never be able to get away with stuff in a denominational church to get away with it there.

And so I think there's a lot of error.

Churches that are in error that would claim to dispensationalism.

And so, you know, one of the things we don't want to do is make an argument.

Well, there's more people, therefore it's right.

I wouldn't want to make that case.

Case any more than I would want to say that it must be wrong because look at all the churches that are in error, that hold to it, you know.

Right.

And so.

So we wouldn't argue that the recency of it would be a disqualifying correct.

Yeah, Well, I only bring that up.

It's not the recency is the word you use.

The.

It's not the chronology or the, the span of time.

It's the novelty.

That's.

That's the argument that this is novel.

So it's something like Joseph Smith.

Right.

Was novel.

What he was saying was something no one else had ever said before.

And being suspicious of something that no one else has ever said before is a pretty good instinct in Christianity.

Like if you come up with a theology that no one else has seen in the text, then you should probably be suspicious that maybe you're reading it wrong.

And so you compare it against the measuring rod of church history just to check yourself to make sure.

And that's all I'm saying is that the novelty of it, or at least the perceived novelty of it, has always been something that I've wanted to really wrestle through.

Yeah.

I've just been so busy battling what I consider to Be like much more important issues.

And I don't think I've already, I've already, I've really argued against the guys, you know, like Joel Webin, who, who, who have in the past and I think he's kind of moved past this now, but who have made that kind of the measuring rod.

Like, you know, if you're post mill, things are going to kind of work out and that's, that's the answer to what happened in 2020.

And that's where TGC was wrong.

And that's like, it's post mill.

You got to just be post mill.

And I think he realizes now that, that no, that's not, that's not the case.

Like you, you can still be post mill and have all kinds of problems.

In fact, there are many postmodern churches that went covet crazy and accepted BLM and like did all of that stuff.

So it's like the eschatology flavor does not seem to be the thing that determines whether or not you're going to compromise on these liberal things or these social justice things.

Yes, yeah, that's been my focus.

But, but I think it's important.

Right.

Because it's in scripture.

So I, I, I, I'm kind of embarrassed to say as an M.

Div that I never really, even in my eschatology class, I never really settled.

But then again, my professor didn't even have a view.

He was like, well, you know, half the week I'm Amel and the rest of the week I'm historic free mill.

He didn't even have a view.

Hey.

Yeah.

So Kyle is saying many different schools of dispensationalism, Classic, historical, Revised, progressive, etc.

Covenant theology has its strains of, of Covenant Theology, New Covenant Theology as well.

And, and I would say I'm, I'm starting to use the term now.

Jeff, you used, you know, the, the modified dispensationalism, which as you said was coined in that meeting.

I'm, I've been using a term, Reformed dispensational.

Oh, that offends some people, I'm sure.

Exactly.

But that in my view that's what it is.

It's, you know, the, the idea, I mean, what really offends people.

I mean, we weren't planning to talk dispensationalism, but hey, but topics I know.

The least about too.

Yeah, but, but you know, here's the thing.

You think about Covenant Theology and, and this, this, I'm going to preface this by saying if you, if anyone holds to what they would call Covenant theology.

Hold on, let me finish the thought before you, you know, throw something at your screen or, you know, tune me out.

Okay?

But what you end up seeing is you had the.

The, you know, Constantine just declares everyone Christian.

That's not how Christians become Christian.

The emperor doesn't just declare it, but you, because of, you know, all of a sudden getting the graces of the emperor.

You.

You want to be a pastor.

You want to be in the church doing things.

You had a lot of people who were not saved that were moving their way into the.

Into church, into leadership positions in church.

I mean, much like you see in denominations, by the way, a lot of the people that want to be in the leadership of denominations are not the people who care about people's souls.

They care about power and position.

And so you had a lot of people that were deciding what God's word means by replacing themselves with Israel.

And because that gave a.

Because you see this in every group.

I mean, Mormons do this.

I mean, so many groups, they want to try to assign themselves that they're Israel so that they're God's chosen people.

They have that special relationship.

And Covenant theology really was founded in the Roman Catholic Church.

And what the reformers actually taught was what was called Reformed theology, where they reformed that.

They got rid of the church tradition and the church authority, but they kept that same hermeneutic of looking at things spiritually and seeing if Israel and the church being a, you know, just two administrations of the same body.

And so what dispensationalism did was to take a step back and say, no, no, no, we should inter.

The Bible doesn't have some special way of interpreting.

We interpret it the way we would any type of literature.

It's.

It really was the Catholic Church that had this idea.

And this is a key difference where they would say, well, the Bible's a special book, so you needed the church to provide the interpretation.

And the Reformers still held to it, just not with the church, but they held to it as well.

We need to see.

We need to see a.

You know, that it's.

It's not the church, but it's Christ.

We have Christ in.

In everything.

So, you know, that's.

That's where we would.

We would need to.

To see it is.

That's really the.

The essential difference, I think, between the two.

But that's good.

And that would make sense that if they're not focusing on eschatology in the 1500s and 1600s so much that it might take some time to Work out those less important doctrines because they're applying this grammatical historical hermeneutic to more important issues early on.

And then as eschatology comes into central focus, it does, it does reform there as well.

Yeah.

Let me bring in one of our speakers at Striving Fraternity, the very short Dan Kraft.

Extremely short Dan Craft, the seven foot short.

Hey.

I don't know what happened.

I clicked on the duck head and tried to.

Tried to get in and I'm just sitting here staring at myself.

Yeah.

We have been having a problem with the website.

I should let Aaron know too, in case he's coming in.

We've been having a problem with the website where we can't seem to.

It updates and tells me everything's right.

And when I test it and then when everyone tries to get in, they're still stuck in a show from three weeks ago.

So.

So, yeah, so that's why I put.

I have this, I have it on the, the link there on how to join on screen.

And if you, if you just go.

At least this week and until we can get this fixed, if you go to YouTube, to the Striving Fraternity YouTube channel, you'll see it when on Thursday night when we go live.

Until we can get the website fixed.

We, we should have it hopefully fixed soon.

So, so we're.

Dan, we're talking about a conference that John and Jeff are putting together.

Let me actually, Jeff, I want you to go through because, you know, looking at the schedule that you have it, you know, so John's opening Friday.

He's also closing Saturday.

So he opens and closes.

In case you were.

You didn't know that John, you know, now.

And so the.

But look at, you know, it's not just Friday night.

There's a strategic meeting for planning of how to get some pastors together to plant some.

But it's.

We're having a session in the morning at 9 and then from 10am to 7 at night you have planned, you know, strategic conversations over activities.

Philadelphia, New York, sightseeing, golf, you know, things like this.

So this is, this is unlike any conference I've seen.

I've been to conferences where they try to book a lot of time for fellowship, but you're planning like an entire day where you're planning to have time.

For extended fellowship in New York City is pretty far.

Yeah.

And I noticed that since you're on the east coast, you probably don't have anybody making trips to gun ranges during that fellowship time.

Not, not in New Jersey.

Those are not allowed.

No.

We can now things change.

You can, but you still Trump's president.

Get used to it.

Yeah, yeah.

And we do have connections.

Most of our church goes to gun ranges.

So we have, we have the opportunity.

To do that if you have only if you have 10 rounds magazines, because.

I know that is the worst.

So, so I, I, I, I, I'm looking to move back to New Jersey possibly.

And I realized you do this there.

I, I, I was actually my old church, the first pastorate that I had was asking me to return for a couple years because they've been, you know, to help kind of transition to revitalize the church.

And so I was looking at, at moving back to New Jersey and realized I only have, you know, one of my many weapons that I would be able to bring back into New Jersey and like almost none of my good ammunition.

So I think, I think we'll go to Ohio instead.

Go the other way, go to Nineveh or not Nineveh.

So, but, but yeah, I mean, the, the idea there.

What do you, what do you have as far as your idea, Jeff, with, I mean, a bulk of the day you have strategic conversations.

What are you planning?

What are you thinking?

Yeah, I just want pastor, this group of pastors especially to hang out with each other, to go spend time.

And John, you got to blame Seth Brickley for the New York City because he's, that's his, his baby right there.

He wants to go to New York City.

Seth, he's got time.

I mean, maybe.

Well, if we go, if we go to, if we go to Union Square, John, because if you were out with us, if you were out with us in New York, we must have been in, in Union Square a lot.

Yeah, we were.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

It was weird.

It was really weird.

There was some demon possessed guys.

Oh, always.

It's, it's a very interesting, like cloaks and robes.

I don't remember those guys.

They're like a cult.

This guy came and he was a black guy, but he had like a bunch of guys following him and he had like a cloak or something.

And yeah, that we, we had, I mean, we would see everything in Union Square in New York.

Anyone that wants to do some Evangeline, if you really want to get really good at apologetics, you go to Union Square, New York on a regular basis and you are going to hear, I mean, you're going to hear the most craziest things there, There were, there were multiple people that would try to mimic what Christians were doing by creating their own religion and just looking to make stuff up and, and they would admit it.

But.

But yeah, we, we.

We've seen.

I've seen like almost everything out there.

And calculus man says Union Square was an interesting place to do evangelism.

I think I was a repentant witness in 2017.

So.

So, John, what.

Do you remember which year you were there?

Probably before that, I would say.

Yeah, probably was.

It was before that by a while, actually.

Yeah.

Maybe 20.

Like, we're probably talking like 2008 or nine, actually.

Okay.

So the early years when we were doing it.

Yeah, okay.

It was pretty.

It was like when Todd Friel would give the phone to Tiffany at the subway.

Okay.

That's how I found out about it.

And we were.

I was the vice president of a campus group at a community college I went to.

We were looking at affiliating with like a navigator or something like that.

And I just didn't like any of the groups.

I was like, ah, they're all compromised.

What about this change your campus thing?

Let's go down and check it out.

So we drove down and it was like.

It was for a fundraiser night and it was.

It was a little confusing.

Like the pastor who they had speaking ended up talking the entire time about a coming economic collapse and what we should invest in left.

And I was like, man, I.

I don't know.

Like, I didn't really hear anything about college ministry, so I don't know.

And then I was like, well, let's give it one more shot.

And then they, they did this thing in Union Square and that's what I went to.

And that's where I met you.

And I had a good time.

Like we, we.

We were there all day.

They actually kind of left me on my.

Alone on my own for a bit.

And I, I don't know, I got separated from the group and I was with this guy who was reading my aura for like two hours.

He's like, that's a big aura, beautiful blue aura.

And that the evil spirits were staying away from me.

And I'm like, well, that's good.

And.

Oh yeah, that was wild.

And we got some barbecue in New York City.

It wasn't that good.

And I went home.

York City.

Yeah, I remember that.

It was before the cell phones.

That's how long ago it was.

Before the GPS on cell phones.

Oh, man.

Oh, yeah.

Printed out MapQuest, you know, and I, I missed something and I, I was.

I got lost.

Yeah, yeah.

New York City.

But I remember what the.

The one problem with New York City in open.

In Union Square was because they had so much lights on back in the day, you could.

You lost track of what time it was.

And.

And we once were there and the.

The we're there to like three in the morning.

Morning.

And didn't realize like the subway shut down and we were kind of stuck there.

This is.

I mean, this was before cell phone.

So it wasn't like you could just call a cab.

And we were like, we were wandering around New York trying to figure out where can we find a cab?

How do we get to this?

That's pretty funny.

I can see that.

So, like, what, you just stay there?

I mean, just stay there for, you know.

Well, just plenty homeless there.

Why not?

Why not?

Why not?

You'll probably.

Actually, you could probably get a check and like make more than you, you know, you were making before or something.

I don't know.

Yeah, well, hey, you know, look, you guys, if you guys remember the Occupy Wall Street.

Okay, I do.

So.

And.

And this was.

This was again, this is where I was calling out against social justice before it was really popular.

But I was actually involved.

John, you probably don't know this, but I was actually involved in the Occupy Wall Street.

So what happened was.

No, I.

So what it was was, you know, they make the claim that Occupy Wall street started on a Thursday night because of a Facebook post.

And the reason I know that's not true is I was invited to the meetings three months before it started, and I was late to the game.

I was invited because people in Union Square, they.

In their meetings, they were trying to get a religious.

They wanted to get a religious part of the, you know, to get.

To start influencing the, you know, Christianity.

So they wanted religious leaders that would be involved in the Occupy movement so that.

To give credibility to get other churches to start backing it.

Okay.

And so I went there basically as a spy.

I mean, I just, I went there like calling them out.

Like, I mean, I eventually got kicked out when.

When.

So what they, what they did was they had.

They'd have this open meeting every day at 10 o'clock and where everyone can come.

Everyone had a voice.

That was the whole thing.

And they were in Zagati Park.

And the interesting thing that happened was that you ended up with these people that, that were, you know, the homeless or people that just didn't care.

They were just there for the free food that George Soros's organization was funding and, you know, and for fun, because they had nothing else to do.

And so.

But, you know, they wanted money, so they kept stealing people's iPads and MacBooks.

And so very quickly in Zagati park, what you had was what I referred to as upper class occupiers and lower class class because what they did is the, the college student folks, they physically moved people's tents so that these guys would all be together so they could self do security for each other so they can keep an eye on each other's stuff.

And so they, they physically separated the riff raff from themselves.

And, and because they weren't getting things if accomplished at the 10 o'clock meeting because there was too much, you know, of the lower class Zuccotti, you know, people, they started having meetings at 9am to discuss how they could push their agenda at the 10am meeting and I was thrown out.

When I asked them about when at the 10 o'clock meeting I mentioned it that they had separate meetings to push the agenda.

How is that any different than what they claim claim the, the conservatives do with trying to push agendas?

Right.

So they eventually they threw me out.

But yeah, it was, you know, back then they were, they were wanting to get the, their influence into the church so that the church would push their agenda very much.

What you see in, you know, the MLK50 in together for the Gospel Gospel Coalition, you know, all the Southern Baptists, they're, they're all being influenced with I think some of the money from Zorro Soros to push the agenda that we were talking about earlier that we are trying to fight against.

Right.

I was on call, I was at college at the time.

I think the Invisible Children thing came right before that.

Remember that?

I don't remember that one.

Invisible Children was like a huge day.

They were camping out in Central park and they, they were protesting, what was it?

Mugabe and what he was doing in Africa.

And you're taking children and using them in his, his army basically.

And they in Mugabe didn't care what some teenagers were doing in Central park.

So he just kept doing it.

And then I, I remember, I think it was not long after that Occupy.

Anyway.

Yeah, I, I forget, you know, I'm gonna, I'll do a quick search.

I forget what year Occupy Wall street started.

I don't think they had iPads.

You said the iPads.

I was like, I don't think anyone's stealing iPads at that.

Well, they were stealing MacBooks and let me see, they were stealing flip phones.

2004 was Invisible Children.

Wow.

And it was Joseph Coney.

Sorry, you don't remember that?

I don't man, but it Might just be because I.

I wasn't paying enough attention then.

So let's see.

So 2011 is when.

When supposedly.

September 17th.

Okay.

So the first iPad came out in 2010.

So you're right.

Yeah.

And so it would have been 2016 that I.

That I got involved in that.

That I was invited to their meetings.

And so, like, it's funny because I would go to their meetings and then go from there to Union Square and preach against everything that they just said in the meeting.

Meeting with some of those people there.

And we're gonna do this all at Jeff's conference.

Isn't that great?

Yes.

I like that idea.

Rabbit trail right there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we might just take a small group up the Times Square.

People who want to see New York City get lunch, maybe not preach at Union.

Well, maybe we will.

I don't know.

I think we should.

And we'll have another group go to the gun range.

Somebody else can go hit golf balls at topgolf.

We do have an advantage team.

There are guns.

There are gun ranges in.

In Pennsylvania.

And you can put more than 10 rounds in a magazine.

I'm just saying, if you want to.

Hook that up, then we could do that.

We have.

We have the hookup here in New Jersey, but yeah, if you want to do more than 10, yeah, that's fine.

But we could do Philadelphia too.

Go see Constitution hall and run up the rocky steps.

Yeah, I might do that.

Yeah.

So I had been a missionary in inner city Philly, so we have a lot of contacts in the Kensington neighborhood.

Yeah.

So if there's anybody that wants to go do evangelism, like inner city evangelism.

That's always a blast.

So they'll probably be a contingent that wants to go and do something like that.

So we'll break up.

But before this ever happens, I'm going to send emails to all of these pastors and let everybody know what the options are, and we'll form.

Figure out what we're going to do before the conference.

Yeah.

And so this conference is extremely expensive to.

To attend.

What's that big, bold word there?

Free?

R, F, R, E, E.

What?

Our church has, has decided to fund it.

So we put it in our budget for the year.

We're good.

And so we just need people to get here.

The thing is, I.

I am letting our church sign up now, so it's starting to fill up for the sessions.

So just from the cornerstone people, they probably won't participate as much in, you know, the activities because they kind of live here.

So, like going to Philly or going to Kensington or shooting guns, they just kind of do that anyway.

So they'll have their.

No, no, not.

Not shooting guns in New Jersey.

Yeah.

What's that?

They'll all go to New York.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You could probably get a few of them doing that.

What's the name of the conference?

The Truth Conference.

It is still the Truth Conference.

Yeah.

And so.

So folks want to register right now.

We are going to try to get a webpage together for this.

But if you want the email there for Pastor Jeff is.

Is Jeff.

And I'll just spell.

Spell out the.

So it's jeff.

So it's j e f f dot k, l, I e w e r@corribly sj dot org.

You got it.

Email me and you get signed up.

And Dan.

Dan is pulling his head just over the.

The lower third there.

Oh, don't ever see me.

Wilson.

So, yeah, I mean, I think this is to be a fun conference for folks who, you know, who want to come and it's.

It's going to be different.

I'm looking forward to, you know, having a conference where we're actually going to have some planning and strategy about where.

Which church's role in.

In this culture.

Yeah.

So we've talked about doing an annual Truth Conference.

Seth did it last year in St.

Croix Falls, Wisconsin, and he said he'd be wanting to do it again next year, 26.

But I've got a brother down in Tampa and they just acquired a new property for their church.

And I would love to do one of these years, maybe 27, a truth conference down there because that's more of, like a destination, especially doing that in the winter.

That's.

Maybe we could pull that off.

Yeah.

Great January location.

100% get down out of the cold.

I mean, John Harris doesn't know what, you know, cold is up there in New York.

It's.

He's not, you know, it doesn't get cold up there.

I mean, right now it's feeling nice because we just turned a corner this week, but it was pretty cold this year.

Yeah.

You're upstate New York, so.

Yes, it's very cold up there.

It was worse this year than all the previous years.

It got kind of mild.

But yeah, it was for, like, a good solid month.

I think it was like in the 20s.

So like, 30 felt really good.

So, yeah, I would.

I would have to heat up my cold plunge just to be able to get in there.

Up there.

It's expensive.

My house is expensive to heat so, you know, I hate it when it gets that cold for multiple reasons.

But there's something special about it too, I suppose.

I guess.

I don't know, there's.

I guess it smells a certain way.

You go outside.

I don't.

I can't describe it, but you smell wood burning and my wife really likes that.

So.

Yeah.

Snow gets old, though.

Yes.

So as a kid, it's great.

Now I'm like, oh, I don't even have fun in it anymore.

I just shovel it.

That's it.

No, no, no, you, you, that's going to change, my friend, because as your daughter grows, you are going to have a blast in the snow once again.

Yeah.

And then when she, when she becomes an adult, it's going to be even worse than it is now.

Well, yeah, she's.

She hasn't gotten to that point.

Maybe next.

So it should be in a year and a half, I guess, when next winter starts hitting.

So maybe.

Yeah, she won't now.

You gotta wait.

Another two years will probably be where it starts getting fun.

But.

So.

So other than the conference, what, Jeff, what topics do you have in mind for the speakers at the conference?

Well, I think.

Well, that's what we haven't really determined yet.

So I would like to see that each one who comes to speak is able to share something that's been pressing on them.

You know, I think John might want to say something that comes out of this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What's that?

For the, for the audio audience.

What is.

What are you holding up?

Yeah, it's a book on dispensationalism.

This is a book that I just came out with called against the Waves, Christian Order in a Liberal Age.

And it's on Amazon.

You can go to my website, john harrispodcast.com and get a copy.

But yeah, William Wolf said to me, because I talked to him yesterday on the phone and he's like, dude, it's so long.

And I'm like, really?

I mean, how many pages is it?

About 300 pages, I guess.

That's not that long.

It's not like that long.

It's longer than my other ones, I guess.

It's.

It's more of a collection of essays that I wrote over the last few years because there's been so many questions.

Post 2020.

People have been asking all kinds of things, you know, not.

Not just like what a man and a woman is, but.

Excuse me, what.

What is the country?

What is a nation?

Can.

You know, same sex attraction stuff.

I mean, like every facet of the Created order has been questioned.

Are our mechanisms for even delivering leaders?

Are those corrupted?

Or like should we just go back to the drawing board on everything?

And some guys are.

And it's interesting to see what's happening on the political right and in conservative Christianity because both are fracturing in about 5, 000 parks because people are following different, different podcasts and they're, it's like all the institutions failed.

They don't trust anyone and now they're looking for answers to why things fail.

That everyone's got something they're selling.

Yeah, so that's kind of why I wrote this because you should just listen to me and take all my answers.

No, I want you to think for yourself.

And I've, I really tried to think biblically about a lot of these questions and, and, and biblically and also think in terms of.

So like I'm writing to conservative Christians, I'm writing to political conservatives and I'm trying to convince both, I'm trying to convince political conservatives like look, you need Christianity.

You have nothing to positive to argue for with if you don't have Christianity really or you have very little at least.

I mean you, you don't have a holistic kind of vision without that.

And then for Christians like don't spurn the political like you, you have to be involved, you have to, you, you need to be influencing political right or else you are going to get some of the weird varieties we're seeing develop right now.

I mean we're getting some, some.

I, I just put out an article at American Reformer yesterday where I addressed some of the, the ideology I call it, but some, some of like the over the top explanations for every, everything evil and it's always rooted back to, it's like the Jews faults and then you see this popping up on the right.

It's been on the left for a while but I, I really want to steal, steer people towards like common sense and, and that's why it's Christian order.

It's Christian order.

God made a template.

God made like.

And I guess this is the bottom line.

I'll end here.

But I think God put down a created order that we're supposed to conform ourselves to.

There are universal laws within that.

There's transcendentals as they call them.

The good, the true, the beautiful.

We should, we should aspire to these things and these things are going to be mediated through culture over the course of time and applied in specific contexts.

We live in the United States in 2025 and so, so yeah, I think that, that, that.

That's what I'm, I'm trying to convince people of is like, there is a template here, there is a positive vision and maybe.

And that.

So that goes with truth.

Maybe we'll talk about that in.

In relationship to truth.

What's the positive vision?

We're not just arguing against social justice.

We have.

We have something that we're very much for.

Amen.

So, so would you be in favor of taking, like you're saying with that, taking the step back with everything's being questioned?

Do you.

Are you in favor of taking a step back and reevaluating things, not looking at the light of the world way we have seen things before, but taking a step back and saying, let's rethink things?

Well, I think we.

When you're off the track, you got to figure out where did we get off?

Right.

So I think, like that part of progress.

I think, as C.S.

lewis said that, and I'm not endorsing all theology, but I think what C.S.

lewis said about, like it is, it's not progressive to keep going down the wrong path.

Progress is you figure out where you got off the path.

But, but there is a path.

I don't think that it's.

I think we're in a bad position now because all the institutions are questioned.

So all people have is their, Their own sense.

And then whatever guru they're following oftentimes.

And that gets them into weird places because a lot of people are not really trained to think.

They, they don't understand logical fallacies.

They don't.

They.

And why should they?

They've trusted their institutions their whole life.

Most people are like this.

They're.

They.

They know the people around them.

And when that fails them, when they can't even trust their pastor and they go on the Internet to try to find answers, they could get them into weird places.

So, you know, where did we go off path?

Was it, you know, did the wrong side win the Revolutionary War, the Civil war, World War II, or.

I mean, these are a lot of the, like the points at which people say, oh, it was a Civil Rights Act.

It was, it was.

No, it was 2015.

It was Obergefell.

Everything was great before that.

I, I think that there's merit to a lot of these explanations, but they're not the whole thing.

They're not the whole enchilada.

And that's where we get in.

That's where I think ideology is a threat, because it blinds you to the truth.

You start making one little thing the explanation for all things QAnon's a good example of this.

Like when, when guys got into QAnon, it was kind of like, hey, the government's corrupt.

It's like, well, yeah, no kidding.

Don't you think that explains every single thing that's happening in human existence?

Is the.

It's like, no.

And then it's like, oh, what, you trust the government?

I was like, no, I didn't say that.

But like, that.

That's how, like, these holistic total critiques work.

That's social justice.

Social justice.

Everything is motivated by, you know, if you're the me too guys, it's the patriarchy.

If you're the BLM guys, it's some kind of racial preference.

That mode, every brushing your teeth, it's motivated by racism.

The, the Jew.

The Jew hate stuff.

It's like everything's related to.

It's the Jews that are behind it somehow, or the lizard people or whatever.

And it's like there's.

There's.

There's strands that you can.

Like, like, there are narratives that we should examine.

But, but, you know, this book, the more important book, gives you holistic.

And you're holding up a Bible for folks that on the audio.

What's that?

Oh, it's the Bible.

Yeah.

It's actually the preacher's Bible in sheepskin.

So.

So, so, John, you just.

I'm.

I'm glad that you had said what you said because.

Because you just answered the question from the earlier discussion.

You just explained how dispensationalism came about.

People questioned the institution, they took a step back.

They, they examined things.

And that is why it is relatively newer, is because that's what, that's what they did.

They, they, they questioned the way things were, why they were, and, and took the step back.

So you just.

Yeah, it's okay to do that.

It's just.

You don't want to make skepticism an ideology, though.

You don't want to, like, you want to.

You want to try to get back to some, some firm rootedness, some, some.

Some good tradition that, like, confers identity and, and, you know, makes sense.

So, so let me just.

I, I.

There's a topic I think would be a good discussion for us.

But, you know, part of before we get into it, because it's gonna.

I'd be really interested to see where you guys go, but I do want to encourage folks that, you know, maybe, you know, I know it's a little bit late at night, and so we're going to have this discussion and maybe what you might need is a good cup of coffee.

And if that is you right now, you want to make sure you get a good cup of Squirrelly Joe's Coffee.

And you could get that@restrivingforreturn.org Coffee.

Not only would you be getting yourself a great cup of coffee, but you'll also be supporting a Christian family at the same time.

And if you use the promo code SFE, I think you get either 20 off your first order or a first bag free.

I forget which he does.

But go to Squirrelly Joe's Coffee and remember, every time you reorder, do us a favor, go to striving for eternity.org Coffee when you are reordering so that they know that you found out about them from us here.

I do want to encourage you guys, if you wouldn't mind, go and order a lot of coffee like, like this month because we're going to be kind of a couple of us that are sponsored by Squirrelly Joes are going to be having a little bit of fun in our promotions.

You'll be seeing those on my Facebook and Twitter soon, but we're gonna have a little bit of fun, see who can, who can get do better promotion for Squirrelly Joes.

Also, you know, if you're a little bit bored, you know, well, not when these guys are talking, but when I'm talking, talking.

Well, if you're going to get bored, at least get yourself a good pillow to get a good night of sleep.

And you can go to mypillow.com use the promo code SFE stands for Striving Fraternity.

That gets you their great discounts.

And again, it lets them know that you heard about them from us.

So with that something you mentioned, John, that I have been watching really in, in the last several years, it's, it's even more so with this past election.

And that has been the rise of conservatives that are arguing for the need in America for Christianity.

Now you're seeing it from guys like Matt Walsh, from Michael Nol, and they are Roman Catholic.

And so what I'm seeing is that there seems to be a rise, they'll say of Christianity.

But really what it is, it's a rise of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

Both of those are, are on the rise where evangelical Christianity does not seem to be.

I have, I have my ideas on it, but let me just, I'll start with, with John and then, then Jeff and Dan if you want to, you know, if you have anything you want to add in.

Why do you think we're Seeing this, this, this rise.

What do you guys think in EO especially?

Well, Catholic, Roman Catholicism and eo.

Yeah, I mean, I've seen a little bit with Catholicism, I've seen a lot more with Eastern Orthodoxy.

But I do think actually evangelicalism, though is like, like Russell Brand, didn't he convert to a form of evangelicalism, if I'm not mistaken?

And n.

I think he is either EO or Roman Catholic.

I thought, okay, I thought he was Anglican and then he like, went to some other form.

But, but I know, like Nayla Ray, I think, who converted.

There's been a lot of, like, celebrity type conversions lately.

And guys just even reading the Bible for the first time.

Like, there's a lot of Bibles that were purchased last year and Tim Allen just said he's reading through the Bible and Tucker Carlson's reading through both for the first time.

It's just, it's odd.

There's a lot of celebrities.

But I think, I think with EO especially and Roman Catholicism, I guess to a lesser extent, what's happening with guys who especially are evangelicals going into these denominations is quest for the transcendent.

They feel like it's lost and left.

They have no rootedness in their tradition.

And evangelicalism invents itself, reinvents itself every 10 years.

What they really want is to walk past the graves of their ancestors or somebody's ancestors, walk into a building that looks like a church with a steeple, go inside, hear heavenly music that calls them to something higher than themselves.

I think they, they want to covenant with other people or at least like, have an accountability structure where other people are going to help them live their lives as they help others live their lives.

They want something that's traditional, that's something older than themselves, something that, you know, reflects the mystery of creation in the sense that, you know, they can't understand all of it.

And that's okay because God, God is bigger than that.

And evangelicalism doesn't offer that anymore.

They, they want, they don't want anything that looks like a church.

They want to get rid of their tradition.

They don't want you to think that, you know, they're insensitive or not inclusive.

And so everything is about tailored around your experience.

And they don't care about their experience as much.

They just want.

They like, they want to feel the way they feel when they go to the Grand Canyon.

Small, you know, not like everything's catering to them.

So that's my, my assumption.

What do you think, Jeff?

I would say that where we are.

Which is a heavily Roman Catholic area.

The participation in Roman Catholic churches has not spiked at all.

I don't see that happening.

We were out evangelizing today and ran across like half the people were Roman Catholic, but not as involved.

But we've had multiple people come to faith in recent weeks, and it's by the Word.

So it's the churches that preach the word, it's the Calvary chapels.

We have an assembly of God in our town here that's doing really well.

The, the Bible churches.

I don't see the liturgical churches and the high church movement here in South Jersey gaining momentum.

Maybe, maybe it has something to do with the celebrities or, you know, the, I don't know, a network of people that way.

Justin Bieber, though, he went with Hillsong.

Right.

So that's more of a charismatic kind of thing.

So I don't know, I just don't see a major resurgence in South Jersey where I, where I see people toward the Roman Catholic Church or towards Eastern Orthodoxy, but I see the Bible churches continuing to reach people.

Dan, I don't know if you have any thoughts on, on that.

The two words that came to mind immediately were tradition and structure.

And John already covered that, so he still did all that, you know, wonderfully.

So I don't have to say anything about it.

No.

But I do think, I think to what John had said earlier, I think I, I'm.

We.

Matt Slick and I have been discussing this for a while because we've been noticing this trend and, and what's behind it.

And I think a lot of what John said, you have, you had where people tried to take God out of society and it created a void because they know God, God exists and they've tried to fill that with everything else.

And I think now we're getting this.

The, the, the next was a Gen Z generation or whatever is, you know, voted more for Trump than, you know, than any, you know, they've never had young people voting, you know, for conservative.

And I think what it is is that, that, that this, this pivot they, they are looking for, you know, they want to, they want God.

They know that there's a need.

You're hearing it with some of the, you know, some of the, like I mentioned, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, they're arguing, even, even Ben Shapiro, who's Jewish, has been arguing for the need for church in society.

Right.

Because this is where we get truth from, and that's where the whole battle is.

And so I think what, in my opinion, I think that a lot of what it is is that they've been told.

You have A generation of people have been told God doesn't exist.

God doesn't exist.

And they're now rebelling against that thinking.

But they don't.

They're not coming to the true God.

They want.

They want the drapings of spirituality without the truths of repentance having a form.

Of godliness, but denying its power.

I think.

I think I've heard that somewhere before in like the Bible.

It's in a book I read somewhere.

Yeah, I had a book.

So let me see.

Calculus man is backstage.

I.

I didn't see he was backstage, but he.

He says it seems like he has son.

He wants to weigh in on this.

So.

Yeah, well, I guess maybe a little bit with the use during Orthodox Roman Catholic.

I guess I go with both John and Dan were saying that sort of thing.

I have nothing new to add there.

There's a.

A topic earlier that actually might.

That I wanted to discuss regarding.

I know Jeff, you mentioned that you were part of the fca.

Because I actually grew up in the fca, although in a different part of the country.

And I was curious.

I was wondering if you want open to talk about right now.

Sure, sure.

Before you get into that, can you clarify what the acronym is?

Evangelical Free Church of America.

Okay.

Yep.

So it's a church with.

That's Evangelical Free.

Yeah.

There's no even.

There's no evangelism in there.

I think, I think the free.

And you missed this in the beginning, but I think the free and.

And you guys could correct me.

I think the free is kind of more that they're more free and open to different theological positions.

Except for wearing a mask.

You know, when the government says to wear a mask, they're not that there's no freedom there.

No.

Yeah.

Long story short, I grew up in the efca.

More like Northern Plains, like Minnesota, North Dakota, that kind of part.

That part of the country.

And from my elementary school years all the way through like my post college years, there's an EFCA megachurch up in North Dakota that I grew up in after first.

At first there's a really good church and that sort of thing where the senior pastor we had was faithful to first B preaching, expositional preaching and that sort of thing.

But then he left and then the guys that were the pastor that replaced him were kind of like.

They're okay.

They weren't like heretics by any stretch of the imagination.

But then they.

They were the ones that adopted more Willow Creek stuff.

Those secret, sensitive.

And then eventually, like over a few years to a decade or so, they would end up going like very secret, sensitive, and that sort of thing, to the point where I.

To find a more biblically sound church as a result.

Yeah, yeah, That's a common story.

I have a friend out there in.

In the Midwest named Calvin Lindstrom.

Podcast.

He's a great guy, but he was confronting an EFCA church.

It might have been the Orchard, because they had someone in their congregation who went on to become the mayor of the town.

Okay.

When he got pressure to do the whole LGBTQ Pride Month in June.

Yeah.

He caved and he proclaimed the town.

You know, he proclaimed it Pride Month.

And so many of the conservatives came to the pastors and said, wait, this is a member at your church.

Somebody needs to say something to him.

Yeah.

And they refused.

They left that as kind of a freedom of conscience issue and let him remain as a member in good standing.

So Calvin Lindstrom and some good brothers challenged that.

But the free church just really is soft on things like that.

But they're very hard on Christian nationalists.

So, yeah, it's been a.

It's been a leftward drift over the years.

A lot of my friends who are trying to describe what we are trying to do have put it this way.

We just want to be what the free church used to be, you know, a conservative church that is a little bit more open towards differences between cessationists and continuationists and Calvinists and Armenians, you know.

Yeah.

And even my.

And the church I grew up in, that sort of thing.

The scene pastor we had, like, when my family first started going, she could, like, I think this has been.

This has been 20 plus years ago, but this North Carolina, they had like a state constitutional amendment to put like a one man, one woman in marriage, like in the state constitution.

And the senior pastor we had at that time, he was really solid, even at a point where he actually made the local secular news because of.

Because he took a biblical stance on marriage and that sort of thing.

And then.

And then he encouraged everyone in church to go around the neighborhoods to a position on the ballot.

And then eventually it passed and that sort of thing.

However, like a couple years after that point, he.

He went to a pastor, a different church within the fca.

And then not too long now, Class four, like a decade.

Like when the first Sunday after.

Or Burger fell, the pastor that was preaching the first Sunday after the Obergefell decision went.

Fell down.

That went down, that sort of thing.

Refused to talk Refused to talk about it even.

Not even a few sentences.

Saying what the Bible says is.

Because he didn't.

Yeah.

He didn't want to get political.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was really disappointing.

And less than or later I was in a different, more biblically sound church because of result.

I'm glad you got out of there because if they're not willing to say anything about abortion, anything about the Obergefell decision, and yet they're so often just pushing diversity, equity, inclusion and they have an entire office of, you know, multicultural diversity initiatives.

They had one guy named Alvin Sanders who wrote a book called Bridging the Diversity Gap.

Yeah.

They sent it to every free church pastor in the country.

1500 books sent out just to push this idea of diversity.

And yet on Obergefell they don't say anything.

They had drifted in that direction.

So I'm glad you got out.

When you're there.

I guess my question for you, at least since you and Jersey and that sort of thing, like when you were part of the FCA there, like what's.

Did you notice like a trend for towards doing the other churches doing the secret sensitive route or.

Yeah.

So here on the, in the Eastern District, we have a group of very conservative evangelical free pastors.

Some of them have left.

There's a few that are still in the free church, but it might not be long before they come out.

But I just saw forwarded to me an initiative that the guys down in Washington D.C.

area, Bill Rydell and Guy Kneebone and John Beagle, they're inviting Sam Albery to come and speak to their huddle group.

Sam Alberry is the guy from Revoice.

Yeah, they're charging full on in the same direction that they were going.

They haven't corrected course.

So yeah, there's, there's a lot of, a lot of the woke nonsense still going on from the main leaders of.

And that's the thing.

I think there's a big difference between your average EFCA pastor, maybe out in Des Moines, Iowa or out here in New Jersey.

There's a, there's a great brother out there in Ocean City, an EFCA guy, Pete Nelson and Mike Gerald in Philadelphia and the guy at Joy Community Church, Mark Savage.

Really conservative pastors.

I think they're, they're still, there are a lot of those.

They're not, they're not that rare in the FCA church, but the leadership has been taken over by a bunch of Ted's guys.

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, they have professors that push them to the left and when They've taken over.

They've also climbed up the denominational leadership, and with that, they've become much more authoritarian against the conservative guys.

And they've moved the conference, the whole movement to the left with the articles, because they have the blog, they have the national blog, and they.

They put out the articles, they have the conference, they have the district conferences.

And over time, that just has an eroding effect on.

On the past years.

That's true.

That's the other thing.

I know the FCA has like an entire, like, youth ministry as well.

Just a fun fact.

One of the guys I'm not sure if you heard of, like, Shane Stacy.

No.

Okay.

Yeah.

Years ago, he was actually the head of all the EFCA youth ministry, basically, that sort of thing.

He was actually.

He was my pastor, youth pastor for a bit, many years ago.

But do you know, like.

I know.

Do you know if the EFC's ministry has also been infiltrated by this stuff as well, or just more like the mainstream or like the.

The adult ministry stuff?

I think you'd see social justice in there.

They have a yearly conference, and I.

I think from what I've seen just watching some of the videos that come out from that, that.

Yeah, it would be infiltrated as well.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, fair point.

Yeah.

Yep.

All right.

Yeah, not necessarily the guy, you know.

You know, there's still plenty of faithful brothers in the efca.

For sure.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Yep.

Well, good.

Well, Calculus man, thanks for coming in.

It's good to meet you.

Yeah.

Yes.

All right.

So another question that we did have, and John, this was.

Came in prime.

More for you.

Brother John from up from Canada said question, is there any updates regarding David Platt?

And so this is probably referring.

You know, you had on your show some folks discussing a documentary that was done about David Platt.

Yeah, I was, I.

I did that.

My editor and I, I knew that.

But I didn't know if that was known publicly.

So I.

Yeah, when I had him on, I meant, you know, we were kind of like.

Yeah, I.

I conducted most of those interviews.

The guy who normally does a lot of the editing for my documentaries did a lot of the work on it.

And credit to those guys, though.

They were all brave.

And I mean, there.

It really.

It took a family or a couple in that church to really pull everyone else together.

And I've noticed in similar situations, which there have been many, if you don't have that really firm, steadfast person, everyone else just kind of goes their separate ways there never would have, you don't ever hear about it, there never would be a documentary.

But in this case you had some fighters and they, they decided they wanted to do this and I mean they, they really made it easy for us.

I mean they even, they funded it and everything.

They just really wanted to get the truth out there about David Platt.

And so I came down and thought it was kind of a grueling two days, but you know, we interviewed all the people in that documentary except one.

I think that they, they interviewed separately.

But yeah, at this point.

Well, before, before you get in, before you give the update, why don't you just, for folks who may not have watched, give a quick, real quick update of what the documentary is about, what it exposed, where people can find it and then give an update if you know of any, with, with David Platt.

Okay.

It's a two part documentary.

There's a lot in it.

So it exposes David Platt, the pastor of McLean Bible Church for a number of things, including lying to the church about affiliating with the sbc.

Their church wasn't supposed to affiliate.

They did, there's a lot of questions about money.

So that came out that David Platt, when he came in, when his guys were in charge because he basically replaced the elder board.

Over time they, they, they started doing some funny things, some funny accounting, we'll put it that way.

And, and so it talks about some of that, the financial secrecy and indiscretions.

It talks about even at the end, there's even like an abuse, cover up kind of thing that happens.

And I was hoping that would be more of the emphasis.

But you know, people who are part of that, who were willing to, to come forward understandably didn't want the attention.

And, and so it kind of became like a minor point in the story, but that was part of it as well.

There was just, I mean, I don't know, there's all kinds of things.

The way that they stripped the church of its identity, basically they got rid of so many of the programs and then brought in David Platt stuff and just use the church for, for David Platt's agenda.

And so it exposes him and makes him look really bad because he was really bad.

And during that week when we were dropping these videos, David Platt all of a sudden gets on Twitter and is like talking about how no one care about these overseas Christians that he's going to reach and he doesn't, that's out of character.

He's not normally doing that.

But all of a sudden he's doing that.

And he's, he reached out to a reporter.

Oh man.

Which outlet was it?

Because they talked about it publicly, it was actually more of a left leaning reporter I think, but with like Religion News Service or something.

And, and, and they're, they're like, that's weird.

Why is David Platt reaching out?

And it's like they were trying to do this sort of like damage control move and I don't think it worked.

I think they, they couldn't answer the accusations.

Right.

So they just were silent on that.

And, and so David Platt's just hoping that his institutional connections are going to kind of just save him.

So the Gospel Coalition is still keeping him at their conference and crosscon kept him at the conference.

But I talked to Rosaria Butterfield who was at crosscon and she's like, yeah, there was a lot of talk apparently in that, that she heard about.

She wasn't in the session, but she said she heard about like a lot of murmurs about David Platt at the, at crosscon.

And so, so this is kind of dogging him.

But I, the way I interpret it, I don't think he's going to go beyond where he's at.

He's kind of stuck.

But I think that the institutions that have platformed him aren't going to back down.

They're going to continue to platform him.

They can't admit that they made such a mistake this bad, which they did.

So that's the long and short of it.

There's really not much that has actually substance substantially changed.

Like it hasn't taken him out in the sense of like he's got to resign from McLean, but he had already, I think driven more than half the church away.

Like the church went from being this mega, like 15,000 people church to now it's like 6,000 or something.

So he's like the church is significantly shrunk and he's got an elder board that's pretty loyal to him.

So I just, I don't know that there's much of a way to get rid of him from his position.

But he's not going to be, I don't think, expanding into other directions.

Yeah, I would still consider 6000 a pretty big church.

But hey, I'm from New Jersey.

Yeah, I would too.

I just, I know that that was DC's church though.

That was like where if you were an evangelical, especially a Republican staffer working in DC, you went to McLean.

Yeah.

Oh, it's, it was a huge, I mean, because I, I would, you know, I would Drive past it quite often and it's a huge complex.

So, yeah, I, I've never been inside driven past it and.

But yeah, yeah, it's a sad story.

Yeah.

So again, I'll just, you know, we, what we wanted to do tonight was talk about truth.

The, the why it matters.

Talk about the.

The truth conference.

I'll put this up again for folks that want, you know, to contact Pastor Jeff over there at Cornerstone.

Cornerstonesj.org if you want to attend this conference.

Seriously, check it out.

I think that this is going to be a bit of a different conference with the way he's structuring this.

And if you haven't heard some of the speakers, you haven't heard John Harris preach before, you'll be in for a treat.

It'll be in direction enjoyable and I know he's going to disagree with that, but.

Oh, well, he's wrong.

So, so if you, if you listen to conversations matter, you've probably heard some of his sermons because he'll put them on there and so then you know exactly what I'm referring to.

So with that, you know, I just want to open it up to, to, you know, Jeff, John, you guys have anything you want to close out with?

Yeah, just a closing word to your listeners that if you've never heard Andrew preach, brother, you preach different than you speak on your podcast.

When you're preaching, man, you bring fire like you're.

Yeah, yeah.

So I would love for people to get a chance to hear you preach.

So therefore, if you didn't hear earlier, we're going to have Andrew take my slot the evening Saturday night, so you'll have a chance to preach then.

And I'm excited for that.

So, yeah, guys, sign up now.

The slots will go quick.

I think we can get as many as 225 in there and I think we will be sold out because so many of the cornerstone people are going to be coming anyway.

So.

And then with the pastors coming in, maybe they'll bring a few people.

So it's going to be a, it's going to be an exciting atmosphere.

It's going to be electric, so you don't want to miss it.

Sign up early.

John, any.

Anything you have, you have a couple of these conferences going on.

That truth script is, is doing.

So are there any others that if people can't make it to Jersey that they might want to.

I know you're coming out to fill to Pennsylvania.

You're gonna be coming down this way.

Christianity in the founding conference, which is kind of Like a, it's like a historical.

I don't know what term to use, but conference, for lack of a better term.

It's presentations on the different Protestant denominations that made America what it is.

And, and, and there's some special focuses on individual figures and move movements and so forth.

But I, I think I'm gonna try to.

I don't have a Methodist representing.

I've left out the Armenians.

I'm just going to be honest there.

I, I have a Presbyterian, I have an Anglican, I have a Baptist.

I have someone who's going to talk about the Puritans and the Congregationalists and.

Yeah, as far as like the Quakers and the Methodists and the Lutherans, we don't care.

But no, I, I'll try to like, kind of wrap that up and I mean, it's in Pennsylvania.

I really should talk about Quakers and Lutherans at least.

But yeah, it's gonna be fun and, you know, I should probably pull that up.

It's Christianity and the Founding.com, and I'm the.

April 25th through 27th.

That's when it is.

So it's pretty cheap.

Registrations, $30.

And there's a VIP dinner, 50 bucks if you can make it.

And it's, from what I understand, a beautiful area.

I don't know you guys who are closer there, maybe you've been to Sellin's Grove.

I only know, like, Lancaster, you know, that's the only place I've ever actually stayed in Pennsylvania.

So.

Yeah, and.

And then, yeah, there's a men's retreat later in the year.

I, I just haven't really.

It's.

It's gonna be on music.

So we have.

Tim Bushong's gonna be there.

He was a Christian recording artist for a little while.

And Danny Steinmeier and his, his dad, Mark Steinmeier are coming out.

He's on the board for True Script.

But Mark.

Mark's a very accomplished pianist and that's called music.

And masculinity.com actually musicandmasculinity.com and you can see a little more.

There's not much there right now, but there will be.

So, yeah, I would love to do more.

We'd love to.

To do a lot of conferences.

There's a lot of guys, including yourselves, that I'd love to see platformed more.

I'm realizing my bandwidth is very minimal.

Like, not actually I have bandwidth, it's just like it's going into all these things and Planet Conference is kind of challenging.

There's a lot.

Oh, yeah.

So yeah, I've done it for many years.

I know it is hard.

Yeah.

Especially when you add like VIP dinners and caterers and like it's, yeah, someone's got to film it.

So I used to think I could do all of that.

Like I'll just film it and do the slideshow for the music and be the emcee and speak and it's like I did that at the retreat for a few years.

Not a good idea.

Yeah.

Something gets lost, especially Andrew's speeches.

I'm like, oh, I didn't press record.

Yeah, well that probably was a good thing speech too.

I know you were kind of, you're like, seriously?

And I'm like, no, seriously.

I, I, I literally didn't.

So last year we had a guy actually come and that was his job.

Just film this.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

And I, I, if you do the, the men's retreat again, I will, I, I, let me know.

I definitely want to make it that, that was a great event.

Enjoyed the fellowship.

So I will, I will make sure to try to make it up there.

Yeah, like, you know, he comes every year so if he brings his sons, you can have a, you know, you can, you can beat his little kids.

Well, they're not so little anymore, but you, I mean Andrew was beating kids in games.

He was like, I'll just like during the free time, beat kids in chess, beat kids in mini golf.

I'll just make myself feel good if.

If they, if they beat me in chess, they earn it and they feel good.

My kids were, you know, my kids were glad if they could beat me at something because they knew they earned it.

It wasn't given to them, you know.

Beating up on kids then come out.

Yep.

So Dan, you got any speaking events coming up or anything happening?

Nothing public.

I have a, a youth retreat for my former church that I left during the Corona apocalypse.

I'm doing a youth retreat for them in a week.

Yeah.

And then, and then in August I am doing a, I've been called in to do what Tiny Heartbeat Ministries calls cult week.

And so they have, they have an internship during the summers and they have, they spend a week on the cults and so they have asked me to do a one hour session on denominations and then a two hour session on Roman Catholicism followed by a visit to, with they're going to sit down and talk with a Roman Catholic priest and have all the interns sit there and talk to him.

So, you know, it's, this is just God again kicking me way out of my comfort zone.

Well, I'm glad.

I'm glad that they admit that Roman Catholicism is a cult.

The Catholics hate that.

Does the priest know he's going to be at Culture Week?

I don't know what he.

I don't know what he knows.

I've got until August to prepare something.

For that of Shark Week.

Doesn't even know it.

Yeah, well, I will have to.

I'll have to send you, if you want, a bunch of copies of my book, what do they believe that, you know, you can have there on hand for folks?

So.

Yeah, so that's going to be.

Going to be really interesting.

God is, you know, couple.

You know, what is it?

Last year, God kicked me out of my comfort zone and had me do my first presentation on abortion.

But that was the best.

That was the best talk I have seen on the issue of abortion.

The way you had done that was outstanding.

Thank you.

And if folks, if folks are listening and want a good talk, seriously, folks want to get Dan out at your church to, to do that talk.

Talk on, on abortion, which he hates.

He'll hate that you have to do it, but he, he'd be happy to talk creation science, you know, presuppositional apologetics, those topics.

He'd love to have to have, you know, invite him out.

But you can contact us@restrivingforattorney.org Dan's one of our speakers and he's a guy I can promise almost everyone in your church will look up to at seven foot tall.

Yeah.

Wow.

There's.

There's not many.

A lot of bed in the morning.

I'm seven feet tall.

But it's all downhill after that.

You have a nice website.

Yeah, I'm looking at it.

Thank you.

I.

I've been building websites professionally since 1995.

That's when I built my first website.

Interesting questions.

Yeah.

And who is it that you stuffed in the.

On the basketball court that I didn't.

Well, I didn't stuff him, but I blocked his dunks.

That was Shaquille O'Neal.

That's.

Let's go.

That story is on my, on my personal website, the craft.net.

so there's a.

There's a section called Halftime where I keep my journals.

And you have to forgive the design of the website.

I haven't touched it in probably 30 years.

Wikipedia page.

Let me see here.

I have a Wikipedia page.

No, I don't.

I don't think so.

I'm.

I'm just kidding.

Don't do that.

I've.

I've had more than my share of 15 minutes of fame on.

On the interwebs and all that.

So according to Google, you are a public figure.

Oh, boy.

I was asked to write for Sports Illustrated.

You know, I played basketball professionally.

Yeah, I got in trouble.

I got in trouble when my teammates got in, got in at Northwestern, got busted for a gambling scandal.

And I said, well, everybody knew they were gambling.

And then.

So the Chicago.

I think it was the Chicago sometimes or the Tribune or like, oh, well, even the AD and the coaches and everybody knew that they were gambling.

Dan Craft said so.

And I was just like, that's not what I said.

Everybody like, it's.

Everybody in the locker room knew that they were gambling.

Right.

So, yeah, I have been.

I have been in the press more than I care to admit.

You just Google my name and I'm just all over the place.

I mean, yeah, I'm doing it now.

Talking about, talking about Amazon, my experiences at Amazon with the New York Times and.

Where do you live, Dan?

I live in the People's Republic of Washingtonistan.

Ah.

I was born in Washington, man.

I've been trying to move to actual America for about four and a half years now, but God just hasn't opened.

Given me the green light to go yet.

Well, at least you're not as bad as.

As Jeff.

I mean, he, he went from one communist country to another, like.

Yeah, yeah, I figure if I'm gonna move, it's gonna be.

It's gonna be to some place.

My wife says, you know, we could.

We could stop just shy of the border and stay in Washington, and the housing is a lot cheaper.

I said, there's a reason for that.

I said, when you're running a marathon, you don't stop 100 yards from the finish line and say, okay, I'm good.

You get across the line.

I'm not looking to move and stay under.

Stay in the People's Republic of Washington.

Not.

Not interested.

I want to get to actual America.

I want to cross the line.

Idaho.

You're shooting for Idaho?

Well, that's primarily because we have.

My in laws are in Vancouver, B.C.

and we want to stay somewhat close to them because they're rather advanced in age, so.

And yeah, and plus my son was.

My son is now actually graduating from New St.

Andrews College there in Moscow.

Okay, nice.

And so Greater Idaho is a chance.

Was that Greater Idaho movement?

No, probably not.

Yeah, the left, the leftists out here wouldn't.

Wouldn't stand for that.

Yeah, they break out their, their paper straws and try to stab us all to death.

Yeah.

I mean, it, it is something where, you know, when I moved from New Jersey to Pennsylvania and I called up the sheriff's department and I asked him, you know, just being from New Jersey, I'm like, what, what do I need to do to transfer my weapons?

Do I need to get permits in Pennsylvania?

And.

And he literally said, yeah, welcome to America.

Just bring your guns over the line.

I was like, okay.

I had some.

My, My son went out to celebrate a friend's birthday party.

He just moved out to.

Out to Pennsylvania.

And apparently they were at an outdoor gun range and they got themselves into a bit of trouble with the park ranger who was on a power trip because this guy, all the guys at the, at the range, including a couple former military guys, they got there and they were shooting in front of the, of the benches because behind the benches were sloped and they were all iced over, so there's nothing safer.

You know, nothing says safety quite like shooting, you know, rifles on, right?

Yeah.

So they stood in front of the benches and plus they had those, you know, those incredibly evil child killing 30 round magazines in their rifles because, you know, they're shooting ars.

And the Ranger came out there and, and read him the riot act and, and, and gave my, my buddy a ticket, basically a fine for shooting in front of the benches, despite the fact that it was way safer and you know, not, not limiting themselves to six rounds or whatever it was.

So it was just.

I was like, man, I thought, I thought Pennsylvania was.

Still had some sense of freedom.

I mean, as long as you stay away from Philadelphia.

I thought it was free, but man, somewhat.

Somewhat.

Yeah, I did, I did get in trouble some.

Somewhat.

Well, not really, but there was some.

There, there was some flack when we were in New Jersey shooting 30 round magazines fully automatic.

But, you know, the captain said we could, we got word on the range, we could go full auto in our M16s.

And so we did it.

But I heard there was flack given to the captain for allowing us to do that.

Hey, we got a train.

You got to train for what you really have, you know.

Well, there's a gun range just over the hill from where I live, probably about five miles away from here.

And it's, it's, it's.

It's really weird because it's a gun range nestled in the middle of a big, like it's in a valley and it's surrounded by residential neighborhoods.

So people move in knowing there's a gun range right there and then they start complaining because their gunshots it's so loud.

So the gun range had this, you know, they had this one round per second rule.

And so if you, if you exceed that, you know, of course they, they say you can't have any more than, you know, 10 rounds in your magazine or yada, yada.

And, you know, the neighbors will call the police.

Well, one time they had the, I think it was the National Guard out there practicing, and these guys had full auto weapons.

And they're like, well, these guys are military and, or the reserves or something.

And so they let them go.

They let them do what they needed to do.

And of course, course, the neighbor.

The phone lines just lit up and the neighbors were calling the police and gunshots.

And you, ma'am, you live next to a gun range.

What do you expect?

Well, this was, this was Fort Dix in New Jersey.

And, and people, people were calling, complaining because they heard full auto with I, I.

There's probably like three dozen of us, all of us just unleashing full auto.

And so.

Yeah.

Are you aware of what the job of the military is?

They're responsible for two things.

They kill people and they break stuff.

Right.

Right now they're just breaking stuff.

Yes.

Yeah.

One of the few times I enjoyed was we, I was, I, I used to shoot the 50 cal.

And there was one time where some of the trucks got backed up and we literally, Sergeant had said we got, you know, trucks were waiting for the trucks.

Me and the other guys had our 50 cows out and they were like, you guys got nothing to do for a couple hours till the trucks get here.

Have fun.

And so we just, we spent like three hours just loading up 50 cal.

And just blasting things.

There was an old tank.

We just destroyed that thing.

It was fun.

So one of, one of my late brother's platoon mates, they were involved in a firefight in Afghanistan.

And they're basically just shooting up at the hills.

They can't even even see the guys who are shooting at him.

Right?

So there's, there's a firefight and then everything calms down.

And the next thing you know, you hear this automatic.

I don't know what the, the designation is for the, the automatic grenade launcher.

So my brother was on the automatic grenade launcher, and he's just suddenly he just starts screaming at the top of his lungs and just launching like an entire box of grenades into the, into the hillside, right?

And he's just like.

And then when he gets done, he kind of ran out of grenades and he just kind of looks over sheepishly.

He's like, like, man, that looks like, I mean, aside from people shooting at you, I mean, that looks like it was so much fun.

Yeah.

Well, I want to, I want to thank you guys for coming on next week.

Let you guys know.

We will have a show next week, even if the website is still kind of acting up.

We will have Peter Hammond.

He's been on before the he has a ministry to video gamers, but he did an article about the virtual church and the need for meeting in a physical church.

There are still so many years after Covid, there are still churches that are meeting mostly virtually.

And so we're going to have that discussion discussion next week on the 27th.

We will not have a show.

I will be, I will be out.

My, my son is coming to town because we have a family wedding and he and I are going to be in New York City.

We got some plans there.

So there'll be no show on the 27th.

But next week we plan to be discussing whether people should worship virtually or in person.

And so until then, I want to thank the guys that came in be checking out John's podcast, Conversations that Matter.

It's an excellent podcast.

You will get a lot there.

You'll also get some of the some of the Churchman podcast, which he does.

He sometimes puts that on his Conversations that Matter.

Sometimes you get him having some folks explain their articles on truthscript.

So go and follow the that if you want to have Dan Kraft come to your church speaking on issues of creation science, presuppositional apologetics.

If you really want to challenge him, have him do his talk on abortion.

You won't regret that.

Contact us at striving for eternity.org and contact Jeff, especially if you want to come to the Truth Conference and be involved in the work that we've been talking about that he he is trying to do with the Truth Council.

It will be helpful if you are, especially if you're a pastor, to be involved in that.

And so until then, till next week, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

And we'll see you next time.