Woods' appeals to New Testament limits on state power are also guilty of non sequitur. He confuses a Christian ethic and call to bear witness with enumerated powers. Likewise in his state of deception and delusion (32:00) he seems to find the Second Amendment in the Scripture - even when numerous passages in the New Testament repudiate the ethic of vengeance, self-defense, let alone the taking of life in self interest. His interpretations of Luke 22 and Christ's words regarding the two swords being enough are telling as he falls into the very same misguided interpretive traps as did the Pharisees who argued with him and the apostles in some of their worst moments of ignorance. The sword in Luke 22 has nothing to do with walking around with a gun strapped to you - or strategically placed under you car seat. And Christ made very clear in the garden that he was not calling them to take up swords and warned them against doing so. They were either an object lesson or a case of his exasperation due to their lack of understanding - which He knew would be clarified in short order. Woods completely misinterprets these passages as indeed he has demonstrated a repeated failure to grasp basic New Testament teachings and ethics.
He makes a huge and unwarranted leap in logic to assume that therefore since the sword isn't for forced conversion, it must be for self defense. Likewise his statements regarding the death penalty are also misleading. The state has that power granted by Providence but it doesn't mean that we as Christians endorse it, celebrate it, and given Paul's argument in Romans 12-13 we are certainly not to be part of it. Woods distorts the point to the extent that his entire take is misleading.
The New Testament is not worried about World Economic Forums - Caesar's coin is Caesar's and we are to expect bestial orders to dominate the Church age or Last Days. National Sovereignty is not a Christian issue as the Church is an internationalist transcendent entity - a spiritual Kingdom. Those (like Woods) who teach the Church to chase after national sovereignty are actually traitors and subversives - leading God's people to proclaim allegiance to a state above and beyond New Testament ethics, and to put loyalty to Earthly nation above loyalty and obligation to their brethren. It's really rather evil and I have little patience with such arguments. The fruits of it are also evil and I think about people like Woods as I drive by the ICE camp near Philipsburg in the central part of Pennsylvania. I wonder how many professing Christians work there and are part of that evil?
This appeal to justify 'nations' - a new fad among the Christian Right is completely erroneous and represents a terrible form of eisegesis. It ignores what is plainly taught and reads an ideology into passages where it is not found. It's pernicious. What a wicked distortion of Paul's teaching to appeal to Acts 17 as a justification for ICE and its thuggery and murder - but Woods is hardly alone.
They appeal to Babel and how nations confound global government. Are they so blind as to not understand that Babel was undone for the Church at Pentecost? Let the world builds it Babels and Romes, its bestial empires. But for the Church, we live under a different paradigm and with a different hope. In the name of fighting Babel, they build a new Babel, again with a cheap cross on top and they think it's the Kingdom of God. What blindness and folly! What judgment they bring on themselves, their idolized nation, and what destruction they bring to the Church! These people are literally condemned by the apostles as their errors overlap with the same Hellenistic-Judaized doctrines and aspirations of the false teachers that infiltrated the Church in the first century. They are deceived deceivers. They think they do Christ service but instead promote the domain and interests of the enemy. And no marvel....
Peace Through Strength is a lie. Militarism is a great evil. People like Woods think that Reagan's massive build-up was moral in that it prevented war. In fact Reagan brought the Cold War to the brink. It was only Soviet level-headedness and the fact that Reagan eventually awoke from his stupor that led to things calming down. And (as already mentioned) while the USA and USSR never fought directly the period was marked by terrible conflict and proxy wars that led to mass death and suffering. The whole narrative is a lie and as far as Trump - he has no policies or principles. He's a fool (I mean that morally) and every new day only underlines this fact.
Woods views of Israel are corrupted by Dispensationalism and its heretical Judaizing theology that categorically rejects the final and absolute authority of the apostles and the New Testament. As a result, the basic Biblical structure is overthrown and in their quest to find prophetic fulfillment outside of Christ, its adherents offer vigorous spiritually-rooted support for Benjamin Netanyahu, The Butcher of Gaza and his genocidal projects.
Woods argues that because Christ prays 'They Kingdom Come', we are therefore not in the Kingdom. This only demonstrates that he has not grasped the dynamic at the heart of New Testament teaching regarding the Kingdom. The Kingdom Woods looks for is about a future worldly dominion where Christ reigns in Jerusalem over a 1,000 year world empire. He condemns those who are trying to build the Kingdom now - even though functionally he's doing the same thing or least some kind of cheap copy. Whether one embraces the heresy of Dominionist Postmillennialism or not, Woods' commitment to Dominion and power leads (in practical terms) to the same result. Additionally by not understanding the Kingdom is in effect, and yet heavenly and thus delayed until the eschaton and experienced only by those who have the Holy Spirit - he falls prey to substitutes and counterfeits. Rejecting Christ's Heavenly Kingdom, he instead enshrines two substitutes - the Judaized state of Zionist Israel, and a heretical pseudo-Christian version of the American Empire.
The question is not between choosing someone perfect or not perfect. Woods says it plainly at 39:00 - choose the lesser of the two evils. In other words the ends justify the means. Support the evil and the evil system because - why? He never says. Supposedly he thinks this will help the Church in its cause or is it simply because he wants to have his best life now and enjoy the harvest of riches and power? Let the dead bury their dead. The powers that be are ordained by God. We don't support evil. We submit to Providence. They're not the same thing. Woods offers nothing apart from a confused syncretistic way of thinking - twisting Scripture in order to fit a political programme that he's sold his soul to in order to enjoy earthly benefits.
Schneider disingenuously raises this point regarding the dilemma of choosing evil but Woods simply responds that we cannot then make any choices in life. What a testimony to cheap grace and Evangelical compromise! What a bankrupt understanding of Christian ethics. Yes, the world is fallen to be sure and all roads prove ill to some extent and lead to the valley of death. But we are called to walk with integrity and in truth and suffer the consequence. Woods just shrugs his shoulders and falls into good old American pragmatism - hoard your gold, carry your gun, and destroy anyone who opposes you. This is the ideology of Lamech and Nimrod.
How foreign is the notion that we might be called up on to suffer for the cause and testimony of truth! Evangelicals just won't have it. They will not give up their comforts and worldly delights and so they have turned Scripture inside out in order to develop a justification for their unfaithfulness and worse - they beat everyone over the head who resists them and won't actively take up their cause. Woe to them!
In the name of Biblical values, they reject Biblical values. Yes, sodomy and abortion are wrong, but truth be told, that's about the only things they get right. And even how they hold these truths vis-à-vis the world is in error as they are wed to a twisted framework. When we reject our responsibility as voters (Woods says at 42:00) we're not holding up our end of the sovereignty-responsibility equation. Really? And where does the Bible say it's our responsibility to vote? Again, he begs the question assuming the validity of Liberalism, democracy, rights, social contract and the like.
It may be that Providence allowed this system to take root as it overthrew previous fallen systems - but it was never endorsed or sanctified.
Just as Christians refused to take oaths under the older order (or were supposed to), we can just easily argue that we should refuse to vote, sit on juries, or submit to conscription. Paul didn't embrace modern conceptions of citizenship. He shamed authorities and worked with the law that existed - especially if it prevented him from being tortured or assassinated, and yet the real motivation in many cases was for him to arrive in Rome while in chains. This is why so many misinterpret his actions in the book of Acts.
The Roman system is not endorsed by the apostles. They instruct the Church to submit to it, pay taxes, obey laws, and press on with their Kingdom business and not trouble themselves about what Rome was doing. It went without saying that it was involved in idolatry, murder, and deviance - all the more given its decadence. And all this was paid for with the tax revenue that Christians were commanded to pay.
The same is true today apart from one thing - the fact that Christians endorse this American version of the Bestial Empire, just as many have with its older forms such as we saw in Great Britain and its empire. That Christian element changes everything and both then and now these people (like Woods and Schneider and the multitude like them) must be opposed and called out.
I used to make the same stupid argument as Woods (at 43:00) - you can't complain if you don't vote. The opposite is true. If you vote, you can't really complain because the system assumes that if the people have spoken, it must be right. Vox populi, vox dei. The voice of the people is the voice of God - in other words the democratic choice makes right and sets the ethical standard. This is the wickedness of democracy. It's not always followed through and there are certainly dynamics and tensions and yet this is the basic assumption and the tension today between those who believe in it absolutely as opposed to those (like Woods) who believe in it when it's convenient and when it lines up with their own desires. When they have the vote on their side they appeal to this principle with great vigour and yet pull back from it and denounce it when inconvenient. In other words their not honest players and their tactics are unprincipled and deceitful.
If you vote, then the assumption is you endorse the system and its results and if you're patriotic you accept them even if you lose. You support the winner and yet make your argument hoping to win the next time. That's how it works. Again these people pay lip service to it and yet manipulate it at every turn.
Do the Democrats do the same? So what if they do? I'm supposedly talking to Christians. Shouldn't the ethical bar be a bit higher?
If you vote, you're part of it all and no pilgrim. You're a citizen invested in the order. You've lost your voice of true dissent. You've already started down the pathway to compromise.
I find it so ironic that Woods speaks of those who might vote in order to line their pockets in the realm of business contracts. He just told the story of every activist in the Christian Right from Charlie Kirk to Calvin Beisner to the myriad Evangelicals working at the Heritage Foundation and connected to places like Grove City and Hillsdale Colleges. Good night, what blindness. The same is true when it comes to their pro-life claims. Regardless of their opposition to abortion, the Evangelical movement is not pro-life in any way shape or form. They promote death and suffering at every turn - when it comes to economics and the destruction of the family (just like Marx), to militarism, to gun culture, and I won't even mention their Darwinist ethical response to Covid.
In response to the discussion beginning at 41:00, God uses means - a concept that is largely absent in Evangelical thinking. And the government is a means - not to build His Kingdom (an error that Abraham Kuyper repackaged for the modern Church), but to simply restrain evil. It is temporal and thus not part of God's Kingdom. God is longsuffering not willing that any should perish and as such the consummation of the Parousia was delayed. These are the Last Days, the time in which the Kingdom is proclaimed - souls are saved and doom is declared to the principalities and powers that rule over this world, the spiritual forces in high places allied with the god of this world. They are cast down and at the same time not yet cast down. The time is short. And part of this proclamation is the lives that we who are united to Christ lead on this Earth. We reject its glories and enticements, its hopes and its pleasures and we take up the cross as pilgrims and strangers and lay up our treasures in heaven.
The theology of Christendom rejects this - whether in classic or modified modern Enlightenment Liberal forms - such as Woods advocates. Mammonism rejects this. Nationalism rejects this. Woods rejects this.
The whole show was a farce and a deception used by the enemies of Christ to mislead His people. It's not 'Cross' talk but a spit on the cross talk. It was a travesty and even while masquerading as light, truth, and wisdom it represents an attack on Christ, the Scripture, and the Church.