The Eric Metaxas Show - Lucas Miles (Encore)

Episode Date: April 15, 2022

We start off with fun questions with "Ask Metaxas," move on to solid business advice from the Talbotts, and round out the hour peering into "The Christian Left" with Lucas Miles. (Encore Presentation)

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. Eric McTaxis show with your host, Eric Metaxis. Uh-oh. Albin, you know what it is? Oh, I know. It's hour two on Thursday of the Eric Mattaxas show. Do you know what that means? Oh, I know.

It's time for another episode, so, sod, of Ask Mataxis. Okay, Ask Mataxis is when you, Albin, read questions that people have sent in these wonderful people. I can almost see them, and yet I can't. I can't. I tell you, I can't see them. But some of you submit questions, and we pick the best ones, the ones we have time for. So, Albin, I'm ready. I'm ready. Sometimes we pick the worst ones.

but these are the best. Do you want to write more children's books in the future? Actually, this is funny. I prefer to write more children's books in the past because then they would already be written and there's no work. Yeah. But so I don't really want to write more children's books in the future. I want to write more children's books in the past.

But since I can't, you know what? That's true. But I guess the future eventually becomes the present if you wait long enough. So that's my way of dithering because the real answer is, yes, I do want to write more children's books. In fact, this is kind of weird. I have written children's books in the past that have not been published. So I will be publishing some children's books in the future.

I did a whole series for kids, kind of like my Squanto book called The Great Cloud series. I have yet to publish that. I wrote the story of St. Patrick. I wrote the story of Eric Little, Cherites of Fire. I wrote the story of Jackie Robinson. I wrote the story. I'm trying to think, who else did I?

I'm pretty sure. I just did a whole bunch. Some of the ones that I did in the seven women and seven men books I did as kids' books. But anyway, the point is, yes, I do. And there are many other children's books that I want to write. So the short answer to do you want to write

more children's books in the future is, yes. Okay, I got a question, when do you sleep? Yeah, exactly. Okay, question two, the real one. What do you think the implications for China, Taiwan are after the Ukraine-Russia war? I think it's pretty obvious. I think that the current administration is just unprecedentedly awful. You have to understand that whoever is president, it affects the whole world.

and this president and vice president and administration, they are unprecedentedly awful. As somebody who's approaching his sixth decade in life, I can just tell you that when America projects this level of incompetence, weakness, whatever it is, people suffer. And it invites tyrants like Vladimir Putin to do what they're doing right now. So the people of Ukraine are suffering as a result of American policy, which is an amazing thing, a horrible thing to think about that. Your vote, if you didn't vote or you did vote, it affects lives around the world. And yes, obviously China is just licking its chops to snap up Taiwan, just as Russia wants to snap up Ukraine. What do you think? So the answer

would be that's that. Okay, here is another question. Thoughts on the end of the NYC mask vaccine mandates. We've been living through an epic of madness, absolute madness. When I see little children in the playground in school wearing masks, my head is tempted to explode off of my shoulders. It is sickening to me. Even talking about it is so upsetting to me. I just don't talk about it because I know that these kids are going to be dealing with us for the rest of their lives. They're going to write memoirs about this. Just wait. In about 10 or 15 years, the memoirs are going to come out of what it was like to live under this cultural Marxist madness that we're going through right now.

So the idea that we had vaccine mandates, the idea, I mean, we don't really get into this in depth on the program. But I do enough reading that I am simply astonished that Americans allowed this to happen. You know, people talk about their head exploding. Why don't people say my head imploded? Okay, well that's not a real question. Implosion is like a weird concept that you can't picture. So anyway, by the way, that was your question. That wasn't one of the official questions.

Here's number four. Official, official. Why don't you wear suits? What do you mean? Why don't I wear suits? Huh, who says I don't wear suits? Of course I wear suits. I just don't wear suits often because I don't have many occasions that call for it.

Okay. In taping the pilot for the late night talk show, I wore a suit. You did. So I'm not averse to suits. In fact, I love suits, but they, I think normally I go for the more dressed up casual look when I'm just kind of living my life. So I wear more casual pants, even jeans, and a blazer of some kind. But I love suits, and I own suits, and I plan to wear them if given the opportunity. Thoughts on the dangers of alcohol versus weed? Weed? I love the fact that now it's called weed. Oh, you mean marijuana? Well, let me tell you. Here's the story. Alcohol is very dangerous in a way that's different from marijuana or weed or wacky weed or hemp or Mary Jane, whatever you want to call it.

Both of them are very, very dangerous. Now, I just have to say that I think weed cannabis is more dangerous in a way for young people because it's very temper. to think that you could do a little bit every day, that you just want to be mellow. And I think what it does is it robs people of any ambition, and it kind of puts you in this. Now, this is not everybody, but most people, it can really affect you badly forever. Like it can kind of mess up your life because it just becomes like a habit. It becomes that thing you do. Alcohol, I think that, I mean, we know the dangers of alcohol.

alcohol ruins many, many lives, but I'm not averse to alcohol being legal. I am averse to weed being legal. I think it was, I think it's going to lead to all kinds of social ills. But I, we don't have time, so we'll just move on. Okay, I'll put this next one in the form of a question. How to make reading the Bible daily a priority? How to do that? Well, you simply have to do that. I don't know. I think of, I do the read the Bible through a year. There's a number of plans, but it doesn't matter. Grab one and do it. It's important.

Right, there you go. Happy spring, this person writes. What is your favorite season? Actually, I'm against seasons totally. Okay. I just don't like them. Well, Congress did that thing about the daylight savings time. Why don't we just get rid of all the seasons?

Get rid of them. Come on. Enough. Enough with the seasons. No, I love seasons, and I can't imagine living in another part of the world where we don't have robust seasons, as it were. hot summers and cold winters. I love it. So what's my favorite season? Well, I think it would have to be summer, but I really, every season brings its own blessings. So I really, I really love every single one of the seasons. Yeah. Okay, favorite year of your life?

1972, next question. Okay. Do you, okay, do you think the Supreme Court is effective in what it's set out to do? Okay, I just want to say that's officially the strangest question in this list. Do I think the Supreme Court is effective in what it's set out to do? I think I'm guessing that whoever asked this question means is the Supreme Court doing what the founders set it up to do? And I would say largely it is. I mean, look, the Supreme Court is a bulwark against madness. If you have an executive branch and a legislative branch that starts going crazy, you need a third branch of government to say, eh, you can't do that.

That goes against the Constitution. In other words, if you have a president and a Senate and a Congress that votes crazy things into being, it is the role of the Supreme Court to say, no, that is fundamentally unconstitutional. In other words, the fundamental law of the last. land is the Constitution. And if you pass a law that makes a group of people second-class citizens, if you pass a law that says, I want to be dictator for life, if you pass a law that violates the Constitution, it's the role of the Supreme Court to say, no, you can't do that. And I think by and large, they have been effective, but I say by and large, because it's only

by and large. We just have seconds left, and so I will simply say, largely yes. Okay, that's great. We're at a time. We'll catch you next week. Tell me, Eric, why is relief factor so successful at lowering or eliminating pain? I'm often asked that question. The owners of Relief Factor tell me they believe our bodies were designed to heal.

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It works for me. It has for about 70% of the health. half a million people who've tried it and have ordered more. Go to Relieffactor.com or call 800 for Relief to find out about this offer. Feel the difference. Hey there's sports fans. I got a question. Let's say you have a business. Pretty good business.

But you decided, you know what? It's so good. I want to retire. I want to sell the business. How do I do that? Well, about once a week I like to bring on my friends Pete and Seth Talbot. and they like to answer these questions, and they have actual good answers.

And they are identifying not as father and son, Pete and Seth, but as the Talbot group. Talbot group, welcome. I'm proud of my son. He's still answers to Pete a little bit. But you're still proud of your son? I'm not buying it. I'm not buying it.

No, but you guys, look, this is what you do. You examine these kinds of things. And we met for dinner the other night, and you were talking about this is a real problem, that there are companies that they go like, okay, we're ready to sell the company, but they have problems. Why? Well, usually our firm talks about this where owners come to us usually in one of three states where they either won out yesterday, they want out within a year, or they're thinking about it

in the next three to five. And the reality is that the reason why most companies don't sell, Small businesses don't sell is because there is incredible owner dependence on the running of the company, both operationally and typically with sales. And they don't know how to get out of the business. So what most people probably don't know is that there's about $10 trillion worth of generational transition happening with boomers exiting the market within the next decade. 10 trillion. $10 trillion within the next decade. and Tubb group, we've merged with another company, one accord, and that's what we do, and we help companies sell.

And we focus on generational transition, boomer transition. We call it the gray wave, you know, the great tsunami. And there's all this generational transition going on. And so we meet owners all the time that have a company, you know, and they're in the, you know, five to 20 million in range, typically. and some of a little larger, but typically in that range, and they don't know what to do with it. It's been their life. They've been there for 20 plus years. They certainly don't know how to sell.

Well, the logical question, too, speaking as a non-business guy, but what is it that you're selling, right? In other words, if you've been the driving force and then you're saying, but when I sell this and I want to out, it reduces the value in a sense. By about a third, at least. There's usually at least a third. So if a PE firm, a private equity firm's coming in and looking at your company, which, by the way, most private equity firms won't look at companies that small, which is, again, why most companies won't sell and they just shut down. We were actually looking at a building just before the pandemic hit,

and we were looking at a new building to grow into. And we visited this place, and we're walking through, and it was a machine shop with an office space attached. We wanted a big warehouse thing. We're walking through, and the agent, tells us, oh, by the way, that this is an owner-run company. He's retiring, can't find a buyer. So they're just shutting down the whole business. And this will be available within six to 12 months based on when they just shut it down. So we're walking through it. And it was a weird

experience because the business was running. There are people in the machine shop, working on projects, doing stuff. There's a need. You walk in the office. There's people in the office. And you're thinking, they're just shutting it down. Right. And then, that's not unusual. It is not unusual. We actually just helped a company sell their boat, as in fact, it was a boat company. A boat company. And they had an, they had an international offer from a Chinese firm that was a huge valuation. And they said no, because it was a family-run business, very successful luxury yachts out of the Seattle area, very successful. But it was a pride of ownership. This, it had been, is a third, excuse me, Third generation, and they were just going to shut it down. Excuse me. We have, we have, well-off. I'm not getting choked up over this.

He's getting choked up. I can't believe it. The bottom, according to Forbes, we've got a crisis looming. The serious facts are that 90% of businesses that try to sell don't. Don't. They can't. They wind up shutting down, losing them, what have you, 90%. So that's really like leaving money on the table.

Yeah, but it's not just this. Yes. Oh, it's transferred over to me. It's not just that they don't know how to sell. They're not ready to sell. And so in some cases, what we do, like we told about the diagnostic review that we have developed, is very helpful for someone who is thinking either short or maybe midterm year, two, three years down the track, to get their act together, to get their own. operations together to maximize the value?

Because the thing is, most private equity firms, by the way, too, won't come in and fix. They'll tell you, here's what we think we can sell you for. Well, private equity is. They're kind of as is. But a typical agency that sells for us. Private equity actually is buying companies. But an agency is going to sell. They don't have the staff to fix it.

It's not worth it to them to take the trouble. Well, they don't have the staff for it. It's not what they do. They're just sellers. These are brokers that go and sell businesses. So they don't have the team. We actually have the team to actually fix the business. So that's one of the major distinctives is that companies that are in that phase of not trying to figure out how to transition when they come to us.

We say, all right, here's what your company is probably worth. But here's what we think we could make it worth. That's a completely different conversation. I think of like a house, right? Like you come in and somebody's like, nobody's lived there in two years or whatever. It's like, well, you know, if you mow the lawn. you can get a lot more money for it. Well, think about your agent.

Think about your agent when you're, that's a great example. If you brought an agent to your house and said, what could I get for it right now? Yeah. You don't have an agent that says, I will take care of fixing your house for you. Yeah. And then we'll sell it and I will make a little with you as, no one does that. The agent's just, and it's nothing wrong. It's just their model isn't to say, hey, I'll partner with you and grow it and help you exit for more.

they just say, well, you should do this, you should do that, you should do that. And if you're lucky, they'll refer you to somebody. If you're lucky, they'll have a list of like, well, you could maybe call this person or you could call that person. But what we do is we actually can partner with those companies. So we do sales where we actually don't do the renovation. It's not required in our transactions. But a lot of times, they're not quite ready to go. And their financials need to be cleaned up.

They need to have operational systems put in place. even just putting in ERP systems and CRMs, systems for running enterprise management and customer tracking, we deploy that. All of a sudden, the buyer knows, oh, they've got systems, they've got data, they've got analytics on this. They know who they are. They know what they're doing. Otherwise, they look at it and go, well, they don't have a this, they don't have a that, they don't have a this. Oh, well, they do a discount.

Right. So it's not just owner dependence. It's they look at all the work they're going to have to do to try to flip it or have to, to do it themselves to get the right value out of it. Did you find yourself just because of your interest, getting, you know, becoming an expert on this? I mean, because you've done a number of business, but I'm just fascinated how you kind of look at this globally.

You're not just looking at your businesses. Now you're transferring your skills to other. When I started, I did startups back about eight years ago, what I was annoyed with myself is that I was in the middle of a software startup, and I didn't understand how the startup world worked. So I was behind the eight balls. So all these things I was learning about the funding, the growth and what people are looking for. I remember we were trying to raise like one and a half million dollars.

Nobody wants to give you one and a half million dollars if you're a startup. They either want to give you 100,000 to 200,000, or they want to give you 10 million. Because the people that are going to give you millions, the amount of effort they have to put into, it's not worth their time. So we thought we were like, well, let's just not ask for too much. We should have asked for more because that way we got the, I needed to know that ahead of time. So I got burned by that, and I committed to, in business, developing what I would call internally the reach muscle, where we're always venturing into something a little bit unfamiliar, but not getting totally over our skis. So once we had a variety of companies, and we sold out of them this last year, which we've talked about, and we've left, and we just, we love what we've done, but we were looking to do something new. I wanted to do this kind of stuff.

This is it. So I got really focused on what's the landscape? Who's buying companies, who's selling companies, and how does this world work? And so that's, I think, where we provide a little bit of unique value is that these small business owners, and I've been there, this is why I want to help, is those lessons of, why didn't someone tell me this? And a lot of times it's because when you're successful, no one wants to share, and I get why, but they don't want to share what made them successful. And when you fail, very few jump online and write up a post-mortem. Right. So what I found is that I just in kind of the way I'm wired, I wanted to share with people what I learned so that they don't have to go through it.

That just was a way I was focused. So people can come to the Talbot group to learn from your failures. Absolutely. But seriously, no, but actually it's kind of funny, but it's true, right? Absolutely. This is absolutely in our sweet spot. This is because it's what we love to do. And we've done it a few times.

Well, look, and you've had enough success. You've had so much success that it's embarrassing to me. And I don't even share in this success. It's silly. But you guys have been so successful. But you look, you have the relief factor is an insane level of success. I saw that. Okay, I want to tell people if you're interested, you want to go to 866 Talbot, T-A-L-L-O-T-T, or go to Talbot group.com.

That's on the internet. Talbot Group. We would love to hear from them. I'll give them. We can talk and see if we can be of help. So you really are friendly. You're not just playing friendly. You really are friendly. One of the two of us is.

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see, except part of the city's been taken over by this thing called the Gaylord Opryland Resort. It's kind of like a terrarium for people. And we're inside it right now. They pump in the oxygen. If they choose to pump it in less, people die. So it's scary. It's scary. But the good news is I bump into all kinds of friends, old friends, new friends. I'm sitting here now with my friend Lucas Miles. He's written a book called The Christian Left, How Liberal Thought, has hijacked the church. This is a very, very important subject. Lucas Miles, thank you for being with me. Hey, thanks for having me. Let's talk about this because there's so many people that attend churches that are kind of drifting along with this.

They've accepted some of this rather than understanding that this is very bad on every level. So, you know, when you talk about the church being invaded in your book, the Christian left, Talk to us about the details. Yeah, I mean, what we're really seeing is this rising, growing constituency of left-leaning Christians, progressive Christians, and sometimes Christians in name only, who have embraced Marxism, socialism, critical race theory. When you say Christians in name only, do you specifically mean the Episcopal Church? You know, I think there could be, there's probably some of these individuals, maybe, in a lot of churches.

But we have to be clear that the mainline Protestant churches, okay, they're all hanging out rainbow flags, they're all hanging out BLM. I mean, I wrote them off, you know, when the National Council of Churches was formed, they are just utterly useless. But what you're talking about and what concerns us more is the so-called evangelical church. We expect this when we drive through a big city and we see the old churches downtown that are these, you know, these mainline denominations and just see those, a lot of times they're higher liturgical. We expect to see the rainbow flag flying above the cross. That doesn't necessarily

shock anybody today. It should, but it doesn't, right? But what we're now seeing is in our community churches, our evangelical mega churches, you know, these places that are our teaching CRT that are pushing, you know, socialism, Marxism, Marxist ideas from the pulpit. And many of these people are drifting really away from, I believe, Orthodox Christian teaching. And so, I mean, I have my answers for this, and I was on a panel with you yesterday where you were asking me about this,

but let me ask you, why do you think people who are supposedly Christian leaders, pastors, would allow this kind of thing to drift into their world? Are they simply convinced that it's true? or are there some of them who are just afraid to stand against it? Is it sheer lack of courage?

You know, I had said this yesterday on the panel that I really think that, you know, yes, there is a problem with the pastors, but I'm looking a lot to the professors. And I think there's been this trickle down from the professors at what used to be trusted Bible colleges that have now moved to progressive... Give me an example of a trusted Bible college that has allowed these ideas in seriously. I think there's good people in a lot of Bible colleges,

but I think we see places even like, you know, Wheaton or Biola. And again, I love people at Wheaton, Biola. I've spoken at some of these places, and maybe I won't after this interview. I don't know that could ruin that right here. Right. Right. But I think that, you know, there are, there's individuals there that have really drifted.

I think a place like Azusa Pacific, they've changed their policies on sexuality and gender. That's what I'm saying is like when you talk about Biola, and Wheaton and Azusa Pacific, it is hard for me to take it in. The idea that these places, which I would have sworn up and down, these folks are solid,

that these places have allowed this stuff in. It is mind-bending. Who are the presidents of these three places? Why are they allowing this to happen? I mean, look, if people are sending their kids to these places or if you're thinking of going to these places, the idea that we're talking about, about this right now should give you pause because this is a staggering development.

It absolutely is. And I mean, even some conservative universities, conservative Christian universities, I have parents, I have faculty coming to me and saying, hey, I just want you know, wokeism is at our door and we have to continue to push it back. And we have to really ensure that we're not falling into this position. I mean, there's a lot of people have done research, you know, people like Michael O'Fallan and others who have really traced some of the money involved in this. You know, if you look at, you know, a situation, even with a place, like Biola University. And again, I have great friends at Biola University.

Some of them are on staff there that, you know, you see a place that they've taken, their 990s, which show they've taken $3 million from the Riyadi family, a Chinese Indonesian billionaire who was involved in a greatest campaign finance scandal in U.S. history with the Clintons. Well, now, that is more confusing than anything to me. In other words, why, in other words, I get that that's bad money, but it's different from Soros money where it makes perfect sense to me what they're trying to do with the money.

What are the Riyadi family trying to do with their money by sending it to a place like that? I think that there are, I think that there are, you know, we hear the name Soros. He's become kind of the boogeyman to the right. And I do believe that he is a bad actor and very much responsible for putting money into causes to really shift what he would call reflexivity,

where he is essentially using marketing money, dollars, etc., to change public opinion about certain issues. The left knows that unless they divide the church and the family, they can't win elections. And so they're going to continue to put money into things that create confusion in those spaces. And one of the places they do that is in higher, you know, Christian Ed. They're also doing that in churches. You know, we saw that through, you know, when it was all the stuff that came out about sojourners and Soros funds and these things, creation care, you know, and all of that. I mean, but I'm not shocked when I hear that it's happening with sojourners or creation care.

I am shocked when I hear about Azusa Pacific and Biola. Now I'm, I'm horrified. They're getting pressure. And I believe, you know, it's the same with a lot of our megachurches. You know, there's the staffing that's happening, hiring people. Actually, forgive me. We're going to break since this is radio. We'll be right back talking to Lucas Miles.

The book is The Christian Left. How Liberal Thought is hijacked. Hey, folks, if you listen to this program, of course, you've heard me talk at infinitum about my pillow and my friend Mike Lindell. Well, Mike has just announced that you will receive one of his books, and the book is next level insane. It is called What Are the Odds from Crack Addict to CEO? It's his story. You will receive it absolutely free with any purchase using the promo code Eric. Did you hear that?

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That's 800, 978 3057. To use the promo code, Eric. Folks, is here at Metaxus show. I'm talking to my friend Lucas Miles, who has a bookout called The Christian left how liberal thought has hijacked the church. So let's just continue this conversation. You're telling me that there's pressure to hire at places like Biola, at places like Azusa Pacific and Wheaton, that they're hiring people. So for them, maybe it starts out like they think, well, we want to be more inclusive and open-minded. But what they don't realize is on these issues,

you're inviting the devil in to, you know, rob the children, the students of their souls. It's gotten that serious that this is not just, it's not a small thing what they're doing when they let these folks in. Look, I mean, even a place, you know, so we talked about Biola University, there's a famous mural that's been under, you know, a debate for, you know, about a decade. And it's the Jesus mural. It's a giant portrait of Jesus that painted on one of the side of the buildings. And this continues to come under attack. that so much so that the president of the university, because of this color of Jesus' skin, because he's a little lighter than what some people would want him to be in this particular painting.

And so now we had the president of university at one point came out and said that he could understand how this picture of Jesus would cause alienation for certain students. Wait, who said that? The president of Iowa University. And his name is? It's the last day of NRB. I don't even know what your name is. You know why I know his name.

His name is Barry. Yes, he's Barry. Yes. and Barry is a good man, and I've known him for years. So it's particularly dismaying when a good man, like Barry Corey, is pressured into saying things like that. I don't think people realize when you say something like that, you can do tremendous damage on a number of levels

because you're really giving comfort to the enemy by playing into their narrative. Because the thing is, Jesus was a Jew. If you have a problem with that, jump in a lake of fire. if you like, but the point is he was a Jew. He wasn't a Puerto Rican. He wasn't a Nigerian. Like, is this really something that we need to be talking about? Even the idea of talking about it is itself crazy, right? Because you could say, like, well, we can have that conversation, but there is unbelievable suffering going on in the world. There are Uyghur Muslims being murdered

and having their organs taken out so that the Chinese government can make money. This is what we want to focus on? Let me pivot this a little bit. And just because this is why these things aren't so shocking for me. When you look at the history of the church, the two, you know, original heresies to face the church were the Judaizers and then the Gnostics. And I believe that everything we see in church history is always sort of this pendulum swinging between the Judaizers, the legalists, the fundamentalists, and the Gnostics who are really the progressists. the spiritual but not, you know, faith-filled, those that we're trying to bring in some these pagan concepts. So right now, we are in a swing towards Gnosticism, particularly

ethnic Gnosticism, as a lot of people have been talking about. And that is really what's guiding the church. Now, in 10 years, we might be swinging back to fundamentalism, and you and I are going to be sitting here in our old age, talking about, you know, the issues with the Christian right, you know, that the fundamentalism that has come in and people have abandoned the gospel of grace. honestly it's so it is fascinating but we have to fight this battle

and I think it's kind of funny because when I see folks like you know former campus crusade crew on their blog they have somebody you know kind of writing about systemic racism and this and that and when you read it

you think to yourself and this is the key and this is how the devil works is that there may be truth in what is written, right? Somebody's had an experience. They've been, you know, I mean, but it's the fact that by talking about it, you're not talking about something else. You're elevating this to like, hey, this is an issue. We need to deal with. And the fact of the matter is,

no, in the scheme of things, this is not. In this nation, you know, hundreds of millions of young men died to end slavery. So if you really want to be talking about it, somebody got their feelings hurt because some jerk looked at them funny, your priorities are screwed up. So part of what it is to be a leader is to say, we're talking about this, we're not going to talk about this. We don't need to talk about this. This is not one of the central issues that need discussing. Yeah, and so this is a big question. You know, really the idea, are there such things as, you know, secondary and tertiary doctrines, or is it, or is every doctrine primary? And see, the interesting. And see, the interesting, thing that's been happening is we have solid Christian denominations, you know,

charismatic and evangelicals arguing about, you know, speaking in tongues versus not speaking in tongues, women in ministry, women in ministry. The whole time, while all this is happening off to the side where the progressive church is rising, they're fighting with, instead of just going, you know what, there's going to be certain things where I disagree with, you're getting your answers from scripture, I'm getting my answers from scripture, I can at least respect your answers because you haven't left the Bible. And let's, why don't we join together and start really speaking out against, you know, this growing, you know, sort of Marxist entity that is, you know, using the name Jesus and the church in order to try to, you know, advance through society.

Well, and again, you have really respected people like Tim Keller, who for years was a friend. But, I mean, he's, he says things that, he says, like, well, everybody should should get their hands on everything they can read on critical race theory. And I think, no, no, no, no, no. That's preposterous. People don't have time. And when you say that, you're implying, there's a lot of good stuff here that we need to chew on. And I want to say, no, there's not a lot of good stuff.

It's like reading Mind Kumpf. You read Mind Kumpf in college to familiarize yourself with it. But you don't be like, hey, get your hands on all the Nazi literature you can get your hands on so that you can combat it. You don't need to read everything to know it's bad. It's basically wrong. And can we move on with our lives? We have other things to do. Look, you wrote the book on Bonhofer, and, you know, one of the things that I think is interesting right now, you know, people like you and I, we would get called by, you know, the left, Christian nationalists because we love Jesus and we like living in the USA.

And so when you look at the church in Germany, and you know this even better than I do, what you see is that the Nazafi German church, they were the ones that were willing to lay down biblical ideology in order to do anything that the government said. Who are the true Christian nationalists today? It's the church of the left. It's the progressive. They are the ones bowing down to the state, you know, taking that agenda forward in order to promote anything that the state wants them to do all the while laying down biblical ideology. Well, right, and there was a brilliant article. We had her on the program, Megan Basham at Daily Wire. She wrote about this, and it's a scandalous thing.

And part of it is this idea of that it's kind of like wanting to be part of the elite or thinking that I'm going to be more effective evangelistically if I'm kind of, you know, not saying. sounding crazy. So I'm just going to, I'm going to agree with Anthony Fauci and whoever I have to agree with. And I think there's a time to be really be bold and to say, no, this is wrong. And there's a price to be paid. But, you know, I don't know where I heard it, but you can't out give God. So you might as well pay the price and praise his name. We'll be right back. Folks, I'm talking to Lucas Miles. He has written a number of books. The book I'm holding in my hand is the Christian left, and you are one of the co-hosts of the church boys podcast. You're all over the place. You live in this world, and you've seen this. I just imagine, since I have lost friends,

you've probably lost friends who they simply don't understand where you're coming from. Yeah, I mean, I shared this, you know, in several places that in 2016, we lost about 40% of our church for, and I didn't wear a red hat. I didn't have a Trump banner on the stage. I didn't talk about even endorsing particular candidates, but I did a series teaching about biblical views related to issues of the election of the upcoming election in 2016. And we had about 40% of our church leave over about a 30-day period. But that sounds very healthy. It sounds like they finally realized, uh-oh, I guess I'm not a Christian. I'll see you later.

Yeah, that's kind of what happens. Kind of what it felt like. And look, I'm in a red state with a super majority, but we're in a blue county. Look, this is a healthy sifting. People have to deal with these issues. There's just, there's no way around it. Yeah. And the idea that politics can be divorced from faith or faith from politics, that's another

cudgel that the left uses simply to shut up those people of faith. I mean, imagine Wilberforce saying, my faith compels me to use the political process to abolish the slave trade. Tons of people in his day told him, keep your faith to yourself. We're not interested in your faith, you know, and he thought, well, I'm interested in doing what God calls me to do, and I'm going to do it, and I'm going to live with the results. This is exactly what we see in the book of Acts. So basically, look, I appreciate what you're saying, but I'm going to listen to God instead of you,

and I'm going to show up in the temple the next day and preach. And so, you know, this is, I think, the decision that every single Christian has to make is, are we going to just, you know, bow down to the state? Are we going to bow down to the government? Or are we going to submit to God? And look, as, you know, you look at church history, Jerome, during, you know, persecution of Christians, defended the church by saying, look, Christians are going to be the best citizens that you're ever going to have in your nation. We're going to follow, you know, the laws, we're going to make sure it's a just society, all these sorts of things.

But we're just not going to bow down to you as God. We're not going to offer sacrifices that you want us to offer. We're going to follow Jesus. And this is really what we're saying. It's not, you know, Christians have been kind of labeled today as, oh, this rebellious, you know, group trying to cause all these problems. At the end of the day, we're saying, look, we'll do whatever you want us to do unless it violates my faith and my conscience in Christ. And what we saw this last two years is the government forcing people to violate their faith and conscience over things like vaccines, et cetera. And we have seen many Christians go along with that.

100%. In other words, here is a moment. You know, all these people that said they'd love my Bonhofer book, hey, this would have been a really sweet moment for you to show that you understood the content of the book. But in fact, it's obvious that they didn't. Yeah. That now, when it comes to you to do something that may cost you something, you go, no, not. yet. Not yet. I'm not willing to do that. I'll wear a mask. I'll do that. We just got 40 seconds. The book is

the Christian left. Final thought, Lucas Miles. Yeah, I think the difference about what I'm saying, maybe what you hear from some others, is at the end of the day, we also have to make sure that we're ministering to people. Some people have ended up in this place in deception. Some people have ended up in this place because they just haven't heard a better answer. They've been ignorant of these things. They just haven't been, you know, they haven't been in the word enough to know. And I think it's important as Christians that we don't just write people off. We don't just, you know, condemn them immediately. We speak the truth. We stand on the truth, but we still want to minister to them and really help lead them back, because I think there's some of these people are going to

be able to come back to biblical truth. I like your hopeful attitude. I think you're exactly right. You're a good man, Lucas Miles. Congratulations on all you've done, but especially on the new book, The Christian Left, how liberal thought has hijacked the church. God bless you. Thank you. I don't want anyone in this radio audience to miss out on giving to Food for the Poor. This is an important opportunity, and if you are part of the radio audience, and that means if you can hear my voice now, you're it. We want you to please go to metaxis talk.com and click on the banner.

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