Eschatology Matters
Why They Want Your Kids
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Granger, for the ones who get it done. (upbeat music) - Well, welcome back to Eschatology Matters on the Fight Lab Feast Network. Before we get rolling today by myself and my friend Jacob Tanner, before we get rolling, are you a Christian struggling to find companies that align with your values and beliefs? Well, Squirrely Joe's has you covered for all of your coffee needs. All of their coffee is hand selected and roasted fresh every day by a family of fellow believers. Try them out and you'll savor exceptional coffee while knowing that your investment supports a company committed to following God's teachings and upholding truth and righteousness, ensuring that your hard-earned money contributes to the growth of God's kingdom. Stop giving your hard-earned dollars to pagans who support evil. We also have a fantastic offer for our listeners. Your first bag of coffee is free. All you have to do is cover the shipping. So head over to squirrelyjoes.com/ematters to claim your free bag of coffee. I'd never really point this out, but it's actually fantastic coffee. That's what I love about partnering with Squirrely Joe's is solid coffee and like actually solid folks. So really appreciate it. You know what would really sell people on this right now? If you were to give us two thumbs up to explain how much you like this particular coffee. This is not the most professional start to an episode, but yeah, we figured out there's some sort of zoom feature enabled and there's that. Yeah. So anyway, Jacob Tanner, thanks so much for joining me today, brother, good to talk to you again, man. Yeah, thanks for having me back on with you. Yeah, I don't know if it counts as me having you back on. It's just, yeah, we're both here at Eschatology Matters. We're both doing this thing. But yeah, we're hoping to-- You wanted to talk to me at least. So thank you, I appreciate that. Hey, man, we all need friends. And especially, I'm assuming this will come out in June. So it's about to be, I don't know how it is where you are, but it's an interesting month around us in June. Why June? Something just happens in June. It's just warmer weather in general. That makes sense. That makes sense. No, it's tragic and I think it's a good impetus for Christians to stand firm and true with the gospel message, especially in times when there's a lot of church buildings that are flying flags to the contrary, especially where I live. And I think where you live as well, I don't think your context is far removed from mine. We've got it. Yeah, but today, we're talking about something not unrelated to that. Because every June, again, you see not only parades, you not only see flags waving and banners. There's always-- there's always the-- it's June, so you don't exactly see this in June. But you see things in schools. You'll see banners. You'll see situations down the hallways. There's always a huge focus on incorporating kids into these celebrations, bringing in whole families and that sort of thing. The topic that would be public libraries, too. Yeah, public libraries. You can go into them throughout any time of the month of June, and they will have displays concentrated for children explaining things, not just advertising it, but like you said, celebrating it. Yeah. Yeah. And so the topic-- let me throw out the topic. And then I want to talk about what you just brought up with libraries. But the topic today, from an eschatological standpoint, is why does the world want your kids? Why does the darkness desire your kids? Why does the evil one, we could say, desire the kids, specifically of believers? Like, what is it about the kids? That may sound like a no-brainer to some people, but I think there's a little bit of depth, a little bit of nuance to this conversation. But going back to what you just said, as far as the libraries, our kids will occasionally want to watch something on TV. And we've had to grapple with-- you have-- everybody did a streaming now, right? Nobody's really doing cable that might, or at least not in the way they used to. So you've got all these streaming services and you could set up kids' accounts, which you would think would be at least somewhat safe. But then I started noticing even the kids' accounts will specifically tailor themes to your kids that you won't even see on the adult profile, which is interesting to me that you can get on your adult profile with no tailored message. And yet, if you go to a specified children's profile that has limited settings and limited scope of what it can even look up, they'll have some sort of sociopolitical theme that is being shoved right at the kids. I mean, it's right there on your settings. If you're a parent and you didn't know that, you know, encourage obviously with Christian parents, watch what your kids have on their screens like a hawk. But it's really interesting with that. You mentioned you go to the local library and there's displays set up in the kids' area, right? Very, very focused at that. You serve in a school, of course, not in a public school setting, but at the same time, you understand the power of teaching with kids. Let's start walking into this just a little bit. Just thinking, thinking biblically, there is a cross-bible theme of, how can we say this, generational blessings, generational faithfulness, an eye toward the future, an eye toward those who are coming after us, a duty to raise up and instruct those who are coming after us. This is something we find old and new testament. But it's something that doesn't just disappear with the cross and the resurrection and ascension. This is a, you know, we think of whole Bible eschatology. This is something that stretches all across scripture. What sort of things have you heard, Jacob? Maybe Christians working through this and thinking through this. Why does the darkness want your kids specifically? What is it about kids? At least from like what you've maybe heard, you pastor, you teach, what have you heard people kind of walk through this concept with? Why does the darkness want our kids? What would most Christians say? So most Christians, I think the typical, easy answer, and all of us have heard it multiple times, is that the darkness or Satan wants the kids because they're so innocent, right? And since they're so innocent, if he can pollute them, if he can corrupt them and win them over to his side, then he's going to win the war, basically. But that's actually not what the Bible teaches. I mean, the Bible is pretty straightforward and Romans 3, for example, there is none righteous, no, not one. There's none who does good. They have altogether gone astray. They have altogether become corrupt. There is none profitable. Romans 3, 23, all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God. In fact, the book of Romans in general, those first six chapters are really describing for us how mankind has inherited from birth, from conception, the sin nature of Adam and Eve. So it's not that children are innocent, though I can certainly understand why Christians would kind of default to that perspective. And I don't think that it's entirely off the mark either of what's going on. I think that what we miss is that children are impressionable and because they are so impressionable and because it's so easy to convince them of different things, it's easy to get them to believe, for example, that the agenda is okay, that it's right, that it's good. It's easy to get them to believe that, for example, separation of church and state means that the church should never be involved in state matters. It's easy to get them to believe just about anything contrary to what the Bible actually teaches because not only are they impressionable but because like the rest of us, they have that sin nature. And so it's really a matter of who's going to teach our children. One of the great examples or one of the great sayings that I think we have from the past few years comes from Vodie Bockham where he says, don't be surprised if you send your kids to Caesar and they come back behaving like Romans because your kids are going to be trained up. One way or another, they're going to be taught, they're going to learn and you, we, we who are parents, we have a very limited amount of time with our children when you actually stop and think about it. Now I know most people are going, well, you've got at least 18 years until they go off to college. Some don't go to college, some will move into the basement. I get that, but still in the grand scheme of eternity, we have a limited amount of time with our children or I look at my position as a pastor, as a principal, I have a very limited amount of time with the children whom the Lord has placed me as a shepherd over. And it's kind of a battle that's being waged of who's going to get the attention of the kids, right? And who is going to actually end up teaching them? Who's actually going to train them? And I understand a lot of people have a lot of contention about what Proverbs is actually getting at when it says, train up a child in the ways he should go and when he's old, he will not depart from it. But I believe that that's actually a promise that's given to us in the scripture, train up the child in the way he should go and he won't depart from it. If you have a child just preached on that passage and yeah, you're right about people disagreeing on that one, I caught some of that from some posting I did. But yeah, I just want to push back in on something you just said, Jacob, 'cause just walking through this. So we can affirm and agree that mankind has fallen, there's not that is good within, springing from within our heart. Instead, we're, as John Calvin described us, we're little idle factories, even from birth, we're producers of evil because there's evil within us. And yet at the same time, we could say, okay, but people are stamped with the Amago Day. People are stamped with God's image and there is an eschatological quality to that. That's not me just stretching that because of our channel. That's like, no, like the Amago Day is actually something that propels all the way from the garden through to the new heavens and the new earth. This is something in which we are stamped in God's image. We have inherent dignity and worth, yes. But there's also something about that that is integral to the story, that big story that God's writing that his image bearers are carrying out through that. So in that sense, I can say, I think we could agree like, okay, the evil wants your kids because they are bearing the image of their creator. And I would say, yes and amen. There's something to that that I think we would affirm. But then could you not say that adults are also bearing that image? So in other words, it's not like the kids have the untarnished image and the adults have a tarnished image. We'll know the kids, their image is actually tarnished as well, right? There's still the stain of sin on our nature. So I'm kind of agreeing in, you know, just kind of like adding to a little bit from what you said, that there's something there about that image bearing quality that I think we wouldn't describe it as innocent, but we would describe it as beautiful. But I think you could say the same of most of those things. - So I think a good place to go and still with the eschatological bent here is to consider Genesis 'cause you can't really understand the end without the beginning, right? And consider Cain and Abel and how one of the first things that Satan is tempting Cain to do is to kill his brother, to destroy the image, right? When we think in (indistinct) the actual, the cutting off of body parts, right? There isn't a front happening there to the image of God in man, which is itself, I think, in a front to the creator who has designed human beings with dignity, purpose, and beauty in that image. So there's definitely an eschatological bent in what Satan's ploy is here and then what the world is attempting to do to our kids. - So you brought up Genesis. So let me start walking us into this idea. So you looked at the Old Testament and there is a theme specifically with God's people that speaks to families. And again, the intention with families is looking toward those children that one would have after not only your immediate children, but Lord willing, if God should bless you, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren, et cetera. So Genesis 12, three, God promises to Abraham. He says, I will bless those who bless you. I will dishonor those who dishonor you. Then in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So even from like Genesis 12, you've got this conception of families in the world being blessed. He reiterates this again in Genesis chapter 17. He says, I'll establish my covenant between you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your offspring after you. It's this language that is pointing directly down toward your descendants and specifically toward your kids who are Lord willing, growing up faithfully and following God and then promulgating his glory among the creation that he's called us to. I'm setting that up because I think it's interesting. In the day and age we live in, we're in 2024, we're in the West, we're in America, you and I both are in America. And we look around and we, what is the trend of paganizing cultures and paganizing societies? There's always a direct attack on the offspring, on the kids. You look to just, just to America, our birth rates are plummeting and have been for quite some time. Now we're still ahead of the curve. You know, when you look to some Western European countries that look like they're almost below the point of no return, we're still ahead of the curve of them, but we're still not at the point of even maintaining normal population levels, right? We're dipping below that because people aren't having kids. The people that could be having kids, like you pointed out or either having surgeries to remove that ability, they're directly limiting it through birth control, which sometimes has unintended effects that cause them to be unable to permanently or that they actually become pregnant with. It's a direct, not only a perversion after birth of those children, but it's a direct assault on them becoming children in the first place or being born rather we should say in the first place, right? They're children in the womb and yet we're trying to do everything we can to suppress that. I find that interesting with secularizing, paganizing societies that the fruit it bears is the complete reversal of what we see very early on in the story of Scripture, which is that the generations are a blessing to us, that are offspring or a blessing to us. You see the complete inversion of that thoughts on-- - And I think with all of that, something has to take its place, right? So what do we see end up taking its place? Well, what you see are these people who wear shirts like my cat is my baby, my dog is my baby. And they'll act as though the most unnatural thing, as though the most disturbing thing anybody could possibly do is have multiple children with their spouse whom they love and start a family. But again, that's an inversion. That's a subversion of what God has actually commanded and how God actually blesses societies. So again, going back to this question, why does Satan want the children? Well, if you sort of change their philosophy on all of these things and if they begin to think it's actually bad to have kids, if they begin to think to themselves, it's all about me and myself and actualizing my existence through surgery, actualizing my existence and legitimizing the way that I feel by being affirmed by others, then they're going to have this very individualistic take on culture, on life, on family life. And therefore, they won't even see the blessing of family life. And that's why they'll babies in the womb and not bad and I at it because it's all about me, myself and I, you know, my three favorite people. And the problem with all of this is that it does the exact reverse of what it promises. It doesn't bring about human flourishing. It doesn't bring about fulfillment within the life of the person who does it, but they've been sold this lie since the time they were children. And so like I look at myself, I grew up in the '90s and I can remember by the late '90s, early 2000s, I was in public school at the time. And I remember that we would still joke and maybe this will get me into trouble, we would still joke about it because it was such an unusual thing. - You're just trying to get us booted off YouTube with this video for you. - Yeah, probably, yeah. - Continue. - That's always my goal, just getting trouble as much as possible. But, you know, late '90s, early 2000s were elementary school kids. We would joke about these things because to us, it was so unnatural. And I can remember the first time that I was confronted with an actual person who had been quote unquote married to another person. And I remember we were in a restaurant, I remember sitting there and just blurting out, they got married? That's not allowed, that's not possible. And, you know, everybody going shh, you can't say that and covering my mouth. I was probably like five, six years old at the time. And just fast forward, 24 years to now, from 2000 to now, and what we have is some other culture entirely that you've said is a paganized culture. I would agree with that. It's paganized, it is in a lot of ways post-Christian and it has promised the world to, you know, people my age and people younger than me. And it has failed to deliver anything meaningful, but it has failed to deliver joy. And that's because I truly believe, who was that football player a few weeks ago that made that speech that got into trouble? - I can just remember his Twitter handle is butt kicker. And so his name's not something like the butt key or something, but something like that. - Yeah, that sounds like that. - We'll go with that. So the butt kicker guy, when he gave his speech and he said that his wife's life began when she had children. A lot of people up in arms over that and they're like, "Well, she had a life before that." I don't think he meant that. There's a lot to disagree with them on, but I don't think that's what he meant. I think what he meant is that his wife found her greatest joy and fulfillment in having children. And when you take that away from culture, because you raise kids who are told that kids are bad and so they don't have kids, they miss out on this huge, huge blessing that God has actually promised in his word. Now, I know there's a bunch of caveats. We could say, well, not everybody's blessed with a spouse, not everybody's blessed with the ability to have children. I get that, but we can't deny the fact that actually having kids is a blessing and then the desire to raise those kids as image bearers of God who glorify God, that too is a blessing that brings great joy. But do away with all of it and you promise the people, well, you'll have the greatest fulfillment of all. If you don't have kids, what they find out is there's no fulfillment, there's no joy, there's no happiness to be found because Satan can promise you everything and deliver on nothing. - Yeah, and that's the thing is, I feel like we can die the death of a thousand qualifications with this stuff, right? It's the same dilemma that you have every mother's day. I guess we're just gonna step on all the toes today. - Let's go for it. - So every mother's day, you have to think of those who can't have children or those who haven't had children or those who may one day. So it's like every mother's day, you wanna celebrate mothers, but you always feel the burden to have about 10 qualifiers before you actually say anything good about the mothers. And it's like, we as Christians, like we can be sensitive to those, especially like maybe those who have struggled with having children totally wanna be sensitive and affirming to where they're at. But at the same time, you can just say, like, no, it's a good thing in general, just for us to celebrate mothers. And I should be able to say that, without feeling the burden of qualifying it every time we say it. So when you say something like this, children in general are a blessing. I think Christians should be able to affirm that. Are there some qualifiers we can throw in there and some life experiences? Well, sure, we can walk through those pastoral concerns, but in general, the Bible describes children's arrows that are in the quiver of their father. So like, they're a good thing in general. What I find with this whole thing is, if we think of this big story of eschatology, this thing that God is writing, that has a teleology to it, right? There's a direction and a purpose and a goal toward which we're moving. Some of these concepts that we're talking about are a direct affront to that. So one of the things that was popping up to my mind was Psalm 127. It says, "Behold, children are heritage from the Lord, "the fruit of the womb, a reward." And then this leads into, obviously, like arrows in the hand of the warrior, the children of one's youth, blessed is the man who's quivers full of them. So we take that and I can vividly remember my daughter was at a, I think it was her kindergarten graduation, she was at a little Christian school. It was super cute. They get all the, you know, kids up there and they're all saying what they want to be when they grow up. And they get to the end and it's been like 30 kids, or maybe probably not 30, like 20, 25, whatever. And they get to the end and it's my daughter's turn and they're, you know, they're supposed to say what they want to be when they grow up. She's like, "I want to be a mommy." And the whole audience, like, just is like, "Oh, and I'm back there just bawling my eyes out." Like, "Oh, that's the most precious thing I've ever heard." But it was abnormal, right? Even among Christians, it was just, and again, this isn't like, I'm not casting judgment on these kids that had, you know, aspirations, but it was abnormal and kind of strange that a little girl was just saying, like, I might do some other stuff. You know, my daughter does have, you know, she's got plenty of interests, but she wants to be a mom. And that's just something that's just naturally good. What we do instead, we take that thing from Psalm 127, children are a blessing. God's actually working through faithful generations of Christians, we take that and we invert it to the point where now it is so commonplace to watch any number of movies, TV shows, even from, you know, quote unquote, good sources that make childbearing look tedious and boring and that it robs you of your vocation. Everything about it, you know, it's like the butt of people's jokes that the kids come along and now the parents are going to have to fight and dad's going to be an idiot and mom's going to have a headache and need more wine at the end of the evening. It's like, we've completely inverted something that's supposed to be a generational blessing throughout this story that God's writing. I've got one more just to suggest, and then I won't hear your thoughts on this because I think again, I don't think this is something that was strange to the Old Testament and I want to push in toward that in a minute, but Isaiah 54 verse 13, your children, excuse me, all your children shall be taught by the Lord and great shall be the peace of your children. So you look at something like that, you say, okay, the children of believers being taught by the Lord and instructed in his ways, the Lord instructing them and raising up a generation, that's a blessing and it's a blessing that brings societal peace. That's eschatological victory right there. That's eschatological blessings flowing out. What is the inversion of that? The inversion is when, for some reason, a lot of middle-aged men want to (indistinct) and do sexually explicit dances in front of those very children who are supposed to be not only guarded from sin and evil, but also raised in the nurture of the Lord. If being raised in the nurture of the Lord brings that peace, what does the inversion bring? The absence of peace, the absence of justice in the land, the absence of good things. So we look around and we say, why is it these things seem to go hand in hand, a complete attack on children and a denial of them being raised in the Lord and societal upheaval and societal unrest and cultural churn? These things are related directly, I think. And I think scripture is trying to tell us that as part of this eschatological story. What are your thoughts? - So I would say look at Sodom and Gomorrah. Sodom and Gomorrah didn't get to be the way they were overnight, right? It took generations probably. It took children learning sinful, wicked, sexual deviancy until you reach the point where suddenly they're outside Lot's house trying to ram the door down so that they can basically (indistinct) angels, you don't get there overnight. And again, I think what we're seeing is the buildup of things that have been happening in our culture for an extremely long time. You were talking about your daughter saying that she wants to be a mother. Similar situation, few weeks ago, my son graduated from preschool, which I know, they graduate from everything now. But anyway, graduated from preschool. And they asked, I had one of those same moments. They said to him, what do you wanna be when you grow up? And he said a pastor and I was like, that's my boy, there you go, that's what I want. But a lot of the other kids and even, and I'm not saying this is anything bad at their kids. But some of the girls, the jobs that they were saying, they wanted, I was thinking to myself, some of those aren't the most feminine jobs around. And I thought it was interesting then that when the graduation rolled around for our school this year and we graduated our senior class, some of them were talking about the fact that they wanna go out and they wanna get careers. And the last, and this is a Christian school, last thing on their mind is to have children. They don't wanna hear about starting a family. They don't wanna hear about having children because they're focused on their career. And I think that this is part of that societal upheaval. I think it's kind of our culture having bought into the secularist lie that life is devoid of meaning and purpose if it has lived with the family. That your life only has meaning and purpose. If you're outside of the home, and this goes for men and women, right? If you're outside of the home as much as possible, traveling around as much as possible, making the most amount of money, when in reality, I think the greatest meaning and purpose in each of our lives and in the lives of our children comes when we're an actual family unit. I mean, (upbeat music) - I've got Dan Morgan here on the pod. Say hi, Dan. - Hey, how's it going today? - It's going good, man. Tell us who you are and what you do. - I'm Dan Morgan. I'm an attorney and a managing partner at Morgan and Morgan, which is America's largest injury law firm. - That's pretty awesome. Why do you guys think you win so many cases? - The insurance companies and other companies that we go against know that we're gonna take it to the end that we believe in the case. So we fight for every dollar and we're not afraid to go that extra mile for our clients. - Are insurance companies like actually afraid of you guys? - We don't bluff. We take it to trial and we are not strangers of getting very, very, very large verdicts. - Awesome. So how does someone get in contact with Morgan and Morgan? What would I do if I got into an accident? - Probably the easiest way is dialing pound law. That's pound 529 from your cell phone. And our call center is always waiting to take your call. 24/7, 365. - Wow, Dan Morgan from Morgan and Morgan, America's largest injury law firm. Thanks for coming by the show. - Thanks for having me. - Visit forthepeople.com for an office near you. - Lucky land slots, asking people, what's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky? - Lucky, in line at the deli, I guess? - Aha, in my dentist's office. More than once, actually. - Do I have to say? - Yes, you do. - In the car, before my kids' PTA meeting. - Really? - Yes. - Excuse me, what's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky? - I never win and tell. - Well, there you have it. You can get lucky anywhere playing at luckylandslots.com. Play for free right now. Are you feeling lucky? - No purchase necessary. VGW Group would be recruited by law 18 plus terms and conditions apply. - Here's an example of my own life. I've preached in front of somewhat large crowds and there's a joy to that. I mean, I love preaching the word of God. But my even greater joy is when I'm at home with my wife and my sons and we're going through a catechism together and my son's getting all of the answers right. And he's actually explaining the gospel. And then he picks what song he wants to sing. You know, he sings a song or he sings nothing but the blood. There's only four of us. But when he's doing that and my other little one who's just now starting to talk is now singing with him as well, which I think is incredible, it's just this blessing to me. And I wish more people would see that because with that blessing comes, like the verse tells us peace, peace that I don't have to worry about my children because God has promised to save my children. And this is, by the way, I wanted to throw this out there. This is another argument I've heard that Christians make against having kids. Well, since the world is so bad, I don't want to bring children into this world when it's so obvious that they're going to be corrupted and influenced by the world. Now make no mistake, the world wants your kids, but the promises of God are entirely different. The promises of God are, God is going to teach your children the word. God is going to save your children. For example, Isaiah 59 verse 21, back in the book of Isaiah. We read, and as for me, this is my covenant with them, says the Lord, my spirit that is upon you and my words that I put in your mouth shall not depart out of your mouth or out of the mouth of your offspring, or out of the mouth of your children's offspring, says the Lord from this time forth and forever more. And notice that's God's covenant. So I know a lot of people read that verse and they think, okay, so I need to learn the word, I need to teach my children the word. Amen, you need to do that, but that's not what this verse is telling us. This verse is God's covenantal promise to us that he is going to take our teaching and he's gonna cause it to actually bring about regeneration, the new birth within the lives of our children. And he is going to do, who is Ezekiel 36, give him a new heart, pour out his spirit upon them, wash them clean. This is God's promise. And so we need to, as Christian parents, not just pastors, not just high school and elementary school principals, but we as parents need to cling to promises like these and trust that our sovereign covenantal keeping God is not going to change his mind on these things. And along with this then will come peace and internal peace, but also an external peace, practice within our society. Because the beauty of it is, as these kids begin to follow God, all the days of their life, we get the exact opposite of Sodom and Gomorrah. We get the sort of heavenly Jerusalem, you're on earth. - Yeah, yeah, I love that passage you just read because it's essentially, yes, the world wants your kids, but have faith, Christian, God wants your kids and God gets what he wants. - Here's one thing, 'cause you kind of just went into it, but I want to kind of suss this out just a little bit because I think for a lot of people, when we hear about kids and specifically attacks on the children of believers, we think of that as an Old Testament thing that was leading to Christ only. And there's a lot of truth there, right? So we can think of like those promises of the offspring that would come and we can say, okay, you see these genealogies tracing down through scripture, you see how God preserved a line and a lineage, you even see, you know, the promise that the descendant of David would sit upon his throne, et cetera. So like there's a sense in which, yes, there's that, there's the actual line that leads to Christ, to the Christ child being born, Jesus Christ, living, dying and rising, and through that bringing redemption to all of his people. So there's a sense in which I see that, but I think what a lot of Christians would think then is, well, that just stops when Christ came then. And that's why I mentioned that at the front end of the episode a little bit preemptively probably, but I said something about it just doesn't stop with Christ when he lives, dies and rises and ascends to the right hand of the Father. That thing does not stop 'cause if it did, it would be like, okay, like it seems the attacks upon, especially the offspring of believers, those things should kind of recede into the background, but you don't really see that. Here's my contention. And I wanna hear your thoughts on it as well, obviously, but my contention is that those attacks don't stop because it is not just to preserve the seed through which the Christ child would come, that we see attacks on the offspring of believers. It's also because the offspring of believers are the means through which Christ expands his kingdom in this world. So we're preaching through Ephesians here at our church. And one of the promises we're gonna come to is in Ephesians chapter six. Ephesians chapter six, you hear the Apostle Paul speak to the children there in Ephesus and he says, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Honor thy father and thy mother." And then Princees, this is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. I find that so compelling because Paul is addressing the children of believing parents, they're in Ephesus. And he says, "Number one, not only are you to obey them in the Lord, but you're also recognized that command from God to you, it comes with a promise. There's actual blessings that come from following this command." When you look to that then, you see the expanding of God's kingdom and it's something, I think Tim Bashong and I picked up on this in a previous podcast, but it's the two means through which God presses his kingdom into this world is through evangelism of those outside the kingdom and the raising of Godly children within the kingdom. And typically Christians will focus a lot on the first and not that we should neglect it, but we'll focus a lot on the first and say, "Yes, we should evangelize to the ends of the earth." And yes, and amen, but we oftentimes neglect the fact that God is giving us offspring with commands and promises of blessing for them following us in the Lord, that we are to then raise up in the fear and admonish the Lord, protecting them from the attacks of the world outside and of the darkness that surrounds and yet raising strong children who will then in fact serve as faithful servants within God's kingdom. This is a means of kingdom expansion and has been from Genesis three onward until the new heavens and the new earth. I think we miss that a lot of times. And I know tiptoeing in the background here are some of the covenant conversations. I understand people have some covenant distinctives that they may want to squabble with there, but I think that Christians in general, no matter your covenant disposition on this perhaps, can agree that children are a means through which, children of believing parents who we raise in the fear and amnage to the Lord are a means through which God is pushing out his kingdom into this world and the darkness wants to attack that and wants to attack it right at the source, right at the core, right at the beginning, we could say of that growth. What are your thoughts on that one? - No, absolutely. And I think that this idea is vital for the simple fact that there are a lot of, I'm gonna go in the direction now of upsetting church people. Within our churches, we often discount the children and we'll treat them as though they are second rate citizens of the kingdom of heaven. And what I mean by that is rather than encourage them to participate in worship with the quote unquote adults, we ship them off into children's church where they might color some pictures, maybe they'll eat pizza. Maybe they'll learn about a big fish swallowing some dude and that's kind of the end of it. And so that they never actually are engaged in participation with worship. They're never engaged in the fellowship of the saints, of the believers in Christ, and we fail to see too. And here's the hard thing to see, but this is abundantly true. That child who has come to Christ is in fact a brother or sister in Christ along with us. And so part of the reason too, going back to the book of Ephesians and Ephesians too, I think it is, Paul writes about how Christ is kind of the master builder and he is building his church and he's kind of building it brick by brick. In other words, he knows where each person is going to be slotted within this temple that is being built up unto the Lord. Imagine, and this will never happen, but imagine what a dishonor it would bring upon Christ in his name, if he either lost one of those bricks or if he failed to secure one of those bricks. And what I mean by that is if he lost one that he had already saved or if he failed to secure the salvation of one whom he died for. Now, neither of those things are going to happen, but Satan nonetheless tries, the followers of darkness, nonetheless try to kind of snuff out this light. But let it be an encouragement to each one of us then, not just as parents, but as churchgoers now, to actually encourage our kids to follow Jesus. One of the things that I sometimes think of, well, relatively often I've been thinking about it lately is in Matthew 18, verse number five. Jesus has brought a child before the disciples and he has said, whoever wants to be greatest in the kingdom of heaven must become like this child. In other words, you need to be born again. I need a repent of your sins, your pride, those idle factory hearts of yours. You need to repent of that, you need to turn to me, be born again, become like an innocent child. And many says, whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. And I've often lately been thinking about the context of that verse and how the, at least the American church, the Western church, the evangelical church has seemingly failed in a lot of ways to encourage those children to come to Jesus. It's almost like we've done the exact opposite when the parents are bringing the children to Jesus and the disciples go, hey, no, don't do that, stop that. And Jesus goes, no, you stop it, let the little children come to me. It's almost like we've tried to figure out excuses to put barriers up and say, nah, he said, let the little children come, but really what he meant is let's shove them off into a different part of the church 'cause this is the adult time in the sanctuary. And I think it actually goes along very well with that mindset of mommy needs her wine at the end of the night after dealing with the kids. It's this idea that the biggest blessing comes when we get rid of the kids. But again, that's not the case. Our blessing is training them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And just one more text, for example, in Acts chapter two, we have Peter preaching his great sermon on the day of Pentecost. And we have him calling the Jews to faith, to repentance in Christ. And in the middle of doing so and calling them to repent and to be baptized, every one of them in the name of Jesus, he says, and this promise, by the way, it's for you and for your children and your children's children for their offspring after you. This promise, this covenantal promise, again, this covenant keeping God wants your children and he's gonna get them. And this promise is for them and he's gonna keep his word, he's gonna keep his promise. Hopefully that's an encouragement to somebody who's been wrestling with these things that you can have actual peace, despite the fact that we are in a very real battle because though there is an eschatological bent to all of these things, Jesus still wins. He has won, and so we don't need to fear these things, but we need to be aware of these things. - Yeah, and I think I'm glad you brought up, especially, well, I'm glad you brought up both of those passages 'cause I think they're both so key to this discussion. I would point out one thing, and this is at the risk of, I guess, further offending or alienating any church folks. We can recognize there's a place for, let's just say there's a place for children's ministries. Okay, let's just throw that out there and that we can have debates on where exactly, should you have a nursery? Should you have any sort of age-grade ministries? We can have that in general though. I think a good general principle is to affirm what you just said, which is that it is best when we make special effort to include all ages worshiping together whenever possible, whenever practicable. This is good, and then we can get into all the details and have our squabbles, but in general, again, this goes back to the whole death by 1,000 qualifications. I think we should be able to affirm what you just said as that is good, and it's also biblical, and it's also imminently helpful. - If you noticed, I don't like qualifying anything. I just like to give the strongest possible, hottest take on things, and then not elaborate. - You are probably awesome on Twitter then. - That's why I love that on Twitter. - I still booted off. So here's the thing that I'm thinking of right now. Because if somebody was watching, maybe the front end of this and they were thinking, why is it always, why is there always the focus on June? Why is it always the focus on, let's just say certain sorts of attacks that come against our kids. There's a reason for that. Number one, you respond to the threats of the day, right? So we are pastors. You and I both, I'm responding to the threats that are coming against our church. If there were Vikings roaming the seas, trying to kidnap our children, I'd probably have something to say about it. There aren't, but there are other things that are directly attacking the children of my church. So I respond to the threats of the day. - Spiritually, that's actually exactly what's happening though. - Well, yeah, secondly though, with the Millstone comment, that's interesting, okay? So you have this concept of those who attack these children or specifically prevent these children from coming to Christ. It'd be better if you had a Millstone, it'd be better. Essentially, it'd be better for you if you weren't even born or if you were drowned in the sea. There's a severe judgment associated with that. What I think the church should reckon with is there's two ways this applies. Number one, we have to be very serious and very outspoken about the protection of our children. So if there are those at the gates who would come in and do our children harm, whether by teaching them wrong things, whether by encouraging them to do wrong things to their bodies, whatever that looks like, if they're threatening our children, we must be clear, watch them on the wall. This goes back to that Ezekiel 36 topic of the watchmen on the wall and if he fails to cry out and say that there's danger against the city, that their blood is on his head, this is a serious matter. And I find it upsetting that there's a lot of Christians who we get very cautious with naming the most pressing threats of the day at times. So that's one thing, but the second thing, and I think this is on the other end, and this is where it's like a little bit of an ouch for the church, maybe a little bit of introspection is an order here, is that if we intentionally keep our kids away from the church body to a detrimental point to where they're not connected with the broader fellowship, to where they're not integrating together with those that have come before them, where they're not hearing sound biblical doctrine, essentially where they're being starved and given entertainment, as opposed to being fed and trained up in the fear and the admonition of the Lord as strong soldiers in the kingdom of God. And that's biblical language, that's not me just making up some militaristic thing, right? If we're doing that, and then we send them out into the world at 18, and we wonder why the church is hemorrhaging our children when they hit college age and they're being absolutely devoured in the teeth of radical secularism and evolutionary theory and critical theory and all the swirling threats that they will encounter in their college years if they go off to college. If we're doing that, that millstone thing that starts to direct toward us a bit, doesn't it? - Oh yeah. - Because if we're raising up our children, intentionally giving them milk and not meat, intentionally raising them up to be, to be essentially weak, what's the word I'm looking for here? - Anemic. - Yeah, anemic sure. If we're raising them up without girding them for the battle that they will imminently face in this world and then we're sending them out into the teeth of destruction, that millstone starts to look a little bit like it lays on us. And that for the church, I think it goes back to what I was saying, that a lot of the time kids are treated as though they're second-rate citizens in God's kingdom as though there's this hard-line distinction. And that ought not to be, again, without offering any qualification whatsoever, it is best that these kids learn to worship alongside us and that they participate in that heavenly worship. I mean, not to go completely off rails here for a moment, but for a moment when I'm gonna go completely off rails, when we gather for worship, what's happening, except we are stepping into the heavenly places. You know, we are going before the very throne room of God. So you can think of our church sanctuaries as kind of like embassies. And when you're in a foreign country and you go to an embassy for that, you're on that other country's territory. Well, you enter into the sanctuary where worship is happening and you're entering holy ground. You're stepping into the heavenly sanctuary of God. And when we keep the children out of that, for whatever reason, we're actually doing harm to them. And so that millstone thing definitely applies to us when we do things like that. It also definitely applies to movement and all that they are attempting to do to our young people. So I think that warning, you're right. Two very clear warnings there. One, for those who are not followers of Christ, that if you keep on doing this, you'd be better off to be brutally drowned in the bottom of the sea than to allow to continue in your wickedness. And secondly, let it be the wake-up call to the church that we need to actually encourage our kids to follow Jesus because yes, the promises are true, but we need to encourage the little children to come to Christ. We need to encourage them to follow Christ. We need to teach them the word. And so I'll get on my soapbox for a moment and mention the thing I always mention, family worship. Families should be doing family worship. We should be especially you men who are the patriarchs of your home. You should be teaching and training your wife and your children to follow the Lord. And then become like the family of Charles Spurgeon. Spurgeon wasn't around, his wife would lead family worship. And when she was sick and he wasn't around, the kids would actually do family worship on their own. They didn't have to be told to do it. They would do it on their own. And people listening to this might go, well, that's too hard. It's gonna take forever. Really doesn't. My son, who is now five years old, if we don't do family worship at the dinner table, which is what we normally do, but if we're out or something or we're visiting somebody's house, on the car ride home, my son will go, "Dad, when are we gonna do family worship?" Or he says, "When are we gonna do family devotions?" These are things that the Lord will take and he'll bless, but we've got to do it. We've got to encourage the children to come to Jesus. - Yeah, and that's what I think is so refreshing about, you know, we did that short series on, or not short, it was six episodes, I think. But on building Christian communities, it's the little things, but it's the easiest, I say it's the easiest things. It should be the easiest things for us to do. So like overall vision, there is a darkness swirling that hates the light. The light has shown and is still shining and the darkness shall not overcome it. That light is going to shine until the darkness is eradicated. That shining of the light is built through kingdom and the darkness hates the kingdom. So it wants to attack the children of the kingdom. It wants to attack the generations of the kingdom, the offspring of the kingdom. So that's where the attack is coming. That's like, that's big view eschatology of it. But if you're thinking, well, how do I, with all that kingdom advance and light shining, like how do I contribute to that? Like you said, you train up your kids to where it is abnormal for you not to read scripture with them. And even if your kids are older, like so like my oldest is about to turn shockingly 15 next month. And one of my heroes just turned gray, as I said those words. So my kids are a little bit ahead of yours, but like if you find yourself at that place in life and you're like, oh man, I haven't started this with my kids, that's okay, just start it right now. Like literally start it right now. It's okay, it'll be weird for them, but it'll be better for them. If you're a grandparent, that's great. Just start doing catechism with your grandkids. Or with the kids in your church. If you're a single person, invest in some of the kids in your church and start leading them in a little catechism class or something like there's such easy, practical ways that you can catch glimpse of this big eschatological story and you can be a part of that light shining in right where you are. I think that's what's so encouraging about this topic for a lot of Christians in our day. And I hear a lot, a lot more of this is the encouragement. When I was growing up, I didn't hear, I didn't hear a whole lot of this sort of talk. Family worship, if it was on the radar, it wasn't on our radar, at least where we were. I'm hearing a lot more retrieval of that because again, this isn't something new that people are trying. This is something quite old that Christians have been doing for quite some time, but a lot more doing it in our day. But any closing thoughts on this? How do we land this plane? - So I think one of the big things for us to keep in mind is that yes, the battle is real. Yes, the world wants your kids because they want to teach them sin, wickedness, wretchedness, sexual deviancy in the hopes that it could somehow do violence to the kingdom of God. The good news is God wins. We're on the winning team here. So we actually don't need to fear it, but we do need to fight it. And fighting it is going to mean a lot of different things. It's going to mean, like you said, being that man in the watchtower yelling out, this is sinful, this is deplorable, this is not natural, this is against God's created order. It's gonna mean actually getting involved, for example, in school board meetings and saying the school has absolutely no right to decide that my child's a different gender. The school has absolutely no right to not inform me as a parent of what's going on in the school, relating to sexuality and other things of that nature. In fact, it's my child that the Lord has given to me and I'm gonna raise this child up, not you. Caesar doesn't get to raise my kid, right? This kid is mine, this kid is the Lord's and I've been given the mission. I've been given the task to raise him or her up in the admonition of the Lord. So no, they're not gonna have a say. - Hey Jacob, can I add one thing on that too, by the way, 'cause you're rolling, I hate to interrupt, but also to recognize that the darkness does want to teach your kids. I just wanna really like push in on that. It's not benign, it's not for no reason. So, you know, wants to do gender new clothing and they had that big stink and people were like, trying to teach my kids anything, might not. But the forces of evil behind them making gender neutral clothing and encouraging your kids to think of themselves as androgynous, that there is an element to which that darkness does want to teach your kids. We look at those things and we're like, well, a company's benign, they're not actually trying to teach us anything, you're missing the point. There's something bigger behind all of those things. I just wanted to include that. - No, no, no, that's great. And I think it's important too to keep in mind. This isn't just a conspiracy theory, 'cause a lot of people will look at this and they'll say exactly that. Well, target, they don't really want it. They don't care what my kid thinks or they'll look at the school board and they'll go, the school board doesn't really care if my kid's a boy or a girl. They don't care about males or females. But the honest truth is, we're fighting against spiritual principalities who have been around much longer than us. And they're able to do things that we can't even begin to understand. They have tactics and schemes, employees that we're not smart enough to combat, apart from the grace of God. So I think the one other thing that people really, really need to know, they need the scriptures. - Yeah, and I'm sorry, I keep interrupting you, but you just mentioned the principalities and powers. Paul, in the same chapter in Ephesians, he's in Ephesians six, in the same breath as he says, "Kids obey your parents and the Lord." He says, "By the way, there's principalities and powers "and forces of evil darkness that are swirling. "We're gonna fight them and we're gonna win. "Kids obey your parents." It's the same breath. It's just, yeah. - It really is. And it goes, that's why it goes together. And that's, maybe we should've just started there. That's the real reason. - Should've just three Ephesians six and called it a day. - Oh, well. - Yeah. - Let's learn. - There we go. - Do we have anybody else left to insult? - Or if we take care of everyone. - I think we've covered that today, but yeah, I hope it's encouraging though, because again, we are optimistic here at Eschatology Matters, and we're not optimistic because we have our heads in the sand and we think that there's no threats in the world quite far from it. We're optimistic as that soldier that's shot in the leg, dragging himself up onto the shore on D-Day, there's a real fight and we might not live through it, but our side wins and our Lord reigns. And he will have the victory. So wherever we find ourselves in that fight, the fight's real, but there's a victory that's assured. And so we have confidence, we have optimism in that. But Jacob, thanks for joining me, brother. It's always, it's a blast to talk to you, man. I appreciate you. - Amen. I enjoyed it. And hopefully this is an encouragement to people. And if you have kids, you'll train them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. - Amen. All right. Appreciate it, Jacob. - Amen. ♪ Sweet in here at my right hand ♪ ♪ The Lord to my Lord did command ♪ ♪ For of the easy that I will make ♪ ♪ A kingly foot still for your share ♪ ♪ To the Lord's house ♪ - Well, it's the S-World from the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. I'm Marco Wint. - And I'm Rick Schwartz. 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