Kingdom Conversations: Why Christians Must Engage in the Culture War

For us, as Christians, it's about the Kingdom. It's not this life, it's the next. And we want to see those people that want us killed and murdered because we don't agree with them. We want to see them in heaven.

The Rapp Report and the Truth Fellowship

Welcome to The Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity in the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Welcome to another edition of The Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, the executive director of Striving for Eternity and the Christian podcast community of which this podcast is a proud member.

We're here to give you biblical interpretations and applications for the Christian life. And today I have a fellow friend and again, another board member from the Truth Fellowship. You guys may have remembered maybe just two or three episodes ago where we had Russell Fuller on talking about his message that he gave us at the National Conference on Antisemitism.

And I am bringing really the guy who we all kind of credit with the Truth Fellowship, Pastor Jeff Gower to come on because he did a message for the conference that was delivered on Sunday that was a really good, well, I say warning for the church, but also kind of the kick that many of us needed to take a stand.

And Jeff has been on the show before. We've talked about the stand he took as he stood up to the Easy Free Church and they basically tried to kick him out for the nerve of calling out the truth of social justice.

And that's what created really what we now know as the Truth Fellowship. Pastor Jeff, welcome to The Wrap Report again.

Well, thank you for having me on, brother. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, it was really these woke wars one that brought us all together when we were fighting against the racial social justice nonsense.

You were part of crafting the Dallas statement back in 2018, brother. So that's what got Russell Fuller in trouble because he signed it and lost his job at Southern Seminary. And I was fighting against wokeness in the free church, which got me expelled, as well as David Whitney.

And we all rallied to one another. And lo and behold, we have the Truth Fellowship.

Yeah, so if you want, you can go to the truth fellowship dot org. That's where you can find out about it. I'm sure that we'll eventually have the videos from the conference up there. I don't know that they're there yet.

And we are working on a book that is our 13 distinctives that we you can read what those distinctives are. And we have a book that it's actually now in my hands to do some final tweaks to it in the formatting and just for book format.

And so it should be out very shortly. So, Jeff, you at the conference, this is now, I guess, technically our second national conference because we had the first one at your church before we actually organized.

That was actually where we started the organization. And what came out of that conference was the Truth Fellowship. Your message, I would say there wasn't a person there that didn't walk away with a new and refreshed if, or maybe if they didn't have one, a new need or understanding of the need to stand up against the, well, as on your podcast, you'd call the high towers.

Right.

We didn't mention your high places.

So you have a podcast called tearing down the high places, a podcast I listen to.

Regularly.

Matthew 10 and the Call to Truth Warfare

Let's start with overall, what was your message? And then I want to dig into some specifics that we talked about.

Okay.

So my message came from Matthew chapter 10 verses 16 to 23. And the big idea was that the first part of Matthew 10, 1 to 15 was specific to the apostolic mission during the ministry of Jesus. And it actually had this delicated authority to go ahead and cast out every demon and heal every disease, which was particular to that mission.

But when you get to verse 16 of Matthew 10, it transitions to something that would be in the church age. The expectation for the church age is that we will be like sheep among wolves and we're going to be torn.

We're going to be in a truth war. It's going to be a battle. It's going to be fierce. And you're going to be dragged before Kings and governors, and maybe your own family is going to start betraying you and turning against you.

So the expectation that Jesus sets for the mission of the church is such that we have to be warriors, truth warriors. We have to be willing to suffer for the name. And if we're going to take ground in the truth war, you cannot be subtle and mild, but you have to be all in, willing to suffer and rugged and you got to have some grit.

That was kind of the big idea of the message. You got to have grit, be willing to go and take one on the chin and keep on moving and not give up. Otherwise, you're not going to take any ground in the truth war.

And that's the thing you mentioned is the fact that we live in a culture that, well, they kind of want to soften things. Can't we just get along? Can't we have an impact on the world, but not be in their face?

You kind of addressed that and shot that idea down pretty powerfully for folks who didn't listen to the message yet. Is there a way we could just get along with the world? Can we just try to not be so in their face?

They're not really coming after us, are they?

Why Christians Must Engage the Culture War

Well, I think there's a message within evangelicalism, mostly pushed by the gospel coalition and groups like that, that we ought to just preach the gospel. We shouldn't get too political or get into the mud and deal with some of the cultural issues or fight the culture wars.

But that's not the heritage that we were given. We in America were given the heritage of George Whitefield and the great awakening and then the American revolution. And I opened my talk down in Florida with the story of John Mullenberg.

He was a preacher. I think he was a Lutheran down in Virginia, but he preached a sermon on Ecclesiastes chapter three, and the sermon was about a time to fight. There is a time to fight, and it was leading up to the Revolutionary War.

But the remarkable thing is, as he finished his sermon, he came out of the pulpit and he stripped off his clerical robe to reveal a colonel's uniform under his clerical robe, and then he led 300 men to sign up for the 8th Virginia regiment, and ultimately they went to war with Britain.

That was a powerful way to start your sermon. And for folks that were not at the national conference, it was funny because you were not on the stage for Q &A, but someone asked the question of whether you thought the Revolutionary War was wrong.

Now, I don't know who wrote that question, but I do wonder if they read your notes because that is exactly how you started your sermon.

Well, it was great because they called me out in the night before I preached and said, Hey, Jeff, what do you think about that? And I was like, I'm not telling. You got to come back tomorrow. So after I told the story of Muhlenberger, I said, well, how do we know whether that was actually right?

Just because it was cool, you know, it was dramatic. It was awesome. That doesn't mean that it was necessarily a just war. And so I pointed out that when we declared independence from the UK, the Americans gave a list of 27 grievances.

One of them was taxation without representation, but they also talked about how Britain is sending mercenaries often to kill them. They're inciting the violence of the Native Americans to stir up war against them.

They've burned towns and villages. They're capturing people and hauling them all the way back to Britain to stand trial. So there's no real due process if you can't be tried by a jury of your own peers, and then it's a mock and sham trial and they're convicted.

They were also impeding upon religious freedom. And that was a big one for Muhlenberger. The problem was they were trying to force everyone to register with the Church of England. Well, what does that do for a Lutheran or a Baptist or a Presbyterian?

And so really there were many Presbyterians that were part of that black robe regiment that stood against King George. So the idea was it was a just war because they were fighting for things that mattered.

And then in my sermon, I outlined seven areas that are of like kind today. Reasons why we do need to fight in the truth war, even if it touches on politics, these are moral issues that are worth fighting for and even dying for.

We have to.

And this is the thing you brought up Gospel Coalition, who they do like to say we, those of us who want to stand on truth, shouldn't talk about politics, but they never seem to have a problem saying to vote for Harris and Biden and give all the justifications why Trump is bad.

It's amazing how they get into politics. We shouldn't. And there is this notion you addressed, which is the fact that many people in America think there's a separation of church and state, and this church should not get involved in state issues.

Your opening with the black coat regiment really kind of nailed that because you have a pastor, preaches a sermon, then takes off his, okay, let's go to war.

He did exactly that.

Is there really a separation of church and state? What should be the church's role in government or in our society?

Obviously, when Thomas Jefferson wrote about a wall of separation between church and state, he was writing to the Danbury Baptists to assure them that they will be kept safe from government encroachment.

That the state will stay within their sphere in this federalist arrangement and not impede upon the right of states and certainly of churches. So there was a wall in how the constitution protected, first of all, speech, but also the establishment of religion.

So there's not a wall that protects the state from churches speaking to it. We have absolute free speech to be prophetic voices, to speak to the state, to call for repentance, like John the Baptist did to Herod and say, what you're doing is unlawful.

We're not getting out of our realm. That is our realm. We have a prophetic voice to be salt and light in the culture. Salt is a preservative. Light brings clarity and the ability to see what's going on.

Well, that's what we have to be as Christians. We've got to speak to the public square.

That actually is some topics that will be in our book that's coming out for the Truth Fellowship. Cause we do have sections on that and you can go to the truthfellowship .org and you can see our distinctives.

And that is speaking into the public square is something that we think is a requirement for shepherds.

Yes.

Abortion, Life, and the Church's Responsibility

So the first area that I addressed in my sermon, this actually comes out of my book, Blood Red Church. I have seven chapters. So I just mentioned one for each. So chapter one, life. Our country is built on life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.

The first one is life. And we have entered into an era in American history where life is so devalued that a human being is no longer regarded as a human life in the womb. And as long as people are killing babies in the womb, we have to speak about that.

If we're silent about that, there's an aspect of being complicit in it.

It's to that level.

If we just ignore the issue, we are ignoring the destruction of innocent human life. So we've got to speak about abortion, for example.

There is this notion where they want to silence the Christian. I mean, all right, you and I have a mutual view when it comes to Islam in America right now. And what we see is right now you have the mayor of New York city leading worship services in the streets where they're taking over entire streets so that they could do a call to prayer in New York.

And they're being very open about what their goal is. And it is American domination, not just religiously, politically, because you can't separate those two. You've been addressing it here in New Jersey.

You've gone to their different events and did outreach there. This is something that I think a lot of Christians are not willing to see the danger of. And why must, if this is, I mean, the truth fellowship, we talked about the fact that yes, we started over social justice.

Now the topic we've been dealing with kind of recently is antisemitism because that's on the rise. But I think the next big thing we're probably going to be tackling is going to be Islam and is Islam compatible with American policy, with American government, and can it be, I would argue, can it even be because America is based on Christian values?

So can it coincide with Christianity?

It clearly cannot. So Islam is a political ideology as much as it is a religion. When you really dig into the Hadith, the Sunnah of the prophet, and even in the Quran itself, Islam is seeking through Sharia law to be a totalizing view of life, which includes the political realm, and it is not based on the American conception of freedom that we derive from the Bible.

And especially through the reformation, it is built on Muhammad's sword, conquering by the sword and bringing into subjection the world. And that would include forcing anybody who's not a Muslim to pay the Jizya, Surah 929, that they can lay in wait for Christians.

And if they refuse to pay the Jizya, then they can be put to death. So it's written right in the Quran, Surah 929. So as long as that's there, Islam can never be compatible with the freedom of our Western world, that Christianity built.

The Jizya for folks that may not know is a tax that the infidels, those that are not Muslim would have to pay. And exorbitant tax.

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Basically the purpose of that is to bankrupt those that are not Muslim. It's an economic force. So they understand that in America, we believe in independent freedom. And in Islam, the word Islam has its root in the meaning to submit.

It, a Muslim has the root in one who submits. So Islam is about submission. Americanism is about freedom. They're not the same and Islam will use many ways. I mean, yes, I know that people go to the early parts of the Quran and the Quran is not in a chronological order.

It's in an order laid out by size, except for the first chapter or Surah. When you look at it chronologically, you can actually see the shift where he used to talk about peace to talking about warfare when he had to feed a lot of people.

And so it changed. And one of the things you end up seeing is that, yes, they talk about working within, they are about migration because they, they migrate and take over. And the Jirzah is about an economic enforcement where basically you can't afford to live in a Muslim country unless you become Muslim.

And when they first move into a culture, they lay in wait, they don't just come out and say, yeah, we were here to impose Sharia law on you because there's a principle called Takiyah where you are allowed to essentially lie to achieve an end, the end justifies the means.

So they won't necessarily disclose everything that the Quran says about Sharia law.

I remember when I was at Montclair State University doing a debate with an Imam and someone asked a question and the Imam had realized from the way I had spoken for the last three hours that I understood Islam.

He like quickly puts his hand out. He goes, don't ask that. Don't ask, you know, I'm like, oh no, I want to ask, I want to answer this. And so I just turned to a person. I said, are you practicing Takiyah right now?

And the guy's face just went white. And, and he's like, you understand that? And the Imam's like, I told you, I wish I had that recorded. There was no recording of that, but man, the look on his face, as I said that just, he went completely white because he thought it was like, I'm going to deceive this infidel, but this infidel actually read the Quran, you know, taking your message, now your message on Sunday wasn't directed toward Islam so much as society, but I think this is now where the big thing that we're going to be addressing, so what should be in, let's take the case of whether it's social justice, if you want to address the antisemitism, or if you want to address Islam, because I think that's the next thing, the next truth war that's going to be coming down the pike.

What should be a Christian pastor's responsibility? And then what about the Christian in the pew, our responsibility to the culture? Should we just sit back and say, well, if this is God's will, should we just say, Hey, well, I, I voted and that's my responsibility.

I got a job to do. I got family to raise, or is there something else we should be doing?

Pastors, the Public Square, and Cultural Engagement

Yeah.

So here in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, they proclaimed Ramadan and officially recognized and honored holiday. And especially, um, Eid al-Fitr, which is the breaking of Ramadan. So they had to do this through a township council proclamation.

So when they proclaim that at the end of the meeting, not as they were doing it, they just did it, but at the end of the meeting, they left an opening for questions and answers to stand accountable to people of the town.

So myself and some people from Cornerstone Church stood up and challenged what they just affirmed. And we did it by reading verses from the Quran and showing that this is incompatible with Americanism.

So not even necessarily a religious argument, but derivatively it was. So we talked about polygamy. We talked about wife beating, which is right in the Quran. So I read a passage on beating your wife to discipline her.

Also a child bride. We gave the age right out of the Hadith from, I think it's 31, 54. It's Sahih al-Bukhari has a Hadith that recounts that Aisha was six years old. When Muhammad married her and nine years old when they consummated the marriage.

So, yeah, we read that and then told them that this is the kind of thing that's still going on all around the world in Pakistan, child brides. There's just another little girl who died of internal bleeding because the husband, an old man married her as a nine-year-old, which is allowed under Sharia because Muhammad is the example.

And the girl died from internal bleeding after that wedding night. So it is despicable. And when you honor that in the United States of America, where are the pastors? Where are the preachers and the Christians in the pews going to the town council to say, this is what you just affirmed?

Yeah.

I mean, it's funny that in Islam, there was this rule that you couldn't have more than three wives because at the time Muhammad had three wives. Aisha being the one you just mentioned being the third.

And then Muhammad goes to his adopted son's place and his adopted son wasn't home, but he got a look at his adopted son's wife and suddenly, amazingly, God spoke to him and he can have a fourth wife. Amazing.

It's interesting because when you read Aisha's comment about it, she says, you're such a prophet of God. God always gives you what you want. And the Muslims read that as like, see, that's proof that he's a prophet of God because God gives him what he wants in convincing his son to divorce his wife so that Muhammad can marry her and add her as another wife.

I really think that the way Aisha said that was very sarcastic. If you study into Islamic history, like I think she was like, oh yeah, Muhammad. It's just amazing how God always gives you what you want.

Yes.

And what's so hilarious, if you ever just go read Surah 33, the way Muhammad couches this quote unquote revelation from God, he does it as if it's for other people, not for himself. He says, in case you ever wanted to marry the wife of your adopted son, and you think that might be haram or whatever, you know, just outlawed, God has given me this revelation that it's okay to marry the divorced wife of your adopted son, and he therefore commanded me to go ahead and do it so that you guys would know your freedom to go ahead and do it.

So he actually says, I'm doing this for you. It's, I don't really want to have to do it.

And the crazy thing about the Quran too, is that it's presented as if it's a dictation from God. Like it was already in heaven and it's not even brought through the instrumentation of Muhammad. He's just like quoting recitation.

It means recitation. The Surahs are recitation. He's just getting these direct words that he's receiving. The interesting thing is Muhammad is all over the place in the book. You can see, this is totally about his life, him justifying himself as a prophet.

And his favorite thing to do is to use the old covenant prophets as a way to justify himself. So he recasts their stories as if they're really about him and leading to him.

You know, it's amazing. Cause that's something we see with like all the cults. I mean, Mormonism does that.

Yes.

You know, I would argue the Roman Catholic church did that when they created their whole priesthood. Oh, look, we're like Israel. We're Israel. We got priesthoods and everyone wants to mimic Israel. It's kind of funny because now today, like you have people that now want to bash Israel saying that, you know, the church is Israel, there is no Israel and yet they still copy everything, like try to steal from Israel.

Yep.

Okay.

The Church Must Speak in the Public Square

So let's start with pastors. What should pastors be doing in these different issues, whether it's social justice, antisemitism, Islam, or whatever else we see in culture, right? I mean, Marxism, we can, there's a whole lot of things we could address.

What is the pastor's role within the congregation and beyond? So like, what role does he have to his congregation with these issues? And then does he have a responsibility outside?

Yeah, I would say it does include the pulpit. We live in a culture that denigrates anybody for bringing an illustration that's true to life, that actually matters in the public square. So a preacher can stand in the pulpit and talk about secretariat, the horse who back in however many decades ago had a heart that was three times larger than the average horse and everybody after the sermon will cheer for that and say, you know, pastor, that was a great illustration.

What a big heart secretariat had because that illustration does not hurt anybody's feelings. But as soon as a pastor stands in the pulpit and brings up an issue that not everybody's going to agree with, all of a sudden he will be vilified for it.

I'll give you a great example of this. Just a couple of nights ago, I watched a sermon from the Coram Deo conference. It's a great conference. I'm sure mostly very much agrees with us. It's reformed, just solid people.

But one of the speakers did an entire presentation on J. Gratia Machen and Carl McIntyre. And these two giants of the faith that were big in the 1930s through 50s took a slightly different approach to politics.

As Carl McIntyre went along, he became much more active, just fighting communism because he thought it was the great threat of the day, which it was. And millions of people tuned into his radio broadcasts and read his magazines and filled the sanctuary where he would preach the gospel and exposit the text.

But he would also give illustrations relating to the culture. He would tie it to communism and how these dangers. Well, at this conference, it was very clear that the speaker, first of all, he himself was not just expositing a passage of the text and saying nothing more.

He was delving into these matters to criticize Carl McIntyre and to say he was too active in politics. He had lost the script. He had become the problem in this presentation. So it was very ironic because he devoted an entire talk at the Quorum Deo Conference to proving how bad Carl McIntyre was for talking about politics.

But it was actually McIntyre that was helping to keep a country from going off the cliff. And the fact of the matter is America won the Cold War and Jerry Falwell and Carl McIntyre and Bob Jones and some of these culture warriors, whatever rewards they have, they were the fighters that helped us win that Cold War because they were willing to talk about these things.

Now, it doesn't have to be the predominant message, right? When we're expositing a passage, we're following the train of thought. But when you're going to make application to culture, you are allowed to talk about what actually matters in our country today.

And in fact, it's better to do that. That's my argument.

And outside the church, your church is an example.

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You went to your local township meeting with the church to address the issues that they were doing that you see as a threat to, well, Christianity primarily, but also to the country.

Amen.

It's not only preachers in the pulpit who need to talk about some of these things. We need to talk about abortion often in the pulpit, because as long as these babies are being slaughtered, how can we be silent?

We have to talk about it, but it's not just the preacher in the pulpit. All of the church has a role in this. So we've been involved with a group called Love Life that goes out in front of the abortion clinic and we just pray and we call out to women to not kill their babies, but plead with them that we could help them.

Let us throw a party for this baby and provide all the diapers you're going to need and that kind of thing. We did see one woman turn away from going in, but in the years that we did that, we stopped in about 2023 for various reasons, and hopefully we'll resume.

We still support Love Life as a ministry. We'll get back out there, but it's a lot of hard work for a little visible fruit. And yet it needs to be done. So that would be an example of what a whole church can do.

You can go pray in front of an abortion clinic. Another example is when Mount Laurel tried to pass this book sanctuary thing at the town council. We showed up. It was to protect books, so-called, right?

Because they were casting it as Christians are trying to ban books and we are opposed to learning. So they would say, look, they're trying to block catcher in the rye or fiddle around the roof or whatever.

But the truth of the matter was they had LGBTQIA plus books that introduced this to children.

It's grooming.

It's grooming. It's a hundred percent what it was. We went in and called that out and said, we don't want a book sanctuary to protect these books. And we actually opened some of those books and it was disturbing to read in front of adults at a town council meeting.

Did they cut you off like they do with so many others where they say you can't read it?

Yeah.

And they let me read it. My whole speech was like three minutes and then, you know, next man up. But the problem for them was the next man up was also a cornerstone guy. Going like that. We had more than half the room.

See, and that they have to address, right? And so if you do want to check out lovelife .org, we've had my friend, Brian Ottenberger here. Brian was on, he's, he was a pastor. He's now working with Lovelife.

So if you go back to when Brian was on, you could check out that and learn more about them and what they're doing.

Brian is a great guy. Brian Ottenberger.

Yeah.

He's the one we support here at Cornerstone. He is very worthy of support because he's the one that's getting more workers out there. He's the multiplier. So we've got to, we should get behind him. Another one that we're connected with there is Juan Riesco, who, if you've never seen his documentary that John Harris made for him, it is paint the wall black.

Oh, okay.

Yes.

Gotta go watch that.

Yes.

Remarkable.

I have that on my list to watch. John's brother, David told me about that. You just can encourage me to go to watch.

Yeah, it's worth it. It's a great watch.

Why Christians Must Fight the Culture War

So what are some ideas? I mean, you gave a good, powerful message to really get people to see the need for us not to just sit in a pew, but to do something just quickly, give some of the points, why should we as Christians take on the culture war, should we just be about the gospel, this is the big thing we hear.

We should just be about the gospel. Why is that not the right thing to do? Why do we have a, shall we say requirement to reach into the culture with, I mean, the gospel, yes, I don't think anyone's going to, well, people accuse me of everything, but there's got to be more than just the gospel comes down to some people who say, well, we should just give food to the poor and give clothing to the poor and it's the social works with no gospel.

And they feel better about doing that. They feel good inside because no one hated them for it, but people are taking advantage of them for it. And then we have the people that just say, oh, well, let's, it's just the gospel, which I always find funny because those very people we mentioned, gospel coalition, they say just the gospel.

And then they're more than happy to talk about politics for the Marxists, right? What is the biblical position and what are some of the warnings or challenges that you had for us?

So a couple of examples, I might've used both of these in the sermon, but one of them is John Witherspoon. He wrote a sermon and delivered it pre-revolutionary war called the dominion of providence over the passions of men.

And he exposits from one of the Psalms where it says, the wrath of man shall praise you, and he talks about how even the wrath of man, war is part of God's providence, and there's a time for war in the same way Muhlenberg did the same thing, the result of being willing to fight, even to engage to the level of taking up arms, imagine that that ever would be the case, would Christians be too soft now to ever take up arms if there was a threat at that level, tyranny, absolute tyranny in the declaration of independence, that was the bar.

You don't just sever ties with a governing authority for trivial matters. It's when you have an absolute despot who is preventing you from worshiping God, right? You take up arms. And so that example would be one, we are the children of the reformation and of the American revolution.