WEBVTT

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I assume that you can all hear me now because

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there is a weird glitch between sound source and OBS where if

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I have sound source enabled Yeah.

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Then OBS throws a fit.

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And I don't think anyone has yet figured out what exactly the

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conflict there is.

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At any rate, I will simply start over.

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It is the twenty second of May twenty twenty six.

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I am Cory J.

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Mahler and this is at any cost.

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This is episode twenty-nine, a Q<unk>A episode.

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I have just a little bit of housekeeping before I get started

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with the actual questions here.

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There are some outstanding orders for challenge coins, that's both Stone Choir

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and Confident Faith.

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Most of those are ready to go.

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I should have all of those out either tomorrow morning or Monday

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morning depending on how that goes.

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So if you're waiting for your order, you'll have a tracking number

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in your email.

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If you're signed up for USBS tracking, if it's a foreign order

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or something like that, then you should still get one, but if

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you don't, let me know and I'll send one over to you.

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At any rate you should have those coins in hand in the

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next handful of days, unless you ordered from Europe, then give it

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a week.

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The only other bit of housekeeping that I had is that next

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week I think I am going to go through some of the

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more involved questions.

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So there'll be fewer questions addressed, but some longer answers.

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I see some in the backlog there that I haven't prepared yet

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because they're going to be longer.

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They're going to take up a good chunk of an episode.

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So I'll get to some of those.

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I think that's pretty much it for housekeeping though, so I'll move

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on to the questions now.

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I see that there are already some questions coming in in the

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chat. I'll try to copy those as we go.

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So

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Nothing I need to address right now.

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But anyway, I'll move on to the first question.

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Question one.

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What do you make of the papist photos that they post of

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the Eucharist and it's bloody?

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They claim this is evidence of transubstantiation.

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So I've seen these images going around on X in particular.

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That seems to be where they've been sharing them recently.

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And And

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without actually knowing anything about

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what happened, because there's never really any facts attached to it, nothing

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substantiated or corroborated, I have no idea what it is exactly they're

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doing. Generally speaking, my assumption would be it's just wine on the

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wafer. Wine looks like blood, right?

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Red wine looks like blood.

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One of the reasons that's symbolically we use red wine, because scripture

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doesn't say you have to use red wine.

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Incidentally, some places in Germany use white wine.

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There are historical theological reasons for that, but that's permissible because it's

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not required by scripture that you use red wine or white wine

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or it has to be cabernet or something, right?

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It just says wine.

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So the reason historically and today that we use red wine is

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that it looks like blood.

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It reminds

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you of what is happening in the supper.

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And that's a good thing.

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So I think using red wine is probably a good practice unless

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you have some specific reason not to do so, which was the

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case with those German Lutherans at one point.

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And some of them just carried it forward.

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But the claims being advanced, I don't have any evidence.

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I don't have any facts.

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So if I were there and I saw something happen, then certainly

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I would faithfully report that.

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But

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I haven't seen that.

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And like I said, they don't provide facts to corroborate this, go

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alongside it.

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They're just weird naked claims.

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It's kind of the same as the claims of statues crying and

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things like that.

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We see this stuff all the time.

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And I'm not saying there are no miracles, but you should have

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some corroborating evidence that the thing happened is indeed supernatural, because otherwise

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you wind up embarrassing yourself when it turns out the statue is

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crying because there was a leaky toilet above it.

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That's literally happened before.

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I believe that was in Mexico.

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You don't want to put yourself in that situation, right?

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If you're going to advance that something is a miracle, make sure

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there's no mundane explanation for it.

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If the priest spilled some wine on the wafers, that's the explanation

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for it.

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If the wafers instead were isolated and then the priest spoke the

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words of institution and they start bleeding, that's a totally different thing.

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I haven't seen proof of that, so as far as I'm concerned,

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I think spilled wine is the most likely explanation.

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But again, I'm not saying miracles don't happen.

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God still performs miracles today.

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Lutherans are not cessationists with regard to miracles or with regard to

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sign gifts even.

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God just does it less today because many of those things were

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meant in the immediate aftermath of the New Testament era to put

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God's stamp of approval as it were to prove that these were

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men who were actually empowered by God to go out and speak

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his truth.

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And today we don't need the same thing.

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God's operating in a different way with us today.

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Question

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two

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Can you give guidance to any delegates who are going to the

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LCMS convention?

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I saw there is a resolution that was brought forward against UN

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Wo. So yes, there are actually several resolutions against us.

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One, at least one, happens to name us personally.

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So I'll refrain from commenting on some aspects of that.

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But if you are going to the convention, you have to realize

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the men at the convention by and large are going to be

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company men, as it were.

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There will be good pastors, and there will be good pastors who

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brought along good elders with them.

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For those who don't know in the LCMS, the pastor of a

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congregation goes and he takes one man with him.

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So usually going to be an elder, right?

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Or the president of the congregation, someone in a position of authority.

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Doesn't have to be, usually is.

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There will be a lot of good men there.

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But at the same time, if you stand up and advocate for

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Stone Choir, you'll probably be out of the LCMS.

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And it won't be asked to leave, they'll force you to leave,

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inside of a few weeks.

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Now you'd think, oh, the next date.

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No, it's bureaucracy, it takes a little while to operate.

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But they are still very much in witch hunt mode and they

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will try to ruin your life.

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So So

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I wouldn't recommend that because I don't think it's going to gain

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you anything or advance anything with regard to the LCMS.

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This is just not going to be a convention where anything particularly

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substantive is accomplished.

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I think I will refrain from commenting more on that particular subject

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right now.

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Maybe I'll comment more on it after the convention is underway.

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But But the general rule is probably just fly under the radar

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right now.

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That's the the wise thing to do.

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Question three.

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I guess this is sort of a almost a follow-on to question

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one, just incidentally.

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You previously mentioned not taking the angelic view of the Nephilim.

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What phenomena do you believe are supernatural or preternatural that other others

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may take a naturalistic view on.

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So insofar as supernatural views, if I ignore that last clause as

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it were, that limiting clause, then obviously belief in God is probably

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my primary supernatural view.

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Belief in the soul.

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Just belief in the supernatural at all, right?

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So other than

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when people take a naturalistic view, I think one of the obvious

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ones there would be the development of the races of man, right?

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Because there is a spiritual element to that.

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It's not purely naturalistic, it's not purely physical.

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And so

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You have the genetic component, but you also have the component of

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how faithful a particular race remained to God, how deeply they fell

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into demon worship, and that influenced the development of that race over

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time. Then obviously cultures downstream from race and then culture reinforces whatever

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those proclivities were for the given race and you have a feedback

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loop. So So many would try to take that as purely naturalistic,

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and I think that there's very clearly a supernatural element to that

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as well.

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Insofar as other supernatural things are concerned, demons are real.

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They can do things in the physical world within bounds God set

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for them.

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I've mentioned before God doesn't tell us the bounds, so we can't

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say, oh yes, a demon can do X, a demon cannot do

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Y, right, by and large.

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We know the general rule a demon cannot go further than God

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has permitted.

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A demon cannot outright drag you to hell, right?

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Demons can't do that They tempt you, try to mess with you,

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do things like that.

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I mean, look at the book of Job, right?

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That was obviously a special instance.

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God permitted Satan to do some stuff that he does not normally

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do, right?

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I look out right now and Satan's not calling down fire on

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my livestock.

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I can't actually see my chickens from this window, but it's not

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happening, I know that, so

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as far as supernatural versus naturalistic views, I think that probably just

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about covers the the general range as it were.

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If you look at the world, sort of as a an extrapolation

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from the question, if you look at the world as purely naturalistic,

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you're going to miss a lot of things and also you can't

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explain the world.

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Because materialism falls flat.

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There are many arguments that demonstrate this.

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Qualia is probably one of the best one.

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You can go ahead and look that up.

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Basically, it's your personal experience of something.

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Something, your interior experience, which is not physical.

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And so your per personal perception, experience of the color red, is

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your qualia of the color red, or qualia if we want to

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use the singular there, which we probably should.

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That is not purely physical.

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And there are many thought experiments that have demonstrably and conclusively proven

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that. So we know that there are things that are at least

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supra natural, right?

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They are above the material, outside the naturalistic, which means if you

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have a purely material science or a purely material view of the

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universe approach to things, your world view, there will be things you

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cannot explain within that.

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Not least of all, you know, things like the laws of logic,

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upon which you are relying

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to build up your natural system.

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So the supernatural is very clearly real and you can't avoid it

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and have a coherent system.

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Question four and five are related, and then I think I'll get

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to some questions from the chat because I think, like I said,

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next week I'll go over some more involved questions.

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So I'll do some shorter ones this week.

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Question four.

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In various episodes you and Wo touched on Levitical Punishments being strong

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suggestions, but not strictly necessary.

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I assume, however, that there is, of course, no good argument for

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not simply following them in principle.

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With regard to following them in principle, I don't think there's any

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argument against that.

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So

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the arguments against it would be, however, practical arguments.

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They would be pragmatic arguments.

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So, for instance, if we were right now, as things stand, to

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institute a law handing out capital punishment we'll take the extreme example,

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right? Handing out capital punishment for blasphemy, and we took the expansive

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view of blasphemy that is found in the Old Testament, we would

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very significantly reduce the population of our country.

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And given the reality of the conditions of the last 100, 150

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years, maybe even a little longer, I don't think that that's a

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reasonable approach.

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Essentially, you have to give people some sort of warning, as it

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were, that this is going to be enacted, right?

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You have to say, we are going to punish going forward blasphemy

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with the death penalty.

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Here are the things that are blasphemous.

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Do not do these things.

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The Israelites had that, right?

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Because God gave Moses the law.

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Moses spoke it to them, the Levites interpreted it and gave it

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to them, right?

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They knew these things.

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And so they had fair warning as it were.

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And yes, you could make the argument, well everyone knows that God

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exists and that you shouldn't, you know, say these horrible things about

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God, right?

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Okay. That's different from having an explicit statement of, we are going

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to punish this in this way, you are hereby warned, right.

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So I think we have to take that approach.

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I think there is a level of pragmatism when it comes to

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where we fall on the scale with regard to punishments that are

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permissible. So we shouldn't go enacting all of the old testament laws

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with the maximum punishment right now.

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I saw someone mention there's no audio.

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I assume that's someone who just started listening to the stream and

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that the audio did not cut again.

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My levels all look fine.

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Hopefully they are.

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If not, someone in the chat please tell me.

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So the follow-up question, question five, why should we not just

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execute all adulterers?

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And adulteresses we're using the generic term there.

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Is the justification given by God for the execution of murderers enough

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to put it above the equal in law slave on paper punishments

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of adultery and sodomy.

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One of the reasons that I sort of put this one off

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a little bit, and I've touched on this previously, is that there's

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actually a difference in the way the commandments, particularly these two, are

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listed in the Septuagint versus the Masoretic text.

00:14:48.560 --> 00:14:53.840
One of the lists in the Septuagint actually lists adultery before murder.

00:14:54.560 --> 00:15:00.000
which would make adultery, the fifth commandment, and murder the sixth commandment,

00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:02.800
in the Lutheran or traditional numbering, right?

00:15:02.800 --> 00:15:07.200
Not the the Reform numbering to which with which most Americans are

00:15:07.200 --> 00:15:12.960
familiar. So being Lutheran, I'm accustomed to the Lutheran numbering.

00:15:12.960 --> 00:15:13.280
And

00:15:14.240 --> 00:15:17.440
the other aspect of that is that if you actually look at

00:15:17.440 --> 00:15:22.080
the way that Christ himself lists them in Luke, he also lists

00:15:22.080 --> 00:15:23.280
adultery first.

00:15:23.280 --> 00:15:25.680
It's one of those things that we've all read, we've read it

00:15:25.920 --> 00:15:28.960
however many times you've read the book of Luke, right?

00:15:28.960 --> 00:15:32.480
And we just go past we're like, oh Christ is just giving

00:15:32.480 --> 00:15:34.080
an off Christ is God.

00:15:34.080 --> 00:15:36.320
He's not just giving an offhand list.

00:15:36.320 --> 00:15:41.520
And yet, he says adultery and then murder.

00:15:41.520 --> 00:15:44.000
This is one of those things where yes, there's some tension, as

00:15:44.000 --> 00:15:48.240
it were, in the text, we sort of have to resolve how

00:15:48.240 --> 00:15:51.600
we're going to list them and teach them to our children, right?

00:15:51.600 --> 00:15:53.600
I could make an argument either way.

00:15:53.600 --> 00:15:55.600
Very easily argument either way.

00:15:55.600 --> 00:15:58.080
I could make a compelling argument either way.

00:15:58.080 --> 00:16:01.520
I am not going to give a resolution to this.

00:16:01.520 --> 00:16:04.400
I think that it's partly up to the translators to deal with

00:16:04.400 --> 00:16:05.600
that issue.

00:16:05.600 --> 00:16:08.480
And so I'm just not going to say that it should be

00:16:08.480 --> 00:16:09.360
X, right?

00:16:09.360 --> 00:16:12.000
I'm not going to try to bind them to that.

00:16:12.000 --> 00:16:15.680
On a related note, I guess little nugget for those who are

00:16:15.680 --> 00:16:16.960
listening to this.

00:16:16.960 --> 00:16:20.160
Those who are listening to the Through the Bible in a year

00:16:20.160 --> 00:16:23.280
readings, you may have noticed that I am not always pronouncing the

00:16:23.280 --> 00:16:25.120
names consistently.

00:16:25.120 --> 00:16:26.480
That's deliberate.

00:16:26.480 --> 00:16:28.960
And the reason that I'm doing that is that I don't want

00:16:28.960 --> 00:16:32.080
anyone to be able in the future to point to those readings

00:16:32.080 --> 00:16:34.960
and say, well he said it this way, and so we should

00:16:35.040 --> 00:16:38.880
and so I've denied them the ability to do that by pronouncing

00:16:38.880 --> 00:16:40.400
the names different ways.

00:16:40.400 --> 00:16:45.360
I'm also implicitly pointing out the names need to be anglicized in

00:16:45.360 --> 00:16:49.680
a way that is comprehensible for English listeners, English readers, and so

00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:53.920
we're not bound by exactly how the name is spelled in the

00:16:53.920 --> 00:16:57.920
Greek, because some of the things that the Greeks believe are pronounceable

00:16:57.920 --> 00:16:59.920
are insane to English ears.

00:16:59.920 --> 00:17:03.040
So that's the reason that I'm doing that.

00:17:03.040 --> 00:17:04.960
Same sort of thing going on here.

00:17:04.960 --> 00:17:08.720
Translators need to work through this issue.

00:17:08.720 --> 00:17:13.280
But to get to the specific question of adultery and the punishment

00:17:13.280 --> 00:17:17.520
of adulterers, and even if you think the commandments are one way

00:17:17.520 --> 00:17:21.280
versus another, it doesn't mean that we can't have capital punishment for

00:17:21.280 --> 00:17:22.000
both, right?

00:17:22.000 --> 00:17:26.960
Obviously, because God says it's a capital crime in the Old Testament.

00:17:26.960 --> 00:17:30.400
That for those who don't know, the punishment in the Old Testament

00:17:30.400 --> 00:17:32.080
for adultery is death.

00:17:32.080 --> 00:17:34.240
It's a capital crime.

00:17:34.240 --> 00:17:36.800
I do think that we should bring that back.

00:17:36.800 --> 00:17:41.680
Because adultery completely destroys nations, it destroys families, it is one of

00:17:42.240 --> 00:17:46.720
the most destructive things in which a man or woman can engage.

00:17:46.720 --> 00:17:49.840
Now that comes with some caveats.

00:17:49.840 --> 00:17:54.720
And the caveats would be this for women, adultery should be a

00:17:54.720 --> 00:17:56.400
capital crime.

00:17:56.400 --> 00:18:01.520
For men, there are instances where it should be, and where for

00:18:01.520 --> 00:18:04.640
sort of pragmatic reasons it should not be.

00:18:04.640 --> 00:18:09.440
So I'll give some examples here to draw out that distinction and

00:18:09.440 --> 00:18:11.680
then explain a little bit why it's there's a difference here.

00:18:11.680 --> 00:18:14.000
I think many of those listening know why, but I'll explain it

00:18:14.000 --> 00:18:20.160
nonetheless. So if a man is already married, has a wife, has

00:18:20.880 --> 00:18:25.680
children, and then sleeps with another woman who is not married, that's

00:18:25.680 --> 00:18:27.360
important for this.

00:18:27.360 --> 00:18:30.320
Polygyny is morally permissible.

00:18:30.320 --> 00:18:36.160
And so there is a solution here that is not capital punishment.

00:18:36.160 --> 00:18:38.960
You still punish the man in some way, you know, public shaming

00:18:39.040 --> 00:18:40.800
or beating, whatever it happens to be.

00:18:40.800 --> 00:18:42.320
There's nothing wrong with corporal punishment.

00:18:42.320 --> 00:18:44.000
It certainly works.

00:18:44.000 --> 00:18:49.040
But in order not to deprive the first woman of her husband

00:18:49.280 --> 00:18:53.760
and the children of their father, and there bo and thereby inflict

00:18:53.760 --> 00:18:57.920
that sort of harm, you have the solution of him having another

00:18:57.920 --> 00:19:01.760
wife. So there are cases where I think that's the solution.

00:19:01.760 --> 00:19:04.080
Are there cases where he should be executed instead?

00:19:04.080 --> 00:19:05.840
Certainly yes, I think so.

00:19:05.840 --> 00:19:11.040
Now, if the woman, the second woman, is instead married, that's different

00:19:11.200 --> 00:19:13.920
that should be death penalty for the man as well.

00:19:13.920 --> 00:19:17.440
The reason for the difference is very simple that it's just biology,

00:19:17.440 --> 00:19:23.040
right? A woman engaging in adultery has committed something that is never

00:19:23.040 --> 00:19:24.400
in any way permissible, right?

00:19:24.400 --> 00:19:27.680
A woman is not permitted to sleep with a man, not her

00:19:27.680 --> 00:19:32.000
husband. Polyandry is never permissible.

00:19:32.000 --> 00:19:36.320
So you don't have that solution, as it were, of here's your

00:19:36.320 --> 00:19:36.960
new wife.

00:19:36.960 --> 00:19:38.080
You have a second wife, right?

00:19:38.080 --> 00:19:38.800
You have to marry her.

00:19:38.800 --> 00:19:41.680
Obviously, the father of the woman should have a veto and all

00:19:41.680 --> 00:19:45.520
that sort of stuff, ancillary to the immediate question.

00:19:45.520 --> 00:19:50.400
But a woman engaged in adultery, so an adulteress, there's no solution

00:19:50.400 --> 00:19:55.360
there. She has committed a heinous crime that for which there is

00:19:55.360 --> 00:19:58.480
no real fix in this life.

00:19:58.480 --> 00:20:03.760
Now, could you potentially have some sort of minor carve out as

00:20:03.760 --> 00:20:08.480
it were for a lesser punishment in the law where her husband

00:20:08.480 --> 00:20:13.120
forgives her and says, I don't want the maximum penalty.

00:20:13.120 --> 00:20:15.200
Maybe. I think you could argue one way or the other with

00:20:15.200 --> 00:20:16.960
that. I'm not saying it's morally impermissible.

00:20:16.960 --> 00:20:22.160
I think I think that that's a morally permissible caveat or carve

00:20:22.160 --> 00:20:23.920
out in the law.

00:20:23.920 --> 00:20:27.520
But should it be something we do as a society is a

00:20:27.520 --> 00:20:31.200
different argument because there's the issue of wisdom, right?

00:20:31.840 --> 00:20:36.560
If you permit that, then you can create conditions in your society

00:20:36.800 --> 00:20:40.240
such that men are pushed to be the sort of man who

00:20:40.240 --> 00:20:41.440
has to forgive that, right?

00:20:41.440 --> 00:20:43.600
Oh, you're not a good man unless you do X, Y, and

00:20:43.600 --> 00:20:48.080
Z. If you don't permit the exception, you can't run into that

00:20:48.080 --> 00:20:51.280
problem. Similar to, and this should come to mind for some of

00:20:51.280 --> 00:20:56.400
you certainly, we should have paternity testing for all children born.

00:20:56.400 --> 00:21:00.000
Period. And the reason you do that is that it is an

00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:05.600
incentive not to engage in adultery, because you will be caught at

00:21:05.600 --> 00:21:07.760
least under those circumstances.

00:21:07.760 --> 00:21:14.240
And what it does then is it removes the strife that demanding

00:21:14.240 --> 00:21:18.320
a paternity test could cause in a particular situation, right?

00:21:18.560 --> 00:21:21.520
If you have a man who is, you know, he's suspicious of

00:21:21.520 --> 00:21:24.960
his wife for some reason and she's totally innocent, and he demands

00:21:25.360 --> 00:21:29.600
a paternity test, that's going to do grave harm to the marriage.

00:21:29.600 --> 00:21:33.680
Whereas if the state is instead saying, you must have a paternity

00:21:33.680 --> 00:21:37.440
test, you have no say in this, she's not going to blame

00:21:37.440 --> 00:21:40.240
him. You don't cause the problem for the marriage.

00:21:40.240 --> 00:21:41.920
It's better policy.

00:21:41.920 --> 00:21:44.960
So paternity testing should absolutely be mandatory.

00:21:44.960 --> 00:21:48.560
It resolves a lot of problems in society, and you don't have

00:21:48.560 --> 00:21:51.760
that potential strife between husband and wife.

00:21:52.480 --> 00:21:56.400
But with regard to adultery, yes, my basic stance is that capital

00:21:56.400 --> 00:22:00.880
punishment should absolutely be on the table, but it should not automatically

00:22:00.880 --> 00:22:04.960
and always be the punishment, because there should be some not really

00:22:05.120 --> 00:22:06.080
exceptions, but

00:22:07.360 --> 00:22:12.000
and not even really mitigating circumstances, but mitigating in the sense of

00:22:12.000 --> 00:22:17.680
there are other considerations that come into the calculus and argue for

00:22:18.400 --> 00:22:22.080
a lesser punishment in order to reduce harm.

00:22:22.080 --> 00:22:25.920
And I think harm reduction is permissible in some cases.

00:22:25.920 --> 00:22:30.240
Not at all, because Genesis nine six, God doesn't give us the

00:22:30.240 --> 00:22:34.400
option those who commit murder, and obviously that's kind of thinking, you

00:22:34.400 --> 00:22:37.840
know, murder one sort of thing there, but those who commit murder,

00:22:37.840 --> 00:22:39.920
capital punishment, period.

00:22:39.920 --> 00:22:43.200
God doesn't give us the means, so we have freedom with regard

00:22:43.200 --> 00:22:47.120
to that, there's leeway there, but the punishment itself has to be

00:22:47.120 --> 00:22:51.440
capital punishment because again, Genesis nine six is abundantly clear.

00:22:51.440 --> 00:22:54.000
And I've said it enough times on this podcast and elsewhere that

00:22:54.000 --> 00:22:55.200
I'm sure you all know it by now.

00:22:55.200 --> 00:22:59.760
It's one of those ones we should all have memorized.

00:22:59.760 --> 00:23:03.680
Question six is actually from the letter I mentioned last week.

00:23:03.680 --> 00:23:05.600
I'm just going to read it off the letter because I didn't

00:23:06.480 --> 00:23:08.800
it was actually a physically mailed letter.

00:23:08.800 --> 00:23:11.360
I am not going to answer all the questions from it because

00:23:11.360 --> 00:23:15.040
some of them, as it turns out, I was reading it before

00:23:15.040 --> 00:23:18.960
I went live, and some of them are a little more involved.

00:23:18.960 --> 00:23:25.120
There's a question about Mind Kampf and some history and Nexus with

00:23:25.120 --> 00:23:29.360
theology and philosophy, so it's a little complicated, but hopefully I'll get

00:23:29.360 --> 00:23:30.800
to that one next week.

00:23:31.040 --> 00:23:36.320
Maybe I'll go through MindKomp at some point and assess that project

00:23:36.320 --> 00:23:37.200
for the future.

00:23:37.200 --> 00:23:40.080
Anyway, the question I'm going to answer is the second question from

00:23:40.080 --> 00:23:41.200
this letter.

00:23:41.200 --> 00:23:42.800
And it's very nice and short.

00:23:42.800 --> 00:23:46.960
How can you explain Genesis chapter thirty, verses thirty seven through thirty

00:23:46.960 --> 00:23:50.640
nine, which gives a very strange story on reproduction?

00:23:50.640 --> 00:23:52.160
So for those of you who

00:23:53.040 --> 00:23:56.480
are familiar with how atheists and others try to argue, this is

00:23:56.480 --> 00:23:58.160
one they love, right?

00:23:58.160 --> 00:24:01.200
This comes up all the time, so I will just pull that

00:24:01.200 --> 00:24:07.920
up in logos here, assuming logos will cooperate, and actually read through

00:24:07.920 --> 00:24:09.040
it since

00:24:11.120 --> 00:24:14.240
Always better to do that.

00:24:14.320 --> 00:24:20.560
Logos. Okay, so here we have Genesis.

00:24:20.560 --> 00:24:21.200
Thank you.

00:24:21.200 --> 00:24:23.200
Can we stop doing that?

00:24:23.760 --> 00:24:27.280
The numbering is actually the same in this case for the Septuagint

00:24:27.360 --> 00:24:31.520
conveniently, so for those of you playing along at home.

00:24:31.520 --> 00:24:35.600
And Jacob took for himself a green rod of styrax and walnut

00:24:35.760 --> 00:24:39.600
and one of a plain tree tree, and Jacob stripped white stripes

00:24:39.600 --> 00:24:42.640
in them, tearing away the green, and the white that he had

00:24:42.640 --> 00:24:46.320
stripped appeared variegated on the rods, and he set the rods that

00:24:46.320 --> 00:24:49.440
he had stripped in the channels of the watering troughs of water,

00:24:49.440 --> 00:24:51.600
in order that, when the ship would come to drink in front

00:24:51.600 --> 00:24:55.200
of the rods, as they came for drinking, the sheep would come

00:24:55.200 --> 00:24:58.560
into heat at the rods, and the sheep would produce pure white

00:24:58.640 --> 00:25:01.760
and variegated and ash colored spotted young.

00:25:01.760 --> 00:25:04.880
And so on and so forth, you get the idea here.

00:25:04.880 --> 00:25:08.080
This is of course when Laban is trying to cheat him out

00:25:08.080 --> 00:25:13.360
of his payment for working for Laban by, you know, being what

00:25:13.360 --> 00:25:15.520
Laban is, was was

00:25:16.720 --> 00:25:19.120
probably, you know, depends there.

00:25:19.120 --> 00:25:24.960
At any rate, this is obviously not how natural reproduction works, right?

00:25:24.960 --> 00:25:29.440
The color of the offspring of a given creature are not dependent

00:25:30.240 --> 00:25:34.880
on what they were looking at when the offspring was being created

00:25:35.280 --> 00:25:37.680
or being born, whatever it happens to be, right?

00:25:37.680 --> 00:25:42.000
Your children don't change color based on the paint in your bedroom.

00:25:42.000 --> 00:25:43.360
That's not how genetics works.

00:25:43.360 --> 00:25:44.640
We all know that.

00:25:44.640 --> 00:25:46.720
It's a miracle, right?

00:25:46.720 --> 00:25:51.120
This is God punishing Laban and rewarding Jacob.

00:25:51.120 --> 00:25:52.400
That's all this is.

00:25:52.400 --> 00:25:54.560
So when people try to look at this and say all that's

00:25:54.480 --> 00:25:56.720
not how it happens, it's the same ridiculous argument

00:25:57.600 --> 00:26:00.160
as when people find a miracle in scripture and say, well, that's

00:26:00.160 --> 00:26:01.600
impossible. It's a miracle.

00:26:01.600 --> 00:26:05.840
Of course it's impossible according to naturalistic explanations.

00:26:05.840 --> 00:26:09.280
That's the whole point of a miracle.

00:26:09.280 --> 00:26:14.480
If there were no suspension or violation of the laws of you

00:26:14.480 --> 00:26:18.720
know physics or biology, genetics, whatever it happens to be, then it's

00:26:18.640 --> 00:26:21.840
not a miracle, it's just unlikely.

00:26:21.840 --> 00:26:25.840
This is a miracle, that's what's being told here.

00:26:25.840 --> 00:26:30.080
This is not the Bible giving you a biology lesson, right?

00:26:30.080 --> 00:26:33.280
There are parts of scripture that are simple recounting of facts, a

00:26:33.280 --> 00:26:35.520
recounting of history, whatever it happens to be.

00:26:35.520 --> 00:26:38.880
And there are other parts where God is telling you, you know,

00:26:38.880 --> 00:26:41.920
you must do this, you must not do that, moral law, there's

00:26:41.920 --> 00:26:43.680
all sorts of different stuff in scripture.

00:26:43.680 --> 00:26:44.880
You have to know what you're reading.

00:26:45.520 --> 00:26:47.920
This is what Jacob did.

00:26:47.920 --> 00:26:51.280
We don't know if God told him specifically to to do this,

00:26:51.280 --> 00:26:54.240
right? We don't have that here in this text.

00:26:54.240 --> 00:26:54.400
But

00:26:55.840 --> 00:26:59.360
we can assume God probably told him to do this.

00:26:59.840 --> 00:27:03.840
If God didn't tell him to do it, then God simply took

00:27:03.840 --> 00:27:06.960
Jacob's ignorance and blessed him nonetheless.

00:27:06.960 --> 00:27:07.840
God can do that.

00:27:07.840 --> 00:27:09.040
He does it all the time, right?

00:27:09.040 --> 00:27:10.320
We're ignorant of many things.

00:27:10.320 --> 00:27:14.320
He still blesses us despite our ignorance, despite the fact that we

00:27:14.320 --> 00:27:17.280
do things that don't really match up.

00:27:17.280 --> 00:27:21.040
So again, just an instance of a miracle, not something that's difficult

00:27:21.040 --> 00:27:24.800
to explain, just something that atheists try to use as a gotcha.

00:27:24.800 --> 00:27:27.120
It's the It's the same it would be the exact same as

00:27:27.120 --> 00:27:30.160
if someone tried to say, Water doesn't turn into wine.

00:27:30.160 --> 00:27:32.240
That's the entire point.

00:27:32.240 --> 00:27:35.600
The entire point is that he's God, he's performed a miracle.

00:27:35.600 --> 00:27:39.360
It's not that if you do something with water, other than, you

00:27:39.360 --> 00:27:43.280
know using grapes and yeast, wine results.

00:27:43.280 --> 00:27:46.800
It's a miracle, so is this.

00:27:46.800 --> 00:27:50.880
Let me pull out some questions here from the chat, make sure

00:27:50.880 --> 00:27:53.280
I didn't miss anything.

00:28:11.840 --> 00:28:16.160
Someone asked a question right at the beginning, and all I have

00:28:16.160 --> 00:28:17.760
is one out of two.

00:28:17.760 --> 00:28:20.960
As he numbered them, I don't have the actual question.

00:28:20.960 --> 00:28:23.840
So if you would like to post your actual question, I can

00:28:23.840 --> 00:28:27.200
get to it, otherwise I'm not entirely certain what you were asking.

00:28:27.360 --> 00:28:29.600
But the first one that I see that's actually a question I

00:28:29.600 --> 00:28:30.080
can answer

00:28:31.120 --> 00:28:35.280
is could someone believe and accept Jesus but be such an awful

00:28:35.280 --> 00:28:40.480
teacher? The example given here is a modern megachurch or other insane

00:28:40.480 --> 00:28:45.600
denomination that that this teacher will indeed be damned to hell.

00:28:45.600 --> 00:28:45.920
So

00:28:48.000 --> 00:28:53.120
can you be such a bad teacher that despite professing Christ, you

00:28:53.120 --> 00:28:55.200
will be damned?

00:28:55.520 --> 00:28:57.680
The answer is there depends.

00:28:57.680 --> 00:29:02.080
And the reason it depends is because you have an assumption here

00:29:02.080 --> 00:29:03.600
in the question.

00:29:03.600 --> 00:29:06.960
So it depends on which way you take that assumption.

00:29:06.960 --> 00:29:11.040
Is the assumption that he believes in Jesus the real Jesus?

00:29:12.160 --> 00:29:16.560
Or is this assumption that he believes in someone he has constructed

00:29:16.560 --> 00:29:19.040
and named Jesus, right?

00:29:19.600 --> 00:29:23.440
Because you can say that you believe in something and then deny

00:29:23.440 --> 00:29:25.520
absolutely every single tenet of it.

00:29:25.520 --> 00:29:27.280
Are you a believer in the thing?

00:29:27.280 --> 00:29:29.200
No, of course not.

00:29:29.200 --> 00:29:30.800
This is.

00:29:30.800 --> 00:29:32.720
We're right back to No True Scotsman, right?

00:29:32.720 --> 00:29:34.560
No true Scotsman comes up all the time.

00:29:34.640 --> 00:29:36.000
This is another atheist one.

00:29:36.000 --> 00:29:39.200
They'll try to say that you know Christians aren't Christian because of

00:29:39.200 --> 00:29:41.760
X, Y, and Z or something like that, or Christians are like

00:29:41.760 --> 00:29:44.720
this because I found this one person who did something I didn't

00:29:44.640 --> 00:29:47.760
like. The point of no true Scotsman

00:29:48.640 --> 00:29:55.440
is that an innate characteristic remains an innate characteristic regardless of other

00:29:55.440 --> 00:30:02.080
things. So, you can't say that a man, right, no true Scotsman

00:30:02.320 --> 00:30:04.640
would hate Scotch.

00:30:04.640 --> 00:30:06.640
That's an insane argument.

00:30:06.640 --> 00:30:08.400
You can say it in jest, right?

00:30:08.400 --> 00:30:10.640
We understand there's a difference there.

00:30:10.640 --> 00:30:15.760
But whether or not a man is Scottish, whether he's a Scotsman,

00:30:15.760 --> 00:30:18.560
is a matter of his blood.

00:30:18.560 --> 00:30:22.320
I was incidentally just at a Scottish festival this last weekend, but

00:30:22.640 --> 00:30:24.640
and they did indeed have Scotch.

00:30:24.640 --> 00:30:28.960
And Scotch is indeed great, but whether or not he's Scottish is

00:30:28.960 --> 00:30:31.440
not a matter of these incidental things.

00:30:31.440 --> 00:30:33.840
It's something innate to him.

00:30:33.840 --> 00:30:36.080
I'm male innately.

00:30:36.080 --> 00:30:40.000
It's not a matter of whether I like, you know, steak, scotch,

00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:43.520
motorcycles, whatever argument you want to make for whatever group.

00:30:43.520 --> 00:30:49.680
An innate characteristic doesn't change because you assign some arbitrary thing, more

00:30:49.680 --> 00:30:53.840
or less arbitrary, and then find someone who does not adhere to

00:30:54.640 --> 00:30:59.040
that. Now that's different from something that is not innate.

00:30:59.040 --> 00:31:01.280
For instance, an ideology.

00:31:01.280 --> 00:31:03.280
Religion is a great example.

00:31:03.280 --> 00:31:05.360
What is a religion?

00:31:05.360 --> 00:31:09.120
It is sort of at a fundamental level a set of tenets,

00:31:09.120 --> 00:31:10.320
a set of beliefs.

00:31:10.320 --> 00:31:15.200
And so if the religion claims A, B, and C, and the

00:31:15.200 --> 00:31:17.760
point of the religion, and the core of the religion is A,

00:31:17.760 --> 00:31:21.280
B, and C, and if you deny any one of those, you're

00:31:21.200 --> 00:31:24.880
not a member of the religion, that's not no true Scotsman.

00:31:24.880 --> 00:31:28.320
Because this is an ideology that is a set of beliefs, and

00:31:28.320 --> 00:31:31.120
you cannot deny the set of beliefs and say you believe

00:31:32.240 --> 00:31:34.800
the very set of beliefs you are denying.

00:31:34.800 --> 00:31:37.360
Because again, it's not innate.

00:31:37.360 --> 00:31:41.600
You elect this in the generic sense here, not dealing with election,

00:31:41.600 --> 00:31:46.480
obviously. And so you can have someone who claims to be a

00:31:46.480 --> 00:31:51.520
member of this thing, but is not because of these beliefs.

00:31:51.520 --> 00:31:55.840
So you can exclude yourself from a group based on beliefs.

00:31:55.840 --> 00:31:59.200
You can't make yourself cease to be male if you were born

00:31:59.200 --> 00:32:01.360
male based on beliefs.

00:32:01.360 --> 00:32:03.200
That's not how it works.

00:32:03.200 --> 00:32:05.840
You know, you can't say my favorite color is pink, well you're

00:32:05.840 --> 00:32:07.040
no longer a boy, you're a girl.

00:32:07.040 --> 00:32:08.880
That's not how it works.

00:32:08.880 --> 00:32:10.720
But it does work that way with religion.

00:32:11.440 --> 00:32:17.920
And so if this hypothetical teacher has someone, has an idol, he

00:32:17.920 --> 00:32:23.200
has named Jesus, who denies all the things that Jesus taught and

00:32:23.200 --> 00:32:24.800
teaches all these false things.

00:32:24.800 --> 00:32:26.640
Well, he doesn't believe in Jesus.

00:32:26.640 --> 00:32:28.320
He believes in an idol.

00:32:28.320 --> 00:32:30.320
He is damned.

00:32:30.320 --> 00:32:35.680
The other potentiality here, the other potential here would be that you

00:32:35.680 --> 00:32:40.240
have a man who ultimately does believe in Jesus, the Jesus of

00:32:40.240 --> 00:32:46.560
the Bible, the Jesus who is God, but has false beliefs.

00:32:46.560 --> 00:32:49.040
And that's true of most men.

00:32:49.040 --> 00:32:53.040
Most men have some false beliefs, even if they are Christian, even

00:32:53.040 --> 00:32:54.800
if they believe in Jesus.

00:32:54.800 --> 00:32:56.000
This comes up all the time.

00:32:56.000 --> 00:32:57.120
Lutherans have a term for it.

00:32:57.120 --> 00:33:01.680
It is felicitous inconsistency, which is to say, despite the false teachings

00:33:01.680 --> 00:33:05.040
of maybe the church of which you are a part, or even

00:33:05.040 --> 00:33:07.200
the things you yourself profess.

00:33:07.200 --> 00:33:11.120
Ultimately, in your heart, at the end of the day, you rely

00:33:11.120 --> 00:33:14.320
on Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you believe that He

00:33:14.320 --> 00:33:18.560
died for you, you believe in the resurrection, ultimately you're a Christian,

00:33:18.560 --> 00:33:23.360
despite these things, so felicitously inconsistent in your beliefs between what you

00:33:23.360 --> 00:33:25.680
believe internally and what you profess.

00:33:25.680 --> 00:33:29.360
If he's that man, then he's saved despite being a bad teacher.

00:33:29.360 --> 00:33:32.160
He's going to have a very awkward conversation with God at the

00:33:32.160 --> 00:33:33.280
final judgment, right?

00:33:33.280 --> 00:33:37.520
Because teachers get the stricter judgment, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's

00:33:37.520 --> 00:33:42.400
damned. It may just mean that you don't receive the sort of

00:33:42.400 --> 00:33:45.360
rewards that you would have received if you had been a faithful

00:33:45.360 --> 00:33:47.520
teacher and more faithful in your beliefs.

00:33:47.520 --> 00:33:49.840
Because remember, there are two judgments, right?

00:33:49.840 --> 00:33:55.200
There's the judgment of saved or damned, as it were, and then

00:33:55.200 --> 00:33:59.280
there's the judgment according to works, which is for your rewards, crowns,

00:33:59.280 --> 00:34:00.720
things like that.

00:34:00.720 --> 00:34:03.600
I'm not saying there's like different days or something, God doesn't have

00:34:03.600 --> 00:34:05.200
a backlog.

00:34:05.200 --> 00:34:08.800
But well Whether or not you are saved is a matter of

00:34:08.800 --> 00:34:11.120
whether or not you have faith in Christ.

00:34:11.120 --> 00:34:14.080
The rewards you receive are a different thing, because those are according

00:34:14.080 --> 00:34:14.880
to works.

00:34:14.880 --> 00:34:18.720
The man who teaches falsely has fewer works, has wicked works that

00:34:18.720 --> 00:34:20.560
will be burned up, right?

00:34:20.560 --> 00:34:23.920
The man who teaches rightly has more good works, just as a

00:34:23.920 --> 00:34:26.160
general thing all else being held equal.

00:34:26.160 --> 00:34:28.800
So it depends on what the assumption is there, right?

00:34:28.800 --> 00:34:31.200
It depends on whether this is a man who has an idle

00:34:31.280 --> 00:34:35.120
An idol named Jesus, or has it Jesus but some false beliefs

00:34:35.200 --> 00:34:38.560
that he's accumulated from the world and ultimately doesn't rely on those

00:34:38.560 --> 00:34:42.640
for his salvation, ultimately still has faith, that man is saved, the

00:34:42.640 --> 00:34:44.160
former is damned.

00:34:51.040 --> 00:34:53.440
Yes, to the person who said in chat, Gremlins got me, the

00:34:53.440 --> 00:34:56.240
Gremlins did get me, and this time the Gremlins are called OBS

00:34:56.320 --> 00:34:57.920
and Sound Source.

00:34:58.560 --> 00:35:08.560
See Let's see.

00:35:09.280 --> 00:35:14.080
A question about infant baptism, which is obviously one that comes up

00:35:14.160 --> 00:35:21.440
frequently. The question is, if I'll just rephrase

00:35:21.520 --> 00:35:25.360
it a little bit, if children of Christian parents are saved pre-baptism,

00:35:25.360 --> 00:35:28.560
doesn't that contradict the idea that we must be born again?

00:35:28.560 --> 00:35:35.760
Secondly, does that not contradict the necessity for infant baptism?

00:35:35.760 --> 00:35:39.520
The way that this works, and the way that Lutherans have always

00:35:39.520 --> 00:35:42.880
addressed this, and Roman Catholics as well, this is not exclusively Lutherans,

00:35:42.880 --> 00:35:46.960
obviously, Presbyterians, others baptize their infants as well.

00:35:46.960 --> 00:35:48.880
Because Scripture tells you to do so.

00:35:50.640 --> 00:35:53.680
You can have faith before you're baptized.

00:35:53.680 --> 00:35:55.200
An infant can have faith.

00:35:55.200 --> 00:35:59.200
John the Baptist leapt in the womb, in utero.

00:35:59.200 --> 00:36:04.080
He knew his Savior was nearby, was physically proximate.

00:36:04.080 --> 00:36:07.840
So we don't know exactly how that works.

00:36:07.840 --> 00:36:10.720
You can hear things in utero, we know that.

00:36:10.720 --> 00:36:12.960
And there are those who will try to say, oh that's impossible,

00:36:12.960 --> 00:36:15.600
you can't make out distinct words, you can't do X.

00:36:15.600 --> 00:36:18.240
What does Scripture say about you?

00:36:18.240 --> 00:36:21.360
Before you are given the free gift of faith, before you are

00:36:21.360 --> 00:36:23.040
made alive again in Christ?

00:36:23.040 --> 00:36:25.920
It says you're dead in your sins and trespasses.

00:36:25.920 --> 00:36:29.040
So if you think that you're any better off than the infant,

00:36:29.040 --> 00:36:33.200
you need to re-read your Bible and pay closer attention.

00:36:33.200 --> 00:36:35.920
If anything, you're worse off than an infant.

00:36:35.920 --> 00:36:41.760
The infant doesn't have the obstinate will of an impenetent adult with

00:36:41.760 --> 00:36:46.400
a lifetime of sin and hardened heart toward God and a seared

00:36:46.400 --> 00:36:49.760
conscience and all these other problems, the infant is not going to

00:36:49.760 --> 00:36:51.440
resist the Holy Spirit.

00:36:51.440 --> 00:36:55.600
An adult has a worse time than the infant.

00:36:55.600 --> 00:36:59.440
Because Because again, the infant is not going to resist God.

00:36:59.440 --> 00:37:03.120
The adult probably is going to resist God to some degree.

00:37:03.120 --> 00:37:07.600
So the child may very well have faith already before the child

00:37:07.600 --> 00:37:08.960
is baptized.

00:37:09.040 --> 00:37:13.600
But the reason that we still baptize the child is one, God

00:37:13.680 --> 00:37:17.840
told us to do so, and two, if God has given us

00:37:17.840 --> 00:37:21.680
a gift, we are going to receive the gift with joy, particularly

00:37:21.680 --> 00:37:25.760
when the gift has the promise of salvation attached to it.

00:37:25.760 --> 00:37:31.440
So maybe a particular infant has faith in utero, maybe that infant

00:37:31.440 --> 00:37:35.520
is given faith in the waters of baptism You can't determine which

00:37:35.520 --> 00:37:39.280
one, so what would it be rational to do?

00:37:39.280 --> 00:37:43.040
And that's even just, you know, ignoring that first part, which is

00:37:43.040 --> 00:37:46.000
obviously obedience to God, is the major point here.

00:37:46.000 --> 00:37:50.400
Just in a rational calculation, you still baptize the infant.

00:37:50.400 --> 00:37:54.320
Because we know that you are given faith in the waters of

00:37:54.320 --> 00:37:57.920
baptism, at least if you don't already have faith, or your faith

00:37:57.920 --> 00:37:58.800
is strengthened.

00:37:58.800 --> 00:38:01.840
So if the infant has faith, you strengthen the infant's faith.

00:38:01.840 --> 00:38:04.640
If the infant doesn't have faith, you give the infant faith.

00:38:04.640 --> 00:38:08.400
Either way, obeying God, good thing, you still do it.

00:38:08.800 --> 00:38:12.880
Scripture very clearly speaks of the child of believers as as being

00:38:12.880 --> 00:38:15.120
sanctified as being holy, right?

00:38:15.120 --> 00:38:19.600
Particularly in the passage dealing with the believing spouse versus the unbelieving

00:38:19.680 --> 00:38:23.840
spouse, and the believing spouse sanctifies the children, other because you know,

00:38:23.840 --> 00:38:27.680
otherwise your children would be unholy sort of thing, that whole thing,

00:38:27.680 --> 00:38:29.680
other places in scripture as well.

00:38:29.680 --> 00:38:30.000
But

00:38:30.960 --> 00:38:34.080
it doesn't change the fact that you have to be born again,

00:38:34.080 --> 00:38:38.400
because being born again is obviously faith.

00:38:38.400 --> 00:38:39.360
It's believing.

00:38:39.360 --> 00:38:44.000
Baptism is the natural means by which that is done, because you

00:38:44.000 --> 00:38:46.240
are supposed to be baptized as an infant.

00:38:46.240 --> 00:38:50.880
If you are an adult convert, you generally have faith first, right?

00:38:51.120 --> 00:38:52.640
That's how it goes.

00:38:52.640 --> 00:38:57.040
Because we're not running around grabbing adults and dunking them on the

00:38:57.040 --> 00:38:59.600
street. That's not how things operate.

00:38:59.600 --> 00:39:01.200
That's not what we should be doing.

00:39:01.200 --> 00:39:04.160
With adults we engage in them in a different way because we

00:39:04.160 --> 00:39:07.520
can. With as an adult, I can reason with you, I can

00:39:07.520 --> 00:39:10.720
give you the scriptures, I can do all these different things.

00:39:10.720 --> 00:39:12.640
You can't do that with an infant.

00:39:12.640 --> 00:39:15.840
The only means we have and there are multiple means of grace,

00:39:15.840 --> 00:39:18.880
the only means we have that works for an infant, as far

00:39:18.880 --> 00:39:21.360
as we know, is baptism.

00:39:21.360 --> 00:39:25.360
We still read the scriptures to our children, including infants, and we

00:39:25.360 --> 00:39:27.840
leave these things in God's hands.

00:39:27.840 --> 00:39:30.480
This is another one of those instances where we shouldn't be trying

00:39:30.480 --> 00:39:34.240
to look for edge cases and exceptions and saying, well, what if

00:39:34.320 --> 00:39:38.960
and then God has been super abundant with the things that He

00:39:38.960 --> 00:39:40.240
has given us.

00:39:40.240 --> 00:39:42.960
Just accept all the gifts from God's hands hands.

00:39:42.960 --> 00:39:46.880
Don't ask God why did you give me multiple ways to be

00:39:46.880 --> 00:39:48.160
assured of my salvation?

00:39:48.160 --> 00:39:50.720
That's an insane question.

00:39:50.720 --> 00:39:54.160
Why would you ever ask God why he gave you multiple ways

00:39:54.160 --> 00:39:56.800
to be assured you won't spend eternity in hell?

00:39:56.960 --> 00:40:00.080
If he wants to give me eighty-seven different ways, I'd be very

00:40:00.080 --> 00:40:01.120
happy with that.

00:40:01.120 --> 00:40:02.960
He gave us several means of grace.

00:40:02.960 --> 00:40:04.880
I'm glad we have all of those.

00:40:04.880 --> 00:40:07.520
And I've spoken before of the fact that you have, you know,

00:40:07.520 --> 00:40:11.760
you're tripartite, and so your soul, your mind can grasp different things

00:40:11.760 --> 00:40:12.320
from your body.

00:40:12.320 --> 00:40:14.160
Your body can grasp water.

00:40:14.160 --> 00:40:19.360
Your flesh can't really understand the words of scripture, right?

00:40:19.360 --> 00:40:20.800
Your flesh understands paper.

00:40:20.800 --> 00:40:22.080
It understands holding scripture.

00:40:22.240 --> 00:40:25.840
I was gonna grab the Septuagint, but it's actually over here.

00:40:26.640 --> 00:40:28.720
So for those who are looking at X, yes, I did go

00:40:28.720 --> 00:40:32.320
and grab my physical copy of the German Septuagint, but your flesh

00:40:32.320 --> 00:40:33.920
can grasp physical things.

00:40:34.240 --> 00:40:37.600
And so God has given us physical things with regard to the

00:40:37.600 --> 00:40:41.840
sacraments, the means of grace, so that the totality, the gestalt that

00:40:41.840 --> 00:40:44.960
is man, can grasp these things.

00:40:44.960 --> 00:40:46.400
Excuse me.

00:40:47.200 --> 00:40:51.440
So So it's not that you don't have to be born again,

00:40:51.440 --> 00:40:53.840
right? That's not what's going on here.

00:40:54.080 --> 00:40:58.720
It's that your children are holy to God, and

00:40:59.600 --> 00:41:03.840
God has given them that gift in some way that isn't one

00:41:03.840 --> 00:41:06.000
hundred percent spelled out in Scripture.

00:41:06.000 --> 00:41:09.520
What is spelled out in Scripture is that faith comes by hearing,

00:41:09.520 --> 00:41:11.840
and that faith comes by baptism.

00:41:11.840 --> 00:41:14.400
Right? Baptism now saves you.

00:41:14.400 --> 00:41:16.560
The only thing from which it can save you that's greater than

00:41:16.560 --> 00:41:19.680
temporal death, which is why it's compared to the flood, is eternal

00:41:19.680 --> 00:41:20.880
death by giving you faith.

00:41:20.880 --> 00:41:23.440
I've explained this before many other places.

00:41:23.520 --> 00:41:23.840
So

00:41:26.080 --> 00:41:29.520
we don't know all of the exact nuances of this.

00:41:29.520 --> 00:41:34.080
We don't have this long drawn out formula of if this then

00:41:34.080 --> 00:41:36.080
that, if that, then this, and all these exceptions.

00:41:36.080 --> 00:41:38.720
We don't have the tree of decision, right?

00:41:38.720 --> 00:41:40.880
All we know is what God has given us.

00:41:40.880 --> 00:41:42.880
He's given us the sacraments.

00:41:42.880 --> 00:41:44.720
He's given us the Word.

00:41:44.720 --> 00:41:47.920
We know that we use these things because of the means instituted

00:41:47.920 --> 00:41:51.520
by God to bestow faith on all believers, but certainly on the

00:41:51.520 --> 00:41:52.560
next generation.

00:41:52.560 --> 00:41:55.920
We use them in the way God is commanded, as God intended,

00:41:55.920 --> 00:41:57.600
and we trust in God.

00:41:57.600 --> 00:42:01.200
We know that for instance with David, when his son dies, having

00:42:01.200 --> 00:42:05.200
not been circumcised, he was still able to say, and this is

00:42:05.200 --> 00:42:07.600
David as a prophet, that he will see him again.

00:42:08.560 --> 00:42:13.200
So we have faith that God has done this in some way,

00:42:13.200 --> 00:42:17.120
that these children are given faith in a way that is consistent

00:42:17.120 --> 00:42:20.000
with God's plan because of course it is because God's the one

00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:20.880
designing it.

00:42:20.880 --> 00:42:27.440
And so as believers, we don't have worry about our children dying

00:42:27.440 --> 00:42:29.520
before they're baptized if they're very young.

00:42:29.520 --> 00:42:32.000
We don't have to worry about that because God has been clear

00:42:32.000 --> 00:42:34.640
in His Word that He provides for that.

00:42:34.640 --> 00:42:36.800
The children are holy because of the parents.

00:42:36.800 --> 00:42:40.080
We have the instance of David, a specific instance, even a children

00:42:40.240 --> 00:42:44.800
a child in this case conceived in particularly egregious sin is David

00:42:44.880 --> 00:42:47.360
as a prophet can still say he'll see him again.

00:42:47.360 --> 00:42:51.360
So you look at the totality of Scripture, the way God has

00:42:51.360 --> 00:42:55.920
laid out, the way this process works, and you simply obey and

00:42:55.920 --> 00:42:57.280
trust in God.

00:42:57.280 --> 00:43:00.800
God's not saying that there's some you know exceptional way like oh

00:43:00.960 --> 00:43:05.040
little children are totally fine because no you still use the means

00:43:05.040 --> 00:43:06.560
God has instituted.

00:43:06.560 --> 00:43:09.920
You don't try to find an exception and then rely on an

00:43:09.920 --> 00:43:13.520
exception. That's not the like I've explained it before.

00:43:13.520 --> 00:43:16.720
The way you look at it is if there's a cliff, you

00:43:16.720 --> 00:43:18.800
don't walk right on the edge.

00:43:18.800 --> 00:43:21.680
Now for those who've never been near cliffs maybe I would hope

00:43:21.680 --> 00:43:24.560
it's still obvious, but the edge of a cliff is often kind

00:43:24.560 --> 00:43:26.000
of slippery and crumbly.

00:43:26.000 --> 00:43:27.360
Don't walk right there.

00:43:27.360 --> 00:43:30.720
The same thing applies with regard to the things of God.

00:43:30.720 --> 00:43:34.400
Use them as God intended, be thankful for the fact that God

00:43:34.400 --> 00:43:38.960
has given us multiple instead of singular, and rely on God, because

00:43:38.960 --> 00:43:42.000
He is faithful to His Word and His Promises.

00:43:42.000 --> 00:43:42.320
So

00:43:43.200 --> 00:43:48.080
Yes, the children of Believers are holy, and we don't have to

00:43:48.080 --> 00:43:51.520
worry about if they happen to die in that very narrow window

00:43:51.680 --> 00:43:53.840
between birth and baptism.

00:43:53.840 --> 00:43:59.600
But we still baptize them because one, God's command, two, God's promises.

00:44:08.720 --> 00:44:12.800
And then uh I guess a follow-up question from the same person,

00:44:12.800 --> 00:44:13.600
sort of

00:44:14.960 --> 00:44:19.600
the question about the pericope adulteri, which is to say the woman

00:44:19.600 --> 00:44:21.520
caught at adultery.

00:44:21.520 --> 00:44:25.360
And yes, that is scripture.

00:44:25.360 --> 00:44:28.640
We do hold to, Lutherans do generally hold to that.

00:44:28.640 --> 00:44:30.000
Pretty much all Lutherans hold to that.

00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:32.560
There's always that one weird guy somewhere in a corner.

00:44:32.560 --> 00:44:36.560
But we don't think that that's should be removed from scripture, right?

00:44:36.560 --> 00:44:38.080
They're people who try to make that argument.

00:44:38.080 --> 00:44:41.360
So the question is, what do we take away as a lesson

00:44:41.360 --> 00:44:41.600
from that?

00:44:41.760 --> 00:44:43.840
And I'll probably go into it greater depth in the future.

00:44:43.840 --> 00:44:46.800
I'll actually make a note for myself on that, that another list

00:44:46.800 --> 00:44:49.520
that is eternally growing.

00:44:49.520 --> 00:44:49.840
But

00:44:50.800 --> 00:44:51.600
excuse me.

00:44:53.200 --> 00:44:54.400
What do we take away from that?

00:44:54.400 --> 00:44:58.160
I think what we said earlier with regard to some of these

00:44:58.160 --> 00:45:01.920
punishments not being absolutely mandatory, but more

00:45:03.040 --> 00:45:05.360
the limit that is set, right?

00:45:05.600 --> 00:45:09.680
You can punish adultery with a capital punishment.

00:45:09.680 --> 00:45:11.200
You can punish it with execution.

00:45:11.200 --> 00:45:12.960
It can be the death penalty.

00:45:12.960 --> 00:45:15.120
But it doesn't have to be.

00:45:15.120 --> 00:45:20.560
And I think probably the bigger takeaway here.

00:45:20.880 --> 00:45:22.080
that's sort of a minor takeaway.

00:45:22.080 --> 00:45:23.360
It's there in the text.

00:45:23.360 --> 00:45:26.880
It is obviously part of the argument if you're making the argument

00:45:26.880 --> 00:45:30.480
for civil penalties and the civil law in the Old Testament and

00:45:30.480 --> 00:45:32.480
how we should use it as Christians, how we should view it,

00:45:32.480 --> 00:45:33.280
things like that.

00:45:33.360 --> 00:45:37.600
I think the bigger takeaway though is that he's condemning the wickedness

00:45:37.600 --> 00:45:42.400
of the Jews who were bringing this woman to him to try

00:45:42.400 --> 00:45:44.160
to entrap him and condemn him.

00:45:44.160 --> 00:45:45.280
They were being hypocrites.

00:45:45.280 --> 00:45:47.360
He's condemning them for being hypocrites.

00:45:47.520 --> 00:45:51.440
The same thing is true of the passage with regard to the

00:45:51.440 --> 00:45:53.600
Sadducees and their

00:45:54.560 --> 00:45:58.240
nonsense hypothetical about the woman who was married to seven brothers, right?

00:45:58.240 --> 00:46:00.960
And whose wife will she be in the resurrection.

00:46:00.960 --> 00:46:02.640
Christ is condemning them there.

00:46:02.880 --> 00:46:07.360
He's not really so much commenting on marriage as he is condemning

00:46:07.440 --> 00:46:11.120
the hypocrisy and the stupidity of the Sadducees.

00:46:11.120 --> 00:46:13.280
I think we're dealing with the same sort of thing here.

00:46:13.280 --> 00:46:17.200
He's condemning the wickedness and the hypocrisy of the Jews more than

00:46:17.200 --> 00:46:20.960
necessarily commenting on whether or not adultery should be punished, right?

00:46:20.960 --> 00:46:25.040
Because he's very clear, many places, neither jot nor title, none of

00:46:25.040 --> 00:46:26.800
the law will pass away.

00:46:26.800 --> 00:46:30.320
Adultery is still one of the commandments, whether it's the fifth or

00:46:30.320 --> 00:46:31.440
the sixth.

00:46:31.440 --> 00:46:35.200
It is still eligible for the death penalty, it just doesn't always

00:46:35.200 --> 00:46:37.840
have to be a death penalty offense.

00:46:38.160 --> 00:46:44.000
and those who are employing it hypocritically, God is going to condemn

00:46:44.000 --> 00:46:44.800
them for that, right?

00:46:44.800 --> 00:46:46.400
God hates hypocrisy.

00:46:46.400 --> 00:46:47.920
God hates lying.

00:46:47.920 --> 00:46:51.280
So you don't want to be the person who is doing the

00:46:51.280 --> 00:46:55.680
very wicked thing that you're condemning publicly, right?

00:46:56.080 --> 00:47:00.400
You can think of many instances of that, certainly among politicians and

00:47:00.400 --> 00:47:04.320
others, but you don't want to be the person who's saying this

00:47:04.480 --> 00:47:09.600
adulteress should be stoned Meanwhile you have three mistresses, right?

00:47:09.600 --> 00:47:10.880
Don't be that guy.

00:47:10.880 --> 00:47:13.840
You can think of Judah, for instance, in the Old Testament and

00:47:14.000 --> 00:47:15.920
a couple of events there.

00:47:15.920 --> 00:47:20.880
So So condemnation of hypocrisy and as a sort of subsidiary point

00:47:20.960 --> 00:47:24.880
we can draw that certainly you do not always have to punish

00:47:24.880 --> 00:47:28.000
adultery with capital punishment.

00:47:28.000 --> 00:47:31.920
As I pointed out previously in another episode, the same thing is

00:47:31.920 --> 00:47:34.640
true with regard to Joseph and Mary, right?

00:47:34.640 --> 00:47:38.800
Because engagement was tantamount to marriage, and that was the case in

00:47:38.800 --> 00:47:41.360
our society as well until relatively recently.

00:47:41.360 --> 00:47:45.680
So she would have been eligible for punishment as an adulteress, and

00:47:45.680 --> 00:47:48.800
yet he's called righteous for wanting to put her away quietly instead

00:47:48.800 --> 00:47:52.000
of bringing her before the elders and having her stoned.

00:47:52.000 --> 00:47:55.920
Also very clear teaching that you don't necessarily have to apply capital

00:47:56.400 --> 00:47:59.840
punishment because then he couldn't be called righteous because then he would

00:47:59.840 --> 00:48:04.800
be subverting God's law instead of being merciful while still obeying God's

00:48:04.800 --> 00:48:08.480
law. Because those two are not necessarily at odds, right?

00:48:08.800 --> 00:48:11.040
They aren't at odds.

00:48:11.040 --> 00:48:13.120
Mercy is not at odds with God's law.

00:48:13.120 --> 00:48:15.360
God's law is not at odds with mercy.

00:48:15.360 --> 00:48:18.640
As long as you properly conceive of mercy, right?

00:48:18.640 --> 00:48:21.360
Not the sort of mercy the world thinks where they're setting murderers

00:48:21.360 --> 00:48:22.720
free to go and kill again.

00:48:22.720 --> 00:48:23.680
That's not mercy.

00:48:23.680 --> 00:48:25.360
That's hatred of your neighbor.

00:48:35.360 --> 00:48:39.360
Question about capitalism we have here.

00:48:39.360 --> 00:48:39.680
So

00:48:42.720 --> 00:48:47.280
is capitalism really that bad or is the idolatry of capitalism the

00:48:47.280 --> 00:48:51.120
problem And would slavery basically solve all the problems of the people

00:48:51.120 --> 00:48:54.960
that put themselves into poverty and single parent households?

00:48:54.960 --> 00:48:57.760
Sort of a few related questions there, but

00:48:58.640 --> 00:49:01.920
with regard to capitalism, it's sort of distilling a lot of information

00:49:02.160 --> 00:49:04.000
into one answer.

00:49:04.000 --> 00:49:09.200
The episode that we did in Stone Choir on capitalism, capitalist idolatry,

00:49:09.360 --> 00:49:10.560
highly recommend that one.

00:49:10.560 --> 00:49:14.560
I will go ahead and put that in the show notes for

00:49:14.560 --> 00:49:16.240
this question.

00:49:16.240 --> 00:49:18.960
That's sort of the longer form answer.

00:49:18.960 --> 00:49:23.120
But the core of the answer is that there's a difference between

00:49:23.120 --> 00:49:29.520
what most people call capitalism and what capitalism actually is.

00:49:29.520 --> 00:49:36.240
Capitalism is more extensive than just the free ex relatively free exchange

00:49:36.240 --> 00:49:37.280
of goods, right?

00:49:37.280 --> 00:49:41.360
If I sell you this pen for whatever amount of money.

00:49:41.360 --> 00:49:43.200
It's amount of money's not the point.

00:49:43.200 --> 00:49:45.920
If I sell you this pen, that's not capitalism.

00:49:45.920 --> 00:49:50.080
If you buy some of my chickens, that's not capitalism.

00:49:50.080 --> 00:49:54.160
Just because you have a market, that's not capitalism.

00:49:54.400 --> 00:50:01.760
Ultimately, capitalism is essentially the economics of the social

00:50:02.080 --> 00:50:05.200
theory that is libertarianism.

00:50:05.200 --> 00:50:10.960
Because anytime you step outside that sort of maximalist conception of capitalism,

00:50:10.960 --> 00:50:13.920
you're no longer really dealing with capitalism.

00:50:13.920 --> 00:50:19.440
Then you're dealing with something else that has overlapping elements with capitalism.

00:50:19.440 --> 00:50:24.000
So for instance, a market, exchange of goods, private ownership of property,

00:50:24.000 --> 00:50:25.840
right? These things exist.

00:50:25.840 --> 00:50:29.360
And those exist in systems that are not capitalist.

00:50:29.360 --> 00:50:30.960
This existed in medieval times.

00:50:30.960 --> 00:50:35.440
They were not capitalists just because you could own property and goods.

00:50:35.440 --> 00:50:42.000
So capitalism can't claim to have exclusive authority over those or ownership,

00:50:42.000 --> 00:50:42.880
whatever you want to call it.

00:50:42.880 --> 00:50:46.400
Perhaps that's ironic, but Capitalism doesn't have that.

00:50:46.400 --> 00:50:50.160
Ultimately, what capitalism is, is that laissez-faire market economy.

00:50:50.160 --> 00:50:52.320
It is the hands-off approach.

00:50:52.320 --> 00:50:56.640
And some of the economic thinkers, some economists, are a little more

00:50:56.640 --> 00:50:58.480
honest about that than others.

00:50:58.480 --> 00:51:03.120
So So as soon as you, for instance, start regulating the economy,

00:51:03.120 --> 00:51:07.520
you are deviating from what capitalism in its so-called pure form would

00:51:07.520 --> 00:51:12.320
be. Because now you have a regulatory state that has taken some

00:51:12.320 --> 00:51:17.280
level of control over the economy, that's no longer capitalism, it's a

00:51:17.280 --> 00:51:18.000
different thing.

00:51:18.000 --> 00:51:20.240
There are those who want to call it, you know, regulatory capitalism

00:51:20.320 --> 00:51:22.320
or something like that.

00:51:22.320 --> 00:51:27.840
But you've really fundamentally violated that core of the claims of capitalism,

00:51:27.840 --> 00:51:31.200
which that essentially is that the market is a god, right?

00:51:31.200 --> 00:51:32.480
If you have enough

00:51:33.600 --> 00:51:36.960
rational actors, which is already a problem here, if you have enough,

00:51:36.960 --> 00:51:41.520
at least economically rational actors in a system, and enough information that's

00:51:41.520 --> 00:51:45.600
sometimes a caveat there, in the system, then they will make rational

00:51:45.600 --> 00:51:51.040
decisions that will ultimately be beneficial Well, one, that doesn't actually pan

00:51:51.360 --> 00:51:53.200
out really ever.

00:51:53.200 --> 00:51:57.040
And then two, you always have to regulate that.

00:51:57.040 --> 00:52:00.000
And one of the reasons you have to regulate it, and I

00:52:00.000 --> 00:52:03.760
know this one makes economists some economists, not all obviously, makes some

00:52:03.760 --> 00:52:05.760
economists and others angry.

00:52:05.760 --> 00:52:10.560
Regulation is necessary with regard to the market, because the market inevitably

00:52:10.560 --> 00:52:13.280
trends and naturally trends toward monopoly.

00:52:13.280 --> 00:52:16.800
And without getting into, you know, an economics crash course as it

00:52:16.800 --> 00:52:21.520
were, or regulatory law crash course, essentially the reason that that happens

00:52:21.600 --> 00:52:27.280
the way that it works is partly corporations, because the corporation is

00:52:27.280 --> 00:52:27.760
sort of the

00:52:29.040 --> 00:52:32.800
ultimate outcome of capitalism, inevitable outcome.

00:52:32.800 --> 00:52:36.400
And a corporation as an economic actor is always going to outcompete

00:52:36.400 --> 00:52:38.240
individuals, first off.

00:52:38.240 --> 00:52:42.480
And then the corporation, whatever corporation it happens to be, you have

00:52:42.480 --> 00:52:45.120
a number in a given market, right?

00:52:45.120 --> 00:52:47.680
One will develop some sort of advantage over time.

00:52:47.760 --> 00:52:49.200
Doesn't matter what it is.

00:52:49.200 --> 00:52:52.800
It could be advantage with regard to a downstream supplier.

00:52:53.680 --> 00:52:57.360
Upstream, whatever it doesn't matter what you're dealing with, right?

00:52:57.360 --> 00:53:01.760
Distributor, supplier, technology.

00:53:01.760 --> 00:53:03.360
You just get a good deal on something.

00:53:03.360 --> 00:53:05.680
You happen to find a good piece of land, any sort of

00:53:05.680 --> 00:53:12.080
advantage. That advantage can be used to drive out competition.

00:53:12.080 --> 00:53:16.080
And over time, this leads to concentration in the market.

00:53:16.080 --> 00:53:18.960
And what you can then do is once you have a certain

00:53:18.960 --> 00:53:23.920
degree of power within your particular market, you can leverage that into

00:53:23.920 --> 00:53:24.880
adjacent markets.

00:53:24.880 --> 00:53:28.400
This is the general way that monopolies develop, particularly once you get

00:53:28.400 --> 00:53:32.320
an integrated monopoly, which basically just means upstream and downstream, right?

00:53:32.400 --> 00:53:35.680
They've got control over the resources they need going into the product,

00:53:35.680 --> 00:53:38.800
they've got control over the distribution of the product once they've created

00:53:38.800 --> 00:53:41.760
it. They are an integrated monopoly.

00:53:41.760 --> 00:53:45.040
And one of the ways you can do this is say you

00:53:45.040 --> 00:53:45.360
have

00:53:47.200 --> 00:53:48.800
50% share of a market, right?

00:53:48.800 --> 00:53:50.640
And let's say there is one other competitor.

00:53:50.640 --> 00:53:51.760
Let's say you're a duopoly.

00:53:51.760 --> 00:53:53.520
It's 50 and 50.

00:53:53.520 --> 00:53:59.040
But now you have some sort of relationship with the major we'll

00:53:58.960 --> 00:53:59.280
do the

00:54:00.320 --> 00:54:03.760
we'll do the uh supply of some sort of input here.

00:54:03.760 --> 00:54:06.320
I think it's probably the best, the easiest way to understand this.

00:54:06.320 --> 00:54:10.240
You have some sort of relationship with some key supplier of some

00:54:10.240 --> 00:54:14.800
particular input that is necessary to produce the widget on which these

00:54:14.800 --> 00:54:19.200
two companies, you and your duopolistic partner, are supposedly competing.

00:54:19.200 --> 00:54:21.120
There's also the issue of corruption.

00:54:21.120 --> 00:54:24.320
See the lovely admission of, I think it was the ATT CEO

00:54:24.400 --> 00:54:27.200
who said he just didn't, it was Sprint or Verizon.

00:54:27.200 --> 00:54:29.840
Well, we we just don't compete in that market, just bluntly admitted

00:54:29.840 --> 00:54:31.280
it on national TV.

00:54:31.280 --> 00:54:33.120
Basically nothing happened.

00:54:33.120 --> 00:54:38.160
But you have some relationship with this supplier of this necessary good.

00:54:38.160 --> 00:54:42.960
And what you do is you use that relationship to monopolize the

00:54:42.960 --> 00:54:47.280
supply or to drive out your competitor from having access to the

00:54:47.280 --> 00:54:51.120
supply. Your competitor can no longer compete with you because your competitor

00:54:51.120 --> 00:54:53.040
no longer has that access to the supply.

00:54:53.040 --> 00:54:57.200
You've now become a monopoly and you can use your monopolistic position

00:54:57.200 --> 00:55:02.880
now to leverage yourself into the say distribution or retail market because

00:55:02.880 --> 00:55:05.120
now you're the only supplier.

00:55:05.120 --> 00:55:08.800
This happens thousands of times a day all over the place.

00:55:08.800 --> 00:55:14.240
Not all of these individuals wind up becoming successful corporations over time,

00:55:14.240 --> 00:55:15.840
but some of them do.

00:55:15.840 --> 00:55:18.560
And if you wind up with ones that have enough power and

00:55:18.560 --> 00:55:23.200
enough money, they become such monopolistic players that you have additional problems,

00:55:23.200 --> 00:55:26.880
like regulatory capture, where they take over the entity that's supposed to

00:55:26.880 --> 00:55:27.760
be regulating them.

00:55:27.760 --> 00:55:29.280
That's what happened with net neutrality.

00:55:29.280 --> 00:55:33.680
Whatever you think about net neutrality, the way that it got repealed

00:55:33.680 --> 00:55:40.800
was the major ISPs coming together and subverting it by taking over

00:55:40.800 --> 00:55:44.720
the regulatory agency that was supposed to oversee them.

00:55:44.720 --> 00:55:49.200
They took their own personnel, put them in, changed the law, gave

00:55:49.200 --> 00:55:52.560
them another job when they came back out of having their term

00:55:52.560 --> 00:55:53.440
in office.

00:55:53.440 --> 00:55:54.480
Literally, what happened

00:55:55.520 --> 00:56:00.160
happens all the time in our economy, which is supposedly a regulated

00:56:00.400 --> 00:56:02.080
capitalist economy.

00:56:02.080 --> 00:56:06.400
If it were unregulated, this would be orders of magnitude worse.

00:56:06.400 --> 00:56:10.160
And so there's just the practical matter that it doesn't exist.

00:56:10.160 --> 00:56:14.960
It can't exist because the market destroys itself absent regulation.

00:56:14.960 --> 00:56:18.800
So even if you want a market, you have to regulate it.

00:56:18.800 --> 00:56:20.160
And I'm not saying a market's bad.

00:56:20.160 --> 00:56:20.720
Markets can be good.

00:56:20.960 --> 00:56:22.240
They're a tool.

00:56:22.240 --> 00:56:26.400
This is related to when people ask me what's your economic ideology,

00:56:26.400 --> 00:56:28.880
I say I don't have one, and the example I like to

00:56:28.880 --> 00:56:32.800
give is that I don't have an ideology of shovels.

00:56:32.800 --> 00:56:38.880
If I'm digging a trench to bury, say, irrigation tubing, I've been

00:56:38.880 --> 00:56:42.560
doing that recently, updating some stuff around the property, I probably want

00:56:42.560 --> 00:56:45.120
a narrow, you know, two inch shovel, right?

00:56:45.120 --> 00:56:47.600
Because I'm burying a half inch tube.

00:56:47.600 --> 00:56:51.200
I don't want to get a you know six, eight, ten inch

00:56:51.200 --> 00:56:55.200
shovel or something crazy and dig a giant trench in my property.

00:56:55.200 --> 00:56:57.760
That's the wrong tool for the job.

00:56:57.760 --> 00:56:59.920
I look at economics the same way.

00:57:00.000 --> 00:57:02.880
I'm not going to say that I have to do X, Y,

00:57:02.880 --> 00:57:07.440
or Z because ideologically I'm beholden to this system, I'm loyal to

00:57:07.440 --> 00:57:08.000
this system.

00:57:08.000 --> 00:57:10.240
That's insane to my ears.

00:57:10.240 --> 00:57:13.280
It's a tool to be used like any other.

00:57:13.280 --> 00:57:17.520
And so if the market is good in a given area to

00:57:17.520 --> 00:57:21.200
solve a given problem, by all means use a market.

00:57:21.200 --> 00:57:25.760
But where the market is not a useful tool, don't use it.

00:57:25.760 --> 00:57:29.040
So for instance, there's such a thing as a natural monopoly.

00:57:29.040 --> 00:57:32.000
I know some people hate to hear this, but it's reality.

00:57:32.000 --> 00:57:35.680
And the reason it's reality is that we are physical beings.

00:57:35.680 --> 00:57:40.720
So things that are physical are natural monopolies to a certain extent,

00:57:40.720 --> 00:57:44.240
some of them fully, some of them partially.

00:57:44.240 --> 00:57:50.080
So for instance, if you are a company mining coal, right?

00:57:50.080 --> 00:57:53.680
Only one company can mine from a particular mine at a time.

00:57:53.680 --> 00:57:57.520
If you had multiple companies mining, you would have a sort of

00:57:57.520 --> 00:57:59.600
chaos that would look like a mini war.

00:57:59.600 --> 00:58:02.240
It just not it would not work at all.

00:58:02.240 --> 00:58:04.880
Another example would be roadways.

00:58:04.880 --> 00:58:06.800
Roads are a natural monopoly.

00:58:06.800 --> 00:58:09.600
Why? I have one driveway.

00:58:09.600 --> 00:58:14.880
How many different companies, if we privatized our roadways, could build a

00:58:14.880 --> 00:58:19.520
road to my driveway without without just paving the entirety of East

00:58:19.520 --> 00:58:20.560
Tennessee, right?

00:58:20.560 --> 00:58:22.080
The answer is one.

00:58:22.080 --> 00:58:27.120
You don't want a bunch of different providers of that particular good

00:58:27.600 --> 00:58:29.440
because it would be destructive.

00:58:29.440 --> 00:58:30.960
That's a natural monopoly.

00:58:31.200 --> 00:58:35.360
You handle the natural monopoly by regulating it, not by creating a

00:58:35.360 --> 00:58:39.200
market. Because you can't create a market because it's a natural monopoly.

00:58:39.200 --> 00:58:41.520
These are issues capitalism can't solve.

00:58:41.520 --> 00:58:46.240
Capitalism ignores that they are problems that are inherent to human life,

00:58:46.240 --> 00:58:50.320
human economic activity, and just tries to hand wave them away by

00:58:50.320 --> 00:58:53.120
saying, well if we just created a market for it, it would

00:58:53.120 --> 00:58:54.480
solve itself.

00:58:54.480 --> 00:58:55.200
You can't.

00:58:55.200 --> 00:58:57.440
You can't create a market for that, right?

00:58:57.440 --> 00:58:59.200
Are you going to create a market for nuclear weapons?

00:58:59.200 --> 00:59:03.440
Like there are certain things where monopoly is a good thing.

00:59:03.440 --> 00:59:03.760
So

00:59:05.040 --> 00:59:10.320
Capitalism, yes, it it is indeed that bad because it's taking what

00:59:10.320 --> 00:59:13.680
should be viewed as a tool and elevating it to the level

00:59:13.680 --> 00:59:14.880
of essentially a god.

00:59:14.880 --> 00:59:18.880
Look at the language people use when speaking of capitalism.

00:59:18.880 --> 00:59:23.200
Look at the slavish obedience and loyalty they have to capitalism.

00:59:23.200 --> 00:59:28.080
They speak of capitalism with more glowing terms and more dedication than

00:59:28.080 --> 00:59:31.520
they have ever expressed toward any sort of religion in their lives.

00:59:31.520 --> 00:59:34.160
And that's including supposed Christians.

00:59:34.160 --> 00:59:38.720
That is the mark of perhaps a cult, but certainly a religion.

00:59:38.720 --> 00:59:43.040
And so there's a reason we called it capitalist idolatry, because the

00:59:43.040 --> 00:59:45.280
system has become an idol for many.

00:59:45.280 --> 00:59:47.120
And it should not be that.

00:59:47.120 --> 00:59:47.760
Because

00:59:48.720 --> 00:59:53.680
economics, every tool in the economics tool bag is indeed a tool.

00:59:53.680 --> 00:59:57.840
It's not something to which you pledge your undying loyalty.

00:59:57.840 --> 01:00:00.480
Then to answer the other part of the question there, it's sort

01:00:00.480 --> 01:00:03.680
of the the quick view, I guess, of that.

01:00:03.680 --> 01:00:07.600
Absolutely, slavery is you know, you can call it whatever you want,

01:00:07.600 --> 01:00:09.920
right? There are people who are object to the term they balk

01:00:10.080 --> 01:00:11.360
oh slavery is you can't be sl

01:00:12.480 --> 01:00:16.880
The person who is working for minimum wage is a slave.

01:00:16.880 --> 01:00:18.960
Period. You can call them whatever you want.

01:00:18.960 --> 01:00:20.480
You want to call them an employee?

01:00:20.480 --> 01:00:24.640
Great. Employees are treated worse than slaves because the person who is

01:00:24.640 --> 01:00:28.560
making minimum wage at some giant giant corporate job and I'll avoid

01:00:28.560 --> 01:00:31.280
naming any particular corporation right.

01:00:31.280 --> 01:00:36.640
That man has fewer guarantees, has fewer s has a much much

01:00:36.640 --> 01:00:42.560
diminished safety net, has nothing provided for him essentially, he is worse

01:00:42.560 --> 01:00:44.320
off than a slave.

01:00:44.320 --> 01:00:45.760
Because what did the slaves get?

01:00:45.760 --> 01:00:50.480
Well, they got food, they got shelter, they got needful education, not

01:00:50.480 --> 01:00:52.080
excessive, but needful education.

01:00:52.080 --> 01:00:54.480
They were instructed in the Christian faith when it comes to the

01:00:54.480 --> 01:00:56.240
American South at least.

01:00:56.240 --> 01:01:00.400
They had a better life than a worker, who was just an

01:01:00.400 --> 01:01:02.320
employee of a corporation.

01:01:02.320 --> 01:01:05.520
And you can even see that by the fact that indentured servants

01:01:05.520 --> 01:01:10.080
were generally and often treated worse than slaves.

01:01:10.080 --> 01:01:13.120
Men are going to have some concern for their property and slaves

01:01:13.120 --> 01:01:14.240
are proper.

01:01:14.240 --> 01:01:14.560
So

01:01:16.080 --> 01:01:19.760
just practically speaking, a slave is better off than an employee at

01:01:19.760 --> 01:01:22.080
that low of a level anyway.

01:01:22.080 --> 01:01:25.920
And the reality of the matter is that there are certain individuals

01:01:25.920 --> 01:01:28.400
who are not going to be able to run all of their

01:01:28.400 --> 01:01:29.280
own affairs.

01:01:29.280 --> 01:01:33.280
So you really have two potential paths you can take.

01:01:33.280 --> 01:01:35.680
To hearken this back to the first part of the question, I

01:01:35.680 --> 01:01:39.760
guess, you can take the capitalist route, right, and say You know,

01:01:39.760 --> 01:01:41.840
survival of the fittest, fend for yourself.

01:01:41.840 --> 01:01:44.480
If they starve, they starve, too bad.

01:01:44.480 --> 01:01:47.120
That's the hard line capitalist route.

01:01:47.120 --> 01:01:50.000
I don't think that's compatible with Christianity.

01:01:50.000 --> 01:01:53.360
I think it's also insane and wrong on many levels because it

01:01:53.360 --> 01:01:56.000
doesn't value things that are still valuable, right?

01:01:56.000 --> 01:01:58.880
Art is still valuable, beauty is valuable.

01:01:59.200 --> 01:02:03.040
You're not going to assign an economic value to that and a

01:02:03.040 --> 01:02:06.080
market. It's just insane to even think of trying to make that

01:02:06.080 --> 01:02:08.080
argument. I know people have done it and I've read the work,

01:02:08.080 --> 01:02:10.720
but it's insane.

01:02:10.720 --> 01:02:14.720
So the other option, right, is to have their affairs run by

01:02:14.720 --> 01:02:16.880
someone who's more competent.

01:02:16.880 --> 01:02:19.920
Whether that means that they are, you know, a serf or a

01:02:19.920 --> 01:02:23.760
slave, whatever term you want to use, that life is better off

01:02:23.760 --> 01:02:26.160
than the alternative.

01:02:26.160 --> 01:02:29.760
This goes back to the issue of egalitarianism, right?

01:02:29.760 --> 01:02:30.880
This is what it runs counter to.

01:02:30.880 --> 01:02:33.360
People hear this kind of stuff and they their ears catch fire

01:02:33.440 --> 01:02:34.560
and they start screaming.

01:02:34.560 --> 01:02:37.680
Because they think, oh no, everyone's equal and everyone could do No,

01:02:37.680 --> 01:02:41.040
not everyone is equal, not everyone can do the same thing.

01:02:41.040 --> 01:02:44.560
Men are inherently inequal because that is how God has made us.

01:02:44.560 --> 01:02:46.800
Some men are taller, some men are smarter, some men are more

01:02:46.800 --> 01:02:51.360
attractive. They're all sorts of abilities that have a spectrum, and each

01:02:51.360 --> 01:02:53.840
man falls somewhere within that spectrum.

01:02:53.840 --> 01:02:58.080
Someone who does not have the ability to run all of these

01:02:58.080 --> 01:03:03.440
affairs for himself can still be a very productive, very good, useful

01:03:03.680 --> 01:03:05.760
member of society.

01:03:05.760 --> 01:03:12.000
Right? You don't need someone who understands, you know, all these economic

01:03:12.000 --> 01:03:13.440
issues, right?

01:03:13.440 --> 01:03:17.920
Politics, and everything else that is supposedly demanded of a modern citizen

01:03:17.920 --> 01:03:23.120
in a modern capitalist democracy, maybe his job is just to make

01:03:23.120 --> 01:03:29.040
shoes. I don't care if the man making my shoes understands

01:03:30.080 --> 01:03:37.120
all of the theory behind how different systems of political representation

01:03:37.120 --> 01:03:39.520
inevitably lead to certain outcomes.

01:03:39.520 --> 01:03:40.880
I don't care if he knows any of that.

01:03:40.880 --> 01:03:42.880
In fact he's probably making better shoes if he knows none of

01:03:42.880 --> 01:03:47.600
it. Specialization is not a bad thing, right?

01:03:47.600 --> 01:03:51.040
This is all again not something that is exclusive to capitalism.

01:03:51.040 --> 01:03:53.680
This is something that has been around forever.

01:03:53.680 --> 01:03:56.800
You have had men specializing in different things as long as there

01:03:56.800 --> 01:03:58.320
have been men.

01:03:58.320 --> 01:04:01.120
Think of your last name, for many of you.

01:04:01.120 --> 01:04:05.440
Your last name probably traces back in many cases to the medieval

01:04:05.440 --> 01:04:08.400
era, and it's probably an occupational name.

01:04:08.800 --> 01:04:11.040
That's because your ancestors specialized.

01:04:11.040 --> 01:04:12.240
That's how far back that goes.

01:04:12.240 --> 01:04:14.480
Capitalism wasn't a thing yet.

01:04:14.480 --> 01:04:14.800
So

01:04:15.840 --> 01:04:19.520
yes, we should have some kind of system where those who can't

01:04:19.520 --> 01:04:23.600
manage their own affairs are still cared for by society.

01:04:23.600 --> 01:04:25.360
I think that is our Christian duty.

01:04:25.360 --> 01:04:28.720
Now, part of that is expelling foreigners who should not be here

01:04:28.880 --> 01:04:32.000
and are a burden on our system, but among our own people,

01:04:32.000 --> 01:04:34.560
those who are less capable, we should care for them.

01:04:34.560 --> 01:04:38.160
We have an affirmative moral duty to do that, and telling them

01:04:38.320 --> 01:04:41.040
good luck and then leaving them to freeze and starve is not

01:04:41.040 --> 01:04:43.440
permissible for Christians, certainly.

01:04:48.800 --> 01:04:50.640
A question about North Korea.

01:04:50.640 --> 01:04:54.640
I don't know that I'll necessarily Well, I'll touch on it shortly,

01:04:54.640 --> 01:04:55.120
I guess.

01:04:55.120 --> 01:04:58.320
I was gonna say maybe I'll wait for next week, but I'll

01:04:58.320 --> 01:05:00.160
touch on it real quick.

01:05:00.160 --> 01:05:03.520
So, brief thoughts on North Korea and the Kim dynasty and why

01:05:03.520 --> 01:05:06.960
you said it's more Christianizable than South Korea.

01:05:06.960 --> 01:05:14.400
So, the general reason that it's more Christianizable is that, generally speaking,

01:05:14.400 --> 01:05:17.760
Christianity has been imposed, top down.

01:05:17.760 --> 01:05:22.640
That's true of pretty much all ideologies, very few things historically, and

01:05:22.960 --> 01:05:27.440
I think I would probably even struggle to think of one example.

01:05:27.440 --> 01:05:32.080
Very few things have been bottom up, truly bottom up.

01:05:32.080 --> 01:05:34.000
And I know there are people who think, what about the French

01:05:34.000 --> 01:05:35.360
Revolution? No.

01:05:35.360 --> 01:05:39.040
The men leading the French Revolution were all scions of noble families.

01:05:39.440 --> 01:05:42.800
They were those who had money and idle time and things like

01:05:42.800 --> 01:05:44.960
that. These are the men who have the time to go and

01:05:44.960 --> 01:05:48.080
sit for 25 hours a week in a coffee shop, right?

01:05:48.080 --> 01:05:50.880
That's not working class, that's not bottom-up.

01:05:50.880 --> 01:05:52.640
It's a totally different thing.

01:05:52.640 --> 01:05:55.360
So, these things are imposed top-down.

01:05:55.360 --> 01:05:59.200
That's how most of the Christianization of Europe took place.

01:05:59.200 --> 01:06:02.400
The nobles were converted, the kings were converted, and then they made

01:06:02.400 --> 01:06:05.920
it the official religion of the land, and that's how it spread.

01:06:05.920 --> 01:06:06.880
The bottom-up thing

01:06:08.160 --> 01:06:10.880
did not really work anywhere.

01:06:10.880 --> 01:06:11.760
It doesn't work.

01:06:11.760 --> 01:06:14.160
That's just not how human beings function.

01:06:14.160 --> 01:06:16.480
Headship is a very real thing.

01:06:16.480 --> 01:06:18.400
So you can think of the very early church, right?

01:06:18.400 --> 01:06:22.240
The very early church did a little bit of the bottom-up thing,

01:06:22.240 --> 01:06:23.360
but not really.

01:06:23.360 --> 01:06:24.800
Read through the New Testament.

01:06:24.800 --> 01:06:28.080
How many times is it mentioned that you had wealthy individuals or

01:06:28.080 --> 01:06:30.640
the prominent men in a city who were involved?

01:06:30.640 --> 01:06:34.160
They went after those who had influence because those are the ones

01:06:34.160 --> 01:06:37.440
who move men, who move societies.

01:06:37.440 --> 01:06:41.760
That is the reality but because again, headship, hierarchy, these things are

01:06:41.760 --> 01:06:45.920
all real, and again, certain men have greater aptitude for certain things

01:06:45.920 --> 01:06:47.200
than others.

01:06:47.200 --> 01:06:52.560
So, with regard to South Korea versus North Korea, South Korea has

01:06:52.560 --> 01:06:59.680
basically adopted just full steam ahead the most pernicious form of Western

01:07:00.320 --> 01:07:03.120
Western democracy and capitalism.

01:07:03.120 --> 01:07:06.560
It is so decentralized with regard to many things.

01:07:06.560 --> 01:07:08.560
There's still centralization of power, obviously.

01:07:08.560 --> 01:07:10.240
Money is in the hands of a few.

01:07:10.240 --> 01:07:12.320
That always ends up being the case.

01:07:12.320 --> 01:07:15.440
But it is so decentralized with a lot regard to a lot

01:07:15.440 --> 01:07:19.360
of these things, and individualism has taken such firm root.

01:07:19.360 --> 01:07:21.520
You know, I'm my own person and I can believe what I

01:07:21.520 --> 01:07:23.200
want, and blah blah blah.

01:07:23.200 --> 01:07:28.960
That is much more difficult to change in any sort of way

01:07:29.680 --> 01:07:34.080
than is a society like North Korea that still has that hierarchy.

01:07:34.080 --> 01:07:39.920
If someone could get to the Kim dynasty and convert that man,

01:07:39.920 --> 01:07:43.760
whichever man happens to be in control in this hypothetical year, you

01:07:43.760 --> 01:07:47.840
could convert most of North Korea to be Christian in a generation

01:07:47.840 --> 01:07:48.800
or two.

01:07:48.960 --> 01:07:51.920
That would be very difficult to do with South Korea.

01:07:51.920 --> 01:07:58.960
You can manipulate democratic polities with mass media, but you're

01:07:58.960 --> 01:08:02.720
going to find it very difficult to get them to fundamentally change,

01:08:02.720 --> 01:08:07.600
and converting to Christianity is a fundamental change from either of those

01:08:07.600 --> 01:08:09.120
systems. So

01:08:10.480 --> 01:08:17.440
much more challenging somewhere like South Korea than somewhere like North Korea.

01:08:17.440 --> 01:08:20.560
And just the fact that, you know, South Koreans have basically given

01:08:20.560 --> 01:08:23.840
up having children and families and all that stuff and all the

01:08:23.840 --> 01:08:26.720
other lovely things that always seem to go along with capitalism and

01:08:26.720 --> 01:08:28.480
democracy. So I think So I think you can look at the

01:08:28.480 --> 01:08:31.600
fruits of the system as well, to hearken back to that earlier

01:08:31.600 --> 01:08:34.080
question. North Korea has its problems.

01:08:34.080 --> 01:08:36.240
I'm not going to say the system is perfect, obviously.

01:08:36.240 --> 01:08:37.920
It has many problems.

01:08:37.920 --> 01:08:40.400
But I think it is better off in some ways than South

01:08:40.400 --> 01:08:44.560
Korea and I think it could be turned into something actually good

01:08:44.880 --> 01:08:48.720
if someone could get to the man in power and make the

01:08:48.720 --> 01:08:51.280
Christian argument in a compelling way for him.

01:08:58.160 --> 01:09:00.480
Okay, the next question I noticed in the chat I may say

01:09:00.640 --> 01:09:03.520
for another time because it it's question about the American Revolution was

01:09:03.520 --> 01:09:05.280
it justified or not?

01:09:05.280 --> 01:09:06.160
That is complicated.

01:09:06.640 --> 01:09:08.720
But then the next part is how do you stop people from

01:09:08.720 --> 01:09:11.840
worshiping freedom and enlightenment liberalism and that is

01:09:12.960 --> 01:09:17.920
probably outside the scope of right now, but I will add that

01:09:17.920 --> 01:09:21.760
to my list of future questions.

01:09:27.680 --> 01:09:29.120
Question what is this?

01:09:29.120 --> 01:09:30.560
Twelve? Question twelve.

01:09:30.560 --> 01:09:34.240
Should we deal with Sodomites as Jesus dealt with the woman that

01:09:34.240 --> 01:09:37.440
was going to be stoned, as in stop all promotion that stuff

01:09:37.520 --> 01:09:41.840
and take the sin no more route rather than capital punishment?

01:09:41.840 --> 01:09:44.800
Is this like try to get me banned from you two night,

01:09:44.800 --> 01:09:47.840
I guess.

01:09:47.840 --> 01:09:53.520
That one is very clear in scripture, because there are two different

01:09:53.520 --> 01:09:57.120
categories of things that are called abomination in the Old Testament.

01:09:57.200 --> 01:10:00.800
There are things that are abomination in the words of Scripture to

01:10:00.800 --> 01:10:03.840
you, speaking to Old Testament Israel.

01:10:03.840 --> 01:10:05.520
So shellfish, right?

01:10:05.520 --> 01:10:06.640
Something like that.

01:10:06.640 --> 01:10:09.920
And there are things that are abominations to God.

01:10:09.920 --> 01:10:11.440
A thing that is an abomination to God

01:10:12.720 --> 01:10:17.040
is an unchanging violation of the moral law because the moral law

01:10:17.040 --> 01:10:20.960
flows from God's nature and God is unchanging.

01:10:20.960 --> 01:10:25.200
Sodomites are in the abomination to God category.

01:10:25.200 --> 01:10:31.200
And so that is always punishable by capital punishment.

01:10:31.200 --> 01:10:34.000
And that is something that is obvious from nature.

01:10:34.000 --> 01:10:38.400
God has written that into the conscience, the heart, the soul.

01:10:38.400 --> 01:10:41.360
It is obvious in every possible way.

01:10:41.360 --> 01:10:45.120
And so those who are engaged in that behavior are deliberately sinning

01:10:45.120 --> 01:10:47.200
against conscience and against God.

01:10:47.200 --> 01:10:48.560
So they know.

01:10:48.560 --> 01:10:49.200
There is.

01:10:49.200 --> 01:10:53.600
There's no need for them to be additionally warned because God has

01:10:53.600 --> 01:10:57.520
built that into creation itself.

01:10:57.520 --> 01:11:01.440
So and there's just the fact that the amount of harm caused

01:11:01.440 --> 01:11:06.720
to society if you take any other route is so unbelievably immense.

01:11:06.720 --> 01:11:11.760
I think if people knew more about so healthcare costs and various

01:11:11.760 --> 01:11:16.400
epidemiology and things like that, they would probably have different and sharper

01:11:16.400 --> 01:11:19.200
views with regard to this issue if they had any idea how

01:11:19.200 --> 01:11:22.000
truly awful it is.

01:11:22.000 --> 01:11:28.640
Probably don't read about that stuff if you have a weak stomach.

01:11:32.960 --> 01:11:36.080
Don't read about the history of San Francisco.

01:11:36.080 --> 01:11:38.480
Recent history of San Francisco.

01:11:41.360 --> 01:11:43.760
L See how many I don't know how many more questions I

01:11:43.760 --> 01:11:48.400
will necessarily do, but I get to a few more, I think.

01:11:48.400 --> 01:11:56.880
Question 13: Should we view the Vikings as great or honorable ancestors.

01:11:56.880 --> 01:12:02.240
So I think it's fine to look at the Vikings as brave,

01:12:02.240 --> 01:12:06.640
certainly, as great in that sense as being great men.

01:12:06.640 --> 01:12:09.120
Honorable might be a stretch.

01:12:09.120 --> 01:12:13.280
They were pretty nasty and they typically decided to raid the weak

01:12:13.280 --> 01:12:14.320
and the vulnerable.

01:12:14.320 --> 01:12:20.160
They went after monasteries, unsupervised women, right, things like that.

01:12:20.960 --> 01:12:22.800
Honorable might be a stretch.

01:12:22.800 --> 01:12:25.840
Were they honorable within their own frame with regard to their own

01:12:25.840 --> 01:12:26.880
people? Certainly.

01:12:26.880 --> 01:12:30.080
But were they honorable with regard to their European brothers?

01:12:30.080 --> 01:12:31.600
I don't think so.

01:12:31.600 --> 01:12:36.560
I think that Christianizing Scandinavia was certainly an immense improvement over their

01:12:36.560 --> 01:12:38.880
previous behavior.

01:12:38.880 --> 01:12:42.000
So you can look to them certainly as, you know, they were

01:12:42.000 --> 01:12:44.960
great men, they were strong, they cared about their own people, so

01:12:45.120 --> 01:12:46.560
they had benefits.

01:12:46.560 --> 01:12:51.280
They had positives in terms of who they were, what they did,

01:12:51.280 --> 01:12:53.280
but with very real drawbacks.

01:12:53.280 --> 01:12:56.800
And I think that's sort of a generally good approach to looking

01:12:56.800 --> 01:13:00.640
at all of our histories with regard to our ancestors, because they

01:13:00.640 --> 01:13:01.680
were people, right?

01:13:01.680 --> 01:13:06.000
They were real men, they had strengths and they had weaknesses.

01:13:06.000 --> 01:13:09.200
We can't just look at any particular ancestor and think, Oh, this

01:13:09.200 --> 01:13:12.800
person was absolutely because there's no person who was absolutely perfect except

01:13:12.800 --> 01:13:14.400
for Christ, right?

01:13:14.640 --> 01:13:18.000
Some were better than others, certainly some were better than others.

01:13:18.000 --> 01:13:21.920
And I think that strength is important because they were certainly doing

01:13:21.920 --> 01:13:25.360
what is consonant with God's design for men, right?

01:13:25.360 --> 01:13:28.320
God's design for men is to be strong, to be protectors, to

01:13:28.320 --> 01:13:31.360
care for their own people, to provide for their own people.

01:13:31.360 --> 01:13:36.720
But there are morally permissible and morally impermissible ways to do that.

01:13:36.720 --> 01:13:39.120
Ransacking convents and

01:13:40.240 --> 01:13:44.400
we'll say abusing all of the nuns is not a morally permissible

01:13:44.400 --> 01:13:46.640
way to provide for your family.

01:13:46.640 --> 01:13:51.200
So the Vikings certainly deserve to be condemned for that And that's

01:13:51.360 --> 01:13:53.280
you know, that's written on the heart of man, right?

01:13:53.280 --> 01:13:55.680
This is not something that you need to have revealed to you

01:13:55.680 --> 01:13:58.240
by God and his word to know this is morally wrong and

01:13:58.240 --> 01:13:59.360
you shouldn't do it.

01:13:59.360 --> 01:14:02.880
Which is why we can condemn what happens all over the third

01:14:02.880 --> 01:14:07.040
world today with regard to those sorts of crimes, it doesn't matter

01:14:07.040 --> 01:14:09.760
if they have the scriptures, it doesn't matter if they've been told

01:14:09.760 --> 01:14:13.120
God says you cannot, it's written on their heart.

01:14:13.120 --> 01:14:16.160
And if their heart is so blackened and their conscience so Conscience

01:14:16.240 --> 01:14:19.280
so seared, that's still sin.

01:14:19.280 --> 01:14:23.200
It's concupiscence, it's still sin, it's a desire to sin, it is

01:14:23.200 --> 01:14:26.800
a violation of God's moral law and the conscience that He gave

01:14:26.800 --> 01:14:29.840
them, even if they have so seared that conscience by their own

01:14:29.840 --> 01:14:34.000
wickedness, including generational wickedness, that they can no longer tell right from

01:14:34.000 --> 01:14:38.960
wrong. You know, those who are mentally retarded, who have severe intellectual

01:14:38.960 --> 01:14:44.320
deficits, should not get off the hook when they commit murder and

01:14:44.320 --> 01:14:46.480
other heinous crimes, they should still be punished.

01:14:46.480 --> 01:14:48.720
That's not again out of jail free card.

01:14:48.720 --> 01:14:52.960
So we can look to Vikings and similar groups for their positive

01:14:52.960 --> 01:14:57.360
aspects while still recognizing that they did things that we should not

01:14:57.360 --> 01:15:00.240
do. They did things that were morally impermissible.

01:15:22.960 --> 01:15:26.960
I have a part two out of two of the earlier question

01:15:27.280 --> 01:15:31.840
asking about the destruction of a civilization, the Indus Valley, many years

01:15:31.840 --> 01:15:33.120
ago in this case.

01:15:33.200 --> 01:15:36.160
But the question essentially is, could God have chosen to end them

01:15:36.240 --> 01:15:39.840
to save them from being afflicted by wicked races that would come

01:15:39.840 --> 01:15:41.040
to those regions later?

01:15:41.040 --> 01:15:44.400
And so I guess sort of extrapolating that out to the larger

01:15:44.400 --> 01:15:45.200
question would be

01:15:46.080 --> 01:15:52.000
does God sometimes destroy a people, so with a natural disaster, in

01:15:52.000 --> 01:15:56.560
order to spare them a greater affliction in the future?

01:15:56.560 --> 01:16:01.600
And I don't think that we necessarily have an answer for that.

01:16:01.600 --> 01:16:05.680
I don't think that God gives us an answer in Scripture, and

01:16:05.680 --> 01:16:09.040
I could certainly mount a moral argument one way or the other,

01:16:09.040 --> 01:16:12.400
right, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the

01:16:12.400 --> 01:16:14.240
name of the Lord.

01:16:14.240 --> 01:16:17.520
And God is certainly the author of life.

01:16:17.520 --> 01:16:19.520
He holds your life in his hands.

01:16:19.520 --> 01:16:21.600
And if you want to think of that in sort of the

01:16:21.920 --> 01:16:25.200
you know the fates holding the threads, God's the one holding those

01:16:25.200 --> 01:16:26.080
threads.

01:16:27.120 --> 01:16:30.880
He's permitted to end your life whenever he chooses to do so,

01:16:30.880 --> 01:16:33.840
or to prolong it as long as he wants.

01:16:33.840 --> 01:16:37.760
And as all are sinners, all are subject to death, and so

01:16:37.760 --> 01:16:40.400
you can't say God's in the wrong for ending a particular life

01:16:40.400 --> 01:16:40.800
at a particular

01:16:41.680 --> 01:16:45.280
time. So could he do that, morally speaking, right?

01:16:45.280 --> 01:16:49.040
Could he do that to spare some greater wickedness in the future?

01:16:49.040 --> 01:16:51.600
Uh yes, absolutely he could do that.

01:16:51.600 --> 01:16:52.720
Does he do it?

01:16:52.800 --> 01:16:54.160
I don't know.

01:16:54.160 --> 01:16:56.400
Because that would be to be God.

01:16:56.400 --> 01:16:58.320
It would be to know the future, right?

01:16:58.640 --> 01:17:02.480
In you can speculate any sort of way there.

01:17:02.480 --> 01:17:07.040
You know, are you spared from some truly heinous treatment in the

01:17:07.040 --> 01:17:10.400
future because you happen to have an aneurysm six hours before it

01:17:10.400 --> 01:17:13.520
happens? God could certainly do that.

01:17:13.520 --> 01:17:15.920
So all of the elect will certainly be saved.

01:17:15.920 --> 01:17:17.520
Scripture's abundantly clear on that.

01:17:18.160 --> 01:17:21.360
Could God use that as a means to ensure that

01:17:22.240 --> 01:17:26.800
Sure. I think that's probably somewhat in the same vein as God

01:17:26.960 --> 01:17:32.960
saying that the end times, the tribulation, the Truly horrible parts of

01:17:32.960 --> 01:17:37.200
the end times will be cut short, so that the elect will

01:17:37.200 --> 01:17:39.280
be saved for the sake of the elect.

01:17:39.280 --> 01:17:41.680
I think that's kind of in the same vein.

01:17:41.680 --> 01:17:45.040
So possible, but I can't say that God has done it or

01:17:45.440 --> 01:17:46.320
God does do it.

01:17:46.320 --> 01:17:48.800
I just don't have that knowledge.

01:17:48.800 --> 01:17:50.080
God has not given me that knowledge.

01:17:50.080 --> 01:17:52.000
He hasn't revealed revealed it in his word.

01:17:52.000 --> 01:17:57.120
It would be speculation.

01:18:03.040 --> 01:18:05.040
Someone asked about gender roles.

01:18:05.040 --> 01:18:07.040
I just want to let you know that I will add that

01:18:07.040 --> 01:18:09.040
to my my list.

01:18:09.040 --> 01:18:11.920
I don't know that I'll get to it right now, but I

01:18:11.920 --> 01:18:15.840
will add it to my future topic list.

01:18:15.840 --> 01:18:20.960
Hopefully get to it soon since that list is indeed growing.

01:18:30.720 --> 01:18:35.840
Get to at least one more question here, I think.

01:18:39.840 --> 01:18:42.160
I have some things I have to do tomorrow, so I'm not

01:18:42.160 --> 01:18:44.240
going to run too late and I want to get those coins

01:18:44.240 --> 01:18:46.720
and things finished so I can mail those out.

01:18:46.720 --> 01:18:48.720
So question 14.

01:18:48.720 --> 01:18:50.880
You mentioned a lot in your posts when we win, this is

01:18:50.880 --> 01:18:52.000
a question from X.

01:18:52.000 --> 01:18:55.200
Is there any group or activity I could do to help us

01:18:55.200 --> 01:18:59.120
win? And so that's going to depend on where you are in

01:18:59.120 --> 01:19:02.960
the country, your free time to some degree things like that.

01:19:02.960 --> 01:19:06.320
I have mentioned that Patriot Front, they're doing good work.

01:19:06.320 --> 01:19:07.040
I believe that.

01:19:07.040 --> 01:19:08.880
I attended their national convention.

01:19:08.880 --> 01:19:10.400
I've spoken with many of them.

01:19:10.400 --> 01:19:11.360
They're doing good work.

01:19:11.360 --> 01:19:14.480
If they're in your area, and they probably are, that's a good

01:19:14.480 --> 01:19:18.400
option. There are other regional groups in many parts of the country,

01:19:18.400 --> 01:19:21.520
so you just have to look at which guys are doing good

01:19:21.520 --> 01:19:24.880
things in your area and partly exercise your judgment, right?

01:19:25.120 --> 01:19:30.960
There are groups that are probably less wise to join, but there

01:19:30.960 --> 01:19:32.160
are good groups out there.

01:19:32.160 --> 01:19:34.800
Is there some level of risk in all of this?

01:19:34.800 --> 01:19:35.920
Of course.

01:19:35.920 --> 01:19:37.840
And there's no avoiding that.

01:19:37.840 --> 01:19:39.200
Let's just be completely frank.

01:19:39.200 --> 01:19:41.040
We're in the middle of a war, right?

01:19:41.040 --> 01:19:44.640
It doesn't feel like it in the same way that if you're

01:19:44.560 --> 01:19:48.320
in a trench being shot at does, but it's no less life

01:19:48.320 --> 01:19:49.440
and death.

01:19:49.440 --> 01:19:54.160
And so taking on some risk in order to advance these sort

01:19:54.160 --> 01:19:58.240
of things, is going to be necessary for many, if not for

01:19:58.240 --> 01:19:59.680
all of us, right?

01:19:59.680 --> 01:20:02.720
I'm taking some risk doing this, you know, this is my face.

01:20:02.720 --> 01:20:06.480
I'm answering questions that the world doesn't want answered.

01:20:06.480 --> 01:20:09.520
I'm saying things people uh particularly people on the other side of

01:20:09.520 --> 01:20:11.760
the aisle, as it were, it's not aisle, it's the other side

01:20:11.760 --> 01:20:14.000
of the battlefield, don't want to hear.

01:20:14.000 --> 01:20:17.840
I'm saying things that people send me death threats for saying it.

01:20:17.840 --> 01:20:20.080
There's a level of risk involved in this.

01:20:20.080 --> 01:20:22.240
There's going to be a level of risk involved in all of

01:20:22.240 --> 01:20:22.960
this, so

01:20:24.400 --> 01:20:25.680
Be wise, still.

01:20:25.680 --> 01:20:27.200
I'm not saying be reckless.

01:20:27.200 --> 01:20:29.600
Don't go out there and do something insane, certainly.

01:20:29.600 --> 01:20:32.960
But there are groups out there that are making positive change they

01:20:33.120 --> 01:20:38.160
are raising the level of consciousness, consciousness of these issues, which is

01:20:38.160 --> 01:20:38.880
very important.

01:20:38.880 --> 01:20:41.520
You need to get people to actually think about these things, recognize

01:20:41.520 --> 01:20:45.120
they're ongoing, recognize the reality of these problems.

01:20:45.120 --> 01:20:46.480
It's very important.

01:20:46.480 --> 01:20:48.480
And there are groups doing that.

01:20:48.480 --> 01:20:53.520
So do we currently have an overarching group, like you know, a

01:20:53.520 --> 01:20:57.200
main group that is the one running everything?

01:20:57.200 --> 01:21:02.080
No, we don't have a national at risk of being repetitive, a

01:21:02.080 --> 01:21:07.600
national nationalist party, not a real formal one with any real power

01:21:07.600 --> 01:21:08.720
at this point.

01:21:08.720 --> 01:21:10.240
We're just not there yet.

01:21:10.240 --> 01:21:13.200
But there are certainly constructive things that you can be doing, groups

01:21:13.200 --> 01:21:17.280
you can join, you can start forming those networks, those relationships, and

01:21:17.520 --> 01:21:20.320
depending how things go in the future, maybe they're useful one way,

01:21:20.320 --> 01:21:21.360
maybe they're useful another way.

01:21:21.360 --> 01:21:24.000
Just sort of depends on how things play out.

01:21:24.000 --> 01:21:26.400
Definitely join one of those groups.

01:21:26.400 --> 01:21:30.240
It's good as particularly as a man just to have that brotherhood.

01:21:30.240 --> 01:21:31.920
That's something men need.

01:21:31.920 --> 01:21:33.920
Men's groups are important.

01:21:33.920 --> 01:21:39.280
Men's organizations, societies, and many of those were shuttered in the last

01:21:39.280 --> 01:21:40.800
hundred years.

01:21:40.800 --> 01:21:42.720
It is not good that

01:21:43.680 --> 01:21:48.720
probably Gen X, Millennial, Z, this really the groups that really it's

01:21:48.720 --> 01:21:52.880
been most affected, are just not joining organizations of any kind.

01:21:52.880 --> 01:21:54.560
That's not natural for human beings.

01:21:54.560 --> 01:21:55.760
It's not a good thing.

01:21:55.760 --> 01:21:58.800
You need that camaraderie, you need that brotherhood.

01:21:58.800 --> 01:22:03.680
So find a group you can join and you know be active

01:22:03.680 --> 01:22:04.160
in that group.

01:22:04.160 --> 01:22:06.320
There's also the fact that of course you can be active in

01:22:06.320 --> 01:22:08.720
your church and you can be active in your local community.

01:22:08.720 --> 01:22:11.520
You should know your neighbors, you should know their names, you should

01:22:11.520 --> 01:22:13.520
know some stuff about them.

01:22:13.520 --> 01:22:15.040
Be there to help them.

01:22:15.040 --> 01:22:16.720
That's also part of this.

01:22:16.720 --> 01:22:21.200
Part of being a Christian and part of being a nationalist is

01:22:21.200 --> 01:22:22.480
caring for your own people.

01:22:22.480 --> 01:22:23.760
And that starts locally.

01:22:23.760 --> 01:22:24.960
That starts with your neighbor.

01:22:24.960 --> 01:22:27.840
So if your neighbor needs help putting up a chicken coop, whatever

01:22:27.840 --> 01:22:30.560
it happens to be, it's not a mercenary example.

01:22:30.560 --> 01:22:31.920
My chicken coop's fine.

01:22:31.920 --> 01:22:34.160
But if your neighbor needs help with that stuff, by all means

01:22:34.240 --> 01:22:42.000
be there for him.

01:22:42.000 --> 01:22:43.200
I think that

01:22:44.880 --> 01:22:46.160
may be it

01:22:47.120 --> 01:22:48.880
for this week.

01:22:48.880 --> 01:22:51.440
I see there's another question about infant baptism.

01:22:51.440 --> 01:22:53.280
I would refer you to the episode.

01:22:53.280 --> 01:22:54.160
This is from X.

01:22:54.160 --> 01:22:56.000
I would refer you to the episode on infant baptism.

01:22:57.520 --> 01:23:01.040
Episode on baptism, of course, dealing with infant baptism.

01:23:01.040 --> 01:23:06.080
And there's also from the Book of Concord Luther has an excellent

01:23:06.080 --> 01:23:07.440
section on infant baptism.

01:23:07.440 --> 01:23:09.520
I'll link that in the show notes as well.

01:23:09.520 --> 01:23:14.160
I'll link that under the previous question that was about baptism and

01:23:14.160 --> 01:23:17.360
infants and things like that.

01:23:17.360 --> 01:23:20.080
So I very highly recommend I recommend everyone read that.

01:23:20.080 --> 01:23:21.520
It's very well written.

01:23:21.520 --> 01:23:24.480
You will certainly get something out of reading it, even if you

01:23:24.480 --> 01:23:26.320
ultimately don't agree with Luther.

01:23:26.320 --> 01:23:29.520
Luther is at the very least enjoyable to read, which is more

01:23:29.520 --> 01:23:33.840
than can be said for certainly some theologians.

01:23:34.080 --> 01:23:36.320
I know there are more questions in the chat, but I think

01:23:36.320 --> 01:23:37.600
I am going to call it here tonight.

01:23:37.600 --> 01:23:41.680
I will go through and copy those before I close this out.

01:23:41.680 --> 01:23:44.160
Assuming OBS is cooperative.

01:23:44.160 --> 01:23:47.280
At any rate, thank you for those who submitted questions and for

01:23:47.280 --> 01:23:49.200
those who participated in the chat.

01:23:49.200 --> 01:23:52.240
I do try to get to all the questions at some point.

01:23:52.240 --> 01:23:56.960
I have an ongoing list and growing list as it were, for

01:23:56.960 --> 01:23:58.720
future topics or questions.

01:23:58.720 --> 01:24:00.080
That's on the forum.

01:24:00.080 --> 01:24:04.240
You can find that in the information for the stream and in

01:24:04.240 --> 01:24:05.520
the show notes.

01:24:05.520 --> 01:24:08.880
The show notes and the audio only feed and all that sort

01:24:08.880 --> 01:24:12.400
of stuff is at podcast.coreyjmoller.com.

01:24:12.400 --> 01:24:15.200
I realize it's probably helpful if I give you the actual website

01:24:15.200 --> 01:24:16.560
so you can find that.

01:24:16.560 --> 01:24:19.360
So if you want audio only, that's there.

01:24:19.360 --> 01:24:22.480
It is a little higher quality audio than the stream.

01:24:22.480 --> 01:24:24.800
So for those who don't care about video, you can get a

01:24:24.800 --> 01:24:26.000
little better audio.

01:24:26.000 --> 01:24:28.480
But again, thank you for submitting those questions.

01:24:28.480 --> 01:24:30.800
I like getting the opportunity to do this every week.

01:24:30.800 --> 01:24:34.000
I know that many of you like the opportunity to ask these

01:24:34.000 --> 01:24:37.360
questions, get some clarification on things that we went over in Stone

01:24:37.360 --> 01:24:39.920
Choir, post on X, whatever it happens to be.

01:24:39.920 --> 01:24:43.200
And I will continue doing these for the foreseeable future.

01:24:43.200 --> 01:24:45.120
So feel free to submit questions.

01:24:45.120 --> 01:24:49.920
The primary method is, and the preferable method as well, is the

01:24:49.920 --> 01:24:53.600
forum, but you can submit those via telegram or the chat.

01:24:53.600 --> 01:24:55.600
I do try to aggregate those.

01:24:55.600 --> 01:24:59.600
Again, if I miss your question, it won't be in the list.

01:24:59.600 --> 01:25:01.840
Get it to me again.

01:25:01.840 --> 01:25:06.000
So think that's it for this week, and it is Friday evening,

01:25:06.000 --> 01:25:08.800
so I hope you all have a rest of your weekend, the

01:25:08.800 --> 01:25:10.880
balance of your weekend, a good weekend.

01:25:10.880 --> 01:25:15.280
Go to church on Sunday, and I will see you next week.

01:25:15.280 --> 01:25:19.040
Until then, God bless.