Voting and Predestination - David Bercot

Lesson Transcript

That I love Christ so much that no matter what Satan brings on, I'll never stop loving Christ. Hey guys, BDK and I of Omega Frequency are so happy to bring you all this special episode with David Berceau about predestination and politics. And we're so glad that we were able to get this in before November 3rd so we can help you make a sound and wise decision as to how you should engage this particular time in our country's history. So please take the time and listen to it.

If you have questions, type those questions in the chat, and we will be there live with you during this premiere to answer those questions. I want to make sure that you go and check out scrollpublishing.com where you can find all of David's resources. He has several new teaching CDs or MP3s there, one on five misunderstood verses of Scripture, one on politics and voting, and one on the issue of eternal security and assurance of salvation. So please go check those out.

All right, well, without any further ado, let's go ahead and get to the interview. Well, David Berceau, thank you so much for doing this interview. This is such a blessing for me and for BDK, and man, just thank you for taking your time to do this. Well, I'm looking forward to it. I enjoyed our last chat, and so I'm looking forward to today's as well. Yes, sir.

Yeah, as I was telling you earlier, my mentor and I, we've been going through Romans for the last couple of years, and we're about two-thirds of the way through chapter eight. And the other day, I was looking at your Scroll Publishing's website, and I saw that you have a new teaching out on five misunderstood passages of Scripture. And I looked at it, and I'm like, "Oh my goodness, this is fantastic. You're covering Romans 8:36 through 39.

This couldn't be better timing." And I also saw that you had out a message on voting and politics, and goodness, that's such good timing. And I'm so glad that you made time to do this interview so we could talk about some misunderstood passages in Romans. And I know you have a commentary on Romans that you're working on, and I know this is just a book that so many people have strong feelings about.

And so it's really good for me to have been able to see what a lot of the early Christians believed about it because a lot of the commentaries that we have are based on beliefs from people like Calvin, right, several hundred years ago instead of a couple thousand years ago where we get the original interpretations. So if we can just kick this off, we'll do it in three main sections. We'll hit those three main passages from Romans 8, Romans 9, and Romans 13.

And then if we have some follow-up questions, we'll do that as we go if that's okay. Sure. Excellent. Excellent. Well, in the misunderstood passages CD, you discuss Romans 8:35 through 39. So how is that passage often interpreted? And then how did Paul actually intend for it to be understood?

Okay, so the way it's normally quoted today, and I shared on the CD message my own personal experience with this was that no matter what we do, nothing could separate us from Christ's love, that we can commit adultery, idolatry, murder, whatever. Once we have been saved, then that's it. And I was having actually a discussion with my pastor back when I was a member of an evangelical church on the subject of eternal security.

And he quoted that passage from Romans, Romans 8 to me, that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. And I said, he read it to me, and I said, "Well, it doesn't say that I can't separate myself. It just says that no third party can." And his response was, "Oh, are you saying I can do something that an angel can't do?" And well, I wasn't going to argue with him.

He was my pastor, but I realized that was not a very strong argument because what a third party could do and what I can do are two different things, whether it's an angel or not. But yeah, that's how I understood it, that it was talking about Christ's love of me and that Paul was saying that nothing can separate that, at least no third party can. And so I was very surprised when I'm reading the early Christians. And I think the first one where it became apparent was Origen's commentary on Romans.

And I realized after I read his discussion that, "Wait a minute, now he's not understanding this to be talking about Christ's love for us. He's understanding Paul to be talking about his love, Paul's love, and our love as Christians for Jesus Christ." I thought, "Well, that's different." And I realized, of course, the expression, the love of Christ, that can mean our love for him or it can mean his love for us. It's ambiguous. And it's that way in English. It's that way in Greek. There's no way around that.

You can make it unambiguous, but the expression by itself, it's not clear. Well, then I started looking at other writers. What did they say about this verse? And I realized everybody has the same take. I mean, it wasn't an issue. I mean, it's just their natural reading was he's talking about Paul is talking about his love for Christ or our love for Christ, however you would want to look at that. Sometimes the New Testament writers and the early Christians both, they'll use plural.

They'll say we or our when they're talking about themselves. And so that's why they weren't sure if Paul meant his own love or if he's talking on behalf of all of us. I'm going to just read you one of the quotes. This is from John Chrysostom. I'm just reading this one because it's so clear. Like I say, there's a whole host of them I could read. He says, "If some of us are ungrateful to God, the same was not true of Paul.

He was so alive through the Spirit and was so on fire with love for God as to utter those words worthy of his Spirit and to cry aloud with the words, 'Who will cut us off from love for Christ?' See the point of his remark? See the passion of his overwhelming desire? See his burning love? Who will cut us off? What is there, he says, that has power to deprive us from loving God? Anything visible? Anything invisible?

Then in his wish to enumerate everything individually and to make clear to us all the irrepressible love he had for the Lord, he added distress, hardship, hunger, persecution, nakedness, danger, the sword. What is there, he says, of all the problems besetting us that could separate us from our love of God? Daily distress? Not at all. Hardships? These neither. Persecution? By no means. Hunger? Not even that.

He says the onset of death itself could not succeed in achieving it." So I mean, Chrysostom is clearly understanding Paul is talking about his love for Christ and for anyone else who would have the same kind of love. In fact, I was not able to find one single early Christian who understood that passage differently. Not even Augustine. They all understood Paul to be talking about our love for God, our love for Christ. And the Greek there could be translated love of Christ or love for Christ.

You could translate it either way. So that was marvelous to me that not only is it not saying that there's nothing we could do to make Christ stop loving us or to separate ourselves from his love, but he's not even talking about that. He's saying that I love Christ so much that no matter what Satan brings on, I'll never stop loving Christ. Now, Chrysostom points out not every Christian is at that level. Paul isn't making an empty boast.

He was at a stage in his walk that he could state that confidently along with the other apostles. Not all of us could make that same statement. That's why he understood it to be Paul talking more about himself. And you know when I read that, I thought, "Wow, that is so different." I went back and read the whole passage, and then I realized that's the only interpretation that makes any sense.

Because let's just imagine for a moment that Paul is trying to argue that even if we do wrong, that Christ would still love us. Well, he makes an incredibly weak argument. I mean, you would expect him to say, "Even if we commit adultery, even if we steal." But instead, he says, "Tribulation, persecution, distress, all these things we suffer on behalf of Christ," he says, "cannot separate us from the love of Christ." Well, if he's talking about Christ's love for us, what a horrible argument.

Well, we would assume that if I'm willing to die for Christ, that that's not going to cause him to stop loving me. Well, let's hope not. That if we suffer on his behalf, of course, he's going to still love us. I mean, that would be a horrible argument if Paul was trying to argue that Christ's loving us. But he's talking about our love for him is why he mentions all of these things that bring distress on us and that Satan will use to try to cut us off from loving Christ.

And of course, some Christians have quit loving Christ because of tribulation. But Paul was speaking in a triumphant kind of manner that no matter what happens, we're never going to stop loving Christ. And the early Christians, they all speak the same way. A few of them, yes, they gave in under persecution, but as a church, no. Nothing could stop the church from its love for Christ. That's really good.

It was making me think about, I believe it's Cyprian when he's writing people about martyrdom when they're being persecuted. And he quotes that passage.

And he's basically, like you're saying, saying, "It doesn't matter if we're tortured or whatever, we're going to continue loving Christ." And it was making me think too about what Paul has been saying throughout Romans 8, how he's talking about the flesh and the Spirit waging war against each other, but we need to make sure that we are serving the Spirit, that we are depending on the Holy Spirit.

Because the Holy Spirit, one of his main roles is to conform us to the image of Jesus and to have that same heart that Jesus had when Jesus is crying out to his Father. And I just wanted to read a couple of passages or scriptures from Romans 8. And verse 15, "You did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you've received the spirit of adoption, which we cry out, 'Abba, Father.'" And it's that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs of Christ, if in fact we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. And so the Holy Spirit will bring us into places of suffering. And that does confirm, in a sense, that we're children of God as we cry out to him in those times. And it also serves as a strong witness to those around us that we are children of God because the Spirit of Jesus is growing inside us and changing us to be more like him, to have that same mindset towards suffering.

For instance, it's for the joy set before him that Christ endured the cross. Yes. Bringing many sons to glory, that kind of idea. And Paul lists all the wonderful things God has done for us and that Christ has done for us. And so now he's saying, "Because we have such a wonderful Lord, yeah, nothing is going to stop me from loving him because he's done so much for me." So he's not boasting in his own self-confidence.

Like you say, it's this Holy Spirit in him and that witness that he had because he had such a close relationship with Christ and such a close walk. But it was also a spirit of the age. A lot of modern Christians, I have found, are very critical of people like Ignatius and many of the other early Christians who glory in martyrdom.

And they say, "Oh, there's something kind of sick in that." But no, this was like, "Hey, if I can die for Christ, what more glorious thing could there be?" Now, when people say that about dying for their country, I mean, everyone admires Nathan Hale.

"My only regret is I have but one life to give for my country." And everyone says, "Hey, boy, now that's really talking." But when someone talks like that about Jesus, it's like, "Well, that borders on fanaticism." But no, that's what made the early church so unconquerable that no matter what the Romans did to them, it was like, "Hey, we are so happy to die for Christ. This is wonderful. How do you defeat that?" The Romans couldn't. They finally gave up. "We can't defeat the Christians." Yeah.

That corresponds so well with what Paul talks about in Philippians 3 when he's talking about wanting to know the fellowship of the sufferings of Christ. And he says, "Not that I've already become perfect or obtained that goal, but I press on to win the goal, the upward call of Christ Jesus." And that word perfect, that telos idea of completion is something that the early Christians say about martyrdom. They basically see it as the completion, the fulfillment of a Christian life. That is the ultimate fulfillment.

So yeah, we totally, like you're saying, have a misunderstanding of even what the end goal is for us, at least on earth, if that would be granted to us, the opportunity to do that. Amen. So you bring up a very interesting point about our culture and how we are willing to tie that into patriotism. And you also bring up a very interesting point that we bear a certain amount of responsibility, like in any relationship, to make sure that love and that passion and that zeal doesn't die out.

If someone were to do an honest inventory of their heart and say, "You know what, man? I don't think I have that sort of passion where I would welcome persecution or martyrdom." Do you have any sort of practical advice on how a Christian can cultivate that sort of love for Jesus, like a couple of steps they could take today to do that? Yeah. I mean, I think the obvious ones would be developing a close prayer life.

That's, I think, the foundation to everything that if we don't pray regularly, pray throughout the day. I mean, Paul, when you look at his letters, almost everyone, he says, "I pray for you continually." So this tells me that Paul, I mean, this guy, when he's not preaching or reading or writing or something like that, he's praying. I mean, that's what creates a person like Paul and the other apostles is having that kind of prayer life.

And of course, walking with Christ obediently, the early Christians say, "When we're baptized, when we're born again, the Holy Spirit, we receive it as a gift." But now, if we're not going to walk with the Spirit, if we're going to live an ungodly life, then the Spirit is going to withdraw. The Spirit does not dwell in an unholy temple. And so it's also part of that is living a godly life. So the Spirit is infusing his power in us, and we respond obediently, which then he walks, he lives even more inside of us.

And it's just an ongoing growth that way, but it can unravel the other way around. So it's prayer, and then it's putting all of this into action daily, living it out. And we all stumble. We fail. We constantly go to God and ask forgiveness. Jesus, why he said as part of the Lord's Prayer, "Forgive us our trespasses," because he knew every day we would need to pray that because every day we're going to stumble. But God is so merciful. He wants to see us succeed.

So yeah, he's there to pick us up and to help us as long as our desire is to please him in everything that we do. Amen. Now, though this passage really isn't dealt with in your new teachings, Romans 9:10 through 23 is often used by people to promote a view on predestinations that the early Christians really would reject. How did the early Christians interpret this passage, and how did that original interpretation kind of get twisted throughout time? Yeah, excellent question.

As Phil mentioned, I'm working right now on an early Christian commentary on Romans and how was Romans understood before Augustine. So I've kind of given the last part of your question away. And every one of them, I mean, before Augustine, no one read Romans 9 as doing away with free will. Now, they didn't all have the exact same explanation, and I'm still trying to get my head around it. I was telling Phil, I think when he first emailed me, that I'm still in the research stage.

I'm still trying to get to the point where I feel like I totally understand how the early Christians, how all of them understood every single chapter of Romans. And I want to get that down and not stick my own thoughts in there. But I can give you, well, certainly Origen, who probably has the best and most detailed explanation. I can then mention what some of the others have to say on it as well.

His explanation, well, it depends which part of that, that Paul isn't taking away free will, but he's pointing out the fact that God is in charge of everything. Nobody disputes that. And that he can deal with us however he chooses in his sovereignty. He's never going to do it outside of his love. I mean, that's the chief thing that God is love. So anything that would be contrary to love, and we as even fallen humans, we understand what love is. God has infused that understanding in us.

We may not always practice it, but we know what love is. We know what justice is. God is never going to do anything unjust. So his dealing is not based on anything arbitrary or harsh. It's going to be always based on love. But the other ingredient that we don't have is, or I mean, none of us have it to God's degree, justice or love, but we don't have his foreknowledge. So when he's dealing with Pharaoh, yeah, he knows how Pharaoh is going to turn out. He knows how you are going to turn out. He knows how Phil and I.

We don't know if we're going to continue to walk faithfully till the end. If we're a five-point Calvinist, we would say, "Well, perseverance of the saints." So we know if we're saved, we're going to persevere. The early Christians would say, "No, we don't know that we're going to persevere, but we can have confidence. We can have a confident expectation if we're walking with Christ." But yes, God had two choices. Satan, I mean, Pharaoh was wicked. He deserved to die right on the spot.

God, in his justice, had every right to strike him down. He asked him to let his people go. This is the God of the universe. This isn't some little desert god, some little idol. This is the creator of the universe saying, "Let my people go." And Pharaoh says, "No, I don't think I'm going to do that." God could have just struck him dead. No, he shows him abundant mercy. One miracle, and Pharaoh doesn't respond. So he gives him another miracle. He gives him another miracle, and so on.

Now, some of the early Christians would have said, "There's two ways to understand hardening his heart." One is that by showing him so much mercy, it kind of spoiled him. In other words, God could have just struck him dead by being so indulgent with him. It just helped him to get worse and worse. But God had a reason behind it because he wanted to show mercy on all of the other people who would respond to those miracles. And Origen explains this. I've always loved his illustration.

He said, "If you take a lump of wax and a lump of wet clay and put them both out in the sun, that same sun, that same action of the sun will soften that wax and make it just where you can it's pliable. It'll harden that clay and make it like a brick." In fact, that's how they made bricks back in those days, mud bricks anyway. So that same action of God, it hardened Pharaoh because of his own nature, because of his own sinful, wicked nature.

It just made him worse and worse and worse, but it softened all of these other Egyptians who left along with the Hebrews. So God hardened him, not because he wanted to harden him, but because that same action of the way he dealt with him had those two different effects. So I thought that was a brilliant illustration how God can act in love, and yet those actions can harden certain people because of their own wickedness.

When Jesus spoke harshly to the Pharisees, well, he spoke very harshly to the apostles many times, very abruptly, very frankly, and it softened them. I mean, they were humble. I mean, they took his rebukes. The Pharisees, it hardened their hearts because of how Jesus spoke to them. That was because of their own wickedness. The same kind of frank language softened the hearts of the apostles. So yeah, God's dealing is always in justice that way.

And then, like I say, others pointed out he knew how Pharaoh was going to turn out, and so he wanted to have the opportunity to perform these miracles.

If he had just struck him dead, which would have been just, he would not have had the occasion to perform the miracles that not only affected other people, but it spread his reputation so that even when the Israelites, yeah, 40 years later, approached the promised land and people are saying, "We heard about what happened with Pharaoh." So it did an enormous amount of mercy to people who weren't even there present on that stage.

When you were talking earlier in the last question about the necessity for obedience in our life, that kind of brought to my mind Mark chapters 2 and 3 because you see this great miracle being performed to a paralytic. And you see the Pharisees that were there, and Jesus knew their hearts, right, that they're trying to trap him in a sense.

But you see everyone there gathered in that house praising God after the miracle, but they don't do the main they don't follow through with the main purpose of that miracle, right? Because if they really understood it, they would have asked for God to forgive them of their sins. They would have asked for that. And they don't. And what happens in the very next chapter is they begin plotting to murder Jesus. Yeah. It's so incredible how quickly that hardening happened.

And I was thinking about miracles too as you were talking that a lot of people just say, "God, if you would just do this miracle in my life, then I would fill in the blank." But it seems throughout scripture that miracles have this revealing effect that they reveal whether we were wax or clay based on how we respond to it. Yes. And it's kind of like we all want a miracle. Well, do you really?

Because it puts us in a position where you either now repent based on what you just saw and experience this softening, or if you don't, it's going to cause a lot of terrible things. And I've seen people in my life. I know someone pretty well who went on a mission trip and spent three months in the slums of Indonesia and saw God do incredible things. But this person didn't then he didn't respond appropriately afterward, came back to the States, and just went into sin and got deeper and deeper and deeper.

And it's almost like those miracles had a hardening effect, or maybe they revealed that the person wasn't really serving God for God, but rather trying to get something from God. Yeah. And a lot of people follow after I'm sorry, I was going to say a lot of people follow after miracles. They want wonders. They don't want to truly want a broken heart before God that doesn't require miracles. God, again, he doesn't owe us explanations. He performs miracles for some people. He heals some people.

Others he chooses not to. He has a reason. Now, Chrysostom, looking at this same passage in Romans, the main point that he gets out of it, or one of the main points, is we humans don't need to be overly inquisitive. God doesn't owe us explanations. He has shown enough and has taught enough in the scriptures that we can be assured of his love and his justice towards us. So having that assurance, then we should rest in that. We don't need to be asking, "Well, how come you didn't heal? I prayed for this person.

How come you didn't heal their sickness?" Or, "How come this person didn't get saved?" Or, "How come you treated this person this way?" God has his reasons. They're not ever going to be arbitrary, but he doesn't owe us an explanation. And it's very wrong for us as humans to think we've got to have all of the answers or else we're not going to serve God. And we live in an age where too many people are exactly in that spot. Why is there evil in the world? Why is there this or that?

And if we can't give all of the answers, well, then I'm not going to serve God. I'm not going to follow God. And of course, they're not hurting God in doing that. They're hurting themselves, but God is still going to try to reach them. But that was one lesson I would have probably never thought of that I really appreciate that Chrysostom really emphasizes that. Don't be overly curious.

Accept what God has revealed and accept there's things that we wouldn't understand even if he tried to reveal them to us because our outlook is too limited. Yeah, that's great. And you're absolutely right. We would prefer a God that we can understand better. We would prefer a God that maybe we can control, right? And I think that's one of the main reasons why BDK and I were talking about this last night. Probably one of the biggest gods in our country is our country.

Just like for the Romans, the god of the state, the empire cult is like the chief god. And that's one of the reasons why we would see Christians choosing not to get into politics. So along with that, with the election coming up, I'm so glad that you put out this new teaching on voting and politics. So what was the early Christians' position on the affairs of the state? And how should their approach toward politics inform our decisions in this area? So I'm going to read you just a couple of quotes.

And of course, at the time of the New Testament and of the early Christians, the Roman Republic was over. They had the emperor. They didn't elect him. But there were a lot of political things going on at a smaller level. Tertullian, he makes this quote, and this stuck in my mind when I read it first time 35 years ago or more. He said, "All zeal in the pursuit of glory and honor is dead in us.

So we have no pressing inducement to take part in your public meetings, nor is there anything more entirely foreign to us than the affairs of state. We acknowledge one all-embracing commonwealth, the world." And Tertullian isn't talking about open borders. This isn't a political issue. He's saying, as a Christian, they were looking at the whole world from the standpoint of God's kingdom, of bringing people from every nation, every ethnic group, every tribe into God's kingdom.

And it didn't matter if they were part of the Roman Empire or not part of the Roman Empire. Their loyalty was not to the Roman Empire. It was to the kingdom of God. And so somebody who was from one of the Germanic tribes was their kinsman. Even though to the Romans, he might have been an enemy, he was their brother and fellow kinsman. That national boundaries did not come between fellow citizens of God's kingdom.

Either your ultimate loyalty is going to be to your earthly kingdom, which is where most professing Christians are at. They will, without hesitation, drop bombs on fellow Christians in another country because they're in that country and those two countries are at war. Or we take a position, "No, our country is the kingdom of God." And so every single person on earth who is part of God's kingdom is my fellow citizen, and I'm not at war with them. I can't be at war with them.

So that was the early Christian position, how they looked at everything. And so politics, they just had no interest in all of those things that were going on around them other than as to the extent it maybe affected them. But other than that, they took no interest in the politics of their day. So how do you think that their beliefs should counsel? If we can put ourselves in the mind of Tertullian or Origen, how would they counsel a 21st-century American in late October, right before this election? Yeah.

I mean, I'm sure they would counsel us, "What are you doing down there in the mud when you can be up in the heavens? I mean, why are you toiling after earthly things instead of after your citizenship, which is in the heavens? And you're expending all of this energy, all of this passion on things that are going to pass away that don't make any difference." Furthermore, they had this complete confidence that God was in charge of the universe.

I mean, as Bible-believing Christians, we all the time hear people saying, "God's in charge. God's in charge." Well, if you believe God's in charge, then why are you so worried about the election? God's in charge, and he may want someone there totally different than what you or I think because his plan, I mean, he's dealing with a strategy that spans centuries and millennia, and we can't even begin to foresee that.

And so something we think is bad might actually be exactly what he's wanting to happen at that particular time. One of the quotes I shared in my CD from Daniel, two quotes actually, Daniel 2:20 and 21, Daniel says, "Blessed be the name of God forever and ever," or it may be Nebuchadnezzar speaking, "For wisdom and might are his, and he changes the times and the seasons. He removes kings and raises up kings." So God, he's the one who raises rulers and takes them down.

And also Daniel 4:17, he says, "This matter is by the decree of the watchers and the demand by the word of the holy ones to the intent that the living may know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, not just in the kingdom of angels, in the kingdom of heaven, but in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever he wills and sets up over it the basis of men." So we look at some of the people who are in public office and we think, "Why did God allow that to happen?" Well, he already told us he's going to put

the basis of men in office if that pleases him.

And we are blessed. We live in a time that the worst person running for public office today wouldn't even begin to put a match to someone like Nero or Caligula, the rulers that they were dealing with. So if they weren't worried and they were dealing with people like Nero, what are we all worried about? I mean, how can I take away any time from the kingdom of God to be worrying about what's going on in the kingdom of men? Jesus didn't send out his apostles to change the earth to make things better here.

He sent them out to make disciples for his kingdom that has an impact on our daily living now and has eternal impact as well. One of the things that BDK and I were talking about, we were having this conversation last night. The issue of being an ambassador for the kingdom of heaven came up in our discussion from 2 Corinthians chapter 5.

And so a question I have for you is, do you believe that Paul's counsel toward the Corinthians that we are to be ambassadors, ministers of reconciliation, had an impact on the early Christians' approach toward politics and government? So that's first. Do you think that idea of being an ambassador for heaven had an approach in the way they lived out their stance on politics? And second, how can we be effective ambassadors for the kingdom of heaven? So yeah, it definitely impacted that.

And the best witness to that effect is the fact that Paul and the apostles were all Jews. And there were all these things going on in the Jewish nation in the background of the writing of the New Testament. I mean, a number of rebellions that went on, major protests and things like that, Paul never talks about them. He doesn't care. He's an ambassador to the kingdom of God.

When he went down to Jerusalem, he didn't go down there to talk about, "Oh, yeah, how are you dealing with this latest thing that Caligula did?" Because he tried to bring in he was going to put his own statue in the temple in Jerusalem, and the Jews were all upset about that. Yeah, Paul is unconcerned. He says, "I'm an ambassador of the kingdom of God. I want you guys to realize that you're worried about something that is passing away.

I want to bring you into citizenship of a wholly different kingdom that will never pass away, of the Israel of God that, again, will never pass away, that no one can trample on. They can persecute us. They can put us to death, as Paul, we're talking about Romans 8. They can do all of that to us, but they're not going to be able to stop God's church from loving God, from loving Christ. They're never going to be able to stamp it out. And so we want to be ambassadors to that. And that's how we should be today.

No one should be associating Christians with a political party, whether liberal or conservative. I mean, that's not the answer to the world's ills. I mean, it might patch up this problem or that, but invariably, it creates all kinds of new problems. I'm 70 years right now, and my whole life, people have been unhappy politically. It's always, "We got to change this. We got to change that." They do make that change, and then they're unhappy about something else. It's never going to end.

People aren't ever going to solve man's woes because the root of them is sin, and it's our fallen nature. And it's like rearranging the furniture. It's not completely remodeling. We just moved the chairs around. Yeah, good illustration. So he wants us to remodel. He wants us to get into a whole new home and to help other people that way. And once your eyes are set on eternity, Paul could be happy in all kinds of circumstances because his eyes were on eternity.

So even if all he had was just barely enough to eat and all of that, he was joyful. He wasn't there complaining about it. So what would you say to people who would take the approach that, "Well, the early Christians lived in Rome or nations that are completely different from America, whereas our political system is more modern. We have a civic duty to vote. We can influence whether good or bad is in our land.

What if God is using us as his instruments through voting to make a positive impact in society?" People will always say, "If we don't do good, then evil will flourish." And the bare minimum of doing good is maybe voting for a candidate. These are all things that me and Phil get asked a ton of times. Do you have a take on that? Yes. Number one, it's treating prayer as if it's ineffective.

In other words, if we pray for God to put the person in of his choice, which is what he's going to do, but that we are putting our reliance on him, that, "Oh, well, that's not going to accomplish anything. We better get out and vote and get other people to vote because prayer, what good is prayer?" I mean, see, we're revealing that we really have this very low view of prayer when we take that attitude. The other thing is that this has been tried over and over. It's not something new.

Christians have been saying this since I was a little boy, "Yeah, let's put Christians in office and we'll solve all these ills." Well, it hasn't changed things. They were saying that back at the time of the US Constitution when it was first passed. They were saying that in the days of Puritan New England and on and on. You can keep going back. And it started with Constantine.

And the lesson there to me is so revealing because if I had lived at that time, I don't know that I wouldn't have thought the way everyone else did, "Oh, good. We finally have a Christian emperor. What can be better?" And he brought about some good things. He did away with the gladiator games, at least as far as people killing people. I think they maybe still kept having gladiators fight animals, but not killing other people. He made prostitution illegal. Abortion was illegal.

Abandoning infants, which was such a common thing, that was illegal. All of these good things. And you think, "Well, how could you beat that?" Well, yeah, but on the flip side of that was the church influenced the world and made some good changes in the world, but the world came into the church and decimated the church. I mean, within 100 years, nothing distinguished a "christian" from someone who wasn't a Christian. I mean, there was no difference whatsoever. I was just recently listening to a podcast.

I'm going to mention this is no competition to yours, Phil, because it's not an ongoing one. It's something that was recorded. You listen to, and then it's over. But it's a history one. It's called The 12 Byzantine Rulers. Let me see. I've got the guy's name, Lars Brownsworth. Now, from what I can tell listening to it, he is very pro the Byzantine Empire. In other words, he's not trying to find fault with it. He's upholding it as something good, but on the other hand, he's not blind to the faults.

And I was just listening to it this past week. Just again, I like to keep my ancient history fresh in my mind. And I'm thinking, "This is terrible. These are all 'christian emperors.' They're all involved. Some of them were holding ecumenical councils and all of that. And they are so wicked.

I mean, they are killing this person and that person and this and that." And this is what happened when Christians thought, "Yeah, we can reform the world." They did make some reforms, but in the end, the world reformed the church, made it into something unholy, ungodly. And yeah, it never changes. And that's why Jesus didn't try to remake the world of mankind. He came in and he told Pilot, "My kingdom is not of this world." And that should be our motto as well. Our kingdom is not of this world.

I think one of the best analogies that I've ever heard is something that you said about paint. If you start with black paint and you try to pour white paint in it, it has almost no effect on the paint. It stays black. But if you start with white paint and you start pouring the black paint into it, changes happen immediately. So if we think that we're going to change the culture by adding a little bit of Christian influence, got another thing coming. Yeah. Yeah. Man, that was great. Thank you so much, David.

This has been so edifying for me. And I know BDK and I know all the people that are going to listen to it. Do you have any final words of exhortation or encouragement for us? Well, since we're about to go into the election, I am going to encourage our listeners, "Hey, maybe this year, if it's going to be new to you to sit out an election, yeah, approach it on your knees.

Not to pray for Donald Trump or to pray for Biden, whichever camp you happen to be in, but to just pray that God's will would be done and that more and more people would look to his kingdom as the answer to their problems." And try that approach this year instead of going to the polls and see. It's not necessarily going to have a tangible result that you're going to know of. It's going to have a result on yourself, though.

The more you get focused on God's kingdom, it will change you, even if you don't ever know except in eternity how it may have impacted the course of election, what you did on your knees. Amen. Praise God. That was great. David, thank you so much for joining us today. We really, really appreciated you taking time to share with our listeners a different perspective on the kingdom of God, politics, and election and predestination.

Man, keep doing the work that you're doing, preparing the body of Christ to really, truly face the hour we're living in by taking us back to the historical roots of our faith. God bless you, man. Godspeed. Well, God bless both of you, and thank you for the ministry that you brothers carry on. And again, it's been just a pleasure having this godly Christian conversation with both of you. Amen. Thank you. Praise God.