0:00
(upbeat music)
0:02
- This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
0:21
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:23
Let's get into it.
0:24
Our guys today, we got a special guest on the podcast.
0:26
His name is Tom Askel.
0:27
So he is an evangelical Christian pastor, author,
0:30
and the president of Founders Ministries
0:32
in the Institute of Public Theology.
0:33
He's also the senior pastor
0:35
of Grace Baptist Church in Florida
0:36
and the host of the Sword and the Trow podcast.
0:39
So I've been very excited to learn about him
0:41
and he kind of came on my radar in 2019.
0:43
And that's really one of the center points
0:45
of our discussion today.
0:46
And that's what's happened inside
0:47
of the Southern Baptist Convention.
0:49
So I've gotten a lot of emails and a lot of DMs
0:51
over the last couple of years, basically since 2019.
0:54
Like Kyle, why aren't you talking about
0:55
what's happening in the SBC?
0:56
Like do you just not go to an SBC church?
0:58
Do you not care about this?
0:59
Why won't you talk about it?
1:00
And part of it was because there's so many layers
1:03
to what's going on inside the Southern Baptist Convention
1:06
that I didn't feel equipped or comfortable
1:09
with the information that I was finding online
1:10
and this hearsay type stuff
1:12
to talk about it confidently on the show.
1:14
So that's one of the reasons that I wanted to get Tom
1:16
on the show because he was in the middle of everything
1:19
that was going on with really the last several decades
1:22
of the SBC, but especially the last few years.
1:24
When we get into resolution nine,
1:25
I was passed in 2019.
1:27
What he and Vodie Bockham were trying to do this year
1:30
at the SBC National Convention to try to counteract that.
1:33
But there's a lot of these post-modern
1:35
kind of humanist ideologies that are kind of taking hold
1:39
with some of the most prominent people inside of the SBC.
1:42
And so we talk about that.
1:43
We talk about if he thinks the SBC will eventually disband
1:46
or split.
1:47
We get into some other subject matters,
1:48
but the other big thing that we talked about
1:50
is Christian nationalism.
1:51
So that's another topic that's very, very big
1:54
that a lot of people have asked me about.
1:55
That I haven't spoken about explicitly at length
1:57
about on this particular show, but we get into that.
2:00
Like should we embrace that label?
2:01
What does that label even mean?
2:03
When people say, "Hey, we didn't even have a Christian founding,"
2:05
or, you know, all Western countries are essentially the same.
2:07
How do you respond to that?
2:08
But then we also towards the end of the podcast,
2:10
we talk about masculinity and manhood inside the church.
2:13
We talk about the liberalization of seminaries.
2:16
What can be done about that?
2:17
We didn't have all the time in the world today.
2:19
So I know there's some follow-ups out there
2:20
that you guys would have surely wanted me to ask,
2:22
but I just kind of had to move on
2:23
and kind of keep the ball rolling.
2:24
But I really, really enjoyed my time with Tom.
2:26
So without further ado, let's get into it.
2:29
- Tom Askel, welcome to "Don't To Life A Man's Podcast."
2:32
- Well, thanks Kyle, glad to be with you.
2:35
- I told you all fair, I've been looking forward
2:36
to this one for a while because there's a couple
2:37
of big topics I want to get into today.
2:39
But for those that don't know,
2:41
you obviously I talked about you a little bit
2:42
in the introduction, so I kind of gave your background.
2:44
But give me the SparkNotes version
2:46
about how you became a professional Christian.
2:48
'Cause I'm assuming when you were just a little tight,
2:50
maybe you wanted to be a, you know, in the army
2:53
or be a major league baseball player or something like that,
2:55
you probably didn't think you would be doing
2:56
what you're doing now, so how'd all that go down?
2:58
- Yeah, well, I was raised by a godly mother
3:01
and a troubled family and she was a praying woman
3:05
and I'm the youngest of six, all six of us came to Christ.
3:09
And there's some that are in heaven now,
3:12
but the rest of us are persevering in faith
3:15
at this stage of our lives.
3:17
It's a testimony of God's grace.
3:18
I wanted to be a lawyer, but God determined
3:21
that he was going to make me a special example
3:25
and trophy of just how sovereign and powerful
3:28
who grace is.
3:29
- There you go.
3:30
- He saved me and yeah, so it's an incredible thing
3:34
for me to stop and think about.
3:36
I should probably be in prison for axe murdering,
3:40
but God stopped me and rested me and brought me to himself.
3:44
- And you've been a pastor for a very, very long time.
3:46
Senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church there in Florida.
3:50
Podcasts, hosts, written books helped out
3:51
with a bunch of other things,
3:53
but probably the most prominent thing
3:55
and one of the things I want to talk with you
3:56
the most about in the past year or two
3:59
is what's been going on at the Southern Baptist Convention
4:01
or the SBC.
4:03
And there are so, there's so much detail in this Tom
4:07
that I've neglected to talk about it on my show
4:10
when I've done my solo episodes
4:11
because I'm like, this is seemingly too complicated.
4:14
Not everybody that listens to SBC
4:15
or even cares about the SBC,
4:17
but if you could, 'cause we're gonna get into, you know,
4:19
resolution nine and you know, kind of what you and Vodie did
4:23
and all that, but can you just give us an overview
4:25
of the issues that have come up with the SBC
4:28
over the last few years and then, you know,
4:29
we'll start digging into what you were trying to do
4:31
to counteract them.
4:33
- Yeah, well, the Southern Baptist Convention
4:35
is not like other denominations
4:38
that your listeners may be familiar with
4:41
because we're not a church.
4:44
People will make a mistake
4:45
and talk about the Southern Baptist Church.
4:47
Well, there is no the Southern Baptist Church.
4:50
It is a convention or an association of churches,
4:53
47 and 1,000 to 50,000, something like that,
4:56
throughout the United States.
4:58
It's the largest Protestant denomination in North America,
5:01
but every church is autonomous.
5:03
Every church is independent.
5:05
And so the SBC has no controlling say
5:09
over any local church.
5:12
And that makes it unique in the broad landscape
5:17
of Protestant denominations in the world, actually.
5:21
But that's just, that's what it means to be Baptist.
5:24
The Baptist Church is always independent and autonomous.
5:27
So because of that, we cooperate as we see fit
5:31
and we do that voluntarily.
5:33
So there's no coercion, there's no requirements.
5:35
Oh, you know, you've got to tow the line here.
5:38
You've got to do this.
5:40
The SBC is autonomous as well.
5:42
And so they can remove churches and say,
5:45
we're not going to have you go to part of this association.
5:48
But they cannot in any way try to dictate
5:52
to a Baptist Church what it must do.
5:56
Obviously, you deny the lordship of Christ
5:59
or you deny certain specific things
6:01
that Southern Baptist becomes sensitive to over the years,
6:04
then they're not going to let you stay in the association.
6:07
So because of that, because of that,
6:10
there's always hope for reformation
6:12
because it's independent churches.
6:14
It's not like, oh my, you know, the PCUSA
6:18
or the United Methodist Church.
6:20
We've seen all that's happened to them the last few years
6:22
where once Rot takes hold and apostasy
6:27
is at the highest levels,
6:30
there's nothing that local churches can really do about that.
6:33
Well, the churches that are members of the SBC
6:36
have all of the opportunity to make changes.
6:40
But what's happened over the last 20 or 30 years or so,
6:44
the SBC went through a big battle
6:46
back on the late part of the 20th century, 80s and 90s.
6:50
I mean, there were a lot of hard fought conventions,
6:54
annual meetings where we fought for the affirmation
6:59
of the inerrancy and the full authority of God's word.
7:02
And by God's grace, that happened.
7:03
And so we had our seminaries and our entities
7:07
that we own that represent us,
7:09
all pretty much cleaned out of liberalism.
7:11
So praise God for that.
7:12
Well, then conservatives went to sleep
7:14
and they just trusted our leaders.
7:16
And what happened is too many of our leaders
7:19
began to be influenced by the culture
7:22
and intimidated by the culture.
7:24
When the culture came in and began to say,
7:26
well, this is what love is
7:27
and this is how you must show your respect
7:32
for people that are different from you.
7:34
And this is what is racism and this is what is misogyny
7:37
and how dare you do anything that would look like that.
7:40
And this is what it means to be submissive
7:43
to governing authorities.
7:45
Well, those things were going on for a long time,
7:48
but 2018, 1920 just pulled the curtain back
7:53
so that even those who were living in denial
7:57
could no longer honestly admit
7:59
that we have not been played by the culture.
8:03
And sadly, our leaders in the SBC failed,
8:06
almost without exception, they failed.
8:10
Even the good guys, my friends and I love,
8:12
they failed in their leadership
8:14
because they led their institutions and agencies
8:17
to pretty well comply with, go along
8:20
with these cultural ideologies
8:22
and the new wins that were blowing.
8:24
And that's a grievous thing to me
8:26
because I think it's a lack of courage.
8:29
I think it's a, they did not have the courage
8:33
of their convictions.
8:33
Some of them I think really privately believe this.
8:36
I told them, tell me that.
8:37
You'll privately, we're with you.
8:38
But publicly, they refused to take a stand
8:41
and it has gotten us in a mess.
8:43
And it matters, Kyle, because the SBC owns six seminaries,
8:48
it owns the largest traditional Indian agency,
8:52
I think in the world, certainly North America
8:54
and a home missionary agency as well
8:57
in church planning network
8:58
called the North American Mission Board.
9:00
So the SBC matters and it's either gonna matter for good
9:03
or it's gonna matter for ill.
9:05
And my great fear is that we're on a downgrade
9:08
and unless God grants repentance
9:11
and real reformation and revival,
9:12
we're gonna see a lot of bad things continue to happen
9:15
and be exacerbated in the years to come.
9:18
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9:48
- Tom, there's so many tendrils that come off of that
9:50
that I wanna talk about and hopefully we have time to do it.
9:52
But to kind of keep this moving a little bit specifically,
9:55
you came on my radar in 2019
9:58
because of all the hubbub with Resolution 9.
10:01
And so Resolution 9 feels like to me for someone
10:04
that hasn't spent my whole life in the SBC
10:06
or studying the SBC or any of those things.
10:08
That felt like a turning point, not just for the SBC,
10:12
but for Christendom in the United States.
10:13
And I'm trying not to be hyperbolic as I say that,
10:16
but if you could, please give us a rundown
10:18
of what Resolution 9 was kind of your response to it
10:22
and then kind of what ended up happening with it.
10:25
- Yeah, well Resolution 9 came up.
10:28
Southern Baptist have an annual meeting every year in June
10:31
and it usually goes for like a day and a half
10:34
or two days or so.
10:35
Well, in the last session and the last closing minutes
10:39
of the last session of our 2019 convention,
10:43
there was a resolution introduced by the resolutions committee
10:47
and it was certainly done indelicately
10:51
and you might even say deceitfully,
10:53
a lot of accusations have flown about that
10:55
regardless of the motivations.
10:57
There was an attempt to get Southern Baptist on record
11:01
and it was successful, they did affirming critical race theory
11:05
and intersectionality as useful analytical tools
11:09
that Christians can take up and help them
11:12
minister the gospel of God's grace.
11:14
Now, nobody was talking about CRT or intersectionality
11:18
on a broad scale in the SBC before that.
11:20
I was alert to it because of some other things
11:22
that had happened in the previous couple of years
11:24
and I'd gone to school, I tried to learn about it
11:26
because I saw this creeping in at different places.
11:30
But I guarantee you that no more than 10%
11:33
if that many of the messengers from our churches
11:36
that were still left in the room at the close
11:39
of that convention probably had even heard
11:42
of intersectionality and critical race theory.
11:45
Certainly didn't understand.
11:46
I've had people that voted for that resolution come up
11:50
to me and tell me, I didn't really know
11:52
what I was voting for, I'd never heard of these things.
11:54
I just trusted the platform, I trusted the people in charge,
11:58
the leaders who recommended that we ought to approve this.
12:02
And so I and a few others, we found out about it,
12:06
we offered some amendments, we tried to fight it,
12:08
tried to do whatever we could to get something about it,
12:10
it's not to go on record affirming these things,
12:13
but we failed in that attempt.
12:15
But with the failure, I think God used the failure,
12:18
our failure in even a more dramatic way
12:21
than perhaps he would have had we been successful
12:23
because it caused people to stand up and say,
12:26
wait a minute, wait a minute, what just happened there?
12:27
What's going on?
12:28
And we produced a documentary that came out of that
12:31
by what standard that, I don't know,
12:34
has been seen hundreds of thousands of times in that way.
12:36
So God overruled it and is overruling it for good,
12:39
but boy, it was a real commentary on how bad off we are.
12:43
- Well, and to be honest, Tom, you know,
12:45
most people don't scroll through their newsfeed
12:48
and see anything about the SBC.
12:50
But in 2019, that was different because all of a sudden,
12:53
a lot of people that never talked about this
12:55
were talking about it.
12:55
It's like, okay, something's happening here
12:57
and it's not because there's a slow news cycle.
12:59
Again, that's still in the thick of Donald Trump's presidency.
13:01
So every time he sneezed or farted,
13:03
it became headline news or something like that.
13:06
But you know, you didn't just sit by and be like,
13:08
oh, gosh darn it, all shucks.
13:11
I guess that's just what's going to happen now.
13:13
You and the lion, Vody Bockham,
13:15
tried to do something about it
13:17
during this year's SBC National Convention.
13:20
So what did you try to do?
13:22
Because I was a fan of this and I was trying
13:24
to get both of y'all on the show before it happened
13:26
and we couldn't quite work it out.
13:27
But what did y'all try to do and what was the outcome?
13:30
- Yeah, well, in 2020, the convention didn't meet
13:33
and I was prepared to offer every parliamentary maneuver
13:38
I could come up with that would be legitimate
13:40
to try to get us to rescind that resolution
13:43
that we adopted in 2019.
13:44
Of course, COVID shut down everything so we didn't meet.
13:46
So 2021 rolled around and there was talk about doing that.
13:51
We actually put together a resolution
13:54
that had over 1,300 signatures on it.
13:57
Unprecedented in the history of the SBC
14:01
and the resolutions committee rejected it.
14:03
Wouldn't even bring it out.
14:04
Wouldn't let it be discussed or debated
14:07
by the messengers that showed up
14:08
and a lot of messengers showed up
14:10
specifically to vote for that resolution.
14:12
It was atrocious.
14:12
Again, failed leadership, failed leadership.
14:16
We heard from the resolutions chairman in 2021
14:19
the world is watching, the world is watching.
14:21
We heard that all the time.
14:22
It's like, okay, we don't want to do anything
14:24
that's going to make people think ill of us.
14:27
We want to be nice.
14:29
We want to be seen as kind
14:30
rather than actually in my estimation,
14:32
being kind and being loving,
14:34
which always goes with telling the truth.
14:37
So out of that, I've had people for years
14:40
say, hey, we want you to run for president of the SBC
14:42
and I have my standard answers.
14:44
I'd rather be beaten with a bag of ponies.
14:46
(laughing)
14:47
Oh, pastor, I love the church.
14:49
I pastor here in Cape Coral, Florida.
14:52
It's what God's called me to do.
14:54
Our church is Southern Baptist,
14:56
but that's not our identity.
14:57
I think we're the best kind of Southern Baptist church
14:59
and that is the kind that doesn't think,
15:01
oh, good night, the SBC is the be-all-end-all
15:03
and the King of God.
15:05
I mean, it's not.
15:05
It's useful.
15:06
It's done some wonderful things.
15:08
It's got tremendous potential for good or for bad.
15:11
And so we have participated on that basis.
15:13
But finally, there were people that convinced me,
15:17
convinced our elders here at the church
15:20
that sat down with them and said, hey, listen,
15:23
here's why we think you guys ought to be willing
15:25
to let Tom do this.
15:26
So the elders bought it.
15:27
In fact, the elders in the course of a week
15:30
went from no, no way to, yeah, we believe this is God's will.
15:35
And an interesting kind of twist to this is, man,
15:38
I was ragging Vodie pretty hard and saying, brother,
15:42
we see these problems and why don't you let your name
15:45
be submitted and he's just, no, absolutely not.
15:49
That's crazy.
15:50
And then he'll begin to acquiesce, you know?
15:53
He said, you know, maybe, maybe we'll and he was ready to do it.
15:57
And we discovered that he couldn't do it
15:59
because he's a missionary over and joined, rightly,
16:04
joined a church where he is in Lusaka.
16:06
And so he didn't have the credentials
16:08
to actually be president of the SBC.
16:11
But there's a pastor's conference that meets every year
16:14
before the SBC and you don't have to be.
16:18
There's no real bylaws for that organization.
16:20
So Vodie could be nominated to be president
16:23
of the pastor's conference.
16:24
So what Vodie said was, he said, no, you know,
16:26
I can't do it, but Tom, you're the one
16:28
that persuaded me, you do it.
16:29
And so Vodie's voice was added to these others
16:31
and our church, we love Vodie.
16:34
We have a great relationship.
16:35
Go to back a long time.
16:36
So anyway, basically we said to each other,
16:39
I will, if you will, and we agreed to do that
16:43
with the only reason is to attempt to take this organization
16:48
that is not going away and to try to see it begin
16:53
to make recovery from the retrograde,
16:56
the downgrade that it has been on now for many years.
17:00
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17:28
- So you did that and just to kind of go toward the end there,
17:33
didn't work, neither one of y'all were accepted
17:36
into those positions.
17:37
I don't know, was it ever actually close or in question?
17:40
Because I remember like crossing my fingers,
17:42
hope you know, sending prayers towards Anaheim,
17:44
like that this would happen.
17:45
- What was the kind of the final tally
17:47
were you all ever really close in the running?
17:48
- No, I can't remember.
17:49
I think I got, I don't know, like 30% or 35%.
17:52
I don't remember.
17:53
And Vodie, I don't remember his either.
17:55
But there was just the whole SBC machinery
17:59
came out against this.
18:02
They thought it was unfair for Vodie
18:04
as somebody living in Zambia
18:06
to even want to be president of the pastor's conference.
18:08
And, you know, I mean, there were all kind of things
18:11
that about me, I mean, it's just stuff a lot true.
18:15
And some of the stuff was just made up.
18:19
- Well, Tom, it feels like anytime the machine
18:23
puts all of its ire towards one person,
18:25
I usually start paying attention to that person more, right?
18:28
Because the entire, you know, we already mentioned
18:29
Trump in this podcast, the entire political machine
18:32
gave all of the attention and, you know,
18:34
took all the oxygen out of the room starting in 2016.
18:37
And that just kept going.
18:38
And it's still going on today.
18:39
Like there's so many news, you know, agencies are like,
18:42
"Oh, thank God he's running for president."
18:43
And again, and he announced like 17 years
18:45
before the next election.
18:46
This is going to be great for ratings.
18:47
But, you know, to kind of get up
18:49
and we have so many other things I want to talk about today.
18:50
So we'll kind of put a bow on the SBC stuff
18:52
with this question.
18:54
Do you think, and I know you're not going to prophesy this,
18:57
but like, do you think that the SBC
18:59
will eventually disband entirely
19:02
or maybe more likely have a split
19:04
where there is a legitimate schism
19:06
where here are the people that believe this
19:08
and here are the people that believe that.
19:10
Here are the people that want to make sure
19:11
that we have critical race theory
19:12
and all these other whatever isms
19:14
that we can use as a lens through which to view the world
19:17
and all that nonsense versus the other people that are like,
19:19
well, we have the inherent word of God here.
19:21
So let's go to this and let's operate according to this.
19:24
How do you see the future of the SBC shaking out?
19:26
- Yeah, well, I tell you what's already happening
19:28
is that churches are leading.
19:30
We've seen a mass amount of churches, massive amount
19:35
that have just begun to leave over the last few years
19:37
after what happened in Anaheim
19:39
and the way that it happened.
19:41
I got contacted.
19:41
I don't know how many people pass your same brother.
19:44
We can't take this, what they did to you and Vodie
19:46
and how that shook it down.
19:48
What was happening on the floor at the convention.
19:50
We're gone, we're gone.
19:52
And I get it.
19:53
I don't try to talk people into staying in the SBC.
19:55
I understand it.
19:56
You got to be willing to fight.
19:57
You got to be willing to see a big picture
19:59
and take a stand and there comes a point in time
20:02
where churches say it's not worth our time and energy.
20:05
I get it.
20:06
So I think that's what's going to happen.
20:07
I don't think we're going to see a split.
20:09
But do I believe it can be recovered?
20:12
Yeah, I certainly do because we have a God
20:15
who raises people from the dead.
20:17
And if I didn't believe that, you know,
20:20
well, I would certainly get out.
20:22
I don't know if he doesn't need the SBC.
20:25
So, you know, the SBC can just carry on
20:29
and do even worse and become horrible in multiple ways.
20:33
And God's kingdom is not going to miss a beat.
20:36
So I don't know what the Lord's going to do.
20:38
Every church is going to have to determine
20:39
their own sense of stewardship about that.
20:41
I don't think it will split.
20:43
I think what will happen is if there's recovery,
20:47
I hope it'll be a wise recovery
20:49
and a humbled and chastened recovery
20:51
starts that we don't go to sleep.
20:53
And we try to see things done well
20:57
and safeguards put up against the ideologies of the world.
21:01
But if that happens, it's going to be miserable.
21:03
It's going to be hard because I really think the SBC,
21:06
I've been told this by insiders,
21:09
well-trained lawyers have told me this,
21:11
the SBC will be sued into oblivion
21:15
by a lot of what's going on today
21:17
in the whole Me Too movement stuff.
21:19
So I don't know if it'll happen or not.
21:21
Yeah, we'll see.
21:22
But I think you said the key thing there, Tom,
21:23
which is that God doesn't need the SBC.
21:25
And I think that's a good reminder for everybody
21:27
that thinks God needs the fill in the blank.
21:29
God doesn't need the Republican party.
21:31
God doesn't need your church or your specific pastor
21:34
to do the things that he wants to do
21:35
and to accomplish the works
21:36
that he wants to accomplish on this planet.
21:38
But as I promised, we'll go ahead and wrap up the SBC stuff there
21:41
'cause there's other stuff to get into.
21:42
So early next year in January,
21:44
you've got your 2023 National Founders Conference.
21:47
I believe it's sold out as of the recording of this podcast.
21:50
So congratulations on that.
21:51
It's called What is a Man?
21:52
So you're speaking, Bodie, Bach, and Paul washer,
21:55
a lot of guys that we're fans of on this show
21:57
and certainly our fans are fans of them as well.
22:00
So I wanna talk about the pre-conference here in a second,
22:03
but if you would kind of give us an idea
22:05
of what this conference,
22:07
the National Founders Conference of 2023 is about,
22:09
what do you hope to accomplish with it?
22:11
- Yeah, well, we set this theme and agenda a couple years ago
22:16
and again, God was very kind to make it almost prophetic
22:20
and certainly timely because now we've got a Supreme Court
22:24
justice who says you can't tell us what a woman was.
22:27
- Yeah, that's just kind of a public again in your face.
22:31
- Well, Tom, Tom, she's not a biologist.
22:34
I mean, come on, how could she possibly answer
22:36
without the credentials, you know?
22:38
- I know, we're just, our society is so drunk
22:42
on postmodernism and evil and wickedness
22:47
and rather than standing firm and declaring no,
22:51
there is a clear definition of man and woman
22:55
because the God who created this world created men
22:58
and women, the church has kind of gone silent
23:01
and we've had people like JD Greer and Ed Litten
23:03
and others that we need to use pronoun hospitality.
23:06
So, you know, somebody tells you they wanna,
23:08
you call him he or her or she or Z or whatever,
23:11
then, you know, be hospitable, be loving.
23:13
- Forget about truth and all that nonsense.
23:15
We don't need any of that.
23:17
- That's why, I mean, you don't love people
23:18
if you lie to them.
23:19
If you participate in their lives, you're not loving them.
23:22
So we've just been played, man.
23:24
We got so much confusion and biblical infidelity
23:29
in certain sectors of the Christian church
23:33
that you can no longer assume that we all
23:37
will answer the question the same way
23:38
when you ask what is a man.
23:40
And so that's what we're doing.
23:41
We're gonna deal with biblical anthropology
23:43
and we're gonna go hard after it
23:45
from Genesis all the way through.
23:46
This is what God says, both about male and femaleness
23:52
because he created us male and female,
23:54
but also about creatureliness and the fact
23:57
that we are not God, that we are here for God.
24:01
He created us for himself, by himself.
24:03
This is his show.
24:05
He has given us a place in his show
24:07
and our responsibility is to fulfill that place.
24:11
We are to do what he's called us to do
24:13
as creatures made in his image.
24:15
And those of us who are redeemed should know that
24:18
and learn it better and communicate it
24:20
and call all creatures made in his image to repentance
24:23
because they've rebelled against their creator
24:25
and they need what only he has provided in Jesus Christ.
24:29
So it's timely, the men who are coming
24:33
are just rock stars in my estimation
24:36
in terms of their ability to handle the Bible
24:38
and seeing these issues clearly.
24:40
So I'm looking forward to it.
24:41
I think I don't know anything that we could have done
24:43
that would have been more timely.
24:45
- So I would agree with that.
24:47
And I'm trying not to blow up my own interview here
24:48
because I keep saying there's a lot of stuff
24:49
I wanna cover and I'm looking at the clock here.
24:51
But you mentioned a word that is like,
24:53
it's become a buzzword and that's love, right?
24:56
How do we love people?
24:57
So you specifically talk about the pronoun thing.
24:59
I've asked people before that are Bible-believing Christians,
25:02
they believe in the resurrection,
25:03
all the different things that will use pronouns
25:06
that they know do not align with somebody's biological sex
25:10
that God gave to them as a gift
25:11
because they don't wanna be non-hospital
25:14
or inhospitable, they wanna be nice,
25:16
they don't wanna be needlessly offensive.
25:18
But I think with everything, whether you're LGBTQ affirming,
25:22
whether you're trans affirming,
25:23
whether you're complimentary in your heart
25:25
by egalitarian in public or something like that,
25:28
everybody has this very warped sense of what love is.
25:31
And they think apparently that love is saying,
25:34
all the sinning you're doing, no big deal, because love,
25:37
because the overarching thing for everybody is love.
25:41
I actually wanna read this
25:42
because I've already talked about this on my show,
25:43
but you probably saw this online.
25:45
This was a tweet by Dr. Kevin M. Young.
25:49
He's a faculty member at Northwind Seminary,
25:51
so we'll talk about the liberalization of seminaries,
25:53
but literally I'll read this
25:55
and then I wanna get your thoughts on love
25:57
and how we love people.
25:58
I've been chewing on this response to my tweet.
26:00
I've realized that, for me,
26:02
gay marriage actually paints
26:04
a more beautiful semiotic of Christ and his church
26:08
than a mere hetero one, a mere hetero one.
26:12
God's kingdom is diverse in makeup,
26:14
experiencing belief, but one thing unites above all, love.
26:19
Okay, so you got Jack Waggins like this out there
26:21
saying things and you got all these morons online
26:23
that are like, yeah, yeah, sounds plausible.
26:26
Yeah, that actually seems to make sense
26:27
because God is a God of love.
26:29
Obviously, he's certainly not a God of love.
26:31
Oh, you know, wrath, you know,
26:32
there's only the Lamb of God, the Lion of Judas too scary.
26:34
We don't wanna talk about him.
26:36
So I know I just went on my own little tangent there.
26:38
So save me, talk to me about love, Tom.
26:41
Yeah, well, that statement is heretical blasphemous.
26:45
This guy should not, I mean, if he's a Christian,
26:49
he is so bad off, he needs to just resign
26:51
from every position he has and have some life.
26:53
He's a professional pastor.
26:54
He's a faculty member at a seminary
26:57
that apparently exists in real life.
26:59
So there you go.
27:00
Again, this is an indication.
27:03
That's another indication of how far we have been overrun
27:07
by the culture and I mean, it's not love to lie to people.
27:12
Love, 1 Corinthians 13 says, "Rejoices in truth."
27:18
Reform is in truth.
27:19
Well, there's no truth in telling a man he's a woman
27:22
or using a pronoun that would make him feel good
27:25
because he wants to be a woman and thinks he is a woman.
27:28
Whatever the level of dysphoria there might be there.
27:31
What's happened, Kyle, is in our churches,
27:33
we have substituted neighbor love,
27:36
which Jesus tells us we must have for neighbor nice.
27:40
And we think it can just be nice to people
27:43
that that's being loving.
27:44
Well, I'll tell you what, I would rather be thought mean
27:48
while being loving than to be thought loving
27:50
while being unkind and harsh and brutal to people
27:54
because you're sending them to hell
27:56
with all kinds of nice feelings about them.
27:59
Neighbor nice.
28:01
That may be what I end up calling this episode.
28:03
We'll figure it out towards Ian here,
28:05
but I absolutely agree with that.
28:06
Like, where did we get this idea
28:08
that the overwhelming ethic of this world is politeness?
28:11
Because there are some things,
28:12
if you read the gospel accounts
28:14
and you look at what Jesus did,
28:15
and we have evidence to suggest
28:16
that Jesus didn't clear the temple once he did it twice.
28:18
Once at the beginning of his ministry
28:19
and once at the end of his ministry.
28:21
And then he got these morons out there that are saying,
28:22
I'm like, well, Jesus did that.
28:24
He didn't give the apostles the ability to do that.
28:26
It's like, wait a minute.
28:28
Now you're going against this whole idea
28:30
that we should be Christ-like.
28:31
So we're just reading the gospels
28:33
as an allegorical representation
28:36
of what a Middle Eastern Jew did 2,000 years ago.
28:38
Is that what we've reduced the New Testament to?
28:41
Or should that be an actual roadmap
28:43
to our own godliness and our own Christ-likeness as it were?
28:47
So again, you're going to make me mad
28:48
if we keep talking about it.
28:49
So we need to get to something else
28:50
so that we can calm ourselves down.
28:52
I want to talk about Christian nationalism.
28:54
So everybody on the planet,
28:56
regardless of their background,
28:58
regardless of their persuasion,
28:59
has a very strong moronic opinion
29:02
about what Christian nationalism is.
29:03
And for me, people see it as like,
29:07
okay, if you embrace so-called Christian nationalism,
29:10
you're basically a brown shirt.
29:11
You're walking around in your jack boots,
29:13
kicking down doors and pulling black people
29:15
and homosexuals and Jews out and shooting them in the streets.
29:18
It's like, where did this come from?
29:20
Why do we have this new category
29:23
with the word Christian?
29:24
And that we're supposed to lump all the people in it
29:26
that we don't like Republicans and conservatives
29:28
and people that read the Bible and stuff like that.
29:30
But you have a, before the Founders Conference on January 19th
29:34
and through the 22nd,
29:35
I think you and Vodia are doing a pre-conference
29:38
where you're discussing Christian nationalism.
29:40
So if you could,
29:42
give me a fair middle of the road definition
29:46
of what people define Christian nationalism to be.
29:49
But then let's dig into it because,
29:50
I mean, I know a lot of Christians
29:52
that are very wary about Christian nationalism
29:54
and they're very worried
29:55
and they don't see the benefits
29:58
to saying you're a Christian nationalist.
29:59
And we're just now starting to get some books
30:01
and some really in-depth blogs
30:03
that really dig into the subject.
30:04
But I think that the left side of the Christian aisle
30:07
and the left side of the world has defined what this term is.
30:10
And now Christians are kind of caught flat-footed.
30:12
Like, no, no, no, no, it actually means this.
30:14
So help us out.
30:15
- Yeah, well, I wish I could.
30:17
It's a plastic word.
30:19
I'm Stephen Bull's book Case for Christian Nationalism.
30:21
He makes that case.
30:23
And it's an area that is obviously being recovered,
30:27
I think, in response to what we're seeing going on
30:30
in our culture, in our nation, in Western nations.
30:33
And so that's good.
30:35
I'm grateful for that.
30:37
But it's what the word means,
30:39
what the definition of the term is,
30:41
and then how it's used.
30:43
And what you just said,
30:44
it is used as a cudgel to bulging everyone.
30:48
And there's some problematic elements
30:51
in some of those who are identifying themselves
30:53
as Christian nationalists.
30:54
And so, you know, I'm hesitant.
30:56
I don't wanna just say,
30:57
"Hey, I'm a Christian nationalist."
30:59
And what you do is you give everybody
31:02
then a license to fill that with their own definitions.
31:06
You know, I'm a reformed guy.
31:08
I'm a Calvinist, five-point Calvinist.
31:10
I'm unashamed about it.
31:12
But man, years ago when Calvinism wasn't well-known
31:16
and people would come and ask me,
31:17
"Are you a Calvinist?"
31:19
I'd always say, "Well, what do you mean by that?"
31:21
And that way you don't believe in evangelism.
31:22
You know, you think God sends babies to hell
31:24
and delights in that and I said, "No, no, I'm not that."
31:27
If that's a Calvinist, I'm not that.
31:29
And I'm having to do the same thing
31:30
with Christian nationalism today as well.
31:32
You know, what do you mean by it?
31:33
If you mean somebody who believes that God has appointed
31:38
the places and the times of our existence
31:40
and that he has put me in this nation at this time
31:42
and that my responsibility to love neighbors means
31:46
that I need to think in terms of proximity
31:48
and what does that mean?
31:49
I can more easily love somebody who lives here
31:52
in the United States than I can somebody who lives
31:54
in Botswana and that's just inevitable
31:57
and that what God has done in this nation
31:59
is worth celebrating in the good that's been accomplished
32:03
and I wanna see it accomplish more good
32:05
and I wanna see the influence of Christ's lordship
32:09
over every square inch in the borders
32:11
of these United States.
32:13
Yeah, I want that.
32:14
You know, does that mean that I want a theocracy?
32:16
No, I don't want that.
32:18
You know, does that mean that I want to see people
32:21
who are not Christians taken out in the streets and stoned?
32:25
No, I don't want that.
32:26
I certainly believe that the Bible teaches us,
32:30
the Bible gives us principles for liberty of conscience
32:33
and for religious liberty.
32:35
And I'm a big proponent of that.
32:39
I think the United States,
32:40
the good that the United States has done,
32:42
it has been able to do because there was a Christian worldview
32:46
and foundation at the beginning of this nation.
32:50
Kyle, this is something that got me thinking
32:52
more along these lines.
32:54
And again, I've written on this.
32:55
I said, if that makes me a Christian nationalist,
32:57
so be it, I don't care.
32:58
Call me whatever you wanna be.
33:00
But here's a question that I began to ask a couple of years ago
33:03
and even put it to some good friends of mine,
33:04
close friends of mine that wouldn't see these things
33:07
necessarily the way I do is, here's the question.
33:10
If we were given the opportunity or the responsibility
33:13
to start a new nation today, could we come up with
33:17
in this generation, a nation like the United States?
33:21
And the answer's obviously no.
33:24
We don't have the chops, man.
33:26
We don't have the backbone.
33:27
We don't have the worldview to do that.
33:29
So, okay, well, if America has had any value and it has,
33:34
I mean, all these people that say America's a horrible place,
33:38
I wanna, I do say this, compared to what?
33:41
Go live in Cuba a few months.
33:43
Go over to China.
33:44
I mean, we got people in our church,
33:46
a lot of people from Cuba, and they are livid,
33:49
and everybody says those kinds of things.
33:52
They say, I don't know what they're talking about.
33:54
So, if we wanna appreciate what God has done
33:58
in the United States of America across its history,
34:01
with all of our blemishes,
34:02
grant everything it wants to be said about that,
34:04
then why couldn't we today reproduce it?
34:08
Why couldn't we do it if we were given a blank slate?
34:11
It's because we've forgotten God.
34:13
We have left what God has clearly revealed on the floor
34:18
because we wanna be nice,
34:19
and we don't want anybody to think ill of us.
34:21
And those days are over.
34:22
Man, I got grandkids, and that as much as anything
34:26
has motivated me to stay in this fight,
34:30
'cause I don't think God can change everything in a day.
34:32
So, I'm not discounting what he can do,
34:34
but there's no evidence right now on the horizon
34:36
that I can see that I'm gonna live to see a change.
34:40
I hope there will be a change, but man, if nothing else,
34:42
I wanna leave some signposts for my grandson and daughters
34:46
so that they can look back in 20, 30, 40 years and say,
34:49
"Well, you know what, oh, paps."
34:50
He said some things, and he was on the right side
34:52
of these issues, and maybe God would use that
34:56
in their lives to stand firmer and do better
34:59
than we've done.
35:00
- Well, I mean, the signpost for us should be
35:02
our founding documents and what the founders
35:04
actually believed at the moment,
35:05
because to kind of go into your theory a little bit more
35:08
as a thought experiment, there are people in the world
35:11
that think the Western countries so include
35:13
and exclude any countries that you wanna say
35:15
in Western countries, they think that they are fundamentally
35:17
the same and superficially different,
35:19
but it's the exact opposite.
35:21
They are superficially the same and fundamentally different
35:24
because when we just go back to our founding document
35:27
and there's this new movement in the last
35:29
probably a couple of decades that,
35:30
oh, the founders weren't Christians.
35:32
They weren't reading the Bible and then creating
35:35
the Declaration of Independence and then creating
35:37
our Constitution and all these different things.
35:39
It's like, I think there were like 51 or 52 signers
35:43
of the Declaration of Independence.
35:44
Not only were basically all of them Christian,
35:47
over half of them graduated from seminary,
35:50
at the time when seminaries were legit,
35:52
places where people actually studied the Bible
35:55
and studied church history and studied theology
35:57
and all these different things.
35:58
So this idea that we're somehow the exact same as Canada
36:02
or England or France or Italy or any of these types of things,
36:06
it's like, based on what?
36:07
Like by what standard are you saying that these things
36:10
are the same?
36:11
And I think it goes back to this whole Christian nationalism
36:13
thing to where for a guy like me,
36:14
like I've toyed with the idea of making Christian nationalist
36:18
shirts like I told you, just to start that conversation
36:21
with people because it's like, look,
36:22
I'm not thinking that there should be a theocratic fascist
36:25
headed up by whoever's favorite Christian is
36:28
at the moment or something like that.
36:29
But at the same time, it's like, it goes back to an answer
36:32
that your Senator, Senator Rubio gave
36:34
during the run up to the 2016 election
36:36
for the Republican ticket for president.
36:38
He was asked by an atheist at a, you know,
36:40
some speech or, you know, whatever he was doing.
36:43
You know, hey, I'm an atheist and you're a Christian.
36:45
Like, why should I vote for you?
36:47
Because you're gonna be using your Christianity
36:49
in the things that you're doing.
36:51
And his response was perfect.
36:52
He says, you better hope that I do
36:54
because my worldview gives you the foundation
36:57
for human flourishing that atheism or secularism
37:00
or, you know, humanism doesn't give you.
37:03
And it was the perfect response.
37:04
So it's to a degree, shouldn't we just embrace it
37:07
and say damn all the people that think that, you know,
37:09
this is some sort of nefarious thing.
37:11
Like, I don't care.
37:12
Like, this is how we're gonna define it
37:13
and operate moving forward.
37:15
- Yeah, I don't know.
37:16
I think that the jury's still out on that
37:17
in terms of what kind of language we use.
37:20
But the principles, the principles that are being uncovered
37:23
and being extolled right now, I'm grateful
37:27
for so many of those.
37:28
And there's a lot of good spokesman that are speaking up.
37:30
And there's people that are trying to give
37:32
more critical analysis to this.
37:34
I mean, I'm not all the way finished with Stephen Wolf's book,
37:37
but he came on my radar two or three years ago.
37:40
He's doing his PhD at LSU.
37:42
And I'm just reading some of the things you're writing.
37:44
So I called him and we had a wonderful conversation.
37:46
I appreciate him.
37:47
He has written things that we need to consider.
37:50
He's uncovering things from our Protestant heritage
37:54
that we need to give attention to.
37:56
Again, I think the book's got,
37:58
he was not trying to do everything in the book.
38:00
So I don't, you know, he was, for what he's trying to do,
38:02
I think he's done a good job in helping
38:04
to move this conversation forward.
38:07
But with that, we have to be careful
38:11
that we're not miscommunicating.
38:13
We're not miscommunicating.
38:14
And man, that's just, it's a minefield
38:18
because you can turn the conversation off immediately
38:22
or say things in a way that people who are listening to you
38:25
that you really want to influence assume
38:27
is almost the opposite of what you're continuing for.
38:30
Let me make, let me give a plug to one book,
38:32
Mark David Hall's book, Did America Have a Christian Founding?
38:37
- Yeah.
38:38
- That is a superb treatment from a very scholarly approach
38:42
to answer the question that he poses in his title.
38:46
- So I actually picked up that book a while ago
38:49
and haven't had the chance to take a look at it.
38:50
But yeah, I would absolutely cosign that
38:52
just because of the people that have cosign didn't sit like,
38:54
yeah, this is something you need to check out.
38:55
So Mark David Hall, and what was the name of the book again,
38:57
just for our listeners?
38:58
- America Have a Christian Founding.
39:00
I mean, because I always raised saying, yeah,
39:03
America was basically a Christian nation,
39:05
all Christians founded it.
39:06
And then got to college and said, no, that's a joke.
39:10
Anybody told you that lied to me
39:11
and they showed a lot of evidence, contrary to it.
39:14
And then I got into David Barton and his,
39:16
the wall builders and that seemed really wonderful.
39:19
Then I started checking footnotes and he's stretching
39:22
some things here.
39:23
And so I hadn't really dealt a lot with it
39:27
until the last 10 years or so.
39:29
But Hall's book is the best thing,
39:32
the single best volume that I've read on this issue.
39:36
He's got tons of footnotes.
39:37
And in fact, in there, I learned something I didn't know
39:39
about Thomas Jefferson, the deus Thomas Jefferson.
39:42
You know what he wanted our national seal to be?
39:45
He wanted it to be a picture of Pharaoh on his chariot
39:49
going through the Red Sea with the waters
39:50
coming over him, destroying him.
39:52
The deus wanted that.
39:55
- Right, see again, when you go back
39:57
and actually look at the founders,
39:58
you get a much different view as opposed to what,
40:00
you know, a intro to philosophy for professor
40:03
at your favorite state college is going to give you.
40:05
So I want to transition to a subject matter
40:07
that's very important to me that I think is very important
40:10
to our audience to get your perspective of Owen.
40:11
And that's just masculinity and manhood
40:13
inside the church in general.
40:15
And so I know that we've, especially over the last several
40:17
hundred years seen a degradation of just overall masculinity
40:20
and the setting up of men inside the church,
40:22
the focus on men that has something to do
40:25
with we had two world wars that were fought
40:26
by a lot of our strong men that were no longer in the church
40:29
has to do with the different cultural revolutions
40:32
has to do with the industrial revolution
40:33
that took a lot of men out of the household.
40:35
And like, there's a lot of things that go into that,
40:37
but there's this modern emphasis.
40:38
Well, I guess in churches, there seems to be one of two
40:41
emphasis.
40:42
Number one, we're not going to focus on the men at all.
40:44
We're just going to operate and do whatever we want.
40:46
Or number two, we're going to do men's ministry,
40:48
whatever that means, which typically becomes a once
40:51
or twice a year men's event, prayer breakfast,
40:53
bringing an ex football player to come and talk
40:55
about how you used to chase women in snort coke,
40:57
but now he's saved and all that, which is fine.
40:59
But that's not men's ministry, that's men's programming.
41:02
And so I want churches and pastors to shift their thinking
41:05
from men's ministry to man-friendly churches,
41:08
churches that communicate whether explicitly or implicitly,
41:11
we are for you, we need you.
41:13
We need you here, we need to catechize you
41:15
so you can catechize your children,
41:17
that's Vodie Bockham's book, Family Shepherds,
41:18
like we need that and we're going to do what we can
41:20
to disciple you and facilitate that.
41:22
So just talk to me a little bit about masculinity
41:25
and manhood within the church.
41:27
- Yeah, well, you can't avoid it
41:30
if you do an honest job of expositional preaching.
41:35
Once again, it's God's world, God's book,
41:38
and he defines these things for us.
41:40
And so wherever you see deficiency in those areas,
41:43
you can be sure there's a lack of
41:46
expository preaching of the texts
41:49
that have been given to us in scripture.
41:52
- Yeah, men or women are different
41:54
and praise God for their differences.
41:56
First Corinthians 16, 10, I think it is,
42:01
where Paul says act like men, be strong.
42:05
Well, they must have had some idea in their mind
42:10
about what manhood was for him to communicate a point
42:13
about strength in that terminology.
42:16
So we don't need to be embarrassed about manliness.
42:22
And we don't need to be embarrassed about femininity.
42:25
God designed them both.
42:26
And man, you see it in our education system,
42:29
so much is designed for girls
42:31
and the feminine way of thinking.
42:34
So we want to challenge men.
42:37
I mean, because the danger is,
42:38
and what we see, we're seeing in our culture some,
42:41
is there's this rebound to the feminization
42:45
of our culture and even churches
42:47
where it's almost like a rainbow.
42:50
Hey man, if you're going to be a man, then it's machismo
42:53
rather than biblical manhood.
42:55
We've been doing this for years.
42:57
Once a quarter, we take our men, set them aside
43:00
in a normal meeting.
43:01
We have a prayer meeting Bible study on Wednesday nights.
43:04
And we just deal with men.
43:05
We just talk about stuff that men need to address.
43:08
And sometimes, you don't have to speak pretty plainly
43:10
and rebukeingly to them on some issues.
43:12
And we do the same thing with women.
43:14
We just elders will teach this.
43:16
And so we're not doing, it's not like we think
43:18
there's a women's Bible or women's study Bible
43:20
and a man's study Bible, it's not that.
43:22
We're just wanting to talk specifically about things
43:24
that God says, God distinguishes between men and women,
43:28
older men, older women and younger.
43:31
I mean, those are all God's designations.
43:33
And so we want to try to understand that
43:35
and apply the gospel, apply the law in those scenarios
43:38
and where you are in life.
43:41
And what that means is that, you know, with guys,
43:43
I mean, I've got five daughters, one son.
43:45
And, you know, the boy stood out, he just,
43:49
he went nuts trying to do what the feminine atmosphere
43:54
of our home at times would suggest.
43:56
And we tried to protect him from that.
43:58
That, you know, and you're a boy, you're not a girl.
43:59
The system's what he's not you, don't dress him up.
44:03
He's not a doll, he's not a girl.
44:05
So just understanding that God made men and women differently.
44:09
And they're good, they're both good.
44:11
One's not more valuable than the other.
44:12
Both made the image of God,
44:14
but they both have responsibilities and roles
44:17
that God has ordained in his world
44:19
and in the various spheres
44:20
where they might find themselves.
44:22
- Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile.
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44:24
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44:50
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44:52
- I think that there's a lot of great stuff there
44:54
that I think just for pastors
44:57
and some of the best advice I've given is just,
44:59
can you have the mint in mind
45:00
when you're creating your sermons?
45:02
Just I've had worship leaders reach out to me.
45:04
Like I didn't have the mint in mind
45:06
when I was picking out the songs,
45:08
the lyrical content,
45:09
the keys that we would sing and I don't really understand music.
45:12
But like, you know, they were singing these songs
45:13
and keys that mint had trouble hitting
45:15
where the lyrics were like almost homo erotic in nature.
45:17
Like we're singing to Jesus as if he's our cute Danish boyfriend
45:20
or something like that.
45:21
And it's like they just having them in mind
45:24
is changing a lot of that.
45:26
We'll make this the last question of the day
45:28
because you kind of teed it up a little bit earlier.
45:30
And it's a liberalization of seminaries.
45:33
Is there anything that can be done about that?
45:35
Because you're gonna have people,
45:37
I mean, we just elected one to the US Senate,
45:39
Raphael Warnock, who is a reverend, apparently,
45:42
who doesn't believe in the resurrection
45:44
and also doesn't believe that women shouldn't be able
45:46
to murder their children inside the womb.
45:47
So what can be done about that?
45:49
- Well, I'll tell you what I've done.
45:52
We started the Institute of Public Theology last year.
45:55
And we're in our second year,
45:57
we are committed to rock solid,
45:59
biblical theological, historical teaching,
46:01
but doing it with a view to the public square.
46:04
Because I think even more than liberalism,
46:06
that's certainly there across the board
46:08
in the Christian world,
46:09
in the higher education, seminary training.
46:11
But even more than that,
46:13
is there is this cultural capitulation.
46:17
You know, we now have freedom of worship
46:20
inside our four walls.
46:21
So stay there, don't be too outspoken,
46:24
don't address things.
46:25
And man, our theology needs to be public
46:28
because God is public.
46:29
And God is the one who speaks to us,
46:31
the truth of his word.
46:33
So this Institute of Public Theology that we've started
46:36
is designed for that very purpose.
46:38
You know, we're praise God for every good thing
46:40
that's done in every academic institution,
46:42
but we are on record with having only the kind of teachers
46:46
that are unafraid to lay it on the line.
46:48
And I would put our faculty already
46:51
in our second year up against any faculty in the world.
46:54
Man, we got Vodie Balkam, Tom Nettles.
46:56
We got Mark Coppinger and Carl Truman.
47:03
It's just, we got good guys, solid men
47:07
who are unafraid to speak the truth and not flinch.
47:11
And so that's one thing.
47:13
You know, we see more of these institutions
47:15
popping up over the last 10 years or so,
47:17
and I'm grateful for every good one
47:19
that does every good thing, any good thing.
47:21
But we have a specific approach that we're taking
47:25
and unashamedly so, and we believe it's what's gonna be
47:28
necessary in the years and generations to come.
47:32
- Well, that's great. I'm so happy that you've been able
47:34
to pull something like that out.
47:35
And I really appreciate all the time today
47:36
and all the different subject matters that we've gotten into.
47:38
But for now, that is all for me.
47:40
Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
47:41
- No, man, I appreciate all you're doing.
47:44
It's a big war.
47:45
And what I tell people all the time when they say,
47:48
"What about that guy?
47:49
He didn't dot the eyes with us or cross the T's with us."
47:51
I said, "All right, he's got a gun.
47:53
Let's help him point it the right direction."
47:54
So he's not shooting us in the butt
47:56
and maybe he's taking out a few enemies.
47:57
Yeah, we love that.
47:59
- All right, sounds good.
47:59
Well, Tom Askel, thank you for coming on
48:01
"Don't To Life" a man's podcast.
48:02
- Yeah, thank you, Kyle.
48:04
- There you go, guys.
48:05
I hope you enjoyed my interview and my time with Tom Askel.
48:07
But before we let you go,
48:08
we are going to do a quick resilience boost.
48:09
"Don't To Life," our mission is equipping
48:11
me into pushback darkness with content
48:13
that forges spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
48:15
So here are the links I've got for you today.
48:17
I've got a link to the Founder's Ministry website.
48:19
I got a link to an article that is from him
48:21
that was on his website.
48:22
It's called, "The SBC Must Be Shaped by the Word."
48:25
Not by the world.
48:25
I thought that was a fantastic article.
48:27
So I included that here.
48:28
I've also got a link to the 2023 National Founders Conference
48:31
so you guys can get a little bit more information on that
48:33
'cause we did talk about it on the show
48:34
and a link to the website
48:35
for the Institute of Public Theology.
48:37
All right, guys, thanks so much for listening to the show.
48:38
We do appreciate it wherever you're listening to this.
48:40
Please subscribe, rate, and leave us a positive five-star review.
48:43
If you want me to come speak live at your event
48:44
or on your podcast to shoot me an email
48:46
to info@andonto.life, that's I-N-F-O @andonto.life.
48:50
Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook
48:52
and check out our website for everything else,
48:54
including how to donate to keep more content
48:55
like this coming your way.
48:56
Just go to www.andonto.life.
48:59
And as always, we want to thank the band,
49:01
August Burns Red, for allowing us to use their music
49:03
on our content.
49:04
The music on this podcast is our song, "Cutting the Ties,"
49:06
which is off their 10th anniversary re-recording
49:08
of their album, "Leveler."
49:09
The links are in the description.
49:11
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
49:13
Remember, keep pushing back darkness,
49:16
keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
49:20
Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
49:23
(upbeat music)
49:25
♪ I don't die left with a heart attack ♪
49:29
♪ Where all you want is a sign ♪
49:33
♪ You may stand as I find you ♪
49:37
♪ You will be revived ♪
49:41
(upbeat music)