Yeah.
Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast.
I am Corey J.
Mahler.
And
I'm Wo.
So the question that's been raging lately on the uh Lutheran Twitter
sphere um has been can girls teach?
Uh it's an interesting question because it's it's not a Lutheran question,
it's one that's been
really facing the whole church for how far back you go, centuries.
Um, but certainly in the last fifty years, can girls teach has
been in the forefront of what's happening in our Christian churches.
And And the reason we're going to talk about it today is
that in part that's not actually the right form of the question.
The right form of the question is may girls teach.
Uh but before we can answer that, we have to answer a
few predicate questions to define our terms.
Uh the first is what is a girl, what is a woman?
Where did they come from?
What are they for?
And then once we understand that we can add address the question,
what is teaching?
So uh Corey, what is a girl?
Well, a girl is defined in part you could define a girl
as in contrast to a man.
And what a girl is, is a helpmeat.
Woman is made for man, not man for woman, as scripture very
clearly states.
And so woman is made
in Genesis one.
We have of course we have the uh more elaborate detail later
on in Genesis, but we have in Genesis one twenty seven.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of
God he created them, male and female, he created them, and of
course we'll get to some of the the grammar and such there
a little bit later, but
the whole purpose of a girl is
to help her husband.
Before she has a husband, it's to help her family.
But that is the purpose of a girl.
It is not to be an equal or a competitor to man,
which is Which is sort of what we've allowed girls to become
today. So we have in Genesis 127, so God created man in
his own image.
In the image of God he created him.
Male and female, he created them.
Now the question of course arises here is woman is the female
made in the image of God?
And we have other places in scripture that will shed light on
this, because man is the glory of God.
Man is made in the image of God.
Woman is the glory of man.
So there's a difference there.
Is woman ultimately made in the image of God?
Yes, in a transitive sense, because she's the image and glory of
man who is the image and glory of God.
And we have that here, in Genesis one twenty seven, because if
you actually look at
Genesis one twenty seven, what is said there?
God created man in his own image, and that is, of course,
masculine, singular, man.
In the image of God, he created him, and again, masculine, singular,
and then and the ESV actually does a good job here because
there's a semicolon after him, and then male and female he created
them. Related matter, not the exact same thing.
There is a distinction even here, in the very beginning, between man
and woman and the creation of man and woman.
So what is woman made to do?
She is made to be a helpmeet, she is made to help
her husband.
And there's actually some useful language from Luther here in his actually
volume one in the American edition, because the first eight volumes are
Luther's commentary on Genesis.
So for Luther's commentary here for Genesis 127, I'll skip the uh
the first couple paragraphs here.
They're just about similitude and image and comment on the sentences.
But male and female he created them.
And this is a quote from Luther.
In order not to give the impression that he was excluding the
woman, from all the glory of the future life, Moses includes each
of the two sexes, for the woman appears to be a somewhat
different being from the man, having different members and a much weaker
nature. Although Eve was a most extraordinary creature, similar to Adam so
far as the image of God is concerned, that is, in justice,
wisdom, and happiness, she was nevertheless a woman.
For as the sun is more excellent than the moon, although the
moon too is a very excellent body, so the woman, although she
was a most beautiful work of God, nevertheless was not the equal
of the male in glory and prestige.
And so Luther properly recognizes that even in the garden, before the
fall, in the state of perfection, woman is Woman is not equal
to man.
Men and women are different.
The girl was made for the man, not vice versa.
I think you mentioned early the the transitive property.
And I'm sure there are people listening who think that we are
denying that women are made in the image of God.
And that's not the point, but it's a it's a subtle distinction
that relies on the sort of reason that really isn't taught anymore
that people don't understand, don't think in those terms.
So when you say similar to and you say transitive property, what
do you actually saying?
What is the A to B and B to C doing in
this this scenario?
The point that we are attempting to make is that if you
say that two things are entirely equal, of course, well, that gets
into the laws of logic then because two things that can't be
distinguished are, of course, the same thing.
But
if man is made in the image of God, to be made
in the image of God
means something.
It does not mean to be equal to God, it does not
mean to be identical to God, because of course it cannot mean
that, because we are finite, God is infinite.
And so if we are created in the image of God, we
are a lesser creature than God.
Woman is made in the image of man.
Woman is a lesser creature than man, still made in the image
of God, still partakes of if she is Christian, salvation and the
eternal life, the the good version of the eternal life, you do
get the other one if you're not a Christian, but she is
a lesser creature, but still made in the image of God.
There's that difference there, and it's important to note that difference.
What is an what is an image?
You know, in the in the internet age we just think of
JPEGs and frankly that's about as far as pecu people can take
it. But when th theologians talk about image, what does that mean?
Well, we could actually
go to the the Greek here so we can uh perhaps address
some potential pastoral detractors because what does it actually say in the
Greek? Icona.
It's an icon or an idol.
Man is meant to image or to represent God in creation, so
man is the pinnacle of creation.
Man is at the top of the hierarchy.
Man represents God to creation, and that is what man is supposed
to do.
And we still have this to some degree today.
Yes, it is to some degree lost and corrupted because of the
fall, but if you have a dog, particularly if you select it
well and have a good breed, your dog is going to look
to you after a fashion as if you were God, because your
dog looks to you for everything good in his life.
He looks to you for food, for shelter, for warmth, for care,
affection. Your dog looks to you as the representative of God in
creation. So your dog is not necessarily looking exactly through you to
God, but after a fashion, that is what's happening.
And that is how woman properly interfaces and interacts with God because
the wife is not the head, the husband is the head, and
so the body interacts with the head, the head interacts with God.
That's how things are supposed to work.
There's a natural hierarchy there.
There's um a footnote reference that is also relevant from the same
work in Luther.
It references Luther's later comments on marriage, and it's important to
to bring this up as well, because I'm sure we'll discuss marriage
a little more shortly, but what appears in the Latin text, Luther
was reading the Vulgate, as likened to himself is in Hebrew, which
should be about him.
With this expression, the text also makes a difference between the human
female and the females of all the remaining animals, which are not
always about their mates.
The woman was so created that she should everywhere and always be
about her husband.
Thus imperial law also calls the life of married people an inseparable
relationship. The female of the brutes has a desire for the male
only once in a whole year.
But after she has become pregnant she returns to her home and
takes care of herself.
For her young born another time she has no concern, and she
does not always live with her mate.
But among men, the nature of marriage is different.
There the wife so binds herself to a man that she will
be about him and will live together with him as one flesh.
And so there is this difference between man and Man and the
Wild Creatures.
Now, perhaps the wild creatures were a somewhat different before the fall,
but his point about woman is very important to note.
What does it say in Scripture about the wife?
She is to obey her husband in everything as she would obey
the Lord.
That is an exceptionally high bar.
And so woman is supposed to be about her husband, which makes
perfect sense if you understand headship.
Because the head is in charge.
The body is supposed to follow the head.
Your foot isn't supposed to tell you no, I don't feel like
going for a walk today.
That's not how things are supposed to work.
We were talking about this privately recently that until the last really
two generations maybe.
Whenever a married woman was referenced by a third party, it was
as Mrs.
Robert Price.
It was never by her first name.
Sure she didn't have her own distinct identity apart from her husband.
And that's one of the things that feminism has sought in great
earnestness for a hundred years to cast down, to ensure that every
woman can be defined entirely apart from any man, whether it's her
father or her husband or the absence of a husband.
The essence of feminism is ultimately that girls are first party members
of everything and therefore must be granted all of the same privileges
and ultimately the same authority that men have because we're all the
same.
And Christians hear those things that did not originate within Christianity.
They hear them and they try to find in scripture where they
can justify them.
And so you end up people making an argument about the Imago
Dei that, well, yes, women were made in the image of God
too, so of course they can do all these things.
And that's why we're discussing this right up front is that the
headship that predates the fall, the headship that is the very essence
of the created order, is not set of it is it's damaged
by the fall, it is harmed in its unity by the fall,
but is not set aside, and it's not set aside in redemption
either. When we are sanctified by Christ, when we are a new
creation as brothers in Christ, in scripture refers to girls as brothers
in Christ as well for the sake of inheritance, which is something
we may not get to today, but if you read the passages
where Paul deals with inheritance, he refers to everyone as a son
of God, whether they're male or female, because inheritance had to belong
to the man.
And so these
categories and these terms are not they're not cultural things that we
have just sort of read about recently online and decided that we
need to fight over about the Bible.
This is how scripture talks about what God has done in creation
since the beginning.
And these attacks coming from outside the church are fundamental attacks on
creation itself.
And I think as Lutherans, we're not good at defending attacks against
creation because Lutheranism was defined when the attack was against sanctification and
justification. And we we're not fighting the Pope anymore.
We're fighting we're fighting people who deny the first three books of
the Bible.
And that that's part of this this fight as well.
Yeah, Satan doesn't sleep and he's realized that he can attack us
at something that is tangential and yet still very much connected to
the fight that we had centuries ago.
And when it comes to the the issue of the use of
either the masculine or the feminine pronouns and such, there are those
who will try to argue that well, the masculine encompasses the feminine
grammatically, and one, there's some irony there because these will be the
same people who like to say she and he'll even go so
far as to list both and list the feminine first, just completely
throwing grammar aside, but they are correct that the masculine can encompass
the feminine because as we've discussed previously, you know, in Latin, if
there's a group of
a thousand women and one man, you use the masculine, because that's
just how it works.
And that's how it works in most languages typically.
However, scripture does have places where it says he or she effectively,
because a man or woman.
And so Scripture is very clear when men and women are being
addressed separately or when they are being addressed collectively, and so most
of the scripture is in fact written with a male audience in
mind, it is written toward men, and that is of course only
right, as we even recognize, of course, in the small catechism, as
the head of the household should teach should teach his household.
It's funny you mentioned the the fact that
we we look at those language features as quirks, as that's just
the sexist misogynistic past, when in reality those ancient languages reflected headship,
they reflected created order.
they reflected a basic fundamental understanding of what we're trying to establish
with this episode, which is that the presence of a man in
a community, even if it's a one to many relationship with one
man and lots of women, the man is in charge, period, by
default. There cannot be an exception if you want to be godly.
And we're up against a lot of people, including a lot of
pastors, who just don't buy that.
There are pastors who are very proud about the fact that they
that they have girls teaching at synotical conferences teaching theology to pastors.
And they think it's the best thing ever.
They're so delighted to be uh so progressive and so forward looking
um in in in such celebrators of the quote unquote gospel, when
in reality what they're doing is A abdicating their own offices on
the spot and B defiling and mocking God's created order.
And they're doing it in in a very public way and they're
doing it unrepentantly.
And I I pray that people will begin to take this issue
more seriously because it's not it's not a small linguistic matter, and
it's not about publishing books.
It's about whether we submit to God.
And if we as all Christians submit to God, then all girls
will submit to men in all cases.
There's not a case where a girl cannot submit to a man.
There's a question of order, there's a question of hierarchy, and not
every girl automatically submits to every man, but the fact remains a
man A man will always be in the lead and on top
in the superior position.
And as you mentioned, men are superior.
And that's something that just sets the egalitarian mind on edge today.
Because the idea that superior and inferior must necessarily reflect the value
of those involved and it's simply not the case.
If you have a general and you have a colonel, the general
is his superior.
That's literally what it's called.
It doesn't necessarily mean he's a better soldier.
He might be, he should be, but it means that he is
in the superior position, and his authority must be obeyed because of
his position.
And what God has revealed in scripture is that man is superior
by virtue of the position that he holds in creation over all
of it.
And you mentioned earlier that that man was over all of creation.
that's why all of creation fell.
when Jesus died in redeemed creation, he didn't just pay for our
personal sins, he paid for the disobedient tree that he cursed that
didn't produce fruit, and he paid for the wind that he had
to rebuke because it was blowing and trying to kill them.
All of creation fell.
And while we wouldn't care categorize the d disobedience of creation as
sin per se.
It is the result of the fall.
It's the result of everything that was under Adam's dominion having lost
that proper order.
And you will see, as you mentioned, there's there's a reflection of
this thing where sometimes that order is still properly established where your
dog should obey you and your dog should naturally obey you, but
you must assert your superiority.
And in dog training, one of the worst really the worst mistake
you can make is letting your dog run wild.
If your dog is in charge, if your dog is calling the
shots, he will think, well, there's a hierarchy and you're not on
top, so I must be.
And as soon as your dog realizes that, he's gonna run wild
and you will never get him back under control.
And that reality does not only apply to animals, it applies to
people too.
Where there is an order and it is usurped, there's no way
to get it properly restored without a lot of pain because everyone
is like, Well, hey, I was getting away with it.
Why should I stop now?
And
we're at the tail end of a century or so of exactly
that people just running entirely wild and doing as they please.
And as you mentioned, egalitarianism, we have these priors, these presuppositions that
we inherited from the enlightenment, and they go completely unexamined.
And so this this presupposition, this egalitarian prior, this belief that all
men are created equal, is just false.
It is objectively demonstrably false and we all know it.
Because we have all been in a situation where someone was either
significantly better or significantly worse at something than we were at the
time. And so there are those who are significantly better at task
A, those who are significantly better at task B.
They're not equal with respect to those tasks at which they are
better or worse.
And the same thing is true of human attributes.
There are those who are more intelligent, there are more those who
are more attractive, there are all sorts of differences.
Man to man is not equal.
Man to woman is certainly not equal.
And so these fundamentally flawed priors that we have imported from the
secular world from
objectively, aggressively godless world are just corrupting the church
because they go unexamined, and even pastors have bought into them, and
we see that, like you mentioned, when they have women stand up
and speak at even worse teach, but just speaking at a pastor's
conference. That is that enlightenment coming back to bite us because, well,
we're truly progressive and we are including women and you're not being
inclusive. You're not being progressive.
And we can discuss whether progressive is even a good thing, but
it's not, is the short version.
What you are doing is undermining what God built.
You are undermining his order.
You are being faithless if you are a pastor to your office.
And actually, I I almost skipped over something that is worth mentioning
with regard to Genesis 127 because we miss it in the English.
And this is one of those cases where it actually, surprisingly, Hebrew
helps a little bit.
Because it's even more blatant what is being said in Genesis 127
in the Hebrew.
Because we have of course anthropon in the Greek, but what word
is that translating from the Hebrew Adam?
The word for man is Adam.
So you have he made the man Adam in his image.
It's there's no missing what is being said there.
Adam is the one who is made in the truest, strictest, and
highest sense in the image of God.
And specifically Adam, because all of us who followed after him are
fallen until of course we get to the new Adam.
Absolutely. You had mentioned or referred back to talking about the pastors
conferences and and girls teaching pastors.
Um you think it's time to move on to defining what teaching
is
uh first I just want to go over the fall.
Okay. Because I want to point out something vitally important about women
in the fall.
And so of course in the in the fall, God's cursing of
creation, you have first the serpent, who is essentially just dismissed.
there's no discussion here that the serpent is just cursed.
Because of course it's Satan, but to the woman he said, I
will surely multiply your pain in childbearing, in pain you shall bring
forth children, your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall
rule over you, but of course, as has been mentioned a number
of times by a number of commentators, that your desire shall be
for your husband is actually better rendered into the English as your
desire shall be against your husband.
Your desire shall be contrary to your husband.
And so how is woman cursed?
Woman is cursed in the same not the same exact way, but
in the same sense as man is cursed.
Sh man is cursed with regard to the soil, of course.
By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.
Because the curse falls on the core of the duties, what that
person is.
And so man is cursed with regard to his work, because work
isn't supposed to be labor and toil.
Work was something God made for us to do.
It's one of the things we are supposed to do.
But it was not suffering before the fall.
And so woman is cursed in two ways.
Really one way, two aspects of it.
She is recursed with regard to womanhood, motherhood, and of course being
a wife, all tied together.
She is cursed in regard to being a mother by having childhood
Childbearing be painful, it is now a process that will come at
a cost.
That was not the case before the fall.
And so that strikes at the core of what woman is supposed
to be, which is wife and mother.
And so the desire Desire against your husband strikes at that other
aspect, the central aspect of being a wife, because first wife, then
mother. And so woman after the fall desires to rule.
She desires to usurp the office that rightly belongs to her husband.
She desires to become head.
And that is the case even for women who are attempting to
live as they ought and to behave as they ought, those women
will struggle against that sinful nature in themselves and will try to
suppress the desire to usurp the office of their husbands, to actually
submit to their husbands as they are commanded to do, and as
they would have been able to do without effort prior to the
fall. But today, of course, it requires effort on the part of
both the woman and the man.
And man is head, of course, has the higher duty.
He has to keep the women in his life under control.
That is part of what it means to be the head, that
is part of what it means to be a man.
And
as you mentioned there, I just want to reiterate this because it's
so important.
Man's work was cursed, his work is the ground, woman's work is
cursed, her work is childbearing and obviously child rearing, raising children.
Her work isn't cursed in the field because she shouldn't properly be
in the field.
The man should be providing.
Yeah.
There's that too.
Um it's just
that's what it there's two types of working the field that man
does. Woman is a field.
Indeed.
And that's
in uh to get back to what i said about feminism it
exists to upend all of this all of it first wave second
wave there's there's no version of the pro female machinations in the
secular or religious realm, they can be sanctified.
You cannot take scripture and take nineteenth and twentieth century vault values
and somehow legitimize them.
And that's something we'll get into in a little bit, but there's
the genealogy of these ideas that we need to take seriously because
people want to just grab whatever from the world, which is something
that we were actually accused of tonight by one of the pastors
on Twitter of just sort of borrowing cultural things and importing them
into Christianity.
Nothing to be further from the truth.
All we're doing is pointing to Scripture.
We're having to point to Scripture about the issue of girls teaching
and girls writing books and doing this other work that rightly belongs
to men exclusively, because as you said, even well meaning, well intentioned,
otherwise faithful Christian men and women have been so secularized that they
don't know they're being secular.
They don't know that they're being worldly when they white night for
girls who are doing things that they shouldn't be doing.
And when a man speaks up and says, hey, that's not your
job there's a dogpile against the man who's pointing to scripture in
defense of a girl who is usurping her father, her sa her
husband, and God himself.
And
it it just comes back to we live at the tail end
of generations of faithlessness, and that is a very hard thing to
undo. Because you have these presuppositions and these priors and Indoctrination, it's
not even right to call it education, over a course of decades,
almost a century, generations, where they have just wholesale adopted the secular
culture. And that comes out everywhere.
Just look at the you could look at the timeline and see
what happens.
Well, we have the 19th Amendment.
Now women are able to exercise political power, which of course is
an exercise of headship, and we can discuss whether it's right for
all men to exercise that even, of course it's not, but it
is absolutely wrong for women to exercise it.
And what does the church do in response?
Well now women can vote in our congregations.
It follows the culture, it doesn't follow scripture, it doesn't listen, because
we know what the church is.
The church is a harlot.
The church rebels against Christ in the same way Eve rebels against
Adam, in the same way woman rebels against man.
And Christ has to bring the church back to himself.
Man has to bring woman back to himself.
It is that constant fight against that fallen nature until things are
perfected in the new creation.
Absolutely. And I I think one of the problems that we struggle
with is that so many pastors and others want to define these
battles in terms of the quote unquote culture war as though there's
somehow this political sphere that exists sort of in the in the
periphery or in the distance, and people are importing political things into
the church and into the Christian life.
And it's sometimes it's causing harm and sometimes it's doing good.
And what happens is when
everyone has a tendency to think, well, I'm a Christian and I'm
not sorry for anything I'm doing right now.
Therefore everything I'm doing right now and everything I believe must be
Christian, 'cause I'm a Christian and I believe the Bible.
So it's not possible for me to be disobeying God in an
idolatrous and wicked way 'cause I love God.
And that is the exact opposite of what Christians should be thinking.
And frankly, it's what we're accused of.
We're accused of ignoring what scripture says and doing what we want.
And I personally find that laughable because if I were to invent
a religion, it would absolutely not be Christianity.
If I wanted to make up my own rules, there would be
a lot more of some things and a lot less of others.
It would not look like what we do.
This is not self-serving.
When I open scripture to any page, I see myself and my
own personal sins condemned.
And so it's no surprise to me when I examine my priors
after decades of believing, for example, things like libertarianism were forced We're
fine. I never examine those priors.
They were sold to me by Christians.
There were Christians.
You said, oh yeah, this is great.
This is fine.
it's political.
It's totally consistent with God's Word.
It's in this separate sphere, so have fun.
It's better than communism.
Like, well, I don't like communism, so libertarianism must be fine.
And it it and so when when when we when we escape
from examining our priors rigorously As they relate to scripture, you can
justify anything.
And the problem is that what we're facing now is that
proof texting is a terrible thing.
And it's something that's easy to do and it's hard to get
away from, but it's why I mentioned the genealogy of ideas earlier,
and also we we both talked about the timeline of these things.
There's a timeline of what women have done in the church, what
women have done in the home, what women have done in the
workplace. In every century where Christianity exists, you will see roles of
a certain nature.
Like I said at the outset, misses Robert Price was married to
mister Robert Price, or doctor Robert Price.
Her identity was as her husband's wife, first and foremost, to him,
he didn't call her misses Robert Price, because she belonged to him.
He called her in a much more personal way.
But strangers or those who were not intimately familiar as they were
should not do that.
And that was
the norm until
our grandparents, basically.
And what's happening everywhere, not this is this isn't a Lutheran problem,
this is a societal problem.
And it's the reason that the quote unquote based and trad crowd
constantly gets dragged by these pastors is that we're skipping right over
all the crap that they've been selling us and their grandparents have
been selling us and we're looking back to prior centuries And I
think that Lutherans are particularly vulnerable to rejecting appeals to history because
Rome did it to us.
When Luther popped up and's like, hey, I'm reading the Bible and
I'm not finding this stuff you're teaching, I think we're doing it
wrong. Their argument was well we've been doing this for forever.
The church has always believed this and so you're wrong.
And he said, But scripture says otherwise and then as others mentioned,
he and you know, he and the other Lutherans basically invented epis
patristrics to demonstrate that no, actually many in the church did believe
what we believe in the sixteenth century and today, and it was
in fact Rome who had departed from tradition.
So tradition appeals are not per se invalid, but they are
They can either be good or bad.
They always need to be examined in terms of their priors.
And the priors in Latin and Greek and these other languages were
that women had headship under men.
the woman was the body, the man was the head.
And so that's reflected even in the most basic linguistic elements.
It's reflected in in job roles of which the woman existed in
the home, to be a help meet to her husband in his
household for his his vocation, whatever it was, she was to act
in service to that in everything that she did.
Um a woman is given by the father to the To the
husband to be married.
And that is a transfer of title that no one wants to
deal with today.
But even the even the forms of the of the ceremony and
the ways that we describe things, at least until very recently, reflected
the past that the fact that the headship went from the father
to the husband.
And that is godly and that is proper.
And wherever you have girls acting in a way that is contrary
to the dominion of either a husband or a father, whatever they
do after that is inherently illegitimate because they're in a rebellion.
They're an open rebellion by virtue of their life.
And that's also the norm today.
You know, we see pastors worrying about, well, where do I send
my girl to college?
And we beg them, please, please don't, don't send them to college.
Your daughter will become a whore in college, even if she goes
to a Lutheran college.
And everyone's like, oh no, well, you know, the Christian colleges are
fine. It's the other it's the it's those pagans.
Like, no, it isn't.
It is rebellion for her to leave your household without being sent
to a man's house to be his husband.
And because we've spent so many decades and now centuries in engaging
in some of these activities that we think that since we're Christian
it must be fine when in fact we're Christian, we've been told
better when the world hasn't, and not only we disobeying God, but
we are setting the worst example for others.
And so when the based and trad crowd looks at what our
own churches are teaching today and they see it's inconsistent with scripture
and with the history of the Christian church, they just look elsewhere
because we don't look Christian to them and they're not wrong.
That's absolutely true.
And we have this serious problem where we actually have pagans who
are being more faithful
in some ways than Christians.
Of course they're wrong when it comes to the core theological questions.
They're wrong, obviously, on justification and soteriology.
They don't understand those things.
But when it comes to ontology, when it comes to creation, when
it comes to the nature of God, there are a lot of
pagans who understand it a lot better than most Christians, including many
pastors. And that is not
what we need to have happening.
We cannot permit that because as you mentioned, what does that do.
It drives all the young men out of the church, and if
you drive all the young men out of the church, you have
killed the church.
The church cannot exist with just women.
That's not a church.
The church has to have men.
Not least of all because only men can be pastors, but also
because men as head have to be the ones in charge, have
to be the ones who are teaching.
And some men
are simply resorting to permitting women to do these things because those
men are lazy, they are derelict in their duty.
They don't want to have to do the things they are supposed
to do, so they figure, well, women are good enough at it.
Or even if you find a woman who is better at it,
it is still the man's duty to do the task if it
falls within the things assigned to man.
But those men don't want to do it, because it's so much
easier if you just let women do it, and you don't have
to fight with them then.
But Woman is naturally rebellious.
You are going to have to train a woman.
You're going to have to train a wife.
You are going to have to deal with this constant desire she
has because she is a fallen creature, and the curse that she
has is rebellion against rightful authority, you have to deal with that,
and most men, today at least, don't want to have to deal
with it.
And you don't have to deal with it if you just let
her do whatever she wants.
But if you let her do whatever she wants, she will tear
down everything.
She will tear down society and the church, and we see that
happening.
And she will do that even when she is well meaning, because
the very act itself is usurpation.
It has nothing to do with good intentions.
It has nothing to do with how well she knows the catechism
or loves Jesus.
If she's doing these things, she is acting in an evil way,
per se, and that must be stopped per se.
And
that is one thing that so many pastors and others do not
understand, or at least refuse to accept.
You can do something
that for all appearances is a great thing, it is a good
thing, but because of who you are, because of the actor, because
of the nature, the status of the actor, the act itself is
evil. And pastors should understand that, as should every Christian, particularly Lutherans,
because our doctrine on this is exactly correct, is perfectly sound.
If you do good works, and you are not a Christian, they
are sin.
If you go out and feed the homeless, you provide them with
shelter, you clothe them, you visit people in prison, you do all
of these wonderful things, but you aren't a Christian.
They're filthy rags, it's sin.
None of it is good.
If you are a Christian, the sin that taints those things is
removed, is not counted against you because you are in Christ.
Again, headship, and because you are in Christ, your good works are
good. And so it is the status of the individual that matters,
and so woman cannot exercise headship, no matter how well she may
do it, you can have someone who is extremely good at the
task and is still prohibited from engaging in that task.
And we just look at it because we at least in the
U.S. we're largely coming at it with this capitalist mindset of well,
we should just pick the person who is best at the job,
and that person should do it.
And that's just not how it works, because there are certain people
who should or should not do the job.
And so, for instance, you should not have female soldiers.
Is there possibly a woman who is a better soldier than a
particular man?
Yes, that could happen.
Not often, most women are terrible soldiers compared to men, but you
could conceivably find one who is better.
But it would still be sin for her to be a soldier,
it would still be sin to permit it, because that is a
task that is restricted to men.
Women should not be engaged in it.
And so we have to understand ontology, the nature of things, and
of course duty.
Absolutely. So let's talk about teaching.
that's why we're here today.
Um
teaching is
it gets to the heart of the Lutheran conception of vocation.
Lutherans have this correct doctrine that of a vocation, uh the the
root their word is the same as vocal, uh means a calling,
uh in this case a calling from God.
It means that God both created you and then called you to
a purpose.
So there are vocations like father and husband.
Uh being a pastor is a vocation, being a mother is a
vocation. When God calls you into a vocation, there are certain duties
that go along with it, and you are to fulfill those duties
not because it's the job, but because it is your duty to
God. You have been entrusted with the care of whatever that duty
is, and it is obedience to God for a man or a
woman to faithfully execute those duties and in his or her vocation.
So
as we mentioned at the in the part about Genesis, there are
vocations that rightly strictly can only belong to men.
That would That which is work, that which is outside the household,
you will find that those both in scripture and elsewhere rightly belong
to men.
And a girl will not be called to them by God.
She may be thrust into them by evil circumstance, or she may
be usurping in her actions, but if she ends up wearing one
of those hats, it's because
she and others have disobeyed God.
And so the question that that arose on Twitter in the last
few weeks and and elsewhere is, is it teaching to write a
book? Is it teaching for a girl to write a book?
Is it pastoral teaching for a girl to write a theological book?
So the first thing we need to talk about is
Whether teaching is inherently done with authority.
And this is where the Lutheran doctrine of vocation completely falls apart.
I'm gonna say some things here that'll probably make a lot of
Lutherans very angry because they'll be uncomfor comfortable with the idea that
maybe the way we talk about things can lead to error.
But that's exactly what's out going on here.
And you've we've seen it left and right from especially pastors discussing
the intersection of the passage in First Timothy two and first Corinthians
fourteen regarding the proper role of women in the church.
I have uh the first Timothy two section pulled up here so
may as well read it so at least we remind people of
what it says.
Hopefully most of our audience will be familiar with it, but nevertheless.
I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting
holy hands without anger or quarrelling, likewise also that women should adorn
themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self control, not with braided
hair and gold or pearls or costly things costly attire, but with
what is proper for women who profess godliness with good works.
That a woman learn quietly in all submissiveness, I do not permit
a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, rather
she is to remain quiet for Adam was formed first, then Eve,
and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became
a transgressor, yet she will be saved through childbearing, if they continue
in faith
There
No, that's just I was going to point out there are a
lot of things in there that need to be addressed because there
are so many places that modern Christians and unfortunately many pastors go
off the rails.
One in particular I'll address before we move on to the next
part of this.
Nowhere in there does it say this is restricted to the church.
Nothing in there says it's restricted to the church.
In fact, what does it say?
I desire then that in every place it doesn't say in every
church, just in the church, in houses of worship, in every Christian
home. No, it says every place.
These are instructions for life, and the appeal is to the order
of creation, to the nature of men and women.
It is not simply a set of rules for how we conduct
things in the church.
This is a statement about the reality of the world in which
we live, the reality of man and woman, and just how things
should be conducted
If we are to be Christians in our lives and not just
for an hour on Sunday.
Absolutely. if you were to
look at that list of things that God commands through Paul's writing,
and limit it to one hour during the divine service on Sunday,
you would create hell on earth.
if we're going to be given a world where all these things
are permissible for everyone, except when they're in church, you have destroyed
civilization. And frankly, we're not far from it.
When you when you go through that list of things, as you
said, they're all happening.
They're happening outside of church.
And then of course they're being brought into church because when Christians
fail to listen to God, when Christian Christians are ashamed of what
God has said and they backpedal and they circumscribe and they narrow
down God's law until it's there's so little of it left that
pretty much anyone can buy into it.
Satan is one.
And that is what we are battling today.
And the reason that I said that the Lutheran doctrine of vocation
falls apart is for that very reason.
Is it because Timothy Timothy is a pastoral epistle, and around that
Paul is describing things within the church, Christians read that and say,
well, this can only apply to the church because I don't want
to deal with the implications of it not applying to the church.
If it if it applies to the grocery store, if it applies
to the school, if it applies to the government, then we're in
trouble. I'm in trouble because I am participating in sin and I
know that I am free from sin.
that's kind of where we are, and it's it's simply false.
Um it's interesting to note that uh grammatically
the Holy Spirit says, Lit a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness,
I I do not a woman permit a woman to teach or
to exercise authority.
So teaching is separate from exercising authority because there are kinds of
exercising authority that are not teaching, but it is also connected in
the same sentence because teaching is a form of the exercise of
authority. And that's been one of the roots of the argument online
that I want to address now.
When a Lutheran thinks
about authority, we think about it in terms of vocation.
So we think father, we think husband, we think teacher in a
classroom, or a pastor over his flock, or a prince over his
dominion. And those are all vocations where God has called a particular
person, a particular man, to a place, has given him a domain,
has given him people under his care and rebellion against that authority
is sin all by itself.
If you disobey your father and he is not doing something that
is if assuming that he is not directly contravening God, your disobedience
to your father is disobedience to God because of his authority as
your father.
So when Lutherans think about vocation, they think that well, all authority
stems from and flows from vocation.
And that's simply not true because there are two kinds of authority.
And this is something that we all understand naturally and I'll give
you the example of this very podcast.
As Cory and I are speaking to you, we are teaching.
We are exercising authority.
How so?
Cause I have the microphone and you have the speakers.
I am actively speaking and you are passively listening.
I am giving and you are receiving.
That is inherently authority per se just by virtually virtue of the
structure of the thing.
Now, that is not to suggest that if you disagree with me,
you're you're sinning, you're transgressing against God, because this is the type
of authority where although it is inherent in the act, it does
not compel submission except through the veracity of its claims.
So if I sit here and talk and I cite Scripture and
you agree with what I say about Scripture, you're doing that because
the Holy Spirit, acting in you, hears the voice of God in
the way I'm framing something Thing.
Not that I'm a prophet, not that I'm speaking as God, but
that I'm saying what God says and God within you hears it
and says, Yes, I believe that.
That's between you and God.
If you agree with that, you're not submitting to me.
You're submitting to God.
And if you disagree with it, if I'm wrong, then you're just
disagreeing with me.
If I'm right, you're disagreeing with me and God, but your only
sin would be against God because the authority of my speech does
not extend to condemnation of someone who doesn't like it.
Um there and there are lots of examples of this in the
world. You know, if you go to a lecture, the whoever the
lecturer is is standing.
He's typically standing behind a podium.
It's raised.
You are seated.
You are lower than him.
Every physical element of the process of teaching
Reinforces the authority of the speaker and the submission of the listener.
Now, in the case of teaching, there are also actually two different
kinds of teaching.
I had mentioned that teacher is a vocation.
It is a vocation in the realm where a student goes to
a classroom, the teacher takes attendance.
In that case, the student has been assigned to that teacher by
the school system, by the parents, whatever.
There is a one-to-many relationship of the teacher to the students, but
there is a relationship of authority and accountability because the teacher has
a responsibility for the performance of the students.
And that is unlike a lecture.
That is unlike a podcast.
And that is unlike a book, where there is also a one-to-many
relationship, but the many are typically anonymous.
The many there's no accountability from the one to God to make
sure that the many hew to whatever has been said.
So the authority is very limited, but nevertheless it is authority.
For a man to stand up and pronounce something is is done
as an act of authority.
Now it may be usurpation depending on vocation.
There may be cases where, you know, for example, in the middle
of a church service where the pastor is speaking and he's preaching,
if some man stands up in the middle of the service the
service and starts arguing with him.
He's the the man is acting with authority, but it's evil.
It's a bad type of of usurpation because you're usurping that which
the pastor is rightly doing, even if the pastor's wrong.
I mean there'd be there are very limited circumstances where it would
ever be permissible to do that.
I wouldn't say that it should never be done, but it should
be so stroke store so extraordinary that you should probably never hear
about
it.
One would hope.
Basically it would have to be outright heresy.
Yeah. And you know that that does occur, but you know, God
dwelling it won't happen in our churches at least for at least
for a while.
So the the reason for for pointing out that there are two
different kinds of authority in teaching is to get to the heart
of what has been discussed online about girls writing books and girls
writing theology books, because that's exactly what's happening in the Missouri Synod
today and has been going on for quite some time.
Concordia Publishing House CPH is an arm of the Missouri Synod.
It is a wholly captive business that belongs to the corporation of
the LCMS.
It's a business entity.
And this is a game that gets played whenever these questions come
up. On one hand, everything that CPH publishes must go through doctrinal
review. Because CPH is the church for the purposes of publishing things
that should be sound doctrine.
But when men stand up and say, hey, but we have girls
teaching, suddenly the church says, hey, you know, it's just a publishing,
like it's like print on demand.
You know, they they can say what they say and it's not
the church saying it and you just need to settle down and
quit hating women.
Um which is not what anyone has said at any point.
What has been said is that there again there's several tiers of
this question.
Is the publishing house that belongs to a church church teaching?
Now the Missouri Senate plays lots of games I don't even want
to get into because I just find them disgusting, but the answer
is yes or no, depending on how you want to interpret it.
It's all weaseling.
The more basic question, which is what we want to talk about,
is whether publishing a book, period, is teaching.
And again, first Timothy says that teaching is exercising of authority.
And that is the point that I'm trying to make.
And when the when the pastors say, well, no, it can't be
not all teaching can be with authority because it doesn't touch on
the pastoral office.
The point that we're trying to make is it doesn't matter because
that section of first Timothy is not about the pastoral office.
It is not about what pastors do in the pulpit versus what
the laity are permitted to do, whether male or female.
The question is much more fundamental, and this is where Lutherans have
gotten, we just become retarded.
We don't understand these ontological questions of what is the root of
the authority to do this, and thank God for telling us right
in the text that the order of creation is the revealed nature
of the difference.
Eve was deceived.
Now that's that's profound if you're talking about girls publishing theological books.
God said it wasn't Adam who was tricked by Satan, it was
the girl who was tricked by Satan.
And that is the reason why girls can't teach.
And for pastors to stand up and say, well that just means
in church, or that just means, you know, maybe not theological books
or certain kinds of theological books, but maybe not the really hardcore
ones. It's nonsense.
If a girl is teaching and she is the one who was
deceived by Satan, she is usurping the created order by opening her
mouth. And this is where the egalitarian thing really just causes everyone
to have a meltdown.
The bottom line is very simple.
If you are a girl, your will should be expressed through your
father or through your husband.
You should not have a public will expressed in any other way.
That isn't headship.
As Corey talked about, you know, the foot doesn't decide where to
go, the foot doesn't talk.
The mouth is on the head.
The head speaks.
And that's the reason that it's Mrs.
Roger. Robert Price and not whatever her name was.
I don't even have to know her name.
I know she was Mrs.
Robert Price.
She was his wife.
There's not a permissible circumstance under which
a woman has her views v expressed in public.
And that was the root of the nineteenth Amendment.
It's the root of all of this.
It's the root of the feminist attack on the created order for
the last hundred and however many years is to say, you know
what? Girls, you know, it's girl power.
Girls are gonna express themselves.
They're going to make their mark.
They're going to do those things which they are capable of doing.
And that's another part of the argument is that as as Corey
mentioned, you know, you said that it's not about whether or not
they are good at it.
And honestly, I think one of the reasons that a lot of
these pastors are so willing to embrace all these girls doing stuff
in their churches, is that inside they know that they should never
have been ordained.
I think they know that they're not competent.
And when they see the teaching abilities of some of the girls
in their in their They're under their care, under their superior rule,
they're ashamed because they can't do as well as the girls under
them. And rather than trying to be by their pastors, or maybe
stepping down and saying, you know what, I'm not fit for this
office. Instead, they choose to usurp God's order by elevating girls to
do the job that God has tasked them with doing.
There's that, and there is also they know that if they That
if they promote women, or at least they believe that if they
promote women, and today's society it's true, that that will insulate them
from criticism from others because look at how progressive I'm being, and
I am including women, and I'm doing all these things that the
culture the culture loves, which that should set off alarm bells for
any Christian, but they do that because then they're insulated from being
criticized by other men.
And if they were instead selecting competent men in their congregations, which
unless they've absolutely failed as a pastor, they should have those in
their churches, because they don't necessarily want to select the men because
that's competition, which is not how a man would actually see it.
Yes, competition is healthy and it's a good thing, but ultimately I'm
not trying to destroy you if I'm teaching and I'm better at
teaching a particular subject.
It's simply a recognition that God has given me certain abilities, God
has given you certain abilities, and they should be used to serve
the church.
And we tr well, we don't, but modern Christians try to weasel
around
everything in Scripture.
Lutherans do this with some things.
Thankfully we do not do it when it comes to justification, when
it comes to sanctification, when it comes to these core issues
that we got absolutely right five hundred years ago, and we have
held correctly for five hundred years, which thanks be to God that
we have those.
But that doesn't excuse us when it comes to all these other
issues, that if we don't get them wrong, we certainly don't get
them right, and the CTCR and those who have crafted some of
the documents made in the sixties definitely got them wrong.
And so we have the injunctions in First Timothy that relate to
creation, that relate to things how they are supposed to be in
a Christian society, what Christians should attempt to create wherever they live.
Well we also have first Corinthians, which addresses the church explicitly, so
we have society generally and the church explicitly.
Well what does First Corinthians say to women?
As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep
silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but
should be in submission as the law also says.
If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their
husbands at home, for it is shameful for a woman to speak
in church.
This could not possibly be more clear.
It says that women are s to be silent in the churches.
It does not say that women are supposed to speak only if
the pastor permits it or the pastor wants to have women lectors
or anything like that.
No, women are to be silent in the church.
Women should not be heard in the church.
And yes, that applies to the Bible study as well as to
the service.
As much as we'd like to think that, oh well, it's just
no, don't weasel out of it by saying it's just the service.
Where does it say just during the liturgy?
Where does it say just during the service of the sacrament?
Where does it say just during the service of the Word?
It doesn't say that anywhere, because it says women are to be
silent in the churches, period.
No exceptions.
And now, of course, you'll have those who try to wiggle out
of it by saying, Well a woman's not speaking if she writes
a book.
Yes, she is.
If I write something, and someone else reads it, I'm speaking in
his head.
That's what that is.
So if I write a book and it is then used by
a pastor to teach his sheep, I am teaching his sheep.
I am exercising authority, and so if a woman writes a book
and the pastor uses that in church, that woman is exercising authority
over those sheep and that pastor is facilitating it.
So he is now participating in her sin, and making it worse,
because of his office, and what he should be doing, and he
as a rightful head is going to be held to a higher
standard. And pastors should tremble at the fact that yes, you have
opted for this for the stricter judgment.
Maybe worry about that a little more.
And
that's a vital point is that this podcast is us speaking with
authority. We may be completely wrong, that doesn't mean we're not speaking
authority aut Authoritatively, it means that we're sinning if we're in error
because we're saying things that are lies.
The example you gave of these pastors who say that they're excited
to take these books published by girls and teach them in their
congregations
takes the other kind of authority and directly applies it.
Because the crucial difference between you and I and a pastor is
that we don't have a caller.
When we speak, we do not bind consciences.
And we see this every day.
Whenever we've said anything online for years, we get dogpiled by people
who'd never give us the best construction We're told that we're not
brothers in Christ.
We're told that we're evil.
We're told every malign thing possible has been said about us directly
for citing scripture.
And frankly, that's okay.
The point is that when I speak, when you speak, we don't
bind anyone's conscience unless the Holy Spirit binds their conscience.
Because although speaking has authority inherent to itself, it is the it
that ends the moment that the person is done listening or reading,
because they go and process it and they decide am I going
to believe this or not?
That's not the case when a pastor speaks.
And that's not the case when a pastor sanctifies teaching that's usurping
the order of creation by a girl doing it.
When he does it, a pastor binds consciences.
Anything a pastor says, whether he's wearing his collar or not, says
this is what God says.
It's implicit.
And a lot of these guys are afraid of that because they
know that the strict for judgment awaits.
And so they just think, well, either, you know, it's on Twitter,
so it's not really a big deal, or I'm not gonna say
what I think because I don't want to get in trouble or
cause a cause a kerfuffle.
When these pastors sanctify usurpation of God's order, they are sinning.
They're sinning against their flock.
They are sinning against God.
They are acting in an idolatrous way in an evil way.
Um I think as we're getting to the end of our time
in this first episode, I want to point out that part of
the reason that we chose the name Stone Choir is from the
verse where Jesus describes how this very stones would cry out when
the Pharisees implored him to silence his followers and The Pharisees were
tired of Jesus' followers praising him and giving adoration to his word.
And Jesus, understanding the vocation of a follower better than any man
could, under also understands creation itself.
And Jesus told the Pharisees, if I tell my people to stop
confessing me and to stop praising me, it will be creation itself.
It will be a stone whose vocation is to just sit there
silently and be a stone and do nothing, they would literally cry
out, and that wasn't figurative, that wasn't metaphor any more than Balam's
donkey speaking to warn him was true.
The stones would literally cry out if every man went silent.
So the reason that we chose that name for this podcast is
that you and I are laymen.
We have no vocation to speak apart from that vocation of Christian
Christian of Christian man uh of Christian man who has been given
the aptitude and the discernment to read these things and to understand
them and to explain them in a way that is accessible to
any m many people and for all the pastors who accuse us
of being cowards and being trolls and ogres and all sorts of
other nonsense, the bottom line is this what we are saying is
what scripture is saying.
And I will tell Hans and all the other guys that the
reason that that conversation started a few weeks ago was downstream from
conversations that you and I have had.
And our churches are full filled with men who agree with you
and agree with me, Corey.
And we're not usurping.
In our own congregations, we don't pick fights.
We don't cause trouble.
What we do is we step forward.
So that in all these cases where we see girls usurping, whether
they deliberately usurp or not, when they're acting as ushers and lectors
and all these other things, the men who agree with us, rather
than arguing with those girls, they're stepping forward in the church.
We are doing those things that men have advocated.
And that's fundamentally the root of all of this.
From start to finish, the only reason that a girl would ever
write a book or try to be an elder or a lector
or any of the other things that goes on is if a
man has failed to do so.
And by our publishing house, publishing all these books by girls, what
the LCMS is saying is that there are no pastors to say
these things.
There are no pastors to teach.
We need girls to teach our theology now.
We need girls to teach anything because there are no men to
do it.
And that's simply not the case.
This God has blessed Lutheranism and has blessed Christianity outside Lutheranism with
faithful Christians who hear his word and obey it, even in the
face of the most vicious and murderous slander.
And we are speaking out, we started this podcast and we will
continue to speak as long as pastors are unfaithful.
As long as we are the only voices who are saying these
things that need to be said, we will be here saying them.
It was hilarious that earlier this evening Hans Feeney posted that thread
to where he basically said, Yeah, for fifty years, all these problems
have been going on in the church and no one said anything
until these anonymous cowards started this fight.
But they have a good point.
Well that's exactly that's exactly why a lot of guys are anonymous.
And that's why Corey and I are never going to pursue the
pastoral office.
Despite the fact that virtually every pastor both of us have ever
talked to has in our first conversation with them, I've had pastors
interrupt me after fifteen minutes saying, You should go to seminary.
That's the kind of men that we are in person.
And all these guys that think that we're stupid or we're evil
or we're up to no good, not only are they being uncharitable
and slanderous, but they're also just wrong.
Um we will re remain laymen because laymen do not have a
vocation to a congregation.
I I think one of the the greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses
of the Missouri Synod is our congregational polity means that every pastor
can just be head down with his own sheep and pretending these
other things are not happening.
But that's not the way the world works.
especially when you have the internet and you have publishing houses and
you have catalogs where error in any one place will rapidly propagate
everywhere. And for every pastor that wants to pretend this stuff is
not happening, his congregation is full of people who are lapping it
up a hundred and sixty seven hours a week.
And that one hour a week that he's preaching faithfully isn't gonna
cut it when Satan is catechizing them for the other hundred and
sixty seven hours.
So as much as we can do anything, we are going to
speak faithfully and may God help us to reach those who are
willing to listen.
I
want to add a little bit of emphasis to the point that
we both made about what is actually happening when a pastor or
another teacher in the church uses materials written by a woman?
And of course, that is the pastor permitting that woman to exercise
authority through him.
But it's worse than that.
And the reason it's worse than that is because
what is a pastor actually doing?
What is a pastor supposed to be doing?
A pastor speaks in the stead of Christ.
When a pastor is up there speaking, he is speaking with the
voice of God.
At the very least, he is supposed to be speaking with the
voice of God.
So if a pastor is up there teaching and he is using
materials produced by a girl, he is saying that a girl can
speak with the voice of God.
And that is simply not true.
Men speak for God.
God chose men to speak for him.
God made men to speak for him.
He did not make girls to do that.
Yes, in public, of course.
A woman can teach her children at home.
Absolutely. She should do that.
That is one of her duties.
We recognize that.
Yep. Because that is her sphere.
And a mother can rightly exercise a sort of headship over her
children, just as children can exercise a sort of headship over their
pets. There are different levels to the hierarchy, but when it comes
to speaking in public, a woman cannot speak with the voice of
God in public in that way.
That is something that is restricted to men.
And so the pastor is misrepresenting God ultimately is what he is
doing. And that is a grievous sin, and that should absolutely terrify
these men when they stand up and defend the indefensible.
And I just have to say it is funny that they always
go after the anonymity thing as if I've ever been anonymous.
Yeah, you're they're just subtle with your name
and face
everywhere. I am very subtle about it, yes.
They're just absolute hypocrites and and they know it.
They're just insufferable hypocrites.
To preemptively address one of the criticisms of the last point you
m the argument has been made against the position that that has
been advanced against disc against girls publishing books.
Well what about the grocery store?
the distinction in teaching is public.
It is the one to many relationship.
Every Christian, male or female, has a duty at all times.
Young or old.
You're five-year-old, whether it's a boy or a girl, has a duty
to share his or her faith in Christ with anyone who will
listen. But those are one-to-one relationships.
They're interpersonal.
If you're in the grocery store and you're a mother and you
have an opportunity to share the gospel, you are commanded to do
that by God.
We are not speaking against that.
Because although that is a public place for legal purposes, that is
not public preaching or teaching.
When a woman shares her faith in Christ, she's sharing what she
knows, hopefully faithfully, but that conversation should always end with let me
introduce you to my pastor.
And that's the part that's missing from this.
and that's and that is where we too I like you and
I between us have probably put I I know I personally put
at least a hundred souls in Lutheran churches.
And I'm not taking credit like I did that.
The fact that I have represented myself as a Lutheran online has
caused well over a hundred men, women and children to join Lutheran
congregations. And not once have I ever said, join the church of
woe. What I have said is let me help you find a
faithful pastor under whose care you and supervision you will be, and
then go and be the last be the best layman that you
can be in that congregation, where you will, you know, hopefully someday
serve as an elder, where you can volunteer, where you can set
a good example, where you can learn to catechize your own family
faithfully So we are not usurpers of the church.
We are attempting to enable the church in a way that is
being battled by the very men who are sworn to God not
to do so.
And I I pray that we can once again be on the
same side because
we ultimately want everyone to hear the gospel.
And as I mentioned earlier, a lot of the men that that
Corey and I have reached Reach through the work that we have
done have been men, some of them were baptized, Israel's only there
are several who've been baptized and catechized just in the last year
because of me posting the very things that pastors say I'm going
to go to hell for.
And And now these men are attending every Sunday.
They are excited uh about watching the Fort Wayne daily stream of
services. They're reading their Bibles voraciously.
They are working with their pastors.
If that is the fruit of an evil tree, then I don't
know what a good tree is supposed to bo look like.
Yeah, I mean it it's just ultimately we actually intend all of
this for the good.
And
there are those who those there are those who believe that we
don't. And if they're going to believe that, then they can go
ahead and believe that.
But nothing we have said, nothing we have posted, nothing we've written,
would give any indication that we desire anything other than what we
have stated.
We want to get men back into the churches.
And men are not going to come back into the churches as
long as they are just hearing a watered-down 20-year-old version of what
the culture tells them every day echoed from the pulpits.
Because if we have pastors like that, why on earth would I
go to church?
It makes so much more sense to wake up late and go
have brunch instead of going to a church where I'm just going
to hear the same nonsense the culture tells me every single day.
So instead, we want pastors to be faithful and actually teach what
Christianity is not this watered down culturally sensitive version of Christianity
that is not.
As this podcast goes along, I hope that um I hope that
we'll reach the right people.
And as we do this, we're gonna name names.
We're gonna go after people by name for what they've said in
public. And it is never done with malicious intent.
It is not with the intent of destruction.
It is done with the attempt of the intent of calling to
repentance. Because as long as these errors persist
men will be chased away.
And one of the things that we have seen repeatedly is that
there are a lot of pastors that think it's hilarious for the
type of men who have come into their very own churches because
of the things that we have said over the past few years,
pastors want those guys to go to hell.
They don't want them in their pulp in their in their pews.
And
I the
you could not find a more different spirit dichotomy than what we
see with the response to men who've hold opinions that are contrary
to the world and in some cases as they are learning about
Christianity are contrary to Christianity.
they're ignorant.
they've been raised outside the church by an evil world.
We are trying to connect them with pastors who will be faithful
to the teachings of God.
And it's astonishing and depressing to me how difficult that is.
But But the reason that we are speaking again it's not it's
not to condemn just for the sake of condemnation.
It is because I want there to still be Lutheran churches in
twenty years for us and for all of these people who are
trying to come to God
to find and to find faithful preaching.
And on the project on the trajectory that we're on today, that's
not going to be the case.
There will not be a Christian church in 20 years.
And I know the pastors think that's not the case because of
you know the gates of hell not prevailing and all that stuff.
Yes, that's true.
Christianity will always be preserved, but God also promised there would be
a remnant and God promised there would be a great apostasy, and
God promised that many of those who cry out, Lord, Lord, do
we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons?
God will say to them, You workers of lawlessness, I never knew
you We don't want that to happen to the pastors who hate
us. We want them to repent and we want the people who
want to come to our churches to find churches that are faithful
to God so that we can all meet in heaven and not
have any of these problems and we can live the perfect lives
that God created us to live in the first place.
I think we can sum up in large part, in addition to
the stones crying out, we can sum up the purpose of this
podcast with Ezekiel thirty three.
So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the
house of Israel.
Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them
warning from me.
If I say to the wicked, O wicked one, you shall surely
die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn
from his way.
That wicked person shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I
will require at your hand.
But if you warn the wicked to turn away from his way,
and he does not turn from his way, that person shall die
in his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul.
And that's what it comes down to.
We don't have a choice.
If Christ's disciples, his followers, had been silent, the stones would have
cried out, the stones would not have had a choice.
The stones would have to have cried out.
It would have been their duty to cry out.
Well it's our duty to address these things, because as was stated
previously, God has given us the ability to see them and the
ability to address them.
And so we do not have a choice.
This isn't a a project because it's necessarily enjoyable or fun.
This is something that has to be done.
Because there is a duty to do it, and because the consequences
of not doing it are unthinkable.
Amen.