WEBVTT 00:00:00.240 --> 00:00:04.320 It looks like everything is working, so at least it is working 00:00:04.320 --> 00:00:05.200 on my end. 00:00:05.200 --> 00:00:08.240 If you are in the chat, please let me know if there's 00:00:08.240 --> 00:00:10.480 any trouble with the audio or anything like that. 00:00:10.480 --> 00:00:14.320 I don't have any headphones in since I'm not listening to anyone. 00:00:14.720 --> 00:00:21.120 on my end. 00:00:21.120 --> 00:00:24.640 So the couple of the questions that I have here I'll start 00:00:24.640 --> 00:00:26.400 with. One is 00:00:27.360 --> 00:00:30.160 let me pull up the exact wording here since I don't currently 00:00:30.160 --> 00:00:32.000 have a way to show it on the screen, so I will 00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:36.240 just read it. 00:00:36.240 --> 00:00:43.360 Question is what motivates you does stone choir keep you pressing forward? 00:00:43.360 --> 00:00:47.120 And the short version is one word, truth. 00:00:47.120 --> 00:00:48.880 Truth is what motivates me. 00:00:48.880 --> 00:00:51.520 My desire is to see that the truth is out there, to 00:00:51.520 --> 00:00:55.440 see that the truth is defended, and to see that people believe 00:00:55.440 --> 00:00:56.320 the truth. 00:00:56.320 --> 00:00:58.960 It's one of the reasons that we did the episode on being 00:00:58.960 --> 00:01:00.720 convincing, for instance. 00:01:00.720 --> 00:01:04.160 It's important not only to portray the truth, not only to deliver 00:01:04.800 --> 00:01:08.000 the truth, but also to defend the truth in a way that 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:11.760 encourages other men to believe the truth. 00:01:11.760 --> 00:01:16.240 And so primarily, yes, it would be the truth that does motivate 00:01:16.240 --> 00:01:19.040 me. Of course, there's also the fact that I simply have the 00:01:19.040 --> 00:01:21.920 sort of personality where I'm not going to leave this sort of 00:01:21.920 --> 00:01:22.960 thing alone. 00:01:22.960 --> 00:01:27.680 When I encounter something that is false, my inclination is to correct 00:01:27.680 --> 00:01:30.800 it, or at least figure out why it is false, and then 00:01:30.880 --> 00:01:32.560 of course correct it. 00:01:32.560 --> 00:01:36.400 It's simply sort of a personality trait from a number of different 00:01:36.400 --> 00:01:40.000 things. Part of it is the Germanic ancestry, of course, the Scottish 00:01:40.160 --> 00:01:41.360 adds to it a little bit too. 00:01:41.360 --> 00:01:43.440 There's a confrontational aspect there. 00:01:43.440 --> 00:01:46.560 There's the fact that I have an int J personality. 00:01:46.560 --> 00:01:50.400 I am inclined to care more about the truth than about the 00:01:50.400 --> 00:01:53.840 fact that it is going to inevitably offend some people, because that's 00:01:53.840 --> 00:01:55.360 simply the reality of it. 00:01:55.360 --> 00:02:00.000 There will always be those people who are offended by the truth, 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:02.640 particularly if you state it in a blunt way, which sometimes you 00:02:02.640 --> 00:02:03.840 have to do. 00:02:03.840 --> 00:02:06.720 You don't always have to state the truth bluntly. 00:02:06.720 --> 00:02:11.280 Sometimes it's important to be tactful, sometimes it's important to lead people 00:02:11.280 --> 00:02:14.960 slowly into the truth, but a lot of times it's important to 00:02:14.960 --> 00:02:18.560 shock people out of the rut in which they have found themselves 00:02:18.720 --> 00:02:21.280 or not found themselves in more cases. 00:02:21.920 --> 00:02:25.440 And in shocking them out of that, you can get them to 00:02:25.440 --> 00:02:28.080 actually consider what it is that you're saying. 00:02:28.080 --> 00:02:32.240 And so yes, Stone Choir in part does encourage me to keep 00:02:32.240 --> 00:02:36.640 pressing forward because obviously it's a very good outlet for talking about 00:02:36.640 --> 00:02:38.640 these issues that are very important. 00:02:38.640 --> 00:02:41.520 But I would probably be doing this anyway. 00:02:41.520 --> 00:02:45.600 If I weren't doing Stone Choir and I didn't have a public 00:02:46.160 --> 00:02:48.640 persona, if I didn't have all of my views out there in 00:02:48.640 --> 00:02:52.240 the open, so my website and my ex account and all these 00:02:52.240 --> 00:02:53.760 other things, Telegram. 00:02:53.760 --> 00:02:56.400 If I didn't have that then I would probably be practicing law 00:02:56.480 --> 00:02:58.000 and no one would know my name. 00:02:58.000 --> 00:03:01.600 Outside of the area of law in which I was practicing anyway. 00:03:01.600 --> 00:03:04.720 But that is sort of no longer an option at this point, 00:03:04.720 --> 00:03:07.120 as most of you probably know. 00:03:07.120 --> 00:03:10.560 The second question, sort of a change of pace and tone here, 00:03:10.560 --> 00:03:14.880 I guess, is really about two different things. 00:03:14.880 --> 00:03:20.240 One is the morality of suicide and then secondarily specifically the specific 00:03:20.240 --> 00:03:23.920 case of Hitler's suicide, the morality of that. 00:03:23.920 --> 00:03:27.040 And so I'll start first with the general case. 00:03:27.040 --> 00:03:30.480 Is suicide an unforgivable sin? 00:03:31.840 --> 00:03:34.400 The answer for Christians is pretty straightforward. 00:03:34.400 --> 00:03:37.680 Because Scripture says there's only one unforgivable sin, that's the sin against 00:03:37.680 --> 00:03:38.160 the Spirit. 00:03:38.160 --> 00:03:39.280 It's unbelief. 00:03:39.280 --> 00:03:42.320 If you die in unbelief, you go to hell. 00:03:42.320 --> 00:03:44.320 Very simple, very straightforward. 00:03:44.320 --> 00:03:47.840 And so suicide is not the unforgivable sin. 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:50.240 Just going to pull up Twitter here quickly. 00:03:50.240 --> 00:03:52.320 X, whatever we want to call it. 00:03:53.440 --> 00:03:58.720 Suicide not being the unforgivable sin means that suicide is not necessarily 00:03:58.880 --> 00:04:00.800 or per se damning. 00:04:00.800 --> 00:04:05.120 I quite frankly firmly believe there are situations in which suicide is 00:04:05.200 --> 00:04:08.800 the right course of action, not just an acceptable course of action, 00:04:08.800 --> 00:04:10.400 but the right course of action. 00:04:10.400 --> 00:04:14.240 That will lead into answering the more specific case. 00:04:14.240 --> 00:04:18.800 But it's going to depend on the person and the circumstances. 00:04:18.800 --> 00:04:22.320 So for instance, if you are a man and you have the 00:04:22.320 --> 00:04:25.760 chance to fight to the death, say you're in a an actual 00:04:25.760 --> 00:04:30.240 battle, a war situation, then perhaps you should fight to the death. 00:04:30.400 --> 00:04:34.640 But if you are someone else and you are going to be 00:04:34.640 --> 00:04:41.120 tortured for some indeterminate amount of time, particularly horrible torture, then it 00:04:41.120 --> 00:04:44.000 may be that the suicide option is the right way out. 00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:46.000 And I know that many Christians don't want to hear that, they've 00:04:45.920 --> 00:04:52.000 been told their whole lives pretty much mostly in the Roman Catholic 00:04:52.000 --> 00:04:55.840 traditions, but a few others as well, mostly because they've imported things 00:04:56.160 --> 00:05:00.960 from Rome on this particular issue with regard to this doctrine. 00:05:00.960 --> 00:05:03.920 Because Rome sort of teaches that it's an unforgivable sin. 00:05:03.920 --> 00:05:07.840 The logic of Rome is that if you commit suicide, you don't 00:05:07.840 --> 00:05:09.840 have the chance to repent. 00:05:09.840 --> 00:05:12.800 Well, the problem with their doctrine of repentance, and I know that 00:05:12.800 --> 00:05:15.040 I'm getting off on a tangent here a little bit, but it's 00:05:14.960 --> 00:05:16.640 important because it's related. 00:05:16.640 --> 00:05:21.360 The problem with their doctrine of repentance is that most likely we 00:05:21.360 --> 00:05:24.560 are all going to die having not repented of something. 00:05:24.960 --> 00:05:29.600 Because unless you happen to have the good fortune to die in 00:05:29.600 --> 00:05:33.360 your bed with a pastor at your bedside to hear your final 00:05:33.360 --> 00:05:36.800 confession, you're probably not going to have repented of all of the 00:05:36.800 --> 00:05:39.840 sins you committed, at least that day up to the point you 00:05:39.840 --> 00:05:42.240 died. Because we all commit sins all the time. 00:05:42.240 --> 00:05:45.760 Because don't forget that concupiscence is itself also sin. 00:05:45.760 --> 00:05:48.480 The desire to sin is sin, not just active sin. 00:05:48.480 --> 00:05:51.520 So even if you're bedridden at the end of your life, you're 00:05:51.520 --> 00:05:53.440 still going to have sinful desires. 00:05:53.440 --> 00:05:56.000 And perhaps you die without confessing those. 00:05:56.000 --> 00:05:59.520 You don't have to confess all of your sins in order to 00:05:59.520 --> 00:06:00.640 be forgiven. 00:06:00.640 --> 00:06:03.680 Your sins have already been forgiven. 00:06:03.680 --> 00:06:07.520 The issue with regard to confession and sins is when you have 00:06:07.520 --> 00:06:09.200 an impenitent sin. 00:06:09.200 --> 00:06:11.840 It is something you're holding on to. 00:06:11.840 --> 00:06:14.160 It is some sin that you sort of made your own and 00:06:14.160 --> 00:06:17.280 decided no this one is mine, I'm not going to let God 00:06:17.280 --> 00:06:20.000 have this one, I'm not going to repent of this one. 00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:22.000 This is something I want to keep doing. 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:24.720 That's impenitence, that's a different thing. 00:06:24.720 --> 00:06:28.720 And so suicide does not necessarily damn. 00:06:28.720 --> 00:06:34.000 The logic that Rome employs to argue for that end, to argue 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:38.480 for that conclusion, would put basically all of us in jeopardy. 00:06:38.480 --> 00:06:41.280 And that is simply not what Scripture teaches. 00:06:41.280 --> 00:06:44.800 Now in the specific case of Hitler and his suicide in the 00:06:44.800 --> 00:06:47.920 bunker and I do believe that he committed suicide, I don't believe 00:06:47.920 --> 00:06:51.040 that he escaped to Argentina or whatever else. 00:06:51.040 --> 00:06:54.240 I don't really care if people believe one way or the other. 00:06:54.240 --> 00:06:56.880 I think it's better to believe that he did commit suicide for 00:06:56.880 --> 00:07:01.760 various reasons, and I think the argument, the evidence much stronger. 00:07:01.760 --> 00:07:04.640 But that's not the most interesting case there. 00:07:04.880 --> 00:07:08.480 The most interesting case really is Gerbles and his family. 00:07:08.480 --> 00:07:11.360 But in the case of Hitler, I'll deal with that one first 00:07:11.360 --> 00:07:13.120 because it's sort of the easier case. 00:07:13.120 --> 00:07:16.880 It's certainly the easier case for people to hear. 00:07:16.880 --> 00:07:21.120 In the case of Hitler, his suicide was the right thing to 00:07:21.120 --> 00:07:23.920 do. And the reason that it was the right thing to do 00:07:24.160 --> 00:07:28.000 is because he was the leader of a defeated nation. 00:07:28.000 --> 00:07:32.720 The only thing, literally the only thing that lay ahead of him, 00:07:32.720 --> 00:07:37.200 was torture being paraded around as a war trophy by the Soviet 00:07:37.200 --> 00:07:40.480 Union, one of the most evil things ever to exist politically in 00:07:40.480 --> 00:07:45.680 history? Rivals, certainly any of the ancient empires, Babylon, the Aztecs, anything 00:07:45.680 --> 00:07:46.800 like that. 00:07:46.800 --> 00:07:50.800 Being paraded around by them as a war trophy to demoralize the 00:07:50.800 --> 00:07:54.560 German people further, and basically everyone else who had fought on that 00:07:54.560 --> 00:07:55.520 side of the war. 00:07:55.520 --> 00:07:58.640 And quite frankly, they would have probably done horrible things and demoralized 00:07:58.640 --> 00:08:00.640 the West as well. 00:08:00.640 --> 00:08:03.920 So he had a duty to his people, and his duty to 00:08:03.920 --> 00:08:08.640 his people necessitated that he preclude them from having that opportunity. 00:08:08.640 --> 00:08:11.440 And that's exactly what he did by committing suicide. 00:08:11.440 --> 00:08:14.320 Now I know that I'm currently streaming this on YouTube, I don't 00:08:14.240 --> 00:08:16.880 have the DVR functionality listed. 00:08:16.880 --> 00:08:19.120 I'm not trying to be monetized, of course, but I'd like not 00:08:19.120 --> 00:08:20.480 to get a strike. 00:08:20.480 --> 00:08:22.640 But I'm going to be frank about these topics. 00:08:22.640 --> 00:08:24.960 Perhaps I won't stream to YouTube in the future, I don't know, 00:08:24.960 --> 00:08:27.120 it depends on their policies and how they view this sort of 00:08:27.120 --> 00:08:30.320 thing. So I'll try not to get too far off into that 00:08:30.320 --> 00:08:32.400 sort of territory. 00:08:32.400 --> 00:08:35.200 That being said, the next one is the harder case. 00:08:35.200 --> 00:08:39.440 And it's the harder case largely because it's emotional for people. 00:08:39.440 --> 00:08:44.720 It's not because it's the harder case, say, logically or rationally, or 00:08:44.720 --> 00:08:48.640 even theologically, it's not that hard of a case. 00:08:48.640 --> 00:08:48.960 But 00:08:49.920 --> 00:08:54.880 the question is, was it right for Goebbels to kill his family 00:08:54.880 --> 00:08:57.200 before he committed suicide? 00:08:57.520 --> 00:09:00.080 And really the question is you have to take a step back 00:09:00.160 --> 00:09:02.960 and you have to look at what is happening in the bunker 00:09:03.440 --> 00:09:06.560 at that time, in this situation, because what are the options? 00:09:06.560 --> 00:09:08.320 You need to look at your options. 00:09:08.320 --> 00:09:12.080 I'm not saying that consequentialist morality is always correct. 00:09:12.080 --> 00:09:15.360 I'm not saying that deontological morality is always correct. 00:09:15.360 --> 00:09:16.960 I think both of those are important. 00:09:17.280 --> 00:09:20.320 I think you should look at the nature of the act itself, 00:09:20.320 --> 00:09:24.400 whether the act itself is moral or immoral per se, because sometimes 00:09:24.400 --> 00:09:25.280 that's true. 00:09:25.280 --> 00:09:27.760 There are certain things you simply cannot do. 00:09:27.760 --> 00:09:30.640 Killing is not one of them, notably. 00:09:30.640 --> 00:09:34.320 Killing is not something that is always per se immoral. 00:09:34.320 --> 00:09:36.880 Murder is per se immoral. 00:09:36.880 --> 00:09:40.320 And so the question is, is it murder or is it not 00:09:40.320 --> 00:09:43.840 murder? Which really comes down to a question of what is a 00:09:43.840 --> 00:09:45.680 moral warrant for killing. 00:09:45.680 --> 00:09:49.280 And I think in that particular situation, he was right to do 00:09:49.280 --> 00:09:50.320 what he did. 00:09:50.320 --> 00:09:55.680 Because his options were give his children the cleanest death that he 00:09:55.680 --> 00:10:00.560 possibly could, or basically hand them over to the Soviets. 00:10:00.560 --> 00:10:03.760 And I won't go into the details because quite frankly they're lurid 00:10:04.000 --> 00:10:06.240 and Christians shouldn't even want to hear them. 00:10:06.240 --> 00:10:07.920 Sometimes it's necessary. 00:10:07.920 --> 00:10:10.720 Because of course we need to realize how evil the world is 00:10:10.880 --> 00:10:14.240 and look evil straight in the face, and accept the reality of 00:10:14.240 --> 00:10:18.240 it. But for various reasons, you can guess some of them, I 00:10:18.240 --> 00:10:20.800 won't go into the specific details, but we all know what would 00:10:20.800 --> 00:10:21.680 have happened. 00:10:21.680 --> 00:10:24.960 If his children had fallen into the hands of the Soviets. 00:10:24.960 --> 00:10:28.240 The same thort of the same sort of thing that happened to 00:10:28.240 --> 00:10:30.320 so many German and 00:10:31.200 --> 00:10:37.760 Czechoslovakian and various other women, mostly women, and children, in the aftermath 00:10:37.760 --> 00:10:38.800 of that war. 00:10:38.800 --> 00:10:41.200 The same thing would have happened to his children. 00:10:41.200 --> 00:10:44.160 He was faced with a horrible set of decisions. 00:10:44.160 --> 00:10:46.800 His choices were awful. 00:10:46.800 --> 00:10:51.120 All he had to choose from was kill his own children, or 00:10:51.120 --> 00:10:55.120 permit them to fall into the hands of monsters. 00:10:55.120 --> 00:10:58.400 I think that he did the right thing, because I think he 00:10:58.400 --> 00:11:01.040 picked the least bad option. 00:11:01.040 --> 00:11:03.680 And I don't think it qualifies as murder. 00:11:03.680 --> 00:11:06.320 Because I think there are times where killing is necessary, and I 00:11:06.320 --> 00:11:07.840 think that was one of them. 00:11:07.840 --> 00:11:11.520 We recognize this to some degree in some places. 00:11:11.760 --> 00:11:18.320 For instance, no one actually objects to a soft form of euthanasia. 00:11:18.320 --> 00:11:20.560 I won't say no one, of course, because there's probably someone out 00:11:20.560 --> 00:11:24.240 there who does, but the specific kind that I have in mind 00:11:24.240 --> 00:11:29.360 is the form of euthanasia where we basically give someone so much 00:11:29.360 --> 00:11:32.480 painkiller that death is inevitable. 00:11:32.480 --> 00:11:34.240 And there are times when that's necessary. 00:11:34.240 --> 00:11:38.960 For instance, someone who has a large part of his body burned 00:11:39.360 --> 00:11:44.080 in a fire, there's nothing we currently, with current medical technology, can 00:11:44.080 --> 00:11:45.280 do for that person. 00:11:45.280 --> 00:11:48.160 Literally all we can do is give him as much morphine or 00:11:48.160 --> 00:11:53.120 something stronger these days as possible to try to dull the pain. 00:11:53.120 --> 00:11:54.960 That's it, that's all we can do. 00:11:54.960 --> 00:11:58.560 And in fact, we wind up giving those people so much that 00:11:58.560 --> 00:12:01.440 we know they are going to die from an overdose. 00:12:01.440 --> 00:12:05.520 But that is better than the horrendous pain of having third-degree burns 00:12:05.520 --> 00:12:08.000 over seventy percent of your body. 00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:10.080 And so, is that euthanasia? 00:12:10.160 --> 00:12:14.320 The answer, of course, is yes, because strictly speaking, it is literally 00:12:14.480 --> 00:12:18.800 the killing of a person, but with a good intent. 00:12:18.960 --> 00:12:23.360 Now the question of course is does it matter if your intent 00:12:23.360 --> 00:12:26.560 is to kill the person or if your intent is to relieve 00:12:26.560 --> 00:12:29.840 pain? There's a distinction there, but I don't think it's a distinction 00:12:29.840 --> 00:12:31.600 that really matters in this case. 00:12:31.600 --> 00:12:36.240 Because if you do something with the intent to do something good, 00:12:36.240 --> 00:12:40.240 but you know that it will necessarily eventuate in the death of 00:12:40.240 --> 00:12:45.520 that person, that is essentially morally indistinguishable from that intent to kill. 00:12:45.680 --> 00:12:48.160 Cons if the end is a good end, of course. 00:12:48.160 --> 00:12:50.400 I'm not saying you can do this for a wicked end. 00:12:50.400 --> 00:12:53.840 These are edge cases, these are difficult questions to answer for most 00:12:53.840 --> 00:12:55.600 men. I recognize that. 00:12:55.600 --> 00:12:58.800 And I recognize that most Christians are not particularly fond of these 00:12:58.800 --> 00:13:00.320 sorts of answers. 00:13:00.480 --> 00:13:05.840 But when you are involved in that sort of war, or when 00:13:05.840 --> 00:13:09.680 you have horrendous burns all over your body, it's certainly an edge 00:13:09.680 --> 00:13:12.960 case. And there are going to be times where there are no 00:13:12.960 --> 00:13:14.000 good options. 00:13:14.160 --> 00:13:17.040 There's not going to be this is obviously the best and the 00:13:17.040 --> 00:13:18.960 moral option we have to do this. 00:13:18.960 --> 00:13:22.080 It's going to be a set of terrible options, and you have 00:13:22.080 --> 00:13:24.080 to pick the least terrible one. 00:13:24.080 --> 00:13:28.720 And I don't think that as Christians we are prohibited in all 00:13:28.720 --> 00:13:31.840 cases from enacting euthanasia. 00:13:31.840 --> 00:13:34.560 I do think that we don't get to do it because someone 00:13:34.560 --> 00:13:38.800 is sad or someone is in a little bit of pain, or 00:13:38.800 --> 00:13:41.360 someone is going through a rough spot in life. 00:13:41.360 --> 00:13:43.520 In those cases we have better treatments. 00:13:43.520 --> 00:13:46.080 We have things we can do for those people. 00:13:46.080 --> 00:13:50.720 The person who's in a bunker in Berlin in the 1940s, surrounded 00:13:50.720 --> 00:13:53.680 by the Soviets, doesn't have another option. 00:13:53.680 --> 00:13:57.680 The person who has third-degree burns over 90% of his body doesn't 00:13:57.600 --> 00:13:58.880 have other options. 00:13:58.880 --> 00:14:03.200 There are times where there are, again, no good options, and you 00:14:03.200 --> 00:14:06.160 have to do the best thing that you can do in the 00:14:06.160 --> 00:14:10.160 situation with what you have been given. 00:14:10.320 --> 00:14:17.920 We'll check the replies here and see what else we have. 00:14:24.720 --> 00:14:27.120 First one that I see here. 00:14:27.120 --> 00:14:30.240 X is not the best platform for trying to do this live, 00:14:30.240 --> 00:14:35.120 but what is the best way to answer slash refute the God 00:14:35.120 --> 00:14:38.480 is not finished with Israel mantra? 00:14:40.720 --> 00:14:44.080 We have touched on this in a number of different epis episodes, 00:14:44.080 --> 00:14:45.200 of course. 00:14:45.200 --> 00:14:49.760 Undoubtedly the one on dispensationalism, chief among them, but also dealing with 00:14:49.760 --> 00:14:52.000 the Israelites, Hebrews, Jews, etc. 00:14:53.440 --> 00:14:58.640 The question of whether or not God is done with Israel, and 00:14:58.640 --> 00:15:02.000 of course, here we mean ethnic Israel, which is say the Jews, 00:15:02.000 --> 00:15:06.480 Old Testament Israel, which the problem with Old Testament Israel is it 00:15:06.480 --> 00:15:08.400 no longer exists, of course. 00:15:08.400 --> 00:15:10.000 God destroyed it. 00:15:10.000 --> 00:15:12.720 Christ was very clear, destroyed in seventy AD. 00:15:12.720 --> 00:15:15.680 That was the end of Old Testament Israel. 00:15:15.680 --> 00:15:18.720 That was actually the final destruction of the last bit of surviving 00:15:18.720 --> 00:15:19.520 Hebrew, incidentally. 00:15:19.840 --> 00:15:22.800 That was when the scrolls were burned on the temple steps. 00:15:22.880 --> 00:15:23.200 But 00:15:24.160 --> 00:15:27.680 how do we deal with the question of whether or not God 00:15:27.680 --> 00:15:32.560 has some future return of the Jews to the land? 00:15:32.560 --> 00:15:35.840 Was that a fulfillment of prophecy? 00:15:35.840 --> 00:15:38.160 And of course the answer is no. 00:15:38.160 --> 00:15:40.400 And we all know that the answer is no, but how do 00:15:40.400 --> 00:15:44.560 we get those who believe that that was prophecy, a fulfillment of 00:15:44.640 --> 00:15:49.280 prophecy, to see that it was not. 00:15:49.280 --> 00:15:54.480 And part of that is, of course, properly defining Israel. 00:15:55.760 --> 00:15:58.720 If we don't properly define Israel, we are going to find it 00:15:59.200 --> 00:16:04.160 difficult, virtually impossible, to get anywhere on any of these issues. 00:16:04.160 --> 00:16:10.400 Most people, when they see Israel, think the Jews. 00:16:10.400 --> 00:16:13.520 They simply think, oh, it m every single time it says Israel, 00:16:13.520 --> 00:16:14.640 it must be the Jews. 00:16:14.640 --> 00:16:15.840 And that's simply not true. 00:16:15.840 --> 00:16:19.200 If you actually read through the Old Testament and pay attention to 00:16:19.200 --> 00:16:22.720 what is being said in the Old Testament, clearly, many of the 00:16:22.720 --> 00:16:25.040 times, it's not the Jews. 00:16:25.040 --> 00:16:29.040 In fact, quite frankly, probably most of the time, it's not the 00:16:29.040 --> 00:16:32.640 Jews. Israel has always been the believers. 00:16:32.640 --> 00:16:35.360 Israel has always been the Israel of God. 00:16:35.600 --> 00:16:40.080 those who are believers in either the Messiah who was to come 00:16:40.320 --> 00:16:43.520 or now the Messiah who has come. 00:16:43.520 --> 00:16:47.520 And so the true Israel is not the Jews. 00:16:47.520 --> 00:16:49.280 It's never been the Jews. 00:16:49.280 --> 00:16:53.440 For a period of time, you had Old Testament Israel, and the 00:16:53.440 --> 00:16:59.280 purpose of Old Testament Israel was very specific and very limited. 00:16:59.280 --> 00:17:03.520 It was the fulfillment of the promise of a Messiah from the 00:17:03.520 --> 00:17:08.160 line of Abraham, of course through the line of Israel, through the 00:17:08.160 --> 00:17:09.600 line of David. 00:17:09.600 --> 00:17:11.520 That was fulfilled. 00:17:11.520 --> 00:17:13.840 That's it for the Jews. 00:17:13.840 --> 00:17:15.760 That was the only promise they had. 00:17:16.320 --> 00:17:21.840 Now they had other contingent promises, conditional promises, and that's one of 00:17:21.840 --> 00:17:23.200 the big things here. 00:17:23.200 --> 00:17:25.760 There are many who will say, Well, all of these promises, look 00:17:25.760 --> 00:17:28.560 at all of the promises that God has for the Jews and 00:17:28.720 --> 00:17:30.480 yes, let's look at them. 00:17:30.480 --> 00:17:32.080 They're conditional. 00:17:32.080 --> 00:17:36.800 They say if you are faithful, if you follow my rules, if 00:17:36.800 --> 00:17:40.320 you follow my commandments, if you do not worship other gods. 00:17:40.640 --> 00:17:44.000 And then look at what usually comes after that as well, because 00:17:44.080 --> 00:17:48.480 usually what follows those promises is all of the curses when you 00:17:48.480 --> 00:17:49.520 don't obey. 00:17:49.520 --> 00:17:52.400 In fact, oftentimes the curses are longer. 00:17:52.400 --> 00:17:54.320 The curses are more extreme. 00:17:54.320 --> 00:17:57.440 God goes so far as to says that he will walk contrary 00:17:57.440 --> 00:17:59.040 to them for evil. 00:17:59.040 --> 00:18:01.680 God threatens to destroy those who do not obey him. 00:18:01.680 --> 00:18:03.440 The same thing applies to us. 00:18:03.440 --> 00:18:07.760 Incidentally, when you start to read the Old Testament correctly, one of 00:18:07.760 --> 00:18:10.720 the things that you get to see is that so much of 00:18:10.720 --> 00:18:14.720 this, so many of these things, apply to us today. 00:18:14.720 --> 00:18:19.200 These are not just promises and curses for some people in the 00:18:19.200 --> 00:18:22.800 distant past living over there and this doesn't have any meaning for 00:18:22.800 --> 00:18:23.760 us, right? 00:18:23.760 --> 00:18:26.480 No, this has meaning for us because those are the very same 00:18:26.480 --> 00:18:29.280 sorts of promises and curses that apply to us if we are 00:18:29.280 --> 00:18:31.440 faithful or faithless. 00:18:31.440 --> 00:18:35.280 And so when someone tries to basically get rid of all these 00:18:35.280 --> 00:18:41.040 promises that apply apply to the church, that apply to Christians, what 00:18:41.040 --> 00:18:43.600 they're really doing is they're saying, Oh, the old the old testament 00:18:43.600 --> 00:18:44.640 doesn't apply to me. 00:18:44.640 --> 00:18:45.440 It's a sort of 00:18:46.400 --> 00:18:50.880 weak form of Marcionism, saying that the Old Testament is a different 00:18:50.880 --> 00:18:51.600 sort of book. 00:18:51.600 --> 00:18:52.880 It's for a different people. 00:18:52.880 --> 00:18:54.160 It's a different God, right? 00:18:54.160 --> 00:18:56.560 That's the God of Old Testament Israel. 00:18:56.560 --> 00:18:59.520 My God as a Christian, right, is the the New Testament God. 00:18:59.520 --> 00:19:00.000 That's Jesus. 00:19:00.080 --> 00:19:01.760 He's a He's a nicer God. 00:19:01.760 --> 00:19:05.360 He's not the fire and brimstone God of the Old Testament. 00:19:05.360 --> 00:19:07.280 And that's just not true. 00:19:07.280 --> 00:19:09.120 That's entirely false. 00:19:09.120 --> 00:19:12.640 It's the wrong way to look at these things And so the 00:19:12.640 --> 00:19:16.560 short answer really is you want someone, if he's willing to do 00:19:16.560 --> 00:19:20.000 so and capable of doing so, to look at the actual promises 00:19:20.080 --> 00:19:21.680 in the Old Testament. 00:19:21.680 --> 00:19:25.280 You will find that basically all of them, except for the promise 00:19:25.280 --> 00:19:30.480 of the Messiah, are contingent, are contingent, are conditional. 00:19:30.480 --> 00:19:34.560 They're not a blanket promise God is just going to do all 00:19:34.560 --> 00:19:36.720 these great things for you regardless of what you do. 00:19:36.720 --> 00:19:39.760 Those are not the sort of promises that God makes. 00:19:39.760 --> 00:19:44.320 Because those who receive good things from God are those who are 00:19:44.320 --> 00:19:45.200 in Christ. 00:19:45.200 --> 00:19:47.440 And the way you're in Christ in the Old Testament, of course, 00:19:47.440 --> 00:19:50.800 is belief in the Messiah who is to come, and our belief 00:19:50.800 --> 00:19:53.280 today is in this Messiah who has come. 00:19:54.240 --> 00:19:57.520 But all of these promises, all these good things apply to you 00:19:57.520 --> 00:19:59.440 only if you are in Christ. 00:19:59.440 --> 00:20:04.000 God does not give good things to evil people. 00:20:04.000 --> 00:20:07.520 That's not to say I'm not saying you know prosperity gospel or 00:20:07.520 --> 00:20:12.080 nonsense like that, because of course, no Christian believes that. 00:20:12.080 --> 00:20:14.400 That's clearly false. 00:20:14.400 --> 00:20:16.400 Do bad things happen to good people? 00:20:16.400 --> 00:20:18.640 Yes. Do good things happen to bad people? 00:20:19.200 --> 00:20:21.920 Yes. There is a sort of natural good in the world. 00:20:21.920 --> 00:20:25.440 You know the rain falls on the wicked and the righteous alike. 00:20:25.440 --> 00:20:30.800 But the promises of long term good, the promises of all of 00:20:30.800 --> 00:20:35.440 these blessings down through generations, do not apply to those who are 00:20:35.440 --> 00:20:38.480 wicked apostates who worship other gods. 00:20:38.480 --> 00:20:39.600 And we see that. 00:20:39.600 --> 00:20:41.840 Look at the various nations of the world. 00:20:41.840 --> 00:20:46.320 The ones that apostatized very early on and worship demons for thousands 00:20:46.320 --> 00:20:49.040 of years, are clearly cursed by God. 00:20:49.040 --> 00:20:52.240 They are much worse off than those of us who belong to 00:20:52.240 --> 00:20:56.800 nations that were faithful for much longer, and then we're faithful again, 00:20:56.800 --> 00:21:02.000 when the New Testament reached us, faithful for a thousand years, fifteen 00:21:02.000 --> 00:21:07.440 hundred years, almost two thousand years in some cases. 00:21:07.440 --> 00:21:13.120 And so when someone brings up Israel, it's important first to point 00:21:13.120 --> 00:21:15.520 out that Israel is not the Jews. 00:21:15.520 --> 00:21:19.200 Israel is the Israel of God and of course you can look 00:21:19.200 --> 00:21:21.680 at Romans for that, there are various places. 00:21:21.680 --> 00:21:26.640 I know that sometimes they will try to argue with regard to 00:21:26.640 --> 00:21:29.120 Romans that you know those who are 00:21:30.080 --> 00:21:36.160 of Israel but not of Israel are believing Jews versus unbelieving Jews. 00:21:36.320 --> 00:21:38.400 But it's clearly not what the text is saying. 00:21:38.400 --> 00:21:41.840 What the text is saying is that you have 00:21:42.800 --> 00:21:49.920 Jews who are Old Testament Israel, physical descendants of Israel, ethnic Israel, 00:21:49.920 --> 00:21:54.400 and you have the Church, you have spiritual Israel, you have the 00:21:54.400 --> 00:21:56.000 Israel of God. 00:21:56.000 --> 00:22:01.120 Not all of those who are descended linear by blood from Jacob, 00:22:01.120 --> 00:22:05.440 from Israel, belong to the Israel of God. 00:22:05.440 --> 00:22:07.440 And we very clearly see that. 00:22:07.440 --> 00:22:10.480 Look at what God does to many, if not most of the 00:22:10.480 --> 00:22:12.400 Israelites in the Old Testament. 00:22:12.400 --> 00:22:15.200 He sets them on fire, he plagues them with disease, he sends 00:22:15.200 --> 00:22:18.720 snakes after them, he swallows them up with the earth. 00:22:18.720 --> 00:22:22.320 These people did not go to paradise, these people do not all 00:22:22.480 --> 00:22:26.240 get into heaven, and so when it says, All Israel will be 00:22:26.240 --> 00:22:31.120 saved. Well it can't mean ethnic Israel, because not all of ethnic 00:22:31.120 --> 00:22:33.360 Israel was saved. 00:22:33.360 --> 00:22:37.120 In fact, probably most of them in the Old Testament went to 00:22:37.120 --> 00:22:40.080 hell. If you look at the times they were faithful, the times 00:22:40.080 --> 00:22:44.000 they were faithful were tiny slivers compared to how often they were 00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:47.840 faithless. And so when you see things saying, all Israel will be 00:22:47.840 --> 00:22:52.320 saved, it clearly can't be ethnic Israel, because if it were ethnic 00:22:52.400 --> 00:22:57.120 Israel Israel, God would be a liar. 00:22:57.120 --> 00:22:58.560 And God is not a liar. 00:22:58.560 --> 00:23:01.600 God is always telling the truth. 00:23:01.600 --> 00:23:05.680 So if Scripture says that all of this group will be saved, 00:23:06.080 --> 00:23:08.800 it can only possibly mean those who have faith. 00:23:08.800 --> 00:23:11.680 It can only possibly mean the church. 00:23:11.680 --> 00:23:16.000 Now, on a purely practical sort of note, you're going to find 00:23:16.000 --> 00:23:19.280 it very difficult to get most of those who have been steeped 00:23:19.280 --> 00:23:24.960 in dispensationalism for a long period of time, particularly baby boomers, which 00:23:24.960 --> 00:23:29.120 is very relevant for many of those who listen to Stone Choir, 00:23:29.120 --> 00:23:31.440 because many of those who listen are millennials. 00:23:31.600 --> 00:23:33.120 I'm also a millennial. 00:23:33.120 --> 00:23:35.440 And so your parents are baby boomers. 00:23:35.440 --> 00:23:39.520 And they have probably heard dispensationalist talking points, probably not from a 00:23:39.520 --> 00:23:45.360 strictly dispensationalist church, but from a Baptist church or a non-denominational so-called, 00:23:45.360 --> 00:23:50.080 a mega church, whatever it happens to be, they've heard these dispensationalist 00:23:50.080 --> 00:23:51.920 talking points for decades. 00:23:51.920 --> 00:23:55.360 They've bought into them, probably have a study Bible that has the 00:23:55.360 --> 00:23:59.280 notes, so, some sort of updated version of Schofield, maybe the Ryri 00:23:59.440 --> 00:24:01.760 Study Bible, one of those. 00:24:01.760 --> 00:24:04.560 You are going to find it very difficult to get them to 00:24:04.560 --> 00:24:06.640 change their views. 00:24:06.640 --> 00:24:10.720 And in some cases, the best thing that you can do is 00:24:11.200 --> 00:24:15.120 and this is sort of a practical bit of advice, particularly again 00:24:15.200 --> 00:24:18.320 for millennials who have baby boomers as parents who probably will not 00:24:18.320 --> 00:24:22.720 change. Sixty, seventy year old men don't typically make radical changes with 00:24:22.720 --> 00:24:24.400 regard to their worldview. 00:24:24.400 --> 00:24:26.720 It's just the reality of things. 00:24:26.720 --> 00:24:29.360 You still have the fourth commandment in play. 00:24:29.360 --> 00:24:31.680 Honor thy father and thy mother. 00:24:33.120 --> 00:24:35.680 You have to work around the fact that you are never going 00:24:35.680 --> 00:24:39.040 to get to get particularly your father, which is true for many 00:24:39.040 --> 00:24:42.320 men who listen, you're just not going to get him to change. 00:24:42.320 --> 00:24:42.880 And so 00:24:43.760 --> 00:24:45.760 do the best that you can. 00:24:45.760 --> 00:24:48.640 If the issue comes up, by all means you can discuss it 00:24:48.640 --> 00:24:51.760 earnestly and honestly, you can point to scripture, you can go through 00:24:51.760 --> 00:24:56.320 scripture with your father, your mother, whoever it happens to be. 00:24:56.320 --> 00:24:59.680 But don't make it the singular point of that relationship. 00:24:59.680 --> 00:25:02.800 Don't press the point until you alienate everyone around you. 00:25:02.800 --> 00:25:07.680 That doesn't that doesn't serve God, it doesn't serve your parents, it 00:25:07.680 --> 00:25:10.400 doesn't serve the interests of the commandments, and by the way, of 00:25:10.400 --> 00:25:15.600 course I'm using the Lutheran numbering, so the fourth commandment for us. 00:25:15.600 --> 00:25:19.120 You have to work with what you have in front of you. 00:25:19.120 --> 00:25:21.760 You're not always going to be able to convince people of these 00:25:21.760 --> 00:25:24.640 things. So are there sound arguments? 00:25:24.640 --> 00:25:29.280 Absolutely. And you can just go through scripture and there's argument after 00:25:29.280 --> 00:25:30.480 argument after argument. 00:25:30.480 --> 00:25:31.680 Go read the prophets. 00:25:31.680 --> 00:25:35.200 Look at what the prophets say about Israel versus what the prophets 00:25:35.200 --> 00:25:37.120 say about the promises. 00:25:37.120 --> 00:25:40.240 And note also, this is an important point I just read through 00:25:40.640 --> 00:25:45.760 some of the prophets for the through the Bible podcast last night, 00:25:45.760 --> 00:25:46.080 and 00:25:47.040 --> 00:25:50.480 many of those promises, when you look at them, can only be 00:25:50.480 --> 00:25:52.240 eschatological promises. 00:25:52.240 --> 00:25:57.440 They cannot be temporal, because they are speaking about things like all 00:25:57.440 --> 00:26:00.000 Israel will believe. 00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:01.600 That's never happened. 00:26:01.600 --> 00:26:05.440 It's not going to happen with regard to the ethnic Jews. 00:26:05.440 --> 00:26:07.520 They'll never again be removed from their land. 00:26:07.520 --> 00:26:09.360 No one will make them afraid. 00:26:09.360 --> 00:26:14.960 All of these promises are clearly about the new Jerusalem, which is 00:26:14.960 --> 00:26:17.520 used to mean the new earth. 00:26:17.520 --> 00:26:20.480 They're talking about the church in the new earth. 00:26:20.480 --> 00:26:22.400 That is when no one will make us afraid. 00:26:22.400 --> 00:26:25.440 That is when we will no longer have to worry about sickness, 00:26:25.440 --> 00:26:29.680 about disease and death and all these problems and warfare, and everyone 00:26:29.680 --> 00:26:31.280 will know God. 00:26:31.280 --> 00:26:34.640 That is consistent language in the Old Testament and the New Testament. 00:26:34.640 --> 00:26:39.200 When it speaks of those things, it is speaking about the Eshkaton, 00:26:39.200 --> 00:26:42.800 it's speaking about the new heavens and the new earth, not Old 00:26:42.800 --> 00:26:45.200 Testament Israel, not ethnic Jews. 00:26:45.280 --> 00:26:48.640 And again, one of the reasons that it's important to have this 00:26:48.960 --> 00:26:52.480 frame in mind when you're dealing with the Old Testament is that 00:26:52.480 --> 00:26:54.640 if you are looking at it through a lens of thinking, oh 00:26:54.720 --> 00:26:58.080 this is the Jewish book, then you're going to miss what God 00:26:58.080 --> 00:27:03.120 is saying to you, because God isn't speaking exclusively to the Jews. 00:27:03.120 --> 00:27:05.520 He's speaking to them as well, of course, and it's often very 00:27:05.520 --> 00:27:06.960 bad news for them. 00:27:06.960 --> 00:27:10.320 But he is speaking to his people, he is speaking to anyone 00:27:10.320 --> 00:27:14.160 who has ears to listen, anyone who has ears to hear, he 00:27:14.160 --> 00:27:16.160 is speaking to that man. 00:27:16.160 --> 00:27:19.760 And if you have the right mind, if you have the right 00:27:19.760 --> 00:27:23.200 frame of mind, when you are going through the old testament, it 00:27:23.200 --> 00:27:25.920 will mean more to you, you will get more out of it, 00:27:25.920 --> 00:27:29.120 because God will be speaking to you through his word, as he 00:27:29.120 --> 00:27:33.200 intends, instead of having it at this sort of armed distance, this 00:27:33.200 --> 00:27:34.720 history of a foreign people. 00:27:34.720 --> 00:27:36.160 That's not what it is. 00:27:36.160 --> 00:27:38.000 It is a book for us today. 00:27:38.000 --> 00:27:40.160 It is a book for God's church. 00:27:46.240 --> 00:27:48.720 Let's see what we have here. 00:27:54.080 --> 00:27:59.120 Following the Septuagint series, do you consider anything from the traditional church 00:27:59.120 --> 00:28:01.120 to be beyond reproach? 00:28:01.120 --> 00:28:05.680 As your framework for assessing the validity of things changed, or could 00:28:05.680 --> 00:28:08.080 anything be subject to scrutiny ultimately? 00:28:08.080 --> 00:28:11.600 For instance, the Creeds Confessions. 00:28:11.600 --> 00:28:14.560 With regard to the Creeds, there is nothing in the Creeds that 00:28:14.560 --> 00:28:18.400 changes. And do remember, the men who wrote the creeds were using 00:28:18.400 --> 00:28:22.480 the Septuagint, so in that case we have no danger whatsoever. 00:28:22.480 --> 00:28:27.520 With regard to some of the confessions that come centuries later, as 00:28:27.520 --> 00:28:31.200 Wo pointed out, there will be some questions with some of those. 00:28:31.200 --> 00:28:34.880 Now, personally, I can point out that I have not found anything 00:28:34.880 --> 00:28:39.440 in the book of Concord that is actually in jeopardy, anything that 00:28:39.440 --> 00:28:40.880 changes whatsoever. 00:28:40.880 --> 00:28:43.840 Incidentally, I've been looking at it as I've been reading through it 00:28:44.080 --> 00:28:48.400 for the Daily Devotions podcast and just my personal reading. 00:28:48.400 --> 00:28:53.760 And all of the references are basically identical in the Old Testament, 00:28:53.760 --> 00:28:57.680 in the so called Masoretic and in the Septuagint. 00:28:57.680 --> 00:29:01.760 Fortuitous divine intervention, whatever you want to call it, that happens to 00:29:01.760 --> 00:29:02.720 be the case. 00:29:02.720 --> 00:29:06.320 I am not as familiar with the Reformed confessions. 00:29:06.320 --> 00:29:07.360 I haven't gone through them. 00:29:07.360 --> 00:29:12.000 I don't read them daily certainly, because again, I'm not reformed. 00:29:12.000 --> 00:29:14.800 And so that is going to be a task for men who 00:29:14.800 --> 00:29:17.360 are from the reformed camp. 00:29:17.360 --> 00:29:19.680 I think that some of them are going to run into some 00:29:19.680 --> 00:29:23.760 problems, and Woe pointed out one of the reasons for that. 00:29:23.760 --> 00:29:28.800 Some of them state explicitly that they believe the Old Testament is 00:29:28.800 --> 00:29:30.080 in Hebrew. 00:29:30.080 --> 00:29:33.280 And very clearly we demonstrated that is not the case. 00:29:33.280 --> 00:29:36.800 And so the question for those who hold to those confessions that 00:29:36.800 --> 00:29:41.920 make those sorts of claims is can you jettison the part that 00:29:41.920 --> 00:29:45.520 says the Old Testament is in Hebrew and retain the rest of 00:29:45.520 --> 00:29:46.880 the confession? 00:29:48.640 --> 00:29:51.680 That's not a question for me to answer. 00:29:51.680 --> 00:29:55.840 That is a question for the men who adhere to those confessions 00:29:55.840 --> 00:29:57.680 to answer. 00:29:57.680 --> 00:30:01.280 Personally, I would have some doubts about the confessions then. 00:30:01.920 --> 00:30:04.800 I would have doubts about the Book of Concord if one of 00:30:04.800 --> 00:30:08.400 the first things it said was, the Old Testament is Hebrew, period, 00:30:08.400 --> 00:30:10.800 you have to read the Hebrew, you have to learn Hebrew. 00:30:10.800 --> 00:30:11.840 It doesn't say that. 00:30:12.080 --> 00:30:14.560 There's actually no enumeration of the books of the Bible, even in 00:30:14.560 --> 00:30:15.520 the Book of Concord. 00:30:15.520 --> 00:30:19.680 That's something for which Lutherans are kind of notorious, but that's simply 00:30:19.680 --> 00:30:21.920 the state of affairs as it stands. 00:30:21.920 --> 00:30:27.040 So it's a question for those in camps that hold to confessions 00:30:27.200 --> 00:30:30.560 that say things about the Hebrew being the Word of God. 00:30:30.560 --> 00:30:35.680 Not a problem for Lutherans, so in my case, nothing changes. 00:30:35.680 --> 00:30:39.120 I would just prefer to have a Septuagint in a good English 00:30:39.120 --> 00:30:44.320 translation. Unfortunately it doesn't exist yet because as it turns out we 00:30:44.320 --> 00:30:49.120 basically just have some stilted academic ones and then the Brenton, which 00:30:49.120 --> 00:30:54.960 is kind of like a weird almost KJV translation of the Septuagint, 00:30:54.960 --> 00:30:58.720 but sometimes it uses the Masoretic without noting it. 00:30:58.720 --> 00:31:00.800 I wish we had something better. 00:31:00.800 --> 00:31:01.840 We don't have it yet. 00:31:01.840 --> 00:31:02.960 We will get there. 00:31:02.960 --> 00:31:08.080 Because again, translating Greek into English is not the most daunting or 00:31:08.080 --> 00:31:10.240 impossible task in the world. 00:31:10.240 --> 00:31:12.160 Almost anyone can do it. 00:31:12.160 --> 00:31:15.280 We want men with the specific qualifications we laid out in the 00:31:15.280 --> 00:31:19.600 episode we did on translating the Greek, but it's not something about 00:31:19.600 --> 00:31:20.320 which I'm concerned. 00:31:20.320 --> 00:31:26.560 It's just inconvenient for me today because if I wanted to say 00:31:26.720 --> 00:31:31.520 switch to the Septuagint for the daily readings, for the daily devotions 00:31:31.520 --> 00:31:33.440 podcasts that I do. 00:31:33.440 --> 00:31:37.760 It would be somewhat difficult to do that because I have a 00:31:37.760 --> 00:31:40.880 number of options that are kind of good, but not one that 00:31:40.880 --> 00:31:43.440 I can just say, I'm going to read this one now. 00:31:43.440 --> 00:31:47.280 Because Because the nets, for instance, gets weirdly academic in some places 00:31:47.360 --> 00:31:51.360 and the name translations are kind of crazy in some points. 00:31:51.360 --> 00:31:55.040 A little hilarious, honestly, sometimes they're quite funny, but it's not what 00:31:55.040 --> 00:31:59.040 I want when I'm reading just to read the daily devotions, just 00:31:59.040 --> 00:31:59.760 to record that. 00:31:59.760 --> 00:32:02.880 And it's not something that you want in your daily reading, because 00:32:03.200 --> 00:32:07.520 you don't want an academic translation for that. 00:32:07.520 --> 00:32:09.600 I'm not saying an academic translation is bad. 00:32:09.600 --> 00:32:14.080 Like we said in the episode, an academic translation has its place, 00:32:14.080 --> 00:32:17.920 but it's not the everyday translation we should be using to read 00:32:17.920 --> 00:32:20.320 when we're just reading the Word of God. 00:32:20.320 --> 00:32:22.000 So the short answer is no. 00:32:22.000 --> 00:32:25.760 Nothing has really changed for me except for that desire to read 00:32:26.560 --> 00:32:30.480 the actual Old Testament in the Greek with the caveat that yes, 00:32:30.480 --> 00:32:33.200 I do find myself if I'm reading it in one of my 00:32:33.200 --> 00:32:36.560 existing Bibles, which is sort of unfortunate because I have a decent 00:32:36.560 --> 00:32:38.800 collection of Bibles at this point. 00:32:38.800 --> 00:32:44.080 I find that I am cross-referencing constantly to the Greek or translation 00:32:44.080 --> 00:32:47.920 of the Greek into English and making sure that things match, making 00:32:47.920 --> 00:32:50.720 sure that it actually says what it's supposed to say. 00:32:50.720 --> 00:32:53.920 Which, like I said, I have I don't know how many Bibles, 00:32:53.920 --> 00:32:56.800 some number of dozens of Bibles, and most of them, of course, 00:32:56.800 --> 00:32:58.400 are based on the Masoretic text. 00:32:58.400 --> 00:33:01.920 I do have a number of Septuagint translations, but but I now 00:33:01.920 --> 00:33:07.120 have some very nice Bibles that are more shelf decoration than necessarily 00:33:07.120 --> 00:33:09.280 something I would use. 00:33:09.280 --> 00:33:13.680 Which is unfortunate, but it's the reality of it, because our forefathers 00:33:13.680 --> 00:33:16.480 decided to trust the Jews when they said here, this is the 00:33:16.480 --> 00:33:18.720 word of God, trust us. 00:33:18.720 --> 00:33:22.480 Probably not the best plan, as we went over at length in 00:33:22.480 --> 00:33:25.360 the Septuagint series. 00:33:25.360 --> 00:33:30.800 As far as the the greater question, whether or not things from 00:33:30.800 --> 00:33:34.720 the church, from the history of the church, are reliable. 00:33:34.720 --> 00:33:38.800 Well, the early church, of course, was using the Septuagint exclusively. 00:33:38.800 --> 00:33:42.720 They didn't even have the so called Masoretic Text, and so they 00:33:42.720 --> 00:33:46.000 couldn't have relied on that because they didn't have it. 00:33:46.000 --> 00:33:50.320 Things that came after the Masoretic text was brought into the church, 00:33:50.320 --> 00:33:52.640 there are some questions. 00:33:52.640 --> 00:33:58.400 If someone is exegeting a passage, and that passage is different in 00:33:58.400 --> 00:34:01.520 the Masoretic text from what it should be, what it is in 00:34:01.520 --> 00:34:08.560 the Septuagint, then that exegesis is probably wrong, probably unhelpful, 00:34:08.560 --> 00:34:10.640 and something we should ignore. 00:34:10.640 --> 00:34:14.320 And so it's going to be necessary when we look at the 00:34:14.320 --> 00:34:18.960 older exegetes, but not the really old exegetes, but the older exegetes, 00:34:18.960 --> 00:34:22.320 it's going to be necessary to assess whether or not they were 00:34:22.320 --> 00:34:26.720 commenting on a passage that is different between the texts. 00:34:26.720 --> 00:34:30.880 And of course, as we pointed out, and as should be very 00:34:30.880 --> 00:34:37.280 obvious, by and large, the Septuagint and the Masoretic do actually agree. 00:34:37.280 --> 00:34:41.040 The Jews played games, they did so pervasively. 00:34:41.040 --> 00:34:48.320 In some books they did so thoroughly, but by God's protection, by 00:34:48.320 --> 00:34:54.960 divine providence, much of the text remains essentially identical between the Septuagint 00:34:55.120 --> 00:34:56.960 and the Masoretic text. 00:34:56.960 --> 00:35:00.240 So in all of those cases where the text is the same, 00:35:00.240 --> 00:35:04.240 where we don't have these concerns of they changed things, they played 00:35:04.240 --> 00:35:08.720 games, then we can certainly rely on those old exegetes the same 00:35:08.720 --> 00:35:10.960 way we would before. 00:35:11.200 --> 00:35:16.160 But of course, none of this really changes anything fundamentally with regard 00:35:16.160 --> 00:35:22.720 to how we treat exegetes, because those who exegete scripture are not 00:35:22.720 --> 00:35:25.760 perfect. They're fallen men, they're imperfect men. 00:35:25.760 --> 00:35:30.160 They make errors, they make mistakes, they misunderstand things. 00:35:30.160 --> 00:35:33.680 We have to run an assessment when we are reading those works. 00:35:33.680 --> 00:35:37.200 We don't just read them uncritically and say, Well, Augustine said it 00:35:37.280 --> 00:35:38.960 it must be true. 00:35:38.960 --> 00:35:43.680 Now in Augustine's case generally, if he said it, it very well 00:35:43.680 --> 00:35:45.520 probably is true. 00:35:45.520 --> 00:35:48.160 But even Augustine is not perfect. 00:35:48.160 --> 00:35:50.080 Calvin was not perfect. 00:35:50.080 --> 00:35:50.800 Luther was not 00:35:51.760 --> 00:35:57.200 perfect. Not one of these men was divinely inspired in the sense 00:35:57.200 --> 00:36:00.720 of being a prophet who could speak without error with regard to 00:36:00.720 --> 00:36:01.920 the things of God. 00:36:01.920 --> 00:36:05.200 And so it is necessary to cross check these things when we 00:36:05.200 --> 00:36:08.720 read these exegetes, cross check them against Scripture. 00:36:08.720 --> 00:36:10.640 We should always be doing that. 00:36:10.640 --> 00:36:13.040 Now, does it mean we can't rely on them? 00:36:13.040 --> 00:36:16.000 Of course not, because many of these men were very gifted. 00:36:16.000 --> 00:36:20.800 They had a gift of intelligence and insight, discernment. 00:36:20.800 --> 00:36:22.400 They knew what they were doing. 00:36:22.400 --> 00:36:24.160 And so we can rely on them. 00:36:24.160 --> 00:36:28.080 We can look at the things as they interpreted them, and then 00:36:28.080 --> 00:36:31.520 use the gifts, the skills, the abilities God has given us to 00:36:31.520 --> 00:36:33.920 assess that in the light of Scripture. 00:36:33.920 --> 00:36:36.000 That's always going to be the case. 00:36:36.000 --> 00:36:39.840 It's why when anyone makes the argument that, well, we just have 00:36:39.840 --> 00:36:42.960 to rely on the fathers, or we have to rely on this 00:36:42.960 --> 00:36:47.360 theologian or that theologian, that's complete nonsense. 00:36:47.360 --> 00:36:50.720 Because it is always going to be a question of what is 00:36:50.720 --> 00:36:52.640 reliable and what is true. 00:36:52.640 --> 00:36:55.680 And even if you are saying, well, we just have to rely 00:36:55.680 --> 00:36:59.040 on Calvin I'm not beating up on Calvin because I like doing 00:36:59.040 --> 00:37:00.880 so, it's just because I'm picking him. 00:37:00.880 --> 00:37:02.960 And I saw one of his book his books on my shelf 00:37:02.960 --> 00:37:04.160 over here. 00:37:04.160 --> 00:37:07.360 You can't just say, Well, we're going to rely on Calvin. 00:37:08.400 --> 00:37:10.560 Because you have to rely on the word of God. 00:37:10.560 --> 00:37:11.600 You have to rely on scripture. 00:37:11.600 --> 00:37:13.920 And what are you doing if you say we're just going to 00:37:13.920 --> 00:37:15.120 rely on Calvin? 00:37:15.120 --> 00:37:20.480 You've made the same sort of assessment with regard to his reliability 00:37:20.480 --> 00:37:23.920 that you should be making with regard to what Scripture says. 00:37:23.920 --> 00:37:27.200 Now it may very well be that he has very good interpretations, 00:37:27.200 --> 00:37:28.160 and he does in some cases. 00:37:28.160 --> 00:37:30.080 I don't as a Lutheran I can agree with some of the 00:37:30.080 --> 00:37:32.400 things that he says. 00:37:32.400 --> 00:37:36.160 But you don't uncritically agree with what he says. 00:37:36.160 --> 00:37:40.080 And so overall we're still running the same sort of assessment we've 00:37:40.080 --> 00:37:44.320 always had to run with regard to church fathers, with regard to 00:37:44.320 --> 00:37:48.320 the Reformation Fathers, all of these men down through history that God 00:37:48.320 --> 00:37:52.880 has gifted to the church, who had various levels of various abilities, 00:37:52.880 --> 00:37:56.000 we have to assess their work in the light of Scripture. 00:37:56.000 --> 00:37:58.960 Because Scripture is always the standard. 00:37:58.960 --> 00:38:02.080 That's what we mean when we say sola scriptura. 00:38:02.080 --> 00:38:03.680 We mean by scripture alone. 00:38:03.680 --> 00:38:06.320 Because remember again, and I've said this before, but it's good to 00:38:06.320 --> 00:38:09.600 have it here so it's documented, I guess. 00:38:09.600 --> 00:38:13.280 That's in the ablative, which is something that means absolutely nothing to 00:38:13.280 --> 00:38:17.280 most people these days because no one learns grammar anymore, unfortunately. 00:38:17.280 --> 00:38:20.880 And in English we are a little weird with our declensions. 00:38:20.880 --> 00:38:24.640 But the ablative essentially deals with means. 00:38:24.640 --> 00:38:28.160 It is the means by which something is accomplished. 00:38:28.160 --> 00:38:31.840 And so when we say faith alone, we're not saying faith alone, 00:38:31.840 --> 00:38:37.840 we're saying by faith alone, you are justified by faith alone. 00:38:37.840 --> 00:38:41.760 When we say scripture alone, we're not saying scriptural, we're saying by 00:38:41.760 --> 00:38:47.520 scripture alone, which is to say that all doctrine, all theology, ultimately 00:38:47.600 --> 00:38:50.080 is judged by scripture alone. 00:38:50.080 --> 00:38:54.800 It is not judged by what many men argue, what men say, 00:38:54.800 --> 00:38:58.720 even the most gifted man can err. 00:38:58.720 --> 00:39:03.200 Men are fallen, men make mistakes, and so any man must be 00:39:03.200 --> 00:39:05.600 subjected to the word of God. 00:39:05.600 --> 00:39:09.040 We do that regardless of the text on which he based his 00:39:09.040 --> 00:39:12.800 argument. In some cases will he his argument be faulty because he 00:39:12.800 --> 00:39:14.480 used a text that was faulty? 00:39:14.480 --> 00:39:15.520 Of course. 00:39:15.520 --> 00:39:19.520 But in most cases, again, the texts are going to agree in 00:39:19.520 --> 00:39:22.960 large part, and so we just run the same sort of reliability 00:39:22.960 --> 00:39:25.600 assessment that we would otherwise run. 00:39:25.600 --> 00:39:27.920 Very little has changed on that front. 00:39:27.920 --> 00:39:30.000 It just means that we have this extra little 00:39:31.040 --> 00:39:35.920 nuance, this extra analysis to run with regard to those who are 00:39:35.920 --> 00:39:38.000 exeguting the Old Testament. 00:39:38.000 --> 00:39:41.840 Which is something that we've done down through history anyway, because sometimes 00:39:41.840 --> 00:39:42.720 you have textual variants. 00:39:42.720 --> 00:39:44.240 Variants and things like that. 00:39:44.240 --> 00:39:46.880 So, in large part, no, it hasn't changed. 00:39:46.880 --> 00:39:50.240 In my specific case, my reliance on the Book of Concord hasn't 00:39:50.240 --> 00:39:54.640 changed, but I do find myself checking the Greek more often than 00:39:54.640 --> 00:39:58.960 I would have before, because before I basically just would have used 00:39:59.200 --> 00:40:03.280 a handful of different English translations, because obviously I don't know Hebrew. 00:40:03.280 --> 00:40:06.320 I know that the adversaries try to make a big deal of 00:40:06.320 --> 00:40:10.080 that, but quite frankly, not knowing Hebrew is helpful to exegete scripture 00:40:10.160 --> 00:40:12.880 because then you don't have the poison of the rabbis in your 00:40:12.880 --> 00:40:14.480 mind when you're doing it. 00:40:14.480 --> 00:40:17.120 And so I never looked at the Hebrew when I was doing 00:40:17.120 --> 00:40:19.680 it, except for if I happened to look at a a word 00:40:19.680 --> 00:40:21.920 here or there, sometimes I'd look something up. 00:40:21.920 --> 00:40:23.840 I don't do that anymore obviously. 00:40:23.840 --> 00:40:26.080 I look at the Greek, I rely on the Greek. 00:40:26.080 --> 00:40:27.440 Because the Greek is the word of God. 00:40:27.440 --> 00:40:30.000 The Septuagint is the word of God. 00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:33.680 So that small change, yes, I've made that change. 00:40:45.200 --> 00:40:49.920 Referring to the theory of demon worship and racial degeneration, what is 00:40:49.920 --> 00:40:51.280 your take on the St. 00:40:51.280 --> 00:40:54.480 Thomas Christians of India? 00:40:54.480 --> 00:40:59.440 If you look at many of the statistics for the region of 00:40:59.440 --> 00:41:03.360 India that is Christian, basically everything there is better. 00:41:03.360 --> 00:41:07.440 The crime is lower, it's cleaner, they're just generally better off. 00:41:07.440 --> 00:41:11.840 And so even in the case of a race that engaged in 00:41:11.840 --> 00:41:17.200 open and particularly pernicious demon worship for thousands of years, turning to 00:41:17.200 --> 00:41:22.320 Christ still improved them, still made them better, certainly seems to have 00:41:22.320 --> 00:41:24.960 stopped them from degenerating further. 00:41:24.960 --> 00:41:27.920 And so the other parts of India are much worse off. 00:41:27.920 --> 00:41:31.280 Perhaps I should have encrypted this stream so Indians can't join, but 00:41:31.280 --> 00:41:34.720 I'm not watching the comments on X anyway, so it doesn't matter 00:41:34.720 --> 00:41:35.600 that much. 00:41:35.600 --> 00:41:37.840 They're better off for being Christians. 00:41:37.840 --> 00:41:40.480 And that is the case for basically any population. 00:41:40.480 --> 00:41:42.880 You can look at the Ethiopians in Africa, the same thing is 00:41:42.880 --> 00:41:46.160 true. It's better to be in Ethiopia than many other places in 00:41:46.160 --> 00:41:47.920 sub Saharan Africa. 00:41:47.920 --> 00:41:50.560 They've been Christian for many years. 00:41:50.560 --> 00:41:55.120 Granted, they have a significant Islam problem these days, but they at 00:41:55.120 --> 00:41:58.400 least had that trade with Old Testament Israel, and so they had 00:41:58.400 --> 00:42:02.160 access to the scriptures, and so they did have a form of 00:42:02.160 --> 00:42:05.520 Christianity for a very long time, and they still have Christianity today. 00:42:05.760 --> 00:42:12.160 Incidentally and perhaps interestingly, they had the same problem with their language 00:42:12.160 --> 00:42:13.280 that Hebrew had. 00:42:13.280 --> 00:42:16.560 It was an objad, they didn't write down the vowels, and they 00:42:16.560 --> 00:42:21.440 didn't actually have a full and proper written language until two Greek 00:42:21.440 --> 00:42:25.520 Christians were captured and sold into the court, who then improved their 00:42:25.520 --> 00:42:28.960 language, improved their written language, and basically gave them a way to 00:42:28.960 --> 00:42:33.840 write down scripture fully in Amharic, which is the language they use. 00:42:33.840 --> 00:42:37.920 The main language they use. 00:42:38.960 --> 00:42:40.880 Then Excuse me. 00:42:40.880 --> 00:42:45.760 The next question, any book collection recommendation to to start a home 00:42:45.760 --> 00:42:50.480 library with, particularly theology or history related. 00:42:50.480 --> 00:42:55.600 That is a difficult one to answer because there are so many 00:42:55.600 --> 00:42:57.040 good options. 00:42:58.080 --> 00:43:00.640 I would say and I know that some people are probably going 00:43:00.640 --> 00:43:03.360 to disagree with me because you know, the Lutherans want me to 00:43:03.360 --> 00:43:07.760 say, oh, you should definitely just grab Luther and the Reformed, depending 00:43:07.760 --> 00:43:10.560 on which flavor of Reformed, will say whichever their favorite one is, 00:43:10.560 --> 00:43:16.240 Knox, Calvin, whoever it happens to be I think probably grab the 00:43:16.240 --> 00:43:22.000 number one book from the best theologian in your particular tradition, in 00:43:22.000 --> 00:43:23.200 your denomination. 00:43:23.200 --> 00:43:25.040 At least have that on your shelves. 00:43:25.040 --> 00:43:28.640 Read that one, be familiar with it, because you should know what 00:43:28.640 --> 00:43:32.400 you believe, and you should be comfortable believing it. 00:43:32.400 --> 00:43:35.280 If you're part of a tradition and you know nothing about what 00:43:35.280 --> 00:43:38.480 they believe, then there's some questions about why you're part of that 00:43:38.480 --> 00:43:42.400 tradition. Obviously I'm talking to men who care about theology who are 00:43:42.400 --> 00:43:44.960 going to actually do this sort of reading in this study, because 00:43:44.960 --> 00:43:47.440 the average man is just going to go to church, believe what 00:43:47.440 --> 00:43:50.240 his pastor and his elders tell him, and there's nothing wrong with 00:43:50.240 --> 00:43:53.520 that. It's one of the reasons that scripture is so clear about 00:43:53.520 --> 00:43:56.800 what is going to happen to bad teachers, false teachers. 00:43:56.800 --> 00:43:58.640 It will not be good. 00:43:58.640 --> 00:44:02.080 And that's not to say that if you have imperfections in your 00:44:02.080 --> 00:44:04.400 teaching, you're going to go to hell and be tormented for all 00:44:04.400 --> 00:44:05.120 of eternity. 00:44:05.360 --> 00:44:08.400 It's to say that you are going to be judged strictly and 00:44:08.400 --> 00:44:11.120 maybe you're going to be a door sweeper or whatever the equivalent 00:44:11.120 --> 00:44:12.560 is in paradise. 00:44:12.560 --> 00:44:14.320 Because you taught falsely. 00:44:14.320 --> 00:44:16.240 And so teachers should be terrified. 00:44:16.240 --> 00:44:19.120 The passages in scripture that say that you're going to receive the 00:44:19.120 --> 00:44:23.680 stricter judgment should scare most men out of wanting to teach. 00:44:23.680 --> 00:44:26.400 Bo and I both very clearly said early on that we have 00:44:26.400 --> 00:44:27.920 elected the stricter judgment. 00:44:27.920 --> 00:44:31.440 We know that is exactly what is coming for us when we 00:44:31.440 --> 00:44:33.280 die. I have no illusions about that. 00:44:33.280 --> 00:44:36.800 It's one of the reasons that I'm so insistent on being precise 00:44:36.800 --> 00:44:39.840 and being consistent and being clear about the things that I teach, 00:44:39.840 --> 00:44:42.800 the things that I believe, and why I spend the amount of 00:44:42.800 --> 00:44:45.600 time and effort that I do in order to back them up, 00:44:45.600 --> 00:44:48.960 because I want to be completely right on these issues. 00:44:48.960 --> 00:44:52.400 Not just because of course I have my own concerns about what 00:44:52.400 --> 00:44:55.440 is coming for me at the judgment, but I also want other 00:44:55.440 --> 00:45:00.320 men to stand before God with a clean conscience and with a 00:45:00.320 --> 00:45:05.040 true confession that doesn't have errors and other problems. 00:45:05.040 --> 00:45:07.760 I want that for all the men who listen to me as 00:45:07.760 --> 00:45:11.440 well, because I recognize that I am in a position where men 00:45:11.440 --> 00:45:16.560 listen to me and weigh somewhat heavily the things that I say. 00:45:16.560 --> 00:45:21.520 They are going to hear the words as I choose to speak 00:45:21.520 --> 00:45:25.200 them, and in some cases just simply believe them. 00:45:25.200 --> 00:45:28.960 And so I recognize the sort of burden, the sort of duty 00:45:28.960 --> 00:45:30.560 that comes along with that. 00:45:30.560 --> 00:45:34.720 But to return specifically to your question, and I'm looking at just 00:45:34.720 --> 00:45:38.080 a tiny fraction of my library I have here in my study. 00:45:38.320 --> 00:45:41.200 Most of it's down the hall in another room, but 00:45:43.040 --> 00:45:47.760 as far as which books I would recommend you grab? 00:45:47.760 --> 00:45:51.520 Again, part of it is going to depend on your tradition, on 00:45:51.520 --> 00:45:54.800 your denomination, because you should be reading the things from your theologians, 00:45:54.800 --> 00:45:57.360 because again, you should know why you believe the things you believe 00:45:57.440 --> 00:46:00.400 and just knowing the things you believe, first off. 00:46:00.400 --> 00:46:05.120 Certainly have a copy of your confession, know that well, know what 00:46:05.120 --> 00:46:07.840 it says, know if you agree with it, because if you don't, 00:46:07.840 --> 00:46:10.560 then you have some problems. 00:46:10.560 --> 00:46:16.000 But more general recommendations, I would definitely say if you can find 00:46:16.000 --> 00:46:18.720 it used by all means do that. 00:46:18.720 --> 00:46:21.840 Grab a PDF copy if you don't want to spend the money 00:46:22.000 --> 00:46:25.600 because I hate the prices from CPH and others. 00:46:25.600 --> 00:46:29.360 It's highway robbery, it's terrible, it's anti-Christian. 00:46:29.360 --> 00:46:34.480 But the eight volume set of Luther's commentary on Genesis is very 00:46:34.480 --> 00:46:35.360 worth having. 00:46:35.360 --> 00:46:39.520 Unfortunately, it's forty-five to fifty dollars a volume, which again is highway 00:46:39.520 --> 00:46:42.720 robbery. I hate that they do that, but it's just the reality 00:46:42.720 --> 00:46:43.920 of where we are right now. 00:46:43.920 --> 00:46:47.760 Capitalism has infested the church as well. 00:46:47.760 --> 00:46:52.000 In addition to sort of that Luther volume, then it's going to 00:46:52.000 --> 00:46:55.520 be which sort of areas interest you. 00:46:55.520 --> 00:46:59.440 If you're more interested in election, collect volumes on that. 00:46:59.440 --> 00:47:02.320 If you're interested in the history of the church, you can grab 00:47:02.320 --> 00:47:03.040 volumes on that. 00:47:03.040 --> 00:47:04.320 They're great volumes on that. 00:47:04.560 --> 00:47:08.160 You can read some of the church fathers, Eusebius and others who 00:47:08.160 --> 00:47:11.920 collected and wrote things about the history of the church. 00:47:11.920 --> 00:47:16.400 There is a wealth of information out there, but I want to 00:47:16.400 --> 00:47:21.680 offer a sort of general recommendation that is don't just collect books 00:47:21.680 --> 00:47:22.800 to collect books. 00:47:22.800 --> 00:47:25.840 There's not necessarily anything wrong with that. 00:47:25.840 --> 00:47:28.880 And if they're good books, then maybe building the library so you 00:47:28.880 --> 00:47:30.480 can one day pass it down, that's fine. 00:47:30.480 --> 00:47:32.080 That's perfectly acceptable. 00:47:32.080 --> 00:47:33.120 There's a reason to do that. 00:47:33.120 --> 00:47:35.360 That's good that some men do it. 00:47:35.360 --> 00:47:39.120 But don't just read books to read books. 00:47:39.120 --> 00:47:41.040 That's not beneficial to anyone. 00:47:41.040 --> 00:47:43.840 If you're doing it with fiction, that's fine, because that's entertainment, that's 00:47:43.840 --> 00:47:45.200 leisure, it's a different thing. 00:47:45.200 --> 00:47:48.880 But if you're just trying to power through as many theology books 00:47:48.880 --> 00:47:52.240 as you possibly can, you're going to get very little out of 00:47:52.240 --> 00:47:55.120 it. What you're going to do is you're going to have it 00:47:55.120 --> 00:47:58.000 go in one ear and out the other. 00:47:58.000 --> 00:48:00.720 That's just the reality of it, because you're not going to be 00:48:00.720 --> 00:48:04.720 able to retain fifty, sixty, seventy books a year, whatever it is, 00:48:04.720 --> 00:48:08.080 these people who try to power through book after book after book. 00:48:08.080 --> 00:48:09.200 It is much better 00:48:10.160 --> 00:48:15.120 to know something well than to have this sort of surface level 00:48:15.120 --> 00:48:18.880 knowledge of a whole bunch of things and never actually dive into 00:48:18.880 --> 00:48:21.040 any of them and never actually have a deep understanding of any 00:48:21.040 --> 00:48:22.480 of the topics. 00:48:22.480 --> 00:48:27.760 And so find an area that particularly interests you. 00:48:27.760 --> 00:48:33.440 Figure out which volumes in that area are considered the pinnacle of 00:48:33.440 --> 00:48:37.440 scholarship in the history of the church, and then move outward from 00:48:37.440 --> 00:48:42.640 there. Basically take a deeper dive in things instead of the surface 00:48:42.640 --> 00:48:45.600 level in which so met so many engage these days. 00:48:45.600 --> 00:48:48.400 The point isn't to say, you know, I've read and I I 00:48:48.400 --> 00:48:51.840 realize there some are going to say, oh, there's hypocrisy here. 00:48:51.840 --> 00:48:54.480 I don't think that there's necessarily hypocrisy here. 00:48:54.480 --> 00:48:58.960 Yes, I've certainly read a lot, but in part it has helped 00:48:58.960 --> 00:49:02.240 me to recognize, and I certainly then have the sort of standing 00:49:02.320 --> 00:49:05.920 as it were, to say it's better to have a deeper knowledge 00:49:05.920 --> 00:49:11.680 of a handful of things than a trivial knowledge of a thousand 00:49:11.680 --> 00:49:15.840 things. You know it's the old a man who's practiced one kick 00:49:15.840 --> 00:49:19.680 a thousand times or a thousand kicks one time sort of thing. 00:49:19.680 --> 00:49:24.320 So that's sort of my general recommendation with regard to these things. 00:49:24.320 --> 00:49:28.160 But of course, the primary recommendation is just read the scriptures. 00:49:28.160 --> 00:49:33.200 Too many men spend a hundred hours a week whatever it happens 00:49:33.200 --> 00:49:36.960 to be, that's obviously sort of the the far end of things, 00:49:36.960 --> 00:49:39.840 an exaggeration almost, hyperbole. 00:49:39.840 --> 00:49:43.440 They spend a hundred hours a week reading theology, and then they 00:49:43.440 --> 00:49:46.080 spend twenty minutes a day reading God's Word. 00:49:46.080 --> 00:49:47.440 Don't do that. 00:49:47.440 --> 00:49:49.840 Spend at least as much time in God's Word as you do 00:49:49.840 --> 00:49:51.520 in various other books. 00:49:51.520 --> 00:49:53.520 God is the one who's going to speak to you through his 00:49:53.600 --> 00:49:55.760 word. Yes, he can speak to you through these other men as 00:49:55.760 --> 00:49:59.280 well. But you want to spend your time with God. 00:49:59.280 --> 00:50:03.200 And a related, a tangentially related thing here. 00:50:03.200 --> 00:50:08.000 Sort of a little off from the question, of course, but pray. 00:50:08.000 --> 00:50:12.080 This is one of those things that I've been thinking about recently, 00:50:12.080 --> 00:50:14.880 and really for a number of years, but 00:50:15.840 --> 00:50:18.160 most of us don't pray enough. 00:50:18.160 --> 00:50:22.880 It's one thing to spend hours and hours in God's Word and 00:50:22.880 --> 00:50:25.360 in theology and discussing it and all of these things. 00:50:25.360 --> 00:50:25.920 These are important. 00:50:25.920 --> 00:50:27.520 They're parts of the Christian life. 00:50:27.520 --> 00:50:30.720 It's important to discuss these things with other men. 00:50:30.720 --> 00:50:31.920 But pray. 00:50:32.240 --> 00:50:36.400 We're supposed to be constantly in prayer, and prayer is part of 00:50:36.400 --> 00:50:39.280 how we have this conversation with God. 00:50:39.280 --> 00:50:42.160 We talk to God in prayer, God talks to us in His 00:50:42.160 --> 00:50:46.560 Word. And if we're just reading His Word or we're just reading 00:50:46.560 --> 00:50:51.680 theology, we're missing half of what's supposed to be a conversation. 00:50:51.680 --> 00:50:54.480 We're supposed to have and I know some men hate to hear 00:50:54.480 --> 00:50:57.600 this word because it's been so abused in the churches in recent 00:50:57.760 --> 00:51:00.240 decades, we're supposed to have a relationship with God. 00:51:00.240 --> 00:51:01.600 We are. 00:51:01.600 --> 00:51:02.960 And we know that. 00:51:02.960 --> 00:51:07.040 It's not what the modern non-denominational churches and others have made. 00:51:07.040 --> 00:51:08.240 I'm not saying that. 00:51:08.240 --> 00:51:10.160 But what does God say He is to us? 00:51:10.160 --> 00:51:11.840 And what does He say that we are to Him? 00:51:11.840 --> 00:51:14.080 He's our Father. 00:51:14.080 --> 00:51:15.840 And we're His sons. 00:51:15.840 --> 00:51:19.920 You're supposed to have a relationship with your earthly Father. 00:51:19.920 --> 00:51:22.800 You're certainly supposed to have a relationship with your heavenly Father, and 00:51:22.800 --> 00:51:25.360 so And so make sure that prayer is part of this, not 00:51:25.360 --> 00:51:29.200 just reading as many books as possible, or even just spending untold 00:51:29.200 --> 00:51:33.360 hours in Scripture and never talking to God. 00:51:33.360 --> 00:51:36.240 At the very least, as I've recommended so many times, just pray 00:51:36.240 --> 00:51:37.200 the Lord's Prayer. 00:51:37.440 --> 00:51:40.160 It's the one that Christ said we should pray. 00:51:40.160 --> 00:51:43.280 And if God Himself says this is how you should pray, we 00:51:43.280 --> 00:51:46.000 should at least use it sometimes. 00:51:46.000 --> 00:51:49.200 I personally recommend the traditional way of saying, you know, say it 00:51:49.200 --> 00:51:50.000 before meals. 00:51:50.000 --> 00:51:51.680 Say it when you wake up, say it before you go to 00:51:51.680 --> 00:51:54.960 sleep. That gives you four or five times a day. 00:51:54.960 --> 00:51:59.920 That's at least a foundation for building that sort of relationship, that 00:51:59.920 --> 00:52:03.360 right mindset, that right orientation toward God. 00:52:03.360 --> 00:52:05.760 And of course you're returning thanks to him for all these things 00:52:05.760 --> 00:52:12.480 as well, which is a very important part of the Christian life. 00:52:12.480 --> 00:52:19.040 Advice or reading material for long-term political or grassroots work, particularly when 00:52:19.040 --> 00:52:23.360 things get uglier in America. 00:52:23.360 --> 00:52:26.640 There is a non-trivial chance, of course, that things are going to 00:52:26.640 --> 00:52:28.640 get very ugly. 00:52:28.640 --> 00:52:32.560 There's also a chance that things will get better, because of course 00:52:32.800 --> 00:52:34.160 miracles exist. 00:52:34.160 --> 00:52:36.320 And I know there are those who will say that oh we 00:52:36.320 --> 00:52:37.440 can't just rely on a miracle. 00:52:37.440 --> 00:52:40.000 Well, every day is a miracle, quite frankly. 00:52:40.000 --> 00:52:44.720 Yes, there are extraordinary miracles, but the fact that I'm still breathing 00:52:44.720 --> 00:52:45.920 is a miracle. 00:52:45.920 --> 00:52:48.720 The fact that any of us is alive is a miracle, the 00:52:48.720 --> 00:52:51.840 fact that we have faith is a miracle because that's a specific 00:52:51.840 --> 00:52:54.000 miracle. God actually had to get God had to reach me To 00:52:54.000 --> 00:52:57.120 reach down into creation and give you the gift of faith. 00:52:57.120 --> 00:52:58.880 That's a miracle, certainly. 00:52:58.880 --> 00:53:02.960 But with regard to reading material and things like that, get practical 00:53:02.960 --> 00:53:07.280 books. I have an entire section of my library that is just 00:53:07.280 --> 00:53:08.080 practical stuff. 00:53:08.080 --> 00:53:10.640 I have thank you to the person who sent a new one 00:53:10.720 --> 00:53:11.040 by the way. 00:53:11.040 --> 00:53:13.040 I have a books on beekeeping. 00:53:13.040 --> 00:53:14.640 I have some books on woodworking. 00:53:14.640 --> 00:53:16.640 I hope I don't have to personally do that because I'd like 00:53:16.640 --> 00:53:18.320 to keep all of my fingers. 00:53:18.320 --> 00:53:24.000 I have books on various forms of regenerative farming, both forest and 00:53:24.000 --> 00:53:25.360 open field. 00:53:25.360 --> 00:53:28.240 It's good to have that practical knowledge because that's something that's sort 00:53:28.240 --> 00:53:30.560 of fallen away in recent years. 00:53:30.560 --> 00:53:34.480 Many of us, and particularly with this sort of audience, it's undoubtedly 00:53:34.480 --> 00:53:38.800 true, you get the theoretical knowledge and all these o other subjects, 00:53:38.800 --> 00:53:42.720 but we let sort of the practical things fall to the wayside. 00:53:42.720 --> 00:53:45.360 And I don't think that's a good way to go through life. 00:53:45.680 --> 00:53:51.440 Because it's important to spend time on things that are sort of 00:53:51.440 --> 00:53:53.280 purely of the mind. 00:53:53.280 --> 00:53:55.680 But we're not just mind. 00:53:55.680 --> 00:53:57.200 We're not just spirit. 00:53:57.200 --> 00:54:00.720 I believe in the tripartite division of man, of course. 00:54:00.720 --> 00:54:01.840 We're also flesh. 00:54:01.840 --> 00:54:02.720 We're also body. 00:54:02.720 --> 00:54:05.280 It's important to have that real anchor into the world. 00:54:05.280 --> 00:54:08.480 And part of the way you can do that is to have 00:54:08.480 --> 00:54:10.960 things that are concrete in your life. 00:54:10.960 --> 00:54:13.120 I of course have chickens and I have to take care of 00:54:13.120 --> 00:54:15.040 them, I have to go down there and feed them and muck 00:54:15.040 --> 00:54:16.800 them out and do all those various things. 00:54:16.800 --> 00:54:21.680 It's important to have that tangible concrete relationship and connection to the 00:54:21.680 --> 00:54:27.040 world, and that will also serve you well if things go sideways 00:54:27.040 --> 00:54:28.720 with regard to our country. 00:54:28.960 --> 00:54:33.520 Because you will have practical skills, you will have things that are 00:54:33.520 --> 00:54:39.600 actually useful regardless of what society is currently doing because people are 00:54:39.600 --> 00:54:40.880 always going to need food. 00:54:40.880 --> 00:54:44.640 If you have books on growing food in the forest or growing 00:54:44.640 --> 00:54:47.920 food in the field and doing it in a regenerative way, doing 00:54:47.920 --> 00:54:50.880 it in a sustainable way, in a way that is better for 00:54:50.880 --> 00:54:54.320 not just humanity, not just for the people you're feeding, but also 00:54:54.320 --> 00:54:55.120 for your land. 00:54:55.200 --> 00:54:58.960 Because don't forget, if you don't take care of your land, well, 00:54:58.960 --> 00:55:00.320 it stops feeding you eventually. 00:55:00.320 --> 00:55:03.520 We're running into that problem now with huge chunks of our farmland 00:55:03.520 --> 00:55:06.400 in the middle of the United States. 00:55:06.400 --> 00:55:09.760 If you have those sorts of skills, they're going to be valuable 00:55:09.760 --> 00:55:11.600 at all times. 00:55:11.600 --> 00:55:16.080 Even today, where we live with relative abundance, if you're able to 00:55:16.080 --> 00:55:19.040 grow some of your own produce, for instance, it's going to be 00:55:19.040 --> 00:55:22.000 far better than what you can get in most grocery stores. 00:55:22.000 --> 00:55:24.560 I know that basically everything that comes out of my garden is 00:55:24.560 --> 00:55:26.720 better than what I can get at the store. 00:55:26.720 --> 00:55:30.320 Certainly, produce is a world of difference and the eggs I get 00:55:30.560 --> 00:55:31.840 are better from the chickens. 00:55:31.840 --> 00:55:39.120 So having a practical section for your library is incredibly important with 00:55:39.120 --> 00:55:43.200 regard to the perhaps specifically political. 00:55:43.200 --> 00:55:47.040 If that is something in which you are interested and you have 00:55:47.040 --> 00:55:51.360 the capacity to read that sort of thing and dedicate the time 00:55:51.360 --> 00:55:54.480 and the effort and can see some sort of return on it, 00:55:54.480 --> 00:55:57.600 classical political theory is the way to go. 00:55:57.600 --> 00:56:01.600 And a huge component of that that is often neglected, and I'm 00:56:01.600 --> 00:56:03.840 looking at a book on my shelf that I have related to 00:56:03.840 --> 00:56:05.680 it, rhetoric. 00:56:05.680 --> 00:56:07.600 Get classic books on rhetoric. 00:56:07.600 --> 00:56:12.560 That is a huge part of these things because if you are 00:56:12.560 --> 00:56:15.680 doing anything in the political space and you are not able to 00:56:15.680 --> 00:56:19.680 speak in a way that can actually get men to become engaged, 00:56:19.680 --> 00:56:23.360 that can get men to listen not only listen to your words, 00:56:23.360 --> 00:56:26.400 but listen to your words and want to act and then go 00:56:26.400 --> 00:56:29.440 on to act because of the things that you have said. 00:56:29.440 --> 00:56:32.400 If you can't do that, you are never going to be effective 00:56:32.400 --> 00:56:39.520 in politics There are men who are geniuses who know certain areas 00:56:39.760 --> 00:56:44.480 of whatever it happens to be regulatory law or some aspect of 00:56:44.480 --> 00:56:49.440 the government forward, backward, inside out, upside down, they know it better 00:56:49.440 --> 00:56:51.840 than any man who's ever lived. 00:56:51.840 --> 00:56:56.880 But they are more boring to listen to than watching paint dry. 00:56:56.880 --> 00:57:00.800 They are never going to get anywhere unless they can find a 00:57:00.800 --> 00:57:05.520 man who can translate that into actually effective rhetoric. 00:57:05.520 --> 00:57:09.120 The Greeks and the Romans understood this far better than most men 00:57:09.120 --> 00:57:10.240 in modern society. 00:57:10.240 --> 00:57:15.520 There are a handful of political exceptions, some more obvious than others. 00:57:15.520 --> 00:57:17.920 Bismarck is a great one. 00:57:17.920 --> 00:57:20.640 If you are good at rhetoric, you are going to be more 00:57:20.640 --> 00:57:23.360 effective in most parts of your life. 00:57:23.360 --> 00:57:27.680 It's one of the things that good pastors should certainly study, because 00:57:27.920 --> 00:57:31.280 even if you're not using it, say to manipulate people, which of 00:57:31.280 --> 00:57:34.720 course is one of the things you can do with rhetoric, it's 00:57:34.640 --> 00:57:37.440 one of the sort of abuse not always an abuse, but often 00:57:37.440 --> 00:57:38.320 an abuse 00:57:39.840 --> 00:57:43.840 Even if you are just trying to get men to listen, to 00:57:43.840 --> 00:57:48.160 learn something, to pay attention to your words, being able to deliver 00:57:48.160 --> 00:57:52.560 them in an effective way is going to make you far more 00:57:52.560 --> 00:57:57.440 effective. You are going to actually see returns on your investment. 00:57:57.440 --> 00:57:59.520 You're going to achieve something. 00:57:59.520 --> 00:58:03.600 Because any man can learn a great deal about a particular area 00:58:03.680 --> 00:58:06.080 and then go and shout into the void. 00:58:06.080 --> 00:58:09.680 That doesn't accomplish anything except maybe entertaining him if he's a little 00:58:09.680 --> 00:58:13.920 strange. You have to be able to speak to other men, to 00:58:13.920 --> 00:58:18.560 convince other men, to get other men to change their opinions and 00:58:18.560 --> 00:58:22.080 to follow you if you're going to be a political leader, certainly. 00:58:22.080 --> 00:58:28.080 And so the short recommendation is practical books, political theory, and rhetoric 00:58:28.080 --> 00:58:30.720 included in that political theory. 00:58:30.720 --> 00:58:35.040 Most of these things have been known since ancient times. 00:58:35.040 --> 00:58:38.080 Much of it's contained in scripture as well, because of course, read 00:58:38.080 --> 00:58:41.040 Proverbs, read Ecclesiastes. 00:58:41.040 --> 00:58:44.480 But these things are not new, they're not novel. 00:58:44.480 --> 00:58:47.440 These books have existed for a long time. 00:58:47.440 --> 00:58:57.600 We've just sort of neglected to read them in the modern world. 00:58:57.680 --> 00:58:58.080 Well 00:59:00.480 --> 00:59:04.240 not certain how long I will go tonight, but I guess at 00:59:04.240 --> 00:59:06.400 least another say twenty minutes 00:59:12.640 --> 00:59:14.240 Have an easy question here. 00:59:14.240 --> 00:59:16.480 How is Gizmo and how are the chickens? 00:59:16.800 --> 00:59:18.960 they're both doing well. 00:59:18.960 --> 00:59:20.400 They're quite happy. 00:59:20.400 --> 00:59:24.560 Have a new kitten, and Gizmo has very mixed feelings about that. 00:59:24.560 --> 00:59:26.560 But other than that, all is well. 00:59:26.560 --> 00:59:29.600 He's been hanging out in my study making sure that he's still 00:59:29.600 --> 00:59:33.040 the favourite, so and sulking a little bit, but he is a 00:59:33.040 --> 00:59:35.200 Pomeranian, so I did kind of expect that that 00:59:40.000 --> 00:59:44.320 the question about the Russian Revolution when the country was almost entirely 00:59:44.400 --> 00:59:50.160 orthodox, that starts to be a fairly long and complicated topic. 00:59:50.160 --> 00:59:54.480 I think I may save that one for next time, or perhaps 00:59:54.480 --> 00:59:56.160 the time after that. 00:59:56.160 --> 01:00:01.840 The short answer is it is always possible to subvert something. 01:00:01.840 --> 01:00:04.720 And Satan is particularly good at it. 01:00:04.720 --> 01:00:09.040 He has always been very effective at finding fault lines or creating 01:00:09.040 --> 01:00:12.560 fault lines and leading men astray. 01:00:12.560 --> 01:00:17.280 And this is one of the reasons that teachers and political leaders 01:00:17.280 --> 01:00:21.040 and others are so important and it is important to make sure 01:00:21.040 --> 01:00:25.120 that they're not just good at their job, as it were, but 01:00:25.120 --> 01:00:30.000 they actually have right beliefs and want to translate those into policy. 01:00:30.000 --> 01:00:34.880 Because a wicked man who is competent can do an unfathomed amount 01:00:34.800 --> 01:00:36.160 of harm. 01:00:36.160 --> 01:00:38.960 Stalin was an unbelievably evil man. 01:00:38.960 --> 01:00:42.160 He is undoubtedly in one of the deepest pits of hell right 01:00:42.160 --> 01:00:45.760 now. But he was a very effective political leader. 01:00:45.760 --> 01:00:50.320 One of the most effective, probably in history. 01:00:50.320 --> 01:00:56.720 And it is vitally important that those sorts of men are identified 01:00:56.720 --> 01:01:02.000 and removed by the state, because they can cause untold harm. 01:01:02.000 --> 01:01:05.440 In fact, there were many opportunities leading up to the Russian Revolution 01:01:05.440 --> 01:01:11.360 to remove some of those revolutionaries, and the various leaders of Europe 01:01:11.360 --> 01:01:13.360 neglected to do so. 01:01:13.360 --> 01:01:19.600 They simply watched them, in some cases aided them, unfortunately, and so 01:01:19.600 --> 01:01:23.520 tens of millions died as a result. 01:01:23.520 --> 01:01:27.760 And it is a warning to us that even in a Christian 01:01:27.760 --> 01:01:32.160 nation, at least a largely Christian nation, there's a question about how 01:01:32.160 --> 01:01:34.160 deep the faith was at the time, of course. 01:01:34.160 --> 01:01:35.040 Many of them were Christians. 01:01:35.040 --> 01:01:36.880 I won't deny that for a second. 01:01:36.880 --> 01:01:39.600 There were some very dedicated Christians, many of them died in the 01:01:39.600 --> 01:01:44.160 gulags. But even in a Christian nation, that sort of subversion and 01:01:44.160 --> 01:01:46.880 wickedness is possible because there is always evil in the hearts of 01:01:46.880 --> 01:01:50.400 men, and Satan will always find a way to latch on to 01:01:50.400 --> 01:01:53.840 that and organize evil toward his own ends. 01:01:53.840 --> 01:01:58.720 It is something against which we have to be constantly clear. 01:01:58.720 --> 01:02:00.000 It is part of the Christian life. 01:02:00.000 --> 01:02:02.080 It's part of being Christian man. 01:02:02.080 --> 01:02:06.160 There is no rest, as it were, in this life. 01:02:06.160 --> 01:02:08.240 Because you enter God's rest. 01:02:08.240 --> 01:02:10.400 That's the next life, that's paradise. 01:02:10.400 --> 01:02:11.520 In this life, it's work. 01:02:11.840 --> 01:02:16.080 In this life, it's toil, it's hardship, it's suffering in many cases. 01:02:16.080 --> 01:02:18.720 And that is the reality of life. 01:02:18.720 --> 01:02:22.160 Of course, there's joy as well, because we still live in God's 01:02:22.160 --> 01:02:24.400 world. God's world is still good. 01:02:24.400 --> 01:02:27.840 His good good gifts still exist, we still have all of the 01:02:27.840 --> 01:02:32.800 various blessings, but we don't get to rest on our laurels ever. 01:02:32.800 --> 01:02:34.560 No matter how good it is. 01:02:34.560 --> 01:02:38.160 At the height of Christendom, men became too lax. 01:02:38.160 --> 01:02:41.600 They should have been vigilant to maintain that, and then it would 01:02:41.600 --> 01:02:42.800 have been passed down to us. 01:02:42.800 --> 01:02:46.800 We would have inherited something far better than what we have today. 01:02:46.800 --> 01:02:48.640 They were not vigilant. 01:02:48.640 --> 01:02:51.920 It is our duty to be vigilant if God puts us in 01:02:51.920 --> 01:02:55.360 such a position where we again have those opportunities, where we have 01:02:55.360 --> 01:02:58.080 the blessings our ancestors had. 01:02:58.080 --> 01:03:01.920 It is something that was neglected in Europe during that period, and 01:03:01.920 --> 01:03:04.160 it caused untold suffering. 01:03:04.160 --> 01:03:13.760 We're still suffering the consequences of it. 01:03:13.760 --> 01:03:18.400 What is your take on why women go to non-denominational churches and 01:03:18.400 --> 01:03:21.040 men go to traditional churches? 01:03:21.520 --> 01:03:25.840 I sort of answered that one earlier when I posted that the 01:03:25.840 --> 01:03:29.040 women who are going to the non-denominational churches are large churches largely 01:03:29.040 --> 01:03:32.480 headless, and that's just the reality of it. 01:03:32.480 --> 01:03:36.160 Women who have a head, an actual head who does what he 01:03:36.160 --> 01:03:39.360 is supposed to do, are by and large not the ones going 01:03:39.360 --> 01:03:42.160 to those churches, certainly not the ones who are being shown in 01:03:42.160 --> 01:03:45.520 the images that have been passed around on X and other places 01:03:45.520 --> 01:03:49.840 recently. Because the men in their lives should be the ones who 01:03:49.840 --> 01:03:52.560 are leading them to the truth, who are leading them to where 01:03:52.560 --> 01:03:53.280 they should be. 01:03:53.440 --> 01:03:55.600 The women are not going to do this on their own because 01:03:55.600 --> 01:03:58.080 women are not their own heads, they cannot be. 01:03:58.080 --> 01:04:00.400 Definitionally a woman is not her own head. 01:04:00.400 --> 01:04:01.520 Someone else is. 01:04:01.520 --> 01:04:05.440 And so the question is who is the head with regard to 01:04:05.440 --> 01:04:06.400 these women? 01:04:06.400 --> 01:04:10.400 Well, the father is clearly absent in many of these cases, which 01:04:10.400 --> 01:04:12.400 is a big part of the problem. 01:04:12.400 --> 01:04:14.240 Many of them are at the age where they should have been 01:04:14.240 --> 01:04:17.040 married already, and so there's no husband to act as the head, 01:04:17.040 --> 01:04:18.640 that's part of the problem. 01:04:18.640 --> 01:04:23.040 And most of them have elected a head that is either the 01:04:23.040 --> 01:04:26.000 state or some random political figure. 01:04:26.000 --> 01:04:28.800 That's a recipe for disaster. 01:04:28.800 --> 01:04:34.320 God has not given women collectively to be wards of the state. 01:04:34.320 --> 01:04:36.960 A woman is supposed to have a husband he's she's supposed to 01:04:36.960 --> 01:04:39.520 have a father who's active and involved in her life and has 01:04:39.520 --> 01:04:42.640 trained her up in the way she should go, and then passes 01:04:42.640 --> 01:04:44.240 her to a godly husband. 01:04:44.240 --> 01:04:46.560 That is the way things are supposed to be, and so these 01:04:46.560 --> 01:04:50.880 women are headless, and so they're basically running around like headless chickens. 01:04:50.880 --> 01:04:52.880 That's exactly what they're doing. 01:04:52.880 --> 01:04:56.400 The men are not doing that because a man is his own 01:04:56.400 --> 01:04:59.520 head once he reaches a certain age, and so men don't have 01:04:59.520 --> 01:05:00.240 that problem. 01:05:00.240 --> 01:05:02.800 That's why you see the women doing these things and you don't 01:05:02.720 --> 01:05:04.400 see the men doing them. 01:05:04.400 --> 01:05:08.000 It is a problem on both sides, of course. 01:05:08.000 --> 01:05:10.400 I'm not going to say that, you know, you can just blame 01:05:10.400 --> 01:05:13.760 women entirely, because of course women aren't their own head. 01:05:13.760 --> 01:05:16.480 And if a woman is not her own head, then the men 01:05:16.480 --> 01:05:20.080 who have neglected to act as head, who were given that office, 01:05:20.080 --> 01:05:23.360 that position by God, ultimately they are to blame, and they will 01:05:23.360 --> 01:05:25.200 answer to God for that. 01:05:25.200 --> 01:05:28.720 Yes, of course, women still answer for their own sins. 01:05:28.720 --> 01:05:30.960 I'm never going to be the one who says, Oh no, women 01:05:30.960 --> 01:05:34.320 can't sin because women don't have autonomy or whatever it happens to 01:05:34.320 --> 01:05:37.280 be. No, women are still responsible for their own sins. 01:05:37.280 --> 01:05:40.080 Eve was still responsible for eating the apple. 01:05:40.080 --> 01:05:43.600 Adam had the greater sin because he did not act as her 01:05:43.600 --> 01:05:45.760 head, as he was supposed to do. 01:05:45.760 --> 01:05:48.080 What he should have done is rebuked her and killed the snake, 01:05:48.080 --> 01:05:50.080 and he didn't do it. 01:05:50.080 --> 01:05:52.080 That's why we have these problems today, we have a lack of 01:05:52.560 --> 01:05:56.480 headship. Part of it, of course, is our society is incredibly deeply 01:05:56.480 --> 01:06:00.080 wicked, designed in order to make it difficult or nearly impossible in 01:06:00.080 --> 01:06:02.640 some cases for men to exercise headship. 01:06:02.640 --> 01:06:05.680 But just because something is difficult does not mean we are absolved 01:06:05.680 --> 01:06:07.200 of the duty to do it. 01:06:07.200 --> 01:06:10.160 And so fathers still have a duty to raise their daughters well. 01:06:10.160 --> 01:06:12.960 Husbands still have a duty to lead their wives, and they should 01:06:12.960 --> 01:06:14.000 be doing so. 01:06:14.000 --> 01:06:16.880 That's why we see this sort of split, because women are headless 01:06:16.880 --> 01:06:19.520 and men are not doing what they're supposed to do. 01:06:34.880 --> 01:06:37.200 How familiar are you with Eastern Germany? 01:06:37.200 --> 01:06:40.800 Any places you would suggest visiting? 01:06:40.800 --> 01:06:46.000 I am familiar with Berlin and the surrounding area, and it's worth 01:06:46.000 --> 01:06:47.280 a visit. 01:06:47.280 --> 01:06:51.120 There are certain neighborhoods that are not great, but they're pretty easy 01:06:51.120 --> 01:06:53.040 to identify, just don't go there. 01:06:53.040 --> 01:06:56.000 And they're not the ones you want to visit anyway, because as 01:06:56.000 --> 01:06:58.560 a tourist, you're going to want to be in Mitte, which is 01:06:58.560 --> 01:07:02.800 the center of the town, Prenzlauerberg, and a couple places like that, 01:07:02.800 --> 01:07:05.280 which have the restaurants and the museums and all those things. 01:07:05.280 --> 01:07:09.600 So just go to those places and you've basically seen what you 01:07:10.000 --> 01:07:11.840 want to see if you just go there. 01:07:11.840 --> 01:07:15.040 Berlin is nowhere near as bad as Paris, for instance. 01:07:15.040 --> 01:07:19.360 I did not particularly enjoy visiting Paris, unfortunately, because Paris is a 01:07:19.360 --> 01:07:20.400 wonderful city. 01:07:20.400 --> 01:07:24.160 The people currently occupying Paris are not wonderful. 01:07:24.160 --> 01:07:29.520 But Berlin has world-class museums, probably the best museums in the world, 01:07:29.520 --> 01:07:32.320 despite seemingly no one actually knowing that. 01:07:32.320 --> 01:07:36.800 And they are in large part concentrated in one part of the 01:07:36.800 --> 01:07:40.800 city, conveniently called Museum Island, but there are some others that are 01:07:40.800 --> 01:07:43.040 spread throughout the city that are also worth visiting. 01:07:43.040 --> 01:07:46.960 So that would be one of my recommendations as far as other 01:07:46.960 --> 01:07:51.280 parts of East Germany are concerned, I'm less former East Germany of 01:07:51.280 --> 01:07:54.960 course. I am less familiar with that because I did spend most 01:07:54.960 --> 01:07:56.720 of my time in Berlin. 01:08:22.640 --> 01:08:25.360 I think that I am going to have to get to some 01:08:25.360 --> 01:08:31.200 of these next time because they are lengthier and answers to some 01:08:31.200 --> 01:08:39.680 of these questions. 01:08:39.680 --> 01:08:43.600 Given the framework handed to us by the actions of the prophets, 01:08:43.600 --> 01:08:48.000 for example Daniel, could it be within reason to agree that prophecy 01:08:48.000 --> 01:08:54.800 has reached individuals post Christ even within apostatized rather nations, and how 01:08:54.800 --> 01:09:01.360 should we as Christians navigate self proclaimed prophets and their messages? 01:09:01.360 --> 01:09:06.560 I am not a cessationist, because Lutherans aren't cessationists, we've never been 01:09:06.560 --> 01:09:08.880 so. That's not part of our confession. 01:09:08.880 --> 01:09:11.600 There are some who are cessationists, not Lutherans, but there are some 01:09:11.600 --> 01:09:12.800 Christians who are. 01:09:12.800 --> 01:09:16.960 And I'm not saying they don't have no argument whatsoever. 01:09:16.960 --> 01:09:23.120 I don't believe that there are any prophets except for the final 01:09:23.120 --> 01:09:25.040 two in Revelation. 01:09:25.040 --> 01:09:27.040 That's a different thing. 01:09:27.040 --> 01:09:31.520 But the problem with a prophet, right, a so-called prophet, rising up 01:09:31.520 --> 01:09:36.080 today would would be if he says anything that's at odds with 01:09:36.080 --> 01:09:38.720 scripture, he's not a prophet. 01:09:38.720 --> 01:09:41.760 Anything else he says is just going to be repeating what we 01:09:41.760 --> 01:09:45.440 have in Scripture, and so of what value is he? 01:09:45.760 --> 01:09:46.800 And it seems like 01:09:47.920 --> 01:09:52.800 most of the sign gifts ended with the apostolic age. 01:09:52.800 --> 01:09:55.520 So basically they died at the same time as John. 01:09:55.520 --> 01:09:59.120 That's not to say that God can't hand out extraordinary gifts today. 01:09:59.120 --> 01:10:01.920 I think that he still does in some cases. 01:10:01.920 --> 01:10:05.360 But by and large, we don't see miraculous healing. 01:10:05.360 --> 01:10:08.320 We d despite what some TV preachers claim. 01:10:08.320 --> 01:10:11.280 We don't see the dead coming back to life. 01:10:11.280 --> 01:10:15.680 These sorts of gifts that were given out in order to stamp 01:10:15.680 --> 01:10:20.560 what the apostles were preaching and teaching with God's stamp of approval, 01:10:20.560 --> 01:10:22.320 with his authority. 01:10:22.640 --> 01:10:26.000 That was closed in the apostolic age largely. 01:10:26.000 --> 01:10:29.600 Again, not in the sense of being a firm closure of God 01:10:29.600 --> 01:10:33.120 can't. I'm not saying that, because certainly God can. 01:10:33.120 --> 01:10:36.800 But I personally do not believe there are any prophets today. 01:10:36.800 --> 01:10:39.200 I think I think perhaps there are those who are given certain 01:10:39.200 --> 01:10:43.680 gifts that look a little bit like prophecy, but they're not giving 01:10:43.680 --> 01:10:45.920 any new message from God. 01:10:45.920 --> 01:10:51.200 God has given us the final word in the Old Testament and 01:10:51.200 --> 01:10:52.640 the New Testament. 01:10:52.640 --> 01:10:56.640 And as Revelation says, anyone who adds to or subtracts from is 01:10:56.640 --> 01:11:00.400 cursed. And so no prophet is going to arise that's going to 01:11:00.400 --> 01:11:02.080 give us anything new. 01:11:02.080 --> 01:11:07.040 Certainly. And so the question would be, again, of what utility would 01:11:07.040 --> 01:11:09.840 someone saying, I'm a prophet, and then saying the same thing we 01:11:09.840 --> 01:11:11.920 have in Scripture be Is he a prophet, or is he just 01:11:11.920 --> 01:11:13.840 repeating what we already have? 01:11:14.160 --> 01:11:18.000 Because in the sort of limited sense of prophet, you can say 01:11:18.000 --> 01:11:22.080 that anyone who is teaching God's Word is a prophet, because that's 01:11:22.080 --> 01:11:25.040 one of the things prophet one of the things called a prophet 01:11:25.040 --> 01:11:27.920 in scripture is someone who is teaching God's Word. 01:11:27.920 --> 01:11:31.280 But of course, when we think of prophet, and undoubtedly what the 01:11:31.280 --> 01:11:34.480 question is, is someone who has a new word from God. 01:11:34.480 --> 01:11:36.880 And Revelation clearly forecloses that. 01:11:36.880 --> 01:11:39.920 So no, I do not think there are any prophets today, and 01:11:40.160 --> 01:11:44.080 basically, they're all at the absolute best scammers. 01:11:44.080 --> 01:11:47.600 They are just making money off of the gullible. 01:11:47.600 --> 01:11:51.360 Some of them are very clearly demonically oppressed. 01:11:51.360 --> 01:11:54.880 I can think of some certain pastors in mega churches in Texas 01:11:55.360 --> 01:11:57.840 who I I don't know how anyone sits in the pews and 01:11:57.840 --> 01:12:02.480 doesn't realize that it's an actual demon standing there preaching to them. 01:12:18.800 --> 01:12:23.040 I do think that most of the rest of these questions are 01:12:23.600 --> 01:12:27.440 going to have to be for next time because they are, again, 01:12:27.440 --> 01:12:32.000 longer answers, and I didn't tend to run for about an hour, 01:12:31.920 --> 01:12:34.560 and I think we're just a bit over that now. 01:12:34.560 --> 01:12:39.360 So see if there's a short one here. 01:12:39.360 --> 01:12:41.600 Is the crucifix the Lutheran norm? 01:12:41.600 --> 01:12:45.360 The answer to that one is indeed very short and easy, yes. 01:12:45.360 --> 01:12:51.840 Our churches essentially always have a crucifix, but the use of the 01:12:52.160 --> 01:12:56.080 the ordinary cross without the corpus, without the body, also very standard. 01:12:56.080 --> 01:12:58.720 You can see behind me there's both a crucifix and a on 01:12:58.720 --> 01:12:59.760 this side actually. 01:13:00.240 --> 01:13:03.600 Also a an eyes an iron cross there. 01:13:03.600 --> 01:13:07.120 And I'm I'm wearing uh a necklace that is not a crucifix, 01:13:07.120 --> 01:13:10.080 it's just a cross. 01:13:10.080 --> 01:13:12.240 Incidentally made of Irish marble. 01:13:12.240 --> 01:13:16.160 So for the Irish listeners, a little a nod to my Celtic 01:13:16.160 --> 01:13:24.400 brothers there. 01:13:28.080 --> 01:13:33.200 I do not think that I have any other short ones right 01:13:33.200 --> 01:13:34.080 now, so 01:13:35.600 --> 01:13:40.000 I think I may bring this to a close for this episode 01:13:40.080 --> 01:13:40.720 as it were. 01:13:40.720 --> 01:13:42.800 I will try to do this every Thursday. 01:13:42.800 --> 01:13:45.360 I think that's the goal going forward. 01:13:45.360 --> 01:13:49.120 The overall point is basically to make a library of answers to 01:13:49.120 --> 01:13:53.680 questions so that I can point people to them instead of answering 01:13:53.680 --> 01:13:55.520 the same question over and over and over. 01:13:55.520 --> 01:13:58.640 It's much more efficient use of my time and more helpful to 01:13:58.640 --> 01:14:01.520 others if there's a library and then other people can point to 01:14:01.520 --> 01:14:03.040 my answers as well. 01:14:03.040 --> 01:14:06.800 So I will make the video of this available, I'll make the 01:14:06.800 --> 01:14:11.680 audio available, I'll run off a transcript so it's searchable, and perhaps 01:14:11.680 --> 01:14:15.280 figure out how to insert the timestamps into the video so that 01:14:15.280 --> 01:14:18.480 people can go to the exact question and answer instead of having 01:14:18.480 --> 01:14:20.800 to listen to the whole thing. 01:14:20.800 --> 01:14:24.480 So thank you for those who sent in questions and thank you 01:14:24.480 --> 01:14:26.960 for those who listen to this and for those who listen in 01:14:26.960 --> 01:14:28.320 the future. 01:14:28.320 --> 01:14:32.560 And keep sending questions so that I have them for next week, 01:14:32.560 --> 01:14:34.960 and if you send them earlier, then I have a little more 01:14:34.960 --> 01:14:37.760 time to prepare to answer them instead of answering them on the 01:14:37.760 --> 01:14:42.000 spot. So for some of the more complicated questions I saw in 01:14:42.000 --> 01:14:45.360 the queue as it were there, I will take the intervening time 01:14:45.360 --> 01:14:47.440 to prepare answers for those. 01:14:47.440 --> 01:14:51.200 And I think that's all for tonight, so may God bless all 01:14:51.200 --> 01:14:51.840 of you. 01:14:51.840 --> 01:14:53.840 And again thank you for your time. 01:14:53.840 --> 01:14:55.120 Have a nice evening.