WEBVTT 00:00:01.040 --> 00:00:04.160 It is the 21st of August 2026. 00:00:04.160 --> 00:00:05.360 I am Corey J. 00:00:05.360 --> 00:00:07.920 Mahler, and this is at any cost. 00:00:07.920 --> 00:00:11.920 This is episode 39, a QA episode. 00:00:11.920 --> 00:00:15.600 And I do not believe that I have any housekeeping, so I 00:00:15.600 --> 00:00:20.400 can get right into the questions this evening. 00:00:20.400 --> 00:00:23.840 All the levels look good on my side, I will just check 00:00:25.200 --> 00:00:29.040 very quickly before I actually get into the questions that YouTube has 00:00:29.040 --> 00:00:32.880 not disabled the comments like it did two weeks ago, which was 00:00:33.360 --> 00:00:38.800 a lovely feature on their part. 00:00:38.800 --> 00:00:42.720 Okay, it looks like comments should be working on YouTube and everywhere 00:00:42.720 --> 00:00:45.360 else, so I don't know how you'd let me know, but try 00:00:45.360 --> 00:00:47.280 to let me know in the chat if they're not. 00:00:47.280 --> 00:00:52.480 At any rate, the first question I see the question about the 00:00:52.480 --> 00:00:57.200 intro and outro music for Lutheran lectionary recordings. 00:00:57.200 --> 00:00:59.120 I don't remember off the top of my head, so I'll have 00:00:59.120 --> 00:01:00.000 to check that one. 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:02.880 I will reply to that one after the show. 00:01:02.880 --> 00:01:07.200 But the first question for the actual stream is one that has 00:01:07.200 --> 00:01:11.200 been pending for a little while and I've been putting it off 00:01:11.280 --> 00:01:14.320 because it's going to take a little longer to address, but it 00:01:14.320 --> 00:01:17.200 is very important considering the current state of things. 00:01:17.200 --> 00:01:20.640 And the question was originally about let me see if I can 00:01:20.640 --> 00:01:23.440 find the actual wording here. 00:01:23.440 --> 00:01:24.640 Question one. 00:01:24.640 --> 00:01:27.920 What role did the opium wars play in relations between the West 00:01:28.080 --> 00:01:32.800 and China China and how morally legitimate was the British involvement in 00:01:32.800 --> 00:01:38.160 them. I'm actually going to expand this one because I I think 00:01:38.160 --> 00:01:42.560 it's a fair expansion, first, and second, it's not just the Opium 00:01:42.560 --> 00:01:45.600 Wars. You have to understand the Opium Wars and the Century of 00:01:45.600 --> 00:01:47.840 Humiliation, which is what they call it. 00:01:47.840 --> 00:01:50.800 So that kind of tells you some stuff to start off. 00:01:50.800 --> 00:01:55.600 But you have to understand that whole time period and the interaction 00:01:55.600 --> 00:02:00.800 of various players in order to understand the modern Chinese mindset with 00:02:00.800 --> 00:02:05.280 regard to the West and there's a caveat, there's an asterisk there 00:02:05.280 --> 00:02:08.400 next to West, and I'll get into that as well So the 00:02:08.400 --> 00:02:12.160 major events will be the First Opium War, the Second Opium War, 00:02:12.160 --> 00:02:17.440 and then the Century of Humiliation, which basically spans those. 00:02:17.440 --> 00:02:21.120 So the Century of Humiliation is 1840 to 1949. 00:02:21.120 --> 00:02:25.040 The first Opium War is nine is eighteen thirty nine to eighteen 00:02:25.040 --> 00:02:28.160 forty two, and the second opium war is eighteen fifty six to 00:02:28.160 --> 00:02:30.640 eighteen sixty. 00:02:30.640 --> 00:02:30.960 And 00:02:32.400 --> 00:02:36.720 the historical background basically you have to start by understanding, of course, 00:02:36.720 --> 00:02:41.760 the period of colonization, the spread particularly of the British Empire and 00:02:41.760 --> 00:02:46.240 its trade, and at this point, the British own India. 00:02:46.240 --> 00:02:51.440 That's also important because obviously opium partly grown in India, particularly opium 00:02:51.440 --> 00:02:54.240 that would wind up in Britain. 00:02:54.240 --> 00:02:58.240 But the way that this starts off is you have a huge 00:02:58.240 --> 00:03:04.080 demand in Britain and in the British Empire generally, for tea, for 00:03:04.080 --> 00:03:06.480 porcelain, and for silk. 00:03:06.480 --> 00:03:11.760 Well, tea, porcelain, and silk are largely Chinese products. 00:03:11.760 --> 00:03:14.960 And so what happens, because this is also an era in which 00:03:15.360 --> 00:03:18.800 you're using gold and silver, right, as your currency. 00:03:18.800 --> 00:03:22.160 And so most of this trade was denominated in silver, so you 00:03:22.160 --> 00:03:27.440 had huge outflows of silver from the British Empire into China. 00:03:27.440 --> 00:03:31.920 The British obviously don't like this because in a time of hard 00:03:31.920 --> 00:03:35.280 currency, how much currency you have is actually physically limited. 00:03:35.280 --> 00:03:39.600 They can't do anything really to generate more except physically mine it 00:03:39.600 --> 00:03:41.680 somewhere and turn it into currency. 00:03:41.680 --> 00:03:44.080 So this is a problem for the British. 00:03:44.080 --> 00:03:51.040 The British decide to solve this by taking Indian, largely Indian opium, 00:03:51.040 --> 00:03:52.960 and shipping it into China. 00:03:53.200 --> 00:03:57.520 What actually happened was it was so successful that the outflow of 00:03:57.520 --> 00:04:01.920 silver reversed, and so you actually had a positive inflow for the 00:04:01.920 --> 00:04:05.200 British and a negative outflow from the Chinese. 00:04:05.360 --> 00:04:09.200 Now the Chinese of course objected for a number of reasons here. 00:04:09.200 --> 00:04:11.360 Not just because they were losing all their silver. 00:04:11.360 --> 00:04:13.200 That was a huge part of it. 00:04:13.200 --> 00:04:18.080 A lot of this gets cast into moral and other terms, but 00:04:18.080 --> 00:04:19.840 at the end of the day, a lot of it was about 00:04:20.880 --> 00:04:22.320 really two things. 00:04:22.320 --> 00:04:26.720 Sovereignty, which in the Asian sense also includes not losing face, and 00:04:26.720 --> 00:04:29.120 money. Hard currency. 00:04:29.120 --> 00:04:33.600 But at any rate, a Chinese commissioner, my Chinese is not good, 00:04:33.600 --> 00:04:36.160 so if I mispronounce some names, it's just what it is. 00:04:36.160 --> 00:04:38.720 My Chinese isn't I have very limited Chinese. 00:04:38.720 --> 00:04:40.880 So Lin Zeksu objected to this. 00:04:40.880 --> 00:04:44.560 He destroyed about twenty thousand chests of opium. 00:04:44.560 --> 00:04:45.600 This is a lot of money. 00:04:45.600 --> 00:04:47.680 This is a huge amount of opium. 00:04:47.680 --> 00:04:52.480 And technically speaking, under international law, that is an act of war. 00:04:52.480 --> 00:04:55.280 So the British were not entirely out of line in doing what 00:04:55.280 --> 00:04:57.520 they did, which was declare war. 00:04:57.520 --> 00:05:00.640 This was the start of the first opium War. 00:05:00.640 --> 00:05:06.240 The British won decisively, as is the case for basically every single 00:05:06.240 --> 00:05:11.120 conflict up until that nineteen forty nine demarcation of the end of 00:05:11.120 --> 00:05:16.080 the century of humiliation, basically the Western powers just trounced China in 00:05:16.080 --> 00:05:17.760 every single engagement. 00:05:17.760 --> 00:05:21.680 This leads to the Treaty of Nanjing, which is what ceded Hong 00:05:21.680 --> 00:05:25.040 Kong, so you can see how that set up what has happened 00:05:25.040 --> 00:05:26.400 in recent years. 00:05:26.400 --> 00:05:30.960 That was in perpetuity, and then it opened five treaty ports. 00:05:30.960 --> 00:05:35.280 These were ports where Western powers this eventually expanded to additional nations, 00:05:35.280 --> 00:05:36.320 not just the British. 00:05:36.320 --> 00:05:40.320 But this was basically free trade ports where the Western powers could 00:05:40.320 --> 00:05:45.200 trade with China on favorable terms, in fact on most favored nation's 00:05:45.120 --> 00:05:47.040 status, which is a technical sense. 00:05:47.040 --> 00:05:50.880 It just means that the nation that has MFN status is treated 00:05:51.680 --> 00:05:56.000 at least as well as whichever nation is treated best. 00:05:56.000 --> 00:05:57.920 This crops up all the time in it. 00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:00.720 This is still a thing in modern international law. 00:06:00.720 --> 00:06:04.160 China also had to pay a large indemnity for the for the 00:06:04.160 --> 00:06:09.360 war, for the conflict, and British and other European citizens were granted 00:06:09.360 --> 00:06:14.240 what is called extraterritoriality, which means they're not subject to the law 00:06:14.240 --> 00:06:17.600 of the nation in which they're residing, in this case China, but 00:06:17.600 --> 00:06:19.680 to the laws of their home nation. 00:06:19.680 --> 00:06:23.760 So British subjects could only be subjected to criminal penalties, whatever it 00:06:23.760 --> 00:06:28.000 happened to be, under British law, not under Chinese law. 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:31.200 This of course did not make the Chinese happy, and then we 00:06:31.200 --> 00:06:34.480 have the second opium war, which starts with the Brit the Chinese 00:06:34.480 --> 00:06:38.000 doing a similar thing, this time they seize a vessel that is 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:42.320 shipping opium, arrests the Chinese crew and some British, and refuse to 00:06:42.320 --> 00:06:46.560 return all of it, and they eventually return some but not all 00:06:46.560 --> 00:06:47.200 of it. 00:06:47.200 --> 00:06:50.720 This leads to the second Opium War. 00:06:50.880 --> 00:06:55.920 This is the Cassus Belly, the sort of spark that starts it. 00:06:55.920 --> 00:06:58.080 Of course China loses again. 00:06:58.080 --> 00:07:02.800 You have additional territory that is ceded, you have various other treaty 00:07:02.800 --> 00:07:07.200 provisions similar to the first one, one of which is an imposition 00:07:07.200 --> 00:07:07.520 of 00:07:08.480 --> 00:07:13.520 not the modern sort of freedom of religion, but something akin to 00:07:13.520 --> 00:07:16.080 it in the same sort of family. 00:07:16.080 --> 00:07:21.440 Christians and others were allowed to evangelize And to practice their faith, 00:07:21.440 --> 00:07:25.840 which is something that had been suppressed here and there, not necessarily 00:07:25.840 --> 00:07:28.800 consistently, but had been suppressed by the Chinese. 00:07:28.800 --> 00:07:33.120 This plays into something later that's important, that's why it's noted here. 00:07:33.120 --> 00:07:36.400 Instead of all the provisions of the treaty, that one's important to 00:07:36.400 --> 00:07:37.920 bear in mind. 00:07:37.920 --> 00:07:43.040 So, subsequent to this, you have essentially what is the equivalent in 00:07:43.040 --> 00:07:45.280 Asia of the rush for Africa. 00:07:45.280 --> 00:07:48.800 You have the carving out of spheres of influence by various European 00:07:48.800 --> 00:07:54.080 powers, really about six or eight main players, and largely building railroads, 00:07:54.080 --> 00:07:57.840 infrastructure in their spheres of influence over which they exercise not just 00:07:57.840 --> 00:07:59.600 control but ownership. 00:07:59.600 --> 00:08:02.880 Child China, of course, objects to this. 00:08:02.880 --> 00:08:05.920 This is part of what leads to what is called the Boxer 00:08:05.920 --> 00:08:11.840 Rebellion. This is a major rebellion of the Chinese, both against some 00:08:11.840 --> 00:08:15.440 of the Chinese domestically and against the European powers. 00:08:15.440 --> 00:08:20.160 You have eight European powers that come together and completely crush the 00:08:20.160 --> 00:08:23.520 Chinese. it's not even close. 00:08:23.520 --> 00:08:27.440 Jumping ahead a little bit, and I should note before we do 00:08:27.440 --> 00:08:30.640 that, the Boxer Rebellion, why I said the freedom of religion thing 00:08:30.640 --> 00:08:35.920 was important, the Boxer Rebellion was also a domestic anti-Christian pogrom. 00:08:35.920 --> 00:08:40.080 They killed probably thirty to thirty-five thousand Chinese Christians. 00:08:40.080 --> 00:08:42.560 That was part of the argument for 00:08:43.520 --> 00:08:44.960 that particular rebellion. 00:08:44.960 --> 00:08:48.960 There were also some weird eschatological claims and things, but it was 00:08:48.960 --> 00:08:51.600 largely anti-Christian and anti-Western. 00:08:51.600 --> 00:08:55.360 Jumping ahead a little bit, you come to World War I. 00:08:55.360 --> 00:08:58.080 And the reason that World War I matters is that one of 00:08:58.080 --> 00:09:03.040 the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles was that Shandong, the German 00:09:03.600 --> 00:09:08.080 sphere of influence in China, was transferred from Germany as punishment of 00:09:08.080 --> 00:09:10.480 Germany, to the Japanese. 00:09:10.480 --> 00:09:14.480 This leads to obviously increasing there was already plenty of it, but 00:09:14.480 --> 00:09:17.760 increasing hostility Toward the Japanese. 00:09:17.760 --> 00:09:20.800 And this is that caveat I mentioned in the beginning. 00:09:20.800 --> 00:09:24.480 You have to recognize when the Chinese speak of the West, they 00:09:24.480 --> 00:09:26.880 don't just mean, you know, white guys. 00:09:26.880 --> 00:09:28.400 They don't just mean Europeans. 00:09:28.400 --> 00:09:30.160 They include the Japanese in that. 00:09:30.400 --> 00:09:36.480 In their conception, Japan is part of this cabal that has suppressed 00:09:36.480 --> 00:09:39.680 and you know destroyed China. 00:09:39.680 --> 00:09:42.320 They even go as far as to say there's destruction of Chinese 00:09:42.320 --> 00:09:44.320 cultural heritage and things like that. 00:09:44.320 --> 00:09:45.760 They include Japan. 00:09:45.760 --> 00:09:49.920 So recognize that animosity is there, not just for us, but also 00:09:49.920 --> 00:09:51.840 for Japan. 00:09:51.840 --> 00:09:55.520 And then of course this is further exacerbated by the Chinese invasion 00:09:55.520 --> 00:10:00.080 and occupation occupation initially of Manchuria and then of more of China 00:10:00.080 --> 00:10:04.160 in 1937, lasting until 1945. 00:10:04.160 --> 00:10:07.360 Then of course you have that four-year period before the Chinese take 00:10:07.360 --> 00:10:10.960 over the Chinese Communists, which is the nationalists versus the communists, it's 00:10:10.960 --> 00:10:12.560 the Chinese Civil War. 00:10:12.560 --> 00:10:16.320 But to give you some numbers so you can kind of place 00:10:16.320 --> 00:10:19.600 these things in perspective and understand that the Chinese overplay and they 00:10:19.600 --> 00:10:22.880 overstate what has actually happened, what has happened historically. 00:10:22.880 --> 00:10:25.040 And I recognize there's a little bit of sun there, I need 00:10:25.040 --> 00:10:27.440 to put up a a curtain at some point. 00:10:27.440 --> 00:10:30.000 But the first opium war. 00:10:30.000 --> 00:10:33.200 Fifteen to twenty thousand Chinese die, right? 00:10:33.200 --> 00:10:39.760 Six hundred ish British casualties, that's including only a handful, a handful, 00:10:39.760 --> 00:10:43.440 a dozen died as a result of actual fighting. 00:10:43.440 --> 00:10:44.960 Disease got the rest. 00:10:44.960 --> 00:10:49.120 Pretty standard down through war, even up until modern times. 00:10:49.120 --> 00:10:52.880 The second opium war, twenty to thirty thousand Chinese died. 00:10:52.880 --> 00:10:55.760 Several hundred British and the French were involved this time, so that's 00:10:55.760 --> 00:10:57.440 British and French casualties. 00:10:57.440 --> 00:11:01.520 So again, massively one-sided in terms of losses. 00:11:01.520 --> 00:11:02.960 Boxer Rebellion. 00:11:02.960 --> 00:11:04.560 A hundred thousand Chinese die. 00:11:04.560 --> 00:11:07.840 That's including the thirty to thirty five thousand Christians who were killed. 00:11:07.840 --> 00:11:11.200 So you could probably subtract that from the total because they weren't 00:11:11.120 --> 00:11:13.520 really fighting on the Chinese side. 00:11:13.520 --> 00:11:17.360 Here's where the numbers start to get important, because you have to 00:11:17.360 --> 00:11:22.080 understand how much they overemphas emphasize the Western conflicts and their cost 00:11:22.480 --> 00:11:28.080 versus downplaying what happened in their own history So the Taiping Rebellion, 00:11:28.080 --> 00:11:32.960 which was another domestic issue that China had, 20 to 30 million 00:11:32.960 --> 00:11:34.800 died in that. 00:11:34.800 --> 00:11:38.400 Some estimates are as high as 60 to 80 million, but it's 00:11:38.400 --> 00:11:43.040 at least around 2530, say, is a conservative estimate, very supported by 00:11:43.040 --> 00:11:44.560 the historical facts. 00:11:44.560 --> 00:11:47.840 The Japanese invasion was 15 to 20 million, you can see why 00:11:47.840 --> 00:11:49.840 they are still angry about that. 00:11:49.840 --> 00:11:53.520 The Chinese Civil War was at least five million. 00:11:53.520 --> 00:11:55.760 That was the nationalist versus the communist. 00:11:55.760 --> 00:11:57.920 Could have been significantly more. 00:11:57.920 --> 00:12:00.400 The records aren't very good for obvious reasons. 00:12:00.400 --> 00:12:01.840 The communists won. 00:12:01.840 --> 00:12:03.360 So hard to tell. 00:12:03.360 --> 00:12:07.040 Great leap forward, as best as we can tell, killed tens of 00:12:07.040 --> 00:12:10.320 millions. That was just a communist domestic policy. 00:12:10.320 --> 00:12:14.960 And then the so-called Cultural Revolution killed several million as well. 00:12:14.960 --> 00:12:21.280 So pick any of the actions domestically of the Chinese against themselves, 00:12:21.280 --> 00:12:26.240 more Chinese died in those than all of the Western actions combined, 00:12:26.240 --> 00:12:29.520 by an order of magnitude at least. 00:12:30.080 --> 00:12:30.400 But 00:12:31.680 --> 00:12:36.160 this leads into the modern Chinese view of the West. 00:12:36.160 --> 00:12:40.640 It is basically formed it because this is the propaganda that is 00:12:40.640 --> 00:12:42.880 taught in all of their schools. 00:12:42.880 --> 00:12:46.880 All of the Chinese are raised on this as their education. 00:12:46.880 --> 00:12:50.640 And so they view the West through this lens. 00:12:50.640 --> 00:12:54.240 Because again, this is a mandatory part of Chinese education. 00:12:54.240 --> 00:13:00.320 So when you, for instance, have Western powers criticizing human rights violations 00:13:00.320 --> 00:13:04.240 by the Chinese communists and things like that, it is always from 00:13:04.240 --> 00:13:08.400 the Chinese perspective viewed as a continuation of this policy of the 00:13:08.400 --> 00:13:08.560 West 00:13:09.520 --> 00:13:14.400 of suppressing the Chinese, turning them into vassals, etcetera. 00:13:14.400 --> 00:13:18.560 It's never viewed as being genuine, it's always viewed as being mercenary, 00:13:18.560 --> 00:13:21.440 which is part of why it's not ever effective, right? 00:13:22.080 --> 00:13:25.120 They view it purely as something where the West is trying to 00:13:25.120 --> 00:13:29.280 again impose a new century of humiliation on China. 00:13:29.280 --> 00:13:32.320 That's always their concern, and I'll get into that near the end 00:13:32.320 --> 00:13:34.960 of my remarks on this. 00:13:35.040 --> 00:13:40.800 The Chinese are also taught that only the CCP, the Chinese Communist 00:13:40.800 --> 00:13:42.400 Party, saved China. 00:13:42.400 --> 00:13:46.080 They're taught that the Chinese were stood up again, that they were 00:13:46.080 --> 00:13:50.800 again part of the great powers as it were, due to the 00:13:50.800 --> 00:13:53.600 actions of the communists and nothing else. 00:13:53.600 --> 00:13:58.400 Some irony in this, of course, because the majority of the reason 00:13:58.400 --> 00:14:03.600 the Japanese were expelled from China is one, they were losing against 00:14:03.600 --> 00:14:07.840 the United States in the Pacific Theater, and two, the nationalists in 00:14:07.840 --> 00:14:11.920 China were actually fighting against them and having some success. 00:14:11.920 --> 00:14:13.280 The communists weren't. 00:14:13.280 --> 00:14:17.520 So the communists claim credit for what the nationalists in China actually 00:14:17.520 --> 00:14:23.680 did. But their real concern is that past humiliation and not repeating 00:14:23.680 --> 00:14:28.880 that. That is, you know, losing face, big thing in Asian politics. 00:14:28.880 --> 00:14:33.280 There is a similarity here, you will notice, and perhaps you'll notice 00:14:33.280 --> 00:14:36.480 it even better if I point out that one of essentially not 00:14:36.480 --> 00:14:42.240 necessarily word-for-word their maxim, but a sort of mindset they have is 00:14:42.240 --> 00:14:43.680 never again. 00:14:44.080 --> 00:14:47.840 They believe that this should never again happen to them, and where 00:14:47.840 --> 00:14:49.920 have you heard that before, right? 00:14:49.920 --> 00:14:52.080 Well, with the Jews and the Holocaust. 00:14:52.080 --> 00:14:54.080 Very similar mindset going on here. 00:14:54.080 --> 00:14:59.120 You have this propagandized version of history that is then used as 00:14:59.120 --> 00:15:03.200 warrant to hate the West, and particularly also to hate Christians, incidentally 00:15:03.280 --> 00:15:06.640 in both cases, and the slogan is never again. 00:15:06.720 --> 00:15:07.760 There's a similarity there. 00:15:07.760 --> 00:15:11.440 The Chinese have a little more historical warrant, certainly, than the Jews, 00:15:11.440 --> 00:15:15.600 but they still overemphasize it in a way that's certainly impermissible. 00:15:17.200 --> 00:15:19.120 Now, some criticisms of 00:15:20.320 --> 00:15:24.320 some additional, I guess, criticisms, of this view of the Chinese that 00:15:24.320 --> 00:15:26.960 they advance, they teach in their schools, their propaganda. 00:15:26.960 --> 00:15:30.800 One, there's no such thing as China as a nation. 00:15:30.800 --> 00:15:31.920 China is an empire. 00:15:32.560 --> 00:15:37.200 China has 56 ethnic group recognized ethnic groups. 00:15:37.200 --> 00:15:40.400 This is officially recognized by the Chinese Communist Party. 00:15:40.400 --> 00:15:43.760 One is the Han Chinese, one is the Manchu. 00:15:43.920 --> 00:15:48.720 The Manchu are important because they are actually the ethnicity that was 00:15:48.880 --> 00:15:51.440 largely the source of the Qing dynasty. 00:15:51.440 --> 00:15:55.680 The Qing Dynasty spelled with a Q is the one that was 00:15:55.680 --> 00:15:58.560 in charge during both of the Opium Wars, the one that is 00:15:58.960 --> 00:16:04.400 sometimes blamed by the Chinese Communist Party for being weak, not modernizing 00:16:04.400 --> 00:16:09.600 fast enough, not responding quickly enough, etcetera So they 00:16:11.360 --> 00:16:15.120 are sort of they're an important player, but they're monshu, they're not 00:16:15.120 --> 00:16:15.920 Han, right? 00:16:15.920 --> 00:16:20.880 The Chinese Communist Party is largely Han Chinese, although the Han Chinese 00:16:20.880 --> 00:16:25.040 are actually reproducing more slowly than all of These minority groups, ethnic 00:16:25.040 --> 00:16:28.800 groups in China, so they're slowly losing power, but that will also 00:16:28.800 --> 00:16:32.880 play into how they're going to behave domestically, of course. 00:16:32.880 --> 00:16:36.080 The disputed territories, one of the other reasons the Qing dynasty is 00:16:36.240 --> 00:16:41.920 important, the disputed territories, so Hong Kong in particular, Taiwan certainly. 00:16:41.920 --> 00:16:45.120 These are areas that were actually conquered by the Qing. 00:16:45.120 --> 00:16:49.680 They were relatively recently conquered and became part of the Chinese Empire. 00:16:49.680 --> 00:16:54.240 There's some history there, it's complicated in some cases, but they're not 00:16:54.240 --> 00:16:55.360 Han Chinese, right? 00:16:55.360 --> 00:16:58.400 They're not like uppercase C Chinese. 00:16:58.400 --> 00:17:00.240 But the Chinese view them that way. 00:17:00.240 --> 00:17:04.880 This is a big part of their mentality because they view, for 00:17:04.880 --> 00:17:07.120 instance, Taiwan as the outstanding one, right? 00:17:07.120 --> 00:17:08.480 They got Hong Kong back. 00:17:08.480 --> 00:17:10.400 Taiwan's outstanding. 00:17:10.400 --> 00:17:15.920 Every day that Taiwan remains not part of China in their conception 00:17:15.920 --> 00:17:19.200 of it is an assault on them. 00:17:19.200 --> 00:17:22.160 It's an affront to them, they're losing face because they don't have 00:17:22.160 --> 00:17:25.200 this territory they view as being rightfully theirs. 00:17:25.200 --> 00:17:27.680 And so they will eventually move to retake that. 00:17:27.680 --> 00:17:30.400 The question is how exactly they'll do it. 00:17:30.400 --> 00:17:35.360 Usually the Chinese, in this case, are relatively rational actors, so if 00:17:35.360 --> 00:17:39.200 they can retake it through referenda and through political means they would 00:17:39.200 --> 00:17:41.760 prefer to do that to war, but they could also take Taiwan 00:17:41.760 --> 00:17:47.600 in about a day if they day if they really wanted to. 00:17:47.600 --> 00:17:52.160 Another fact that is ignored in the historical narrative that's very important. 00:17:52.160 --> 00:17:57.040 China had been producing and consuming opium for over a century before 00:17:57.040 --> 00:17:58.880 the British got involved. 00:17:58.880 --> 00:18:03.840 So in their propaganda, they basically say that the British introduced opium 00:18:03.840 --> 00:18:05.840 to the Chinese, which is just a lie. 00:18:05.840 --> 00:18:07.600 It's flat out wrong. 00:18:07.600 --> 00:18:12.000 Because literally for a century, they had actually been importing a bunch 00:18:12.000 --> 00:18:15.040 of it from neighboring countries, and they had sort of the same 00:18:15.040 --> 00:18:17.440 problem that the British had with regard to tea. 00:18:17.440 --> 00:18:20.320 They hated how much they were spending on this, the outflow of 00:18:20.320 --> 00:18:23.520 capital, and so, in this case, hard currency. 00:18:23.520 --> 00:18:26.400 And so what they actually did was they started to produce it 00:18:26.400 --> 00:18:31.760 domestically. Their domestic production had actually exceeded their imports at the point 00:18:31.760 --> 00:18:33.760 where the British got involved. 00:18:33.760 --> 00:18:38.240 So did the British exacerbate an existing problem? 00:18:38.240 --> 00:18:39.520 Absolutely yes. 00:18:39.520 --> 00:18:42.160 Did they introduce the Chinese to opium? 00:18:42.160 --> 00:18:45.440 Absolutely no. 00:18:45.440 --> 00:18:49.200 And then beyond that, just I would emphasize again the fact that 00:18:49.200 --> 00:18:51.360 the Japanese are viewed as part of the West. 00:18:51.360 --> 00:18:54.880 So that's not going to come naturally to your mind, perhaps, but 00:18:54.880 --> 00:18:57.920 bear that in mind when the topic of China comes up, because 00:18:57.920 --> 00:19:04.320 they think of sort of a solid anti-Chinese bloc, including Japan. 00:19:04.320 --> 00:19:07.440 But then to answer the other part of the question, that's sort 00:19:07.440 --> 00:19:10.960 of the outline of how we got to where we are and 00:19:10.960 --> 00:19:13.760 how you have the Chinese view of the West of the West 00:19:13.920 --> 00:19:15.840 in light of these things. 00:19:15.840 --> 00:19:19.120 But then the actual second part of the question asked by the 00:19:19.120 --> 00:19:23.200 questioner, was it moral for the British to be involved in this 00:19:23.200 --> 00:19:26.720 way? I think they exceeded their moral warrant. 00:19:26.720 --> 00:19:32.400 Was it fine to impose colonialism and then to allow evangelization of 00:19:32.400 --> 00:19:34.000 Christianity and things like that? 00:19:34.000 --> 00:19:36.000 Yes, that's fine. 00:19:36.000 --> 00:19:39.120 Was it fine to balance your budget by getting more of the 00:19:39.120 --> 00:19:41.520 Chinese addicted to a hard drug? 00:19:41.520 --> 00:19:43.600 I think it's pretty easy to say no. 00:19:43.600 --> 00:19:45.120 They should not have done that. 00:19:45.120 --> 00:19:48.880 They should have found some other way to balance that trade imbalance 00:19:48.880 --> 00:19:53.360 with regard to tea, porcelain, and silk instead of just getting a 00:19:53.360 --> 00:19:56.720 bunch more of the Chinese addicted to opium. 00:19:56.720 --> 00:20:00.640 Now, the Chinese, of course, blow this again vastly out of proportion 00:20:00.880 --> 00:20:05.760 because they lie about numbers, they downplay their own internal politics, they 00:20:05.760 --> 00:20:10.880 downplay so many different things, many of which I went over, and 00:20:10.880 --> 00:20:11.760 then they 00:20:13.120 --> 00:20:16.160 Really just it's not even exaggerating. 00:20:16.160 --> 00:20:19.440 It's they just outright lie about what happened with regard to Western 00:20:19.440 --> 00:20:20.960 involvement in China. 00:20:20.960 --> 00:20:25.360 But it has become the founding myth of the CCP. 00:20:25.360 --> 00:20:30.400 The CCP makes claims about continuity with the Qing and previous dynasties, 00:20:30.400 --> 00:20:31.920 complete nonsense. 00:20:31.920 --> 00:20:36.320 It sort of claims to have the mandate of heaven. 00:20:36.320 --> 00:20:39.520 It's kinda squirrely with whether or not it has that, but the 00:20:39.520 --> 00:20:43.600 problem is the common people, particularly in the hinterlands, view the CCP 00:20:43.600 --> 00:20:48.000 as having the mandate of heaven and being tied to economic prosperity. 00:20:48.000 --> 00:20:52.880 And so that d partially drives their psychology and their policies because 00:20:52.880 --> 00:20:56.640 if they lose that prosperity, they will be perceived as having lost 00:20:56.640 --> 00:21:00.960 the mandate of heaven, and that always leads to rebellion in China's 00:21:00.960 --> 00:21:06.640 history, and usually tens of millions dead, depending on the era. 00:21:06.640 --> 00:21:10.000 But the reality is that the modern view of the West that's 00:21:09.920 --> 00:21:14.240 held by China is formed by the Opium Wars and the Century 00:21:14.240 --> 00:21:19.440 of Humiliation, and the conception of the West as including Japan and 00:21:19.440 --> 00:21:20.960 being anti-China. 00:21:21.920 --> 00:21:24.080 And their big complaints. 00:21:24.080 --> 00:21:27.360 In essence, they have four big complaints. 00:21:27.360 --> 00:21:30.080 And with what I just gave you, you can judge whether or 00:21:30.080 --> 00:21:32.000 not these are legitimate complaints. 00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:36.480 They argue that drugs and moral degradation were introduced to China by 00:21:36.480 --> 00:21:37.520 the West. 00:21:37.520 --> 00:21:42.800 They argue that the unequal treaties that were imposed on China were 00:21:42.800 --> 00:21:45.440 onerous and an insult. 00:21:45.440 --> 00:21:51.120 They argue territory that was rightfully Chinese was amputated by the West, 00:21:51.120 --> 00:21:56.080 so Hong Kong, Taiwan, Kowloon attached to Hong Kong, a couple other 00:21:56.080 --> 00:21:59.920 places. And they argue there was cultural destruction 00:22:00.880 --> 00:22:05.440 Now, were some cultural relics destroyed in the course of the wars? 00:22:05.440 --> 00:22:09.040 Yes. The old, I think it was called the old summer palace 00:22:09.200 --> 00:22:13.680 was destroyed during the second opium war, I believe it was, and 00:22:13.760 --> 00:22:18.400 there were some volumes of an encyclopedia that were destroyed in Beijing 00:22:18.720 --> 00:22:23.200 as a result of that city being conquered and occupied. 00:22:23.200 --> 00:22:25.360 So yes, were some things destroyed? 00:22:25.360 --> 00:22:27.120 Of course, it happens in war. 00:22:27.120 --> 00:22:32.080 Was there a deliberate program by the West to destroy Chinese culture? 00:22:32.080 --> 00:22:34.000 There's no evidence of that. 00:22:34.000 --> 00:22:39.280 So that's the Chinese mindset, the reality is not really identical to 00:22:39.280 --> 00:22:40.480 what they believe. 00:22:40.480 --> 00:22:44.320 But ultimately that doesn't matter, because this is what they're taught, this 00:22:44.320 --> 00:22:47.200 is what they believe with regard to the w to the West, 00:22:47.200 --> 00:22:49.920 excuse me, and this is how they view the world. 00:22:49.920 --> 00:22:53.040 So if this is how they view the world, they're going to 00:22:53.040 --> 00:22:55.440 behave according to this worldview. 00:22:55.840 --> 00:22:58.720 So were the British wrong to push opium? 00:22:58.720 --> 00:23:03.200 Yes, you should not push hard drugs because they're bad, right? 00:23:03.200 --> 00:23:06.080 As a Christian, you shouldn't want people to be addicted to hard 00:23:06.080 --> 00:23:07.440 drugs. But 00:23:09.200 --> 00:23:14.000 that's one of those means that you really probably should not use. 00:23:14.000 --> 00:23:17.040 If it's an active war, maybe there are some caveats there, but 00:23:17.040 --> 00:23:19.280 this was not an active war, right? 00:23:19.280 --> 00:23:21.200 This was a trade imbalance. 00:23:21.200 --> 00:23:23.760 They should have handled it in a different way. 00:23:23.760 --> 00:23:27.520 But that is what has set the stage for how China views 00:23:27.520 --> 00:23:29.920 the West and how they view the world and how they will 00:23:29.920 --> 00:23:31.760 continue to interact with us. 00:23:31.920 --> 00:23:35.440 Because it's what they taught and what it's they actually believe it. 00:23:35.440 --> 00:23:35.760 So 00:23:38.240 --> 00:23:41.040 And I I guess I should have prefaced it by saying this 00:23:41.040 --> 00:23:43.360 is the sort of thing where you could teach an entire year 00:23:43.360 --> 00:23:48.080 of a graduate seminary on this era in Chinese history and all 00:23:48.080 --> 00:23:52.640 of the intricacies and the intrigue and the involvement of the different 00:23:52.640 --> 00:23:56.880 European players, but that will at least give you an overview of 00:23:56.880 --> 00:24:00.400 it that gives you a functioning view of how this happened and 00:24:00.400 --> 00:24:05.280 an accurate one so you can sort of gauge how China's behaving 00:24:05.280 --> 00:24:07.600 on the world stage and how people are behaving in relation to 00:24:07.600 --> 00:24:10.480 China. In fact if you remember 00:24:11.760 --> 00:24:15.360 the the core of my answer though, you will be better informed 00:24:15.360 --> 00:24:19.360 on China than most of our politicians, which is another problem. 00:24:22.080 --> 00:24:24.240 Question two 2 00:24:25.600 --> 00:24:30.560 The godly pursuit of this life or pursuits of this life I 00:24:30.560 --> 00:24:34.080 wrestle to find the proper line between fighting to win here and 00:24:34.080 --> 00:24:37.360 now and being prepared to face the end of our race. 00:24:37.360 --> 00:24:40.800 Looking at Hitler's righteous cause I struggle with why God allowed the 00:24:40.800 --> 00:24:42.000 wicked to win. 00:24:42.000 --> 00:24:45.440 If God moves us to a similar response, how should we hold 00:24:45.440 --> 00:24:49.600 the possibility of failing in our hearts without doubting God or defecting 00:24:49.600 --> 00:24:52.960 from this righteous cause. 00:24:52.960 --> 00:24:56.480 So I would say read Job. 00:24:56.480 --> 00:24:59.040 That is always going to be part of my answer when it 00:24:59.040 --> 00:25:00.640 comes to something like this. 00:25:00.640 --> 00:25:02.880 You can also read certain parts of history, right? 00:25:02.880 --> 00:25:06.480 North Africa used to be European, that fell away. 00:25:06.480 --> 00:25:10.240 There were many Christians in the Middle East, and they were killed 00:25:10.240 --> 00:25:12.320 mostly by the Jews. 00:25:12.320 --> 00:25:16.080 Just because you are faithful and righteous does not mean that you 00:25:16.080 --> 00:25:17.520 will win in this life. 00:25:17.520 --> 00:25:19.120 That's not how it works. 00:25:19.120 --> 00:25:22.400 Because we live in an evil and fallen world, and sometimes the 00:25:22.400 --> 00:25:23.920 wicked win. 00:25:23.920 --> 00:25:30.960 So winning a war is is not necessarily intimately linked to 00:25:30.960 --> 00:25:32.800 being faithful to God. 00:25:32.800 --> 00:25:35.760 Winning a war is a matter of being capable of winning a 00:25:35.760 --> 00:25:38.720 war, and we should bear these things in mind given where the 00:25:38.720 --> 00:25:41.760 country is currently headed and the West is currently headed. 00:25:41.760 --> 00:25:44.880 I do think that God will not let us fail. 00:25:44.880 --> 00:25:49.520 And I think that He can't, because He made promises to Japheth. 00:25:49.520 --> 00:25:52.000 We are the sons and daughters of Japheth. 00:25:52.000 --> 00:25:55.520 Those promises did not have a termination date. 00:25:55.520 --> 00:25:59.360 And so he can't let all of us pass away unless is 00:25:59.680 --> 00:26:02.960 unless this is the actual end times, in which case everything passes 00:26:02.960 --> 00:26:06.320 away. I don't think it necessarily is yet, and so God is 00:26:06.800 --> 00:26:10.160 bound by the things he has promised, and so I do believe 00:26:10.160 --> 00:26:11.360 that we will win. 00:26:11.360 --> 00:26:15.840 We're really fighting over the contours, the nature of that win, and 00:26:15.840 --> 00:26:19.680 I would prefer it to be the best win we can obtain 00:26:19.760 --> 00:26:23.040 instead of just barely squeaking by. 00:26:23.040 --> 00:26:27.760 So I don't think that despair is ever the right mindset. 00:26:27.760 --> 00:26:30.640 Ultimately Christians win, regardless, right? 00:26:30.640 --> 00:26:33.200 I know that some people hate that answer, it's true, but I 00:26:33.200 --> 00:26:36.080 always add it with the caveat that we should still endeavor to 00:26:36.080 --> 00:26:38.400 win here in time as well. 00:26:38.400 --> 00:26:42.000 Because it is not the Christian approach to abandon the here and 00:26:42.000 --> 00:26:45.920 now just because we win ultimately in the Eschaton, right? 00:26:45.920 --> 00:26:48.560 That's not an appropriate way to look at it. 00:26:48.560 --> 00:26:48.880 So 00:26:50.160 --> 00:26:56.160 you know, live your everyday life, but also with the the orientation 00:26:56.160 --> 00:27:00.080 toward where things are going, the reality of the times in which 00:27:00.080 --> 00:27:03.680 we live and what will need to be done in the not 00:27:03.680 --> 00:27:08.160 so distant future in order to secure a victory that's worth having. 00:27:08.160 --> 00:27:12.800 I would also add that you should listen to the episode 00:27:13.920 --> 00:27:18.640 on normalcy bias from Stone Choir because we really touch on this 00:27:18.640 --> 00:27:20.000 exact topic in that one. 00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:22.560 So I would say go and listen to that one again. 00:27:22.560 --> 00:27:24.080 I'll add that into the show notes. 00:27:24.080 --> 00:27:29.600 I made a note for myself Myself. 00:27:29.600 --> 00:27:31.440 Question three 00:27:33.040 --> 00:27:37.200 Genetic relation between random whites and a mixed couple with a mixed 00:27:37.200 --> 00:27:41.680 child. Could you explain how a white father with a child born 00:27:41.680 --> 00:27:44.560 from a marriage to a black woman is more genetically related to 00:27:44.560 --> 00:27:47.520 any random white man than his own child? 00:27:47.520 --> 00:27:50.880 Yes, the child is fifty percent his, but what else is creating 00:27:50.880 --> 00:27:55.040 this distance between him and his child? 00:27:55.040 --> 00:27:59.120 So the way that this works without delving necessarily too deeply into 00:27:59.120 --> 00:28:01.280 genetics right now, is 00:28:02.880 --> 00:28:08.960 genetically speaking, a race is sort of a more or less fixed 00:28:08.960 --> 00:28:14.560 set of genetics, of inheritable characteristics. 00:28:14.560 --> 00:28:18.880 So, you know, genetics, your genome, your phenotype is the expression of 00:28:18.880 --> 00:28:22.480 that. And so whites are phenotypically white because we have the genetics 00:28:22.480 --> 00:28:26.800 to produce the various things that make us fair skinned. 00:28:26.800 --> 00:28:32.080 You share a huge chunk of your DNA with everyone else in 00:28:32.080 --> 00:28:32.800 your race. 00:28:32.800 --> 00:28:36.480 You share a huge chunk with everyone else who's a human being, 00:28:36.480 --> 00:28:41.280 but it is above and beyond that baseline, whatever 90% it is. 00:28:41.440 --> 00:28:45.840 That you share with humanity generally, that you share with your race. 00:28:45.840 --> 00:28:50.320 If you then have a child with someone from another race, any 00:28:50.320 --> 00:28:55.120 random individual in your race will be more related to you because 00:28:55.120 --> 00:28:58.720 of that shared pool, as it were, of genetics that really is 00:28:58.720 --> 00:29:00.800 what is your race. 00:29:00.800 --> 00:29:04.800 Your child doesn't have that because he has it split between your 00:29:04.800 --> 00:29:06.800 race and your wife's race. 00:29:06.800 --> 00:29:10.800 That's why you will be more related to a random person from 00:29:10.800 --> 00:29:13.440 your own race than to your own child. 00:29:13.440 --> 00:29:17.120 Now, are you going to have 90 plus percent shared with your 00:29:17.120 --> 00:29:21.360 child? Of course, because that's the case within a species, within the 00:29:22.400 --> 00:29:25.200 species of humanity, human beings, right? 00:29:26.000 --> 00:29:30.720 But we're not talking about the percentage of the 100, because that's 00:29:30.720 --> 00:29:31.840 irrelevant, right? 00:29:31.840 --> 00:29:34.000 Because if all of humanity, let's just say for the sake of 00:29:34.000 --> 00:29:37.280 argument, shares ninety percent, right? 00:29:37.280 --> 00:29:42.160 Well the ninety percent isn't what differentiates me from every other member 00:29:42.160 --> 00:29:43.520 of my species. 00:29:43.520 --> 00:29:46.720 The ninety percent is shared, only the ten percent matters. 00:29:46.720 --> 00:29:49.200 And so And so if you're talking about, say, a two or 00:29:49.200 --> 00:29:53.920 three percent difference between the races, that's huge because you're talking about 00:29:53.920 --> 00:29:57.840 two or three percent of ten percent, not of a hundred percent. 00:29:57.840 --> 00:30:00.800 So you have to bear in mind what's being discussed, right? 00:30:00.800 --> 00:30:05.520 When you're talking about, say, cross species, then that percentage is going 00:30:05.520 --> 00:30:06.320 to be wider. 00:30:06.320 --> 00:30:10.320 But even then, you share a significant percentage of your DNA with 00:30:10.320 --> 00:30:14.480 dogs and cats and goats We're all mammals, right? 00:30:14.480 --> 00:30:16.160 We share that DNA. 00:30:16.160 --> 00:30:20.320 So we wouldn't say that you know it's the 100% of the 00:30:20.320 --> 00:30:21.760 DNA that matters. 00:30:21.760 --> 00:30:27.680 It's that differentiating percentage of human versus goat, or in this case, 00:30:27.680 --> 00:30:29.440 the different races of men. 00:30:29.440 --> 00:30:32.960 So that's why you are going to be more closely related, genetically 00:30:32.960 --> 00:30:36.480 speaking, to a random member of your own race than to your 00:30:36.480 --> 00:30:40.480 own child if you marry particularly someone who is of a distant 00:30:40.480 --> 00:30:42.640 race like white versus black. 00:30:42.640 --> 00:30:48.080 Now, you know, if you're talking about, say, English and Russian, much 00:30:48.080 --> 00:30:53.600 less of an issue because already significantly more overlap in total as 00:30:53.600 --> 00:30:56.400 opposed to between whites and blacks, which are about as distant as 00:30:56.400 --> 00:30:57.520 you can get. 00:30:57.520 --> 00:31:02.560 There's also a very good chart going around that shows the different 00:31:02.560 --> 00:31:06.640 human races mapped onto a graph, and so it will show you 00:31:06.640 --> 00:31:10.000 the distance between, say, whites and Africans, which is basically the biggest 00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:14.000 you can get, and then also where your child would fall if 00:31:14.000 --> 00:31:16.400 you married someone from that other race. 00:31:16.400 --> 00:31:18.880 And so that's the genetic distance. 00:31:18.880 --> 00:31:22.480 The little circle that is your race, everyone who's a member of 00:31:22.480 --> 00:31:24.080 your race is within that. 00:31:24.080 --> 00:31:27.600 So you're much closer to them than to your own child if 00:31:27.600 --> 00:31:29.680 you marry someone way over here. 00:31:29.680 --> 00:31:32.320 So maybe someone can find and share that image. 00:31:32.320 --> 00:31:35.280 I don't think that I have it saved, but there are plenty 00:31:35.280 --> 00:31:36.640 of ways you can generate this. 00:31:36.640 --> 00:31:41.680 FST is one of the standard measures of genetic distance between individuals 00:31:41.680 --> 00:31:43.920 or populations. 00:31:44.480 --> 00:31:47.760 But that's how you can be more distant from your own child 00:31:47.760 --> 00:31:51.280 genetically than from your neighbor. 00:31:51.280 --> 00:31:56.320 As assuming your neighbor is as he should be your own race. 00:31:56.320 --> 00:31:58.000 Question four. 00:31:58.560 --> 00:32:01.920 I currently reside in a state that has poor demographics. 00:32:01.920 --> 00:32:04.480 I find having to deal with these people on a daily basis 00:32:04.480 --> 00:32:07.520 to be very tiresome, and I can't help but feel as though 00:32:07.520 --> 00:32:10.320 the poor demographics have made it more difficult for me to find 00:32:10.320 --> 00:32:11.600 a suitable wife. 00:32:11.600 --> 00:32:13.360 That's definitely true. 00:32:13.360 --> 00:32:15.360 Would you recommend moving to Tennessee? 00:32:15.360 --> 00:32:16.640 Do you enjoy living there? 00:32:16.640 --> 00:32:19.120 A part of me wants to move to the Midwest, the land 00:32:19.120 --> 00:32:22.960 of my ancestors, but the particular state from which my family hails 00:32:22.960 --> 00:32:26.400 has very high taxes. 00:32:26.400 --> 00:32:30.960 So we definitely address this in a number of episodes of Stone 00:32:30.960 --> 00:32:34.240 Choir, and the general rule is that it's best to stay around 00:32:34.240 --> 00:32:36.720 family where your family is your family has lived for a long 00:32:36.720 --> 00:32:42.480 time. But that being said, there are times where wisdom dictates you 00:32:42.480 --> 00:32:43.600 should move. 00:32:43.600 --> 00:32:48.240 Because there are so many problems where you are and it's trending 00:32:48.240 --> 00:32:49.760 so rapidly in the wrong direction 00:32:50.880 --> 00:32:54.800 that you can do nothing about it except leave. 00:32:54.800 --> 00:32:57.360 Maybe it can be fixed in the future, but that is a 00:32:57.360 --> 00:32:59.280 greater undertaking than an individual. 00:32:59.280 --> 00:33:02.880 So wisdom sometimes will say Will say you need to move. 00:33:02.880 --> 00:33:05.520 If you're in a particular state, I don't know which state you 00:33:05.520 --> 00:33:09.520 reside. I can guess at which Midwest states, given the high tax 00:33:09.520 --> 00:33:14.080 issue, although they're all not particularly low tax these days. 00:33:14.080 --> 00:33:19.280 I would say move where you have family or some connections so 00:33:19.280 --> 00:33:23.360 you can get back on your feet quickly, you have a job, 00:33:23.360 --> 00:33:26.320 you have a way to provide yourself, you have a community around 00:33:26.320 --> 00:33:29.440 you, and go from there. 00:33:29.440 --> 00:33:33.120 Things are going to change a lot in the next ten, fifteen, 00:33:33.120 --> 00:33:38.160 twenty years, so you're not really planning for the next five hundred 00:33:38.160 --> 00:33:41.440 years right now, you're planning to survive what's coming. 00:33:42.160 --> 00:33:47.840 And in that sense, move to somewhere that has decent demographics and 00:33:47.840 --> 00:33:52.240 again has those networks that can support you with regard to job 00:33:52.240 --> 00:33:54.240 prospects and things like that. 00:33:54.240 --> 00:33:55.520 Tennessee's great. 00:33:55.680 --> 00:33:56.640 I like it here. 00:33:56.640 --> 00:33:59.760 I've got family, been living in the hills here for hundreds of 00:33:59.760 --> 00:34:02.560 years, so it made sense in my case. 00:34:02.560 --> 00:34:05.600 But I'm not going to say you no, you can't move to 00:34:05.600 --> 00:34:08.240 some part of the country if you don't have close cousins because 00:34:08.640 --> 00:34:13.920 ultimately all Americans, and by Americans, of course, I mean racial Americans, 00:34:13.920 --> 00:34:15.600 are your cousins. 00:34:15.600 --> 00:34:19.760 It's better to live close to close family, but by all means, 00:34:19.760 --> 00:34:24.160 if opportunity presents itself, moving somewhere like Tennessee makes perfect sense for 00:34:24.160 --> 00:34:26.320 some people. 00:34:26.320 --> 00:34:28.720 Just be ready for the humidity. 00:34:28.720 --> 00:34:31.280 And also I had a bear walk through my front yard two 00:34:31.280 --> 00:34:38.640 nights ago, so as long as you're fine with those things. 00:34:38.640 --> 00:34:41.920 Question five. 00:34:41.920 --> 00:34:46.720 I was talking to a pastor about slavery slash genocide, basically racism 00:34:46.720 --> 00:34:50.000 by proxy, and it became clear to me that one of us 00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:53.440 had a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of morality. 00:34:53.440 --> 00:34:57.760 My understanding was basically that something was either inherently good or inherently 00:34:57.760 --> 00:35:01.280 evil, and the fact that God cannot or will not sin basically 00:35:01.920 --> 00:35:05.520 meant that he could or would not do something that was inherently 00:35:05.520 --> 00:35:09.360 evil. His belief seemed to be that nothing was really inherently good 00:35:09.360 --> 00:35:13.840 or evil, and that anything God does is basically automatically cleansed for 00:35:13.840 --> 00:35:17.040 him and made to be not evil, but that it doesn't make 00:35:17.040 --> 00:35:18.640 it not evil for us. 00:35:18.640 --> 00:35:22.160 Are you able to explain the proper understanding of how this actually 00:35:22.160 --> 00:35:26.240 functions? That argument from argument I should put in quotations, but that 00:35:26.240 --> 00:35:29.760 argument from your pastor comes up all the time. 00:35:29.760 --> 00:35:35.520 I don't know who started it, what the source is. 00:35:35.520 --> 00:35:38.080 But it's not only wrong, it's blasphemous. 00:35:38.080 --> 00:35:43.040 Because the nature of morality is that morality flows from God's nature. 00:35:43.280 --> 00:35:45.360 Because God is his nature, right? 00:35:45.360 --> 00:35:49.360 God is what we would call attributes, what are known philosophically and 00:35:49.360 --> 00:35:51.200 theologically is the transcendentals. 00:35:51.200 --> 00:35:54.400 Goodness, beauty, truth, unity, and being, if we want to use the 00:35:54.400 --> 00:35:56.320 fourth and the fifth, which we don't really need those ones here. 00:35:56.320 --> 00:35:58.000 We just really need goodness, right? 00:35:58.000 --> 00:35:59.600 And truth. 00:35:59.920 --> 00:36:04.320 So something is good if it aligns with God's nature, if it 00:36:04.320 --> 00:36:08.160 is oriented toward its proper end, which is an end that God 00:36:08.160 --> 00:36:11.920 has set for it, in accordance with its nature, its nature being 00:36:11.920 --> 00:36:14.640 a good thing created by God. 00:36:14.640 --> 00:36:17.760 But without I guess delving into some of that stuff, it gets 00:36:17.760 --> 00:36:19.120 a little complicated. 00:36:19.120 --> 00:36:23.440 You really just have to understand that core reality is that morality 00:36:23.440 --> 00:36:25.680 flows from God's nature. 00:36:25.680 --> 00:36:27.520 God's nature is unchanging. 00:36:27.520 --> 00:36:30.400 So that which is good will always be good. 00:36:30.400 --> 00:36:33.360 That which is evil will always be evil. 00:36:33.360 --> 00:36:36.960 It's not good by virtue of God having done it. 00:36:36.960 --> 00:36:40.240 It is that God is good and would never do something evil. 00:36:40.240 --> 00:36:44.800 We're speaking in human terms, of course Because it's not it's not 00:36:44.800 --> 00:36:48.480 would or could, it's that it's incoherent to say that God would 00:36:48.480 --> 00:36:52.480 sin. It's we don't have the human terms for it. 00:36:52.480 --> 00:36:56.080 So the best we can say is wouldn't or couldn't or whatever 00:36:56.080 --> 00:36:57.920 it happens to be won't. 00:36:57.920 --> 00:37:02.160 Whatever terms we use, we're approximating the reality instead of saying it 00:37:02.160 --> 00:37:07.680 exactly. Because again, the best way that I've explained it, and the 00:37:07.680 --> 00:37:10.080 best way I've found to explain it, is that just because you 00:37:10.080 --> 00:37:14.480 can string some words together and it sounds like a sentence doesn't 00:37:14.480 --> 00:37:15.840 mean it is. 00:37:15.840 --> 00:37:20.000 So you know, the purple canoe sleeps briefly. 00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:24.240 That's not that right, that sounds like a sentence, but it's not. 00:37:24.240 --> 00:37:29.840 And so God does not sin is a true statement, but in 00:37:29.840 --> 00:37:31.840 that case it understates it. 00:37:31.840 --> 00:37:36.080 Saying God will not sin is is also kind of true, but 00:37:36.080 --> 00:37:38.400 it's incoherent. 00:37:38.400 --> 00:37:42.560 The real incoherent one is when you get into God cannot, right? 00:37:42.560 --> 00:37:44.720 Because God can do all things. 00:37:44.720 --> 00:37:48.720 But the sentence, God cannot sin, is technically true in a certain 00:37:48.720 --> 00:37:52.480 sense, but it's also incoherent because you're saying God who can do 00:37:52.480 --> 00:37:54.720 all things cannot do something. 00:37:54.720 --> 00:37:58.960 It's not so much cannot as it is nonsense to say that 00:37:58.960 --> 00:38:00.400 God would sin. 00:38:00.400 --> 00:38:02.160 God is goodness. 00:38:02.160 --> 00:38:05.280 God is the very ground of that which is good. 00:38:05.280 --> 00:38:09.600 You can't have something that is good if it is not aligned 00:38:09.600 --> 00:38:12.560 toward God, aligned toward the ends for which God is. 00:38:12.560 --> 00:38:13.360 created it. 00:38:13.360 --> 00:38:16.480 That's the very definition of that which is good. 00:38:16.480 --> 00:38:22.160 So your pastor is using a pastor, so maybe not your pastor, 00:38:22.160 --> 00:38:26.400 but this pastor was using a mercenary sense of it where they 00:38:26.720 --> 00:38:29.840 I understand part of why they tried to do it, because then 00:38:29.840 --> 00:38:33.120 they can say, well, genocide was fine because God commanded it, but 00:38:33.120 --> 00:38:35.200 otherwise it's evil, right? 00:38:35.200 --> 00:38:36.160 That's their goal. 00:38:36.160 --> 00:38:40.000 S slavery was fine because God commanded it, but otherwise it's evil. 00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:43.440 It's a It's a mercenary attempt to explain away the Old Testament 00:38:43.440 --> 00:38:46.160 instead of believing the Old Testament is God's truth. 00:38:46.160 --> 00:38:50.640 So ultimately, what they're actually doing is denying that objective morality exists. 00:38:50.640 --> 00:38:54.320 This is sort of a command theory of morality. 00:38:54.320 --> 00:38:56.240 God can say anything he wants. 00:38:56.240 --> 00:38:59.760 So under this sort of interpretation, this is a way you can 00:38:59.760 --> 00:39:04.080 actually argue with someone who advances this, thou shalt not kill. 00:39:04.080 --> 00:39:08.400 God tomorrow, under this man's conception, could s could say, thou shalt 00:39:08.400 --> 00:39:09.920 kill, and now it's moral. 00:39:09.920 --> 00:39:14.000 Notably we mean murder when we say kill in the sense, right? 00:39:14.000 --> 00:39:15.680 Would that be moral? 00:39:15.680 --> 00:39:18.160 The answer is no, and God wouldn't do it. 00:39:18.160 --> 00:39:20.800 But that's what this man is saying, so you're say basically a 00:39:20.800 --> 00:39:25.040 reduction to absurdity is what you're arguing against here, to defeat his 00:39:25.040 --> 00:39:28.000 point. But the whole reason they're doing it is to dismiss the 00:39:28.000 --> 00:39:30.320 Old Testament and the parts that make them uncomfortable. 00:39:30.400 --> 00:39:33.360 No And they're blaspheming God. 00:39:33.360 --> 00:39:36.480 They're saying God changed or God could change. 00:39:36.480 --> 00:39:38.320 They're saying God isn't God. 00:39:38.320 --> 00:39:40.880 And they're saying morality isn't real. 00:39:41.280 --> 00:39:44.640 And that is exactly the sort of thing that leads to men 00:39:44.640 --> 00:39:49.680 not being men, men deciding they're women, or they're children, or they're 00:39:49.680 --> 00:39:52.240 a dog or a goat or whatever it happens to be. 00:39:52.240 --> 00:39:55.520 It's the same sort of nonsense saying that truth doesn't exist. 00:39:55.520 --> 00:40:00.480 It's merely a declaration that is true in a sense because of 00:40:00.480 --> 00:40:03.920 the declaration for some bounded period of time. 00:40:03.920 --> 00:40:09.280 So yes, you were arguing correctly and this pastor was absolutely wrong. 00:40:09.280 --> 00:40:10.320 But it is a common 00:40:11.200 --> 00:40:13.760 I don't even know if I want to call it an error. 00:40:13.760 --> 00:40:18.320 It is a common evil, it is a common wickedness that someone 00:40:18.320 --> 00:40:23.040 started. Question six. 00:40:22.960 --> 00:40:23.600 six 00:40:24.880 --> 00:40:27.600 a note for myself here. 00:40:27.600 --> 00:40:32.320 What is your take on Charlie Kirk's death and Candace's theory? 00:40:32.320 --> 00:40:34.640 I can answer the first part of that but not the second 00:40:34.880 --> 00:40:38.720 because I don't pay any attention to Candace Owens. 00:40:38.720 --> 00:40:42.960 So I don't know what she has been saying or not been 00:40:42.960 --> 00:40:47.040 saying, but I was very clear very early on, I don't know 00:40:47.040 --> 00:40:51.520 exactly the timeline, how long it was before I said something after 00:40:52.480 --> 00:40:57.520 his murder, his assassination, but I said bluntly that it was Israel. 00:40:57.520 --> 00:40:58.960 The Jews murdered him. 00:40:58.960 --> 00:41:02.400 And that was made very obvious by the fact that Netanyahu was 00:41:02.400 --> 00:41:05.120 bragging about it almost immediately. 00:41:05.120 --> 00:41:08.960 And I highlighted that in a post on X, so I'm sure 00:41:08.960 --> 00:41:11.680 someone can find that and add that to the show notes. 00:41:11.680 --> 00:41:15.280 But if you understand how Jews brag and how they behave publicly, 00:41:15.280 --> 00:41:18.240 he was absolutely bragging about having done it. 00:41:18.240 --> 00:41:22.640 And so that is my belief that has not changed. 00:41:25.280 --> 00:41:32.960 Question Question seven in what quantifiable, measurable, and observable ways did Christianity 00:41:32.960 --> 00:41:35.840 benefit pagan Europe or Europeans? 00:41:35.840 --> 00:41:40.400 I have a pagan friend that I go back and forth with. 00:41:40.960 --> 00:41:44.160 There are really two answers to this, and I'll get the sort 00:41:44.160 --> 00:41:47.520 of secondary one out of the way briefly because it's the shorter 00:41:47.520 --> 00:41:52.880 answer. The second is that truth matters whether or not it benefits 00:41:52.880 --> 00:41:55.920 you. The measure of whether or not something is true is not 00:41:55.920 --> 00:42:01.280 a mercenary calculation of whether or not you will benefit from adhering 00:42:01.280 --> 00:42:03.040 to that truth, right? 00:42:03.040 --> 00:42:06.000 Something is true objectively. 00:42:06.000 --> 00:42:11.440 So the question initially, in this case the secondary concern, but the 00:42:11.440 --> 00:42:15.200 initial question is is Christianity true? 00:42:15.200 --> 00:42:18.160 Not does Christianity benefit? 00:42:18.160 --> 00:42:21.360 But then to get on the benefit, incidentally, Christianity is both true 00:42:21.440 --> 00:42:24.160 and does benefit, right? 00:42:24.480 --> 00:42:26.800 So for one, we had 00:42:27.760 --> 00:42:32.080 the establishment of an objective morality in parts of Europe that did 00:42:32.080 --> 00:42:34.160 not previously have it. 00:42:34.160 --> 00:42:39.920 Now, there were certain tribes that behaved very well prior to Christianization. 00:42:39.920 --> 00:42:42.000 Were they improved by Christianization? 00:42:42.000 --> 00:42:43.600 I would say yes. 00:42:43.600 --> 00:42:48.560 But that doesn't mean that they were wild, crazy, feral animals before 00:42:48.560 --> 00:42:49.920 they were Christianized, right? 00:42:49.920 --> 00:42:52.400 Tacitus, for instance, I've used this example many times. 00:42:52.400 --> 00:42:57.680 Tacitus remarks upon how highly esteemed marriage is among the Germans, and 00:42:57.680 --> 00:43:02.640 that adultery is basically unheard of, and that indeed they execute adulterers. 00:43:02.640 --> 00:43:07.360 So were they behaving according to the moral law without having the 00:43:07.360 --> 00:43:08.560 Christian scriptures? 00:43:08.560 --> 00:43:12.000 Absolutely. That was a good thing, because do remember, the law's written 00:43:12.000 --> 00:43:15.120 on your heart, whether you're a believer or not, you have a 00:43:15.120 --> 00:43:22.160 conscience, and even the pagans had a conscience, the heathen, the unbelievers. 00:43:22.160 --> 00:43:27.360 But is there a benefit to having the fullness of that moral 00:43:27.360 --> 00:43:29.120 law written out for you? 00:43:29.120 --> 00:43:30.640 Well the answer is yes. 00:43:30.640 --> 00:43:33.680 It is more beneficial to have it written out than to just 00:43:33.680 --> 00:43:35.680 have it in a fragmentary way. 00:43:35.680 --> 00:43:41.280 But with regard to concrete benefits, I always point out that the 00:43:41.600 --> 00:43:42.880 height of 00:43:43.840 --> 00:43:49.440 life, quality of life, things like that for Europeans, was not Rome. 00:43:49.440 --> 00:43:51.200 It certainly wasn't Greece. 00:43:51.200 --> 00:43:53.040 It was the Holy Roman Empire. 00:43:53.040 --> 00:43:57.120 That was the height of the quality of life in terms of 00:43:57.120 --> 00:43:58.320 the things that actually matter. 00:43:58.320 --> 00:44:00.560 I know there'll be people who will object and say, oh, we're 00:44:00.560 --> 00:44:02.000 more materially comfort. 00:44:02.000 --> 00:44:05.360 Sure. I've got an AC vent directly above me right now because 00:44:05.360 --> 00:44:07.840 it's still like 86 degrees outside. 00:44:07.840 --> 00:44:10.880 Am I materially comfortable in ways today that I would not have 00:44:10.880 --> 00:44:12.640 been in the Holy Roman Empire? 00:44:12.640 --> 00:44:16.320 Sure. Technological advance has brought some benefits. 00:44:16.320 --> 00:44:20.320 But with regard to quality of life and the things that matter, 00:44:20.320 --> 00:44:22.320 are we better off? 00:44:22.320 --> 00:44:25.920 Look at the depression numbers, look at the anxiety numbers, look at 00:44:25.920 --> 00:44:28.480 the marriage numbers, these things are all abysmal. 00:44:29.200 --> 00:44:32.560 So have we benefited from the de-Christianization? 00:44:32.560 --> 00:44:34.080 Obviously, no. 00:44:34.080 --> 00:44:36.400 Did we benefit from Christianization? 00:44:36.400 --> 00:44:40.720 I would say obviously yes, because we had that upward trajectory until 00:44:40.720 --> 00:44:45.280 we started to reject Christianity, until we started to apostatize. 00:44:45.280 --> 00:44:49.760 And also bear in mind, when did European power peak? 00:44:49.760 --> 00:44:53.840 It peaked at the end of the period of colonization, which was 00:44:53.840 --> 00:44:54.800 a spread of Christianity 00:44:55.840 --> 00:45:00.560 over the face of the earth after centuries of being Christian. 00:45:00.560 --> 00:45:06.960 Our power didn't peak under the various pagan groups that preceded Christianization. 00:45:06.960 --> 00:45:10.160 We didn't get to the moon as pagans. 00:45:10.160 --> 00:45:14.960 We got there and had the Lord's Supper on the Moon. 00:45:14.960 --> 00:45:17.120 That's what we did as Christians. 00:45:17.120 --> 00:45:20.640 The height of our civilization, regardless of how you look for it, 00:45:20.640 --> 00:45:23.360 is going to be found when we were Christians. 00:45:23.360 --> 00:45:28.320 And as Christianity has declined, so has our civilization. 00:45:28.320 --> 00:45:31.920 So the argument I don't even know where you would start to 00:45:31.920 --> 00:45:35.040 try to make the argument that there was a peak under paganism 00:45:35.360 --> 00:45:39.600 because the best thing you could argue is that Rome was okay 00:45:39.920 --> 00:45:45.040 if you were an upper class noble and you lived in the 00:45:45.040 --> 00:45:47.200 inner part of the empire. 00:45:47.200 --> 00:45:50.400 If you lived in the hinterlands, life wasn't great. 00:45:50.400 --> 00:45:54.480 If you were the lower classes, life wasn't great. 00:45:54.480 --> 00:45:59.760 Rome was a brutal society where basically unless you were part of 00:45:59.760 --> 00:46:04.640 the patrician classes, unless you had immense wealth and influence, it wasn't 00:46:04.560 --> 00:46:05.760 great to live in Rome. 00:46:05.760 --> 00:46:07.840 And Rome was better than Greece. 00:46:07.840 --> 00:46:11.360 So I don't know how you could argue that we have this 00:46:11.360 --> 00:46:14.160 sort of peak at any point under paganism. 00:46:14.160 --> 00:46:19.520 It's really just a romantic misconception of our history in order to 00:46:19.520 --> 00:46:24.000 arrive at obviously his desired conclusion is Christianity is bad. 00:46:24.000 --> 00:46:25.920 He's making a mercenary argument. 00:46:25.920 --> 00:46:29.920 He's not actually setting forth facts to arrive there because the peak 00:46:29.920 --> 00:46:33.040 of our civilization was Christendom. 00:46:33.040 --> 00:46:37.040 We had the best quality of life under Christianity. 00:46:37.040 --> 00:46:40.960 Things have declined as we have become less Christian. 00:46:40.960 --> 00:46:45.680 So Christianity is true, I think that's the more salient matter because 00:46:45.680 --> 00:46:48.400 the truth matters even if it doesn't benefit you. 00:46:48.400 --> 00:46:53.920 And then incidentally Christianity does also benefit you because if you adhere 00:46:53.920 --> 00:46:57.280 to God's laws and you behave in a Christian way, you will 00:46:57.280 --> 00:46:58.880 have a better society. 00:46:58.880 --> 00:47:02.400 But yes, you don't have to be Christian to behave in a 00:47:02.400 --> 00:47:02.880 moral way. 00:47:03.120 --> 00:47:05.840 Christians have never said that's the case. 00:47:05.840 --> 00:47:09.760 It is better to have the fullness of the law than to 00:47:09.760 --> 00:47:14.480 have the fragmentary bits of it that are discerned through human wisdom. 00:47:14.480 --> 00:47:18.000 So it's better to be Christian than not to be Christian, both 00:47:18.000 --> 00:47:22.000 in terms of adherence to the truth and in terms of the 00:47:22.000 --> 00:47:26.720 comforts of life and having a better life. 00:47:26.720 --> 00:47:31.440 We'll pull out some questions here from the chat now. 00:47:45.280 --> 00:47:51.040 A question about Pope Gregory that I will leave for next week 00:47:51.280 --> 00:47:54.720 because I want to look at exactly what's being asked there. 00:47:54.880 --> 00:47:57.360 Just going to add a few questions to my 00:47:58.320 --> 00:48:01.120 ongoing list so I don't lose them. 00:48:25.520 --> 00:48:30.480 Answer this one because I can answer this without having to. 00:48:30.480 --> 00:48:33.200 Question where are we? 00:48:33.200 --> 00:48:37.200 Question eight. 00:48:37.200 --> 00:48:40.880 Have you read the book The Black Sun and generally what do 00:48:40.880 --> 00:48:45.280 you make of the historic association of national socialism with occultism? 00:48:45.280 --> 00:48:48.560 Could you specifically comment on the Black Sun symbol they apparently put 00:48:48.560 --> 00:48:50.080 in a castle? 00:48:50.080 --> 00:48:54.960 So So I have not read that book, so I can't comment 00:48:54.960 --> 00:48:56.400 on that book. 00:48:56.400 --> 00:49:01.120 But the relationship of occultism and national socialism is blown wildly out 00:49:01.120 --> 00:49:02.160 of proportion. 00:49:02.160 --> 00:49:06.720 Were there a handful of individuals who were interested in some occultic 00:49:06.720 --> 00:49:09.600 nonsense? Yes, there were. 00:49:09.600 --> 00:49:14.560 Overwhelmingly, however, the leadership were traditional Christians, and they were mostly Roman 00:49:14.560 --> 00:49:16.880 Catholic and Lutheran, handful of reformed, but 00:49:17.920 --> 00:49:23.200 the overwhelming majority of the leadership of every part of National Socialist 00:49:23.200 --> 00:49:24.880 Germany was Christian. 00:49:24.880 --> 00:49:27.200 And Germany itself was 95 plus percent Christian 00:49:28.160 --> 00:49:30.560 during and after the war even. 00:49:30.560 --> 00:49:34.320 In fact, it went up during the National Socialist period. 00:49:34.320 --> 00:49:38.080 So the occultic thing is blown out of proportion in order to 00:49:38.080 --> 00:49:42.480 demonize national socialists primarily in the mind of baby boomers. 00:49:42.480 --> 00:49:44.480 They were the ones who really bought into that. 00:49:44.480 --> 00:49:48.160 The younger generations aren't buying it because they've been seeing the actual 00:49:48.160 --> 00:49:52.560 speeches and hearing the actual words and have access to the actual 00:49:52.560 --> 00:49:57.200 documents. There was a question last week about the Hitler youth meetings 00:49:57.200 --> 00:49:58.320 and when they were held. 00:49:58.320 --> 00:50:01.200 The baby boomers were apparently told they were held on Sundays to 00:50:01.200 --> 00:50:02.640 conflict with the church. 00:50:02.640 --> 00:50:05.200 The reality is we still have the documents, they were held on 00:50:05.200 --> 00:50:09.680 Wednesday and Saturday, so it's just not a thing. 00:50:09.680 --> 00:50:13.120 Did you have a handful of weird individuals? 00:50:13.120 --> 00:50:16.000 Yes. Would it perhaps have been better if they'd been shoved in 00:50:16.000 --> 00:50:19.200 an attic somewhere for Further away from the center of power? 00:50:19.200 --> 00:50:22.880 Probably yes, but by and large they were sidelined and told to 00:50:22.880 --> 00:50:23.920 cut it out. 00:50:23.920 --> 00:50:27.440 Like Hitler personally told a number of individuals to cut it out 00:50:27.440 --> 00:50:30.560 with the pagan nonsense because it was annoying him, and it was 00:50:30.560 --> 00:50:32.000 just it was nonsense, right? 00:50:32.400 --> 00:50:38.080 He is literally the source of the LARP meme, of calling neopagans 00:50:38.160 --> 00:50:40.960 LARPers. That's literally from Hitler. 00:50:40.960 --> 00:50:42.880 That's a quote from him, basically. 00:50:42.880 --> 00:50:48.320 So No, the the occult stuff, the accusations are not real. 00:50:48.320 --> 00:50:52.000 And the black sun is just a stylized symbol of the sun. 00:50:52.000 --> 00:50:55.600 We have symbols of the sun all the way back through history. 00:50:55.600 --> 00:51:00.880 The Hakkenkreuz is partly a Christian symbol and partly just what happens 00:51:00.880 --> 00:51:04.720 when you look at the rotation of certain heavenly bodies over the 00:51:04.720 --> 00:51:07.520 course of a year, the four seasons, right? 00:51:07.520 --> 00:51:10.880 And before people get weird about that and think, oh you can't 00:51:10.880 --> 00:51:14.880 look at the stars and literally in scripture it says the stars 00:51:14.880 --> 00:51:16.960 are created for signs. 00:51:16.960 --> 00:51:21.200 I went into this previously, we don't know and understand exactly how 00:51:21.200 --> 00:51:24.880 that worked because that was lost to history, but it's still there, 00:51:24.880 --> 00:51:25.920 it's still in scripture. 00:51:25.920 --> 00:51:29.840 There's nothing wrong with using symbols from God's creation, as long as 00:51:29.840 --> 00:51:31.920 you're not worshiping them, right? 00:51:31.920 --> 00:51:36.480 Using the sun as a symbol, very common in heraldry back for 00:51:36.480 --> 00:51:40.240 centuries through Christendom, that's not identical to worshiping the sun. 00:51:40.240 --> 00:51:41.440 So I don't object to the symbol. 00:51:41.440 --> 00:51:42.560 I think it's fine. 00:51:42.560 --> 00:51:50.720 Just, you know, don't worship the sun. 00:51:57.120 --> 00:51:58.720 Question nine. 00:51:58.720 --> 00:52:01.680 Do you think the current model of pastors being paid for simply 00:52:01.680 --> 00:52:06.000 being pastors is biblical, or is a pastor being by vocational a 00:52:06.000 --> 00:52:07.200 better model? 00:52:07.200 --> 00:52:13.600 So we have the clear example, right, of Paul and Paul contrasting 00:52:13.600 --> 00:52:17.040 himself with others and he says that he is working for his 00:52:17.040 --> 00:52:17.840 own keep, right? 00:52:17.840 --> 00:52:21.520 He's a tent maker, and others are not doing so because they're 00:52:21.520 --> 00:52:23.920 preaching the gospel and sustaining themselves that way. 00:52:23.920 --> 00:52:27.200 So both exist in scripture, both are fine. 00:52:27.200 --> 00:52:29.280 You can do either one. 00:52:29.280 --> 00:52:33.520 Do I think it's better to have a bivocational pastor? 00:52:33.520 --> 00:52:38.000 These days, perhaps, but under ideal circumstances, I don't think so, because 00:52:38.320 --> 00:52:42.960 if you have a pastor for an average a good average, not 00:52:42.960 --> 00:52:47.360 necessarily whatever average is right now, but for an average size congregation, 00:52:47.360 --> 00:52:49.120 that's a full-time job. 00:52:49.120 --> 00:52:52.960 Because you are supposed to know the state of the families in 00:52:52.960 --> 00:52:55.600 your congregation, you're supposed to spend time with them. 00:52:55.600 --> 00:52:57.840 You're supposed to talk to them, pray with them, do all these 00:52:57.840 --> 00:52:59.920 things. You're supposed to care for the sick. 00:52:59.920 --> 00:53:00.880 You're supposed to teach. 00:53:00.880 --> 00:53:02.640 You're supposed to prepare your sermon. 00:53:02.640 --> 00:53:04.560 You're supposed to have a midweek lesson. 00:53:04.560 --> 00:53:07.520 There's a lot of work if you're a pastor and you're doing 00:53:07.520 --> 00:53:08.560 your job. 00:53:08.560 --> 00:53:13.440 So I think it's better to have pastors who are dedicated to 00:53:13.440 --> 00:53:15.440 that, that is their sole job. 00:53:15.440 --> 00:53:18.800 However, that being said, other than obviously being a father and a 00:53:18.800 --> 00:53:19.200 husband, right? 00:53:19.440 --> 00:53:21.440 You have to do the that as well. 00:53:21.440 --> 00:53:24.880 That being said, I don't think men should go into the pastorate 00:53:24.880 --> 00:53:26.960 until they are second career. 00:53:26.960 --> 00:53:29.600 Because I think you need that life experience and you need to 00:53:29.600 --> 00:53:32.400 be a little older, you need to have a few gray hairs 00:53:32.560 --> 00:53:35.680 for the other men in the congregation to take you seriously. 00:53:35.680 --> 00:53:38.240 They're just not going to take you seriously if you're a twenty 00:53:38.240 --> 00:53:41.440 one year old fresh out of graduate school, and they probably shouldn't 00:53:41.360 --> 00:53:42.400 take you seriously. 00:53:42.400 --> 00:53:44.720 I don't care if you're a prod if you're a prodigy, they 00:53:44.720 --> 00:53:46.720 probably should not take you seriously. 00:53:46.720 --> 00:53:50.960 Go out and actually live something of life first. 00:53:50.960 --> 00:53:53.520 It's going to give you a perspective you don't have if you 00:53:53.520 --> 00:53:56.400 spent all of your time in academia. 00:53:56.400 --> 00:54:00.080 Granted, pastors are usually less of that kind, that's more the theologian, 00:54:00.080 --> 00:54:02.800 but still I think it's better if the pastor goes into it 00:54:02.800 --> 00:54:05.680 when he's in his, you know, thirties or even forties. 00:54:23.120 --> 00:54:28.160 I'll briefly touch on this one without going into too much depth. 00:54:29.920 --> 00:54:34.240 Is Baal or Baal if you want to pronounce it technically correctly, 00:54:34.240 --> 00:54:36.960 Satan and Saturn, are they identical? 00:54:36.960 --> 00:54:39.040 What do you know about Saturn? 00:54:39.040 --> 00:54:42.160 I know the star of Remfen and Black Cube are associated with 00:54:42.160 --> 00:54:46.080 Saturn, so getting back into the occult, I guess. 00:54:46.080 --> 00:54:49.520 Some of this stuff you don't want to delve into it too 00:54:50.080 --> 00:54:54.160 deeply, because delving into the occult and the demonic is always bad 00:54:54.160 --> 00:54:55.120 for you. 00:54:55.120 --> 00:54:59.920 And it's one of the sort of caveats or downsides of say 00:55:00.000 --> 00:55:00.880 being an exorcist. 00:55:00.880 --> 00:55:02.880 You're going to have to deal with these things. 00:55:02.880 --> 00:55:04.080 And you don't want to. 00:55:04.080 --> 00:55:05.440 I've gone over this many times before. 00:55:05.440 --> 00:55:06.880 There's such a thing as bad knowledge. 00:55:06.880 --> 00:55:08.640 There are things you don't want to know. 00:55:08.640 --> 00:55:13.520 But it is worth knowing that there are connections with regard to 00:55:13.520 --> 00:55:17.200 these symbols and these practices historically and even And even today. 00:55:17.200 --> 00:55:23.440 So the black cube is definitely associated with Satan and with Saturn. 00:55:23.440 --> 00:55:27.040 So you see that in a number of different cultures, you see 00:55:27.040 --> 00:55:28.960 it particularly among the Jews. 00:55:28.960 --> 00:55:31.360 That's why they have the little black cube on their heads. 00:55:31.360 --> 00:55:36.560 They're not doing it to be pious or to store scrolls and 00:55:36.560 --> 00:55:39.440 be, you know, true worshippers of God. 00:55:39.440 --> 00:55:42.400 They're revealing in public what they are. 00:55:42.400 --> 00:55:46.080 They are Saturnists, they are Satanists. 00:55:46.080 --> 00:55:47.360 That is what they are. 00:55:47.360 --> 00:55:51.120 So is Baal and Satan, are they identical? 00:55:51.120 --> 00:55:52.240 Not necessarily. 00:55:52.240 --> 00:55:56.720 And do remember that Baal just means Lord, historically, so sometimes it 00:55:56.720 --> 00:56:00.640 was a title that was just applied to whichever local god was 00:56:00.640 --> 00:56:04.720 the god of a given tribe, and then it morphed over time 00:56:05.040 --> 00:56:09.840 into the the great god, as it were, of that region being 00:56:10.080 --> 00:56:14.160 Baal was the highest one for many different peoples. 00:56:14.160 --> 00:56:18.320 But sometimes that means Satan, but it does not always mean Satan. 00:56:18.320 --> 00:56:20.400 It could mean some other demon. 00:56:20.400 --> 00:56:24.720 We don't know exactly what the relationship is, like the one-to-one relationship 00:56:24.720 --> 00:56:25.920 behind the scenes. 00:56:25.920 --> 00:56:28.160 You know, this name is this demon. 00:56:28.160 --> 00:56:30.240 God has not given us that information. 00:56:30.240 --> 00:56:32.080 We don't need to know it. 00:56:32.080 --> 00:56:34.000 So are they worshiping demons? 00:56:34.000 --> 00:56:36.720 Yes. Are they ultimately worshiping Satan? 00:56:36.720 --> 00:56:41.280 Yes. That's what's important to recognize, and then you start to recognize 00:56:41.280 --> 00:56:44.800 where these occult symbols pop up, because like I've said many times 00:56:44.800 --> 00:56:48.000 before, it very much seems to be the case that God has 00:56:48.000 --> 00:56:52.640 required them to broadcast their plans to a certain degree, not to 00:56:52.640 --> 00:56:56.320 operate totally in the shadows, to give us a chance to respond 00:56:56.320 --> 00:56:59.840 to it, and we've sort of been failing to respond accordingly for 00:56:59.840 --> 00:57:01.760 quite some time. 00:57:01.760 --> 00:57:03.840 But excuse me. 00:57:03.840 --> 00:57:08.400 Yes, that's very clearly demonic, and what the connection is exactly with 00:57:08.400 --> 00:57:11.200 Saturn, I don't think we know. 00:57:11.200 --> 00:57:20.400 But it's certainly there There. 00:57:25.360 --> 00:57:27.840 A follow up question sort of 00:57:30.240 --> 00:57:33.360 How can I stay in the lines in quotation marks in regard 00:57:33.360 --> 00:57:35.760 to the law while writing about the Jews? 00:57:35.760 --> 00:57:38.320 I want to be safe and not get in trouble, to be 00:57:38.320 --> 00:57:41.680 more like you and Carl Rodel as prime examples. 00:57:41.680 --> 00:57:42.000 So 00:57:44.560 --> 00:57:47.680 it obviously helps if you're familiar with the actual law in this 00:57:47.680 --> 00:57:51.200 area. And the law is very clear about what counts as, you 00:57:51.200 --> 00:57:53.760 know, incitement to violence or things like that. 00:57:53.760 --> 00:57:55.680 You obviously can't incite violence. 00:57:55.680 --> 00:57:57.360 You're not allowed to do that. 00:57:57.360 --> 00:58:01.200 So you can't discuss. 00:58:01.200 --> 00:58:06.160 And the thing is, you can I want to be careful here, 00:58:06.160 --> 00:58:09.600 not necessarily because legally speaking, but this is also an important part 00:58:09.600 --> 00:58:10.320 of it. 00:58:10.320 --> 00:58:15.600 Legally speaking, you have certain bounds to what you are permitted to 00:58:15.600 --> 00:58:17.200 say in public. 00:58:17.200 --> 00:58:22.640 And basically you're not to permitted to incite imminent lawless action is 00:58:22.640 --> 00:58:23.840 essentially the standard. 00:58:23.840 --> 00:58:26.960 But if you are so inclined, you can go read the case 00:58:26.960 --> 00:58:32.000 and pull out the the greater extent of that holding, the fuller 00:58:32.000 --> 00:58:34.080 holding, not just that summary of it. 00:58:34.080 --> 00:58:36.320 That is an an accurate summary though. 00:58:36.320 --> 00:58:39.600 And so it's not enough if you're just a crazy person yelling 00:58:39.600 --> 00:58:44.240 on the street corner but there's no risk of inciting imminent lawless 00:58:44.240 --> 00:58:47.440 action. But obviously you don't want to be that guy. 00:58:47.440 --> 00:58:52.800 However, there is a second layer to it, practically speaking, because you 00:58:52.800 --> 00:58:55.600 are not just subject to the the 00:58:56.560 --> 00:59:00.720 law of the Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court, you're also 00:59:00.720 --> 00:59:04.560 subject to the terms and conditions of every service you're using, right? 00:59:04.800 --> 00:59:10.720 So you know, right now, I'm streaming to YouTube, Twitch, Kick, Rumble, 00:59:10.720 --> 00:59:12.960 and X. 00:59:12.960 --> 00:59:18.880 I am subject to the terms of service of those various platforms, 00:59:18.880 --> 00:59:22.160 and so I cannot run afoul of those with what I say 00:59:22.320 --> 00:59:25.200 or they will terminate my account and then I can't stream and 00:59:25.200 --> 00:59:28.640 then you can't listen to my answers to the questions unless we 00:59:28.640 --> 00:59:31.120 find some other platform that will not ban me. 00:59:31.120 --> 00:59:35.440 So the question isn't with regard to something like this, is it 00:59:35.440 --> 00:59:37.120 legal for me to say it? 00:59:37.120 --> 00:59:42.000 It is is it permissible according to the requirements of the platform? 00:59:42.000 --> 00:59:47.600 So generally speaking, as long as you are factual in your analysis 00:59:47.840 --> 00:59:54.480 and you're not making inflammatory statements inciting people to violence, you're probably 00:59:54.480 --> 00:59:56.560 not going to run afoul of the rules, right? 00:59:56.560 --> 01:00:00.240 Sometimes there are topics you can't discuss and more likely than not 01:00:00.320 --> 01:00:04.000 you'll be demonetized, regardless, even if you're very careful about how you 01:00:04.000 --> 01:00:09.760 discuss things, you'll probably be demonetized for talking about naughty subjects, right? 01:00:09.760 --> 01:00:11.360 Subjects you're not allowed to address. 01:00:11.360 --> 01:00:13.920 And in some cases, it's not even subjects related to say To 01:00:13.920 --> 01:00:17.600 say the Jews or religion or something truly controversial, it could just 01:00:17.600 --> 01:00:19.840 be something advertisers don't like, right? 01:00:19.840 --> 01:00:22.400 So there are a number of different layers to it, and so 01:00:22.400 --> 01:00:24.320 it sort of depends on what you're doing. 01:00:24.320 --> 01:00:28.640 If you're just writing and publishing books, don't run afoul of Supreme 01:00:28.640 --> 01:00:31.360 Court precedent and the actual state of the law with regard to 01:00:31.360 --> 01:00:32.400 the Constitution. 01:00:32.400 --> 01:00:35.280 If you're streaming, you have to comply with the terms and sir 01:00:35.440 --> 01:00:39.440 the terms of service, the regulations, the policies of the platforms you're 01:00:39.440 --> 01:00:43.040 using. So it's an answer that it depends, which is the standard 01:00:43.040 --> 01:00:47.280 attorney answer, but it is the reality, it's an accurate answer. 01:00:47.280 --> 01:00:54.480 So stay factual, stay objective, don't veer into polemics too 01:00:55.120 --> 01:00:57.600 hard in the sense of inflammatory language. 01:00:57.600 --> 01:01:00.880 Polemics fine as long as it's not, you know, standing up and 01:01:00.880 --> 01:01:03.920 advocating for something, right? 01:01:03.920 --> 01:01:08.400 And you know, euphemism exists in English, and it has a use, 01:01:08.400 --> 01:01:10.400 it has a utility, I employ it. 01:01:10.400 --> 01:01:13.120 It is one of the ways that you can speak the truth 01:01:13.120 --> 01:01:15.680 without immediately getting the banhammer. 01:01:15.680 --> 01:01:19.680 So some men are suited for it, some aren't, that's uh wisdom 01:01:19.680 --> 01:01:21.440 call for you to make for yourself. 01:01:35.200 --> 01:01:36.480 Question 12. 01:01:36.480 --> 01:01:38.720 I think I'll probably do a try to do a I don't 01:01:38.640 --> 01:01:41.360 know how many more questions, but trying to get through some of 01:01:41.360 --> 01:01:42.640 the ones in the chat. 01:01:42.640 --> 01:01:42.960 So 01:01:43.920 --> 01:01:47.600 Question 12: Can you speak on the pacifism of Christianity? 01:01:47.600 --> 01:01:52.080 I'm seeking proof that the religion is not pacifist at its core. 01:01:52.080 --> 01:01:52.400 So 01:01:54.000 --> 01:01:58.400 the accusation that Christianity is pacifist isn't even really 01:01:59.600 --> 01:02:03.120 historically an accusation leveled against Christianity. 01:02:03.120 --> 01:02:08.160 It's a modern accusation and it largely comes from groups like the 01:02:08.160 --> 01:02:11.920 Quakers and others who were pacifist and to some degree, the Amish 01:02:12.160 --> 01:02:14.560 and the Mennonites and things like that. 01:02:14.560 --> 01:02:16.800 They're just misinterpreting scripture. 01:02:16.800 --> 01:02:21.520 The overwhelming majority of Christians have never for a second entertained Christianity 01:02:21.520 --> 01:02:24.000 as being pacifist. 01:02:24.000 --> 01:02:28.160 I think one of the best ways to approach this, perhaps, would 01:02:28.160 --> 01:02:33.440 be to point out the distinction between private enemies and public enemies. 01:02:33.440 --> 01:02:36.400 Of course, there's also the enemies of God, which are kind of 01:02:36.400 --> 01:02:38.320 public enemies, but slightly different thing. 01:02:38.320 --> 01:02:42.000 You can of course go and listen to the Stonequire episode on 01:02:42.000 --> 01:02:45.680 that. I will try to remember to put that in the show 01:02:45.680 --> 01:02:51.920 notes. But the short version is that your private enemies are the 01:02:51.920 --> 01:02:53.360 ones you are to forgive. 01:02:53.360 --> 01:02:57.040 This is where part of the accusation, right, of Christianity being pacifist 01:02:57.120 --> 01:02:58.240 comes from. 01:02:58.240 --> 01:03:00.160 You are to forgive your private enemies. 01:03:00.160 --> 01:03:03.600 Your private enemy is your neighbor who borrows your lawnmower and never 01:03:03.600 --> 01:03:04.800 returns it. 01:03:04.800 --> 01:03:08.720 Right? You go ask him for the lawnmower, but you forgive him 01:03:08.720 --> 01:03:10.320 for not returning the lawnmower. 01:03:10.320 --> 01:03:12.480 You forgive him for denting your tool. 01:03:12.480 --> 01:03:15.200 You forgive him for annoying you. 01:03:15.200 --> 01:03:19.920 You cannot forgive the people invading your country. 01:03:19.920 --> 01:03:21.840 They're not your private enemies. 01:03:21.840 --> 01:03:23.040 They are public enemies. 01:03:23.040 --> 01:03:26.000 They are enemies of your nation, they are enemies of the state. 01:03:26.000 --> 01:03:28.400 You are not permitted to forgive them. 01:03:28.400 --> 01:03:31.120 In fact, it's insane to say that. 01:03:31.120 --> 01:03:34.800 And the example that I'll use, that's the best example, so just 01:03:34.800 --> 01:03:38.160 go ahead and use this one, for people who try to argue 01:03:38.160 --> 01:03:40.800 that you oh you just have to forgive all enemies. 01:03:40.800 --> 01:03:45.600 Okay. Can you forgive Satan for rebelling against God? 01:03:45.600 --> 01:03:47.280 Satan's your enemy. 01:03:47.280 --> 01:03:51.680 Satan is the arch enemy of Christians of mankind. 01:03:52.000 --> 01:03:54.960 You are not permitted to forgive God's enemies, and so if there 01:03:54.960 --> 01:03:58.400 is an enemy, you are not permitted to forgive, then you are 01:03:58.400 --> 01:04:01.200 clearly not supposed to forgive all enemies. 01:04:01.200 --> 01:04:05.120 It would in fact be a sin to try to forgive Satan. 01:04:05.120 --> 01:04:07.840 So you have to bear in mind that there are different kinds 01:04:07.840 --> 01:04:10.400 of enemies, and you are not commanded to forgive all of them, 01:04:10.320 --> 01:04:12.240 because it's not your place. 01:04:12.240 --> 01:04:15.760 And then you can look at down through history, Christians have always 01:04:15.760 --> 01:04:19.040 taken up arms to defend their nation, to defend Christendom, defend their 01:04:19.040 --> 01:04:24.160 homes, defend their lives You have duties to defend these things, because 01:04:24.320 --> 01:04:27.120 these things have been entrusted to you by God. 01:04:27.120 --> 01:04:33.280 Right? And so when Scripture says, Thou shalt not murder, there are 01:04:33.280 --> 01:04:35.600 positive requirements that come along with that. 01:04:35.600 --> 01:04:38.400 Defending your neighbor's life is part of that. 01:04:38.400 --> 01:04:40.320 So that's defense of others. 01:04:40.320 --> 01:04:42.240 You are God's slave. 01:04:42.240 --> 01:04:46.160 You are not permitted to let God's property be destroyed. 01:04:46.160 --> 01:04:47.200 You have to defend yourself. 01:04:47.440 --> 01:04:48.880 That's self-defense. 01:04:48.880 --> 01:04:53.600 Christians have always believed in these things, in this hierarchy of loves 01:04:53.600 --> 01:04:58.320 and duties, and pacifism has no place in Christianity. 01:04:58.320 --> 01:05:01.360 It used to be we executed pacifists. 01:05:01.360 --> 01:05:03.920 It was considered a capital offense. 01:05:03.920 --> 01:05:06.560 And we should maybe go back to that in some cases. 01:05:06.560 --> 01:05:09.440 Maybe it would stop the nonsense of men trying to spread that 01:05:09.440 --> 01:05:13.120 lie. Christianity is very obviously not pacifist, though. 01:05:27.440 --> 01:05:31.120 Let's see, I'll put this question in my Question 13. 01:05:31.120 --> 01:05:33.600 Did you watch the debate on the curse of Ham with Dale 01:05:33.600 --> 01:05:38.560 Partridge and the individuals struggling with sanctification last night? 01:05:38.880 --> 01:05:40.480 I did not watch it. 01:05:40.480 --> 01:05:43.680 I heard that it was kind of a dumpster fire. 01:05:43.680 --> 01:05:46.240 So I assume that was an accurate assessment given the men who 01:05:46.240 --> 01:05:46.960 told me that. 01:05:46.960 --> 01:05:52.080 But no, I did not personally watch it. 01:05:52.080 --> 01:05:57.600 But yes, that the individual whom I also debated was certainly an 01:05:57.600 --> 01:06:00.640 experience. Question fourteen related question. 01:06:00.640 --> 01:06:04.160 I have some friends who watched your debates. 01:06:04.160 --> 01:06:07.200 I was wondering how we could trace the continuity of the genealogy 01:06:07.280 --> 01:06:09.040 of the curse of ham. 01:06:09.040 --> 01:06:12.800 So this one's actually pretty easy to trace because there are really 01:06:12.800 --> 01:06:15.680 three great races of men on Earth. 01:06:15.680 --> 01:06:20.480 You have the Europeans, the Asiatics in the broad sense, sort of 01:06:20.480 --> 01:06:23.680 the British sense of Asian, and the Africans. 01:06:23.680 --> 01:06:26.640 Now there are subgroups within that and at the periphery you get 01:06:26.640 --> 01:06:29.760 mixtures, but those are the three groups and those just correspond to 01:06:29.760 --> 01:06:31.840 the three sons of Noah. 01:06:31.840 --> 01:06:36.240 You've got Japheth as Europeans, you've got Shem as the Asiatics, Majulo, 01:06:36.240 --> 01:06:39.440 you know, the Arabs are part Hamite, and then you have Ham 01:06:39.440 --> 01:06:40.800 as the Africans. 01:06:40.800 --> 01:06:43.120 So it really is just, I mean you can basically tell by 01:06:43.120 --> 01:06:46.720 skin tone for Japheth versus Ham, right? 01:06:46.720 --> 01:06:50.800 Not necessarily at the periphery for some of the Shemites, they're fair-skinned, 01:06:50.800 --> 01:06:54.240 but you can certainly identify the sons of Ham on site. 01:06:54.240 --> 01:06:55.440 So it's it's really not difficult. 01:06:55.840 --> 01:06:59.360 But there's also, like I said previously, you can see this with 01:06:59.360 --> 01:07:04.160 genetic studies, different populations and how distant they are from one another. 01:07:04.160 --> 01:07:08.800 And the Africans are very clearly more distant from everyone else than 01:07:08.800 --> 01:07:10.640 than other groups are from each other. 01:07:10.640 --> 01:07:14.640 But it's not difficult to identify the the different groups descended from 01:07:14.640 --> 01:07:15.920 the sons of Noah. 01:07:15.920 --> 01:07:18.960 Except like I said, at the periphery where you've had the admixture 01:07:18.960 --> 01:07:22.320 over centuries, then in some cases they're descended from two, like the 01:07:22.320 --> 01:07:24.400 air in scripture we see that, right? 01:07:24.400 --> 01:07:28.240 The Arabs are descended from a union of Ham and Shem. 01:07:28.240 --> 01:07:31.440 That's very clear in scripture with the son of Abraham. 01:07:31.440 --> 01:07:31.760 So 01:07:33.440 --> 01:07:36.880 But yes, I don't think it would be difficult to identify which 01:07:36.880 --> 01:07:49.040 groups are descended from hammering 01:07:57.760 --> 01:08:03.440 Question fifteen in the case of not having access to a Lutheran 01:08:03.440 --> 01:08:06.480 church, only Baptist churches should I go to the Baptist church and 01:08:06.480 --> 01:08:08.080 abstain from the Lord's Supper? 01:08:08.080 --> 01:08:10.560 That would be my recommendation, yes. 01:08:10.560 --> 01:08:14.960 And I've gone into this in some depth previously, so I would 01:08:14.960 --> 01:08:19.920 say listen to the times where I've been asked about attending X 01:08:20.160 --> 01:08:24.400 denomination instead of another, because I've specifically gone over the Lord's Supper. 01:08:24.400 --> 01:08:28.000 And basic basically the issue is that you don't want to give 01:08:28.400 --> 01:08:32.160 a false public confession, but like I've said, there are times where 01:08:32.240 --> 01:08:36.240 maybe I wouldn't be uncomfortable communing at say an Anglican church because 01:08:36.240 --> 01:08:37.920 they do confess the real presence. 01:08:37.920 --> 01:08:41.120 Granted it's sort of in the reformed sense, which we disagree with 01:08:41.120 --> 01:08:46.400 as Lutherans, but the question, as I pointed out previously, would be, 01:08:46.400 --> 01:08:50.160 am I making a public confession of the doctrine that is being 01:08:50.160 --> 01:08:54.720 preached, or am I making a public confession confession of my unity 01:08:54.720 --> 01:08:56.080 with these men as brothers? 01:08:56.240 --> 01:09:00.240 So maybe in the sense of like Anglicans I might be comfortable 01:09:00.240 --> 01:09:01.280 doing that. 01:09:01.280 --> 01:09:05.520 For Baptists typically no, and on top of it, Baptists typically don't 01:09:05.440 --> 01:09:08.720 have the Lord's Supper because they're often using grape juice and not 01:09:08.720 --> 01:09:12.480 wine, so they're disobeying God with the very thing they're doing. 01:09:12.480 --> 01:09:14.800 So I would not partake I would not partake. 01:09:14.800 --> 01:09:17.280 But I do believe many of them are brothers, of course, just 01:09:17.280 --> 01:09:18.160 to make sure that's clear. 01:09:18.640 --> 01:09:21.280 I just believe their brothers in error and they're in deep error 01:09:21.280 --> 01:09:23.200 with regard to the Lord's Supper. 01:09:23.200 --> 01:09:26.160 So I would recommend not participating. 01:09:26.160 --> 01:09:29.680 But you can certainly go and worship God with them. 01:09:57.360 --> 01:10:00.880 I have someone who is unimpressed with IQ studies. 01:10:00.880 --> 01:10:05.040 I take it up with the scientists, they are among the most 01:10:05.040 --> 01:10:09.520 reproducible studies ever conducted in any field. 01:10:09.520 --> 01:10:12.960 Other than something like physics, where it's just the laws of the 01:10:12.960 --> 01:10:21.680 universe. 01:10:21.920 --> 01:10:24.800 Question sixteen, I guess, is related to fifteen. 01:10:24.800 --> 01:10:27.040 The interjection there was not really a question. 01:10:27.040 --> 01:10:30.560 Question sixteen should churches return to using one common cup of wine 01:10:30.560 --> 01:10:32.640 and one common loaf of bread for communion. 01:10:32.800 --> 01:10:34.560 think that is the better symbolism. 01:10:34.560 --> 01:10:37.760 It's not required, this is adiaphorn, right? 01:10:37.760 --> 01:10:43.120 This is something that is neither required nor prohibited, just like you 01:10:43.120 --> 01:10:45.600 can use white wine or you can use red wine. 01:10:45.600 --> 01:10:48.400 Scripture does not say which wine it was. 01:10:48.400 --> 01:10:52.320 Is the symbolism of red wine better because it is the Lord's 01:10:52.320 --> 01:10:54.080 blood? I think so. 01:10:54.080 --> 01:10:58.160 But there have been times where Lutheran churches have used white wine 01:10:58.160 --> 01:11:02.240 specifically as a confession against the error of other groups. 01:11:02.240 --> 01:11:03.840 That happened in Germany, for instance. 01:11:03.840 --> 01:11:06.400 You'll go to churches and it'll be Riesling instead of a red 01:11:06.400 --> 01:11:09.680 wine. Or maybe you don't have red wine, but you have white 01:11:09.680 --> 01:11:10.640 wine, right? 01:11:10.640 --> 01:11:11.760 That's permissible. 01:11:11.760 --> 01:11:13.680 Does it have to be unleavened bread? 01:11:13.680 --> 01:11:15.200 No, it can be leavened bread. 01:11:15.200 --> 01:11:18.400 Does it have to be the wafers, no, it can be a 01:11:18.400 --> 01:11:19.680 common loaf. 01:11:19.680 --> 01:11:24.720 I think insofar as the symbolism and the purpose, and it's not 01:11:24.720 --> 01:11:27.600 just the forgiveness of sins, it's also the unity of the church, 01:11:27.600 --> 01:11:30.960 particularly the local church body, as far as those things are concerned, 01:11:30.960 --> 01:11:34.720 I think the common cup and a common loaf are better. 01:11:34.720 --> 01:11:37.360 And then you have the, you know, broken for you, right? 01:11:37.360 --> 01:11:38.880 The Lord's body broken for you. 01:11:38.880 --> 01:11:42.000 There's more of a symbol there when you're breaking the loaf. 01:11:42.000 --> 01:11:46.160 So I think that's optimal, but is it necessary? 01:11:46.160 --> 01:11:51.120 No. So as we start to return to more traditional and better 01:11:51.120 --> 01:11:54.720 churches, whether it's taking over existing ones or starting up a home 01:11:54.720 --> 01:11:57.680 church that turns into a proper church in the sense of owning 01:11:57.680 --> 01:12:00.960 a building and things, I think this is probably the way to 01:12:00.960 --> 01:12:03.680 go, and I think it's a a better way to do things. 01:12:17.600 --> 01:12:20.640 Maybe a couple more questions for this stream, I think. 01:12:20.960 --> 01:12:25.440 Sort of a follow-up question from the introductory monologue, I guess, about 01:12:25.440 --> 01:12:27.280 China. Question seventeen. 01:12:27.280 --> 01:12:29.920 Why do you think Christianity ever trickled down to the masses in 01:12:29.920 --> 01:12:32.800 China despite them having had two Christian leaders in the past in 01:12:32.800 --> 01:12:35.120 the past. 01:12:35.120 --> 01:12:39.120 I think that there are quite frankly a lot of reasons, but 01:12:39.120 --> 01:12:41.200 if I were to give say 01:12:42.720 --> 01:12:48.080 three reasons, I would say that the first one is just that 01:12:48.080 --> 01:12:53.280 the hinterlands were never really evangelized in the same way and to 01:12:53.280 --> 01:12:57.760 the same extent as the coastal regions, because the Europeans dealt with 01:12:57.760 --> 01:13:00.160 the coastal regions because those were those were the trade cities, as 01:13:00.160 --> 01:13:03.120 I went over in the introduction to this the first question for 01:13:03.120 --> 01:13:05.040 the episode. 01:13:05.040 --> 01:13:07.440 I would say the second part would be 01:13:08.800 --> 01:13:13.520 that because you didn't have any of that Christianization, you never had 01:13:13.920 --> 01:13:18.880 any sort of pressure for others to think about Christianity. 01:13:18.880 --> 01:13:20.960 They didn't have any exposure to it. 01:13:20.960 --> 01:13:23.840 There's a little bit now because there are people who are sending 01:13:23.840 --> 01:13:27.840 Bibles and you know, the Chinese communist Party kind of vaguely tolerates 01:13:27.840 --> 01:13:33.120 Christian evangelization, although surveils you extremely heavily if you are a Christian 01:13:33.120 --> 01:13:34.720 pastor there. 01:13:34.720 --> 01:13:35.040 And 01:13:37.200 --> 01:13:44.720 I think that the traditional their old pagan religions just had enough 01:13:44.720 --> 01:13:48.640 weight that they stuck around and there was never any real 01:13:49.600 --> 01:13:53.600 like I said, no real pressure with regard to Christianity. 01:13:53.600 --> 01:13:57.600 And so you didn't have enough people converting in to build that 01:13:57.600 --> 01:13:59.680 momentum to change the society. 01:13:59.680 --> 01:14:03.600 And then third and perhaps the most important, like I said, they 01:14:03.920 --> 01:14:08.880 murdered 35,000 Chinese Christians at one point during the Boxer Rebellion. 01:14:08.880 --> 01:14:12.880 And then they had pogroms during the Cultural Revolution. 01:14:12.880 --> 01:14:20.400 And they suppressed and surveilled and sometimes just assassinated Christian pastors, communism, 01:14:20.400 --> 01:14:24.240 born out of that and sort of the intellectual progeny of that 01:14:24.320 --> 01:14:29.680 modulo, the Jewish involvement, of course, in the Chinese Communist Party, very 01:14:29.680 --> 01:14:32.640 anti-Christian and has suppressed Christianity. 01:14:32.640 --> 01:14:34.720 And I think that's probably the biggest fact. 01:14:34.720 --> 01:14:38.160 Because if you look at the places even in Europe where you 01:14:38.160 --> 01:14:45.600 had the most thorough communist Sort of destruction of traditional society 01:14:45.920 --> 01:14:50.720 and control over the culture, they still haven't recovered with regard to 01:14:50.720 --> 01:14:55.440 Christianity. Look at East Germany versus West Germany. 01:14:55.440 --> 01:14:57.680 Communism destroys the soul. 01:14:57.680 --> 01:15:00.560 And I think that is a large part of what happened in 01:15:00.560 --> 01:15:05.600 China. And unfortunately, Confucianism kind of set the stage for that to 01:15:05.680 --> 01:15:07.120 be ushered in. 01:15:16.880 --> 01:15:21.920 I think that maybe the final question from the chat, so let 01:15:21.920 --> 01:15:24.880 me see if I can pull out one last question that's not 01:15:24.880 --> 01:15:32.720 too long. 01:15:33.520 --> 01:15:36.400 Someone asked me about data centers. 01:15:36.560 --> 01:15:39.360 I guess I uh comment on that one very briefly because it's 01:15:39.360 --> 01:15:43.440 that's kind of a complicated topic, but I'll make this the the 01:15:43.440 --> 01:15:45.760 last one for this stream. 01:15:45.920 --> 01:15:56.320 Add that to my Notes here. 01:15:56.320 --> 01:16:01.120 So the final question, what is the proper solution to these seemingly 01:16:01.200 --> 01:16:06.480 out of control situation with companies buying up farms, homesteads, etc. 01:16:06.720 --> 01:16:11.120 to build data centers. 01:16:11.120 --> 01:16:12.240 Where did my 01:16:15.920 --> 01:16:17.600 I don't want to get into 01:16:18.720 --> 01:16:22.960 the AI topic right now, because the AI topic is not only 01:16:23.120 --> 01:16:27.120 expansive, and this is question 18, I guess I should say, for 01:16:27.120 --> 01:16:30.640 the sake of the the record and the transcription. 01:16:30.640 --> 01:16:33.520 The AI topic is complicated and I don't necessarily want to get 01:16:33.520 --> 01:16:38.000 into it because it will take quite a lot of time actually. 01:16:38.000 --> 01:16:40.080 But with regard to 01:16:41.120 --> 01:16:44.320 sort of what zoning laws, really what we're talking about in regulatory 01:16:44.320 --> 01:16:48.160 law, the issue is that we just have very bad regulatory law 01:16:48.160 --> 01:16:51.680 and very bad zoning law, zoning law being a subset of regulatory 01:16:51.680 --> 01:16:53.440 law in much of the country. 01:16:53.440 --> 01:16:56.960 And so they're not prepared to deal with these issues. 01:16:56.960 --> 01:17:00.080 They don't have the local competence because they've never dealt with it 01:17:00.080 --> 01:17:01.440 before. And so 01:17:03.200 --> 01:17:06.640 men who are competent, if you are in these areas, you need 01:17:06.640 --> 01:17:11.120 to get involved on these local boards who will oversee and hear 01:17:11.120 --> 01:17:12.160 these issues. 01:17:12.160 --> 01:17:16.080 Now, excuse me, recently we have had some individuals at the state 01:17:16.080 --> 01:17:20.640 level and at the national level who have been trying to address 01:17:20.640 --> 01:17:22.480 the issue to some degree. 01:17:22.480 --> 01:17:24.720 But it's not just data centers, right? 01:17:24.720 --> 01:17:26.640 You have massive warehouses being built. 01:17:26.640 --> 01:17:30.240 You have things that don't fit the location in which they are 01:17:30.240 --> 01:17:34.560 built. We need to have better land use regulations so these things 01:17:34.560 --> 01:17:39.280 are done rationally in a way that benefits the population and not 01:17:39.280 --> 01:17:41.040 just these giant corporations. 01:17:41.040 --> 01:17:44.400 Part of this is a problem with capitalism, and if you have 01:17:44.400 --> 01:17:47.360 enough money to throw at something you can generally get your way. 01:17:47.360 --> 01:17:52.240 And part of it is just we don't have competent men involved 01:17:52.240 --> 01:17:55.920 in these things any more, so it's mostly incompetent men and often 01:17:55.920 --> 01:17:59.440 men who are very easily bribed You know, the kind of man 01:17:59.440 --> 01:18:02.560 who can be bribed with a single nice dinner and a bar 01:18:02.560 --> 01:18:06.160 of scotch and a bottle of scotch, rather, is the kind of 01:18:06.160 --> 01:18:08.000 man on a lot of these boards. 01:18:08.000 --> 01:18:10.640 You don't want that man in charge of the decision of saying, 01:18:10.640 --> 01:18:13.680 sure, you can build a data center here in the middle of 01:18:13.680 --> 01:18:16.320 this neighborhood or whatever it happens to be. 01:18:16.320 --> 01:18:23.200 So complicated issue, but it has to be solved by changing the 01:18:23.200 --> 01:18:26.720 laws. Now, that's assuming that everything doesn't go sideways and things get 01:18:26.720 --> 01:18:31.200 solved in a different way, but if that doesn't happen and it 01:18:31.200 --> 01:18:36.240 probably will, but in the interim, it is solved by involving competent 01:18:36.480 --> 01:18:40.720 moral men in the decision making process and making sure these things 01:18:40.720 --> 01:18:42.720 are done as they should be done. 01:18:42.720 --> 01:18:48.800 And from my perspective, corporations should not own giant chunks of land, 01:18:48.800 --> 01:18:55.120 farms, homesteads, corporations should be absolutely banned from ow owning private residences. 01:18:55.120 --> 01:18:58.400 Black rock should be shattered into a million pieces and scattered to 01:18:58.400 --> 01:18:59.680 the winds. 01:18:59.680 --> 01:19:04.640 But these are very real problems and they will take time and 01:19:04.640 --> 01:19:07.600 a lot of effort to fix because things have been allowed to 01:19:07.600 --> 01:19:09.360 fester for so long. 01:19:09.360 --> 01:19:11.040 But get involved. 01:19:11.040 --> 01:19:16.160 You can probably get involved in your local, whatever it happens to 01:19:16.160 --> 01:19:21.840 be, zoning commission, whatever regulatory body it is, they probably have open 01:19:21.840 --> 01:19:26.160 seats or very few people vote for the position and maybe you, 01:19:26.160 --> 01:19:29.680 your family and like your cousins could get you elected That's the 01:19:29.680 --> 01:19:30.960 case in a lot of places. 01:19:30.960 --> 01:19:35.280 So get involved because at the local level, you can do a 01:19:35.280 --> 01:19:38.000 lot. Maybe you can't get elected to the state level at the 01:19:38.000 --> 01:19:38.560 national level. 01:19:38.560 --> 01:19:40.160 Everyone always focuses on that. 01:19:40.160 --> 01:19:43.200 But by and large, the people making a lot of decisions that 01:19:43.200 --> 01:19:48.000 affect your everyday life are probably fifteen minutes down the road. 01:19:48.000 --> 01:19:50.240 So you can get involved and you can do a lot of 01:19:50.240 --> 01:19:51.360 good for your neighbor. 01:19:51.360 --> 01:19:54.400 Christians should absolutely be involved in these things in making sure that 01:19:54.400 --> 01:19:58.080 they are being done in a way that is consonant with morality 01:19:58.080 --> 01:20:00.480 and consonant with what is best for your neighbor. 01:20:00.480 --> 01:20:02.640 This is one of the ways you can serve your neighbor in 01:20:02.640 --> 01:20:04.320 a very concrete way. 01:20:04.320 --> 01:20:08.720 So I think that's the short version of how to deal with 01:20:08.720 --> 01:20:11.520 that issue and what's going on. 01:20:11.520 --> 01:20:14.000 But I think that will be it for 01:20:14.960 --> 01:20:16.000 this week. 01:20:16.000 --> 01:20:19.360 I see there are a couple more questions that have come in 01:20:19.040 --> 01:20:22.880 in the chat, I will copy those over so that I don't 01:20:22.800 --> 01:20:25.680 miss them. 01:20:25.680 --> 01:20:31.280 But as always, thank you for submitting questions and for participating in 01:20:31.280 --> 01:20:32.560 the chat. 01:20:32.800 --> 01:20:35.440 If I did not get to your question or I missed your 01:20:35.440 --> 01:20:39.840 question, which is entirely possible, please go ahead and submit that on 01:20:39.840 --> 01:20:40.400 the forum. 01:20:40.400 --> 01:20:43.600 The forum is always the best way because I can mark those 01:20:43.600 --> 01:20:46.480 as having been answered and I have a record of them in 01:20:46.480 --> 01:20:51.360 a way that is not subject to whatever YouTube decides to do 01:20:51.360 --> 01:20:55.040 with the stream comments and things like that. 01:20:55.040 --> 01:20:58.800 But you can submit the questions any of a number of different 01:20:58.800 --> 01:21:04.320 ways on X in reply to say the stream during the stream 01:21:04.320 --> 01:21:09.200 in the chat, Telegram, or again, forum is the preferred way to 01:21:09.200 --> 01:21:10.400 do it. 01:21:10.400 --> 01:21:12.320 At any rate, it is Friday. 01:21:12.320 --> 01:21:14.720 I try to do these on Thursday or Friday, just depends on 01:21:14.720 --> 01:21:15.920 how my week goes. 01:21:15.920 --> 01:21:19.280 Usually winds up being Friday, that's just the reality of it these 01:21:19.280 --> 01:21:23.600 days. But given that it's Friday, go out and enjoy your weekend. 01:21:23.600 --> 01:21:27.280 Try to spend some time outside if it's not too unbearably hot 01:21:27.280 --> 01:21:30.080 where you are and there's not a bear in your front yard, 01:21:30.080 --> 01:21:32.800 as apparently happens around me a lot now. 01:21:32.800 --> 01:21:37.040 At any rate, I always enjoy giving answers to these questions and 01:21:37.440 --> 01:21:39.360 I will see you all next week. 01:21:39.360 --> 01:21:43.600 Go to church on Sunday and until then, God bless you 01:21:43.600 --> 01:21:44.240 all.