Jolly Missionary Interview

I have a special guest today. This is a new friend of mine. This is Nathaniel Jolly. And I met Nathaniel in a 1689 Baptist Reformed Facebook group. And he was expressing some things that were going on in his life and some things that he had seen. And I just was really impressed with what the Lord is doing in Nathaniel's life.

And I wanted to kind of let my whole listening audience know what's going on here. So, hey, Nathaniel, good morning. Hey, good morning, Michael. It's good to be with you this morning. Yeah, thank you for being with me. Can we just start out?

Why don't you just tell me and the audience here, just a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? Where do you live now? When did you get saved? Yeah, okay, no problem. So right now, my wife and I live in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina near the Asheville area.

I grew up a southern boy in South Carolina in Columbia, arguably the hottest place in the world. And yeah, I guess I came to faith in Christ my freshman year in college. Strangely enough, growing up in the South, I was never shared the gospel until my freshman year in college. And so, yeah, the Lord really did a work in me and drew me to himself then.

And so that's, yep, kind of the brief, where we are, how I grew up. And of course, now my wife and I are in the process of preparing to move to East Africa this year. So how long, when were you in college? So how long you've been saved? Yeah, so that would have been, gosh, 17, 18, somewhere around there. I don't have the exact time, but yeah, so early or late teens.

And I'm in my late 30s now. So you can figure the math out there about, yeah, a little less than 20 years now, I think. Okay, sure. And I actually can't tell how old you are from your pictures, so that helps me understand. Yeah, I'm 36. Yeah, you're also not a recent convert.

No, not at all. Yeah, by any standard of those things, because when you start talking about being a missionary, we're talking about something really serious here. and I think we live in a culture where really any kid in a youth group becomes a missionary on any given summer, right? Yeah, that's the trend for sure. Yeah, and we're talking about something different here, even though we're using the same word.

So when I say you're a missionary, what does that mean? Yeah, so, you know, my understanding of Scripture, and you're exactly right, is different than how we hear the word used so often today. So I would understand from Scripture a missionary to be someone that primarily goes to a foreign land with the intent of planting churches. So someone that would be training church leaders, planting churches, and then raising up leaders in that place.

And so church planting is the primary focus of a missionary's responsibility. If that's not happening, I probably wouldn't label that church, that person, a biblical missionary. And now when you say church planting, you know, you mean church planting, but through the preaching of the gospel, God saving sinners and building the church through through salvation of sinners by preaching, not just building a church and having an amusement place for people to come.

Right, yeah, absolutely. Good point. It's going, preaching the gospel of Christ, and then pastoring those who are getting saved and planning a church that way, as we see with the Apostle Paul. Exactly. Now, you're prepared to be the elder or an elder at a church, right? That's part of your qualification?

That's correct. Yeah, I would argue that any missionary would have to meet the biblical qualifications of an elder. So your new convert would not meet that qualification. Yeah, and if someone doesn't, then I wouldn't say that we could send them as a missionary. Or they would have to at least be along with someone who's qualified then, right? Right, correct.

So that when the church is planted, they could help, right? But they wouldn't be able to be a pastor. Right, that's correct. And so do you do some evangelism now in the States? What's your experience been with being a gospel preacher here? Yeah, so just up until fairly recently, I guess in the last year and a half or so, I was pastoring a church in North Carolina, a church plant.

In our preparation to move, we've since merged with another. Other than that, you know, I've done street preaching. I actually have been teaching classes at the local community college. You wouldn't think teaching a religious class would lead you to evangelism, but it did regularly. And then, of course, you know, God gives us, if we're willing to pray and ask for it, opportunities all the time.

So I'm quite happy to evangelize at the grocery store counter. You know, if I'm not holding up a line of 15 people, you know, wherever I am, I try my best to take those opportunities and not be ashamed to give the gospel in public places so Yeah I really glad that you shared that People like what people might not know and maybe you don believe me but this is really unscripted here You texted me 20 minutes ago and said, hey, can we do this at 8 o'clock? And I said, let's do it.

And so I'm asking questions, some of which I don't know the answer to. Although the type of person that I've seen that you are, I have a guess what your answer will be. But I'm really glad to hear what you just said, because I have noticed in my experience that sometimes when I meet people that are excited to be missionaries, they're actually telling me that they're going to go to a foreign land, sometimes a land that will be a more difficult place for gospel preaching.

And they're going to actually do something they don't do here where, frankly, it's kind of easy. and so I'm glad that you said that because I think that I don't think a man is qualified to go anywhere until he shows that he's doing the work here and of course your your wife is a Christian how long have you been married we've been married for five years this year and my my wife is actually a an MK she is a Guatemalan citizen her her parents were Bible translators in Guatemala for 35 years or so. Awesome. And so she's going to go alongside you.

And what's her role in supporting this? Is she just your helper while she's there? Does she have some gifts that you plan to use to build the church there? Yeah, absolutely. So the reality is I couldn't do my ministry well without my wife. She's a huge help.

And so I really want to emphasize the importance of what she's going to be doing. Predominantly, she'll be helping me. And that's a big deal. So it sounds simple, things like keeping my calendar. But then she'll also be, I mean, she also helps do research. I'm working on getting a few booklets published.

So she helps with that. I mean, And I really just couldn't function as well without her. But in addition to that, you know, she'll take on the biblical mandate for women to train and teach other women in the church to help women love their husbands, to help women train their children. And so she'll be deeply involved in that. And then, of course, where we're going, there'll be, you know, a plethora of other opportunities just to help edify and build up the church, you know, which she'll do as those things come up and are available.

Perfect. So this is Nathaniel and Jen Jolly. You call yourselves the Jolly Missionaries to Uganda. Right. And I think it's pretty cool how God gave you a name, Jolly, that sort of draws attention, right? So you're the Jolly missionaries.

And so with great joy, you're going to go to Uganda. And so tell me now, let's get into the story. How did you first get turned toward Uganda and then leading into actually saying, look, we're actually going to pick up and move? Yeah, okay So I'll try to keep the story brief It actually started with an invitation to To take over and reform a local church in Uganda And so we went over Made a trip to kind of see if things were what they were You know, what we were told they were And in God's providence, I decided that we wanted to meet with some other guys.

So I hopped onto Paul Washer's website, HeartCry, to see if he had any other churches in the area. And lo and behold, there's one in all of Uganda. And so I contacted that local pastor, Bill Issa, who's become a dear friend of mine, and said, hey, we're going to be in the country. We're going to be doing a pastor seminar. Would love to meet you, see you.

And so he came and attended that. as it turns out, that church and church system that had invited me were charismatic. So they actually kicked me out of the conference because they didn't like Timothy and God's qualifications for an elder. They had several female pastors. So they kicked me out of the conference. So Bill and I got an extra day and a half together. and just in the middle of all of that in God's providence, that brother is whom we're going over to serve with.

So that's kind of the short version. So looking at Uganda, it looks like it's probably square mileage, not much bigger than North Carolina. Yeah, it's not a very large country. The population is quite large, but yeah, it's not a very big country landmass size. and so you go over there, and you're at this conference, and you're just trying to preach the word.

Right. I'm literally just preaching an expository set of sermons through the book of Timothy. And they just tell you you're not welcome back? Yeah, so they stopped us the morning of the second day, I think, because they'd gotten complaints. and you know actually to quote him directly he said well that's just the Apostle Paul's opinion so if you're willing to set your doctrine aside we'd love for you to keep preaching at which stage we said well that's not going to happen I'm going to preach what's written and so they said you know get out of here you're not welcome praise the Lord I remember reading that for the first time as you were saying it and to me it's actually it chilling to hear and it just this idea that there really is that contrast and it wasn like you were in there telling everybody they were going to hell you were just telling people the way God set up the church and it caused that much distress yeah absolutely and you know anytime someone says well that's just the Apostle Paul's opinion or they hint at that, you know, at that point, there's just so many issues that become clear.

No, it's a gift of faith from God for you to stand firm in a difficult situation. And you see God's providence, though, because as the result of being kicked out of the conference, which would have never been your plan, you end up talking to Bill, and now you have this, we'll call it a grander plan, to actually move there and stay there. So how did you and Jen, like, arrive at this?

You know, I know we're not continuationists, so it's not like you got a vision from God or something. Like, how did you come to a decision that says, hey, this is what we're going to do with our life for the Lord Jesus Christ? yeah that's a great question and i think a good opportunity to you know just kind of express how to biblically make decisions um yeah exactly rather than yeah the vision from god which we did not get surely um you know so we we were thinking of moving here uh to reform this church and since that clearly wasn't going to work um we met with bill uh spoke to him about um what we were going to do. We came home still with the thought of, you know, well, this is where we're kind of being, we see we can be useful.

This was our plan. Let's just see if, you know, if this is still what God's wanting us to do. And the way we test that, right, is through prayer, through godly counsel with other men. And so we spoke to several other people. the fact that HeartCry has a church there is significant for us, you know, for guys who don't know, very solid biblical ministry.

They really do a great job of vetting churches that come on board with them. Paul Washer does a great job in that regard. And yeah, so just through prayer and counsel, we decided, you know what, nothing's changed. It's just God in His graciousness and his providence is going to allow us to go there and work with a more healthy situation where we can be more productive in proclaiming the gospel and church planning and that sort of thing.

Now, what's the general culture there? You know, I mean, is this a Christian country? Is it a Muslim country? You know, what kind of just overall landscape is it? And then maybe more specifically where you're planning to go, you know, what, I guess what I'm asking is what are the specific challenges that you're facing? You know, like when I go out and preach, I'm really facing people who have been affected by kind of Charles Finney-ism, decisional regeneration, and a lot of the Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer type stuff in our country.

So what are you going to face there that maybe is what you are at least now thinking, this is what I really need to be prepared for this is the battlefront? Yeah, so, you know, best we can tell at this point in time, you've got Catholicism in the country, and we've already run into and have witnessed to several Catholics just on short trips there. There's Islam in the country, and it sort of depends on what areas you're in.

These guys seem to sort of kind of group together, it appears. But I think the the most challenging issue in the country in terms of witnessing is the prosperity gospel. And it's, you know, when I say that here, we kind of think of, you know, your Joel Osteen and, you know, maybe Kenneth Copeland and Todd White and some of these other guys. Just imagine the worst of what we have here in that sphere of so-called Christianity and multiply it a thousand times. and that's the that's the face of the entire church in Uganda now when you say multiply I'm not trying to get too weird technical but do you mean it's a it's like there's a thousand times more prevalent or it's a thousand times more severe like what do you mean yeah both um so so your your your average person if you asked in Uganda they would say that Uganda is a Christian country, but there, you know, nine out of every ten churches are charismatic and hyper-charismatic.

You know, I don't know if that's a real word, but so more prevalent and worse. So maybe just a quick example would be, you know, not too long ago, there was a pastor who, you know, the so-called the Holy Spirit told him to give his congregation Clorox, blessed Clorox, to cleanse the demons. So he killed several of his congregants, put several others in the hospital, and that kind of thing is not the unusual.

That's a common thing that you would see there. And then people by faith are drinking it. Right, absolutely, yeah. So that's a good example. I'm going to ask a question that you sort of just answered, but maybe you can go into more detail. You know, you and I are what we call cessationists.

We believe in the sufficiency of Scripture and that these miraculous gifts have ceased, the gifts of the apostles. Right. And then there other people that think well maybe somebody could speak in tongues or maybe somebody could get a vision And so you got kind of the continuationist starting point and then you have the hyper-charismatics that you just described where they've gone all the way.

And so a lot of times the things people would say to guys like us is, hey, just leave them alone. These guys that think, well, maybe, and maybe the book's not closed on prophecy and some of this stuff, and for the sake of unity, you should stay friends with people and support their ministries, and so help people understand why is this so dangerous to even open the door at all, and I think you've seen the answer, but help them understand maybe even theologically and then experientially why we just have to fight this stuff even at the lowest level. yeah you know well i think first and foremost and and clear and simple is we're commanded to refute unsound doctrine amen um and and it's a command it's not an option um you know unity if it comes by way of giving up sound doctrine then then the unity isn't in the faith it's in it's in worldliness. Yeah, so fundamentally, that's the first reason why we would do that.

But then beyond that, you know, like I mentioned, the natural progression of charismatic theology is what we see in Africa, and it kills people. I mean, folks really need to understand that it kills people who do not know the gospel and think they do. And that's the severity of it. I mean, I often say to people, the only reason we don't see more of that here in the U.S. is because our laws are still enforced.

One day, when our laws are not as enforced, if that should happen, we'll see the exact same thing we see in Africa. Now, is the pulse there? Are these people, you know, like middle class? Are they poor? Are they wealthy? Like, what's the, you know, compare it to what we see here in the United States?

Yeah, you know, I think just from looking at numbers, you know, from census that are done in the country, the majority of the country is very poor. If I remember correctly, I think the average person lives on less than two U.S. dollars a day, you know, eating one meal kind of thing. Half of the entire country is 14 years old or under. half of the whole country.

But you also get the very wealthy guys who buy into this kind of thing as well, who would equally do things like drink the Clorox. And Votie Bauckham talks a lot about this. He's got a great thing on why prosperity gospel works well in Africa. But it works so well because it lines up very well with animism. You know, the Holy Spirit just becomes another spirit to please.

And so it's spread like wildfire. And so these people, you know, they don't know the gospel. They aren't worshiping Jesus Christ of the Bible. And they're just doing horrendous, horrendous things. And people are dying. It's a very serious, serious thing that we should never join ourselves with.

They are the mission field. Yeah, they're the mission field, and the leaders of that movement are wolves, and we need to treat it that way. Yeah, as you were describing the logical progression of charismatic thinking, I was thinking about pornography, and I was thinking about how apparently there's an epidemic of pornography use in the Christian church.

I'd like to actually see these statistics sometime, and I'd like to meet some of these guys that use it all the time and see if they're really Christian. But it's this idea that it starts with pornography, but a man can't hold a fire against his chest and not get burned. You know, these things lead to more logically. You know, once we approve of pornography use and lust like that, then it will branch out.

And by God's grace, a lot of people will probably die having only looked at porn and cheated on their wife that way their whole life. But some people, it goes further. Those fires are kindled and it's not satisfied by even the grossest porn and they have to go out and live things out. and maybe for older people that have a moral compass from a United States that was a little more moral 30 years ago, there's not as much risk, but you get young kids, this 14 and under generation who are being exposed to hardcore pornography on phones now, they're expecting that out of girls at their school and they're going to start raging and there's going to be murders, there's going to be rapes.

We have this whole culture now of this Me Too movement, which, you know, there's a lot of truth in this Me Too movement that there are people being abused and hurt. And that's what I see is the reason why we fight even the smaller sins, we'll call them, like just lusting in your heart or just seeing a picture and lusting after it. The reason why we have to fight against those things, part of it is because of where it will inevitably lead.

It's the same with this charismatic window. What's the saying? If the charismatic window is where all heresies come in from, you really don't get heresy if your soul is scriptura. And so that's a compassionate thing, too, to go to a place because you see that people are hurting. You see that people are being sold. a false Jesus, and your heart is moved with compassion.

I appreciate that, and for me, I look at a man who has solid doctrine. You have a good ecclesiology. You want to go and preach the gospel. You're willing to suffer the consequences of standing firm on God's word. you have a helper who wants to stand by you and and what I see is this this is the kind of guy that I would expect God to bless with fruit for his labors you know in the building of a church and even if he even if we didn't see that in this lifetime I still think it's a faithful endeavor but that's why I wanted to have you on is I want people to hear that there are missionaries like you.

And so if you can, and I know this wasn't why you came on, but this is one of the reasons I brought you on, is can you tell people how they can partner with you in order to be a part of what we hope God's going to do through you in Uganda? Yeah, I appreciate that. Well, first and foremost, and I mean this truly and sincerely, is to dedicate to praying for us. what we found is a lot of people will kind of casually say, yeah, we'll pray.

But we really want praying people who know how to come before God in reverence and as a child of God and plead for the work that we're doing so that his word would go forth. So we really do need faithful praying people to do that. And then secondly, we are going through a mission agency. As people are led, they're welcome to give. Obviously, that's a necessary thing.

And the mission agency is called C10, C like the leather and P-E-N. You can look our names up on there. Don't have the web address. There's sort of a disclaimer. or they're a general agency, so they just let anyone kind of be a missionary. They expect your local church to qualify you and et cetera, et cetera. So I think they have other guys that we would totally disagree on doctrine that are in other places, but obviously that's not our position.

If you read our biography on the site, you'll see we stand by the London Baptist Confessionals, appreciate the Westminster in all the areas we can do that. you know as you said we're cessationists and yeah so we looking to promote healthy doctrine and proclaim the gospel of Christ And yeah so any of that we be grateful for But especially we need praying people. Okay, so pray for Nathaniel, Jen, Jolly. When do you go to Uganda?

Yeah, so Lord willing, we will go August of this year. That's when the move, like that's the final move, not... That's the final move, yeah. So I just came back from a short trip to kind of arrange housing and things like that. And this August, we'll make our last move, Lord willing. And when you get there, is your intention to have some kind of job to make money?

Or are you going to be supported just by the support you get? Are you going to teach a class or something? How does that work? yeah so we will have to be fully supported um yeah so what we have is what we will have to work with but we'll be faithful in what we're doing whether we have little or or much sure and and so for people to support you i apologize that wasn't totally clear to me i i feel like people need a simple instruction like what's the website they can go to to you know somebody just says hey i I've got $50 a month and I want to help a godly missionary preach the gospel.

How do I just sign up? Yeah, so cten.org, I think, is the website. So www.cten.org, that's the mission agency. And you would just simply search for our name, Nathaniel Jolly. And they have a way to donate one time or regularly. and I could send you a link or something after the conversation. Yeah, why don't you do that?

We'll put it in the show notes. In fact, I just typed C10. Is it C-T-E-N? Correct, C-T-E-N. Oh, okay, I typed the wrong thing. So C as in Christopher and then T-E-N.org, and then when they get there, you can search for the Jolly Missionaries.

Okay, excellent. Yeah, I remember when you posted, the first time you posted, like, here's what happened to me. Like, well, do you guys have any advice about this? And I remember even just responding immediately and saying, like, man, is there a place people can help you with finances? And because I was moved by God in my heart that this is the kind of thing that we're supposed to be supporting. and uh so i know you you know you a humble guy you probably almost embarrassed that i making a big deal out of it but but it a fact that you and your wife need you need something to live on And and you say well, we'll trust the Lord's going to provide and he's going to provide hopefully through people that might, that might hear this.

And then, you know, who knows what things will come up while you're there and you're going to have expenses that are unpredictable. And so we, we do hope that people will remember people like you. I know my habit is to meet the missionary, to say, yeah, that's great. I love what you're doing. And then to sort of forget about them. And I just, I want to repent of that.

I want to remember that you're there. And even if I don't get to hear from you a lot, even if I don't get to read regular newsletters, I think it's important that I remember that you're there and pray for you regularly. So do you have, are there plans to come back or are you just moving and you're kind of done? It's probably expensive to visit the United States a lot.

So what's the plan there? Yeah, so, you know, we have decided we are willing to go and serve and die there if the Lord would have it. You know, we're looking at a long-term work. we'll be working on having a school seminary education for pastors there and that kind of thing you're looking at a couple decades worth of foundational work so our plans are not to come back to the US that could change in God's providence but that's not our plan our plan is to die well there hopefully later rather than sooner you know where you can go if you ever need a fence painted or a wall built you you know call the youth groups in the united states yeah unfortunately so a little tongue-in-cheek there but i appreciate you coming on i i want to uh let me just pray for you right now and uh and then we'll just we'll close out the episode but thanks so much nathaniel and thank your wife too, not only for supporting you, but being a part of the mission, you know, not just supporting you, but she's a part of it and for letting you come on and talk to us.

Okay. Yeah, I appreciate that. And yeah, again, I couldn't do it without her. Real quick, Michael. Yeah. If people wanted our newsletter, they could simply email us at jollymissionaries at gmail.com.

If people want to pray for us and get information that way, we'd love to send that out to them. Perfect And yeah I get the newsletter and it one of just like reading a good solid doctrine blog post I mean it just really good so I appreciate that too So jollymissionaries at gmail.com, right? Right. And you're on Facebook and Twitter, so people can keep up with you there as well.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, let me pray. Father in heaven, I pray your blessing upon the Jolly Missionaries. I thank you for their desire to see good doctrine preached in a hard land. We know that your gift to them is their faith, and their desires to stand by your word is a gift from you. And so we give you all the glory for all the good things that have happened so far, all the praise that we can heap upon the missionaries, the jolly missionaries, for what they've already done.

That praise is really due to you, ultimately. but we do thank you for what you've done through them we pray that they be encouraged that they would not be lonely when they go to their new land that they would always know that they not only have Jesus Christ with them but the fellowship of the saints even from far away and we pray that you would give them a firmness and a resolve to endure with with with perseverance whatever it is that they're going to face there and we thank you for the sanctification you will work in their lives while they are there and we pray Lord for a church we pray that maybe the next time we have an interview that there would be a report of a church that's been started and the ordinances are being practiced and elders are preaching the word and people are discipling one another and we pray for revival in Uganda and I pray your blessing upon the Jolly Missionaries as they go to start this work we thank you for their friend Bill we pray for Bill that all would go well with him that he would take care of his health and he would supply his every need as well as he's been such a friend to Nathaniel and we pray your blessing upon him in Jesus name I pray, Amen Amen, thank you very much Alright well hey thank you brother thank you for listening to Be A Berean with your host Michael Coughlin I am a writer at thingsabove.us and I also have a personal website, michaelcoghlan.net. You can contact me by emailing me, michael at thingsabove.us. I hope that you have been encouraged to search the scriptures.