“No, I’m not going.” That’s what I told my eldest daughter when I told her about the text, asking me to go on Tucker’s program. She’s the first one I reached out to. She’s smart, godly, and I trust her judgment.
“I’m going to see if they’ll take Webbon instead,” I told her, referencing my co-author in Hyphenated Heresy, Joel Webbon, which is what I assumed Tucker wanted to talk about. That’s the same thing I told Webbon himself, minutes later, “I’m not doing it.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“Have you seen what they do to his guests?”
You’ve got to understand my life. It is good. It is really, really good. I was at the bank when I got that text, pulling cash to pay movers and cleaning people on the morning of the move to our new home, nestled far into the Ozark mountains, surrounded by woods and friendly hillbillies who use Confederate flags as living room curtains. Like most Americans, we hit middle age before we could afford the home of our dreams, one in which each kid has their own bedroom and bathroom, and enough acreage to never worry about finding a place to hang a tree stand again. No, I’m not bragging. I’m setting the scene.
After a monumental crash-out you can read about here, I stepped out of rehab for a prescription Xanax addiction and took the first job I could, on the bottom rung of the corporate totem pole, from the first company that didn’t include preferred pronouns in the HR letter. Humbled could not begin to express it. From a pastor of 20 years and moderate Internet infamy, whose preaching and/or speaking for either religion or politics took me on the road more than 300 days the previous year, to an entry-level job that neither a BA in religion or a Masters’s in History qualifies you for. There were bills to pay, and considering I had spent more than a decade telling disgraced ministers to go get a real job, I was now a disgraced minister who had gone and gotten one. The virtual parade of both religious and political enemies celebrating the infamous polemicist and political troublemaker who helped turn a purple state red was still underway, and articles with “the rise and fall” in the title were still being written. All of that coincided with a 2 million dollar lawsuit when Planned Parenthood attorneys and a Democrat governor’s chief legal counsel put me in a vice grip I couldn’t escape from on behalf of a trans-activist, and bankruptcy was the only legal maneuver to escape from the jurisdiction of a judge who called me a ‘homophobe’ before hearing the case.
There are low points. And there’s that. “Low point” doesn’t begin to describe that.
Apologist James White in Phoenix, speaking about these struggles after angrily discovering I “surfaced” alive somewhere, recalled in a podcast that when he first heard of them, his immediate thought was, “Thank God.” Phil Johnson, Justin Peters, and Chris Rosebrough - all good friends, whom I lent pulpits and provided platforms in a non-reciprocal manner - did a video when I was in rehab, announcing to the world…I’m not sure what. I’ve never watched it. The way my wife describes it was something along the lines of, “We tried to stop him.” But they were talking about my polemics. I guess they thought I went to treatment for polemics, not sure. But it was in that milieu that I lost my cowboy hats and my boots, put on some sensible, work-appropriate footwear, and went to work in my cubicle as a normal person. That’s why I’m LostMyHats on X.
But since then, God has done nothing but prosper me. He gave us a small farm, which we felt was important, hoping that farm life and pygmy goats and sheep and some chickens might be a good, healing environment for the kids who left so much behind. And, it was. I built fences and farm infrastructure after work each day, and we all enjoyed the catharsis. God gave us a good church with a good pastor. I was promoted several times, and the bills were paid, and the farm work was good rehab for a body utterly broken from the seizures and the falls mid-seizure that resulted from withdrawal, which on several occasions, almost killed me. For about 18 months, I couldn’t find the words I needed, suffering from “word displacement,” the first and initial symptom of the drug that I noticed, and went to the doctor to be diagnosed for what I thought might be killing me or giving me early onset Alzheimer’s, about six months before my full unraveling. One day, in September of 2023, that haze lifted, too. My vocabulary came back to normal, like a cloud departed.
Several years in, my daughter and wife told me I should write. I assured them that no one would care to read it. They assured me that that was untrue. “Dad,” Reagan said, “People love you.” Nah. Crazy girls.
But, eventually, I did.
Insight to Incite has been one of the best things I could imagine. God’s been good. It grew quickly. People liked it. Not preaching was weird, and I described it as “feeling like a songbird that can’t sing.” I had things to say, but no place to say them, and I’m not about to change my ecclesiological perspectives on ministerial qualifications to suit my own fancy. When you’re a preacher, you can vent that pent-up collection of convictions down in your gut that builds, that weight on your back that builds until you finally speak them. Good sermons are like that. A sermon should be a thing of such weight that you have to preach it to get the burden off you. But not having that outlet of release meant a lot of screaming sessions took place in the car ride to work and back, like a release valve, hissing off the pressure before a boiler explodes. I preached some pretty fine rants to the steering wheel, if I do say so myself. But, having a Substack to say things, to get the burden off, has been pure blessing.
I’m a Baptist and a Cessationist, but I’m also a Supernaturalist. I believe in supernatural things. And one of them is annointing, for which I’ve had many a funny look from my fellow Cessationists, as though I’m not supposed to believe such a thing. But all the revered ‘dead guys’ believed it; Spurgeon, Edwards, Calvin. And I did, too. That God the Holy Ghost places a special umph upon a man to convey words with a special affectual force. No, not direct, divine revelation. “Unction,” the old Reformed Baptists used to call it, before the New Reformed Baptists stopped believing in it, somewhere along the way. It’s hard to define. But you know when hear a preacher has it. And you know when he doesn’t. So, I prayed to the Lord for unction in what I write, that the words I put to cyber parchment might touch people, that God would be glorified by it, that Insight to Incite might uniquely prick the heart and illumine the mind of those who read it. Yes, I realize that’s a weird thing to pray for, in what is essentially a blog. But I pray for weird things all the time, and I ask God that each article would, in some small way, accomplish His divine purposes.
Whether or not you think God answers those prayers or not, He has most certainly blessed it. After a year of writing, I told my bosses thanks for the job and quit. And something else strange happened, too. My writing was, for the first time ever, popular. Don’t get me wrong, at its height, Pulpit & Pen enjoyed over a million readers per month. But I wouldn’t call it “popular.” Granted, I2I doesn’t make enemies like polemics did at Pulpit & Pen or Protestia. But it’s true that “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” and evangelicalism found out that quite a few of my perspectives over the years turned out to be right. Those publications have aged like fine wine, and people saw that. On top of that, evangelical culture shifted massively during the years I was away. That culture shift helped, too.
Most have been incredibly kind. Oh, sure, there’s been some ugliness. For example, when I first came back on Twitter, I saw a post from Pastor Tom Hicks, a fellow Reformed Baptist, broadcasting my sin and shame (and quite a bit of slander attached to it) for his personal enjoyment; and I commented (politely). He immediately blocked me. But overall, the world has been very kind to me. My subscribers grew, along with my follower list, and for the first time, maybe ever, I felt genuinely appreciated by most, with a few old critics, like Tom Hicks or James White, notwithstanding.
And just as I was ready to live my life way back in the woods with a driveway longer than some county roads and a gate to assure I don’t have to deal with other human beings, to continue writing the best Substack in known human existence, I got the text asking me to go on Tucker.
Surely, you can see the reason for my hesitance. The ZogBots and NeoCon flying war monkeys massacre his guests. It’s a bloodbath for them, especially if they are a “normie,” a regular person, who doesn’t have an established support network to protect them in the aftermath. That poor Orthodox lady is going to be called “mustache nun” the rest of her mortal existence. Her sin was serving the church in Gaza and testifying to what she saw and heard with her own eyes and ears. Then there was the military contractor and former special operator who testified to what he saw and heard in Gaza. I tracked that one myself, researched it myself, and they savaged him. Wrongly. They butchered a war hero and patriot because he told the truth about what was happening there. I could only imagine what they’d do to me, too.
Fifteen minutes of fame isn’t worth it. No way. I have the home I always wanted, where I can use the bathroom off the front porch like God intended, a comfortable existence, more friends and followers than foes, the shame of past sin fading under the blood of Christ, and absolutely nothing to prove to anyone, anywhere, and no one to impress. And now, on the day this new chapter was beginning, goals achieved, dreams accomplished, wounds healed, I get an invitation to go onto what is arguably the biggest platform in the world, douse myself in gasoline, pull out a lighter, and self-immolate in front of millions of people.
This seemed like a profoundly bad idea.
“So?”
That was my daughter’s response when I asked her if she knows what they do to Tucker’s guests. She knew what I meant. She knew what it entailed. She lived through all the chaos of this before. And she suffered more than anyone, at the precarious stage between childhood and adulthood, at 18 years old, and knowing what the criticism was like with a front row seat and scars of her own to show from it. So.
God did that, obviously. I didn’t ask for that. God orchestrated it. That’s an opportunity most people would die for. That was out of the blue. Tucker’s people said he likes my writing. Tucker’s brother, I knew for sure, read and appreciated it. But I didn’t pull strings to make it happen. I don’t have strings. I didn’t ask for it to happen. I was minding my business. So, trying to wrap my head around this turn of events, I presumed that if God did that, which He would had to have, I better do it. And if I was going to do it, I had better share the gospel. So, when the Protestia boys asked what we were going to talk about it, I said the following:
Sharing the gospel was my only goal. My Patreon supporters gathered for prayer beforehand, and we prayed explicitly for that opportunity. When the NXR guys asked what my objectives were, I told them it was to share the gospel. That was my one and only ambition. If I was going to set myself on fire, it sure as heck wasn’t going to be pitching a book or something gay like that.
I could not think of another single cause that would make it worth what would follow. Days, maybe weeks, of being flogged by Israeli bots, war lobbyists, random critics, old enemies, or jealous online Reformed evangelical war lords in blind rage that they were not asked instead. The only thing that could make any of that worth it, is talking about Jesus.
So, that’s what I did. I was praying for a single opportunity. God gave me the whole interview.
CRITICISM
Within minutes of the footage being released, while I was yet in the air, the criticism started. Long before people complained about what was said, they complained I was the one saying it. Apologist James White tweeted something like, “So the farmer is a theologian now.” It was one of those monumental moments of abject stupidity where the speaker is so completely self-unaware of exactly how terrible the optics are of what they’re saying, blinded by intoxicating pride. He was responding to the title of the video TCN posted on YouTube, which referred to me as a theologian. That turned out to have been a fantastically bad idea for him.
The Protestant tradition is built upon the testimony of Tyndale, who was martyred for translating the Bible into the common tongue so that plowboys could know the Bible better than Popes. The disciples were fishermen. They were also “unlearned and ignorant men.” I can’t fathom how unwound he’d become if he ever figures out who the Good Shepherd is. He might implode.
White followed up with a lengthy X diatribe about what he meant, full of invectives, sin-shaming, scandal-mongering, and self-justifications. He then followed that up with a video, insinuating people were stupid for not understanding his original tweet, repeating his complaints, and having a fairly robust grievance session. At one point, he seemed to acknowledge a dwindling audience but assured whoever was listening that he’d remain stalwart in his gospel-centered convictions. The basic gist is that I should prove my repentance by never being seen or heard from again, and that I blame the Jews for too much. According to reports, he did not have complaints about anything I spoke, except, for the Jew thing. Before he was finished, he mentioned in passing that he only watched part of it.
With their cue from White, all seven of his remaining followers went about to mock me for being referred to as a “theologian.” I suppose a pastor of 20 years, a multi-time church planter, a degree in theology, a graduate degree in education, a religion author, and someone who’s done moderated debates on charismaticism, theonomy (James White pronounced me the winner on that one, for what it’s worth), and Covenant Theology, and reigning as Polemics Santa, doesn’t qualify one for the title “theologian” without the expressed written consent of James White. Weirdly, his personal endorsement graces the cover of my catechism book, and I wonder if he remembers this. But none of that is the point. Protestants believe everyone is a theologian. You’re just a good one or a bad one, but every Christian has the responsibility to “study the Scriptures to show yourself approved.” I’ve said it a thousand times in the pulpit, “You are a theologian, raising theologians. You must be good ones.”
But that title was nothing I’ve taken for myself. It’s tacky. It’s like demanding to be called “doctor” because you think the honorific is more prestigious than the title “pastor.” It isn’t. Nothing is. Not even “president.” Imagine thinking “Bachelor’s Degree Kevin” or “Master’s Degree Mark” is a higher honor than that assigned by the Holy Ghost, who makes one an overseer (Acts 20:28). I asked TCN not to refer to me as “pastor,” because I’m not qualified for that. James White, on the other hand, demands to be called something besides pastor, because he’s over-qualified for it.
Joe Boot posted the TCN footage with an image of the Three Stooges, because apparently, it was high comedy. Tom Hicks made a direct plea to Tucker, tweeting at him to say that I’m “not a good representative of Covenant Theology.” Some pubescent-looking man with girl hair named “Bob the Baptist” mocked Tucker’s compliment of my writing being clear. Apparently, he believes I’m very convoluted, or just grabbed the first possible thing to complain about, made it no further than the very first comment made in the introduction, and ran to X to notify the world he was the first to find a problem in the footage. And according to this excellent breakdown video by Supremacy of Christ Studios, some of the Reformed Baptists were quite incensed that I didn’t break down the intricacies of the Covenants well enough.
Oh, and some said I was fat. And then, the guy who made fun of me for being fat, then tweeted at Protestia to ask why they hadn’t attacked me yet. He wasn’t clear, for what exactly.
Sure, lots more criticism has followed. Ron Cantor said he was going to sue for “all my lies.” No idea what he’s talking about. Charismatic public relations specialist, Mike Winger (who I wrote about here) said I lied about Cantor in the interview, then deleted it after I posted the evidence for the claim I made about him promising not to convert Jews, but then he returned to X to announce he found something else in an article months ago that I had “lied about,” which was quibbling point of subjective perspective that had nothing to do with the interview at all. In both of those cases, given the response they got on X, they had a pretty bad day and might be walking with a limp for a while. They were dogpiled by my new friends and faithful followers, weaponized with facts.
And then, there were the Israel Lobby accounts and the Judeo-Christians, and criticism regarding my very specific claim about the Millet system of the Ottoman Empire in the 400 years in the Holy Land prior to 1917, to compare the treatment of Christians in that same location today. It wasn’t a generalization of Islam throughout all ages, locations, and eras, nor did it deny the historicities of any atrocities or proclivities of violence and brutality, but has since been used to accuse me of being an “Islamic Propagandist,” with straw men arguments attacking me for what I didn’t say, ignoring the context in that very specific time and place as an apples-to-apples to modern Israel.
For further context, at the time of the Ottoman Conquest, Christians made up 20% of the population of the Holy Land. When the British took over in 1917, Christians were still 20% of the Holy Land. When the Jews took over in 1948, Christians were still 20% of the Holy Land. In just 80 years, Christians are now 2% of the Holy Land, a population drop so steep it’s rare to see short of ethnic cleansing or the bubonic plague. The point isn’t that Islam is lovely. It’s that in the Holy Land, Israel is worse than the Ottomans in that specific time and place, and the demographics collapse is the fruit of it.
I stand by what I said, and the facts hold. For example, I was called a “liar” for saying that the Ottomans didn’t tax churches, when Christians had to pay the jizya tax. The jizya tax was a contractual agreement that allowed Christians to be exempt from forced military conscription in the Muslim army and afforded them physical protection, but I didn’t say they didn’t tax Christians. I said they didn’t tax churches, while Israel is freezing their bank accounts for not paying years of back taxes retroactively, without notice, payable immediately. People are complaining instead that what I spoke is untrue because Muslims are killing Christians in 2026 Nigeria, missing the point entirely. In one correction video, the commentator announces I was a liar for the taxation claim in the video description, and he proceeded to tell his audience that technically, I was correct. It’s a goat rope.
Ultimately, the Muslim thing doesn’t bother me. It’s one of those absolutely inescapable, unavoidable accusations when people are hell-bent to find a beef or accusation, so they find one. If it wasn’t that, it would be something else. One woman alleged that because I “laughed” when I said JMAC and Sproul are dead, I found their deaths funny, apparently unaware of the human experience that a laugh isn’t always from delight. Everyone who knows me knows my affection for both men. She wanted a complaint. She found one. She pulled a muscle trying to stretch to make it.
Jeremy Boering did an episode on Tucker using “Neo-Nazis,” with my face on the cover of his graphic, and being a Biblically illiterate, full-time Israeli informercialist and former full-time Israel lobbyist, rented some evangelicals to attempt a Biblical counter-argument. Jon Harris, who has been auditioning hard to be picked up by the Israel Lobby as an evangelical ally of Israel since even before he got back from his state-sponsored propaganda pilgrimage (as I explicitly said he was doing, weeks ago), happily obliged them.
I had heard that Brannon Howse, with whom I got my start in podcasting when he recruited me for Worldview Weekend, “tore me apart” on his webcast. Darrell Schoppa, whom I financially supported when he was run off from his pulpit, asked on X how I “failed my way onto Tucker Carlson.” Another pastor, Rob Jackson, tweeted he’d “never have let me preach in his church had he known I held those views.” He was referring to when I drove 8 hours (one-way) to fill the pulpit at his church of a dozen people, many times, at my personal expense, and then found a replacement pastor, paid for his move across the country, and then fully funded his salary. The church was Reformed. It held those actual views on Covenant Theology.
Old critics. New critics. Jew critics.
“So.”
My daughter was right. So. What. Literally none of that matters. It will pass. It will pass, and fade away into the far recesses of memory like every other storm. Every single one of them. White’s grievance sessions, Hicks’ preening, Boering’s Israeli infomercials, the limp-wristed parade of men who wanted Tucker’s attention badly enough to audition as my executioners to get it. In five years, nobody will remember what any of them said. In five years, a meaningful percentage of them won’t even have a platform. The internet has a long memory for receipts and a short one for grudges, and the grudges here are transparently motivated by jealousy dressed up as theological concern. These men didn’t watch the interview. They watched for ammunition.
I know what that looks like. I invented that.
But here’s what won’t fade. Somewhere in those millions of views, there is a man who has never heard that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that He was crucified for sin, buried, and raised on the third day. He wasn’t looking for it. He was watching Tucker. He found it anyway. That is the only number that will matter on the last day, and I have precisely zero access to it. God keeps that ledger, not me.
That’s what I said I was going in there to do. That’s what I did. Not perfectly. Not elegantly. Not to the satisfaction of every gatekeeping seminarian who wanted me to walk through the intricacies of the Pactum Salutis in twenty-two minutes on cable television while Tucker nodded politely. But the name of Jesus Christ was spoken, clearly, into the largest megaphone I have ever been handed, and I didn’t waste it on a book pitch.
THE ONLY THING WORTH SETTING YOURSELF ON FIRE FOR
When my daughter said “so,” she wasn’t being sarcastic. She wasn’t telling me criticism doesn’t sting. She was telling me that none of it changes the calculus. The math is simple. You have one shot. You say the thing that matters. You get off the stage. What happens in the comment sections afterward is not your problem, and more to the point, it’s not your business. You don’t get to control what people do with the gospel, and you don’t get to control what people do with you.
I live on the other side of a gate that says crossing it will get you shot. I have a bathroom off the front porch. I’ve had a front row seat to a play whose script was written by divine hands, with more twists and turns and false endings and sharp turns and surprises, and am in full assurance that God is most certainly in control of all of it. For whatever reason, God didn’t want to have James White, Tom Hicks, a “real theologian,” or a “better representative” do that, becuase they didn’t get the Text. But I would have much preferred they do it.
On quite a few occasions in the last 18 months, I have begged them to speak up on Dispensationalism. Begged them. I said it here and here and here, begging them to please, for the love of God, speak out on Dispensational Zionism. This issue, this exact issue, is our core doctrinal distinctive (not just Reformed Baptists, but Presbyterians too, and anyone who calls themselves “Reformed”). It is our bread and butter of Biblical doctrine. We have been debating this issue, at length, for literally forever, to an extent that to any onlooker surely borders on obnoxious, and when the topic of Israel crawled back to the front pages and our theological expertise could be of some use to the world, they packed it in and went quiet.
Doug Wilson sat on stage with Jews at TPUSA and declared the Talmud could be “mined for exegetical gold” and a day later alleged “Jesus defended the Talmud” (it didn’t exist yet, and Jesus wasn’t a fan of Rabbinic tradition). James White mocked the premise of Hyphenated Heresy when it came out and declared the entire subject unnecessary, as though Doug Wilson praising the Talmud in front of thousands of people wasn’t proof of it being necessary. When CrossPolitic went on a Potemkin Pilgrimage and came back and declared Israel to be a bulwark against the LGBTQ movement, it’s indisputable proof that not only is the conversation necessary, but the people who should be leading the fight have actually joined the other team. It’s no wonder the SecDef stood in front of a crowd in Israel and thought building the Third Temple would be a great idea, despite belonging to a Covenantal church that rejects the notion. The church has been invaded, and nobody was watching the doors.
I might be a “bad representative of Covenant Theology,” as Hicks tweeted at Tucker. I don’t know. But these men aren’t representing it at all. That’s why they didn’t get a text. I mean, goodness sakes, maybe they’re right that JD Hall is the “bottom of the barrel.” That means they aren’t even in the barrel. Why’s the barrel empty? If they’re right, my appearance should shame them. God doesn’t reward cowardice.
Meanwhile, the guys who wrote the “rise and fall” pieces can hurriedly update them, I suppose.
Hell or high water, I had a job to do. I did it. And now, I’ve got chickens to feed.
If you appreciate my free content, you’ll love my premium content. Please subscribe to premium to access the full archives, podcasts, converse with me from Susbtack, periodic Zoom calls, and more.
If you don’t do subscriptions, please consider a one-time gift by clicking the link below.
