The Eric Metaxas Show - Douglas Wilson (continued)

Episode Date: March 31, 2023

Douglas Wilson highlights his upcoming book, "Mere Christendom," pointing out the failure of the church to effectively provide guidance and hope to a culture gone off the rails.

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m.investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. We'll get you from point A to point B. But if you're looking for point C, well, buddy, you're on your own. But if you'll wait right here in just about two minutes, the bus to point C will be coming right by.

And now here's your Ralph Cramden of the Airways, Eric Mattexas. Uh-oh. Oh, yeah. Well, it's that time of the week, Albin. It's a segment we call Ask Mataxis. In fact, everyone calls it Ask Mataxis. Because that's the actual title of this segment. We do this at the beginning of hour two.

Today we've got Douglas Wilson. We're continuing the conversation with him. But right now we pause. to interrupt our normal programming, to do our normal programming of Ask Metaxis. So this is where you write in, and I try to answer the questions that we get. So, Albin, if you would carefully enunciate the first question starting now. All right, this one's getting very personal. Hello, she says. People ask me often if we are related.

Someone asked me at church, so I thought, well, I'll just ask. My grandfather, George, came from the, is it the Aegean Greece, from Aegean Greece in early 1900s? He had no other family here in this country. Do you know your family history, Eric? The only other metaxus I came across was somebody who was a reporter on CNN. We thought we were related way back. Thank you. And my name is Marcella.

It looks like, Maciel. Marceal Metaxis. Well, I have to say, I don't think. were related. Metaxus, I have to be clear, it's a fairly common Greek name. It's not that rare. If you land at the Athens airport, everywhere you look, you see advertisements for metaxus, metaxa, uzo, lique, cognac, or whatever. There are a lot of metaxuses, or to use the plural, Greek, plural, metaxades, in the world. And our family, in my book, Fish Out of Water,

I talk about how three Metaxus brothers left Constantinople in the mid-15th century and settled in Kefalonia, cephalonia, Kefalonia. And there are metaxuses that I'm friends with incephalonia to whom I am not related. And that is partially because in the 1930s, under the dictatorship of general metaxus, a lot of people to kind of curry favor with the regime name themselves metaxus. Kind of weird, because he was not exactly like a Hitlerite figure.

He was the premier of Greece. But it's just kind of funny. There are lots of metaxuses, and I'm related to almost none of them. Although I think she's referring to the CNN reporter, that is probably my first cousin, John Metaxus. obviously I'm related to John, but I don't think I'm related to this woman. Oh, very interesting. Okay, RFK Jr. Well, he seems to understand deep state corruption better than anyone.

When Trump is reelected, I think he should select RFK Jr. as his deep state czar. What do you say, Eric? Well, first of all, there is no such thing as a deep state czar. So somebody who has to create that term. I, listen, I believe Trump will be reelected, and I believe that the reason they're coming after him is because the deep state recognizes him as the ultimate threat.

They have treated him so abominably that he is aware that they despise him, and they despise not just the people have voted for him, but they despise the founders' vision of America, and they have over the decades gained control. And Trump would be without question the best candidate to go against the deep state. So it seems to me that he ought to bring anyone in who can help him. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would be tremendous.

Of course, he's from a fabled Democratic family and may be running for president or something on the Democratic side. But the point is he's basically a very, very, very good guy. And I think that it would be wonderful if Trump were able to use his help and the help of General Flynn and so many

others who know exactly where the bodies are buried. It is an amazing thing that we're living in times when we can talk about these things seriously. Of course, some people don't believe a word of this. They just think we're insane. I wish

they were right. I wish they were right, but I think that history will prove that there are bad actors who have gained controls, the levers of power, and they don't like it when they are challenged. You know, these are the people probably who were involved in the assassination of JFK way back when. They've been around, and we're seeing we're getting clarity on it in a way that we never have before.

The vaccine mandates, the forced silence on the election, the completely fraudulent depiction of the J6 narrative, all of this stuff has led many Americans to understand that, yes, something is going on. And I believe one of the reasons I believe Trump will be elected is that people are angry. We've never seen anything like this before, and we want somebody who's willing to fight for us. So whether RFK Jr. could be part of that or not. I don't know, but I hope that he could be. Question number three, what do you think about the possibility of nuclear war?

I feel like we had this question a month ago. I'm a ginnit. Well, I think most people know that because we're living in crazy times, anything is possible. And I think that, first of all, if you think of Kim Jong-un, in North Korea, that guy is a straight up madman. He is allied with China. I don't even think you need to think about Putin. Putin is enough of a malefactor that I don't think he would hesitate. I don't know. One thing I do know, I put my trust in God. I think that we're not supposed to live in fear. First of all, I'm not afraid of death because I believe that Jesus defeated death on the

cross and that by faith in him, we never die. I actually believe that's true. And so I think we should never be, scripture says, be anxious for nothing. So realistically, these things are possible. We don't know what the future holds. Our job is to do our job, to praise God, to obey him, to live heroically, bravely, freely, and what happens is not up to us. We're just to do our job. Okay, speaking of North Korea, are you excited for Socrates in the city tonight with Yomi Park?

I mentioned at the end of the last hour, you want to live stream this, folks. This woman's story, it is absolutely unlike anything I've ever heard. Absolutely, believe me, it is, it's unbelievable. unbelievable her story. I really can hardly underscore it enough. It was just reading her book and then finishing her second book, the two of them together. Read the first book first. You need it. But tonight, you can live stream it. Go to Socratesandthecity.com. Socratesandcity and city.com, when you click on events, you'll follow the links. Really don't miss it. It starts

645 sharp at Eastern Time, 645 sharp. Okay. Last question. What do you think? of self-assisted suicide? It's interesting how they make that sound benign. You know, like we're going to help you to kill yourself. I have to say I am against it. I think we have to be very, very careful about playing God. That, you know, it's one thing to pull the plug on somebody. It's one thing to debate whether keeping somebody alive artificially is ethical.

But when we're talking about somebody saying, you know what, I'm done, I don't want to live anymore, I would say that's not our call. God is the one who determines when we leave this world. And I would stand very strongly against assisted suicide because I think for one thing, even if you don't look at it morally the way I just have, for one thing, it's a kind of a place that will lead to abuse. because people will be bullied into saying, you know what, it's costing your family a lot of money, just take this pill and you can end their suffering, their financial suffering, or whatever. That happens over and over and over again.

So on every level, I think it's the wrong way to go. I couldn't say it more strongly. That ends, Ask Metaxus. We'll be back with more of our new friend, Douglas Wilson. Legacy precious metals has a revolutionary new online platform that allows you to invest in real gold and silver online. In a few easy steps, you can open an account online, select your medals of choice,

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in theaters, April, 2, 3rd, 4th, and 6th. Find out more at The Journey. That's The Journey.Movie. Welcome back, folks. I continue my conversation. Lucky you and lucky me with Douglas Wilson, the new book, which is about the hundredth of the books that he has written, mere Christendom. So you're saying, Douglas, that you have hope because we are seeing the madness in a way that we haven't before,

the bankruptcy of secularism, the idea of a world without God, we're being forced to confront the reality of it, that it doesn't work. It is bankrupt. And so that's, to my mind, the prelude to revival and reformation and a number of good things, if Christians will stand, if Christians will take seriously God's charge to them at this hour. Yes. And I would, if I would say something important here, that just as America is governed by a secular elite, so evangelical Christians have been governed by an evangelical elite who have been compromised by the secular elite. So there are a lot of Christians who know better than what's being told to them from the pulpit or being told to them on respected blog sites of what's come to be called Big Eva.

So the big evangelical world, the big conference circuit, there are a lot of even local leaders who are sort of echoing what the secular elites are saying. So if the secular elites say, we've all got to panic about climate change, then pretty soon, five years later, evangelicals are telling us, oh, we've got to really be serious about climate change. What they do is they don't present an alternative. They're just a faint, distant echo. And so one of the things we have to do is shake loose of our dependence upon approved respect voices.

Reformations, revivals are never conducted to the background sound of golf applause. That's not how reformations come. Say it again to the background sound of what? Golf applause. Oh, golf applause. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a golf applause. Well, you know, that's not how rare.

It's funny because that's a really important point, and it's part of why I wrote my book letter to the American Church, because the silence of the church is horrific. It's satanic, ultimately. It's the silence of the church in Germany that led to the Nazis taking power. And it is in large part, precisely, as you've just said it, because the evangelical church, the one that we would, think that those are the good guys that get this stuff, that have a biblical worldview, have themselves been governed, as you're saying, by their own cultural elites, whether it's Russell Moore or David French, or you name it. These are people that have really, in a sense, sold their souls to be perceived as respectable, to be perceived as someone that, well, we can talk to him.

We can publish him in the Atlantic or in the New York Times or, or whatever. And I hope for their repentance because they have done tremendous damage, tremendous damage and have continued to lead astray, you know, millions probably, by really parroting precisely what these secular elites have said. And it's an amazing thing to see that division, in evangelical Christendom to see that somehow the people that thought that they were speaking for us aren't speaking for us. And I guess I found it funny when my book letter to the American Church was reviewed by the gospel coalition. They basically gave it a negative review because I didn't focus. They said on, you know, the other danger, Christian nationalism and, you know, or white supremacy

or the proud boy, whatever boogeyman that they think is a thing, And I thought to myself, well, of course that they wouldn't agree with what I'm saying. They hate everything that I'm saying. I was surprised they reviewed the book at all. But these were once, at least in my mind, the good guys. They have drifted and drifted and drifted to where they're absolutely on the other side of the river. Yeah. What we need now is a bracing dose of someone like Francis Schaefer.

So Francis Schaefer was the kind of evangelical leader who wasn't afraid to tell the church that they were asleep at the switch. You've got to wake up. We've got to do something about this abortion carnage. Francis Schaefer, virtually single-handedly, brought the evangelical movement back in a truly conservative direction. We wondered off a lot earlier. but evangelical leaders are not like that anymore or there are leaders like that but they get shut out their microphones get turned off yeah they they they're there but they get canceled no that's that's exactly right uh and so i read um when when my book letter to the american church came out just or i should say when i send the manuscript to the publisher i got a book in the mail from

zondervan by pastor andy stanley in atlanta and that book I didn't order it. They sent it to me. I guess they still think of me as some kind of an influencer. And I was just horrified by his thesis. His thesis was precisely the opposite of what we're both saying, what I say in my book, what you said in your books, that his thesis was that we shouldn't be divisive, we shouldn't be political, we should just worry about, quote, unquote, the gospel, as though there were such a thing as a gospel apart from truth and reality and standing against evil. and corruption, they seem to be styling themselves as holier than Jesus. And that's where a lot of these evangelical elites are today. Many of them, I think, were triggered by the ascendancy of Trump.

And they just thought, I just don't want anything to do with the vulgar people that would vote for someone like that. And so we find ourselves in this crazy moment. But I do think that some of the folks that we've mentioned, They have marginalized themselves. I think that their constituency has really shriveled. I don't know anybody who reads Christianity today, if there's anything in it worth reading.

It was once a great magazine, and it has fallen, you know, down the rabbit hole. Yeah, hard times. And what these people who want to focus on just the gospel, what they're saying is we don't, we want a gospel that doesn't disrupt anything. So what you want is a mild. antidepressant drug. You don't want the gospel. The gospel upends the world. That's exactly right. But it really is an issue of respectability, I think. In other words, I think that the way our friend John Zmirach often talks about it, because it's like it's the Vichy French. You know,

they want to kind of, they kind of want to make friends with the Nazis because they want, you know, they want to get a good deal out of it. They figure, we've lost. We'll never win. And so we'll kind of make friends with the enemy and kind of go along with them and, you know, be their lap dogs and do what we need to do because we don't really believe we could win. That's kind of where we are when, you know, if you're worried about being published in the New York Times or in the Atlantic or something, any number of years ago, that was something that I aspired to do. But you've got to be honest when something is pronounced dead. The New York Times, Harvard, Yale, all of these leg. institutions, they're dead. The idea that you would worry about what they think at this point

is completely preposterous, but it's very difficult for people to let go of that. Right, right. And respectability is the great idol for certain people. But Jesus says in the Gospel of John, how can you believe when you receive honor from one another? That should be inscribed on the of many Christian institutions, seminaries, publishing houses, colleges, how can you believe when you receive honor from one another?

We have to be looking to be accredited by God. We want to be approved by God. We don't want anyone else's approval. Well, that says it. I mean, a lot of quote-unquote Christian publishers, you know, they have published things in favor of

a critical race theory. They have really drunk the Kool-Aid of the world and are going along with it. Rather than standing heroically against it, they are drifting along with it and promulgating evil ideas. It's just an amazing moment we're living in. It's one of the reasons that I'm so glad to have you on and want to have you back to talk about your other books. The current book, folks, is called Mere Christendom. You can find my guest, Douglas Wilson, at Douglas Wills. Sorry, Doug Wills, D-O-G-W-I-L-S dot com. Lots of stuff there.

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So I recommend that you visit Doug Wills, W-I-L-S-Dug-W-W-I-L-S-Dugwills.com. Okay, Douglas Wilson, in mere Christendom, you have a chapter called The Jesus Mobbs. Is that the title? Yeah, I forget what the title is, but it's about the Jesus mobs. Yes. And basically, one of the things that's thrown at Christians who are wanting to be active and have their faith engage with what's going on is people will say, oh, well, you're in favor of the proud boys or favor of these white supremacy groups. Or you're in favor of the January 6th and Kersh Capital, all of these things.

But one of the things that people don't realize is through the Gospels and then over into the Book of Acts, there was a large contingent of people in Judea that I call the Jesus mobs. they had received the baptism of John the Baptist. They were on Jesus' side, but a number of them had not gotten the sermon on the Mount memo. So there's a place in Acts where they arrest the apostles, but they do it very gingerly because they're afraid of being stoned. And the reason Jesus was arrested at night was because the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Pharisees were afraid of the crowds, right? So, and we're told this multiple times in the Gospels that the authorities who arrested Jesus and railroaded him and had him executed did it the way they did it because they were afraid of mob action. They were afraid of the crowds.

And many people think that I've heard many preachers refer to the triumphal entry and the crowds, you know, the crowds were saying Hosanna. And then a few days later, the same crowd was saying crucify him. There's no reason for believing that those were the same crowds. I've got to tell you, I've never heard that in my life until a few weeks ago. I had New Testament scholar Eugenia Constantinou wrote a book called The Crucifixion of the King of Glory. Spectacular book. She said exactly what you just said. And I had never heard that before.

We've all heard the sermons at the same crowds that said, you know, Hosanna, Hosanna said, crucify him. and she said it's clearly not the same crowd. I've never heard that before, and now you're saying it again. Yes, clearly not the same crowd because the crucify him crowd was early. It was a rent-a-mob sort of thing. They showed up at Pilots' house early in the morning. The triumphal entry crowd was out-maneuvered and home in bed, and they arrested Jesus the way they did because there was a huge segment of Jerusalem.

that thought Jesus, God's prophet or the Messiah, but they were outmaneuvered. And then some of them were followers of Christ and understood his message, but others of them just appreciated him from a distance. And they didn't have the whole picture. And they were the kinds of people who might have stoned the people who came to arrest the apostles. Now, not once does Jesus apologize for those people who didn't get the sermon on the Mount Memo. I don't have to apologize for the January 6th incursion into the Capitol. I don't have to

apologize for people who behaved with excessive violence in response to whatever the government was doing. What I have to do is teach what the Bible says, articulate it, and then join arms with people who agree with me on that. And I don't have to feel bad about the Jesus mobs. Are there there people out there in the right wing who jumble up right wing politics and Christian theology in a in a less than helpful way? Yes, they're out there. Do I feel bad about it? No, not a bit of it. Because Jesus and the apostles didn't apologize for all the, uh, the agitated mobs that were fomenting, uh, their way throughout Judea at the time. Judea at the time was a powder keg. And, And in that environment, Jesus went up to the temple and started flipping over tables.

Jesus was not oil untroubled waters. Jesus was a firebrand. Well, when we talk about Jesus flipping over the tables, it always comes back to that. That's Jesus before he got the memo, the recent memo from Christianity today, that that is mere culture warring, and we shouldn't take part in anything as divisive. and violent as flipping over tables and calling out corruption. It really is comedy that we have now these elite evangelicals who claim to speak for the rest of us and to claim to speak for God,

who are really portraying themselves as holier than Jesus himself. It's like they have brought into this idea that, well, Christianity has evolved. We don't want to be, you know, we can unhitch from the Old Testament and from the toxic masculinity of Jesus, and we can find some, I don't know, some ethical high ground, some semi-secular ethical high ground where there is no Christianity,

there is no crucifixion. I don't know where they think that they're taking us. Yeah, their chief complaint with Jesus of Nazareth is that he's so unchrist-like. Isn't that about it? I mean, that's about it. Well, okay, what else is in the book that we can talk about in the little bit of time we have? Sure.

So I talk about the bankrupt of secularism, common objections that are thrown, you know, you guys are doing the, want to do the Handmaid's Tale thing. I talk about, at the conclusion, I talk about a hot gospel as being the thing. A hot gospel for heat at the, okay, when we come back, we're going to talk about many things including hot gospel for heated times talking to Douglas Wilson, Dougwills.com, W-I-L-S-com, Dougwills.com. Folks, welcome back talking to Douglas Wilson, who may be found at Dougwills.com, W-I-L-S-com,

Dougwills.com. The new book, Mere Christendom. So what were you just saying before we went to the break about what else we can touch on in the book? The conclusion is hot gospel for heated times. And you've alluded to this before. The need of the hour is revival. The need of the hour, and I would say reformation and revival. If we just have revival, it's going to be a Kleenex fire. But if we have reformation and revival, we're going to split and stack a lot of hardwood

that's going to burn for a long time. And that means substantial doctrine, a thoroughgoing knowledge of church history, an understanding of God's plan of redemption, where it's not just like a cotton candy gospel, it's substantive. So you're preaching deep theology, but you're preaching it like you believe it. What we need are preachers who spit on their hands before they get to work and throw their necktie over their shoulder. That kind of preaching is the kind of preaching that sets people's hair on fire. We can't act like we are lecturers in a Unitarian lecture hall. It's got to be good news for people who are drowning. Good news for people who are beyond hope.

I really think that God has set all this up. I mean, I'm always referring to my own books only because they're in my brain. But when I wrote my book, Is Atheism Dead? I was myself astonished at how very lately God has given us evidence from science for his existence. We've been dealing with this narrative for decades that science is pushing God out. And of course, you cannot, the house always wins. God invented reality in the universe, and when you do science, eventually it's going to point back to God. I feel that every apologetic, whether it's the archaeology that's being discovered, whether it's science, whether it's the crazy world in which we live, it's pointing more dramatically to God than it has in our lifetimes.

Somehow God has prepared us for this moment, is preparing us. Yeah, reality is not optional, right? we can we can act like it is for a time you can jump off a cliff if you're under the delusion that you you can identify as a bird right all the experts told you that you could identify as a bird so you jump off the cliff and you can have the sensation of flying for a time but that sensation is going to be rudely interrupted when you hit bottom and our society is right there that we're hitting bottom right now. Well, that's, it's undeniable. And I think it's why the enemy and his minions have become much more dramatic and drastic and desperate in what they do. I mean, it's one thing for politicians

to misrepresent things, to shade the truth. But there's a level of lying. I've never seen anything quite like it. We have, you know, Joe Biden wanting to give over our sovereignty to the World Health Organization. Everywhere you look, there's a kind of madness that in previous years, it simply wouldn't have been possible or people would have stood up against it before it ever got to that point. But we're seeing it almost everywhere somehow. I still cannot believe that we have giant dudes who pretend to be women competing against female athletes. It's just you think that that's a joke. That's a joke I would make that that could never happen.

The fact that that's happening, what are people thinking about that? That's why we have words like preposterous. And there's that famous Solzhenitsyn quote that says, we knew that they were lying. They knew that we knew that they were lying. We knew that they knew that we knew that they were lying. and still they lie. You know, the lies are brazen. The lies are out there.

And the whole point is to get us to conform. This, going back to Rod Dreher's not by lies. Again, keying off a Solzhenitsyn essay, what we have to resolve to do is to put our foot through the side of any lie that we see. Don't put up with any lies. and Bruno on the swim team or Bruno in the junior high girl shower is that's a lie. That's a lie.

Don't put up with it. Well, what's interesting to me is the willingness of people to put up with it. I mean, I think to myself, I thank God that I'm not a dad having to deal with that because I don't know what I would do. I cannot imagine that their parents standing by and allowing this to happen. I mean, it's a failure of moral courage. It's an astonishing failure, frankly, that parents would put up with this and that they wouldn't raise hell. And what I often say, why I wrote a letter to the American Church, is that it's the

job of the church to lead on these things. We're supposed to be the ones that have no fear, that we believe that God defeated death on the cross. and so we can speak the truth without fearing the consequences because God is with us. He has called us to this hour. So it's kind of amazing. It is the failure of the church led by these evangelical elites, some of whom we've mentioned, that is allowing these things to go on because traditionally it would be the church that would stand up.

One man outnumber everybody. Say that again, because you broke up a lot. us there. God and one man outnumber everybody. God and one man outnumber everybody. I've not heard that. Everybody. Where did that quote come from or is that original to you? I think that that might be original or a variation of. I probably read something that made me think of that somewhere. But what it boils down to is if it goes back to the Apostle Paul. If God is for us, who can be against us? If we're standing with God in his truth,

if we stand in His gospel, if we identify with Jesus Christ, then who can be against us? Well, that's the question, and the question is being asked by God of his people. Do you believe this? Do you believe this? Because I know by your actions and by your words,

whether you believe it. We'll be right back final segment talking to Douglas Wilson. You can find him at Dougwills. W-I-L, Dougwills.com. Welcome back, folks. A couple seconds left with Douglas Wilson. Everywhere I go, I travel a lot, and people give me books and things, and I hate it because my luggage is crammed and because I don't have any time to read what people give me, and I feel guilty. But the other day I was in Naples, Florida, and someone gave me a book by Douglas Wilson called Rules for Reformers.

And I said, thank you. I'm going to read that book, and I want to read that book. So in the few minutes we have left, Douglas Wilson, tell us about your book Rules for Reformers, obviously taking the lead off of Saul Olinsky's Rules for Radicals. Correct. Obviously riffing off of that. Saul Olinsky was a leftist, but a very talented tactic. And he wrote a book Rules for Radicals, which insightful,

conservatives can riff off of. There's some things there that we can't do because we believe in God, but there are other things that he has there that are things that we can learn from. So what I've done is I took Sol Olensky's rules for radicals and adjusted them, modified them for Christians and said if you want to be engaged in Reformation, if you want to be involved in the pushback against the current craziness, then you have to do it intelligently. And so I wrote rules for reformers because Christians are reformers, not revolutionaries. Revolutionaries are impatient. They want it now. They want a new world now. Reformers, the historian Christopher Dawson, said that the church lives in the light of eternity and can afford to be patient. Because we live in the light of eternity,

We don't have to demand everything now. We're not going to have a convenience store reformation. We've got to do the solid foundational work, and we've got to be dedicated over the long haul, sort of a long obedience in the same direction, to use that phrase. And that's what for reformers is all about, how to equip culture warriors for intelligent engagement. Engagement.

intelligent engagement with the with the adversary well uh it is funny because people give me books all the time and i think please please i friends of mine have given me books uh dear friends that i haven't had the chance to finish and and so whenever anybody gives me a book i i i weep inwardly but the other day when somebody gave me a copy of your book rules for reformers i thought thank you i want to read that book so i will read that book and we'll have you back uh Douglas Wilson because there's a lot more to cover. I just really wanted to introduce my audience to you. Audience, you're welcome.

The website is dugwills.com. And you said, Douglas, that that will lead people to all these other things we've been talking about. Yeah. Right. On the front page, there's a link to pretty much everywhere that I'm involved with. Okay. You're involved with a lot of stuff. Did you know that? I guess you did.

Yeah. Do you ever leave Moscow, Idaho? Do you ever get a chance to leave? Or do you just have so many commitments that you can't even think about it? I leave occasionally. I don't travel all the time, but I travel some. You travel some. Well, I hope we can work out my travel so I can get to Moscow, Idaho.

In the meantime, we'll just have to have these conversations. but I am very grateful to you for all that you've done. We've just touched on the surface of many of them, but I want to encourage my audience again to go to Doug Wills, Doug, D-O-U-G-W-I-L-S dot com. There's a whole universe there awaiting you. Douglas Wilson, thank you, and God bless you. Well, thank you.

Really appreciate the opportunity.