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Can a War Be HOLY? · CrossPolitic Show

• 3500 years ago an old shepherd stopped on a mountain side. Because a bush was on fire. The bush was burning but it was not consumed. A voice came out of the flames and told him to take off the shoes because the ground on her feet had just turned hold. From that holy ground God sent Moses to war. And history has never been the same. 3500 years later we've tried to tame that holiness into something private and small and safe. We said in a lot of well meaning and I would even say good conferences and heard about the holiness of God. Some of us even thought that we might have felt the holiness of God. I'll say that it was probably me. But we kept it in the heart and we kept it for some days. And a holiness that never leaves the heart leaves the public square standing empty. So someone else was consecrated. Pastors were told just preach the gospel and so church stepped back and the state walked into the empty sanctuary. It seized a priesthood no one had given it and over time wrote new holiness laws many of which we didn't notice until we were told to cover our faces. Wash your hands, stand six feet apart, break the code and you were unclean, contagious, a leopard to be turned in. Unless you were marching for Black Lives Matter then those streets became holy in that right Jonathan Leighney. But holiness was never meant to stay private. Once it painted blood over a doorpost and marched a nation of slaves out of Egypt in a single night, while the first born of the captors laid dead and Pharaoh's chariot sank into the sea, real holiness sets nation free. It lays claim to everything it touches the ground that you stand on, your table, your bed, your money, your borders and yes, even your wars. So holiness is not a question that you get to skip. It's not weather, but which? The holiness bought by the blood of Jesus Christ which sets nations free or the counterfeit holiness of human activism, which has only ever produced more death and more slavery. A nation does not lose the real thing in a day America itself has been set ablaze twice by what looked like revival. The first fire was the real thing and it built a free people. The second promised fire but it built something else in time. We are all children of the second grade awakening from Black Lives Matter to COVID panic, to just preach the gospel third ways, Republicans and Democrats all are the same. We are the descendants of Charles Finney and Joseph Smith. You don't have to like it, but it's true. And like Vody said, if you can't say amen, you gotta say ouch. In the 1730s a movement shook the American colonies called the Great Awakening. Jonathan Edwards preached justification by faith alone and the need for true conversion to Christ and large numbers of church-going Christians were born again, saved from the slavery of formalism and traditionalism and ferrisical moralism. Edwards preached calmly, even quietly, but it was the message that deeply affected his congregants, most famously, that we are sinners in the hands of an angry God. The holiness of God struck a nerve and swept through colonies and 40 years later, America was declaring independence from Great Britain and fighting a war for freedom, for constitutional freedom. From the holy ground of the Great Awakening, God raised up a holy war, a generation of man who looked to the Bible for their ultimate authority, who understood their covenant to obligations and their responsibilities, and that united the colonies in a shared faith and culture. Because the Great Awakening was very much a national movement, it spread throughout the colonies, you also started to get a sense of national cohesion, like the colonies were becoming more self-conscious of their being actually a people developing nation in their own right, because they were hearing the same sermons, they were reading the same pamphlets about liberty and the breaking down of tyranny and the importance of the word of God over against merely church authority, 30 or 35-odd years later. That kind of a spirit, it was informing them the reaction when King George III is trying to enforce the stamp act on the colonists. There's a sense of, hang on a minute, we've got spiritual liberty, we've got the word of God, we've got conscience, we've got the free, we've got the rights of free-born Englishmen, we need to assert those against tyranny. So the Great Awakening had laid all that sort of spiritual theological groundwork for the war of independence, basically. By the time you get to the 1800s another awakening was being preached by Manlight Charles Finney, but where the earlier awakening was doggedly careful and resulted in the unified culture and nation, this second so-called Great Awakening, it quietly descended into a highly emotional preaching. Spiritual men in the relation and marketing, and what became known as the camp style revival, and with all kinds of bizarre claims of the Holy Spirit. The fruit of this movement was vastly different. Very quickly these conversions were turned into social activism, early prohibition movements against alcohol, and the first women's rights conventions. The seventh day Adventists formed around LNG white claims to prophetic powers, and Joseph Smith was soon spreading his false visions and founding the Mormon movement. The first Great Awakening created a cultural cohesion around the supremacy of Christ and the authority of Scripture. The second Great Awakening created cultural chaos around the supremacy of emotions and experiences and activism. If the first Great Awakening gave us the glory of the war for independence, the second Great Awakening descended into the shame and misery of the war between the states. Because the American War for Independence was deeply theologically rooted in the ideas of the first Great Awakening, the ideas of George Whitfield in particular. But also the ideas of Jonathan Edwards and the tenant, family, and a whole host of others. It was profoundly theological. You read the sermons, for instance, of the colonial pastors. And you start to see the reaction back in Westminster of what they called the Black-robed regiment. It was led by these theologically astute, deeply theologically rooted pastors and leaders. The result was that things like the Just War theory were taken very much into account in the prosecution of the war. It was really important for the military leaders like George Washington. So you have all of that going on in the first Great Awakening leading up to the war of Independence. With the civil war on the other hand, you have the unleashing of horrors precisely because it did not have the theological rootedness. The second Great Awakening stirred passions and emotions, but it has scattered those passions and emotions through a whole host of cults and sex and bizarre utopian experiments. You have on the one hand the realistic vision of a simple refermenda reformed ever reforming in the American War of Independence. And what you have is unleashed enlightenment and utopian thought in the second Great Awakening and the resultant war between the states. In this absence of true holiness that transforms lives and nations, activism fills the vacuum. Holiness is inescapable. It's not weather but which. But activism, it burns hot and fast and then it moves on to the next thing. True revival establishes culture. Revivalism is a hotbed of cults and chaos. And right after that comes the turn to secularism. People get tired of emotionalism and when emotionalism gets tied to religious experiences, people get tired of manipulation and games. And right on schedule, after a few decades of conferences and carismania, we are seeing a resurgence in calls for natural law, raw political power and more philosophical grounds for culture and nationhood. What we think our immigration problem is that we don't have enough power. But the real problem is that we don't have God on our side. Scripture is not enough we are told. Holiness doesn't work. We need something else. But the problem is that we haven't actually tried holiness. Holiness is the source of all true power. But here's the trap. The moment you decide holiness is too weak to matter, you go looking for power somewhere else. To turn on the news, watch the borders dissolve and the dollar shrink and the mob gets its way. And you either go numb or you go hunting for raw political muscle. There's still another option. You can refuse to arm the people who hate what you love. A Christian does not have to hand his dollars to the corporations, bankrolling the very rebellion we have been describing. Since 2012, Patriot Mobil has stood on the other side of that line. Patriot Mobil is America's only Christian conservative wireless provider. They run the same nationwide 4G and 5G towers as the major carriers with plans for any budget and customer support team based 100% in the United States. The difference is where the money goes. Patriot Mobil funds the fight for religious freedom, your constitutional rights, the sanctity of life, and the veterans and first responders who guard them. Switch now and get a free activation. It would be offer code crosspolitik. That's PatriotMobile.com forward slash crosspolitik. In war, you got to remember that every little battle counts. And this small allegiance, it has big implications. Your wallet, it's one of the weapons that God has given us in the battle. Using it wisely is holy. And in order to be able to see that, we have to go back to the mountain. In the wilderness of Sinai, 3,500 years ago. Holiness is not a vibe. Holiness is not a feeling. And holiness is not limited to personal or individual piety or obedience. Holiness is the fiery presence of the Traumgon. Holiness is the Lord of the universe, high and lifted up and thrown an unapproachable light, causing even the seraphim who are constantly around that throne to cover their eyes and chant holy, holy, holy. The Lord of armies, the whole earth is full of glory. Isaiah 6-3. Holiness is a fire that consumes all evil, all sin, every shadow of darkness. God is a consuming fire. He used 1229. After Israel left Egypt, God brought them to the same mountain where he had originally appeared to Moses. The God's presence descended on the mountain and fired. And there were thunders, and lightning, and thick clouds, and a voice like a trumpet blaring louder and louder, and the whole mountain shook like an active volcano. And the people begged Moses. They begged them to go to the mountain to speak with God for them instead of them, so that they wouldn't die. That is the holiness of God. It is the hurricane force of God's life itself. It is the goodness and truth and mercy and grace and justice. And sinners are completely undone by Him. So this is holy war. In the first instance, it is God's holy war against all our sin. But then that hurricane spoke. There was a voice in that consuming fire. And it said, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of Bungus. Thou still have no other God's before me. That holy God came down in order to make His people a holy nation. This holy God would dwell with His people. This would be the only way they would survive. The Ten Commandments were not just random rules. They were the words of life, the words of the fire, the consuming fire that blazed in that bush, that descended on the mountain would come down and His people would walk in the midst of the fire. In the beginning, the holy fire spoke and created the heavens and the earth, that fire was a perfect garden, a perfect paradise. But when Adam and Eve sinned, the fire began to consume them. So the fire drove the first man and woman out of the garden of Eden, out of God's blazing presence. And holy angels were stationed at the entrance with the flaming sword signifying the separation that had a car between God and man. That's God's holy war against sin. God's flaming sword. Sin is always the offer of an alternative holiness, an autonomous holiness, the original political activism, man on his own grasping for power, grasping for deity, grasping for answers. It's the way of dabble, the way of Egypt, the way of bails, the way of feminism and BLM and COVID lockdowns and every form of status, Republican cronism. Man grasped for salvation for human solutions. We will fix the economy, we will fix homelessness, we will fix immigration, we will end all wars. But the more we take matters into our own hands, the worse it gets. But man is not the solution. Man is the problem. The flaming sword pictures what must happen. Man must pass through the flaming sword. Everywhere we go, everything we touch is defiled by our selfishness and greed, our pride and our envy, our lust and our malice. Man sin must be cut and burned. God killed an animal and made skins for Adam and Eve to cover their nakedness and shame, to cover our leprous sores of guilt. And so ever after, bloody sacrifice pictured the same thing. Animals served as temporary symbolic substitutes for man. People could draw near to the holy presence of God through the fire suit of sacrifices. God's holiness would burn against the substitute until the final substitute Jesus would come. But sin is everywhere. In our clothes and in our hair, on our hands and in our hearts, in our homes and in our fields and our marriages of children, in our neighbors and nations. It's like a pollution that can never be taken away. That's what Leviticus teaches. Everything had to be constantly washed. It was all unclean, defiled, polluted, stained. But the Holy Fire of God was in their midst, burning with a love as strong as death. The Holy God was in their midst, promising to break that curse one day, to heal their hearts and heal their homes and their nations. On one day each year, one man, the high priest, with holiness to God inscribed on his forehead, would enter into the fiery presence of the most holy place to sprinkle the blood of goats on the mercy seat. While a skate goat was released into the wilderness, bearing all the sins of the people. A frail, defiled man walked into the fire and was not consumed. A man walked through the sword and the fire because of the scapegoat. That was the way back into the garden. That was the way back into the presence of God. Back into his blessing, back into his way of life, back into his blessing in the fields and homes and families and nations. Not by human might, not by human ingenuity, not by parliaments or Congress or passing legislation, but by God's power, his way, his law. His spirit. But it was all a picture, a promise, an oath that was written in fire in the sand that God himself would come and that the earth would be filled with his glory again. Everything would burn with the fire of his glory, but only the sin would be burned away and all that would remain would be gold. The world would be transfigued. And so centuries later, the fire came down again and the hurricane of glory came down on another mountain, Galgata. A storm of wrath and grace was poured out on the God-man, Jesus Christ. And he walked straight into the fire in the sword and though he was sinless, he came as a last and great scapegoat. He came as our high priest bearing our names, bearing our sins, bearing our curse. And the flaming sword fell on that Roman cross until justice burned like a thousand sons and it was finished. At that moment, the curtain that was in the holy place was torn into two from the top to the bottom. God himself tore it down and the fire broke out in the world beginning with lighting his own people on fire with God's own presence, his Holy Spirit. Our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. We are holy ground and everywhere that we go and everything that we do in obedience to God, in obedience to the ten fire words is now consecrated, sanctified and holy to God. This is how you walk in the fire. You have no other gods before him. You make no images to worship. You honor God's name. You honor God's day. Your relationship with your parents is sacred. Life is to be defended. Your married bed is holy. Your neighbor's possessions are sacred. Your word is sacred. And so even your thoughts and desires must be holy content. And therefore, for Christians, there could be nothing other than holy war. In our lives as believers, it means making sure that the various aspects of our lives are set apart to the Lord. They're separate, they're distinct, they're cut off from profanity. They're not treated as common or just neutral. But that our lives are truly set apart to the service of God. That's what it really means. Now, we might say that that entails righteousness and justice, so that which would include our piety. But when you look at the politically in America, for example, the oath of office that the president used to take was on an open, not on a closed Bible. He still takes the oath of office on a Bible. He used to be on an open Bible to detour on a me 27-28, invoking the blessings and cursings of God upon the nation for obedience or disobedience. Most Christians have no problem with the idea of holy war against sin. But everyone gets nervous as soon as you start talking about war, like actual war as holy. What are you saying that America is like Israel? Yes, I think we can talk about wanting to be like Israel. I mean, when you look at the great Protestant nations like Britain and the United States, one of the most famous patriotic songs in England is called Jerusalem. We will build Jerusalem in England's green and peasant land in the United States. The view was that we could be a city on a hill. That there would be a sense in which this new land, this could be devoted to the Lord, and would be a light to the nations. This is all languages borrowed from Israel and from the Old Testament. Even Canada was originally the Canadian Dominion, where the motto of the nation was taken from Psalm 72 verse 8. He should have dominion from seed to seed from the river to the ends of the earth. So for Britain, for the United States and for Canada, there was certainly a sense that we could be a nation devoted to God, a righteous people, a city on a hill, and that we could build Jerusalem in our lands by turning to the Lord, by obeying the gospel, by obeying the Lord God. So in that sense, I would say yes, we can be holiness to the God wants to write over America, holiness unto the Lord. And yeah, that will be when the Church is faithful and obedient, and the nation through the influence of God's people nationally wants to turn back to the Lord. Think back to the great awakening and the war for independence. The colonial pastors, the black-robed regimen, they didn't see the war for independence as a regrettable secular necessity that they tolerated for political reasons. They preached it from their pulpits as a righteous cause under God. George Washington, Nelt, and the Snow at Valley Forge, and prayed, the chaplains who barged with the Continental Army weren't there to provide emotional support, they were there because they believed they were fighting on holy ground. Was that just the pious sentiment? Not at all. It was the working out of the Protestant Reformation. The God who owns every square inch of the creation and every nation under heaven is not merely Lord of individual souls. He is the Lord of imagestrates and armies and borders and justice too. And when a imagerate wills the sword in obedience to God against genuine evil, that is not a secular act that God tolerates. No. It is a holy act that God commands. This is not a novel idea. The Church had understood it for 15 centuries. The Bible teaches that authority is under Christ and that includes the authority to wield the sword. God claims every square inch. Therefore everything done in obedience to God's word is holy. That is included in our Holy Word. One of the things that has happened in the evolution of thought, particularly in modern times, as a result of enlightenment thought is, while the idea of a possible just war may be acknowledged by some and even embraced enthusiastically by some, the idea of calling that just war, a holy war, seems to be a bridge too far. It seems to be almost fanatical. However, when Augustine first framed the idea of the just war theory in the 5th century AD, the idea of something being just necessarily meant that it was just in the eyes of God, that it was the administration of his steadfast love and unending mercy on a broken and fallen world. Thus, just and holy were synonyms, but they weren't separate categories. For us moderns, that is a difficult pill to swallow, particularly given our reaction to things like Islam, which she had, where the Islamists call for a holy and just war against the West and against Israel. But if we think in biblical categories, if something is genuinely just, it is just because at hears too and in forces, God's standards is holy standards. So if a war is genuinely just, then we can say that it ought to therefore also be holy. Thomas Aquinas had already laid out the three criteria, lawful authority, just cause, and right intention. The reformers took this and hammered it into an even sharper tool. With the rise of persecution of Protestants in the 16th century, the reformers further developed these themes by adding the doctrine of the lesser magistrate and the duty of interposition. This is exactly what the American colonists did. When King George violated his covenant obligation and trampled the God-given rights of his subjects, the colonial magistrates didn't merely launch a political rebellion. They interposed as God's servants between the tyrant and his victims. The war for independence wasn't holy because of America, their God's chosen people like Israel. It was holy because it was just. So that's the theory. But here's where most people want to push back. Okay, maybe you can make that case for the revolution, but what about the crusades? The day is November 27th. The year is 1095. Hope Urban the Second preaches the first crusade at the Council of Claremont in Central France, calling upon Christian princes and soldiers to take up arms to take back Jerusalem from the Muslims for Christendom. The reports trickling back into Europe were horrifying. Churches had been completely destroyed and defiled. Christians flayed, tortured in the most humiliating ways, not to mention the widespread rate of Christian women. I would say the first crusade that was preached in 1095, I think by Hope Urban the Second, was a just war. It was the result of an appeal from the emperor in the East in Byzantium, the Byzantine Empire. As you know, the Turks had invaded. They were in control of much of Asia Minor and they were threatening Constantinople. And so an appeal was made to the Western Church and it was in my view that was a just the first crusade was a just war. Now, I think where the question marks come in, that term holy war, and the holiness is an important concept in the Bible. The difficulty with the way it was used there was the sacramental nature of it in so far as the Pope who considered himself the vicar of Christ, was in this unique position to declare what they were doing truly holy. That is sanctioned by God or even actually commanded by God. And if you engaged in this holy war, you could have your sins remitted. If you died in the crusades, in the first crusade, you would go directly to heaven as a martyr. And so this, the kind of tying it together with the Roman Catholic Church is sacramentalism, indulgences and promises of salvation and forgiveness and everything else. Obviously make it problematic for Protestants to talk about the holiness of it. But there's no question in my mind at all that the first crusade was absolutely a just war against the Islamic Turks. One of the things you have to do is when looking at the crusades, a movement that spans about 400 years, you've got to separate them into very different categories. I would say the seventh and eighth crusade were largely just wars and holy wars. I think that the second crusade was largely just war and a holy war. The first crusade was a mixed bag. The fourth crusade was an utter disaster pursued for commercial and mercantilist and expansionist purposes. So you go kind of separate them and exercise some good discernment. They weren't just one thing. The problem was not with the idea that a just war was a holy war. Rightly understood a righteous war is necessarily a holy war because justice is God. And when God servant, it ministers that justice faithfully, it is His work in the world. The problem is that the medieval church confused what holiness actually is replacing the finished work of Christ with geography and relics and purchase indulgences. And that confusion didn't end in 1095. Look at secular activism, for example, BLM marches are pilgrimage, a sacred journey to holy ground, a public act of devotion, anti-racism training is confession and penance, the ritual acknowledgement of original sin, your whiteness. And the prescribed works of satisfaction silences violence, basically an indulgent system pay the right amount of public grief and you stay in the community of the righteous. And those who refuse to comply, they're the unclean ones. They're the contagious ones, the lepers cast those guys out, excommunicate them. The activists have every category of holiness, sacred cause, ritual purification, excommunication of the defile. They just amputated it from Christ and they sutured it on the politics. It still bleeds, it's still demand sacrifice, but now the scapegoat isn't a goat and isn't Jesus. It's you. It's your silence, your privilege, your history, your activism, the mechanism is identical to the medieval indulgent system. You can purchase your way into the community of the righteous, but the debt is never finally paid because there is no finished work. There is no it is finished. The guilt just keeps compounding and revivalism does the same thing just from the other direction. Instead of political guilt, it offers emotional experience as the currency of holiness. Have you felt it? Did you weep at the altar? Did you speak in tongues yet? Did you have that mystical breakthrough at the core change? The go-posts they move costly because there is no wants for all atonement to stand on. No baptism that permanently declares you clean. Only the next conference, the next encounter, the next emotional eye. But those are all false scapegoats. Both promise the fruit of holiness, both promise transformed lives, healed communities, a world made right, but without the root. The blood of Jesus Christ, the one true scapegoat who bore the sins of the world and rose again from the debt. We said it at the beginning, holiness is an escapeable. It's not weather, but which? The question before this generation is whether we will stand on the finished, unshakable holiness of Christ or keep grasping for the substitutes that burn hot and leave nothing but ash. And yes, we know. After criticizing the endless cycle of conferences, the experience is there and the spiritual highs. Inviting you to a conference sounds a little ironic, fair enough, but the problem isn't gathering together. Christians have always done that. The problem is treaty conferences like sacraments. No conference can make you hold it. No speaker can remove you from guilt. No emotional experience can accomplish what Christ has already finished. That's why we're gathering in Franklin, Tennessee October 1st to the 3rd for the Fight Left East Conference. This year's theme is the same as this documentary, Holy Wars. Just War through Crusades and the Christian life. We'll examine how both secular activism and modern revivalism create counterfeit paths to holiness through penance and performance and scapegoating, while pointing to the only true source for our holiness, the finished work of Jesus Christ. So come not because the conference will change your life. Come because Christ already has. Join us to think and laugh and worship and feast and be equipped to fight faithfully in all the battles of our age. Doug Wilson, Joe Boot, George Grant, Jared Longshort, Joe Rigny, Ben Merkel, and of course the cross-politic crew will be there. Holy Wars. No indulgences. No mystical shortcuts. Just Christ, His Word, and His people. So we begin our journey looking at a shepherd that was in the wilderness distracted by a burning bush that was little flame but was not consumed. The holy presence of God had descended on that common thorn bush and made it into something extraordinary. A meeting place between heaven and earth. Moses, he had to take off his shoes because the ordinary ground that he stood on had been transfigured by the fire of God's presence. We are that bush now. The angels surrounding God's throne constantly sing. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of armies. The whole earth is full of His glory. But notice that the whole earth is full of His glory. It was always full of His glory, always full of His holiness. But our sin cut us off from seeing the glory. But by the sacrifice of Christ we have been permanently brought there. We have been washed in His baptism and now we are permanently clean and holy and our bodies are living sacrifices. Now the fire is not merely resting on a bush in the wilderness of Sinai or just sitting on a mountain and thunder and lightning. Now the fire is inside every believer. You are holy. You are holy, Grant. Your family is holy, your marriage bed. It is holy, your dinner table. Holy, your car, your work. Holy, your hands. Holy, the crusaders thought holiness resided in a piece of the true cross or some stone in Jerusalem. Revivalists think it is found in mystical feelings and political activism. They are all looking in the wrong places. Holiness is here, you standing in the fire. The Holy Spirit empowering you to obey the Word of God in your home, in your city as a nation, and the church gathered around the Word and sacrament. Take off your shoes. As a prophet Zachariah foretold, every dinner dish is a holy to the Lord. Even the bells that are on the horses are engraved like the plate fasten to the high priest's forehead, holy to the Lord. Every word, thought or deed done into the Lord, done in obedience to the Lord. When it is offered up in the power of the Holy Spirit, it is sanctified and consecrated and holy to the Lord. When a marriage and a family, when one partner comes to the Lord Jesus Christ, there is a sanctifying effect that is taking place in the household. When a nation, and it is quite clear in Scripture that nations can turn to the Lord, people can turn to the Lord. It is not just individuals that turn to Christ. There can be national repentance. There can be people turning back to the Lord. Doesn't mean everybody in that people group or everybody in that nation is saved, but there can be a turning back to the Lord. And therefore, while our primary struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and heavenly places, that struggle still touches down in every struggle against sin in every realm. We are not fighting a culture war with political weapons. We are not fighting a spiritual war with emotional experiences. We are fighting a holy war. With the weapons God has actually given us. Individuals carry out this holy war in their thoughts and attitudes, putting to death the false holiness of ego and autonomy. Marriage is carry out this holy war as husbands fight to love and lead their wives. And wives carry out this holy war as they respect and submit to their husbands, pushing back against a culture that has made the family its primary target. Parents carry out this holy war as they love and teach and discipline their children in the Lord, refusing to hand them over to institutions that will catacquise them into a rival religion. Churches. They carry out this holy war when they take up the weapons of the Word and the sacrament and practice church discipline, which means the church must actually be the church, not a conference center for emotional experiences or a chaplaincy for the political right. And yes, magistrates, they carry out this holy war as they establish biblical justice and punish evil doers and uphold the law of God. Not because politics is the answer, but because God has appointed them as his ministers, whether they acknowledge it or not. America could deport every illegal immigrant and outlaw abortion tomorrow. But apart from the holiness of God, we cannot have his blessing. And so evil, it would reinvent itself pretty simply. That's a law is not enough. Clinical philosophy is not enough. There can be no holy nation without a holy people. We love to think in mechanistic terms in the modern world. And so we tend to kind of take an either or approach to things like the reformation of our culture. We assume that it's either got to be bottom up or we assume that it must be top down. Top down folks will emphasize politics over all else. Bottom up will emphasize personal holiness and family relations first. The truth is, is it all happens all at once. That all of us have places of influence that go beyond my own personal holiness and my family. And all of us have some responsibilities that are top down and bottom up. What we have to do is we have to think organically. We have to think of culture as a kind of organism. It's not a machine. And we don't approach it with mere charts graphs and, you know, mechanical operations. So it's all a part of a whole. And this is one of the reasons why the biblical analogies of things like salt and light are so applicable. Light comes from above salt penetrates them below. And it's an altogether thing. We're called to be lights on the hill. Extending truth to the hinter regions of the world. We're simultaneously to focus on the here and now when we read the book of programs, we see both things. We see the call to faithfully walk and we see the call to faithfully lead. It's a both ends not any either or proposition. This is our holy war, not some kind of church run military or new crusade to conquer lands and relics. But every sphere of life, family, church and state operating under Christ, limited by his word, consecrated to him, burning with his presence until the earth is full of the knowledge of the Lord as the water that covered the sea. Not by our might, not by our ingenuity, not by our own politics and our philosophy. But the fire of the spirit that was poured out on Pentecost that burns in every believer and that will not be quenched. Deus volt. God wills it. He always has. He is doing it. And we have the holy privilege of burning in the midst of it. Thank you.