Matt Whitman from Ten Minute Bible Hour

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:06] Speaker B: Was Dave Chappelle talking about being canceled on Twitter. And he was like, here's the thing. Twitter's not a real place. Right? Like, it's not real. So from the 10 minute Bible hour, thanks for being on Lutheran Answers for subjecting yourself tooth gauntlet, sir. [00:00:28] Speaker A: Okay, well, let's see what happens. Nice to meet you, Remy. [00:00:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I come. I've come across your stuff before, the denomination videos, which I think really took off on you, and that's so great. I came across your stuff before, and I always thought the name was so good, so I'll take it. 10 minute Bible hour. It's perfect. How did you come up with that? Please tell me. [00:00:54] Speaker A: I used to have lunchtime brainstorming sessions with a buddy of mine that I made short films with, and we would get liquored up on caffeine, and so we were about 10 Mountain Dews and three hours deep on different ideas for things we should totally do. And one of them was, I should get started on this Bible stuff I want to do on the Internet. But I should riff on those old timey radio Bible Hour names, but make it absolutely incoherent. Yeah, it's completely an impenetrable title that will just be willfully confusing. So people know there will probably be Bible here, but it might be stupid. I think I delivered. Okay. [00:01:32] Speaker B: All right. I like that. I like that. I think that's so beautiful. [00:01:40] Speaker A: I. Dude, I'm glad you saw my stuff before the denominational videos. [00:01:43] Speaker B: I did. I did. [00:01:44] Speaker A: I couldn't tell you. [00:01:45] Speaker B: I could. I can't say, like, I wasn't, like, a subscriber or a super fan, but I. I'd run across you a few times up until the denomination stuff. And then when I saw the denomination stuff, I was like, that's the guy. [00:01:57] Speaker A: With the name, with the thing, the head. Yeah, that was. That was 10 years ago that I started that stuff a little over 10 years ago. And so I've been doing that and then the. I do a podcast with Destin from Smarter every day. That's one of the. Yeah. Super old granddaddies of the Internet podcasts at this point. But at least you go and people seem to like it, so, you know, we'll quit when everybody's mad and starts to hate it, I guess. But maybe we'll even want to do it more at that point because it's fun to hang out with my friend. [00:02:26] Speaker B: That's right. [00:02:27] Speaker A: It's just been a while on all of this stuff, and the Bible stuff is what I really like, doing. That's why I got into it. I think it's really interesting. I grew up around faith and then like a lot of people who did with 90s and early 2000s worlds colliding, end of the modern age, beginning of postmodernism. Here's the Internet, here's social media, all. Also, people talk like the click economy was something that happened to us starting in 2005, 2007, but that's false. It started in the 90s. All of that stuff just mushed together for so many people like me who were raised around this, to just make our compasses spin like crazy and not know what it means or looks like to be a Christian at all when we got to adulthood. So I'm one of those guys. I went through the whole ups and downs of faith, having to take the whole thing apart and put it all back together. That's after going to school for all of this stuff. I mean, it was really. It was a really difficult and tumultuous time. But the thing that I did not appreciate at all when I was a kid with faith build 1.0 was the Bible. Like, I already don't do anything wrong, so it already affirms everything I do behaviorally. Why would I even worry about what it says? I'm totally on the same page with it. And I more or less get the gist of the story. My dad's a pastor. If I don't know, I can come up with sophisticated language to pass it off. Like, I do know good. I think I'm set here with the Bible, right? And then coming out the, you know, going through kind of that. That period of not faith very quietly. I didn't make any public announcements about that. It was really the Bible that came to life, and I encountered God through it in ways I hadn't before. And so then at some point I was like, all right, well, that part of my life kind of sucked and was really hard and lonely because I didn't really tell anybody about it. But I'm just quietly going through all of this difficult stuff at this crossroads in my life. At a young age, I come out the other side of it and I still got all that training and everything. I love the material history, went to school for it. I was like, I'm going to do it on the Internet. And so the Bible is just my favorite man. I really enjoy what other people think about it. I enjoy the history, the extra biblical stuff. And so it always makes me happy. This is what I'm driving at. I'm taking way too long here, Remy. But it always makes me happy when I run into somebody around the Internet who remembers that. That's my favorite thing and what I like to do the most, because the talk with people from other expressions of Christianity thing is, I mean, that's just kind of the moment we're in right now. And so that's what a lot of people bring up when we meet, when we chat. [00:05:04] Speaker B: It's, it's interesting. You, I think we're about the same age. [00:05:12] Speaker A: 26. [00:05:13] Speaker B: 26, yeah. [00:05:15] Speaker A: Okay. Identical. [00:05:17] Speaker B: Yeah, identical. That's 100. Correct. There's. Thank God there's no prohibition against lying in the Bible. [00:05:27] Speaker A: It's not even in that. I've only read certain parts of it, but I didn't see anything about lying. [00:05:31] Speaker B: I've never, I've, I don't even own one. But well done, dusty old book. Who needs it? But it's, I think it's interesting because you, first off, you didn't take way too long. You did the thing that I love. And you're a podcast host. I'm sure you get this. The thing I love when a guest does is when I can softball them something and they can just go, that's great for me. That makes my job easy. So thank you. [00:05:57] Speaker A: Happy to help. [00:05:58] Speaker B: Yeah, Take as much time as you need. But you mentioned this difficult period you went through and this sort of crisis of faith, what have you. And you have to. And I, I, I had to do sort of the same thing. I, I had a whole period of my life where I was essentially not believing. I just didn't care. It's. I, I never really said, oh, I don't think I believe. This is just so much as I don't really care about it anymore. I wanted to do other things with my life, you know, party and whatever and have fun. And the thing, when you come back to wanting to live out the faith in your life, and you're right, we don't have this. We didn't grow up with this kind of. I'm all over the place. The thing I'm trying to say, what I'm trying to drive at, is that people before us deconstructed sort of the historic expression of Christianity as it were. Like the, they took apart the way Christianity has always been done and, like, refashioned it. So I grew up Pentecostal holiness, which does away completely with any kind of structure or liturgy or even history, I thought. [00:07:18] Speaker A: And my understanding, based on your podcast title, is that you are in some way affiliated with Some expression of Lutheranism. [00:07:23] Speaker B: I'm a Lutheran at this point, which is quite different. Quite different, Vastly different. But it's because I. I also had to go through like this same kind of period of rebuilding kind of my faith because the faith I was in was an emotion based faith. And that's all it was. And it was. There was no structure to the services. There was no structure, order to Christian life. There was no connection to deeper history. It was all very, how does this make you feel? And let's have an emotive worship experience. And it was a holiness theology. So, you know, outside of having any motive worship experience, now you also have to live this sanctified holy life. And when you fail in that, then you feel bad. And so your faith is emotive. So now God hates you because you feel bad about it. Right? So this is kind of the. It's a sort of pendulum kind of that you're on. You're either really high in your faith because you're doing great, or you're really low because you're doing bad. And it led me to sort of go back. It. I guess what I'm saying is there were people before us, right, over the last, I don't know, 200 or so years who have sort of reworked the faith in that, you know, we don't need this or we don't need that, and we can, we can do Christianity this way and we can do it that way. And ultimately what I found is that it leads to people having to then break down what faith they do have. You end up in an existential crisis because, I don't know, it feels like in some, not in every expression of the Christian faith, but in quite a few of them, it feels like we're jettisoning important parts. We're jettisoning some vital structure. In my case, for me, I think the liturgy is vitally important. I enjoy the fact that I'm in a liturgical church now, and I like that I can use that same liturgy at home in my own worship, you know, and as I lead my own wife through devotion, I have a structure for it, you know, because it's. I've always wondered, what does it look like to be a Christian in the home? And what does it look like to be a Christian in your daily life? And the answer I was always given was, oh, well, speaking in tongues and prophesying to strangers. You meet strangers and it's just, oh, I have a word from God for you. And it's like, well, that's not. That's not what Lutheranism teaches. You know, it's. Luther said you, the Christian shoemaker doesn't do his duty by stamping crosses on shoes, but just by making the best shoes he can. Right. And it's like you do the work that's put before you. You do it humbly. You do it well. If the opportunity opens to talk about Jesus. Sure. But, you know, we're not. You don't have to call down fire, you know, from heaven or what have you. [00:10:13] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's interesting that that's the Lutheran ethic of public life and work. I just came across that. I. I mean, maybe it's in that. That Lutheran or Luther for every man or whatever. I got a copy of it from my church. Maybe that's where I just came across that concept. [00:10:33] Speaker B: Your Lutheran church. [00:10:35] Speaker A: Mm. Yeah. Yeah. I go to an AFLC church. [00:10:40] Speaker B: Do you really? [00:10:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:10:42] Speaker B: I did not know. [00:10:43] Speaker A: Oh, well, is this just weird now because there's no tension? [00:10:46] Speaker B: No, I didn't think there was any tension before. We can add some tension in. I hate bald people. [00:10:52] Speaker A: There we go. It's working. It's. Yeah. We go to a free Lutheran church at this point, and I've really appreciated it. It's been an interesting thing for me because I was a pastor for a long time, and effectively my tradition is Lutheran with varying degrees of liturgy, varying degrees of evangelical stylistic elements, and a heavier emphasis or heavier influence from the pietist movement. I'm the Evangelical Free Church of America. That's my undergrad degree. A pair of bald eagles just cruised by at like 15ft outside my window. And I have been sure that there must be a mating pair. And I finally just got it. There are two at once. I knew this day was coming. Now I have confirmed it. I just wanted to share it with you because it's an exciting thing. [00:11:47] Speaker B: I think that's wonderful. I think that's a sign from George Washington that this was meant to happen. [00:11:51] Speaker A: Let's go with that. Bring on Greenland. My point is that the EFCA thing, Evangelical Free Church of America. I mean, it's Scandinavian Lutherans who didn't want to be a part of the state Lutheran Church anymore and had a more. Just a heavier influence on that individual piety side of the equation. And so I've never felt particularly estranged from Lutheranism. I mean, it was weird to go to an LCMS church and not get to take communion, but. [00:12:21] Speaker B: Right. [00:12:22] Speaker A: Whatever. I don't. Whatever. Like, it doesn't make me mad either. [00:12:27] Speaker B: Right. [00:12:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Is what it is. So when we moved when I retired. I mean, I'm really young to be retired, but when I moved from doing church full time. Excuse me. To doing the Internet full time, where do you go to church? What do you do after that? You know, that's kind of a weird thing. And it actually made more sense given that I'm in the same district that I was in for so long in the Evangelical Free Church, to attend a different kind of free church. [00:12:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:12:57] Speaker A: And I really like and resonate with so much of what Lutheranism is historically and what it looks like now. And they had a great guy there for the longest time. He just resigned to go and plant churches. He resigned on Sunday. So we're kind of grieving that right now, but it's just been a great fit. I've really appreciated it. [00:13:17] Speaker B: That's awesome. [00:13:17] Speaker A: So, you know. But going back a couple of beats, I know there are people sitting in on this conversation who have no idea what we mean when we just throw around terms like holiness movement or holiness theology. [00:13:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:30] Speaker A: And I'm not even sure we're necessarily on the same page. Not that I would disagree, but just, you know, what does it mean? And also, I would have to think there are a lot of people who are new to this and sizing it up with this. I mean, the scales have fallen off the eyes of society in the last two years. The era of madness is coming to an end. People are trying to figure out where they fit and what it looks like to follow God. And I think a lot of people are just dipping their toe in the water. And I think people like you and me probably overwhelm them a lot with terms they don't know. So I'm guessing there are a lot of people who are sitting here talking with us thinking, wait, I thought holiness was good. [00:14:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:07] Speaker A: But you're making it sound like it's bad. So what is the holiness movement question for you? And how is that different than just holiness, which I think we like. [00:14:18] Speaker B: Yeah, great. Holiness is something we like. We should be holy because God is holy. There are a lot of different ideas. I think maybe not a lot, Maybe a few. There's some ideas about how do we do this? How do we sort of interact with the divine in this way? How do we achieve this holiness, and what does that look like for us? And Wesley, John Wesley, the Methodism, that guy had an idea about holiness. And I'm not a big super expert on Wesleyan theology because he was not a Lutheran, so you'll have to forgive me there, but Wesley had an idea about holiness and sanctification and tying those two together. And he had a concept of entire sanctification wherein one could stop sinning. And he changes the definition of sin, I think, in this idea, to exclude minor mistakes and things like that, to sort of exclude human nature. I think he's just thinking, like, mortal sins. You, like, stop doing the big sins or whatever, which I don't think makes sense. And if I'm getting him wrong, I don't care, because this isn't Wesleyan answers. But out of Wesleyan's I. Out of Wesley's idea of entire sanctification, there was this. There's this idea that you have to live perfectly according to the law and not in a. Not in a. It's something we should strive for way. Or here is the mark. And I'm going to do my best with the power of the Holy Spirit. And it. It works itself out historically in more a. You have to do this kind of way, a mandatory sort of keeping of the entire law. And that around the early 1900s, mixes with various. Various strains of charismata that are coming out of the Azusa street revival movement, the charismatic movement there and creates. Actually, about 40 minutes from my house in Falcon, North Carolina, the Pentecostal Holiness Movement was founded in, I think, 19. Oh, I don't know, the 20s maybe or the 30s. But they took this basically, this idea. [00:16:56] Speaker A: Quick question. [00:16:57] Speaker B: Yes. [00:16:58] Speaker A: Come from that crowd. Or that strain of Christianity ended up going further and being not trinitarian, some treating God as a created or Jesus as a created being, others arriving there a little differently. Was that the tradition you were a part of, or. [00:17:16] Speaker B: No, this. [00:17:16] Speaker A: A different strain of the holiness movement. [00:17:18] Speaker B: Yeah. So that's a different strain. And it actually, I think, historically develops separately, not entirely separately. I think all of this comes out of Azusa Street. But that was the. Those are the oneness Pentecostals, and they are, I think, more in the Northeast than the Southeast. And I think they chart a bit of a different historical course than the holiness movement. The Pentecostal holiness movement, but the Pentecostal holiness movement starts in Falcon, North Carolina, with the Pentecostal Holiness Church. And they basically take large strains of Wesleyanism, like large swaths of Wesleyan theology, but not. Not all of. Not enough to be, like, Anglican, you know, like, they take enough of his sort of decision theology and they take the sanctification aspects of his theology, the entire decision theology. [00:18:17] Speaker A: Meaning we pick God, we pick Jesus. [00:18:20] Speaker B: That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. We have to. We have to make a choice for Jes. So they take all of those things and they mix them with the charismatic elements of the Azusa Street Revival, which is this. [00:18:30] Speaker A: You mean like miracles and tongues? [00:18:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that sort of thing. [00:18:34] Speaker A: I mean, the stuff that comes later, that's not part of the original Azusa stuff, like the manifesting animals. [00:18:41] Speaker B: No, yeah. [00:18:41] Speaker A: That's more Toronto Airport Church, Toronto Blessing. [00:18:45] Speaker B: Start getting into the NAR at that point, which I also spent some time in, which was good. [00:18:49] Speaker A: Wow. [00:18:50] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:18:51] Speaker A: You've done the whole thing. [00:18:52] Speaker B: Well, just on the charismatic side. [00:18:53] Speaker A: Yeah, fair enough. [00:18:55] Speaker B: But, yeah, so then that's. The Pentecostal Holiness Church starts there today. It's the same denomination, but they had to rebrand. They are now the International Pentecostal Holiness Church. [00:19:05] Speaker A: Oh, that's even more. [00:19:06] Speaker B: Yeah, they. Yes, they got very big. They are still. It's a very big church body. They have thousands of churches, tens of thousands of churches around the world. [00:19:16] Speaker A: Are they Christians? [00:19:18] Speaker B: Yes, yes. They. They're trinitarian, I think. I don't think they officially affirm the ecumenical creeds on paper. I would have to check. I would have to check the. Their website. I know they affirmed Apostles Creed. [00:19:35] Speaker A: Yeah. I bet they don't affirm the ecumenical taxonomically. It seems to me those groups do not. [00:19:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:19:42] Speaker A: Or if they do, it's a highly qualified. [00:19:44] Speaker B: Right, right. [00:19:45] Speaker A: Heavily annotated version. [00:19:46] Speaker B: Sort of in the same way. In the same way that, like, we just found out the Baptist. The Southern Baptist Convention didn't affirm the Nicene Creed. [00:19:54] Speaker A: It's true. [00:19:55] Speaker B: And then everybody was like, oh, my gosh, are you even Christians? Right. Like, that's a. Like that's a big. That's a big thing. [00:20:01] Speaker A: But. Yeah, but I mean, obviously, obviously they're Christians. It's a later formulation. If they affirm every doctrine, but just want to say it different. Well, and. [00:20:09] Speaker B: And they. They. I think they ended up saying that they would affirm the Nicene Creed, but again, the same way, heavily qualified. Right. When we say, you know, so the. The Pentecostal Church that I grew up in, when. When you say things like one baptism for the remission of sins, what are we talking about specifically? And they would want to parse that out in a different way than I would. [00:20:32] Speaker A: The concern is that would be a work. [00:20:35] Speaker B: Correct. Yeah. [00:20:36] Speaker A: That they would have. [00:20:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Which is. And I see it. Growing up in it. I see it. Right. Why they think that. But on the outside now, looking at it, it seems so clear to me that it's not a work, because I'm not doing it. I'M not doing anything in my baptism. I'm not doing anything. Another guy is dunking me. Another guy is speaking. The Holy Spirit is working through the water and the word. I am doing nothing. I am passive. I am a passive recipient. And so it's like. [00:21:10] Speaker A: So would it work then, within Lutheran thought to do unwilling vicarious baptisms like the Mormons do for the dead or people who didn't ask for it? [00:21:21] Speaker B: Would Lutherans. Would Lutherans be unwilling to do that? Yes. [00:21:26] Speaker A: Well, so there has to be some willingness on the part of the recipient in the Augustinian sense. [00:21:32] Speaker B: Baptism for the dead. Yeah. No, that's. [00:21:36] Speaker A: How about for the living from a phone book? Because I think Mormons do that. Right. Like, they just take turns getting baptized for, like, we're doing Farmington, New Mexico, today. [00:21:45] Speaker B: Right. [00:21:46] Speaker A: Well, kids all volunteer. It's like a youth group activity, I would assume. [00:21:49] Speaker B: I would assume the person has to be present. Right. To be baptized. [00:21:56] Speaker A: Sure seems like that to me. [00:21:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. [00:21:59] Speaker A: I don't understand what the Mormons are doing there, and I don't claim to represent them fairly. I. I have no idea what the strategy is there. [00:22:06] Speaker B: Yeah. I. So they. [00:22:08] Speaker A: I wonder if you've been Mormon baptized vicariously by somebody. [00:22:11] Speaker B: I. I spent. When I was in the nar. I spent some time living out in Arizona in the Mesa area, which, outside of Utah is the most heavily Mormon area in the United States. [00:22:19] Speaker A: Come on. It's Idaho. [00:22:20] Speaker B: I guarantee you I've been vicariously baptized. [00:22:24] Speaker A: Okay. [00:22:25] Speaker B: Yeah. Per capita. Per capita. Let me specify. Mesa, Arizona was founded by the Mormons. [00:22:32] Speaker A: Really? [00:22:33] Speaker B: Yeah. And it is, like, 99% Mormon. [00:22:38] Speaker A: Wow. [00:22:39] Speaker B: The public school kids out in Mesa are allowed to take Mormon seminary during the school day, like, as a part of their school curriculum. [00:22:48] Speaker A: I want that to exist for Christian stuff. [00:22:50] Speaker B: So be an overwhelming part of the voter bloc. And it happens. It's amazing. America. [00:22:57] Speaker A: Interesting. [00:22:58] Speaker B: When you're 90% of the tax dollars and 95% of the constituents, you get your way, you know? [00:23:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess so. I mean, there's this. [00:23:05] Speaker B: There's this group. [00:23:06] Speaker A: What's the guy's name? Joel. He's a former D1 college football player. He put together this life way, I think it's called, pretty cool. Like, the strategy there is go around and just make available, without taxpayer money, a course in Christian theology or Bible survey or something like that for high school students who want to take it. And then they literally have to bus them, like, across the street. [00:23:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:35] Speaker A: So that no Bible thing happens on the sacred grounds of the Rival religion, which is the state. So. [00:23:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. Well, that's how, that's how the, that's how the seminaries were in. Out in Arizona. [00:23:49] Speaker A: Oh, the Mormon. Like what we would call, you know. [00:23:51] Speaker B: Yes. What we would call Bible class, they call seminary. [00:23:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:54] Speaker B: And then they don't actually have an equivalent for what we call seminary, which is funny, but they. Yeah, because they don't have. They don't do. Yeah, yeah. [00:24:03] Speaker A: I mean, you're right. [00:24:03] Speaker B: It's ordained ministers like that. [00:24:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, they don't. [00:24:07] Speaker B: So what the, the LDS church did out there is they buy like a quarter acre parcel directly next to the school and build their little building on it, and then the students can walk and they, they leave school property, but they never actually have to like get on a bus or, you know, it's like usually positioned next to the ball field so they can just walk right over to it. [00:24:30] Speaker A: I want to keep a pin in the holiness thing and the right standing with God thing and how that happens in Pentecostal thought versus Lutheran thought. I really, really want to hear you talk about that more. So we're coming back to that, I promise. But kind of a weird tip of the hat to the Mormons real quick. Those guys are shrewd. And shrewd is a way underrated value of the Bible if you go and just add up. I actually did the math on this a while back. Put pen to paper, like, what are by volume the biggest values that the gospels pound? Okay, well, obedience to God, repentance, forgiveness, the stuff you would expect, but solidly a top five marker of following God in the New Testament. Maybe the whole Bible is shrewdness. I mean, and those are the parables that confuse everybody. Like, I don't know why Jesus is saying this guy who ripped off his boss by cutting all these accounts down was good because it's so weird. But shrewdness is really. I mean, it doesn't fit with sort of the pietistic background I come from. Like, that seems naughty. It seems like you're being like goofus, not gallant. And that's bad. But it's affirmed that. Very clever. Taking stock of the moment you're in and trying to do something smart with it to advance the good thing. It is all over the place. And yeah, when I talk to Mormons about stuff, you know, they're always like, hey, you know, we're definitely Christians. Don't think we're not Christians. And you can tell by the fruit. I'm like, well, dang, like the one fruit that really pops for me. With Mormons, everybody would say, like, they're nice and family and stuff. I would say shrewd. [00:26:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:26:12] Speaker A: I would say they clearly really believe their thing and are really willing to do very clever stuff to try to advance it. And frankly, I think Christians are a little lazy in this regard because our thing makes more sense. Well, we don't have to do all that to prop it up because, I mean, look, I have friends who were Mormon. There are things to like about Mormonism, but that's a lot harder pill to swallow in terms of the whole backstory and the whole thing. It's a harder sell. [00:26:42] Speaker B: Yeah, well, Mormons aren't Christians. [00:26:47] Speaker A: I agree with that statement. And I don't know that I've said that into a camera before, but it is what I think that taxonomically, I'm not making any judgment on anybody's soul. Don't even need to. Taxonomically speaking, that is a different religion. [00:27:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:01] Speaker A: That is Christian adjacent and has some taxonomical features of Christianity. [00:27:06] Speaker B: I, I try to describe this. I, I can't think of any good ways to describe it, but whenever I talk to Mormons, it's, it's the. So the only way, so the only way I can do this with like Jewish people or with Muslims is when they say, we worship the same God. I post a picture of Jesus on the cross and I say, is this the God you worship? Because this is the God I worship. So if you are not worshiping this guy on the cross, we do not worship the same God. And it's difficult with Mormons because they would look at that and say, yes. Right. But they're non trinitarian, so. [00:27:50] Speaker A: And they may, they have a whole extra Bible. [00:27:53] Speaker B: Right, Right. [00:27:54] Speaker A: Deeply conflicts with the actual one. [00:27:56] Speaker B: But if you're, if, if you're not a trinitarian. We are definition, by definition, we're not worshiping the same God. We're not. [00:28:05] Speaker A: That's the key. And that's why I don't think it should be offensive. [00:28:08] Speaker B: Right. [00:28:09] Speaker A: Well, it's not me who went to Mormonism and was like, I found a bunch of things that you didn't mean to put in there. [00:28:14] Speaker B: Right. [00:28:15] Speaker A: Actually make us different. I'm so sorry you can't be a Christian. I'm the gatekeeper. Right, right. [00:28:19] Speaker B: No, you're separating themselves out. Yeah. [00:28:22] Speaker A: You made the thing. [00:28:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:23] Speaker A: And, and for the longest time had no interest in being thought of as Christian. That's a rather recent turn. Well, that's the Mormon direction. [00:28:31] Speaker B: This gets me to my other point. With Mormons. And their shrewdness is that I think sometimes they cross the line with the eighth commandment, she shall not bear false testimony. I think they sometimes cross the line here and they go from shrewdness to just lying. [00:28:47] Speaker A: So you mean about what they believe, misrepresenting Mormon teaching? [00:28:51] Speaker B: Yes. They will absolutely obfuscate and misrepresent their own church teaching just to make you think they're on the same side as you. They do this a lot in debate. [00:29:02] Speaker A: I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, Remy. I don't. [00:29:05] Speaker B: So the reason why I don't is so first off, they mean different things when they use the same words you use. So they'll use a word like salvation. And to you, that's all encompassing. As a Christian, what do you think. [00:29:17] Speaker A: I mean by that? [00:29:18] Speaker B: Salvation you're saved from your sins, your death, that you're going to be resurrected, that you're going to live on new earth, new heavens, new earth with Jesus and God's presence forever. Hallelujah. Amen. Salvation. [00:29:29] Speaker A: And how did that happen? [00:29:30] Speaker B: Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. [00:29:33] Speaker A: And what role did I play in that? [00:29:34] Speaker B: None. [00:29:35] Speaker A: Yeah, you just said. You just said what? I think that's it. [00:29:39] Speaker B: So Mormons believe that salvation means specifically Christ's death and resurrection specifically means that you will one day be physically resurrected. But that's it. That's whether to live, whether to go to eternal judgment and outer darkness, which they believe hardly anyone will ever face, or whether that means you're going to one of the three levels of heaven, the telestial, terrestrial, or celestial kingdom. All that's dependent upon your works. And the only kingdom in which you get to live in the presence of God forever, as we would define it, is, is in the celestial kingdom. And you have to be a super good Mormon to get there. Do all your temple work, et cetera, et cetera. That's not one for you by Christ. You win that yourself. Christ only won for you. Resurrection. That's it. [00:30:34] Speaker A: That's massively in conflict with the teachings of Christ and the Bible and historic Christianity. [00:30:39] Speaker B: But see, they will obfuscate that fact because they'll ask you, they'll say, well, don't you believe you're saved by Jesus? And you say, yes. And they say, well, us too, but. [00:30:48] Speaker A: Couldn'T we go benefit of the doubt though, and just attribute that to ignorance of one's own religion? Surely a lot of Mormons have no idea or, you know, they would fail a Mormon theology exam. How many? I mean, I Did a video a while back, some shocking percentage of evangelicals, Catholics, mainline, all Christians could not properly answer the question that Jesus is divine. They were all Aryans, I'm sure majority were Aryans. [00:31:16] Speaker B: So I'm sure a lot of Mormons would fail a Mormon theology. But we're. When you, when you talk to missionaries or when you talk to highly educated LDS people, they know what they believe, they know what they don't believe, and they know what you believe to a degree. And they are, they're. I can't. The, the best example I can give you of this is institutionally the big pushback I've been getting because I talked to a lot of Mormons on. On Elon Musk's ex and I. The big pushback I've been getting lately is we do not believe we'll get our own planet. We do not believe that we'll become our. We'll become gods one day and get our own planet. We don't believe that. That's a misunderstanding of Mormon teaching. That's what I'm being told over and over and over. And they say, go find it. Go. All of the LDS doctrine is on Church of Jesus Christ dot org. Go there and find where it says that. You guys are just misunderstanding our view of theosis. That's what they tell me. And you go to the LDS website and you cannot find it. But if you go to archive.org and you look at the LDS website from four years ago, it's everywhere. [00:32:30] Speaker A: There you go. [00:32:30] Speaker B: It's. There you go. [00:32:31] Speaker A: And I just. What we're doing now, where a former Mormon went through and compared the dog. I mean, whatever, like basically their Sunday school, their seminary list of, well, all their textbooks five years ago with now. [00:32:46] Speaker B: And it, their missionary training, their Sunday school books, all of that the church provides to the local stakes and they update it every so often. [00:32:55] Speaker A: Okay, I'm going to continue to do the benefit of the doubt here. [00:32:59] Speaker B: Okay. [00:33:00] Speaker A: You continue to play the role you're playing. I think this is fruitful. You're a Lutheran. I'm from a historically Lutheran tradition and attend a Lutheran Church. We like, reform within religions. We think that from time to time, in the course of human events, it makes sense to reform or even if necessary, separate from an institution, to uphold these important things, to uphold the truths of God. Why would it be a bad thing if, in an attempt to look more Christian to the Twitter sphere, if Salt Lake City started to reduce all of the extra biblical teachings and purge it from their curriculum and effectively, over a generation or two then would stop believing that and passing it. I mean, couldn't they backdoor their way into historic Christianity if this cycle repeated for four or five more generations? [00:33:58] Speaker B: Certainly they could. Why would it be a bad thing is because during those four or five generations, until they backdoored themselves into historic Christianity, they are still a non Christian heretical sect that results in people going to hell for eternity. And so for four or five generations, while they are not Christian but look more and more Christian, they're able to deceive more and more people and thereby damn more souls to hell. So I think that's a net negative. [00:34:29] Speaker A: That's a pretty big deal. [00:34:30] Speaker B: That's a pretty big deal. I think that's a pretty big deal also. I thought you were going to go. I had an answer ready for you. I thought you were going to go for why would it be bad for a church to reform from. From a Lutheran? How dare you, as a Lutheran say it's bad for a church to reform. But the answer to that, for anyone wondering, is that you can't name a single core base biblical Christian doctrine that Luther changed. You can't. But the LDS Church, if I thought that you could, wouldn't be. [00:34:58] Speaker A: I would be a different brand of Christian. [00:35:00] Speaker B: Absolutely. 100% agree. But the LDS Church on record, because you can go to archive.org and look at the before and after shot on record changes core LDS doctrine all the time. [00:35:11] Speaker A: All the time. [00:35:12] Speaker B: All the time. [00:35:13] Speaker A: I mean, Parker and Stone were kind of joking about it with that Book of Mormon musical. [00:35:18] Speaker B: But no, it's. [00:35:20] Speaker A: They really did change their mind. I mean, they really want. Would have you believe that God changed his mind about black people? [00:35:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:35:26] Speaker A: At a given point in history. No, there were. [00:35:28] Speaker B: Yes, the book. [00:35:30] Speaker A: I grew up in the Mountain West. I grew up around Mormonism and Mormons. I played ball. I had Mormon friends. I'm not making this stuff up. I mean, this isn't like the cornucopia on the Fruit of the Loom logo or Sinbad in Shazam, which is a movie that I'm told apparently never existed. It's not a Mandela effect thing. [00:35:48] Speaker B: Right. [00:35:48] Speaker A: It is gaslighting to tell me that. That the Mormon Church didn't teach those things that I saw with my own eyes that were advocated for by humans I knew who were Mormons. But at the same time, I mean, the bright lights of the Internet have disrupted a lot of weird fringe religious stuff in good ways. [00:36:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Thank God. [00:36:14] Speaker A: When I went and talked with. Okay, I'm going to disclaimer this real quick. I've done a lot of videos. I've published. I've done a lot of videos. I haven't. Generally speaking, I don't want to make Christianity look stupid, and I don't want to be the guy that goes to your church, suckers you into an interview, and then craps all over your thing in the edit when I get home and talks about what an idiot you were. Like, I just don't want to do it. I can't. If I cannot find some strain of historic Christianity, if I can't find some positive way to contrast it with what I believe to be historic orthodox Christianity, I might choose not to publish a video. There are videos I haven't published that I filmed, where I've gone and visited other churches that I just haven't gotten around to publishing yet. There are others that are never going to see the light of day because the guys came off like complete idiots and they embarrassed historic Christianity. How do I know what that looks like? Because I've done. [00:37:12] Speaker B: You're doing it right now. It's. I'm the guy defending Mormons. [00:37:16] Speaker A: I'm doing it right. [00:37:18] Speaker B: No, I'm the guy. No, it's me. [00:37:20] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. No, I don't think so. I think you're doing great. So all of that said, I don't want anybody guessing, like, who I'm talking about, because I might not have even published the videos we're talking about. You might not have even known I've filmed them. But all of that said the. I talked with a charismatic Pentecostal group to very, very high leadership within that group. And with the camera not rolling, they were willing to admit cell phones kind of ruined our thing. [00:37:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:37:50] Speaker A: Because if our thing was actually happening the way we used to say it happened all the time and then lambast other Christians for not believing it, everybody would be pointing a camera at it. And like, all these dead people that always get resurrected, they're. I mean, there'd be a. There'd be a TikTok of that. Somebody would have filmed that. People would be very interested in dead people coming back to life. [00:38:09] Speaker B: I will say. [00:38:10] Speaker A: That would get a million views. [00:38:11] Speaker B: I will say, though I asked, I did have. Because we're not cessationists, by the way, for any Lutherans out there listening, we're not cessationists. [00:38:22] Speaker A: Normal. [00:38:23] Speaker B: Welcome to Lutheranism. And. [00:38:28] Speaker A: Okay, but you got to clarify, what does cessationist mean in your. [00:38:31] Speaker B: Miracles still happen, you guys. Miracles do in fact happen. That's. You know, God can, in fact Speak and move immediately. That is without means in the world today. He's God. He can do what he wants. That's. [00:38:43] Speaker A: I mean, there's in charge of when those happen. In your opinion, God. Yep. That's the ticket. That's the key distinction right there. [00:38:51] Speaker B: So. But I had an atheist friend ask me. She said. She said, do you think demon possession is a real thing? I said, yes, I do. She said, do you think it's like pea soup and head spinning and levitating objects? And I was like, well, maybe some of that, some of the time, but largely, probably not most of the time, it probably just looks like mental illness just kind of seems to be the way biblically it's portrayed. There are some supernatural effects that you see, but nothing like the movies in Hollywood or whatever. But she said. She said, well, if it was real, why don't we have a video of it? And I said to her, I said, if I showed you a video that I have on my phone right now of an exorcism that I participated in, wherein the demoniac levitates a chair they are sitting in, three feet off of the floor, if I showed that video to you right now, what would you say? And she said, after effects, of course. So. [00:39:57] Speaker A: And that's. And you're. You're anticipating my point that I. I suspect that in the age of cheap, easy effects and AI generated images that maybe this. This moment in history, where the bright lights of the Internet through cell phones, but before cheap, easy, accessible AI imagery, I think this is gonna. We're gonna look back on this as a very consequential moment, because some expressions of faith did not survive that and are not gonna survive that in their. The form they were before. Other expressions don't really depend on anything. You can point a camera at it or not. It kind of looks the same. [00:40:33] Speaker B: Right. [00:40:34] Speaker A: So I. I have had people admit to me, hey, we've had to lean a lot more into the gospel because kind of the thing we used to lean into. [00:40:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:40:43] Speaker A: It just isn't passing muster anymore. And I think the same is true of Mormonism. I think there's a little bit of a shell game going on there with their approach. Again, this is a criticism they brought on themselves by having a singular monolithic hierarchy. Like, when you go that route, everything the institution does, it kind of gets to answer for. [00:41:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:05] Speaker A: And. And it's moved a lot. It shifted a lot. Well, when it's just paperwork and you can get rid of the books or the old editions, nobody notices that. But when you got the Wayback Machine, when you got archives on the Internet, people are going to catch, hey, you keep changing fundamental things about your faith, and they're going to bring it up and they're going to view that as a weakness. [00:41:25] Speaker B: And to get back to how we got here, that I think is the worry with shrewdness. Because you go from a point from being shrewd and shrewd to being deceptive, right? [00:41:40] Speaker A: Well, you're not allowed to do that according to the teachings of Christ. Matthew 10:16. But behold, I'm sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be two things as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves. Right in the stupid therapeutic big box church era of dumb Christianity. Anytime you see something like that in the Bible, you immediately go to HR Morality and say, ah, balance is so important, guys. We have to be half honest and half stupid. That's where Jesus wants us. Just a little bit dishonest and pretty dumb, but also somewhat shrewd. It's not one slider, it's two sliders. And they're both supposed to be set to 100% of the virtue. Jesus said 100 virtuous 100. I love the 100 shrewd. [00:42:31] Speaker B: I love the. The either or that we do with scripture when it's clearly a both and yes, you know, but we're just so dead set on it being an either or. [00:42:43] Speaker A: Balance, guys. Balance so important. [00:42:46] Speaker B: Amen. [00:42:46] Speaker A: Also, I didn't prepare this week and I'm just reading the passage at the same time. You are, you are? [00:42:51] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Can I get the worship leaders back up here? [00:42:54] Speaker A: You don't want to be too much. This. You don't want to be too much. [00:42:57] Speaker B: That spirit is moving. [00:42:59] Speaker A: Dodged a bullet this week. Oh, my goodness. So, okay, yeah. And my point with all of that is just in general, I think one of the most foundational questions of the Reformation of why Lutheranism is even a thing, why everybody's favorite punching bag right now, evangelicalism is even a thing, is simply that question, who does the heavy lift? And people get really offended and write me really angry emails and comments when I use that phrase, who does the heavy lift? But okay, let's not use it exactly that way. In all of these different traditions, though, there's a rating like the back of the box on Transformers when I was a kid. Strength. It was a. It was a rating bar. It was like a zero to a ten. Prime is like a nine. He's really good. You got to leave room for grimlock to be the 10. Right. But in the same way, each different expression of historic Christianity and para Christian, Christian adjacent stuff like Mormonism as well. There's a heavy lift quotient for all of them. Who does it? Well, I suppose in the most, like a house church with the Apostle Gary would be like the very, very lowest. Who does the heavy lift quotient? Like it's me and J.C. and the apostle Gary. That's it. Whereas, you know, I think Catholicism is going to rate a lot higher on that lift because of how they view the sacraments and the role of the church and the mediating role of the church in the dispensation of grace. It might not be that they do all the lift, but they do a way bigger lift than an evangelical free church in Mankato, Minnesota. It's silly and nonsensical to pretend that all of these traditions have the same sense of how right standing with God is achieved and what role the institution and organization plays within that. So earlier, this whole conversation is really about holiness, because you invoked that word talking about the tradition that you grew up in and how to. No, it's great. And so the question is. I mean, I think the right question is, how do you get that? I want it. I clearly don't have it. There must be a righteousness that is apart from the law. My righteousness would have to exceed that of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. It would have to exceed that of the Pharisees, excuse me, to enter the kingdom of heaven. Well, they write the rules, right? How can you be more holy and righteous than that? So there's all this talk and all this fighting and the Twitter sphere in Christianity is not a ton of fun right now. I'm not. I don't know what to do with that. [00:45:53] Speaker B: But. [00:45:55] Speaker A: It really comes back to this question, my friend, and that is, how do I have right standing with God? I'm going to die. Everybody I love is going to die. I am flawed. Everyone I love is flawed. Anyone I think isn't flawed? I just don't know well enough yet to see it. How do we fix this thing? There is a giant problem that we are distracted from while we are bickering about who does the church right. The central question that I think people are really starting to wonder right now is how does this work? How do I have right standing with God? And I thought you answered that question beautifully, whatever, half an hour ago in our conversation. But if the answer is come to our church and donate to our thing and we'll handle it for you. And I'm not saying that's what any specific group says. [00:46:47] Speaker B: I'll say it's what the Catholic Church says. I'll say it if that's your answer. [00:46:52] Speaker A: It sucks and it's not satisfying. And. And if you're going to say that, your institutional track record had better be spotless. I don't want one blemish. I don't want one thing where anybody else is excommunicating anybody else at the same time that they're being excommunicated. I can't have any speed bumps. I can't have any questions. I can't have a current leader to your church that half of the people who go to your church thinks might be a heretic. I can't have a church where a third of your church is operating on OS 1.5 and 2/3 are operating on OS 2.1. If the church is going to do the heavy lift on imparting the holiness of God to you, your church has to be perfect. That's why I like your answer way better. [00:47:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's. Yeah. Because it's Jesus. Right? It's Jesus. It's Jesus. Since we're talking about the Mormon thing, I had Pastor Mark Parsons of Truth and Love Ministry. He's been on quite a few times now. [00:47:56] Speaker A: He has an aptonym. [00:47:58] Speaker B: He's wonderful. He. [00:48:00] Speaker A: I mean parson. [00:48:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:48:02] Speaker A: And he's a pastor. It's fantastic. Dave Parker being a home run hitter. Park home run. It's just perfect. [00:48:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:48:10] Speaker A: Born to be a pastor. [00:48:11] Speaker B: He was. He. That they're a Mormon outreach group. That's all they do. Okay. And he's the current CEO of the non profit whatever. And he. What was I gonna say anyway? Go listen to his episode. It's great. He says whatever I was about to say. [00:48:36] Speaker A: We're talking about holiness. We're talking about how it's just Jesus. Jesus. [00:48:40] Speaker B: Yeah. They launched a new memory. A new memory. They launched a new outreach. Missionary outreach to LDS people. And it's called Jesus is Enough. [00:48:53] Speaker A: Great name. That's it. [00:48:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Jesus is enough. And that's the point. And that's the thing they try and drive people to. Is that Jesus. Jesus is enough, man. [00:49:02] Speaker A: Okay, so then how is Lutheranism different than the Apostle Gary doing a house church? Why do you need the Lutheran church then, bro? [00:49:10] Speaker B: I would have to meet and speak with the Apostle Gary because maybe it's not. Honestly, it might. It might not be. Okay, so my pastor, Joe Christina, his mother went and got Saved at one of the Billy Graham crusades. And he, Billy Graham ended the crusade with now go and find a Bible believing church. And so she grabbed her Bible and she grabbed like a denomination, like play by play, like what do people believe? Thing and just went through and compared and just this is what they believe. And here's their scripture reference. And she just went through back and forth and compared and at the end of it said, all right, well we're going to become Lutheran because that seems to be the one that lines up with the book the most. And Billy said, find the one that lines up with the book. [00:50:06] Speaker A: How did you figure out which version. [00:50:08] Speaker B: Of Lutheran they were in Wisconsin? So that's the one she went with. [00:50:12] Speaker A: Okay. Yes, right there in the name. Okay, that makes it easy. [00:50:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:50:17] Speaker A: So, but, but to my question, like in all seriousness, what does the church do then? What is the function of the institution and the gathering and all of that? [00:50:29] Speaker B: The institution and the gathering. The. So the church. The church. I think it's important to discuss what the church is to get there. Right? So the church, we're going to make the distinction, especially in Lutheran theology of the visible versus the invisible church. Right. The invisible church is all of the Christians, all of the people who are saved and, you know, get to heaven in the end, I guess we'll say. It's a terrible way to say it, but whatever. All the Christians, the invisible church, the visible church is the organization, building, etc. Denomination, these things are all the visible church. The outward thing you belong to, the outward thing you belong to is made up of both the visible and invisible church. And that outward thing in Lutheran theology, anyway, the church is going to be there to distribute, I would say, the sacraments. It's going to be there to teach, to rightly teach the word of God, to administer the sacrament. It's going to appoint pastors and teachers to steward these mysteries and teach people in the faith. The function of the church is a pass on what you have been taught role. The function of the church is to continue to teach and pass on Christianity, I guess, to build the faith of the faithful, to administer word and sacrament rightly. But that's not to say that the church then is necessary for those things or that the outward structure of the church then is necessary for those things. If you and your family find yourself somewhere that you're isolated in some remote jungle and you get taken in by the jungle people and you tell them all about Christianity and then they, they get you who you know the most about. The thing and they say, well, will you be our pastor? Because Jesus clearly talks and the Bible clearly lays out that congregations meet together, that they're like, there is a church, right? There is a, you know, you shouldn't neglect the gathering, etc. Thessalonians. So there is a church, right? If these people in this remote jungle that took you and your family in, they say, well, you know, the most, you should be our pastor. I wouldn't deny that you had a real church, even though you wouldn't be denominationally affiliated. You wouldn't have been ordained by some fancy institution or what have you. I wouldn't deny that you had a real church. Because the authority to appoint pastors is going to lie with the congregation, and the congregation is the people you find yourself around. Right. So it's. All of this is important because when we say, what is the role of the. The Lutheran Church? You know, well, are we talking about the lcms? Are we talking about my denomination, the aalc? What about the Wells? What about the elca? What about the Roman Catholics? But that's not really what we're talking about. Right. When we say, what's the point of the church? The thing we're really talking about is the local congregation. What is the point of these people that I gather with and why do I go to these people every Sunday? And it's because here I know I will receive the gifts that God has for me, forgiveness of my sins, the gospel rightly preached, encouragement in the faith. And do these things necessarily need my specific denomination label? No. No, they do not. That's why. Back to the question about, you know, the great Apostle Gary and his house church of one, you know, it's just Gary and like, his wife or whatever. I would have to. I mean, I would have to speak with Gary just to know, like, where he's at theologically. But I would not rule Gary out as, you know, as rightly. Rightly preaching and leading his church or what have you. [00:54:59] Speaker A: I would not either. [00:55:00] Speaker B: No, you can't. [00:55:01] Speaker A: No, I would not either. I mean, if. If we're too good for home churches. Now, it's really problematic with how you read the New Testament. [00:55:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [00:55:10] Speaker A: It's like the people who say, you know, wine is bad. Well, that. That makes the New Testament difficult. And if you say having church in a house is bad. [00:55:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:55:21] Speaker A: Or, you know, having a small collection of believers like this doesn't count. That's tough for the New Testament. So it is. I'm with you in that regard. I mean, you know, you understand the way I'm framing the question is just why is the thing. I think the, the outside skeptic who is very enthusiastic is very on the enthusiastic end of the spectrum in terms of the institution and the organization of their church is going to say something like, well, the church is important because there is no salvation outside of it. [00:55:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:55:53] Speaker A: Whereas my guess would be that you and I would say pawn receiving the gift of faith from God, you are in it. [00:56:04] Speaker B: Yes, correct. Yeah, there, that's. It's 100% correct to say there is no salvation outside of the church. That's correct. But to say there is no salvation outside of the church is to simply say in a more confusing way that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father except by him. If you come to the Father through Jesus Christ, you are in the church. Like I don't. That's it. Right. And there is no. So there's no salvation outside of Christ. What people get wrong is they mix up the distinction between a visible and an invisible church and they say, well, there's no salvation outside of the church and the church is the Roman Catholic Church. This particular set of paperwork is my denomination. If you're not a part of my completely random, ethnically homogenous, autocephalous Eastern sect, then you are not a member of the one true church. [00:56:55] Speaker A: There's only 12 is what was revealed to the Apostle Gary in. [00:56:59] Speaker B: Exactly, Exactly. [00:57:01] Speaker A: Punctilly, New York in 1841 in a vision only he saw and that, that you can't know anything about other than it's totally true and reliable. [00:57:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Gary, by the way, and the reason I'm. Go ahead, please, by the way. Has a direct line of hands on apostolic succession going all the way back to Saint Hippopotamus in 342. [00:57:21] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:57:22] Speaker B: You know, if you don't believe in Gary's church. Yeah, that's where people get it wrong. [00:57:27] Speaker A: But I bring up that example to say, I think, as I read the text, I think that both of those, the super high institutional church advocates are making an error when they say this is the institution that holds salvation, this visible institution. I also think the restorationists are making an error when they say, no, it's us, because we got here this other way. You got it through tradition, we got it through direct revelation. And the reformers weigh in and we're like, we got it from the Bible and everybody's pointing to a source of authority when it seems pretty evident both rationally and biblically that the source of Authority that declares someone is in the church is the God whose bride is the church. It's his. The church is one foundation, is the one who gets to make these declarations. So I don't know. I don't think we're necessarily going to get that solved with one podcast in terms of persuading everyone. But to me, these really aren't terribly difficult questions Biblically. I mean, I'm working on Galatians right now with my daily Bible podcast. I mean, I do the YouTube thing that you and I talked about, but I do this daily Bible podcast and have for years. That's really fun. Ten minutes a day. Pick a book, chip away at it. Well, right now we're working on Galatians, and I just. I just don't know how you can carefully read this book and come to any other conclusion about where. Right. Standing with God comes from in the life of the believer. What would it look like for Paul to be more direct in explaining that this is the gift of God? [00:59:14] Speaker B: Yeah, but. [00:59:15] Speaker A: And I mean, he says it 50 times in one book alone. [00:59:19] Speaker B: But, Matt. [00:59:20] Speaker A: Oh, no. [00:59:21] Speaker B: He added the word alone after faith. Luther did. Luther added the word alone after faith. So. [00:59:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I get it now. What are we even doing here? [00:59:33] Speaker B: What are we doing here? [00:59:34] Speaker A: I'm kind of embarrassed that we just spent the last hour like this. [00:59:38] Speaker B: I'm selling this. [00:59:39] Speaker A: Everyone, an apology, especially the Mormons. [00:59:40] Speaker B: I'm selling this to Catholic Answers. Now. This is. [00:59:45] Speaker A: I, like so many Mormons, I don't want to give the impression that I'm in a fight. [00:59:49] Speaker B: I love Mormons. I love Mormons. [00:59:50] Speaker A: Any of the people whose ideas we're talking about, like, this is my disclaimer. I should have done it on the front end. I'm doing it on the back end. I love the taxonomy of faith. I love the taxonomy of religious institutions and structures. I find this very, very interesting. And I think certain things and I disagree with certain things. And it's ridiculous to ask me not to think things and believe things in the interest of fairness or whatever I don't like. I want to be gracious and I want to be fair and that I'm accurately representing what other people think. I think that's an ultimate gesture of respect. But I also don't want to. I mean, we're men of action. Lies do not become us. Let's not pretend people think things they don't think. [01:00:31] Speaker B: That's right. [01:00:32] Speaker A: Let's accurately taxonomize what it is that we're looking at here. So sometimes I can maybe come off as a little bit callous when I'm in that mode. Please forgive me if I've done that today. [01:00:43] Speaker B: I. We're hitting an hour here and I promise not to take up any more than an hour to an hour and a half of your time. So I want to be respectful of that. I know you have obligations, but I do have Twitter questions I want to ask you questions. [01:00:59] Speaker A: All right, let's do a couple Twitter questions. I'm game. [01:01:01] Speaker B: Alright. [01:01:01] Speaker A: I can see my family fidgeting about, but I don't think they're fidgeting toward dinner just yet. [01:01:07] Speaker B: Alrighty, Texan. Papa wants to know what's the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? [01:01:16] Speaker A: Okay, unladen. I know the damn steps. You want me to just do them all or should we just let it be? [01:01:25] Speaker B: Fine, we all get it. It's a Monty Python reference. Wonderful. What were your thoughts on the Anglican tradition? Just. [01:01:37] Speaker A: Oh. What do you think about Anglican? [01:01:39] Speaker B: What do you think about Anglicans? [01:01:40] Speaker A: Anglicanism. [01:01:41] Speaker B: Real quick, on the way, real quick, five minutes. Okay. [01:01:44] Speaker A: Specifically about one of the five, four great branches of a 2,000 year old religion. Okay. Anglicanism. I've done a bunch of Anglican videos. I have done a video at a continuing, like a continuing Anglican, Anglo Catholic, very conservative church in Las Vegas. I've done kind of your typical middle, sort of theologically liberal leaning Episcopal church also in Las Vegas with just a brilliant man. I have done a super hyper progressive, lefty, almost hard to recognize as historical Christianity expression of Episcopality. Really like the guy I talked to. Really like the guy. But it's probably as hard as I've ever found myself disagreeing with somebody I've interviewed outside of. I mean the Unitarian gal was a wonderful lady as well, but I disagreed with her harder. And then I have done an ACNA church, which I find very compelling. And if I were going to be Anglican, I would do the ACNA thing. Or maybe I'd. Yeah, I would do the ACNA thing. I was very impressed. That was in Kansas City. A really impressive merging of the best stuff to flow out of the larger Reformation while finding a way to, I think theologically faithfully fuse that with the best stuff we took with us from before the Reformation. I thought it. I think the ACNA is a really smart hybrid and if they play their cards right, I think they've got a real future ahead of them. Especially in this moment where all the men of the world are waking up at one wants. They don't want effeminate evangelicalism. They don't want hr, morality insurance, don't get sued. [01:03:50] Speaker B: Bull crap. [01:03:51] Speaker A: Religion. That is the religion of our time. It's the stupidest thing ever. It's gutless, it's faithless, it's emasculating, it's boring, it's trite, it's conference room. ACNA isn't any of that. ACNA is what will scratch the itch right now. And there's an authority to it. There's history to it. There's clarity to what they're trying to do. Also, they understand, they live in this moment. And so there's enough familiarity to the paces to be understandable because we live in, you know, at least the last 15 years have been very post Christian. People don't know the material anymore. Yeah, the groups that are going to thrive in the next 10 years and seize on this, this cultural falling off, you know, scales falling off the eyes moment are going to be the ones who figure out how to say it in a way that people that makes sense, but also that is not a slave to culture or Americanism. People want something bigger than this country. And I think acna, lcms, I think a lot of these kind of groups are really well positioned. Confessional Lutheranism, really well positioned to make it make sense to that crowd. So I really like Anglicanism in its more biblical, historical, orthodox sense. Dude, I'm just shooting from the hip and saying what I really think about stuff as we talk. But I'll tell you, I'm hurt and disappointed by where the Episcopal Church has gone in general. There are exceptions. Oh, I've been to an amazing Episcopal Church in St. Augustine, Florida, with Reverend Matt. They're phenomenal. So you can't get out the broad brush and be like, this is how the Episcopals are. This is how the Anglicans are. There's this huge spectrum and there are people efforting inside these groups to nudge it toward historic Christian orthodoxy. And there are other forces in these groups trying to nudge it towards something that I look just taxonomically is unrecognizable as historic Christianity. So I've met some phenomenal people, and I'm not punting on the Episcopal Church. I think there's a future there. But I've seen some stuff in it that is troubling as well. [01:06:06] Speaker B: I. I had redeemed Zoomer on. It hasn't aired yet at the time of our recording. [01:06:14] Speaker A: I know that guy. Okay, cool. [01:06:16] Speaker B: He. He talked to me about his Reconquista movement. And I went into that conversation and I was like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. You're an idiot and you're gonna fail. And I came out of the conversation thinking it's worthwhile. Like, I. Like there is. [01:06:31] Speaker A: It's worthwhile. [01:06:32] Speaker B: The way he lays it out there. There's not like there's not just like a chance, but there's like a good opportunity to really build a movement and change the culture of some of these main lines. [01:06:45] Speaker A: I agree. So it's not that hard structurally. [01:06:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:06:50] Speaker A: The same structures that left it wide open to be taken over by leftover hippies and people who wanted the social structure of the church along with a little bit of the value structure, but no Jesus and no Bible. The same structure that left it ripe for being taken over from the inside out is still in place. And a lot of these groups, they straight up publish all their numbers as a requirement of membership in these denominations. If you just want to have fun, go pick a mainline denomination and see how the churches in your town are doing. The answer is horrible. Horrible, Horrible. [01:07:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:07:31] Speaker A: Amazing buildings taking up amazing real estate and. [01:07:36] Speaker B: Yeah, well. And that's. [01:07:37] Speaker A: There's nothing there. [01:07:38] Speaker B: And there's. There's the. So you have to inculcate a new culture. Right. When you do something like this. But at the same time, there's like the. The vestiges of the old culture. And this is going to sound really terrible, and I apologize for how offensive this is going to sound. But the people that hold on to that old hippie culture, most of them are seriously not that far away from no longer being with us. Right. Like, the. The. A lot of the big liberal numbers, the big people that were pushing this sort of liberalism on mainlines, they are quite literally dying off. And with taking their ideology with them. A lot of young, outside of, like, you have a priestly class, I think, like in the elca, that's still hard liberal, but the actual people on the ground that were pushing for these changes are in fact dying off. And the people or just retiring. [01:08:40] Speaker A: I mean, okay, come on. That. That lets us say it a bit more graciously. I think that's. [01:08:45] Speaker B: That's fine. [01:08:45] Speaker A: I do not yearn for the day when somebody roots for me and all of my classmates to die. So church can be better. But. And I'm not saying that's what you're saying. [01:08:55] Speaker B: It's not. But the point. [01:08:56] Speaker A: I just want to. I want. For the record, okay, they're retiring. [01:09:00] Speaker B: They're okay. They're all tiring. Yes, you're right. [01:09:04] Speaker A: And everybody. I've ever interviewed who advocates for that particular perspective, that kind of old school mainline liberalism, they are aging out and. [01:09:13] Speaker B: The people coming up behind them aren't carrying those values. Like that's the no thing. That's the thing I'm driving at. [01:09:19] Speaker A: Because they don't, they don't need the mechanism of the church anymore to carry forward their agenda. Their agenda already is mainstream. They don't need to be subversive. [01:09:29] Speaker B: So they are. [01:09:29] Speaker A: And they are pushing it for the last 15 years for holding those opinions publicly. Whereas when all of the mainline, you know, American Baptist, the pcusa, Episcopal Church, United Methodist, when all of this stuff happened, that was the sheep's clothing that you could wrap these failed ideas in to carry them outward into culture. And they won for a while. But the problem is, the problem with always aspiring to unseat the man is that then you're the man and now we have to see if your thing works or not. And wow, did we ever weigh that particular ideology for the last 15 years and everyone found it wanting. [01:10:13] Speaker B: Yeah, it is not working. [01:10:14] Speaker A: Being across the board, rejected. [01:10:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:10:18] Speaker A: And, and so there, you're right. There is no one in the pipeline coming up behind. I can say that empirically. I'm not just theorizing about that because the people who want to advance those values in a public, social, political way do not need the vehicle of the mainline church to do it. They can just go out and do it in public or they could. Now the wheels are coming off of that and those churches, here's what's going to happen. They're just going to close and go away and turn into bars and nightclubs and converted, gaudy, tacky houses. I would love to start a denomination. And I know this is an offensive idea, but I would love to start a denomination. I have a name for it. I'm not going to say it because I want somebody to steal it. It's a great name, it's a historic name. And I would love to articulate in those founding documents that we're not actually starting a new denomination. It is this. It has been dormant, it has been latent, it has been absorbed into other denominations. But I would make a legal, structural case in the founding of this denomination or reopening of this denomination that this has been here for centuries. It's just this. And it's these latencies reawakened in one place. We're just picking up where dead Christians who came before us left off. And frankly don't need to make that point. I would love to start Such a denomination, and I would love to make one of the rules of that denomination is much like the Greyjoys. We do not sow. We do not build buildings. There are plenty of buildings, plenty of buildings. We take buildings that are sitting there and we make them alive and well. They are positioned in the right place already. We're never getting that real estate back with a church of 200 people. You're not buying back in, in downtown here, downtown there. We're taking it and we're making it beautiful and we're making it thrive again. We're going to put crosses on them again. We're going to have clear Christian imagery with accoutrements again that I will not describe here in case I decide to reawaken this latent ancient denomination someday. Or try. I talk like I could do it. That's comical sounding, but the right people could. But, you know, some sort of accoutrement or flair to that cross like the Orthodox have, they just say, oh, that's an Orthodox cross. Or the Irish Catholics have, that's a Celtic cross. Something to just say, oh, wow, that is a historic confessional Western church cross. And there it is on another building. And there it is on another building. What will I get inside there? Historic Orthodox, biblical, faithful Christianity carrying forward the message. So I tell you what, Zoomer is a dude who, tonally, we come at it a little different, he and I. He's got the brashness of youth on his side and I think he wears it pretty well. He does. I might couch things a little differently than him, but not a lot of people are trying to solve the problem. A lot of people are sitting around and griping about stuff all the time, impotently. While the most incredible moment in the history of Christianity is, or in the history of our lives for the church is dawning right now. This is what we've been positioning for for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years. Right now is the moment. And what I respect about that young man is he's trying to do something. And I really like Christians who are thinkers and doers right now. [01:13:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's. That's awesome. That's well put. I look forward to joining Whitman's Bible church headed by the Apostle Gary. I think it's. [01:14:04] Speaker A: The name's a lot better than that. I'm telling. [01:14:05] Speaker B: I don't think I'm still workshopping, but. [01:14:08] Speaker A: It'S way better than. [01:14:08] Speaker B: I don't know how we can get much better than what I just said. [01:14:12] Speaker A: No, it's already taken by Chocolates, man. [01:14:14] Speaker B: We can't. There can't be a. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. [01:14:17] Speaker A: Okay. We're doing 10 Minute Bible. Oh, gross. That's tacky and awful. I don't want to do that either. [01:14:23] Speaker B: Which tradition had the most profound impact upon you and why Was it Lutheranism? [01:14:29] Speaker A: Okay, all right, let's just play along. Let's say it was Lutheranism. [01:14:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:14:38] Speaker A: Hearing for the first time what I would consider to be biblical orthodoxy in a very high church setting. The church in Hamel, Illinois, that I went to Weedon. Yeah. With with Will. Wonderful guy, Pete Slayton. [01:14:54] Speaker B: Wonderful guy. [01:14:55] Speaker A: That. That really impressed me. Excellent. They didn't give me communion. I think they should have. I don't. I don't like that. I disagree with that strategy. Lcms, they've got a wing in lcms, Missouri Synod Lutheran, that kind of wants to do the just typical evangelical thing. I think strategically, that's really unshrewd. I. Man, I. I think you missed your moment. If you wanted to do that, you should have done that in 1995 and ridden that train for about 10 years. [01:15:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, how do you argue. How do you argue, though, those churches, you know, you have. And not to. Not to. I'm not throwing shade at the LCMS here. I love the lcms, our denominations in fellowship with them. I'm in the aalc. We're in alternate pulpit fellowship. So love the lcms, brothers and sisters. But how can you say that? What you just said about the big box evangelicalism, you're missing the mark. [01:15:55] Speaker A: How can. [01:15:55] Speaker B: How can you say that when the largest LCMS church, I believe, is King of Kings Omaha with several thousand people? And there is nothing liturgical at all about that church. It is literally just a big box megachurch. But they teach Lutheran stuff instead. [01:16:13] Speaker A: I don't know. I haven't been there. I can't judge it or critique it. What I can say is that all these different groups have a superpower. It really is like the Avengers or the X Men, the comic book stories that are powerful and well written, or the Fellowship of the Ring. Everybody's good at something else. It doesn't work if you don't have all of them. And LCMS is great. I mean, this is still speaking to the question of what church had a huge impact on me and why was it Lutheranism? LCMS is great as a representative of confessional, historic, creedal Western Catholic Lutheranism. It's magnificent. And they still do it, and they wear it well and they articulate it in A way that makes sense. And so the reason I would like them to keep leaning into that is because there aren't a lot of other people who do it well, you know. So, like, you got the Avengers. Well, I don't know. Both Hulk and Thor are good at bending metal and smashing things. If you wanted to add one more member to the core nine members of the MCU Avengers, do you go with another smasher? I don't know. I think we have that covered. I think we're good. And I feel like we've got the big box evangelicalism that I'm not even trying to crap on it with that language. I like it and think it plays an important role and needs to be there. I think that is a faithful carrier of the gospel. Unless you get into some of the fringe stuff and then taxonomically, you're not talking about evangelical anymore. Even if they have evangelical in the name. What I am saying is the LCMS Wisconsin Synod, you guys, it's rare, it's weird, it's important. Pca, the Presbyterian Church in America is rare, weird and important. The acna, the Anglican Church in North America is very important. These are all precious groups that do something nobody else completely does well. And so when they run off and imitate things that tend to get clicks, tend to draw donations, tend to result in getting big buildings, tend to result in getting notoriety, I'm not surprised that it worked. I'm not surprised at all to find out that that church in Omaha is the largest LCMS church. Awesome. It just further proves my point that we know that works and there's plenty of it. There isn't a lot of what you're into and what you do is really important. And this is the important thing. So I'm going to say right on microphone, real loud, it's the important thing for the next 10 to 15 years. It feels bigger than America, even though it has an American state in the name. It feels bigger than America. It feels bigger than our government, it feels bigger than our advertising and our economy and our systems. And people are at this beautiful point where they have realized the clown king motif of the Bible, that the rival claimant on your heart is the state, it is the world, it is society and all of its empty promises. And it feels like in this moment especially, men are realizing how hollow the promises of the world and the government and the economy and all the things that make us feel secure are. And they want something that rather than grabbing onto all of the accoutrements of all of that stuff that we Just realized doesn't work. They want something that feels like it's bigger than that, like it's gonna outlast that. Like. And I think those expressions of conservative confessional Lutheranism do that really, really well. So if LCMS needs to do evangelical looking things, great. I'm an evangelical. I'll never apologize for that. Awesome. But also, you're really good at this other thing, and I hope they keep doing it. [01:20:01] Speaker B: You're good at this other thing that not many other people are good at. [01:20:04] Speaker A: Yes. [01:20:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:20:05] Speaker A: Yes. They're very important to the team. [01:20:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Cool. Matt, thank you so much. [01:20:12] Speaker A: Was this what we were supposed to do at all, man? [01:20:14] Speaker B: I had no plans, dude. I went into this was zero plan, no questions, nothing. This was great. [01:20:20] Speaker A: You're great. You're good at this. [01:20:22] Speaker B: I. I said thank you. I tell you what. [01:20:28] Speaker A: What. [01:20:28] Speaker B: What can. What can I plug for you? What can I plug for you? There's gonna be. Look, look, I know you got like a thing going, but I got. I probably 30 listeners an episode here, brother. [01:20:38] Speaker A: So phenomenal. I'll take it. [01:20:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:20:42] Speaker A: Well, okay, here's my things real quick. It's a short list. 1. I do the no Dumb Questions podcast with Destin from Smarter every day. I'm not out, you know, trying to see how many listeners we can rack up. People listen. That podcast is in good shape, but you might like it. And so I offer that as something that people might really enjoy. It's weird. He's a rocket scientist. I'm a. Whatever this is. We pick a topic. He. Rocket science is it. I. Whatever. This is it. And it's kind of fun. I do the YouTube channel. It's called Matt Whitman and the 10 Minute Bible Hour. I don't even know how it's. It's supposed to be Bible stuff, but it always ends up being ecclesiology stuff. I. I don't know what to do about that. It is what it is. I think it's good or I wouldn't be doing it. People might enjoy that. And then finally, the thing that I'm really excited about and that I hope people would consider checking out is my very weird daily Bible podcast that is weird, but orthodox. And it is just trying to get to the bottom of what the thing seems to mean. There is no sermon in it. There's no excuse me, there's not like, you know, punchline or life lesson at the end of every episode where now I tell you, like, come on, guys, let's swear less or whatever. It's just whatever the text is. We're just working on it. If it takes a month's worth of daily episodes, fine. If we're through in a day, like, whatever, I don't know, we're just learning it together. I'm unwrapping the present at the same time as a listener. And it's just meant to be like a 1012 minute part of your daily rhythm. Little drive time commute. Bible podcast to keep the Bible on repeat in your life all the time. Get that? Anywhere you listen to podcasts, the 10 Minute Bible Hour is the name. And I really, straight up would be really honored if folks who are listening would check it out, see what they think. You can jump in anywhere. [01:22:29] Speaker B: Wonderful, Matt. Thank you. [01:22:31] Speaker A: Appreciate you, man.