Church and Family Life Podcast

Bradley Pierce and Phil George have focused significant energy on the effort to abolish abortion in Texas. In this podcast, they explain why they think abolition must be preferred above incremental measures.

When a pastor’s convictions change and grow, what happens in the church he serves? This is part of Carlton McLeod’s story, and the remarkable trajectory of reformation in his church in Chesapeake, VA. In this podcast, Carlton tells the story of his own changing understandings of the church and how he continues to lead his church through progressive sanctification by the Word of God.

What is the mark of the beast? The truth is that no one knows exactly what this will look like, or if it is even a physical mark (remember, Revelation largely uses figurative language).  In today’s discussion, we start off talking through what people have believed was the mark of the beast. Then we define that mark as the mark of the world. We are identified by what we believe and do, where we allow our affections to run. If the mark of the beast is the mark of the world, then how it appears in our lives is going to be running with, pleasing, and falling into the ways of the world.  For the final word, we turn to a sermon preached a few years ago by Richard Owen Roberts: Twelve Marks of Spiritual Death, from Ephesians 2:1-3.

Drew Davis, a data analyst for a large pharmaceutical company, joins the podcast to discuss Covid by the numbers. When his company demanded that he get a Covid vaccine, he engaged in an aggressive pattern of research to understand the numbers as published by mainstream information outlets like the CDC and others from the mainstream medical community. In the process, he uncovered fascinating perspectives which he shares with us today. You can access the PowerPoint slides shown during the podcast here.Access the COVID19 Response Analysis Dashboard here.Why Build This Dashboard? - This dashboard aims to highlight key data that is being underreported by our media and our leaders related to our COVID-19 response. This dashboard was not designed to help you make health decisions or make light of the impact that COVID-19 has had on many people. This dashboard does not highlight the many risks of COVID-19 as there are many sources for that information. Instead, this dashboard will shed light on the inconvenient truths our country is overlooking relating to the negative impacts of masking, shutdowns, and possibly the COVID-19 vaccines.

In this final chapter of When to Disobey Viret urges Christians to be patient under tyrannical regimes. Viret cites several examples we can look to in Scripture in Jeremiah, Esther, and Mordecai. Viret also uses Jeremiah 29 to demonstrate that Christians ought not to respond to tyranny in sullenness, pride, and rebellion, but rather in productivity and fruit-bearing. When difficult times come, it is the easy thing to sit in a corner and complain, to allow conversations with friends to be dominated by objections and fretfulness, to take up your pen (or phone) and rail against the oppressors. Viret urges all of us to rise up, take dominion, and be a blessing.

When persecution comes, Viret wants us to examine ourselves. In chapter 14 of When to Disobey, He urges us to examine how we have loved one another (or not loved one another) and how we may have sinned against one another. The reality is that God sends trouble to those who have departed from His ways. When we are being treated poorly, we ought to think about how we have treated our neighbors and our brethren before pointing fingers at the world.

In our discussion of Chapter 13 of When to Disobey, we encounter four heroes of the faith who are worth emulating. The Bible is full of heroes who would not obey government mandates – perhaps surprisingly, Scripture does not just tolerate these figures, it praises them. First, we encounter the Hebrew midwives in Exodus 1. Second, we see the Egyptian taskmasters who were also Israelites who obeyed God by not abusing their workers. Our third example is Rahab in Joshua 2 and 6.  Our last stop is I Samuel, examining Jonathan before his father, King Saul.

Join us as we discuss the matter of guarding kids against worldly ideologies and lifestyles. In today’s episode, we cover a range of subjects that parents need to pay attention to in the growing of the affections of their children, what they expose them to, how they expose them to different cultural influences, and the end goal of it all.

Missionary William Carey called himself a “plodder”. In the twentieth century, Warren Weirsbe wrote a book called In Praise of Plodders. We are here to talk about the virtue in plodding through life (in other words, replacing a desire for heroism by doing what you are supposed to do as part of a rhythm of life, without  “freneticism”). The core question: Are you frenetically productive or calmly productive? Join me, Jason Dohm, and Kris Bains as we discuss this important matter.

When can a Christian lie? Can he lie to protect people as Rahab did? We are here to discuss this issue in the book When to Disobey, Case Studies in Tyranny, Insurrection, and Obedience to God, written by Pierre Viret. Today we are discussing Chapter 12: Truth, Tyrants, and our Responsibility Before God. This is a fascinating chapter about lying for a good cause, including Viret’s commentary on the ninth commandment, thou shalt not bear false witness.