Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast.
I am Cory J.
Molly. And I'm still woe.
Today
Stone Choir will in all likelihood be our final episode.
Rather than simply disappearing, we wanted to explain why we wrap things
up
and why we're not doing any more particularly since when we last
left you at the end of the Septuagint series we said we
were gonna keep going.
Things have changed on the world since then.
The details don't matter.
But
we, as a globe, are now in the after portion of one
of those before and after inflection points in human history and getting
into the details is irrelevant.
But when things change in the environment, as we discussed in the
normalcy bias episode.
If you continue on as though nothing has changed, you are suddenly
putting yourself in a worse position than you were doing exactly the
same thing before things changed And so although we had intended on
continuing after my surgery and a few other things that happened, our
departure has nothing to do with personal circumstances.
It became clear to me, and I talked to Corey and we
agreed that what we had set out to do with Stone Choir
from the beginning for years before we even began doing this, when
we had talked about it, we have effectively accomplished those goals.
And one of our explicit non-goals was to be content producers that
sit here every week and talk in your ear to rattle off
whatever the latest thing is and give you our hot takes.
Despite appearances to some, that is not what we intended.
And I don't think it's ever what we did.
I think that the reason that the library we have produced has
stood the test of time for the past three years is that
as new people discover us, which is most of you, you know,
initially we had no listeners.
When we began, it was just a few friends from a private
group chat, and word spread and it quickly spread beyond anybody that
we knew.
And yet the difference between the size of our audience in year
one, when we did, frankly, some of the weightiest episodes in year
three when we were wrapping things up without really realizing it.
We hit some of the most important things when almost no one
was listening, because we knew that we were building a library that
people would refer back to in the future.
And And so every time we have sat down to record, one
of the prominent things on our minds has been, is this worth
your time listening to?
To hear us talk for a couple hours?
Is it worth taking up your time?
Is it something that is going to stand the test of time?
Is it something that will actually pay dividends years in the future
versus just being something that's momentarily interesting?
And I think that overwhelmingly we have succeeded in building a library
of one hundred and seven episodes that do precisely that.
What that means, however, is that there's really a finite set of
things about which you can say that.
There's always stuff to talk about.
And while we're not vanishing from the planet, we're going to keep
posting and probably appearing elsewhere and doing other things.
The purpose of Stone Choir we now believe has been fulfilled.
You can look back at the hundred and seven episodes in the
library and
my belief when I began to come to the realization I think
we were finished a month or so ago was that basically you
could say Stonequire talks about this for pretty much anything that came
across the transom, any new event on any particular day, there's probably
gonna be an episode that would address some fundamental facet that would
help anyone get from zero to having a good grasp of the
situation unfolding in front of them.
And so as that started to dawn on me, I applied that
heuristic to just whatever popped up any given day.
And not once in the past few weeks has that statement failed
to be true.
Every time anything interesting came up, not once have I ever thought
to myself, we need to do an episode to address some underlying
aspect of this.
In every case, either it was meaningless because it was just sort
of passing a fluvia, or we'd already dealt with it.
And it's great to see so many people that we don't even
know saying elsewhere online, yes, Tokware talks about this.
Here's the episode link.
For us, that is mission accomplished.
The mission was never to have a bunch of people listening to
us and thinking anything about us.
The purpose was to straighten people out about some things that were
very important.
And looking back, we believe that we have succeeded in doing that.
So I say this will probably be last episode because we're not
shutting anything down.
My microphone's gonna stay where it is, the feed's gonna stay where
it is and website's gonna stay up.
Nothing's going to change except that we don't plan on releasing another
episode. Simple simply because we don't believe that there's anything else that's
going to come up in the future that would rise to the
level of, yeah, we need to expand the library.
It's possible.
There may be something that we have not foreseen in the future.
I don't think there are any subjects that are obvious today.
If we thought of anything that should have been addressed, we would
keep going to address it.
We've done that.
I'd give it a zero point zero five percent chance that there's
some unforeseen circumstance that would both
require our input and we would be around to possibly say anything.
If that happens, then we will pop back up.
So I would recommend to you don't delete your subscription.
Like it's free, it doesn't cost anybody anything for you to say
subscribed. Maybe two, three years from now, there will be an emergency
episode of Stone Choir.
If we ever pop up again, it's gonna be for a really
good reason and it's probably gonna be an interesting episode.
Couldn't begin to tell you what that might be because if I
knew we would just do it.
The whole point has been to try to get ahead of things.
But stay subscribed if you wish, so that you can hear whatever
happens on this channel in the future.
At the same time don't expect anything.
So I'd like to say thank you to everyone who has shared
all of our episodes over the last three years.
Thank you everyone, especially those who have supported us financially.
Some of you incredibly generously.
And as we've said before, any giving to a stranger is always
generous. But some of you have given quite a lot, far more
than I would ever even hope to have
never asked for it.
In particular I want to mention because some of you also give
on a recurring basis.
And if what you had in mind with those recurring donations was
to encourage us to continue, I would suggest you need to go
to the donations website and shut that off because we're not gonna
be showing up anymore.
So we're not gonna deliver on your hope or you know, any
perceived promise of future performance.
Please stop giving.
On the On the other hand, we're gonna leave the donation website
up along with the rest for now because people will be discovering
us for years and if somebody wants to say thank you, far
be it for me to say I'm too important to accept a
gift from a stranger.
You know, if circumstances were to change for us such that we
no longer needed any such thing, yeah, we would change things.
But for the time being, we have only accepted what has been
offered freely because it really did matter to us personally.
Keep sharing episodes, keep saying, Hey, Stonequare talks about this.
Here you go.
Keep introducing new people to the podcast.
I realized a month or so ago, one of my only reasons
remaining for doing the show was because people don't understand the concept
of a defunct podcast.
Why would you go listen to some show that doesn't exist anymore?
It's not really done because almost no one has ever tried to
do what we have tried to do with the catalog of episodes.
So I thought that, you know, may we keep going just so
people would have a reason to keep sharing, but realize that's that
just turns us into content producers and that's not sincere or worthwhile
your time or our time or our sanity.
I have poured everything that I have into this, to everything that
I've been able to give I have given.
If I had anything left, I would give that to if we
had anything more to say, we would certainly say it, even if
it was at the cost of not having anything to give, I
would go negative if I haven't already to to do that because
it's always been worth it to us.
But But at this point, the final message that we have for
you from Stone Choir is that the time for talking is over.
There is no new information that's going to change anything for anyone.
And this is the hardest lesson for the moderately intelligent man to
process, because just like Paul talking about the guy sitting around in
the Areopagus, talking about whatever came by day by day.
It was their thing.
They would sit there and just shoot the breeze.
And on one hand, that's fine and that's good.
And it's a wonderful blessing to sit around with friends and talk
about things around a campfire with some beer.
That's wonderful.
We're not saying stop doing that.
We're not saying that any of our other friends who have podcasts
and shows that produce stuff daily should shut up like we are.
When our friends do it, we're saying it's okay.
But for us in particular, fleshing out what is effectively a munitions
factory that we have been equipping you for future circumstances that we
have foreseen, some of you have foreseen some of them.
The rest are gonna come probably sooner rather than later.
We have wanted you to be equipped such that when any situation
arises, you as a Christian man are going to be able to
face it boldly, faithfully, with clarity about what you need to do,
not being confused, not being frightened, not having any no bearing on
what is happening in front of you.
Our goal is to make sure that you hit those situations and
you know what to do.
We wanted this to be a form of training.
And so for us to go away and to say that we're
done training, we're done talking is
to our enemies and to our haters going to seem like we're
quitting, like we're giving up when the reality is nothing could be
further from the truth.
Our silence is a testimony to the fact that we know that
we have won.
We have set out to accomplish something that has now been accomplished.
Such that if you were to go back and re-listen to the
three years of episodes, which I do highly recommend, especially if you
haven't done it before, if you're Jonesing for more stone choir, the
best thing to do is listen to the episodes again.
They're so dense you will find stuff that you didn't catch the
first time, or even the second time.
What's funny is that some of the things that we said in
the first year that almost nobody else was saying, stuff that seemed
edgy and controversial.
Today it's becoming normal.
So for us, the victory condition of what we set out to
do is irrelevance.
We set out from the beginning to become irrelevant because rather than
simply having two guys shouting in the wilderness with nobody listening, if
somebody does come along, they're gonna hear two guys seemingly crazy saying
things that nobody likes to hear, that doesn't sound like anybody else,
that's not convenient.
Why are they talking about this?
This is the opposite of what I've been told.
Three years on, a lot of those things everybody's saying it.
My say everybody, I don't mean the majority, but I mean it
is sufficiently common knowledge that there's nothing more for us to do
because you have picked up the mantle.
You have taken these ideas, whether you got them from us or
somewhere else, we've tried to help flesh them out, to give a
really good form of the argument.
They can be taken to a normal man and say, look, here
you go.
You thought one thing, it's actually another.
Straighten up.
Let's be serious about this and be honest and be faithful to
God. And And do what's right and say what's true.
And three years on, the stuff that we were talking about the
first year is now mainstream battles at the highest level of politics.
Stuff that was totally fringe when we began.
Another year it's gonna be totally obsolete.
But that means that we don't have to be the guys saying
it anymore, which was always the goal.
We never wanted to do it in the first place.
We only did it because we realized that the men who came
before us who had the aptitude and had the platforms and had
the knowledge to say this stuff turned out to be cowards.
They turned out not to be the guys who are gonna show
up and do it.
So Corey and I chose to be the first through the door
knowing that we wouldn't survive the process.
And that's fine.
And many of you have piled through behind us and stepped over
our bodies and continued to prosecute the fight in a way that
is succeeding.
And that was the entire point.
Not to be known or to be remembered, but to be so
mundane that in a few more years, if someone does listen to
the catalog, we're gonna sound like a couple of boomer moderates.
I want to be obsolete.
I want people to go further than us to the point that
what we have said seems totally generic.
That's what winning looks like.
That's what persuasion looks like.
You don't get to be special anymore.
And at this point, I don't think there's really anything special about
us doing a bunch of new takes.
You guys are doing a great job.
I love to see it.
And crucially, as I said, I don't think that for new material,
for new fights, new controversies, there's nothing else.
And that's the hard part of this.
That's the last lesson in this brief episode.
There's no new information that's going to change anything.
You have what you need to know.
Others can be handed what they need to know to get up
to speed quickly.
What is going to come in the future is not going to
be dictated by guys sitting around and talking.
It's going to be dictated by men acting in a manner that
is faithful to God, faithful to their duties, that is fearless, that
is dedicated to the truth at all costs.
And that's what it's going to take for us to prevail in
the end.
And God is with us.
And we see that now in the turn of the tide in
events. Things have changed in a way that frankly I couldn't have
hoped for.
But it's gonna be ugly and it's gonna be hard, and there's
going to be a high cost for many more men than just
us, in far more serious ways and people saying mean things on
the internet.
We have done everything that we can.
And now it's up to God, and it's up to you.
You have everything that we can possibly give you, and from here
on out, Stone Choir is legacy.
What is done with it is going to be what you see
fit to do with it.
We will not be here anymore to tell you what to do
or how to do it or how to think.
You're gonna have to figure it out on your own.
And by saying that the training is over and that the library
is closed, we're saying you have everything that you need.
You are ready.
Even if you don't know it yet, even if you don't feel
like it.
That's how training works.
You get to the end, and the guy who is training you
says, okay, you're ready for the real thing.
And you don't feel like it usually.
You're not going to feel like you have everything you need.
You do.
If we can tell you one last thing as we go silent,
that is it.
We are ready for the next steps.
We have been equipped, and what is left is the doing.
So be faithful to God in all things, serve him in all
things, and don't be afraid.
There's always a temptation in this sort of episode to try to
make things exhaustive, and instead, much like what we are doing with
closing out Stone Choir, although again there could be a potential episode
in the future if we deem it necessary, something needs to be
addressed. Similar to what we are doing with the podcast, I will
keep things brief with my comments.
But as I'm sitting here in my study, I have two of
my bookshelves in this room.
Most of them are down the hall, another room, but I have
two bookshelves here.
And on those shelves are a number of books.
I quite frankly don't know how many I've been going through and
cataloguing my books recently, but I'm nowhere near done, so I I
don't know how many volumes.
But just looking over the names of the authors as I'm sitting
here and as well as speaking.
Maybe ten of the books were were written by men who are
still alive.
That may be an overestimate, but it seems to me that it's
probably about right.
It seems about ten out of far more than ten volumes.
But it doesn't really matter that those men are no longer around
producing content, as one might call it.
Many of the volumes are from Martin Luther.
I have about an entire shelf of his works in here.
Most of my volumes from Luther are again down the hall in
another room, but I have maybe twenty volumes in here from Luther,
maybe a little more than that.
What Martin Luther produced for the church is still bearing fruit today.
Martin Luther has been gone for centuries.
He is no longer producing sermons, he's no longer writing books, he's
certainly not producing podcast episodes.
Although perhaps he would have, if he had been around at that
time, in our day and age, perhaps he would have done such
a thing
But his works are still useful and they're still producing fruit.
And that's sort of the way that we want you to look
at Stone Choir, at least for the foreseeable future.
What we set about to do, I fully agree with Wo, we
accomplished. Because our goal was to answer the fundamental questions, to answer
things no one else even knew needed to be answered.
To address the actual core problems, to build the foundation and the
framework for not necessarily other men in all cases, but some other
men and certainly other endeavors to take and build the future.
And again we accomplished that.
Now in the immediate aftermath of this episode's release, as, undoubtedly, many
of you already know and as well commented on in his remarks,
the enemies, the opponents will believe that they've won some sort of
grand victory.
But of course some of the demons believe the same thing at
Calvary. And they haven't won.
They've suffered a fatal wound and they don't know it yet.
That is what we set about to do, and that is what
we accomplished, and that is why we don't feel any need to
release future episodes.
This was never going to be a matter of churning out content.
If we were churning out content, then we went about it the
entirely wrong way.
We didn't address the issues that attracted the most attention.
We didn't do it in a showy way.
We didn't do it in a way that was going to draw
in listeners and advertisers and money and all of these other things
that are so very important to other shows.
And I'm not saying that's always wrong because of course many of
those men make their living off of their content, and so they
have to obviously pay the bills, feed their family.
I'm not condemning that.
But that was never what we set about to do, because it's
not the point of Stone Choir.
The point of Stone Choir is the creation of an armory or
munitions factory as Woe said.
And that is what we have given you, and that will continue
to function.
Long after we are no longer making episodes, even if we were
gone and were no longer capable of making new episodes, it would
continue to function because it will still be out there.
The website will still be up.
I will have an archive ready for those who want to download
the full thing, there's already an archive of most of the episodes,
just not the full one yet.
And so you can pass those around, you can send people to
the website.
All of the materials will still be available.
Now for my part, and Woe can choose what he wants to
do, and he can choose how he wants to tell you he's
going to do it.
But for my part, I'm not going anywhere.
Because I've sort of already thrown the die, I've already cast the
dice as it were.
And
I'm in this to the end, whether it is a sweet end
or a bitter end.
That is the reality of it.
What we're doing here is we're closing out specifically Stone Choir.
Because Stone Choir has achieved its goal.
And as Wo said, there is a transition now into other things.
Because the game board has changed.
There are different considerations, the players are moving, and this is no
longer what needs to be done, in part because we have already
accomplished the goal, but in part because to some degree the time
for talking is drawing to a close.
That's not to say that the other podcasts and things need to
end and that there's no space for these, because certainly amongst ourselves
you have to continue talking, it's part of human existence.
But
the time for action is coming.
It is a different thing.
Now, what we have done with Stone Choir was not exclusively, say,
religious or theological or doctrinal or political or any of those things.
It was a combination of those and more.
But what is coming in the years ahead is certainly political.
It is a different beast.
It is something that needs to be addressed in a different way.
We have given the foundation that is necessary to ensure that those
things are done in accordance with God's will, God's desires, what Christian
men must do.
But what needs to be done on that field, what needs to
be done by men in that battle is different from what we
did with Stone Choir.
Stone Choir is a necessary part of it.
It is a foundational part of that future.
But it is not that future.
Our goal was never to create a church.
I know some have asked us to do that, and we will
not. That's not to say that we won't help others when they
are building those sorts of things.
Certainly we intend to do that.
But we were never going to build a church.
We have been very clear.
Neither one of us is a pastor.
I have zero intention of her being a pastor.
I've joked before that God would have to send a giant fish,
and now that I live in landlock, Tennessee, perhaps that's a little
more challenging than it would have been in California.
We're also not a political movement.
That was never our goal with Stone Choir.
It's not to say that we won't take part in coming political
movements. For my part I certainly intend to do so, and I
already have begun to do so.
But Stone Choir set out to achieve certain discreet goals.
We knew exactly what we wanted to do when we started, before
we started, as Will mentioned, because we put this off for years
at the beginning.
We achieved those goals.
And in achieving those goals, it would be wrong for us to
continue implying that there is more that needs to be said on
this front, because that simply gives men a reason, an excuse to
continue to delay instead of acting.
And that is not what we want, because that would be wicked,
and so we will not take part in that.
If there is by some small chance, I largely agree with Wo's
assessment on the likelihood of that.
If there is by There is by some small chance something, some
topic, whatever it happens to be that we missed, that we were
not able to bring to mind that no one else happened to
mention and we saw it, whatever that may be, then yes, we
will release an episode in the future so long as we are
capable of doing so.
We have zero intention of just ignoring that sort of thing.
And again, specifically for my part, I have zero intention of
stopping doing related things.
Not the same, not stone choir, because again, this is a time
of transition into something else, because it is something else something else
that needs to be done going forward.
Before we started recording this episode, and almost ironically, but in a
way not and in a way yes, I had a package arrive
from someone sent me a present, someone sent me a gift, and
I opened it, and it happens to be a microphone.
Now, if I were inclined, and to some degree I am, to
take things as a sign, because sometimes they're a little on the
nose, God isn't always particularly subtle.
I would take receiving a microphone on the day that we're recording
the last episode of Stone Choir as a pretty clear indication that
I shouldn't stop.
But the question is what should I not stop?
I don't think that I should take this to mean we should
continue Stone Choir.
That's a different thing.
But I am going to continue doing the QA's which I intend
to do weekly weekly, because I recognize that while we believe that
we answered all of the fundamental questions and things like that, laid
the groundwork, all of that important and inevitable and absolutely vital work,
well I believe we already did that with Stone Choir.
I recognize that there are still questions, legitimate questions, not just inane
ones, but legitimate questions some of you may have, or that may
arise in the future, that don't rise to the level of requiring
a stone choir episode, but still deserve to have an answer.
That's the reason that I am going to set aside about an
hour, basically every week.
At this At this point on Thursdays I'm not dedicated to that
day, but I will set that time aside so that you can
ask those questions and so that I can give answers.
By the time you hear this episode, I will have already recorded,
broadcast, and recorded another QA session.
In fact, I intend to do that not so long after we
record this episode.
Because again this is not a matter of the two of us
disappearing into the woods off the face of the earth, as tempting
as that may be from time to time.
That's not what I intend to do, it's not what Woe intends
to do.
You're not going to see us deleting our social media and disappearing
into the ether.
We're highlighting that it is a time of transition, and I think
we have both made that point very clear at this point.
And so in drawing Stone Choir to a close, I also want
to thank all of you for the support that you have given
us, not just in terms of monetary support, which some of you
certainly have in sending gifts like one of the bookcases I have
was sent as a gift, the microphone, and so many other things
that have been sent over the years of Stone Choir, but also
those of you who have supported us in terms of sharing the
episodes, in terms of thanking us, it's always great to hear from
those of you who have benefited from what we have taught, from
the work that we have done, because that's a big part of
why we are doing it, a big part of why we kept
doing it.
Now of course we were compelled to do it because God gave
us the abilities, God gave us the resources to get it done,
and we felt that we had no choice.
We still believe that, of course, but it is still nice to
hear from those of you who benefited from Stone Choir along the
way. And so just for any of you who supported Stone Choir
in any fashion, whatever it happens to be, for those who were
happened to be driving through Knoxville and bought me lunch as some
of you did, thank you to all of you.
And this is not goodbye.
It is simply It is a time of transition.
Things are changing.
And it is important that each and every one of you recognizes
that. And one of the best ways that we can drive that
point home
is what we're doing here today.
We accomplished our goal.
We set about to do a certain set of discrete things.
We accomplished that.
We've inflicted fatal damage on the enemy, with regard to the enemy's
ideology, theology, doctrine, all of those things.
They don't realize it yet.
Some men on our side do.
So we accomplished what we set out to do, and now it
is time for other things, for other ventures, for other undertakings, and
in many cases for other men to step up and do what
needs to be done.
And so in closing out this episode and also the Stone Choir
Podcast at the same time, I would like to end with saying
that
this has been all along one about the gospel because everything we
have done has been essential to the gospel, and that is my
second point.
It is not only about the gospel.
Because there are so many who want to be gospel reductionists and
they just want to be Christ and him crucified and nothing else.
And there's more to life than that.
Scripture is very clear that there is more to life than that,
because if it were just Christ and Him crucified, then it wouldn't
say that those who do not care for their own family are
worse than unbelievers.
Because that's not the gospel.
That's your family, that's something else.
And so many of the things that we have addressed, and many
of the most important things going forward, are in fact going to
look an awful lot not like the gospel.
You can't lose that in what's coming, because that's absolutely vital.
You can't lose sight of Christ and Him crucified.
But that can't be everything.
Because if that were everything, then there would be no other important
things in the world.
There would be no other problems, and we know that there are
other problems.
Those are the ones that we have to address in the coming
years. So remember your faith.
Focus on your faith.
Keep your faith alive.
Do the things that a Christian man must do.
Go to church, whether it happens to be a home church or
if you are lucky enough to have a faithful congregation nearby, or
in the future, new congregations started up that are faithful, deliberately and
intentionally, contrary to the faithless congregations that plague our country and the
entire world at this point.
Make sure that you continue to pray.
That is something that all of us let fall away far too
often. We lose focus on how important that is.
It is important to talk to God.
God is your heavenly Father.
He wants to hear from you.
He invites you to pray.
At the absolute least.
Pray the Lord's Prayer.
It is the prayer that Christ instructed us to pray.
His disciples asked him, How should we pray?
And God answered, pray like this.
Don't neglect to use that.
Serve your neighbor, which has always been one of the major points
that we have attempted to drive home with Stone Choir, that is
part of the Christian life.
The Christian life is lived out in good works.
Yes, it is absolutely essential to have faith, but it is lived
out, it is experienced, it is proven in good works.
Those are a necessary part of the Christian life.
That is what we want you to do.
We intend to leave you with that.
That is how we intend to close out Stone Choir.
Move forward as Christian men.
Do what needs to be done in order to preserve Christendom and
all of the things that have been entrusted to
your care by God, all of the things that He will demand
at the judgment from your hand, because you will be judged according
to what you have been given and what you did with it.
Christ is abundantly clear about that in so many parables.
Scripture is clear about that, from beginning to end.
Live your life as an actual Christian man, not with lip service,
but with but with actual Christian living, Christian good works.
Because the world will tell you that Christianity is something fundamentally different
from what it is, and if you follow the world, you will
certainly tread downward on the broad path that leads to destruction, because
the way is narrow that leads to eternal life, but it is
worth the effort, and it is worth the suffering that will certainly
come. To go back to Luther and his volumes sitting on my
shelves in here, one of his most famous comments that I think
is perfect for closing this out before I move on to a
little bit of scripture, is peace if possible, truth at all costs.
That is the mindset we need.
That is the mindset we've had with Stone Choir.
That is the mindset that we commend to each and every one
of you going forward.
And so we will end with a blessing from Scripture.
The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face
to shine upon you and be gracious unto you, the Lord lift
up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.
Amen.