WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.520 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:40.320 I am Cory J. 00:00:40.400 --> 00:00:44.160 Moss. Mahler and I'm still woe. 00:00:44.160 --> 00:00:48.560 This week's Stone Choir is a little different from our standard episodes. 00:00:48.560 --> 00:00:53.200 Last week we joined Will Spencer from the Renaissance of Men podcast 00:00:53.200 --> 00:00:56.480 and recorded a wide-ranging discussion. 00:00:56.480 --> 00:01:00.960 Many of the topics will be familiar to the Stone Choir audience. 00:01:00.960 --> 00:01:05.440 We discussed the origin of the Stone Choir podcast, why we started 00:01:05.440 --> 00:01:10.080 the podcast, why we address some of the topics that we do, 00:01:10.080 --> 00:01:13.520 why it is important to speak the truth and the consequences of 00:01:13.520 --> 00:01:16.560 doing so, and a number of related topics. 00:01:16.560 --> 00:01:20.400 Those are covered largely in this first episode. 00:01:20.400 --> 00:01:22.720 We covered additional topics as well. 00:01:22.720 --> 00:01:26.400 There will be a second episode released at some point in the 00:01:26.400 --> 00:01:30.480 future. The audio for that is not currently publicly available. 00:01:30.480 --> 00:01:33.360 This is the first segment, which runs about two and a half 00:01:33.360 --> 00:01:37.120 hours. The second segment runs about four, four and a half hours, 00:01:37.120 --> 00:01:41.040 and again, that will be released in the future. 00:01:41.280 --> 00:01:45.120 That second segment just like this one will be released in the 00:01:45.120 --> 00:01:49.280 future on the main stone choir stream. 00:01:49.280 --> 00:01:55.360 I have left in Will Spencer's introductory monologue, which begins now. 00:01:55.360 --> 00:01:55.520 My 00:01:55.520 --> 00:01:59.280 guests this week are the hosts of the most popular podcast no 00:01:59.280 --> 00:02:01.600 one is allowed to admit that they listen to. 00:02:01.600 --> 00:02:05.200 For part one of an epic six and a half hour conversation, 00:02:05.200 --> 00:02:13.040 please welcome Corey Mahler and Woe from Stone Choir. 00:02:13.040 --> 00:02:17.440 You are the Renaissance. 00:02:17.440 --> 00:02:20.400 First of all, welcome to all my new listeners. 00:02:20.400 --> 00:02:23.200 If this is your first time here, I begin all of my 00:02:23.200 --> 00:02:27.520 episodes with an extended monologue to set the stage for the conversation 00:02:27.760 --> 00:02:29.120 and my guests. 00:02:29.120 --> 00:02:32.800 Please bear with me because I promise that there's a point, and 00:02:32.800 --> 00:02:34.640 an important one at that. 00:02:34.640 --> 00:02:37.280 So So, I'd like to tell you a story. 00:02:37.280 --> 00:02:41.040 I didn't pay any attention at all to the twenty sixteen election. 00:02:41.040 --> 00:02:44.560 I left the United States for South America in March of that 00:02:44.560 --> 00:02:47.680 year, so I was far too busy on the road to even 00:02:47.680 --> 00:02:49.600 think about American politics. 00:02:49.600 --> 00:02:52.480 Plus at the time, I was still a more or less blue 00:02:52.560 --> 00:02:53.600 pilled liberal. 00:02:53.600 --> 00:02:57.280 I knew about Jeffrey Epstein and that whole underworld, but I hadn't 00:02:57.200 --> 00:03:00.720 yet cracked feminism, the New World Order, or anything like that. 00:03:01.120 --> 00:03:04.640 So as far as politics was concerned, I knew Hillary Clinton would 00:03:04.640 --> 00:03:05.840 get the nomination. 00:03:05.840 --> 00:03:10.000 Everyone knew it, and I just assumed that November 2016 would be 00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:12.720 her coronation, and I didn't think much about it. 00:03:12.720 --> 00:03:16.560 When Donald Trump got the nomination, I thought that was odd, but 00:03:16.560 --> 00:03:19.680 from a distance, I just assumed it was part of the American 00:03:19.680 --> 00:03:22.160 right wing decline into idiocracy. 00:03:22.160 --> 00:03:26.000 Again, being a blue pilled liberal at the time, I genuinely believed 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:29.520 that red state Americans were what was wrong with the nation, and 00:03:29.520 --> 00:03:34.720 that evangelical Christians, and more specifically Southern Baptists, were driving the whole 00:03:34.720 --> 00:03:38.480 mess. So you can imagine my shock and comic surprise at God's 00:03:38.480 --> 00:03:42.800 goodness and sense of humor when years later on Sunday during service 00:03:42.960 --> 00:03:45.600 I realized that I had ended up as a member of an 00:03:45.600 --> 00:03:46.960 SBC church. 00:03:46.960 --> 00:03:49.600 But that's another story for another time. 00:03:49.600 --> 00:03:51.120 Back to 2016. 00:03:51.120 --> 00:03:55.600 So from July through November 2016, I was finishing my travels in 00:03:55.600 --> 00:03:59.200 South America and then on my way to Japan, thinking not at 00:03:59.200 --> 00:04:00.720 all about the election. 00:04:00.720 --> 00:04:04.400 I did notice two good friends consistently posting on Facebook in support 00:04:04.400 --> 00:04:07.760 of Trump and getting absolutely dragged over it. 00:04:07.760 --> 00:04:11.440 I also participated in such a dogpile, though not with my friends, 00:04:11.440 --> 00:04:12.800 but in a men's group. 00:04:12.800 --> 00:04:15.840 Another man I didn't know posted his support for Trump. 00:04:15.840 --> 00:04:18.480 This man was the one guy in a group of hundreds of 00:04:18.480 --> 00:04:20.000 men who spoke up. 00:04:20.000 --> 00:04:23.440 Then the entire group, including me, landed on him. 00:04:23.440 --> 00:04:25.600 And I can't even say why I did. 00:04:25.600 --> 00:04:28.640 But that was about as much as I thought about or participated 00:04:28.640 --> 00:04:30.160 in the 2016 election. 00:04:30.160 --> 00:04:32.080 I didn't even vote that year. 00:04:32.080 --> 00:04:36.320 As I said, I was busy and the outcome seemed obvious until 00:04:36.320 --> 00:04:37.840 the election happened. 00:04:37.840 --> 00:04:41.680 I remember watching it on TV and checking my Facebook feed. 00:04:41.680 --> 00:04:45.680 I, like many, assumed that the outcome was certain, but then one 00:04:45.680 --> 00:04:50.080 by one, I started watching my hardcore liberal friends in San Francisco 00:04:50.080 --> 00:04:51.440 begin to freak out. 00:04:51.440 --> 00:04:55.840 I remember one man wrote something like hold fast, encouraging everyone as 00:04:55.840 --> 00:04:59.760 if the ship was sinking, and then suddenly it was over. 00:04:59.760 --> 00:05:02.480 I think I was watching CNN when they called it. 00:05:02.480 --> 00:05:06.560 I remember being in stunned shock, feeling a note of grief, probably 00:05:06.560 --> 00:05:10.400 mostly in sympathy with my friends, though also because of the uncertainty 00:05:10.400 --> 00:05:13.760 Trump's election represented, and then I went to sleep. 00:05:13.760 --> 00:05:15.600 And then a funny thing happened. 00:05:15.600 --> 00:05:19.760 Rather than joining my friends, doubling down in opposition to Trump, the 00:05:19.760 --> 00:05:22.880 thought crossed my mind, there must be more going on here than 00:05:22.880 --> 00:05:24.240 I recognized. 00:05:24.240 --> 00:05:26.720 I wasn't caught up in the election fervor. 00:05:26.720 --> 00:05:28.720 I wasn't wearing my team jersey. 00:05:28.720 --> 00:05:32.480 I was watching my country from afar take a direction I didn't 00:05:32.400 --> 00:05:35.600 expect. Nor did I question the legitimacy of the election. 00:05:35.600 --> 00:05:38.960 I believe that Hillary Clinton would win in a landslide. 00:05:38.960 --> 00:05:43.200 That the outcome apparently was not obvious said nothing to me about 00:05:43.200 --> 00:05:45.360 objective reality being wrong. 00:05:45.360 --> 00:05:49.440 Rather the outcome told me that I was wrong regarding something fundamental 00:05:49.440 --> 00:05:52.080 about my nation, though I didn't know what. 00:05:52.080 --> 00:05:56.480 Far more people disagreed with me and my friends than I realized. 00:05:56.480 --> 00:05:58.560 They were not living in my world. 00:05:58.560 --> 00:06:00.000 I was in theirs. 00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:02.880 That meant there was more for me to understand. 00:06:02.880 --> 00:06:04.240 So what did I do? 00:06:04.240 --> 00:06:07.440 I reached out to my two friends on Facebook who had been 00:06:07.440 --> 00:06:10.000 courageously posting in support of Trump. 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:12.400 One was a man, the other was a woman. 00:06:12.400 --> 00:06:15.280 What I said to them both was that the election outcome was 00:06:15.280 --> 00:06:17.760 a surprise, and that I didn't understand it. 00:06:17.760 --> 00:06:22.080 I said to them, I have no preconceived notions, no agenda. 00:06:22.080 --> 00:06:23.760 I am a blank slate. 00:06:23.760 --> 00:06:26.480 Please help me understand what just happened. 00:06:26.480 --> 00:06:27.200 And they did. 00:06:27.760 --> 00:06:30.320 The rest, as they say, is history. 00:06:30.320 --> 00:06:33.440 I share that story by way of introduction to how I conduct 00:06:33.440 --> 00:06:36.960 myself as a man in relation to intellectual inquiry. 00:06:36.960 --> 00:06:40.480 For things that matter I do not accept as factual or true 00:06:40.480 --> 00:06:45.120 what other people say about an individual, his beliefs, or his words. 00:06:45.120 --> 00:06:47.280 I go and listen for myself. 00:06:47.280 --> 00:06:49.440 I do not care about being right. 00:06:49.440 --> 00:06:50.960 I care about the truth. 00:06:50.960 --> 00:06:55.040 If the truth makes me wrong, then praise God and hallelujah, I 00:06:55.040 --> 00:06:57.680 just got a little bit closer to the truth and I didn't 00:06:57.600 --> 00:06:59.200 need those lies anyway. 00:06:59.200 --> 00:07:02.400 They were only doing me harm, as all lies do. 00:07:02.400 --> 00:07:05.520 This perspective carries on to today, and I believe is why I 00:07:06.000 --> 00:07:07.280 became a Christian. 00:07:07.280 --> 00:07:10.320 I did not accept the truths of Eastern mysticism and the New 00:07:10.480 --> 00:07:15.040 Age. I went around the world to experience them for myself, uncritically 00:07:15.200 --> 00:07:18.960 even. But while on that road, I encountered questions that my fellow 00:07:18.960 --> 00:07:21.760 believers would not and could not answer. 00:07:21.760 --> 00:07:25.440 I wanted the truth more than I wanted their acceptance, more than 00:07:25.440 --> 00:07:29.200 I wanted twenty years of my life's pursuits to mean something. 00:07:29.200 --> 00:07:32.720 And so I stepped across the last border of that land, leaving 00:07:32.720 --> 00:07:37.520 literally everything behind, wading into the waters of the Spokane River, and 00:07:37.520 --> 00:07:40.320 finding myself in the forgiving arms of Christ. 00:07:40.320 --> 00:07:43.280 I sold all I had and bought the field. 00:07:43.280 --> 00:07:45.760 Four years later, here I am. 00:07:45.760 --> 00:07:48.480 I look back on my life and can see in the long 00:07:48.480 --> 00:07:51.600 view that this is not any good inherent in me, but is 00:07:51.600 --> 00:07:54.320 in the working of the Holy Spirit that I can trace back 00:07:54.320 --> 00:07:56.880 to being as young as eleven or twelve years old. 00:07:56.880 --> 00:07:59.600 I suppose if I thought about it or asked my dad, I 00:07:59.600 --> 00:08:00.880 could go back even further. 00:08:01.200 --> 00:08:05.440 I want to know for myself, not because anyone tells me, because 00:08:05.440 --> 00:08:08.080 people can and often do get it wrong. 00:08:08.080 --> 00:08:11.360 I am capable of discerning the truth for myself and thus I 00:08:11.360 --> 00:08:16.160 do. I must, because if capable men and yes women lack the 00:08:16.160 --> 00:08:21.920 intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and moral courage to confront their errors, then there's 00:08:21.920 --> 00:08:25.200 no hope for the lesser men and women, not to mention children 00:08:25.360 --> 00:08:30.320 either. In today's world, this same attitude I've spent thirty years cultivating 00:08:30.480 --> 00:08:32.560 is even more desperately needed. 00:08:32.560 --> 00:08:36.000 Everyone wants to tell us everything, and with all the information and 00:08:36.000 --> 00:08:40.000 human history available to us with a few taps of our thumb 00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:43.360 tips, no one wants us investigating anything. 00:08:43.360 --> 00:08:44.960 And yet we have to. 00:08:44.960 --> 00:08:49.280 Because the lies are deep and thick and sticky, these webs ensnare 00:08:49.280 --> 00:08:52.640 many of us, which is why we need men to help us 00:08:52.640 --> 00:08:55.520 cut our way out with the Word of God, the sword of 00:08:55.520 --> 00:08:58.320 the Spirit, and its courageous truth. 00:08:58.320 --> 00:09:00.560 Which brings me to my guests this week. 00:09:00.560 --> 00:09:04.160 Their names are Cory Mauler and Woe, the latter of which is 00:09:04.160 --> 00:09:09.200 a pseudonym, and they're the hosts of Stone Choir, an informative, enjoyable, 00:09:09.200 --> 00:09:10.880 and well produced podcast. 00:09:10.880 --> 00:09:12.640 Okay, sounds good so far. 00:09:12.640 --> 00:09:14.320 There's just one problem. 00:09:14.320 --> 00:09:17.920 They tackle ideas that a lot of people invested in the success 00:09:17.920 --> 00:09:21.840 of the regime, whether consciously or otherwise, don't like. 00:09:21.840 --> 00:09:26.160 Over seventy-five episodes and counting, they've covered a number of different topics, 00:09:26.160 --> 00:09:29.600 including headship and submission right down to the level of men's and 00:09:29.600 --> 00:09:31.360 women's biological design. 00:09:31.360 --> 00:09:35.280 They've also covered notions of race, its reality, and the significance of 00:09:35.280 --> 00:09:36.960 those facts on evangelism. 00:09:36.960 --> 00:09:42.160 They've talked about Christianity and the Jews, conspiracy theories and truth, anonymity, 00:09:42.160 --> 00:09:47.920 slander, IQ, love, Christian nationalism, forgotten doctrines of scripture, and much more. 00:09:47.920 --> 00:09:52.160 But crucially, one of their most impactful topics is the growing institutional 00:09:52.160 --> 00:09:57.440 corruption of Christian denominations, in their case, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, 00:09:57.440 --> 00:09:58.960 or the LCMS. 00:09:58.960 --> 00:10:03.520 Long regarded as one of America's most conservative Christian denominations, it too 00:10:03.600 --> 00:10:08.000 has fallen prey to wokeness and corruption at apparently the highest levels. 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:12.240 Woe and Corey watched all this happen in 2020 and 2021, as 00:10:12.240 --> 00:10:15.040 many of us did in our own way, and they decided to 00:10:15.040 --> 00:10:16.160 do something about it. 00:10:16.160 --> 00:10:19.680 So they started a podcast called Stone Choir to help clear away 00:10:19.680 --> 00:10:24.080 false teachings and bad ideas, because they saw few others in Christendom, 00:10:24.080 --> 00:10:27.520 behind the pulpit or otherwise, doing anything at all. 00:10:27.520 --> 00:10:31.360 Then they applied their considerable intelligence to a recent update of the 00:10:31.360 --> 00:10:36.000 core doctrinal teachings of Lutheranism, called the larger catechism, and it was 00:10:36.000 --> 00:10:38.240 as if they had kicked the hornet's nest. 00:10:38.240 --> 00:10:42.160 This led to a sequence of events, including doxing, threats of violence, 00:10:42.160 --> 00:10:43.120 and much more. 00:10:43.120 --> 00:10:45.040 I'll let them share the story. 00:10:45.040 --> 00:10:48.800 But their story highlights something important that I think should have resonance 00:10:48.800 --> 00:10:50.800 with every man and woman listening. 00:10:50.800 --> 00:10:52.560 Truth is expensive. 00:10:52.560 --> 00:10:57.040 Proverbs chapter twenty three, verse twenty three says Buy the truth and 00:10:57.040 --> 00:10:58.080 sell it not. 00:10:58.080 --> 00:11:01.440 Also wisdom and instruction and understanding. 00:11:01.440 --> 00:11:04.960 If truth were cheap or easy, everyone would profess it. 00:11:04.960 --> 00:11:08.080 If it didn't take courage to share the truth or the intellectual 00:11:08.080 --> 00:11:11.600 acumen to discern it, we wouldn't value those who speak and write 00:11:11.600 --> 00:11:12.240 it either. 00:11:12.240 --> 00:11:15.120 But we do, because the truth is rare. 00:11:15.120 --> 00:11:18.640 Today we may be more saturated with lies than perhaps any other 00:11:18.640 --> 00:11:22.240 point in human history since Christ, and so men are needed to 00:11:22.240 --> 00:11:25.760 stand up, to speak up, to investigate, and to share what they 00:11:25.760 --> 00:11:29.600 discover no matter the cost, shining light into the darkness as they 00:11:29.600 --> 00:11:33.040 can. Yes, it's a tall order, and it's a call too many 00:11:33.040 --> 00:11:33.840 men reject. 00:11:33.840 --> 00:11:37.280 They either shy away from the truth, backing down from the fight, 00:11:37.280 --> 00:11:41.600 or they go charging into battle like a berserker, rusty sword swinging 00:11:41.600 --> 00:11:45.760 wildly. But the truth we need is more like a scalpel, wielded 00:11:45.760 --> 00:11:49.840 with precision by deft hands, and if you ask me, that is 00:11:49.840 --> 00:11:54.080 the stone choir MO and that's what makes them dangerous, which is 00:11:54.080 --> 00:11:58.880 why various forces on the internet made them personas non grata, smearing 00:11:58.880 --> 00:12:00.800 their names across social media. 00:12:00.800 --> 00:12:04.720 And that's also why, when I first heard about their podcast, I 00:12:04.720 --> 00:12:05.760 went to listen. 00:12:05.760 --> 00:12:09.440 Like Trump and my journey to Christ, I didn't accept what I 00:12:09.440 --> 00:12:12.800 was told as fact simply because I was told it. 00:12:12.800 --> 00:12:15.040 I wanted to know for myself. 00:12:15.040 --> 00:12:18.320 My hope with this interview is that you'll learn what I did, 00:12:18.320 --> 00:12:21.920 that slander as a weapon is no match for the force of 00:12:21.920 --> 00:12:25.600 truth, and men bold and brilliant enough to wield it. 00:12:25.600 --> 00:12:29.280 In our conversation we discussed how Cory and Wo met and started 00:12:29.280 --> 00:12:34.720 Stone Choir, counting the cost for speaking truth, why to investigate where 00:12:34.720 --> 00:12:36.240 Satan is attacking? 00:12:36.240 --> 00:12:41.040 The turnip stream and conflict with the LCMS, Woe's doxing and its 00:12:41.040 --> 00:12:46.400 consequences, why there is no political solution to a creational problem, and 00:12:46.400 --> 00:12:48.960 finally finding a courageous church. 00:12:48.960 --> 00:12:51.520 As you heard me say at the outset, this is part one 00:12:51.520 --> 00:12:54.720 of our conversation, just the first two hours or so. 00:12:54.720 --> 00:12:57.600 You can find the other four and a half hours available for 00:12:57.600 --> 00:13:00.080 paid subscribers only on my substack. 00:13:00.080 --> 00:13:03.840 In that episode we discuss the four waves of feminism, the two 00:13:03.840 --> 00:13:08.560 things Satan wants to subvert, differences between the races, why the enemy 00:13:08.560 --> 00:13:14.480 can't act without human agents, feminism, racism, the Jews, and Hitler, and 00:13:14.480 --> 00:13:18.800 finally the responsibility that comes with conspiracy information. 00:13:18.800 --> 00:13:21.920 Now after my conversation with Cory and Woe, what you'll hear that 00:13:21.920 --> 00:13:23.200 I enjoyed very much. 00:13:23.200 --> 00:13:26.960 I thought hard about whether to release the second segment separately. 00:13:26.960 --> 00:13:30.080 I finally decided that for my audience it would be best if 00:13:30.080 --> 00:13:31.760 you bought a ticket to the show. 00:13:31.760 --> 00:13:34.800 We discussed topics that for the moment pushed the limits of the 00:13:34.800 --> 00:13:38.080 Overton window for many, though not all of the participants in the 00:13:38.080 --> 00:13:39.280 Christian dialogue. 00:13:39.280 --> 00:13:41.280 A month from now though, who knows? 00:13:41.280 --> 00:13:44.400 So the episode is opt-in, and I hope it's worth it. 00:13:44.400 --> 00:13:45.440 I think it is. 00:13:45.440 --> 00:13:48.400 In fact, I think it's one of my best episodes ever. 00:13:48.400 --> 00:13:52.080 But even if you're uninterested in listening further, I still believe the 00:13:52.080 --> 00:13:55.920 Stone Choir story has relevance to my listeners, which is one of 00:13:55.920 --> 00:13:59.360 the many reasons why I decided to release this segment to the 00:13:59.360 --> 00:14:02.800 public. Whatever you think of their ideas, whether you agree with them 00:14:02.800 --> 00:14:06.000 or not, or whether you ever put on even a single episode 00:14:06.000 --> 00:14:10.080 of their podcast, I think you'll hear that their intelligence and faithfulness 00:14:10.080 --> 00:14:11.040 shines through. 00:14:11.040 --> 00:14:15.440 They are nothing if not reasoned, rational, and committed men, no matter 00:14:15.440 --> 00:14:16.560 what you've heard. 00:14:16.560 --> 00:14:19.520 Plus, if one of my core values is finding the truth for 00:14:19.520 --> 00:14:23.120 myself, I'd like my listeners to have the same opportunity. 00:14:23.120 --> 00:14:26.240 Again, once you're done with this first segment, you can find the 00:14:26.240 --> 00:14:32.000 remainder of the interview on Substack at willspenserpod dot substack dot com. 00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:35.200 If you enjoy the Renaissance of Men podcast, thank you. 00:14:35.200 --> 00:14:38.400 Please leave us a five star rating on Spotify and a five-star 00:14:38.480 --> 00:14:40.400 rating and review on Apple Podcasts. 00:14:40.400 --> 00:14:42.880 If this is your first time here, welcome. 00:14:42.880 --> 00:14:47.280 I release new episodes about the Christian counterculture, masculine virtue, and the 00:14:47.280 --> 00:14:48.880 family every week. 00:14:48.880 --> 00:14:51.600 And one last thing briefly before we begin. 00:14:51.600 --> 00:14:54.160 We all know how the game is played today. 00:14:54.160 --> 00:14:58.080 So I encourage everyone listening to embrace the truth that agreeing with 00:14:58.080 --> 00:15:01.680 one thing Cory and Woe have said does not immediately mean that 00:15:01.680 --> 00:15:05.520 you agree with everything they've ever said on Stone Choir or anywhere 00:15:05.520 --> 00:15:09.120 else. The only package deal in history is the Bible. 00:15:09.120 --> 00:15:12.160 That book, if you don't take it all, you leave it. 00:15:12.160 --> 00:15:15.120 Fallible men like the rest of us, you get to pick and 00:15:15.120 --> 00:15:18.880 choose, no matter what the wokesters say, because that is one of 00:15:18.880 --> 00:15:20.560 their chief tactics of slander. 00:15:20.560 --> 00:15:25.840 With anything any fallible man says, including and especially me, you can 00:15:25.840 --> 00:15:29.200 take the truth you discern to be accurate and discard the rest 00:15:29.200 --> 00:15:31.200 without giving it another thought. 00:15:31.200 --> 00:15:35.120 I have freedom of intellectual inquiry, and so do you, and I 00:15:35.120 --> 00:15:39.200 believe our right to free speech includes our right to hear. 00:15:39.200 --> 00:15:43.280 So please welcome this week's guest on the podcast, Cory Mahler and 00:15:43.280 --> 00:15:49.680 Wo from Stone Choir. 00:15:49.680 --> 00:15:52.480 Whoa and Cory, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast 00:15:52.480 --> 00:15:53.200 today. 00:15:53.200 --> 00:15:54.560 Thank you for having me. 00:15:54.560 --> 00:15:54.720 Thank 00:15:54.720 --> 00:15:55.040 you for 00:15:55.040 --> 00:15:55.680 having us. 00:15:55.680 --> 00:15:59.280 I've uh I've been devouring as much of your content as uh 00:15:59.280 --> 00:16:02.240 time allows and uh and I know that we're gonna have a 00:16:02.240 --> 00:16:03.760 ton of stuff to talk about today. 00:16:03.760 --> 00:16:06.160 Uh but first I just wanna say thank you for all the 00:16:06.160 --> 00:16:08.480 work that you guys have been putting into your podcast because I 00:16:08.480 --> 00:16:10.320 don't actually listen to a lot of podcasts. 00:16:10.480 --> 00:16:12.800 And I've enjoyed yours an immense amount. 00:16:12.800 --> 00:16:14.400 So thank you so much for that. 00:16:14.400 --> 00:16:15.120 You're welcome. 00:16:15.120 --> 00:16:16.400 Glad it paid off. 00:16:16.480 --> 00:16:17.600 Excellent. 00:16:17.600 --> 00:16:21.200 So I think for a start, where we're uh just from my 00:16:21.200 --> 00:16:25.760 own personal curiosity to is when did you start the Stone Choir 00:16:25.760 --> 00:16:26.960 podcast and why? 00:16:26.960 --> 00:16:28.880 And how did you guys meet in the first place? 00:16:28.880 --> 00:16:31.520 Like what was the what was the inspiration behind Stone Choir? 00:16:31.520 --> 00:16:33.920 And then we'll get into some of the stuff with the LCMS 00:16:33.920 --> 00:16:34.240 as 00:16:34.240 --> 00:16:34.880 well. 00:16:35.680 --> 00:16:37.440 I'll let you take that one. 00:16:37.920 --> 00:16:40.560 Corey and I have known each other, I don't know, four or 00:16:40.560 --> 00:16:42.240 five years at this point. 00:16:42.240 --> 00:16:43.440 It's a little hard to say. 00:16:43.440 --> 00:16:45.200 Time's kind of a blur. 00:16:45.920 --> 00:16:48.720 we met as as in a group of Lutherans. 00:16:48.720 --> 00:16:52.800 And it's funny initial initially we had a number of mutual friends 00:16:52.800 --> 00:16:55.760 who should have known to introduce us and it took them like 00:16:55.760 --> 00:16:58.880 year two years to unify the groups. 00:16:58.880 --> 00:17:00.240 I honestly don't understand. 00:17:00.240 --> 00:17:02.800 Like one of my one of the things I've always been best 00:17:02.800 --> 00:17:06.800 at is kind of matchmaking guys who should talk to other guys. 00:17:06.800 --> 00:17:09.200 Even if I don't particularly have something in common with it, I 00:17:09.200 --> 00:17:11.200 can still understand like this guy needs to talk to this guy 00:17:11.280 --> 00:17:12.400 because they're gonna love it. 00:17:12.400 --> 00:17:14.960 And so like once once Corey and I met, I'm like, why 00:17:14.960 --> 00:17:15.760 didn't you introduce us? 00:17:15.760 --> 00:17:19.680 We're like the same guy, just with two kind of weird variations 00:17:19.680 --> 00:17:20.400 on the same thing. 00:17:20.400 --> 00:17:23.120 So anyway, once we met, you know, we hit it off and 00:17:23.360 --> 00:17:28.080 we were mostly thinking and talking about theology and Lutheranism in particular 00:17:28.160 --> 00:17:31.360 and the state of the world and just privately, um, on top 00:17:31.360 --> 00:17:34.400 of what we would do publicly on Twitter, et cetera. 00:17:34.400 --> 00:17:34.720 And 00:17:36.240 --> 00:17:38.640 we're both simultaneously observing all the same things. 00:17:39.120 --> 00:17:40.480 We notice the same stuff. 00:17:40.480 --> 00:17:42.960 And Corey has, of course, always been Corey J. 00:17:43.280 --> 00:17:44.400 Mahler publicly. 00:17:44.640 --> 00:17:47.760 he's the the least pseudonymous man on the internet. 00:17:47.760 --> 00:17:50.960 And it's like he catches a rash of crap for things that 00:17:51.120 --> 00:17:54.960 someone who's pseudonymous or completely anonymous uh doesn't. 00:17:54.960 --> 00:17:58.800 You know, you're when your name is not known, you're somewhat immunized 00:17:58.800 --> 00:18:00.720 from certain types of attacks. 00:18:00.720 --> 00:18:02.880 And I've always been pseudonymous on the internet. 00:18:02.880 --> 00:18:06.320 We did one of early episodes talking about pseudonymity, like what's the 00:18:06.320 --> 00:18:11.280 difference between that sort of conduct is there a Christian implication to 00:18:11.280 --> 00:18:12.880 it in various things. 00:18:12.880 --> 00:18:17.120 And for my purposes, I just as I said before I was 00:18:17.120 --> 00:18:20.640 doxed and after I was doxed, there's nothing about my background that 00:18:20.640 --> 00:18:23.840 if you know that, it's going to really tell you anything more 00:18:23.840 --> 00:18:24.480 about me. 00:18:24.480 --> 00:18:27.360 Like whatever it is that I have to say is put out 00:18:27.360 --> 00:18:29.120 there. Like here's what I think. 00:18:29.120 --> 00:18:31.120 I don't have a credential to back it up. 00:18:31.120 --> 00:18:33.360 Take it or leave it. 00:18:33.360 --> 00:18:37.760 And so Corey and I were both observing the same problems in 00:18:37.760 --> 00:18:42.400 the church, and because I wasn't yet I wasn't public to the 00:18:42.400 --> 00:18:46.160 point of like using my my voice, and so I knew that 00:18:46.160 --> 00:18:48.240 that would be the sort of thing that could potentially get me 00:18:48.240 --> 00:18:52.240 doxxed. And I didn't want it for the aggravation and also for 00:18:52.240 --> 00:18:54.240 the sake of you know extended family. 00:18:54.240 --> 00:18:57.280 I don't have I don't have a wife or kids or anything, 00:18:57.280 --> 00:19:01.120 so like it's not gonna hurt me personally but it's still disruptive 00:19:01.120 --> 00:19:04.320 to people you know when someone's coming after you the way they 00:19:04.400 --> 00:19:05.680 you know they come after Corey. 00:19:05.680 --> 00:19:08.160 So there was no upside, there was only downside. 00:19:08.160 --> 00:19:11.200 And so for that reason, although we knew for a while that 00:19:11.200 --> 00:19:14.000 we wanted to do a podcast, like I don't know if we 00:19:14.000 --> 00:19:15.040 wanted to. 00:19:15.040 --> 00:19:17.760 We knew that it was inevitable we were going to have to. 00:19:17.760 --> 00:19:20.400 And I was kind of waiting to put that off as long 00:19:20.400 --> 00:19:21.600 as possible. 00:19:21.600 --> 00:19:24.080 And towards the end of the 00:19:25.360 --> 00:19:30.080 middle of 2022, certain things were happening in the LCMS that made 00:19:30.080 --> 00:19:33.520 it clear that this our hands were gonna be forced. 00:19:33.520 --> 00:19:36.480 And so we'd start talking a little more seriously about the idea 00:19:36.480 --> 00:19:39.600 behind starting a podcast and like what will we approach? 00:19:39.360 --> 00:19:43.120 and we finally decided to pull the trigger and we were gonna 00:19:43.120 --> 00:19:48.720 begin October 21st, 2022, which was uh you know Reformation Day. 00:19:48.720 --> 00:19:51.200 And that a couple of things happened a few weeks before that, 00:19:51.200 --> 00:19:53.040 and like, okay, we're gonna push it up a couple of weeks 00:19:53.120 --> 00:19:54.960 and so we kinda just hit the ground running. 00:19:54.960 --> 00:19:57.840 So we never wanted to have a podcast. 00:19:57.840 --> 00:20:00.400 We felt that our hands were forced because there were things were 00:20:00.400 --> 00:20:03.040 being that were happening in the church and in the world that 00:20:03.040 --> 00:20:07.760 were that were either being not addressed correctly, were being misaddressed, or 00:20:07.760 --> 00:20:11.040 were being covered up by people who should have known better. 00:20:11.040 --> 00:20:14.080 And we both been sitting here listening to some other guys in 00:20:14.080 --> 00:20:17.760 the same space who should have they certainly do know what's going 00:20:17.760 --> 00:20:22.480 on, but they either didn't have the aptitude, the courage, or the 00:20:22.640 --> 00:20:25.280 the ability to speak up and say the things we knew that 00:20:25.280 --> 00:20:25.920 we could say. 00:20:25.920 --> 00:20:28.160 And so finally we're like, you know what, no one else is 00:20:28.160 --> 00:20:29.040 gonna do this. 00:20:29.040 --> 00:20:30.160 We're gonna have to. 00:20:30.160 --> 00:20:32.560 And so that was really the genesis of Stone Choir. 00:20:32.560 --> 00:20:36.560 And hence the name of you know the stones crying out. 00:20:36.560 --> 00:20:40.480 Corey. And that essentially covered it. 00:20:40.480 --> 00:20:46.960 That we really figured that if there were men currently in this 00:20:46.960 --> 00:20:51.520 space, if we take the term more generally, so the Christian right, 00:20:51.520 --> 00:20:55.040 say, who took up the mantle and addressed these issues, then we 00:20:55.520 --> 00:20:58.240 wouldn't necessarily have to do so. 00:20:58.320 --> 00:21:01.040 That was not happening with many of the issues. 00:21:01.040 --> 00:21:03.520 You can tell from some of the topics we've covered on the 00:21:03.520 --> 00:21:07.200 podcast we're covering things that other men are simply not covering, particularly 00:21:07.360 --> 00:21:08.000 Christian men. 00:21:08.480 --> 00:21:11.440 Which is one of One of the problems that we were seeking 00:21:11.440 --> 00:21:16.160 to address is that some of these issues were being discussed on 00:21:16.160 --> 00:21:20.880 the political right, but they were being discussed from an atheist framework, 00:21:20.880 --> 00:21:22.800 not from a Christian framework. 00:21:22.800 --> 00:21:26.960 And It's necessary to address them from a Christian framework for a 00:21:26.960 --> 00:21:30.160 number of reasons, but two of the most salient reasons to do 00:21:30.160 --> 00:21:33.840 it from a Christian perspective is so that other Christian men know 00:21:34.080 --> 00:21:37.440 these are issues about which Christian men can speak in the public 00:21:37.440 --> 00:21:41.920 sphere. And so that those who look at the church with a 00:21:41.920 --> 00:21:46.240 little bit of apprehension, perhaps, or disdain in some cases, realize there 00:21:46.240 --> 00:21:49.440 are actual Christian men who care about these issues and can speak 00:21:49.440 --> 00:21:53.360 about them truthfully and forcefully, as opposed to what we hear from 00:21:53.360 --> 00:21:55.760 far too many pulpits these days. 00:21:56.240 --> 00:22:00.880 So when you when you stepped up to do this, um again 00:22:01.040 --> 00:22:04.400 specifically when you say the church, you're talking about the the Lutheran 00:22:04.400 --> 00:22:07.440 church as opposed to just Christendom more broadly? 00:22:07.840 --> 00:22:08.080 When 00:22:08.080 --> 00:22:11.440 I say the church in this case, I'm talking about the church, 00:22:11.440 --> 00:22:12.960 uppercase C, the whole church. 00:22:13.360 --> 00:22:16.800 The Lutheran church specifically we have problems that we are addressing in 00:22:16.800 --> 00:22:20.800 the Lutheran church, particularly in the American context, although the problems are 00:22:20.800 --> 00:22:25.040 similar in other parts of the world that have Lutheran churches as 00:22:25.040 --> 00:22:28.640 well. But But I mean the church more generally. 00:22:28.640 --> 00:22:30.560 I mean all Christian men. 00:22:30.960 --> 00:22:33.840 Okay. Yeah, I I think certainly there there are probably a lot 00:22:33.840 --> 00:22:36.480 of men listening and a lot of men out there today that 00:22:36.480 --> 00:22:40.560 can relate to that feeling of seeing that there's something wrong, more 00:22:40.560 --> 00:22:43.600 than one thing, saying that there's many things wrong, then no one 00:22:43.600 --> 00:22:47.200 is speaking about it, especially on the right from in any sort 00:22:47.200 --> 00:22:50.000 of impactful way, and the ones who are are speaking about it 00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.080 from an atheist or an even pagan perspective and wondering where are 00:22:54.080 --> 00:22:56.480 the Christian men speaking up on behalf of these things in the 00:22:56.480 --> 00:22:57.520 world and the church. 00:22:57.520 --> 00:23:00.560 So I think a lot of men, myself included, actually can relate 00:23:00.560 --> 00:23:01.120 to that. 00:23:01.120 --> 00:23:04.560 So but when you s when you started didn't when you started 00:23:04.560 --> 00:23:08.800 doing it, did you anticipate ahead of time the road that would 00:23:08.800 --> 00:23:09.440 be ahead? 00:23:09.440 --> 00:23:11.360 Would and some of the things that we'll get into with the 00:23:11.360 --> 00:23:14.240 Lutheran church obviously is a big part of that, but did you 00:23:14.240 --> 00:23:16.480 un anticipate running into the headwinds? 00:23:16.480 --> 00:23:19.280 Like or did you count the cost, I suppose? 00:23:19.280 --> 00:23:19.920 Absolutely. 00:23:21.040 --> 00:23:22.400 Yes, we both knew it was coming. 00:23:22.640 --> 00:23:25.200 Yeah. I w one of the things in the in the episode 00:23:25.200 --> 00:23:29.120 that I mentioned, it was called Name No Man's Nose, where this 00:23:29.200 --> 00:23:31.440 we did this, I think, in November of 2022. 00:23:31.440 --> 00:23:33.360 It was about six months before I was doxxed. 00:23:33.360 --> 00:23:36.320 It was basically my response to being doxed and I said in 00:23:36.320 --> 00:23:39.280 that episode, I know at some point I'm gonna get doxed because 00:23:39.280 --> 00:23:42.320 of this show because I say the same things in person to 00:23:42.320 --> 00:23:45.120 pastors and other people in the con in the in the church 00:23:45.360 --> 00:23:47.920 that I was gonna say on Stone Choir. 00:23:47.920 --> 00:23:50.880 I'm not secretive about this. 00:23:50.880 --> 00:23:54.160 And so I knew before I had Ben Docks that eventually that 00:23:54.160 --> 00:23:57.760 would happen in punishment for speaking at these things. 00:23:57.760 --> 00:24:01.760 And the specific topics that we address is that it was actually 00:24:02.080 --> 00:24:05.600 the subject of this week's show just yesterday, the target selection. 00:24:05.600 --> 00:24:09.280 How do we pick the things that we want to discuss? 00:24:09.280 --> 00:24:12.560 And so we knew that we were primarily going to be taught 00:24:12.640 --> 00:24:16.560 talking we were We were primarily going to touch on hot button 00:24:16.560 --> 00:24:20.080 issues, not because we want to stir up controversy or or be 00:24:20.720 --> 00:24:24.480 dramatic or a pain in the butt, but simply because there are 00:24:24.480 --> 00:24:25.760 things happening in the world. 00:24:25.760 --> 00:24:28.640 Satan is on the move and everyone sees that. 00:24:28.720 --> 00:24:31.520 Unbelievers, believers, everyone sees that. 00:24:31.520 --> 00:24:34.720 And what we have found over the last number of years before 00:24:34.720 --> 00:24:39.760 we started was that many in the church were doing a worse 00:24:39.760 --> 00:24:44.320 job of identifying the spiritual undertones to the attacks relative to even 00:24:44.320 --> 00:24:45.680 pagans and unbelievers. 00:24:45.680 --> 00:24:48.880 Guys who have no basis whatsoever in the church church can see 00:24:48.880 --> 00:24:51.760 Satan on the move in the things that happened in the summer 00:24:51.760 --> 00:24:54.320 of 2020 and all the surrounding events. 00:24:54.320 --> 00:24:57.760 People without any church background are like, this is evil. 00:24:57.760 --> 00:25:00.240 This stuff that's happening is telling me that there must be a 00:25:00.240 --> 00:25:02.560 Satan. And if there's a Satan, then there's got to be a 00:25:02.560 --> 00:25:06.400 God. And so those guys who are not Christians or who you 00:25:06.400 --> 00:25:09.520 know had left the church are like I see this sort of 00:25:09.520 --> 00:25:13.680 evil in the world, real spiritual evil, not just mean people, not 00:25:13.680 --> 00:25:19.280 just bad politics, actual malevolence of a spiritual nature, non materialist. 00:25:19.280 --> 00:25:21.520 Guys who had been materialists would see that. 00:25:21.520 --> 00:25:25.680 It was their first introduction in some cases to spiritual ideas of 00:25:25.680 --> 00:25:30.000 anything. I mean their first discovery was there's something that, you know, 00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:31.600 we call Satan. 00:25:31.600 --> 00:25:34.400 I know that there's this group of people to talk about Satan, 00:25:34.400 --> 00:25:35.760 let me go see what they have to say. 00:25:35.760 --> 00:25:39.440 And what they were seeing in from the church was the same 00:25:39.440 --> 00:25:42.400 sorts of things are being said in the world about race, about 00:25:42.400 --> 00:25:43.680 sex, about everything. 00:25:43.680 --> 00:25:47.040 You know, write down the list where you have, you know, I 00:25:47.200 --> 00:25:51.520 frequently talk about like the MSMBC talking points of worldly, you know, 00:25:51.520 --> 00:25:55.520 the the global religion, the things that the DEI programs, the things 00:25:55.520 --> 00:25:58.960 that HR departments say are the same things that the church is 00:25:58.960 --> 00:26:02.160 saying. And they're both talking about them in moral terms. 00:26:02.160 --> 00:26:04.480 And so one of the reasons that we started the show is 00:26:04.480 --> 00:26:07.920 that we have these guys who should like these are the primary 00:26:07.920 --> 00:26:09.280 objects of the gospel. 00:26:09.280 --> 00:26:12.000 This is these are the people to whom every church in the 00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:15.600 country should be reaching out, saying, Hey, you're looking for God. 00:26:15.600 --> 00:26:17.840 You might not even know it, but you're looking for God right 00:26:17.840 --> 00:26:19.200 now because you're seeing evil. 00:26:19.200 --> 00:26:22.560 We know We know the other side and it's infinitely more powerful 00:26:22.560 --> 00:26:26.080 than things that have you scared enough that you're looking for them. 00:26:26.080 --> 00:26:28.000 And yet we don't see that in our churches. 00:26:28.000 --> 00:26:28.880 We see the opposite. 00:26:28.880 --> 00:26:31.840 We see our own churches all of them, not one particular denomination 00:26:31.920 --> 00:26:35.440 is I agree completely with Corey, like although we in some cases 00:26:35.440 --> 00:26:42.160 focus principally on LCMS and general confessional Lutheran questions, fundamentally it's about 00:26:42.160 --> 00:26:45.840 all the conservative denominations was really just is is shorthand for the 00:26:45.840 --> 00:26:47.600 actual Christian denominations. 00:26:47.600 --> 00:26:52.240 Because the you know the mainstream churches fundamentally aren't Christian at all. 00:26:52.240 --> 00:26:56.640 Even though there's some Christians in them, their doctrine is completely antichrist. 00:26:56.640 --> 00:27:00.720 And it's more aligned with the world even than what the conservative 00:27:00.720 --> 00:27:02.240 denominations are doing. 00:27:02.560 --> 00:27:05.360 But as a means of outreach, when we try to reach guys 00:27:05.360 --> 00:27:10.000 who are who are embracing paganism because it seems trad, it's like, 00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:12.560 well, I know that white people used to do good stuff and 00:27:12.560 --> 00:27:15.680 they used to worship trees, so I'm gonna worship trees. 00:27:15.680 --> 00:27:18.400 And we and we try say that's d no, no, no, let 00:27:18.640 --> 00:27:19.760 let's start from the beginning. 00:27:19.760 --> 00:27:21.840 There's a lot more going on that you're missing. 00:27:21.840 --> 00:27:24.000 And there's virtually no one in the church who will talk to 00:27:24.000 --> 00:27:27.840 those men in ways that don't call them in ways that don't 00:27:27.840 --> 00:27:29.040 lie about the world. 00:27:29.040 --> 00:27:31.520 Because there are things in the world, you know, subjects of race, 00:27:31.520 --> 00:27:37.200 of of sex, of headship that are controversial because believing the right 00:27:37.200 --> 00:27:42.000 things about them necessarily causes you to have to denounce the state 00:27:42.000 --> 00:27:45.440 of the world, of politics, of of everything we see around us. 00:27:45.440 --> 00:27:48.480 You have to say this is bad and there's actually a scriptural 00:27:48.480 --> 00:27:50.480 basis for why I can say that say that. 00:27:50.480 --> 00:27:54.480 So our hands were forced because the church was failing. 00:27:54.480 --> 00:27:57.920 And we saw like the laundry list of all the issues that 00:27:57.920 --> 00:27:59.120 we would have to tackle. 00:27:59.120 --> 00:28:02.240 And like, yeah, like this we know we're going to be going 00:28:02.240 --> 00:28:06.560 right downtown, right over target, where all the maximum amount of anti-aircraft 00:28:06.560 --> 00:28:07.200 is gonna be. 00:28:07.200 --> 00:28:10.080 We're gonna be flying low and we're gonna be bombing the crap 00:28:10.080 --> 00:28:12.960 out of the things that are the most important to Satan. 00:28:12.960 --> 00:28:15.280 So yeah, we knew it was gonna cause trouble. 00:28:15.520 --> 00:28:16.720 And we did it anyway. 00:28:16.720 --> 00:28:17.920 It wasn't to cause trouble. 00:28:17.920 --> 00:28:20.640 It wasn't to be controversial. 00:28:20.640 --> 00:28:23.120 It was because this is where the fight is. 00:28:23.120 --> 00:28:25.840 Satan has picked this battle and all we can do is show 00:28:25.840 --> 00:28:26.640 up and fight 00:28:26.640 --> 00:28:27.120 it. 00:28:28.960 --> 00:28:31.120 so then maybe I want to back up a little bit and 00:28:31.120 --> 00:28:34.320 say, you know, as I as I've listened listened through the episodes, 00:28:34.320 --> 00:28:37.680 uh I I hear like we started uh in uh I think 00:28:37.680 --> 00:28:42.000 you said October 22, 2022 when you started Stone Choir and also 00:28:42.000 --> 00:28:45.440 from twenty twenty when sort of the George Floyd riots happened and 00:28:45.440 --> 00:28:47.440 that was a big awakening for a lot of people. 00:28:47.440 --> 00:28:49.920 But maybe we can go uh just a little bit further back 00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:53.120 because Well, I've heard you talk a little bit about your background 00:28:53.120 --> 00:28:57.280 and sort of your theological evolution, sort of the questions that you 00:28:57.280 --> 00:29:00.640 didn't ask that you then started asking at one point in time 00:29:00.720 --> 00:29:03.120 that led you to a place where you had I g in 00:29:03.120 --> 00:29:05.360 many ways the answers that men have been looking for. 00:29:05.360 --> 00:29:09.520 What started so maybe let's go back pre your meeting or pre, 00:29:09.520 --> 00:29:13.680 you know, even pre-2020, what was the what was the path leading 00:29:13.680 --> 00:29:16.000 for both of you men to the point where you could cross 00:29:16.080 --> 00:29:17.680 paths in the first place? 00:29:18.240 --> 00:29:21.680 I think in some ways it started with our engagement with the 00:29:21.680 --> 00:29:25.360 political and not And not necessarily overtly in Christian terms. 00:29:25.360 --> 00:29:28.320 You know, when I first got on Twitter in twenty seventeen, I 00:29:28.320 --> 00:29:30.640 wasn't talking about being a Christian. 00:29:30.640 --> 00:29:33.360 I've always been a Christian, but like it was never it wasn't 00:29:33.360 --> 00:29:35.040 something I talked to people about. 00:29:35.040 --> 00:29:38.480 It wasn't something I I was consciously embarrassed of, but it was 00:29:38.480 --> 00:29:40.000 like that's the Sunday stuff. 00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:43.040 You know, I I did what everybody does where you sequester your 00:29:43.040 --> 00:29:47.360 private little Christian personal beliefs and you don't upset anybody by bringing 00:29:47.360 --> 00:29:47.920 them up. 00:29:48.080 --> 00:29:49.840 It's like, you know, once in a while stuff will come up. 00:29:49.840 --> 00:29:51.280 And I I wouldn't embarrass about it. 00:29:51.440 --> 00:29:55.760 I I remember having lunch with coworkers, you know, 10 years ago, 00:29:55.760 --> 00:29:59.120 you know, talking ironically, one of the only guys that I worked 00:29:59.120 --> 00:30:01.600 with that I had agreement with was a Muslim. 00:30:01.600 --> 00:30:04.160 Cause you know, we both we both agreed that there was a 00:30:04.160 --> 00:30:06.400 God. We agreed that there was a flood. 00:30:06.400 --> 00:30:08.640 And so I remember one day we were having lunch and like 00:30:08.720 --> 00:30:11.760 we were the only two that had any any sort of spiritual 00:30:11.760 --> 00:30:13.360 basis for anything. 00:30:13.360 --> 00:30:15.520 And everyone else is just completely materialist. 00:30:15.600 --> 00:30:19.600 Those like it's you sometimes find strange friends in the world. 00:30:19.600 --> 00:30:22.000 But I was never evangelistic about anything. 00:30:22.320 --> 00:30:25.360 And so when I got online started talking about politics, it's It 00:30:25.360 --> 00:30:28.800 took me a year or two of addressing 00:30:29.680 --> 00:30:34.960 political issues, addressing kind of I began to realize in my in 00:30:34.960 --> 00:30:38.640 my own own mind that the things that we were seeing in 00:30:38.640 --> 00:30:42.800 the political sphere ultimately weren't going to have political solutions. 00:30:43.200 --> 00:30:45.200 I say ultimately, like there there are things that have to be 00:30:45.200 --> 00:30:47.200 done politically. 00:30:47.200 --> 00:30:51.360 But if you don't understand the spiritual undertones, you're gonna make poor 00:30:51.760 --> 00:30:53.040 political decisions. 00:30:53.040 --> 00:30:57.200 There are things that you have to understand about the creator before 00:30:57.200 --> 00:30:58.640 you can understand creation. 00:30:58.640 --> 00:31:01.040 And politics is fundamentally about creation. 00:31:01.040 --> 00:31:04.080 So there's stewardship, there are things we have to do in creation, 00:31:04.080 --> 00:31:07.040 but absent knowledge of God, we're not gonna do nearly as good 00:31:07.040 --> 00:31:08.080 of job. 00:31:08.080 --> 00:31:12.480 And so as I was talking about online with guys about politics, 00:31:12.480 --> 00:31:15.680 I started realizing more and more that I was having to talk 00:31:15.680 --> 00:31:17.040 about religion. 00:31:17.040 --> 00:31:19.360 I was having to say, wait a minute, I remember when I 00:31:19.360 --> 00:31:22.320 was, you know, a kid when I was being catechized, there was 00:31:22.320 --> 00:31:25.040 something about, you know, some small aspect of it. 00:31:25.040 --> 00:31:28.880 And so I kind of almost evangelized myself initially just from my 00:31:28.880 --> 00:31:30.800 catechesis as a teenager. 00:31:30.640 --> 00:31:34.240 as I was talking politically, I realized no I I need God 00:31:34.320 --> 00:31:36.320 to answer some of these questions. 00:31:36.320 --> 00:31:38.640 And that was a for m for me kind of a personal 00:31:38.640 --> 00:31:43.440 transformation of just realizing I'm wasting my time talking about politics because 00:31:43.760 --> 00:31:47.360 ultimately it's not going to help any of these people because we 00:31:47.360 --> 00:31:51.200 can't necessarily win the political battles, but we have to do what's 00:31:51.200 --> 00:31:53.680 right in God's eyes and then let him take care of the 00:31:53.680 --> 00:31:55.840 rest. And that's not in any way a we lose down here 00:31:56.240 --> 00:31:59.280 attitude. It's just let's put the first thing first. 00:31:59.280 --> 00:32:01.280 And so that was my transition. 00:32:01.280 --> 00:32:03.760 I I eventually, you know, rebranded online. 00:32:03.760 --> 00:32:06.480 I I more or less stopped talking about political stuff. 00:32:06.480 --> 00:32:10.480 Not that I don't care, but that I realized until we shore 00:32:10.480 --> 00:32:13.360 up the spiritual, everything else is going to continue to be in 00:32:13.360 --> 00:32:17.200 shambles. Because if you just want to debate politics, well then pagans 00:32:17.200 --> 00:32:20.320 have an equal seat at that table and you know, I'm I'm 00:32:20.320 --> 00:32:23.040 not necessarily going to win an argument with them from principle principle 00:32:23.200 --> 00:32:24.880 if I can't talk about the supernatural. 00:32:24.880 --> 00:32:27.440 So we just I took everything one step back so I could 00:32:27.440 --> 00:32:30.720 get to the foundational level and then be confident I was going 00:32:30.720 --> 00:32:34.320 to be on firm ground as I tackled all these other things. 00:32:34.320 --> 00:32:37.840 And ultimately that's the only place where these answers can be found. 00:32:37.840 --> 00:32:41.360 Mm-hmm. I think you're you're mirroring a journey that a lot of 00:32:41.360 --> 00:32:45.440 men have gone on over the past certainly myself, over the past 00:32:45.440 --> 00:32:49.040 four years, but some men less time, some men more, the recognition 00:32:49.440 --> 00:32:53.120 that there there is no that that the answers the the problems 00:32:53.120 --> 00:32:56.640 that we're struggling with at this moment in sort of human history, 00:32:56.640 --> 00:32:59.760 while they appear on the surface to be political or economic or 00:32:59.760 --> 00:33:03.280 cultural, that they're actually spirit fundamentally spiritual questions. 00:33:03.280 --> 00:33:06.000 I think a lot of people, men in particular and women as 00:33:06.000 --> 00:33:08.960 well in their own way, have been pushed, have been pushed to 00:33:08.960 --> 00:33:13.760 that point, um, looking beyond themselves or beyond material means for answers. 00:33:13.760 --> 00:33:15.280 Um I can relate to that very much. 00:33:15.280 --> 00:33:17.040 So Corey, that was it similar for you? 00:33:17.040 --> 00:33:19.360 I I get the sense that you've been a little bit more 00:33:19.360 --> 00:33:21.680 openly online for a little bit longer. 00:33:22.320 --> 00:33:25.200 To some degree, yes, with some of these things, and largely I 00:33:25.200 --> 00:33:26.880 was also focused on politics. 00:33:26.880 --> 00:33:28.720 I did political science as my 00:33:29.680 --> 00:33:33.680 main undergraduate degree, so I've been focused on that sort of thing 00:33:33.680 --> 00:33:34.400 for quite some time. 00:33:34.400 --> 00:33:38.080 And I worked in politics for a while, not as the front 00:33:38.080 --> 00:33:39.360 man, but behind the scenes. 00:33:39.360 --> 00:33:41.680 I did get out the vote efforts and organization and all that 00:33:41.680 --> 00:33:44.720 stuff in a handful of different states. 00:33:44.720 --> 00:33:47.760 I guess people can probably guess for which party, as much as 00:33:47.760 --> 00:33:49.440 I don't like them sometimes. 00:33:49.440 --> 00:33:49.760 But 00:33:50.880 --> 00:33:56.640 really, I started taking Christianity, my faith more seriously. 00:33:56.640 --> 00:33:58.240 Because I've been a Christian my entire life. 00:33:58.240 --> 00:33:59.600 I was raised in a Christian family. 00:33:59.600 --> 00:34:00.800 My parents are still married. 00:34:00.800 --> 00:34:01.680 They're both Christian. 00:34:01.680 --> 00:34:04.000 I was baptized by my father in a church. 00:34:04.000 --> 00:34:07.440 He's not a pastor, but that was something they permitted fathers to 00:34:07.440 --> 00:34:08.400 do at that church. 00:34:08.720 --> 00:34:11.840 I was not, however, raised Lutheran. 00:34:11.840 --> 00:34:13.040 I've mentioned it before. 00:34:13.040 --> 00:34:18.240 I was sort of half-not even really half, but half Lutheran, half 00:34:18.240 --> 00:34:21.520 non-domin non-denominational, which really means Baptist in the U.S. 00:34:21.520 --> 00:34:26.560 context, because I attended an LCMS school, but I went to a 00:34:26.560 --> 00:34:29.280 non-denominational church. 00:34:29.280 --> 00:34:33.360 Then my parents eventually switched churches and we wound up going to 00:34:33.360 --> 00:34:38.160 a church that technically historically was Lutheran, but it's the Covenant Church, 00:34:38.160 --> 00:34:41.760 which is now basically non-denominational, thankfully one of the the good ones 00:34:41.760 --> 00:34:45.040 under that umbrella, not one of the more lefty ones. 00:34:45.280 --> 00:34:50.320 But I really didn't pay that much attention to theology and doctrine 00:34:50.480 --> 00:34:53.920 all of these various things, because I was more focused on politics 00:34:53.920 --> 00:34:56.240 and philosophy and those, because those were the things that I was 00:34:56.240 --> 00:34:58.320 doing in, like I said, undergrad. 00:34:58.960 --> 00:35:05.520 But I started to take Christianity more seriously again, probably a little 00:35:05.520 --> 00:35:11.120 while after I graduated law school, so probably right around 2013, and 00:35:11.120 --> 00:35:12.480 then I read a lot of 00:35:13.600 --> 00:35:18.400 theology, a lot of the relevant literature in this area. 00:35:18.400 --> 00:35:20.640 And I didn't actually start with Lutheranism. 00:35:20.640 --> 00:35:25.040 I started with the Reform, because by and large, we have a 00:35:25.040 --> 00:35:29.920 fairly largely reformed context here in the United States, if we take 00:35:29.920 --> 00:35:34.000 the term very broadly, because even the Baptists are sort of at 00:35:34.000 --> 00:35:36.480 the edge of the Reformed umbrella. 00:35:36.480 --> 00:35:40.800 And so I read a lot of the Reformed theology first, and 00:35:40.800 --> 00:35:42.960 I read through a lot of other things as well, not just 00:35:42.960 --> 00:35:47.440 Reformed and Lutheran, but I eventually got around to reading the Lutherans. 00:35:47.440 --> 00:35:51.520 Perhaps some will think that's odd that I would end with reading 00:35:51.520 --> 00:35:55.920 the Lutherans because as a German from a Lutheran background you think 00:35:55.920 --> 00:35:57.360 I'd start there, but I didn't. 00:35:57.360 --> 00:36:01.920 And so it wasn't until really about twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen when 00:36:01.920 --> 00:36:04.240 I started to read a lot of the Lutheran materials. 00:36:04.240 --> 00:36:10.080 And that's when I officially joined an LCMS congregation and started to 00:36:10.080 --> 00:36:14.480 take Lutheranism more seriously because I was convinced by the Book of 00:36:14.480 --> 00:36:19.280 Concord, by Luther, by the arguments from the Lutheran divines that this 00:36:19.280 --> 00:36:23.760 is a correct interpretation, a correct exegesis of scripture. 00:36:23.760 --> 00:36:26.880 And so that's when I started to take that seriously. 00:36:26.880 --> 00:36:32.400 However, I did not immediately launch into teaching or anything like that. 00:36:32.400 --> 00:36:35.680 I took the admonitions of scripture seriously that if you are a 00:36:35.680 --> 00:36:38.640 new convert, as it were, you are not supposed to immediately stand 00:36:38.640 --> 00:36:40.800 up and start speaking publicly. 00:36:40.800 --> 00:36:45.920 And so in twenty twenty I created a separate Twitter account to 00:36:45.920 --> 00:36:49.200 discuss theology and Lutheranism and things like that. 00:36:49.200 --> 00:36:51.760 That's my Mahler LCMS account. 00:36:51.760 --> 00:36:55.440 My other one is from twenty twelve, I believe, it's much older, 00:36:55.440 --> 00:37:01.600 but that's when I really started discussing Lutheranism and theology and Christianity 00:37:01.600 --> 00:37:05.840 publicly. I'd been discussing politics and things like that publicly for a 00:37:05.840 --> 00:37:07.760 decade at that point, if not longer 00:37:08.720 --> 00:37:12.000 But that is when I sort of came to the same conclusions 00:37:12.000 --> 00:37:12.720 as Wo. 00:37:12.720 --> 00:37:16.160 It's not I'm not disagreeing with what Woe said, but I am 00:37:16.480 --> 00:37:17.920 putting a nuance on it. 00:37:17.920 --> 00:37:20.880 There is a political solution to all of our problems. 00:37:20.880 --> 00:37:24.080 But the problem is we both see what kind of political solution 00:37:24.080 --> 00:37:26.720 that is if it is not a Christian one. 00:37:26.720 --> 00:37:30.880 And that's not a road that anyone should want to go down. 00:37:30.880 --> 00:37:33.840 Amen. That's an ug that's an ugly road. 00:37:33.840 --> 00:37:38.960 And so we need We need to have a Christian political right 00:37:39.360 --> 00:37:42.640 if we are going to accomplish anything that's worth accomplishing. 00:37:42.640 --> 00:37:47.280 Because you can achieve victory in a completely materialistic, atheistic way. 00:37:47.280 --> 00:37:49.120 You can absolutely win like that. 00:37:49.120 --> 00:37:51.680 It's not a victory that's worth having. 00:37:51.680 --> 00:37:56.960 And so there are issues with regard to morality, religion, these other 00:37:56.960 --> 00:38:01.520 things. These tie into politics, but they're absolutely necessary in order to 00:38:01.520 --> 00:38:06.960 have the kind of political movement that actually achieves something worth achieving. 00:38:06.960 --> 00:38:12.080 And also, as Well was saying, part of it is just helping 00:38:12.080 --> 00:38:15.280 all of the men in our society who are essentially lost. 00:38:15.280 --> 00:38:17.680 They're wandering through life with no purpose. 00:38:17.680 --> 00:38:20.720 They hate everything because it seems like everything hates them, and in 00:38:20.720 --> 00:38:23.200 fact, in many cases, that's true. 00:38:23.200 --> 00:38:25.840 But those are the men to whom the church should be reaching 00:38:25.840 --> 00:38:27.440 out, and the church is not. 00:38:27.440 --> 00:38:30.320 And so part of what we're doing is reaching out to those 00:38:30.320 --> 00:38:35.920 men. And yes, of course, if you can get these men who 00:38:35.920 --> 00:38:40.560 are atomized, who are Separated from everything in their life and from 00:38:40.560 --> 00:38:43.120 their culture, from their family, from their history. 00:38:43.120 --> 00:38:46.800 If you can get them into a group they know cares about 00:38:46.800 --> 00:38:51.120 them, you can actually achieve things both with regard to the churches 00:38:51.120 --> 00:38:53.600 and also with regard to the political sphere. 00:38:53.600 --> 00:38:57.200 It's not that it's a mercenary attempt to organize things, it's that 00:38:57.200 --> 00:38:59.200 this is the truth and it matters. 00:38:59.200 --> 00:39:02.880 Even if you don't wind up with political successes, that's a separate 00:39:02.880 --> 00:39:08.400 topic perhaps, these things matter because these are ultimate things. 00:39:08.400 --> 00:39:11.920 These determine where you spend your eternity. 00:39:11.920 --> 00:39:16.480 And so the politics, the political sphere, the left-hand kingdom is vitally 00:39:16.480 --> 00:39:20.960 important. We'll never minimize the importance of the left hand kingdom. 00:39:20.960 --> 00:39:23.440 But you have to get things right in the right hand kingdom 00:39:23.440 --> 00:39:23.920 as well. 00:39:23.920 --> 00:39:27.840 And we both started looking around roughly the same time at the 00:39:27.840 --> 00:39:31.600 right hand kingdom and found that it's in worse shape than the 00:39:31.600 --> 00:39:35.760 left hand kingdom, which is almost impressive considering how bad our politics 00:39:35.760 --> 00:39:36.960 are these days. 00:39:36.960 --> 00:39:42.240 And so the churches have we have to clean house because no 00:39:42.240 --> 00:39:44.400 one has done it for a century and things have just been 00:39:44.400 --> 00:39:47.520 allowed to rot and decay and fall apart. 00:39:47.520 --> 00:39:50.560 And that's why we see men leaving the churches in droves and 00:39:50.560 --> 00:39:51.600 not returning. 00:39:51.600 --> 00:39:55.680 Except for now, since we finally have some men who are preaching 00:39:56.080 --> 00:39:59.360 and teaching the truth, we do see other men returning to the 00:39:59.360 --> 00:40:01.120 churches, which is what is necessary. 00:40:01.120 --> 00:40:03.760 You can't have a church that is nothing but women. 00:40:03.760 --> 00:40:04.640 That's not a church. 00:40:04.640 --> 00:40:05.840 That's a gossip club. 00:40:05.840 --> 00:40:06.640 Amen. 00:40:07.200 --> 00:40:10.480 I I appreciate you uh calling out that there's an ugly road 00:40:10.480 --> 00:40:11.760 ahead that nobody wants. 00:40:12.000 --> 00:40:14.400 and the reason why I appreciate you saying that is because um 00:40:14.480 --> 00:40:17.040 in fact I was just listening the last episode that I had 00:40:17.040 --> 00:40:20.000 a chance to really dig into in any depth with s the 00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:23.280 the slander episode And one of the things, uh, I think I 00:40:23.280 --> 00:40:25.920 might have gotten about a third of the way through it. 00:40:25.920 --> 00:40:29.600 So one of the things that um seems to have happened here, 00:40:29.600 --> 00:40:32.000 at least in the way that I've heard people speak about your 00:40:32.000 --> 00:40:35.360 podcast, is painting you uh both as men that I uh from 00:40:35.360 --> 00:40:38.160 listening to the podcast itself that I don't think you are. 00:40:38.160 --> 00:40:41.200 Um or at least not in so far as I've listened. 00:40:41.200 --> 00:40:44.240 Uh and and to hear you say things like that, like this 00:40:44.240 --> 00:40:46.160 is a road that no one wants to take, 'cause what's the 00:40:46.160 --> 00:40:49.760 first slander that al that always always that always gets thrown at 00:40:49.760 --> 00:40:53.120 anybody whenever they try, particularly a man whenever he tries to speak 00:40:53.120 --> 00:40:57.440 up for biblical fidelity against what we might call the post-war consensus. 00:40:57.440 --> 00:41:00.080 Right? He gets he gets tarred with a lot of different names, 00:41:00.080 --> 00:41:03.200 but one of them implies like violent radical, right? 00:41:03.200 --> 00:41:06.320 Uh wanting to take up wanting to take up like J6, right? 00:41:06.320 --> 00:41:07.520 Something like that. 00:41:07.520 --> 00:41:07.840 And 00:41:08.080 --> 00:41:09.040 uh go ahead. 00:41:09.520 --> 00:41:11.040 The term is always Nazi, yes. 00:41:11.040 --> 00:41:12.080 Yeah, I mean, yes. 00:41:12.080 --> 00:41:15.520 I mean it uh to the extent that's true, and I think 00:41:15.520 --> 00:41:17.760 that there's other words that are used to kind of point in 00:41:17.760 --> 00:41:19.440 that direction, but essentially yes, like not 00:41:20.400 --> 00:41:22.320 racist is one misogynist. 00:41:22.320 --> 00:41:26.480 There's a whole universe of terms that Satan uses and abuses to 00:41:26.720 --> 00:41:29.600 slander men who are just speaking biblical truths. 00:41:29.760 --> 00:41:30.240 Yes. Yeah. 00:41:30.240 --> 00:41:33.600 And I and I think the thing that they focus particularly on 00:41:33.760 --> 00:41:39.600 uh culturally today is uh the the physical violence, specifically because the 00:41:39.600 --> 00:41:43.440 big weapon that's used to silence men is is uh hatred of 00:41:43.440 --> 00:41:44.320 men's anger. 00:41:44.320 --> 00:41:48.560 Right. so what they do is they shame men's righteous anger and 00:41:48.560 --> 00:41:51.040 and hatred, which is one of the episodes I listened to today 00:41:51.040 --> 00:41:55.440 as well, and by by accusing men preemptively of violence. 00:41:55.440 --> 00:41:58.960 And so men, you know, aren't they they aren't necessarily inclined to 00:41:58.960 --> 00:42:01.920 that level of violence so they shut down so they to avoid 00:42:01.920 --> 00:42:02.880 the slander. 00:42:02.880 --> 00:42:05.520 So you saying that very at the very start that no one 00:42:05.520 --> 00:42:09.520 wants that ugly path immediately cuts off any notion that like anyone 00:42:09.520 --> 00:42:11.920 talking on this call is talking about violent revolution. 00:42:11.920 --> 00:42:13.680 Because that that's always the first thing. 00:42:13.680 --> 00:42:16.880 That's what uh January 6th was, one way or another. 00:42:16.880 --> 00:42:19.600 It was like, look at all these horrible people doing this violent 00:42:19.600 --> 00:42:21.600 thing to our poor sacred capital. 00:42:21.600 --> 00:42:25.360 Right. And it's like that's not what anyone's necessarily advocating for, though 00:42:25.440 --> 00:42:29.120 like something like that, you know, from from the outside might be 00:42:29.120 --> 00:42:32.000 inevitable depending on you know, where we go with the conversation. 00:42:32.000 --> 00:42:35.120 Like just talking about the threats that America is facing from within 00:42:35.200 --> 00:42:38.000 coming over the border and from without, but that's another topic. 00:42:38.000 --> 00:42:41.280 But I think it's important to say that we as men can 00:42:41.280 --> 00:42:43.360 speak up for theological truth. 00:42:43.360 --> 00:42:47.600 And though that has a quality of aggressiveness to it, the spiritual 00:42:47.600 --> 00:42:51.040 aggress aggressiveness does not imply physical aggressiveness. 00:42:51.040 --> 00:42:53.760 And I think those two get confused very easily. 00:42:54.240 --> 00:42:57.280 We've been very clear that it is the duty of the Christian 00:42:57.280 --> 00:42:58.320 prince to wield the sword. 00:42:59.120 --> 00:43:02.080 And that does, of course, include violence, because that is the nature 00:43:02.080 --> 00:43:02.960 of a sword. 00:43:02.960 --> 00:43:06.320 A sword solves problems only one way. 00:43:06.320 --> 00:43:10.400 And Lutherans, we have, of course the Magdeburg Confession when it comes 00:43:10.400 --> 00:43:16.960 to speaking of things like Rebellion, revolution, resisting a higher authority who 00:43:16.960 --> 00:43:19.120 is abusing his office. 00:43:19.120 --> 00:43:21.600 And there are different levels, and there are different things that are 00:43:21.600 --> 00:43:25.520 permissible depending on what is being done, because the things that are 00:43:25.520 --> 00:43:29.440 being done ultimately are being done against God, and we see instances 00:43:29.440 --> 00:43:34.400 of that in scripture and men will stand up and do what 00:43:34.400 --> 00:43:36.560 is necessary. 00:43:36.560 --> 00:43:39.120 There is a serious problem in the church when it comes to 00:43:39.120 --> 00:43:41.600 speaking about violence. 00:43:41.600 --> 00:43:43.920 Part of it is our culture, and part of it is because 00:43:43.920 --> 00:43:47.280 there's always the looming threat of the FBI knocking down your door 00:43:47.440 --> 00:43:49.840 or just no knock raiding you. 00:43:49.840 --> 00:43:54.480 But the reality is that if you are arguing that violence is 00:43:54.480 --> 00:43:57.440 not at all part of the Christian tradition, then you're no longer 00:43:57.440 --> 00:43:59.120 a Christian, you're an anabaptist. 00:43:59.120 --> 00:44:01.280 Yeah. The radical kind of Anabaptist. 00:44:01.280 --> 00:44:04.000 Which there's some irony there because they were actually so violent that 00:44:04.000 --> 00:44:06.960 the emperor had to call in the troops to quell a rebellion, 00:44:06.960 --> 00:44:08.800 basically burn a city to the ground. 00:44:08.800 --> 00:44:13.440 But that aside, they are the ones who try to argue, particularly 00:44:13.600 --> 00:44:16.720 we have some of the modern versions of the Mennonites and others. 00:44:16.720 --> 00:44:18.080 They're basically pacifists. 00:44:18.080 --> 00:44:20.800 You cannot be a Christian and a pacifist. 00:44:20.800 --> 00:44:22.720 One, it's accusing God of sin. 00:44:22.720 --> 00:44:26.160 You're trying to be more moral than God, which is always sin, 00:44:26.160 --> 00:44:30.160 because you cannot be more moral than morality itself. 00:44:30.160 --> 00:44:34.640 But many of the instances where you have a Theophany or a 00:44:34.640 --> 00:44:40.240 Christophany, particularly in the Old Testament, God is enacting violence on his 00:44:40.320 --> 00:44:44.480 enemies. You can think of Sodom and Gomorrah, you can think of 00:44:44.480 --> 00:44:47.360 the conquest of Canaan, you can think of what God did to 00:44:47.360 --> 00:44:48.880 the Egyptians. 00:44:48.880 --> 00:44:50.880 God is not a pacifist. 00:44:50.880 --> 00:44:53.200 God destroys his enemies. 00:44:53.200 --> 00:44:56.480 This is one of those things, and this comes perhaps from some 00:44:56.480 --> 00:45:00.080 of the political background, but it's something that we used to recognize 00:45:00.080 --> 00:45:02.000 in theology as well. 00:45:02.000 --> 00:45:07.680 Ultimately, all of this rests on God's infinite ability to bring infinite 00:45:07.680 --> 00:45:09.760 violence against those who oppose him. 00:45:09.760 --> 00:45:12.560 That is the basis of God's authority. 00:45:12.560 --> 00:45:15.760 If God could not destroy his enemies, he wouldn't be God. 00:45:15.760 --> 00:45:20.480 And the way that he destroys them is metaphorically, figuratively with the 00:45:20.480 --> 00:45:23.600 sword. He has better things at his disposal, certainly. 00:45:23.600 --> 00:45:27.040 He can send fire and brimstone and locusts and any number of 00:45:27.040 --> 00:45:28.640 other things on you. 00:45:28.640 --> 00:45:32.640 But God's power rests upon his infinite power 00:45:33.520 --> 00:45:36.000 to bring violence against his enemies. 00:45:36.000 --> 00:45:39.600 And so if we're going to condemn violence in a blanket sense 00:45:39.760 --> 00:45:42.880 as Christians, we're condemning God. 00:45:42.880 --> 00:45:43.760 That's sin. 00:45:43.760 --> 00:45:44.560 We can't do that. 00:45:44.560 --> 00:45:46.800 Which is this is one of those things that we bring up 00:45:46.800 --> 00:45:49.760 so many times in the podcast. 00:45:49.760 --> 00:45:54.480 Modern morality, we could put that in scare quotes, but modern morality 00:45:54.480 --> 00:45:57.600 attempts to argue that there's this list of things that you can't 00:45:57.600 --> 00:46:01.200 do. Oh, we're so much more enlightened than our ancestors, and these 00:46:01.200 --> 00:46:02.720 things were wicked and evil. 00:46:02.720 --> 00:46:05.600 Almost every single thing on the list is something that God has 00:46:05.600 --> 00:46:07.520 done or told us to do. 00:46:07.520 --> 00:46:10.320 And so what they're doing is they're accusing God of sin. 00:46:10.320 --> 00:46:12.400 They're announcing their own apostasy. 00:46:12.400 --> 00:46:16.160 You cannot believe the things that the modern world tells you to 00:46:16.160 --> 00:46:17.840 believe and stay a Christian. 00:46:17.840 --> 00:46:20.320 That's why we have episodes, for instance, on slavery. 00:46:20.320 --> 00:46:23.760 You can't say that slavery is per se sinful and be a 00:46:23.760 --> 00:46:27.760 Christian. Because God makes regulations for it. 00:46:27.760 --> 00:46:30.720 God gives Abraham slaves. 00:46:30.720 --> 00:46:32.080 God cannot sin. 00:46:32.080 --> 00:46:33.520 What God does isn't sin. 00:46:33.520 --> 00:46:37.600 So if God gives someone slaves, slavery cannot be sin. 00:46:37.600 --> 00:46:39.040 These are just things that people ignore. 00:46:39.280 --> 00:46:42.080 They're right there in Scripture, which is one of the things that 00:46:42.080 --> 00:46:43.440 Woe and I do. 00:46:43.440 --> 00:46:45.440 We pay attention when we read. 00:46:45.440 --> 00:46:49.760 If you just pay attention to Scripture while you're reading, many of 00:46:49.760 --> 00:46:56.400 these things have answers, explicit answers in scripture, sometimes very slightly implicit. 00:46:56.400 --> 00:47:01.360 For instance, when it comes to polygyny, you have to read through 00:47:01.520 --> 00:47:06.880 the full story of David and Bathsheba to realize God offers David 00:47:06.880 --> 00:47:08.240 more wives. 00:47:08.240 --> 00:47:09.600 Well that's polygyny. 00:47:09.600 --> 00:47:12.080 That's God offering a man additional wives. 00:47:12.080 --> 00:47:15.120 You can't say it's sin because you're accusing God of sin. 00:47:15.120 --> 00:47:17.520 But you have to pay attention when you read that passage and 00:47:17.520 --> 00:47:19.680 not just gloss over it. 00:47:19.680 --> 00:47:23.120 There's a difference between staring at a book and hallucinating and actually 00:47:23.120 --> 00:47:23.760 reading it. 00:47:23.760 --> 00:47:27.040 And that's why we keep trying to emphasize to men they need 00:47:27.040 --> 00:47:28.400 to read scripture. 00:47:28.400 --> 00:47:29.600 You can't just stare at the Bible. 00:47:29.600 --> 00:47:31.680 You don't get credit for trying. 00:47:31.680 --> 00:47:34.000 You have to actually read the thing. 00:47:34.000 --> 00:47:37.280 Because God is speaking to you through his word. 00:47:37.280 --> 00:47:39.600 But you have to read what he actually wrote, what he had 00:47:39.600 --> 00:47:40.960 other men write. 00:47:41.440 --> 00:47:46.800 Yes. Yes, I mean I I talk to uh argue with the 00:47:46.800 --> 00:47:51.360 polygyny bros on social media all the time, particularly on Instagram. 00:47:51.360 --> 00:47:54.320 Um I agree with you that I I um in so far 00:47:54.320 --> 00:47:57.680 as like God does offer David uh multiple wives, and there are 00:47:57.680 --> 00:48:02.000 biblical characters throughout the Old Testament in particular that uh that have 00:48:02.000 --> 00:48:03.040 multiple wives. 00:48:03.040 --> 00:48:04.960 But I what uh the point that I try to make to 00:48:04.960 --> 00:48:06.960 men is like that's not normative. 00:48:06.960 --> 00:48:10.880 Like to mistake to mistake the behavior of David and Solomon and 00:48:10.880 --> 00:48:13.840 these other men, you know, throughout scripture, like what I tell the 00:48:13.840 --> 00:48:16.960 polygyny bros today is like, bro, you can't get one wife. 00:48:16.960 --> 00:48:19.600 Like let's hold off on the talking about the the multiple wives 00:48:19.600 --> 00:48:19.920 thing. 00:48:20.400 --> 00:48:21.280 Right? Yes. 00:48:21.280 --> 00:48:25.840 Well it's it's the difference between something being morally permissible and something 00:48:25.840 --> 00:48:26.880 being wise. 00:48:26.880 --> 00:48:29.360 Sure. Which we've emphasized that many times. 00:48:29.360 --> 00:48:33.680 It is almost always unwise to have multiple wives. 00:48:33.680 --> 00:48:37.040 Right. One of the major exceptions, and it's one of the places 00:48:37.040 --> 00:48:38.880 you see in scripture, is the king. 00:48:38.880 --> 00:48:41.440 It makes sense for a king to have multiple wives for a 00:48:41.440 --> 00:48:42.160 number of reasons. 00:48:42.160 --> 00:48:44.080 One, of course, is the most obvious. 00:48:44.080 --> 00:48:45.840 Ensuring he has an heir. 00:48:45.840 --> 00:48:46.960 That's an important thing to do. 00:48:46.960 --> 00:48:49.520 That became a major problem in the Reformation in England. 00:48:49.520 --> 00:48:53.760 If he had just taken additional wives without killing his previous wives 00:48:53.760 --> 00:48:57.920 or divorcing them, etc., you would have had fewer problems. 00:48:57.920 --> 00:49:00.320 But of course the Pope didn't, which was a big part of 00:49:00.320 --> 00:49:02.000 the problem. 00:49:02.000 --> 00:49:04.400 It makes sense for certain men to have multiple wives. 00:49:04.400 --> 00:49:05.680 So the king, it makes sense. 00:49:05.680 --> 00:49:09.120 For most men, you are just inviting strife into your home. 00:49:09.120 --> 00:49:12.080 Look at what happens with some of the men in the Bible 00:49:12.080 --> 00:49:16.160 who engaged in polygyny, it the most obvious example is perhaps Solomon 00:49:16.320 --> 00:49:20.320 who went way overboard and destroyed himself and his kingdom in the 00:49:20.320 --> 00:49:24.880 process. Just because something is morally permissible does not mean that you 00:49:24.880 --> 00:49:27.360 should do it in any given situation. 00:49:27.360 --> 00:49:31.680 What we're arguing when we argue over something like polygyny or slavery 00:49:31.840 --> 00:49:34.880 isn't that you have to legalize it and we should absolutely engage 00:49:34.880 --> 00:49:36.880 in this is a good thing. 00:49:36.880 --> 00:49:41.920 It's the difference between saying you are permitted morally to do this 00:49:42.080 --> 00:49:44.400 and on the other side saying no, this is sin. 00:49:44.400 --> 00:49:47.600 Because when you say no, this is sin, again, you're accusing God 00:49:47.600 --> 00:49:48.080 of sin. 00:49:48.080 --> 00:49:49.120 So you have to refute that. 00:49:49.120 --> 00:49:51.280 You have to reject that argument. 00:49:51.600 --> 00:49:57.920 And many men have trouble drawing that distinction, that difference between permissibility 00:49:57.920 --> 00:49:58.800 and wisdom. 00:49:58.800 --> 00:50:01.680 Some of our enemies, of course, are just conflating the truth the 00:50:01.680 --> 00:50:03.920 two because they're malicious. 00:50:03.920 --> 00:50:07.200 But there are those who just don't grasp that distinction. 00:50:07.200 --> 00:50:12.080 And it's vitally important because God does not always say you must. 00:50:12.080 --> 00:50:14.560 Sometimes he says you may. 00:50:14.560 --> 00:50:15.440 Mm-hmm. 00:50:15.440 --> 00:50:16.560 Yes. Yes. 00:50:16.560 --> 00:50:22.400 And I think What this all points to is that speaking the 00:50:22.400 --> 00:50:27.120 clear truth of scripture, what it says about men and women, and 00:50:27.120 --> 00:50:29.440 as you guys talk about in the podcast, what it says about 00:50:29.440 --> 00:50:32.320 race, what it says about all of these subjects that are so 00:50:32.720 --> 00:50:38.640 deeply confrontational to our modern political era, our modern political uh ethics 00:50:38.720 --> 00:50:42.880 such as they are, is is the part where that gets very 00:50:42.880 --> 00:50:44.160 scary to people. 00:50:44.160 --> 00:50:48.400 It gets very frightening because it truthfully turns our entire wicked age 00:50:48.400 --> 00:50:51.120 on its head and our wicked age is standing on its head 00:50:51.120 --> 00:50:53.680 anyway. So it writes thing it writes the ship. 00:50:53.680 --> 00:50:57.200 But people will look at that and they will feel very deeply 00:50:57.200 --> 00:51:02.080 confronted by those ideas and that confrontation, that feeling of being confronted 00:51:02.080 --> 00:51:03.920 by the truth leads to fear. 00:51:03.920 --> 00:51:07.120 And fear puts people in this kind of flight or uh fight 00:51:07.280 --> 00:51:08.880 or flight state, right? 00:51:08.880 --> 00:51:10.400 Being confronted with the truth. 00:51:10.400 --> 00:51:14.720 And their thought immediately goes to the idea of violence. 00:51:14.720 --> 00:51:17.440 Uh and and this is this is how discuss this is why 00:51:17.440 --> 00:51:18.880 the FBI gets involved. 00:51:18.880 --> 00:51:22.000 This is why these no knock raids get involved, is because you 00:51:22.000 --> 00:51:24.160 have people speaking up for biblical truth. 00:51:24.160 --> 00:51:26.160 The truth is in a sense violence. 00:51:26.160 --> 00:51:28.160 The truth is aggressive to lies. 00:51:28.160 --> 00:51:31.440 And when we live in an era that is built upon a 00:51:31.680 --> 00:51:36.720 foundation of lies, naturally people are going to draw that conclusion. 00:51:36.720 --> 00:51:40.160 And I think it's important to speak to that conclusion right away 00:51:40.240 --> 00:51:43.120 in order to set the ground to approach truth at all. 00:51:43.120 --> 00:51:46.160 Because if you if you think about how dumbed down people have 00:51:46.160 --> 00:51:51.040 gotten, the inability to see that simple distinction between must and may, 00:51:51.040 --> 00:51:54.800 that very simple, like must do this set of things. 00:51:54.800 --> 00:51:56.560 You may do this set of things. 00:51:56.560 --> 00:51:57.680 People just don't get that. 00:51:57.680 --> 00:51:59.520 But if we were to rewind the clock, I don't know how 00:51:59.520 --> 00:52:01.600 far do you want how far back do you want to go? 00:52:01.600 --> 00:52:03.280 People would understand that distinction. 00:52:03.280 --> 00:52:07.280 So in this dumbed-down environment where people can't understand these fine distinctions 00:52:07.280 --> 00:52:11.440 between what scripture says our behavior as humans should be and could 00:52:11.440 --> 00:52:13.040 be, people don't get that. 00:52:13.040 --> 00:52:16.400 So they're naturally going to jump immediately to fear and naturally naturally 00:52:16.400 --> 00:52:18.240 to the kind of response that they didn't 00:52:19.440 --> 00:52:21.440 the people who are trying to tell them the truth. 00:52:21.440 --> 00:52:24.320 And so that's why it's important to set this ground of rash, 00:52:24.320 --> 00:52:28.720 we'll call it rationality, to say, look, we're talking about things that 00:52:28.720 --> 00:52:30.800 will feel very confronting. 00:52:30.800 --> 00:52:31.760 And that's okay. 00:52:31.760 --> 00:52:34.160 Whoa, you said uh I think it was in uh it was 00:52:34.160 --> 00:52:37.280 in one of the episodes today, that you don't give much regard 00:52:37.280 --> 00:52:38.320 to your emotions. 00:52:38.320 --> 00:52:40.480 And I really appreciated that 'cause I can relate to it. 00:52:40.480 --> 00:52:43.040 So maybe maybe you can s you can speak to that point 00:52:43.040 --> 00:52:47.120 in particular because not giving regard to your emotional response, to our 00:52:47.120 --> 00:52:51.920 emotional response to a fact is so crucial to navigate through that. 00:52:51.920 --> 00:52:54.240 So maybe you can maybe you can unpack that a little 00:52:54.240 --> 00:52:54.640 bit. 00:52:55.040 --> 00:52:59.840 My personal approach has always been just try to get things right. 00:52:59.840 --> 00:53:02.960 I it's it it's more important to me to be right than 00:53:03.440 --> 00:53:05.120 pretty much anything else. 00:53:05.120 --> 00:53:07.920 And it I don't say that in any sort of idolatrous fashion. 00:53:07.920 --> 00:53:12.320 It's just the truth for me is is the root, the truth 00:53:12.320 --> 00:53:13.200 of whatever. 00:53:13.200 --> 00:53:17.200 And then when I look at the truth about whatever, if it 00:53:17.200 --> 00:53:19.680 I don't like it or if it doesn't make me feel good, 00:53:19.680 --> 00:53:20.560 okay, whatever. 00:53:20.560 --> 00:53:21.840 That's the truth too. 00:53:21.840 --> 00:53:24.960 Sometimes the truth that I read in the Bible is that I'm 00:53:24.960 --> 00:53:26.560 a poor miserable sinner. 00:53:26.560 --> 00:53:29.600 I read through passages and like, yep, this is a laundry list 00:53:29.600 --> 00:53:33.200 of all the crap I was doing and it's disgusting. 00:53:33.200 --> 00:53:35.760 But I don't look at it and try to find some excuse 00:53:35.760 --> 00:53:40.240 for how that was contextual to the you know, the the climate 00:53:40.240 --> 00:53:42.720 in that day and it doesn't apply to me and so I'm 00:53:42.640 --> 00:53:43.760 not actually a sinner. 00:53:43.760 --> 00:53:45.360 No, I'm absolutely a sinner. 00:53:45.360 --> 00:53:47.920 And God knew it and He wrote about it and I look 00:53:47.920 --> 00:53:51.200 at it and so the fact that you know maybe it doesn't 00:53:51.120 --> 00:53:54.560 make me feel good is is secondary, the fact that it's true. 00:53:54.560 --> 00:53:57.920 And I think that you know you're talking about people having emotional 00:53:57.920 --> 00:54:02.240 responses to many of the things that we talk about, a lot 00:54:02.240 --> 00:54:07.120 of that is fundamentally rooted in just the pure feminization of all 00:54:07.120 --> 00:54:11.920 of Western culture, where it is terrifying not to be a member 00:54:11.920 --> 00:54:12.880 of the crowd. 00:54:13.280 --> 00:54:17.280 And this is particularly acute, I think, in the church, because Christians 00:54:17.280 --> 00:54:20.880 are already inherently on the outs with the world to some extent 00:54:21.040 --> 00:54:23.200 because you know there's you kind of have to believe in the 00:54:23.200 --> 00:54:27.680 supernatural to be a Christian, although plenty really don't anymore. 00:54:27.680 --> 00:54:31.360 But you're already sort of on the edge of the cusp of 00:54:31.680 --> 00:54:34.080 permissibility in the public sphere. 00:54:34.080 --> 00:54:37.600 And then if you say things like sodomy is a sin Or, 00:54:37.600 --> 00:54:41.040 you know, things like maybe girls shouldn't go to college, and maybe 00:54:41.040 --> 00:54:43.280 you can make a scriptural argument for that. 00:54:43.280 --> 00:54:48.000 Suddenly, if you're making a moral argument from scripture, so you're talking 00:54:48.000 --> 00:54:50.800 as a Christian, all the other Christians who are fitting in with 00:54:50.800 --> 00:54:55.200 MSMBC and with their HR departments five minutes ago, you show up 00:54:55.200 --> 00:54:58.160 and say, hey, this thing out over here, this is actually a 00:54:58.160 --> 00:54:59.200 sin too. 00:54:59.200 --> 00:55:02.720 That is a threat because they are then being forced to choose 00:55:02.720 --> 00:55:07.120 between a moral principle, a question of truth, and continuing to fit 00:55:07.120 --> 00:55:08.320 in with the herd. 00:55:08.320 --> 00:55:14.720 And so it's mercenary self-defense that there's this visceral fear and hatred 00:55:14.800 --> 00:55:18.080 and all these emotions that are brought to bear against whatever guy 00:55:18.080 --> 00:55:22.400 is speaking up and saying, Hey, this is what God actually says. 00:55:22.400 --> 00:55:24.480 And you see that everywhere in scripture. 00:55:24.480 --> 00:55:27.600 The prophets would show up from God and say, Hey, this is 00:55:27.600 --> 00:55:28.800 what God actually says. 00:55:28.800 --> 00:55:30.320 And generally they were killed. 00:55:30.320 --> 00:55:34.960 People got mad, they got offended, they was disruptive to their worlds, 00:55:34.960 --> 00:55:37.200 and so the easy thing to do is you kill the guy. 00:55:37.200 --> 00:55:38.880 And Corey and I are not prophets. 00:55:38.880 --> 00:55:39.840 We don't need to be. 00:55:39.840 --> 00:55:40.960 We have the Bible. 00:55:40.960 --> 00:55:43.920 But w to whatever extent there's a difference between us and other 00:55:43.920 --> 00:55:46.880 men's, it's just like Corey said, I read it and you know, 00:55:46.880 --> 00:55:51.360 sometimes I like I'll read something that I've glossed over fifty times 00:55:51.600 --> 00:55:53.840 and then for whatever reason on a particular day I read it, 00:55:53.840 --> 00:55:58.080 I'm like, oh wow, I this I I'm making a connection now 00:55:58.080 --> 00:56:00.720 to something in my life or to something in the world that's 00:56:00.720 --> 00:56:05.200 real. Like it's it's not some it's not some wild fantasy version. 00:56:05.200 --> 00:56:07.120 It's like it slaps you in the face. 00:56:07.120 --> 00:56:09.920 Sometimes the Holy Spirit slaps you in the face and says, This 00:56:09.920 --> 00:56:12.560 right here, this is what's important. 00:56:12.560 --> 00:56:15.440 And you know, as part of the the the episode we did 00:56:15.440 --> 00:56:17.920 this week where we're talking about target selection, one of the things 00:56:17.920 --> 00:56:21.120 that Corey and I are good at doing is just listening to 00:56:21.120 --> 00:56:25.760 what the anime the enemy is upset about when guys start screaming 00:56:25.760 --> 00:56:28.320 about things that we didn't even think were that interesting. 00:56:28.320 --> 00:56:30.960 Like Corey and I have talked a lot about race and we 00:56:30.960 --> 00:56:31.920 hate the subject. 00:56:31.920 --> 00:56:34.480 It's dumb, it's boring, it's tedious. 00:56:34.480 --> 00:56:36.640 I would really like never have to talk about it for the 00:56:36.640 --> 00:56:37.440 rest of my life. 00:56:37.440 --> 00:56:39.760 I don't find it interesting. 00:56:40.000 --> 00:56:42.720 But the enemy gets a vote. 00:56:42.720 --> 00:56:46.320 And so when the world is saying you can't do this for 00:56:46.320 --> 00:56:50.720 religious reasons, for moral reasons, that's when we pay attention. 00:56:50.720 --> 00:56:54.400 And that's where the you know, that's where the truth versus popularity 00:56:54.400 --> 00:56:55.520 thing comes into. 00:56:55.520 --> 00:56:57.840 Is it going to stink if you say the opposite of what 00:56:57.840 --> 00:56:58.480 the world says? 00:56:58.480 --> 00:56:59.760 Yeah, probably. 00:56:59.760 --> 00:57:00.080 And 00:57:01.200 --> 00:57:03.360 I think one of the hard things for a lot of guys 00:57:04.000 --> 00:57:07.360 who maybe don't have a tremendous amount of aptitude in this space 00:57:07.520 --> 00:57:11.920 is that there are certain people that just want to be disagreeable 00:57:11.920 --> 00:57:15.040 for its own sake is opposition defiant disorder. 00:57:15.040 --> 00:57:17.600 You're just going to do the opposite of whatever people are saying. 00:57:17.600 --> 00:57:20.320 And that's not at all what we're articulating. 00:57:20.320 --> 00:57:24.560 We try to listen and understand why is race important. 00:57:24.560 --> 00:57:25.920 And we have an answer for that. 00:57:25.920 --> 00:57:27.200 We have an answer that's scriptural. 00:57:27.200 --> 00:57:30.000 We have an answer that's rooted in the entirety of the history 00:57:30.000 --> 00:57:30.880 of humanity. 00:57:30.880 --> 00:57:33.520 And we can make the case for why m race is an 00:57:33.520 --> 00:57:34.480 issue today. 00:57:34.480 --> 00:57:37.680 We can put that in the context on the timeline and clearly 00:57:37.680 --> 00:57:39.200 explain to anyone who will listen. 00:57:39.760 --> 00:57:42.000 You mentioned the the slander episode. 00:57:42.000 --> 00:57:43.920 There are three types of people in the world. 00:57:43.920 --> 00:57:46.720 There's the type the people who've never heard of Stone Choir before, 00:57:46.720 --> 00:57:49.920 which is most of your audience, just virtually everyone on the planet, 00:57:49.920 --> 00:57:52.560 and then there's the small number of people who've just listened 'cause 00:57:52.560 --> 00:57:55.680 they were recommended by friends and they check it out and some 00:57:55.680 --> 00:57:56.880 think it's interesting. 00:57:56.880 --> 00:57:59.120 And then there's a set of people who've never listened to a 00:57:59.120 --> 00:58:02.720 word that we say, but they've entertained all the slander against us. 00:58:02.720 --> 00:58:05.920 And that goes back to you were talking about the the words 00:58:05.920 --> 00:58:10.640 that are used for men who are gonna step outside the boundary 00:58:10.640 --> 00:58:12.480 of permissible discourse. 00:58:12.480 --> 00:58:16.560 You get tarred with all those brushes to make you untouchable, which 00:58:16.560 --> 00:58:17.840 is fundamentally what we are. 00:58:17.840 --> 00:58:22.400 Corey and I have been rendered untouchable by the slander, not by 00:58:22.400 --> 00:58:25.120 what we say, but by what is said about us and then 00:58:25.120 --> 00:58:28.240 what is entertained by those who listen to it. 00:58:28.240 --> 00:58:29.680 And it's part of life. 00:58:29.920 --> 00:58:31.520 Like it's it's not a complaint. 00:58:31.920 --> 00:58:36.560 it's shameful for those who've participated because when people actually listen, they 00:58:36.560 --> 00:58:37.200 enjoy it. 00:58:37.200 --> 00:58:40.080 And if you've never heard anything about us, a lot of people 00:58:40.080 --> 00:58:40.800 are gonna enjoy it. 00:58:40.800 --> 00:58:42.640 And if you don't enjoy it, like it's just because you're bored, 00:58:42.640 --> 00:58:46.080 you don't find it interesting, but you would never conclude all the 00:58:46.080 --> 00:58:49.440 terrible things that are said about us by the slanders. 00:58:49.440 --> 00:58:52.800 And so that that sort of defamation and cutting out of the 00:58:52.800 --> 00:58:56.560 herd we did an episode on the the uh enemies playbook, that 00:58:56.560 --> 00:58:58.560 those those are Alinsky's rules. 00:58:58.560 --> 00:59:01.120 You pick people out who are causing a problem and you cut 00:59:01.120 --> 00:59:03.120 them off for the hurt so they have no support. 00:59:03.200 --> 00:59:04.720 That's basically where we're left. 00:59:04.720 --> 00:59:07.600 There is a huge number of people in our audience that I 00:59:07.600 --> 00:59:11.360 know for a fact listen that we'll like never publicly acknowledge it 00:59:11.520 --> 00:59:13.440 because it would cost them something. 00:59:13.440 --> 00:59:14.240 And that's fine. 00:59:14.240 --> 00:59:15.280 Like I get that. 00:59:15.280 --> 00:59:16.960 But that those are the stakes. 00:59:17.040 --> 00:59:19.280 The the that's the message to everyone. 00:59:19.200 --> 00:59:22.880 We are so far outside of the bounds of what's permissible, not 00:59:22.880 --> 00:59:28.400 because we say anything that's bad or mean or false, certainly, but 00:59:28.400 --> 00:59:31.360 we're saying the things that the world says you can't say. 00:59:31.360 --> 00:59:33.120 And for us, that's just the roadmap. 00:59:33.120 --> 00:59:35.200 If there's a set of things that the world says you can 00:59:35.360 --> 00:59:38.560 you can have your your pride parade, you can do all these 00:59:38.560 --> 00:59:41.440 wicked things, but you can't do this. 00:59:41.440 --> 00:59:46.000 When someone with a moral compass that not only broken but inverted 00:59:46.240 --> 00:59:49.600 points away from these things, that's where we know we need to 00:59:49.600 --> 00:59:50.960 go take a look. 00:59:50.960 --> 00:59:53.520 And that doesn't mean you automatically do the opposite, but you have 00:59:53.520 --> 00:59:56.560 to look, and what we find is that every one of those 00:59:56.560 --> 01:00:00.080 things is basically a roadmap for obedience to God. 01:00:01.280 --> 01:00:04.960 It's because you were slandered that I discovered your podcast in the 01:00:04.960 --> 01:00:05.760 first place. 01:00:05.760 --> 01:00:10.640 Uh one of our mutuals uh named Nick, he uh he posted 01:00:10.640 --> 01:00:13.760 on Twitter, he said uh something, how's everyone enjoying the podcast that 01:00:13.760 --> 01:00:14.880 none of us are supposed to be listening to 01:00:15.760 --> 01:00:17.280 something words along those lines. 01:00:17.520 --> 01:00:20.400 And I was like I d wasn't quite sure what that was. 01:00:20.400 --> 01:00:23.200 I think I I think I had probably heard something like that. 01:00:23.200 --> 01:00:26.400 So I messaged him and uh and then he sent me he 01:00:26.400 --> 01:00:29.040 sent me the show and uh you know I don't know that 01:00:29.040 --> 01:00:32.560 I have uh uh maybe you call it opposition defiant disorder, but 01:00:32.560 --> 01:00:36.320 uh my general response is if if I see all the people 01:00:36.640 --> 01:00:40.240 who I don't like or that I dislike, you know, dogpiling on 01:00:40.240 --> 01:00:43.440 some b something, my tendency is like, well, what is it what 01:00:43.440 --> 01:00:45.120 is this thing that they're all dogpiling on? 01:00:45.120 --> 01:00:47.520 Because they're so wrong they're so wrong about everything else. 01:00:47.920 --> 01:00:49.680 Let me go check out what's going on here. 01:00:49.680 --> 01:00:53.120 So that was ultimately my introduction my introduction to your work because 01:00:53.120 --> 01:00:56.160 I felt that um I felt that you guys deserted deserved a 01:00:56.160 --> 01:00:59.600 fair hearing for who you actually were. 01:00:59.600 --> 01:01:03.360 Um and so I went and I listened with really no preconceived 01:01:03.360 --> 01:01:07.920 notions. It's just my experience is that uh whenever you know the 01:01:07.920 --> 01:01:11.280 the uh the people let's say let's say let's say the people 01:01:11.280 --> 01:01:15.840 that I dislike uh all start dogpiling on somebody it's almost never 01:01:15.840 --> 01:01:17.360 as bad as they say it is. 01:01:17.360 --> 01:01:20.640 It's uh it's actively an attempt to slander, to drive away and 01:01:21.040 --> 01:01:23.040 uh and I go walking towards that. 01:01:23.040 --> 01:01:27.280 And um I've I've appreciated listening to the episodes and and also 01:01:27.280 --> 01:01:30.880 now speaking to you both and getting to hear the background behind 01:01:30.880 --> 01:01:34.720 it because I can relate very much to the showing up in 01:01:34.720 --> 01:01:37.600 the in the church, like the I guess the capital C church 01:01:37.680 --> 01:01:41.680 in a way, and coming from the world and seeing all of 01:01:41.680 --> 01:01:43.840 these problems that are so out there. 01:01:43.840 --> 01:01:46.320 Like I came in from the secular world and I was like 01:01:46.480 --> 01:01:49.920 just getting all the all the dirt off that's out there. 01:01:49.920 --> 01:01:53.120 And I come walking into the church and I'm like, it's in 01:01:53.120 --> 01:01:54.400 here too. 01:01:54.400 --> 01:01:55.920 What are you guys doing? 01:01:55.920 --> 01:01:57.200 You guys are supposed to have the truth. 01:01:57.200 --> 01:01:58.400 What are you doing? 01:01:58.400 --> 01:02:02.240 And so I can relate very much to the impulse to uh 01:02:02.480 --> 01:02:06.080 well uh there's no one around here who's saying anything about it. 01:02:06.080 --> 01:02:07.680 I guess we're the guys. 01:02:07.680 --> 01:02:10.400 Uh and and I can also relate very much to the counting 01:02:10.480 --> 01:02:10.640 the cost 01:02:11.520 --> 01:02:13.760 part of that, um, part of that as well. 01:02:13.760 --> 01:02:16.720 And so now the it's kind of starting to make kind of 01:02:16.720 --> 01:02:18.400 starting to make a little bit of sense. 01:02:18.400 --> 01:02:21.680 Um not that it didn't before, but it's making a lot of 01:02:21.680 --> 01:02:25.440 sense to understand, you know, the the feeling of this is wrong, 01:02:25.440 --> 01:02:29.280 this is not scriptural, God has something to say about this. 01:02:29.280 --> 01:02:32.160 I think you I believe one of you said, um, politics is 01:02:32.160 --> 01:02:35.600 about creation and start putting all the pieces together and say, Okay, 01:02:35.600 --> 01:02:37.200 we're going to we're gonna do this. 01:02:37.200 --> 01:02:40.080 We're going to lean into this and we're going to push through 01:02:40.080 --> 01:02:42.640 this in the hopes that maybe you could reach out and connect 01:02:42.640 --> 01:02:45.440 with the I think you said the young men that you really 01:02:45.440 --> 01:02:46.560 want to re reach. 01:02:46.560 --> 01:02:49.600 And so that's that's the next set of questions that I want 01:02:49.600 --> 01:02:51.920 to ask is because I was just at the new Christendom conference, 01:02:51.920 --> 01:02:56.000 the Building Christian Boroughs Conference in Ogden, Utah about two weeks ago. 01:02:56.000 --> 01:02:59.280 And uh one of the things that was very apparent to me 01:02:59.360 --> 01:03:01.760 uh was first of all, the room was full of mostly young 01:03:01.760 --> 01:03:03.760 men. And when I say young I say under the age of 01:03:03.760 --> 01:03:08.000 forty. So maybe peaking between, you know, twenty five and and thirty 01:03:08.080 --> 01:03:11.280 five, but certainly younger between twenty and twenty five and then older 01:03:11.440 --> 01:03:14.160 like quote unquote older from like thirty five to forty with their 01:03:14.160 --> 01:03:15.360 families and stuff like that. 01:03:15.360 --> 01:03:17.760 I don't know that I saw many men in the room who 01:03:17.760 --> 01:03:19.360 were over the age of 40, right? 01:03:19.360 --> 01:03:21.360 I don't think it's just what it is. 01:03:21.360 --> 01:03:25.040 And but I think the reason why that particular conference and the 01:03:25.040 --> 01:03:28.880 speakers there had such appeal is there were so many young so 01:03:28.880 --> 01:03:32.960 many young men Who are aware of the subjects that you guys 01:03:32.960 --> 01:03:39.600 talk about, um and seeing pagans talk about these subjects very boldly, 01:03:39.600 --> 01:03:42.560 being very wrong in their foundations, but speaking about them very boldly 01:03:42.640 --> 01:03:44.480 and also drawing bad conclusions. 01:03:44.480 --> 01:03:48.240 Um Um and they see this and they're longing for anyone inside 01:03:48.240 --> 01:03:52.240 their churches to say these things or to even explore the topics 01:03:52.320 --> 01:03:55.840 instead of like shoving it in the closet and tucking it away, 01:03:55.840 --> 01:03:59.440 which seems to be the approach of basically every church out there, 01:03:59.440 --> 01:04:01.040 almost every church out there right now. 01:04:01.040 --> 01:04:05.040 So when you started the podcast, given both of your individual journeys, 01:04:05.040 --> 01:04:08.560 how you met, et cetera, w did you set out to say, 01:04:08.560 --> 01:04:11.680 you know, we're trying to reach out to um I guess I'll 01:04:11.600 --> 01:04:14.800 use the word disaffected men, or was it more like these are 01:04:14.800 --> 01:04:17.520 the subjects that we're gonna explore because we have the capacity to 01:04:17.520 --> 01:04:17.920 do so? 01:04:17.920 --> 01:04:20.320 Like did you know who you wanted to talk to or did 01:04:20.320 --> 01:04:23.520 you know what you wanted to talk about, or perhaps both? 01:04:24.160 --> 01:04:26.800 I would say that it's both of those just because the Venn 01:04:26.960 --> 01:04:29.200 diagram is practically a circle. 01:04:29.360 --> 01:04:34.080 The topics that need to be covered are going to have an 01:04:34.080 --> 01:04:38.320 interest for those men who would be targeting anyway. 01:04:38.320 --> 01:04:41.440 If we were deliberately targeting them, we'd talk about these subjects. 01:04:41.440 --> 01:04:44.320 By talking about these subjects, we are targeting them. 01:04:44.320 --> 01:04:47.040 So it's just sort of a natural consequence of the things that 01:04:47.040 --> 01:04:48.320 we are addressing. 01:04:48.640 --> 01:04:54.480 Because the men who have the capacity to deal with these issues 01:04:54.800 --> 01:04:57.600 are the very men that we need in the church, and also 01:04:57.600 --> 01:05:00.240 the very men who have, for the last century or so, been 01:05:00.240 --> 01:05:01.680 driven out of the churches. 01:05:01.920 --> 01:05:05.120 Which is why the churches are in the state they're in, because 01:05:05.200 --> 01:05:09.520 again, they're all run by women and effeminate men. 01:05:09.520 --> 01:05:13.920 That is not a recipe for a successful organization of any kind, 01:05:13.920 --> 01:05:16.000 particularly not for the church. 01:05:16.160 --> 01:05:22.080 And that's why again, so many young men despise the churches because 01:05:22.080 --> 01:05:26.080 all they have seen is weak pastors who get pushed around by 01:05:26.080 --> 01:05:29.840 the women in their congregations and then they go and preach lies 01:05:30.000 --> 01:05:33.120 just to double down on how reprehensible they are. 01:05:33.120 --> 01:05:36.560 There's no good reason any man would ever join that. 01:05:36.560 --> 01:05:41.920 You can look, even if you were convinced fully by scripture that 01:05:41.920 --> 01:05:45.840 God is real, that scripture is true, why would you join one 01:05:45.840 --> 01:05:47.440 of those churches? 01:05:47.440 --> 01:05:50.480 The only reason you join one of those churches is if you 01:05:50.480 --> 01:05:56.320 have someone Have someone giving you the correct information, teaching you correctly 01:05:56.320 --> 01:06:01.120 with regard to Christianity and what the Christian faith actually holds, and 01:06:01.120 --> 01:06:04.720 then you view the churches as a battlefield because the churches need 01:06:05.200 --> 01:06:07.680 to be taken back, the same as the state, the same as 01:06:07.680 --> 01:06:09.840 the secular realm. 01:06:09.840 --> 01:06:14.640 Because Satan has conquered them by and large, particularly the mainline churches. 01:06:14.640 --> 01:06:18.480 But the conservative churches, so called, aren't safe either. 01:06:18.720 --> 01:06:21.120 They are also in terrible shape. 01:06:21.120 --> 01:06:24.800 We have many churches that are supposedly conservative. 01:06:24.800 --> 01:06:28.480 We just saw this with the Southern Baptist Convention particularly, they're just 01:06:28.480 --> 01:06:34.160 the most recent example but many supposedly conservative churches are effectively ordaining 01:06:34.160 --> 01:06:38.320 women. Even the ones who don't permit women to get up behind 01:06:38.320 --> 01:06:42.080 the pulpit if they have a pulpit and preach, are letting women 01:06:42.080 --> 01:06:46.480 do things where they are effectively in the office of pastor. 01:06:46.480 --> 01:06:49.200 They are acting as if they were ordained. 01:06:49.200 --> 01:06:52.400 They are in some cases doing things where they're basically ordained. 01:06:52.400 --> 01:06:55.360 In the LCMS we have the problem with deaconesses, the way that 01:06:55.360 --> 01:06:59.040 that is connected, it makes it seem like they're ordained. 01:06:59.040 --> 01:07:03.360 Now the conservatives in the LCMS will deny that up one side 01:07:03.360 --> 01:07:06.960 and down the other, but the reality is what they are presenting 01:07:06.960 --> 01:07:09.600 to the world and what they are instilling in these young women 01:07:09.600 --> 01:07:14.560 and other women by proxy, is that women can do whatever men 01:07:14.560 --> 01:07:15.680 can do. 01:07:15.680 --> 01:07:18.320 This is the groundwork for ordaining women. 01:07:18.320 --> 01:07:23.520 Now they may never get around to actually ordaining women so long 01:07:23.520 --> 01:07:26.960 as they haven't had a split, that is probably coming if this 01:07:26.960 --> 01:07:29.520 continues on the current trajectory. 01:07:29.520 --> 01:07:30.960 But it doesn't matter. 01:07:30.960 --> 01:07:34.160 If you let women and others who are not supposed to be 01:07:34.160 --> 01:07:38.400 in that office, do all the things the office does, you've effectively 01:07:38.400 --> 01:07:39.360 ordained women. 01:07:39.360 --> 01:07:42.560 Right. And so there's no reason for men to join those churches 01:07:42.880 --> 01:07:46.800 because you have an HR department at your work probably. 01:07:46.800 --> 01:07:48.240 They're obnoxious enough. 01:07:48.240 --> 01:07:51.440 Why would you elect to have another one in your life? 01:07:51.440 --> 01:07:54.080 Because that's all most modern churches are. 01:07:54.080 --> 01:07:56.720 It's a bunch of effeminate men who are going to tell you, 01:07:56.720 --> 01:08:00.800 well, you can't do that because it's mean instead of defending the 01:08:00.800 --> 01:08:05.920 truth. It's as if pastors have just completely forgotten that there is 01:08:05.920 --> 01:08:07.600 a stricter judgment awaiting them. 01:08:07.600 --> 01:08:08.000 That's right. 01:08:08.240 --> 01:08:10.800 You don't become pastor because it's comfortable. 01:08:10.800 --> 01:08:13.600 You become a pastor because you have the aptitude for it and 01:08:13.600 --> 01:08:16.720 you believe you have been called to it, and then there are 01:08:16.720 --> 01:08:21.760 certain restrictions, somewhat stringent restrictions on your life going forward, and there 01:08:21.760 --> 01:08:24.880 are requirements for what you must do in that office, and if 01:08:24.880 --> 01:08:28.480 you do not live up to them, the stricter judgment awaits. 01:08:29.280 --> 01:08:31.680 They should fear, and they don't. 01:08:32.000 --> 01:08:32.160 And 01:08:32.160 --> 01:08:34.720 I think a big part of the reason that you see rooms 01:08:34.720 --> 01:08:40.560 full of guys under forty all invigorated and passionate about facing in 01:08:40.560 --> 01:08:43.680 the same direction, and in many cases just trying to figure these 01:08:43.680 --> 01:08:49.520 things out together, is that unfortunately what passes for bold leadership in 01:08:49.520 --> 01:08:54.880 the conservative churches is being anti sodomy and anti-abortion. 01:08:54.880 --> 01:08:56.480 And they won't even call it sodomy. 01:08:56.480 --> 01:09:01.280 They'll say, oh, they're I'm anti-LGBTQ because that's bad for people. 01:09:01.280 --> 01:09:02.640 But they won't call it sodomy. 01:09:02.640 --> 01:09:04.560 They won't even call it homosexuality. 01:09:04.560 --> 01:09:08.400 So they will adopt the frame of the wicked world and then 01:09:08.400 --> 01:09:09.680 they'll say, but that's sin. 01:09:09.680 --> 01:09:11.760 And then you ask, well, what kind of sin is it? 01:09:11.760 --> 01:09:15.360 And that was part of the controversy with the large catechism last 01:09:15.360 --> 01:09:20.880 year for the LCMS, was basically taking things like sodomy and raping 01:09:20.880 --> 01:09:23.440 children and putting it in the same bucket as looking at a 01:09:23.440 --> 01:09:25.680 girl in a machining if you're not married to her. 01:09:25.680 --> 01:09:30.800 Yeah. That sort of equivocation is revolting to to younger men and 01:09:30.800 --> 01:09:34.240 using the same definition as you, like you know, basically m millennials 01:09:34.320 --> 01:09:36.240 and younger, that's revolting. 01:09:36.240 --> 01:09:39.840 It's obviously not an actual bold confession. 01:09:39.840 --> 01:09:43.120 It's an excuse to sort of stand on the street corner and 01:09:43.120 --> 01:09:47.920 pretend to be a Christian who's actually deeply rooted when you just 01:09:47.920 --> 01:09:51.840 picked a single point on the battlefield when there's all these other 01:09:51.840 --> 01:09:56.000 places where they are in complete agreement with the very same sodomites 01:09:56.000 --> 01:09:58.480 that they're condemning for that particular sin. 01:09:58.480 --> 01:10:01.280 But they agree with them politically about everything else. 01:10:01.280 --> 01:10:06.320 And so it's young men almost exclusively that can clearly see that 01:10:06.320 --> 01:10:09.440 there are a lot of people in the church in leadership positions 01:10:09.600 --> 01:10:11.440 who are hoaxes, they're frauds. 01:10:11.440 --> 01:10:15.520 They can say, Oh, I'm I'm so bold, I'm so politically involved, 01:10:15.520 --> 01:10:18.240 I'm so passionate because I condemn abortion. 01:10:18.240 --> 01:10:22.800 Really? Sacrificing babies to Satan you think is a bold confession? 01:10:22.800 --> 01:10:24.400 That's not even table stakes. 01:10:24.400 --> 01:10:27.360 That's it it's inhuman for that to even be a question. 01:10:27.360 --> 01:10:30.240 So you don't get any points for being anti abortion. 01:10:30.240 --> 01:10:33.280 But that issue for the last fifty years has given a lot 01:10:33.280 --> 01:10:38.080 of guys who are complete cowards, complete feminists, cover for all the 01:10:38.080 --> 01:10:39.360 other things that they're pushing. 01:10:39.360 --> 01:10:41.280 And as long as once a year they'll go to the pro 01:10:41.360 --> 01:10:44.640 life rally, they can say, look how bold my stand is. 01:10:44.640 --> 01:10:45.680 It's garbage. 01:10:45.680 --> 01:10:48.720 And so when Corey and I come along and we'll point fingers 01:10:48.720 --> 01:10:52.640 at every single other thing they're lying about Men notice. 01:10:52.640 --> 01:10:54.000 Like, yeah, they're right. 01:10:54.320 --> 01:10:56.400 what about all the other stuff in the Bible? 01:10:56.640 --> 01:10:59.600 you pick this one or two these one or two issues, and 01:10:59.600 --> 01:11:03.040 that's your confession, and you ignore everything else and let the world 01:11:03.040 --> 01:11:05.680 burn. They know that that's not real Christianity. 01:11:05.920 --> 01:11:09.680 And that's the that's the reason that things like that that meeting 01:11:09.680 --> 01:11:12.320 in Utah and all these other things that are going on, including 01:11:12.640 --> 01:11:14.960 Stone Choir itself, are a threat. 01:11:14.960 --> 01:11:18.480 Because when men get together and start talking about these subjects without 01:11:18.880 --> 01:11:23.360 being bounded by HR, you can start reading the Bible again. 01:11:23.440 --> 01:11:24.960 You can start believing it again. 01:11:24.960 --> 01:11:27.360 And that is the single biggest threat to everything. 01:11:27.360 --> 01:11:31.280 It's a threat inside the church, it's a threat politically, because it's 01:11:31.200 --> 01:11:32.320 a threat to Satan. 01:11:32.320 --> 01:11:36.560 And the fact that he's controlling all these things independently, seemingly not 01:11:36.560 --> 01:11:40.480 obviously in some cases, but it's it's clear that the influence is 01:11:40.480 --> 01:11:43.360 there. It's men getting together and seeing, you know what? 01:11:43.360 --> 01:11:47.920 No holds barred, let's look at everything from scratch and let's be 01:11:47.920 --> 01:11:52.080 faithful to the teachings that have been consistent with scripture historically and 01:11:52.080 --> 01:11:53.360 see where the chips fall. 01:11:53.360 --> 01:11:56.480 And if it turns out that we have adopted beliefs that are 01:11:56.480 --> 01:11:58.320 false, we need to repent. 01:11:58.320 --> 01:11:59.600 We need to repent. 01:11:59.600 --> 01:12:01.840 It's not just about calling others to repent. 01:12:01.840 --> 01:12:04.240 It's about saying I got something wrong. 01:12:04.240 --> 01:12:05.120 I fell for it. 01:12:05.120 --> 01:12:06.160 I went along with it. 01:12:06.160 --> 01:12:08.160 I realize now I was an error. 01:12:08.160 --> 01:12:10.640 I reject my own sin and I repent. 01:12:10.640 --> 01:12:14.480 And that's a bridge too far for pretty much everybody over forty. 01:12:14.480 --> 01:12:16.800 Yes. Unfortunately. 01:12:16.800 --> 01:12:21.360 Um okay, so so um I think I wanna st I want 01:12:21.360 --> 01:12:25.440 to operationalize this because we're talking about going to war for the 01:12:25.440 --> 01:12:29.200 truth, we're talking about being confrontational, we're talking about churches chasing out 01:12:29.200 --> 01:12:33.360 young men, we're chasing talking about churches ordaining female pastors, and you 01:12:33.440 --> 01:12:37.680 so you mentioned the large the larger catechism, the larger cataclysm I've 01:12:37.600 --> 01:12:38.720 heard you refer to it. 01:12:39.120 --> 01:12:43.440 so uh when you started the stone stone choir, had had this 01:12:43.760 --> 01:12:46.960 come into being yet, or was that a little bit down the 01:12:46.960 --> 01:12:49.760 road? So maybe and maybe you can unpack for the listeners who 01:12:49.760 --> 01:12:53.680 aren't familiar with Luther Lutheranism, who don't know what the large cate 01:12:53.920 --> 01:12:57.040 catechism is, maybe you can unpack a little bit the structure of 01:12:57.040 --> 01:13:00.480 your denomination and an And understand how key this document is and 01:13:00.480 --> 01:13:02.160 some of the figures behind it. 01:13:02.560 --> 01:13:04.400 Sure, I'll take that one. 01:13:04.400 --> 01:13:04.720 The 01:13:05.680 --> 01:13:11.200 Lutheran confessions are technically and properly called the Book of Concord. 01:13:11.200 --> 01:13:15.840 The Book of Concord was published in fifteen eighty. 01:13:15.840 --> 01:13:20.880 It is comprised of a number of different documents. 01:13:20.880 --> 01:13:24.800 The large catechism is one of those, and it's particularly important. 01:13:24.800 --> 01:13:27.280 I'll return to that in a minute though. 01:13:27.280 --> 01:13:31.120 The documents that comprise the Book of Concord, other than obviously it 01:13:31.120 --> 01:13:36.000 has a preface, it includes the three universal creeds, the Augsburg Confession, 01:13:36.000 --> 01:13:40.560 the Apology of the Confession, the small cult articles an article, a 01:13:40.560 --> 01:13:44.640 treatise on the Pope, the small catechism, the large catechism, and then 01:13:44.640 --> 01:13:49.520 the formula of Concord has both an epitome and a solid declaration. 01:13:49.520 --> 01:13:55.600 These documents span from fifteen thirty which is when the Augsburg Confession 01:13:55.600 --> 01:13:56.640 was first introduced. 01:13:56.640 --> 01:14:02.560 That was incidentally the 494th anniversary, two days ago, of the presentation 01:14:02.560 --> 01:14:05.280 of that to the emperor at Augsburg. 01:14:05.280 --> 01:14:08.400 So we'll have a major anniversary coming up here in six years 01:14:08.640 --> 01:14:11.520 for the Reformation just generally. 01:14:11.520 --> 01:14:15.280 But the various documents address various things. 01:14:15.280 --> 01:14:20.720 The Formula of Concord is very much a technical theological document. 01:14:20.720 --> 01:14:24.080 It's meant to iron out some squabbles that were in the Lutheran 01:14:24.080 --> 01:14:26.480 Church and some other things like that. 01:14:26.480 --> 01:14:32.160 But the catechisms are particularly important for a specific reason. 01:14:32.160 --> 01:14:36.880 The small catechism is memorized by all Lutheran children. 01:14:36.880 --> 01:14:41.680 The large catechism is expounding on the small catechism. 01:14:41.680 --> 01:14:45.760 The large catechism is what fathers are supposed to use to teach 01:14:45.760 --> 01:14:50.000 their wives and their children the faith, because you have them memorize 01:14:50.000 --> 01:14:54.800 the small catechism and then you teach them more about the sections 01:14:54.800 --> 01:14:58.960 of the small catechism from the large catechism. 01:14:58.960 --> 01:15:04.160 And so if you can subvert the catechism that is used, and 01:15:04.160 --> 01:15:07.840 this has been an ongoing problem in the Lutheran church and in 01:15:08.160 --> 01:15:09.760 other churches as well. 01:15:09.760 --> 01:15:15.360 But how they subvert it is they'll republish a new small catechism. 01:15:15.360 --> 01:15:18.560 The text of the small catechism will stay the same, but they'll 01:15:18.560 --> 01:15:21.600 add a bunch of questions and answers or explanatory notes or things 01:15:21.600 --> 01:15:21.840 like that. 01:15:22.240 --> 01:15:28.000 So it's honestly it's very similar to what happened with the Schofield 01:15:28.000 --> 01:15:33.280 Bible, because the Schofield Bible itself is the King James. 01:15:33.280 --> 01:15:37.120 Now Now, we aren't particularly fond of the King James in the 01:15:37.120 --> 01:15:39.840 modern context for reasons we've gone into before. 01:15:39.840 --> 01:15:41.680 It's not that we don't like the King James. 01:15:41.680 --> 01:15:44.080 I read the King James, I have no problem with it. 01:15:44.080 --> 01:15:47.360 I usually read the ESV, but I read that one as well. 01:15:47.520 --> 01:15:51.920 The issue with the Schofield Bible was the footnotes, because a lot 01:15:51.920 --> 01:15:55.680 of the men reading the King James couldn't understand the English of 01:15:55.680 --> 01:15:59.200 the King James, but the footnotes were in modern English, so they 01:15:59.200 --> 01:16:01.920 read the footnotes, and then they just preached whatever the footnotes said. 01:16:02.960 --> 01:16:06.480 The same thing happens when you start adding all of these notes 01:16:06.480 --> 01:16:09.520 and explanations and questions and answers and all this other crap to 01:16:09.520 --> 01:16:11.120 the small catechism. 01:16:11.120 --> 01:16:14.800 That stuff winds up being what is actually taught in your schools 01:16:14.880 --> 01:16:17.680 and then what is preached in your pulpits and what your people 01:16:17.680 --> 01:16:19.120 actually believe. 01:16:19.120 --> 01:16:23.760 And so subverting the small catechism has been an ongoing effort in 01:16:23.760 --> 01:16:27.760 many Lutheran denominations for a long time, for decades. 01:16:27.760 --> 01:16:31.680 That's an ongoing problem, largely from the sixties, as is expected, because 01:16:31.680 --> 01:16:36.240 that's sort of when Satan really began in earnest his current push 01:16:36.240 --> 01:16:40.000 to subvert everything in our society and particularly in the churches. 01:16:40.960 --> 01:16:46.960 But the large catechism with annotations and other crap in it, that 01:16:46.960 --> 01:16:51.360 one is sort of the first major salvo with regard to subverting 01:16:51.360 --> 01:16:54.000 the large catechism. 01:16:54.000 --> 01:16:57.600 And it's still the text of the large catechism, but it has 01:16:57.600 --> 01:17:00.080 all of these essays along with it. 01:17:00.080 --> 01:17:04.880 Some of them aren't terrible, but some of them are outright Marxist. 01:17:04.880 --> 01:17:11.120 It is It's the Frankfurt School being funneled into the LCMS via 01:17:11.120 --> 01:17:15.680 these essays, via this commentary on the large catechism that is published 01:17:15.680 --> 01:17:20.480 as a volume and intended for basically everyone in the LCMS to 01:17:20.480 --> 01:17:24.000 use this thing, and they are currently using it in the seminaries. 01:17:24.000 --> 01:17:27.840 They're using this abomination to teach pastors. 01:17:27.840 --> 01:17:32.720 And so when this thing was first released, we got a hold 01:17:32.880 --> 01:17:36.320 very early on of an electronic copy of it, and we read 01:17:36.320 --> 01:17:41.440 through the almost thousand-page document, however many pages it actually is, and 01:17:41.440 --> 01:17:48.320 then we did with Ryan Turnipseed, a YouTube video just assessing some 01:17:48.320 --> 01:17:53.600 of the more problematic, the more heinous parts of these essays, some 01:17:53.600 --> 01:17:58.240 of the things that are put forward in this annotated so-called large 01:17:58.240 --> 01:18:03.920 catechism. And it became a big issue in the LCMS. 01:18:03.920 --> 01:18:06.400 But of course, that wasn't addressed. 01:18:06.400 --> 01:18:12.640 Yes, initially, Harrison pulled it back, halted publication in order to seem 01:18:12.640 --> 01:18:16.720 like he was doing something because we stopped his vacation, he had 01:18:16.720 --> 01:18:18.720 to come back from Hawaii. 01:18:18.720 --> 01:18:21.120 Which is a uh part of the reason he doesn't like us, 01:18:21.120 --> 01:18:22.880 I'm sure that plays into it a little bit. 01:18:22.880 --> 01:18:26.800 But he almost immediately resumed publication of this thing. 01:18:26.800 --> 01:18:30.800 They just stopped it temporarily to say, we'll look into it. 01:18:30.800 --> 01:18:33.360 And then they started attacking us. 01:18:33.360 --> 01:18:36.320 Because of course it's shoot the messenger, not actually deal with the 01:18:36.800 --> 01:18:38.960 content of the message. 01:18:38.960 --> 01:18:39.280 And 01:18:40.240 --> 01:18:41.680 so this thing is still out there. 01:18:41.680 --> 01:18:42.720 It's still being published. 01:18:42.720 --> 01:18:44.560 Like I said, it's being used in the seminaries. 01:18:44.560 --> 01:18:47.120 It is being pushed by CPH. 01:18:47.120 --> 01:18:51.920 The goal of Satan, the goal of the authors of this abomination, 01:18:51.920 --> 01:18:55.120 is to make this the official doctrine of the LCMS. 01:18:55.120 --> 01:18:58.160 And so it won't matter what the Book of Concord says. 01:18:58.160 --> 01:19:01.520 It's the same sort of game that Rome plays and that other 01:19:02.000 --> 01:19:04.080 magisteriums play. 01:19:04.080 --> 01:19:09.280 It doesn't matter what your confessional document says if no one ever 01:19:09.280 --> 01:19:13.200 uses it, they only use the explanations of it. 01:19:13.360 --> 01:19:15.840 Because it matters what the explanation says. 01:19:16.000 --> 01:19:19.600 And so that's the goal is to subvert the book of Concord, 01:19:19.600 --> 01:19:23.520 because the things that are wrong, the things that are wicked in 01:19:23.520 --> 01:19:27.600 the annotations in those essays, by and large are addressed in the 01:19:27.600 --> 01:19:30.640 book of Concord, and it says the exact opposite. 01:19:31.200 --> 01:19:35.280 But it doesn't matter because the game Satan is playing is redefining 01:19:35.280 --> 01:19:37.680 terms, subverting them, explaining them away. 01:19:37.680 --> 01:19:40.080 It's the same thing that he always does. 01:19:40.080 --> 01:19:44.000 Just like they tried to say that Sodom and Gomorrah wasn't about 01:19:44.000 --> 01:19:47.200 sodomy, wasn't about sexual perversion, wasn't that wickedness. 01:19:47.200 --> 01:19:49.440 Oh, they were just being inhospitable. 01:19:49.440 --> 01:19:53.360 Right. That's c that's of course completely ridiculous because if that were 01:19:53.360 --> 01:19:55.840 the case, God would have wiped ninety percent of humanity off the 01:19:56.080 --> 01:19:57.600 map ages ago. 01:19:57.600 --> 01:20:02.640 But this is the same game we see with Satan everywhere. 01:20:02.640 --> 01:20:05.360 He does this in the political sphere, he does this in the 01:20:05.360 --> 01:20:10.640 churches, but it is happening in earnest now in the LCMS. 01:20:10.640 --> 01:20:12.640 This is not the first problem, as I said. 01:20:12.640 --> 01:20:16.320 They've done this with the small catechism previously, and they've also done 01:20:16.320 --> 01:20:21.760 this with various essays and opinion pieces published by the CTCR, which 01:20:21.760 --> 01:20:26.000 is the theological, the doctrinal body in the LCMS. 01:20:26.000 --> 01:20:28.560 That's the body to which questions are supposed to be posed, and 01:20:28.560 --> 01:20:30.400 then they give a definitive answer. 01:20:30.400 --> 01:20:33.920 They have been publishing wicked things from the nineteen sixties forward. 01:20:33.920 --> 01:20:35.520 Again, not surprising. 01:20:35.520 --> 01:20:37.680 The sixties is the decade from hell. 01:20:39.360 --> 01:20:43.920 And it's just it finally got to the LCMS. 01:20:43.920 --> 01:20:45.120 Because the LCMS was 01:20:46.240 --> 01:20:54.320 one of the last standing most conservative denominations in the American context. 01:20:54.320 --> 01:20:58.160 It's had problems for some time, and part of the reason that 01:20:58.320 --> 01:21:01.440 it's so insular and isolated is the world war is because the 01:21:01.440 --> 01:21:03.360 LCMS is largely German. 01:21:03.360 --> 01:21:07.520 And so there was political and other problems that played into it. 01:21:07.520 --> 01:21:11.680 But Satan finally got around to actively attempting to subvert the LCMS 01:21:11.760 --> 01:21:15.040 and Matthew Harrison is playing a key role in that because he 01:21:15.040 --> 01:21:17.360 is currently the leader of the LCMS. 01:21:17.360 --> 01:21:20.000 Not for better, but definitely for worse. 01:21:20.480 --> 01:21:25.040 When did you guys When did you guys notice this personally start 01:21:25.040 --> 01:21:29.440 happening? Because I I I've watched some of the turnip stream and 01:21:29.440 --> 01:21:34.080 and how long into doing the Stone Choir podcast did that did 01:21:34.080 --> 01:21:35.760 that faithful fateful stream happen? 01:21:35.760 --> 01:21:37.920 Now I'll be sure to put the link to the the stream 01:21:37.920 --> 01:21:39.040 in the show notes. 01:21:39.040 --> 01:21:42.400 Because I guess the question is like, did you go into the 01:21:42.400 --> 01:21:45.840 podcast knowing, starting Stone Choir, knowing like, okay, we're probably going to 01:21:45.840 --> 01:21:48.560 speak up to this in this denomination because you guys said that 01:21:48.560 --> 01:21:51.440 you had met in some uh some met met in some Lutheran 01:21:51.920 --> 01:21:55.280 groups and then and then you had the the turn up stream 01:21:55.360 --> 01:21:58.800 and then of course all hell broke loose, perhaps literally. 01:21:58.800 --> 01:22:02.000 Like or or what was the sequence of events that all these 01:22:02.000 --> 01:22:03.760 things kind of took place in? 01:22:04.240 --> 01:22:09.600 We actually describe this in excruciating detail in the longest episode we'll 01:22:09.600 --> 01:22:13.040 probably ever do, the timeline of recr recriminations. 01:22:13.680 --> 01:22:18.160 That is an episode that we began with the suicide of George 01:22:18.160 --> 01:22:23.520 Floyd. When Floyd killed himself in twenty twenty with a fentanyl overdose, 01:22:23.520 --> 01:22:27.520 Matt Harrison put out a press release in the name of every 01:22:27.520 --> 01:22:33.840 church, every pastor and every LCMFs individual in the country saying that 01:22:33.840 --> 01:22:35.760 basically it was a murder. 01:22:35.760 --> 01:22:40.240 And he in our name called the police officers who had been 01:22:40.240 --> 01:22:42.800 involved in that arrest murders. 01:22:42.800 --> 01:22:45.680 He said that they were guilty of taking his life, and he 01:22:45.840 --> 01:22:47.600 basically called for their heads. 01:22:47.600 --> 01:22:51.600 And so independently, Cory and I each sent letters to him in 01:22:51.600 --> 01:22:52.560 our own names. 01:22:52.560 --> 01:22:53.440 I signed my name. 01:22:53.440 --> 01:22:56.880 I didn't I I dox myself to Harrison in twenty twenty. 01:22:56.880 --> 01:22:59.520 And if he had bothered to read that letter, he would have 01:22:59.520 --> 01:23:01.760 been able to personally dox me as soon as we started the 01:23:01.760 --> 01:23:05.120 show. Because I was saying the same things three years later. 01:23:05.120 --> 01:23:09.520 What we said to him was that you have defamed these men 01:23:09.520 --> 01:23:13.040 who have not this he put this out about four weeks after 01:23:13.040 --> 01:23:17.440 the suicide, which was about two weeks after the the full police 01:23:17.440 --> 01:23:18.560 video came out. 01:23:18.560 --> 01:23:21.840 So anyone who'd bothered to pay attention knew that that man had 01:23:21.840 --> 01:23:24.720 been saying I can't breathe for ten minutes before he was put 01:23:24.720 --> 01:23:25.440 on the ground. 01:23:25.440 --> 01:23:25.840 That's right. 01:23:26.000 --> 01:23:30.160 They and so Harrison didn't care about that because he is a 01:23:30.160 --> 01:23:31.680 racial agitator. 01:23:31.680 --> 01:23:37.040 Everything that he does is rooted in tearing down anything that he 01:23:37.040 --> 01:23:39.760 sees in opposition to black America. 01:23:39.760 --> 01:23:42.240 That's one of the crucial things that he has. 01:23:42.240 --> 01:23:45.680 Both of his sons have married outside of their race, and he's 01:23:45.680 --> 01:23:50.240 thrilled that one of his own grandchildren has more African DNA than 01:23:50.240 --> 01:23:51.200 German DNA. 01:23:51.200 --> 01:23:54.160 He thinks that's just the s most special thing in the world. 01:23:54.160 --> 01:23:58.720 And so he's personally invested, for mercenary reasons and for false political 01:23:58.720 --> 01:24:00.960 reasons, to push this crap. 01:24:00.960 --> 01:24:02.880 And so George Floyd kills himself. 01:24:02.880 --> 01:24:05.040 He puts out s this demonic press release. 01:24:05.040 --> 01:24:08.080 Corey and I each independently, not knowing each other at the time, 01:24:08.080 --> 01:24:10.160 sent him personal letters and said this is crap. 01:24:10.240 --> 01:24:11.360 It was a couple of pages long. 01:24:11.360 --> 01:24:12.720 It was very respectful. 01:24:12.720 --> 01:24:15.360 But that was certainly for me and I think for Corey as 01:24:15.360 --> 01:24:18.640 well, our first indication that we were dealing with a man who 01:24:18.640 --> 01:24:21.840 was not Christian, because some of the the way that he wrote 01:24:21.840 --> 01:24:24.560 that could not have been written by a Christian. 01:24:24.560 --> 01:24:27.760 But we didn't make that argument public, we didn't accuse him of 01:24:27.760 --> 01:24:29.040 that at that time. 01:24:29.040 --> 01:24:32.800 We certainly condemned and continued to condemn for a year the fact 01:24:32.800 --> 01:24:35.200 that he had had defamed these men. 01:24:35.200 --> 01:24:38.800 I I was hoping the Chauvin would win in court so that 01:24:38.800 --> 01:24:41.840 he would sue them for defamation because it would have been trivial 01:24:41.840 --> 01:24:43.520 for him to win. 01:24:43.520 --> 01:24:46.160 We knew that Harrison was bad, we knew that he was evil, 01:24:46.160 --> 01:24:49.440 we knew he was a liar and that his conscience was seared. 01:24:49.440 --> 01:24:53.120 So when things started going south in 2022 that caused us to 01:24:53.120 --> 01:24:54.480 begin Stone Choir. 01:24:54.480 --> 01:24:56.800 We like you said we began that in October. 01:24:56.800 --> 01:25:01.120 The large catechism came out about January twentieth, roughly. 01:25:01.280 --> 01:25:02.880 We immediately got a copy. 01:25:02.880 --> 01:25:07.360 Ryan Turnipseed put out his thread with a bunch of screenshots from 01:25:07.360 --> 01:25:10.320 the large catechism itself and published to the world. 01:25:10.320 --> 01:25:11.760 Hey, this is really bad. 01:25:11.760 --> 01:25:14.640 There's a bunch of stuff in here that's not remotely Christian. 01:25:14.640 --> 01:25:17.120 Never mind not being you know Lutheran. 01:25:17.120 --> 01:25:19.040 And it got a lot of traction. 01:25:19.040 --> 01:25:23.920 And that's why and so that fight began on Twitter. 01:25:23.920 --> 01:25:27.520 You know, that that the the thread was several days, I think 01:25:27.760 --> 01:25:31.920 close to a week before the turnip stream, if I remember correctly. 01:25:32.240 --> 01:25:35.680 And then about thirty minutes before we began recording the turnip stream 01:25:35.760 --> 01:25:38.400 where we were gonna discuss all the same things that were in 01:25:38.400 --> 01:25:42.480 the in that thread, we got a notice that they were pulling 01:25:42.480 --> 01:25:43.280 it from sale. 01:25:43.280 --> 01:25:47.040 And it was pulled from sale for about a week. 01:25:47.040 --> 01:25:53.200 And then when it was republished about February 1st, Harrison additionally said, 01:25:53.200 --> 01:25:54.240 This is wonderful. 01:25:54.240 --> 01:25:56.080 We stand by everything in it. 01:25:56.080 --> 01:26:01.520 We roundly condemn the wicked, you know, basically calling us Nazis for 01:26:01.520 --> 01:26:04.320 opposing pushing pedophilia in the church. 01:26:04.320 --> 01:26:07.520 And then three weeks after that, Missouri Sen had put out a 01:26:07.520 --> 01:26:12.480 press release ex explicitly condemning Stone Choir in all but name. 01:26:12.480 --> 01:26:16.480 It was made very clear that everything that had happened, he tried 01:26:16.480 --> 01:26:21.840 to frame it as exclusively online rabble rousers who had this political 01:26:21.840 --> 01:26:25.920 ax to grind that were outside the church were wicked men, and 01:26:25.920 --> 01:26:29.840 he swore in public, in in writing, that he was going to 01:26:29.840 --> 01:26:32.800 see every one of those men on the stream excommunicated. 01:26:32.800 --> 01:26:36.080 And the four men on that stream have subsequently all been driven 01:26:36.080 --> 01:26:38.640 out of the LCMS by his hand. 01:26:38.640 --> 01:26:43.280 Now Ryan has since joined another church, and that's a separate matter 01:26:43.280 --> 01:26:44.400 of drama. 01:26:44.400 --> 01:26:49.600 But these top down things are their mercenary self-defense by a wicked 01:26:49.600 --> 01:26:52.800 man to cover up the fact that he's burning this church down. 01:26:52.800 --> 01:26:55.040 And I don't care about him personally. 01:26:55.040 --> 01:26:56.240 I could care less. 01:26:56.240 --> 01:26:59.280 I don't I don't I'm not interested in personalities. 01:26:59.280 --> 01:27:02.080 I'm interested in the fact that one of the few Christian denominations 01:27:02.400 --> 01:27:05.680 that has consistently been on the right side of the most of 01:27:05.680 --> 01:27:08.720 these things, this guy is now turning it inside out and wearing 01:27:08.720 --> 01:27:12.080 it as a skin suit, and people don't see it. 01:27:12.080 --> 01:27:14.400 Because we're all nice Christian guys. 01:27:14.400 --> 01:27:16.000 We don't want to be disagreeable. 01:27:16.000 --> 01:27:19.360 The guy who's in charge, who everyone is agreed, let's he's he's 01:27:19.280 --> 01:27:22.400 the man man, let's back him, let's back his play. 01:27:22.400 --> 01:27:26.000 He's consistently nudging things very slowly. 01:27:26.000 --> 01:27:29.360 Like it all of the the large cataclysm was not particularly slow. 01:27:29.360 --> 01:27:31.520 That was really an acceleration on his part. 01:27:31.680 --> 01:27:34.560 But it was still relatively subtle to the point that you can 01:27:34.560 --> 01:27:37.680 play Talmodic games and and try to read between the lines and 01:27:37.680 --> 01:27:39.120 say, Oh, he didn't really mean that. 01:27:39.120 --> 01:27:40.400 Which is the whole point. 01:27:40.400 --> 01:27:44.800 To introduce doubt and uncertainty and to give the enemy a foothold. 01:27:44.800 --> 01:27:46.160 Courtney and I are having none of that. 01:27:46.160 --> 01:27:46.960 We can see through it. 01:27:46.960 --> 01:27:48.160 We've fought these fights before. 01:27:48.160 --> 01:27:50.640 We've dealt with men like that before. 01:27:50.640 --> 01:27:53.440 Men who are wicked, who haven't do not have the Holy Spirit. 01:27:53.440 --> 01:27:55.200 We've no how they play. 01:27:55.200 --> 01:27:57.120 And so we just said, yep, here it is. 01:27:57.120 --> 01:27:58.240 It w it was not him. 01:27:58.240 --> 01:28:00.880 It was about the fact their lives were being told about God 01:28:00.880 --> 01:28:02.160 in God's name. 01:28:02.160 --> 01:28:04.720 That is always going to cause me to show up and always 01:28:04.720 --> 01:28:07.440 gonna cause me to cause problems for someone when when I have 01:28:07.440 --> 01:28:09.040 some place to say something. 01:28:09.040 --> 01:28:12.480 And because this was in our own house, we went after it. 01:28:12.480 --> 01:28:15.280 And you know, part of the reason for calling it Stone Choir 01:28:15.440 --> 01:28:18.080 is that you know we we say that we're the stones crying 01:28:18.080 --> 01:28:20.240 out. We don't have a vocation A vocation to do this. 01:28:20.240 --> 01:28:24.080 I don't have credentials to say that I have permission to criticize 01:28:24.080 --> 01:28:26.080 other guys about theology. 01:28:26.080 --> 01:28:27.600 All I have is a Bible. 01:28:27.600 --> 01:28:30.720 And that's not me and my Bible under a tree. 01:28:30.720 --> 01:28:34.800 It's saying when God gives a man the Holy Spirit and additionally 01:28:34.800 --> 01:28:37.840 gives him other gifts of reason and intellect and whatever else and 01:28:37.840 --> 01:28:42.160 personality, if he doesn't show up, if if Cory and I didn't 01:28:42.080 --> 01:28:45.200 show up to this fight, we would be wicked because we have 01:28:45.200 --> 01:28:48.080 been equipped in a way the few men have been to be 01:28:48.080 --> 01:28:50.400 able to deal with all of this at once, to deal with 01:28:50.400 --> 01:28:54.640 the complexity, to come deal with the confrontation, to deal with the 01:28:54.720 --> 01:28:56.400 you know, the personal fallout. 01:28:56.400 --> 01:28:57.760 We're fine with all of it. 01:28:57.760 --> 01:28:59.680 It this is easy mode for us. 01:28:59.680 --> 01:29:02.640 Whereas for most men, it would all like any one of these 01:29:02.640 --> 01:29:04.640 things would be nearly insurmountable. 01:29:04.640 --> 01:29:07.440 And so that's why it's it's part of what we started Stone 01:29:07.600 --> 01:29:10.000 Choir. We saw that no one else was going to show up 01:29:10.000 --> 01:29:10.800 to the fight. 01:29:10.800 --> 01:29:14.160 And I think that, you know, personally for me looking back, I 01:29:14.640 --> 01:29:18.400 I'm not gonna ascribe, you know, miraculous intervention on on God's part 01:29:18.480 --> 01:29:21.840 that that's how this played out, but we were up and running 01:29:22.320 --> 01:29:25.680 three months, four months before this happened. 01:29:25.840 --> 01:29:29.760 And we hadn't really delved too much into controversial stuff yet. 01:29:29.760 --> 01:29:33.600 In fact, the most controversial episodes that we did were after the 01:29:33.600 --> 01:29:35.200 LCMS doxed me. 01:29:35.200 --> 01:29:38.320 They doxed me and it they'd asked they doxxed me in retaliation 01:29:38.320 --> 01:29:40.800 for that and then we went to town because they thought that 01:29:40.800 --> 01:29:43.040 we were afraid and ashamed and blah blah blah. 01:29:43.040 --> 01:29:43.680 We're not. 01:29:43.680 --> 01:29:44.800 I'm not ashamed. 01:29:44.800 --> 01:29:47.440 If I get something wrong, that's what bothers me. 01:29:47.440 --> 01:29:49.840 It doesn't bother me if someone else doesn't like me. 01:29:49.840 --> 01:29:52.480 Like if I get something wrong, if I sinned, that that's my 01:29:52.480 --> 01:29:55.360 concern. And so if someone calls me to repent and they're right, 01:29:55.360 --> 01:29:56.320 I'm gonna thank 'em. 01:29:56.320 --> 01:29:57.520 I'm gonna push back. 01:29:57.760 --> 01:29:59.520 I mean that's the Christian attitude. 01:29:59.520 --> 01:30:03.040 But if someone attacks me for saying what God says, then they 01:30:03.040 --> 01:30:06.080 have they've created a problem for themselves that if they've just left 01:30:06.080 --> 01:30:07.440 me alone, they wouldn't have had 01:30:07.440 --> 01:30:08.560 it. And 01:30:08.560 --> 01:30:12.160 I think this is this is why you've catalyzed so many men 01:30:12.160 --> 01:30:16.160 and and so many listeners is that they they see what's wrong 01:30:16.240 --> 01:30:19.840 and they see what's wrong, we'll say acutely in their own churches, 01:30:19.840 --> 01:30:23.680 like meaning their own the church buildings, or maybe the denominations as 01:30:23.680 --> 01:30:26.960 well. And they they they see what's wrong and they don't find 01:30:26.960 --> 01:30:30.960 anyone talking about it, and maybe they themselves don't have the capacity 01:30:30.960 --> 01:30:32.000 to talk about it. 01:30:32.000 --> 01:30:36.080 And not only that, they would be dealing at a far lower 01:30:36.080 --> 01:30:40.000 uh degree of scale than with an entire denomination, than with the 01:30:40.000 --> 01:30:42.400 head of the entire denomination. 01:30:42.400 --> 01:30:47.200 And so I think there's something very inspiring about saying, uh there's 01:30:47.200 --> 01:30:47.920 no one else here. 01:30:47.920 --> 01:30:49.200 I guess we're the guys. 01:30:49.200 --> 01:30:51.600 So we're going to get up and running to talk about the 01:30:51.600 --> 01:30:54.880 things that no one else is going to, particularly because we we 01:30:54.880 --> 01:30:56.880 want to talk about it for our own sake, not just for 01:30:56.880 --> 01:30:57.680 others' sake. 01:30:57.680 --> 01:30:59.040 So we're going to start talking about it. 01:30:59.040 --> 01:31:03.760 And then here's this moment where uh this this document comes out 01:31:03.840 --> 01:31:05.840 and it's sort of like a proof of concept. 01:31:05.840 --> 01:31:08.800 Like here's all these things that are very wrong and so we've 01:31:08.800 --> 01:31:09.840 already been up and running. 01:31:09.840 --> 01:31:11.040 So we're going to talk about it. 01:31:11.040 --> 01:31:13.040 And you're going to get on the stream and you're going to 01:31:13.040 --> 01:31:16.320 have that direct confrontation with the dragon. 01:31:16.320 --> 01:31:19.520 And the dragon's going to roar and breathe fire and then and 01:31:19.520 --> 01:31:20.800 then dox you. 01:31:21.040 --> 01:31:22.400 And we'll talk about that. 01:31:22.400 --> 01:31:26.240 And then the the response is like, Well that didn't hurt very 01:31:26.240 --> 01:31:28.640 much. And then you double down and then you lean into it 01:31:28.640 --> 01:31:29.120 even further. 01:31:29.200 --> 01:31:31.360 'Cause whoa, I remember when you and I were talking and it 01:31:31.360 --> 01:31:33.680 was like, Oh yeah, no, you did you guys did all your 01:31:33.840 --> 01:31:37.840 all all your your spiciest episodes, let's say after they doxed you. 01:31:37.840 --> 01:31:40.800 They didn't dox you for the spiciest episodes. 01:31:40.800 --> 01:31:43.440 And I think that there's something very admirable about that. 01:31:43.440 --> 01:31:45.920 And I think that there are a lot of men that um 01:31:46.080 --> 01:31:49.760 they might uh in another life wish to be the men capable 01:31:49.760 --> 01:31:52.800 of doing that, but certainly they have that fighting spirit within themselves. 01:31:52.800 --> 01:31:56.800 So I've I've appreciated learning about the saga, of course, way after 01:31:56.800 --> 01:32:00.240 the fact, because I think it speaks to what a lot of 01:32:00.240 --> 01:32:03.920 men wish that they had the capacity to do, or would pray 01:32:03.920 --> 01:32:06.800 to have the capacity to do, which is to say, Lord give 01:32:06.800 --> 01:32:10.480 me the strength to speak truth into this situation, whatever the situation 01:32:10.480 --> 01:32:13.760 is. Maybe it's my household, maybe it's my church, maybe it's my 01:32:13.760 --> 01:32:17.600 business, maybe it's my whole denomination, maybe it's my entire nation. 01:32:17.600 --> 01:32:19.200 Give me the strength to do that. 01:32:19.200 --> 01:32:22.640 And you guys stepped into it reluctantly, which is of course the 01:32:22.640 --> 01:32:25.600 stories of all the best warriors are the reluctant warriors. 01:32:25.600 --> 01:32:29.920 So um so let's let's talk now about what specifically was it 01:32:30.080 --> 01:32:32.400 were some of the things I of course I know this I 01:32:32.400 --> 01:32:34.720 just want to make sure that everyone's operating on the same on 01:32:34.720 --> 01:32:36.560 the same page with the narrative. 01:32:36.560 --> 01:32:40.160 What were some of the specific things within the larger catechism that 01:32:40.480 --> 01:32:43.520 were like, that's really bad and there's no place to hide from 01:32:43.520 --> 01:32:45.360 it? Because I I know what some of these are, so I 01:32:45.360 --> 01:32:46.800 just want to hear you guys talk about 01:32:46.800 --> 01:32:47.360 them. 01:32:47.520 --> 01:32:48.240 Let you start 01:32:48.240 --> 01:32:49.440 that one off. 01:32:49.840 --> 01:32:50.480 Uh 01:32:51.760 --> 01:32:54.800 the principal one, there was there was one particular one. 01:32:54.800 --> 01:32:57.920 I think it's by far the most egregious and the most effective 01:32:57.920 --> 01:33:02.000 weapon that we had that they handed to us was a quote 01:33:02.000 --> 01:33:06.160 on one of the sexuality ones that I made a slide for 01:33:06.560 --> 01:33:10.480 and spread that far and wide online because it went really rent 01:33:10.640 --> 01:33:12.240 went directly to 01:33:13.120 --> 01:33:18.880 the fact that these are not just like subtle theological issues. 01:33:18.880 --> 01:33:20.320 Let me read this quote for you. 01:33:20.320 --> 01:33:25.280 This is from one of the contemporary annotations, one of the essays 01:33:25.280 --> 01:33:28.720 that was written, in this case incidentally, by a girl. 01:33:28.720 --> 01:33:31.600 She wrote on behalf of the church 01:33:32.640 --> 01:33:38.800 However, though some of us are burdened with homosexual lust, pornographic addiction, 01:33:38.800 --> 01:33:44.960 transgenderism, te pedophilia, and polyamory, more often they're the speck in our 01:33:44.960 --> 01:33:47.920 neighbor's eye rather than the log in our own. 01:33:47.920 --> 01:33:50.800 Yeah. And so I made a slide of that with the LCMS 01:33:50.800 --> 01:33:54.560 logo and I highlighted burdened pedophilia and speck. 01:33:54.560 --> 01:33:57.280 I think that was the single most devastating thing that came out 01:33:57.280 --> 01:33:58.880 of all that because 01:34:00.640 --> 01:34:02.400 mothers noticed. 01:34:02.400 --> 01:34:06.720 You know, there are things that were guys can argue over fiddly 01:34:06.880 --> 01:34:10.560 stuff. And like that's guys like arguing over fiddly stuff. 01:34:10.560 --> 01:34:13.680 You know, everybody wants to have some strongly held opinion about some 01:34:13.680 --> 01:34:18.160 ecumenical council and pick a side and use words no one's ever 01:34:18.160 --> 01:34:20.000 heard before and and fight it out. 01:34:20.000 --> 01:34:21.600 That's not what we're talking about here. 01:34:21.600 --> 01:34:25.760 We're talking about Matt Harrison's LCMS saying that there's some people that 01:34:25.760 --> 01:34:29.280 are burdened with raping children, but that's just a speck in their 01:34:29.280 --> 01:34:31.680 eye. And we took exception to that. 01:34:31.680 --> 01:34:33.520 We thought you know what? 01:34:33.520 --> 01:34:37.920 They're passages about millstones, about God saying these people are going to 01:34:37.920 --> 01:34:42.800 be killed for eternity because what they are talking about is far 01:34:42.800 --> 01:34:46.080 more heinous than the speck in your eye. 01:34:46.080 --> 01:34:49.200 It's a complete complete misapplication of that verse. 01:34:49.200 --> 01:34:52.320 It's a complete misapplication of Christian doctrine. 01:34:52.320 --> 01:34:55.200 One of the episodes we did was entirely on all sins are 01:34:55.200 --> 01:34:56.000 not equal. 01:34:56.000 --> 01:34:58.400 Like I gave the example of a girl in a bikini. 01:34:58.400 --> 01:35:02.800 It's absolutely sinful and damning for you to lust after someone. 01:35:02.800 --> 01:35:07.280 But heterosexual lust for a member of the opposite sex who is 01:35:07.280 --> 01:35:12.880 not your spouse is not the same degree of sin as something 01:35:12.880 --> 01:35:18.160 that is fundamentally disordered against nature, disordered against creation itself. 01:35:18.160 --> 01:35:21.840 And so sodomitic lust is disordered against creation. 01:35:21.840 --> 01:35:24.880 It's completely disordered for a man to desire another man. 01:35:24.880 --> 01:35:26.560 And scripture makes that clear. 01:35:26.560 --> 01:35:30.640 And then And then further to separate desires from what is natural, 01:35:30.640 --> 01:35:34.800 to misdirect them towards children and then to act upon it is 01:35:35.040 --> 01:35:36.400 it's unspeakable. 01:35:36.400 --> 01:35:38.000 It should be unthinkable. 01:35:38.000 --> 01:35:41.360 And the fact that these people had the temerity to do like 01:35:41.920 --> 01:35:45.760 this is part of the thing, like the LGBTQIA plus plus, that 01:35:45.760 --> 01:35:52.160 whole rainbow coalition, that spectrum of sexualities includes pedophilia, peas in some 01:35:52.160 --> 01:35:54.800 of those acronyms and they all know it because it's how they 01:35:54.800 --> 01:36:00.400 reproduce. This was the Missouri Synod leaping leapfrogging ahead of most of 01:36:00.480 --> 01:36:05.200 our other churches to the very cutting edge of this degeneracy to 01:36:05.200 --> 01:36:09.840 say that wanting to have sex with children is another sexual orientation. 01:36:09.840 --> 01:36:12.640 That's literally the context that they provided. 01:36:12.640 --> 01:36:16.240 And so of all the errors in there, I principally focused on 01:36:16.240 --> 01:36:19.440 this one just because it makes clear Not only can you not 01:36:19.440 --> 01:36:23.120 have the Holy Spirit and produce this sort of thing, your hard 01:36:23.120 --> 01:36:25.280 drive needs to be handed handed over to someone. 01:36:25.280 --> 01:36:27.040 You're gonna die in prison. 01:36:27.040 --> 01:36:30.720 No one writes this unless they are demonically wicked. 01:36:31.040 --> 01:36:34.720 this is so far beyond you know disputes about like you're reformed 01:36:34.720 --> 01:36:35.600 and we're Lutheran. 01:36:35.600 --> 01:36:38.160 We disagree to some extent on the sacraments. 01:36:38.160 --> 01:36:39.520 I don't think you're wicked. 01:36:39.520 --> 01:36:41.520 I mean I've even asked you about that, but like you know, 01:36:41.520 --> 01:36:44.800 they're they're basic confessions, they're basic things and we've done episodes about 01:36:44.880 --> 01:36:48.960 like you're different groups believe this about baptism, about communion. 01:36:48.960 --> 01:36:50.640 These are disagreements in the church. 01:36:50.640 --> 01:36:52.240 They're doctrinal disagreements. 01:36:52.240 --> 01:36:54.800 There's scriptural cases to be made. 01:36:54.800 --> 01:36:57.920 When you're talking about raping kids, there's no scriptural case to be 01:36:57.920 --> 01:37:00.720 made. There's nothing except for millstones. 01:37:00.720 --> 01:37:02.800 And that's why a lot of this is political. 01:37:02.800 --> 01:37:04.800 There's there is a political side. 01:37:04.800 --> 01:37:09.600 There's a fact that until fairly recently it was legal in the 01:37:09.840 --> 01:37:12.320 United States for pedophiles to be executed by the state. 01:37:12.320 --> 01:37:14.080 And then the Supreme Court shot that down. 01:37:14.080 --> 01:37:17.760 It's something that's just being challenged recently, where some states are passing 01:37:17.760 --> 01:37:18.800 those laws again. 01:37:18.800 --> 01:37:21.600 They're illegal at a federal level, so that's gonna get battled out. 01:37:21.600 --> 01:37:23.200 But like this is what we're talking about. 01:37:23.520 --> 01:37:26.640 If someone's willing to do this in the in the world, and 01:37:26.640 --> 01:37:29.440 then we have churches running interference and say, Well, that's just a 01:37:29.440 --> 01:37:31.040 speck in their in their eye. 01:37:31.280 --> 01:37:33.600 you have a you have you have a child raper next door, 01:37:33.600 --> 01:37:36.880 but you know, you you cursed at the TV when the football 01:37:37.200 --> 01:37:38.480 play didn't go the way you like. 01:37:38.480 --> 01:37:39.440 You're just as bad as them. 01:37:39.440 --> 01:37:40.720 Take that spec out first. 01:37:40.720 --> 01:37:41.360 No. Yeah. 01:37:41.360 --> 01:37:43.920 That's w we're not dealing with Christians at all. 01:37:43.920 --> 01:37:45.440 And so that's the most egregious. 01:37:45.440 --> 01:37:46.800 Some of the others a little more subtle. 01:37:46.800 --> 01:37:51.040 There were ones about gentrification was was condemned as a sin. 01:37:51.440 --> 01:37:54.400 Just like like Cory said like it's just w where'd this come 01:37:54.400 --> 01:37:57.440 from? This is not it's it 01:37:58.400 --> 01:38:01.680 it it's brazen radical left wing. 01:38:01.680 --> 01:38:02.960 You know, we call it political. 01:38:02.960 --> 01:38:05.840 Some people call it woke, and Corey and b I both hate 01:38:05.840 --> 01:38:08.000 that term because it's it's dismissive. 01:38:08.000 --> 01:38:11.040 To call something woke is to trivialize it. 01:38:11.120 --> 01:38:12.880 And this stuff is not trivial. 01:38:12.880 --> 01:38:17.200 This stuff is rooted in actual spiritual malevolence. 01:38:17.200 --> 01:38:21.680 And the fact that it seems incoherent, it seems irrational, is part 01:38:21.680 --> 01:38:23.360 of how they get away with it. 01:38:23.360 --> 01:38:26.080 Because you think it's so like there was a headline this week 01:38:26.080 --> 01:38:28.080 where milk was called racist. 01:38:28.400 --> 01:38:30.160 And people like, oh, that's so woke. 01:38:30.160 --> 01:38:31.200 They're so retarded. 01:38:31.200 --> 01:38:33.520 No. Milk is racist. 01:38:33.520 --> 01:38:38.800 The ability to metabolize milk to metabolize lactose is racially based. 01:38:38.800 --> 01:38:40.800 Milk is absolutely racist. 01:38:40.800 --> 01:38:42.960 Whites can do it and most other races can't. 01:38:43.040 --> 01:38:44.160 Milk's racist. 01:38:44.160 --> 01:38:44.960 They're right. 01:38:44.960 --> 01:38:45.840 They're not woke. 01:38:45.840 --> 01:38:46.800 They're not stupid. 01:38:46.800 --> 01:38:49.120 What they're doing is they're attacking white people. 01:38:49.120 --> 01:38:52.160 And that's the unifying theory behind all of these things. 01:38:52.240 --> 01:38:55.360 It's part of the reason that the pagan versus Christian stuff is 01:38:55.520 --> 01:38:57.840 it's one of the reasons we talk about race because there's so 01:38:57.840 --> 01:39:03.360 many guys that want to be propositional in in their ideas about 01:39:03.360 --> 01:39:07.120 nationhood when it that's not what Satan's doing. 01:39:07.120 --> 01:39:10.080 Satan's not going after the idea of an American. 01:39:10.080 --> 01:39:12.240 He's specifically going after whites. 01:39:12.560 --> 01:39:16.320 if every single white in this country were exterminated, that would be 01:39:16.320 --> 01:39:17.600 a victory condition. 01:39:17.600 --> 01:39:19.120 They made that very clear. 01:39:19.120 --> 01:39:22.160 You know, it's like these are controversial things, they upset people. 01:39:22.160 --> 01:39:24.640 Most people have never thought about 'em and they don't want to. 01:39:24.640 --> 01:39:27.360 And there's not a lot of church writing about this stuff because 01:39:27.600 --> 01:39:30.480 when in history has milk ever been attacked? 01:39:30.480 --> 01:39:33.120 Like that's and so you know, most people see that and they 01:39:33.120 --> 01:39:34.880 just throw up their hands like that's crazy. 01:39:35.120 --> 01:39:37.280 we're able to understand is not crazy at all. 01:39:37.280 --> 01:39:39.760 There's a root behind why they're picking that fight. 01:39:39.760 --> 01:39:43.440 The episode we this this week about when these fights are picked, 01:39:43.440 --> 01:39:44.480 we gotta listen. 01:39:44.480 --> 01:39:45.920 Why would they go after milk? 01:39:45.920 --> 01:39:46.960 Why do they go after math? 01:39:47.200 --> 01:39:49.920 Why do they go after showing up on time and saying those 01:39:49.920 --> 01:39:50.960 are all racist? 01:39:50.960 --> 01:39:53.760 It's because certain races can't do those things. 01:39:53.760 --> 01:39:56.880 Literally. They're physically incapable of doing those things. 01:39:56.880 --> 01:40:00.480 And when people in the church lie about that, we can't evangelize 01:40:00.480 --> 01:40:04.960 to pagans because they see that we're foolish, and Satan just keeps 01:40:04.960 --> 01:40:06.880 moving the ball. 01:40:07.920 --> 01:40:12.800 Good. If you ever want a reason to hate Justice Kennedy, he 01:40:12.800 --> 01:40:16.160 is the one who authorized the majority opinion in that case. 01:40:16.160 --> 01:40:17.120 That's Kennedy v. 01:40:17.200 --> 01:40:22.720 Louisiana. And I don't actually recommend reading that fact pattern unless you 01:40:22.720 --> 01:40:28.000 don't already hate those who push this sort of thing, particularly with 01:40:28.000 --> 01:40:29.920 regard to pedophilia. 01:40:29.920 --> 01:40:32.320 You're not going to forget the fact pattern if you read it, 01:40:32.320 --> 01:40:34.160 so fair warning. 01:40:34.480 --> 01:40:36.800 One of the reasons that 01:40:37.680 --> 01:40:40.160 I in particular woe as well though. 01:40:40.160 --> 01:40:43.520 One of the reasons I'm prepared to deal with some of these 01:40:43.760 --> 01:40:48.160 problems, and in particular when I read through things like the so-called 01:40:48.160 --> 01:40:53.600 large catechism with annotations and contemporary applications, that word alone should probably 01:40:53.600 --> 01:40:57.200 alert most men to potential problems. 01:40:57.200 --> 01:41:00.560 But one of the things that prepared me for reading it and 01:41:00.560 --> 01:41:04.160 finding these problems is that I am very familiar with the writings 01:41:04.160 --> 01:41:05.280 of the Frankfurt School. 01:41:05.280 --> 01:41:08.000 So I am familiar with cultural Marxism. 01:41:08.000 --> 01:41:12.320 I've read I won't say most, but actually it might be most. 01:41:12.320 --> 01:41:16.080 I've read many of their works, particularly of the central thinkers so 01:41:16.160 --> 01:41:17.280 called of that school. 01:41:17.280 --> 01:41:18.320 And so when I read through 01:41:19.280 --> 01:41:23.600 these essays, I notice thing that uh things that other men are 01:41:23.600 --> 01:41:28.560 going to miss because I know how Marxists work, I know Satan's 01:41:28.560 --> 01:41:31.120 playbook, I know the way that he is going to build his 01:41:31.120 --> 01:41:35.280 arguments, the words he's going to use, the way he's going to 01:41:35.280 --> 01:41:36.640 shade things. 01:41:36.640 --> 01:41:39.440 And I see it in these essays. 01:41:39.440 --> 01:41:41.920 And it almost reminds me of that was, I believe, just as 01:41:41.920 --> 01:41:44.480 Justice Potter Stewart, who said, I know it when I see it 01:41:44.640 --> 01:41:46.640 of pornography. 01:41:46.640 --> 01:41:48.240 It's the same with this. 01:41:48.240 --> 01:41:51.760 If you know it, you are going to recognize it immediately for 01:41:51.760 --> 01:41:52.560 what it is. 01:41:52.560 --> 01:41:56.320 So when I read through these essays, I saw Marxism all over 01:41:56.880 --> 01:41:58.720 the place in a number of them. 01:41:58.720 --> 01:42:03.520 And it's incredibly obvious what Satan is attempting to do. 01:42:03.520 --> 01:42:05.680 Because he uses the same playbook everywhere. 01:42:05.680 --> 01:42:07.840 And he uses it because it works. 01:42:07.840 --> 01:42:10.960 Because ignorant men and also wicked men 01:42:12.000 --> 01:42:14.080 just let him do it. 01:42:14.080 --> 01:42:19.520 And we have that happening in the LCMS because very few pastors 01:42:19.520 --> 01:42:24.240 have done anything in opposition to this wickedness. 01:42:24.240 --> 01:42:28.080 This is now again being used in the seminary. 01:42:28.320 --> 01:42:31.280 Probably in both seminaries, I believe, at this point. 01:42:31.280 --> 01:42:33.520 The LCMS has two seminaries, one in St. 01:42:33.520 --> 01:42:35.760 Louis and one in Fort Wayne. 01:42:35.760 --> 01:42:39.280 This is being used to train future pastors. 01:42:39.280 --> 01:42:42.400 This is going to be pushed by those pastors, the fathers. 01:42:42.400 --> 01:42:45.920 Fathers are going to use this to teach their children. 01:42:45.920 --> 01:42:50.880 This alone is enough to undermine any teaching of actual Christian doctrine 01:42:50.880 --> 01:42:55.200 in the LCMS because it's not just the beginning. 01:42:55.200 --> 01:42:59.040 This is another step in what Satan has been doing for a 01:42:59.040 --> 01:42:59.840 number of decades. 01:42:59.840 --> 01:43:03.040 It is a major step, but this will be used as the 01:43:03.040 --> 01:43:05.600 foundation for even more wicked things. 01:43:05.600 --> 01:43:08.640 If this is permitted to stand, the LCMS may as well be 01:43:08.640 --> 01:43:12.720 Elka. And for those who are not as familiar with how Lutheranism, 01:43:12.720 --> 01:43:15.680 although Elka is not really Lutheran, but how Lutheranism works in the 01:43:15.680 --> 01:43:20.560 US, you have a handful of relatively conservative denominations and then you 01:43:20.560 --> 01:43:21.600 have Elka. 01:43:21.600 --> 01:43:24.960 Elke is the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. 01:43:24.960 --> 01:43:27.760 Unfortunately, they still are allowed to use that name. 01:43:28.080 --> 01:43:29.920 They're not even Christian. 01:43:29.920 --> 01:43:33.760 I know the Presbyterians will immediately recognize this because you have the 01:43:33.760 --> 01:43:38.960 three major groups in Presbyterianism, and they're basically in ranked order of 01:43:38.960 --> 01:43:40.800 least to most faithful. 01:43:40.800 --> 01:43:44.480 We kind of have the same thing going in Lutheranism in America. 01:43:46.400 --> 01:43:46.720 So 01:43:48.160 --> 01:43:53.680 when I saw uh when I saw the the bit about pedophilia, 01:43:53.680 --> 01:43:55.440 whoa, I think you sent it to me and then I listened 01:43:55.440 --> 01:43:56.880 to it on the tur term stream. 01:43:56.880 --> 01:44:00.160 I mean, there there really is no way around that. 01:44:00.160 --> 01:44:04.640 Like you can understand certain denominations, like I'm aware of some stuff 01:44:04.640 --> 01:44:08.240 that's been happening in the OPC lately with softening of language. 01:44:08.240 --> 01:44:12.080 I watched a YouTube video about that, a couple guys discussing, you 01:44:12.080 --> 01:44:15.360 know, well, why are they going to change this provision to essentially 01:44:15.360 --> 01:44:18.720 something from something clear to something substantially less clear? 01:44:18.720 --> 01:44:21.040 And these two guys are talking about it on YouTube, like we 01:44:21.040 --> 01:44:22.320 really just don't understand this. 01:44:22.320 --> 01:44:25.040 And it just kind of seems like they are genuinely unaware of 01:44:25.040 --> 01:44:25.920 what's going on. 01:44:25.920 --> 01:44:30.240 So there there's there are these subtle shadings of language that open 01:44:30.240 --> 01:44:34.960 the door, a crack for larger transgressions down the line. 01:44:34.960 --> 01:44:39.120 But it it seemed to me that just seeing that one line, 01:44:39.120 --> 01:44:44.720 that likening pedophilia to all these other more more uh normal sins, 01:44:44.720 --> 01:44:47.760 I guess you'd say, or more everyday sins or properly ordered sins, 01:44:47.760 --> 01:44:51.520 like it was it was crossing a major, major line and over 01:44:51.680 --> 01:44:55.520 a massive overplaying of the hand, or perhaps a total uh revelation 01:44:55.520 --> 01:44:59.920 of what's going on in this absolute Absolutely unmistakable way. 01:44:59.920 --> 01:45:03.760 And just to put the pieces together, it was because you and 01:45:03.760 --> 01:45:06.800 Brian on the turnip stream and then one one other man, you 01:45:06.800 --> 01:45:09.280 guys got together on this four-way, I think it was like a 01:45:09.280 --> 01:45:12.080 a YouTube uh Zoom call perhaps and maybe it was live streamed, 01:45:12.080 --> 01:45:13.280 I'm not sure. 01:45:13.280 --> 01:45:18.400 That you called these things out, you brought destruction down on yourselves 01:45:18.400 --> 01:45:19.200 from the top. 01:45:19.200 --> 01:45:22.000 And not only because of this, but you brought destruction down on 01:45:22.000 --> 01:45:24.960 yourselves from and I don't mean to put this in your hands, 01:45:24.960 --> 01:45:27.520 understand. I just mean that like you spoke into this thing and 01:45:27.520 --> 01:45:31.760 Matthew Harrison publicly declared that you four must be destroyed for speaking 01:45:31.760 --> 01:45:32.640 into this. 01:45:32.640 --> 01:45:35.440 And so um I I want to talk I want to move 01:45:35.440 --> 01:45:37.760 into talking about some of the racial issues that we got to, 01:45:37.760 --> 01:45:39.760 but before we do that, I just I want to hear a 01:45:39.760 --> 01:45:43.440 little bit about that moment when it's like you spoke into something 01:45:43.440 --> 01:45:47.280 truthfully and openly that needed to be spoken into that I think 01:45:47.280 --> 01:45:50.720 a lot of men listening listening would would wish they had the 01:45:50.720 --> 01:45:53.200 the opportunity to have the courage to draw their swords and say 01:45:53.360 --> 01:45:55.040 we will not stand for this. 01:45:55.040 --> 01:45:57.280 Like maybe you can talk a little bit about that moment, the 01:45:57.280 --> 01:45:59.440 stream and the aftermath and then we can get into the milk 01:45:59.440 --> 01:46:01.840 and all that stuff, which is sort of the meat of the 01:46:01.840 --> 01:46:05.520 of the Stone Choir podcast as I've listened to it anyway. 01:46:06.080 --> 01:46:11.520 That moment really wasn't that interesting for us evolutionarily because they that 01:46:11.520 --> 01:46:14.240 by that point is as we said in the episode that we 01:46:14.240 --> 01:46:17.520 did on the timeline of recriminations where we go th over all 01:46:17.520 --> 01:46:18.960 of these events. 01:46:18.960 --> 01:46:23.520 Corey and I both knew after Floyd's suicide that Harrison was apostate. 01:46:24.000 --> 01:46:28.720 So the fact that he went mask off in the large cataclysm, 01:46:28.720 --> 01:46:32.880 I was kind of surprised at the aggressiveness of how openly he 01:46:32.880 --> 01:46:36.800 was going to be apostate, but the fact didn't surprise me. 01:46:37.120 --> 01:46:44.080 the degree of openness did but it wasn't revelation. 01:46:44.080 --> 01:46:48.080 Stone choir exists because pastors have been faithless. 01:46:48.080 --> 01:46:51.760 If pastors in the LCMS were addressing these things as they have 01:46:51.760 --> 01:46:55.040 a duty to God to do, we wouldn't exist. 01:46:55.040 --> 01:46:58.160 It's another part of the reason we're called Stone Choir. 01:46:58.160 --> 01:47:01.360 We don't have a vocation to tackle these issues. 01:47:01.360 --> 01:47:05.440 There's no line item in any charter that says here's the office 01:47:05.440 --> 01:47:08.160 of the guy that's going to complain about people doing this stuff 01:47:08.400 --> 01:47:09.520 in the church. 01:47:09.520 --> 01:47:11.840 Pastors are supposed to police this stuff. 01:47:11.840 --> 01:47:12.960 That's what they say. 01:47:12.960 --> 01:47:16.480 That the the theology of the LCMS pastorate is that they have 01:47:16.480 --> 01:47:19.520 a duty to the to address these issues. 01:47:19.520 --> 01:47:23.840 But when push comes to shove, what pastors do is they put 01:47:23.840 --> 01:47:24.720 their heads down. 01:47:24.720 --> 01:47:25.920 They pretend it doesn't exist. 01:47:25.920 --> 01:47:27.200 They say it's not their problem. 01:47:27.200 --> 01:47:28.640 It's none of their business. 01:47:28.640 --> 01:47:33.760 And the LCMS's own bylaws expressly forbid them from publicly disagreeing. 01:47:33.760 --> 01:47:39.120 If there are doctrinal disputes within the LCMS, pastors who are members 01:47:39.120 --> 01:47:39.440 of the 01:47:40.320 --> 01:47:43.680 corporation of the LCMS is called the roster. 01:47:43.680 --> 01:47:46.960 Corey and I were not members of the LCMS, we were members 01:47:46.960 --> 01:47:50.000 of congregations which were members of the LCMS. 01:47:50.000 --> 01:47:52.240 So there's a level of indirection there. 01:47:52.240 --> 01:47:55.680 So laymen so-called are members of the LCMS. 01:47:55.680 --> 01:47:57.120 We're members of churches. 01:47:57.120 --> 01:48:01.280 The churches and the pastors themselves are members of the corporation, which 01:48:01.280 --> 01:48:04.800 means that the members of the corporation, the pastors and the churches 01:48:04.800 --> 01:48:08.640 collectively, can be kicked out of the corporation, which means you don't 01:48:08.640 --> 01:48:12.480 have access to you know, the payroll like the benefits program, you 01:48:12.480 --> 01:48:14.960 don't have access to receive new pastors. 01:48:14.960 --> 01:48:18.720 So it's close to a death sentence for a congregation to be 01:48:18.720 --> 01:48:22.080 kicked out, and it's basically a death sentence for a pastor to 01:48:22.080 --> 01:48:25.440 be removed from the roster because no one else in the Missouri 01:48:25.440 --> 01:48:27.440 Synod can call him. 01:48:28.080 --> 01:48:31.600 As a result, virtually no pastors are willing to stand up to 01:48:31.600 --> 01:48:32.880 any of this stuff. 01:48:32.880 --> 01:48:38.720 A remarkable thing happened in the immediate aftermath of Ryan Turnipseed's thread 01:48:38.880 --> 01:48:40.560 and the turnip stream. 01:48:40.560 --> 01:48:43.120 For a period of about ten days, there were a whole bunch 01:48:43.120 --> 01:48:45.360 of pastors who'd kept their heads down. 01:48:45.360 --> 01:48:49.040 They hadn't fought back against any of his crap for years. 01:48:49.040 --> 01:48:53.360 They forgot that they were beholden to the congregation and they actually 01:48:53.360 --> 01:48:55.280 did their jobs for a couple weeks. 01:48:55.280 --> 01:48:56.560 And they said, This is bad. 01:48:56.560 --> 01:48:59.120 This is this is clearly false doctrine. 01:48:59.120 --> 01:49:03.680 And then the corporation slammed the blast doors on the first when 01:49:03.680 --> 01:49:06.400 it was re released, the first of February, and then on I 01:49:06.400 --> 01:49:09.680 think the twenty second, twenty first or twenty second, when the press 01:49:09.680 --> 01:49:13.040 release was put out that said that there were basically na Nazis 01:49:13.040 --> 01:49:16.560 running wild in the LCMS and they were going to be excommunicated. 01:49:16.560 --> 01:49:22.800 That pretty much completely shut down all pastoral objections to these things 01:49:22.800 --> 01:49:23.920 in public. 01:49:23.920 --> 01:49:26.080 And one of the things that we said in that stream is 01:49:26.080 --> 01:49:28.320 part of the reason that we have been targeted, part of the 01:49:28.320 --> 01:49:31.440 reason that we're such a threat is we're not beholden to anyone. 01:49:31.600 --> 01:49:35.280 There's nothing that they can do to us to prevent us from 01:49:35.280 --> 01:49:37.120 speaking against these things. 01:49:37.120 --> 01:49:41.440 And you know, that there's it's a wild west sort of scenario 01:49:41.440 --> 01:49:44.640 that's not good for anyone because you don't want to have men 01:49:44.640 --> 01:49:47.440 just running around taking shots of things. 01:49:47.440 --> 01:49:49.360 Like it's it's disruptive. 01:49:49.360 --> 01:49:53.280 But the fundamental problem is if the church weren't doing this stuff, 01:49:53.280 --> 01:49:54.400 we wouldn't exist. 01:49:54.560 --> 01:49:57.840 If the church if the church had small problems, we never would 01:49:57.840 --> 01:49:59.040 have started talking about it. 01:49:59.120 --> 01:50:02.640 Like there's every church has had small problems and sometimes big ones. 01:50:02.640 --> 01:50:05.200 You can even work through some of the big ones. 01:50:05.200 --> 01:50:08.160 What we saw for the last few years was that there That 01:50:08.160 --> 01:50:13.360 there is a tectonic shift that has is going to end Christianity 01:50:13.360 --> 01:50:14.960 within the LCMS. 01:50:14.960 --> 01:50:19.280 It's not only ceasing ceasing to be Lutheran and ceasing to exist. 01:50:19.680 --> 01:50:23.920 The number of members has nearly dropped in half since Harrison took 01:50:24.080 --> 01:50:26.080 the presidency about two thousand ten. 01:50:26.080 --> 01:50:27.120 It's dying. 01:50:27.120 --> 01:50:29.520 And even though it's dying, they're still trying to kill it with 01:50:29.520 --> 01:50:30.560 false doctrine. 01:50:30.560 --> 01:50:33.280 That's why the fight has to occur. 01:50:33.280 --> 01:50:33.920 And so 01:50:35.120 --> 01:50:39.600 the moment of the stream didn't really tell us anything new. 01:50:39.600 --> 01:50:42.160 It showed us for a little while like the d the battle 01:50:42.160 --> 01:50:44.800 lines were drawn a little bit publicly because there were a whole 01:50:44.800 --> 01:50:48.880 bunch of guys on Twitter and elsewhere on social media who immediately 01:50:48.880 --> 01:50:52.720 condemned all of us, said, you have no business doing that. 01:50:52.720 --> 01:50:55.440 How dare you criticize the Pope in Rome? 01:50:55.440 --> 01:50:58.480 I mean it was really it was the replay of the Reformation 01:50:58.480 --> 01:51:01.040 that occurred in that moment is is hard to overstate. 01:51:01.040 --> 01:51:05.440 I was actually just yesterday, I spent like three hours watching a 01:51:05.440 --> 01:51:08.400 documentary series on the papacy. 01:51:08.400 --> 01:51:11.680 And in the episode that they did on Leo X, who is 01:51:11.680 --> 01:51:14.880 the Pope during the Reformation, at least the early early part of 01:51:14.880 --> 01:51:17.360 it, over and Over and over, the things that they were saying 01:51:17.360 --> 01:51:20.400 about the disputes between Luther and Rome and the behavior of both 01:51:20.400 --> 01:51:23.280 sides, the echoes were unmistakable. 01:51:23.280 --> 01:51:25.280 You know, one of one of the points that they made was 01:51:25.280 --> 01:51:28.000 that Luther was a master of social media. 01:51:28.240 --> 01:51:31.680 the use of the printing press and the popular appeal to the 01:51:31.680 --> 01:51:34.800 laity to say like, here you go, Christians, this is what's actually 01:51:34.800 --> 01:51:35.280 going on. 01:51:35.280 --> 01:51:36.400 Here's what the Bible says. 01:51:36.400 --> 01:51:37.520 Here's what the Pope says. 01:51:37.520 --> 01:51:40.240 You gotta pick one because they don't say the same thing. 01:51:40.240 --> 01:51:43.280 That was revolutionary and it was hugely disruptive. 01:51:43.280 --> 01:51:47.120 The exact same thing played out last year because Ryan Turns, he's 01:51:47.120 --> 01:51:48.320 really good at social media. 01:51:48.320 --> 01:51:49.920 Corey and I are good at it too. 01:51:49.920 --> 01:51:51.600 We're good at messaging. 01:51:51.600 --> 01:51:54.480 And that can either be used to deceive or it can be 01:51:54.480 --> 01:51:56.960 used to spread truthful messages. 01:51:56.960 --> 01:51:59.200 You know, you're also very good at you have you know a 01:51:59.200 --> 01:52:03.200 multimedia empire that you're growing here where you're you're taking things to 01:52:03.200 --> 01:52:06.320 people in different contexts and just saying like look this is true, 01:52:06.160 --> 01:52:07.680 but it's not enough to be true. 01:52:07.680 --> 01:52:09.920 You know, you need good production quality. 01:52:09.920 --> 01:52:11.440 You need good arguments. 01:52:11.440 --> 01:52:12.960 You need them well presented. 01:52:12.960 --> 01:52:15.200 There's polish has to be a part of it. 01:52:15.200 --> 01:52:17.520 And so the fact that we're good at kind of all of 01:52:17.520 --> 01:52:22.400 those things simultaneously, where our opponents are not, they're ham fisted and 01:52:22.400 --> 01:52:25.680 they're bad at these things was tremendously disruptive. 01:52:25.680 --> 01:52:27.760 And like I said, that that's potentially a bad thing. 01:52:27.760 --> 01:52:30.800 I I don't want an environment where a random guys on the 01:52:30.800 --> 01:52:33.040 internet are just running around taking pot shots. 01:52:33.040 --> 01:52:36.640 That's not good for anyone, per se. 01:52:36.640 --> 01:52:39.760 But at the same time, it is the absolute duty of the 01:52:39.760 --> 01:52:41.600 churches to be faithful to scripture. 01:52:41.600 --> 01:52:44.480 And the moment that they stop doing that, you're gonna find some 01:52:44.480 --> 01:52:45.760 stones crying out. 01:52:45.760 --> 01:52:48.320 And you're gonna find some stones flying. 01:52:48.320 --> 01:52:51.920 And that's you buy your ticket, you take the ride. 01:52:51.920 --> 01:52:55.440 They picked this fight and they didn't realize who was showing up. 01:52:55.440 --> 01:52:58.640 The men that they chose as their opponents on the turnip stream 01:52:58.800 --> 01:53:01.120 were the mer the worst men in the universe they could have 01:53:01.120 --> 01:53:02.480 possibly chosen. 01:53:02.480 --> 01:53:05.840 We're all very intelligent, were all very good at this. 01:53:05.840 --> 01:53:08.240 All they had to do was be faithful and we would have 01:53:08.320 --> 01:53:09.760 still been on their side. 01:53:09.760 --> 01:53:12.080 It's like this isn't a personality conflict. 01:53:12.080 --> 01:53:13.520 This is about scripture. 01:53:13.520 --> 01:53:15.600 It's about obedience to God. 01:53:15.600 --> 01:53:18.320 That I'm I'm gonna answer to God for all of this. 01:53:18.320 --> 01:53:21.440 I'm gonna stand before the judgment throne and answer for all of 01:53:21.440 --> 01:53:23.760 this. And I that's what worries me. 01:53:23.760 --> 01:53:26.400 The hip pieces and the press and you know, all the other 01:53:26.400 --> 01:53:29.360 stuff that's happened, not interesting. 01:53:29.360 --> 01:53:30.240 It's fine. 01:53:30.240 --> 01:53:32.160 I care about what God thinks about me. 01:53:32.160 --> 01:53:34.960 And if men don't like it, well, that tells me more about 01:53:34.960 --> 01:53:36.480 them than it does about God. 01:53:37.840 --> 01:53:38.000 I 01:53:38.000 --> 01:53:41.840 wasn't aware that uh that you that there were all these incentives 01:53:41.840 --> 01:53:45.200 from various pastors and and members of the roster to to make 01:53:45.200 --> 01:53:46.640 sure that you were quiet. 01:53:46.640 --> 01:53:49.520 I didn't I don't I don't don't really understand the denomin I 01:53:49.520 --> 01:53:54.640 I didn't understand the denominational structure where there's actually more interest in 01:53:54.640 --> 01:53:57.440 making sure that you guys don't speak up than just at the 01:53:57.440 --> 01:53:59.040 very tippy top level. 01:53:59.040 --> 01:54:03.680 Like there's a there like your truth speaking highlights the the um 01:54:03.920 --> 01:54:07.200 the consent to lies or the act of participation and lies from 01:54:07.280 --> 01:54:08.080 from everybody else. 01:54:08.080 --> 01:54:10.240 So I I didn't fully understand that and I think I do 01:54:10.240 --> 01:54:10.400 now. 01:54:10.640 --> 01:54:14.160 Yeah. It's i it's exactly the same point I was making earlier 01:54:14.160 --> 01:54:18.560 about abortion, there's a subset of guys that are very bold confessors 01:54:18.560 --> 01:54:20.800 of fights that no one's having anymore. 01:54:20.800 --> 01:54:23.920 And they hang, they rest their on their laurels and they hang 01:54:23.920 --> 01:54:27.440 their hat on picking those fights about the liturgy and about some 01:54:27.440 --> 01:54:28.000 other things. 01:54:28.000 --> 01:54:29.280 I love the j the liturgy. 01:54:29.280 --> 01:54:30.400 I care about those things. 01:54:30.400 --> 01:54:32.480 But that's not the fight that Satan's picking. 01:54:32.480 --> 01:54:35.600 We're gonna show up wherever Satan picks the fight. 01:54:35.600 --> 01:54:36.720 And that's that's the problem. 01:54:36.720 --> 01:54:38.880 Like yeah, you you correctly identified it. 01:54:38.880 --> 01:54:42.160 We put those men to shame because we went where the puck 01:54:42.160 --> 01:54:45.520 moved. We don't care about the battle from five years or fifty 01:54:45.520 --> 01:54:47.920 years ago or five hundred years ago. 01:54:47.920 --> 01:54:51.600 We care about this year's battle because this year's battle is destroying 01:54:51.600 --> 01:54:54.720 souls and no one else was willing to show up. 01:54:54.720 --> 01:54:56.640 And in the subsequent 01:54:57.520 --> 01:55:02.160 convention that occurred, there were a bunch of resolutions both supporting the 01:55:02.160 --> 01:55:06.160 pedochism and condemning it, and they were all basically shot down. 01:55:06.160 --> 01:55:10.160 And the pastors were basically told behind the scenes, don't do this. 01:55:10.160 --> 01:55:12.160 In fact, one of the reasons, one of the ways they were 01:55:12.160 --> 01:55:15.680 able to shut that down was they lied to them then, I 01:55:15.680 --> 01:55:19.120 think June or maybe July, with the same lies that Harrison was 01:55:19.120 --> 01:55:22.640 telling back in February, which is what they're terrorist threats. 01:55:22.640 --> 01:55:26.640 They directly accuse Corey and me of violent terrorist threats in order 01:55:26.640 --> 01:55:29.920 to shut down discussion that this actually happened. 01:55:29.920 --> 01:55:32.720 I have eyewitnesses to the fact that those lies were told. 01:55:32.720 --> 01:55:35.120 And as a result, they were told, well, there there were threats 01:55:35.120 --> 01:55:36.080 of violence made. 01:55:36.320 --> 01:55:37.760 We can't do this. 01:55:37.760 --> 01:55:39.680 And so nothing happened. 01:55:39.680 --> 01:55:43.760 Like that's it the the the brazen degree of 01:55:45.120 --> 01:55:46.800 of deceit and cowardice. 01:55:46.800 --> 01:55:48.080 Like it's just it's shocking. 01:55:48.080 --> 01:55:50.800 Like if we're just being jerks on the internet, just cause jerks 01:55:50.800 --> 01:55:51.680 on the internet. 01:55:51.680 --> 01:55:54.720 But I wouldn't even necessarily disagree. 01:55:54.720 --> 01:55:57.440 But that's not that's not the accusation. 01:55:57.440 --> 01:56:01.040 The accusation is all these things that are complete falsehoods because it's 01:56:01.040 --> 01:56:05.520 necessary to prevent anyone from actually thinking about the problems, which are 01:56:05.520 --> 01:56:08.960 the we have a church saying it's raping kids as j is 01:56:08.960 --> 01:56:10.560 a sexual preference. 01:56:10.560 --> 01:56:12.160 That's the fight. 01:56:12.240 --> 01:56:14.320 Corey, did you have something you want to add to 01:56:14.320 --> 01:56:14.560 that? 01:56:15.200 --> 01:56:17.040 Just sort of a tangential comment. 01:56:17.040 --> 01:56:22.720 I think it's somewhat amusing that this is happening in the Lutheran 01:56:22.720 --> 01:56:27.360 Church when we have the history of really any of the major 01:56:27.360 --> 01:56:31.680 figures in Lutheranism, these were not men who were afraid to stand 01:56:31.680 --> 01:56:35.600 up and bear the brunt of the attack by whomever it happened 01:56:35.600 --> 01:56:37.760 to be or speak their mind. 01:56:37.760 --> 01:56:39.440 And particularly the LCMS. 01:56:39.440 --> 01:56:40.800 The LCMS is largely 01:56:41.760 --> 01:56:44.160 historically at least, and still today German. 01:56:44.160 --> 01:56:48.640 There's a fair contingent of Scandinavians as well, but Germans aren't known 01:56:48.640 --> 01:56:52.560 for being afraid to say the truth somewhat bluntly. 01:56:52.960 --> 01:56:56.000 Anyone who's travelled in Germany will of course know that to be 01:56:56.000 --> 01:56:58.000 entirely true. 01:56:58.000 --> 01:57:03.280 One of the princes at the presentation of the Augsburg Confession, when 01:57:03.280 --> 01:57:07.360 he was speaking face to face with the Emperor, said Rather than 01:57:07.360 --> 01:57:10.400 deny my God and his gospel I would sooner kneel down here 01:57:10.400 --> 01:57:14.160 before your Imperial Majesty and have my head struck off. 01:57:14.160 --> 01:57:16.720 I think if we come from a line of men who are 01:57:16.720 --> 01:57:19.200 willing to say that to the face of the Emperor, who could 01:57:19.200 --> 01:57:22.000 very well have done that to him right then and there, I 01:57:22.000 --> 01:57:24.160 think the least we can do is stand up and tell the 01:57:24.160 --> 01:57:29.760 truth about Marxism being brought into the LCMS and subverting one of 01:57:29.760 --> 01:57:34.880 the last few standing actual Christian churches in America. 01:57:35.840 --> 01:57:36.800 Mm-hmm. Yeah. 01:57:37.680 --> 01:57:40.240 especially it's such a clear-cut issue. 01:57:40.400 --> 01:57:43.440 Like that there's not a lot of wiggle room when you're talking 01:57:43.440 --> 01:57:44.480 about pedophilia. 01:57:44.480 --> 01:57:47.280 Like and that's the one of the odd things that seems to 01:57:47.280 --> 01:57:49.040 be going on right now. 01:57:49.040 --> 01:57:54.240 Is it would seem to me that that uh reaping children, right? 01:57:54.240 --> 01:57:56.080 Just call it what it is. 01:57:56.320 --> 01:58:00.720 that would be the clearest cut example of something that every normal 01:58:00.720 --> 01:58:05.760 human being would find so revolting and repulsive as to as to 01:58:06.160 --> 01:58:09.280 not just tickle the conscience or prick the conscience, but to you 01:58:09.280 --> 01:58:13.520 know, outrage the conscience of of almost every normal human being. 01:58:14.000 --> 01:58:15.200 pretty clear. 01:58:15.200 --> 01:58:20.720 And that that idea is being snuck into a denomination like the 01:58:20.720 --> 01:58:23.520 LCMS. And when you s like I don't have any experience with 01:58:23.520 --> 01:58:25.920 the denomination, but I trust you guys when you say that it's 01:58:25.920 --> 01:58:27.280 one of the faithful ones. 01:58:27.280 --> 01:58:32.400 So to that idea, it's it's uh beyond offensive to that that 01:58:32.400 --> 01:58:34.160 they would try, that they would do that. 01:58:34.160 --> 01:58:36.000 And it was done by, I think you said it was written 01:58:36.000 --> 01:58:37.440 by a woman as well. 01:58:37.440 --> 01:58:40.240 Like it's it's like a double, it's like a double offense. 01:58:40.240 --> 01:58:44.240 And I can understand being in a we'll say a metaphorical room, 01:58:44.240 --> 01:58:46.640 whether it be social media or you just imagine you're in a 01:58:46.640 --> 01:58:51.120 giant auditorium full of all the members of this denomination, including pastors 01:58:51.120 --> 01:58:55.040 and and people inside the you know executive staff, and the and 01:58:55.040 --> 01:58:58.960 like looking around, like, is anyone going to say anything about this? 01:58:58.960 --> 01:59:00.720 Does anyone have anything to say? 01:59:01.120 --> 01:59:04.240 And then the the resonating silence. 01:59:04.720 --> 01:59:07.280 And I I think well you did mention that some mothers did 01:59:07.280 --> 01:59:08.080 notice that. 01:59:08.080 --> 01:59:10.400 So I I don't mean to say that no one said anything, 01:59:10.400 --> 01:59:14.640 but the ability to build a platform to say something from you 01:59:14.640 --> 01:59:19.520 and Ryan, like you guys and Ryan is so crucially important and 01:59:19.520 --> 01:59:23.360 it's very telling that you would speak up and you would say 01:59:23.360 --> 01:59:26.960 these things and then the immediate response would be con like executive 01:59:26.960 --> 01:59:31.280 level condemnation from fr like we got we gotcha. 01:59:31.280 --> 01:59:33.680 Cause the reaction kind of says it all. 01:59:33.680 --> 01:59:37.520 If you speak truth into something that is objectively morally wrong, being 01:59:37.520 --> 01:59:40.480 spoken by a woman nonetheless, you know, to a to uh in 01:59:40.480 --> 01:59:40.960 in the in 01:59:40.960 --> 01:59:44.320 Lutheranism, I wonder what Luther would have to say about that. 01:59:44.320 --> 01:59:48.880 That the response came was so swift and so aggressive and so 01:59:48.880 --> 01:59:51.920 personal. It means that you you hit the thing. 01:59:51.920 --> 01:59:53.600 You put your finger on the thing. 01:59:53.600 --> 01:59:55.520 So well done with that. 01:59:55.920 --> 02:00:02.160 That particular aspect, that particular issue, at the time we thought that 02:00:02.160 --> 02:00:04.400 it was, as most people would assume, it was just you know 02:00:04.400 --> 02:00:06.240 Just, you know, theoretical. 02:00:06.240 --> 02:00:10.160 Uh I have subsequently learned that numerous men who were involved in 02:00:10.160 --> 02:00:14.960 the things have happened to us, their defense of that false doctrine 02:00:14.960 --> 02:00:17.040 was more than theoretical. 02:00:17.440 --> 02:00:18.480 Oh no. 02:00:18.720 --> 02:00:23.280 No, you go beyond that, but I yeah, it's it the the 02:00:23.280 --> 02:00:28.400 mercenary self-dealing of the things that have occurred to us in punishment 02:00:28.400 --> 02:00:30.880 for this, uh just off the charts. 02:00:30.880 --> 02:00:32.000 We don't miss. 02:00:32.000 --> 02:00:34.880 Even we don't even know the shot that we're taking. 02:00:35.360 --> 02:00:38.720 So okay, so you talked about I think it was Matthew Harrison, 02:00:38.880 --> 02:00:43.440 has uh his his children married outside their race, and so the 02:00:43.600 --> 02:00:46.800 there's a personal aspect to the racial issues that you guys have 02:00:46.800 --> 02:00:47.680 brought up. 02:00:47.680 --> 02:00:50.720 So it sounds to me like you're saying there's perhaps some personal 02:00:50.720 --> 02:00:55.040 advocacy on on behalf of uh on behalf of pedophilia that's coming 02:00:55.040 --> 02:00:58.960 from within the same executive body without getting too specific about it? 02:00:59.360 --> 02:01:03.280 Yeah, the the cadre of men who were involved in my doxing 02:01:03.280 --> 02:01:06.480 have direct connections to that question. 02:01:07.280 --> 02:01:10.560 Going back 15 years that I know of for a fact. 02:01:10.560 --> 02:01:12.480 And so you know I learned about that afterwards. 02:01:12.560 --> 02:01:16.240 You know, it's again like the it for us principally the problem 02:01:16.240 --> 02:01:19.760 is theological, but we can never lose sight of the fact that 02:01:19.760 --> 02:01:22.800 when we're talking about sin We're talking about sin in the real 02:01:22.800 --> 02:01:25.680 world. Sin is not theoretical. 02:01:25.680 --> 02:01:27.760 People are hurt by sin. 02:01:27.760 --> 02:01:31.440 And so that's one of the reasons that it's so crucial for 02:01:31.440 --> 02:01:35.200 any church body to hold the line on these very basic things. 02:01:35.200 --> 02:01:39.040 And you know, although we we principally here have highlighted that particular 02:01:39.040 --> 02:01:42.560 thing, the other things that were done in there were were not 02:01:43.040 --> 02:01:44.400 that egregious. 02:01:44.400 --> 02:01:49.360 They were lesser sins, but they were still still wildly impermissible aspect 02:01:49.520 --> 02:01:50.960 of false doctrine. 02:01:50.960 --> 02:01:53.200 And that was one of the things that the pushback occurred was 02:01:53.200 --> 02:01:55.680 that, well, you guys have just overplayed your hand. 02:01:55.680 --> 02:01:58.400 You you're you're making a mountain out of a hole a molehill 02:01:58.400 --> 02:02:01.440 here. Sure, maybe things could have been phrased a little bit better, 02:02:01.440 --> 02:02:03.920 but and as Corey said, that's the game they play. 02:02:03.920 --> 02:02:07.520 It's a Mott and Bailey play where they'll they'll advance the ball 02:02:07.680 --> 02:02:09.920 and then they'll pull it back just a little bit and say, 02:02:09.920 --> 02:02:11.280 why are you overreacting? 02:02:11.280 --> 02:02:13.120 This is it's not that big a deal. 02:02:13.520 --> 02:02:16.320 the point that Corey made was that we clearly saw as we 02:02:16.320 --> 02:02:21.600 were reading through the essays, the additions to this thing, that it 02:02:21.600 --> 02:02:24.240 was all coming from outside of Christianity. 02:02:24.240 --> 02:02:27.120 And one of the regular points that we make on Stone Choir 02:02:27.200 --> 02:02:32.640 is that unfortunately the modern Christian has this inherent tendency to want 02:02:32.640 --> 02:02:36.080 to take things from outside the church, just drag a bag of 02:02:36.080 --> 02:02:39.680 dog crap off the street and try to baptize it and try 02:02:39.680 --> 02:02:42.400 to find a proof text to say, yeah, this thing that I 02:02:42.400 --> 02:02:46.320 found from my HR department, this new morality, let's find a Bible 02:02:46.320 --> 02:02:48.880 verse that says that I can hold the same thing that HR 02:02:48.880 --> 02:02:51.280 believes and that the DEI program believes. 02:02:51.280 --> 02:02:52.960 That's not how Christianity works. 02:02:52.960 --> 02:02:56.640 That's your your moral compass must be rooted in scripture. 02:02:56.640 --> 02:03:00.000 You don't find morality outside of God's word. 02:03:00.160 --> 02:03:03.120 That's really one of the fundamental aspects of all of this. 02:03:03.120 --> 02:03:06.080 And so often in all of our church bodies, we see people 02:03:07.280 --> 02:03:11.760 finding new sins and they're not finding them in scripture, but then 02:03:11.760 --> 02:03:12.720 what will happen? 02:03:12.720 --> 02:03:15.840 Someone they'll hear somewhere that someone says something is really bad and 02:03:15.840 --> 02:03:19.680 really mean and really hateful, really dangerous, and they'll say, Well, I 02:03:19.680 --> 02:03:21.280 need to find where that is in the Bible. 02:03:21.280 --> 02:03:22.720 That's completely backwards. 02:03:22.720 --> 02:03:25.600 You read your Bible and you discover your own sins. 02:03:25.600 --> 02:03:29.040 That's how Christianity works when you have the indwelling of the Holy 02:03:29.040 --> 02:03:32.560 Spirit. These people are playing it in reverse because Satan plays it 02:03:32.480 --> 02:03:33.040 in reverse. 02:03:33.040 --> 02:03:35.840 He says, I got all these other teachings for you, and you 02:03:35.840 --> 02:03:37.600 can go find a proof text if you want. 02:03:37.600 --> 02:03:40.800 Non-Christians don't care for as far as they're concerned, all these things 02:03:40.800 --> 02:03:43.120 are moral dicta without any Bible. 02:03:43.120 --> 02:03:45.200 They don't need the Bible and though these things are evil. 02:03:45.200 --> 02:03:47.520 And then Christians like, oh, I need to agree with the new 02:03:47.520 --> 02:03:48.480 morality of the world. 02:03:48.480 --> 02:03:50.160 I gotta find Bible verses. 02:03:50.160 --> 02:03:52.560 And they'll twist some verse that to say something. 02:03:52.640 --> 02:03:56.000 You know, we did an entire episode on Galatians 3.28 and how 02:03:56.000 --> 02:03:59.520 it's complete in version is fundamentally the roadmap for most of what's 02:03:59.520 --> 02:04:00.560 happening. No. 02:04:00.560 --> 02:04:05.040 It's the the church is so averse to fighting in defense of 02:04:05.040 --> 02:04:10.160 scripture that they're the Christians so called are willing to take wicked 02:04:10.160 --> 02:04:13.520 things from outside of the church and then try to insert them 02:04:13.520 --> 02:04:16.320 into the Bible and then pretend that they got it from God. 02:04:16.320 --> 02:04:18.000 That's it's it's not Christian. 02:04:18.000 --> 02:04:19.520 And these and that's the problem. 02:04:19.520 --> 02:04:23.120 These things are not just matters of doctrinal dispute among, you know, 02:04:23.120 --> 02:04:25.200 post-Reformation sects. 02:04:25.200 --> 02:04:26.880 We're talking about very basic stuff. 02:04:26.880 --> 02:04:28.800 Where do you get your right and wrong? 02:04:28.800 --> 02:04:31.840 And today almost no one gets their right and wrong from the 02:04:31.840 --> 02:04:35.520 Bible. They're getting it from whatever the new morality is in the 02:04:35.520 --> 02:04:37.440 last last six months 02:04:38.800 --> 02:04:39.520 I uh 02:04:40.800 --> 02:04:45.680 I hear I hear all of that and um I guess because 02:04:45.760 --> 02:04:49.040 I I deal with it in in my own way not in 02:04:49.120 --> 02:04:50.480 not in like trying to baptize 02:04:51.840 --> 02:04:56.240 specific like cultural or theological or political errors, but I deal with 02:04:56.240 --> 02:04:57.920 it, for example, with with yoga. 02:04:57.920 --> 02:05:00.160 When I tried to explain to you know, because I came in 02:05:00.160 --> 02:05:02.320 from the new age, when I tried to explain to Christians that 02:05:02.400 --> 02:05:06.160 like, no, you can't just like baptize yoga because you decide that 02:05:06.160 --> 02:05:09.360 you're gonna say some prayers or read scripture verses while you're doing 02:05:09.360 --> 02:05:11.760 it. That doesn't magically make it okay. 02:05:11.760 --> 02:05:14.880 And in fact there was a there was a guy I'm I'm 02:05:14.880 --> 02:05:17.520 in a little bit of a conflict with right now on Instagram, 02:05:17.520 --> 02:05:22.000 popular, popular creator, uh, Christian content for men. 02:05:22.000 --> 02:05:25.760 And uh he posted a a video of uh it's this heavy 02:05:25.760 --> 02:05:31.520 metal rock band that's producing like Christian kind of metal, Christian rock. 02:05:31.520 --> 02:05:34.000 And the thing with it is like if you were to turn 02:05:34.000 --> 02:05:36.960 off if you were to turn off the audio and just look 02:05:36.960 --> 02:05:41.040 at it, it would look like any modern rock performance in terms 02:05:41.040 --> 02:05:42.080 of the imagery. 02:05:42.240 --> 02:05:44.560 And if you were to just turn off the imagery and just 02:05:44.560 --> 02:05:47.840 listen to the music, it just it sounds worldly, except for some 02:05:47.840 --> 02:05:48.800 of the lyrics. 02:05:48.800 --> 02:05:51.680 And I was saying like I, you know, I'll hard pass on 02:05:51.680 --> 02:05:53.920 that. And a lot of guys got really upset and I'm like, 02:05:53.920 --> 02:05:56.880 look, you can't just baptize these things from the world and bring 02:05:56.880 --> 02:05:58.240 them into the Christian church. 02:05:58.240 --> 02:05:59.520 That's not how this works. 02:05:59.520 --> 02:06:01.920 And people get very upset when you try and tell that to 02:06:01.920 --> 02:06:04.480 them. And I did a stream a live stream last night with 02:06:04.560 --> 02:06:07.360 with uh uh a young man, uh, you know, uh Connor from 02:06:07.360 --> 02:06:10.240 Forge and Anvil who explained to me, 'cause I bump into this 02:06:10.240 --> 02:06:12.960 dynamic all the time coming in from the world and just trying 02:06:12.960 --> 02:06:15.200 to get rid of as much of the world as I possibly 02:06:15.200 --> 02:06:17.920 can. And there were been moments where I couldn't do it fast 02:06:17.920 --> 02:06:20.640 enough. And so I come into the church and I meet so 02:06:20.640 --> 02:06:23.200 many people that are so attached to their things of the world 02:06:23.280 --> 02:06:26.240 and when you try and challenge it, they get really touchy about 02:06:26.240 --> 02:06:29.120 it. Um and so he helped me understand some of why that 02:06:29.120 --> 02:06:32.320 is. But I can definitely understand and and relate to the idea 02:06:32.320 --> 02:06:36.640 that when you're dealing with the political dynam dynamics of a denomination, 02:06:36.640 --> 02:06:39.920 that there is this temptation, uh, and I and I do mean 02:06:39.920 --> 02:06:42.960 that, you know, not just in the neutral, like we're all tempted 02:06:42.960 --> 02:06:47.440 by things, but like the the actual satanic temptation to corrupt doctrine 02:06:47.840 --> 02:06:50.000 to fit in better with the world. 02:06:50.000 --> 02:06:52.560 Like I s I s I see that and I I have 02:06:52.560 --> 02:06:54.560 a I just look at a little tiny piece of it. 02:06:54.560 --> 02:06:58.000 Like I don't mean to compare my little talking about yoga or 02:06:58.000 --> 02:07:00.560 anything like to to what you guys have experienced. 02:07:00.800 --> 02:07:02.720 But I I see that temptation. 02:07:02.720 --> 02:07:06.080 And I think a lot of other young men do as well. 02:07:06.400 --> 02:07:09.520 and they want to be able to say to the people around 02:07:09.520 --> 02:07:12.560 them, whether it be you know the the men and women around 02:07:12.560 --> 02:07:16.640 them who are in upside down marriages or daughters going to college, 02:07:16.640 --> 02:07:17.840 right, is a is another one. 02:07:17.840 --> 02:07:21.680 And we'll get into all of this and say that's not scriptural 02:07:21.920 --> 02:07:29.200 in direct contradiction to to the prevailing the po prevailing political climate. 02:07:29.200 --> 02:07:32.880 And so being able to speak into all of these issues at 02:07:32.880 --> 02:07:35.280 the post where we are as men. 02:07:35.600 --> 02:07:38.880 so there are three guys talking here that have built you know, 02:07:38.880 --> 02:07:40.880 platforms, podcasts, et cetera. 02:07:40.880 --> 02:07:42.480 Like we we've done that. 02:07:42.480 --> 02:07:45.440 But my my hope is for the men and in in their 02:07:45.440 --> 02:07:49.760 own ways, the women who are listening to this to recognize that 02:07:49.760 --> 02:07:52.560 this exists in your life somewhere and you've seen it. 02:07:52.560 --> 02:07:55.040 You probably wouldn't be listening to any of us talk if you 02:07:55.040 --> 02:07:56.080 hadn't seen it. 02:07:56.080 --> 02:08:00.320 And so I just want to encourage everyone listening to take from 02:08:00.320 --> 02:08:03.840 uh what Woe and Corey are talking about and apply it to 02:08:03.840 --> 02:08:07.520 the way that you can speak truth in your own life in 02:08:07.520 --> 02:08:12.560 support of scripture because these modern aspects of whether it be politics 02:08:12.560 --> 02:08:15.760 or culture can't simply just be brought into the church and be 02:08:15.760 --> 02:08:19.200 baptized. You can't just like we're gonna sprinkle some water on it 02:08:19.200 --> 02:08:20.400 and we're gonna call it Christian. 02:08:20.880 --> 02:08:21.920 that's not how it works. 02:08:21.920 --> 02:08:25.040 And so what you guys sort of uh you know, you built 02:08:25.040 --> 02:08:28.160 the platform, you were ready uh when the moment came. 02:08:28.160 --> 02:08:31.600 You didn't know necessarily that that you were building it in preparation 02:08:32.000 --> 02:08:34.480 for the for the for this moment, but you had built this 02:08:34.560 --> 02:08:38.160 and you took it to speak into this pattern that we're all 02:08:38.160 --> 02:08:42.000 watching. Like where are we supposed to go to find refuge from 02:08:42.000 --> 02:08:42.720 the world? 02:08:42.720 --> 02:08:45.520 Where are we supposed to go to find refuge from from uh 02:08:45.840 --> 02:08:50.480 Satanism essentially masquerading in all of its various forms if we can't 02:08:50.480 --> 02:08:53.680 find it in the church and if we can't speak up about 02:08:53.680 --> 02:08:57.440 it in in the form of these little these they're not little, 02:08:57.440 --> 02:09:00.560 they're just words on a page, but they're they're as you said 02:09:00.560 --> 02:09:06.720 very rightly, they're symptoms of a deeper illness in people's lives that 02:09:06.800 --> 02:09:11.440 if you're if you're advocating on behalf of this pedophilia issue, like 02:09:11.520 --> 02:09:15.120 you're not just doing it uh because you did this in-depth study 02:09:15.120 --> 02:09:18.160 of it for years and you understand this and you really do 02:09:18.160 --> 02:09:20.640 think there's a scriptural case, it's like you're trying to cover for 02:09:20.640 --> 02:09:22.000 your own sin. 02:09:22.000 --> 02:09:26.160 And I think that's the part that gets so difficult for people 02:09:26.160 --> 02:09:29.040 to do, which is to say, I know that if I speak 02:09:29.040 --> 02:09:32.720 truth into this moment, I'm going to convict this person of their 02:09:32.720 --> 02:09:34.320 sin that they don't want to be convicted of. 02:09:34.800 --> 02:09:38.800 And the result for me is there are going to be consequences. 02:09:38.800 --> 02:09:43.280 And people are afraid to do that for their churches, their families, 02:09:43.280 --> 02:09:44.560 and their businesses. 02:09:44.560 --> 02:09:47.120 And so just I before we start getting into some into some 02:09:47.120 --> 02:09:51.840 of the more specific topics around race and sex, et cetera, which 02:09:51.840 --> 02:09:53.760 I think are really important to get into. 02:09:53.760 --> 02:09:56.960 Like maybe you guys can talk a little bit about, we talked 02:09:56.960 --> 02:09:58.480 about counting the cost. 02:09:58.480 --> 02:10:02.400 How like what what has been the cost for you guys for 02:10:02.400 --> 02:10:04.480 those for those who don't know to the extent that you want 02:10:04.480 --> 02:10:05.200 to share? 02:10:05.200 --> 02:10:09.520 Because what you've done is essentially convicted an entire denomination or certainly 02:10:09.520 --> 02:10:14.960 the executive leadership of a denomination of sin and you've convicted probably 02:10:14.960 --> 02:10:17.840 also a lot of pastors of the sin of uh uh sin 02:10:17.840 --> 02:10:20.160 of silence, if we can say that such a sin as such 02:10:20.160 --> 02:10:23.760 a sin exists, which I think we can probably scripturally support that. 02:10:24.240 --> 02:10:26.960 so what has been the cost to you guys individually to the 02:10:26.960 --> 02:10:29.680 extent that you want to share for speaking up and doing 02:10:29.680 --> 02:10:30.800 this? Did 02:10:30.800 --> 02:10:32.400 you want to take that one first? 02:10:32.720 --> 02:10:37.120 I think the most obvious one then any man on the political 02:10:37.120 --> 02:10:42.240 right who has been doxxed is going Is going to understand this. 02:10:42.240 --> 02:10:47.280 If you speak certain truths in the public square in this day 02:10:47.280 --> 02:10:52.480 and age, and that becomes associated with your actual name, in my 02:10:52.480 --> 02:10:54.640 case, obviously, I put my name out there. 02:10:54.640 --> 02:10:57.120 In Wo's case, he was doxxed. 02:10:57.120 --> 02:11:02.160 But if that happens, one, you are essentially unemployable. 02:11:02.160 --> 02:11:05.840 You are not going to be hired most places because of that. 02:11:05.840 --> 02:11:08.720 So for instance, I am not going to be hired by any 02:11:08.720 --> 02:11:10.480 large firm at this point. 02:11:10.480 --> 02:11:13.760 If I put in an application, they wouldn't even respond to me. 02:11:13.760 --> 02:11:19.040 Despite the fact that I am an actual expert in a relatively 02:11:19.040 --> 02:11:20.640 important area of the law. 02:11:20.640 --> 02:11:23.600 I am now unemployable with regard to that. 02:11:23.600 --> 02:11:27.440 I still do some legal work, but certainly not as much as 02:11:27.440 --> 02:11:29.280 I would be doing. 02:11:29.280 --> 02:11:36.000 Another example, one thing that is related to this, it's not entirely 02:11:36.000 --> 02:11:37.680 one hundred percent this. 02:11:37.680 --> 02:11:43.680 During the COVID pandemic, I was offered a teaching position at a 02:11:43.680 --> 02:11:45.120 German university. 02:11:45.440 --> 02:11:49.600 However, because of the restrictions at the time, I would not have 02:11:49.600 --> 02:11:52.880 been able to accept that position without being vaccinated. 02:11:52.880 --> 02:11:57.040 Subsequently, and not that long after, actually, maybe two months after that, 02:11:57.040 --> 02:12:00.320 they lifted some of those restrictions so I could have taken that 02:12:00.320 --> 02:12:05.040 job, but because of this public activity, there's no chance I would 02:12:05.040 --> 02:12:07.120 be hired for something like that now. 02:12:07.120 --> 02:12:09.600 And so that was something that I had to forego in order 02:12:09.600 --> 02:12:10.560 to do this. 02:12:11.120 --> 02:12:15.040 But that is one of the the major considerations, obviously. 02:12:15.040 --> 02:12:18.960 But of course, there's also the fact I have been supposedly excommunicated. 02:12:18.960 --> 02:12:20.080 That matter is ongoing. 02:12:20.080 --> 02:12:22.800 I can't really comment further on it because of the fact that 02:12:22.800 --> 02:12:24.000 it's ongoing. 02:12:24.000 --> 02:12:26.640 Woe was driven out of his church. 02:12:26.640 --> 02:12:30.160 It's all of the things that you would expect to happen because 02:12:31.040 --> 02:12:35.040 what you've done is taken a stand against the devil and the 02:12:35.040 --> 02:12:37.920 world, and the world is going to attack you back. 02:12:37.920 --> 02:12:42.560 And the supposed Christians who are on the other side, all they've 02:12:42.560 --> 02:12:45.920 proven is that they are not actually Christians. 02:12:45.920 --> 02:12:50.400 That doesn't mean that every single member of First Lutheran, all of 02:12:50.400 --> 02:12:54.320 whom failed to veto, as far as I know, the excommunication vote, 02:12:54.320 --> 02:12:56.720 because they didn't make any of that stuff public as they were 02:12:56.720 --> 02:12:58.480 supposed to. 02:12:58.480 --> 02:13:00.880 But all of them, I'm not saying that every last one of 02:13:00.880 --> 02:13:02.640 them is not a Christian. 02:13:02.640 --> 02:13:06.160 What they did was anti-Christian. 02:13:06.160 --> 02:13:07.600 What they did was sin. 02:13:07.600 --> 02:13:09.040 They need to repent of that. 02:13:09.040 --> 02:13:10.640 And hopefully they do that. 02:13:10.640 --> 02:13:16.160 The leadership in particular are particularly guilty of heinous crimes. 02:13:16.160 --> 02:13:22.320 Because what they have done is willfully and maliciously act in an 02:13:22.320 --> 02:13:25.440 anti Christian manner at the behest of synod. 02:13:25.440 --> 02:13:29.040 And so of course that wound up being the personal cost of 02:13:29.680 --> 02:13:31.120 it makes it difficult to find a church 02:13:32.320 --> 02:13:36.800 because most pastors, again, are not going to be very comfortable standing 02:13:36.800 --> 02:13:40.160 up under the sort of pressure they are going to receive if 02:13:40.160 --> 02:13:42.800 I were a member of their church or if Woe were a 02:13:42.800 --> 02:13:44.000 member of their church. 02:13:44.320 --> 02:13:48.000 Because we have those who are trying to track what we are 02:13:48.000 --> 02:13:52.080 doing, and they will harass a church if we join that church. 02:13:52.080 --> 02:13:53.520 They will harass the pastor. 02:13:53.520 --> 02:13:55.440 They will harass the congregants. 02:13:55.440 --> 02:13:59.680 That's a very real thing because Antifa and others have an interest 02:13:59.680 --> 02:14:02.240 in us in a particular way. 02:14:02.240 --> 02:14:06.080 And so, yes, there are very real costs associated with doing this, 02:14:06.080 --> 02:14:09.440 but as Well mentioned earlier, one of the benefits that we have 02:14:09.440 --> 02:14:11.680 is that neither one of us is married. 02:14:11.680 --> 02:14:16.400 So there are some considerations other men have that we do not 02:14:16.400 --> 02:14:19.360 have. You could consider that a cost as well, because if I 02:14:19.360 --> 02:14:21.280 were to get married, they would attack my wife. 02:14:21.600 --> 02:14:22.560 That's a given. 02:14:22.560 --> 02:14:23.600 The left does that. 02:14:23.600 --> 02:14:24.800 We know that. 02:14:24.800 --> 02:14:29.520 So there are very real personal consequences that come along with a 02:14:29.520 --> 02:14:31.360 willingness to speak the truth. 02:14:31.360 --> 02:14:37.760 Thankfully, we are Dispositionally inclined to speak the truth regardless of consequences, 02:14:37.760 --> 02:14:40.400 which is probably partly why the we're the ones who wound up 02:14:40.400 --> 02:14:41.440 doing this. 02:14:41.440 --> 02:14:45.120 But that's not to say the consequences don't exist. 02:14:45.920 --> 02:14:48.960 Yeah, I was doxxed by one of my elders. 02:14:48.960 --> 02:14:50.960 I Antifa did not dox me. 02:14:50.960 --> 02:14:54.560 My elder at my local congregation doxed me to Synod. 02:14:54.560 --> 02:14:59.360 Synod doxed me to a number of other men around the country. 02:14:59.360 --> 02:15:03.280 They They in turn doxed me to Antifa, which made it public. 02:15:03.280 --> 02:15:07.120 And then a hit piece was run against me in the local 02:15:07.120 --> 02:15:10.560 media calling me a neo-Nazi podcaster. 02:15:10.560 --> 02:15:15.600 And my congregation, I was never placed under church discipline. 02:15:15.600 --> 02:15:18.320 I've never been under church discipline a moment of my life. 02:15:18.320 --> 02:15:21.200 I would have welcomed it if they had done that so that 02:15:21.200 --> 02:15:24.800 I could have made a scriptural defense for what I believe. 02:15:24.800 --> 02:15:29.280 Instead, what happened when I was doxxed by the Missouri Synod by 02:15:29.280 --> 02:15:34.160 Matt Harrison through the Antifa cutout and then the the hit piece 02:15:34.160 --> 02:15:36.000 was run in the local media. 02:15:36.000 --> 02:15:39.280 The members of my congregation in effect said if we ever see 02:15:39.280 --> 02:15:42.160 your face again, we're not gonna come to church anymore. 02:15:42.480 --> 02:15:44.880 So they they effectively said we're gonna burn down the church if 02:15:44.880 --> 02:15:45.920 you ever show up again. 02:15:45.920 --> 02:15:47.920 Not excommunication, nothing. 02:15:47.920 --> 02:15:51.520 If we see you again, we will this church will cease to 02:15:51.520 --> 02:15:52.160 exist. That's 02:15:52.160 --> 02:15:53.040 wild which is 02:15:53.440 --> 02:15:57.120 which is something that I anticipated in the name a no man 02:15:57.120 --> 02:15:59.360 knows episode six months prior. 02:15:59.360 --> 02:16:04.000 I said that in the event that all this stuff happens, I 02:16:04.000 --> 02:16:05.360 may well be excommunicated. 02:16:05.360 --> 02:16:08.320 I like I said at the time, the only thing they can 02:16:08.320 --> 02:16:10.880 do is get a restraining order to keep me from coming. 02:16:10.880 --> 02:16:14.720 I didn't actually anticipate that they would metaphorically threaten to burn down 02:16:14.720 --> 02:16:17.600 the church, but I did say that at that time that I 02:16:17.600 --> 02:16:21.520 would not have it on my conscience if other people would not 02:16:21.520 --> 02:16:23.840 come to church because they hated me so much. 02:16:23.840 --> 02:16:25.440 And that was ultimately what did it. 02:16:25.440 --> 02:16:27.760 It was made clear to me that the members of my congregation 02:16:28.000 --> 02:16:32.320 hated me so much that they would apostatize rather than be in 02:16:32.320 --> 02:16:33.920 the same building with me. 02:16:33.920 --> 02:16:38.560 So I I withdrew my membership voluntarily for their sake, for the 02:16:38.560 --> 02:16:42.400 sake of their souls, because although they're unrepentant for the wickedness they 02:16:42.400 --> 02:16:46.640 did to me, at least hopefully they're still going to church. 02:16:46.640 --> 02:16:49.360 You know, maybe at some point God will get through to them 02:16:49.360 --> 02:16:51.520 and they'll repent of those sins. 02:16:51.520 --> 02:16:54.000 After I was doxxed I laid low for about a month and 02:16:54.000 --> 02:16:59.280 then I contacted the local OPC congregation and spoke for about ninety 02:16:59.360 --> 02:17:00.320 minutes with the pastor. 02:17:00.320 --> 02:17:04.240 I I told him everything that happened, and I said point blank, 02:17:04.240 --> 02:17:06.400 You have no right as a Christian to tell me that I 02:17:06.400 --> 02:17:08.160 can't come to your congregation. 02:17:08.160 --> 02:17:12.720 However, with all this is coming that's going on, I know that 02:17:12.720 --> 02:17:16.400 p people would potentially be scandalized if they learn my name when 02:17:16.480 --> 02:17:18.000 I stick start coming. 02:17:18.000 --> 02:17:20.160 Do I have your permission to come? 02:17:20.160 --> 02:17:20.480 And 02:17:21.440 --> 02:17:23.600 he said I need to talk to the elders, I'll get back 02:17:23.600 --> 02:17:23.840 to you. 02:17:24.000 --> 02:17:24.880 They ghosted me. 02:17:24.880 --> 02:17:26.000 So that was my answer. 02:17:26.400 --> 02:17:28.080 So I don't have a church home. 02:17:28.080 --> 02:17:29.360 I would go to church. 02:17:29.360 --> 02:17:32.080 You know, it's and the thing is the people some people said, 02:17:32.080 --> 02:17:34.320 Well, you can just drive an hour or two hours away. 02:17:34.320 --> 02:17:35.840 It's gonna be the same treatment. 02:17:36.320 --> 02:17:39.360 And so this isn't this isn't butthurt on my part. 02:17:39.360 --> 02:17:41.680 It's like, well, you don't like me, I'm gonna take my marbles 02:17:41.760 --> 02:17:42.480 and go home. 02:17:42.480 --> 02:17:44.960 It's bad for me not to be able to attend church. 02:17:44.960 --> 02:17:45.920 That's harmful. 02:17:45.920 --> 02:17:48.000 That's what Satan was once. 02:17:48.000 --> 02:17:51.120 However, I bear no guilt for it whatsoever. 02:17:51.120 --> 02:17:54.320 I would be going to church every Sunday and every midweek service 02:17:54.320 --> 02:17:56.720 available if I were permitted. 02:17:56.720 --> 02:18:01.280 So I am not violating the third commandment, the way Lutherans count 02:18:01.280 --> 02:18:03.840 them, by not attending church. 02:18:03.840 --> 02:18:06.560 I I do what I can with study and I pray for 02:18:06.560 --> 02:18:09.120 the day when these people will repent. 02:18:09.120 --> 02:18:11.040 But you know, that's certainly a cost. 02:18:11.040 --> 02:18:15.200 Additionally, when I was doxxed, uh I had an outstanding business debt 02:18:15.200 --> 02:18:20.080 of around $300,000 potentially that would have come back to me at 02:18:20.080 --> 02:18:23.600 some point that effectively went to zero the day I was doxxed. 02:18:23.600 --> 02:18:27.920 So I have very real personal financial, you know, just across the 02:18:27.920 --> 02:18:30.720 board. Like what you would expect when when you were then rendered 02:18:30.720 --> 02:18:34.720 unemployable. And in my case I had uh I worked for Apple 02:18:34.720 --> 02:18:36.720 for fifteen years and had some savings. 02:18:36.720 --> 02:18:39.600 I poured most of that savings into that business that I ended 02:18:39.600 --> 02:18:41.280 up selling and closing. 02:18:41.280 --> 02:18:44.080 And then that kind of put me in a position to do 02:18:44.080 --> 02:18:47.120 this. And you know, I was counting on that 300 grand to 02:18:47.120 --> 02:18:48.240 come back at some point. 02:18:48.240 --> 02:18:51.760 So but as I've said on the uh we've done We've done 02:18:51.760 --> 02:18:54.720 episodes on fear of the Lord and trusting in God. 02:18:54.720 --> 02:18:56.880 I trust that God will take care of me. 02:18:56.880 --> 02:18:59.760 So I don't worry about any of this and I never have, 02:18:59.760 --> 02:19:03.280 because I know that there's nothing that these people can do, there's 02:19:03.280 --> 02:19:07.040 nothing that Satan can do that can harm me that God won't 02:19:07.040 --> 02:19:11.520 permit. And if I end up like Job, I'm not gonna say 02:19:11.680 --> 02:19:13.200 curse God and die. 02:19:13.200 --> 02:19:15.520 I'm just gonna take the good with the bad. 02:19:16.320 --> 02:19:18.720 I think that and this is this is one of the things 02:19:18.720 --> 02:19:22.880 we I talked about in the episode on Fear of the Lord. 02:19:22.880 --> 02:19:25.680 One of the reasons that I I share some of these stories 02:19:25.680 --> 02:19:28.800 with people on Stone Choir and elsewhere is not to point to 02:19:28.800 --> 02:19:32.800 myself or anything, but to say this specific example of faith, not 02:19:32.800 --> 02:19:36.400 my faith, not that I'm so great, but that when God gives 02:19:36.400 --> 02:19:42.240 us the confidence in his benevolence, in his love and his care, 02:19:42.480 --> 02:19:45.040 such that we don't have to worry about what happens in the 02:19:45.040 --> 02:19:49.760 world. It's the peace which passes all human understanding. 02:19:49.760 --> 02:19:52.640 I don't worry about any of these things, not because I have 02:19:52.640 --> 02:19:55.360 any confidence in myself, because I trust in God. 02:19:55.360 --> 02:19:59.440 And if I die tomorrow, if somebody hurts me, whatever, I still 02:19:59.440 --> 02:20:01.920 belong to God no matter no matter what happens. 02:20:01.920 --> 02:20:04.240 And that's the kind of faith that we want to share with 02:20:04.240 --> 02:20:08.720 everyone. Because when you actually believe and fear and love and trust 02:20:08.720 --> 02:20:12.640 in God like that, nothing else can hurt you. 02:20:12.640 --> 02:20:15.280 Even if you have a family and they come after your family, 02:20:15.280 --> 02:20:17.600 if they kill your wife and your kids, if the very worst 02:20:17.600 --> 02:20:21.200 things imaginable happen, you're still in God's hands. 02:20:21.200 --> 02:20:24.320 And a lot of what all of these attacks rely on is 02:20:24.320 --> 02:20:25.840 people not believing that. 02:20:25.840 --> 02:20:28.800 All the pastors who refuse to acknowledge us, all the men who 02:20:28.800 --> 02:20:32.720 refuse to acknowledge us in public because they're afraid of the blowback, 02:20:32.720 --> 02:20:35.840 at some level that's fundamentally a confession, I don't trust that God 02:20:35.840 --> 02:20:38.880 will take care of me if I'm faithful. 02:20:38.880 --> 02:20:40.960 And I'm not calling those men out. 02:20:40.960 --> 02:20:43.200 I'm not saying they're cowards or anything. 02:20:43.200 --> 02:20:46.400 I'm saying that these are the stakes for these questions. 02:20:46.400 --> 02:20:50.480 When you have men who are used in the Alinsky model 02:20:51.360 --> 02:20:56.960 as objects of wrath, and that entire playbook plays out, it's a 02:20:56.960 --> 02:20:58.240 lesson for everyone. 02:20:58.720 --> 02:21:00.560 for you know, for us to say, here's all the bad things 02:21:00.560 --> 02:21:04.080 that happened to us That tells everyone else in the world, don't 02:21:04.080 --> 02:21:05.680 say these things, don't say that. 02:21:05.680 --> 02:21:07.840 Looks look what's gonna happen to you. 02:21:07.840 --> 02:21:09.680 That's the whole point of it. 02:21:09.680 --> 02:21:12.480 And so that's the point of us standing our ground. 02:21:12.480 --> 02:21:14.720 Because it's not our ground, it's God's ground. 02:21:14.720 --> 02:21:18.000 We're standing on God's ground, which is why we haven't gone anywhere. 02:21:18.000 --> 02:21:21.200 If this were us just us being stubborn or whatever, I I 02:21:21.200 --> 02:21:22.640 wouldn't have fared as well. 02:21:22.640 --> 02:21:26.000 But because none of this is rooted in me, it's rooted in 02:21:26.000 --> 02:21:28.880 confidence in God, there's nothing anybody can do. 02:21:28.880 --> 02:21:31.280 And so we will do this as long as we're able and 02:21:31.280 --> 02:21:35.040 we're going to go after whatever sacred cows there are because it's 02:21:35.040 --> 02:21:36.560 our duty to God. 02:21:36.560 --> 02:21:39.600 You know, we said earlier like we're kind of reluctant about starting 02:21:39.600 --> 02:21:42.400 Stone Choir in my case because I didn't want to cause problems 02:21:42.400 --> 02:21:46.000 for others as I knew would come, not for my own sake. 02:21:46.000 --> 02:21:49.040 I'm not I don't care about the consequences for my sake because 02:21:49.040 --> 02:21:50.160 I trust in God. 02:21:50.160 --> 02:21:53.120 But I don't want to make things harder for other people. 02:21:53.120 --> 02:21:55.440 But we knew that the gifts and abilities that we had were 02:21:55.440 --> 02:21:58.240 such that when the time came when we did join forces and 02:21:58.240 --> 02:22:01.920 start doing something, it was going to be efficacious and God has 02:22:01.920 --> 02:22:02.560 blessed it. 02:22:02.560 --> 02:22:03.120 And you know, we 02:22:04.240 --> 02:22:08.480 the the the blessing from what Stone Choir has done is that 02:22:08.480 --> 02:22:11.920 we have probably about in the on the order of around 10,000 02:22:11.920 --> 02:22:13.920 listeners a week, plus or minus. 02:22:14.160 --> 02:22:17.680 We we don't have creepy stats, We don't really know specifics, but 02:22:17.680 --> 02:22:21.680 it's a sizable audience for a podcast with no budget and like 02:22:21.840 --> 02:22:24.960 no curb appeal, like we just sit and talk for two hours. 02:22:24.960 --> 02:22:28.000 That's not it's not a sexy production. 02:22:28.000 --> 02:22:31.280 But people have gravitated towards it because we're saying things that no 02:22:31.280 --> 02:22:32.800 one else will say and we're saying it well. 02:22:33.840 --> 02:22:37.520 And one of the amazing fruits has been that there are quite 02:22:37.520 --> 02:22:42.560 literally hundreds of people who have joined churches, many cases for the 02:22:42.560 --> 02:22:43.120 first time. 02:22:43.120 --> 02:22:45.280 There are a lot of adults who've been baptized, a lot of 02:22:45.280 --> 02:22:49.360 families who've been babies who've been baptized, specifically because they started listening 02:22:49.360 --> 02:22:50.480 to Stone Choir. 02:22:50.480 --> 02:22:53.440 And whatever they heard, it wouldn't wherever the catalog was along the 02:22:53.440 --> 02:22:55.280 way. And we don't do a lot of we don't do a 02:22:55.280 --> 02:22:56.960 lot of straight theology. 02:22:56.960 --> 02:22:57.840 We're not preaching. 02:22:58.080 --> 02:22:59.840 There's not a law gospel. 02:22:59.840 --> 02:23:01.200 Here's a sermon for you. 02:23:01.200 --> 02:23:05.440 We specifically talk about believing and obeying God, and then here's a 02:23:05.440 --> 02:23:08.480 a modern current context where it matters. 02:23:08.480 --> 02:23:10.800 Here's a contemporary application. 02:23:10.800 --> 02:23:13.760 We can do that correctly, unlike the Lutherans. 02:23:13.760 --> 02:23:16.560 The fruit of that has been that people are joining churches and 02:23:16.560 --> 02:23:21.440 droves. And that's frankly probably the one thing that keeps me going 02:23:21.680 --> 02:23:24.800 is knowing that the fruit that has been born by what we're 02:23:24.800 --> 02:23:26.560 doing is godly. 02:23:26.560 --> 02:23:29.520 And if we vanish tomorrow, those people are going to be Christians 02:23:29.520 --> 02:23:30.640 the rest of their lives. 02:23:30.640 --> 02:23:34.160 And that trajectory of them in their lives and their families' lives 02:23:34.320 --> 02:23:39.200 and all the lives that they touch, because they're Christians now, that's 02:23:39.200 --> 02:23:40.640 that's how the gospel works. 02:23:40.640 --> 02:23:42.080 That's how Christianity works. 02:23:42.080 --> 02:23:43.840 That's how it's always spread. 02:23:43.840 --> 02:23:46.640 And so it's a blessing for us to have an opportunity to 02:23:47.760 --> 02:23:50.880 be God's instrument for that sort of fruit. 02:23:50.880 --> 02:23:53.680 And the pap the fact that people are screaming and saying mean 02:23:53.680 --> 02:23:55.920 things frankly just tells us over target. 02:23:55.920 --> 02:23:58.960 It's like you said, you discovered us because terrible people said that 02:23:58.960 --> 02:24:00.080 we were terrible. 02:24:00.080 --> 02:24:01.760 That's pretty much how it works. 02:24:01.760 --> 02:24:05.840 Terrible people know what the threat is, and good people sometimes don't. 02:24:05.840 --> 02:24:08.320 It's one of the things we tell people, listen, listen to the 02:24:08.320 --> 02:24:09.200 bad people. 02:24:09.200 --> 02:24:11.760 They know better than you do what the threats are. 02:24:11.760 --> 02:24:14.400 And one of those is is Corey and myself. 02:24:14.400 --> 02:24:15.440 We're a threat. 02:24:15.440 --> 02:24:18.320 Not to Christianity, we're a threat to people who are a threat 02:24:18.320 --> 02:24:19.440 to Christianity. 02:24:19.440 --> 02:24:22.320 And I we do it to encourage other people to become a 02:24:22.320 --> 02:24:26.080 threat. We every listener is now a threat to the things that 02:24:26.080 --> 02:24:27.680 are harmful to Christianity. 02:24:27.680 --> 02:24:31.360 And it's emboldened men to be faithful and to speak out more 02:24:31.360 --> 02:24:35.760 faithfully. You know, the the trajectory even before Stone Choir, Cory and 02:24:35.760 --> 02:24:41.360 myself denouncing Michael King, you know, Martin Luther King Jr., that wicked 02:24:41.440 --> 02:24:42.640 demonic liar. 02:24:43.120 --> 02:24:44.480 He's an evil man. 02:24:44.480 --> 02:24:47.040 And when we started saying that a few years ago, almost nobody 02:24:47.040 --> 02:24:47.520 said that. 02:24:47.520 --> 02:24:51.920 There was a highly revisionist view that, like, it was basically outside 02:24:51.920 --> 02:24:52.720 of the church. 02:24:52.720 --> 02:24:56.400 And every year around MLK Day, we see more and more Christians 02:24:56.400 --> 02:24:58.640 saying exactly the same things we've always said. 02:24:58.640 --> 02:25:03.760 That guy is evil, he's bad, he's terrible, his theology is wicked, 02:25:03.760 --> 02:25:06.400 there's nothing redeeming whatsoever about the man. 02:25:06.400 --> 02:25:09.520 That sort of sea change occurs quietly and no one remembers where 02:25:09.520 --> 02:25:10.400 they got it from. 02:25:10.400 --> 02:25:11.360 And that's fine. 02:25:11.600 --> 02:25:14.880 the whole point of us spreading these ideas is so that they 02:25:14.880 --> 02:25:16.320 take on a life of their own. 02:25:16.320 --> 02:25:19.600 No one remembers that they, you know, got something from Stone Choir. 02:25:19.600 --> 02:25:20.400 I don't care. 02:25:20.400 --> 02:25:21.360 I don't want credit. 02:25:21.920 --> 02:25:24.240 I want so many men to be saying these things that there's 02:25:24.240 --> 02:25:28.000 no longer any reason for us to do it. 02:25:28.000 --> 02:25:32.320 As mentioned in my brief introduction to this episode, this is part 02:25:32.320 --> 02:25:33.600 one of two. 02:25:33.600 --> 02:25:36.800 The second part will be released in the future and will be 02:25:36.800 --> 02:25:40.320 included in the main stone choir stream.