WEBVTT 00:00:37.200 --> 00:00:39.440 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.440 --> 00:00:40.400 I am Cory J. 00:00:40.400 --> 00:00:43.760 Mahler. And I'm Wo. 00:00:43.760 --> 00:00:48.160 As a sort of warning to the listener, today's episode does run 00:00:48.320 --> 00:00:49.520 a little long. 00:00:49.520 --> 00:00:53.520 Undoubtedly your podcast app has already notified you of the length of 00:00:53.520 --> 00:00:56.480 the episode so I don't need to repeat it, not least of 00:00:56.480 --> 00:00:59.280 all because I do not yet know the exact length. 00:00:59.280 --> 00:01:01.120 It is over two hours. 00:01:01.120 --> 00:01:04.960 Really it is a two part episode, but we do have ask 00:01:04.960 --> 00:01:09.680 that you listen to the entire episode, preferably in one sitting, and 00:01:09.680 --> 00:01:12.640 preferably with minimal distractions. 00:01:12.640 --> 00:01:17.600 This is an important topic, and the entire thing hangs together. 00:01:17.600 --> 00:01:22.160 It is important to listen to the entirety of the episode to 00:01:22.160 --> 00:01:27.040 get the proper doctrine and theology and the proper context, because all 00:01:27.040 --> 00:01:29.120 of it is connected. 00:01:29.120 --> 00:01:35.280 We try to aim for roughly an hour with episodes, but some 00:01:35.280 --> 00:01:41.040 things simply require more time, because they are important, and we want 00:01:41.040 --> 00:01:45.840 to make sure that we cover them adequately and correctly. 00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:52.720 Welcome to the delayed election episode when we originally originally decided we 00:01:52.720 --> 00:01:55.680 wanted to tackle election next the timing was Timing was that it 00:01:55.680 --> 00:01:58.560 was going to be the day after the midterm election, so I 00:01:58.560 --> 00:02:00.560 was going to make a stupid joke about that. 00:02:00.560 --> 00:02:05.440 But you've been spared by that, by uh multiple hardware malfunctions. 00:02:05.440 --> 00:02:09.360 Uh my very expensive microphone died, and it died in such a 00:02:09.360 --> 00:02:12.720 way that it took me about 40 hours of debugging and buying 00:02:12.720 --> 00:02:15.920 several hundred dollars more equipment to isolate that it was in fact 00:02:16.000 --> 00:02:16.880 the microphone. 00:02:16.880 --> 00:02:20.320 So I apologize for the two weeks that we were down. 00:02:20.320 --> 00:02:20.640 Um 00:02:21.680 --> 00:02:25.120 I love listening to podcasts too, and I always count on showing 00:02:25.120 --> 00:02:27.760 up on time, and our goal is absolutely to make sure that 00:02:27.760 --> 00:02:29.840 we always deliver every episode on time. 00:02:29.840 --> 00:02:32.240 So that will be the case in the future, I think. 00:02:32.240 --> 00:02:34.640 Uh now that we're back up and running, we will get try 00:02:34.640 --> 00:02:37.200 to get a couple episodes in the can so that we'll be 00:02:37.200 --> 00:02:42.320 able to deliver even in the event that uh calamity befalls us. 00:02:42.320 --> 00:02:45.200 Uh on that note, I would like to ask for something of 00:02:45.200 --> 00:02:46.080 our our listeners. 00:02:46.080 --> 00:02:49.440 Uh first thank you to everyone who's been sharing the podcast with 00:02:49.440 --> 00:02:51.920 friends and online and elsewhere. 00:02:51.920 --> 00:02:56.000 Uh means a lot because it's this is obviously an incredibly niche 00:02:56.000 --> 00:02:59.520 sort of thing that we'll also never have any marketing budget. 00:02:59.520 --> 00:03:02.560 So the only way anyone's gonna hear it is if someone shares 00:03:02.560 --> 00:03:04.800 it with someone and says, hey, we think this is worth your 00:03:04.800 --> 00:03:08.320 time. Uh so we appreciate each and every uh share that you 00:03:08.320 --> 00:03:09.600 provide. Um 00:03:10.640 --> 00:03:14.160 when Corey and I d set out to do this, when we 00:03:14.160 --> 00:03:17.280 finally decide to pull the trigger on a project we've been talking 00:03:17.280 --> 00:03:22.080 about pretty much since we were introduced, within about 40, 24 hours 00:03:22.080 --> 00:03:26.240 of us deciding to do this, all hell broke loose. 00:03:26.240 --> 00:03:31.840 Uh we started having equipment malfunctions, software malfunctions, not just related to 00:03:31.840 --> 00:03:36.320 the stuff we were using for the podcasting, um, but just in 00:03:36.320 --> 00:03:37.600 general in life. 00:03:37.600 --> 00:03:39.840 A whole lot of stuff went wrong and some of it some 00:03:39.840 --> 00:03:43.040 of it went wrong in ways that are literally impossible. 00:03:43.040 --> 00:03:45.440 Like some of the malfunctions that my 00:03:46.480 --> 00:03:52.240 microphone and recording stuff exhibited it was the technological equivalent of water 00:03:52.240 --> 00:03:53.200 flowing uphill. 00:03:53.200 --> 00:03:56.560 There was no rational explanation for what was going on. 00:03:56.560 --> 00:03:58.800 Um which is part of why it took me so long to 00:03:58.800 --> 00:04:00.960 figure out that it was in fact the mic that needed to 00:04:00.960 --> 00:04:02.240 be replaced. 00:04:02.240 --> 00:04:06.240 Um so my er my request to to the audience if you 00:04:06.240 --> 00:04:09.040 would uh consider saying a prayer for us once in a while 00:04:09.200 --> 00:04:14.320 to keep Cory and I faithful and steadfast to to God's Word 00:04:14.560 --> 00:04:18.800 and to give us the strength to persevere through the slings and 00:04:18.800 --> 00:04:21.280 arrows that that Satan is throwing at us. 00:04:21.280 --> 00:04:22.080 Um, you know. 00:04:22.080 --> 00:04:24.000 Uh audio hardware is is 00:04:24.880 --> 00:04:28.800 uh kind of a possessed all by itself without any special intervention 00:04:29.120 --> 00:04:30.320 by the devil. 00:04:30.320 --> 00:04:33.760 But I th the the volume and the nature of the things 00:04:33.760 --> 00:04:37.600 that have gone wrong are such that I I personally think there's 00:04:37.600 --> 00:04:40.720 no argument that Satan really doesn't want us to be doing this 00:04:40.720 --> 00:04:43.920 thing. Which we knew going into it, that's precisely why we're doing 00:04:43.920 --> 00:04:48.480 it, despite not really wanting to to undertake this, we knew that 00:04:48.480 --> 00:04:51.280 we had to because of the the challenges that were being faced 00:04:51.280 --> 00:04:51.920 in the world. 00:04:51.920 --> 00:04:55.520 So if you would just say a prayer for our protection and 00:04:55.520 --> 00:04:57.680 and faithfulness, it would be greatly appreciated 00:04:59.840 --> 00:05:00.000 Well 00:05:00.080 --> 00:05:03.440 just the the sheer unlikeliness of both of us having a mic 00:05:03.440 --> 00:05:07.120 die because I also had a mic that bricked itself And it 00:05:07.120 --> 00:05:09.040 happened within the same week. 00:05:10.000 --> 00:05:15.760 Totally different mics, different manufacturers, purchased at different times, died within a 00:05:15.760 --> 00:05:16.720 week of each other. 00:05:16.720 --> 00:05:18.240 Very unlikely. 00:05:18.560 --> 00:05:23.200 Yeah. I mean and a microphone is it's basically a stalled state 00:05:23.200 --> 00:05:26.080 device. there's one moving part and it barely moves. 00:05:26.080 --> 00:05:28.880 Like it's just it's not something you would expect to fail. 00:05:28.880 --> 00:05:30.000 Yeah, mine's a digital. 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:31.760 Anyway it yeah. 00:05:31.840 --> 00:05:33.440 Yeah. It's just 00:05:35.520 --> 00:05:38.560 the the things that we're talking about and the people that we're 00:05:38.480 --> 00:05:43.280 addressing and the problems that we're addressing are we believe vital and 00:05:43.280 --> 00:05:44.640 that's that's why we're here. 00:05:44.640 --> 00:05:47.600 So we thank you for listening and we hope that uh you'll 00:05:47.600 --> 00:05:50.800 consider keeping us in your prayers once in a while. 00:05:50.880 --> 00:05:53.600 The reason that we're talking about election today, it was not a 00:05:53.760 --> 00:05:57.840 it wasn't just a gimmicky choice based on the timing. 00:05:57.840 --> 00:06:03.440 Uh but election uh uh other words for it are predestination, uh 00:06:03.600 --> 00:06:07.440 or having your name written eternally in the book of life in 00:06:07.440 --> 00:06:09.840 heaven from before eternity. 00:06:09.840 --> 00:06:13.760 Uh th these are all ways that the doctrine of election are 00:06:13.760 --> 00:06:15.600 described in scripture. 00:06:15.680 --> 00:06:18.640 The reason that we wanted to talk about it next is that 00:06:18.640 --> 00:06:25.680 it flows naturally from episodes episode two's discussion of genealogy 00:06:25.920 --> 00:06:29.520 and episode three's discussion of uh nationality. 00:06:29.520 --> 00:06:34.480 Uh when you look at how election plays out both as it 00:06:34.480 --> 00:06:38.240 is described in scripture and then what happens in the world and 00:06:38.240 --> 00:06:43.440 time and space, it is clear that it is also a manifestation 00:06:43.440 --> 00:06:50.480 of God's will through lineal inheritance, um, which is not to say 00:06:50.480 --> 00:06:52.960 that it is only inherited, and we'll we'll get into that, but 00:06:52.960 --> 00:06:56.240 it does flow naturally from from our previous discussions. 00:06:56.240 --> 00:06:59.360 And all of these are laying the groundwork for additional future episodes 00:06:59.360 --> 00:07:02.800 that are gonna get into some of the most controversial issues that 00:07:02.800 --> 00:07:06.240 are frankly they're gonna split the church in a in some really 00:07:06.240 --> 00:07:07.360 ugly ways. 00:07:07.360 --> 00:07:10.160 And And our fear is that there will be good men on 00:07:10.160 --> 00:07:12.800 the wrong side of those splits because they have not thought these 00:07:12.800 --> 00:07:13.520 things through. 00:07:13.520 --> 00:07:15.440 So that's why we're talking about 'em now. 00:07:16.000 --> 00:07:19.920 The three things that I I hope uh the audience today will 00:07:19.920 --> 00:07:23.600 keep in mind as we're talking about this particular doctrine. 00:07:23.600 --> 00:07:26.400 Uh first, this is not going to be a systematics podcast. 00:07:26.400 --> 00:07:29.760 We're not going to be doing deep dives on doctrines as a 00:07:29.760 --> 00:07:30.800 matter of course. 00:07:30.880 --> 00:07:34.320 The reason that we are tackling election in particular is that it 00:07:34.320 --> 00:07:37.680 touches directly on things that we're facing today. 00:07:37.680 --> 00:07:40.080 In the second half of the episode, we'll we'll be making that 00:07:40.080 --> 00:07:44.320 case. But election is a doctrine that is found everywhere in Scripture. 00:07:44.320 --> 00:07:47.840 Uh once you realize the different terms that are being used for 00:07:47.840 --> 00:07:52.400 it by God, you basically can't turn from from Genesis to Revelation. 00:07:52.400 --> 00:07:55.520 You're gonna find it smacking you in the face continuously. 00:07:55.520 --> 00:07:58.240 So it's a doctrine that 00:08:00.240 --> 00:08:01.280 is universal. 00:08:01.280 --> 00:08:05.840 It's not Lutheran doctrine, it's not Protestant doctrine, it's Christian doctrine. 00:08:05.840 --> 00:08:10.720 And it is the key way that God helps to explain our 00:08:10.720 --> 00:08:13.840 salvation and the gift of faith that is given to us. 00:08:14.080 --> 00:08:16.400 So the first thing I want everyone to keep in mind is 00:08:16.400 --> 00:08:16.720 that 00:08:17.840 --> 00:08:22.240 doctrine the doctrine of election is given for our comfort. 00:08:22.240 --> 00:08:26.400 When we're talking about election and predestination, it should never be thought 00:08:26.400 --> 00:08:30.640 of in the sense of the condemnation of those who are not 00:08:30.640 --> 00:08:33.840 believers. And we'll get into why that that is. 00:08:33.840 --> 00:08:36.640 Um but election is given for comfort. 00:08:36.640 --> 00:08:41.040 It is not given for punishment or for doubt. 00:08:41.280 --> 00:08:43.440 The second thing that you need to keep in mind as you're 00:08:43.440 --> 00:08:47.440 listening to this episode is that this is one of the very 00:08:47.440 --> 00:08:49.600 short list of doctrines in Scripture that 00:08:50.480 --> 00:08:52.480 is beyond reason. 00:08:52.480 --> 00:08:55.360 Uh it's like the Trinity in that sense. 00:08:55.360 --> 00:08:59.360 When you look at everything in Scripture that describes the Trinity, uh, 00:08:59.360 --> 00:09:02.640 in a great encapsulation of this, if you haven't seen it before, 00:09:02.640 --> 00:09:07.120 not only the Apostle and Nicene Creeds, but the Athanasian Creed. 00:09:07.120 --> 00:09:10.880 Uh it's something that in Lutheran churches is typically only read once 00:09:10.880 --> 00:09:11.520 a year. 00:09:11.520 --> 00:09:13.120 It is well worth studying. 00:09:13.120 --> 00:09:16.080 Um I actually memorized it in seventh grade for extra credit and 00:09:16.080 --> 00:09:16.880 that was that was fun. 00:09:17.200 --> 00:09:19.040 Because it's a couple pages long. 00:09:19.040 --> 00:09:24.160 When you read the Athanasian Creed, what you will find is a 00:09:24.160 --> 00:09:30.400 faithful confession of what Scripture says about God in such a way 00:09:30.400 --> 00:09:34.160 that there are no errors in the Athanasian Creed because it agrees 00:09:34.160 --> 00:09:38.000 with scripture, but when you look at it in totality, it's kind 00:09:38.000 --> 00:09:39.360 of confusing. 00:09:39.360 --> 00:09:44.160 It doesn't really make sense how there can be not three eternals 00:09:44.240 --> 00:09:45.040 but one eternal. 00:09:45.040 --> 00:09:48.000 What's the difference between a person and the God? 00:09:48.000 --> 00:09:51.200 How can there be three persons but one God? 00:09:51.200 --> 00:09:56.320 Our human reason fails when we're trying to introspect God, which shouldn't 00:09:56.240 --> 00:09:57.120 shouldn't surprise us. 00:09:57.120 --> 00:09:57.680 We're creatures. 00:09:57.680 --> 00:10:00.560 We're we have a creator who is infinite. 00:10:00.560 --> 00:10:03.600 So the idea that we can't fit our creator inside our little 00:10:03.760 --> 00:10:08.880 tiny created meat minds shouldn't surprise or upset us. 00:10:08.880 --> 00:10:14.400 The essence of the Christian faith is believing that which is taught, 00:10:14.400 --> 00:10:18.560 not making it subject to intellectual assent. 00:10:18.560 --> 00:10:21.760 And that's that's a place where some denominations kind of go off 00:10:21.760 --> 00:10:22.320 the rails. 00:10:22.720 --> 00:10:26.080 they look at f scripture faithfully and and they say, okay, I'm 00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:30.080 gonna believe this, but then they run into things where it seems 00:10:30.080 --> 00:10:33.200 like it doesn't add up and reason has made the master over 00:10:33.200 --> 00:10:34.160 their doctrine. 00:10:34.160 --> 00:10:36.800 And that is how you invent heresies. 00:10:36.960 --> 00:10:40.000 the reason that the creeds were originally written was to deal with 00:10:40.000 --> 00:10:43.200 the heresies that came from the very intelligent men who were looking 00:10:43.200 --> 00:10:45.840 at scripture and trying to make sense of the Trinity and they 00:10:45.840 --> 00:10:49.760 made a mess because they made their reason the master 00:10:50.800 --> 00:10:54.560 when God must be the master and what he reveals must be 00:10:54.880 --> 00:10:57.760 binding upon us, whether or not we understand it. 00:10:57.760 --> 00:11:00.800 When Christ talks about us having the faith of a child, that's 00:11:00.800 --> 00:11:03.680 what it means to to receive teaching 00:11:04.720 --> 00:11:09.120 without requiring that it pass some smell test of of our own 00:11:09.120 --> 00:11:13.440 reason. That's not to say that you should b just blindly listen 00:11:13.440 --> 00:11:14.640 to whatever you hear. 00:11:14.640 --> 00:11:18.960 And this is the reason why faithful teachers, faithful pastors are so 00:11:18.960 --> 00:11:23.840 crucial, because most people are not equipped to understand and reason these 00:11:23.840 --> 00:11:24.560 things out. 00:11:25.040 --> 00:11:29.920 We have thousands of years of faithful doctrine being developed and understood 00:11:30.320 --> 00:11:33.840 developed as is a weak word, being properly fleshed out in such 00:11:33.840 --> 00:11:36.880 a way that when you say everything that Scripture says in a 00:11:36.880 --> 00:11:39.680 certain way, you can know that you're being faithful. 00:11:39.680 --> 00:11:42.800 And so there are a few doctrines like the Trinity, uh like 00:11:42.800 --> 00:11:46.240 the nature of Christ, the hypostatic union, how can he be both 00:11:46.240 --> 00:11:48.320 fully God and fully man? 00:11:48.320 --> 00:11:49.840 It doesn't make sense. 00:11:49.840 --> 00:11:53.680 And as Lutherans, we're comfortable saying that we don't understand. 00:11:53.680 --> 00:11:54.720 It's a mystery. 00:11:54.720 --> 00:11:57.920 We can say what God says, but we can't make sense of 00:11:57.920 --> 00:11:59.840 it in such a way that it's going to add up in 00:11:59.840 --> 00:12:00.880 our minds. 00:12:00.880 --> 00:12:04.640 Uh the same is true of of communion of the Eucharist when 00:12:04.640 --> 00:12:08.640 God says this is my body, this is my blood, he also 00:12:08.960 --> 00:12:11.760 says this is bread and this is wine. 00:12:11.760 --> 00:12:17.040 And the Reformed and the Catholics both agree that it can only 00:12:17.040 --> 00:12:18.560 be one or the other by reason. 00:12:18.560 --> 00:12:21.680 It can't possibly be blood if it's wine, and it can't be 00:12:21.680 --> 00:12:23.200 wine if it's blood. 00:12:23.200 --> 00:12:26.640 So each of them pick one and they go in opposite directions. 00:12:26.640 --> 00:12:31.760 Uh Lutherans and to their credit the the Eastern Orthodox say, look, 00:12:31.760 --> 00:12:34.560 we don't understand how it works, but God says it's bread, God 00:12:34.560 --> 00:12:36.800 says it's his flesh, so it is. 00:12:36.800 --> 00:12:40.080 This is the same God who spoke the universe into existence. 00:12:40.080 --> 00:12:43.600 He's the same God who spoke Lazarus back to life by saying, 00:12:43.600 --> 00:12:44.960 Lazarus, come out. 00:12:45.200 --> 00:12:47.760 That wasn't a descriptive thing, that was proscriptive. 00:12:47.760 --> 00:12:49.920 When God speaks, it is true. 00:12:49.920 --> 00:12:50.240 So 00:12:51.120 --> 00:12:53.840 when there are doctrines that are revealed in such a way that 00:12:53.840 --> 00:12:57.520 we can't make them subject to our reason, once we've exhausted all 00:12:57.520 --> 00:13:00.880 of the possibilities as faithful Christians, we simply have a duty to 00:13:00.880 --> 00:13:01.520 believe them. 00:13:01.520 --> 00:13:05.760 And election predestination is one of those where it's it's challenging. 00:13:05.760 --> 00:13:10.080 So as you hear us talking about it today, please don't cherry 00:13:10.080 --> 00:13:14.720 pick 30-second or two minute segments of this and try to say, 00:13:14.720 --> 00:13:15.520 well, that's wrong. 00:13:15.760 --> 00:13:17.680 that's contrary to scripture. 00:13:17.680 --> 00:13:21.040 Because in isolation, you're probably right. 00:13:21.040 --> 00:13:26.080 The doctrine of predestination, the doctrine of faith, the doctrine of salvation 00:13:27.760 --> 00:13:29.280 it doesn't make sense. 00:13:29.280 --> 00:13:32.400 And you can say what God says, but if you try to 00:13:32.400 --> 00:13:37.040 apply reason to it rigorously, you're gonna make a mess. 00:13:37.040 --> 00:13:39.520 And so I would just encourage people to please listen to the 00:13:39.520 --> 00:13:43.200 whole thing as one piece and then take it as a coherent 00:13:43.200 --> 00:13:46.160 whole because that's the only way it can be presented. 00:13:46.160 --> 00:13:48.640 This is not something that can fit on a bumper sticker. 00:13:48.640 --> 00:13:50.720 U Uh and the third point I'd just like to make before 00:13:50.720 --> 00:13:52.320 we launch into this is that 00:13:53.280 --> 00:14:00.080 election is not simply some hypothetical doctrine that doesn't have any applicability. 00:14:00.080 --> 00:14:02.480 It is a doctrine which is 00:14:03.600 --> 00:14:09.120 Central to all of the most painful problems that the church and 00:14:09.120 --> 00:14:10.880 the world are facing today. 00:14:10.880 --> 00:14:12.720 And this is the case we're going to be making in the 00:14:12.720 --> 00:14:15.040 second half of the episode. 00:14:15.040 --> 00:14:20.640 Every major modern fight about racism, about colonialism, about cultural and racial 00:14:20.640 --> 00:14:26.480 supremacy, about patriarchy, all of these things are ultimately attacks on doctrine 00:14:26.480 --> 00:14:28.160 and on salvation. 00:14:28.160 --> 00:14:32.640 And we are doing this episode in order to make the case 00:14:32.640 --> 00:14:32.960 for 00:14:34.000 --> 00:14:38.080 the necessity of us returning to a faithful belief of election, because 00:14:38.160 --> 00:14:43.840 frankly, while Lutherans certainly say that we uh we we subscribe to 00:14:43.840 --> 00:14:47.840 the doctrine of election, when push comes to shove, our churches are 00:14:47.840 --> 00:14:48.960 full of universalists. 00:14:48.960 --> 00:14:53.360 They're chur they're full of people who reject election, who try to 00:14:53.360 --> 00:14:57.920 be so quote unquote gospel focused that they end up contradicting scripture 00:14:57.920 --> 00:15:00.800 left and right and they're doing it in the name of love. 00:15:00.800 --> 00:15:04.160 So we're going back to first principles here in order to try 00:15:04.160 --> 00:15:08.960 to get our feet under us so that when these discussions are 00:15:08.960 --> 00:15:13.920 had in future episodes and elsewhere, you'll be equipped to understand what 00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:17.440 it is that you're facing because like you said, this is not 00:15:17.440 --> 00:15:18.560 just an academic thing. 00:15:18.560 --> 00:15:23.120 This is a live issue that is it's it's shaping the world 00:15:23.120 --> 00:15:24.000 around you. 00:15:24.000 --> 00:15:27.440 And that is something the doctrine of election is not novel, it's 00:15:27.360 --> 00:15:29.280 something that's it'd been around forever. 00:15:29.280 --> 00:15:33.120 Everyone in Christianity and the faith has always known about it. 00:15:33.120 --> 00:15:38.240 But the modern implications are something that personally I haven't seen discussed 00:15:38.240 --> 00:15:41.120 elsewhere. And that's the reason we're doing this episode is to make 00:15:41.120 --> 00:15:45.360 the connection between the doctrine of scripture and and the events that 00:15:45.360 --> 00:15:47.280 we're seeing in the world today. 00:15:47.280 --> 00:15:50.160 So that like the preamble out of the way, let's get into 00:15:50.160 --> 00:15:52.880 what election is. 00:15:53.280 --> 00:15:57.360 Just briefly before we get into election proper, I want to address 00:15:57.440 --> 00:16:02.640 at the outset an issue that some will have approaching the matter 00:16:02.640 --> 00:16:06.080 of election and related things, and that is as you said, it's 00:16:06.080 --> 00:16:07.120 a mystery. 00:16:07.120 --> 00:16:09.600 Now the word mystery is going to 00:16:11.120 --> 00:16:12.880 raise the hackles of some people. 00:16:12.880 --> 00:16:16.480 Some people are trained so that they don't like the idea that 00:16:16.480 --> 00:16:18.160 some things are beyond our knowledge. 00:16:18.160 --> 00:16:21.440 And we'll we'll get into that later in the episode. 00:16:21.440 --> 00:16:24.640 But I just want to point out the word for mystery, the 00:16:24.640 --> 00:16:29.920 word that is translated as mystery appears thirty five times in Scripture, 00:16:29.920 --> 00:16:33.040 twenty seven of which are in the New Testament, that is Musterion 00:16:33.040 --> 00:16:33.920 in the Greek. 00:16:33.920 --> 00:16:37.040 This is not, as mentioned, something that appears in one place, this 00:16:37.040 --> 00:16:41.680 appears throughout the scriptures, and it is mystery or secret, a thing 00:16:41.680 --> 00:16:42.640 that is hidden. 00:16:42.640 --> 00:16:46.400 There are things that are beyond our understanding, and that just makes 00:16:46.400 --> 00:16:50.320 sense we worship an infinite God who created the universe, there are 00:16:50.320 --> 00:16:53.760 going to be things in His counsel that we cannot understand fully. 00:16:53.760 --> 00:16:57.680 We can understand them to the extent that they are revealed to 00:16:57.680 --> 00:17:00.240 us, primarily in Scripture. 00:17:00.240 --> 00:17:02.800 And so I just wanted to deal with that issue of the 00:17:02.800 --> 00:17:07.200 word mystery and the fact that it makes some people uncomfortable. 00:17:07.760 --> 00:17:11.280 And I as a as a lifelong Lutheran, that's one of the 00:17:11.280 --> 00:17:14.800 things that I appreciate the most about our doctrine is that 00:17:15.760 --> 00:17:19.760 we are content to run out of runway and say, you know 00:17:19.920 --> 00:17:22.960 what? We we're not going to be able to understand this. 00:17:22.960 --> 00:17:25.440 We can say what God says, but we're not going to be 00:17:25.440 --> 00:17:28.240 able to make sense of us, and that's okay because we acknowledge 00:17:28.240 --> 00:17:31.680 that we are creatures and that our God, our creator, is greater 00:17:31.680 --> 00:17:36.400 than us, and we say right back to him what he says. 00:17:36.400 --> 00:17:39.280 And if we don't make sense of it, that's okay. 00:17:39.520 --> 00:17:40.960 we are children in the faith. 00:17:40.960 --> 00:17:43.840 We do not need to be the masters of these things. 00:17:44.080 --> 00:17:47.920 And in a very real sense, we do actually have these things 00:17:47.920 --> 00:17:49.360 revealed to us in scripture. 00:17:49.360 --> 00:17:53.040 So they're a mystery in the sense of they are unknowable with 00:17:53.040 --> 00:17:56.720 regard to human reason, but they are knowable with regard to revelation 00:17:57.360 --> 00:18:03.440 because we actually can understand election in a final sense. 00:18:03.440 --> 00:18:05.600 We understand what election is, what election does. 00:18:05.600 --> 00:18:06.400 We cannot necessarily 00:18:07.280 --> 00:18:11.200 get all of the steps leading up to election explain the why 00:18:11.200 --> 00:18:14.720 and the how and all of these things, but the actual doctrine 00:18:14.720 --> 00:18:18.240 itself is revealed in Scripture in a way that it is knowable 00:18:18.400 --> 00:18:20.720 to those who have the Holy Spirit. 00:18:21.120 --> 00:18:21.360 And 00:18:21.360 --> 00:18:22.400 it's very simple. 00:18:22.640 --> 00:18:25.600 the when when we talk about it being a mystery, the mystery 00:18:25.600 --> 00:18:29.840 is that when you I mean, election in a nutshell is that 00:18:29.840 --> 00:18:36.160 God is the cause of our salvation solely, not us, only God. 00:18:36.160 --> 00:18:40.000 We are the cause of our damnation, solely, not God. 00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:42.720 When you try to synthesize those two things, when you try to 00:18:42.720 --> 00:18:46.640 rationalize them and say, well, if X and not Y, then I'm 00:18:46.640 --> 00:18:48.320 gonna infer a bunch of things. 00:18:48.320 --> 00:18:49.040 You can't. 00:18:49.040 --> 00:18:50.560 Your inferences are gonna be wrong. 00:18:50.560 --> 00:18:53.600 And so when we talk about reason failing, that's where it fails. 00:18:53.600 --> 00:18:57.600 It's the reasonable inferences that try to fill in the blanks between 00:18:57.760 --> 00:19:02.800 God cheese chooses those whom he saves, but God did not choose 00:19:02.800 --> 00:19:04.800 those who are damned. 00:19:04.800 --> 00:19:06.240 It that's where it doesn't make sense. 00:19:06.240 --> 00:19:09.680 And when people try to reconcile those two things beyond saying what 00:19:09.680 --> 00:19:12.960 God says, you're going to make some profound errors that that will 00:19:12.960 --> 00:19:15.680 themselves have knock-on effects that are very harmful. 00:19:16.080 --> 00:19:16.320 It's 00:19:16.320 --> 00:19:17.680 the crux the allegorum. 00:19:17.680 --> 00:19:22.080 It's the problem of attempting to resolve the statements in Scripture God 00:19:22.080 --> 00:19:24.960 does not wish that any would perish, but that all would repent, 00:19:24.960 --> 00:19:26.560 turn and be saved. 00:19:26.560 --> 00:19:27.200 And And 00:19:28.160 --> 00:19:34.080 God chose those who are saved by giving them faith in time. 00:19:34.080 --> 00:19:38.400 Now he chose them in eternity, and through faith in time is 00:19:38.400 --> 00:19:42.320 how he saves them, but attempting to reconcile those two things is 00:19:42.480 --> 00:19:47.280 beyond the capabilities, at least of fallen human reason, and possibly of 00:19:47.280 --> 00:19:49.840 human reason entirely. 00:19:49.840 --> 00:19:50.640 Yep. 00:19:51.440 --> 00:19:54.400 So do you want to get into making the scriptural case for 00:19:54.400 --> 00:19:57.920 where this came from and why we speak the way we 00:19:57.920 --> 00:19:58.320 do? 00:19:58.960 --> 00:20:02.720 Sure. We could at some point, I guess, go through the the 00:20:02.720 --> 00:20:05.520 eight points that the book of Concord makes. 00:20:05.520 --> 00:20:07.040 That's we'll do that in a little bit. 00:20:07.040 --> 00:20:10.240 It's actually very brief section there in one of the last articles 00:20:10.240 --> 00:20:12.480 in the s the Solid Declaration. 00:20:12.480 --> 00:20:17.040 But just as a summary of election, I think it's best to 00:20:17.040 --> 00:20:19.680 turn to Romans eight. 00:20:19.680 --> 00:20:22.560 And that is starting with verse twenty eight, which I am obligated 00:20:22.560 --> 00:20:25.680 to mention is my confirmation verse every time I bring it up. 00:20:25.680 --> 00:20:28.320 And we know that for those who love God all things work 00:20:28.320 --> 00:20:32.480 together for good, for those who are called, according to his purpose, 00:20:32.480 --> 00:20:36.720 for those whom he forenew, he also predestined, to be conformed to 00:20:36.720 --> 00:20:39.360 the image of his Son, in order that he might be the 00:20:39.360 --> 00:20:44.320 firstborn among many brothers, and those whom he predestined he also called, 00:20:44.320 --> 00:20:48.000 and those whom he called, he also justified, and those whom he 00:20:48.000 --> 00:20:50.880 justified, he also glorified. 00:20:50.880 --> 00:20:55.600 We have the entirety of the Christian life in these verses, and 00:20:55.600 --> 00:20:58.480 we have what it means to be a Christian, how you are 00:20:58.480 --> 00:21:02.880 made a Christian, why you are made a Christian in these verses. 00:21:02.880 --> 00:21:08.640 It is only those who are predestined to faith who are ultimately 00:21:08.640 --> 00:21:14.640 saved. All of those who are predestined will ultimately be saved. 00:21:14.640 --> 00:21:19.040 Which is to say the elect these these terms are interchangeable. 00:21:19.040 --> 00:21:26.240 God in eternity, chose those that he would save in time via 00:21:26.400 --> 00:21:28.800 faith, by grace through faith. 00:21:28.800 --> 00:21:29.920 That's how we're saved. 00:21:29.920 --> 00:21:34.720 He uses means in time to effect what he decided in eternity. 00:21:35.200 --> 00:21:38.160 And that's all that predestination is. 00:21:38.160 --> 00:21:42.560 Now, as mentioned in the opening, it is important to understand that 00:21:42.800 --> 00:21:48.080 to bring up the law-gospel distinction: predestination is gospel. 00:21:48.080 --> 00:21:49.280 Predestination is not law. 00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:54.640 Some take it as really not even law, so much as just 00:21:55.440 --> 00:21:59.040 a depressing military muster as is as it has been described in 00:21:59.040 --> 00:22:01.200 the literature from time to time. 00:22:01.200 --> 00:22:05.520 Because if you take a lecture election predestination to mean that God 00:22:05.520 --> 00:22:10.400 simply rolled dice or in eternity saw everyone and pointed left and 00:22:10.400 --> 00:22:14.000 right, a military muster, then that's depressing. 00:22:14.000 --> 00:22:18.880 And that leads to the problems of either security, because well if 00:22:18.880 --> 00:22:22.720 I'm elect then I can do anything I want, and regardless of 00:22:22.720 --> 00:22:26.240 that, ultimately I will be safe because I am elect. 00:22:26.240 --> 00:22:29.920 Or it leads to despair, on the other hand, being, well it 00:22:29.920 --> 00:22:33.840 doesn't matter what I do because if I am not elect, anything 00:22:33.840 --> 00:22:37.760 I do doesn't matter because I am ultimately damned. 00:22:37.760 --> 00:22:40.960 And that is the wrong way of looking at the doctrine. 00:22:40.960 --> 00:22:44.080 Again, we can judge trees by their fruit. 00:22:44.080 --> 00:22:47.920 Not to directly apply that here, but it can be used as 00:22:47.920 --> 00:22:49.440 a guide. 00:22:49.440 --> 00:22:57.040 Predestination election is gospel because what it means is you were chosen 00:22:57.040 --> 00:23:01.680 in Christ before the foundation of the world, and he will not 00:23:01.680 --> 00:23:04.000 lose you out of his hand. 00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:06.320 Your faith is not in your own hands, it is in his 00:23:06.400 --> 00:23:09.120 hands, and he will see you through to the end. 00:23:09.120 --> 00:23:12.160 He who began the good work will see it through. 00:23:12.160 --> 00:23:13.760 And that is why it is gospel. 00:23:13.760 --> 00:23:17.120 This is something that is meant to be preached to the sheep 00:23:17.120 --> 00:23:18.480 in the church. 00:23:18.560 --> 00:23:23.440 Because it is for the comfort of consciences, it is to secure 00:23:23.440 --> 00:23:27.200 those who are feeling weak in the faith, who are weighed down 00:23:27.200 --> 00:23:30.160 by the troubles of the world, it is to let them know 00:23:30.640 --> 00:23:35.200 God knew them before anything had been created, and chose them in 00:23:35.200 --> 00:23:38.960 His Son to save them, and that He will see them through 00:23:38.960 --> 00:23:39.840 to the end. 00:23:39.840 --> 00:23:43.280 That is the right way of looking at election, of looking at 00:23:43.280 --> 00:23:48.720 predestination, any other way of looking at it is incorrect. 00:23:48.800 --> 00:23:52.000 And this is why God has given us the sacraments. 00:23:52.000 --> 00:23:53.280 That's why we have baptism. 00:23:53.280 --> 00:23:54.800 It's why we have communion. 00:23:54.800 --> 00:23:59.040 Because in addition to the assurances and the reassurances in the Word, 00:23:59.680 --> 00:24:01.280 God knows that we will doubt. 00:24:01.280 --> 00:24:05.360 He knows that we will need something more concrete than a promise 00:24:05.680 --> 00:24:08.240 because we're faithless, we're weak. 00:24:08.240 --> 00:24:12.080 And because of that, in baptism, God knows his name on us 00:24:12.240 --> 00:24:16.720 to seal us into himself, to say, I mark this child as 00:24:16.720 --> 00:24:19.440 an adopted son of myself. 00:24:19.440 --> 00:24:22.480 This child is now my son because I place my name on 00:24:22.480 --> 00:24:24.080 him in baptism. 00:24:25.200 --> 00:24:30.160 It connects us it connects the the flesh and blood world, the 00:24:30.880 --> 00:24:35.920 the physical reality of our lives to the eternal promise in such 00:24:35.920 --> 00:24:37.840 a way that it takes it out of our hands. 00:24:37.840 --> 00:24:41.280 And like you said, it's it's for comfort when it's it's the 00:24:41.280 --> 00:24:45.440 reason that the Lutherans continuously point back to baptism as 00:24:46.640 --> 00:24:50.560 the touch point in the Christian life when even if someone had 00:24:50.560 --> 00:24:54.960 faith before baptism by hearing the word, which happens very often, God 00:24:54.960 --> 00:24:59.280 promises that no matter what, He has given He has given faith 00:24:59.280 --> 00:25:03.200 in baptism and that that is a comfort to those who who 00:25:03.200 --> 00:25:04.480 need to hear it most 00:25:06.000 --> 00:25:09.680 is one of the reasons that Lutherans tend to die well. 00:25:09.680 --> 00:25:13.520 Ask a pastor who has been bedside with a number of dying 00:25:13.520 --> 00:25:19.040 Lutherans. Lutherans don't die in fear and uncertainty and doubt, Lutherans die 00:25:19.040 --> 00:25:24.560 secure in the knowledge that they belong to Christ, and that when 00:25:24.560 --> 00:25:28.160 they wake up on the other side of that door, they will 00:25:28.160 --> 00:25:31.200 be face to face with their Savior. 00:25:31.200 --> 00:25:33.840 That is true doctrine. 00:25:34.080 --> 00:25:35.120 Comforts the sheep. 00:25:35.120 --> 00:25:36.480 It does not terrify the sheep. 00:25:36.480 --> 00:25:39.680 It does not make them doubt whether they are saved. 00:25:39.680 --> 00:25:43.760 If a doctrine brings those who are on their deathbed to the 00:25:43.760 --> 00:25:49.360 point of despair and doubt, that doctrine is false, if that person, 00:25:49.360 --> 00:25:51.360 of course, is a sheep. 00:25:51.360 --> 00:25:56.080 Because the sheep are comforted by the words of the shepherd. 00:25:56.080 --> 00:26:02.160 And with regard to the sacraments, there are those who contend that 00:26:02.160 --> 00:26:05.040 God doesn't work with means at all. 00:26:05.040 --> 00:26:08.960 Largely this would be the enthusiast Pentecostals. 00:26:08.960 --> 00:26:12.000 And there are those who contend that God uses only one means, 00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:15.360 which is to say scripture, although they typically those who consider it 00:26:15.360 --> 00:26:18.800 one means wouldn't call it a means, but nonetheless. 00:26:18.800 --> 00:26:22.240 Lutherans look at it, and those who believe in the sacraments look 00:26:22.240 --> 00:26:23.440 at it rightly. 00:26:23.440 --> 00:26:29.360 God has multiple means of bringing his grace to us, of bringing 00:26:29.360 --> 00:26:31.200 forgiveness of sins to us. 00:26:31.200 --> 00:26:33.840 God is super abundant with his grace, he is not stingy. 00:26:34.480 --> 00:26:37.840 God does not give us no means or just one means. 00:26:37.840 --> 00:26:41.280 He gives us the word, he gives us absolution, he gives us 00:26:41.280 --> 00:26:43.680 baptism, he gives us the Lord's supper. 00:26:43.680 --> 00:26:48.320 We have these many ways that God comes to us and comforts 00:26:48.320 --> 00:26:51.200 us, lets us know that yes, we are his children. 00:26:51.200 --> 00:26:54.720 Even though we are still in this world, we are still beset 00:26:54.720 --> 00:26:57.760 by sin and death, we are beset by the flesh and the 00:26:57.760 --> 00:26:59.200 devil in the world. 00:26:59.520 --> 00:27:03.200 We are still his, we are in his hands, he will see 00:27:03.200 --> 00:27:06.080 us through, and he is super abundant with his grace. 00:27:06.080 --> 00:27:10.560 That's why there are these multiple means, not just one or none. 00:27:10.560 --> 00:27:14.800 And it is also because, as Luther and some other theologians have 00:27:14.800 --> 00:27:21.200 pointed out, my mind, my soul, can grasp the promises, the words 00:27:21.200 --> 00:27:22.480 of God. 00:27:22.480 --> 00:27:24.480 My flesh really can't. 00:27:24.480 --> 00:27:30.880 But my flesh understands water, my flesh understands bread and wine, and 00:27:30.880 --> 00:27:35.280 human beings are not just a soul, you are not a spirit 00:27:35.280 --> 00:27:37.040 operating a meat suit. 00:27:37.040 --> 00:27:41.040 That conception of what human beings are is Gnostic, it is false, 00:27:41.040 --> 00:27:42.480 it's heretical. 00:27:42.480 --> 00:27:44.720 You are your body. 00:27:44.720 --> 00:27:48.480 Because human beings are a body, a mind, and a soul, is 00:27:48.640 --> 00:27:49.440 as one. 00:27:49.440 --> 00:27:53.760 We're our own four sort of minor trinity, as it were. 00:27:53.760 --> 00:27:57.600 And so it is important to have these things that the flesh 00:27:57.600 --> 00:28:02.000 can also grasp, because it's meant so the totality of the human 00:28:02.000 --> 00:28:06.560 being can grasp what God is doing and hold tightly to something 00:28:06.800 --> 00:28:08.800 when weighed down by the world. 00:28:09.360 --> 00:28:12.960 One of the things that is a a classic tell that you're 00:28:12.960 --> 00:28:16.880 dealing with a Lutheran is that we constantly point to the cross 00:28:17.040 --> 00:28:21.520 at As the moment in time when God fulfilled all of his 00:28:21.600 --> 00:28:26.160 promises. And so I can I can imagine someone hearing us today 00:28:26.400 --> 00:28:31.040 pointing to the doctrine of election, pointing to the book of life, 00:28:31.040 --> 00:28:36.480 which had our full names first and last written in eternity as 00:28:36.480 --> 00:28:39.440 a source of comfort and I can see someone potentially saying, Well 00:28:39.440 --> 00:28:42.480 you're not pointing at the cross when in fact that's the exact 00:28:42.480 --> 00:28:44.000 opposite of what's happening. 00:28:44.000 --> 00:28:47.040 When you point to election, when you point to the book of 00:28:47.040 --> 00:28:50.640 life, those are pointing to the cross because the cross where Christ 00:28:50.640 --> 00:28:55.600 sacrificed his precious blood is where the promise was fulfilled, it is 00:28:55.600 --> 00:29:01.360 where salvation took place, it is where the punishment for every sin 00:29:01.520 --> 00:29:05.200 that every person in the history of the universe has ever or 00:29:05.200 --> 00:29:08.400 will ever commit were paid by God. 00:29:08.400 --> 00:29:10.800 And that's one of the things that we'll we'll get into here 00:29:10.800 --> 00:29:14.960 shortly is that there's the question of completeness when you're talking about 00:29:15.120 --> 00:29:18.320 both the book of life and the cross. 00:29:18.320 --> 00:29:22.160 When you apply reason to this, you're like, well, if God omitted 00:29:22.160 --> 00:29:26.080 some names, then did Jesus not pay for their sins on the 00:29:26.080 --> 00:29:30.560 cross? And that's one of the things that five point Calvinism says 00:29:30.720 --> 00:29:34.240 absolutely. Jesus didn't die for everyone, he only died for the elect, 00:29:34.240 --> 00:29:40.480 which is a tremendously harmful false representation of what scripture says. 00:29:40.480 --> 00:29:44.320 And I I think the the reason that we point to to 00:29:44.320 --> 00:29:48.640 election and to the book of life in this episode is because 00:29:50.320 --> 00:29:53.840 as we as I'll I'll m demonstrate later, there are aspects of 00:29:53.840 --> 00:29:58.880 these promises that were known throughout the world before the cross that 00:29:58.880 --> 00:30:03.840 the prof the prophecy of the Christ which began in Genesis three 00:30:04.000 --> 00:30:09.120 fifteen and then we see it coming to to a greater completion 00:30:09.120 --> 00:30:14.320 in Isaiah just seven hundred years before Christ's birth there were other 00:30:14.320 --> 00:30:18.000 things that were told to believers in between those two periods of 00:30:18.000 --> 00:30:21.280 time, that some of which are not recorded in Scripture, but which 00:30:21.280 --> 00:30:23.360 are observable in time. 00:30:23.360 --> 00:30:27.200 And so the reason that we want to point today to election 00:30:27.360 --> 00:30:32.320 and and to connect it to genealogy and to the the religions 00:30:32.320 --> 00:30:36.160 of kings and of their nations is that that is how the 00:30:36.160 --> 00:30:41.040 faith is propagated and ultimately your name is is is Corey, as 00:30:41.040 --> 00:30:44.000 you just said, your name is written in the book of life, 00:30:44.000 --> 00:30:48.000 and God gives you faith, which receives the sacrifice on the cross 00:30:48.160 --> 00:30:49.760 and you are saved. 00:30:49.760 --> 00:30:53.440 All of that goes together, and God speaks of it as a 00:30:53.440 --> 00:30:54.720 unified whole. 00:30:54.720 --> 00:30:57.280 God doesn't speak of these as as piecemeal things. 00:30:57.520 --> 00:31:01.440 these ideas are all connected repeatedly in scripture. 00:31:01.440 --> 00:31:06.160 And it's it's one of the weaknesses of systematic theology is when 00:31:06.160 --> 00:31:09.440 you start when you take scripture and you try to break it 00:31:09.440 --> 00:31:11.920 down like a butcher and say, well the liver goes over here 00:31:12.080 --> 00:31:15.680 and the shanks go over here, you end up with something that 00:31:15.680 --> 00:31:18.880 doesn't look like what you started with, because you've chopped it up 00:31:18.880 --> 00:31:20.000 in little pieces. 00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:24.960 So when we talk about specific doctrines, it's never to separate it 00:31:24.960 --> 00:31:26.000 from the whole. 00:31:26.000 --> 00:31:29.360 It is to highlight, to x ray, or to do an MRI 00:31:29.520 --> 00:31:33.360 on how this one piece of the whole works within the whole. 00:31:33.360 --> 00:31:35.040 And again, it's always for comfort. 00:31:35.040 --> 00:31:38.240 It's never for for judgment or for condemnation. 00:31:38.240 --> 00:31:41.840 And it should be never used as as a distraction. 00:31:41.840 --> 00:31:44.720 It should never the the book of life should not be the 00:31:44.720 --> 00:31:49.200 focus of the Christian faith apart from the cross, but we can't 00:31:49.200 --> 00:31:52.720 forget about it either because God talks about it many times. 00:31:52.960 --> 00:31:57.440 I happen I found just seven verses among many that specifically talk 00:31:57.440 --> 00:31:59.680 about the book of life. 00:31:59.680 --> 00:32:04.160 In Exodus thirty two, God said to Moses, Whoever has sinned against 00:32:04.160 --> 00:32:06.560 me I will blot out of my book. 00:32:06.560 --> 00:32:10.560 In Psalm six sixty nine it's recorded, let them be blotted out 00:32:10.560 --> 00:32:13.760 of the book of the living, let them not be enrolled among 00:32:13.760 --> 00:32:15.120 the righteous. 00:32:15.120 --> 00:32:19.360 In Luke ten, nevertheless, do not rejoice in this that the spirits 00:32:19.360 --> 00:32:22.960 are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in 00:32:22.960 --> 00:32:28.000 heaven. In Philippians four it says, Yes, I'll ask you also, true 00:32:28.000 --> 00:32:31.360 companion, help these women who have labored side by side with me 00:32:31.600 --> 00:32:34.880 in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow 00:32:34.880 --> 00:32:37.760 workers, whose names are in the book of life. 00:32:37.760 --> 00:32:41.200 Now it's an interesting one because Paul's making a pronouncement in time 00:32:41.440 --> 00:32:45.280 of believers whom he he knows their confession and he knows their 00:32:45.280 --> 00:32:48.000 works and he says, these people, their name, their names are in 00:32:48.000 --> 00:32:48.560 the book of life. 00:32:49.200 --> 00:32:51.920 I can tell by looking at their Christian lives that this is 00:32:51.920 --> 00:32:52.640 the case. 00:32:52.640 --> 00:32:54.080 So again, that's not judgment. 00:32:54.080 --> 00:32:57.360 It's not talking about fruit checking to determine if you're saved or 00:32:57.360 --> 00:33:00.640 not, but it is saying the Christian life 00:33:01.520 --> 00:33:03.200 is not a hypothetical. 00:33:03.200 --> 00:33:05.280 It's not just a name in a book, it's not a line 00:33:05.280 --> 00:33:06.480 item and a ledger. 00:33:06.480 --> 00:33:09.360 It is a real and living thing that God has given to 00:33:09.360 --> 00:33:13.600 us to live for his glory, and our names are recorded in 00:33:13.600 --> 00:33:18.480 eternity as a part of that whole. 00:33:18.480 --> 00:33:23.040 In Revelation 3, Jesus Himself writes to the church at Sardis: the 00:33:23.040 --> 00:33:26.720 one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I 00:33:26.720 --> 00:33:29.040 will never blot his name out of the book of life. 00:33:29.040 --> 00:33:33.280 I will confess his name before my father and before his angels. 00:33:33.280 --> 00:33:36.800 And again in verse in chapter thirteen of Revelation. 00:33:36.800 --> 00:33:39.360 And all who dwell on earth will worship it. 00:33:39.360 --> 00:33:42.800 Everyone whose name was na has not been written before the foundation 00:33:42.800 --> 00:33:45.360 of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who 00:33:45.360 --> 00:33:46.480 was slain. 00:33:46.480 --> 00:33:50.720 Now that's an interesting verse because it's it points to one of 00:33:50.720 --> 00:33:55.760 the really difficult things about speaking about this subject In that Revelation 00:33:55.840 --> 00:33:59.760 13 acknowledges there are names that are not written in the book 00:33:59.760 --> 00:34:00.720 of life. 00:34:00.720 --> 00:34:05.440 And we'll talk about predestination, double predestination here in a minute, but 00:34:06.720 --> 00:34:10.480 this is this is why I did that that lengthy preamble is 00:34:10.480 --> 00:34:12.880 that when you try to apply reason to this, you're gonna say, 00:34:12.880 --> 00:34:14.720 well, God picked some people to be damned. 00:34:14.720 --> 00:34:15.680 And that's not the case. 00:34:15.680 --> 00:34:18.640 And that should never be the conclusion that is drawn from scripture 00:34:18.720 --> 00:34:20.400 because it's not there. 00:34:20.400 --> 00:34:26.720 But it is permissible under the right circumstances to say there are 00:34:26.720 --> 00:34:29.280 names that are not in the book of life, and that those 00:34:29.280 --> 00:34:33.200 names who are not written there, those people are damned, not because 00:34:33.200 --> 00:34:34.960 of God's actions, because of their own. 00:34:35.840 --> 00:34:39.520 But we'll in the second half of of the conversation we're going 00:34:39.520 --> 00:34:43.040 to talk about why that's relevant to what's blowing up today. 00:34:43.520 --> 00:34:46.320 The last verse I wanted to highlight is from uh chapter seventeen, 00:34:46.320 --> 00:34:47.520 even Revelation. 00:34:47.520 --> 00:34:50.240 And the dwellers on earth whose names have not been written in 00:34:50.240 --> 00:34:53.360 the book of life from the foundation of the world will marvel 00:34:53.360 --> 00:34:56.080 to see the beast, because it was and is not and is 00:34:56.080 --> 00:34:57.040 to come. 00:34:57.120 --> 00:34:59.600 So again, there are names in the book of life, and there 00:34:59.600 --> 00:35:02.240 are names that are not, and those whose names are not present 00:35:02.240 --> 00:35:06.160 will be damned, not because God didn't write their name in the 00:35:06.160 --> 00:35:10.400 book of life, but because they rejected God's sacrifice on the cross. 00:35:10.720 --> 00:35:15.280 So maybe that's a good place for us to speak briefly about 00:35:15.280 --> 00:35:18.880 intuitu fide, uh because that's one of the areas where Lutherans in 00:35:18.880 --> 00:35:23.280 particular have contributed to some false teachings about this in uh periods 00:35:23.280 --> 00:35:27.760 of time where we struggled with trying to be too reasonable and 00:35:27.760 --> 00:35:30.560 and reach some conclusions that were false. 00:35:30.720 --> 00:35:34.560 Before we get into into a dufidei, I just want to highlight 00:35:34.560 --> 00:35:39.280 that you actually reinforced the fact that when we point to election 00:35:39.280 --> 00:35:43.440 and predestination, when we point to the book of life, we are 00:35:43.440 --> 00:35:45.600 in fact still pointing to the cross. 00:35:45.600 --> 00:35:48.800 Because that's exactly what Revelation thirteen says. 00:35:48.800 --> 00:35:52.240 And far be it from me to give the king James only 00:35:52.240 --> 00:35:57.280 crowd any ammunition not that this is ammunition, but I like the 00:35:57.280 --> 00:36:02.640 formulation in the King James of Revelation thirteen, because it is and 00:36:02.640 --> 00:36:05.360 all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are 00:36:05.360 --> 00:36:08.080 not written in the book of life of the Lamb, slain from 00:36:08.080 --> 00:36:10.240 the foundation of the world. 00:36:10.240 --> 00:36:14.400 I like the placement of that modifying phrase slain from the foundation 00:36:14.400 --> 00:36:18.000 of the world applying to the Lamb because that is what we 00:36:18.000 --> 00:36:19.120 are pointing to. 00:36:19.120 --> 00:36:24.000 We are pointing to Christ was slain from eternity. 00:36:24.000 --> 00:36:29.680 That was God's plan, that was God's purpose to bring humanity, the 00:36:29.680 --> 00:36:34.800 elect, back to himself, to restore us, to cleanse us from our 00:36:34.800 --> 00:36:38.320 sins. And so when we point to election, we point to predestination, 00:36:38.320 --> 00:36:41.360 we are in fact still pointing to the Lamb. 00:36:42.160 --> 00:36:46.880 And just to point out the Luther translation has the same wording. 00:36:46.880 --> 00:36:50.880 So just like that that wording a little more than the the 00:36:50.880 --> 00:36:52.480 way the ESV moved that phrase around. 00:36:52.480 --> 00:36:54.000 I'm not saying the ESV is wrong. 00:36:54.000 --> 00:36:57.360 It's just a different way of writing that particular verse. 00:36:57.360 --> 00:37:01.600 But then to speak of intuitu fidei, and this is going to 00:37:01.600 --> 00:37:06.400 come up in mostly Lutheran circles, but other places as well, because 00:37:07.040 --> 00:37:08.640 it has become a common error 00:37:09.680 --> 00:37:14.160 in some denominations and some traditions, whether or not the term is 00:37:14.160 --> 00:37:17.360 used to view election in this light. 00:37:17.360 --> 00:37:22.640 Now there are multiple ways that intuitive fidei has been used, and 00:37:22.640 --> 00:37:25.520 we should probably define it, that means just in view of faith 00:37:25.680 --> 00:37:31.440 in Latin or in view of foreseen faith, sometimes. 00:37:31.440 --> 00:37:35.200 It has been used in multiple senses, not all of which are 00:37:35.200 --> 00:37:42.320 incorrect. Because some of them get into hypertechnical philosophical discussions of Aristotelian 00:37:42.320 --> 00:37:47.920 cause and you know what is the formal cause or the final 00:37:47.920 --> 00:37:51.840 cause or the instrumental cause or when you get into that kind 00:37:51.840 --> 00:37:55.360 of stuff, one there's a question of the utility of it. 00:37:55.360 --> 00:37:58.640 I'm not saying that philosophy is always useless, but I am saying 00:37:58.640 --> 00:38:03.040 that philosophy is often useless, particularly when you are trying to pick 00:38:03.040 --> 00:38:08.800 apart doctrines of scripture that are largely beyond human reason when it 00:38:08.800 --> 00:38:12.160 comes to those let's call them finer details. 00:38:12.240 --> 00:38:13.040 And also these were 00:38:14.080 --> 00:38:14.720 Yes, exactly. 00:38:14.720 --> 00:38:15.280 It's harmful. 00:38:15.280 --> 00:38:18.160 And these were discussions in part it's to they were discussions being 00:38:18.160 --> 00:38:19.760 had by academics. 00:38:19.760 --> 00:38:22.960 And in that setting, okay, fine, maybe you can have these discussions, 00:38:22.960 --> 00:38:27.600 but they bled out into the church and the These cause real 00:38:27.600 --> 00:38:30.880 harm to the sheep when they are exposed to these things, because 00:38:30.880 --> 00:38:34.240 they will not be understood correctly, or they were be filtered through 00:38:34.240 --> 00:38:35.920 false teachers who corrupt them. 00:38:35.920 --> 00:38:38.800 And so for instance, in the Lutheran tradition we have Gerhard, who 00:38:38.800 --> 00:38:43.600 did use intuitive fide in his writings, but he used it in 00:38:43.600 --> 00:38:48.480 a way that was sound doctrinally and theologically, and I could list 00:38:48.480 --> 00:38:50.320 off many quotes from him to that effect. 00:38:50.320 --> 00:38:52.720 He In fact, he was sound on the doctrine. 00:38:52.720 --> 00:38:57.440 He used it in the sense of faith is the instrumental cause 00:38:57.440 --> 00:39:02.240 used by God in order to save us in time, according to 00:39:02.240 --> 00:39:07.200 his eternal ordination, which is predestination or election. 00:39:07.200 --> 00:39:10.240 That is a fine formulation, that is correct. 00:39:10.240 --> 00:39:14.400 The incorrect formulation, how it has been used in a heretical sense, 00:39:14.400 --> 00:39:19.120 from really around the same time as Gerhard to now, is that 00:39:19.440 --> 00:39:25.680 God in eternity foresaw those who would in time persevere in faith 00:39:25.920 --> 00:39:30.720 to the end, and therefore their names are written in the Book 00:39:30.720 --> 00:39:35.040 of Life because God foresaw that they would persevere, and so it's 00:39:35.040 --> 00:39:39.520 the same Arminian problem, it's the same free will issue that constantly 00:39:39.520 --> 00:39:43.200 recurs. It's the idea that man saves himself 00:39:44.320 --> 00:39:47.680 And that's not what Scripture teaches, because Scripture teaches that you were 00:39:47.680 --> 00:39:50.480 dead in your sin and your trespass. 00:39:50.480 --> 00:39:52.080 Corpses do not act. 00:39:52.080 --> 00:39:53.280 Go to the morgue. 00:39:53.280 --> 00:39:54.080 Wait around. 00:39:54.080 --> 00:39:55.760 None of them are going to stand up. 00:39:55.760 --> 00:39:58.080 Unless someone really botched something. 00:39:58.560 --> 00:40:01.360 The dead do not act, and so you who were dead in 00:40:01.360 --> 00:40:04.320 your sin and trespass cannot save yourself. 00:40:04.320 --> 00:40:08.240 So a doctrine that tells you Oh, you just have to persevere 00:40:08.240 --> 00:40:12.160 to the end, and then God will elect you because of the 00:40:12.160 --> 00:40:15.280 faith that you held on that's not how it works. 00:40:15.280 --> 00:40:16.800 God gave you faith. 00:40:16.800 --> 00:40:18.160 Faith is a gift. 00:40:18.160 --> 00:40:24.320 God creates faith in you via means of grace, baptism, reinforced with 00:40:24.320 --> 00:40:29.840 the Lord's supper, hearing of the word, reinforced with the absolution. 00:40:29.840 --> 00:40:32.000 God gave you faith as a gift. 00:40:32.000 --> 00:40:36.960 It is that gift that receives forgiveness of sins and eternal life. 00:40:36.960 --> 00:40:40.080 It is reliant on God, it is not reliant on you. 00:40:40.080 --> 00:40:44.080 And so if a theology is telling you, if a tradition is 00:40:44.080 --> 00:40:48.480 telling you, that you have to grasp this faith 00:40:49.360 --> 00:40:53.600 and hold it to the end, and it is reliant on you, 00:40:53.600 --> 00:40:58.880 it is not reliant on God, that is a recipe for despair. 00:40:58.880 --> 00:41:03.120 How will I ever know that I have done enough to persevere? 00:41:03.120 --> 00:41:06.400 Yes, Scripture tells us to persevere, yes, you should make your election 00:41:06.400 --> 00:41:08.560 certain, yes you should have good works. 00:41:08.560 --> 00:41:11.360 We are not denying any of that. 00:41:11.360 --> 00:41:17.120 But, as soon as you make justification a matter of your works, 00:41:17.120 --> 00:41:20.960 a matter of your perseverance, a matter of what you do, you 00:41:20.960 --> 00:41:25.600 are taking the glory from Christ, you are denigrating Christ's death, his 00:41:25.920 --> 00:41:31.200 work. And you are dooming yourself, because ultimately you will figure out 00:41:31.440 --> 00:41:32.880 I cannot do this. 00:41:32.880 --> 00:41:35.120 And so if you believe that you have to do it, and 00:41:35.120 --> 00:41:38.720 you figure out that you cannot do it, you will despair. 00:41:38.720 --> 00:41:41.360 And that is a recipe for being an apostate. 00:41:41.360 --> 00:41:43.040 And that is why this doctrine matters. 00:41:43.040 --> 00:41:45.760 You have to get the doctrine right. 00:41:46.560 --> 00:41:46.640 And 00:41:46.800 --> 00:41:51.440 it it seems like a subtle distinction and when when the philosophers 00:41:51.440 --> 00:41:52.240 were tackling it. 00:41:52.240 --> 00:41:55.440 They were originally taking it making a subtle distinction because you said 00:41:55.520 --> 00:41:58.560 it it leaked out into the world and it does tremendous harm 00:41:58.720 --> 00:42:02.240 because again, by pointing to your name being in the book of 00:42:02.240 --> 00:42:06.080 life, you're pointing forward to the cross and to Christ propitiation propitiation 00:42:06.320 --> 00:42:08.080 uh for your sins. 00:42:08.080 --> 00:42:12.880 There's no you in there except as the object of God's mercy. 00:42:12.880 --> 00:42:15.440 You are not ever the subject in 00:42:16.320 --> 00:42:17.680 true Christian doctrine. 00:42:17.680 --> 00:42:19.200 You were always the object. 00:42:19.200 --> 00:42:23.440 Even when you do good works, you are doing the good works 00:42:23.440 --> 00:42:27.200 which you received from God, which were also prepared from before the 00:42:27.200 --> 00:42:30.880 foundation of world for you to do them for God's glory. 00:42:30.880 --> 00:42:34.880 So So there's nothing that we can ever take credit for, ever, 00:42:34.880 --> 00:42:38.000 not a single thing that we can take credit for for our 00:42:38.000 --> 00:42:43.360 salvation. On the other hand, because God is so merciful, because he 00:42:43.360 --> 00:42:46.960 paid for all of our sins, every single good thing that we 00:42:46.960 --> 00:42:50.240 do that he gave us to do, he gives us credit for 00:42:50.240 --> 00:42:54.400 it. Just as he gave us unfairly the credit for Christ's death 00:42:54.400 --> 00:42:57.360 on the cross, he also gives us credit for the good works 00:42:57.360 --> 00:43:00.240 that we do that he gave us to do, just as he 00:43:00.240 --> 00:43:04.080 gives us salvation because he gave us faith, like it's it's all 00:43:04.080 --> 00:43:08.240 just God pouring out continuously and eternally for our benefit. 00:43:08.240 --> 00:43:09.840 None of it is ever fair. 00:43:09.840 --> 00:43:12.400 And that's what we're going to be talking about in the second 00:43:12.400 --> 00:43:16.000 half is that none of this is fair in either direction. 00:43:16.000 --> 00:43:19.040 It's not fair for the elect, and it's not fair for those 00:43:19.040 --> 00:43:20.560 who are not elect. 00:43:20.560 --> 00:43:25.680 And that is not accusing God of sin because God simply isn't 00:43:25.680 --> 00:43:29.600 fair. And that's one of the places where our reason rebels against 00:43:29.600 --> 00:43:31.440 God anytime we hear it. 00:43:31.440 --> 00:43:35.280 Anytime someone says, Well, people aren't equal, the human mind in the 00:43:35.280 --> 00:43:40.960 twenty first century raves furiously against God at the idea that all 00:43:40.960 --> 00:43:42.400 men are not equal. 00:43:42.400 --> 00:43:43.600 It's nonsense. 00:43:43.600 --> 00:43:47.920 Scripture denies it, our own reason denies it, everything we see denies 00:43:47.920 --> 00:43:52.000 it, and yet And yet when we come into contact with these 00:43:52.000 --> 00:43:56.480 things in the world, people either attribute sin to God or they 00:43:56.480 --> 00:43:59.760 deny that God has anything to do with it, which is equally 00:43:59.760 --> 00:44:05.600 bad. And so these discussions must always be focused on the comfort 00:44:05.600 --> 00:44:09.360 to the believer and the warning to the unbeliever. 00:44:09.360 --> 00:44:12.880 Now, the book of life is not given as a warning to 00:44:12.880 --> 00:44:16.320 the unbeliever in the sense that well, as you said, if if 00:44:16.640 --> 00:44:18.320 your name's not in the book of lace, I guess you're just 00:44:18.480 --> 00:44:21.840 addle up, so you know, you drink and be merry 'cause there's 00:44:21.760 --> 00:44:22.880 nothing you can do. 00:44:22.880 --> 00:44:26.640 That's not the message, but the message is all of these benefits 00:44:26.640 --> 00:44:30.240 which accrue to the elect, which accrue to believers, are just are 00:44:30.400 --> 00:44:32.800 denied to those who deny Christ. 00:44:32.800 --> 00:44:36.960 And if someone is an unbeliever, if they're living a godless life, 00:44:36.960 --> 00:44:40.400 if they do not confess that all of their sins were also 00:44:40.400 --> 00:44:43.840 paid for at the cross, they don't receive that, those gifts. 00:44:43.840 --> 00:44:45.520 They don't receive the forgiveness. 00:44:45.520 --> 00:44:49.680 Because although Christ did pay for them, if you reject the credit, 00:44:49.680 --> 00:44:51.600 you got a debit on your bill. 00:44:51.600 --> 00:44:54.480 You have a huge debit and you will spend eternity paying for 00:44:54.480 --> 00:45:00.880 it. And so these discussions ultimately either end up in a faithful 00:45:00.880 --> 00:45:05.360 confession of election or they end up in some flavor of universalism, 00:45:05.360 --> 00:45:08.320 which is what we're literally seeing in the Missouri Senate today. 00:45:08.320 --> 00:45:13.360 We are seeing pastors openly espouse universalism in opposition to election for 00:45:13.360 --> 00:45:18.400 the sake of anti racism, which we'll get to later. 00:45:18.960 --> 00:45:23.760 Yeah. Universalism has been a constant plague for the church for basically 00:45:23.760 --> 00:45:27.280 all of history, but it does wax and wane in cycles. 00:45:27.440 --> 00:45:33.520 It is currently growing globally, realistically, but it is a problem we 00:45:33.520 --> 00:45:37.120 notice in our own backyard because well it's our backyard. 00:45:37.120 --> 00:45:41.520 But you touched again on an important thing that we should probably 00:45:41.520 --> 00:45:45.520 expand on a little bit, that is the scope of the atonement. 00:45:45.520 --> 00:45:50.000 You have those who argue Argue based on reason, I don't want 00:45:50.000 --> 00:45:52.000 to go into their actual argument. 00:45:52.320 --> 00:45:56.560 They know the argument well enough themselves, but they argue that there 00:45:56.560 --> 00:45:59.760 is a limited atonement, that it is only for the elect. 00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:03.920 And part of the reason that they are able to maintain that 00:46:03.920 --> 00:46:08.240 delusional belief, because it is in fact delusional and wrong, is that 00:46:08.240 --> 00:46:13.600 they don't understand from the outset what Christ said about to do, 00:46:13.600 --> 00:46:17.440 what God did in Christ with the atonement. 00:46:17.440 --> 00:46:21.200 The atonement does not cover just the elect. 00:46:22.000 --> 00:46:25.600 The atonement does not cover just men. 00:46:25.600 --> 00:46:33.280 The atonement was of all things, ton cosmon, the universe, everything, absolutely 00:46:33.520 --> 00:46:38.240 everything in existence, was redeemed through Christ. 00:46:38.240 --> 00:46:42.000 And so if you try to limit it to men, then yes, 00:46:42.000 --> 00:46:46.400 you can maybe argue yourself into a position where it makes some 00:46:46.400 --> 00:46:48.880 sense to believe in a limited atonement. 00:46:50.160 --> 00:46:53.440 But if you're dealing with the actual scope of the atonement, God 00:46:53.440 --> 00:46:58.800 redeemed plants and animals and rocks and stars. 00:46:58.800 --> 00:47:01.120 He redeemed everything. 00:47:01.120 --> 00:47:03.520 And so if you deal with that frame, well now it doesn't 00:47:03.440 --> 00:47:07.360 make any sense whatsoever to try to argue that some men aren't 00:47:07.280 --> 00:47:09.280 covered by the atonement. 00:47:09.280 --> 00:47:12.400 And so you have to take scripture at its word, and the 00:47:12.400 --> 00:47:16.000 word it uses is tan cosmon, from which we get, of course, 00:47:16.000 --> 00:47:17.760 Cosmos. 00:47:18.160 --> 00:47:20.720 And the reason, and this is this is going to be one 00:47:20.720 --> 00:47:24.080 of the recurring themes probably in virtually every episode we do is 00:47:24.080 --> 00:47:28.480 headship. The universe fell because Adam was its head. 00:47:28.480 --> 00:47:33.120 Adam was the head of everything because God gave him that crown. 00:47:33.120 --> 00:47:37.600 He was the first fruits of creation to be the ruler over 00:47:37.600 --> 00:47:38.560 the world. 00:47:38.560 --> 00:47:42.720 And when Adam as the head of the world sinned, the whole 00:47:42.720 --> 00:47:43.440 world fell. 00:47:43.760 --> 00:47:49.040 The rocks, the trees, the animals, everything fell into disobedience because Adam 00:47:49.040 --> 00:47:52.240 was its head, because of his disobedience. 00:47:52.240 --> 00:47:53.360 And this is 00:47:54.480 --> 00:47:58.160 this is another place where when people talk about, well, that's fair 00:47:58.240 --> 00:47:59.680 or that's not fair. 00:47:59.680 --> 00:48:00.560 Shut up. 00:48:00.560 --> 00:48:02.080 There's no fair with God. 00:48:02.080 --> 00:48:04.720 There's no such thing as fair with God. 00:48:04.720 --> 00:48:06.080 You will die. 00:48:06.080 --> 00:48:07.200 I will die. 00:48:07.200 --> 00:48:10.560 I will be eaten by worms and I will decay into dust 00:48:10.800 --> 00:48:13.920 because Adam ate the wrong piece of fruit. 00:48:13.920 --> 00:48:17.040 Even if I led a perfect life, I would still be killed 00:48:17.040 --> 00:48:20.080 by God and I would be worm food because Adam ate the 00:48:20.080 --> 00:48:21.360 wrong piece of fruit. 00:48:21.360 --> 00:48:24.480 Now I've committed a dozen sins today more serious than eating the 00:48:24.480 --> 00:48:27.280 wrong piece of fruit, and I'll commit more once we hang up. 00:48:27.280 --> 00:48:31.280 Hopefully I won't commit any on this podcast, but the Christian life 00:48:31.280 --> 00:48:33.680 is is knowledge of how evil we are. 00:48:33.680 --> 00:48:38.880 What Adam did was insignificant by any standard of fairness, but it 00:48:38.880 --> 00:48:40.880 was disobedience to God. 00:48:40.880 --> 00:48:44.960 Adam elevated himself above God and said, I don't like what you 00:48:44.960 --> 00:48:46.240 told me not to do. 00:48:46.240 --> 00:48:47.840 I think I can be a better God than you. 00:48:47.840 --> 00:48:49.120 I think I can do it. 00:48:49.120 --> 00:48:50.000 And he did. 00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:53.360 And because we are his children, because we are of his seed, 00:48:53.360 --> 00:48:56.000 we inherit his sin. 00:48:56.000 --> 00:48:59.280 And that is the reason that Jesus had to come into time 00:48:59.280 --> 00:49:00.960 and into creation as a man 00:49:01.920 --> 00:49:06.160 to be the new Adam, to undo the damage that Adam did 00:49:06.160 --> 00:49:07.360 to the whole universe. 00:49:07.360 --> 00:49:11.040 And Christ is the ultimate head of the universe, both of the 00:49:11.040 --> 00:49:12.560 church and of all creation. 00:49:12.560 --> 00:49:15.200 He's the king over all things, not only those things that were 00:49:15.600 --> 00:49:17.440 that believe in him. 00:49:17.440 --> 00:49:21.920 His perfect redemption redeemed the whole universe, as you said. 00:49:21.920 --> 00:49:27.280 And that's why when when you start talking about limited atonement, y 00:49:27.440 --> 00:49:30.880 if you understand it in terms of, well, this isn't about individuals, 00:49:30.880 --> 00:49:36.000 this isn't about persons, this is about everything, then the notion that 00:49:36.000 --> 00:49:39.920 there would be some small carve out only for unbelievers starts to 00:49:39.920 --> 00:49:41.520 not even make a lot of rational sense. 00:49:41.520 --> 00:49:44.640 Like you said, like you can get into it rationally if you 00:49:44.640 --> 00:49:47.440 have the wrong understanding of the redemption. 00:49:47.440 --> 00:49:50.320 But if Christ did in fact redeem all things as he says 00:49:50.320 --> 00:49:53.040 he did, then it doesn't add 00:49:53.040 --> 00:49:54.240 up. 00:49:54.240 --> 00:49:58.960 Just have one other point that I wanted to draw out and 00:49:59.200 --> 00:50:02.400 make sure that we're abundantly clear. 00:50:03.360 --> 00:50:07.200 What we're talking about here is a number of different issues when 00:50:07.200 --> 00:50:11.760 we talk about the the Christian life and modergism versus synergism. 00:50:11.760 --> 00:50:17.840 Monergism being a single actor, in this case God, synergism being multiple 00:50:17.840 --> 00:50:21.120 actors, in this case, God and man. 00:50:21.120 --> 00:50:24.240 Justification is monergistic. 00:50:24.240 --> 00:50:28.880 God alone acts in your justification, and that is good news because 00:50:29.120 --> 00:50:31.680 your debt was infinite. 00:50:31.920 --> 00:50:35.280 You would never be able to repay it no matter how long 00:50:35.280 --> 00:50:37.680 you suffer in hell. 00:50:37.680 --> 00:50:43.760 And so it is good news that justification is monergistic. 00:50:43.760 --> 00:50:48.560 Sanctification, which will include good works because good works naturally flow from 00:50:48.560 --> 00:50:51.840 a living faith, Christians will have good works. 00:50:51.840 --> 00:50:56.000 Good works do not save you, but you must have them. 00:50:56.000 --> 00:51:02.800 Sanctification is synergistic because as a not fully yet restored, because of 00:51:02.800 --> 00:51:08.080 course you won't be fully restored until the second resurrection, which is 00:51:08.400 --> 00:51:16.000 a into eternal life, baptism being the first, of course, you participate 00:51:16.000 --> 00:51:21.600 in those good works, you work with the Holy Spirit in sanctification, 00:51:21.600 --> 00:51:26.560 because your will is restored to the extent that you can work 00:51:26.560 --> 00:51:30.720 toward God in that way, you can work with the Holy Spirit. 00:51:30.720 --> 00:51:36.720 And so monergistic for justification, synergistic for sanctification. 00:51:36.960 --> 00:51:40.400 Which is to say we are not saying that Christians cannot do 00:51:40.400 --> 00:51:43.840 good works, or God forbid we're not saying Christians should not do 00:51:43.840 --> 00:51:44.800 good works. 00:51:44.800 --> 00:51:49.920 We are saying that Christians will cooperate, will have good works. 00:51:51.120 --> 00:51:55.360 And both the cooperation and the good works themselves are also gifts 00:51:55.360 --> 00:51:57.280 of God through the Holy Spirit. 00:51:57.280 --> 00:51:58.720 Again, it's all receiving. 00:51:59.200 --> 00:52:00.800 God gets all the credit. 00:52:01.040 --> 00:52:02.320 Which is good news for us. 00:52:02.320 --> 00:52:04.800 We don't want the credit, because if you have the credit, well 00:52:04.880 --> 00:52:09.120 now you you also have duties and things are reliant on you. 00:52:09.120 --> 00:52:12.560 You don't want it reliant on you because again, infinite debt. 00:52:13.360 --> 00:52:14.640 Yeah. I don't want the blame. 00:52:14.640 --> 00:52:15.600 I'm not gonna take the credit. 00:52:16.240 --> 00:52:17.680 let God take everything. 00:52:17.680 --> 00:52:21.200 I'm a creature and he's the creator and I don't I I 00:52:21.200 --> 00:52:23.840 want to be a slave to that kind of God because I 00:52:23.840 --> 00:52:25.600 don't have anything to worry about. 00:52:26.160 --> 00:52:28.880 the little brick that says the buck stops here, you want it 00:52:28.880 --> 00:52:30.880 to stay on God's desk. 00:52:31.200 --> 00:52:33.600 Yeah. don't try to steal it for yourself. 00:52:33.600 --> 00:52:36.720 That ends poorly. 00:52:37.360 --> 00:52:37.520 So 00:52:37.600 --> 00:52:40.640 I think one of the other doctrines, the the most obvious one 00:52:41.040 --> 00:52:45.600 that we need to speak to, because when most people hear predestination, 00:52:45.600 --> 00:52:49.840 they probably think of the Calvinists don't call it this, but but 00:52:49.840 --> 00:52:53.840 the doctrine of double predestination, which is the law of the logical 00:52:53.840 --> 00:52:58.960 conclusion that if God predestined some to be damned or to be 00:52:58.960 --> 00:53:02.480 saved, and that's a subset of all of those men who were 00:53:02.480 --> 00:53:04.800 born, you have a leftover set 00:53:06.160 --> 00:53:10.160 they must also have been predestined to be damned, because it's the 00:53:10.160 --> 00:53:11.280 only thing that makes sense. 00:53:11.280 --> 00:53:12.240 And that's true. 00:53:12.240 --> 00:53:14.160 It is the only thing that makes sense. 00:53:14.160 --> 00:53:17.920 The problem is it's contrary to scripture, because there are many places 00:53:17.920 --> 00:53:21.280 where God says he desires that all men be saved, and he 00:53:21.280 --> 00:53:25.040 says that the sacrifice on the cross was for all men, not 00:53:25.040 --> 00:53:26.640 only those who believe. 00:53:26.640 --> 00:53:27.280 And so 00:53:28.560 --> 00:53:33.200 predestination is heard in most people's minds as double predestination, which is 00:53:33.760 --> 00:53:34.560 is false. 00:53:34.560 --> 00:53:38.880 And as we've said earlier, when you get these things wrong, you 00:53:38.880 --> 00:53:41.360 will cause despair in the hearer. 00:53:41.360 --> 00:53:46.240 You any false doctrine will ultimately potentially lead to damn because if 00:53:46.320 --> 00:53:49.760 a false doctrine is a lie, and a lie has a father, 00:53:49.760 --> 00:53:51.680 and his name is Satan. 00:53:51.680 --> 00:53:55.120 And I I don't mean to be to be harsh against the 00:53:55.120 --> 00:54:00.400 tulip Calvinists, but double predestination to say that there is limited atonement 00:54:00.640 --> 00:54:02.240 and that na all men 00:54:03.840 --> 00:54:08.000 are able to receive the sacrifice that that God paid on the 00:54:08.000 --> 00:54:09.840 cross is false. 00:54:09.840 --> 00:54:12.800 And it is as we described, it does tremendous harm to hearers 00:54:12.880 --> 00:54:14.240 to to hear that. 00:54:14.240 --> 00:54:17.120 So the reason that we the reason it's so difficult to talk 00:54:17.120 --> 00:54:20.080 about this is that like I said up front, like if if 00:54:20.080 --> 00:54:22.400 you just listen to two minutes as this, you're gonna think that 00:54:22.400 --> 00:54:26.080 it's crazy because you're saying that God picked some men and that 00:54:26.080 --> 00:54:28.160 means that He picked other men and I either I don't like 00:54:28.160 --> 00:54:31.280 the sound of that or I believe that and both of those 00:54:31.280 --> 00:54:31.920 are wrong. 00:54:31.920 --> 00:54:35.280 You shouldn't believe it and you shouldn't really like the sound of 00:54:35.280 --> 00:54:37.840 it because it doesn't it's not true. 00:54:38.160 --> 00:54:42.480 it is true that God is the sole reason for our salvation 00:54:42.560 --> 00:54:45.440 and we are the sole reason for our damnation. 00:54:45.440 --> 00:54:49.360 And there's no math that can fill in the blanks or connect 00:54:49.360 --> 00:54:52.800 the dots between those two scriptural facts. 00:54:52.800 --> 00:54:56.320 And so it's vital for us when we're thinking about this and 00:54:56.320 --> 00:54:59.760 applying this doctrine elsewhere in the Christian life, and it does have 00:54:59.760 --> 00:55:04.640 application, never to think that God created a man in order to 00:55:04.640 --> 00:55:08.960 damn him because that's that's utterly false and it's a terrible thing. 00:55:09.680 --> 00:55:14.640 To quickly address an argument directly to the reformed, this is one 00:55:15.600 --> 00:55:18.640 That should be compelling for the reformed if they will simply hear 00:55:18.640 --> 00:55:21.120 it out and listen to it. 00:55:21.440 --> 00:55:26.560 The reformed have a tendency to want to reduce things to reason. 00:55:26.560 --> 00:55:29.120 We know that, the reformed know that as well. 00:55:29.120 --> 00:55:30.160 I don't think they would necessarily 00:55:31.280 --> 00:55:35.760 say that that characterization is wrong or unfair. 00:55:35.760 --> 00:55:42.480 And so we have Calvin's famous comment The finite is not capable 00:55:42.480 --> 00:55:49.040 of the infinite, which is a generally true statement with regard to 00:55:49.040 --> 00:55:51.360 human reason. 00:55:51.360 --> 00:55:54.560 But of course we have the incarnation in which an infinite god 00:55:55.440 --> 00:56:01.120 because the fullness of deity dwelt bodily in Christ, as Scripture says, 00:56:01.120 --> 00:56:07.760 so you have finite human form containing the infinite. 00:56:07.760 --> 00:56:08.960 That's not my argument though. 00:56:09.280 --> 00:56:13.280 My argument for the reformed is this if you try to say 00:56:13.520 --> 00:56:17.920 that these statements in scripture, whatever they happen to be, do not 00:56:17.920 --> 00:56:20.960 make sense together, and so we have to do something, you know, 00:56:21.120 --> 00:56:25.600 thinglies, aliosis, whatever it happens to be, in order to make them 00:56:25.600 --> 00:56:30.560 make sense, what you are ultimately saying is that I, you, in 00:56:30.560 --> 00:56:38.240 this case, are saying I a finite, the finitum, in Calvin's statement, 00:56:38.240 --> 00:56:41.920 am capable of understanding the infinite. 00:56:41.920 --> 00:56:47.840 And of course, to understand the infinite, you must be infinite. 00:56:47.840 --> 00:56:49.520 That's incoherent. 00:56:49.520 --> 00:56:50.640 It's contradictory. 00:56:50.640 --> 00:56:52.160 It's self-defeating. 00:56:52.160 --> 00:56:58.080 And so the central claim of reformed doctrine in this way doesn't 00:56:58.000 --> 00:57:02.160 even stand up to the general rules of reformed doctrine that things 00:57:02.160 --> 00:57:04.480 must submit to reason. 00:57:04.480 --> 00:57:10.640 So if you actually think through your statement, your axiom, finitum non 00:57:10.800 --> 00:57:14.640 infiniti, capax, if you think it through, it doesn't even meet its 00:57:15.120 --> 00:57:17.200 own standard. 00:57:17.200 --> 00:57:20.560 Just believe what the Word of God says. 00:57:20.560 --> 00:57:25.440 We have an infinite God who is infinitely good, who has elected 00:57:25.440 --> 00:57:30.240 us before the foundation of the world in his Son, believe what 00:57:30.240 --> 00:57:33.360 he tells us, because that's the right way to come to all 00:57:33.360 --> 00:57:34.720 of these things. 00:57:34.720 --> 00:57:39.040 You don't come to it first by looking at Scripture, resolving all 00:57:39.040 --> 00:57:42.720 of the issues and saying, okay, this makes sense to me, therefore 00:57:42.800 --> 00:57:44.160 there must be a God. 00:57:44.160 --> 00:57:46.560 That's exactly wrong. 00:57:46.560 --> 00:57:50.640 You come to Scripture with the knowledge there is a God, and 00:57:50.640 --> 00:57:53.840 believe what Scripture says because God is the one who has given 00:57:53.840 --> 00:57:54.800 it to you. 00:57:54.800 --> 00:57:59.360 The causation flows the opposite way from the way many people approach 00:57:59.360 --> 00:58:03.440 Scripture. And so if you look at it as God gave me 00:58:03.440 --> 00:58:03.680 this 00:58:03.920 --> 00:58:06.720 we're to believe and then we're to try to understand, not the 00:58:06.720 --> 00:58:07.360 other way around. 00:58:07.680 --> 00:58:10.480 Yeah, now believing it makes perfect sense. 00:58:10.480 --> 00:58:15.440 I don't have to be able to resolve everything in scripture to 00:58:15.440 --> 00:58:17.920 the satisfaction of my fallen reason. 00:58:17.920 --> 00:58:21.200 Because I know the source and I can trust him, so I 00:58:21.200 --> 00:58:24.000 can trust what it says. 00:58:24.000 --> 00:58:28.080 And that's that should be the root of all all sound doctrine 00:58:28.160 --> 00:58:31.200 is that if you if you fear love and trust in God 00:58:31.200 --> 00:58:35.760 above all things You don't worry when you're confused. 00:58:35.760 --> 00:58:37.600 You don't worry when you're scared. 00:58:37.600 --> 00:58:40.160 You don't worry when you're worrying. 00:58:40.160 --> 00:58:44.720 Because I realize that sounds silly, but it I mean it when 00:58:46.480 --> 00:58:52.400 when you are facing the worst moments in your life, your faith 00:58:52.560 --> 00:58:58.320 should and will, when you are faithful and you understand God as 00:58:58.560 --> 00:59:02.240 a human can, you'll know that the when the worst thing is 00:59:02.240 --> 00:59:05.840 happening to you, if when you're when you're dying, maybe you're dying 00:59:05.840 --> 00:59:10.880 terribly, you are still gods, and God is still God. 00:59:10.880 --> 00:59:13.840 You belong to Him because he put His name on you in 00:59:13.840 --> 00:59:17.440 baptism, because He wrote your name down in the book of Life 00:59:17.440 --> 00:59:18.720 before eternity. 00:59:18.720 --> 00:59:22.880 So there's nothing that can happen to you, even if it's falling 00:59:22.880 --> 00:59:26.800 into an industrial shader shredder, it's it's gonna hurt a lot and 00:59:26.800 --> 00:59:28.000 then you're gonna die. 00:59:28.000 --> 00:59:31.280 But that's nothing in comparison to the promises of the God who 00:59:31.280 --> 00:59:32.560 created you. 00:59:32.560 --> 00:59:36.960 And a faith that is rooted in that sort of certainty of 00:59:36.960 --> 00:59:42.160 God, of who God is, is a faith that cannot be shaken. 00:59:42.160 --> 00:59:45.200 And it's the reason that the everything that we say tries to 00:59:45.200 --> 00:59:47.120 point us away from ourselves. 00:59:47.120 --> 00:59:52.080 And Christian Christian doctrine should always seek to point away from the 00:59:52.080 --> 00:59:56.320 individual and his actions as a means of salvation or as a 00:59:56.320 --> 01:00:00.720 means of comfort, because if that's where you're rooting your confidence, you're 01:00:00.720 --> 01:00:01.840 gonna fail yourself. 01:00:01.840 --> 01:00:06.080 And on the day where you need yourself the most and you're 01:00:06.080 --> 01:00:08.080 failing, you have nothing. 01:00:08.080 --> 01:00:11.280 Whereas if you're rooting your confidence in God, on the day when 01:00:11.280 --> 01:00:14.560 you need God the most, he's there because he's been there every 01:00:14.560 --> 01:00:16.880 day since before there were days. 01:00:16.880 --> 01:00:21.440 And that sort of certainty defies the worst things that could happen 01:00:21.440 --> 01:00:22.560 to anyone. 01:00:22.560 --> 01:00:28.400 And that is the comfort of the gospel properly understood. 01:00:28.800 --> 01:00:33.440 And just to repeat myself and to repeat what you've said, we 01:00:33.440 --> 01:00:39.120 do not ultimately have to understand everything God tells us. 01:00:39.120 --> 01:00:43.120 Because we understand enough of what God tells us and we understand 01:00:43.120 --> 01:00:47.440 enough of God to know that we should trust him. 01:00:47.440 --> 01:00:52.080 My dog is the same way, and the difference between my dog 01:00:52.400 --> 01:00:59.040 and me is significantly smaller than the difference between me and God. 01:00:59.040 --> 01:01:00.560 My dog trusts me. 01:01:00.560 --> 01:01:04.160 He does not always understand what I am telling him to do, 01:01:04.160 --> 01:01:07.680 but he does it because he trusts me. 01:01:07.680 --> 01:01:12.160 I believe what God has told me because I trust God. 01:01:12.160 --> 01:01:14.480 I have excellent warrant. 01:01:14.480 --> 01:01:17.040 I have perfect warrant to trust God. 01:01:17.040 --> 01:01:19.360 And so it makes sense. 01:01:19.360 --> 01:01:23.360 It is actually ultimately rational to believe what God says in his 01:01:23.600 --> 01:01:26.320 word, because God is trustworthy. 01:01:27.760 --> 01:01:27.920 Is 01:01:27.920 --> 01:01:30.480 there anything else that you would like to say about election before 01:01:30.480 --> 01:01:31.280 we move on to how it 01:01:40.560 --> 01:01:43.440 Well, I th I think we're that's actually what we're just about 01:01:43.440 --> 01:01:44.160 to get into. 01:01:44.640 --> 01:01:44.880 That's 01:01:44.880 --> 01:01:46.080 actually true. 01:01:46.320 --> 01:01:49.040 Fairness is nonsense is the short version, but let's go with the 01:01:49.040 --> 01:01:49.680 longer one. 01:01:51.680 --> 01:01:55.040 So we've been talking about election and in your name being written 01:01:55.040 --> 01:01:58.320 in the book of life from before eternity, which is a mouthful, 01:01:58.320 --> 01:02:01.440 but it's it's vital to get every word in there because each 01:02:01.440 --> 01:02:04.880 of those words is comforting and each of those words means something, 01:02:04.880 --> 01:02:08.560 including that your name was written in the book of life, not 01:02:09.120 --> 01:02:12.800 not a your social security number, not a uh an ID number 01:02:12.960 --> 01:02:15.120 or something, your name. 01:02:15.120 --> 01:02:17.120 And we'll we'll get into that in a minute. 01:02:17.120 --> 01:02:23.120 But first, as we've been saying all along, God foreknew you, he 01:02:23.120 --> 01:02:27.440 foreordained your salvation, He gave you the gift of faith to receive 01:02:27.440 --> 01:02:28.560 that salvation. 01:02:28.560 --> 01:02:31.840 You receive faith, you are saved. 01:02:31.840 --> 01:02:33.600 How do you come to faith? 01:02:33.600 --> 01:02:37.280 And that's where all the people who say they believe in the 01:02:37.280 --> 01:02:41.440 doctrine of election, when push comes to shove in the modern world, 01:02:41.440 --> 01:02:44.400 many of them fall away and they no longer believe it. 01:02:44.400 --> 01:02:48.560 In Romans 10, it's recorded: How then will they call on him 01:02:48.720 --> 01:02:52.560 in whom they have not believed, and how are they to believe 01:02:52.560 --> 01:02:54.560 in him whom they have never heard? 01:02:54.560 --> 01:02:57.360 And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 01:02:57.360 --> 01:03:00.720 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? 01:03:00.720 --> 01:03:01.360 Now 01:03:02.320 --> 01:03:05.440 when you take that in the context of Romans in the in 01:03:05.440 --> 01:03:12.400 the first century, after Jesus has come and ascended, as Christians we 01:03:12.400 --> 01:03:15.920 think about that strictly in terms of the New Testament gospel. 01:03:16.240 --> 01:03:21.200 That Jesus the promise of the Messiah was fulfilled, the sacrifice on 01:03:21.200 --> 01:03:24.400 the cross was made, he was raised from the dead, he ascended 01:03:24.400 --> 01:03:25.520 into heaven. 01:03:25.520 --> 01:03:26.640 It's done. 01:03:26.640 --> 01:03:30.480 As Christ said is finished on the cross, the propitiating work is 01:03:30.480 --> 01:03:32.320 complete. And 01:03:33.920 --> 01:03:36.960 so when we think about how will they believe in him and 01:03:37.120 --> 01:03:40.000 whom they have never heard, we're thinking about that. 01:03:40.000 --> 01:03:44.400 But the point that I want to make now is that when 01:03:44.400 --> 01:03:48.800 you look at human history, not only Christian history, not only history 01:03:48.800 --> 01:03:52.640 of believers in God, but of every people, of every tribe and 01:03:52.640 --> 01:03:56.320 every nation, the manner in which they have believed believed 01:03:57.360 --> 01:03:59.440 reflects upon this too. 01:03:59.600 --> 01:04:04.720 No, as we've talked about in in previous episodes, as Europeans we 01:04:04.720 --> 01:04:07.280 are as humans, we're sons of Adam. 01:04:07.280 --> 01:04:08.640 As humans we're sons of none. 01:04:09.440 --> 01:04:16.960 As Europeans were sons of Japheth, Bar Noah that was his father. 01:04:16.960 --> 01:04:21.760 I have, and you have, as a European, the faith of Japheth 01:04:22.080 --> 01:04:27.440 The faith that Noah gave to him as his father, transmitting to 01:04:27.440 --> 01:04:29.280 him by teaching him. 01:04:29.280 --> 01:04:34.400 Now Noah predated Abraham, predated the covenant that God gave Abraham that 01:04:34.400 --> 01:04:38.640 included circumcision, that included the the law as it was it was 01:04:38.640 --> 01:04:42.560 laid out to preserve the Hebrew people as they were bounced through 01:04:42.800 --> 01:04:49.520 time as as frankly objects of wrath on many occasions. 01:04:49.520 --> 01:04:52.800 The faith that Noah had is the same faith that we have 01:04:52.800 --> 01:04:54.160 today. And 01:04:55.520 --> 01:05:00.080 I was watching a show recently that talked about uh uh ancient 01:05:00.080 --> 01:05:03.920 history. It was done by a pagan who's was clearly denied God 01:05:04.080 --> 01:05:07.520 and he was clearly an evolutionist and so some of his dates 01:05:07.520 --> 01:05:08.640 were wrong. 01:05:08.640 --> 01:05:12.000 But the work that he would done had done I found invaluable 01:05:12.000 --> 01:05:15.600 as a Christian who believes That the earth is about 6,000 years 01:05:15.600 --> 01:05:19.520 old and that the flood was a global event as recorded in 01:05:19.520 --> 01:05:24.480 Scripture. What he found as he's traveled all over the world doing 01:05:24.480 --> 01:05:30.000 excavations and learning about cultures uh that were separated from the tower 01:05:30.000 --> 01:05:31.600 of Babel. 01:05:31.760 --> 01:05:34.480 Like these are people who clearly went in different directions. 01:05:34.480 --> 01:05:38.560 We're talking about Aztecs, we're talking about Egyptians, we're talking about people 01:05:39.120 --> 01:05:44.400 in in far the far eastern Asia, people who never heard about 01:05:44.400 --> 01:05:48.880 Isaiah promising the virgin birth, people who never heard that Jesus had 01:05:48.880 --> 01:05:51.760 died until after it had occurred. 01:05:52.160 --> 01:05:56.240 There is still the case even in those scattered 01:05:57.520 --> 01:06:04.240 civilizations, those scattered nations, where some of the nascent elements of the 01:06:04.240 --> 01:06:06.080 Christian faith are found. 01:06:06.080 --> 01:06:08.160 Now they're not found in a salvific sense. 01:06:08.160 --> 01:06:11.280 I'm not saying that these people were Christians secretly. 01:06:11.280 --> 01:06:17.520 But if you look at, for example, uh Egyptian mythology. 01:06:17.840 --> 01:06:23.840 The Egyptians about thirteen fifty BC they they were originating the myth 01:06:23.840 --> 01:06:28.000 of Osiris and Iris and Horus, where there was a virgin birth 01:06:28.000 --> 01:06:32.240 of a god who w then died sacrificially. 01:06:32.240 --> 01:06:36.640 Now the timing of that is interesting because the virgin birth thing 01:06:36.640 --> 01:06:41.440 doesn't show up in scripture until seven hundred BC, six hundred fifty 01:06:41.440 --> 01:06:44.880 years after they were coming up with this is the first time 01:06:44.880 --> 01:06:48.880 it's recorded that there would be a virgin born. 01:06:48.880 --> 01:06:54.080 The import of that is that the first record that we have 01:06:54.320 --> 01:06:56.400 is in Isaiah. 01:06:56.400 --> 01:07:00.080 But if you look at how many places this shows up, now 01:07:00.160 --> 01:07:04.000 with the Egyptians, you could say maybe they heard it from the 01:07:04.480 --> 01:07:08.160 Hebrews who had been who had just left a hundred years earlier. 01:07:08.160 --> 01:07:11.840 So for the four hundred years that the Hebrews were there, they 01:07:11.840 --> 01:07:13.360 may have been sharing the faith. 01:07:13.360 --> 01:07:16.400 But even then, for the Egyptians to have picked up the virgin 01:07:16.400 --> 01:07:21.760 birth of a god who would sacrifice himself, that that story, that 01:07:21.760 --> 01:07:26.080 myth would have had to have been known to the Hebrews centuries 01:07:26.080 --> 01:07:27.840 prior to Isaiah. 01:07:27.840 --> 01:07:31.200 And even then you would have contact between the Hebrews and the 01:07:31.200 --> 01:07:32.800 Egyptians to transmit that. 01:07:32.800 --> 01:07:35.120 And they were in the same place and time. 01:07:35.120 --> 01:07:37.040 So So th that's conceivable. 01:07:37.200 --> 01:07:39.120 we don't know if that was the case or not. 01:07:39.120 --> 01:07:44.080 However, you can look even further far afield to the Vietnamese and 01:07:44.080 --> 01:07:49.200 to the Aztecs, who also have similar, more corrupted stories, but stories 01:07:49.200 --> 01:07:52.640 that repeat some of the same elements that there would be a 01:07:52.640 --> 01:07:55.360 virgin birth of a god and that there would be some sort 01:07:55.360 --> 01:07:56.880 of sacrifice. 01:07:56.880 --> 01:08:00.800 And there are some other cultures where some of those elements are 01:08:00.800 --> 01:08:04.400 present but they're bastardized to the point that it's really impossible to 01:08:04.880 --> 01:08:09.760 infer whether they came via transmission or they they arrived at independently 01:08:09.840 --> 01:08:14.000 not not as some sort of prophecy that was originally rooted in 01:08:14.000 --> 01:08:17.920 Christianity. But the point I'm I'm making with this is that 01:08:18.800 --> 01:08:22.400 The only way that the Egyptians and the Aztecs and the Vietnamese 01:08:22.400 --> 01:08:25.040 and others would have heard about the virgin birth of a god 01:08:25.520 --> 01:08:29.760 would have come from the time of the Tower of Babel, long 01:08:29.840 --> 01:08:32.560 before there was an Abraham, long before there was a covenant, a 01:08:32.560 --> 01:08:35.680 covenant, long before there was an Isaiah, they would have heard those 01:08:35.680 --> 01:08:41.600 promises. And that's entirely consistent with scripture, which doesn't say anything about 01:08:41.600 --> 01:08:45.680 it. But the promises that are given in Scripture were given to 01:08:45.680 --> 01:08:48.160 the Hebrews and were given to us. 01:08:48.160 --> 01:08:50.000 Noah was a prophet. 01:08:50.240 --> 01:08:53.920 The men of Noah's day and earlier, many of them were prophets. 01:08:53.920 --> 01:08:54.880 They walked with God. 01:08:54.880 --> 01:08:56.320 They spoke with God. 01:08:56.320 --> 01:08:59.360 There is every reason for us to believe that they would have 01:08:59.360 --> 01:09:02.320 had more than just the Genesis three fifteen promise. 01:09:02.320 --> 01:09:03.840 Because there's not much there. 01:09:03.840 --> 01:09:06.640 You could read it and if you didn't know anything about Jesus 01:09:06.960 --> 01:09:09.680 you might not it it might not occur to you that that 01:09:09.680 --> 01:09:10.960 was a fulfillment. 01:09:10.960 --> 01:09:15.280 And it is only later on in scripture where other elements of 01:09:15.440 --> 01:09:18.240 I think there are at least three hundred odd prophecies of of 01:09:18.240 --> 01:09:22.400 Christ's birth and his life and his death and his resurrection in 01:09:22.400 --> 01:09:24.400 the Old Testament. 01:09:24.400 --> 01:09:27.120 That doesn't mean that that was a complete picture. 01:09:27.120 --> 01:09:31.440 There may well have been more and the the the the 01:09:32.960 --> 01:09:38.400 anthropological evidence strongly, strongly indicates that that was the case. 01:09:38.400 --> 01:09:42.080 That the promise of a messiah was known, we know it was 01:09:42.080 --> 01:09:46.640 known to Noah and his children, because they were Noah's. 01:09:46.640 --> 01:09:49.600 Their faith was transmitted by their father to them. 01:09:49.600 --> 01:09:52.560 We know that Japheth was blessed, and we know that Shem was 01:09:52.560 --> 01:09:57.520 blessed. We know that Ham was cursed by God, and his descendants 01:09:57.680 --> 01:09:58.880 bear that curse. 01:09:59.840 --> 01:10:01.040 Noah was a prophet. 01:10:01.040 --> 01:10:04.320 He didn't have any authority to curse anyone or to bless anyone. 01:10:04.320 --> 01:10:08.320 Any curses or blessings coming from him came from God. 01:10:08.320 --> 01:10:12.080 That's the only Christian conclusion that we can reach. 01:10:12.080 --> 01:10:16.480 So when we look in the historical record and we see those 01:10:16.480 --> 01:10:22.000 people who branched out from Babel scattered across the earth as God 01:10:22.000 --> 01:10:28.400 had commanded them to do, carrying elements of the true Christian faith, 01:10:28.400 --> 01:10:31.680 again, bastardized to the point that they were no longer salvific, they 01:10:31.680 --> 01:10:35.600 no longer knew God, but they they all knew about the flood. 01:10:35.600 --> 01:10:39.280 That's something that's preserved even in pla even in cultures that have 01:10:39.280 --> 01:10:44.880 no record whatsoever of anything that we would consider Christian doctrine, they 01:10:44.880 --> 01:10:47.120 still record that historical event. 01:10:47.120 --> 01:10:50.080 And after that, many of them do also record things that could 01:10:50.080 --> 01:10:54.720 be considered to have been elements of the Christian faith. 01:10:54.720 --> 01:10:58.720 Now, this is a tricky area to get into because most of 01:10:58.720 --> 01:11:01.120 the people talking about it are atheists. 01:11:01.120 --> 01:11:06.640 They're worldly men who deny and hate God simultaneously. 01:11:06.640 --> 01:11:10.640 And those men will twist what has occurred. 01:11:10.640 --> 01:11:15.440 So you have Jordan Peterson today, and you have his spiritual father 01:11:15.520 --> 01:11:20.400 Joseph Campbell and you have Carl Jung before him all basically making 01:11:20.400 --> 01:11:24.880 the claim that the reason that we have these repeated stories popping 01:11:24.880 --> 01:11:29.680 up globally, their rationalization for how that could occur, they say that 01:11:29.680 --> 01:11:34.160 it's a it's an upwelling of man's own spirit, that there's some 01:11:34.160 --> 01:11:40.800 indwelling of our own human nature that manifests these stories, these myths 01:11:41.360 --> 01:11:44.400 that that are not connected to God because God doesn't exist. 01:11:44.400 --> 01:11:45.440 They're just us. 01:11:45.760 --> 01:11:49.760 they're us doing our own thing in space and time and across 01:11:49.760 --> 01:11:51.200 space and time. 01:11:51.200 --> 01:11:54.000 And when they delete God, that's the best they can do. 01:11:54.000 --> 01:11:55.600 It it's silly. 01:11:55.600 --> 01:11:58.640 But if you look at it scripturally, you see you can see 01:11:58.640 --> 01:12:00.560 that the opposite was true. 01:12:00.560 --> 01:12:04.960 That when the people got off the ark, they were Christians. 01:12:05.280 --> 01:12:08.240 they had a belief in the in the Messiah who was to 01:12:08.240 --> 01:12:09.680 come at that time. 01:12:09.680 --> 01:12:13.600 They knew what God had revealed to them, which was clearly more 01:12:13.760 --> 01:12:18.640 than is revealed in scripture at that point for our benefit, because 01:12:18.640 --> 01:12:21.440 it's recording what we need and not what they needed at the 01:12:21.440 --> 01:12:23.520 time. Noah was talking directly to God. 01:12:23.520 --> 01:12:25.200 He didn't have to write this stuff down. 01:12:25.200 --> 01:12:30.080 If he did, it was for the benefit of future generations. 01:12:30.400 --> 01:12:30.720 So 01:12:31.840 --> 01:12:35.760 as we look at this, it's important to understand that the transmission 01:12:35.760 --> 01:12:38.640 of faith, how can they call on him in whom they have 01:12:38.640 --> 01:12:40.880 not believed, and how can they believe in him of whom they 01:12:40.880 --> 01:12:42.080 have not heard? 01:12:42.080 --> 01:12:43.200 How do you hear? 01:12:43.200 --> 01:12:45.280 You hear from your father. 01:12:45.280 --> 01:12:49.520 You hear from the man that God has placed in your family 01:12:49.680 --> 01:12:50.720 as your head. 01:12:50.720 --> 01:12:54.560 You are his seed, you are your father's seed, and he transmits 01:12:54.560 --> 01:12:57.920 the faith to you, or he fails to transmit the faith to 01:12:57.920 --> 01:13:01.680 you. And so in time we see that there were some fathers 01:13:01.680 --> 01:13:05.200 who came off the ark and their children and their children's children 01:13:05.520 --> 01:13:10.320 who preserved the faith that was transmitted to them by their fathers. 01:13:10.320 --> 01:13:14.640 We see other fathers who were faithless, who were evil, who abandoned 01:13:14.640 --> 01:13:18.240 God just as quickly as their ancestors before the flood had abandoned 01:13:18.240 --> 01:13:21.680 God, and went off in tremendously evil directions. 01:13:21.680 --> 01:13:27.440 And so the inheritance of those men for both good and evil 01:13:27.760 --> 01:13:31.040 is either faith or lack of faith. 01:13:31.040 --> 01:13:33.840 And that's where the we're going to get into the intersection of 01:13:33.840 --> 01:13:39.520 election and faith in time, because you inherit faith one way or 01:13:39.520 --> 01:13:43.280 another, either it's inherited directly from your parents who give it to 01:13:43.280 --> 01:13:47.120 you, or if you were not blessed with faithful parents, you may 01:13:47.120 --> 01:13:50.720 have to rebel against them and inherit it through adoption, and we're 01:13:50.640 --> 01:13:52.720 all adopted sons of God through baptism. 01:13:52.720 --> 01:13:55.440 I'm not saying that there's there's not a sense here where there 01:13:55.440 --> 01:13:56.880 is a hereditary 01:13:57.760 --> 01:14:01.840 claim to God, which was what the the Israelites misunderstood the the 01:14:01.840 --> 01:14:02.800 Pharisees later on. 01:14:02.800 --> 01:14:05.520 They thought that it was a genetic claim That was never the 01:14:05.520 --> 01:14:06.080 case. Trevor Burrus 01:14:06.080 --> 01:14:07.760 And what CI claims today. 01:14:07.760 --> 01:14:08.000 Aaron Powell 01:14:08.080 --> 01:14:09.040 Yeah, absolutely. 01:14:09.040 --> 01:14:13.760 It's the the Christian identity and various other heresies all make a 01:14:13.760 --> 01:14:16.400 complete mess of these things because they don't want to believe what 01:14:16.400 --> 01:14:17.520 is true. 01:14:18.560 --> 01:14:21.680 Abraham's faith was counted to him as righteousness. 01:14:21.680 --> 01:14:24.160 It wasn't that God had given him a covenant and made a 01:14:24.160 --> 01:14:25.040 promise to him. 01:14:25.040 --> 01:14:27.440 It was that he believed the promises of God. 01:14:27.440 --> 01:14:29.280 That was counted to him as righteousness. 01:14:29.280 --> 01:14:30.960 That's another way of saying faith. 01:14:30.960 --> 01:14:33.280 Abraham had faith because he received faith. 01:14:34.000 --> 01:14:38.080 He gave faith to his children by transmitting the word to them. 01:14:38.080 --> 01:14:41.520 He preached to them, he told them about God, and they received 01:14:41.520 --> 01:14:44.960 faith. So when we talk about election 01:14:46.320 --> 01:14:50.080 It is always in terms of faith, and faith is always transmitted. 01:14:50.080 --> 01:14:53.680 And the the point of that, that historical snippet is that 01:14:54.640 --> 01:14:58.560 the faith was transmitted for a time outside of the sons of 01:14:58.560 --> 01:15:03.280 Shem, outside of the line that became the line of David. 01:15:03.280 --> 01:15:06.880 It was transmitted by fathers to their sons. 01:15:06.880 --> 01:15:08.160 That's hereditary. 01:15:08.160 --> 01:15:12.000 Their posterity received the blessing of their faith. 01:15:12.160 --> 01:15:16.720 There were uh couple recent surveys in the last decade that were 01:15:16.720 --> 01:15:20.000 done by uh some Reformed and Baptists. 01:15:20.000 --> 01:15:24.400 According to data collected by Promise Keepers and Baptist Press, if a 01:15:24.400 --> 01:15:28.160 father does not go to church, even if his wife does, only 01:15:28.160 --> 01:15:32.640 one child in fifty, one child in fifty, that's two percent, will 01:15:32.640 --> 01:15:34.240 become regular worshiper. 01:15:34.480 --> 01:15:37.920 If a father does go regularly, regardless of what the mother does, 01:15:37.920 --> 01:15:41.360 between two thirds and three quarters of their children will attend church 01:15:41.360 --> 01:15:42.480 as adults. 01:15:42.480 --> 01:15:46.400 That's a difference of either two percent without the father, or between 01:15:46.400 --> 01:15:49.440 sixty six and seventy five percent with the father. 01:15:49.440 --> 01:15:51.440 That is radical. 01:15:51.440 --> 01:15:57.440 And that is far more than simply a sociological effect. 01:15:57.440 --> 01:16:00.880 Because what we found what what another survey showed was that Is 01:16:00.880 --> 01:16:04.160 that uh if the first person in a household to become a 01:16:04.160 --> 01:16:07.040 Christian was a child, there's about a three and a half percent 01:16:07.120 --> 01:16:09.520 chance that everyone else in the house would follow. 01:16:09.520 --> 01:16:12.000 If the mother is the first person to become a Christian, there's 01:16:12.000 --> 01:16:13.760 about a seventeen percent chance. 01:16:13.760 --> 01:16:17.360 So quite a bit better than than a child adopting Christianity first 01:16:17.440 --> 01:16:19.760 if the mother did. 01:16:19.760 --> 01:16:23.120 When the father was the first to become a Christian, there's a 01:16:23.120 --> 01:16:27.360 ninety three percent chance that everyone else in the house will follow. 01:16:27.360 --> 01:16:30.800 Now, this is not a sociological consequence. 01:16:30.800 --> 01:16:35.040 This is not this is not something for demographers or demographers and 01:16:35.040 --> 01:16:36.560 sociologists to discuss. 01:16:36.560 --> 01:16:38.640 This is a theological discussion. 01:16:38.640 --> 01:16:41.200 This is a theological discussion of headship. 01:16:41.200 --> 01:16:43.520 The father is the head. 01:16:43.520 --> 01:16:46.800 That's not just a metaphor, it is a reality. 01:16:46.800 --> 01:16:49.600 The father is the head of the wife, the father is of 01:16:49.600 --> 01:16:52.560 his wife, he's the head of his children, he's the head of 01:16:52.560 --> 01:16:57.680 everyone, under his house house under his roof, in his household. 01:16:57.680 --> 01:17:02.480 And his faith becomes their faith on contact. 01:17:02.480 --> 01:17:03.680 Now this is remarkable. 01:17:03.680 --> 01:17:07.280 We're talking about what we must presume to be true faith. 01:17:07.600 --> 01:17:11.200 if children began attending church because their father does, and they do 01:17:11.200 --> 01:17:16.320 it into adulthood, for the most part, those are probably Christians. 01:17:16.320 --> 01:17:21.360 Whereas if only the mother does, it's inconsequential. 01:17:21.360 --> 01:17:21.680 And 01:17:23.120 --> 01:17:29.440 so it's it's a fundamental element of the manner in which election 01:17:29.680 --> 01:17:33.440 is delivered in time that the faith of the father becomes the 01:17:33.440 --> 01:17:38.240 faith of the children, and the faithlessness of the father also becomes 01:17:38.240 --> 01:17:40.480 the faithlessness of the children. 01:17:41.920 --> 01:17:45.920 Well, and that's that's also why in in Scripture, when we look 01:17:45.920 --> 01:17:52.320 at how God deals with humanity, he doesn't actually typically deal with 01:17:52.320 --> 01:17:55.600 individuals. God works with families and nations. 01:17:55.600 --> 01:17:56.560 Yes, individuals are also 01:17:57.680 --> 01:18:04.320 involved, but God didn't just call Abram to who would become Abraham. 01:18:04.320 --> 01:18:08.320 He called him to bring his family, at the time, of course, 01:18:08.320 --> 01:18:12.320 just his wife and his uh cousins, but 01:18:14.560 --> 01:18:20.400 it is the head of the family that represents the family, this 01:18:20.560 --> 01:18:25.040 in the same way that Adam represented creation and so creation fell 01:18:25.200 --> 01:18:29.360 when Adam sinned, in the same way that Christ is the head 01:18:29.360 --> 01:18:32.160 of the new creation, and so those of us who are in 01:18:32.160 --> 01:18:34.880 Christ are also part of that new creation. 01:18:34.880 --> 01:18:37.440 That's why you have to be in Christ in order to actually 01:18:37.920 --> 01:18:41.360 be part of that new creation, in order to see paradise, in 01:18:41.360 --> 01:18:44.640 order not to spend eternity in hell. 01:18:44.640 --> 01:18:48.000 But to go back briefly, I guess we're going to mention CI, 01:18:48.000 --> 01:18:51.520 we may as well also mention a little more paganism. 01:18:52.080 --> 01:18:56.240 When it comes to myths and the various peoples who preserved them 01:18:56.320 --> 01:18:59.840 or failed to preserve them, I think one of the best examples, 01:18:59.840 --> 01:19:02.880 and I know there are those who will comment that this was 01:19:02.880 --> 01:19:05.440 written down in the 10th century, and that's true, but it was 01:19:05.440 --> 01:19:08.080 an oral history before that, and I happen to believe it's an 01:19:08.080 --> 01:19:08.800 ancient one. 01:19:08.800 --> 01:19:14.640 The Havamal is a great example of a corruption, but also a 01:19:14.640 --> 01:19:17.360 maintenance of some Christian truths. 01:19:17.360 --> 01:19:19.520 In a number of places, I think one of the best ones 01:19:19.600 --> 01:19:26.080 though, Odin, in part of the Havamal, is hanged on the world 01:19:26.160 --> 01:19:28.400 tree, Yggdrasil. 01:19:28.400 --> 01:19:33.840 He offers himself to himself, on the world tree. 01:19:33.840 --> 01:19:36.560 He's stabbed with a spear. 01:19:36.560 --> 01:19:39.200 He receives neither food nor drink. 01:19:39.200 --> 01:19:43.440 He peers into the deep, one could consider that a corruption of 01:19:43.440 --> 01:19:45.200 the descent into hell. 01:19:46.080 --> 01:19:50.720 These parallels are extremely close to what we actually have as the 01:19:50.720 --> 01:19:54.880 truth in Christianity, and so you can see a preservation of the 01:19:54.880 --> 01:20:01.120 faith of the forefathers, even if corrupted by demons, by Gnosticism over 01:20:01.120 --> 01:20:05.200 a course of time, and these sorts of things do not just 01:20:05.200 --> 01:20:10.480 happen. This is not something people in far flung parts of the 01:20:10.480 --> 01:20:15.280 world do not create the same myths out of whole cloth with 01:20:15.280 --> 01:20:17.200 no interaction. 01:20:17.200 --> 01:20:21.120 And the Vikings and the Vietnamese were not really interacting 01:20:22.000 --> 01:20:23.280 in BC. 01:20:23.280 --> 01:20:26.000 That just wasn't a thing. 01:20:26.000 --> 01:20:33.440 But just another example of the carrying forward of Mythology, Christian mythology, 01:20:33.440 --> 01:20:35.600 and it's not wrong to call it that because the term has 01:20:35.600 --> 01:20:40.560 multiple senses, the carrying forward, if also the corruption in time, because 01:20:40.560 --> 01:20:44.480 of the faithlessness of some of the fathers in that line. 01:20:44.480 --> 01:20:47.840 They failed to transmit the faith correctly. 01:20:47.840 --> 01:20:51.840 They permitted it to become corrupted, and so their children, instead of 01:20:51.840 --> 01:20:55.600 carrying forward the true faith, carried forward that corruption. 01:20:55.600 --> 01:20:58.800 Now we have an advantage today. 01:20:59.120 --> 01:21:02.560 that basically none of our ancestors until the last handful of centuries 01:21:02.720 --> 01:21:07.440 did. And that advantage figuratively is the printing press. 01:21:07.440 --> 01:21:11.200 Today, of course, we have iPads and computers and all that, but 01:21:11.200 --> 01:21:15.760 ultimately printed books do have more staying power, computers can die. 01:21:15.760 --> 01:21:20.000 Yes, books can burn, but they are typically easier to preserve. 01:21:20.000 --> 01:21:23.760 And so we have the advantage if we have a number of 01:21:23.760 --> 01:21:29.040 faithless generations as we have recently had, we can still return to 01:21:29.040 --> 01:21:30.240 the true faith. 01:21:30.240 --> 01:21:31.280 And what are we doing? 01:21:31.280 --> 01:21:35.680 We are returning to the faith of our fathers who gave us 01:21:35.680 --> 01:21:40.160 the sound doctrine, who preserved for us the Bible, who gave us 01:21:40.400 --> 01:21:43.440 these truths, carried them forward. 01:21:43.440 --> 01:21:47.520 We don't have to, as many of our ancestors did, carry on 01:21:47.520 --> 01:21:50.480 the false and the corrupted faith of our immediate forebears 01:21:51.760 --> 01:21:55.360 Because that is all they had, because theirs would have been orally 01:21:55.360 --> 01:21:58.880 transmitted, and if all you heard was the corrupted version of the 01:21:58.880 --> 01:22:02.720 truth, well all you had was the corrupted version of the truth, 01:22:02.720 --> 01:22:06.000 because that's what you received from your head, whether it was your 01:22:06.000 --> 01:22:09.840 father or your grandfather or your king, or just the leader of 01:22:09.840 --> 01:22:13.520 your tribe, you received that from your head. 01:22:13.520 --> 01:22:15.440 Today again, we can actually 01:22:16.320 --> 01:22:19.440 go back to the truth. 01:22:19.440 --> 01:22:22.720 We can go back to things before they were corrupted by faithless 01:22:22.720 --> 01:22:27.040 generations, because we have that luxury, thanks be to God. 01:22:27.040 --> 01:22:31.040 But it is still a matter of headship because that was transmitted 01:22:31.040 --> 01:22:33.920 to us by a far distant head. 01:22:33.920 --> 01:22:38.640 So for instance, Japheth is head of the European peoples. 01:22:38.640 --> 01:22:41.520 Ashkenaz is head of the Germans. 01:22:42.480 --> 01:22:43.920 And so you you have 01:22:44.880 --> 01:22:49.040 nations descended from individual men. 01:22:49.040 --> 01:22:53.920 All mankind descended from Adam, and all mankind descended from Noah, because 01:22:54.000 --> 01:22:57.200 of course there was a little bit of a bottleneck there. 01:22:57.200 --> 01:22:59.840 Europe descended from Japheth. 01:22:59.840 --> 01:23:03.760 The East, roughly speaking, descended from Shem. 01:23:03.760 --> 01:23:07.840 Africa descended from Ham, and so those men are the heads of 01:23:07.840 --> 01:23:13.760 those large people groups, but within those you have nations and tribes, 01:23:13.760 --> 01:23:16.240 and then under that you have families. 01:23:16.240 --> 01:23:21.200 It's all a matter of hierarchy and headship and what is transmitted 01:23:21.200 --> 01:23:22.880 faithfully or faithlessly. 01:23:23.120 --> 01:23:24.080 Alright, ready to 01:23:24.080 --> 01:23:24.720 go. 01:23:26.000 --> 01:23:26.240 And 01:23:26.240 --> 01:23:31.840 that's why I mentioned up front that election is connected to all 01:23:31.840 --> 01:23:34.800 of this, to the way that the gospel is spread, to the 01:23:34.800 --> 01:23:38.160 way that we come to faith and the way that the problems 01:23:38.160 --> 01:23:41.760 that we're facing in the church today are are really rooted in 01:23:41.760 --> 01:23:47.040 this. Uh when you when you look in scripture you see that 01:23:47.600 --> 01:23:51.760 men are identified by name, but it's not just their name. 01:23:51.760 --> 01:23:55.360 It's for example Jonah, the son of Amitai. 01:23:55.360 --> 01:23:59.360 Uh the prophet Zechariah was a son of Barakiah, son of Edo, 01:23:59.360 --> 01:24:03.680 and When Samuel's born there was a certain man of the hill 01:24:03.680 --> 01:24:07.760 country whose name was Elkanah, the son of Jerobam, and he gives 01:24:07.760 --> 01:24:10.560 his father's name and his father's name and his father's name, and 01:24:10.560 --> 01:24:12.960 the country that he was from. 01:24:12.960 --> 01:24:18.640 That wasn't simply Simply genealogy for the sake of narrowing down which 01:24:18.640 --> 01:24:22.800 Samuel or which Zechariah or which Zona Jonah it was. 01:24:22.800 --> 01:24:27.200 That was identifying the men in space and time as God created 01:24:27.840 --> 01:24:31.440 them. And most of the names that are that are given in 01:24:31.440 --> 01:24:34.400 scripture in those ways are usually of faithful men. 01:24:34.640 --> 01:24:38.160 There are not a lot of faithless men whose names are given. 01:24:38.800 --> 01:24:43.120 In the show notes, there's going to be two video links on 01:24:43.120 --> 01:24:48.560 YouTube that are an absolutely vital part of understanding that the the 01:24:48.560 --> 01:24:50.800 point that we're trying to make with this episode. 01:24:50.800 --> 01:24:53.200 Uh the the reason that there are two of them, it's split 01:24:53.200 --> 01:24:54.080 into two parts. 01:24:54.080 --> 01:24:55.520 It's not very long. 01:24:55.520 --> 01:24:58.320 Uh one is the spread of Christianity. 01:24:58.320 --> 01:25:03.840 It's basically just a map, a visual representation of where Christianity was 01:25:03.840 --> 01:25:10.800 held between year one and uh eighty one thousand and then from 01:25:10.800 --> 01:25:13.600 eighty one thousand to current day. 01:25:13.600 --> 01:25:17.520 And the the reason that I want to talk about those videos 01:25:17.520 --> 01:25:21.200 as we wrap up here is that when we talk about election, 01:25:21.200 --> 01:25:26.880 when we talk about Christianity, we're not simply talking about the hypothetical, 01:25:26.880 --> 01:25:30.000 well, one may have faith and one may be saved. 01:25:30.560 --> 01:25:34.480 But we can point to particular people in space and time who 01:25:34.480 --> 01:25:37.600 were saved, and we know that they were saved just as Paul 01:25:37.600 --> 01:25:40.800 knew when he was referring to those people who were known to 01:25:40.800 --> 01:25:43.520 him whose names he said were written in the book of life. 01:25:43.920 --> 01:25:46.880 Because of their confession and because of their Christian life. 01:25:46.880 --> 01:25:50.960 So there is an immediate connection between their life and the fact 01:25:50.960 --> 01:25:52.480 that they were saved. 01:25:52.640 --> 01:25:54.480 That those are demonstrable facts. 01:25:54.480 --> 01:25:57.760 No, it's not it's not to suggest that you can perfectly judge 01:25:57.760 --> 01:26:02.880 someone's heart the way that God can and will. 01:26:02.880 --> 01:26:06.160 But in general, you're going to be able to tell a Christian 01:26:06.160 --> 01:26:09.440 from a non-Christian just by talking to 'em, by looking at how 01:26:09.440 --> 01:26:10.160 they live. 01:26:10.320 --> 01:26:13.040 Um, and that's always been the case throughout time. 01:26:13.040 --> 01:26:16.720 So the reason that these videos are important is 01:26:17.680 --> 01:26:21.600 where the video shows Christianity spreading. 01:26:21.600 --> 01:26:26.560 Like we said a minute ago, the faith was transmitted from Adam 01:26:26.640 --> 01:26:31.520 through Noah, through Japheth, and through Shem to their sons, and then 01:26:31.520 --> 01:26:34.400 most of them lost it over time. 01:26:34.400 --> 01:26:36.720 But they lost it to varying degrees. 01:26:36.880 --> 01:26:38.480 Some lost it entirely. 01:26:38.800 --> 01:26:42.800 not to not to say that salvation comes by degrees, but a 01:26:42.800 --> 01:26:46.480 memory of the true faith can be lost by degrees, and that's 01:26:46.480 --> 01:26:49.120 clearly what we see in the historical record. 01:26:49.920 --> 01:26:54.000 When you get back to Jesus' birth, death, death, and resurrection in 01:26:54.000 --> 01:26:58.560 the beginning of the church, the spread of the knowledge of the 01:26:58.560 --> 01:27:01.040 truth faith begins again. 01:27:01.040 --> 01:27:02.400 Now, it was always the case. 01:27:02.400 --> 01:27:06.640 It wasn't the great commission that Jesus gave to his disciples saying, 01:27:07.200 --> 01:27:10.960 go and baptize all nations in my name. 01:27:10.960 --> 01:27:13.600 That wasn't the first time that that had ever been true, but 01:27:13.600 --> 01:27:17.920 it was a command that was specifically given that to them in 01:27:17.920 --> 01:27:22.880 the place of Rome and Judea, in the time when Greek and 01:27:22.880 --> 01:27:27.280 Latin were widely spoken, and in a place and time where the 01:27:27.280 --> 01:27:32.800 roads could carry the message of the gospel faster than the guards 01:27:32.800 --> 01:27:36.320 and the men chasing the apostles trying to kill them. 01:27:36.320 --> 01:27:40.240 So it was a very eff efficacious moment that God chose God 01:27:40.240 --> 01:27:41.520 chose to 01:27:42.400 --> 01:27:45.040 enact the Great Commission. 01:27:45.040 --> 01:27:50.000 And the maps in the video show where and how that Great 01:27:50.000 --> 01:27:51.520 Commission was followed. 01:27:51.520 --> 01:27:55.040 And what you see in the maps is that almost immediately uh 01:27:55.440 --> 01:28:00.560 Saint Mark, I believe, goes to the western coast of India, uh 01:28:00.880 --> 01:28:04.800 where to this day there's a tiny sliver on the coast of 01:28:04.800 --> 01:28:07.600 India where there have been Christians for two thousand years. 01:28:07.600 --> 01:28:11.120 It was an apostolic church that has been preserved there by God's 01:28:11.120 --> 01:28:13.200 grace throughout time. 01:28:13.520 --> 01:28:16.400 Now it never spread beyond that place. 01:28:16.400 --> 01:28:18.800 It never went to the rest of the Indian people, but it 01:28:18.960 --> 01:28:22.800 But at least within that tiny sliver, the word was rightly preached 01:28:22.880 --> 01:28:25.920 and those people did have faith. 01:28:25.920 --> 01:28:29.760 The first thousand years of the video omits something that's important for 01:28:29.760 --> 01:28:32.960 this conversation, but it does show up in the second thousand years. 01:28:33.280 --> 01:28:36.880 And that is Ethiopia and Sudan or the modern countries thereof. 01:28:36.880 --> 01:28:41.920 Uh Ethiopia is interesting because they claim a Solomonic dynasty. 01:28:41.920 --> 01:28:47.360 They claim that they're descended from the house of Solomon incontinuously to 01:28:47.360 --> 01:28:52.800 the to living memory that some of their leaders have had that 01:28:52.800 --> 01:28:56.560 blood and the faith has been preserved there as well. 01:28:56.560 --> 01:28:59.920 Uh what's interesting is if if you look at the many of 01:28:59.920 --> 01:29:06.240 the leaders w for whom we have photographs in modern Ethiopia, they 01:29:06.480 --> 01:29:10.640 look more Persian than they do sub Saharan African, even though Ethiopia 01:29:10.640 --> 01:29:12.800 is a sub Saharan African country. 01:29:12.800 --> 01:29:18.560 Uh Ethiopia and Sudan, modern day, have had the faith since the 01:29:18.560 --> 01:29:23.120 beginning. There were churches that were planted there because although it's sub-Saharan 01:29:23.120 --> 01:29:25.840 Africa, it's also adjacent to the Red Sea. 01:29:25.840 --> 01:29:28.240 So there was maritime travel that was able to get there. 01:29:28.400 --> 01:29:31.280 It didn't have to go too far inland in order for those 01:29:31.280 --> 01:29:34.000 people to receive the gospel and to believe it. 01:29:34.000 --> 01:29:36.720 And they too have kept it and preserved the faith faith unto 01:29:36.720 --> 01:29:37.600 this day. 01:29:37.600 --> 01:29:40.240 So as I said, the the first thousand years of the video 01:29:40.240 --> 01:29:45.040 will omit Africa, but it's there continuously in that one tiny corner. 01:29:45.040 --> 01:29:48.320 Now Africa's a uh unfathomably large continent. 01:29:48.320 --> 01:29:51.680 It's three three times the size of North America And 01:29:52.560 --> 01:29:56.480 but in that one small place there were believers continuously. 01:29:56.800 --> 01:29:57.040 Real 01:29:57.040 --> 01:30:00.080 quick, in the case of Ethiopia, it's also worth mentioning that the 01:30:00.080 --> 01:30:04.800 language they use, Amharic, is not a Hamitic, not an African language, 01:30:04.800 --> 01:30:08.480 but a Shemitic language, a Near Eastern language. 01:30:08.480 --> 01:30:12.720 And so we we also see that that interchange, that relationship of 01:30:12.720 --> 01:30:15.840 the peoples in the area in the language they speak, which is 01:30:15.840 --> 01:30:20.160 further proof that you had this interaction and explains why they had 01:30:20.160 --> 01:30:21.200 the faith. 01:30:21.600 --> 01:30:23.840 Yep. That's a very good point. 01:30:23.840 --> 01:30:24.800 And the 01:30:25.760 --> 01:30:30.800 the reason that I've highlighted India and Africa is because the Those 01:30:30.800 --> 01:30:34.400 are the only places outside of the Mid Middle East and Europe 01:30:34.720 --> 01:30:38.720 where Christianity existed prior to the six the 1500s. 01:30:38.720 --> 01:30:40.480 And this is what the video shows. 01:30:40.480 --> 01:30:44.400 It shows the spread of uh Christianity proper. 01:30:44.400 --> 01:30:48.960 It shows the spread of Arianism, which is a heresy, a bastardization 01:30:48.960 --> 01:30:50.240 of Christianity. 01:30:50.240 --> 01:30:50.560 Um 01:30:51.600 --> 01:30:54.960 one thing that's omitted in the video, it doesn't show that Arianism 01:30:54.960 --> 01:30:58.000 did make inroads as far as China, and I believe was preserved 01:30:58.480 --> 01:31:02.320 until well into the the tenth and eleventh century, and then it 01:31:02.320 --> 01:31:03.600 was stamped out. 01:31:03.600 --> 01:31:10.640 Now the Aryan doctrine, which d denies the divinity of Christ fully, 01:31:10.640 --> 01:31:11.280 does 01:31:12.560 --> 01:31:15.360 it's properly condemned as a heresy, but it is fair to say 01:31:15.360 --> 01:31:19.200 that even when there were Aryan heretics that were in control 01:31:20.320 --> 01:31:23.040 The word of God was still in those places. 01:31:23.040 --> 01:31:23.360 So 01:31:24.320 --> 01:31:28.160 while their confession may not have been true, there are many cases 01:31:28.160 --> 01:31:31.120 where people are taught one thing and they believe another and they 01:31:31.120 --> 01:31:32.960 believe what's in scripture. 01:31:33.040 --> 01:31:36.080 That's something that as Lutherans, you and I run into all the 01:31:36.080 --> 01:31:39.600 time, where we're we're talking to someone who has been raised Baptist 01:31:39.680 --> 01:31:43.760 or raised Reformed or something, and we're talking about areas where we 01:31:43.760 --> 01:31:48.160 know that Lutheran and Baptist doctrine differ, and they say, Oh no, 01:31:48.160 --> 01:31:49.600 that's what I've always believed. 01:31:49.600 --> 01:31:53.280 And it's always interesting because we know for a fact that that's 01:31:53.280 --> 01:31:56.320 not what any Baptist would have ever taught them, but it is 01:31:56.320 --> 01:31:57.840 what they read in the Bible. 01:31:57.840 --> 01:32:02.320 And so it's called felicitous inconsistency that you may you may say 01:32:02.320 --> 01:32:05.280 one thing, you may be taught one thing, but in your heart 01:32:05.360 --> 01:32:09.440 if you're if you have faith and you're receiving God's word, you 01:32:09.440 --> 01:32:13.280 may ultimately believe something that is true even if what you're taught 01:32:13.360 --> 01:32:16.240 and maybe even what you think about when you're just sort of 01:32:16.320 --> 01:32:18.960 mouthing the words is contrary to it. 01:32:18.960 --> 01:32:19.280 So 01:32:20.880 --> 01:32:24.400 I wouldn't go so far as says to say the where Arianism 01:32:24.400 --> 01:32:28.400 was spread, everyone is damned, although it is it is a false 01:32:28.400 --> 01:32:31.120 confession. But I will say that where the word of God is 01:32:31.120 --> 01:32:33.280 spoken, it does not return to him void. 01:32:33.280 --> 01:32:35.680 So there's there's hope in those places. 01:32:35.840 --> 01:32:40.400 It's better to be partly right than entirely wrong. 01:32:40.400 --> 01:32:45.120 And that's it's we're not saying that it will save you being 01:32:45.120 --> 01:32:47.840 partly right if you're wrong about the core things. 01:32:47.840 --> 01:32:52.240 If you get the atonement wrong, you're right and you're right about 01:32:52.240 --> 01:32:54.640 some ancillary things that's not going to save you. 01:32:54.640 --> 01:32:57.600 But there are still blessings. 01:32:57.600 --> 01:33:02.080 There is still good that is attached to believing the truth. 01:33:02.080 --> 01:33:04.640 And if you get some of the things right, you are still 01:33:04.640 --> 01:33:08.080 believing some of the truth, and there are still benefits to that. 01:33:08.080 --> 01:33:14.000 And as mentioned, if at least these heretics believe that they are 01:33:14.000 --> 01:33:17.520 Christian, the Word of God will be present, and the word of 01:33:17.520 --> 01:33:20.320 God does not return to him void. 01:33:20.400 --> 01:33:21.360 Yep. 01:33:22.480 --> 01:33:24.800 And so in the in the early part of the video, in 01:33:24.800 --> 01:33:28.240 the first five centuries or so, you'll see that there's a back 01:33:28.240 --> 01:33:31.120 and forth between Ari and Christianity, and I think they call it 01:33:31.120 --> 01:33:34.080 Nicene Christianity in the video. 01:33:34.560 --> 01:33:38.720 Eventually Nicene, which is to say Trinitarian Christianity, which is to say 01:33:38.720 --> 01:33:44.160 Christianity. it's redundant, but proper Christian doctrine did begin to prevail and 01:33:44.160 --> 01:33:48.160 eventually Arianism was effectively wiped out in Europe. 01:33:49.520 --> 01:33:52.720 The the import of the videos and the the reason that we 01:33:52.720 --> 01:33:54.960 are talking about it is that 01:33:55.840 --> 01:34:02.560 If we truly believe the doctrine of election, that God elected those 01:34:02.560 --> 01:34:09.840 unto salvation for Himself from before creation, and He knew those men's 01:34:09.840 --> 01:34:13.840 names and he wrote them in the book of life, then when 01:34:13.840 --> 01:34:19.280 you watch that video, you cannot help but conclude that virtually all 01:34:19.280 --> 01:34:23.760 of those who were elected to faith were sons of Japheth. 01:34:23.760 --> 01:34:26.960 It's a it's the only possible conclusion when you look at the 01:34:26.960 --> 01:34:31.040 map because it's showing the whole known world where 01:34:32.000 --> 01:34:34.320 Christianity was believed. 01:34:34.320 --> 01:34:37.520 And then it eventually zooms out in the the second uh in 01:34:37.520 --> 01:34:40.640 the second thousand years to show the entire globe. 01:34:40.640 --> 01:34:46.320 And there's nothing until Columbus comes to the Americas outside of Europe 01:34:46.400 --> 01:34:48.560 and in the uh Middle East. 01:34:48.640 --> 01:34:52.880 Now when I say Japha obviously many of the sons of Shem, 01:34:52.880 --> 01:34:56.400 not many, but some of the sons of Shem did come to 01:34:56.400 --> 01:34:57.760 faith in the in the Middle East. 01:34:57.760 --> 01:34:59.680 There were some Jews who converted. 01:34:59.680 --> 01:35:03.520 Those men ceased to be Jewish in not too much time. 01:35:04.240 --> 01:35:08.960 they simply became men of of their area, but they eventually abandoned 01:35:08.960 --> 01:35:14.160 those those cultures and that custom and became integrated as as Europeans 01:35:14.160 --> 01:35:16.320 with their their neighbors and brothers. 01:35:16.320 --> 01:35:16.560 But 01:35:17.840 --> 01:35:20.480 that was still a small portion of 01:35:22.000 --> 01:35:24.960 those who received the faith. 01:35:24.960 --> 01:35:26.640 Overwhelmingly, the the number 01:35:27.520 --> 01:35:32.800 throughout time has been in Europe, which is is Cory mentioned, you 01:35:32.800 --> 01:35:34.560 mentioned Christian identity. 01:35:34.560 --> 01:35:38.320 They're heretics, they believe that only white people can be fa saved. 01:35:38.320 --> 01:35:40.800 They believe that only white people I think are human. 01:35:41.040 --> 01:35:44.320 they say some terrible things that are simply false that are blatantly 01:35:44.320 --> 01:35:45.280 contrary to Scripture. 01:35:45.520 --> 01:35:48.480 They also happen to ny the Trinity because once you're being a 01:35:48.480 --> 01:35:50.080 heretic, why not go all in? 01:35:50.720 --> 01:35:53.120 But their history is also wildly incorrect 01:35:54.000 --> 01:35:57.040 because it they couldn't be right about anything, so they have to 01:35:57.040 --> 01:35:58.400 be wrong about everything. 01:35:58.400 --> 01:36:01.600 I mean they they try to argue that the the kings of 01:36:01.680 --> 01:36:05.600 in some cases, the kings of England are descended from David. 01:36:06.160 --> 01:36:06.400 Yeah. 01:36:09.280 --> 01:36:11.280 Yeah. It's c it's insane, it's false. 01:36:11.360 --> 01:36:14.400 And these are people with whom we are lumped in by those 01:36:14.400 --> 01:36:17.680 who say that we're going to hell for what we're saying right 01:36:17.680 --> 01:36:21.680 now, which is straight from Scripture, and it's straight from history, not 01:36:21.680 --> 01:36:25.040 in contradiction to scripture in scripture. 01:36:26.000 --> 01:36:27.920 I I did some math. 01:36:27.920 --> 01:36:30.320 This is this is my own work. 01:36:30.320 --> 01:36:32.480 That's these are very rough estimates. 01:36:32.480 --> 01:36:37.360 Basically what I did, I took the best estimates by century of 01:36:37.360 --> 01:36:40.480 the population of Europe. 01:36:40.480 --> 01:36:46.880 Uh so 700, 800, 900,000 Up through the year 1900. 01:36:46.880 --> 01:36:51.440 I took a look at the estimates of the population of Europe. 01:36:51.440 --> 01:36:56.080 I then took a look at the estimate of approximately what percent 01:36:56.080 --> 01:36:59.520 of those people were nominally Christian. 01:36:59.520 --> 01:37:02.800 That is to say that they their king was Christian, they were 01:37:02.800 --> 01:37:05.920 baptized and lived Christian lives. 01:37:05.920 --> 01:37:10.640 Now, obviously that is not by itself proof that any particular individual 01:37:10.640 --> 01:37:11.280 is a Christian. 01:37:11.280 --> 01:37:12.400 That's not what I'm saying. 01:37:12.400 --> 01:37:17.920 But when someone's confession in their life claims to be Christian, that's 01:37:17.920 --> 01:37:20.960 not something that I'm not going to question that when uh when 01:37:20.960 --> 01:37:22.400 I'm looking back through time. 01:37:22.400 --> 01:37:27.520 So these are very rough estimates, but what I found was that 01:37:27.600 --> 01:37:31.040 uh and part of the reason it's possible to give a very 01:37:31.040 --> 01:37:36.160 rough rough estimate of the number of believers is when the king's 01:37:36.160 --> 01:37:39.440 converted. Because and that's what's borne out in history. 01:37:39.440 --> 01:37:43.440 When the king converted, the head of a nation converted generally within 01:37:43.440 --> 01:37:47.600 a generation or two, most of the people followed. 01:37:47.600 --> 01:37:52.560 So in about the year seven hundred AD, about twenty five percent 01:37:52.560 --> 01:37:56.240 of Europe's population of about thirty two million people were Christian. 01:37:56.240 --> 01:37:59.520 So there were around eight million Christians in Europe in the year 01:37:59.520 --> 01:38:02.240 seven hundred, roughly. 01:38:02.240 --> 01:38:06.240 That's an interesting number because that is at least four tim five 01:38:06.240 --> 01:38:11.440 times more than the number who have ever lived in Ethiopia and 01:38:11.440 --> 01:38:15.760 Sudan. The area that we're talking about where Christianity has been preserved 01:38:15.920 --> 01:38:18.160 there was never was never very populous. 01:38:18.400 --> 01:38:20.160 the land simply couldn't sustain it. 01:38:20.160 --> 01:38:21.920 The people couldn't sustain it. 01:38:21.920 --> 01:38:24.800 So when we're talking about I don't want to call it a 01:38:24.800 --> 01:38:27.200 numbers game, because this is we're talking about salvation. 01:38:27.200 --> 01:38:28.960 We're not talking about a game. 01:38:28.960 --> 01:38:31.120 But when we're talking about 01:38:32.080 --> 01:38:35.680 the number of names that are in the book of life, the 01:38:35.680 --> 01:38:41.200 number of African names prior to European colonization of Africa, which we'll 01:38:41.120 --> 01:38:42.880 get to, was very small. 01:38:42.880 --> 01:38:46.080 There were some, by God's grace, and thank God that there were 01:38:46.320 --> 01:38:50.400 uh Ethiopians who were preserved. 01:38:50.400 --> 01:38:53.600 But by and large they were believers in Europe and nowhere else. 01:38:53.840 --> 01:38:57.680 And I by Europe I mean Greater Europe, so the Mediterranean, Northern 01:38:57.680 --> 01:39:02.400 Africa, which is like the Mediterranean is effectively Europe, not Africa. 01:39:02.720 --> 01:39:06.960 Those countries were soon lost to Islam, which began to make inroads 01:39:06.960 --> 01:39:10.480 even into to the rest of Europe. 01:39:10.480 --> 01:39:13.920 By uh eighty one thousand, the population had gone up about ten 01:39:14.080 --> 01:39:18.800 million to about forty-two million, and the percentage of Christians was probably 01:39:18.800 --> 01:39:21.040 about eighty-five percent give or two. 01:39:21.040 --> 01:39:24.880 So you're looking at about thirty six, thirty-five, thirty-six million Christians in 01:39:24.880 --> 01:39:26.400 eighty-one thousand. 01:39:26.400 --> 01:39:30.000 Fast forward another three hundred years and the population has gone up 01:39:30.000 --> 01:39:33.280 about fifty percent to around sixty million. 01:39:33.280 --> 01:39:36.320 And probably about ninety-five percent of those were 01:39:37.440 --> 01:39:38.880 at least culturally Christian. 01:39:38.880 --> 01:39:42.640 Again, I'm not claiming that virtually everyone in who's ever been European 01:39:42.640 --> 01:39:43.520 has saved. 01:39:43.520 --> 01:39:44.560 There's no way to know that. 01:39:44.560 --> 01:39:47.120 And it's realistically that's probably not the case. 01:39:47.600 --> 01:39:51.840 But they were in Christians land Christian lands with Christian kings. 01:39:51.840 --> 01:39:54.640 They were living as Christians, they were attending church, they were hearing 01:39:54.640 --> 01:39:55.920 the word of God. 01:39:55.920 --> 01:39:59.600 There's more hope for them than there is for the vast majority 01:39:59.600 --> 01:40:00.640 of America. 01:40:00.640 --> 01:40:00.960 So 01:40:02.000 --> 01:40:05.200 if I'm gonna place a stake somewhere, it's gonna be to say 01:40:05.200 --> 01:40:08.080 that most of those people are probably in heaven. 01:40:08.160 --> 01:40:12.320 By 1900, Europe's population had increased to about 240 million and still 01:40:12.320 --> 01:40:14.720 about ninety About 90% were Christian. 01:40:14.720 --> 01:40:18.400 Um, adding all of those up just it just at the century 01:40:18.560 --> 01:40:20.000 marks was about 01:40:20.960 --> 01:40:26.560 roughly a billion souls would have likely been Christian in Europe. 01:40:26.560 --> 01:40:29.280 Now, when you compare that billion people, and and that's only at 01:40:29.280 --> 01:40:33.120 the century marks, obviously there are people who don't who who lived 01:40:33.120 --> 01:40:35.120 and died in between the century marks. 01:40:35.120 --> 01:40:39.680 So um again, these are these these are numbers that I did 01:40:39.680 --> 01:40:40.640 this work myself. 01:40:40.640 --> 01:40:43.600 I'm not claim claiming that these are these are absolute or they're 01:40:43.600 --> 01:40:49.200 precise, but they're definitely in the ballpark in terms of the ratios 01:40:49.200 --> 01:40:50.960 relative to other people groups. 01:40:51.040 --> 01:40:54.160 So why I would not stake a claim on these numbers being 01:40:54.320 --> 01:40:56.080 precision numbers. 01:40:56.080 --> 01:40:57.760 They're not at all unrealistic. 01:40:57.760 --> 01:41:00.560 They're based on on what we know of history. 01:41:00.560 --> 01:41:03.520 And so if there were a billion people alive right at the 01:41:03.520 --> 01:41:06.800 century marks between seven hundred and nineteen hundred. 01:41:06.800 --> 01:41:10.080 My guess is that there's probably about two and a half billion 01:41:10.080 --> 01:41:13.840 Christians in that time period in those places. 01:41:13.840 --> 01:41:17.360 Uh in beginning in the eighteen hundreds, I also included the Americas, 01:41:17.360 --> 01:41:19.680 which was was a spare very small number. 01:41:19.680 --> 01:41:23.280 In eighteen hundred there was about five point three million Christians in 01:41:23.280 --> 01:41:25.360 America. Uh five million. 01:41:25.680 --> 01:41:28.480 in nineteen hundred there was about sixty nine million. 01:41:28.480 --> 01:41:33.520 So not about ten percent of the total European population of Christians 01:41:33.520 --> 01:41:34.880 was in the Americas. 01:41:34.880 --> 01:41:38.080 So give or take, you're looking at about two and a half 01:41:38.080 --> 01:41:44.000 billion Christians, all of European descent, all of all sons of Japheth, 01:41:44.000 --> 01:41:47.360 all holding to the faith of Japheth in that time period. 01:41:47.360 --> 01:41:51.040 Now, as I said, when you look to to Sudan and E 01:41:51.200 --> 01:41:54.800 in Ethiopia, those numbers are minuscule by comparison. 01:41:54.800 --> 01:41:59.360 And the tiny slit in uh in Somalia or sorry, Ethiopia and 01:41:59.360 --> 01:42:04.320 India, those numbers are necessarily minuscule by comparison. 01:42:04.320 --> 01:42:04.640 And 01:42:05.600 --> 01:42:09.440 we as Christians should be able to say this without fear that 01:42:09.440 --> 01:42:14.000 we're going to be murdered by someone calling us rape and racist, 01:42:14.000 --> 01:42:16.240 calling us evil, calling us hateful. 01:42:16.240 --> 01:42:20.400 I am simply recounting what has happened in time. 01:42:20.400 --> 01:42:22.560 I was not the causal effect of that. 01:42:22.560 --> 01:42:24.640 It is not what I would have wished. 01:42:24.640 --> 01:42:27.520 I wish what God wishes, which is that all people would know 01:42:27.520 --> 01:42:30.320 Christ and would come to salvation. 01:42:30.320 --> 01:42:33.840 The reality is that that is not what has happened in time. 01:42:33.840 --> 01:42:41.120 And so the reason for discussing election in terms of genealogy and 01:42:41.120 --> 01:42:45.920 nationality, and now specifically honing in on the sons of Japheth, is 01:42:45.920 --> 01:42:48.240 that Japheth's children 01:42:49.600 --> 01:42:53.600 were faithful where other children were not. 01:42:53.600 --> 01:42:57.120 When you look at the map, the second half, the second video, 01:42:57.120 --> 01:43:03.840 and it shows beginning with European exploration and colonization of the Americas, 01:43:03.840 --> 01:43:09.760 and then in about the 1700s, colonization and exploration began in Africa. 01:43:09.760 --> 01:43:16.240 Those are the very first times for 4,000 years since the flood, 01:43:16.240 --> 01:43:21.360 that the people living in those places would have actually heard the 01:43:21.360 --> 01:43:23.040 Christian faith. 01:43:23.040 --> 01:43:26.880 Now, like I said earlier, there were elements of the faith that 01:43:26.880 --> 01:43:32.400 had been preserved as mythology among them, but it was no longer 01:43:32.400 --> 01:43:37.200 efficacious. It was just a few tiny mangled bits and pieces. 01:43:37.200 --> 01:43:41.360 But that is in fact the demonstration that they had lost the 01:43:41.360 --> 01:43:44.800 faith. There's no way to say that someone who is an Aztec 01:43:44.800 --> 01:43:47.520 in the year 1300 went to heaven. 01:43:47.520 --> 01:43:49.520 One hundred percent of them went to hell. 01:43:49.520 --> 01:43:53.840 I can say that with certainty because the Christian faith The true 01:43:53.840 --> 01:43:57.040 faith could not have existed in those places. 01:43:57.040 --> 01:44:00.400 And when the Spaniards showed up and they saw what the Aztecs 01:44:00.400 --> 01:44:05.120 were doing, when Pizarro and his men went into the Aztec temples, 01:44:05.120 --> 01:44:11.440 they literally vomited because the stench was so vile from the death, 01:44:11.440 --> 01:44:17.120 the murder of humans who were sacrificed to the demon gods of 01:44:17.120 --> 01:44:18.240 the Aztec. 01:44:18.240 --> 01:44:21.440 So all they although they had preserved some tiny piece of the 01:44:21.600 --> 01:44:27.360 virgin birth of a god and his death for some purpose, they 01:44:27.360 --> 01:44:28.960 were worshiping demons. 01:44:28.960 --> 01:44:34.080 The ancestors of those people were worshipping demons until the Europeans showed 01:44:34.080 --> 01:44:38.960 up, the sons of Japheth showed up, colonized those places, and gave 01:44:38.960 --> 01:44:41.280 them the gospel for the first time. 01:44:41.280 --> 01:44:44.160 And that's why we're talking about this story, because when you look 01:44:44.160 --> 01:44:48.560 at the video and you see the way in which Christianity spread 01:44:49.200 --> 01:44:52.880 after about the first couple centuries, where you know Paul obviously was 01:44:52.880 --> 01:44:54.720 a Jew who went to the Gentiles. 01:44:54.720 --> 01:44:59.120 There were other Jews who converted to Christianity and became Christian, they 01:44:59.280 --> 01:45:00.560 ceased to be Jews. 01:45:01.760 --> 01:45:06.000 Apart from that little explosion in the Middle East at the at 01:45:06.000 --> 01:45:10.880 the very beginning of the church, virtually all of the spread and 01:45:10.880 --> 01:45:15.360 keeping of the gospel has been in white lands. 01:45:15.360 --> 01:45:19.120 So So think about that fact if you're Satan. 01:45:19.440 --> 01:45:23.120 if you seek that all men be destroyed, that every life is 01:45:23.680 --> 01:45:27.360 a life of evil, and that they are cast bodily and soul 01:45:27.360 --> 01:45:31.200 upon death into the eternal lake of fire with Satan, who will 01:45:31.200 --> 01:45:35.360 be right there with them being punished. 01:45:35.360 --> 01:45:40.160 To have white people showing up in the 1500s and 1600s and 01:45:40.240 --> 01:45:45.280 1700s in Africa and in the Americas, going to people who had 01:45:45.280 --> 01:45:48.720 all been going to hell for three and four thousand years, and 01:45:48.720 --> 01:45:51.760 suddenly they began converting to Christianity. 01:45:51.760 --> 01:45:56.320 When the colonizers showed up with crucifixes and they told these people 01:45:56.320 --> 01:46:02.000 about the gospel and they baptized them, in some cases forcefully, forcibly, 01:46:02.000 --> 01:46:06.400 those people were converted to Christianity and many of them were saved. 01:46:06.400 --> 01:46:09.440 And there are places to this day that are now Christian in 01:46:09.440 --> 01:46:15.920 Africa and the Americas among native populations who would never have had 01:46:15.920 --> 01:46:19.920 the gospel if the sons of Japheth had not shown up. 01:46:19.920 --> 01:46:25.920 So think about that when you hear rabid anti white hatred, when 01:46:25.920 --> 01:46:27.760 you hear hatred against 01:46:28.720 --> 01:46:34.480 colonialism, when you hear hatred against patriarchy, when you hear hatred against 01:46:34.480 --> 01:46:38.560 kings versus democracy, where it's a free-for-all and we do whatever we 01:46:38.560 --> 01:46:40.240 think is best in our own eyes. 01:46:40.400 --> 01:46:42.640 Think about that like Satan would think about that. 01:46:42.640 --> 01:46:47.040 When white people showed up happy, when they came under the cross, 01:46:47.040 --> 01:46:51.440 what was the response of the demons that the Aztecs were worshiping 01:46:51.440 --> 01:46:54.240 and sacrificing all those innocent people to? 01:46:54.240 --> 01:46:55.760 They were They were not happy. 01:46:55.760 --> 01:46:58.400 And they're still not happy because be demons don't die. 01:46:58.400 --> 01:47:00.000 Those demons didn't go away. 01:47:00.000 --> 01:47:02.240 They were still out there in the jungle. 01:47:02.240 --> 01:47:06.560 And by many accounts, they are back on the prowl today. 01:47:06.560 --> 01:47:09.200 And the backlash that we see against 01:47:10.800 --> 01:47:15.440 Europeans in particular, against Germans in particular, against 01:47:16.400 --> 01:47:22.000 Christianity, against patriarchy, against every form of headship that is ordained by 01:47:22.000 --> 01:47:26.480 God both for salvific purposes and for the purpose simply of proper 01:47:26.480 --> 01:47:27.920 order in this life. 01:47:27.920 --> 01:47:30.880 Those are the things that the most evil people on the planet 01:47:30.880 --> 01:47:32.160 hate. And 01:47:33.280 --> 01:47:37.920 I f fundamentally believe that that is the root of all of 01:47:37.920 --> 01:47:40.480 these societal issues that we're seeing. 01:47:40.480 --> 01:47:47.600 That God's election, his predestination, which was unfair, predominantly predestined 01:47:48.240 --> 01:47:50.480 Europeans for salvation. 01:47:50.480 --> 01:47:51.760 I didn't do it. 01:47:51.760 --> 01:47:52.640 God did it. 01:47:52.640 --> 01:47:56.080 But again, when you look at how they were saved, they weren't 01:47:56.080 --> 01:47:57.840 saved because they were white. 01:47:57.840 --> 01:48:01.760 They weren't saved because their parents were anything in particular. 01:48:01.760 --> 01:48:04.640 They were saved because their fathers were faithful. 01:48:04.640 --> 01:48:08.960 And the Africans and the South Americans and the North American Indians 01:48:08.960 --> 01:48:12.160 were damned because their fathers were faithless. 01:48:12.160 --> 01:48:16.960 They abandoned God, they ceased to teach his word, and just as 01:48:16.960 --> 01:48:22.480 you will die because Adam sinned, those people are in hell because 01:48:22.480 --> 01:48:25.840 their fathers failed to transmit the faith to them. 01:48:25.840 --> 01:48:29.680 They inherited damnation and they lived up to it and now they're 01:48:29.680 --> 01:48:31.600 they're suffering under it. 01:48:31.600 --> 01:48:32.960 Is that fair? 01:48:32.960 --> 01:48:36.240 No. But at the same time we we look at that in 01:48:36.240 --> 01:48:40.320 the context of the spread of the gospel from the first century 01:48:40.400 --> 01:48:42.640 and think, oh well they were never told about Jesus. 01:48:42.640 --> 01:48:43.760 How could they know? 01:48:43.760 --> 01:48:45.360 They were told about Jesus. 01:48:45.360 --> 01:48:48.320 Their fathers were told about Jesus four thousand years ago when they 01:48:48.320 --> 01:48:49.520 got off the ark. 01:48:49.520 --> 01:48:54.240 And those fathers ceased to believe, and that is why their children 01:48:54.240 --> 01:48:56.000 are not believers. 01:48:56.000 --> 01:49:01.840 And just as salvation is transmissible, not as a physical inheritance, but 01:49:01.840 --> 01:49:06.000 as a spiritual inheritance that comes directly by hearing from one's father 01:49:06.240 --> 01:49:12.000 in an absolutely efficacious manner, so too unbelief is transmissible, it is 01:49:12.000 --> 01:49:14.080 heritable, and it's inevitable. 01:49:14.080 --> 01:49:17.760 If your father is evil, and as you said, Corey, without the 01:49:17.760 --> 01:49:21.200 benefit of access to go around your father, to go around your 01:49:21.200 --> 01:49:25.120 nation, to find the truth, as we can do today, there's no 01:49:25.120 --> 01:49:27.040 ways for someone to be saved. 01:49:27.040 --> 01:49:30.160 And that's not fair, but that is God's will. 01:49:30.160 --> 01:49:33.920 Because if their fathers had been faithful and had obeyed, they would 01:49:33.920 --> 01:49:35.360 have been saved. 01:49:35.360 --> 01:49:39.760 So election intersects with reality in ways that makes us make us 01:49:39.760 --> 01:49:41.120 extremely uncomfortable. 01:49:41.280 --> 01:49:44.320 Because all of this sounds like it's totally contrary to the gospel, 01:49:44.320 --> 01:49:49.920 and it's certainly contrary to modern beliefs of morality outside the church. 01:49:49.920 --> 01:49:51.840 But it's true. 01:49:52.320 --> 01:49:52.480 The 01:49:52.480 --> 01:49:55.760 reason it makes so many people uncomfortable is because it runs counter 01:49:56.640 --> 01:49:58.320 to the enlightenment. 01:49:58.320 --> 01:50:02.240 It's not that it runs counter to scripture, because obviously we have 01:50:02.240 --> 01:50:07.360 demonstrated this is all grounded in Scripture, this is readily discoverable for 01:50:07.360 --> 01:50:12.880 anyone who reads Scripture, at least anyone who has the Holy Spirit. 01:50:12.880 --> 01:50:18.080 But heaven looks rather a lot like Europe at present. 01:50:18.080 --> 01:50:22.720 Now of course, depending on how long things continue, and which areas 01:50:23.040 --> 01:50:27.840 become or remain Christian and which ones do not, that composition could 01:50:27.840 --> 01:50:33.760 change. But as of today, paradise is going to be very white. 01:50:34.960 --> 01:50:38.480 And that is simply the fact of the matter from history. 01:50:38.480 --> 01:50:41.600 That is how things have worked out in time. 01:50:41.600 --> 01:50:45.520 And those who say that, well, that's not fair, like I said, 01:50:45.520 --> 01:50:48.880 they are appealing to the enlightenment to hearken back to an earlier 01:50:48.880 --> 01:50:52.960 episode where I pointed out that that's not fair is the cry 01:50:52.960 --> 01:50:56.240 of a child who didn't get his way. 01:50:56.240 --> 01:50:59.200 And that's ridiculous to side with the child in that. 01:50:59.760 --> 01:51:03.280 Because fairness is incoherent. 01:51:03.280 --> 01:51:07.760 No one really actually wants fairness in the final assessment. 01:51:07.760 --> 01:51:10.640 When we speak about fairness, if we are using it in a 01:51:10.640 --> 01:51:13.760 way that makes any sense whatsoever, then that would be that we 01:51:13.760 --> 01:51:17.120 want justice, not fairness. 01:51:17.120 --> 01:51:21.600 You don't want fairness, because if God is perfectly fair, you get 01:51:21.600 --> 01:51:25.200 to spend eternity in hell. 01:51:25.200 --> 01:51:32.640 Because charging your sin to Christ, crucifying Christ, and then attributing 01:51:32.640 --> 01:51:36.080 his righteousness to you, is not fair. 01:51:36.080 --> 01:51:38.240 But it is the only way that you can be saved. 01:51:38.400 --> 01:51:40.800 It is the only way that any of the sons of Japheth 01:51:41.040 --> 01:51:42.240 were saved. 01:51:42.480 --> 01:51:47.440 And so fairness is this concept that comes from the Enlightenment. 01:51:47.440 --> 01:51:50.320 It is built on Tabla Rasa, it is built on that blank 01:51:50.320 --> 01:51:55.520 slate idea that human beings are just little lumps of clay that 01:51:55.520 --> 01:51:58.480 arise by chance in a time and place. 01:51:58.480 --> 01:52:01.680 They're not really connected to the time, the place, their ancestry, any 01:52:01.680 --> 01:52:02.400 of that. 01:52:02.400 --> 01:52:06.400 God flings a soul at random into this little lump of clay, 01:52:06.400 --> 01:52:10.400 and we should treat that as a blank slate. 01:52:10.400 --> 01:52:13.680 Whatever that person does in life is the only thing that matters. 01:52:13.680 --> 01:52:16.800 But of course that's completely ridiculous, because what the person does in 01:52:16.800 --> 01:52:19.840 life flows from what the person is, flows from where the person 01:52:19.840 --> 01:52:24.320 was born, flows from the family, flows from headship and hierarchy and 01:52:24.320 --> 01:52:28.800 all of these things we have been mentioning, because you are not 01:52:29.760 --> 01:52:30.960 an individual. 01:52:31.120 --> 01:52:35.760 You are not an individual with no tethers, no ties, no connections. 01:52:35.760 --> 01:52:40.160 You are the son of your father, who is the son of 01:52:40.160 --> 01:52:43.280 his father, who is the son of his father, all the way 01:52:43.280 --> 01:52:49.440 back through whichever son of Noah, through Noah, to Adam. 01:52:49.440 --> 01:52:53.280 You are part of that line, you are part of a tribe 01:52:53.280 --> 01:52:56.080 and a nation, you are part of a people, and these things 01:52:56.080 --> 01:52:59.440 matter. This is the way God has designed creation, this is the 01:52:59.440 --> 01:53:02.320 way God has designed humanity. 01:53:02.320 --> 01:53:08.400 And so these appeals to concepts like fairness are not born of 01:53:08.400 --> 01:53:10.800 Scripture. Find it in Scripture. 01:53:10.800 --> 01:53:13.840 If you want to argue for fairness, go ahead. 01:53:13.840 --> 01:53:15.440 Try to find it. 01:53:15.440 --> 01:53:17.520 See if God is acted in that way. 01:53:17.520 --> 01:53:19.520 See if that is what God wants us to do. 01:53:19.520 --> 01:53:22.000 You won't because it isn't there. 01:53:22.240 --> 01:53:26.080 That is something born of the mind of secular, which is to 01:53:26.080 --> 01:53:30.240 say atheist philosophers, not of Christians. 01:53:30.800 --> 01:53:30.960 And 01:53:30.960 --> 01:53:34.400 you had mentioned the composition of Europe today, or sort of the 01:53:34.400 --> 01:53:36.000 composition of heaven. 01:53:37.120 --> 01:53:40.720 I think that it's important to to acknowledge and to be grateful 01:53:40.720 --> 01:53:45.360 for the spread of Christianity in Asia and Africa, uh in places 01:53:45.360 --> 01:53:50.480 that historically have rejected the gospel, have rejected rejected God's Word. 01:53:50.480 --> 01:53:54.400 They are now turning around and although African Christianity has some very 01:53:54.400 --> 01:54:00.720 serious problems with syncretism and and demon worship and things, there are 01:54:00.720 --> 01:54:03.280 at least there there are certainly many believers there. 01:54:03.280 --> 01:54:04.880 And there there are 01:54:06.080 --> 01:54:11.280 based on looking at the numbers that have lived in Ethiopia for 01:54:11.280 --> 01:54:16.560 the last two thousand years and before that, there are more living 01:54:16.560 --> 01:54:19.920 Africans who are Christians who will go to heaven than there are 01:54:19.920 --> 01:54:21.360 Africans in heaven. 01:54:21.360 --> 01:54:24.400 That is an easy easy claim to make if you look at 01:54:24.400 --> 01:54:26.800 the simple numbers of history. 01:54:26.800 --> 01:54:30.480 And again None of this is what you or I would wish 01:54:30.480 --> 01:54:31.520 for anything. 01:54:31.520 --> 01:54:32.400 I am thankful. 01:54:32.400 --> 01:54:33.120 I am grateful. 01:54:33.120 --> 01:54:38.000 It gives me joy to see Christians in Africa worshiping in their 01:54:38.000 --> 01:54:39.040 own languages. 01:54:39.040 --> 01:54:43.280 It's amazing in particular to see some of the churches there that 01:54:43.280 --> 01:54:47.600 are Lutheran churches that are trying to be confessional who are happily 01:54:47.840 --> 01:54:54.960 adopting the liturgy and the vestments that they're inheriting from their European 01:54:54.960 --> 01:54:58.560 brothers. They're saying if this is how God is worshipped, we want 01:54:58.560 --> 01:54:59.600 to worship this God. 01:54:59.600 --> 01:55:01.120 This is how we want to do it. 01:55:01.120 --> 01:55:03.280 They don't seek to do it in their own way. 01:55:03.280 --> 01:55:06.800 They don't seek to do it as the is worship of old 01:55:06.800 --> 01:55:08.320 took place for the demons. 01:55:08.320 --> 01:55:09.920 New God, new worship. 01:55:09.920 --> 01:55:11.120 They're fine with that. 01:55:11.120 --> 01:55:13.600 And so it's it's a wonderful thing to see. 01:55:13.600 --> 01:55:17.200 And frankly, it's at odds with some of the pastors in the 01:55:17.200 --> 01:55:18.480 Missouri Synod. 01:55:18.480 --> 01:55:23.520 There is a man in uh the Northwest District named McN Rick 01:55:23.520 --> 01:55:30.640 McCafferty, who is on the Northwest District's webpage, on the Vimeo page, 01:55:30.640 --> 01:55:34.560 giving a talk about how he and his Eskimo and other Indian 01:55:34.560 --> 01:55:35.200 ancestors 01:55:36.080 --> 01:55:37.680 always worshiped God. 01:55:37.680 --> 01:55:40.720 Long before the white man showed showed up, they knew the Creator 01:55:40.800 --> 01:55:42.480 and they worshiped the Creator. 01:55:42.480 --> 01:55:45.120 And they knew the Holy Spirit who was the great spirit. 01:55:45.120 --> 01:55:48.000 These are his words, these are his direct claims. 01:55:48.000 --> 01:55:51.760 And the reason that he made the video, which is an anti 01:55:51.920 --> 01:55:57.200 racist video directed at us, was to implore all of the Lutherans 01:55:57.680 --> 01:56:02.640 who want to evangelize the Indians to stop telling those Indians who 01:56:02.640 --> 01:56:06.080 have been communing with demons for four thousand years to stop telling 01:56:06.080 --> 01:56:08.720 them that the way they're worshipping is wrong. 01:56:09.280 --> 01:56:11.760 he literally says in the video, we'll link it. 01:56:11.760 --> 01:56:15.600 He says, Don't tell us we can't beat drums at the sunrise 01:56:15.600 --> 01:56:16.560 to our God. 01:56:16.560 --> 01:56:19.040 He's always been the same God you guys worship. 01:56:19.040 --> 01:56:20.800 Don't tell us we need to have a liturgy. 01:56:20.800 --> 01:56:22.320 Don't tell us how to worship. 01:56:22.320 --> 01:56:23.920 We've always known God. 01:56:23.920 --> 01:56:26.720 The only thing we just we're missing the details about the great 01:56:26.720 --> 01:56:29.760 warrior who is Jesus, again, his words. 01:56:29.760 --> 01:56:33.680 So that's pure syncretism and that's pure universalism. 01:56:33.680 --> 01:56:37.520 Because I say that all of Rick McCaffrey's ancestors are burning in 01:56:37.520 --> 01:56:39.760 hell. He says that they're in heaven. 01:56:39.760 --> 01:56:41.760 He says that they've always worshiped God. 01:56:41.760 --> 01:56:45.360 And that it's these Lutherans who are coming to their reservations, trying 01:56:45.360 --> 01:56:48.160 to tell them about the triune God and show them how to 01:56:48.160 --> 01:56:50.960 worship as cr as Christians have always worshipped. 01:56:50.960 --> 01:56:52.560 We are the problem. 01:56:52.560 --> 01:56:55.680 Well, one of us is wrong and one of us is going 01:56:55.680 --> 01:56:58.480 to hell because we do not worship the same God. 01:56:59.280 --> 01:57:02.080 And again, this this is a this is an LCMS pastor. 01:57:02.240 --> 01:57:06.080 We're not talking about someone who's, you know, just a a random 01:57:06.080 --> 01:57:07.440 person on the internet. 01:57:07.440 --> 01:57:11.280 He was ordained to evangelize to these people who need to hear 01:57:11.280 --> 01:57:14.080 the word of God, and he's depriving them of it because he's 01:57:14.080 --> 01:57:14.880 a universalist. 01:57:14.880 --> 01:57:17.600 He's saying the exact opposite of what God says. 01:57:17.600 --> 01:57:19.280 He's saying, You've always worshiped God. 01:57:19.280 --> 01:57:20.240 You guys are great. 01:57:20.240 --> 01:57:22.800 Let me tell you about Jesus, but it's a Jesus you already 01:57:22.800 --> 01:57:25.120 knew you just you knew him by another name. 01:57:25.120 --> 01:57:27.680 Which is not at all the point of the discussion early about 01:57:27.680 --> 01:57:30.720 mythology. We are not saying that these people knew God. 01:57:30.720 --> 01:57:35.360 No. We're saying that a reflection of the truth echoed through time, 01:57:35.360 --> 01:57:37.200 but it was never salvific. 01:57:37.200 --> 01:57:40.160 It was simply evidence of the fact that the truth at one 01:57:40.160 --> 01:57:43.680 point had been transmitted to them by their fathers, and then the 01:57:43.680 --> 01:57:48.400 children of some of those fathers at some point long ago abandoned 01:57:48.400 --> 01:57:50.960 God and damned their children to hell. 01:57:50.960 --> 01:57:55.760 They damned Rick McCafferty's ancestors to hell Because they did not worship 01:57:55.760 --> 01:57:56.640 the true God. 01:57:56.640 --> 01:58:00.000 They communed with demons, and they did so in many cases to 01:58:00.000 --> 01:58:00.720 this day. 01:58:00.720 --> 01:58:06.400 We there I have heard stories of actual Lutheran churches near reservations 01:58:06.720 --> 01:58:12.480 where the people come off the reservation targeting the Lutheran churches and 01:58:12.480 --> 01:58:16.000 they will have demonic ceremonies in their parking lot to try to 01:58:16.000 --> 01:58:19.520 bind the spirits in those churches to keep them from threatening the 01:58:19.520 --> 01:58:25.040 reservation. Those people serve demons today, in the current year 2022, they 01:58:25.040 --> 01:58:29.520 are having demonic ceremonies in our church parking lots to stop the 01:58:29.520 --> 01:58:31.200 spread of the gospel. 01:58:31.200 --> 01:58:33.920 Don't tell me that this isn't spiritual warfare. 01:58:33.920 --> 01:58:35.440 We're not talking about hypotheticals. 01:58:35.680 --> 01:58:39.600 We're not talking about some leth node doctrine that that's not relevant 01:58:39.760 --> 01:58:40.960 relevant to life. 01:58:40.960 --> 01:58:44.560 We're talking about souls that will either go to heaven if they 01:58:44.560 --> 01:58:48.000 repent and believe the true God, or they will go to hell 01:58:48.000 --> 01:58:51.600 if they continue to worship as these demon worshiping Indians do. 01:58:51.600 --> 01:58:51.920 And 01:58:53.600 --> 01:58:56.640 in in a future episode we'll talk about some of the other 01:58:56.640 --> 01:59:01.120 rejected doctrines in scripture, but one of them is The doctrine of 01:59:01.120 --> 01:59:04.080 shaking the dust off your feet is a curse against those who 01:59:04.080 --> 01:59:05.920 refuse to hear the gospel. 01:59:05.920 --> 01:59:10.400 This is something that Jesus repeatedly commanded to his apostles, to the 01:59:10.400 --> 01:59:15.440 disciples. And in Acts, as soon as Jesus ascended into heaven, there 01:59:15.440 --> 01:59:18.320 are multiple instances of them doing that very thing. 01:59:18.320 --> 01:59:21.680 They literally shake the dust off their feet against a t a 01:59:21.680 --> 01:59:25.520 place to curse it, to say, You have rejected God, you are 01:59:25.520 --> 01:59:26.320 now rejected. 01:59:26.320 --> 01:59:28.560 We take the gospel elsewhere. 01:59:28.560 --> 01:59:30.640 Find a Christian who will do that today. 01:59:30.640 --> 01:59:34.560 Find a Christian who will not spend a hundred years pouring good 01:59:34.560 --> 01:59:39.200 money after bad to people to who want to worship demons. 01:59:39.200 --> 01:59:41.040 They don't want to hear about Jesus. 01:59:41.040 --> 01:59:43.040 They want to do what they're doing. 01:59:43.040 --> 01:59:47.360 And in the name of a false gospel, we think that we 01:59:47.360 --> 01:59:50.960 have to just continue pouring out our treasure when there are people 01:59:50.960 --> 01:59:52.720 who need it. 01:59:53.360 --> 01:59:56.400 There's a there's an example of a a pastor in Ohio, Ben 01:59:56.400 --> 02:00:00.720 Meyer, an LCMS pastor, who was called to to rural Ohio. 02:00:00.720 --> 02:00:02.480 That's kinda the middle of the nowhere. 02:00:02.720 --> 02:00:05.200 Very uh an area without many people. 02:00:05.200 --> 02:00:06.400 They're all white. 02:00:06.800 --> 02:00:07.120 And 02:00:08.400 --> 02:00:11.760 he gets up in the morning and he drives 45 minutes to 02:00:11.760 --> 02:00:14.480 Columbus so that he can spend time 02:00:15.760 --> 02:00:19.920 spreading the gospel, in his words, to Ethiopian immigrants. 02:00:19.920 --> 02:00:23.040 Now I was fascinated by that because when he's raising money for 02:00:23.040 --> 02:00:26.880 this project, when he's telling all the gullible Lutherans, oh, this is 02:00:26.880 --> 02:00:30.160 so wonderful, we have these Africans who are coming here who who 02:00:30.640 --> 02:00:31.680 need to hear the Word of God? 02:00:31.760 --> 02:00:34.160 Well, yes, everyone needs to hear the Word of God. 02:00:34.160 --> 02:00:39.920 But for you to suggest that the Ethiopian immigrant an immigrant is 02:00:40.080 --> 02:00:42.800 not a word, these people are being shipped here. 02:00:42.800 --> 02:00:47.280 When an Ethiopian leaves Ethiopia and comes to Ohio, he's going from 02:00:47.280 --> 02:00:50.160 a Christian country to a pagan state. 02:00:50.160 --> 02:00:54.000 There are more Christians in Ethiopia today by percentage than there are 02:00:54.000 --> 02:00:55.200 in Ohio. 02:00:55.200 --> 02:00:57.040 But where is Ben Meyer's heart? 02:00:57.040 --> 02:00:59.760 Is it with the people that God sent to him? 02:01:00.000 --> 02:01:02.240 To whom he s God sent him? 02:01:02.240 --> 02:01:04.800 No, it's forty five minutes away where he can plead preach to 02:01:04.800 --> 02:01:08.480 black people 'cause they're foreign and he gets the benefit of all 02:01:08.480 --> 02:01:10.080 the social status of 02:01:11.200 --> 02:01:13.920 oh look at me, I'm I'm so good, I'm I'm reaching out 02:01:13.920 --> 02:01:16.480 to these Africans when they're Christian. 02:01:16.480 --> 02:01:19.600 Now some of them are Muslim because that's the other problem that 02:01:19.600 --> 02:01:20.400 Ethiopia has. 02:01:20.400 --> 02:01:26.480 It's been there's they've had problems with Muslims for many years, centuries. 02:01:26.480 --> 02:01:30.080 But to pretend that it's a non-Christian place where these people have 02:01:30.080 --> 02:01:32.000 never heard the gospel is insane. 02:01:32.000 --> 02:01:33.120 It's a lie. 02:01:33.120 --> 02:01:34.880 It is a damnable lie. 02:01:34.880 --> 02:01:39.440 Ethiopia is a Christian country, and as a Christian, I'm thankful for 02:01:39.440 --> 02:01:42.480 that. I don't want anyone to go to hell. 02:01:42.480 --> 02:01:45.600 And it's got nothing to do with their skin color, their race, 02:01:45.600 --> 02:01:46.880 with their fathers. 02:01:46.880 --> 02:01:49.200 I want the same thing that God wants, which is all for 02:01:49.200 --> 02:01:51.360 all men to be redeemed. 02:01:51.360 --> 02:01:56.080 But guys like Ben Meyer will drive right past all of those 02:01:56.080 --> 02:01:57.200 souls in Ohio. 02:01:57.200 --> 02:02:01.440 You know, the the the Lutheran population is high in Ohio is 02:02:01.440 --> 02:02:03.920 something like zero point four percent or something. 02:02:04.160 --> 02:02:05.280 it's minuscule. 02:02:05.600 --> 02:02:06.960 it's effectively zero. 02:02:06.960 --> 02:02:08.640 It's a rounding error. 02:02:08.640 --> 02:02:12.400 And the number of Christians is not a whole lot better. 02:02:12.400 --> 02:02:17.120 When you look at actual church attendance at actual churches and people 02:02:17.120 --> 02:02:22.240 who actually believe what the actual church teaches, it's a tiny number. 02:02:22.240 --> 02:02:26.480 He is neglecting white people because they're white, even though they're his 02:02:26.480 --> 02:02:30.080 neighbors in the place where God sent him, so that he can 02:02:30.080 --> 02:02:34.560 tell people who already know Jesus about Jesus because that scores good 02:02:34.560 --> 02:02:36.000 boy points. 02:02:36.000 --> 02:02:38.000 That's what these fights are about. 02:02:38.000 --> 02:02:42.960 That is how much race matters to people who despise election, that 02:02:42.960 --> 02:02:46.160 they will drive past their white neighbors for the sake of an 02:02:46.160 --> 02:02:50.480 alien from three, four thousand miles away, because that person who looks 02:02:50.480 --> 02:02:55.120 completely different and sounds completely different has And seems exotic, somehow is 02:02:55.120 --> 02:02:58.240 more worthy of the gospel than the men who live down the 02:02:58.240 --> 02:03:00.400 road from this man who will never tell them. 02:03:00.400 --> 02:03:02.480 He's not gonna he's not gonna spend all that time. 02:03:02.480 --> 02:03:05.520 He's gotta go somewhere else and do it for strangers. 02:03:05.520 --> 02:03:07.280 This is not love, and this is not the gospel. 02:03:07.760 --> 02:03:11.840 This is how the church dies. 02:03:11.920 --> 02:03:12.080 And 02:03:12.080 --> 02:03:17.600 the men who were engaged in syncretistic arguments and worship, if we're 02:03:17.600 --> 02:03:22.640 being very loose with the term, they are going to damn people 02:03:22.640 --> 02:03:23.840 to hell. 02:03:23.840 --> 02:03:28.880 Because those who hear well, no, your ancestors who were worshiping demons, 02:03:28.880 --> 02:03:31.680 he won't say that of course, but your ancestors, they were worshiping 02:03:31.680 --> 02:03:35.120 the true God, you can continue to do what they were doing. 02:03:35.120 --> 02:03:39.120 That's the voice of Satan speaking, that's what that is. 02:03:39.120 --> 02:03:41.760 I'm looking at a a picture right now. 02:03:41.760 --> 02:03:46.240 It's a class of seminarians from Madagascar. 02:03:46.240 --> 02:03:51.440 There are about three million Lutherans, baptized Lutherans in Madagascar. 02:03:51.440 --> 02:03:54.160 It's a country of about twenty eight million, give or take a 02:03:54.160 --> 02:03:57.840 bit. And the reason there are three million 02:03:58.880 --> 02:04:04.480 Believing baptized Christians in the Lutheran churches in Madagascar is because two 02:04:04.480 --> 02:04:08.560 Norwegian men, John Eng and Niels Nilsson, I'm sure I didn't get 02:04:08.560 --> 02:04:11.760 the last names entirely right, but you can look up their names, 02:04:11.760 --> 02:04:16.720 because those two Norwegian Lutheran men went there and spread the gospel 02:04:16.720 --> 02:04:19.440 to them, set up a seminary, started instructing them so they could 02:04:19.440 --> 02:04:23.680 teach their own people, so you could have proper headship, so you 02:04:23.680 --> 02:04:28.160 can have fathers who learn from their pastors, who then turn around 02:04:28.160 --> 02:04:30.640 and teach their wives and their children. 02:04:30.640 --> 02:04:32.400 And that's the reason that you have them. 02:04:32.400 --> 02:04:35.200 And they didn't go over there and tell them keep worshiping your 02:04:35.200 --> 02:04:39.760 ancestors because ancestor worship is a problem in Madagascar, a huge problem 02:04:39.760 --> 02:04:41.440 in large parts of Africa. 02:04:41.440 --> 02:04:44.480 They didn't say continue your animistic practices. 02:04:44.480 --> 02:04:48.320 No, they said your ancestors worship demons. 02:04:48.320 --> 02:04:50.960 We are going to tell you about the true God. 02:04:50.960 --> 02:04:52.400 We are going to tell you about Christ. 02:04:52.400 --> 02:04:56.160 We are going to tell you how to be saved. 02:04:56.160 --> 02:04:59.200 They did not let them continue syncretistic practices. 02:04:59.200 --> 02:05:03.520 They fought against those, because these are men who actually want their 02:05:03.520 --> 02:05:06.560 brothers in Africa to be saved. 02:05:06.560 --> 02:05:10.720 The men here and other places who tell them to continue traditional 02:05:10.800 --> 02:05:14.560 so-called practices, which aren't even traditional, because if you go back far 02:05:14.560 --> 02:05:18.080 enough, the actual practices would have been worshiping the Lord God, the 02:05:18.080 --> 02:05:23.120 men who tell them to continue those syncretistic and pagan practices are 02:05:23.120 --> 02:05:24.800 damning them to hell. 02:05:24.800 --> 02:05:28.400 Maybe not the men who hear it, but their grandchildren? 02:05:28.400 --> 02:05:30.720 How do you think all this stuff was lost in the first 02:05:30.720 --> 02:05:35.600 place? It was lost in the first place because someone loosened something 02:05:35.600 --> 02:05:37.760 here. Changed something there. 02:05:37.760 --> 02:05:43.200 Said, No, it's okay if we engage in this heterodox practice over 02:05:43.200 --> 02:05:44.880 time that accumulates. 02:05:44.880 --> 02:05:47.840 It never gets better, it always gets worse, and that's why you 02:05:47.840 --> 02:05:50.720 have to fight against it as soon as it crops up, no 02:05:50.720 --> 02:05:54.480 matter how trivial it may seem, and it would be a blessing 02:05:54.960 --> 02:05:58.800 from God if the issues we have today were trivial. 02:05:58.800 --> 02:06:03.600 We have serious issues that are matters of eternal life or eternal 02:06:03.600 --> 02:06:07.920 death. We're not dealing with squabbles over the color of the pyramids 02:06:07.920 --> 02:06:10.320 or something of that nature. 02:06:10.320 --> 02:06:15.520 We are dealing with core issues of the faith, core truths about 02:06:15.520 --> 02:06:19.760 creation, and if you deny core truths about creation, you are denying 02:06:19.760 --> 02:06:25.520 the first article of the Creed, because we believe in God, who 02:06:25.520 --> 02:06:28.960 is the creator of heaven and earth. 02:06:28.960 --> 02:06:33.200 And so these issues that over which we are fighting are vitally 02:06:33.200 --> 02:06:35.120 important to the church. 02:06:35.120 --> 02:06:39.760 The outcome of these issues will det will determine, will decide whether 02:06:39.760 --> 02:06:43.840 or not there is a Christian church on this continent in a 02:06:43.840 --> 02:06:45.200 hundred years. 02:06:45.200 --> 02:06:46.800 Because we've seen it elsewhere. 02:06:47.120 --> 02:06:50.160 You can have the gospel, you can have the truth, you can 02:06:50.160 --> 02:06:52.240 have the worship of the Lord God. 02:06:52.240 --> 02:06:55.680 And a hundred years later, all of your children are apostate. 02:06:55.680 --> 02:06:56.800 Look at Europe. 02:06:56.800 --> 02:07:01.040 Because it depends on exactly look at look at Ham. 02:07:01.040 --> 02:07:04.160 How quickly did the children of Ham apostatize? 02:07:04.480 --> 02:07:08.160 It seems in scripture like it was almost immediate. 02:07:08.160 --> 02:07:11.360 And then you had thousands of years of almost no Christians in 02:07:11.360 --> 02:07:12.960 Africa because of that. 02:07:12.960 --> 02:07:16.720 Most of the children of Shem apostatized, and so you had thousands 02:07:16.720 --> 02:07:19.600 of years, of most of those in the near and Middle East, 02:07:19.600 --> 02:07:20.640 no Christians. 02:07:20.640 --> 02:07:24.560 There are real consequences for this, and that's why it matters. 02:07:24.560 --> 02:07:27.280 Fathers have to be faithful, or else they will not have faithful 02:07:27.280 --> 02:07:32.880 children. It takes one faithless generation to lose this. 02:07:32.880 --> 02:07:34.640 And we have had several. 02:07:34.640 --> 02:07:37.440 We are in dire straits. 02:07:37.440 --> 02:07:41.040 Again, we do have the advantage of we have the written material 02:07:41.040 --> 02:07:44.000 to which we can return that is sound, so we are not 02:07:44.000 --> 02:07:48.240 in as bad of a situation as those four thousand, six thousand 02:07:48.240 --> 02:07:51.040 years ago, whatever it happens to be. 02:07:51.040 --> 02:07:55.440 But we are still living in a country where a tiny percentage 02:07:55.440 --> 02:07:58.640 of people believe that Christ is God. 02:07:58.640 --> 02:08:00.720 Look at the survey data. 02:08:00.720 --> 02:08:04.480 If you ask the question Is Jesus Christ God? 02:08:04.480 --> 02:08:08.160 Most who claim to be Christian, even those who claim to be 02:08:08.160 --> 02:08:11.280 evangelical Christians, will say no. 02:08:11.280 --> 02:08:17.440 We are surrounded by apostates because of faithless fathers and grandfathers. 02:08:18.640 --> 02:08:20.080 And you're absolutely right. 02:08:20.080 --> 02:08:22.720 There's we we have a presumption that 02:08:24.000 --> 02:08:29.280 we're living in the ashes of the faithful grandsons of Japheth. 02:08:29.280 --> 02:08:33.360 Obviously, at some point they they lost their way and descended into 02:08:33.360 --> 02:08:38.720 paganism. They quickly took back to the true God when he came 02:08:38.720 --> 02:08:40.240 to them in the Word. 02:08:40.240 --> 02:08:43.360 And that was the inheritance that their children received. 02:08:43.360 --> 02:08:47.040 That's the reason that we are Christian today, because our fathers were 02:08:47.040 --> 02:08:54.000 Christian, going back 1,500 years in some cases, including my own. 02:08:54.000 --> 02:08:54.800 The inheritance 02:08:55.920 --> 02:09:00.880 only works when it is transmitted, and that is why there's never 02:09:00.880 --> 02:09:05.920 been any claim that there is a genetic inheritance of faith. 02:09:05.920 --> 02:09:07.520 That's not the claim. 02:09:07.520 --> 02:09:11.840 But the same father who gives you genes gives you belief in 02:09:11.840 --> 02:09:15.760 something, for better or worse, your father's gonna teach you. 02:09:15.760 --> 02:09:19.040 And either your the only choice you have when your father teaches 02:09:19.040 --> 02:09:22.960 you is to obey him, or to rebel. 02:09:23.840 --> 02:09:27.840 And if your father is faithful and you obey him, you're blessed. 02:09:27.840 --> 02:09:30.720 If he's faithful and you rebel, you fall away. 02:09:30.720 --> 02:09:35.040 Now if he's faithless, you must ob rebel in order to obey 02:09:35.040 --> 02:09:40.880 God, but only narrowly within the confines of what is necessary to 02:09:40.880 --> 02:09:42.800 believe in God and to obey Him. 02:09:42.800 --> 02:09:45.680 In other ways, you should still obey your Father, even if He's 02:09:45.680 --> 02:09:49.680 faithless, as much as is possible within your conscience. 02:09:49.680 --> 02:09:54.080 But we live in a time today where if the pastors who 02:09:54.080 --> 02:09:58.080 are running things in our synod and in the other Christian denominations 02:09:58.080 --> 02:10:03.200 in this country, if they continue continue on the trajectory they have 02:10:03.200 --> 02:10:07.760 chosen, not only will there not be any Lutheranism in a century, 02:10:08.000 --> 02:10:12.080 Christianity will be wiped out on this continent because there is no 02:10:12.080 --> 02:10:13.600 one left defending it. 02:10:13.600 --> 02:10:17.840 And as I've said before, you can recite the creeds all you 02:10:17.840 --> 02:10:20.320 want, you can point to scripture and you can point to the 02:10:20.320 --> 02:10:22.560 book of Concord all you want. 02:10:22.560 --> 02:10:27.920 But if you tell lies in God's stead, you are serving Satan 02:10:28.400 --> 02:10:30.240 no matter what else you do. 02:10:30.240 --> 02:10:32.400 You can't lie about any of this stuff. 02:10:32.400 --> 02:10:36.000 And all that we see online, all that we see whenever these 02:10:36.000 --> 02:10:41.840 questions come up about race, about evangelism, about colonialism, and all these 02:10:41.840 --> 02:10:45.840 things that are when those words are used, things like colonialism and 02:10:45.840 --> 02:10:48.720 patriarchy, they're thought of as 02:10:49.840 --> 02:10:52.720 secular, they're thought of as political things. 02:10:52.720 --> 02:10:53.840 They're not. 02:10:53.840 --> 02:10:55.840 They're Christian things. 02:10:55.840 --> 02:11:01.920 They are profoundly fundamental and vital to the faith, to saving faith. 02:11:01.920 --> 02:11:05.600 And their absence proves the absence of that faith. 02:11:05.600 --> 02:11:09.760 And we are in churches today where those things are despised, those 02:11:09.760 --> 02:11:12.160 things are attacked, those things are forbidden. 02:11:12.320 --> 02:11:15.680 To speak truthfully is forbidden on many subjects. 02:11:15.680 --> 02:11:17.120 In our churches 02:11:18.080 --> 02:11:20.560 That's only going to end one way. 02:11:20.560 --> 02:11:22.960 That's why we're talking about these things. 02:11:22.960 --> 02:11:26.320 If we can change minds, if we can help point people to 02:11:26.320 --> 02:11:30.720 scripture to understand that this is going on, and here's why it 02:11:30.720 --> 02:11:35.520 matters, hopefully a few more voices will arise and eventually we will 02:11:35.520 --> 02:11:39.920 begin to see the only sort of change that will be able 02:11:39.920 --> 02:11:43.520 to present the death of Christianity on this continent. 02:11:43.520 --> 02:11:47.840 Because who knows what sort of faith came across the land bridge 02:11:47.840 --> 02:11:50.320 when when the American Indians came here? 02:11:50.320 --> 02:11:51.520 Probably none. 02:11:51.520 --> 02:11:54.240 But if they had anything, it long since died. 02:11:54.240 --> 02:11:56.560 It's gonna die again if it's not preserved. 02:11:56.560 --> 02:12:00.720 And as you said, it is up to us to preserve it 02:12:01.040 --> 02:12:05.600 because it doesn't take more than a generation to lose something entirely, 02:12:05.600 --> 02:12:08.480 and we are several generations deep in that apostasy. 02:12:12.960 --> 02:12:17.280 We often hear that everything is political, particularly given the realities of 02:12:17.280 --> 02:12:19.200 the age in which we live. 02:12:19.840 --> 02:12:24.320 what we never hear is the the more true and The more 02:12:24.320 --> 02:12:26.960 important statement, everything is also theological. 02:12:26.960 --> 02:12:31.520 Yes. Because everything you do or fail to do is a confession 02:12:31.520 --> 02:12:35.120 of what you believe or what you do not believe. 02:12:35.120 --> 02:12:38.480 And so when we have pastors 02:12:39.520 --> 02:12:40.160 lying 02:12:41.120 --> 02:12:47.040 about demonstrable facts, what does that say to the world about what 02:12:47.040 --> 02:12:49.040 those pastors believe? 02:12:49.040 --> 02:12:50.480 It certainly isn't good. 02:12:50.480 --> 02:12:52.800 There are many things you could take away from that. 02:12:52.800 --> 02:12:54.960 You could take away from it that they don't really believe the 02:12:54.960 --> 02:12:57.200 things they say on Sunday morning. 02:12:57.200 --> 02:13:01.200 You could take away from it that lying about these core truths 02:13:01.200 --> 02:13:02.480 is entirely fine. 02:13:02.480 --> 02:13:04.720 You could take away from it that maybe they don't really believe 02:13:04.720 --> 02:13:09.200 in a creator god who created this world and all the constituent 02:13:09.200 --> 02:13:12.240 parts of it, who set it up in a certain way, if 02:13:12.240 --> 02:13:17.760 they are willing to lie about the way that he did things. 02:13:17.760 --> 02:13:21.680 And so the witness that they are presenting, they are giving to 02:13:21.680 --> 02:13:27.600 the world, is going to, if not drive men away from Christianity, 02:13:27.600 --> 02:13:30.880 at least prevent them from ever coming into the church. 02:13:30.880 --> 02:13:33.280 And that is exactly what we see happening. 02:13:33.280 --> 02:13:38.960 The Zoomer generation and younger, many of them are not even going 02:13:38.960 --> 02:13:44.320 to consider Christianity because of what these faithless pastors are doing, because 02:13:44.320 --> 02:13:49.040 they see these faithless pastors just parroting all of the lies and 02:13:49.040 --> 02:13:52.160 the condemnation and the slander of the world. 02:13:52.160 --> 02:13:56.400 So when they see that, why on earth would you go to 02:13:56.400 --> 02:13:59.120 s to service on Sunday morning? 02:13:59.120 --> 02:14:00.400 Why would you do that? 02:14:00.400 --> 02:14:03.360 If I'm just going to hear the exact same thing that I 02:14:03.360 --> 02:14:08.480 hear from university professionors and the media and all of these others. 02:14:08.480 --> 02:14:10.320 Why would I wake up early? 02:14:10.320 --> 02:14:12.960 To go hear it at church. 02:14:12.960 --> 02:14:15.600 Makes much more sense just to wake up late and go get 02:14:15.600 --> 02:14:16.000 brunch. 02:14:16.320 --> 02:14:17.760 And this is not a hypothetical. 02:14:18.640 --> 02:14:21.920 borne witness to this over and over again personally with our own 02:14:21.920 --> 02:14:25.280 eyes online as we talk to people. 02:14:25.280 --> 02:14:28.560 It it's gotten so bad in in the Missouri Senate that I 02:14:28.560 --> 02:14:32.880 honestly in good faith and good conscience could not recommend that someone 02:14:32.880 --> 02:14:34.880 join our churches anymore. 02:14:34.880 --> 02:14:38.480 Now, that's not to say that there are not specific congregations with 02:14:38.480 --> 02:14:42.000 pastors who are known to me to be faithful where I could 02:14:42.000 --> 02:14:43.200 direct someone. 02:14:43.200 --> 02:14:45.920 But as a church body, we are apostate. 02:14:46.160 --> 02:14:47.120 We are shameful. 02:14:47.120 --> 02:14:51.040 I am I am disgraced by what I see our pastors, by 02:14:51.040 --> 02:14:54.560 what I see our seminaries, by what I see our synod doing. 02:14:54.560 --> 02:14:56.320 They're a disgrace to God. 02:14:56.320 --> 02:15:00.080 These men are ashamed of Jesus and they think that they're gonna 02:15:00.080 --> 02:15:03.600 go to heaven because they said the right words in church 02:15:04.960 --> 02:15:06.160 God warns them differently. 02:15:06.400 --> 02:15:09.920 And the worst part is w we're basically the best off. 02:15:09.920 --> 02:15:10.800 Yeah. Yeah. 02:15:11.040 --> 02:15:12.320 And that's that's the thing. 02:15:12.320 --> 02:15:12.560 That's 02:15:12.480 --> 02:15:13.680 the that's the terrible part. 02:15:13.680 --> 02:15:16.800 Yeah. We're not there is there is we cannot make a black 02:15:16.960 --> 02:15:20.080 a blanket recommendation for our own churches. 02:15:20.080 --> 02:15:23.120 We can make recommendation for specific ones, and I do that all 02:15:23.120 --> 02:15:25.840 the time, a as I know you do as well, but we 02:15:25.840 --> 02:15:30.240 cannot make the general recommendation because we know there are these apostates 02:15:31.200 --> 02:15:35.280 in some of our pulpits, and nothing is being done to remove 02:15:35.280 --> 02:15:39.200 them, and as we have mentioned many times, you know, the district 02:15:39.200 --> 02:15:44.240 presidents and the presidents so called, God is not going to judge 02:15:44.240 --> 02:15:49.360 you differently from a bishop because you declined to use the term. 02:15:49.360 --> 02:15:54.320 You are going to receive the stricter judgment of a bishop because 02:15:54.320 --> 02:15:55.520 you held the office. 02:15:55.520 --> 02:15:59.120 And so those men should fear, even though they don't. 02:15:59.120 --> 02:16:04.000 But when it comes to the other churches in the U.S., absolutely 02:16:04.320 --> 02:16:08.240 cannot make a recommendation to join them because we know the false 02:16:08.240 --> 02:16:11.440 doctrines that are being taught in those churches, so we can't any 02:16:11.440 --> 02:16:13.840 longer just tell someone go to church on Sunday. 02:16:13.840 --> 02:16:16.640 I mean, yes, I do post go to church tomorrow every Saturday 02:16:16.640 --> 02:16:18.240 evening. But But 02:16:19.760 --> 02:16:23.920 we have so many apostate churches that it is nearly impossible to 02:16:23.920 --> 02:16:26.240 give a general recommendation. 02:16:26.240 --> 02:16:29.920 And in particular parts of the country, there are no faithful churches. 02:16:29.920 --> 02:16:31.360 None. Not one. 02:16:33.840 --> 02:16:37.120 I I mean I live in the South now, and I can 02:16:37.440 --> 02:16:43.600 say with absolute certainty that the number of truly faithful churches here 02:16:44.240 --> 02:16:45.680 is tiny. 02:16:46.000 --> 02:16:49.280 I can probably count on one hand the number of faithful ones 02:16:49.280 --> 02:16:50.720 within driving distance of where I live. 02:16:51.680 --> 02:16:55.200 And I am I'm being quite liberal in terms of driving distance. 02:16:55.200 --> 02:16:57.440 I used to live in LA, so driving distance for me is 02:16:57.440 --> 02:16:58.080 a considerable thing. 02:16:58.480 --> 02:17:01.440 And you're also lucky because that's an incredible concentration. 02:17:01.440 --> 02:17:03.040 Many people in most parts of the country 02:17:04.240 --> 02:17:06.000 are would be lucky to have one. 02:17:07.760 --> 02:17:09.120 It's why we're doing this podcast. 02:17:09.120 --> 02:17:11.040 It's why we're talking about these things. 02:17:11.040 --> 02:17:14.400 Because the intersection of everything that people see on M S M 02:17:14.400 --> 02:17:19.920 B C that's called politics, that's called worldly, that's called left-hand kingdom, 02:17:19.920 --> 02:17:24.960 all of it is rooted in attacking the fundamentals of the Christian 02:17:24.960 --> 02:17:28.000 faith. It's not ta attacking justification. 02:17:28.000 --> 02:17:30.320 It's not attacking Jesus died for you. 02:17:30.320 --> 02:17:33.520 And that's why all these Lutherans have lost their minds, they've lost 02:17:33.520 --> 02:17:34.240 their bearings. 02:17:34.240 --> 02:17:37.680 They have no understanding of what's going on because all they can 02:17:37.680 --> 02:17:42.080 see is a battlefield in terms of sixteenth century wars that they're 02:17:42.080 --> 02:17:42.960 not fighting. 02:17:42.960 --> 02:17:45.600 We're not fighting a battle for justification. 02:17:45.600 --> 02:17:47.440 We're fighting a battle for creation. 02:17:47.440 --> 02:17:51.280 We're We're fighting a battle for how God operates in space and 02:17:51.280 --> 02:17:57.920 time. And He operates using election through fathers who transmit the faith 02:17:57.920 --> 02:17:58.960 to their sons. 02:17:58.960 --> 02:18:00.320 That is racial. 02:18:00.320 --> 02:18:04.240 Whatever the race is, you are of your father's race going back 02:18:04.240 --> 02:18:05.200 to Adam. 02:18:05.200 --> 02:18:08.640 But as those races branched out, they became distinct. 02:18:08.640 --> 02:18:13.920 They became distinct physically, they became distinct intellectually, they became distinct func 02:18:14.240 --> 02:18:18.000 culturally, but and those things are permissible. 02:18:18.000 --> 02:18:19.600 Those are part of God's order. 02:18:19.600 --> 02:18:24.960 What is not permissible is that they also became distinct religiously. 02:18:24.960 --> 02:18:26.960 They adopted different faiths. 02:18:26.960 --> 02:18:29.680 These men who went to all these various parts of the world 02:18:29.840 --> 02:18:33.680 began worshiping the demons they found there instead of worshiping the true 02:18:33.680 --> 02:18:37.120 God. And you know, it happened as soon as they got off 02:18:37.120 --> 02:18:37.920 the ark. 02:18:37.920 --> 02:18:41.280 You by the time you get to the the story of Babel, 02:18:41.280 --> 02:18:42.480 they've lost their minds. 02:18:42.480 --> 02:18:45.760 They're doing evil on an industrial scale again. 02:18:45.760 --> 02:18:50.080 After God literally destroyed everything on the planet except for eight people, 02:18:50.080 --> 02:18:51.440 they're right back at 02:18:51.440 --> 02:18:52.320 it. 02:18:52.480 --> 02:18:54.880 And And Noah was probably still living. 02:18:54.880 --> 02:18:55.600 Yeah. 02:18:55.600 --> 02:18:58.160 I I I uh 02:18:58.720 --> 02:19:00.560 Noah wasn't even dead yet. 02:19:00.560 --> 02:19:06.480 Yeah. So these these subjects and these fights, I hope that these 02:19:07.280 --> 02:19:10.560 I hope that the narrative arc that we're starting to build here 02:19:10.560 --> 02:19:13.600 will become clear to people in the fullness of time. 02:19:13.600 --> 02:19:15.120 These things are connected. 02:19:15.120 --> 02:19:18.800 And the reason that we talk about race is not because we 02:19:18.800 --> 02:19:20.000 care about race. 02:19:20.000 --> 02:19:22.960 It's because we care about how God made us. 02:19:22.960 --> 02:19:25.840 And we care about how God made us Christian. 02:19:25.840 --> 02:19:29.280 And our race is part of both of those. 02:19:29.280 --> 02:19:29.920 And And 02:19:30.880 --> 02:19:35.200 to deny that or to attack that is to deny and attack 02:19:35.200 --> 02:19:38.480 your creator, which is the first article of the creed. 02:19:38.480 --> 02:19:41.680 If you don't have the first article, you don't get the second 02:19:41.680 --> 02:19:45.920 article. You don't get Christ's salvation on the cross if you deny 02:19:45.920 --> 02:19:47.360 your creator. 02:19:47.360 --> 02:19:51.280 And we have churches who are second article only. 02:19:51.280 --> 02:19:53.920 They're Jesus on the cross and their gospel only. 02:19:53.920 --> 02:19:55.200 But it's not the real gospel. 02:19:55.200 --> 02:19:56.720 It's not the gospel of Scripture. 02:19:56.960 --> 02:20:01.760 It's a fabricated gospel that plays well on the internet with people 02:20:01.760 --> 02:20:03.360 who hate God. 02:20:03.360 --> 02:20:03.680 And 02:20:04.880 --> 02:20:07.120 that should be a warning to any Christian. 02:20:07.120 --> 02:20:10.400 It's not a warning to these men and I think that on 02:20:10.400 --> 02:20:13.040 judgment day we'll we'll see how that plays out. 02:20:13.040 --> 02:20:17.760 But I am I'm not optimistic, but at the same time I'm 02:20:17.680 --> 02:20:21.520 not despairing either because all we can do is obey God and 02:20:21.680 --> 02:20:25.280 it is it is tremendously comforting to know that my name is 02:20:25.280 --> 02:20:28.480 written in the book of life from before eternity, and the gifts 02:20:28.480 --> 02:20:31.920 that I have are all from God, and whatever good I do 02:20:31.920 --> 02:20:33.680 in this life is from God. 02:20:33.680 --> 02:20:37.040 It is not of me, it is not to my credit, of 02:20:37.040 --> 02:20:42.960 my own volition, it is solely of and for and by God. 02:20:42.960 --> 02:20:45.360 And that's enough. 02:20:45.360 --> 02:20:49.360 I my relationship is with my creator, my my church is where 02:20:49.360 --> 02:20:52.000 I attend and I'm thankful to have a good one. 02:20:52.000 --> 02:20:56.640 But these men will not ruin Christianity, even if they burn our 02:20:56.640 --> 02:20:58.000 churches to the ground. 02:20:58.000 --> 02:21:00.160 And we will continue to fight to make sure that we don't 02:21:00.080 --> 02:21:01.920 have to deal with either one of those. 02:21:01.920 --> 02:21:04.160 Because It should not be the case. 02:21:04.400 --> 02:21:07.040 And as long as there are faithful men who draw breath and 02:21:07.040 --> 02:21:10.400 who are willing to speak publicly, that will not be the case. 02:21:10.400 --> 02:21:13.920 It's only when the last man goes silent that that happens. 02:21:14.000 --> 02:21:17.200 And we are on the tail end of generations who did go 02:21:17.680 --> 02:21:18.800 completely silent. 02:21:18.800 --> 02:21:20.720 They abandoned all of these things. 02:21:20.720 --> 02:21:24.240 The inheritance we have been given today is an evil inheritance in 02:21:24.240 --> 02:21:25.440 our own churches. 02:21:25.440 --> 02:21:28.720 The only good things that we are inheriting in our churches are 02:21:28.720 --> 02:21:30.000 centuries old. 02:21:30.000 --> 02:21:33.120 All of the new things that we're inheriting need to be set 02:21:33.120 --> 02:21:34.720 on fire and destroyed. 02:21:34.720 --> 02:21:38.160 And if the men responsible will not relent, then they can be 02:21:38.160 --> 02:21:39.840 put on the pyre too 02:21:42.080 --> 02:21:42.160 I 02:21:42.160 --> 02:21:46.000 mean in the in the Lutheran case there's really no better example 02:21:46.160 --> 02:21:52.160 than we have the Book of Concord, 1580, centuries old, and then 02:21:52.160 --> 02:21:55.360 we have in contrast the CTCR documents that should all be put 02:21:55.360 --> 02:21:57.440 in a pile and burned. 02:21:58.160 --> 02:21:59.040 Said it's word. 02:21:59.040 --> 02:22:01.120 And those of course are largely from the sixties. 02:22:01.440 --> 02:22:02.960 Yeah. No, they had everything on. 02:22:02.960 --> 02:22:07.920 I it's Truly Oh yes, but the sixties were a truly apostate 02:22:07.920 --> 02:22:08.880 decade. They were. 02:22:09.120 --> 02:22:12.320 Everything that came from the from the fifties and sixties needs to 02:22:12.320 --> 02:22:13.920 be erased from history. 02:22:13.920 --> 02:22:15.520 Nothing can be left standing. 02:22:15.520 --> 02:22:16.480 Yes. 02:22:17.120 --> 02:22:17.360 Well 02:22:17.440 --> 02:22:22.000 it is the election episode, so I think we'll close out here, 02:22:22.000 --> 02:22:27.600 go through just briefly, basically eight sentences describing the eight points on 02:22:28.080 --> 02:22:32.800 election, what election is, from the solid declaration of the formula of 02:22:32.800 --> 02:22:38.800 Concord. So point one: the human race is truly redeemed and reconciled 02:22:38.800 --> 02:22:40.800 with God through Christ. 02:22:40.800 --> 02:22:42.000 Point two. 02:22:42.000 --> 02:22:47.360 Such merit and benefits of Christ are presented, offered and distributed to 02:22:47.360 --> 02:22:50.160 us through His Word and Sacraments. 02:22:50.560 --> 02:22:54.720 three. Christ will be effective and active in us, will convert hearts 02:22:54.720 --> 02:22:58.080 to true repentance, and preserve them in the true faith. 02:22:58.400 --> 02:23:03.600 four. The Spirit will justify all those who in true repentance receive 02:23:03.600 --> 02:23:07.040 Christ by a true faith five. 02:23:07.040 --> 02:23:11.760 He will also sanctify and love those who are justified six. 02:23:11.760 --> 02:23:15.680 He also will protect them in their great weakness against the devil, 02:23:15.680 --> 02:23:18.480 the world and the flesh seven. 02:23:18.480 --> 02:23:22.400 He will also strengthen, increase, and support to the end the good 02:23:22.400 --> 02:23:24.560 work that he has begun in them. 02:23:24.560 --> 02:23:30.560 Last point eight Finally, He will eternally save, and glorify in life 02:23:30.560 --> 02:23:35.280 eternal, those whom He is elected, called, and justified.