WEBVTT 00:00:37.200 --> 00:00:39.440 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.440 --> 00:00:40.480 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.480 --> 00:00:42.800 Mahler. And I'm Woe. 00:00:42.800 --> 00:00:43.040 Today 00:00:43.120 --> 00:00:45.840 we're recording episode twenty-seven of Stone Choir. 00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:49.840 We realized last week that we had hit the twenty-sixth week mark, 00:00:49.840 --> 00:00:52.480 which if you're a math PhD will realize that means we've been 00:00:52.480 --> 00:00:54.160 doing this for half a year at this point. 00:00:54.160 --> 00:00:57.040 Uh we didn't miss a couple weeks when my fancy new microphone 00:00:57.040 --> 00:00:58.320 died on me early on. 00:00:58.320 --> 00:01:00.800 So it's slightly past the six months mark. 00:01:00.800 --> 00:01:03.760 But since we're right at about a half a year into this, 00:01:03.760 --> 00:01:06.560 we thought that we would take a pause for one week and 00:01:06.560 --> 00:01:09.360 do kind of a listener appreciation episode. 00:01:09.360 --> 00:01:14.000 So we're gonna spend some time today on the reader listener mailbag 00:01:14.240 --> 00:01:17.840 going through some emails and some messages we've received, talk about some 00:01:17.840 --> 00:01:20.800 of the feedback that we've gotten, uh then in the towards the 00:01:20.800 --> 00:01:23.600 end we'll talk a little bit about some of the listener stats 00:01:23.680 --> 00:01:26.320 and just kinda give you an idea about what's going on behind 00:01:26.320 --> 00:01:29.680 the scenes and uh how you can help spread the word. 00:01:29.680 --> 00:01:32.400 So to begin, uh we're just going to start right in with 00:01:32.400 --> 00:01:33.520 uh some of the questions. 00:01:33.520 --> 00:01:35.600 These you know, these have been piling up for six months, so 00:01:35.600 --> 00:01:36.880 some of these are a little older. 00:01:36.880 --> 00:01:40.800 Uh to everyone who sent feedback, you know, DMs, emails, whatever, we 00:01:40.800 --> 00:01:41.680 do really appreciate it. 00:01:41.680 --> 00:01:43.360 All the kind notes we've gotten. 00:01:43.520 --> 00:01:47.600 We're not gonna read those obviously, but we get regular messages from 00:01:47.600 --> 00:01:51.200 people all over the world, uh, from probably about half Lutherans, half 00:01:51.200 --> 00:01:54.160 non-Lutherans, all very supportive and encouraging. 00:01:54.160 --> 00:01:56.080 And I we truly appreciate appreciate that. 00:01:56.080 --> 00:02:00.000 Uh Corey and I have been under a lot of stress from 00:02:00.240 --> 00:02:01.840 having tackled these issues. 00:02:01.840 --> 00:02:05.360 Uh our own church despises the fact that we are speaking publicly 00:02:05.360 --> 00:02:08.240 about these things and we've been punished for it. 00:02:08.240 --> 00:02:09.840 We've been censored for it. 00:02:09.680 --> 00:02:13.040 and so having people say, you know why you're doing good work, 00:02:13.040 --> 00:02:15.760 please keep it up means a lot because you don't have any 00:02:15.760 --> 00:02:18.160 reason to say that apart from the fact that you think it's 00:02:18.160 --> 00:02:21.600 true. So thank you for encouraging us and helping to keep us 00:02:21.600 --> 00:02:22.560 in the fight. 00:02:22.560 --> 00:02:25.520 So again, we'll uh we'll dive into some one of the the 00:02:25.520 --> 00:02:28.080 very first message I think we have recorded from way back in 00:02:28.080 --> 00:02:29.920 the the annals of history. 00:02:30.240 --> 00:02:30.400 So 00:02:30.480 --> 00:02:35.520 for the first question from listeners, we have a question about anonymity 00:02:35.520 --> 00:02:40.640 and pseudonymity in light of what we said about the genealogy of 00:02:40.640 --> 00:02:44.880 ideas, which is to say how do you test the genealogy of 00:02:44.880 --> 00:02:50.880 an idea if it comes from someone who is anonymous or pseudonymous? 00:02:50.880 --> 00:02:53.440 And that is a good question. 00:02:53.440 --> 00:02:57.200 Ultimately how you would do that is you look at the source 00:02:57.200 --> 00:03:00.160 of the ideas that person is presenting because he is not the 00:03:00.160 --> 00:03:02.400 ultimate source Source. 00:03:02.400 --> 00:03:05.440 No man to whom you speak is going to be the ultimate 00:03:05.440 --> 00:03:07.920 source on issues like this. 00:03:07.920 --> 00:03:12.160 He could be the ultimate source on a piece of fiction or 00:03:12.720 --> 00:03:17.120 something like that, some idea that can be intrinsic or specific to 00:03:17.120 --> 00:03:18.400 an individual. 00:03:18.400 --> 00:03:20.640 But that's not going to be the case with the sort of 00:03:20.640 --> 00:03:25.120 issues we're tackling on this podcast because the issues we're tackling are 00:03:25.360 --> 00:03:28.400 are are bigger issues, they're grander issues. 00:03:28.400 --> 00:03:31.280 And so you're always going to be able to trace those back 00:03:31.600 --> 00:03:37.520 to scripture, to natural revelation, to logic, philosophy, things like that. 00:03:37.520 --> 00:03:39.440 And if you trace it back to those sources, 00:03:40.320 --> 00:03:42.560 that's what we're saying you need to test. 00:03:42.560 --> 00:03:46.320 That's the real genealogy of that idea because it comes through the 00:03:46.320 --> 00:03:50.240 man who said it to you, but he got it from somewhere. 00:03:50.240 --> 00:03:54.720 And so even if that man happens to be pseudonymous or even 00:03:54.720 --> 00:03:59.920 anonymous, look at the source of his ideas. 00:03:59.920 --> 00:04:06.800 On this podcast, I'm not anonymous or pseudonymous, woe is pseudonymous, but 00:04:06.800 --> 00:04:11.840 we couch everything we say, we ground everything we say in scripture 00:04:11.840 --> 00:04:13.680 and in creation. 00:04:13.680 --> 00:04:15.600 And so that is the actual source. 00:04:15.600 --> 00:04:18.480 We are going back to God as the source of what we're 00:04:18.480 --> 00:04:23.840 saying. And so even if you are dealing with pseudonymity, you can 00:04:23.840 --> 00:04:28.000 still look at those ultimate sources and trace that genealogy of ideas. 00:04:28.320 --> 00:04:29.040 And we did an 00:04:29.040 --> 00:04:33.040 entire episode on pseudonymity, why I am pseudonymous for now, although the 00:04:33.040 --> 00:04:36.480 LCMS has doxxed me and so they have uh it seems like 00:04:36.480 --> 00:04:39.840 they've kinda backed off on their initial plan to feed my information 00:04:39.840 --> 00:04:43.440 to Antifa when the Makaira Action Blog was set up. 00:04:43.440 --> 00:04:44.640 That was certainly the plan. 00:04:44.640 --> 00:04:46.480 And that's what was done to Corey. 00:04:46.480 --> 00:04:49.120 Uh I have a feeling that they got some more lawyers involved 00:04:49.200 --> 00:04:53.440 and they've kind of gotten cold feet about risking the legal ramifications 00:04:53.440 --> 00:04:55.200 of doing that to a layman. 00:04:55.200 --> 00:04:57.280 Uh It's an important question. 00:04:57.280 --> 00:04:58.080 It's a valid question. 00:04:58.080 --> 00:04:59.040 You know, me in particular. 00:04:59.040 --> 00:05:00.000 I'm pseudonymous. 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:00.880 What am I hiding? 00:05:00.880 --> 00:05:04.000 That's so we did the episode on that, and then the episode 00:05:04.000 --> 00:05:07.200 uh later on on why we're Lutheran and why we're doing this 00:05:07.200 --> 00:05:09.760 podcast in general. 00:05:09.760 --> 00:05:13.360 It is important to know to whom you're speaking. 00:05:13.360 --> 00:05:13.680 Um 00:05:14.880 --> 00:05:17.760 you know, one of the one of the things that that comes 00:05:17.760 --> 00:05:21.760 up online frequently on Twitter in particular is the early life check. 00:05:21.760 --> 00:05:25.280 You know, you hear somebody saying something, you know, maybe they were 00:05:25.360 --> 00:05:28.800 a trusted source in the news or some sort of media format, 00:05:28.800 --> 00:05:33.120 and suddenly out of nowhere they say something completely horrific and anti-Christian. 00:05:33.440 --> 00:05:35.200 you're like, where did this come from? 00:05:35.200 --> 00:05:37.440 And you look up their early life, and guess what? 00:05:37.440 --> 00:05:41.040 Their grandparents came from Russia and Poland, and they were Jews, they 00:05:41.040 --> 00:05:42.720 were Jewish refugees. 00:05:42.720 --> 00:05:46.240 Every single time is a meme on Twitter because it seems like 00:05:46.240 --> 00:05:52.320 virtually every time some random person says something horrific, it turns out 00:05:52.320 --> 00:05:54.320 that their grandparents were Jewish. 00:05:54.320 --> 00:05:57.680 At some point that pattern becomes relevant. 00:05:57.680 --> 00:06:02.160 And so, you know, the question, what am I hiding, is completely 00:06:02.160 --> 00:06:03.840 relevant. What am I hiding? 00:06:03.840 --> 00:06:08.480 I'm hiding my my home address, my physical address, because I've had 00:06:08.560 --> 00:06:12.080 you know five years, six years now of people making physical threats 00:06:12.080 --> 00:06:14.240 against me, saying that they would kill me, that they would do 00:06:14.240 --> 00:06:15.600 harm to my family. 00:06:15.840 --> 00:06:19.680 You know, I'm not afraid, but you know, when someone says they 00:06:19.680 --> 00:06:23.200 want to do horrible things to you, you you don't completely ignore 00:06:23.200 --> 00:06:26.000 that. You know, it's I'm positioned in such a fashion that I'm 00:06:26.000 --> 00:06:29.760 not worried about my physical safety much, but that doesn't mean that 00:06:29.760 --> 00:06:31.040 there's zero threat. 00:06:31.040 --> 00:06:31.840 So So 00:06:32.800 --> 00:06:35.840 the flip side of the of the genealogy thing is that back 00:06:35.840 --> 00:06:39.840 to what Corey said, I'm not the origin of anything I say. 00:06:39.840 --> 00:06:43.360 I mean I'm the I'm the vessel, I'm the mouthpiece conveying it 00:06:43.360 --> 00:06:44.800 to you. 00:06:44.800 --> 00:06:48.880 But the fact that I have no name, I have no credentials, 00:06:48.880 --> 00:06:54.240 I have nothing upon which to base any perceived credibility that you 00:06:54.240 --> 00:06:55.920 might assign to me. 00:06:55.920 --> 00:06:58.240 So you have no reason to listen to me whatsoever. 00:06:58.240 --> 00:07:00.720 I'm not going to say I've got this degree or I went 00:07:00.720 --> 00:07:04.080 to this place or I do this thing professionally and so I'm 00:07:04.080 --> 00:07:05.840 an expert and you should listen. 00:07:05.840 --> 00:07:09.120 It's a complete opposite of when for example a pastor says, Hey, 00:07:09.120 --> 00:07:11.360 I have an M div, I have a collar, it's very important 00:07:11.440 --> 00:07:13.840 you listen to me because God is speaking when I speak to 00:07:13.840 --> 00:07:17.280 you. I am binding your conscience by what I say. 00:07:17.280 --> 00:07:20.720 By being pseudonymous, I completely forego even the possibility of being able 00:07:20.720 --> 00:07:22.160 to do any of that. 00:07:22.160 --> 00:07:24.880 All I can do is try to make reasoned arguments. 00:07:24.880 --> 00:07:29.120 And reason is something that shows up particularly in the New Testament 00:07:29.200 --> 00:07:31.200 when Paul was going to the to the Jews and to the 00:07:31.200 --> 00:07:36.160 Gentiles and arguing with them, he frequently used reason, the Jews in 00:07:36.160 --> 00:07:39.120 particular, it says that he reasoned from scripture. 00:07:39.120 --> 00:07:41.920 And in that case it was the scripture was the Tanakh. 00:07:41.920 --> 00:07:44.400 It was the what we have today is the thirty nine books 00:07:44.400 --> 00:07:45.760 of the Old Testament. 00:07:46.080 --> 00:07:49.360 Those were the scriptures from which Paul reasoned with the Jews of 00:07:49.360 --> 00:07:54.000 that day to say, hey, all these prophecies, all these things, Jesus 00:07:54.000 --> 00:07:59.040 fulfilled them, Jesus' life was the embodiment of these things, therefore he 00:07:59.040 --> 00:08:02.080 is the Christ who is promised, the Messiah. 00:08:02.080 --> 00:08:03.200 He used reason. 00:08:03.200 --> 00:08:05.760 Now, you know, God was with him, he wasn't going to speak 00:08:05.760 --> 00:08:10.640 falsely. Nevertheless, many of the things that Paul said when he was 00:08:10.640 --> 00:08:15.600 preaching and speaking didn't need to be direct divine revelation because Scripture 00:08:15.600 --> 00:08:18.160 was the divine revelation that he was using. 00:08:18.160 --> 00:08:21.920 So when he made a logical argument from Scripture, it wasn't by 00:08:21.920 --> 00:08:25.200 his own authority that he was preaching, it was by the authority 00:08:25.200 --> 00:08:27.120 of the word of God. 00:08:27.120 --> 00:08:30.560 Now, I'm not saying that to compare what we are doing here 00:08:30.560 --> 00:08:32.000 to Paul preaching. 00:08:32.000 --> 00:08:32.960 This isn't preaching. 00:08:32.960 --> 00:08:33.840 This is a podcast. 00:08:33.840 --> 00:08:35.840 We're just we're talking about the Bible. 00:08:35.840 --> 00:08:39.440 But ultimately what we're talking about is what God has given to 00:08:39.440 --> 00:08:41.520 all of us, to the whole world. 00:08:41.520 --> 00:08:44.160 The Christian church in particular values scripture. 00:08:44.160 --> 00:08:45.680 We value the word of God. 00:08:45.680 --> 00:08:49.840 And so, as Corey said, the arguments that we make should always 00:08:49.840 --> 00:08:55.280 be rooted in scriptural truth, which doesn't necessarily mean that they're actually 00:08:55.280 --> 00:08:57.360 derived directly from scripture. 00:08:57.360 --> 00:08:59.840 That's something that's come up a couple times recently that I think 00:08:59.840 --> 00:09:02.800 is worth pointing out explicitly. 00:09:02.800 --> 00:09:06.800 You can make claims that aren't in scripture that are true. 00:09:06.800 --> 00:09:11.280 I I think one of the one of the hermeneutics that Lutherans 00:09:11.280 --> 00:09:15.520 bring to a lot of questions that can be valuable, but it's 00:09:15.440 --> 00:09:17.520 also becomes kind of a hamstring 00:09:18.400 --> 00:09:21.280 when it's not understood correctly. 00:09:21.280 --> 00:09:24.560 Is the idea that what we perceive as the law of God 00:09:24.560 --> 00:09:26.960 is always either, you know, it's a command or a promise. 00:09:26.960 --> 00:09:29.520 So if there's not a command from God or a promise from 00:09:29.520 --> 00:09:32.080 God, it's in a different category. 00:09:32.080 --> 00:09:34.800 And the problem is that a lot of these things that Corey 00:09:34.800 --> 00:09:37.280 and I point to as natural revelation. 00:09:37.280 --> 00:09:42.400 By that I mean facts, scientific facts, like you you you have 00:09:42.400 --> 00:09:47.920 ancestors, they came from a place, they have a genealogy, you know, 00:09:47.920 --> 00:09:50.400 they have actual genes going back in time. 00:09:50.400 --> 00:09:52.800 Their properties attendant to that. 00:09:52.800 --> 00:09:56.400 That's you know revelation is is kind of a fancy way just 00:09:56.400 --> 00:09:57.840 saying it's an obvious truth. 00:09:57.840 --> 00:09:59.200 It's in reality. 00:09:59.200 --> 00:10:02.000 You don't need the Bible to tell you everything is true. 00:10:02.000 --> 00:10:05.680 You need the Bible to reveal the things that you can't derive 00:10:06.000 --> 00:10:09.840 from a truthful observation of creation. 00:10:10.000 --> 00:10:14.480 So you know, one of the recent criticisms that came up against 00:10:14.480 --> 00:10:19.440 Stone Choir, uh thankfully, you know, uh one of our opponents went 00:10:19.440 --> 00:10:22.560 on issues et cetera and and devoted an hour to trying to 00:10:22.560 --> 00:10:26.080 debunk us and it was it was the best hour long advertisement 00:10:26.080 --> 00:10:30.320 we could have possibly hoped for because we sounded completely sane and 00:10:30.320 --> 00:10:33.440 reasonable and their arguments were just there were no arguments. 00:10:33.440 --> 00:10:35.600 It was just kind of hysteria. 00:10:35.600 --> 00:10:38.640 But one of the things that they tried to claim was that 00:10:38.640 --> 00:10:43.440 we were using things like Acts 1726, which talks about the dwelling 00:10:43.440 --> 00:10:47.520 places of men and the boundaries thereof, or Revelation seven nine, where 00:10:47.520 --> 00:10:51.920 the nations, you know, the various races appear before the throne. 00:10:51.920 --> 00:10:55.680 They called those proof texts when we use them as though we 00:10:55.680 --> 00:10:59.920 were trying to impose something by saying, Well, acts says that there 00:10:59.920 --> 00:11:03.920 are borders and Revelation says that there are races. 00:11:03.920 --> 00:11:07.360 Therefore we as men are trying to impose these things. 00:11:07.360 --> 00:11:08.800 Those aren't proof texts. 00:11:08.800 --> 00:11:11.840 The reason that there's not a lot of scripture assigned to those 00:11:11.840 --> 00:11:14.320 topics is not that they're not real. 00:11:14.320 --> 00:11:18.560 They were just asides mentioning something that's obvious. 00:11:18.560 --> 00:11:20.000 Yeah, those are done. 00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:22.560 There are boundaries and dwelling places of man. 00:11:22.560 --> 00:11:25.360 And God says, I take credit for those. 00:11:25.360 --> 00:11:28.480 All of the nations, all of the races of men are represented 00:11:28.480 --> 00:11:31.200 in heaven, but for the throne of God. 00:11:31.200 --> 00:11:34.080 God said it's already done in eternity. 00:11:34.080 --> 00:11:38.320 So there's nothing for us on earth to do to affect that. 00:11:38.320 --> 00:11:42.320 We're simply pointing to that because it's an aside in scripture that 00:11:42.320 --> 00:11:44.160 simply recognizes reality. 00:11:44.160 --> 00:11:47.280 So there's no prescription there from God to say you must do 00:11:47.280 --> 00:11:50.480 this. And we don't point to those things to make that case. 00:11:50.480 --> 00:11:52.240 We're just saying it's done. 00:11:52.240 --> 00:11:53.200 It's already there. 00:11:53.200 --> 00:11:54.880 You know, it's the same as you know, if you listened to 00:11:54.880 --> 00:11:58.480 us last week and if you read any of Job when God 00:11:58.480 --> 00:12:00.960 was responding to Job, one of the points that he made was 00:12:00.960 --> 00:12:04.080 that you know the glory of the horse's mane testifies to my 00:12:04.080 --> 00:12:04.400 glory. 00:12:05.360 --> 00:12:08.640 So if I tell you that a horse's mane is something beautiful 00:12:08.640 --> 00:12:12.000 and that God did it, am I making some sort of that 00:12:12.000 --> 00:12:13.600 a command or promise from God? 00:12:13.600 --> 00:12:16.400 No, I'm just saying this is beautiful, it's a part of creation. 00:12:16.400 --> 00:12:17.040 God did it. 00:12:17.040 --> 00:12:20.560 And by the way, God also specifically points to this thing. 00:12:20.560 --> 00:12:23.680 There are other things that aren't listed in in that monologue from 00:12:23.680 --> 00:12:27.680 God in Job that equally testify to his glory. 00:12:27.680 --> 00:12:30.000 You know, there are things that were unknown at that time and 00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:32.960 mention some of the stars, some of the constellations. 00:12:32.960 --> 00:12:35.920 There's stuff further out in space and no one could see with 00:12:35.920 --> 00:12:38.720 the naked eye then, so God wouldn't have mentioned it. 00:12:38.720 --> 00:12:42.480 When we see them now, they testify to God's glory just as 00:12:42.480 --> 00:12:44.720 those things that are mentioned. 00:12:44.720 --> 00:12:49.760 So natural revelation Revelation is a part of God's revelation. 00:12:49.760 --> 00:12:53.040 It's not salvific, but it does proclaim God's glory. 00:12:53.040 --> 00:12:55.280 And so when we point to those things, it's not a denial 00:12:55.280 --> 00:12:55.920 of Christ. 00:12:55.920 --> 00:12:59.440 It's saying, look how big and amazing God is, and he still 00:12:59.440 --> 00:13:00.800 cares about us. 00:13:00.800 --> 00:13:04.160 So that that gets back to, you know, where's this stuff coming 00:13:04.160 --> 00:13:06.240 from? It's not coming from Cory or me. 00:13:06.240 --> 00:13:08.640 We look at the Bible and we point to things that in 00:13:08.640 --> 00:13:10.560 many cases have been neglected for a while. 00:13:10.800 --> 00:13:13.600 In the case of the issues around race, they never really mattered 00:13:14.080 --> 00:13:18.640 because all the races were naturally separated according to the boundaries of 00:13:18.640 --> 00:13:19.840 their dwelling places. 00:13:19.840 --> 00:13:23.520 And it was only in the last couple centuries that mass movement 00:13:23.520 --> 00:13:27.280 of human beings and recently the artificial mass movement of human beings 00:13:28.000 --> 00:13:32.720 caused them to be dislocated and slammed together as neighbors where it 00:13:32.960 --> 00:13:34.400 never occurred in human history. 00:13:34.400 --> 00:13:38.240 So we are now confronting things that no Christians have ever faced 00:13:38.240 --> 00:13:41.680 before. Yeah, you might have port cities where there was a smattering 00:13:41.680 --> 00:13:45.600 of travel or maybe some contact, but that was a very specialized 00:13:45.600 --> 00:13:48.000 thing in a local particular place. 00:13:48.000 --> 00:13:50.960 And frankly, a lot of th those sorts of cities tended to 00:13:50.960 --> 00:13:54.080 be hotbeds of some of the worst idolatry, because as people were 00:13:54.080 --> 00:13:56.480 coming from afar, they're bringing their gods with them. 00:13:56.480 --> 00:13:58.800 Those cities tended to become more pagan. 00:13:58.800 --> 00:14:00.720 And that's something that's preserved to this day as well. 00:14:00.720 --> 00:14:03.200 You know, the big poor cities tend to be raunchy. 00:14:03.200 --> 00:14:06.480 They send they tend not to be great places. 00:14:06.480 --> 00:14:12.160 That's because it's hard to preserve a homogeneous Christian culture when you 00:14:12.160 --> 00:14:14.400 have all these foreign influences. 00:14:14.400 --> 00:14:17.600 So yes, we're talking about some things that the Christian church has 00:14:17.600 --> 00:14:20.800 not talked about much because it didn't have to. 00:14:20.800 --> 00:14:23.840 Now that doesn't mean that we're necessarily right because you know we're 00:14:23.760 --> 00:14:25.680 not we're not inventing new theology. 00:14:25.680 --> 00:14:28.480 We're just taking what God has always said and applying it to 00:14:28.480 --> 00:14:32.000 the new problems today, which is I think the basis of all 00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:38.640 theology ultimately. 00:14:38.800 --> 00:14:39.120 You 00:14:39.120 --> 00:14:44.080 also touched on there an issue that comes up constantly, and that 00:14:44.080 --> 00:14:47.920 is what exactly is meant by sola scriptura. 00:14:47.920 --> 00:14:50.720 And I did a video on this at some point in the 00:14:50.720 --> 00:14:54.480 past, we've linked it previously in the show notes. 00:14:54.480 --> 00:14:58.640 Sola scriptura is in the ablative, which I will continue to say 00:14:58.640 --> 00:15:03.520 that until people get tired of hearing the word ablative, but it 00:15:03.520 --> 00:15:05.360 means by scripture alone. 00:15:05.360 --> 00:15:10.320 And what it means is that doctrine is determined by scripture alone. 00:15:10.320 --> 00:15:15.600 It does not mean that all truth flows from scripture alone. 00:15:15.600 --> 00:15:19.600 That is an abuse of sola scriptura, and there are those who 00:15:19.600 --> 00:15:23.200 make that argument today that's not the case. 00:15:23.200 --> 00:15:27.920 Because as we keep pointing out, God appeals to creation, creation declares 00:15:27.920 --> 00:15:31.280 the glory of God, creation has truth content. 00:15:31.280 --> 00:15:35.040 There is such a thing as natural revelation, and so you don't 00:15:34.960 --> 00:15:38.080 have to look to Scripture for all truth. 00:15:38.080 --> 00:15:43.360 Scripture alone reveals the gospel, because nature doesn't reveal the gospel. 00:15:43.360 --> 00:15:46.960 The natural world does not tell you that Christ died for you, 00:15:46.960 --> 00:15:51.200 atoned for your sins, was a substitute for you. 00:15:51.200 --> 00:15:54.240 There's nowhere to find that in creation. 00:15:54.240 --> 00:15:57.360 But creation can tell you a lot of other things, and so 00:15:57.360 --> 00:16:01.680 it is perfectly fine to look to creation for the truth content 00:16:01.680 --> 00:16:03.600 that God has placed there. 00:16:03.600 --> 00:16:06.960 And so it is important to bear in mind that sola scriptura 00:16:07.200 --> 00:16:12.560 means that doctrine is determined by scripture alone, not that all truth 00:16:12.560 --> 00:16:14.720 comes from Scripture alone. 00:16:14.720 --> 00:16:20.400 And so the second question is about the common refrain of one 00:16:20.560 --> 00:16:26.240 race, the human race, and the issue of intermarriage, which convenient timing 00:16:26.320 --> 00:16:30.160 since that just blew up on Twitter with a tweet that I 00:16:30.160 --> 00:16:32.800 made on Friday. 00:16:32.800 --> 00:16:36.000 But the issue of one race, the human race, is that it 00:16:36.000 --> 00:16:38.240 is a conflating of terms 00:16:39.600 --> 00:16:44.640 or really senses of one term here, because the term race can 00:16:44.880 --> 00:16:49.440 apply to humanity generally because we are all of the race of 00:16:49.440 --> 00:16:54.240 Adam. We're actually all of the race of Noah, because Noah is 00:16:54.240 --> 00:16:59.680 the patriarch of all living, being the father of the three men 00:16:59.680 --> 00:17:02.480 who stepped off the Ark and went on to have children. 00:17:02.480 --> 00:17:08.000 However, there's also a race of Japheth, a race of Ham, a 00:17:08.000 --> 00:17:09.600 race of Shem. 00:17:09.600 --> 00:17:13.840 And so you can use the term race to mean these smaller 00:17:13.840 --> 00:17:17.680 groups or the larger group, and those who argue for one race, 00:17:17.680 --> 00:17:20.960 the human race, are using it maliciously. 00:17:20.960 --> 00:17:26.400 They are doing it in an attempt to erase these actual real 00:17:26.400 --> 00:17:31.120 distinctions between and among the races of men by appealing to the 00:17:31.120 --> 00:17:33.760 fact that we are all descended from Adam. 00:17:33.760 --> 00:17:37.040 Yes, we're all descended from Adam, but that's not the final word 00:17:37.360 --> 00:17:39.920 of truth on these matters. 00:17:39.920 --> 00:17:45.600 Because if you're German, you are in fact very different from someone 00:17:45.600 --> 00:17:47.200 from Uganda. 00:17:47.200 --> 00:17:52.000 Yes, you are both sons of Adam, but you have differentiated over 00:17:52.000 --> 00:17:58.000 a long course of years, centuries, millennia, and so you are distinct. 00:17:58.000 --> 00:18:03.280 And so it is more meaningful to speak of the race of 00:18:03.280 --> 00:18:08.240 Ashkenaz, which would be the Germanic or the German peoples, depending on 00:18:08.240 --> 00:18:13.040 how you interpret that history there, or the race of the various 00:18:13.040 --> 00:18:18.320 sons of Ham, Egypt, descended from Egypt, one of the ones that's 00:18:18.320 --> 00:18:20.080 easy to remember. 00:18:20.080 --> 00:18:23.120 We have to be careful when we use these terms and when 00:18:23.120 --> 00:18:27.680 the opponents use these terms, because they are used to deceive. 00:18:27.680 --> 00:18:30.640 You can use a term that is an accurate term that is 00:18:30.640 --> 00:18:34.000 a meaningful term, but you can use it in a deceptive way. 00:18:34.000 --> 00:18:37.280 And when someone tries to argue that there's one race, the human 00:18:37.280 --> 00:18:42.640 race, well they're saying something that is trivially true, but it is 00:18:42.640 --> 00:18:46.960 also false because in context it is used to mislead. 00:18:46.960 --> 00:18:51.600 And so it is more meaningful again to speak of the individual 00:18:52.000 --> 00:18:56.000 races that have come to exist over a course of time due 00:18:56.000 --> 00:19:00.160 to differentiation, because that is how God designed it. 00:19:00.160 --> 00:19:06.320 We're not talking about speciation, we're not talking about neo-Darwinian evolution or 00:19:06.320 --> 00:19:13.520 modern synthesis, whatever particular arguments you're using, whatever modern formulation of 00:19:13.520 --> 00:19:18.320 Darwinian theory, because it's due to a loss of information over time 00:19:18.320 --> 00:19:19.760 that you have these races. 00:19:19.760 --> 00:19:25.360 It's not due to mutation and then selection against the mutation, because 00:19:25.360 --> 00:19:28.160 that's a creation of new information, and there is no proof of 00:19:28.160 --> 00:19:32.080 that. It's logically impossible, but that's a more complicated argument for another 00:19:32.080 --> 00:19:38.400 time. Due to a loss of information over millennia we have the 00:19:38.400 --> 00:19:44.160 different races instead of the one race that you had when Adam 00:19:44.160 --> 00:19:45.840 and Eve were in the garden. 00:19:45.840 --> 00:19:49.760 But of course, the different races already existed to some degree on 00:19:49.760 --> 00:19:54.080 the ark, because some of that genetic difference comes from the wives 00:19:54.080 --> 00:19:55.120 of Noah's sons. 00:19:55.120 --> 00:19:59.760 And we can see this in the various DNA, in the various 00:19:59.760 --> 00:20:04.000 groups of human beings, the three great groupings, being of course Europeans, 00:20:04.480 --> 00:20:08.160 Asians and Africans essentially. 00:20:08.480 --> 00:20:14.640 Because you have the Neanderthal DNA in Europeans, you have Denisovin in 00:20:14.640 --> 00:20:18.080 Asian populations, and you have the so-called ghost DNA in the African 00:20:18.080 --> 00:20:22.160 populations. That's just DNA from the wives of Noah's sons. 00:20:22.640 --> 00:20:24.160 And to tie the genealogy 00:20:24.160 --> 00:20:29.040 of man to the genealogy of ideas, everybody understood this until about 00:20:29.040 --> 00:20:30.080 fifty years ago. 00:20:30.080 --> 00:20:34.800 It's only within the last well closer to today than even fifty 00:20:34.800 --> 00:20:39.440 years ago that suddenly everyone forgot that human beings are different, that 00:20:39.440 --> 00:20:42.560 there are different groups of people from different places cases and that 00:20:42.560 --> 00:20:44.320 that is consequential. 00:20:44.320 --> 00:20:48.800 It never had to be discussed much among theologians because it was 00:20:48.800 --> 00:20:53.200 so blindingly obvious that no one it was never a controverted statement. 00:20:53.360 --> 00:20:57.360 It to so for someone today to say, well, in the sixteen 00:20:57.360 --> 00:21:01.920 hundreds they didn't talk about race, well, that's arguing that a fish 00:21:01.920 --> 00:21:04.000 doesn't talk about water. 00:21:04.000 --> 00:21:09.040 When something is so pervasive, so a fundamental part of existence that 00:21:09.040 --> 00:21:14.160 it doesn't bear discussion, it's only when that fundamental part of existence 00:21:14.160 --> 00:21:20.880 falls under attack, under existential threat, from a hostile alien force, that 00:21:21.120 --> 00:21:22.880 it requires a defense. 00:21:22.880 --> 00:21:26.240 So, yes, we are saying things that haven't been said to before. 00:21:26.240 --> 00:21:28.880 And yes, that should always concern anyone. 00:21:28.880 --> 00:21:33.920 You shouldn't be hearing new arguments in theology, with the exception of 00:21:33.920 --> 00:21:36.800 an acknowledgement that Satan gets a vote. 00:21:36.800 --> 00:21:38.880 Satan doesn't sit on his laurels. 00:21:38.880 --> 00:21:43.520 You know, the fight the Luther and the other reformers had in 00:21:43.520 --> 00:21:50.240 the 16th century against Rome's false teachings about how we are saved. 00:21:50.240 --> 00:21:53.360 Satan had been doing pretty well at that point, and then he 00:21:53.360 --> 00:21:55.120 got his teeth kicked in. 00:21:55.120 --> 00:21:59.120 He lost a lot of ground on the soteriological battle. 00:22:00.320 --> 00:22:05.280 Basically, all Protestant doctrine since then has more or less rested on 00:22:05.280 --> 00:22:09.840 those laurels and said, okay, we got that soteriological problem solved. 00:22:09.840 --> 00:22:10.400 We're done. 00:22:10.400 --> 00:22:11.040 We're good. 00:22:11.040 --> 00:22:12.320 We know how we're saved. 00:22:12.320 --> 00:22:14.320 We're gonna lock that in for all time. 00:22:14.320 --> 00:22:19.120 And as the centuries have passed, men have gotten dumber and dumber 00:22:19.120 --> 00:22:24.000 and less able to recognize that Satan doesn't sleep, and Satan's not 00:22:24.000 --> 00:22:26.800 stupid. He's not gonna make the same attack again when there's a 00:22:26.800 --> 00:22:28.480 new attack vector. 00:22:28.480 --> 00:22:35.120 And so in the post-Enlightenment world, as all of these egalitarian thoughts 00:22:35.120 --> 00:22:39.440 about humanity have become so pervasive that they shifted from being 00:22:40.640 --> 00:22:47.120 niche philosophical arguments among the intelligentsia to today they're seen as moral 00:22:47.120 --> 00:22:51.440 platitudes that if you defy them you'll be excommunicated. 00:22:51.680 --> 00:22:55.760 That was a shift in theology that happened without anyone f lifting 00:22:55.760 --> 00:22:56.320 a finger. 00:22:56.320 --> 00:22:57.520 There was no fight. 00:22:57.680 --> 00:23:01.600 The fact that you went from the 16th century to the 21st 00:23:01.600 --> 00:23:07.360 century with fundamental paradigm shifts about how we look at our relationship 00:23:07.360 --> 00:23:09.840 to God and our relationship to each other 00:23:10.720 --> 00:23:12.160 there should have been a fight. 00:23:12.160 --> 00:23:13.760 We should have fought all along. 00:23:13.760 --> 00:23:17.040 And there were some men who did fight against the Enlightenment, but 00:23:17.040 --> 00:23:17.520 they lost. 00:23:18.240 --> 00:23:21.200 And part of that was that one of the key elements of 00:23:21.200 --> 00:23:24.880 the Enlightenment was democracy, was that everyone gets a vote, everyone gets 00:23:24.880 --> 00:23:25.600 a voice. 00:23:25.600 --> 00:23:28.080 And so when everyone can chime in and say, Oh well I 00:23:28.080 --> 00:23:30.560 think, oh well here's my opinion, oh well here's what I want 00:23:30.560 --> 00:23:33.760 to do, suddenly suddenly the men who had been fighting over these 00:23:33.760 --> 00:23:38.160 things, some well, some poorly, like when I say intelligentsia, that is 00:23:38.160 --> 00:23:40.560 not flattering coming from my lips. 00:23:40.560 --> 00:23:45.280 I not a fan of having a brain trust sorting things out 00:23:45.280 --> 00:23:46.320 for everyone else. 00:23:46.320 --> 00:23:49.600 On the other hand, everyone else is even worse at it. 00:23:49.600 --> 00:23:53.440 So whether we're talking about professors or we're talking about pastors or 00:23:53.440 --> 00:23:58.720 theologians, we need some of the brightest men dealing with the subjects, 00:23:58.720 --> 00:24:01.040 and we need them to be faithful to scripture. 00:24:01.040 --> 00:24:04.000 They don't need to do anything new if they're honest about the 00:24:04.000 --> 00:24:06.960 facts in front of them and they're honest about scripture. 00:24:06.960 --> 00:24:11.360 And so this shift along today, you know, race is one of 00:24:11.360 --> 00:24:13.440 the primary things that's being attacked. 00:24:13.440 --> 00:24:17.040 The reason we devoted those episodes and the election episode before that, 00:24:17.040 --> 00:24:21.200 and the Christian nationalism episode before that, it's really a seven-part series 00:24:21.280 --> 00:24:25.680 with those those together specifically because Satan knows what he's doing. 00:24:25.680 --> 00:24:29.440 As he's continued to move the pieces around the board, race is 00:24:29.440 --> 00:24:31.040 now the battleground. 00:24:31.040 --> 00:24:34.800 And it's one that virtually no Protestant theologians are equipped for. 00:24:34.800 --> 00:24:36.880 And that is increasingly a problem. 00:24:36.960 --> 00:24:40.400 Uh, just in the last week online, a bunch of the reform 00:24:40.400 --> 00:24:45.200 guys have been fighting out the definition of Christian nationalism. 00:24:45.200 --> 00:24:49.280 And on kind of the leftward side, you know, they're not very 00:24:49.280 --> 00:24:53.040 left, but like within that relative small sphere, the guys who are 00:24:53.040 --> 00:24:57.360 further left are calling the guys to their right racists for talking 00:24:57.360 --> 00:24:58.880 about Christian nationalism. 00:24:58.880 --> 00:25:01.280 And what are the guys on the on the right side of 00:25:01.280 --> 00:25:02.320 that sphere doing. 00:25:02.320 --> 00:25:04.320 They're saying, no, no, we're not not racist. 00:25:04.320 --> 00:25:06.560 Christian nationalism has nothing to do with race. 00:25:06.560 --> 00:25:08.160 It has nothing to do with nations. 00:25:08.160 --> 00:25:10.320 They're basically civnats with Jesus. 00:25:10.320 --> 00:25:12.400 And that's a disaster. 00:25:12.400 --> 00:25:16.320 The idea that there can be magic soil, that when you move 00:25:16.320 --> 00:25:19.440 to a place, you just magically become something new, even if it's 00:25:19.440 --> 00:25:22.480 completely alien to everything in your past. 00:25:22.480 --> 00:25:24.000 That's trannyism. 00:25:24.000 --> 00:25:26.960 That's saying I used to be African, but now I live in 00:25:26.960 --> 00:25:29.200 Detroit and so I'm an American. 00:25:29.200 --> 00:25:32.640 That's the same as saying I identify as a woman, even though 00:25:32.640 --> 00:25:33.920 I was born a man. 00:25:33.920 --> 00:25:35.360 It doesn't work. 00:25:35.360 --> 00:25:39.520 Now there are different aspects of human and biology that are going 00:25:39.520 --> 00:25:42.880 on here, but fundamentally when when you say that one thing can 00:25:42.880 --> 00:25:46.160 just become something else because it decides to be, or because it 00:25:46.160 --> 00:25:47.360 agrees with an idea. 00:25:47.360 --> 00:25:50.000 You know, that the US is a proposition nation. 00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:53.280 That was invented, by the way, in the late nineteenth, early twentieth 00:25:53.280 --> 00:25:57.280 century. It was invented by, surprise, Jewish immigrants. 00:25:57.280 --> 00:25:58.800 Yeah, the melting pot. 00:25:58.800 --> 00:26:02.720 That was from a Jew named uh Zwangli. 00:26:02.720 --> 00:26:04.240 I can't remember his name. 00:26:04.240 --> 00:26:05.360 I can remember his face. 00:26:05.680 --> 00:26:07.760 he's hideous looking human being. 00:26:07.760 --> 00:26:11.680 But what he said in his play in about nineteen oh eight 00:26:12.080 --> 00:26:17.600 called something about the melting pot, was specifically to convince the blood 00:26:17.600 --> 00:26:18.720 citizens of America 00:26:19.680 --> 00:26:24.880 that having this continuous stream of aliens from Europe coming in had 00:26:24.880 --> 00:26:27.520 to be good because look at all the people who came here 00:26:27.520 --> 00:26:29.040 before that were also different. 00:26:29.040 --> 00:26:32.320 Well, Germans are different from the English in some ways, but not 00:26:33.040 --> 00:26:34.240 a lot. 00:26:34.880 --> 00:26:38.240 the Jewish immigrants who came to this country on other hand were 00:26:38.240 --> 00:26:39.520 much more different. 00:26:39.520 --> 00:26:43.760 They had some European blood, but they were also Jewish by culture, 00:26:43.760 --> 00:26:49.680 Jewish by religion, Jewish by language, and they brought something that was 00:26:49.680 --> 00:26:53.520 alien to this nation, and it became very important for them to 00:26:53.520 --> 00:26:57.440 dilute and destroy the notion that American was anything other than I 00:26:57.440 --> 00:26:58.960 want to live in America. 00:26:58.960 --> 00:27:03.840 And so now 120 years later we have people who are trying 00:27:03.840 --> 00:27:08.240 to describe civ Christian nationalism in the same terms. 00:27:08.480 --> 00:27:12.560 They're not understanding that they're part of a a PSYOP that began 00:27:12.560 --> 00:27:14.880 many generations before they were born. 00:27:14.880 --> 00:27:17.520 And so it's one of the reasons that the almost the first 00:27:17.520 --> 00:27:21.920 qu episode we did of Stone Choir was about Christian nationalism, specifically 00:27:22.000 --> 00:27:24.480 to make the case for the nationalist part of that. 00:27:24.880 --> 00:27:27.280 national, natal, same root. 00:27:27.280 --> 00:27:31.200 The root is the Proto Indo European word for gene. 00:27:31.200 --> 00:27:33.760 It's literally descent. 00:27:33.760 --> 00:27:37.680 So you can't have Christian nationalism if you deny the race as 00:27:37.680 --> 00:27:39.360 a part of a nation. 00:27:39.360 --> 00:27:42.640 And you know, we have discussions about where's that in the Bible? 00:27:42.640 --> 00:27:45.920 Well, I guess if you ignore all of the genealogies in the 00:27:45.920 --> 00:27:48.960 Bible and you ignore all the parts of the Bible that specifically 00:27:48.960 --> 00:27:52.640 refer to nation, sure, maybe you could say race isn't there. 00:27:52.640 --> 00:27:54.480 But it's the same thing. 00:27:54.480 --> 00:27:56.080 It's the same thing. 00:27:56.080 --> 00:27:59.520 And the fact that white can be called a race and English 00:27:59.520 --> 00:28:03.840 can be called a race doesn't mean that at most one of 00:28:03.840 --> 00:28:05.520 them exists and the other can't. 00:28:05.520 --> 00:28:08.480 You know, we t we talked about in the Christian nationalism episode. 00:28:08.480 --> 00:28:10.320 There's a there's a winnowing process. 00:28:10.320 --> 00:28:14.080 It was literally the definition in the Webster eighteen twenty eight, saying, 00:28:14.080 --> 00:28:16.800 you know, the the race of Adam, the race of Noah, the 00:28:16.800 --> 00:28:21.520 race of Charlemagne, on down as you winnow through the passage of 00:28:21.520 --> 00:28:24.000 time, but it's always lineal descent. 00:28:24.000 --> 00:28:26.160 A nation always has a root. 00:28:26.160 --> 00:28:28.880 You know, Jesus was the rod of Jesse's stem. 00:28:28.880 --> 00:28:33.520 It came down through the lineage that was it was patrilineal. 00:28:33.520 --> 00:28:34.800 It was a bloodline. 00:28:34.800 --> 00:28:36.240 That was important to God. 00:28:36.240 --> 00:28:38.640 And it wasn't just the one thing about Jesus. 00:28:38.640 --> 00:28:40.960 That's not the only time that's that that's ever mattered. 00:28:40.960 --> 00:28:44.320 It was the most important bloodline, but it wasn't the only one. 00:28:44.320 --> 00:28:45.680 They're all bloodlines. 00:28:45.680 --> 00:28:48.320 Yeah, there were seventy nations in the Old Testament. 00:28:48.320 --> 00:28:51.440 There are seventy nations to whom the disciples are sent out in 00:28:51.440 --> 00:28:52.240 the New Testament. 00:28:52.240 --> 00:28:53.680 That's how God works. 00:28:53.680 --> 00:28:55.120 We don't get a vote. 00:28:55.120 --> 00:28:58.000 And so for us to come along today and say one race, 00:28:58.000 --> 00:28:59.680 the human race, we're all the same. 00:28:59.680 --> 00:29:01.600 We didn't get that from scripture. 00:29:01.600 --> 00:29:04.960 We got that from the 60s and from the 90s and from 00:29:04.960 --> 00:29:07.600 today. We're not talking about hip parade radio. 00:29:07.600 --> 00:29:11.120 We're talking about theology being evolved in real time before our eyes. 00:29:11.120 --> 00:29:14.320 That is a big problem, which is why Corey and I started 00:29:14.320 --> 00:29:17.840 this podcast to talk about this stuff that makes you uncomfortable. 00:29:17.840 --> 00:29:21.680 Because it is uncomfortable be to be confronted with on one hand, 00:29:21.680 --> 00:29:25.280 someone saying something that seems like it might have some foundations, and 00:29:25.280 --> 00:29:27.760 on the other hand, you have the whole world saying that's a 00:29:27.760 --> 00:29:29.040 lie and it's evil. 00:29:29.040 --> 00:29:32.800 Well, when we talk about the genealogy of ideas, it's because a 00:29:32.800 --> 00:29:36.160 hundred years ago no one thought anything different than we're saying today, 00:29:36.160 --> 00:29:40.480 apart from the few people who had begun to adopt the melting 00:29:40.480 --> 00:29:45.280 pot idea that was inserted by a foreign element into the American 00:29:45.280 --> 00:29:47.600 psyche. That was enemy action. 00:29:47.600 --> 00:29:48.560 That was destructive. 00:29:48.800 --> 00:29:54.240 And today it's so pervasive that we have to battle against seemingly 00:29:54.240 --> 00:29:58.640 the the the immune system of the of our own people. 00:29:58.640 --> 00:30:00.480 But it's not an innate immunity. 00:30:00.480 --> 00:30:04.480 It's a it's an artificially induced immunity to something true. 00:30:04.480 --> 00:30:08.400 So that's why we jump over some periods of history specifically to 00:30:08.400 --> 00:30:11.120 say if this is true, it will always have been true. 00:30:11.120 --> 00:30:13.920 And when you look back one hundred, two hundred, three hundred years, 00:30:13.920 --> 00:30:15.440 many of these claims fall apart. 00:30:15.440 --> 00:30:16.400 That's why. 00:30:16.480 --> 00:30:16.640 The 00:30:16.640 --> 00:30:20.080 play you mentioned, the melting pot, gets even better if you look 00:30:20.080 --> 00:30:23.680 at the materials that were used to promote it. 00:30:23.680 --> 00:30:26.960 It it's basically a vision of hell. 00:30:26.960 --> 00:30:27.280 And 00:30:28.240 --> 00:30:30.880 it also gets better when you know his first name because his 00:30:30.880 --> 00:30:34.880 first name was Israel and his name was Israel Dzongvil. 00:30:34.880 --> 00:30:36.080 So thank you. 00:30:36.080 --> 00:30:37.120 Yep. No, it's 00:30:37.280 --> 00:30:38.080 it's worth looking up. 00:30:38.320 --> 00:30:41.360 look it up on Wikipedia and you know it's that's that is 00:30:41.360 --> 00:30:45.920 inserted today into the eternal record of the United States of America. 00:30:45.920 --> 00:30:47.840 And we're told that it was always there. 00:30:48.000 --> 00:30:49.200 it wasn't always there. 00:30:49.200 --> 00:30:53.280 My ancestors who came here in sixteen eighteen, sixteen twenty, sixteen thirty, 00:30:53.280 --> 00:30:54.480 they'd never heard of that. 00:30:54.480 --> 00:30:58.640 They left England and they landed in England, and they were English. 00:30:58.640 --> 00:30:59.600 Nothing changed. 00:30:59.600 --> 00:31:01.200 There was no melting pot for them. 00:31:01.200 --> 00:31:04.080 And yes, some Dutch came and a few Swedes came and I'm 00:31:04.080 --> 00:31:05.440 descended from them too. 00:31:05.440 --> 00:31:08.640 That was what we were sold as being the melting pot, but 00:31:08.640 --> 00:31:13.440 those were all Western European Christians as a fundamentally different type of 00:31:13.440 --> 00:31:19.200 thing than complete aliens by culture, by religion, and by descent. 00:31:19.200 --> 00:31:24.960 And so yes, there are subdivisions, but that doesn't eliminate the fact 00:31:24.960 --> 00:31:26.080 that there's a real 00:31:26.080 --> 00:31:27.360 thing behind it. 00:31:27.360 --> 00:31:30.640 And so the other part of this question was the issue of 00:31:30.640 --> 00:31:33.280 of interracial marriage and 00:31:34.560 --> 00:31:38.960 I think I addressed that well enough in the the podcast episode 00:31:38.960 --> 00:31:41.440 that I put out recently so I think I'll just link that 00:31:41.440 --> 00:31:43.760 in the the show notes. 00:31:43.760 --> 00:31:48.240 But just the very quick summary of it is that per se 00:31:49.280 --> 00:31:54.320 not a sin, not explicitly banned by Scripture as a sin in 00:31:54.320 --> 00:32:01.440 itself. However, in context, often a sin due to wrong motives and 00:32:01.440 --> 00:32:03.280 things like that. 00:32:03.280 --> 00:32:06.000 The what I'll link in the show notes will go over it 00:32:06.000 --> 00:32:09.840 in greater depth, but that is the the short version of why 00:32:09.840 --> 00:32:14.080 Christians should generally avoid interracial marriage. 00:32:14.080 --> 00:32:16.800 And yes, of course, there are the health reasons and other things 00:32:16.800 --> 00:32:20.160 like that, but those are mentioned in what I will be linking 00:32:20.160 --> 00:32:21.360 in the show notes. 00:32:21.920 --> 00:32:22.080 And 00:32:22.080 --> 00:32:25.760 it's also effectively brand new and it's heavily propagandized only in the 00:32:25.760 --> 00:32:27.440 last ten, fifteen years. 00:32:27.440 --> 00:32:30.080 I mean, a lot of it's only in the last five years. 00:32:30.080 --> 00:32:33.520 If you go look at TV shows even fifteen years ago, the 00:32:33.520 --> 00:32:37.840 composition of the couples and the advertisements and everything else is radically 00:32:37.840 --> 00:32:39.120 different than it is today. 00:32:39.120 --> 00:32:40.720 And that was propaganda too. 00:32:40.720 --> 00:32:45.120 So they were pushing the interracial mixing propaganda then, but it wasn't 00:32:45.040 --> 00:32:46.000 so overt. 00:32:46.000 --> 00:32:50.960 Today, it's hard to find any sort of advertisement for anything, including 00:32:50.960 --> 00:32:53.520 our own churches, where it's not a black man and a white 00:32:53.520 --> 00:32:54.560 woman together. 00:32:54.560 --> 00:32:57.040 It's usually that coupling. 00:32:57.040 --> 00:32:59.840 In reality, that virtually never happens. 00:33:00.080 --> 00:33:02.080 it's incredibly rare. 00:33:02.080 --> 00:33:04.960 And yet if you look at the advertisements and you look at 00:33:04.960 --> 00:33:07.760 TV and movies, you would think it was universal. 00:33:07.760 --> 00:33:11.280 And so that is the reason that that people are so vehement 00:33:11.600 --> 00:33:11.920 about 00:33:12.880 --> 00:33:15.520 defending something that it's alien. 00:33:15.520 --> 00:33:18.320 I mean when when we were on issues et cetera hosted, I 00:33:18.320 --> 00:33:20.640 mean we we you know they didn't have our permission or anything, 00:33:20.640 --> 00:33:25.040 not that they needed, but when they played our clips, most of 00:33:25.040 --> 00:33:29.200 the responses were hysteria about interracial marriage, even though it didn't have 00:33:29.200 --> 00:33:30.560 anything to do with the clips. 00:33:30.560 --> 00:33:36.160 They devoted an hour mostly to defending interracial marriage as as what? 00:33:36.160 --> 00:33:38.000 As Christian theology? 00:33:38.240 --> 00:33:40.720 Corey makes the case in the episode, but you know, in the 00:33:40.720 --> 00:33:42.560 in the podcast he's gonna link. 00:33:42.720 --> 00:33:46.880 Suffice it to say if something basically didn't exist fifty years ago, 00:33:46.880 --> 00:33:51.280 twenty years ago, and still barely exists today, maybe you can have 00:33:51.280 --> 00:33:53.840 a discussion about whether or not it's a good idea without somebody 00:33:53.840 --> 00:33:55.360 saying you're going to hell. 00:33:55.360 --> 00:33:59.920 And the fact that it's it's the paramount moral issue in these 00:33:59.920 --> 00:34:03.280 people's hearts and minds makes you wonder what God they're serving. 00:34:03.280 --> 00:34:06.000 Because there's not a God that existed a hundred years ago. 00:34:06.000 --> 00:34:09.680 If the issue didn't exist, if the so called sin didn't exist, 00:34:09.680 --> 00:34:11.200 there was no fight. 00:34:11.440 --> 00:34:15.600 the this principle of faith that's so deeply held by these people 00:34:15.600 --> 00:34:17.200 that they lose their minds. 00:34:17.200 --> 00:34:19.440 You know, Corey blasphemed on Friday. 00:34:19.440 --> 00:34:23.040 He blasphemes virtually every Friday before he logs off Twitter. 00:34:23.120 --> 00:34:24.800 That's not blasphemy against God. 00:34:24.800 --> 00:34:27.440 It's blasphemy against the idols of this day. 00:34:27.440 --> 00:34:32.240 He deliberately posts something carefully worded and antagonistic to get people riled 00:34:32.240 --> 00:34:35.840 up and everyone bites the bait every time because those are the 00:34:35.840 --> 00:34:37.120 idols of this day. 00:34:37.120 --> 00:34:38.240 They're not God. 00:34:38.240 --> 00:34:39.440 They're not from God. 00:34:39.440 --> 00:34:41.840 What he's saying is consistent with scripture. 00:34:41.840 --> 00:34:44.480 It's carefully worded, and it's always bait. 00:34:44.480 --> 00:34:46.800 And if you people were a little bit smarter and you took 00:34:46.880 --> 00:34:50.960 you took seriously that Corey is intelligent, that he's good with words, 00:34:50.960 --> 00:34:53.600 maybe you wouldn't get so riled up when he said something you 00:34:53.600 --> 00:34:54.800 didn't understand. 00:34:54.800 --> 00:34:59.200 Because instead of continuously attacking this obvious bait. 00:34:59.200 --> 00:35:01.200 Like I see it and I just I shake my head. 00:35:01.200 --> 00:35:04.560 I know it's gonna just be a a firestorm and it's unpleasant. 00:35:04.560 --> 00:35:08.000 You know, we don't we don't censor each other's timelines. 00:35:08.000 --> 00:35:10.160 I wouldn't post some of the things he posts and he probably 00:35:10.160 --> 00:35:11.600 wouldn't say some of the things that I say. 00:35:11.680 --> 00:35:12.240 Doesn't matter. 00:35:12.240 --> 00:35:13.280 It's not criticism. 00:35:13.280 --> 00:35:15.520 It's just that there are different approaches to thing. 00:35:15.520 --> 00:35:19.360 But what what you cannot doubt is that when he posts something 00:35:19.360 --> 00:35:25.360 about interracial marriage as a subject that is largely alien to all 00:35:25.360 --> 00:35:26.800 of human existence. 00:35:26.800 --> 00:35:28.640 It's happened, but it's incredibly rare. 00:35:28.640 --> 00:35:29.680 It's infrequent. 00:35:29.680 --> 00:35:32.800 It's never been considered a moral matter. 00:35:32.800 --> 00:35:35.600 And everyone loses their minds. 00:35:35.600 --> 00:35:39.520 You know, it's we're we're told when Benghazi happened. 00:35:39.520 --> 00:35:41.680 We were told that it was because there was some video that 00:35:41.680 --> 00:35:45.520 was made, a movie was made that said something blasphemous about Mohammed 00:35:45.680 --> 00:35:46.400 or whatever. 00:35:46.400 --> 00:35:48.960 And so everyone rioted and everyone murdered. 00:35:48.960 --> 00:35:53.680 That's effectively the sort of response that saying things like interracial marriage 00:35:53.680 --> 00:35:57.360 is generally a bad idea today elicits among most Christians. 00:35:57.360 --> 00:35:58.560 That's not normal. 00:35:58.560 --> 00:36:02.240 That's a response to a blasphemy against a God that even if 00:36:02.240 --> 00:36:05.920 Corey were wrong about what he says about interracial marriage, I believe 00:36:05.920 --> 00:36:06.880 he's correct. 00:36:06.880 --> 00:36:10.080 I think that his explanation is perfectly sound. 00:36:10.080 --> 00:36:13.920 Even if he were wrong, the degree and the vehemence of the 00:36:13.920 --> 00:36:18.880 response against it is so far out of proportion that you have 00:36:18.880 --> 00:36:22.240 to ask yourself, what is the animating spirit behind the people who 00:36:22.240 --> 00:36:23.600 are so mad about this? 00:36:23.600 --> 00:36:25.120 Why this one subject? 00:36:25.120 --> 00:36:26.400 And the answer is very simple. 00:36:26.400 --> 00:36:30.320 It's on your television, it's on your newsfeed when you see ads 00:36:30.320 --> 00:36:34.720 over and over again showing mixed couples, you see black people continuously. 00:36:34.720 --> 00:36:37.360 Most people think that the blacks are thirty or forty percent of 00:36:37.360 --> 00:36:40.800 the US population just based on what they see in ads. 00:36:40.800 --> 00:36:43.440 It's about twelve percent, twelve to thirteen percent. 00:36:43.440 --> 00:36:46.640 They've always been in the 10 to 12, 13% range. 00:36:46.640 --> 00:36:48.960 That's been consistent as the US has grown. 00:36:48.960 --> 00:36:50.320 They've never been more than that. 00:36:50.320 --> 00:36:52.800 But when you look at ads, you would think it was seventy-five 00:36:52.800 --> 00:36:55.920 percent of people because you can't have a TV show without one 00:36:55.920 --> 00:37:00.240 anymore. Now I I I I've mentioned previously I watched The Wire 00:37:00.400 --> 00:37:01.120 three or four times. 00:37:01.120 --> 00:37:01.600 I like it. 00:37:01.600 --> 00:37:03.280 It's virtually all black characters. 00:37:03.280 --> 00:37:07.280 I don't hate black people, but don't pretend that there's something that 00:37:07.280 --> 00:37:07.760 they're not. 00:37:07.760 --> 00:37:10.800 The reason I like the wire is that it was realistic. 00:37:10.800 --> 00:37:13.440 There were some smart ones, there were some dumb ones, there are 00:37:13.440 --> 00:37:15.680 some violent ones, there were some decent ones. 00:37:15.680 --> 00:37:20.080 It was an honest portrayal of the human condition in their community. 00:37:20.080 --> 00:37:23.920 That's not what you get on TV when it's always the black 00:37:23.920 --> 00:37:26.720 science guy or the black computer guy. 00:37:26.720 --> 00:37:29.920 On the IQ episode we demonstrated that that's preposterous. 00:37:29.920 --> 00:37:31.520 It virtually never happens. 00:37:31.520 --> 00:37:34.880 And the fact that you know a guy doesn't disprove the fact 00:37:34.880 --> 00:37:38.480 that there are only one point two million African Americans with IQs 00:37:38.480 --> 00:37:39.680 above 115. 00:37:39.680 --> 00:37:41.040 That's not very smart. 00:37:41.040 --> 00:37:43.360 Like if you're one fifteen, great, God bless you. 00:37:43.360 --> 00:37:46.480 You can do uh pretty much anything that's useful in this world. 00:37:46.400 --> 00:37:48.080 it's still not very smart. 00:37:48.080 --> 00:37:50.160 He's not nearly smart enough to do the sorts of things that 00:37:50.160 --> 00:37:52.800 are portrayed in the media all the time. 00:37:53.360 --> 00:37:56.560 the the expert that knows Latin and Greek off the top of 00:37:56.560 --> 00:37:59.840 her head and she's a computer hacker and she's really good, you 00:37:59.840 --> 00:38:03.280 know, with medicine, it's always the black girl who's twenty five years 00:38:03.280 --> 00:38:05.120 old. That's gaslighting. 00:38:05.120 --> 00:38:06.560 That doesn't happen. 00:38:06.560 --> 00:38:08.800 You know, on one hand it's fiction, whatever. 00:38:08.800 --> 00:38:11.440 On the other hand, when it convinces people that that's actually what's 00:38:11.440 --> 00:38:13.360 happening in the world, and then they make moral 00:38:14.240 --> 00:38:17.600 pronouncements against brothers in Christ for saying, hey, maybe that's kind of 00:38:17.600 --> 00:38:19.680 silly. That's when it becomes a problem. 00:38:19.680 --> 00:38:24.000 And that's why this artificial manufactured consent for these things exists in 00:38:24.000 --> 00:38:25.040 the mass media. 00:38:25.040 --> 00:38:28.000 It's to convince you that something's always been the case when it's 00:38:28.000 --> 00:38:29.440 virtually never been the case. 00:38:29.440 --> 00:38:32.000 And so yeah, when we come along and say, yeah, that's nonsense, 00:38:32.000 --> 00:38:33.440 we're gonna get yelled at. 00:38:33.440 --> 00:38:34.240 We know that. 00:38:34.560 --> 00:38:37.040 it's part of why we're here, is to get yelled at so 00:38:37.040 --> 00:38:39.920 that after the yelling dies down, there can be an actual conversation 00:38:40.960 --> 00:38:46.560 about the reality of what's in the world, about creation, about what's 00:38:46.560 --> 00:38:48.560 revealed in creation. 00:38:49.200 --> 00:38:53.440 I actually want to read the ending, just the last paragraph or 00:38:53.440 --> 00:38:57.760 so, maybe two paragraphs, of the play The Melting Pot. 00:38:57.760 --> 00:39:01.280 Maybe not actually comment on it much, but those who are paying 00:39:01.280 --> 00:39:05.360 close attention and who have been listening all along Will notice that 00:39:05.360 --> 00:39:07.600 this is an open hellmouth. 00:39:07.600 --> 00:39:12.560 And so to give a little background about the play, it's about 00:39:12.880 --> 00:39:17.840 a Russian Jewish family flees a pogrom in Russia, comes to the 00:39:17.840 --> 00:39:18.080 US 00:39:19.200 --> 00:39:22.560 and I'm not going to give you a spoiler warning because it's 00:39:22.480 --> 00:39:24.400 a play, and you're supposed to know plays before you go to 00:39:24.400 --> 00:39:27.680 see them, and I hope you never have to see this play. 00:39:28.000 --> 00:39:32.880 But the Jewish son of the family winds up falling in love, 00:39:32.880 --> 00:39:38.080 as it were, with the Russian daughter of the man who led 00:39:38.080 --> 00:39:40.960 the pogrom against his family back in Russia, because of course it's 00:39:40.960 --> 00:39:42.800 as contrived as could possibly be. 00:39:42.800 --> 00:39:48.400 But at any rate, David is the Jewish son and Vera is 00:39:48.400 --> 00:39:50.240 the Russian daughter. 00:39:50.240 --> 00:39:54.160 And so here is the last bit of the play, David speaking. 00:39:54.160 --> 00:39:57.120 It is the fires of God round his crucible. 00:39:57.120 --> 00:39:59.440 There she lies the great melting pot. 00:39:59.440 --> 00:40:02.320 Listen, can't you hear the roaring and the bubbling? 00:40:02.320 --> 00:40:04.080 There gapes her mouth. 00:40:04.080 --> 00:40:07.440 The harbour where a thousand mammoth feeders come from the ends of 00:40:07.440 --> 00:40:11.120 the world to pour in their human freight, Ah what a stirring 00:40:11.120 --> 00:40:15.920 and a seething, Celt and Latin, Slav and Tutan, Greek and Syrian, 00:40:15.920 --> 00:40:21.920 black and yellow, Vera, Jew and Gentile, David, yes east and west 00:40:22.080 --> 00:40:25.520 and north and south, the palm and the pine, the pole and 00:40:25.520 --> 00:40:30.000 the equator, the crescent and the cross, how the great alchemist melts 00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:33.840 and fuses them with his purging flame, here shall they all unite 00:40:33.840 --> 00:40:37.040 to build the republic of Man and the Kingdom of God. 00:40:37.040 --> 00:40:40.480 Ah, Vera, what is the glory of Rome and Jerusalem, where all 00:40:40.480 --> 00:40:44.160 nations and races come to worship and look back, compared with the 00:40:44.160 --> 00:40:48.400 glory of America, where all races and nations come to labor and 00:40:48.400 --> 00:40:53.680 look forward, peace, peace to all ye unborn millions, fated to fill 00:40:53.680 --> 00:40:58.480 this giant continent, the god of our children give you peace. 00:40:58.480 --> 00:41:02.080 And then just as an extra little touch, the play ends and 00:41:02.080 --> 00:41:06.560 is played out with my country tis of thee. 00:41:07.280 --> 00:41:11.360 I there really is just no need for a comment. 00:41:11.600 --> 00:41:15.600 Yeah. You're that that's a that's a litmus test. 00:41:15.600 --> 00:41:18.960 If you see that in your response that sort of determines which 00:41:19.120 --> 00:41:22.080 which side of everything you're on. 00:41:22.080 --> 00:41:26.000 The uh next question that we had addressed in part uh we 00:41:26.000 --> 00:41:28.160 had a few different questions about hymns. 00:41:28.160 --> 00:41:31.600 Some of them referred specifically to you know, there's some hymns in 00:41:31.600 --> 00:41:35.120 the in the current the Lutheran service book, the L S B, 00:41:35.120 --> 00:41:39.600 the hymnal that talk about the human race, that talk about one 00:41:39.600 --> 00:41:42.960 race of Adam and they're asking what we think about those. 00:41:42.960 --> 00:41:45.520 The first thing I'll say I think the primary thing I'll say 00:41:45.520 --> 00:41:48.560 about any hymn you find in your hymnal is look at the 00:41:48.560 --> 00:41:51.920 bottom of the page and see what year it was written. 00:41:52.000 --> 00:41:54.480 If you want to know what I think about the theology of 00:41:54.480 --> 00:41:57.120 it, tell me what year it was written, tell me what language 00:41:57.120 --> 00:42:00.640 it was written, and I can give you a pretty good idea 00:42:00.640 --> 00:42:02.720 of what the theology of it will be. 00:42:02.720 --> 00:42:06.480 Now in particular some of the worst hymns in there that are 00:42:06.960 --> 00:42:12.320 deliberately one race the human race propaganda, one of them that was 00:42:12.480 --> 00:42:15.120 was highlighted on Twitter in the last couple weeks. 00:42:15.200 --> 00:42:16.960 Was written in 1969. 00:42:16.960 --> 00:42:17.920 It's a brand new hymn. 00:42:18.160 --> 00:42:20.320 I mean there there are hymns in our hymnal from the second 00:42:20.320 --> 00:42:22.640 and third centuries, just a couple. 00:42:22.640 --> 00:42:24.880 But I think those are treasures. 00:42:24.880 --> 00:42:28.080 I think anything written in nineteen nineteen sixty nine should be set 00:42:28.080 --> 00:42:29.920 on fire without even reading it. 00:42:29.920 --> 00:42:30.880 I don't care what it is. 00:42:30.880 --> 00:42:33.760 If it was good, we can invent it again, but that decade 00:42:33.760 --> 00:42:36.320 should be erased from human memory. 00:42:36.320 --> 00:42:39.200 So yeah, there's some stuff in the hymnal. 00:42:39.200 --> 00:42:41.440 That doesn't make it authoritative. 00:42:41.440 --> 00:42:44.480 Yeah, it's that's one of the problems with churches publishing stuff in 00:42:44.480 --> 00:42:45.520 their own name is that 00:42:46.800 --> 00:42:50.640 By having the imprimater of your church and having said that it's 00:42:50.640 --> 00:42:53.760 gone through some sort of doctrinal review, it binds your conscience. 00:42:53.760 --> 00:42:55.280 It says, Oh, you disagree with this? 00:42:55.280 --> 00:42:57.120 You must must not be a good Christian. 00:42:57.120 --> 00:42:59.600 Well, I disagree with some of the newer hymns. 00:42:59.600 --> 00:43:01.680 Not all of them, and there's some great hymns that are newer, 00:43:01.680 --> 00:43:02.560 but not many. 00:43:02.560 --> 00:43:04.800 There are much better hymns that are older. 00:43:04.800 --> 00:43:06.480 And that's part of the reason why. 00:43:06.480 --> 00:43:11.040 You can't any any place in time that produces a hymn, there's 00:43:11.040 --> 00:43:13.280 a reason someone wrote that song. 00:43:13.280 --> 00:43:14.960 They wrote it for a purpose. 00:43:14.960 --> 00:43:18.880 Yeah, we have some hymns from the air of the plague where 00:43:18.960 --> 00:43:21.440 I can't remember you, Geor Corey, you probably remember which one, but 00:43:21.440 --> 00:43:24.320 there's a hymn where a man wrote it alongs hymn as he 00:43:24.320 --> 00:43:28.320 had he'd buried most of his family and most of his town, 00:43:28.320 --> 00:43:32.560 and he was under tremendous suffering, and so knowing that context for 00:43:32.560 --> 00:43:35.280 that hymn makes it all the more beautiful. 00:43:35.280 --> 00:43:39.120 When you know that a hymn about racial racial consolidation was written 00:43:39.120 --> 00:43:43.360 in nineteen sixty-nine, that tells you something very different about what message 00:43:43.360 --> 00:43:44.720 you're supposed to receive. 00:43:44.720 --> 00:43:47.120 So they're good hymns and they're bad hymns. 00:43:47.120 --> 00:43:50.000 Uh a related question was are hymns that are written by women 00:43:50.640 --> 00:43:52.080 teaching by women? 00:43:52.080 --> 00:43:52.400 I 00:43:53.840 --> 00:43:57.360 personally I think probably it's not in the top fifty list of 00:43:57.360 --> 00:43:59.280 issues that I think we need to solve. 00:43:59.280 --> 00:44:02.960 I think that they're much bigger issues to fix. 00:44:02.960 --> 00:44:05.920 And I pray for a day when we can worry about whether 00:44:05.920 --> 00:44:07.760 we need to get rid of the hymns that were written by 00:44:07.760 --> 00:44:10.960 women. The answer is I think probably yes, but that's not where 00:44:10.960 --> 00:44:12.000 I'm gonna start. 00:44:12.000 --> 00:44:14.480 I'm gonna start with saying, hey, maybe maybe people need to believe 00:44:14.560 --> 00:44:17.280 the Bible and in general, and then we can work our way 00:44:17.280 --> 00:44:18.880 down from there. 00:44:19.440 --> 00:44:23.360 That really sort of covers the the issue of hymns and 00:44:24.320 --> 00:44:28.400 except for the tangential issue of should we be using hymns that 00:44:28.400 --> 00:44:34.000 were written by if you're Lutheran, by non Lutherans, and the answer 00:44:34.000 --> 00:44:37.280 is as long as they're doctrinally sound. 00:44:37.280 --> 00:44:40.320 Many of them are not, and so we should probably not be 00:44:40.320 --> 00:44:41.680 using them. 00:44:41.680 --> 00:44:45.520 But the ones that are doctrinally sound are of course fine, and 00:44:45.520 --> 00:44:48.720 you mentioned hymns that are a little more modern in terms when 00:44:48.720 --> 00:44:50.160 they were written that are still good. 00:44:50.160 --> 00:44:55.200 The obvious one would be thy strong word is fairly modern, but 00:44:55.200 --> 00:44:57.280 still quite good. 00:44:57.280 --> 00:45:00.960 No. being written that was in the sixties as well, I believe. 00:45:00.960 --> 00:45:01.280 So 00:45:02.880 --> 00:45:04.480 we one exception. 00:45:04.560 --> 00:45:06.080 Yeah, I I know exactly. 00:45:06.080 --> 00:45:08.880 It's like we can think of one good hymn that was written 00:45:08.880 --> 00:45:10.080 in the sixties. 00:45:10.080 --> 00:45:12.320 But The knaxalt hymn. 00:45:12.320 --> 00:45:12.720 Exactly. 00:45:13.200 --> 00:45:16.720 there actually there were a couple related questions to do we think 00:45:16.720 --> 00:45:19.760 that women shouldn't be able to sing in church or to speak 00:45:19.760 --> 00:45:21.760 responsibly in church as that teaching. 00:45:21.760 --> 00:45:23.680 No. That that's a public celebration. 00:45:24.320 --> 00:45:25.360 Yeah. Yeah. 00:45:25.360 --> 00:45:28.320 That's women being silent in the church. 00:45:28.320 --> 00:45:31.760 When you look at those passages, it's not talking about corporate worship. 00:45:31.760 --> 00:45:38.320 The questions are about the issue is should women be speaking interactively 00:45:38.320 --> 00:45:39.360 in study? 00:45:39.360 --> 00:45:43.280 And so the Paul specifically says, God specifically says if she has 00:45:43.280 --> 00:45:45.680 a question, she should go home and ask her husband. 00:45:45.680 --> 00:45:48.560 Doesn't even countenance the idea of her having her own opinion. 00:45:48.800 --> 00:45:51.280 It's as if she has a has a question, she should go 00:45:51.280 --> 00:45:52.880 home and ask her husband there. 00:45:52.880 --> 00:45:56.720 So that's obviously not something that's happening during the church service proper. 00:45:56.720 --> 00:46:02.720 And that's obviously not related to singing, to chanting, to responsive readings. 00:46:02.960 --> 00:46:08.720 Corporate worship is the body of Christ unified together publicly, speaking with 00:46:08.720 --> 00:46:11.840 one voice, confessing what God has said back to him. 00:46:11.840 --> 00:46:13.120 That's beautiful. 00:46:13.120 --> 00:46:13.600 That's good. 00:46:13.600 --> 00:46:17.920 That is for every son of God, male or female. 00:46:18.400 --> 00:46:18.560 And 00:46:18.560 --> 00:46:22.320 of course, that answers the question of using the magnific or any 00:46:22.320 --> 00:46:26.160 of the other songs in scripture that are originally spoken by women. 00:46:26.160 --> 00:46:29.440 Of course they are recorded by men, because all of scripture was 00:46:29.440 --> 00:46:32.000 written by men and they are inspired by God, which is the 00:46:32.000 --> 00:46:35.440 ultimate reason that we should use them, and of course we do 00:46:35.440 --> 00:46:38.800 use the magnificat in the evening service. 00:46:38.800 --> 00:46:41.680 But those are of course totally fine to use. 00:46:41.680 --> 00:46:44.480 I believe the the hymn writer you had in mind was Philip 00:46:44.480 --> 00:46:47.520 Nikolai. He was that's right. 00:46:47.520 --> 00:46:49.680 Uh pastor lived through the plague. 00:46:49.680 --> 00:46:53.280 He's commemorated on the twenty sixth of October along with Hermann and 00:46:53.280 --> 00:46:56.480 Gerhard, other hymn writers. 00:46:56.560 --> 00:46:59.120 I think one of the things underlying some of the questions about 00:46:59.120 --> 00:47:02.400 what do we think about women doing X, Y, or Z, they 00:47:02.560 --> 00:47:05.760 didn't seem to be hostile questions, but I think there's a perception 00:47:05.760 --> 00:47:09.520 of us sometimes that we are woman women haters or something. 00:47:09.520 --> 00:47:12.560 I actually got a DM yesterday from a lady who thanked me 00:47:12.560 --> 00:47:16.880 for for the show and for, you know, speaking faithfully on these 00:47:16.880 --> 00:47:21.920 matters, we've gotten feedback from a number of women who've they take 00:47:21.920 --> 00:47:23.120 no issue with what we say. 00:47:23.120 --> 00:47:26.560 Now there are some that I'm sure do, but you know, it's 00:47:26.560 --> 00:47:30.960 funny, we think we mentioned before, we get DMs all the time 00:47:30.960 --> 00:47:36.880 from mixed race guys, from non whites, from non Lutherans, from women, 00:47:36.880 --> 00:47:41.440 all the people who the world tells everybody else hate us because 00:47:41.440 --> 00:47:42.320 we hate them hate them. 00:47:42.320 --> 00:47:44.880 The people that we're supposed to hate don't think that we hate 00:47:44.880 --> 00:47:49.200 them. And the people that we're told that we hate like s 00:47:49.280 --> 00:47:50.800 at least some of what we're saying. 00:47:50.800 --> 00:47:53.120 They can listen and they get value from it. 00:47:53.120 --> 00:47:55.280 You know in the in particular case of the number of the 00:47:55.280 --> 00:47:58.320 mixed race people, that was one of the points that Mori Corey 00:47:58.320 --> 00:48:01.760 makes in his about thirty minute podcast that he'll link on the 00:48:01.760 --> 00:48:06.400 previous question is that mixed race guys frequently thank us for speaking 00:48:06.400 --> 00:48:07.760 clearly on race. 00:48:07.760 --> 00:48:09.040 You know, when 00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:14.320 race mixing is pushed on parents, they say, Oh, it'll be beauti 00:48:14.320 --> 00:48:17.200 beautiful, your children will be beautiful, everything will be wonderful, it's gonna 00:48:17.200 --> 00:48:19.920 be a new dawn of a new age, it's gonna be great. 00:48:19.920 --> 00:48:22.160 That's what they're getting from the world and from CNN. 00:48:22.400 --> 00:48:24.320 Their kids have a different experience. 00:48:24.320 --> 00:48:29.520 And their kids, by and large, understand that their experience is to 00:48:29.520 --> 00:48:32.240 the degree that they suffer from alienation. 00:48:32.240 --> 00:48:36.160 It's not because the world is mean, it's because they're divided between 00:48:36.160 --> 00:48:37.440 two nations. 00:48:37.440 --> 00:48:43.280 And when a man has two nations intersecting in himself, his own 00:48:43.280 --> 00:48:46.560 person, ultimately he basically has to pick one. 00:48:46.560 --> 00:48:50.560 And that's that's a that's a difficult choice that no man should 00:48:50.560 --> 00:48:51.520 be faced with. 00:48:51.520 --> 00:48:53.920 You know, we talked about our own genealogies in the past. 00:48:53.920 --> 00:48:56.000 I'm mostly English and partly German. 00:48:56.000 --> 00:48:58.480 I don't have to pick either, 'cause it's far enough back that 00:48:58.480 --> 00:49:04.160 I'm just American by birth, by genes, but there's no conflict between 00:49:04.160 --> 00:49:07.200 the guys who spoke German and the guys who spoke English in 00:49:07.200 --> 00:49:07.840 my past. 00:49:07.840 --> 00:49:10.400 They were able to coexist side by side as neighbors. 00:49:10.400 --> 00:49:13.840 And then when they all started speaking English, they basically became one 00:49:13.840 --> 00:49:18.560 finally. So that's not an inherent conflict. 00:49:18.560 --> 00:49:22.880 The guy who is, you know, half white and half black or 00:49:22.880 --> 00:49:27.440 half Asian and half white, he has a much bigger internal struggle 00:49:27.600 --> 00:49:32.480 because he understands intrinsically he doesn't completely belong to either community. 00:49:32.480 --> 00:49:36.880 And so when these guys talk to us privately, they're generally thankful. 00:49:36.880 --> 00:49:39.840 And part of the reason is that we're the only men in 00:49:39.840 --> 00:49:43.440 some cases that they've ever heard who will speak honestly about these 00:49:43.440 --> 00:49:47.040 things. They're thankful to hear a Christian speaking honestly. 00:49:47.040 --> 00:49:49.360 So for all the people telling you that we hate and that 00:49:49.360 --> 00:49:53.360 people hate us, the actual experience we have with you the listeners 00:49:53.600 --> 00:49:56.960 getting to us and telling us largely says the opposite. 00:49:56.960 --> 00:49:59.040 I mean you know, I I guess if somebody hates us and 00:49:59.040 --> 00:50:01.440 thinks that we hate them, they're maybe not gonna send a message 00:50:01.440 --> 00:50:02.080 at all. 00:50:02.080 --> 00:50:04.960 But the messages we have received had not only been supportive, they've 00:50:04.960 --> 00:50:06.640 been They've been tremendously thankful. 00:50:06.960 --> 00:50:09.840 I do find it a little funny as someone who enjoys opera 00:50:10.240 --> 00:50:14.960 to be accused not by the people who are questioning us, but 00:50:14.960 --> 00:50:18.240 by those who accuse us, by those who attack us on various 00:50:18.240 --> 00:50:20.960 platforms that I don't like women singing. 00:50:20.960 --> 00:50:25.600 How many times have I linked things that were soprano or other 00:50:25.600 --> 00:50:31.360 bits of pieces of music from operas and such in our chat? 00:50:31.360 --> 00:50:37.120 So and if God didn't want women to sing in the service, 00:50:37.120 --> 00:50:39.520 we would have an injunction against it. 00:50:39.520 --> 00:50:42.640 Women are not to speak in the service because women are not 00:50:42.640 --> 00:50:43.360 to teach. 00:50:43.360 --> 00:50:45.840 They are They are to remain silent because they are supposed to 00:50:45.840 --> 00:50:47.440 ask their husbands at home. 00:50:47.440 --> 00:50:51.200 Scripture is very clear about why these things are the way they 00:50:51.200 --> 00:50:55.520 are. But women are part of the body of Christ, and so 00:50:55.520 --> 00:50:59.600 they do participate in the service in insofar as it is appropriate 00:50:59.600 --> 00:51:03.440 for them to do so, and that of course includes singing along 00:51:03.440 --> 00:51:05.120 with the congregation. 00:51:05.120 --> 00:51:09.600 And the congregational singing would be much impoverished if women were not 00:51:09.600 --> 00:51:10.880 singing as well. 00:51:10.880 --> 00:51:13.520 We are in fact much impoverished by the fact that we no 00:51:13.520 --> 00:51:17.920 longer use the chorrals that separate male and female voices, and so 00:51:17.920 --> 00:51:21.280 you can get that distinction between them more clearly. 00:51:21.280 --> 00:51:23.920 Of course part of that is a lack of men in the 00:51:23.920 --> 00:51:27.840 services who actually sing, and yes I do intend to shame those 00:51:27.840 --> 00:51:30.400 of you who don't sing in the service you should be doing 00:51:30.400 --> 00:51:36.960 so. If you don't sing particularly well, practice or sing anyway. 00:51:36.960 --> 00:51:39.920 There are plenty of men who don't sing very well. 00:51:39.920 --> 00:51:43.440 That's one of the great things about being part of a congregation 00:51:43.440 --> 00:51:45.280 or a larger choir. 00:51:45.280 --> 00:51:50.240 The individual imperfections are hidden by the fact that you have more 00:51:50.240 --> 00:51:51.680 people singing. 00:51:51.680 --> 00:51:55.120 The larger the number of people you have singing, the better it 00:51:55.120 --> 00:51:57.360 sounds when it comes to choral pieces. 00:51:57.360 --> 00:51:59.040 That's just how it works. 00:51:59.040 --> 00:52:03.440 Listen to a large choir sometime, if you've never done that, it 00:52:03.440 --> 00:52:03.760 is 00:52:04.720 --> 00:52:07.440 far and away a better thing than if you just have a 00:52:07.440 --> 00:52:08.800 small handful of people singing. 00:52:08.800 --> 00:52:11.360 So yes, you should sing in church, whether you are a man 00:52:11.360 --> 00:52:13.360 or a woman. 00:52:13.360 --> 00:52:15.760 We have the tangential question about whether or not we should be 00:52:15.840 --> 00:52:18.720 using the Psalms, and the answer is yes, of course. 00:52:18.720 --> 00:52:23.280 And it was the emphasis of the question was: are we neglecting 00:52:23.280 --> 00:52:24.160 to use the Psalms? 00:52:24.240 --> 00:52:27.200 And I would say yes, most churches are in fact neglecting to 00:52:27.200 --> 00:52:29.040 use the Psalms. 00:52:29.040 --> 00:52:32.640 In the Lutheran Church we do use that as an intro it, 00:52:32.640 --> 00:52:35.760 and sometimes there's responsive bits that are the Psalm, and we do 00:52:35.760 --> 00:52:39.200 have other bits of the Psalms in the Divine Service smattered here 00:52:39.200 --> 00:52:41.360 and there, scattered about. 00:52:41.360 --> 00:52:44.640 But yes, we should be using the Psalter. 00:52:44.640 --> 00:52:50.720 Because as scripture says, we're to use Psalms, hymns, etc., and so 00:52:50.720 --> 00:52:53.760 we should be using them because the Psalter is the original hymnal 00:52:53.760 --> 00:52:55.360 of the Church. 00:52:55.360 --> 00:52:58.960 We should be employing it, we should be singing it, or at 00:52:58.960 --> 00:53:03.360 least chanting it because whether or not it works particularly well sung 00:53:03.360 --> 00:53:07.120 in English is an open question, but it can certainly be chanted 00:53:07.280 --> 00:53:08.400 and we should make use of it. 00:53:08.480 --> 00:53:11.280 It is scripture, we are commanded to use it. 00:53:11.440 --> 00:53:15.440 And it's also important to note that the word psalm literally just 00:53:15.440 --> 00:53:16.560 means song. 00:53:16.560 --> 00:53:19.760 So the Psalms of David were David's songs. 00:53:20.000 --> 00:53:22.400 And yes, they're a special 00:53:23.280 --> 00:53:27.840 category of songs, the psalms are, because you know, they're inspired by 00:53:27.840 --> 00:53:31.040 God. They're one of the most pivotal parts of all of scripture. 00:53:31.040 --> 00:53:34.000 But fundamentally, they're just songs. 00:53:34.000 --> 00:53:37.520 And so the fact that the church has always had other songs 00:53:37.520 --> 00:53:41.440 that were also sung is also important to us, particularly as Lutherans. 00:53:41.440 --> 00:53:44.320 And as I mentioned, you know, we have hymns in our hymnal. 00:53:44.320 --> 00:53:45.520 They're not Lutheran hymns. 00:53:45.760 --> 00:53:48.720 they're hymns from, you know, the two hundreds and three hundreds and 00:53:48.720 --> 00:53:50.080 four hundreds AD. 00:53:50.080 --> 00:53:53.280 It was the very earliest church was singing some of the songs 00:53:53.280 --> 00:53:54.880 that we sing to this day. 00:53:54.880 --> 00:53:59.200 That's an important part of the Christian heritage, the Western Christian church 00:53:59.760 --> 00:54:02.400 has these things as its treasures. 00:54:03.120 --> 00:54:03.280 One 00:54:03.360 --> 00:54:08.160 of the accusations leveled against the Lutherans by Rome was that we 00:54:08.160 --> 00:54:10.240 were singing people into the faith. 00:54:10.240 --> 00:54:13.840 And I think that is a great a great accusation we should 00:54:13.840 --> 00:54:15.840 wear with pride. 00:54:16.800 --> 00:54:22.560 One of the the first hymnals that was in the vernacular was 00:54:22.880 --> 00:54:23.520 produced 00:54:24.640 --> 00:54:28.880 largely by Luther, he wasn't the one who printed it and actually 00:54:28.880 --> 00:54:32.400 produced it, but he worked with the man who did and produced 00:54:32.400 --> 00:54:33.840 many of the hymns that were in it. 00:54:33.840 --> 00:54:35.600 And that was in fifteen twenty four. 00:54:35.600 --> 00:54:38.480 That was even before the Reformation got into full swing. 00:54:38.480 --> 00:54:43.680 Obviously that was after fifteen seventeen after the theses had been posted, 00:54:43.680 --> 00:54:47.280 but before fifteen thirty when the Augsburg Confession was presented. 00:54:47.280 --> 00:54:54.240 And so very early on Lutherans recognized the importance of teaching Christians 00:54:54.240 --> 00:54:56.400 via music, via hymns. 00:54:56.400 --> 00:54:59.760 Because as was mentioned, you are going to remember things better if 00:54:59.760 --> 00:55:00.880 they are set to music. 00:55:00.880 --> 00:55:05.520 That is just how human memory works. 00:55:05.520 --> 00:55:11.760 In addition to the question about the Psalms in particular, there were 00:55:11.760 --> 00:55:12.400 two other 00:55:13.280 --> 00:55:18.320 minor questions, one partly in jest that came from this particular questioner. 00:55:18.640 --> 00:55:23.200 One was do Lutherans have a category for non Lutheran theologians other 00:55:23.200 --> 00:55:24.320 than terrible? 00:55:24.320 --> 00:55:27.040 And the answer to that is yes, of course, we call him 00:55:27.040 --> 00:55:28.800 Philip Melanchthon. 00:55:29.200 --> 00:55:32.800 And then the other question was whether I am partly joking about 00:55:32.800 --> 00:55:37.280 that, just for those who aren't familiar with the struggle that we 00:55:37.280 --> 00:55:42.640 had in Lutheranism when Philip Melanchthon attempted to reconcile to be ecumenical 00:55:42.720 --> 00:55:49.360 with the reformed there are some things that happened in that pursuit 00:55:49.840 --> 00:55:52.400 with which Lutherans would not agree. 00:55:52.400 --> 00:55:55.840 So partly in jest, partly serious. 00:55:55.840 --> 00:55:59.360 But the other part, the other question here was whether there are 00:55:59.360 --> 00:56:03.280 different levels of punishment in hell and where do we get that 00:56:03.280 --> 00:56:07.120 from? There are a few different places you get that in scripture. 00:56:07.120 --> 00:56:13.920 There is the one where Christ speaks of various servants being varying 00:56:13.920 --> 00:56:19.440 levels of honest or dutiful in their tasks and the amount of 00:56:19.440 --> 00:56:22.560 the beating they will receive if they are not. 00:56:22.560 --> 00:56:25.680 And then there is of course Revelation twenty, which speaks of the 00:56:25.680 --> 00:56:30.960 books being opened and the deeds of the dead being assessed. 00:56:30.960 --> 00:56:34.640 What you have done in life will be assessed at the judgment, 00:56:34.640 --> 00:56:38.000 and you will be rewarded or punished accordingly. 00:56:38.000 --> 00:56:41.840 And so for those who are not in Christ, there will be 00:56:41.840 --> 00:56:46.880 varying degrees of punishment because you are paying for your sins, because 00:56:46.880 --> 00:56:50.720 your sins are not covered by Christ's blood because you're not in 00:56:50.720 --> 00:56:54.000 Christ. And so you are paying for those sins. 00:56:54.000 --> 00:56:57.680 Each of those sins will take you an eternity to pay. 00:56:57.680 --> 00:57:00.560 But your eternity is going to be worse if you have more 00:57:00.560 --> 00:57:02.800 of them or if you have worse sins. 00:57:02.800 --> 00:57:07.520 And so that's where we get the doctrine of the varying degrees 00:57:07.520 --> 00:57:09.200 of punishment in hell. 00:57:09.280 --> 00:57:09.440 Yeah, 00:57:09.440 --> 00:57:12.000 I'm sure that question came in before we did the recent episode 00:57:12.000 --> 00:57:15.200 on Episode on all sins are not equal, and we discussed it 00:57:15.200 --> 00:57:17.920 at some length, but that was all what the whole episode was 00:57:17.920 --> 00:57:21.440 about. Not only are the degrees of sin different, but obviously the 00:57:21.440 --> 00:57:23.920 degrees of punishment will also vary. 00:57:23.920 --> 00:57:26.080 It's you're still either damned or you're saved. 00:57:26.160 --> 00:57:27.680 That's a binary. 00:57:27.680 --> 00:57:32.400 But heaven and hell will not be equal for those who are 00:57:32.400 --> 00:57:33.760 in those places. 00:57:33.760 --> 00:57:35.440 God is not egalitarian. 00:57:35.440 --> 00:57:37.360 There's no equality anywhere. 00:57:37.360 --> 00:57:40.960 There's a place of honor in heaven, there's a place of honor 00:57:40.960 --> 00:57:44.960 wherever God goes, and he bestows that upon whom he chooses. 00:57:44.960 --> 00:57:47.280 And so we don't get to whine about well that's not fair, 00:57:47.280 --> 00:57:47.920 that's not equal. 00:57:47.920 --> 00:57:50.000 Yeah, you're right, it's not fair or equal. 00:57:50.000 --> 00:57:54.640 God dispenses his gifts as he wishes, and we are duty bound 00:57:54.640 --> 00:57:58.560 as creatures to receive them in thanksgiving, and anything else is sin. 00:57:58.560 --> 00:58:00.880 The uh last question we're gonna touch on was 00:58:00.960 --> 00:58:03.920 uh someone asked us about our thoughts on monasticism. 00:58:04.160 --> 00:58:07.680 He said he's he understands a concern with regard to perpetual vows, 00:58:07.680 --> 00:58:11.040 but would something like short term monastic houses of work, prayer, and 00:58:11.040 --> 00:58:15.040 study be a useful tool for young men in the church. 00:58:15.600 --> 00:58:18.480 This goes back to one of my stock answers of what problem 00:58:18.480 --> 00:58:20.240 are you trying to solve? 00:58:20.240 --> 00:58:22.960 Yes, I I do think that you know a period of prayer 00:58:22.960 --> 00:58:27.200 and study and reflection away from the wicked world would benefit young 00:58:27.200 --> 00:58:31.600 men, you know, particularly as they're exiting as they're entering adulthood and 00:58:31.600 --> 00:58:33.760 in transitioning into the real world. 00:58:33.760 --> 00:58:37.280 On the other hand, I don't think you need monastic houses to 00:58:37.280 --> 00:58:37.920 do that. 00:58:37.920 --> 00:58:41.520 I think a young man who's been raised well by faithful a 00:58:41.520 --> 00:58:45.440 faithful father is gonna have been doing that his entire life. 00:58:45.440 --> 00:58:49.920 When a son is is raised in a manner that is focusing 00:58:49.920 --> 00:58:54.400 on prayer and work and study, he's gonna keep doing it. 00:58:54.400 --> 00:58:57.520 Your children are going to be raised up by their parents to 00:58:57.520 --> 00:58:59.920 do what they're gonna do for the rest of their lives, for 00:58:59.920 --> 00:59:01.120 good or ill. 00:59:01.120 --> 00:59:04.800 So if you get to be 18, 19, 20 and you decide 00:59:04.800 --> 00:59:08.720 you need to bolt on some prayer before you get going in 00:59:08.720 --> 00:59:10.720 the world, it's already too late. 00:59:10.720 --> 00:59:12.640 You should have been doing that all along. 00:59:12.640 --> 00:59:16.080 And if we lived in a world where that were actually happening, 00:59:16.080 --> 00:59:22.880 the need for that sort of spiritual halfway house would basically vanish. 00:59:23.360 --> 00:59:28.240 Men would be properly formed as they entered adulthood without needing a 00:59:28.240 --> 00:59:29.200 time out. 00:59:29.200 --> 00:59:31.840 And you know, you even if you don't have great parents, if 00:59:31.840 --> 00:59:34.880 you're a young man, you can still create this for yourself. 00:59:34.880 --> 00:59:38.960 Spend less time on the internet, spend less time on your phone, 00:59:38.960 --> 00:59:42.880 spend more time in nature, spend more time reading the Word of 00:59:42.880 --> 00:59:44.240 God and studying. 00:59:44.240 --> 00:59:49.680 Spend more time seeking out sound sources of doctrine. 00:59:49.840 --> 00:59:55.200 and reflect and judge your own actions according to what you're seeing 00:59:55.200 --> 00:59:56.160 in scripture. 00:59:56.160 --> 00:59:58.480 And if you find that you can do better as a matter 00:59:58.480 --> 01:00:00.960 of conscience, work on that. 01:00:00.960 --> 01:00:02.960 Work on your own self-development. 01:00:02.960 --> 01:00:06.880 That's, you know, there are many passages, particularly in the New Testament, 01:00:07.040 --> 01:00:11.680 really in all of the scripture, talking about athletes as an example 01:00:11.680 --> 01:00:17.280 of godly formation when the body is disciplined, it's same it's the 01:00:17.280 --> 01:00:19.360 same as the mind being disciplined. 01:00:19.360 --> 01:00:21.200 All of these things are beneficial. 01:00:21.200 --> 01:00:24.400 You know, we're not just souls stuck in meat. 01:00:24.400 --> 01:00:28.400 And we're not just bodies with no immortal soul. 01:00:28.400 --> 01:00:30.880 God puts all of these things together in one. 01:00:30.880 --> 01:00:32.560 We have a body, a mind, and a soul. 01:00:32.560 --> 01:00:34.080 Those are the words we use for it. 01:00:34.080 --> 01:00:37.920 We're not ex exactly sure how those are constituted in such a 01:00:37.920 --> 01:00:39.520 way that you can subdivide them. 01:00:39.520 --> 01:00:40.400 It doesn't matter. 01:00:40.400 --> 01:00:44.240 Those are philosophical questions that frankly I find kind of toxic because 01:00:44.400 --> 01:00:48.480 you go down that rabbit trail and suddenly you want to try 01:00:48.480 --> 01:00:52.160 to derive conclusions that are supported by the evidence. 01:00:52.160 --> 01:00:55.600 We know that if the body dies, the soul departs. 01:00:55.600 --> 01:00:58.960 We know that if you fracture someone's mind, the whi the the 01:00:58.960 --> 01:01:00.800 body can wither and die. 01:01:00.800 --> 01:01:04.880 We know that you can destroy a soul in place and leave 01:01:04.880 --> 01:01:08.240 just a shell of a human being through horrific things that are 01:01:08.240 --> 01:01:09.520 done to some people. 01:01:09.520 --> 01:01:11.200 All of those things are bad things. 01:01:11.200 --> 01:01:14.480 So let's focus on just not doing that, preserving the body, the 01:01:14.480 --> 01:01:18.640 mind, and the soul together as God's put it together and in 01:01:18.640 --> 01:01:21.520 the context of a young man being raised up or a young 01:01:21.520 --> 01:01:26.640 woman, focus on living a godly life as you are being brought 01:01:26.640 --> 01:01:30.640 up. You shouldn't get to your adulthood and realize you need to 01:01:30.640 --> 01:01:32.240 play spiritual catch-up. 01:01:32.240 --> 01:01:34.800 If you get to that point and you need to, yes, you 01:01:34.800 --> 01:01:40.240 should absolutely play spiritual catch up, but proper formation of our youth 01:01:40.480 --> 01:01:43.840 obviates the need for nunneries and monasteries. 01:01:43.840 --> 01:01:44.000 As 01:01:44.240 --> 01:01:49.680 Lutherans, we of course do object to perpetual vows and to monasticism 01:01:49.680 --> 01:01:54.880 generally, and so we would not approve of monasteries or nunneries. 01:01:54.880 --> 01:01:59.440 However, just go camping, take your Bible with you. 01:01:59.440 --> 01:02:01.680 Go out in nature, sit there and read. 01:02:01.680 --> 01:02:05.040 If you need some time away to spend time in the Word, 01:02:05.040 --> 01:02:05.840 do it. 01:02:05.840 --> 01:02:07.760 There are easy ways to do it. 01:02:07.760 --> 01:02:10.160 You don't even have to go particularly far. 01:02:10.160 --> 01:02:14.480 Go to a park and sit with your Bible Now, are there 01:02:14.480 --> 01:02:19.360 benefits to having some time off from the world away from things 01:02:19.520 --> 01:02:20.640 to focus on God? 01:02:20.640 --> 01:02:21.920 Of course, absolutely. 01:02:21.920 --> 01:02:25.280 But again, you can do that by going camping with your Bible. 01:02:25.280 --> 01:02:26.880 You can go on a men's retreat. 01:02:26.880 --> 01:02:32.400 There are various things you can do that are not monasticism. 01:02:32.400 --> 01:02:35.840 And I will link it in the show notes. 01:02:35.840 --> 01:02:39.440 It's actually one of the longer articles in the Augsburg Confession is 01:02:39.440 --> 01:02:42.640 the one in which we condemn monasticism. 01:02:42.640 --> 01:02:44.240 That's Article twenty seven. 01:02:44.240 --> 01:02:48.400 I'll link both the confession and the apology of it. 01:02:48.400 --> 01:02:51.280 It is one of the longer articles because it was a very 01:02:51.280 --> 01:02:56.320 serious problem at the time and remains so in the case of 01:02:56.320 --> 01:03:00.560 Rome and the East, so for the pre Reformation sects. 01:03:00.560 --> 01:03:05.520 And so no we would not approve of monasticism, but there are 01:03:05.520 --> 01:03:10.560 certain practices that are associated with the monastic life that are not 01:03:10.560 --> 01:03:14.480 bad. So taking time away from the world to focus on God 01:03:14.480 --> 01:03:15.440 is entirely fine. 01:03:16.560 --> 01:03:21.760 Separating yourself entirely from the world to supposedly focus on God is 01:03:21.760 --> 01:03:25.680 not. Because all you're doing is separating yourself from your neighbor and 01:03:25.680 --> 01:03:28.640 refusing to actually serve God in the ways that He has told 01:03:28.640 --> 01:03:32.000 you to serve Him Him and pretending that you have made this 01:03:32.000 --> 01:03:36.240 holy life for yourself when in fact all you're doing is rebelling 01:03:36.240 --> 01:03:37.360 against God. 01:03:38.080 --> 01:03:43.040 As a historical note, it's important, I think, to mention that monasticism 01:03:43.120 --> 01:03:47.040 for both men and women as it was practiced by the time 01:03:47.040 --> 01:03:51.440 of Luther, a lot of that was specifically financial. 01:03:51.440 --> 01:03:55.680 It was a financial trick employed by the Roman Catholic Church basically 01:03:55.760 --> 01:03:56.720 to interrupt inheritance 01:03:58.000 --> 01:04:02.320 because since the monks and the nuns couldn't inherit property, if they 01:04:02.320 --> 01:04:06.880 could get the the descendants of someone in the church, and everyone 01:04:06.880 --> 01:04:12.560 was in the church, to become non-inheritors, it pretty much guaranteed that 01:04:12.560 --> 01:04:15.280 their property upon their death would be transferred to the church. 01:04:15.280 --> 01:04:19.040 So it was actually a financing, it was a fundraising drive. 01:04:19.040 --> 01:04:22.800 They would steal their children, commit them to lifelong vows of of 01:04:22.800 --> 01:04:26.080 these obscenities and then oh by the way when you die we'll 01:04:26.080 --> 01:04:27.280 take all your property. 01:04:27.280 --> 01:04:29.600 So it was one of the main w ways that the Roman 01:04:29.600 --> 01:04:31.360 Catholic Church enriched itself. 01:04:31.360 --> 01:04:33.920 So today we don't think about or talk about that stuff and 01:04:33.920 --> 01:04:36.880 we think, oh, you know, there's the there's a monastery and they're 01:04:36.880 --> 01:04:39.520 praying and they're you know making beer or whatever. 01:04:39.520 --> 01:04:41.360 That was a small part of it. 01:04:41.360 --> 01:04:44.320 That was a machine, it was a financial machine. 01:04:44.320 --> 01:04:46.720 So if you want to try to have Try to have some 01:04:46.720 --> 01:04:50.400 trad fantasy, get serious about looking at what they were actually doing 01:04:50.480 --> 01:04:52.240 as there was a great deal more to it. 01:04:52.240 --> 01:04:56.480 And oh by the way, abortions were very common in nunneries, and 01:04:56.480 --> 01:04:59.760 sodomy was very common in the monasteries in the fifteen hundreds. 01:04:59.760 --> 01:05:04.800 That's something that's referred to obliquely in the Book of Concord. 01:05:04.800 --> 01:05:07.200 It also goes back another five hundred years before that. 01:05:07.200 --> 01:05:10.880 Saint Peter Damien, one of the doctors of the Roman Catholic Church 01:05:10.960 --> 01:05:18.240 himself condemned the the obscene sexual abuses that were occurring within those 01:05:18.240 --> 01:05:20.720 places in the Roman Catholic Church. 01:05:20.720 --> 01:05:25.440 So these places that we're told, oh, it's just quiet reflection on 01:05:25.440 --> 01:05:26.480 God and prayer. 01:05:26.480 --> 01:05:32.560 No. The vast the vows of celibacy led directly to egregious sexual 01:05:32.560 --> 01:05:34.720 sin, as they always do. 01:05:35.040 --> 01:05:38.160 One important point that I just as an aside that I think 01:05:38.160 --> 01:05:42.000 is worth making, celibacy is a gift from God. 01:05:42.320 --> 01:05:44.480 It is a specific gift. 01:05:44.480 --> 01:05:48.160 If you hear my voice, you are almost certainly not celibate. 01:05:48.160 --> 01:05:49.120 It is so rare. 01:05:49.120 --> 01:05:51.840 You've probably never met anyone who's celibate. 01:05:51.840 --> 01:05:54.720 Well, that doesn't make sense because you you know you're listening and 01:05:54.720 --> 01:05:55.840 you're not a fornicator. 01:05:55.840 --> 01:05:57.840 Yes. That's exactly the point. 01:05:57.840 --> 01:06:01.120 Celibate is not the antonym for having sex. 01:06:01.120 --> 01:06:06.400 Celibate is basically, what is referred to today as is asexuality. 01:06:06.400 --> 01:06:10.880 It's someone who has no desire whatsoever for the opposite sex. 01:06:10.880 --> 01:06:12.720 That is incredibly rare. 01:06:12.720 --> 01:06:17.120 And now today, when people talk about being asexual, a lot of 01:06:17.120 --> 01:06:18.880 them just have mental problems. 01:06:19.040 --> 01:06:21.600 I'm not saying all the people who say they're asexual have a 01:06:21.600 --> 01:06:22.480 gift from God. 01:06:22.480 --> 01:06:24.400 Most of them probably have a demon. 01:06:24.400 --> 01:06:28.000 But God has on occasion made people who simply do not have 01:06:28.000 --> 01:06:29.040 any desire. 01:06:29.040 --> 01:06:31.440 If you have ever had sexual desire for a member of the 01:06:31.760 --> 01:06:34.400 opposite sex, you are not celibate. 01:06:34.400 --> 01:06:36.320 You are simply not a fornicator. 01:06:36.320 --> 01:06:39.680 So if you have desire and you burn with desire, you should 01:06:39.680 --> 01:06:42.560 be married so that you can live a godly life and that 01:06:42.560 --> 01:06:45.040 desire can be fulfilled in a godly fashion. 01:06:45.040 --> 01:06:47.840 The opposite is not celibacy. 01:06:47.840 --> 01:06:50.720 So it's it's just a point to make because I it's I 01:06:50.720 --> 01:06:55.520 think it's very dangerous when we conflate that term and then try 01:06:55.520 --> 01:06:59.520 to hold people to impossible standards. 01:06:59.920 --> 01:07:02.240 Young men, you're not celibate. 01:07:02.720 --> 01:07:04.000 you're not married. 01:07:04.000 --> 01:07:06.720 And the implication of not being married is that you're not having 01:07:06.720 --> 01:07:08.480 sex. That should be the default. 01:07:08.480 --> 01:07:13.680 If you're not married, you're either being chaste or you're being a 01:07:13.680 --> 01:07:17.920 fornicator. And then if you are married, you should be having sex, 01:07:17.920 --> 01:07:21.840 except for periods of abstemption with the agreement of both parties. 01:07:21.840 --> 01:07:23.040 That's what God says. 01:07:23.360 --> 01:07:25.760 Everything else is weird and sinful. 01:07:25.760 --> 01:07:27.760 So just stick to the basics. 01:07:27.760 --> 01:07:29.440 It's not complicated. 01:07:31.360 --> 01:07:33.840 So to wrap up, we just want to talk a little bit 01:07:33.840 --> 01:07:37.760 about the progress we made in in growing the audience for this 01:07:37.760 --> 01:07:39.680 podcast in the last six months. 01:07:39.680 --> 01:07:44.640 We went from absolutely nothing, no advertising budget, no curb appeal, no 01:07:44.640 --> 01:07:46.560 reason for anyone to listen to us. 01:07:46.560 --> 01:07:49.840 I've said before in private that when we started this I I 01:07:49.840 --> 01:07:52.560 hoped that we would get past the point that most of our 01:07:52.560 --> 01:07:54.560 friends would be kind of pity listening. 01:07:54.560 --> 01:07:58.160 Yeah, so if we got if we got past about fifty listeners 01:07:58.160 --> 01:08:00.080 every week I was gonna be pretty happy. 01:08:00.080 --> 01:08:03.680 That was kind of the first threshold for okay, we're somebody's actually 01:08:03.680 --> 01:08:05.600 paying attention and maybe they care. 01:08:05.600 --> 01:08:07.680 We very rapidly blew past that. 01:08:07.680 --> 01:08:11.200 Uh the growth has been very, very steady week over week and 01:08:11.200 --> 01:08:12.480 month over month. 01:08:12.480 --> 01:08:14.240 And it's been entirely word of mouth. 01:08:14.240 --> 01:08:17.360 It's been you, the listener, sharing it with friends, you know, people 01:08:17.360 --> 01:08:21.760 at church, coworkers, just friends you know, uh you know, sometimes individual 01:08:21.760 --> 01:08:26.080 episodes, sometimes recommending the entire podcast series as a whole. 01:08:26.240 --> 01:08:28.000 We're very thankful for all of that. 01:08:28.000 --> 01:08:28.320 Um 01:08:29.760 --> 01:08:32.080 we never wanted to do this just to be shouting into the 01:08:32.080 --> 01:08:35.200 void, but at the same time it's it's very much appreciated that 01:08:35.200 --> 01:08:35.520 people 01:08:36.480 --> 01:08:39.360 see and hear some value in what it is that we're saying. 01:08:39.360 --> 01:08:42.240 And I I think that the feedback that we've gotten has been 01:08:42.240 --> 01:08:45.600 very much along the lines of what we set out to do, 01:08:45.600 --> 01:08:50.000 which was to talk about the things that almost everybody else is 01:08:50.000 --> 01:08:51.120 afraid to talk about. 01:08:51.120 --> 01:08:55.120 Talk about them in an intelligent fashion, in a a fearless fashion, 01:08:55.120 --> 01:08:59.520 that just goes through things that are actually impactful in the world 01:08:59.840 --> 01:09:02.640 and shed some light on them, not new light. 01:09:02.640 --> 01:09:05.200 You know, the we make the case as often as we can. 01:09:05.200 --> 01:09:07.360 We're not saying anything new about this. 01:09:07.360 --> 01:09:11.360 We're saying things that generally have everyone used to think and then 01:09:11.360 --> 01:09:13.040 at some point they went away. 01:09:13.040 --> 01:09:17.120 As Christians, we should want to be connected with what Christians have 01:09:17.120 --> 01:09:18.000 always believed. 01:09:18.000 --> 01:09:19.680 That's always an important question. 01:09:19.680 --> 01:09:23.840 So today, you know, we going from zero, going from, you know, 01:09:23.840 --> 01:09:26.720 me and Corey being the only listeners every morning as we as 01:09:26.720 --> 01:09:29.360 we had prepped the show to make sure it sounded good and 01:09:29.600 --> 01:09:32.080 one of the things that was important to us was the audio 01:09:32.080 --> 01:09:36.400 quality. Uh it was hilarious to me when Issues etcetera put those 01:09:36.400 --> 01:09:38.720 clips of us on their show. 01:09:38.720 --> 01:09:42.320 Our audio quality was actually better than theirs somehow in the same 01:09:42.320 --> 01:09:45.840 recording. I don't I guess that's a function of you know they 01:09:45.840 --> 01:09:48.960 have how they have their voices compressed and stuff, but it actually 01:09:48.960 --> 01:09:49.760 sounds really good. 01:09:49.760 --> 01:09:50.720 And that was important to us. 01:09:50.720 --> 01:09:52.800 You know, we C Corey and I both spent a fair amount 01:09:52.800 --> 01:09:57.440 of money on mics and in hardware and software, specifically so that 01:09:57.440 --> 01:10:00.640 this could This could be listenable because we knew that the things 01:10:00.640 --> 01:10:03.680 that we were gonna be saying were gonna be hard to hear. 01:10:03.680 --> 01:10:06.160 We wanted to make sure that actually hearing them would at least 01:10:06.160 --> 01:10:07.440 be an easy experience. 01:10:07.440 --> 01:10:09.120 So I I think we pulled that off. 01:10:09.120 --> 01:10:10.720 I'm happy with how it sounds. 01:10:10.720 --> 01:10:14.000 Uh there was some somebody making fun of my voice yesterday. 01:10:14.000 --> 01:10:15.520 I don't like my voice either, dude. 01:10:15.520 --> 01:10:16.560 It's what God gave me. 01:10:16.560 --> 01:10:17.600 It's what I got. 01:10:17.600 --> 01:10:20.560 Uh the fun he he d someone specifically said I was low 01:10:20.720 --> 01:10:22.240 T. Well, whatever. 01:10:22.240 --> 01:10:25.040 The irony is that a lot of my voice is below about 01:10:25.040 --> 01:10:27.920 a hundred hertz, but I have to chop it all off because 01:10:28.080 --> 01:10:31.120 it doesn't come through as a pleasing baritone on the mic. 01:10:31.120 --> 01:10:32.640 It just comes through as boomy. 01:10:32.640 --> 01:10:35.120 So I I have to chop all the low end of my 01:10:35.120 --> 01:10:38.480 voice off, not because it's you know, a pleasing rumble. 01:10:38.480 --> 01:10:40.080 It would just it sounds bad. 01:10:40.080 --> 01:10:42.320 You know, I I've done it both ways and listened. 01:10:42.320 --> 01:10:44.720 It would m sound much worse if you heard all of my 01:10:44.720 --> 01:10:47.760 voice. So you're hearing some of the higher stuff, but that that's 01:10:47.760 --> 01:10:48.640 typical in audio. 01:10:48.640 --> 01:10:50.960 Generally, you have to roll off at about 100 hertz. 01:10:50.960 --> 01:10:52.240 We cared about that stuff. 01:10:52.240 --> 01:10:54.560 So I could make myself sound deeper. 01:10:54.560 --> 01:10:56.720 I am not using a voice changer. 01:10:56.720 --> 01:10:58.800 This is what I sound like all the time. 01:10:58.800 --> 01:11:01.920 The funny thing is that before I bought this really fancy mic, 01:11:01.920 --> 01:11:05.680 I had a much lower rev regard for my voice because I'd 01:11:05.760 --> 01:11:08.400 only ever heard shoddy recordings of my voice. 01:11:08.400 --> 01:11:12.240 So I was actually pleased that when I recorded it on good 01:11:12.240 --> 01:11:15.440 equipment, it didn't sound as bad as I thought. 01:11:15.440 --> 01:11:18.320 And it's worth noting that none of you have ever heard your 01:11:18.320 --> 01:11:20.320 own voice until you've heard a recording. 01:11:20.320 --> 01:11:23.440 What you hear in your head is not only going through the 01:11:23.440 --> 01:11:26.480 air to your ears, but it's also going straight through all the 01:11:26.480 --> 01:11:28.480 meat in your head to your ears. 01:11:28.480 --> 01:11:31.600 So there's a muffled version of your voice going straight from your 01:11:31.600 --> 01:11:35.600 voice box into your eardrum without passing through the air, which is 01:11:35.600 --> 01:11:38.480 why all of us sound really weird on recordings. 01:11:38.480 --> 01:11:40.000 That's what everybody else hears. 01:11:40.000 --> 01:11:41.840 So I wish you could hear the sound of my voice in 01:11:41.840 --> 01:11:42.080 my head. 01:11:42.320 --> 01:11:45.360 I think it sounds better, but yeah, that's not real. 01:11:45.360 --> 01:11:46.480 That's not who I really am. 01:11:46.480 --> 01:11:48.640 This is who I really am. 01:11:48.640 --> 01:11:51.360 When we when we got set, we wanted to make sure it 01:11:51.360 --> 01:11:53.760 sounded good because we wanted to we want it to be a 01:11:53.760 --> 01:11:54.320 good podcast. 01:11:54.320 --> 01:11:56.400 We want it to be listenable and enjoyable. 01:11:56.400 --> 01:11:59.840 Uh I've listened to thousands of hours of podcasts and wanted to 01:11:59.840 --> 01:12:02.880 make sure that this was worth listening to, you know, in addition 01:12:02.880 --> 01:12:05.360 to the content, but that it was just sound good and be 01:12:05.360 --> 01:12:06.160 easy to hear. 01:12:06.160 --> 01:12:09.360 So thank you for those who have have complimented us on the 01:12:09.360 --> 01:12:10.880 on the sound of those things as 01:12:10.880 --> 01:12:11.200 well. 01:12:11.520 --> 01:12:15.520 And so just to give some rough information about sort of how 01:12:15.520 --> 01:12:20.640 many listeners we have, how many total downloads and things like that. 01:12:20.640 --> 01:12:23.680 I want to start off by pointing out that we do not 01:12:23.680 --> 01:12:28.480 actually have particularly invasive tracking setup. 01:12:28.480 --> 01:12:32.240 So a lot of this is some math on my end and 01:12:32.240 --> 01:12:37.040 a bit of guesswork, admittedly, because we just don't have invasive analytics. 01:12:37.040 --> 01:12:41.920 We're not tracking every single download and where it was downloaded and 01:12:41.920 --> 01:12:44.080 the device and all of that stuff. 01:12:44.080 --> 01:12:45.200 We're not doing that. 01:12:45.600 --> 01:12:47.280 that's not our goal here. 01:12:47.280 --> 01:12:51.120 You do that if you're trying to sell your podcast to advertisers 01:12:51.360 --> 01:12:54.000 and one we're not and two 01:12:55.120 --> 01:12:59.360 probably a fairly limited pool of advertisers if we were so inclined. 01:12:59.360 --> 01:13:02.640 I can think of maybe one or two who would actually be 01:13:02.640 --> 01:13:05.200 interested, but not something we have in mind. 01:13:05.200 --> 01:13:09.600 We as as we mentioned, this is not something we're doing to 01:13:09.600 --> 01:13:10.560 make money. 01:13:10.560 --> 01:13:13.520 If we were doing this to make money, you would have to 01:13:13.520 --> 01:13:15.200 conclude that we're both idiots. 01:13:15.200 --> 01:13:17.920 Because this is one of the worst possible ways you could try 01:13:17.920 --> 01:13:19.120 to do that. 01:13:19.120 --> 01:13:23.200 Because we are going to offend basically everyone at some point. 01:13:23.200 --> 01:13:26.480 Everyone has idols, and we're going to step on all of them. 01:13:28.240 --> 01:13:32.480 But anyway, to look at some rough numbers. 01:13:32.480 --> 01:13:38.480 If I look at the total number of downloads and then do 01:13:38.480 --> 01:13:41.840 a little bit of math to figure out the actual ultimate number. 01:13:41.840 --> 01:13:49.200 We have somewhere between seventy and seventy five thousand total episode downloads 01:13:49.200 --> 01:13:51.280 so far. 01:13:51.280 --> 01:13:52.720 Now I I don't have 01:13:53.760 --> 01:13:57.280 a complete breakdown of that 01:13:58.240 --> 01:14:01.760 by episode because I was not tracking that initially. 01:14:01.760 --> 01:14:04.800 I was just tracking the total number of downloads. 01:14:04.800 --> 01:14:08.160 And so you know, do some very simple math. 01:14:08.160 --> 01:14:12.400 If you have seventy five thousand total, that's about twenty nine hundred 01:14:12.400 --> 01:14:16.400 downloads per episode, if you assume the episodes are equal. 01:14:16.400 --> 01:14:19.280 They're not, some have more downloads than others. 01:14:19.280 --> 01:14:21.120 But that is about 01:14:22.080 --> 01:14:27.120 right on track now that I have per episode information because we're 01:14:27.120 --> 01:14:31.280 at right around 2100, say for episode twenty two, and a little 01:14:31.280 --> 01:14:35.280 less for episode twenty three, and a little less than twenty-three for 01:14:35.280 --> 01:14:38.000 twenty-four, because we have a long tail on these episodes. 01:14:38.000 --> 01:14:41.920 People are continuing to download them as they remain up. 01:14:42.800 --> 01:14:49.840 But we are getting right around 1200 to maybe 1500 01:14:49.920 --> 01:14:53.120 depending downloads right away on release day. 01:14:53.120 --> 01:14:56.240 And so that represents the number of people we have who have 01:14:56.240 --> 01:15:01.760 subscribed in the various podcast apps, which we're quite pleased with that 01:15:01.760 --> 01:15:03.280 number. It's a good number. 01:15:03.280 --> 01:15:06.960 And then even more so with the number of, like I said, 01:15:06.960 --> 01:15:10.480 the long tail, the number of people who are continuing to download, 01:15:10.480 --> 01:15:17.120 share these episodes, listen to them weeks, months after the fact. 01:15:17.120 --> 01:15:21.600 We do not have a podcast where people are just listening on 01:15:21.920 --> 01:15:25.280 the day of release, deleting it and then ever thinking about it 01:15:25.280 --> 01:15:27.840 again. Which of course is not what we want. 01:15:27.840 --> 01:15:30.720 We don't want people to never think about these issues again. 01:15:30.720 --> 01:15:35.440 These are important issues about which Christians should be continuing to think. 01:15:35.840 --> 01:15:39.600 And so some will return to these episodes when they have questions, 01:15:39.600 --> 01:15:43.760 or when someone else asks a question, they want to provide an 01:15:43.760 --> 01:15:47.360 answer. Here's an episode about this specific question. 01:15:47.360 --> 01:15:48.320 And we see that. 01:15:48.320 --> 01:15:53.040 We see spikes in downloads for certain episodes sometimes where someone has 01:15:53.040 --> 01:15:54.560 shared it somewhere. 01:15:54.560 --> 01:15:58.560 Sometimes we happen to notice the share, sometimes we don't, because some 01:15:58.560 --> 01:16:01.440 of these are shared in group chats to which we are not 01:16:01.440 --> 01:16:06.080 party. But we know that this is being shared, that the information 01:16:06.080 --> 01:16:09.920 is being spread, and it has basically all been organic at this 01:16:09.920 --> 01:16:14.000 point. We've been boosted a few times by people on Twitter and 01:16:14.000 --> 01:16:19.280 elsewhere who've liked the content, but it has been an entirely organic 01:16:19.280 --> 01:16:22.800 thing how this podcast has spread and grown. 01:16:23.200 --> 01:16:25.680 So the reason we're talking about this is that y if you 01:16:25.680 --> 01:16:28.080 are listening, we just want you to know and you're in good 01:16:28.080 --> 01:16:31.760 company. You know, if you happen to stumble across us and have 01:16:31.760 --> 01:16:34.960 no idea if it's just two crazy guys shouting into a microphone 01:16:35.040 --> 01:16:39.200 and then you, you know, basically with a uh shortwave radio tuning 01:16:39.200 --> 01:16:41.120 in in your your cabin. 01:16:41.120 --> 01:16:42.480 It's not that isolated. 01:16:42.800 --> 01:16:45.760 there are thousands of people who are listening right along with you 01:16:46.080 --> 01:16:47.920 and some of them are hate listeners. 01:16:47.920 --> 01:16:49.840 You know, like the the guy I mentioned who was making fun 01:16:49.840 --> 01:16:50.560 of me yesterday. 01:16:50.560 --> 01:16:51.200 Whatever, dude. 01:16:51.200 --> 01:16:52.320 I'm glad you're listening. 01:16:52.320 --> 01:16:56.560 I think it's hilarious that we have hate listeners because They're keeping 01:16:56.560 --> 01:16:57.840 up with the latest episodes. 01:16:57.840 --> 01:16:58.480 They're listening. 01:16:58.480 --> 01:17:00.240 They're listening to every word we say. 01:17:00.240 --> 01:17:03.200 And all they can do is make fun. 01:17:03.200 --> 01:17:06.080 There's been no serious critique of our content. 01:17:06.080 --> 01:17:07.920 Even when we were on issues, etc. 01:17:08.000 --> 01:17:08.560 last week. 01:17:08.560 --> 01:17:10.160 It wasn't a serious cr critique. 01:17:10.160 --> 01:17:11.840 It was it was absurd. 01:17:11.840 --> 01:17:14.720 I it was it was laughably goofy. 01:17:14.720 --> 01:17:16.960 You know, they would play a very charitable clip. 01:17:16.960 --> 01:17:20.960 I was very thankful that when Jeff edited those clips, he was 01:17:20.960 --> 01:17:21.680 very fair. 01:17:21.680 --> 01:17:25.200 He put our entire argument on the air, which shocked me, because 01:17:25.280 --> 01:17:27.840 the other guy who was on there had not done that on 01:17:27.840 --> 01:17:30.960 his own show, which was even more ham fisted. 01:17:31.040 --> 01:17:33.520 So that So they would air a complete clip of of us 01:17:33.520 --> 01:17:36.880 making an argument and then Todd would say, So what did we 01:17:36.880 --> 01:17:37.760 just hear? 01:17:37.760 --> 01:17:40.800 And then the other guy would make some absurd comments that had 01:17:40.800 --> 01:17:43.040 literally nothing to do with what we had just said. 01:17:43.040 --> 01:17:46.400 It was like I said, it was the best unpaid advertisement we 01:17:46.400 --> 01:17:47.680 ever could have hoped for. 01:17:47.680 --> 01:17:50.240 And so I hope that lots of people will will discover us 01:17:50.240 --> 01:17:52.880 as a result of them trying to make fun of us and 01:17:52.880 --> 01:17:54.720 saying we're heretics and whatever. 01:17:54.720 --> 01:17:56.960 If you're listening, at least you know some of you think we're 01:17:56.880 --> 01:17:59.280 heretics, some of you hate us and want to ma make fun 01:17:59.280 --> 01:17:59.840 of us. 01:17:59.840 --> 01:18:00.960 We're glad you're listening. 01:18:00.960 --> 01:18:04.160 I hope that something we say will reach your heart too, because 01:18:04.480 --> 01:18:06.000 this isn't coming from us. 01:18:06.240 --> 01:18:09.200 we think that what we're saying is conconant with what God has 01:18:09.200 --> 01:18:12.400 said. So to everyone else, which is a majority of our listeners, 01:18:12.400 --> 01:18:16.240 certainly thank you very much for sharing it, for uh recommending it 01:18:16.400 --> 01:18:19.120 to others, for spending the time listening to our voices. 01:18:19.120 --> 01:18:22.400 You know, it's it's flattering and humbling that anyone would care what 01:18:22.400 --> 01:18:23.840 we have to say. 01:18:23.840 --> 01:18:26.320 I've said in the past, you know, I spend most of my 01:18:26.320 --> 01:18:29.840 time getting called retarded for saying this stuff because people don't get 01:18:29.840 --> 01:18:33.360 it. And it's nice for us to have the opportunity for a 01:18:33.360 --> 01:18:37.360 long form discussion to Make the case clearly. 01:18:37.360 --> 01:18:40.560 You know, when people have asked me in person to defend some 01:18:40.560 --> 01:18:44.880 of the things that we've said here, it it's a little puzzling 01:18:44.880 --> 01:18:48.240 to for someone to think that a two hour episode could fit 01:18:48.240 --> 01:18:51.360 in to part of a a conversation that's not going to be 01:18:51.360 --> 01:18:52.640 that long. 01:18:52.640 --> 01:18:55.040 The nice thing about us being able to sit here and talk 01:18:55.040 --> 01:18:57.600 is that we can cover all the bases, at least ones we 01:18:57.600 --> 01:18:59.040 think are important. 01:18:59.040 --> 01:19:01.760 That's I think that's I think one of the best examples is 01:19:01.760 --> 01:19:04.880 Corey's tweet from last Friday about interracial marriage. 01:19:05.040 --> 01:19:09.120 It was like one sentence, got six hundred thousand plus views, got 01:19:09.120 --> 01:19:11.280 the whole world riled up condemning him. 01:19:11.280 --> 01:19:14.080 And then on Monday you did uh you know, about a half-hour 01:19:14.080 --> 01:19:18.000 podcast where you just discussed your explanation for it. 01:19:18.000 --> 01:19:22.000 And the people the few people who listen to that explanation, most 01:19:22.000 --> 01:19:24.080 of them like, okay, I can see that argument. 01:19:24.080 --> 01:19:25.600 That's the way this stuff works. 01:19:25.600 --> 01:19:27.360 You can't have a good discussion on Twitter. 01:19:27.360 --> 01:19:29.760 You can't have a good short form discussion. 01:19:29.760 --> 01:19:32.720 You can light a fuse, you can shine a light, but that's 01:19:32.720 --> 01:19:33.680 all it does. 01:19:33.680 --> 01:19:36.880 To actually have a serious discussion about this stuff takes time. 01:19:36.880 --> 01:19:39.680 And so we're appreciative to everyone who would spend the time to 01:19:39.680 --> 01:19:43.680 actually hear us out because that's you know that that's important. 01:19:43.680 --> 01:19:46.560 It it's important to whatever it is that you think you want 01:19:46.560 --> 01:19:48.880 to focus on, spend some time on it. 01:19:48.880 --> 01:19:51.920 And we're glad the folks would spend some time with us. 01:19:52.320 --> 01:19:54.800 One of the things I wanted to mention is discoverability. 01:19:54.800 --> 01:19:57.600 Um, you know, if you listen to us, if you happen to 01:19:57.600 --> 01:20:03.280 listen on the web, please subscribe through whatever your platform's podcast player 01:20:03.280 --> 01:20:10.320 is. Those subscription stats help the engines of recommendation to recommend podcast 01:20:10.480 --> 01:20:11.120 other people. 01:20:11.120 --> 01:20:14.560 Yeah, we put Stone Choir shows up with issues, etc. 01:20:14.880 --> 01:20:16.960 And uh a number of other shows. 01:20:16.960 --> 01:20:20.160 Some are related to religion, some aren't, which is great. 01:20:20.160 --> 01:20:23.600 Yeah, I'm glad that there are people who have diverse interests who 01:20:23.600 --> 01:20:25.280 are also tuning into this. 01:20:25.280 --> 01:20:29.120 Uh we show up in the Christianity podcast listings. 01:20:29.120 --> 01:20:32.000 If you use one of those, we're gonna ask you to take 01:20:32.000 --> 01:20:32.720 a few minutes. 01:20:32.880 --> 01:20:35.440 well not even a few minutes, take you know, twenty seconds, to 01:20:35.440 --> 01:20:37.600 go and please leave a five star review. 01:20:37.600 --> 01:20:40.880 Uh we don't say five stars because you necessarily agree with everything. 01:20:40.880 --> 01:20:44.240 It's just that on a scale of one to five, if you 01:20:44.240 --> 01:20:46.320 want to say what you actually think and you say like a 01:20:46.320 --> 01:20:49.360 three or a four, it drags down the score in such a 01:20:49.360 --> 01:20:52.240 way that when someone glances, you know, just like on Yelp or 01:20:52.240 --> 01:20:55.040 anything else, five stars like, Oh, that's amazing. 01:20:55.040 --> 01:20:56.320 That must be a great show. 01:20:56.320 --> 01:20:58.720 If you get down to four point eight, people are thinking, um, 01:20:58.720 --> 01:20:59.520 yeah, maybe. 01:20:59.600 --> 01:21:02.880 If something's like a three and a half, people think that's mediocre. 01:21:02.880 --> 01:21:04.560 I'm I'm not gonna waste my time. 01:21:04.560 --> 01:21:08.640 And we've had right now we have like fifty six s reviews 01:21:08.640 --> 01:21:13.360 on the IOS uh listings and we have a score like four 01:21:13.360 --> 01:21:13.760 point five. 01:21:13.760 --> 01:21:17.040 We had a we've had a few hate listeners leave some comments 01:21:17.040 --> 01:21:19.440 and their feedback, you know, one star reviews. 01:21:19.440 --> 01:21:21.360 There will be more of this now that we're mentioning it. 01:21:21.360 --> 01:21:24.080 We had debated for a while whether we would say anything because 01:21:24.080 --> 01:21:26.800 some of the people who are so filled with hate will want 01:21:26.800 --> 01:21:29.600 to prevent anyone from discovering this podcast. 01:21:29.600 --> 01:21:32.640 But now that we're mentioning it, it is important for you if 01:21:32.640 --> 01:21:36.320 you listen and you like it at all, please leave us five 01:21:36.320 --> 01:21:37.280 stars. It's cheap. 01:21:37.280 --> 01:21:38.160 It's easy. 01:21:38.160 --> 01:21:40.880 And it will help improve discoverability. 01:21:40.880 --> 01:21:43.680 You know, if we could get up to five hundred reviews of 01:21:43.680 --> 01:21:47.200 whatever numbers, that makes a big difference in the engine saying, hey, 01:21:47.200 --> 01:21:50.320 this is something you could check out because as great as word 01:21:50.480 --> 01:21:52.560 is of mouth has been. 01:21:52.560 --> 01:21:55.440 One of the fascinating things we've gotten in feedback from the show 01:21:55.440 --> 01:21:58.240 is that people, you know, as recently as this week have said, 01:21:58.240 --> 01:22:00.160 I knew what you guys were like on Twitter. 01:22:00.160 --> 01:22:02.560 I wasn't sure what to expect on the podcast. 01:22:02.560 --> 01:22:06.000 What I got was completely different than what I expected. 01:22:06.000 --> 01:22:07.840 We're sane, yeah. 01:22:07.840 --> 01:22:11.040 Arguably, as as sane as intelligent men can be. 01:22:11.040 --> 01:22:12.080 We're reasonable. 01:22:12.480 --> 01:22:14.720 we make our cases calmly and clearly. 01:22:14.720 --> 01:22:18.800 So folks who just kinda stumble onto the podcast generally like it. 01:22:18.800 --> 01:22:22.480 You know, we're stomping on idols, so there's absolutely content that that's 01:22:22.480 --> 01:22:25.120 going to set people's hair on fire and they're gonna hate it. 01:22:25.120 --> 01:22:26.080 It is what it is. 01:22:26.080 --> 01:22:27.440 I'm I'm not worried about that. 01:22:27.440 --> 01:22:29.520 But if you like the show, if you would like other people 01:22:30.000 --> 01:22:32.880 to dis to discover it, please take a minute and leave a 01:22:32.880 --> 01:22:36.560 five star review on whatever service you use, if it's Spotify, Google, 01:22:36.560 --> 01:22:38.080 Apple, whatever. 01:22:38.080 --> 01:22:42.560 That helps other people find us and help to continue to spread 01:22:42.960 --> 01:22:44.880 a message that we think is worth hearing. 01:22:44.880 --> 01:22:47.440 And if you're listening, hope you hopefully you do as well. 01:22:47.440 --> 01:22:51.360 I know that some people have commented, I've had DMs and other 01:22:51.360 --> 01:22:56.800 things. They've said that I am a different person on Twitter versus 01:22:56.800 --> 01:23:00.640 on the podcast versus on my own podcasts. 01:23:00.640 --> 01:23:05.840 And I would reject the frame that I am a different person. 01:23:05.840 --> 01:23:12.080 It is the different media warrant a different approach. 01:23:12.080 --> 01:23:15.040 And this is related to something that I've mentioned before. 01:23:15.040 --> 01:23:20.000 We have a sort of flattening of behavior, of conduct in the 01:23:20.000 --> 01:23:24.480 modern context, particularly in the US for various reasons. 01:23:24.480 --> 01:23:30.960 So people behave, dress, speak the same everywhere these days, and that's 01:23:30.960 --> 01:23:32.000 very unusual. 01:23:32.000 --> 01:23:36.400 That is not historically how human beings conducted themselves. 01:23:36.400 --> 01:23:40.560 You did not dress, act, and speak the same way on Sunday 01:23:40.560 --> 01:23:44.000 morning at church as you did at the pub with your friends 01:23:44.000 --> 01:23:49.040 after work on Friday or at home with your wife and children. 01:23:49.040 --> 01:23:53.200 You tailored these things to your audience to the environment. 01:23:53.200 --> 01:23:58.080 And that is just exactly what I'm doing when I engage in 01:23:58.080 --> 01:24:02.960 a certain way on Twitter because Twitter Twitter, the only real use 01:24:02.960 --> 01:24:07.360 of Twitter, unless you're purely using it for some sort of entertainment, 01:24:07.360 --> 01:24:10.800 which I guess you can do that. 01:24:10.800 --> 01:24:13.760 But the way to engage on Twitter is that you actually have 01:24:13.760 --> 01:24:16.400 to get people to read what you say. 01:24:16.400 --> 01:24:20.640 You have to get them to want to respond to it. 01:24:20.640 --> 01:24:22.720 And so you you have to get them to engage with it. 01:24:22.720 --> 01:24:24.880 Otherwise there's really no purpose in it. 01:24:24.880 --> 01:24:27.280 You're just shouting into a void. 01:24:27.280 --> 01:24:31.200 And so I engage in a certain way to get that response 01:24:31.360 --> 01:24:34.000 because if you don't get the response you can't teach because you 01:24:34.000 --> 01:24:35.920 don't get the person to listen. 01:24:35.920 --> 01:24:38.720 And so, as was mentioned, yes, only a handful of people are 01:24:38.720 --> 01:24:39.920 going to bother clicking through. 01:24:39.920 --> 01:24:45.360 Through and listening to the full explanation, but I did get the 01:24:45.360 --> 01:24:47.680 person to think about the topic. 01:24:47.680 --> 01:24:51.280 That is now something that has at least come up in his 01:24:51.280 --> 01:24:53.840 mind, and maybe at some point in the future he will be 01:24:53.920 --> 01:24:57.600 willing to listen more on that topic. 01:24:57.600 --> 01:25:01.040 And so yes, I do engage in a different way in different 01:25:01.040 --> 01:25:05.680 contexts, and that's just the way that everything has been done historically. 01:25:05.680 --> 01:25:08.160 That is, I would say, the proper way to do things. 01:25:09.280 --> 01:25:12.800 the tweet you mentioned that I mentioned earlier in the episode as 01:25:12.800 --> 01:25:15.760 well, I think it's kind of burned itself out now. 01:25:15.760 --> 01:25:18.320 It's at uh three quarters of a million views. 01:25:18.320 --> 01:25:18.800 Who knows? 01:25:18.800 --> 01:25:20.640 Someone could pick it up and it could hit a million by 01:25:20.640 --> 01:25:23.440 the time this podcast episode is released tomorrow. 01:25:23.760 --> 01:25:27.600 But I well exactly that's that's how you engage. 01:25:27.600 --> 01:25:30.640 You get people to respond to it. 01:25:30.640 --> 01:25:35.280 And so, yes, I am more polemical on Twitter than I am 01:25:35.280 --> 01:25:39.520 on this podcast, because the point of this podcast isn't pure polemics. 01:25:39.520 --> 01:25:43.280 We do engage in polemics to some degree, but it's not pure 01:25:43.280 --> 01:25:46.800 polemics. Twitter is largely polemical. 01:25:46.800 --> 01:25:50.160 And so I'm going to say things on Twitter that are going 01:25:50.160 --> 01:25:52.800 to set your hair on fire from time to time. 01:25:52.800 --> 01:25:53.920 But that's Twitter. 01:25:54.000 --> 01:25:55.520 That's just what it is. 01:25:55.520 --> 01:25:56.000 Speaking 01:25:56.000 --> 01:25:58.560 of setting your hair on fire, the last thing we wanted to 01:25:58.560 --> 01:26:02.000 mention ties into something you said a minute ago. 01:26:02.000 --> 01:26:06.080 When we first started Stone Choir, uh within a few weeks Corey 01:26:06.080 --> 01:26:09.200 had a number of of DMs requesting some sort of tip jar 01:26:09.280 --> 01:26:10.000 or something. 01:26:10.160 --> 01:26:14.160 And so he eventually set it up uh I think largely just 01:26:14.160 --> 01:26:16.560 kind of as an experiment, and we didn't know if anyone would 01:26:16.560 --> 01:26:17.120 use it. 01:26:17.120 --> 01:26:19.840 We've never mentioned it before anywhere. 01:26:19.840 --> 01:26:23.840 As we said, you know, in the paywalling episode and Corey said 01:26:23.840 --> 01:26:27.520 earlier, this is not a money making enterprise for us. 01:26:27.520 --> 01:26:30.320 However, we do have a donation link at the top and the 01:26:30.320 --> 01:26:32.880 bottom of at the top of your page and on the Stone 01:26:32.880 --> 01:26:35.040 Choir page in the footer. 01:26:35.040 --> 01:26:39.040 It's there so that if you would like to support what we're 01:26:39.040 --> 01:26:41.840 doing, you're able to throw us a few bucks. 01:26:41.840 --> 01:26:44.160 We're not asking for anybody's money. 01:26:44.160 --> 01:26:47.360 We're not saying you're a freeloader if you don't send us any 01:26:47.360 --> 01:26:51.200 money. And I d mentioned this in the specific context of smashing 01:26:51.200 --> 01:26:54.640 idols and lighting hair on fire because if we haven't offended you 01:26:54.640 --> 01:26:57.440 yet, I'm certain at some point we're going to. 01:26:57.440 --> 01:27:01.120 So before anyone would ever even consider sending us a dime, which 01:27:01.120 --> 01:27:04.480 we're not asking for, but if you say, oh, there's a tip 01:27:04.640 --> 01:27:06.480 jar, I want to send them a few bucks. 01:27:06.480 --> 01:27:10.320 If you would send us five dollars or whatever, and then in 01:27:10.320 --> 01:27:14.000 two months we say something that you find incredibly offensive, you're like, 01:27:14.000 --> 01:27:16.880 I hate those guys, I feel so ripped off and betrayed. 01:27:16.880 --> 01:27:18.960 If If you think that you could have that response in the 01:27:18.960 --> 01:27:20.960 future, please don't send us any money. 01:27:20.960 --> 01:27:24.000 I would much rather you not feel burned by us saying what 01:27:24.000 --> 01:27:27.600 we think is the truth because you you know didn't send us 01:27:27.600 --> 01:27:30.720 anything. So we're only mentioning it now because we've had n a 01:27:30.720 --> 01:27:34.400 number of people who have sent us gifts, all of whom have 01:27:34.400 --> 01:27:35.440 been very generous. 01:27:35.440 --> 01:27:38.000 And we want just take a minute to acknowledge that. 01:27:38.000 --> 01:27:40.960 You know, so far that what they have sent has basically just 01:27:40.960 --> 01:27:44.160 kind of been vanishing into a black hole and we we decided 01:27:44.160 --> 01:27:45.120 that's not really fair. 01:27:45.120 --> 01:27:48.480 So to each and every one of you who've sent anything, thank 01:27:48.480 --> 01:27:49.920 you from the bottom of our hearts. 01:27:49.920 --> 01:27:51.200 It means a great deal. 01:27:51.200 --> 01:27:54.000 Um it's already offset the costs of what we had put into 01:27:55.360 --> 01:27:58.480 building you know their not studios, but like our you know microphones 01:27:58.560 --> 01:27:59.920 and setups and stuff. 01:27:59.920 --> 01:28:01.520 We're very thankful for that. 01:28:01.520 --> 01:28:04.800 I've sent people money before, you know, just for similar things, so 01:28:04.800 --> 01:28:05.520 I totally get it. 01:28:05.520 --> 01:28:08.400 Like you're voting with your wallet. 01:28:08.400 --> 01:28:11.440 We're only mentioning this to say thank you. 01:28:11.440 --> 01:28:14.080 There are about 30 things that I would tell you to give 01:28:14.080 --> 01:28:16.720 money to before I would say to give us a dime. 01:28:16.720 --> 01:28:20.000 So the fact that we're mentioning this is not a solicitation. 01:28:20.000 --> 01:28:22.000 We had to mention it to be able to say thank you 01:28:22.000 --> 01:28:23.440 to those who've given anything. 01:28:23.440 --> 01:28:26.000 There are a whole lot of things that need our money. 01:28:26.000 --> 01:28:28.800 You need your money more than we do. 01:28:28.800 --> 01:28:31.600 For those of you who voted with your wallets by saying thank 01:28:31.600 --> 01:28:34.160 you for what we're doing here, we're eternally grateful. 01:28:34.160 --> 01:28:37.280 It's very generous of you and it is greatly appreciated and it's 01:28:37.200 --> 01:28:42.080 humbling. And in a way it's also kind of incrementally enslaving us 01:28:42.320 --> 01:28:45.520 because if if you say, Hey, this is valuable, here's a few 01:28:45.520 --> 01:28:48.720 bucks, to me, that tells me I'm on the hook to continue 01:28:48.720 --> 01:28:49.600 to deliver. 01:28:49.600 --> 01:28:53.360 So I appreciate I appreciate the the enslavement. 01:28:53.360 --> 01:28:55.760 It's a good reminder that what we're doing here is is not 01:28:55.760 --> 01:28:56.400 for ourselves. 01:28:56.400 --> 01:28:59.280 It's something that we're doing for God's glory and we're doing it 01:28:59.280 --> 01:29:02.960 for your edification and to know that that's actually happening is is 01:29:02.960 --> 01:29:04.080 very rewarding. 01:29:04.080 --> 01:29:05.040 So thank you. 01:29:05.440 --> 01:29:05.520 I 01:29:05.520 --> 01:29:08.640 guess that's also a peek behind the curtain as to how I 01:29:08.640 --> 01:29:12.480 make some of the design decisions for the site and such because 01:29:13.040 --> 01:29:17.760 at first I had those who asked about the ability to donate, 01:29:17.760 --> 01:29:21.600 and so I generated a donation link, and it wasn't really anywhere 01:29:21.600 --> 01:29:23.920 on the site, but it was available for people if they really 01:29:23.920 --> 01:29:25.600 wanted to find it. 01:29:25.600 --> 01:29:28.000 But then people kept asking me about it, so I put it 01:29:28.000 --> 01:29:29.520 in the footer. 01:29:29.520 --> 01:29:32.720 But then people kept asking me about where it was on the 01:29:32.720 --> 01:29:37.040 site. So then I also added a donate link to the top, 01:29:37.040 --> 01:29:40.640 in part to head off having to answer where the link was. 01:29:40.640 --> 01:29:44.400 And so that's a peek behind the curtain as it were to 01:29:44.400 --> 01:29:48.320 part of my design philosophy, which is to head off questions. 01:29:48.320 --> 01:29:48.720 Yeah. But 01:29:49.200 --> 01:29:51.680 now we look like grifters because we're putting donate links everywhere. 01:29:51.840 --> 01:29:52.560 It's literally just 01:29:53.440 --> 01:29:55.520 so if you want to use it, we're we're not gonna put 01:29:55.520 --> 01:29:57.520 the donate shank link in the show notes. 01:29:57.520 --> 01:29:58.880 We're not gonna tell you where it is. 01:29:58.880 --> 01:30:00.000 Don't go looking for it. 01:30:00.000 --> 01:30:00.960 Don't worry about it. 01:30:00.960 --> 01:30:04.560 But for someone who's frustrated by that, you know where to find 01:30:04.560 --> 01:30:08.000 it. But it's exactly we're literally just we're saying thank you to 01:30:08.000 --> 01:30:11.360 folks who have who have taken advantage of that because it's it's 01:30:11.360 --> 01:30:12.960 humbling and rewarding. 01:30:13.040 --> 01:30:15.600 And like you said, it has offset the the cost of the 01:30:15.600 --> 01:30:19.520 hard work Hardware certainly and the the software cost as well 01:30:19.440 --> 01:30:19.760 Aaron Powell 01:30:20.160 --> 01:30:21.760 Which is something we never expected. 01:30:21.760 --> 01:30:24.400 I mean, that's not we've said from the beginning, it's not why 01:30:24.400 --> 01:30:24.960 we're doing it. 01:30:24.960 --> 01:30:26.960 We're not going to change anything about what we do. 01:30:26.960 --> 01:30:28.800 I will probably never mention it again. 01:30:28.800 --> 01:30:32.640 So if if if someone new does donate, we're never gonna we're 01:30:32.640 --> 01:30:34.720 never gonna I'm not gonna say never. 01:30:34.720 --> 01:30:37.600 I I think it's unlikely that we'll say anything for at least 01:30:37.600 --> 01:30:39.360 probably the rest of this year. 01:30:39.360 --> 01:30:41.280 Um because that's not the point. 01:30:41.840 --> 01:30:45.280 the point is to try to be faithful to God's word and 01:30:45.280 --> 01:30:48.080 to share that with as many people as possible. 01:30:48.240 --> 01:30:50.560 And when we set this thing up originally, we did it, you 01:30:50.560 --> 01:30:53.520 know, the Corey the hosting that Corey set up is designed to 01:30:53.520 --> 01:30:55.920 be resilient, uncancelable. 01:30:55.920 --> 01:30:59.200 You know, we're not using any third party podcast host, which is 01:30:59.200 --> 01:31:02.480 the reason we don't have any invasive podcast statistics. 01:31:02.720 --> 01:31:04.960 If we're using one of those hosts, we would get lots of 01:31:04.960 --> 01:31:06.160 metrics about stuff. 01:31:06.160 --> 01:31:08.960 We're both data guys, so we love that stuff. 01:31:08.960 --> 01:31:13.200 We've foregone having access to it because A, it'd be easy to 01:31:13.200 --> 01:31:16.320 cancel us, and B, we don't want to be creepy and and 01:31:16.320 --> 01:31:20.560 Snoopy. But we're curious about where people are coming in from, so 01:31:20.800 --> 01:31:24.720 we harvest what we can in a in a privacy protecting manner. 01:31:24.720 --> 01:31:27.920 But ultimately none of this is about numbers and it's not about 01:31:27.920 --> 01:31:29.120 self glorification. 01:31:29.120 --> 01:31:34.000 It's just about these are these are ideas we're spreading to steal 01:31:34.000 --> 01:31:35.920 the TED Talk theme once again. 01:31:35.920 --> 01:31:37.440 This stuff matters. 01:31:37.440 --> 01:31:40.480 And it matters in ways that you know, we don't think these 01:31:40.480 --> 01:31:44.080 things should necessarily be showing up in most sermons, most Sundays. 01:31:44.080 --> 01:31:46.240 We don't think this is the meat of the Christian faith. 01:31:46.960 --> 01:31:51.600 I want to make clear that that's not what we think about 01:31:51.600 --> 01:31:52.000 this stuff. 01:31:52.000 --> 01:31:54.320 You know, we devoted five episodes to race. 01:31:54.320 --> 01:31:58.880 Race is not our hermeneutic for reading the Bible, but Satan is 01:31:58.880 --> 01:32:01.280 attacking race, so we had the to address it. 01:32:01.280 --> 01:32:03.120 And a lot of people got a lot of value out of 01:32:03.120 --> 01:32:03.920 those episodes. 01:32:03.920 --> 01:32:05.040 That's why we're doing it. 01:32:05.040 --> 01:32:11.840 These are not necessarily the primary doctrines of Christianity, but Satan has 01:32:11.840 --> 01:32:16.400 learned to go after the trimary doctrines, that stuff's mostly been shot 01:32:16.400 --> 01:32:17.360 down in the past. 01:32:17.360 --> 01:32:21.440 We have Pat answers for shooting down Satan's attacks on the primary 01:32:21.440 --> 01:32:23.360 stuff. So he's moving down the list. 01:32:23.360 --> 01:32:26.720 He's moving on to secondary things because it turns out, if you 01:32:26.720 --> 01:32:30.480 can get someone lying about anything, eventually you'll get them lying about 01:32:30.480 --> 01:32:32.400 everything. So Satan's not dumb. 01:32:32.400 --> 01:32:34.080 He's not resting on his laurels. 01:32:34.080 --> 01:32:37.440 We're trying to fight a rear guard action here against evil attacks 01:32:37.440 --> 01:32:38.960 on the church itself. 01:32:38.960 --> 01:32:39.440 Because 01:32:40.320 --> 01:32:44.480 as long as people are adopting views from the world and confusing 01:32:44.480 --> 01:32:48.320 them with Christianity, that's a wide open door for Satan to just 01:32:48.320 --> 01:32:49.280 run wild. 01:32:49.680 --> 01:32:52.960 there's nothing stopping him once he sneaks in like that. 01:32:52.960 --> 01:32:56.400 So the seemingly eclectic set of issues that we've talked about in 01:32:56.400 --> 01:32:58.640 the past, and you know, it's always going to be kind of 01:32:58.640 --> 01:32:59.840 a weird grab bag. 01:32:59.840 --> 01:33:03.120 It's not that we're scattered, it's that there's a pattern of where 01:33:03.120 --> 01:33:05.600 Satan is going at after the Christian faith. 01:33:05.600 --> 01:33:08.640 And it looks random, which is why people aren't picking up on 01:33:08.640 --> 01:33:14.160 it. There's no direct connection between slavery and feminism unless you listen 01:33:14.160 --> 01:33:15.840 to feminists and then they tell you. 01:33:15.840 --> 01:33:17.680 You know, we've been accused of lying about that one. 01:33:17.600 --> 01:33:20.000 that's literally what those people are saying. 01:33:20.000 --> 01:33:23.200 So the random grab bag of stuff that we talk about, it's 01:33:23.200 --> 01:33:24.960 what's happening in the world. 01:33:24.960 --> 01:33:28.400 So as long as the battle continues to move and evolve, we'll 01:33:28.400 --> 01:33:31.360 continue to shine a bright light on it so that if someone 01:33:31.360 --> 01:33:33.920 wants to hear what's you know what's coming next next where the 01:33:33.920 --> 01:33:37.680 attack is, we can hopefully arm some of you to be able 01:33:37.680 --> 01:33:41.760 to at least see it and seeing it is is all I 01:33:41.760 --> 01:33:42.400 would ask. 01:33:42.400 --> 01:33:45.600 Even if you don't agree with our conclusions, at least to know 01:33:45.600 --> 01:33:48.400 that hey, there's something going on here that I didn't know about 01:33:48.400 --> 01:33:50.240 before. That might be important. 01:33:50.240 --> 01:33:53.440 Like Corey said with his tweet, you know, maybe something we say 01:33:53.520 --> 01:33:55.760 it goes in one ear and out the other, and a couple 01:33:55.840 --> 01:33:58.720 of years from now, it comes up again in your life in 01:33:58.720 --> 01:33:59.520 some other context. 01:33:59.520 --> 01:34:02.000 You're like, oh, I remember hearing about this. 01:34:02.000 --> 01:34:03.840 Wait, there's something going on here. 01:34:03.840 --> 01:34:05.200 I should take it seriously. 01:34:05.200 --> 01:34:07.040 That's why we're talking about this stuff. 01:34:07.040 --> 01:34:09.360 You might not believe us today, but down the road, many of 01:34:09.360 --> 01:34:12.400 you who maybe disagree about some of these things today, I hope 01:34:12.400 --> 01:34:17.200 and pray you're going to find yourself agreeing because we're not terribrained 01:34:17.200 --> 01:34:18.000 about this stuff. 01:34:18.000 --> 01:34:21.760 We're just we're looking where the attacks are coming and we're saying, 01:34:21.760 --> 01:34:23.680 hey, this is important too. 01:34:23.680 --> 01:34:27.440 It's not as important as Christ on the cross, but if you 01:34:27.440 --> 01:34:31.600 start denying how your own body is created, pretty soon Christ's body 01:34:31.600 --> 01:34:33.280 doesn't need to be on the cross at all 'cause we're all 01:34:33.280 --> 01:34:33.840 just spirits. 01:34:33.840 --> 01:34:35.760 And what's this body stuff about? 01:34:35.760 --> 01:34:41.120 It's very easy to have some minor peripheral error turn into absolute 01:34:41.120 --> 01:34:42.720 blasphemy against God. 01:34:42.720 --> 01:34:44.160 Satan knows what he's doing. 01:34:44.160 --> 01:34:46.800 So we're continuing gonna continue to be weird. 01:34:46.800 --> 01:34:49.920 We're gonna continue to be saying things that are upsetting. 01:34:49.920 --> 01:34:52.960 We're gonna continue to light people's hair on fire, not to be 01:34:52.960 --> 01:34:57.280 antagonistic, not to be trolls, but because the spirit of this age 01:34:57.280 --> 01:35:00.960 is completely at odds with the history of the Christian faith. 01:35:00.960 --> 01:35:01.280 And 01:35:02.400 --> 01:35:06.560 we're not claiming to be re great repristinators that are reviving something 01:35:06.560 --> 01:35:09.280 that's been lost, but you know, you read your Bible. 01:35:09.280 --> 01:35:11.600 When I read my Bible, like like I've said before, I read 01:35:11.600 --> 01:35:14.000 my Bible and I find stuff that I'm guilty of, and it 01:35:14.000 --> 01:35:15.360 smacks me in the face. 01:35:15.360 --> 01:35:18.480 And I find other things that I have never heard in church. 01:35:18.480 --> 01:35:21.520 I'm like, Well, if my pastor says he preaches the whole council 01:35:21.520 --> 01:35:24.400 of God and he never says this, what's going on? 01:35:24.400 --> 01:35:26.800 And sometimes that's just the basis for some of these episodes. 01:35:26.880 --> 01:35:28.400 You're like, I've never heard that before. 01:35:28.400 --> 01:35:29.280 That's really weird. 01:35:29.280 --> 01:35:32.080 And we go looking and we find that it was on the 01:35:32.080 --> 01:35:35.040 timeline for hundreds of years and then it vanished. 01:35:35.040 --> 01:35:36.240 That's interesting. 01:35:36.240 --> 01:35:40.080 And as a church that claims to be rooted in Christ's eternal 01:35:40.080 --> 01:35:42.080 word, that's a matter of concern. 01:35:42.080 --> 01:35:46.160 So we're going to continue the same format, the same style, same 01:35:46.160 --> 01:35:48.640 mode of thought and approach, and we hope you'll stick with us 01:35:48.720 --> 01:35:51.120 and we'll hope you'll share with all your friends and family. 01:35:51.200 --> 01:35:54.800 Yes, the summary then is hear us today, believe us tomorrow. 01:35:54.800 --> 01:35:56.880 Yep, that that's a story of my life. 01:35:57.280 --> 01:35:59.680 it's why I don't get upset when people don't believe me or, 01:35:59.680 --> 01:36:01.120 you know, say mean things. 01:36:01.120 --> 01:36:01.840 That's fine. 01:36:01.840 --> 01:36:04.720 I'm I'm used to good friends thinking I was stupid, you know, 01:36:04.720 --> 01:36:05.920 for a decade or more. 01:36:05.920 --> 01:36:08.960 And then eventually they'll come around and realize I was right about 01:36:08.960 --> 01:36:12.240 something. I told them ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. 01:36:12.320 --> 01:36:15.120 Like oh and sometimes I don't even get any credit and that's 01:36:15.120 --> 01:36:19.040 fine. we're not neither Corey nor I care about credit. 01:36:19.040 --> 01:36:23.120 This we in private we tell people we're basically doing this stuff 01:36:23.120 --> 01:36:25.920 so that we can say the things that are true, we can 01:36:25.920 --> 01:36:30.240 take all the blame, we can start the conversations, and then whatever 01:36:30.240 --> 01:36:33.920 happens to us, if we get shot down and immolated, faithful men 01:36:33.920 --> 01:36:37.040 can come in the breach behind us and can speak about these 01:36:37.040 --> 01:36:40.240 things, and we will borne the brunt of the punishment that they 01:36:40.240 --> 01:36:42.240 would have endured if they were the worst ones to sp the 01:36:42.240 --> 01:36:44.000 first ones to speak about it. 01:36:44.000 --> 01:36:45.920 So we're going through the door first. 01:36:45.920 --> 01:36:47.840 We know it's gonna hurt, we know it's gonna suck, we're doing 01:36:48.080 --> 01:36:50.080 it anyway, 'cause it's important. 01:36:50.080 --> 01:36:53.440 And we're hoping that other men are gonna follow behind us and 01:36:53.440 --> 01:36:55.920 say, you know, I'm sure they don't agree with everything. 01:36:55.920 --> 01:36:59.040 If you agree with anything, move the ball a little bit further 01:36:59.040 --> 01:36:59.520 down the field. 01:37:00.320 --> 01:37:04.480 Take what is true in scripture and tell people about it, even 01:37:04.480 --> 01:37:08.320 if they've not heard before, even if it upsets them, maybe especially 01:37:08.320 --> 01:37:09.520 if it upsets them. 01:37:09.520 --> 01:37:11.840 Now for a pastor, there's a right and a wrong way to 01:37:11.840 --> 01:37:16.960 do that, but ultimately if your people, if your flock has false 01:37:16.960 --> 01:37:20.480 beliefs in their hearts, those need to be replaced by true beliefs. 01:37:20.480 --> 01:37:23.120 That's your job as a shepherd, as a pastor. 01:37:23.120 --> 01:37:26.480 That's our job as Christians when we see a Christian brother erring 01:37:26.640 --> 01:37:29.520 to say, hey man, you're not on a good path. 01:37:29.520 --> 01:37:32.160 Not to say you're going to hell if you do this, just 01:37:32.160 --> 01:37:34.320 to say this is not good for you. 01:37:34.320 --> 01:37:35.920 It's going to bear bad fruit. 01:37:35.920 --> 01:37:37.920 I don't want to see you get hurt. 01:37:38.160 --> 01:37:43.360 So these conversations are they seem less important today than they will 01:37:43.360 --> 01:37:44.160 in the future. 01:37:44.160 --> 01:37:46.320 And we're thankful to everyone who's shared. 01:37:46.560 --> 01:37:49.520 If you've listened once some of the episodes, I I think most, 01:37:49.520 --> 01:37:52.000 if not all of them, are worth listening to a couple times. 01:37:52.240 --> 01:37:54.880 To be honest, I've I've listened to all of our episodes several 01:37:54.880 --> 01:37:58.320 times on part just to review what I've said myself, but also 01:37:58.320 --> 01:38:01.280 so I can you know use use it as a library and 01:38:01.280 --> 01:38:04.720 a framework for building on what we say in the future because 01:38:04.720 --> 01:38:08.960 all the stuff is tied together in non-obvious ways, and we're gonna 01:38:08.960 --> 01:38:13.200 continue in the coming years to make the case that there's something 01:38:13.200 --> 01:38:16.880 going on here that's not just about Lutherans, it's about all of 01:38:16.880 --> 01:38:22.080 Christianity. Yeah, we have we have Catholics listening, we have Presbyterians, Baptists, 01:38:22.080 --> 01:38:27.840 non-denominational. I've had messages from every corner of Christianity saying, Hey, thank 01:38:27.840 --> 01:38:29.040 you for what you're saying. 01:38:29.040 --> 01:38:32.800 I've never heard anyone speak about scripture as clearly as you guys, 01:38:32.800 --> 01:38:34.160 and I really appreciate it. 01:38:34.160 --> 01:38:37.120 And we appreciate hearing that because like I said, there have been 01:38:37.120 --> 01:38:40.080 many times when those thoughtful messages have come when we are really 01:38:40.080 --> 01:38:41.840 getting kicked in the teeth. 01:38:41.840 --> 01:38:44.720 So to those of you who have said nice things, to those 01:38:44.720 --> 01:38:48.400 of you who have donated, reviewed, it's deeply appreciated, it's humbling. 01:38:48.400 --> 01:38:50.160 Uh it's not something we ever expected. 01:38:50.160 --> 01:38:53.120 Like I said, if if if it had gone beyond our our 01:38:53.120 --> 01:38:56.080 small set of friends, we would have been happy because we would 01:38:56.080 --> 01:38:59.520 have known that we were laying the groundwork for later on there 01:38:59.520 --> 01:39:02.960 would be a corpus of this content available that somebody would stumble 01:39:02.960 --> 01:39:04.800 across and say, Hey, there's something good here. 01:39:04.800 --> 01:39:09.040 It's grown beyond our expectations and that's by God's grace. 01:39:09.040 --> 01:39:12.480 And I I expect that that will continue to to grow and 01:39:12.480 --> 01:39:16.080 to uh expand beyond places we could possibly imagine. 01:39:16.080 --> 01:39:18.480 So thank you to each and every one of our listeners. 01:39:18.480 --> 01:39:21.440 You are appreciated and and we thank you for your time. 01:39:21.440 --> 01:39:21.600 And 01:39:21.600 --> 01:39:25.040 so I think we'll end with an anecdote, not a personal one 01:39:25.040 --> 01:39:30.240 this time, but an anecdote, a Lutheran one, that sort of explains 01:39:30.240 --> 01:39:34.000 our outlook on this and how we view what we're doing and 01:39:34.240 --> 01:39:38.480 what we expect the results of this to be. 01:39:38.480 --> 01:39:43.040 When Luther was asked, and he was often asked this question, if 01:39:43.040 --> 01:39:48.240 he was worried about the consequences or worried about how to reach 01:39:48.240 --> 01:39:49.040 people, worried about 01:39:49.920 --> 01:39:55.520 how to teach the laity, who knew very little, if anything, of 01:39:55.520 --> 01:39:57.920 the faith, because of the failures of Rome. 01:39:57.920 --> 01:40:01.840 When he was asked those sorts of questions, he would respond that 01:40:01.840 --> 01:40:06.640 he wasn't worried, and that he was enjoying his time drinking beer 01:40:06.640 --> 01:40:08.800 with Melanchthon, because 01:40:10.080 --> 01:40:14.320 he read the Word of God, put out the truth, and then 01:40:14.320 --> 01:40:18.160 the rest was in God's hands, so he felt secure. 01:40:18.160 --> 01:40:22.000 And that's the same way that we look at this. 01:40:22.000 --> 01:40:28.320 Our duty is to read God's Word, to recognize God's truth, to 01:40:28.320 --> 01:40:32.160 speak that truth as best we can, and the rest is in 01:40:32.160 --> 01:40:33.280 God's hands. 01:40:33.280 --> 01:40:36.880 And so we don't have to worry about it, and we don't 01:40:36.800 --> 01:40:38.400 worry about it. 01:40:38.400 --> 01:40:41.120 Because God will work everything together for the good.