Presbyterian YouTuber Redeemed Zoomer joins Lutheran Answers to discuss his journey from viral Minecraft videos to advocating for reform within mainline Protestant denominations. He dives into Calvinist theology, the challenges of internet fame, and the bold Reconquista movement aiming to restore historic church institutions.
In this episode of Lutheran Answers, the guest is “Redeemed Zoomer,” a Presbyterian YouTuber and advocate for reforming mainline Protestant denominations. The discussion begins with his background, theology, and unique position as a Calvinist who values ecumenical dialogue. He describes his journey from being a viral Minecraft YouTuber to becoming a prominent voice in theology and his advocacy for the Reconquista movement—a strategy for reforming liberal mainline churches from within.
The conversation covers Reformed theology, including views on predestination, perseverance of the saints, and baptism. Redeemed Zoomer explains the nuanced goals of the Reconquista movement, emphasizing loyalty to historic church institutions and the need to influence them positively rather than abandoning them. He also critiques various Christian traditions, shares his experience with internet fame, and highlights the challenges of balancing public theology with personal conviction. The discussion closes with thoughts on his theological influences, providence, and his enduring faith in the face of challenges.
Things We Discussed
- Redeemed Zoomer on X
- Redeemed Zoomer’s YouTube
- Operation Reconquista
- Crossbearer
- Jordan Cooper
- Bryan Wolfmueller
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Parting Thought
God’s providence is evident in the small and great moments of life, guiding His people through challenges to fulfill His purposes. Whether reforming churches or simply holding onto faith, we must be sure to trust Him and remain steadfast in the work He has set before us.
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Transcript
[00:00:08] Remy: And people take that doctrinal agreement to then mean like a ton more than it does. But the AALC has a slightly different polity, and we have a completely different history from the lcms, you know, and we like those distinctions and we want to keep them. I don’t know.
What about you? I was told I. I put it out there to. I’m recording now, by the way. We’re going. This is it. Welcome to the show. I put it out there that I was gonna. What should I ask you? And I was told. I was told to ask you. Why are you the way that you are?
[00:00:48] Redeemed Zoomer: Why am I the way that I am? I’m just like this. It’s. It’s not because I’m from New York. It’s not because of my Jewish background.
[00:00:58] Remy: I’m just like, excellent. Okay. It’s just the way that you are, and that’s fine. We love the way that you are.
[00:01:06] Redeemed Zoomer: I was predestined to be that way, so I. I can.
[00:01:10] Remy: Excellent. Are you.
Are you a Calvinist on that front?
[00:01:17] Redeemed Zoomer: Yes. I’m Presbyterian.
[00:01:19] Remy: So I don’t know. I don’t know anything about your personal theology. All I know. Let me tell you what I know about you. I saw a video, and it was the all the denomination video. I think that was your first one to go, like, super huge.
[00:01:32] Redeemed Zoomer: Yeah.
[00:01:32] Remy: And I was pleased with how fair it was across the board.
And then occasionally I see that you have takes on Twitter that come across my timeline and I’m like, I don’t agree with that, or that’s a good take.
And I think the trying to take over the PC USA is Sisyphean task. And that’s it. That’s all I know about you.
[00:02:01] Redeemed Zoomer: All right. Well, I’m Presbyterian and my beliefs are just the normal Presbyterian beliefs. I don’t have, like, my niche unique theology. I mean, I have my takes on nuances and stuff like supra Lapserianism or Mercersberg theology, but all of it’s within the scope of just general Presbyterian beliefs. So there’s nothing really that special about what I believe. I do believe in evolution, so I know that Lutherans generally don’t like that. But, yeah, I’m just a Calvinist. I believe all the things that Lutherans don’t like about Calvinists. I believe in double predestination.
I believe in limited atonement.
I believe in spiritual presence, in the Lord’s Supper, all those things.
[00:02:44] Remy: Oh, excellent. Okay, great.
What. Why are you here?
Why are we doing this?
[00:02:54] Redeemed Zoomer: Well, I really respect Lutherans I’ve always had a lot of respect for the Lutheran tradition because Lutherans still, actually still have a historic institution in America. So often when people are, like, inquiring into, like, Catholicism or Orthodoxy, I’ll just defer them to Lutheranism because I’m like, if you try to become Presbyterian, we have a mess we have to clean up right now, and you might not want to get involved in that. So just go Lutheran for now. That’s what I often tell people. And, you know, Jordan.
[00:03:26] Remy: Oh, that’s good. God bless.
[00:03:27] Redeemed Zoomer: Yeah, thanks. Jordan Cooper taught me more about Reformed theology than any Reformed pastors on the Internet back then did, because there’s really a severe lack of Reformed resources on the Internet. Very recently, there’s this New Presbyterian guy who made a channel. His name’s Reverend Don Baker, and he’s great. But we’re talking, like, three weeks ago is when he started existing. When I first started.
[00:03:49] Remy: Oh, wow.
[00:03:50] Redeemed Zoomer: Yeah. When I first started doing YouTube, there were no Presbyterian resources on the Internet that were, like, any good that went into any theological depth. And some people say, oh, what about you? No, I don’t count as a good resource. I’m a Minecraft YouTuber who accidentally went viral for talking theology and decided to keep doing it. But I’m only meant to be a gateway drug. And I do have a map that millions of people look at, and I have tons and tons of lcms and AALC churches on that map. And people like Brian Wolfmiller have told me that people have gone to their church because of my map and stuff. So I promote Lutheranism. I support Lutheranism, even if I believe all the horrible things. Even if I believe is means is, as long as the definition of is is not, is.
[00:04:34] Remy: Okay, good. Fair enough. Fair enough.
I actually, in the interview that I just posted last with one of my fellow Lutheran seminarians, Gage, we joked around for a few seconds about the Reformed view of baptism, where it is baptismal regeneration, but the time the regeneration happens. Right. The promise of the baptism and the event of the baptism are not necessarily coupled in time, so that it could happen at any point in the person’s life that regeneration is not, while attributed to maybe not directly coupled temporally with baptism. And I was thinking, doesn’t that just make baptism an outward sign of an inward faith?
[00:05:27] Redeemed Zoomer: I mean, you actually did not straw man our belief. That is literally exactly what we believe. That is exactly what the Westminster Confession says.
And I would say in a purely, like, scientific and analytical sense, then, yeah, the actual event of being baptized with water doesn’t do anything. But we believe that there’s more than just the physical and the scientific thing going on because we believe in predestination. We believe God’s outside of time. We believe God’s writing the whole story. An author of a story can choose to have a future event, even somehow cause a past event. And that’s the Reformed theme. The Reform theme is shut up. God does what he wants. So, yeah, it’s okay. We know that our view is mental gymnastics. We know that our view is kind of hard to understand. But I would say, like the Trinity and Christology, like the orthodox view of both of those things is a lot harder to understand than the various heretical views that show up.
Like, it’s. It’s a lot easier to say that the persons are just three forms of God than to say there’s three distinct persons that are like distinct hypostasis, even though that they all share the exact same attributes. It’s easier to commit a trinitarian heresy than to explain trinitarian orthodoxy. So we just apply that to baptism to justify our insane mental gymnastics view of it.
[00:06:48] Remy: Excellent. Okay, okay.
Do you think it’s a fair. It’s a fair critique of Reformed theology that maybe the emphasis is perhaps too much on God’s sovereignty? In Lutheran theology, the emphasis is very much on Christ’s work at the cross. That’s very much the start and focal point of all the emphasis of Lutheran theology. And when you realize that, it makes it easy to understand how you get people like the ELCA or like Ferdi who are reducing everything down to just the gospel and how you see, like so many weird universalists kind of coming out of this idea. It makes sense, though, because the emphasis is on the saving work of Christ at the cross at the cost of all else theologically, you know, whether that’s good or bad, we’ll let someone else determine. But do you see that maybe the emphasis in Reformed theology isn’t on Christ, it’s on the sovereignty of God.
[00:07:50] Redeemed Zoomer: I. You’re absolutely right about that. I’ve made posts saying that Reformed emphasized soli Deo gloria and Lutherans emphasize sola fide. You’re absolutely right. I think that’s good, though. I think that’s what we should be doing. Yes, Christ’s work on the cross is an important theme of Scripture, but the. The teleology of all that, the end goal of the entire, you know, redemptive plan is God’s glory in the end. That’s why he did this. That’s why we exist. That’s why salvation happened. That’s why the fall was allowed to happen. It’s all for God’s glory in the end. And everything else is kind of like a means to that end. If you read the Psalms, like one time I was actually thinking through this, like, what if Lutherans actually have better priorities than we do? If you read through the Psalms, there’s a lot more of an emphasis on God’s holiness and sovereignty than on like, particulars about soteriology or like the church or the. I don’t know, even the sacraments. And the sacraments do matter. But if you just read through the Psalms, which reform people love, we used to only allow those to be sung in worship. If you just read through the Psalms, just look at the themes that are most commonly emphasized and seems to kind of line up with the themes of Reformed theology. God’s glory, God’s sovereignty, God’s holiness, all that.
[00:09:10] Remy: How do you deal. How do you deal with people who fall away from the faith?
[00:09:15] Redeemed Zoomer: Well, Presbyterians believe in Covenant theology, so we don’t believe in a strict once saved, always saved. Reformed theology teaches evanescent grace where God does give people grace. To temporarily believe it’s not the same as saving grace. And that’s just Augustine. So unless you’re some Reformed Baptist, Reform best. They’re not Reformed because they just oversimplify all the aspects of Reformed theology and deny other aspects.
[00:09:38] Remy: Right.
[00:09:39] Redeemed Zoomer: So they, they say that.
[00:09:40] Remy: Why? Why? Hang on.
Why are Baptists just the worst at everything? They’re just the worst.
[00:09:49] Redeemed Zoomer: There are a few good ones. Gavin Ortland is one of the good ones. Keith Foskey one of the good ones. But generally speaking, the Baptist tradition is just very reductionistic and it’s. I. Generally there is anti intellectualism in the Baptist tradition. Yes, I know there’s really smart Baptists, but generally speaking, the bat. It’s like Baptists don’t even really have a consistent theology. It’s just Baptists have a more extreme view of everything, like free grace. Baptists are way more extreme in the free grace direction than any. Like Presbyterians or Lutherans. And like Lordship Salvation Baptists are way more in the legalistic direction. Just Baptist theology oversimplifies everything and has no room for any nuance. That’s why it’s like either you believe every single word of the Bible exactly the way we interpret it, or you’re a false teacher and a heretic. I see a lot of those themes.
So if you’re asking why are Baptists just the worst, I I want to be respectful because there’s a few good ones that I don’t want to make sad in this video.
Okay. A lot of my audience is Baptist, so I need to. I need to keep those views up. But I think the very reductionistic approach to theology does not really help them.
I like, Yeah, I was saying, like, the apostasy. A lot of Baptists in general say, like, oh, if you ever believed, ever, if you said this one prayer and you believed in your heart, then you’re saved forever. And if somehow you fall away, you must have been lying or something. I know not all Baptists would say that. I have heard a lot of them say that. And that’s just not what the Westminster Confession teaches, not what Calvin teaches. It’s not what anyone in the Presbyterian tradition teaches. We think that perseverance of the saints doesn’t mean if you ever believe, you’re always going to believe. It means all of the elect are infallibly going to persevere in the end.
[00:11:52] Remy: I guess.
I guess the issue with an evanescent faith is the, the idea that God tricks you by giving you fake faith only to let you fall away. And then, because Scripture plainly tells us that falling away is a sin, to then turn around and judge you for that, to give you fake faith so that you will fall away, and then to judge you for falling away.
[00:12:31] Redeemed Zoomer: Well, it’s just the parable of the sower really. Like, is the man scattering the seed wrong for scattering the seed on ground that he knows is like, going to be shallow and produce a crop quickly, but it’s going to wither away?
[00:12:50] Remy: I guess that for me is going to come down to which seed do you think you are?
[00:12:58] Redeemed Zoomer: Well, you mean which soil, because it’s the same seed. It’s the same word of God that everyone receives.
[00:13:03] Remy: Right? Okay, yeah. Which soil do you think you are?
[00:13:07] Redeemed Zoomer: Well, when you first start believing, there’s no real. There’s no way to know if you have a real long lasting, saving faith or just a temporary faith. You can’t know. That’s why the Westminster Confession says you can’t really have infallible assurance of salvation until your faith endures trials. It’s not like what the Baptists think, where the second you believe, you’re always going to be saved forever. No question.
So we don’t believe salvation is conditioned upon perseverance like Lutherans believe, but we do think that you can’t really know if your faith is a genuine faith unless you persevere. So in effect, it. It’s the same thing. It fits with the same data.
So I would say that you can’t immediately know which type of ground you are. Time has to reveal that.
[00:13:53] Remy: Interesting. I would say that I am the stony path and that the birds come and take away the seed of faith that has been planted in me. But for the grace of Christ, I am the rocky ground where there’s no root and the trials of this world scorch me and kill me. But for the grace of Christ I am the thorny ground that the cares of this world will choke out. My faith. But for the grace of Christ.
I mean I, I would say that I am all of them. That it, it is the only thing that keeps me from being any of them is Christ. I’m not looking to see which one I am in the end. I am looking to right now recognize that without Jesus I am in the worst possible position I could be in.
Does that make sense?
[00:14:46] Redeemed Zoomer: Of course it makes sense. I mean, you could interpret the parable that way, but the face value reading of it seems to just be an explainer for why some people believe and not others. Because some people just have a disposition to receive the word of God and some don’t. Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice. So that presupposes that they were already his sheep prior to the hearing of his voice. Now I don’t believe that people are in a state of justification before they start believing. But election is from all eternity. The decrees of God are eternal. So when Jesus says my sheep hear my voice and he says, you do not understand because you are not of my sheep, that seems to parallel the scattering of the sea where some people just are naturally going to. I wouldn’t say naturally because it’s supernatural, but some people are just going to receive the word of God and some people won’t. Now you could say that, yeah, I would be the stony ground if it weren’t for Christ. But then you could say, what about people who do permanently reject the word of God? Are they the stony ground? If it weren’t for Christ, why didn’t Christ change them from stony ground into good soil? Why didn’t, why didn’t Christ do that for them?
Then you get into the whole Lutheran predestination paradox.
[00:15:56] Remy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but yeah, you, you know, you stiff necked people, always resisting the Holy Spirit, etc.
[00:16:03] Redeemed Zoomer: Yeah, but why didn’t you, you know, why didn’t you resist the Holy Spirit?
[00:16:09] Remy: Oh yeah, yeah. So I see where we’re going here. And I mean the answer is I’m.
[00:16:15] Redeemed Zoomer: Not going to press you on this Lutheran paradox if you don’t want. I know what the Lutheran view of this is.
[00:16:20] Remy: Yeah, well, it’s. Yeah. And I mean, ultimately the answer is that we don’t know.
We don’t know that. You know, some people, Some people resist and that is their fault. And you know, that’s what they did, and some people don’t. And that is not their fault. That’s what God did. And you know why some and not others? You know, we can’t, we can’t answer that. But.
[00:16:56] Redeemed Zoomer: I’m sure you already know this distinction. We do try to answer it.
Some people, Everyone is already. Just because of the Fall, everyone is naturally in a state of rejecting God. It just. In a perpetual state of resisting. Of resisting, of suppressing God. God’s truth and unrighteousness, as Romans 1 says. So if God just didn’t do anything. No, nobody would believe. Now, some people, God actually intervenes and changes their hearts and changes their affections so that they will accept the gospel. And some people, God leaves in their own sin.
And even, even super lapsarian Calvinists like me believe that nobody is condemned but on their own sin.
[00:17:37] Remy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:17:38] Redeemed Zoomer: Which they freely chose to do, by the way. Westminster Confession says that Adam was created with free will. And even the things we do in this life, aside from monergistic conversion, are acts of free will.
The scholastics who wrote the Westminster Confession, like Samuel Rutherford, saw absolutely no contradiction between the free agency of human actions and the fact that God predetermines every single microscopic event in the universe. They saw no contradiction between those two things.
[00:18:11] Remy: I guess it’s.
I just, I just did a podcast for my member audience on the pinning the Holy Scripture doctrine of Scripture and how Scripture was pinned.
And part of that is that none of the authors of Scripture wrote down any single word that God did not want them to write down. Right. They only wrote the words that the Holy Spirit inspired them to write. And the Holy Spirit directly inspired and maneuvered their minds and their hearts in such a way that they would write everything that he wanted them to write. Yet none of them wrote like robots. It wasn’t like the Holy Spirit took over and began moving through their pins. Rather, they all use their own human reasons and faculties, knowledge that they had divine revelation, they were given and wrote Scripture as free agents, not as robots. Right. Yeah, but those two, Those two concepts don’t necessarily harmonize in that way. Right. So it’s kind of the same thing.
[00:19:28] Redeemed Zoomer: Well, well, yeah, I think as long as you have a doctrine of Providence, then that’s really not a problem at all. It’s not just Calvinists who believe in that. Like Lutherans traditionally believe in that. I think Catholics believe in that. Orthodox don’t think that through because they’re busy praying to paintings. But seriously, Orthodox folks love you guys. You have to work out your soteriology. Because every Orthodox person I ask about like major questions like what is the gospel? Everyone gives me a different answer.
[00:19:59] Remy: But basically I’m convinced, dude. I’m convinced Orthodoxy is just all vibes. I’m 100 convinced. People just convert for the vibes.
[00:20:07] Redeemed Zoomer: Usually. And, and usually it’s like people are like, oh, I felt something like deeply connected to the ancient faith. But 99 of those people were raised in like Billy Bob’s McDonald’s non denominational church. It’s like, yet anything is going to feel like ancient faith compared to that.
[00:20:25] Remy: Yeah, that’s correct.
[00:20:28] Redeemed Zoomer: Yeah, that’s correct. Anyway, so it’s like regarding the superintending of the Bible, it’s like, do you like Harry Potter? Or if not, do you like Lord of the Rings?
[00:20:39] Remy: Nope. Sure. Lord of the Rings.
[00:20:41] Redeemed Zoomer: Lord of the Rings.
Who wrote, I don’t know, Gandalf’s speech? Did Gandalf write it or did Tolkien write it? The answer is yes. So who wrote like the words of the prophets and the apostles? Did they write it or did God write it? The answer is yes, because we’re characters in the story and God is the author of the story. And Jesus is God writing himself into the story.
That’s the best analogy for God’s providence. It’s not like we’re puppets and God’s the puppet master. It’s we’re characters and God’s the author of the story. God is actually outside and above our universe. So we, we are free in that we are not controlled by any agents within our own universe, but God is the primary cause of any of everything. But Thomas Aquinas in the Westminster Confession says that God being the primary cause of all things does not negate the liberty or contingency of second causes. Secondary causes.
[00:21:36] Remy: Fascinating. What, what did you go to school for?
[00:21:41] Redeemed Zoomer: I’m still in school and I have finals in two days. I’m doing math and.
[00:21:48] Remy: Good.
Okay. All right, well, I’ll, I’ll pray for your finals. That’s rough.
[00:21:55] Redeemed Zoomer: Yeah, my finals need prayer.
[00:22:00] Remy: What’s the, what’s the hardest part about being an Internet. A famous Internet theology person for you?
[00:22:10] Redeemed Zoomer: Yeah. The hardest part is that like any, no matter what I Say, because so many people are watching my every move, someone’s gonna get mad. It’s always like, I’ve been accused of being too left wing, of being too right wing, of being too Catholic and being too Protestant. So it’s like. Especially because I made like ecumenical denomination explainer videos. My audience is from. I think I have the most diverse denominational audience of everyone, except maybe the ready to harvest guy, because I once pulled. Only 7% of my followers are even Presbyterian. Most of them are something else.
[00:22:48] Remy: Wow.
[00:22:49] Redeemed Zoomer: Yeah.
[00:22:50] Remy: So it’s like, what’s your largest group? Do you know?
[00:22:55] Redeemed Zoomer: Let me check. I did a. I did a poll on this just a little while ago because I was curious and none of it was surprising to me.
I think I’m barely above 50% Protestant even.
But okay, let me look at my posts and.
All right, I might have deleted it. Basically about 34 of my followers are Catholic and I’m Protestant.
It’s like everyone thinks I’m about to convert to their denomination. So whenever I say anything that slightly disagrees with their denomination, the comments are always like, oh, bro is just coping so hard. He’s like one second away from.
He is one second away from converting to Catholicism. No, he’s one second away from converting to Orthodoxy. And they’re like, the only reason he’s not converting is because he’s seething with rage against the ortho bros in his discord. It’s like, no, it’s because your soteriology is crap and I will literally quote Bible verses to orthodox catechumens without telling them their Bible verses and they’ll call it demonic.
[00:24:28] Remy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:24:30] Redeemed Zoomer: That’s why I’m not converting. It’s not because of 13 year old LARPers in my Discord that I banned. They think that’s why I’m not orthodox.
[00:24:40] Remy: Yeah. Best decision I ever made was making the discord private. Honestly, it’s great. We got a nice little community in there. We hang out, we chat, we’re all friends, we share memes. It’s wonderful.
That’s great.
So I had a Catholic priest want me to ask you, Father Victor Felt on Twitter wanted me to ask you what is your greatest spiritual consolation or miracle story?
I guess we can do both.
[00:25:15] Redeemed Zoomer: Sure. So my greatest spiritual consolation is that there are so many times in my life when I should have fallen away from the faith and everything should have fallen apart. And the only reason that didn’t happen was by God’s grace. So that assures me that like as Vodi Bauckham I’m quoting it back. As Vodi Baukham said, if I could lose my salvation, I would because I would screw it up so fast. So that’s my greatest spiritual consolation. If I could completely go off the rails, I would.
And every time I think that’s gonna happen, somehow it just doesn’t. That’s my greatest spiritual consolation and my greatest miracle story. Now I barely ever. I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed a miracle or, like, heard the voice of God. I think some people are more naturally predisposed to that stuff, and some people aren’t. Some people have a spiritual gift where they can, like, actually hear God or something or see miracles. I never have. I’ve never seen anything supernatural, but I have seen works of God’s providence. There were just so many amazing coincidences that led me, first of all to Christianity, second of all to meeting my wife, and then to making the redeemed zoomer channel and all that. So the signs of God’s providence have been everywhere. Even though I’ve never seen anything supernatural, I don’t think something needs to be supernatural for God to be at work. God works in everything, whether supernaturally or providentially. Meaning naturally. That’s why I can believe in evolution. As a Calvinist, I think God did create everything, just providentially, not supernaturally.
[00:26:53] Remy: Hmm.
At what point?
At what point is man then made in the image of God?
[00:27:07] Redeemed Zoomer: Good question. I did a big debate with Keith Foskey about this. So if you want to know the details, anyone watching can just defer to that. Every time I bring up evolution, everyone brings up like, the same five objections to it. I answered all of them in my debate with Keith Foskey about evolution, but it’s a good question.
[00:27:21] Remy: Okay.
[00:27:22] Redeemed Zoomer: My take is that sort of hominids evolved to the point where they were basically structurally human. And chimpanzees are 98% human, genetically speaking. So if the imago dei, if the image of God is a physical thing, that would mean chimps are 98% in the image of God, which is absurd. No one believes that. So I believe, and there is futuristic historic precedent for believing this, that the imago DEI and the breath of life that God breathes into Adam in Genesis is the rational soul. I believe that there was a particular, you know, human like creature who was set apart and given a rational soul by God, and that was Adam. Then all of his children had rational souls after that. And that’s what makes us human, that the rational soul. I think that is a somewhat of a supernatural thing that does make us human. Because the rational soul is a window into the infinite. We can conceive of infinite concepts. Even if we can’t, like, contain the infinity within our minds. We know that it exists. Humans can conceive of a perfect triangle. I’ve seen videos of animals doing pretty smart things like finding their way through mazes to find food. Animals don’t have abstract thoughts. Crows and dogs never think of, like, a perfect triangle. They never think of anything abstract.
So, yeah, I think that a lot.
[00:28:41] Remy: Of humans lack that too.
[00:28:44] Redeemed Zoomer: That’s true.
All human. All humans could. Doesn’t mean all humans do. All humans have an innate ability to perceive goodness, truth, and beauty in some sense. And a lot of this is from Jordan Cooper.
All humans can perceive the transcendental. Some of them with higher IQs are better at reflecting on it than others. But all humans can perceive the transcendental of goodness, truth, and beauty.
[00:29:11] Remy: All right, last question on the evolution, because I don’t want to. I don’t want to harp you on that.
How do you get around God saying he made the earth in six days?
[00:29:25] Redeemed Zoomer: Moses, who wrote. I assume you believe Moses wrote that, right? Moses wrote Genesis.
[00:29:30] Remy: The Pentateuch. Yeah.
[00:29:32] Redeemed Zoomer: Do you know which psalm Moses wrote?
[00:29:37] Remy: Not offhand.
[00:29:39] Redeemed Zoomer: 90. Moses wrote Psalm 90. And that’s the famous psalm that says, for, for the Lord today is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day. Doesn’t say that exactly. But when Second Peter quotes it, it says something more along those lines. So that. That indicates that that is a valid interpretation of that. So both the Bible and Albert Einstein have revealed that time is really relative. And we judge what a day is based on the position of the sun, which wasn’t in the sky until the fourth day. So it’s. It could. The definition of what a day is, especially before the sun or humans are even visible on the earth, the definition of a day is very flexible.
[00:30:22] Remy: Okay.
It’s just. I don’t know, it’s interesting.
It’s interesting to me because you, when you do that, when you say that the definition of a day is flexible, I don’t, I don’t think that it’s a valid interpretation to say the definition of a day is flexible because of Psalm 90 and then Peter and that time works differently to God. I think. I think saying.
I think it’s fair to say that it’s pointing that time does in fact work differently for God because God is outside of time. So what does it matter to him if it’s a Thousand years or a day, it’s all the same thing because he’s outside of time. I think that’s the driving point of that idea. I don’t think you can then turn around and bring that to bear on, say, Exodus the, the table of the law. In Exodus 20, God says, I am the Lord who brought you out of Egypt. I am the Lord who is jealous of you and who visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children.
I am the Lord who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them in six days. I don’t think you can turn around and take God’s being outside of time and then apply it to use that as a reason to say six days doesn’t mean six days. Because even if six days doesn’t mean six days for God, God is clearly, when he’s speaking to the Israelites and giving the law using six days in a way in which they would understand it. Which is going to be six days, right?
[00:32:28] Redeemed Zoomer: As John Calvin said, the Bible is God’s baby talk. If God really explained, scientifically speaking, how he created the universe, nobody would understand it. If he was like, if the Bible said, oh yeah, in the beginning, God collided some Higgs bows and particles and then there was, you know, rapid expansion of space time. Everyone be like, what are you talking about? So we do know that there is condescension in the law of Moses. Jesus literally says that the law of Moses is in some way a condescension to the understanding of the people, to the hardened hearts of the people. And also there’s a lot of ideal numbers in the Bible like, like generations being adjusted and things that we would call inaccuracies that are really just a Hebrew literary device. And also one of the Psalms, Psalm 105 says God is faithful to a thousand generations.
A thousand generations is like 30,000 years way more than the young earth creationists think the earth is. So one of those numbers has to be ideal numbers. Either the six or seven days of creation or a thousand generations, you can’t take them both to be literal. And there are a lot of church fathers way before Darwin, they’re not just conceding to Darwin. A lot of church fathers who do not have a literal six day interpretation, like Augustine, who thought everything was created instantaneously. Instantaneously.
[00:33:42] Remy: Sure, sure. I would like to point out that whether you meant to do it or not, you just called Charles Darwin a church father. And I’m going to go ahead and clip that and keep that on record. And share that on Twitter. That’ll be a good, good clickbait for me.
[00:33:56] Redeemed Zoomer: He’s already. Charles Darwin’s already my favorite theologian, along with Carl Bart, John Calvin, Carl Bart’s mistress, and Pastor Susan.
[00:34:08] Remy: Excellent. Perfect. Thank you so much, Pastor Susan, of course. Of your local PC USA congregation.
[00:34:15] Redeemed Zoomer: Yes, I definitely have a female minister because everyone on Twitter says I do.
[00:34:22] Remy: So about like trying to say, can you. I know, I didn’t want to talk about it. I think it’s. I think it’s Sisyphean, as I’ve already said. But lay it out for me. Why is it realistic to think you can save a denomination like the PC USA?
[00:34:36] Redeemed Zoomer: Okay, so the statistics show the PCOSA is not going to be here in 30 years. Would you grant that?
[00:34:46] Remy: Yes.
[00:34:47] Redeemed Zoomer: Would you grant that every mainline congregation pretty much is full of at least a sea of white hair and is just gonna age out of existence? Would you grant that?
[00:34:57] Remy: Yeah. Yep.
[00:34:59] Redeemed Zoomer: Would you also grant that if, let’s say a few thousand, a cohort of a few thousand young people were to join one of these denominations and wait it out, they would be the only ones left within about 20 or 30 years?
[00:35:16] Remy: Yes.
[00:35:19] Redeemed Zoomer: Would you grant that if they were the only ones left, they would have the ability to make change in those denominations?
[00:35:27] Remy: Yes.
[00:35:30] Redeemed Zoomer: Would you grant that given that we’ve already gotten hundreds of people to join mainline denominations and are getting active and that within the first year of our nonprofit’s existence, we defeated, we modified a liberal amendment to the Book of Order so that it would not do what it intended to do. Would you grant that given we did that all in just a year and a half, there is reason to hope that we have the ability to make change in the denomination.
[00:35:59] Remy: Reason to hope? Yes. That you will make change in the denomination now did well, Jesus said, with.
[00:36:07] Redeemed Zoomer: A faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains. And I prayed that God would give me the ability to help my denomination. Before I was YouTube famous, I just had like a prayer of desperation. I was like, Jesus, you said, with faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains.
We can move mountains with the faith of the size of mustard seed. And then just two months later, a denominations video that I threw together at like one in the morning after drinking four cups of coffee, after getting back from my wife’s house, suddenly blew up and then actually gave me the ability to start the Reconquista movement.
[00:36:51] Remy: So the thing I worry about is that in 20, 30 years time, when all of the old guard are dead and I Do admit that, that in some organizational.
At an organizational level, in many cases you have to wait for the old guard to die. I get that. You have to wait for them to go so that you can institute change that they otherwise wouldn’t have. Right. I understand that. That is sensible to me. The thing is, in 20 or 30 years, are you sure that the people that you’re able to get together are going to want to make it more conservative? Are they going to want to move it far enough? And hedging against that bet, wouldn’t it be better to just wait for the PC USA church down the road to shudder and just buy the building?
[00:37:47] Redeemed Zoomer: Yeah, a lot of people give the whole just buy the buildings alternative. There’s a few issues with that.
Number one, they will not sell it to you. If liberals are shutting down one of their churches, they are full of spite. They will sell it to a mosque or a strip club or just be demolished before they sell it to a conservative church. We’ve seen that all the time. Number two, most of the offshoots simply barely have enough money to rent a strip mall. So they’re not gonna. There’s a few cases of them rebuying old buildings. It usually does not happen. Like, that’s not just a hypothetical. That’s what a lot of offshoots currently try and it just usually doesn’t happen. And the third thing is that the value of the Main line is a lot more than just buildings. I think buildings are the fruit of just having a rich heritage, of being America’s national churches. Essentially, if you’re, if you are in a church that has a rich heritage and a long history in your country, yeah, you’re naturally going to have pretty buildings, but it’s not that pretty buildings make you have that heritage. The pretty buildings don’t cause you to have the heritage. The heritage causes you to have the pretty buildings. So even if, like there was a brand new denomination is able to like buy some buildings, that doesn’t really mean anything. It doesn’t really mean anything to me. And also, even if buildings were not a factor at all, I agree with the church fathers that schism is sin and that even if the church gets corrupt, you shouldn’t voluntarily leave it. And as you know, Luther did not voluntarily leave the Catholic Church. You’ve seen the Lutheran satire skit, the Reformation piggybackers, I’m assuming, right?
[00:39:19] Remy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:39:21] Redeemed Zoomer: So King Henry VII in that skit is like, thanks for setting us free from the shekels of Rome. So we can follow your example by quitting our church bodies and starting a new one. The second we don’t like the cut of someone’s theological gym. And Luther’s like, that’s not what I did. I got the kick out. And yeah, that’s not what he did. He got kicked out. He got excommunicated. Rome did the schism, not him.
And modern evangelicals have an Anabaptist mindset of, yeah, if the church is not good, just start a new one down the street. That’s not the historic Protestant mindset. Robert Bailey is one of the Scottish Westminster divines, authors of Westminster. And he says that he’s writing against these, like, Congregationalists who split from any church they don’t like. And he says that it’s never okay to leave a church. Even if your church falls into heresy, you can’t leave it. He says. He gives the example of like the Galatian Church in the New Testament. He was like, paul didn’t tell anyone to separate from that church even though they were preaching a false gospel and making Christ to no effect. Robert Bailey says, even if there’s blasphemy of the Eucharist, even if there’s grievous scandal, even if they’re preaching heresy, the apostles never separated from any of those churches, nor gave they the least warrant to any of their disciples to make a separation from them. Now you can disagree with Robert Bailey, but there’s at least precedent in the Reformed tradition for being loyal to the institutional church and not splitting from it just because it has problems.
[00:40:49] Remy: So you don’t have to found your own denomination. But there are already conservative confessional Presbyterian denominations as alternatives. You’re not the one in schism here. By joining a faithful church, you’re not, you’re not starting your own church.
[00:41:14] Redeemed Zoomer: There are faithful churches left in the PC usa, so like, I’m in one of them.
The.
It’s, it’s not an ideal situation. It, I’m not just like, totally satisfied here because obviously there’s still like, like in the PC usa, the lay people are more conservative than Catholic lay people on average. It’s the higher ups that are very corrupt.
But I don’t, I don’t want to participate in these schisms because, you know, you’ll notice whenever, like, there are splits from like a big mainline church, you always just have like a, a bunch of tiny offshoots. They don’t, like, they don’t conglomerate into like one big offshoot because no two fundamentalists have the same list of fundamentals. So There were many splits from the PC is like, oh, we want to do everything our way and have strict subscription to Westminster. And PCA is like, no, we just want good faith subscription to Westminster. And ECO is like, we want to always ordain women, no exceptions, even though we don’t like gays. And then EPC is like, no, we want to leave it up to the individual presbytery whether or not to ordain women. So there’s like a bunch of different offshoots from the PC usa. None of them can agree on what the terms of the offshoot even are. So I think, you know, why not just stay in the original thing and try to reform it rather than joining one of these dozens of offshoot communities.
[00:42:40] Remy: So I say this with all the love in the world as a fellow brother in Christ.
I hate you because I think you’ve convinced me it makes sense.
It makes sense.
[00:43:00] Redeemed Zoomer: Your denomination is historic, so this doesn’t even affect you.
I recommend you take a moment and thank the Lord that you’re in a historic denomination that stayed faithful, unlike the Presbyterians.
[00:43:14] Remy: Yeah, well, so we were, we were the result of a merger.
And so it’s similar, it’s similar to a schism.
Like you’re saying with all the offshoots. Whenever you merge two churches you get three. Right. That’s how the, that’s how the saying goes. You get the two originals and then the one new church. And so that’s, that’s basically what happened with us. I know we had all our even male sea churches that when there’s a.
[00:43:41] Redeemed Zoomer: Merger, I, even though it results in there being more denominations, which is not great, I still wouldn’t call either the mergers or the remnants that didn’t do the merger. I wouldn’t call any of them schismatic because none of them were self consciously separating from the established church.
I called more of like a realignment that usually does not go as planned where. Whereas schism is a bit different, like self consciously leaving the established institution when you didn’t have to do that. That’s a lot different than just a real.
[00:44:19] Remy: God. That’s fascinating. So you’re never, I feel like, like a great way. So you’re too visible. Right. You’re never going to make it high up in the PC usa. Like let’s say that you even had that desire to work your way into the machine and try and change it from the inside out. They would never let you do that. Right. You’re too visible.
[00:44:43] Redeemed Zoomer: Maybe in a conservative presbytery I could, I’M not totally ruling that out. That’s not even really my plan, though, because I, I know a lot of young men who keep a very low profile who are going to seminary and going through it, and they have plans to get ordained. And they are getting ordained because the piece, the main lines are so hollowed out. They’re desperate for pastors. There’s a recent article.
[00:45:05] Remy: Yeah.
[00:45:06] Redeemed Zoomer: Historic PC USA Church ordained a PCA pastor. Like that’s, that used to never happen. But there’s just so desperate. They’ll take anyone.
[00:45:15] Remy: Yeah. The. On the, on the Lutheran. And there was a thing that came out a couple months ago where Bishop Eaton of the ELCA was legitimately considering dropping Lutheran out of the name so that they could join with other more evangelical churches and other denominations and stuff and have more fellowship.
Because bringing more churches into the fold means bringing more pastors, more resources.
[00:45:43] Redeemed Zoomer: Yeah.
[00:45:43] Remy: You know what I mean? And whatever we have to sacrifice to stay, to stay afloat.
[00:45:48] Redeemed Zoomer: I know, but.
[00:45:52] Remy: Yeah, that’s. Yeah, it’s the, it’s the low profile guys that are gonna, they’re gonna be the ones to do it.
[00:45:59] Redeemed Zoomer: Yeah. And I’m not even ruling it out because the faculty at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, one of the PCUSA seminaries, like these are higher ups. They used a lot of colorful language about me. Like I’ve, they called me a bunch of, you know, words that would be censored.
But there are tons of pastors in the PCUSA who are part of the Reconquista movement. And there are even presbytery, entire presbyteries like San Diego that are friendly to us. So it’s not, it’s not impossible that I could be ordained. I think it might be more beneficial for me to just be more of the public face and help guys sneak in on underground.
[00:46:45] Remy: Wow, that’s fascinating. That’s so fascinating. I wanted to avoid it, but I’m glad I brought it up. That’s, it’s, it’s really interesting to me.
Just the whole idea we, we’re doing, we’re doing it a different way.
We’re waiting for the ELCA to collapse. I think it’s probably coming in the next decade, maybe two, but when they collapse, I think we’re just gonna. Because the ELCA also has a lot of faithful conservative Lutheran congregations.
And once, once the denomination goes down, I think at that point it would be very easy to just open the door and welcome in the conservative, the conservative people and congregations. You know.
[00:47:43] Redeemed Zoomer: The Lutheran situation is you have two large institutional, established denominations that are both equally historic as far as America is concerned. One is liberal, one is conservative.
So if congregations switch from one to the other, that’s. I wouldn’t say that schism at all. I’d say that’s just, you know, that’s a realignment. Sadly, Presbyterians don’t have that. Sadly, Presbyterianism in America was just one big thing with, you know, Princeton Seminary in the north and Columbia Seminary in the South.
Like, there was the north, south split, but that. That healed. So with the Presbyterians, it’s like, if we don’t get our mainline institution back, we lose all the American Presbyterian history. So it’s. Lutherans are in a much better place than we are.
[00:48:33] Remy: That’s fascinating.
What’s your favorite book of the Bible?
[00:48:44] Redeemed Zoomer: Romans. Why Romans is my favorite? Because I never really understood, like, how salvation works until I read Romans.
It’s. It’s funny. When I first heard what Calvinism was, I hated it. That’s usually people’s first reaction to Calvinism.
[00:49:04] Remy: Sure.
[00:49:05] Redeemed Zoomer: I went to the elder of my. I went to an elder of my PC USA Church, who was my mentor, and I was like, we don’t still believe in this predestination thing, do we? And he was like, oh, no, we do. And I was like, wait, but surely this doesn’t mean this, does it? And he was like, no, it does. And at first I was like, I don’t know if I can stay here. I inquired into Eastern Orthodoxy. That was before it was cool. This was back in 2019, when still nobody.
So I was like, okay, I can’t be Presbyterian if they’re teaching this.
But I was. I was gonna have, like, a dinner with my mentor, this elder of mine. And I was like, you know, I’ve never actually read my Bible before. Maybe I should do that before talking to my elder about religion. So I opened the Bible to a random page 0. Background or context. Where did I open Romans 9? If you’re asking about examples of providence in my life, that’s what happens. Random page, Romans 9. And it said, like, chooses to harden some people as vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and other to make his glory known to the vessels of mercy. And it says, like, you think this is unfair. Suck it up. That’s basically what Paul says. And my reaction reading that was, this is totally teaching Calvinism, and I hate it.
So I. It’s like, I didn’t have a confirmation bias. I hated Calvinism. I didn’t want to be true, but I had to admit Bible is teaching predestination since I was kind of liberal at the time. I was like, okay, maybe Paul’s just wrong.
Maybe. Maybe The Bible’s not 100% true and Paul’s just wrong. But then I read the rest of Scripture. I kept seeing the themes of God’s sovereignty elsewhere. But then after talking to my mentor a bit and listening to some Tim Keller sermons, I actually fell in love with predestination.
And then I was. I’ve been gung ho Calvinist ever since.
[00:51:06] Remy: Wow. Amazing.
Amazing.
If people want to get involved with the Reconquista movement with you, how do they do that? If you. Maybe there’s a young presbyter. I doubt. I think my audience is all Lutherans. But, yeah, if there is a young Presbyterian that hears this, how do they get involved? What can they do?
[00:51:26] Redeemed Zoomer: Go to operation reconquista.com it shows the map of mainline churches that we think are conservative. That map has about 80% accuracy. Sometimes we make mistakes because sometimes someone will say, oh, this church is conservative. And turns out it’s actually not.
So then I tell people about that. We will remove those churches. Go to Operation Reconquista.com, you’ll find our mainline churches map, and you’ll find our specific strategy, and you’ll find instructions on how to join. You join by joining the Discord. And we let in people to the Discord if they’re in a mainline denomination or they’re planning to join one. And it’s pretty simple. We win by not losing. It’s kind of like the Afghanistan strategy. In every single war, we don’t leave and we wait them out, and we’re going to win.
[00:52:18] Remy: Okay, so there are all these.
All these sister movements that I see.
[00:52:26] Redeemed Zoomer: Yeah.
[00:52:26] Remy: Because they’re all affiliated with you, huh?
[00:52:29] Redeemed Zoomer: Yeah, we. I started the Operation Reconquista Discord server as sort of like an incubator for specific movements. So there’s no, like, magisterium of the Reconquista. It’s just sort of a general philosophy. And in the incubator of the Reconquista Discord, a lot of official organizations spawned out of that. Now we got Crossbearer, which is like the European Reconquista movement.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen the YouTube channel crossbearer.
Every Lutheran I’ve talked to has said they made the most accurate video about Lutheran predestination on YouTube. Even Lutherans who critique the Reconquista admitted that Crossbearer made the most accurate video on predestination. They’ve ever seen. It’s a really funny.
[00:53:15] Remy: I have to look at it.
[00:53:16] Redeemed Zoomer: Yeah. So. And they’re a reconquista movement. The. The guy who makes those videos is in the Church of Sweden, if you can believe it. He’s Church of Sweden. And then there’s the Episcopal Fellowship for Renewal, which has the approval of several bishops in the Episcopal Church, another reconquista organization. There’s Young Methodist for Tradition, which is the United Methodist Reconquista. And then there’s Presbyterians for the Kingdom, which is the nonprofit that I’m one of the board members of. We’re an official nonprofit, and as of just, like a month ago, we have an official collaboration with an organization of PCOSA seminary professors who teach at Dubuque University in Iowa, which is a PC USA organization. So within just like a year and a half, we’ve established real legitimacy within the denomination. We’re no longer a bunch of kids larping on the Internet like we used to be.
[00:54:11] Remy: Yeah, yeah. You’re actually doing stuff.
You’re actually out there doing stuff. That’s impressive. That’s cool.
[00:54:19] Redeemed Zoomer: And I can’t take credit for all these other movements. I just made the incubator, and then faithful mainline Protestants and those other denominations assembled in my incubator and made those movements.
[00:54:34] Remy: That’s awesome.
[00:54:36] Redeemed Zoomer: Thank you, man.
[00:54:37] Remy: I want to.
No, I. I want to thank you for your time. I want to thank you for being willing to come on my show. Yeah, it was such a weird.
I’m. I’m at this. I’m at this weird place because I put out this tweet, and I was like, hey, you know, anybody want to be on the show? I’m just looking to fill up a couple more guest spots by the end of the year. And I had both you and Matt Whitman reach out. Reach out to me about being on the show. And I was like, why do these people see my tweets?
[00:55:12] Redeemed Zoomer: Well, I will say that, like, as soon as I saw that you made, like, Lutheran answers, I was interested in it because I was like, we need a Lutheran version of Catholic answers. We need something to combat the Catholic apologetic industrial complex.
[00:55:27] Remy: Yeah. And I am always. I’m just going to put a plug for myself out here. I am always looking for writers, contributors, if people want to help me build up the answers database. That’s the hardest thing about this. And I am so short on time. You know, I’ve got my family, I’ve got my school, I’ve got my church that I’m doing. I’ve got work. All of this on top of a full time job. I’m always short on time. So if anybody wants to contribute, please just do that. You can just email me. It’s fine.
[00:56:01] Redeemed Zoomer: Yeah. I know that your organization started out as mostly, I don’t know, a joke or whatever, but I think you have a lot of really great potential for this. So I’ll be praying that this actually does blossom into something big, because I think it totally can.
[00:56:17] Remy: Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Is there anything specific you would like to plug here at the end?
[00:56:24] Redeemed Zoomer: No.
[00:56:24] Remy: You have a. You have a YouTube channel, right? You people. Does anybody know about that yet? What do you got, like a thousand subscribers by now, Something? I’m at a thousand. Six. So I can give you. I can give you some pointers when we get off the air.
[00:56:38] Redeemed Zoomer: Yeah. So, yeah, not really anything special going on. I’ve got a few Minecraft videos on YouTube, so.
[00:56:46] Remy: Good. Perfect. All right, well, thank you so much for coming on, man. It was a pleasure to talk to you. I really enjoyed it. I did.
[00:56:54] Redeemed Zoomer: Yeah, me too. Thanks for having me.
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