WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.600 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:40.480 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:43.360 Mahler. And I'm still Wo. 00:00:44.800 --> 00:00:48.640 On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be continuing the series we're 00:00:48.640 --> 00:00:51.840 doing on the current state of religion. 00:00:51.840 --> 00:00:56.560 Last week we talked about defining religion in terms of a source 00:00:56.560 --> 00:01:00.480 of right and wrong of morality, and why it's important to use 00:01:00.720 --> 00:01:06.000 that view when you're looking at religions because many of us simultaneously 00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:08.400 hold multiple religions in our heads. 00:01:08.400 --> 00:01:10.960 So we made a case last week that there's a whole lot 00:01:10.960 --> 00:01:13.440 of that going on that's causing problems in the church. 00:01:13.440 --> 00:01:15.840 And we said that this week we were going to specifically be 00:01:15.840 --> 00:01:21.840 discussing Judaizing and Gnosticism, which are two of the earliest false religions 00:01:21.840 --> 00:01:25.120 that attacked Christianity in its very earliest days. 00:01:25.120 --> 00:01:27.600 As Corey and I were doing the prep for this episode, we 00:01:27.600 --> 00:01:32.000 realized that there's more than enough just on Judaizing for an entire 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:34.560 episode, so this will be in two parts. 00:01:35.040 --> 00:01:38.640 next week will be about Gnosticism exclusively, and then the following week 00:01:38.720 --> 00:01:41.120 we'll be talking about apostasy. 00:01:41.120 --> 00:01:44.640 Before we get into this, a warning to parents who listen with 00:01:44.640 --> 00:01:48.320 kids, one of the subjects we're gonna talk about is is circumcision. 00:01:48.400 --> 00:01:51.440 We're gonna go into some of the obvious details because it's necessary 00:01:51.760 --> 00:01:55.920 to discuss what's going on there and you know you can decide 00:01:55.920 --> 00:01:58.880 if you want to listen to that before your kids do. 00:01:58.880 --> 00:02:02.800 This episode is as always a continuation of previous episodes. 00:02:02.800 --> 00:02:06.080 And I want to make this point again, particularly as we're getting 00:02:06.080 --> 00:02:10.480 into this second full year of Stone Choir this season insofar as 00:02:10.480 --> 00:02:13.440 such a thing exists for us, there's going to be a lot 00:02:13.440 --> 00:02:18.080 more episodes that are syntheses of parts of previous episodes. 00:02:18.080 --> 00:02:21.200 So I be what I mean by that is that we're going 00:02:21.200 --> 00:02:26.320 to treat every previous episode that we've done essentially as axiomatic for 00:02:26.320 --> 00:02:29.440 the purposes of arguments we make in future episodes. 00:02:29.440 --> 00:02:34.240 So this episode on Judaizing obviously is going to assume for the 00:02:34.240 --> 00:02:38.080 sake of argument that you've already heard and at least understand, even 00:02:38.080 --> 00:02:40.640 if you don't agree with what we said in the four parts 00:02:40.640 --> 00:02:42.240 we did on the Jews. 00:02:42.240 --> 00:02:45.360 So if this is the first episode of Stonequarter you're listening to, 00:02:45.680 --> 00:02:48.320 stop. I'd say start from the beginning. 00:02:48.320 --> 00:02:51.120 If you refuse to start from the beginning before listening to this 00:02:51.120 --> 00:02:55.680 one, if it's interesting, at least go back to Hebrews Israelites and 00:02:55.680 --> 00:03:00.400 Jews and listen to that four part series because this will not 00:03:00.400 --> 00:03:04.160 be the complete arguments from that episode they're made there in totality. 00:03:04.160 --> 00:03:05.760 We consider that a done deal. 00:03:05.760 --> 00:03:08.720 So I give that warning because we're gonna say some things that 00:03:08.720 --> 00:03:12.800 just assume all the things, all the facts previously entered into evidence 00:03:12.960 --> 00:03:15.040 were incorporating those by reference. 00:03:15.040 --> 00:03:18.240 And if you're not coming along with the previous thoughts, if you 00:03:18.240 --> 00:03:21.040 don't know what's there, we're gonna be taking a lot of shortcuts 00:03:21.040 --> 00:03:25.120 in the future because we don't waste your time just repeating the 00:03:25.120 --> 00:03:26.800 same things over and over again. 00:03:26.800 --> 00:03:30.800 So we're gonna just assume that you at least know what we're 00:03:30.720 --> 00:03:34.320 talking about when we say some of those things. 00:03:34.320 --> 00:03:38.640 One of the key things that we've said frequently throughout Stone Choir, 00:03:38.640 --> 00:03:41.120 and it's gonna be a key part of this, particularly in framing 00:03:41.120 --> 00:03:46.240 this episode on Judaizing, is that it's crucial for our understanding of 00:03:46.240 --> 00:03:52.560 Scripture and for understanding our place as Christians in history to verbally 00:03:52.560 --> 00:03:56.800 acknowledge out loud that Adam was not a Jew. 00:03:56.800 --> 00:03:58.800 Noah was not a Jew. 00:03:58.800 --> 00:04:01.760 Abraham was not a Jew. 00:04:01.760 --> 00:04:04.960 We made the case in those episodes for why that's true. 00:04:04.960 --> 00:04:09.680 The reason that we're mentioning it here is that one of the 00:04:09.680 --> 00:04:14.880 fundamental elements of the Judaizing tendency that occurred from the very earliest 00:04:14.880 --> 00:04:18.000 days of the church and it's roaring back in the last two 00:04:18.000 --> 00:04:19.680 centuries, in particular in America 00:04:21.680 --> 00:04:26.320 is there's this notion that we have inherited from kind of ambient 00:04:26.320 --> 00:04:30.480 morality in the world around us that well I'm a Christian but 00:04:30.480 --> 00:04:34.880 I'm the Christian and the Judeo Christian and the Judeo came first, 00:04:34.880 --> 00:04:38.640 and that was really the older, more authentic version. 00:04:38.640 --> 00:04:41.280 And so I've got Christianity, but I'm kind of the I'm the 00:04:41.280 --> 00:04:42.960 lesser cousin here. 00:04:42.960 --> 00:04:47.120 And there's there's a senior member from way back, the Jew who 00:04:47.120 --> 00:04:49.520 has more real stuff. 00:04:49.520 --> 00:04:53.440 They fundamentally have more Jesusy stuff than I have. 00:04:53.440 --> 00:04:56.640 Even though Jesus came after their period, I can't really be a 00:04:56.640 --> 00:05:00.480 Christian unless I Jew up the stuff that I have today. 00:05:00.480 --> 00:05:04.560 And that's really what happens with Judaizing in all its forms and 00:05:04.560 --> 00:05:06.000 everything we talk about today. 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:10.320 It's fundamentally Sure, we're Christians, but can we make this more Jewish? 00:05:10.320 --> 00:05:12.160 Wouldn't that make it more authentic? 00:05:12.480 --> 00:05:16.400 And the reason I mention Adam and Noah and Abraham is that 00:05:17.520 --> 00:05:20.720 the assumption that the Old Testament is Jewish and that the New 00:05:20.720 --> 00:05:23.600 Testament is Christian, it's blasphemous for one. 00:05:23.600 --> 00:05:25.440 Let's just get that right out of the way. 00:05:25.440 --> 00:05:27.520 That's utterly false. 00:05:27.520 --> 00:05:32.880 The entire history of Christianity before the birth of Christ pointed to 00:05:32.880 --> 00:05:34.240 the birth of Christ. 00:05:34.240 --> 00:05:35.840 That was its purpose. 00:05:35.840 --> 00:05:42.080 In Genesis three fifteen, when Adam was given the proto gospel, he 00:05:42.080 --> 00:05:45.920 was told that Jesus would come to fix his sin. 00:05:45.920 --> 00:05:49.680 He wasn't told explicitly, not in a prophetic manner that could be 00:05:49.680 --> 00:05:52.800 as easily understood as the later prophecies. 00:05:52.800 --> 00:05:57.120 And most of those prophecies that are recorded for us began with 00:05:57.120 --> 00:06:00.080 Moses. However, we know 00:06:01.200 --> 00:06:06.800 there were many believers in God, including Noah, most notably historically, who 00:06:06.800 --> 00:06:10.640 didn't have the written versions of those things either, because none of 00:06:10.640 --> 00:06:12.160 it been written down yet. 00:06:12.160 --> 00:06:15.840 And so the tendency the Christians have today to think, well, I 00:06:15.840 --> 00:06:19.120 need more Jewish stuff in order to be a better Christian, what 00:06:19.120 --> 00:06:22.800 it really is doing is espousing a belief that comes from the 00:06:22.800 --> 00:06:26.160 Talmud. I'm gonna give you a few paraphrases of things in the 00:06:26.160 --> 00:06:29.840 Talmud. Just to give you an idea of what Jews have been 00:06:29.840 --> 00:06:34.640 taught, including in Jesus' day, in this four-part series now we're doing 00:06:34.800 --> 00:06:39.280 about the ending with apostasy, the next episode is going to be 00:06:39.280 --> 00:06:41.120 about Galatians 3.28. 00:06:41.120 --> 00:06:43.680 And one of the excellent points that Corey's made in the past 00:06:43.760 --> 00:06:48.240 elsewhere is that once you know about the Jewish prayers that come 00:06:48.240 --> 00:06:52.720 from the Talmud, you understand that Galatians 3.28 is Jesus right. 00:06:52.720 --> 00:06:57.120 Rebuking the Talmud before it had been written down, because the Talmud 00:06:57.120 --> 00:06:59.920 was a recording of oral tradition. 00:06:59.920 --> 00:07:03.200 It was writing down things that they had been passing from generation 00:07:03.200 --> 00:07:04.160 to generation. 00:07:04.160 --> 00:07:06.720 So there are things in the Talmud that were written down generations 00:07:07.280 --> 00:07:11.040 after Jesus that were already practiced in his day. 00:07:11.040 --> 00:07:12.640 So these things 00:07:13.600 --> 00:07:18.160 have existed for thousands of years among these people, not all of 00:07:18.160 --> 00:07:21.760 them, because Mary was also a Christian. 00:07:21.760 --> 00:07:26.640 She was obviously a Judahite, she was of that people, but when 00:07:26.640 --> 00:07:29.600 the angel came to her and said you're going to bear the 00:07:29.600 --> 00:07:31.920 Son of God, it wasn't Adelaide Field. 00:07:31.920 --> 00:07:36.160 She was amazed it was her, but she wasn't amazed at what's 00:07:36.160 --> 00:07:36.960 this Messiah stuff? 00:07:36.960 --> 00:07:38.000 I don't know what that's about. 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:40.560 She knew exactly what it was about because she was a Christian. 00:07:40.560 --> 00:07:42.800 She was a Christian expecting the Messiah. 00:07:42.800 --> 00:07:46.640 What she didn't expect was that God would come to her personally 00:07:46.880 --> 00:07:49.680 to be the vessel for God to be born. 00:07:49.680 --> 00:07:53.520 The Talmud, as it existed in that day, and then was written 00:07:53.520 --> 00:07:58.720 down and is the basis for the modern Jewish religion. 00:07:58.720 --> 00:08:04.000 Says things like, Jews may use subterfuge to circumvent a Goy, as 00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:05.440 a non-Jew. 00:08:05.440 --> 00:08:08.080 All children of the Goyim are animals. 00:08:08.080 --> 00:08:10.640 The Goyim are not humans, they're beasts. 00:08:10.640 --> 00:08:13.200 If you eat with a goi, it's the same as eating with 00:08:13.200 --> 00:08:14.080 a dog. 00:08:14.080 --> 00:08:18.240 Even the best of the goiem should all be killed. 00:08:18.240 --> 00:08:21.680 The common theme that these all have is that Jews are human 00:08:21.920 --> 00:08:25.280 and the Goim, that's us, that's everyone who's a non Jew, is 00:08:25.840 --> 00:08:27.440 less than human. 00:08:27.440 --> 00:08:30.320 Now think about that in the context of saying that Adam is 00:08:30.320 --> 00:08:31.440 a Jew. 00:08:31.440 --> 00:08:35.840 If Adam is a Jew, then isn't it consistent that we are 00:08:35.840 --> 00:08:38.960 less than Jews, if we don't have the Jew stuff along with 00:08:38.960 --> 00:08:40.240 our religion. 00:08:40.240 --> 00:08:42.000 But Adam was not a Jew. 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:44.000 Adam was all men. 00:08:44.000 --> 00:08:49.200 Every single Homo sapien on the planet has Adam as his father. 00:08:49.200 --> 00:08:52.320 No matter what we've said about any other race, any people on 00:08:52.320 --> 00:08:56.320 the planet, they're all children of Adam. 00:08:56.320 --> 00:08:59.760 Which is why we all die, because we inherit Adam's sin, because 00:08:59.760 --> 00:09:00.640 he is our father. 00:09:00.800 --> 00:09:03.600 We inherit the sin of that father, that first father. 00:09:03.600 --> 00:09:07.360 The first biological father, he's our first father's obviously God the Father 00:09:07.360 --> 00:09:09.120 in heaven. 00:09:09.120 --> 00:09:14.160 So the first Judaizing tendency that's permeating all of Christian testimony today 00:09:14.240 --> 00:09:17.120 is that well, you know, Adam was a Jew, Noah was a 00:09:17.120 --> 00:09:18.400 Jew, Abraham is a Jew. 00:09:18.400 --> 00:09:20.720 Abraham can be a Jew because if that's the case, then Muslims 00:09:20.720 --> 00:09:21.520 are Jews. 00:09:21.520 --> 00:09:26.800 Because Muslims trace back to Abraham just like the Jewish tribes. 00:09:27.120 --> 00:09:29.920 it it becomes incoherent when you actually look at what's trying to 00:09:29.920 --> 00:09:30.800 be claimed. 00:09:30.800 --> 00:09:34.880 But it's consistent with the Talmudic belief that the Guayim are not 00:09:34.880 --> 00:09:35.840 humans, they're beasts. 00:09:35.840 --> 00:09:39.360 They're less than us, us being the Jews. 00:09:39.360 --> 00:09:43.280 So everything that we're talking about here today in terms of Judaizing 00:09:43.280 --> 00:09:46.800 tendencies is something that we see from the very earliest days of 00:09:46.800 --> 00:09:51.120 the early church where their Christians and the attack that Satan took 00:09:51.120 --> 00:09:55.360 against Christ Church as it was being born, was sure, okay, you 00:09:55.360 --> 00:09:56.720 have this gospel stuff now. 00:09:56.720 --> 00:09:59.360 You know, Jesus rose from the dead and he forgives your sins 00:09:59.440 --> 00:10:00.960 and blah, blah, blah. 00:10:00.960 --> 00:10:03.600 But did you know you still have to have this stuff from 00:10:03.600 --> 00:10:04.480 the Jews? 00:10:04.480 --> 00:10:07.840 And that was the fight in the very earliest church, we have 00:10:07.840 --> 00:10:09.200 to keep the Jew stuff. 00:10:09.200 --> 00:10:11.760 The Christian stuff isn't complete by itself. 00:10:11.760 --> 00:10:12.960 And it's very common today. 00:10:12.960 --> 00:10:15.520 And so all the examples that we give in this episode will 00:10:15.600 --> 00:10:20.240 reinforce that there's an inherent notion in many people's minds that Christianity 00:10:20.320 --> 00:10:24.880 is incomplete unless it's more Jewish than it is today. 00:10:24.880 --> 00:10:30.000 Which if you understand that Judeo-Christian is an oxymoron, obviously it falls 00:10:30.000 --> 00:10:33.520 apart. Judeo-Christian is like saying Satan o Christian. 00:10:33.520 --> 00:10:35.120 They're opposing religions. 00:10:35.440 --> 00:10:36.960 It's not a continuum. 00:10:36.960 --> 00:10:39.440 And it's not one and then the other. 00:10:39.440 --> 00:10:42.880 Noah and Adam and Abraham were Christians because they believed in the 00:10:42.880 --> 00:10:44.400 promise of the Messiah. 00:10:44.400 --> 00:10:47.120 You and I believe in the promise of the Messiah. 00:10:47.120 --> 00:10:51.040 The key difference between us and them is that they had an 00:10:51.040 --> 00:10:53.600 expectant hope in the promise. 00:10:53.600 --> 00:10:54.240 We have 00:10:55.120 --> 00:10:57.840 a hope in a promise already fulfilled. 00:10:57.840 --> 00:11:01.040 We hope in the resurrection, we hope in the return of Christ, 00:11:01.040 --> 00:11:03.840 but we already know for a fact that He came once. 00:11:03.840 --> 00:11:07.120 So that's the only difference between our belief and theirs. 00:11:07.120 --> 00:11:09.520 As they were hoping in a prophecy that had yet to be 00:11:09.520 --> 00:11:13.200 fulfilled, we have a hope that the prophecy which has been fulfilled 00:11:13.200 --> 00:11:17.360 in Christ's birth, death, and resurrection does what God says it was 00:11:17.360 --> 00:11:18.000 going to do. 00:11:18.000 --> 00:11:20.880 The reason that those miracles occurred was so that we would all 00:11:20.880 --> 00:11:24.640 have confidence, yes, if I can do these things in space and 00:11:24.640 --> 00:11:27.920 time, you can trust my promises that the things that I'm doing 00:11:27.920 --> 00:11:29.760 are for the forgiveness of your sins. 00:11:29.760 --> 00:11:31.200 That's the Christian faith. 00:11:31.200 --> 00:11:34.160 And they held it and we hold it in common. 00:11:34.160 --> 00:11:39.680 So when Judaizing occurs in the church, it's a subtle attack against 00:11:39.680 --> 00:11:43.040 that. And we see right from the very beginning, the the one 00:11:43.040 --> 00:11:46.560 time in the New Testament where the word Judaizing is literally used 00:11:46.720 --> 00:11:48.240 is in Galatians 2. 00:11:48.240 --> 00:11:51.440 Paul writes, But when Cephas, that is Peter, came to Antioch, I 00:11:51.440 --> 00:11:54.080 opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 00:11:54.080 --> 00:11:57.120 For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the 00:11:57.120 --> 00:12:01.040 Gentiles, but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing 00:12:01.040 --> 00:12:05.120 the circumcision party, and the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along 00:12:05.120 --> 00:12:09.040 with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. 00:12:09.040 --> 00:12:11.520 But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with 00:12:11.520 --> 00:12:14.640 the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, 00:12:14.640 --> 00:12:17.120 if you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like 00:12:17.120 --> 00:12:21.760 a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews? 00:12:21.760 --> 00:12:25.120 And this is the S V, but the the word that's used 00:12:25.120 --> 00:12:28.480 there, the underlying word that we transliterate, is he saying how can 00:12:28.480 --> 00:12:31.200 you force the Jews or how can you force the Gentiles to 00:12:31.200 --> 00:12:35.840 Judaize? Interestingly, that word does appear in the Old Testament in the 00:12:35.840 --> 00:12:39.760 Septuagint, which we'll get to towards the end, in Esther chapter eight, 00:12:39.760 --> 00:12:40.720 verse seventeen. 00:12:40.720 --> 00:12:43.680 It said that the people there were in fear of the Jews 00:12:43.760 --> 00:12:45.200 and they Judaized. 00:12:45.200 --> 00:12:45.760 Same thing. 00:12:45.760 --> 00:12:51.760 It was adopting the previous Jewish practices of the Mosaic Law in 00:12:51.760 --> 00:12:53.440 order to what? 00:12:53.440 --> 00:12:55.600 In order to earn salvation 00:12:56.480 --> 00:13:00.240 because when Jesus showed up and the Jews were holding the Mosaic 00:13:00.240 --> 00:13:02.960 Law, they were you know they were they were following the rules, 00:13:02.960 --> 00:13:04.800 they'd forgotten what the rules were for. 00:13:04.800 --> 00:13:07.360 And so a lot of us preaching were like the these rules 00:13:07.360 --> 00:13:08.800 weren't to save you. 00:13:08.800 --> 00:13:12.480 These rules are God's will, they're my will for you, the will 00:13:12.480 --> 00:13:15.040 of the Father for you, but they don't save you. 00:13:15.040 --> 00:13:16.320 And they didn't understand that. 00:13:16.320 --> 00:13:18.800 All they knew was the rope performance of the thing. 00:13:18.800 --> 00:13:20.960 They didn't understand that it wasn't for their salvation. 00:13:20.960 --> 00:13:23.040 It was simply what God said to do. 00:13:23.040 --> 00:13:26.240 And if they believed in God, they would do those things. 00:13:26.240 --> 00:13:28.640 But it was the belief that always mattered. 00:13:28.640 --> 00:13:32.320 It was Abraham's faith that was credited to him as righteousness, not 00:13:32.320 --> 00:13:33.200 his doing. 00:13:33.200 --> 00:13:35.840 It was his belief, belief in the promise. 00:13:35.840 --> 00:13:39.360 And so from the very beginning, the very first instance of Judaizing 00:13:39.360 --> 00:13:43.280 being explicitly highlighted has to do with circumcision party, has to do 00:13:43.280 --> 00:13:47.600 with Peter himself, you know, one of the most beloved apostles of 00:13:47.600 --> 00:13:52.160 Christ was sinning against the church as a Judaizer. 00:13:52.160 --> 00:13:54.800 So that's why we said in the past episode, this was the 00:13:54.800 --> 00:13:57.200 ground floor heresy in the church. 00:13:57.200 --> 00:13:57.520 And 00:13:58.560 --> 00:14:01.600 we're going to get into this today that whether or not that's 00:14:01.600 --> 00:14:05.200 a gospel issue depends on how you understand true teaching and false 00:14:05.200 --> 00:14:08.560 teaching. But Paul was deeply concerned when he saw what Peter was 00:14:08.560 --> 00:14:11.920 doing because it was a false confession, and that was the issue. 00:14:11.920 --> 00:14:16.560 When Peter Judaized, when he refused to eat with non Jews, his 00:14:16.560 --> 00:14:17.840 confession was false. 00:14:17.840 --> 00:14:20.240 He was confessing a false religion. 00:14:20.240 --> 00:14:22.480 Even though he was doing what the Jews had been told to 00:14:22.480 --> 00:14:25.760 do before, when God said it is finished on the cross, that 00:14:25.760 --> 00:14:26.160 was it. 00:14:26.160 --> 00:14:29.360 He was talking about those rules, and much of the ink spilled 00:14:29.440 --> 00:14:32.400 in the New Testament is specifically saying no, you didn't understand it 00:14:32.400 --> 00:14:37.200 all. The separation of those people for a time with these rules 00:14:37.200 --> 00:14:40.160 was not for their salvation, it was to preserve the promise of 00:14:40.160 --> 00:14:40.720 the Messiah. 00:14:40.720 --> 00:14:44.480 When that had been fulfilled, when Christ had lived that perfect life, 00:14:44.480 --> 00:14:47.920 then none of them ever could, then it was finished. 00:14:47.920 --> 00:14:53.040 And from then on, everything that every believer has is is Christian 00:14:53.040 --> 00:14:58.080 practice. So from Peter to today, whenever we see people Judaizing, they're 00:14:58.080 --> 00:15:02.000 fundamentally exposing a false confession. 00:15:02.400 --> 00:15:06.400 And so to start off this section of the episode about circumcision 00:15:06.800 --> 00:15:11.600 specifically, but obviously more generally about Judaizing, we will read through Acts 00:15:11.600 --> 00:15:17.280 fifteen, verses one through twenty nine, which relates the text that Wo 00:15:17.840 --> 00:15:20.960 just mentioned in his intro. 00:15:20.960 --> 00:15:24.640 But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, 00:15:24.640 --> 00:15:28.480 unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot 00:15:28.480 --> 00:15:29.520 be saved. 00:15:29.520 --> 00:15:33.280 And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with 00:15:33.280 --> 00:15:36.320 them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to 00:15:36.320 --> 00:15:39.520 go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this 00:15:39.520 --> 00:15:43.040 question. So, being sent on their way by the church, they passed 00:15:43.040 --> 00:15:47.520 through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the 00:15:47.520 --> 00:15:50.720 nations, and brought great joy to all the brothers. 00:15:50.720 --> 00:15:54.160 When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church, and 00:15:54.160 --> 00:15:57.200 the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had 00:15:57.200 --> 00:15:58.800 done with them. 00:15:58.800 --> 00:16:02.000 But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose 00:16:02.000 --> 00:16:05.920 up and said, It is necessary to circumcise them, and to order 00:16:05.920 --> 00:16:08.240 them to keep the law of Moses. 00:16:08.800 --> 00:16:12.880 The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter, 00:16:12.880 --> 00:16:16.000 and after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said 00:16:16.000 --> 00:16:19.520 to them, Brothers, you know that in the early days God made 00:16:19.520 --> 00:16:22.400 a choice among you, that by my mouth the nations should hear 00:16:22.400 --> 00:16:23.200 the word of the Lord. 00:16:23.200 --> 00:16:27.120 the gospel and believe, And God who knows the heart bore witness 00:16:27.120 --> 00:16:30.320 to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as He did 00:16:30.320 --> 00:16:34.240 to us, and He made no distinction between us and them, having 00:16:34.240 --> 00:16:36.480 cleansed their hearts by faith. 00:16:36.480 --> 00:16:40.160 Now therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing 00:16:40.160 --> 00:16:44.000 a yoke on the neck of the disciples, that neither your fathers, 00:16:44.000 --> 00:16:46.000 nor we have been able to bear? 00:16:46.000 --> 00:16:48.560 But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of 00:16:48.560 --> 00:16:52.240 the Lord Jesus, just as they will. 00:16:52.240 --> 00:16:56.000 And all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and 00:16:56.000 --> 00:16:59.360 Paul, as they related what signs and wonders God had done through 00:16:59.360 --> 00:17:00.960 them among the nations. 00:17:00.960 --> 00:17:05.760 After they finished speaking, James replied, Brothers, listen to me. 00:17:05.760 --> 00:17:09.600 Simon has related how God first visited the nations, to take from 00:17:09.600 --> 00:17:13.040 them a people for his name, and with this the words of 00:17:13.040 --> 00:17:17.040 the prophets agree, just as it is written, after this I will 00:17:17.040 --> 00:17:20.480 return, and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen, 00:17:20.480 --> 00:17:23.920 I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it, that the 00:17:23.920 --> 00:17:27.920 remnant of mankind may seek the Lord, and all the nations who 00:17:27.920 --> 00:17:31.680 are called by my name, says the Lord, who makes these things 00:17:31.680 --> 00:17:33.280 known from of old. 00:17:33.280 --> 00:17:36.480 Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the 00:17:36.480 --> 00:17:39.920 nations who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain 00:17:39.920 --> 00:17:44.000 from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from 00:17:44.000 --> 00:17:46.320 what has been strangled and from blood. 00:17:46.320 --> 00:17:50.000 For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who 00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:54.720 proclaim him, for he has read every Sabbath in the synagogues. 00:17:54.720 --> 00:17:57.680 Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the 00:17:57.680 --> 00:18:00.720 whole church, to choose men from among them, and send them to 00:18:00.720 --> 00:18:02.880 Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. 00:18:02.880 --> 00:18:07.440 They sent Judas called Barsabbas and Silas, leading men among the brothers, 00:18:07.440 --> 00:18:11.760 with the following letter The brothers, both the apostles and the elders, 00:18:11.760 --> 00:18:14.560 to the brothers who are of the nations in Antioch and Syria 00:18:14.640 --> 00:18:19.440 and Cilicia, greetings, since we have heard that some persons have gone 00:18:19.440 --> 00:18:23.520 out from us and troubled you with words, unsettling your minds, although 00:18:23.520 --> 00:18:25.280 we gave them no instructions. 00:18:25.280 --> 00:18:28.560 It has seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to 00:18:28.560 --> 00:18:32.240 choose men and send them to you, with our beloved Barnabas and 00:18:32.240 --> 00:18:35.440 Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our 00:18:35.440 --> 00:18:36.960 Lord Jesus Christ. 00:18:36.960 --> 00:18:40.880 We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you 00:18:40.880 --> 00:18:43.920 the same things by word of mouth, for it has seemed good 00:18:43.920 --> 00:18:46.800 to the Holy Spirit, and it, and to us to lay on 00:18:46.800 --> 00:18:51.200 you no greater burden than these requirements, that you abstain from what 00:18:51.200 --> 00:18:54.560 has been sacrificed to idols and from blood, and from what has 00:18:54.560 --> 00:18:57.280 been strangled and from sexual immorality. 00:18:57.280 --> 00:19:00.400 If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. 00:19:00.400 --> 00:19:07.520 Farewell. Now you may note that when I read from the ESV 00:19:07.760 --> 00:19:12.320 or other translations that use the word Gentiles, I draw I drop 00:19:12.320 --> 00:19:12.960 that word. 00:19:12.960 --> 00:19:18.640 I change that word to a more accurate translation to be clear. 00:19:18.640 --> 00:19:23.360 And the reason that I do that is because Gentiles itself has 00:19:23.360 --> 00:19:26.720 become a form of Judaizing in the modern church. 00:19:26.720 --> 00:19:30.160 We'll get into that more later in the episode, but I just 00:19:30.160 --> 00:19:33.120 wanted to point out that that is something that I do, at 00:19:33.120 --> 00:19:36.720 least I attempt always to do that when I am reading from 00:19:36.720 --> 00:19:38.320 these translations. 00:19:38.320 --> 00:19:43.440 Because the understanding word is in fact nations or heathens. 00:19:43.440 --> 00:19:45.040 We have these words in English. 00:19:45.040 --> 00:19:48.720 There's no reason we need to use a Latin derived word such 00:19:48.720 --> 00:19:50.320 as Gentiles. 00:19:50.320 --> 00:19:53.920 I'm not saying the word is necessarily wrong, because if you understand 00:19:53.920 --> 00:19:56.400 what it means, the word is fine. 00:19:56.400 --> 00:20:00.480 But in the modern context, it tends to be misleading and can 00:20:00.480 --> 00:20:04.640 be used for Judaizing, and that is why I personally do not 00:20:04.640 --> 00:20:05.200 tend to use it. 00:20:06.480 --> 00:20:06.640 I 00:20:06.640 --> 00:20:11.600 think it's conspicuous when you look at this passage that again it 00:20:11.600 --> 00:20:14.160 was the Pharisees who came and said, look what these people are 00:20:14.160 --> 00:20:17.840 doing. They the Pharisees didn't attack the gospel. 00:20:17.840 --> 00:20:20.560 They didn't say no Jesus didn't rise from the dead. 00:20:20.560 --> 00:20:24.320 They didn't attack anything that we think of as Christianity today. 00:20:24.320 --> 00:20:28.160 The Pharisees came to the church and said, What are these people 00:20:28.160 --> 00:20:30.880 doing? If they're going to convert, if they're going to be believers 00:20:30.880 --> 00:20:34.320 in the one true God, they need to be circumcised because they 00:20:34.320 --> 00:20:36.320 didn't understand what circumcision was. 00:20:36.320 --> 00:20:38.160 They didn't understand the purpose. 00:20:38.160 --> 00:20:42.000 They didn't understand what Jesus had said and done. 00:20:42.000 --> 00:20:47.520 And so they were burdening consciences with something that was false. 00:20:47.520 --> 00:20:51.600 And the reason that we're beginning with this is that circumcision is 00:20:51.600 --> 00:20:56.480 really the Judaizing heresy that is the most prevalent in the New 00:20:56.560 --> 00:20:59.280 Testament. You see it in numerous epistles. 00:20:59.280 --> 00:21:00.800 It comes up all the time. 00:21:00.800 --> 00:21:03.680 Like that that first quote was from Galatians, this is from Acts. 00:21:03.680 --> 00:21:06.880 I have quotes from Philippians, from Titus, and that's just a small 00:21:06.880 --> 00:21:11.280 portion of where these fights were occurring, where the so-called circumcision party 00:21:11.840 --> 00:21:16.320 would show up and burden consciences and say, You must obey the 00:21:16.320 --> 00:21:19.360 Mosaic Law. 00:21:19.360 --> 00:21:24.560 The reason that the Holy Spirit worked through the apostles to put 00:21:24.560 --> 00:21:28.960 an end to that, that false teaching, was that again, they didn't 00:21:28.880 --> 00:21:31.600 understand what circumcision was in the first place. 00:21:31.600 --> 00:21:36.560 They did understand that sealing a baby boy into the covenant of 00:21:36.560 --> 00:21:41.600 God with the act of circumcision or for adult converts, which happened 00:21:41.600 --> 00:21:47.520 as well, it wasn't an act unto itself. 00:21:47.520 --> 00:21:50.080 It was a public confession. 00:21:50.080 --> 00:21:55.200 And with Christ's death and resurrection, Christians had a new confession. 00:21:55.200 --> 00:21:57.760 The confession was in the risen Lord. 00:21:57.760 --> 00:22:02.320 The confession no longer needed to be in terms of circumcision, which 00:22:02.320 --> 00:22:04.800 was pointing forward. 00:22:04.800 --> 00:22:05.120 And 00:22:06.080 --> 00:22:07.920 that's why it was happening everywhere. 00:22:07.920 --> 00:22:11.920 Because as I said, Satan didn't care about the gospel. 00:22:11.920 --> 00:22:16.240 His first attack on the church, once it was established, he didn't 00:22:16.160 --> 00:22:18.240 go after what we call the gospel. 00:22:18.240 --> 00:22:21.600 What did the teachings of demons that Satan brought to bear do? 00:22:21.600 --> 00:22:23.760 They said no, no, no, you have to do this stuff. 00:22:23.760 --> 00:22:25.440 You have to do what Moses said to do. 00:22:25.440 --> 00:22:28.880 What could be more of a believing thing than to say obey 00:22:28.880 --> 00:22:32.400 God? That's how Satan attacked by saying, hey, obey God, do this 00:22:32.400 --> 00:22:35.920 stuff. Because it took what God said to do entirely out of 00:22:35.920 --> 00:22:41.040 context, with complete disregard for what God actually made clear about the 00:22:41.040 --> 00:22:45.520 practice. And it tried to burden consciousness to say, well, yeah, you 00:22:45.520 --> 00:22:49.280 have a Christian confession, but you haven't done the thing yet. 00:22:49.280 --> 00:22:49.600 And 00:22:50.880 --> 00:22:55.120 this is something that in various shades you will find in all 00:22:55.120 --> 00:22:57.920 the other Judaizing practices that we see to this day. 00:22:57.920 --> 00:23:01.120 And there's a constant myriad churn. 00:23:01.680 --> 00:23:05.040 There's always some new form of this sort of thing. 00:23:05.200 --> 00:23:09.120 But it invariably says, hey, sure, you got the Jesus stuff all 00:23:09.120 --> 00:23:12.560 right, but did you know the Jew stuff from the olden days 00:23:12.560 --> 00:23:15.360 will make it even more authentic? 00:23:15.520 --> 00:23:18.320 I think this is an interesting thing for us to talk about 00:23:18.640 --> 00:23:21.200 on Stone Choir because it sounds kind of like what we talk 00:23:21.200 --> 00:23:22.800 about a lot on the show. 00:23:22.800 --> 00:23:25.040 Like, hey, you know, we have this stuff in the church, but 00:23:25.040 --> 00:23:27.040 what about the old practices? 00:23:27.040 --> 00:23:28.800 There are two crucial differences. 00:23:28.800 --> 00:23:35.360 One, we are not claiming that doing one thing versus another saves 00:23:35.360 --> 00:23:39.440 you. As never the claim of any Christian, the doing saves. 00:23:39.440 --> 00:23:42.320 The doing is the fruit of salvation. 00:23:42.320 --> 00:23:44.720 If we have saving faith, then we obey God. 00:23:45.280 --> 00:23:48.880 That's why there are some who believe before they're baptized. 00:23:48.880 --> 00:23:51.520 A believer's baptism is entirely a real thing. 00:23:51.680 --> 00:23:53.520 They're examples in Scripture. 00:23:53.520 --> 00:23:57.680 That does not mean that baptism does not also give the Holy 00:23:57.680 --> 00:23:59.600 Spirit to those who do not yet have faith. 00:23:59.760 --> 00:24:02.000 Did a whole episode on baptism about that. 00:24:02.000 --> 00:24:04.480 So it can be both one thing and the other at the 00:24:04.480 --> 00:24:05.440 same time. 00:24:05.440 --> 00:24:09.280 When we talk about things that used to be church belief and 00:24:09.280 --> 00:24:11.840 practice, like for example, head coverings. 00:24:11.840 --> 00:24:13.440 It's not to burden consciences. 00:24:13.440 --> 00:24:16.720 It's certainly not to say if you don't cover your head, you 00:24:16.720 --> 00:24:18.080 haven't earned salvation. 00:24:18.080 --> 00:24:20.480 Like that that that's not a phrase that can even come from 00:24:20.480 --> 00:24:22.880 our lips except ironically. 00:24:22.880 --> 00:24:27.200 It it's an impossibility for a Christian to believe that entire vein 00:24:27.200 --> 00:24:28.480 of thought. 00:24:28.480 --> 00:24:33.040 It's also important to know that sometimes the argument is simply true. 00:24:33.040 --> 00:24:35.920 Sometimes we do lose things that we used to have, like head 00:24:35.920 --> 00:24:37.520 coverings, like God said to do it. 00:24:37.520 --> 00:24:40.160 He didn't say if a girl covers her head, she will be 00:24:40.160 --> 00:24:43.040 saved. Just said do it because it's proper order. 00:24:43.040 --> 00:24:45.360 It was never a matter of salvation, but it was a command 00:24:45.360 --> 00:24:46.000 from God. 00:24:46.000 --> 00:24:51.760 And so when we point back, it's not trying to make people 00:24:52.080 --> 00:24:53.680 do something that will 00:24:55.120 --> 00:24:58.240 prove that they're faithful or to earn their salvation. 00:24:58.240 --> 00:25:01.200 It's just to say this is what believers actually do. 00:25:01.200 --> 00:25:03.840 It's what the Christian life actually looks like. 00:25:03.840 --> 00:25:09.520 Which is a very clear distinction from circumcision, because there were many 00:25:09.520 --> 00:25:13.520 who were not circumcised who became believers and again one of the 00:25:13.520 --> 00:25:15.520 earliest controversies in the church. 00:25:15.520 --> 00:25:16.960 And it was a question to be settled. 00:25:16.960 --> 00:25:19.360 Like, you know, they sat down and discussed this for a while. 00:25:19.360 --> 00:25:22.320 It was an important question two thousand years ago. 00:25:22.320 --> 00:25:26.000 It's not an important question today because God settled it. 00:25:26.000 --> 00:25:28.800 So when the Pharisees asked it, regardless of what their intentions were 00:25:29.440 --> 00:25:32.160 or their ignorance, God answered. 00:25:32.160 --> 00:25:35.920 He said, That was for them, that is over, someone can believe 00:25:35.920 --> 00:25:37.920 in God and not be circumcised. 00:25:37.920 --> 00:25:39.840 And so it went away entirely. 00:25:39.840 --> 00:25:43.040 It ceased to be a practice among Christians. 00:25:43.120 --> 00:25:43.360 We 00:25:43.360 --> 00:25:50.720 should point out that not only is circumcision not a Christian practice, 00:25:50.720 --> 00:25:55.120 but the modern practice that we call circumcision and the and the 00:25:55.120 --> 00:25:59.120 ancient practice in the context of the Near East, which would be 00:25:59.120 --> 00:26:04.720 the practice of which the Jews, the more accurately named Israelites or 00:26:04.720 --> 00:26:08.880 Hebrews, partook, these practices are not the same. 00:26:09.040 --> 00:26:12.640 Now there are a number of different circumcision practices across the world. 00:26:12.640 --> 00:26:17.360 There are some that are particularly barbaric amongst certain island peoples and 00:26:17.360 --> 00:26:20.800 some parts of South America, but we're talking about the Near East 00:26:20.800 --> 00:26:26.720 here, and in the Near East, the circumcision practice of that area 00:26:26.720 --> 00:26:29.920 and of those peoples, and this is the part where if you 00:26:29.920 --> 00:26:35.280 are concerned about your children listening to materials that are technically explicit, 00:26:35.280 --> 00:26:39.680 you may wish to skip or listen to it, screen it before 00:26:39.680 --> 00:26:42.400 allowing them to. 00:26:42.400 --> 00:26:46.880 That practice is fundamentally different from what we see today. 00:26:46.880 --> 00:26:51.200 The practice today is the total removal of the foreskin, which is 00:26:51.200 --> 00:26:55.280 actually a relatively significant chunk of tissue. 00:26:55.280 --> 00:27:00.800 The practice back then was simply either a cut in the foreskin 00:27:01.120 --> 00:27:03.600 or the removal of the tip of the foreskin. 00:27:03.600 --> 00:27:07.680 This is one of the reasons that we see in scripture when 00:27:07.840 --> 00:27:13.440 adult converts even are circumcised, they recover fairly quickly. 00:27:13.440 --> 00:27:17.440 If someone removes a significant portion of your penis you are not 00:27:17.440 --> 00:27:20.160 going to recover from that quickly. 00:27:20.160 --> 00:27:23.360 If it is the ancient practice, you can recover in a number 00:27:23.360 --> 00:27:25.920 of days and be back at work or even go fight in 00:27:25.920 --> 00:27:26.880 a battle. 00:27:26.880 --> 00:27:28.080 That's possible. 00:27:28.080 --> 00:27:32.960 That is why in the narrative related to Dina, we see that 00:27:32.960 --> 00:27:36.720 they attacked them immediately afterward, because it was a relatively short 00:27:37.600 --> 00:27:41.280 window in which they would have had this advantage due to the 00:27:41.280 --> 00:27:42.880 recovery period. 00:27:42.880 --> 00:27:44.720 These are very different practices. 00:27:44.720 --> 00:27:49.200 And the reason that this matters is because the modern practice has 00:27:49.200 --> 00:27:52.560 arguably been designed maliciously. 00:27:52.560 --> 00:27:56.000 It is designed to do something to the child. 00:27:56.000 --> 00:28:00.480 It is designed to do something to that boy who is circumcised. 00:28:00.480 --> 00:28:01.920 It's mutilation, to be frank. 00:28:01.920 --> 00:28:03.200 It is gentle mutilation. 00:28:03.440 --> 00:28:06.640 We're used to hearing that particular phrase, that term with regard to 00:28:06.640 --> 00:28:10.800 female so-called circumcision, but it is the same when it comes to 00:28:10.800 --> 00:28:14.880 males for the modern version of circumcision. 00:28:14.880 --> 00:28:17.760 It is more comparable to what we see in some of the 00:28:18.480 --> 00:28:23.120 most demonically oppressed part of the world, and these parts of the 00:28:23.120 --> 00:28:28.080 world practice truly heinous things that are somehow even worse than circumcision, 00:28:28.080 --> 00:28:31.840 but it is comparable to them with regard to its goal, with 00:28:31.840 --> 00:28:35.280 regard to what it does to the circumcised. 00:28:35.280 --> 00:28:37.440 There are a number of effects of this, and we have very 00:28:37.440 --> 00:28:40.800 good studies on this we know these things to be true. 00:28:40.800 --> 00:28:44.640 This has been researched Quite significantly. 00:28:44.640 --> 00:28:48.000 You will typically not hear of these things in the US context 00:28:48.320 --> 00:28:56.000 because the overwhelming majority of those in the United States are circumcised. 00:28:56.000 --> 00:28:59.040 That is not the case in the rest of the Western world. 00:28:59.040 --> 00:29:03.920 You basically do not get circumcised in Europe or Australia or New 00:29:03.920 --> 00:29:06.800 Zealand or the UK, any of these places. 00:29:06.800 --> 00:29:11.600 The rest of the European world does not practice circumcision. 00:29:11.600 --> 00:29:16.160 It is something that was imported into the US culture because it's 00:29:16.160 --> 00:29:19.760 Judaizing. It's part and parcel of a number of other things, and 00:29:19.760 --> 00:29:21.600 we'll get into some of those later in the episode as well. 00:29:21.680 --> 00:29:28.160 As well but to speak of some of the consequences of circumcision. 00:29:28.160 --> 00:29:32.880 When performed on an infant and we will distinguish between infant circumcision 00:29:32.880 --> 00:29:36.720 and adolescent or adult because there are different consequences for those. 00:29:36.720 --> 00:29:40.400 It is more significant with regard to infants and adolescents for a 00:29:40.400 --> 00:29:42.080 number of reasons. 00:29:42.080 --> 00:29:47.440 But infant circumcision often you will hear the argument that, well, the 00:29:47.440 --> 00:29:50.240 child will not remember the pain. 00:29:50.240 --> 00:29:54.160 One that is a morally abhorrent argument, if you actually think about 00:29:54.160 --> 00:29:57.760 it, because that would justify doing almost anything to an infant because 00:29:57.760 --> 00:30:01.520 the infant won't remember And the Talmud has some things to say 00:30:01.520 --> 00:30:03.600 about that, certainly. 00:30:03.600 --> 00:30:07.200 But the problem with this argument, beyond being morally abhorrent, is that 00:30:07.200 --> 00:30:09.360 it is false. 00:30:09.360 --> 00:30:14.960 Studies performed on infants, those who were circumcised in infancy, and those 00:30:14.960 --> 00:30:20.160 who were not show circumcision actually causes a fundamental change in the 00:30:20.160 --> 00:30:25.920 brain. It causes sight specific changes to the brain, usually with regard 00:30:25.920 --> 00:30:30.400 to pain or centers related to trauma in the brain, but it 00:30:30.400 --> 00:30:34.320 also causes a brain wave change that sometimes does not return to 00:30:34.320 --> 00:30:37.440 a baseline and certainly does not do so quickly. 00:30:37.440 --> 00:30:41.280 It causes a spike in all of the various body chemistry that 00:30:41.280 --> 00:30:46.480 relates to anxiety, because it is seen by the body, rightfully, as 00:30:46.480 --> 00:30:47.760 an attack on the body. 00:30:47.760 --> 00:30:51.280 Of course, an infant can't do anything in response to an attack. 00:30:51.520 --> 00:30:57.440 So the infant just has this stress response, this trauma response, but 00:30:57.440 --> 00:31:00.400 crying is all the infant can do, of course, which the infant 00:31:00.400 --> 00:31:05.920 does. It is also notable that this procedure is often done with 00:31:06.240 --> 00:31:10.320 minimal, if any, anesthetic. 00:31:10.320 --> 00:31:12.480 And yes, infants can feel pain. 00:31:12.480 --> 00:31:15.120 If you start your argument or you start trying to make an 00:31:15.120 --> 00:31:19.200 argument that an infant doesn't feel pain, can Congratulations, you're on the 00:31:19.200 --> 00:31:22.400 exact same road as the people who try to argue for abortion. 00:31:22.400 --> 00:31:25.440 You're making roughly the same sort of argument they make with regard 00:31:25.440 --> 00:31:28.000 to well if an infant can't feel pain, then whatever we do 00:31:28.000 --> 00:31:30.400 is obviously moral. 00:31:30.400 --> 00:31:33.920 That is abominable, and Christians should never argue that. 00:31:33.920 --> 00:31:39.600 But beyond the alteration of brainwaves and also certain parts of the 00:31:39.600 --> 00:31:45.600 brain, even, not so much structurally necessarily, but in regards to later 00:31:45.680 --> 00:31:50.240 on psychological responses in the adolescent and adult. 00:31:50.240 --> 00:31:52.480 And this leads into my next point. 00:31:52.480 --> 00:31:58.080 We do see increases in pain sensitivity, anxiety, and a number of 00:31:58.080 --> 00:32:03.200 other problems, including attention problems in infants, in the adolescents who were 00:32:03.200 --> 00:32:08.640 circumcised as infants, there are longitudinal consequences to the modern practice of 00:32:08.640 --> 00:32:15.440 circumcision. Again, this is a fundamentally different procedure from what is described 00:32:15.440 --> 00:32:16.720 in the Old Testament. 00:32:16.720 --> 00:32:19.680 It is not the same thing that is being done to boys 00:32:19.680 --> 00:32:23.200 today that was done to them in that part of the world 00:32:23.200 --> 00:32:30.160 historically. Now to distinguish between infants and adolescents. 00:32:30.160 --> 00:32:33.920 It's difficult to say if it's worse to circumcise an infant or 00:32:33.920 --> 00:32:35.200 an adolescent. 00:32:35.200 --> 00:32:38.880 However, one of the salient differences that we see, and part of 00:32:38.880 --> 00:32:42.880 the reason it's difficult to distinguish, obviously, is that adolescents can actually 00:32:42.880 --> 00:32:48.720 remember what happened consciously, not unconsciously, because there's a difference there. 00:32:48.720 --> 00:32:54.000 You can remember things in your unconscious or subconscious mind that you 00:32:54.000 --> 00:32:58.080 may not be able to remember in your conscious mind. 00:32:58.080 --> 00:33:03.200 And, notably, your body also remembers things that your mind does not 00:33:03.200 --> 00:33:03.520 necessarily 00:33:04.400 --> 00:33:07.600 store. One good example of that would be when we went over 00:33:07.600 --> 00:33:12.640 the issue of promiscuity, a woman's body remembers after a fashion her 00:33:12.640 --> 00:33:14.480 sexual partners, even if she may have forgotten 00:33:15.440 --> 00:33:21.280 them. But that aside, the issue of a child who is circumcised 00:33:21.280 --> 00:33:26.720 in adolescence is that the studies done on those who were circumcised 00:33:26.720 --> 00:33:31.680 in adolescents has shown that the majority of them fulfill all of 00:33:31.680 --> 00:33:39.040 the diagnostic criteria in order to diagnose them with post-traumatic stress disorder. 00:33:39.200 --> 00:33:44.960 Circumcision, the modern practice, inflicts very real harm on children. 00:33:44.960 --> 00:33:48.480 It is something that should not be practiced, it is a barbaric 00:33:48.480 --> 00:33:53.520 practice that is inexcusable, and it is Judaizing, it is attempting to 00:33:53.520 --> 00:33:54.080 participate in 00:33:55.280 --> 00:34:00.320 a Jewish rite, and many of those doing it are supposedly Christian. 00:34:00.320 --> 00:34:01.520 This is inexcusable. 00:34:01.520 --> 00:34:05.440 This is not something that is permissible for Christians to do. 00:34:05.440 --> 00:34:08.640 Now we know that some of those who are listening will be 00:34:08.640 --> 00:34:11.760 fathers. We know for certain that some of you were fathers, and 00:34:11.760 --> 00:34:15.520 that most likely, because much of our audience is American, most likely 00:34:15.600 --> 00:34:18.320 you had your son circumcised. 00:34:18.800 --> 00:34:21.040 We are saying you should not have done that. 00:34:21.040 --> 00:34:27.840 However, do not beat yourself up over it, do not worry about 00:34:27.840 --> 00:34:29.360 it, really. 00:34:29.360 --> 00:34:32.240 You do need to repent, because it was sinful, it was not 00:34:32.240 --> 00:34:33.440 something you should have done. 00:34:33.600 --> 00:34:36.720 But repent, lay it at the foot of the cross, and be 00:34:36.720 --> 00:34:38.880 done with it. 00:34:38.880 --> 00:34:44.160 This is difficult for many people to do, particularly in the US 00:34:44.240 --> 00:34:46.480 context, this is a major problem Major problem. 00:34:46.480 --> 00:34:50.960 We have this issue of looking at sins that have 00:34:51.920 --> 00:34:58.640 physical consequences, consequences in time, and many people want to defend those. 00:34:58.640 --> 00:35:02.080 So for instance, we spoke of promiscuity in previous episodes. 00:35:02.080 --> 00:35:05.840 There are those who want to try and defend those actions in 00:35:05.840 --> 00:35:10.720 the past because if you recognize them as sin, etc. 00:35:11.120 --> 00:35:14.000 they were sin, repent. 00:35:14.000 --> 00:35:17.280 That repentance does not cure the physical consequences. 00:35:17.280 --> 00:35:19.120 The same thing is true here. 00:35:19.120 --> 00:35:23.040 If you repent of the fact that you had your son circumcised, 00:35:23.040 --> 00:35:25.680 his foreskin is not growing back. 00:35:25.680 --> 00:35:27.520 That's not how this works. 00:35:27.520 --> 00:35:32.400 There are very real consequences to our sins in time that will 00:35:32.400 --> 00:35:36.880 not be restored, that will not be undone until the second coming, 00:35:36.880 --> 00:35:38.960 until we are in paradise. 00:35:38.960 --> 00:35:42.320 We have to live with those things in this life. 00:35:42.320 --> 00:35:48.800 But we do not carry them around as conscious baggage. 00:35:48.800 --> 00:35:53.200 Now, there are again real consequences that stick with us, and those 00:35:53.200 --> 00:35:57.520 are baggage in the sense that our sin does burden us. 00:35:57.520 --> 00:36:00.240 But we are not supposed to carry our sin around as a 00:36:00.240 --> 00:36:04.880 burden, because Christ took that on the cross and we are forgiven. 00:36:04.880 --> 00:36:08.800 So again, you repent, but you don't beat yourself up over this. 00:36:08.800 --> 00:36:11.040 That's not the point of the episode, that's not what we're trying 00:36:11.040 --> 00:36:13.520 to do by talking about circumcision. 00:36:13.520 --> 00:36:16.960 The goal here, as is the goal with many of the things 00:36:16.960 --> 00:36:21.440 we discuss in our episodes, is to get people to stop participating 00:36:21.440 --> 00:36:24.000 in something that is sinful. 00:36:24.000 --> 00:36:27.680 Just because you did something that was sinful or you were burdened 00:36:27.680 --> 00:36:31.200 by something that was sinful or you were harmed by it, does 00:36:31.200 --> 00:36:35.440 not mean that you allow it to perpetuate through additional generations. 00:36:35.440 --> 00:36:38.640 You can have it stop with you, or in this case you 00:36:38.640 --> 00:36:40.720 can have it stop with your sons. 00:36:40.720 --> 00:36:43.840 Don't carry forward the wickedness of past generations. 00:36:43.840 --> 00:36:45.600 That's the goal. 00:36:45.600 --> 00:36:50.480 We can actually create a better future, a more Christian future, by 00:36:50.480 --> 00:36:55.120 getting rid of these pagan or Jewish practices. 00:36:55.360 --> 00:36:58.160 The goal is to end the wickedness. 00:36:58.160 --> 00:37:02.960 The goal is not to beat up on those who either willingly, 00:37:02.960 --> 00:37:08.160 wittingly, unwittingly, however it was, participated in something that was wrong, that 00:37:08.160 --> 00:37:09.520 was sinful. 00:37:09.680 --> 00:37:13.040 The goal is to get the practice to stop, to get Christians 00:37:13.040 --> 00:37:17.120 to recognize that there is a Christian response to this, and there 00:37:17.120 --> 00:37:20.240 is an anti-Christian or Jewish response to this. 00:37:20.240 --> 00:37:23.440 And as we pointed out in some of the readings from scripture 00:37:23.440 --> 00:37:27.520 so far, and there are many others, the New Testament is very 00:37:27.520 --> 00:37:31.040 clear. Circumcision is a Jewish practice. 00:37:31.040 --> 00:37:32.560 It is Judaizing. 00:37:32.560 --> 00:37:35.600 It is not something that Christians should be doing. 00:37:35.600 --> 00:37:38.800 It's not because, as Woe already said, it's not because it's a 00:37:38.800 --> 00:37:39.680 gospel issue. 00:37:39.680 --> 00:37:44.960 Although, ironically, as soon as you say that this isn't a gospel 00:37:44.960 --> 00:37:48.960 issue, you've made it a gospel issue by making it into a 00:37:48.960 --> 00:37:53.760 works issue, and so you've suddenly imported works righteousness into the discussion 00:37:53.760 --> 00:37:56.240 by saying it's not a gospel issue. 00:37:56.240 --> 00:38:00.160 What we are saying is that it is a practice in which 00:38:00.560 --> 00:38:05.920 Christians should not participate because it is Judaizing. 00:38:05.920 --> 00:38:09.280 Does participation in it damn you to hell? 00:38:09.280 --> 00:38:12.800 No. If you are circumcised, are you going to hell? 00:38:12.800 --> 00:38:15.440 No No, not what we're saying. 00:38:15.440 --> 00:38:18.480 If you try to make it part of the Christian religion and 00:38:18.480 --> 00:38:22.000 say this is something that you must do to be saved, now 00:38:22.000 --> 00:38:26.240 you have made it works righteousness, now you have rejected Christ, now 00:38:26.240 --> 00:38:29.840 you are severed from Christ in the words of the New Testament. 00:38:29.840 --> 00:38:33.120 Then you are in danger of hellfire. 00:38:33.120 --> 00:38:36.480 But the ultimate point, the foundational point that we are trying to 00:38:36.480 --> 00:38:41.600 make by discussing circumcision, is that it is one, a harmful practice 00:38:41.760 --> 00:38:46.800 and that it is two impermissible Judaizing in which Christians should not 00:38:46.800 --> 00:38:49.280 be engaged. 00:38:49.280 --> 00:38:49.440 I 00:38:49.440 --> 00:38:54.720 want to add just one additional specific scientific point to why and 00:38:54.720 --> 00:38:56.720 how it causes harm. 00:38:56.720 --> 00:39:00.080 As Corey said, this is male genital mutilation. 00:39:00.080 --> 00:39:04.880 This is the amputation of not only a body part without the 00:39:04.880 --> 00:39:08.880 anesthetic. As Corey said that you know the foreskin is a sizable 00:39:08.880 --> 00:39:11.120 portion what is amputated today. 00:39:11.120 --> 00:39:15.040 Has nothing, nothing to do with the scriptural practice. 00:39:15.040 --> 00:39:18.720 It has nothing to do with what Moses was commanded. 00:39:18.720 --> 00:39:23.520 The foreskin itself, when it is removed, that is functionally like a 00:39:23.520 --> 00:39:29.360 clitorectomy, which is a barbaric, disgusting practice that we often find in 00:39:29.360 --> 00:39:31.520 the Muslim world. 00:39:31.520 --> 00:39:34.800 A foreskin has about 30,000 nerve endings. 00:39:34.800 --> 00:39:39.440 The foreskin has significantly more nerve endings than the rest of the 00:39:39.440 --> 00:39:45.440 penis. And so when it is removed without anesthesia, i obviously the 00:39:45.600 --> 00:39:47.520 the pain is is indescribable. 00:39:47.520 --> 00:39:50.320 And thankfully for those of us who have been victims of it, 00:39:50.320 --> 00:39:51.200 we can't remember. 00:39:51.200 --> 00:39:55.280 But as Corey said, not only do our bodies bear the witness 00:39:55.280 --> 00:40:03.200 of that barbaric amputation, but there are permanent in many cases psychological 00:40:03.440 --> 00:40:03.760 and 00:40:04.880 --> 00:40:05.920 what do you call the brain? 00:40:05.920 --> 00:40:07.600 Like it's not it's not mental. 00:40:07.600 --> 00:40:13.120 It's just we are permanently changed by what is fundamentally a practice 00:40:13.120 --> 00:40:14.320 of torture. 00:40:14.720 --> 00:40:17.440 the s the actual process of 00:40:18.640 --> 00:40:24.240 circumcising a an American boy today, they're often put on a cruciform 00:40:24.560 --> 00:40:28.320 slab where their arms and legs are bound, just like Christ. 00:40:28.320 --> 00:40:33.280 They're not given anesthesia, and a part of their penis is amputated 00:40:33.280 --> 00:40:36.640 that has as many endings as many other parts of the body 00:40:36.640 --> 00:40:40.640 combined. Of course this is going to do tremendous harm. 00:40:40.960 --> 00:40:43.920 it's a fundamentally wicked and evil practice. 00:40:43.920 --> 00:40:46.960 As Corey said, once the damage is done, it's done. 00:40:46.960 --> 00:40:48.400 Like it it was done to me. 00:40:48.400 --> 00:40:49.200 I don't remember. 00:40:49.200 --> 00:40:51.360 I don't know what life would be w like without it. 00:40:51.360 --> 00:40:54.320 And we'll make explicit that this is not sour grapes about my 00:40:54.320 --> 00:40:56.160 foreskin. I don't care. 00:40:56.160 --> 00:40:59.680 The point is we should not be permitting these things to happen 00:40:59.680 --> 00:41:00.880 in the world. 00:41:00.880 --> 00:41:04.160 If you participated in something evil, if you've been the victim of 00:41:04.160 --> 00:41:07.280 something evil, you don't look at it and then try to baptize 00:41:07.280 --> 00:41:08.880 and say, oh, I guess it was okay. 00:41:08.880 --> 00:41:09.840 It's actually fine. 00:41:09.840 --> 00:41:11.600 Let's just keep going with more of that. 00:41:11.600 --> 00:41:14.720 Because you don't want to confront whatever evil happened in the past. 00:41:15.280 --> 00:41:17.520 If something is evil, this is plainly evil. 00:41:17.520 --> 00:41:19.200 Forget scripture entirely. 00:41:19.200 --> 00:41:23.920 What I just described and what Cory described is per se evil's 00:41:23.920 --> 00:41:26.640 far too shallow word for what it is. 00:41:26.640 --> 00:41:32.000 It is it's fundamentally a primitive version of what's done in MKUltra. 00:41:32.000 --> 00:41:36.160 The MKUltra torture program was designed to achieve many of the same 00:41:36.160 --> 00:41:41.520 effects that are achieved on every single American boy who's circumcised. 00:41:41.600 --> 00:41:46.080 And as Corey said, the number of European males who are circumcised, 00:41:46.080 --> 00:41:48.320 over 90% of them live in the United States. 00:41:48.320 --> 00:41:52.320 It's almost exclusively an American practice among whites. 00:41:52.320 --> 00:41:56.800 About 90% in it of Jews are circumcised, about 80% of Muslims 00:41:56.800 --> 00:41:58.480 worldwide are circumcised. 00:41:58.480 --> 00:42:03.200 So the only people who have participated in this barbaric practice are 00:42:03.360 --> 00:42:05.440 Americans, Jews, and Muslims. 00:42:05.440 --> 00:42:09.520 That by itself should be an indication that there's something religious going 00:42:09.520 --> 00:42:10.080 on here. 00:42:10.080 --> 00:42:10.960 Because what is that? 00:42:10.960 --> 00:42:11.920 That triad? 00:42:11.920 --> 00:42:13.520 That's the Abrahamic religions. 00:42:13.520 --> 00:42:14.720 That's what we're told today. 00:42:14.720 --> 00:42:16.560 Oh, it all came from Abraham. 00:42:16.560 --> 00:42:20.000 You know, Isaac had Ishmael, and then we get the Muslims down 00:42:20.480 --> 00:42:24.640 the road, and Jacob gave birth to the Jews, and then the 00:42:24.640 --> 00:42:29.520 Jews gave birth to Christians, and so circumcision unites us all. 00:42:29.520 --> 00:42:33.600 No. What's interesting when you look at the specific history of it 00:42:33.600 --> 00:42:37.600 in the United States, it did not exist when this country was 00:42:37.600 --> 00:42:40.480 founded, because it never existed among Christians. 00:42:40.480 --> 00:42:43.040 It was expressly banned. 00:42:43.040 --> 00:42:47.520 It was, frankly, it's something that should be a death penalty matter 00:42:47.520 --> 00:42:48.960 today, in my opinion. 00:42:48.960 --> 00:42:52.640 I think if you're going to harm infants like that, you need 00:42:52.960 --> 00:42:55.680 to talk to the hangman. 00:42:55.680 --> 00:43:00.240 The practice, when it was introduced in this country, part of it 00:43:00.240 --> 00:43:04.720 became it became very widespread once Jews began coming into this country 00:43:04.720 --> 00:43:08.560 at the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century. 00:43:08.560 --> 00:43:13.280 But it was already being pushed a few decades prior by 00:43:15.200 --> 00:43:18.800 post-Christian Judaizing Americans. 00:43:18.800 --> 00:43:20.880 You know, this country, when you look at things like the history 00:43:20.880 --> 00:43:25.760 of the burntover district and other places, There has been a sort 00:43:25.760 --> 00:43:32.720 of Judaizing, apostatizing development of entirely new pagan religions that was unique 00:43:32.720 --> 00:43:34.160 to the United States. 00:43:34.160 --> 00:43:37.040 And then some of it got exported back to England and it's 00:43:37.040 --> 00:43:39.040 made it to a few other places. 00:43:39.040 --> 00:43:42.480 But many of these things, the reason it almost exclusively happens in 00:43:42.480 --> 00:43:46.880 the US is that it was exclusively a US thing. 00:43:46.880 --> 00:43:51.040 And once we started it, and originally one of the theories was 00:43:51.040 --> 00:43:54.880 it's going to improve hygiene, it's going to improve mental health. 00:43:54.880 --> 00:43:57.360 They said it was going to prevent masturbation. 00:43:57.360 --> 00:44:00.640 And then when Jews starting showing up, well, it was a way 00:44:00.640 --> 00:44:05.520 to normalize their population intermingling with ours because they were all going 00:44:05.520 --> 00:44:06.800 to be circumcised. 00:44:06.800 --> 00:44:10.320 And so if you have these people who are trying to insinuate 00:44:10.320 --> 00:44:14.800 themselves into American life, but they all have this one fundamental difference, 00:44:14.800 --> 00:44:18.880 well, that's going to mark them as being apart, which was part 00:44:18.880 --> 00:44:20.160 of the original point. 00:44:20.160 --> 00:44:25.920 You know, all of the Levitical laws were specifically to separate the 00:44:26.240 --> 00:44:29.040 Hebrews from their pagan neighbors. 00:44:29.040 --> 00:44:32.240 So the the promise of the Messiah would be pre would be 00:44:32.240 --> 00:44:34.160 preserved and fulfilled in time. 00:44:34.160 --> 00:44:38.320 They were kept apart from their pagan neighbors so they wouldn't apostatize. 00:44:38.320 --> 00:44:40.880 That was no longer necessary once Jesus came. 00:44:40.880 --> 00:44:45.600 And so not that the circumcision is not specifically a Levitical law, 00:44:45.600 --> 00:44:49.120 but it fell into the same bucket for the purposes of it 00:44:49.120 --> 00:44:49.840 was ended. 00:44:49.840 --> 00:44:52.080 It's clearly ended in scripture. 00:44:52.080 --> 00:44:55.440 And so when it re-emerged in the US almost exclusively in the 00:44:55.760 --> 00:44:59.280 eighteen hundreds, and then it took off in the twentieth century, when 00:44:59.280 --> 00:45:03.440 Judaizing just became the norm, that's or sorry, nineteenth century and then 00:45:03.440 --> 00:45:05.760 twentieth century, it began in the late eighteen mid to late eighteen 00:45:05.760 --> 00:45:08.160 hundreds, and then it really took off in the twentieth century to 00:45:08.160 --> 00:45:11.840 to point that at its peak in the twentieth century it was 00:45:11.840 --> 00:45:16.160 something like ninety percent of males in some places were circumcised. 00:45:16.160 --> 00:45:20.880 And it's thankfully it's begun falling in recent years, but mostly it's 00:45:20.800 --> 00:45:25.360 been falling because of illegal aliens coming here who don't practice it. 00:45:25.360 --> 00:45:28.240 So as we have non whites who have not been subjected to 00:45:28.240 --> 00:45:32.240 the Judaizing tendencies, they just don't do it because it's religious practice 00:45:32.320 --> 00:45:34.160 is not part of their religion. 00:45:34.160 --> 00:45:37.680 So So while mathematically it's a good thing and it shouldn't happen 00:45:37.760 --> 00:45:41.840 to anyone, regardless of religion, that should be a law for everyone. 00:45:41.840 --> 00:45:46.400 It's also the case that it's declining in large part, mostly simply 00:45:46.400 --> 00:45:48.320 because we're being overrun by aliens. 00:45:48.320 --> 00:45:50.080 It's also starting to taper off. 00:45:50.080 --> 00:45:54.160 Thankfully, fewer and fewer zoomers in the latter generation have been subjected 00:45:54.160 --> 00:45:54.640 to it. 00:45:54.640 --> 00:45:55.760 And it's a good thing. 00:45:55.760 --> 00:45:57.200 It should be illegal. 00:45:57.200 --> 00:45:58.880 It should be impermissible. 00:45:58.880 --> 00:46:03.920 In a Christian government would prevent this because it's it's torture. 00:46:03.920 --> 00:46:08.320 It's antithetical to everything that any decent person would hold. 00:46:08.320 --> 00:46:12.480 And the obvious implication is that that would ban Jews, wouldn't it? 00:46:12.480 --> 00:46:15.520 Because if the Jews today still say they have to be circumcised 00:46:15.520 --> 00:46:19.120 to be Jews, which they do, they have their bris, that's part 00:46:19.120 --> 00:46:25.280 of them still practicing the religion that Jesus fulfilled and then set 00:46:25.280 --> 00:46:29.360 aside. And they never gave up because they never understood God. 00:46:29.360 --> 00:46:31.520 They never knew God in the first place. 00:46:31.520 --> 00:46:35.440 So it's absolutely the case that to ban circumcision would be to 00:46:35.440 --> 00:46:36.720 make Jews illegal. 00:46:36.720 --> 00:46:37.600 That's necessary. 00:46:37.920 --> 00:46:41.680 A Christian country should do that. 00:46:41.680 --> 00:46:45.520 It's a shocking thing for some people to hear, but if it's 00:46:45.520 --> 00:46:47.200 evil, why do you permit it? 00:46:47.200 --> 00:46:49.760 Do you permit it because it's their religious practice? 00:46:49.760 --> 00:46:52.560 This is the fight that then happened with Peyote and these other 00:46:52.560 --> 00:46:54.960 things where oh Indians have always been doing it, so we have 00:46:54.960 --> 00:46:55.920 to let it go. 00:46:55.920 --> 00:46:59.600 Or you know, now Satanists are saying, Well abortion is part of 00:46:59.600 --> 00:47:00.320 my religion. 00:47:00.320 --> 00:47:01.360 It's a sacrament. 00:47:01.360 --> 00:47:02.480 They're absolutely right. 00:47:02.480 --> 00:47:04.240 Abortion is a satanic sacrament. 00:47:04.240 --> 00:47:06.720 It's part of their religion, that's true. 00:47:06.720 --> 00:47:09.280 What is not true is that it should be tolerated. 00:47:09.280 --> 00:47:12.240 It should be persecuted to the full extent of the law, in 00:47:12.240 --> 00:47:13.680 addition to being prosecuted. 00:47:13.680 --> 00:47:15.040 I mean both of those. 00:47:15.040 --> 00:47:17.360 It should be stamped out because it's wicked. 00:47:18.320 --> 00:47:23.760 And so this is the most extreme example of Judaizing tendencies that's 00:47:23.760 --> 00:47:27.360 particular to the United States, but it's also, as we said, it 00:47:27.360 --> 00:47:31.600 has the most text spilled in the New Testament condemning it. 00:47:31.600 --> 00:47:34.240 I want to finish with the passage from Titus I, the very 00:47:34.240 --> 00:47:36.320 beginning of what's a pastoral epistle. 00:47:36.320 --> 00:47:41.840 This passage here is being shared to an overseer to say, look, 00:47:41.840 --> 00:47:44.800 this is what you're going to be facing, and here's what is 00:47:44.800 --> 00:47:50.080 written. For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, 00:47:50.080 --> 00:47:52.400 especially those of the circumcision party. 00:47:52.400 --> 00:47:56.320 They must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching 00:47:56.320 --> 00:47:59.440 for shameful gain what they ought not to teach. 00:47:59.440 --> 00:48:02.400 One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, Cretans are 00:48:02.400 --> 00:48:05.040 always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. 00:48:05.040 --> 00:48:06.640 This testimony is true. 00:48:06.640 --> 00:48:10.320 Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, 00:48:10.320 --> 00:48:14.400 not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who 00:48:14.400 --> 00:48:15.840 turn away from the truth. 00:48:15.840 --> 00:48:18.800 To the pure all things are pure, but to the defiled and 00:48:18.800 --> 00:48:21.040 the unbelieving nothing is pure. 00:48:21.040 --> 00:48:24.240 But both their minds and their consciences are defiled. 00:48:24.240 --> 00:48:27.360 They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. 00:48:27.360 --> 00:48:32.080 They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work. 00:48:32.080 --> 00:48:34.160 This is the sort of thing that Cory and I say about 00:48:34.160 --> 00:48:37.200 some of the evil men that we see online, and everybody loses 00:48:37.200 --> 00:48:38.160 their mind. 00:48:38.160 --> 00:48:42.080 Is it unchristian to express these sorts of sentiments? 00:48:42.400 --> 00:48:45.680 No. And it wasn't that Paul gets a special get out of 00:48:45.680 --> 00:48:49.200 jail free card, and it wasn't that we have a capricious God, 00:48:49.200 --> 00:48:52.960 and so whenever the Holy Spirit transmits these things, well I guess 00:48:52.960 --> 00:48:54.720 it's not sin when God does it. 00:48:54.720 --> 00:48:58.320 This is a necessary part of the Christian faith to rebuke and 00:48:58.320 --> 00:49:02.480 condemn evil actions and those who are spreading them and those who 00:49:02.480 --> 00:49:04.000 are perpetuating them. 00:49:04.000 --> 00:49:07.280 Because this circumcision party, which sounds like the worst party in the 00:49:07.280 --> 00:49:08.880 world, was pervasive. 00:49:08.880 --> 00:49:10.960 You found it everywhere in the early church. 00:49:10.960 --> 00:49:13.200 These Judaizers showed up everywhere. 00:49:13.200 --> 00:49:17.360 And they never reviled the cross, not directly, but they reviled the 00:49:17.360 --> 00:49:21.840 cross by despising the sacrifice that Christ had made. 00:49:21.840 --> 00:49:24.880 Because when he said that it was finished, it included circumcision. 00:49:24.880 --> 00:49:25.600 Like, no, no, no. 00:49:25.600 --> 00:49:26.960 We gotta keep doing that. 00:49:26.960 --> 00:49:28.480 We gotta hang on to these things. 00:49:28.480 --> 00:49:31.440 We have to have this Jewish stuff in the church. 00:49:31.440 --> 00:49:35.760 The defining battle of the very first century of the Christian church 00:49:35.760 --> 00:49:37.280 was against Judaizing. 00:49:37.280 --> 00:49:39.520 And what we see today is it's roaring back. 00:49:39.520 --> 00:49:43.120 And next week we're gonna talk about Gnosticism, which was the second 00:49:43.120 --> 00:49:47.280 false religion that came roaring into the church, attacking it from every 00:49:47.280 --> 00:49:49.600 direction. And that's exactly what we have today. 00:49:49.600 --> 00:49:54.320 We're gonna tie together many at past episodes that deal with elements 00:49:54.320 --> 00:49:59.600 of the Gnostic faith, the Gnostic religion of those days that are 00:49:59.600 --> 00:50:01.760 now again pervasive. 00:50:01.760 --> 00:50:03.520 Because why would that happen? 00:50:03.520 --> 00:50:07.520 Satan knows that the old tricks work, the lies that men believe 00:50:07.520 --> 00:50:11.280 before, we keep gobbling em up, and it's only when men will 00:50:11.280 --> 00:50:15.040 speak, as Paul speaks here in Titus, as the Holy Spirit speaks, 00:50:15.040 --> 00:50:17.360 and says they profess to know God, but they deny him by 00:50:17.520 --> 00:50:22.320 their works, their detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work. 00:50:22.320 --> 00:50:26.080 This is the sort of revulsion and hatred of evil the Christians 00:50:26.080 --> 00:50:27.440 are commanded to have. 00:50:27.440 --> 00:50:30.080 It's necessary to hate evil. 00:50:30.080 --> 00:50:34.800 Now, in the Acts fifteen passage, when the Pharisees came and said, 00:50:34.800 --> 00:50:38.720 You guys need to be circumcising, the immediate response in that day, 00:50:38.720 --> 00:50:42.720 because the subject had not been yet been broached, was not hatred, 00:50:42.720 --> 00:50:45.760 but by the time we get to Titus being written, it's clear. 00:50:45.760 --> 00:50:50.320 They this question had been settled by God once and for all 00:50:50.320 --> 00:50:55.360 time. And when people keep coming back and reinvigorating the old question, 00:50:55.360 --> 00:50:58.560 knowing that it's going to do harm, you're permitted and in fact 00:50:58.640 --> 00:51:01.520 you're commanded to have a hateful response to it. 00:51:01.520 --> 00:51:04.640 Now that doesn't mean you necessarily actually speak hatefully. 00:51:04.640 --> 00:51:06.480 We're not advocating that. 00:51:06.480 --> 00:51:10.320 But if our response to this sort of wickedness is not animated 00:51:10.560 --> 00:51:12.080 by vehemence. 00:51:12.080 --> 00:51:14.000 There's something wrong with us. 00:51:14.400 --> 00:51:18.640 There is one more passage that I want to briefly add to 00:51:18.640 --> 00:51:22.640 this section on circumcision because this is something about which I want 00:51:22.640 --> 00:51:24.960 you, the audience, to think. 00:51:24.960 --> 00:51:29.360 And I'm going to read briefly from Romans four. 00:51:29.360 --> 00:51:33.520 Is this blessing then only for the circumcised or also for the 00:51:33.520 --> 00:51:38.800 uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. 00:51:38.800 --> 00:51:40.160 How then was it counted to him? 00:51:40.720 --> 00:51:44.480 Was it before or after he had been circumcised? 00:51:44.480 --> 00:51:48.240 It was not after, but before he was circumcised. 00:51:48.240 --> 00:51:52.480 He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness 00:51:52.480 --> 00:51:56.400 that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. 00:51:56.400 --> 00:52:00.240 The purpose was to make him the Father of all who believe, 00:52:00.240 --> 00:52:04.960 without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as 00:52:04.960 --> 00:52:08.320 well, and to make him the father of the circumcised, who are 00:52:08.320 --> 00:52:12.160 not merely circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of the 00:52:12.160 --> 00:52:18.880 faith, that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised. 00:52:18.880 --> 00:52:23.840 I want you to think about what that passage assumes about two 00:52:23.840 --> 00:52:29.280 distinct groups, and whether or not they are circumcised, and then compare 00:52:29.280 --> 00:52:33.920 that to what we are doing in the modern US. 00:52:33.920 --> 00:52:37.360 I would actually recommend you read the entire book of Romans, but 00:52:37.360 --> 00:52:42.320 at the very least perhaps meditate on that part of the book. 00:52:42.400 --> 00:52:46.720 The next example of Judaizing that we're going to tackle is actually 00:52:46.720 --> 00:52:50.560 a very modern one, which is, I think, a great example because 00:52:50.560 --> 00:52:52.800 no one today knows it's modern. 00:52:52.800 --> 00:52:55.840 I didn't know until someone asked me the question. 00:52:55.840 --> 00:53:00.720 And the question was, is the use of the word Yahweh something 00:53:00.720 --> 00:53:02.080 that is good or bad? 00:53:02.080 --> 00:53:05.840 Somebody asked me and my first response was, obviously that's garbage. 00:53:05.840 --> 00:53:07.360 That was my instinctual response. 00:53:07.360 --> 00:53:08.400 Yeah, it sounds like bunk. 00:53:08.640 --> 00:53:10.880 That sounds like Judaizing. 00:53:10.880 --> 00:53:15.120 As I just instinctively knew this sort of pattern replays over and 00:53:15.120 --> 00:53:21.600 over throughout history, so when someone is using this Jewish sounding word 00:53:21.840 --> 00:53:25.440 to speak of God when in many other contexts that's not how 00:53:25.440 --> 00:53:26.320 we talk about God. 00:53:26.320 --> 00:53:28.160 My instinct was that's crap. 00:53:28.160 --> 00:53:30.080 But I didn't know anything about the history. 00:53:30.080 --> 00:53:33.040 So I started digging into it a little bit and what I 00:53:33.040 --> 00:53:34.800 found was astonishing. 00:53:34.800 --> 00:53:38.240 So some uh months ago, I think about last June, I did 00:53:38.240 --> 00:53:39.520 a thread on Twitter. 00:53:39.520 --> 00:53:42.320 We will link in the show notes that thread so yeah the 00:53:42.320 --> 00:53:45.040 screenshots that I dug up and we'll flesh it out a little 00:53:45.120 --> 00:53:47.360 more fully than we're gonna do here, but because a lot of 00:53:47.360 --> 00:53:48.960 you guys are not on Twitter X. 00:53:48.960 --> 00:53:52.880 I want to just give this example because it's another great way 00:53:52.880 --> 00:53:55.600 of illustrating that these tendencies 00:53:56.640 --> 00:53:58.000 they're pervasive. 00:53:58.000 --> 00:54:01.040 We all want to Jew up our Christianity. 00:54:01.040 --> 00:54:04.560 We want to have the more authentic version of our faith. 00:54:04.560 --> 00:54:08.560 And that means making it seem less Christian and making it seem 00:54:08.560 --> 00:54:10.080 more like the old Hebrew stuff. 00:54:10.080 --> 00:54:11.600 We need those Hebrew roots. 00:54:11.680 --> 00:54:14.960 We need the Jew Judeo back in our Christianity. 00:54:14.960 --> 00:54:17.200 That's the impetus in the American Church. 00:54:17.200 --> 00:54:20.320 And we've talked at some length in other places that that's just 00:54:20.320 --> 00:54:21.840 by itself it's evil. 00:54:21.840 --> 00:54:27.040 The specific example of Yahweh is particularly astonishingly bad. 00:54:27.040 --> 00:54:30.240 So the first thing I did when before we get into it, 00:54:30.240 --> 00:54:32.720 I want to make one thing very clear. 00:54:32.720 --> 00:54:38.080 Yahweh, I'm talking about the six letters, Y A H W E 00:54:38.240 --> 00:54:41.680 H. It's pronounced in English Yahweh. 00:54:42.160 --> 00:54:48.240 It's not synonymous with the tetragrammaton, that is Y-H-W-H. 00:54:48.400 --> 00:54:50.720 So the first thing that we have to understand when we're talking 00:54:51.440 --> 00:54:55.520 about this subject is a reminder of something we talked about in 00:54:55.520 --> 00:54:58.800 a couple of the earlier episodes about Jews, which is that Hebrew 00:54:58.800 --> 00:55:00.960 is a very primitive language. 00:55:00.960 --> 00:55:04.480 It is fundamentally deficient in numerous ways. 00:55:04.480 --> 00:55:08.560 One of the most glaring is a Hebrew literally has no vowels. 00:55:08.560 --> 00:55:11.280 There are no vowels in the Hebrew language. 00:55:11.280 --> 00:55:13.600 They're spoken because you can't speak. 00:55:13.600 --> 00:55:16.720 There we don't know how to speak without vowels. 00:55:16.720 --> 00:55:20.880 Basically the vowels are the the meat of a word and the 00:55:20.880 --> 00:55:24.880 consonants are like the the bread on either side of the sandwich. 00:55:24.880 --> 00:55:27.680 But you have to have a vowel in order to have a 00:55:27.920 --> 00:55:34.320 word. Hebrew doesn't have any vowels, has 22 letters, they're all consonants. 00:55:34.320 --> 00:55:40.240 This is fundamentally defective for a written language because there's so much 00:55:40.240 --> 00:55:44.400 ambiguity. Imagine that I who had written down 00:55:45.360 --> 00:55:48.480 this sentence. 00:55:48.480 --> 00:55:55.280 You should turn off the and then I write L D. 00:55:55.280 --> 00:55:59.520 And so you know when you're reading it that LD is a 00:55:59.520 --> 00:56:03.600 word, but I've left out the vowels, I've left out the vowel 00:56:03.840 --> 00:56:06.320 sounds. Now what can LD mean? 00:56:06.320 --> 00:56:14.560 I could mean LED, I could mean lid, lewd, load, laud. 00:56:14.560 --> 00:56:16.480 All those have very different meanings. 00:56:16.480 --> 00:56:18.560 Those are all fundamentally different words. 00:56:18.560 --> 00:56:21.840 And maybe in context, you might be able to guess which one 00:56:21.840 --> 00:56:23.600 I was talking about. 00:56:23.600 --> 00:56:28.880 But the problem with the Hebrew language being so deficient and lacking 00:56:28.880 --> 00:56:35.360 vowels entirely is that without the direct oral transmission faithfully, it's entirely 00:56:35.360 --> 00:56:39.120 possible for someone to alter what a word means. 00:56:39.120 --> 00:56:42.560 Because if you just have the consonants L and D, any of 00:56:42.560 --> 00:56:43.840 those words are possible. 00:56:43.840 --> 00:56:46.240 And sometimes context doesn't tell you which one it is. 00:56:46.240 --> 00:56:48.560 It could It could in some cases be two or three of 00:56:48.560 --> 00:56:53.520 them. And so it's only with faithful oral transmission of the knowledge 00:56:53.520 --> 00:56:56.800 of which words it is you're reading, which existed for a long 00:56:56.800 --> 00:57:00.720 time. I'm not trying to call into question whether the Hebrews were 00:57:01.120 --> 00:57:06.720 faithfully transmitting scripture because the rabbis would teach their pupils: here's the 00:57:06.720 --> 00:57:09.840 words, here's how you read it, here's how to pronounce it, here's 00:57:09.840 --> 00:57:11.440 what the word actually is. 00:57:11.440 --> 00:57:17.280 Because language is fundamentally spoken and then secondarily written. 00:57:17.280 --> 00:57:24.160 So the question of Yahweh versus YHWH, the tetragrammaton, is that because 00:57:24.640 --> 00:57:27.920 in Hebrew, the word in that this is a word that was 00:57:27.920 --> 00:57:31.120 given to Moses from the burning bush. 00:57:31.120 --> 00:57:32.400 God said, I am. 00:57:32.400 --> 00:57:33.920 That's how he revealed his name. 00:57:33.920 --> 00:57:37.120 He said his name is I am. 00:57:37.200 --> 00:57:40.080 YHWH means I am. 00:57:40.080 --> 00:57:42.240 We know this to be a fact. 00:57:42.240 --> 00:57:46.640 What we don't know, what no one knows, is what the vowel 00:57:46.640 --> 00:57:49.920 sounds were in YHWH. 00:57:49.920 --> 00:57:50.560 And so 00:57:52.880 --> 00:57:55.920 One of the earliest episodes we did on A Name No Man 00:57:55.920 --> 00:57:58.240 Knows, where we talked a little bit about secret names. 00:57:58.240 --> 00:58:01.760 They're secret names of God, where he specifically says there's a name 00:58:01.760 --> 00:58:05.280 that no man knows for Jesus Christ. 00:58:05.920 --> 00:58:08.000 That's fine, that's God's business. 00:58:08.000 --> 00:58:11.760 It's not supposed to be some sort of esoteric knowledge that we 00:58:11.760 --> 00:58:15.680 should chase after and desire greedily, I want to know the secret 00:58:15.680 --> 00:58:17.760 name. I want to know how to pronounce it. 00:58:17.760 --> 00:58:20.080 What that's fundamentally doing is turning 00:58:20.960 --> 00:58:26.720 what God said into a black magic incantation. 00:58:26.720 --> 00:58:29.280 And the reason that I can say this is that when we 00:58:29.280 --> 00:58:33.520 look elsewhere in Scripture in the other places where God said I 00:58:33.520 --> 00:58:37.600 am, he said I am, not in English, but he said in 00:58:37.600 --> 00:58:41.600 Hebrew. He and he said also incidentally in Greek. 00:58:41.600 --> 00:58:44.720 In the New Testament, I am is also said. 00:58:44.960 --> 00:58:48.640 In fact, one of the times when the Jews tried to murder 00:58:48.640 --> 00:58:53.680 Christ was when he said before Abraham was I am, and he 00:58:53.680 --> 00:58:54.560 said it in Greek. 00:58:54.560 --> 00:58:55.200 He said Ego 00:58:57.120 --> 00:59:03.440 If the tetragrammaton, if the YHWH were some special sound that had 00:59:03.440 --> 00:59:07.120 a power all its own, Jesus would have used the special magic 00:59:07.120 --> 00:59:08.080 word, but he didn't. 00:59:08.080 --> 00:59:08.960 What did he say? 00:59:08.960 --> 00:59:11.280 He said in Greek, I am. 00:59:11.280 --> 00:59:13.120 And they knew what he was talking about because they tried to 00:59:13.120 --> 00:59:14.560 murder him on the spot. 00:59:14.560 --> 00:59:20.720 Why? Because even the sentence before Abraham was I am, which was 00:59:20.720 --> 00:59:23.280 a confession that he was got, he was saying I am God, 00:59:23.280 --> 00:59:25.760 which is why they tried to murder him, because if he was 00:59:25.760 --> 00:59:28.320 lying, it would be utter blasphemy. 00:59:28.320 --> 00:59:30.640 That's something I would never say because it would be blasphemous. 00:59:30.640 --> 00:59:34.480 I'm even joke about saying it, because it's facially untrue. 00:59:34.480 --> 00:59:37.520 When he said it was true because he's God. 00:59:37.520 --> 00:59:41.680 The interesting thing about the sentence structure before Abraham was I am 00:59:41.920 --> 00:59:43.280 is it doesn't work. 00:59:43.280 --> 00:59:46.160 It doesn't work logically to human minds. 00:59:46.160 --> 00:59:49.520 It would make sense to say before Abraham was, I was. 00:59:49.760 --> 00:59:53.440 That would still have been blasphemy, but it would not have hearkened 00:59:53.440 --> 00:59:57.280 to what the theophany of the burning bush said. 00:59:57.280 --> 00:59:59.920 It would not have pointed back to that. 00:59:59.920 --> 01:00:04.640 And so when Jesus said I am, he said exactly what God 01:00:04.640 --> 01:00:08.400 said. So that illustrates that it's not a secret noise, it's not 01:00:08.400 --> 01:00:13.680 a special hidden name, it's just what how I am was spelled. 01:00:13.680 --> 01:00:17.280 And Christians left it alone, because one of the things we'll get 01:00:17.280 --> 01:00:20.640 into in this this thread a little bit is that the Septuagint 01:00:20.640 --> 01:00:22.800 was the Bible of Jesus day. 01:00:22.800 --> 01:00:25.360 The Old Testament was one hundred percent Greek. 01:00:25.360 --> 01:00:29.120 Almost no one could read Hebrew, and no one spoke Hebrew. 01:00:29.120 --> 01:00:30.560 It was a dead language. 01:00:30.560 --> 01:00:32.400 It was not being spoken. 01:00:32.400 --> 01:00:36.320 So in the New Testament, when Jesus' words are recorded in Greek, 01:00:36.320 --> 01:00:38.560 it's not a translation of what he was actually saying. 01:00:38.560 --> 01:00:40.880 They're the words that he said, which is why there are the 01:00:40.880 --> 01:00:43.440 few places where you have Aramaic saying. 01:00:43.440 --> 01:00:46.720 So it's like, you know, why does he say Eloi Eloy Lama 01:00:46.960 --> 01:00:49.760 Sabakfani? Well he said that because that's what he actually said, because 01:00:49.760 --> 01:00:54.800 he also spoke Aramaic, and so when the words of Jesus uttered 01:00:54.800 --> 01:00:58.160 out loud were in Aramaic, that is what is recorded in scripture. 01:00:58.160 --> 01:01:01.280 When it records his Greek words, it's not that he was speaking 01:01:01.280 --> 01:01:04.960 Greek or he wasn't speaking Hebrew and they translated into Greek. 01:01:04.960 --> 01:01:06.080 He was speaking in Greek. 01:01:06.080 --> 01:01:07.600 That was his natural language. 01:01:07.600 --> 01:01:08.560 He spoke both. 01:01:08.560 --> 01:01:11.760 When he was preaching to the crowds, he spoke in Greek. 01:01:11.760 --> 01:01:14.080 Later on in the year, we're going to be doing an entire 01:01:14.080 --> 01:01:17.760 episode specifically in the Septuagint, so we're not going to belabor that 01:01:17.760 --> 01:01:19.120 point today. 01:01:19.120 --> 01:01:23.520 But But it's very important that his Bible, Jesus Bible, which incidentally 01:01:23.600 --> 01:01:26.480 is a pretty big deal, the but the if the Bible that 01:01:26.480 --> 01:01:30.240 God is using to preach from is written in Greek, it should 01:01:30.240 --> 01:01:33.600 be good enough for us to say, yes, we can trust this. 01:01:33.840 --> 01:01:37.120 It has the imprimatur of God to say this is my word, 01:01:37.120 --> 01:01:38.720 I'm using it to teach. 01:01:38.720 --> 01:01:43.280 And what we find in the Septuagint is that it's simply translate, 01:01:43.280 --> 01:01:47.440 I am, and other places where it translates it as God. 01:01:47.440 --> 01:01:47.760 So 01:01:49.280 --> 01:01:53.440 this all highlights that there's no magic secret word, there's no secret 01:01:53.440 --> 01:01:59.040 noise that we need to utter or invoke in order to have 01:01:59.200 --> 01:02:01.040 some more Christian experience. 01:02:01.040 --> 01:02:04.000 But that's the Judaizing tendency to say I need something that sounds 01:02:04.000 --> 01:02:05.600 more Jewish than what I'm doing. 01:02:05.600 --> 01:02:08.640 If I just say God or if I say I am well 01:02:08.800 --> 01:02:10.240 I mean I understand what that means. 01:02:10.240 --> 01:02:14.160 If I say Yeshua, or if I say Jehovah, or if I 01:02:14.160 --> 01:02:16.160 say Yahweh, now we're talking. 01:02:16.160 --> 01:02:19.440 That's that really authentic Jewy stuff that's I need more of that. 01:02:19.440 --> 01:02:20.880 That's the problem. 01:02:20.880 --> 01:02:24.400 And so when I dug into the history of Yahweh, Yahweh, not 01:02:24.400 --> 01:02:26.240 YHWH Don't care about that. 01:02:26.240 --> 01:02:27.920 Don't care about vowel pointing. 01:02:27.920 --> 01:02:30.000 Where did Yahweh come from? 01:02:30.000 --> 01:02:34.240 Well, the first place I looked was on Google Engrams, search for 01:02:34.240 --> 01:02:37.760 frequency, because yeah, if Yahweh is the name of God, if it's 01:02:37.760 --> 01:02:41.120 what everybody knows today, yeah, it's common probably in a lot of 01:02:41.120 --> 01:02:45.520 your churches for pastors and others to say Yahweh, because it seems 01:02:46.160 --> 01:02:49.600 sincere. It seems authentic. 01:02:49.760 --> 01:02:55.440 Authenticious. It seems like something that's really, really legit. 01:02:55.440 --> 01:02:57.440 And so people do it in good conscience. 01:02:57.440 --> 01:03:00.240 I don't think that they're acting maliciously when they do it. 01:03:00.240 --> 01:03:03.520 But my question was, what's the genealogy of this thing? 01:03:03.520 --> 01:03:05.600 Is this godly or is it a turd? 01:03:05.600 --> 01:03:09.200 And what I found was that the word literally did not exist 01:03:09.200 --> 01:03:12.800 until the mid eighteen hundreds and it was kind of on the 01:03:12.800 --> 01:03:15.040 it was kind of hanging around in the background in terms of 01:03:15.040 --> 01:03:18.880 frequency on Google engrams, and grams on it was kind of on 01:03:18.880 --> 01:03:23.040 a slow upward trajectory until after about twenty oh five or so, 01:03:23.040 --> 01:03:28.000 right around twenty ten, you know, fifteen, fourteen years ago, it goes 01:03:28.000 --> 01:03:32.800 vertical. Everybody suddenly is saying Yahweh out of the blue. 01:03:32.800 --> 01:03:35.440 Well, that's a really big red flag to me. 01:03:35.440 --> 01:03:37.360 Because that's not a natural pattern. 01:03:37.360 --> 01:03:41.760 That means that something changed in the Zeitgeist, people were behaving in 01:03:41.760 --> 01:03:43.760 one way and then they started behaving another. 01:03:43.760 --> 01:03:47.200 Now, in some cases, that's just an interesting thing to notice, but 01:03:47.200 --> 01:03:51.760 when you're talking about God's name and suddenly God's name explodes 14 01:03:51.920 --> 01:03:55.120 years ago, yeah, that's going to concern me a great deal. 01:03:55.120 --> 01:03:57.600 So I dug into it and I started looking about at the 01:03:57.600 --> 01:04:04.240 very earliest instances in the Google Ngrams repository of where Yahweh was 01:04:04.240 --> 01:04:05.040 first used. 01:04:05.040 --> 01:04:07.520 And the thread is is going over what I discovered. 01:04:07.600 --> 01:04:10.880 I'm not gonna go into it too much here, but the gist 01:04:10.880 --> 01:04:14.560 of it is that as I said, there was never done in 01:04:14.560 --> 01:04:18.000 church history until around the middle ages. 01:04:18.000 --> 01:04:22.080 And then one of the first things that happened was that 01:04:23.520 --> 01:04:27.200 the vowel pointing, so you know, we mentioned that Hebrew has no 01:04:27.200 --> 01:04:30.320 vowels. Some of you probably are familiar with vowel pointing. 01:04:30.320 --> 01:04:34.160 If you see what's called Hebrew today, it's not, but it's what 01:04:34.160 --> 01:04:34.960 it's called. 01:04:34.960 --> 01:04:37.120 You'll often see that there are dots and lines. 01:04:37.120 --> 01:04:40.240 So it's look like broken Morse code is scattered around. 01:04:40.240 --> 01:04:41.440 That's the vowel pointing. 01:04:41.440 --> 01:04:45.120 That's adding the vowel sounds to the written text so that someone 01:04:45.120 --> 01:04:49.440 who isn't receiving the orally transmitted teaching knows how to pronounce it, 01:04:49.440 --> 01:04:54.160 knows which words they are, because again, this primitive backward language has 01:04:54.160 --> 01:04:57.280 no often has not enough context to even know what word you're 01:04:57.280 --> 01:04:58.560 talking about. 01:04:58.560 --> 01:05:03.840 So the vowel pointing has only existed for about eleven, maybe twelve 01:05:03.920 --> 01:05:05.520 hundred years at the outside. 01:05:05.520 --> 01:05:07.360 It's a brand new thing. 01:05:07.360 --> 01:05:10.320 You can say brand new because you know in America most of 01:05:10.320 --> 01:05:13.920 you nobody's living in a twelve hundred-year-old house, but twelve hundred years 01:05:13.920 --> 01:05:16.560 is new for Christianity. 01:05:16.560 --> 01:05:22.960 And so what happened was the Masoretes, the Jewish scholars in Europe 01:05:23.280 --> 01:05:27.840 and elsewhere in the Middle East, they wanted to solve this problem. 01:05:27.840 --> 01:05:31.840 They finally started adding vowels to the old language because there had 01:05:31.840 --> 01:05:34.320 been an effort, even though it was dead, they were beginning to 01:05:34.320 --> 01:05:38.000 try to repersonate it, they were bringing it back, trying to preserve 01:05:38.000 --> 01:05:41.200 it, trying to preserve that part of their tradition. 01:05:41.200 --> 01:05:45.440 And sadly, they also wrote the uh the Talmud in Aramaic and 01:05:45.440 --> 01:05:48.320 so it has vowel pointing as well. 01:05:48.320 --> 01:05:51.920 The very first sentence that we have of vowels on so-called Hebrew 01:05:51.920 --> 01:05:55.040 is the Aleppo Codex, which is about eleven hundred years old. 01:05:55.040 --> 01:05:58.800 And maybe is it could happen they say maybe about as early 01:05:58.800 --> 01:06:02.480 as about 750 was the first time that the vowels were added. 01:06:02.480 --> 01:06:06.480 And something that happened in the 12th century because they still wouldn't 01:06:06.400 --> 01:06:07.680 add the vows to Yahweh. 01:06:07.680 --> 01:06:08.720 They left it alone. 01:06:08.720 --> 01:06:16.160 And so around the 12th century, the Masoretes transliterated the vowels 01:06:16.000 --> 01:06:22.240 from Adonai, which is another name for God, onto the continents consonants 01:06:22.240 --> 01:06:23.600 of the tetragrammaton. 01:06:23.600 --> 01:06:28.720 The YHWH had the vowels from Adonai superimposed on it. 01:06:28.720 --> 01:06:32.000 And that's where the word Jehovah comes from. 01:06:32.000 --> 01:06:36.560 So they they invented Jehovah about 800 years ago. 01:06:36.560 --> 01:06:39.840 And after a couple hundred years it got picked up medieval Europe 01:06:40.560 --> 01:06:40.880 because 01:06:42.400 --> 01:06:46.640 contact with the Jews who were passing around their Hebrew texts and 01:06:46.640 --> 01:06:50.320 saying this is scripture, this is more authentic than what you have, 01:06:50.640 --> 01:06:53.520 some of them fell for it uncritically. 01:06:53.520 --> 01:06:56.880 Like, well, okay, that was kind of the the beginning of Judaizing 01:06:57.040 --> 01:07:02.480 resurging in the Christian church was already happening before the Reformation. 01:07:02.480 --> 01:07:06.400 And it's it's a tragedy that that happened because they were uncritical. 01:07:06.400 --> 01:07:10.720 No one ever considered the fact that the genealogy of even the 01:07:10.720 --> 01:07:15.920 vowel pointing, never mind the so-called Hebrew text of scripture that was 01:07:16.480 --> 01:07:22.480 a thousand years newer than the Septuagint, every single vowel pointer had 01:07:22.480 --> 01:07:26.640 been invented or had been transcribed, had been not transcribed because there's 01:07:26.560 --> 01:07:31.920 no transmission, had been given to the Christians by men who were 01:07:31.920 --> 01:07:32.880 in hell. 01:07:32.880 --> 01:07:36.560 Every single man who was involved in the creation of vowel pointing 01:07:36.560 --> 01:07:40.960 for the Hebrew language is in hell because 100% of them were 01:07:40.960 --> 01:07:45.040 Jews. They were evil, wicked, god-hating men. 01:07:45.040 --> 01:07:48.400 And even in the Middle Ages, they were called Christ-killers. 01:07:48.400 --> 01:07:52.160 And yet when they started, when the church started looking at, hmm, 01:07:52.160 --> 01:07:54.000 I want to learn more about God's word. 01:07:54.000 --> 01:07:54.800 Okay, great. 01:07:54.800 --> 01:07:56.240 Let's turn to the Jews. 01:07:56.240 --> 01:07:59.440 What? They went to the people that they call Christ killers and 01:07:59.440 --> 01:08:01.040 said, Tell us more about our God. 01:08:01.040 --> 01:08:03.280 And so what did the rabbis do? 01:08:03.280 --> 01:08:06.480 They started passing off their Hebrew text and saying, here you go, 01:08:06.480 --> 01:08:12.640 here's the vowel pointers, and the Adonai tetragrammaton mashup of Jehovah was 01:08:12.640 --> 01:08:13.280 passed on. 01:08:13.280 --> 01:08:16.800 And so it began to s plant the seed in people's minds 01:08:16.800 --> 01:08:18.880 that I am is not sufficient. 01:08:18.880 --> 01:08:21.760 The using the words that God used isn't enough. 01:08:21.760 --> 01:08:23.280 You need the sound. 01:08:23.280 --> 01:08:25.680 And I realize this is kind of a fiddly point for some 01:08:25.680 --> 01:08:28.000 people, but the word and the sound isn't the same thing. 01:08:28.000 --> 01:08:32.000 You can have synonyms where different words mean the same thing, totally 01:08:32.000 --> 01:08:34.160 different words, different sounds. 01:08:34.160 --> 01:08:39.680 The sound of whatever the tetragrammaton is, it's the name that God 01:08:39.680 --> 01:08:42.480 gave. I don't I don't mean to diminish its importance. 01:08:42.480 --> 01:08:45.840 What it is not, is a magic spell. 01:08:45.840 --> 01:08:50.240 It's not something that because I don't know how God pronounced it, 01:08:50.240 --> 01:08:51.440 I'm missing out. 01:08:51.440 --> 01:08:54.720 I do not have less of the Christian faith because I don't 01:08:54.640 --> 01:08:57.520 know how to pronounce YHWH. 01:08:57.520 --> 01:09:01.600 And so what happened in the eighteen hundreds, there was a man 01:09:01.600 --> 01:09:06.240 named Wilhelm Gesenius, who was a linguist, he was a scholar, who 01:09:06.240 --> 01:09:08.800 was digging into some of these questions. 01:09:08.800 --> 01:09:13.200 And he came up with Yahweh, Y A H W E H, 01:09:13.200 --> 01:09:14.960 the six letters, that sound. 01:09:14.960 --> 01:09:17.760 He said, I think this is a sound that it probably was. 01:09:17.760 --> 01:09:20.800 Fine. People have been arguing about for a while, just as it 01:09:20.800 --> 01:09:23.040 is a peripheral academic exercise. 01:09:23.040 --> 01:09:24.320 It's an interesting question. 01:09:24.320 --> 01:09:26.800 I wonder, personally, like I like to know. 01:09:26.800 --> 01:09:27.680 I don't care. 01:09:27.680 --> 01:09:31.440 Again, I'm not missing out on anything, but it's a reasonable question. 01:09:31.440 --> 01:09:35.760 And it's one thing for a man to speculate, but what Gicinius 01:09:35.760 --> 01:09:36.720 did was 01:09:38.800 --> 01:09:45.120 for one, he was already practicing critical scholarship, so he didn't believe 01:09:45.120 --> 01:09:49.840 that Moses was the scribe of the Torah. 01:09:49.840 --> 01:09:52.720 He didn't believe the Genesis was literal. 01:09:52.720 --> 01:09:58.560 And so he came up with Yahweh in part by thinking the 01:09:58.560 --> 01:10:01.840 the Hebrews were influenced by their neighbors. 01:10:01.840 --> 01:10:06.960 And so he got to the pronunciation Yahweh with Jove and with 01:10:06.960 --> 01:10:12.640 Jupiter, because those were also preeminent gods in those places where the 01:10:12.640 --> 01:10:16.320 Hebrews lived with their neighbors and he thought, well, there seemed to 01:10:16.320 --> 01:10:20.560 be some similarities between YHWH and Jove and Jupiter. 01:10:20.560 --> 01:10:22.400 I bet they were all influenced the same way. 01:10:22.400 --> 01:10:24.640 And so he sort of mangled some of the 01:10:25.520 --> 01:10:30.640 phonetics of those words, stuck him into the tetragrammaton, and ta-da, we 01:10:30.640 --> 01:10:33.120 have Yahweh. 01:10:33.120 --> 01:10:36.800 If he had been a proper Christian, he could have still made 01:10:36.800 --> 01:10:41.280 the connection between the Tetragrammaton and Jove and Jupiter. 01:10:41.280 --> 01:10:45.040 Because as a Christian, it's entirely believable that those would be related. 01:10:45.040 --> 01:10:48.880 Not because there's some god and we don't know his name, but 01:10:48.880 --> 01:10:55.600 because the worshippers of Jupiter and Jove still remembered something of God, 01:10:55.600 --> 01:10:57.040 but they didn't know God. 01:10:57.040 --> 01:11:00.000 So they they knew part they knew something about how to call 01:11:00.000 --> 01:11:02.400 upon him, but they didn't know who they were calling upon. 01:11:02.400 --> 01:11:05.280 So like the mythologies, all the all the things that they believed 01:11:05.280 --> 01:11:08.560 about Jove and Jupiter were evil, but they at least were pointing 01:11:08.560 --> 01:11:09.920 to the king of gods. 01:11:09.920 --> 01:11:12.000 They got that one detail right. 01:11:12.000 --> 01:11:14.960 That's entirely permissible for a Christian to believe. 01:11:14.960 --> 01:11:17.520 But he didn't believe that, so he said, Yeah, I think it's 01:11:17.440 --> 01:11:20.480 Yahweh. He wrote it in a book, he published it a few 01:11:20.480 --> 01:11:22.400 years later, he actually retracted. 01:11:22.400 --> 01:11:25.120 It was a footnote effectively. 01:11:25.120 --> 01:11:29.280 About thirty years later, twenty years later, a man named Alexander McCorter 01:11:29.360 --> 01:11:35.760 III discovered this book and when he saw Yahweh, he didn't see 01:11:36.400 --> 01:11:40.240 a pious or unpious, depending on how you want to interpret it, 01:11:40.240 --> 01:11:44.000 speculation about how to pronounce this word that doesn't really matter. 01:11:44.000 --> 01:11:48.800 When he saw Yahweh, he discovered a key to reinterpret all of 01:11:48.800 --> 01:11:50.400 scripture. So he went nuts. 01:11:50.400 --> 01:11:53.120 He wrote a whole book, wrote 179-page books. 01:11:53.200 --> 01:11:56.800 I read the read the whole thing, either screenshots in the thread 01:11:56.880 --> 01:11:59.760 where you can read some of the clips I found. 01:11:59.760 --> 01:12:06.800 Basically what he believed when he discovered this word Yahweh, one, he 01:12:06.800 --> 01:12:08.800 was a unitarian, he was not a Christian. 01:12:08.800 --> 01:12:09.920 He had some insane 01:12:10.960 --> 01:12:12.960 heretical beliefs about the Trinity. 01:12:12.960 --> 01:12:14.240 He denied the Trinity. 01:12:14.240 --> 01:12:17.680 He uh it was just a disaster. 01:12:17.680 --> 01:12:22.480 He believed that the Septuagint was a shoddy translation by men who 01:12:22.480 --> 01:12:23.680 didn't know Hebrew at all. 01:12:23.680 --> 01:12:25.360 He said they're really bad at Hebrew. 01:12:25.360 --> 01:12:29.200 So he had fallen completely under the spell that the Masoretic text 01:12:29.360 --> 01:12:33.280 that dates back, in his case, about eight hundred years, that was 01:12:33.280 --> 01:12:34.160 the real Bible. 01:12:34.160 --> 01:12:37.440 And the 2000-year-old version that we have in Greek, that was somehow 01:12:37.440 --> 01:12:43.360 botched. Because he believed that, he believed that the translators of the 01:12:43.360 --> 01:12:48.160 Septuagint were influenced by Greek pagan philosophy. 01:12:48.160 --> 01:12:52.320 And so one of the things that the Septuagint does is it 01:12:52.320 --> 01:12:54.480 will just translate God is God. 01:12:54.480 --> 01:12:56.080 And he rejected the word God. 01:12:56.080 --> 01:12:58.080 It's Theos in Greek. 01:12:58.080 --> 01:12:59.040 He rejected that. 01:12:59.040 --> 01:13:03.840 He said that that was Greek philosophy impinging upon the true religion. 01:13:03.840 --> 01:13:08.480 So he found it impermissible that the Septuagint said God. 01:13:08.480 --> 01:13:12.560 That's kind of weird because Christians have always invoked the name of 01:13:12.560 --> 01:13:14.480 God. He says that's a pagan practice. 01:13:14.480 --> 01:13:16.160 No one's permitted to do that. 01:13:16.160 --> 01:13:20.880 So when he found Yahweh, what he decided was that it didn't 01:13:20.960 --> 01:13:22.880 it didn't mean I am. 01:13:22.880 --> 01:13:26.160 He effectively said the Hebrew had a tense that it doesn't have, 01:13:26.160 --> 01:13:27.920 it doesn't have a future tense. 01:13:27.920 --> 01:13:33.360 He believed the Yahweh was he who is to come, which is 01:13:33.360 --> 01:13:37.360 a really weird thing because what he wanted to do by taking 01:13:37.360 --> 01:13:40.320 this Yahweh sound, like in I realize it's kind of getting off 01:13:40.320 --> 01:13:42.320 into the weeds, but that's that's the point of this. 01:13:42.320 --> 01:13:45.680 When we say Yahweh today, this is what we're inheriting. 01:13:45.680 --> 01:13:48.480 One guy makes up a word, says, I think it might have 01:13:48.480 --> 01:13:49.200 sounded like this. 01:13:49.200 --> 01:13:54.000 Another guy discovers it, he invents a new way of interpreting that 01:13:54.000 --> 01:13:56.080 word, and then he sticks it back in the rest of the 01:13:56.080 --> 01:14:01.920 Bible. And so according to McCorder, if Yahweh or Yahweh means he 01:14:01.920 --> 01:14:05.040 who is to come, he wanted to treat that as a prophecy 01:14:05.040 --> 01:14:06.400 of the Messiah. 01:14:06.400 --> 01:14:10.800 And so the book that he wrote was entitled Yahweh Christ or 01:14:10.800 --> 01:14:12.160 the Memorial Name. 01:14:12.160 --> 01:14:17.280 And basically he used Yahweh, Yahweh, as a decodering for the entire 01:14:17.280 --> 01:14:21.440 Bible. And he reinterpreted all the passages, contrary to how they'd ever 01:14:21.440 --> 01:14:24.240 been interpreted by Christians in the history of the church, in a 01:14:24.240 --> 01:14:27.760 way that was forward looking. 01:14:27.760 --> 01:14:32.320 Now, this becomes really creepy when it gets adopted by others. 01:14:32.320 --> 01:14:35.040 The when he published this book, it was roundly panned. 01:14:35.040 --> 01:14:38.400 It was the I clipped some of the reviews of it. 01:14:38.400 --> 01:14:42.560 It was despised rightfully, even by some places that weren't particularly very 01:14:42.560 --> 01:14:46.240 Christian, they still found this utterly outside the faith. 01:14:46.240 --> 01:14:50.720 So it didn't really go anywhere too much until a cult discovered 01:14:50.720 --> 01:14:55.120 it. After he wrote this, he published it, it didn't really take 01:14:55.120 --> 01:14:58.080 off because it was it was pop theology. 01:14:58.080 --> 01:15:00.400 It was garbage and it was blasphemy. 01:15:00.400 --> 01:15:03.920 Unfortunately, it was discovered by a man named John Thomas and the 01:15:03.920 --> 01:15:10.640 Christadelphians. They were a unitarian cult in When they found it, they 01:15:10.640 --> 01:15:16.800 became ecstatic because this was this key of Yahweh of decoding the 01:15:16.800 --> 01:15:20.560 old testament and the new testament and then pointing to a future 01:15:20.560 --> 01:15:26.240 incarnation. They believed that this was consistent with their beliefs, which was 01:15:26.240 --> 01:15:29.680 really bad news because these guys were a full-blown cult. 01:15:29.680 --> 01:15:35.760 They called them themselves the antipos, which means basically the like the 01:15:35.760 --> 01:15:37.280 adversary working against. 01:15:37.920 --> 01:15:41.360 It's you can see in the in the thread how creepy some 01:15:41.360 --> 01:15:42.160 of the stuff is. 01:15:43.280 --> 01:15:44.640 they're disturbing people. 01:15:44.640 --> 01:15:47.200 They had they denied that the devil existed. 01:15:47.200 --> 01:15:50.720 They denied that there's immortality of the flesh. 01:15:50.720 --> 01:15:54.480 Like they they weren't remotely Christian, but they loved Yahweh. 01:15:54.480 --> 01:15:58.160 And so they popularized it because Unitarianism unfortunately was taking off. 01:15:58.160 --> 01:16:02.720 And so they got enough attention that it sort of entered not 01:16:02.720 --> 01:16:06.640 the mainstream, but it it became widely known enough they was just 01:16:06.640 --> 01:16:09.440 sort of sitting there, and then I didn't figure out where later 01:16:09.440 --> 01:16:12.400 on Yahweh became adopted more broadly. 01:16:12.400 --> 01:16:16.560 But it sort of became normal where people suddenly stop thinking that 01:16:16.560 --> 01:16:20.640 I am has significance, which it does, that confession of Jesus saying 01:16:21.040 --> 01:16:25.920 before Abraham was I am, that's a profound confession of who he 01:16:25.920 --> 01:16:28.640 is as God, that God is eternal. 01:16:28.640 --> 01:16:35.040 When McQuerter made Yahweh a future promise, he effectively turned it into 01:16:35.120 --> 01:16:40.640 a prophetic word, which is a problem because he wasn't talking about 01:16:40.640 --> 01:16:44.480 the second coming of Christ, he was talking about a new incarnation. 01:16:44.480 --> 01:16:48.720 And my personal belief, after digging through this, I think that when 01:16:48.720 --> 01:16:53.040 you read through it, it should creep you out and I believe 01:16:53.040 --> 01:16:57.360 that Yahweh is an invocation of the Antichrist. 01:16:57.360 --> 01:17:02.000 I think that the way these men who expounded upon Yahweh and 01:17:02.000 --> 01:17:05.440 they used it as a decodering for the Old and New Testament, 01:17:05.440 --> 01:17:10.480 the ecstatic terms in which they describe Yahweh is he who is 01:17:10.480 --> 01:17:14.080 coming, it screams antichrist to me. 01:17:14.080 --> 01:17:16.400 I think when you look at it side by side with some 01:17:16.400 --> 01:17:21.440 of the passages in Revelation, I think that's what they're talking about. 01:17:21.440 --> 01:17:24.240 And you can take a look for for yourself. 01:17:24.240 --> 01:17:27.520 I don't it's my personal opinion, but it's really creepy. 01:17:27.520 --> 01:17:30.720 Even if you don't agree that it's an invocation of antichrist, it's 01:17:30.720 --> 01:17:34.240 still really creepy who was attracted to it and none of them 01:17:34.240 --> 01:17:34.960 were Christian. 01:17:34.960 --> 01:17:37.200 Like maybe Gicinius was. 01:17:37.200 --> 01:17:38.560 He was he was in rough shape. 01:17:38.560 --> 01:17:40.240 McQuer was absolutely not. 01:17:40.240 --> 01:17:42.560 The Christadelphians were absolutely not. 01:17:42.560 --> 01:17:46.560 And then yet later on in the 20th century, somebody else digs 01:17:46.560 --> 01:17:49.360 it up and says, Oh yeah, Yahweh, that's that's the original name 01:17:49.360 --> 01:17:49.840 of God. 01:17:49.840 --> 01:17:51.360 That's the Jewish name of God. 01:17:51.360 --> 01:17:52.080 Now we have it. 01:17:52.080 --> 01:17:54.960 Now we have that sound that we're going to use, and now 01:17:54.960 --> 01:17:58.640 we have a more authentic version of Christianity than we have when 01:17:58.640 --> 01:18:02.720 we just said God or I am, depending on context. 01:18:02.720 --> 01:18:03.040 So 01:18:04.000 --> 01:18:09.360 by itself, it seems meaningless, but when you know the genealogy of 01:18:09.360 --> 01:18:12.640 who was attracted to it in the last two centuries, again, it 01:18:12.640 --> 01:18:14.720 didn't exist before two centuries ago. 01:18:14.720 --> 01:18:15.920 It did not exist. 01:18:15.920 --> 01:18:20.080 It was 190 years ago that Yahweh was invented. 01:18:20.080 --> 01:18:24.160 And yet today in our churches and our synods, we see men 01:18:24.160 --> 01:18:28.560 using this again with ecstasy because it's it's authentic. 01:18:28.560 --> 01:18:31.360 And what's really weird is that even in the LCMS there are 01:18:31.360 --> 01:18:35.280 guys who claim to be theologians who will talk about God in 01:18:35.280 --> 01:18:38.800 the New Testament, and then we'll refer to God as Yahweh in 01:18:38.800 --> 01:18:40.400 the Old Testament. 01:18:40.400 --> 01:18:46.160 That's coming incredibly dangerously close to confessing a heresy all by itself. 01:18:46.160 --> 01:18:49.600 To divide God into two parts like that, where you have Yahweh 01:18:49.600 --> 01:18:53.040 in the Old Testament and then God in the New Testament. 01:18:53.040 --> 01:18:54.960 That's not a Christian confession. 01:18:54.960 --> 01:18:58.960 And yet that's a completely normal way for guys to be talking 01:18:58.960 --> 01:19:01.920 today. And since Cory and I began delving into some of these 01:19:01.920 --> 01:19:05.760 subjects, even just a little bit, we have directly seen pushback in 01:19:05.760 --> 01:19:09.280 the Missouri Senate at the highest levels to double and triple down 01:19:09.280 --> 01:19:10.080 on this stuff. 01:19:10.080 --> 01:19:12.080 They're pushing Hebrew even harder. 01:19:12.080 --> 01:19:16.160 They're overtly at attacking the Septuagint, which again was the Bible of 01:19:16.160 --> 01:19:18.480 the early church, that's unequivocally true. 01:19:18.480 --> 01:19:20.000 There's no Hebrew Bible used there. 01:19:20.000 --> 01:19:20.800 It didn't exist. 01:19:20.800 --> 01:19:24.000 The Hebrew Bible that they're using, that they're saying is saying is 01:19:24.000 --> 01:19:27.520 authentic, is just over a thousand years old. 01:19:27.520 --> 01:19:32.000 And the continuity, such as it is, between what they're using from 01:19:32.000 --> 01:19:36.960 their Masoretic text and what goes back to Jesus' day, was exclusively 01:19:36.960 --> 01:19:40.640 in the hands of the Christ killers who deny God. 01:19:40.640 --> 01:19:44.720 Incidentally, there's specific changes that were made in the Masoretic text to 01:19:44.720 --> 01:19:48.480 remove a few of the key prophecies about God. 01:19:48.480 --> 01:19:53.120 In the Hebrew text, the Masoretic text has prophecies removed to not 01:19:53.120 --> 01:19:54.560 refer to Jesus Christ. 01:19:54.560 --> 01:19:59.440 That's what they did with a Bible, so-called, that these men want 01:19:59.440 --> 01:20:02.880 to hold over against the Septuagint. 01:20:02.880 --> 01:20:07.280 Now, Cory and I both think that there's some value in comparing 01:20:07.280 --> 01:20:12.560 them, but for someone to a deliberately attack the Greek to support 01:20:12.560 --> 01:20:16.160 the much newer Hebrew, again it's Judaizing. 01:20:16.160 --> 01:20:17.680 Well why are you doing that? 01:20:17.680 --> 01:20:19.600 Because it's Hebrew and therefore it's older? 01:20:19.600 --> 01:20:20.960 Well, that's simply not true. 01:20:20.960 --> 01:20:21.840 It's not older. 01:20:21.840 --> 01:20:22.960 Yahweh's not older. 01:20:22.960 --> 01:20:25.040 Yahweh's less than 200 years old. 01:20:25.040 --> 01:20:26.960 That's what we find with some of these things. 01:20:26.960 --> 01:20:31.600 Some of the newer forms of Judaizing are they're just fabrications. 01:20:31.600 --> 01:20:35.280 They're taking things that seem Jewy, sticking them in Christianity when they 01:20:35.280 --> 01:20:37.920 have no basis in the Christian church. 01:20:37.920 --> 01:20:41.200 And that's why it's something that Stone Choir was concerned about, because 01:20:41.440 --> 01:20:42.480 what are you doing? 01:20:42.480 --> 01:20:46.320 Why are you importing stuff that has no basis in church history 01:20:46.480 --> 01:20:48.960 and then what's going to be the fruit of it when you 01:20:48.960 --> 01:20:53.840 have Christadelphians, Unitarians, people who deny that there's a Satan, saying, Yeah, 01:20:53.840 --> 01:20:57.600 Yahweh, Yahweh's coming, Yahweh is he who c is to come. 01:20:57.600 --> 01:20:59.200 That creeps me out. 01:20:59.200 --> 01:21:02.720 I that makes me viscerally uncomfortable. 01:21:02.720 --> 01:21:05.600 These guys want to preach about it. 01:21:06.080 --> 01:21:09.440 there's a conflict of religions going on here. 01:21:09.440 --> 01:21:11.680 That's why the first episode we talked about where are you're getting 01:21:11.680 --> 01:21:14.480 your morality from, where you're getting your theology from. 01:21:14.480 --> 01:21:18.000 If you're getting it from from people who call themselves the adversary 01:21:18.160 --> 01:21:23.120 and who are unitarians who deny God, you're you're rowing across the 01:21:23.120 --> 01:21:24.400 river to hell. 01:21:25.440 --> 01:21:25.600 For 01:21:25.840 --> 01:21:31.680 anyone in our audience who happens to be inclined toward languages, or 01:21:31.680 --> 01:21:36.560 perhaps we even have a philologist in our audience, you may have 01:21:36.560 --> 01:21:41.040 noticed something about the word Yahweh or 01:21:42.000 --> 01:21:47.120 Yahweh if you want to say it as the Germans would. 01:21:47.120 --> 01:21:53.520 The vowel sequence that is added to to the consonants is simply 01:21:53.520 --> 01:21:58.720 what one would expect if you were adding vowels to a German 01:21:58.720 --> 01:22:01.920 word in the one case or an English word in the other. 01:22:01.920 --> 01:22:05.840 Which is a little curious that it just happens to have obtained 01:22:05.840 --> 01:22:09.600 the vowels that fit the languages, the target languages. 01:22:09.600 --> 01:22:12.560 It's a minor point, but it is a curious thing to have 01:22:12.560 --> 01:22:16.000 happen, because if you were going to say this more clearly for 01:22:16.240 --> 01:22:22.080 haps for those who are not linguistically inclined, if you were given 01:22:22.080 --> 01:22:27.200 those four consonants and told to pronounce them as an English speaker 01:22:27.200 --> 01:22:31.840 or a German speaker, what we now have is exactly what you 01:22:31.840 --> 01:22:32.800 would do. 01:22:32.800 --> 01:22:34.160 Just think about it. 01:22:34.160 --> 01:22:39.520 Think of the four consonants, pretend you don't know what vowels are 01:22:39.520 --> 01:22:43.040 added to them today, and then add vowels in your head. 01:22:43.040 --> 01:22:46.320 You're going to add A and E, because that's just the natural 01:22:46.320 --> 01:22:50.560 way English and German work when it comes to this sequence of 01:22:50.560 --> 01:22:57.040 consonants. But I want to point out something about the names of 01:22:57.040 --> 01:23:00.320 God that are given in Scripture, a fundamental fact. 01:23:00.320 --> 01:23:03.440 God gives us a number of different names in Scripture. 01:23:03.440 --> 01:23:09.200 Obviously, one of the biggest instances of this is in Exodus, Exodus 01:23:09.200 --> 01:23:13.440 three fourteen, in which God speaks to Moses and says, in English, 01:23:13.440 --> 01:23:15.520 I am who I am. 01:23:15.520 --> 01:23:18.880 For those who are intending to clip that, no, I don't mean 01:23:18.880 --> 01:23:21.920 that God spoke to Moses in English, I mean to say that 01:23:21.920 --> 01:23:27.200 I am who I am is how we render it in English. 01:23:27.200 --> 01:23:33.600 God gives his name as I am, Ego E me, Ego Sum. 01:23:34.320 --> 01:23:40.480 These are all things that are eminently translatable. 01:23:40.480 --> 01:23:44.080 You can readily translate I am who I am into basically any 01:23:44.080 --> 01:23:48.960 language. But two of the other names God gives us that we 01:23:48.960 --> 01:23:53.520 have in Scripture are God and Lord. 01:23:53.520 --> 01:23:58.080 God, Lord, and I am are all eminently translatable. 01:23:58.080 --> 01:24:01.200 I think you would find it very challenging to find any language 01:24:01.200 --> 01:24:03.840 into which you could not translate these. 01:24:03.840 --> 01:24:08.160 God gave us names for Himself that we can use in our 01:24:08.160 --> 01:24:09.360 own language. 01:24:09.360 --> 01:24:14.160 He didn't give us a special name, a special combination of sounds 01:24:14.160 --> 01:24:15.760 that we have to use. 01:24:15.760 --> 01:24:20.400 He gave us a word that can be translated, and he did 01:24:20.400 --> 01:24:25.120 cause it to be translated, because he gave it here to Moses, 01:24:25.120 --> 01:24:28.080 in whatever language it happened to be that he was speaking to 01:24:28.080 --> 01:24:30.400 Moses here, because obviously we don't know. 01:24:30.400 --> 01:24:32.080 Moses knew more than one language. 01:24:32.080 --> 01:24:34.080 We don't know which one God used. 01:24:34.080 --> 01:24:36.960 It was recorded in Hebrew at one point. 01:24:36.960 --> 01:24:39.040 It has been translated into Aramaic. 01:24:39.040 --> 01:24:42.720 It has been translated into Greek, God caused it to be translated 01:24:42.720 --> 01:24:45.200 into Greek with the Septuagint. 01:24:45.200 --> 01:24:48.880 And so we know that this was a word God gave us 01:24:49.120 --> 01:24:53.120 to be translated, because if as Woe said, if it was not 01:24:53.120 --> 01:24:56.960 meant to be translated, if God had intended for this to be 01:24:57.280 --> 01:25:01.120 this specific set of sounds is my name and you will use 01:25:01.120 --> 01:25:04.800 this as my name, Christ would have given it to us as 01:25:04.800 --> 01:25:07.840 his name when he spoke of it in the New Testament, and 01:25:07.840 --> 01:25:11.600 it would have been translated as that sequence of sounds. 01:25:11.600 --> 01:25:15.600 It would not have been translated as a concept. 01:25:15.600 --> 01:25:18.960 It would have been transliterated in order that you could pronounce it 01:25:18.960 --> 01:25:22.240 the same in your tongue as it was pronounced by those who 01:25:22.240 --> 01:25:23.600 used it in another. 01:25:23.600 --> 01:25:26.880 But that's not the case, because you have God, which you can 01:25:26.880 --> 01:25:28.240 translate into German easily. 01:25:28.240 --> 01:25:32.640 Got. You can translate into Latin Deus, you can translate it into 01:25:32.640 --> 01:25:34.320 Greek Theos. 01:25:34.320 --> 01:25:39.680 The same thing is true of Lord and I am. 01:25:39.680 --> 01:25:44.960 God did not intend us to use some magical sequence of sounds 01:25:44.960 --> 01:25:48.400 as his name. 01:25:48.400 --> 01:25:52.880 And we should be very hesitant, we should be very concerned when 01:25:52.880 --> 01:25:57.040 someone tries to say that we have to use this sequence of 01:25:57.040 --> 01:25:59.280 sounds because as Will mentioned, that's magic. 01:25:59.280 --> 01:26:00.400 That's name magic. 01:26:00.400 --> 01:26:02.480 That is something that we see in the Talmud. 01:26:02.480 --> 01:26:04.080 That is something we see in paganism. 01:26:04.080 --> 01:26:07.200 That is something we see in mysticism, in the occult, we see 01:26:07.200 --> 01:26:11.440 this all over in the anti-Christian world. 01:26:11.440 --> 01:26:14.800 It is not something that exists in Christianity. 01:26:14.800 --> 01:26:18.080 And so I want to bring up a version of this that 01:26:18.080 --> 01:26:21.280 we see with regard to the New Testament. 01:26:21.280 --> 01:26:24.560 Because in addition to those who say we have to use the 01:26:24.560 --> 01:26:29.200 word Yahweh for God, at least in the Old Testament or where 01:26:29.200 --> 01:26:33.360 it appears in the New Testament, we have those today who, in 01:26:33.360 --> 01:26:36.560 another form of Judaizing, will tell us that we have to call 01:26:36.560 --> 01:26:39.040 Christ Yeshua. 01:26:39.040 --> 01:26:43.440 Because yes, that is his name if you speak Hebrew or Aramaic. 01:26:43.440 --> 01:26:46.080 His name is Yeshua. 01:26:46.080 --> 01:26:48.800 That's not the name we use in English. 01:26:48.800 --> 01:26:51.760 That's not the name that's used in the New Testament, because the 01:26:51.760 --> 01:26:55.520 New Testament is recorded in Greek, and that's Yesus. 01:26:55.520 --> 01:26:57.520 It is not Yeshua. 01:26:57.520 --> 01:27:00.240 In English, we say Jesus. 01:27:00.480 --> 01:27:05.280 Jesus, depending on which language you use, you use a different name, 01:27:05.280 --> 01:27:08.880 but they are all Jesus. 01:27:08.880 --> 01:27:12.880 And so no, if you are an English speaker, you do not 01:27:12.880 --> 01:27:15.360 have to say Yeshua. 01:27:15.360 --> 01:27:17.280 That is Judaizing. 01:27:17.280 --> 01:27:18.720 We are not Hebrew speakers. 01:27:18.720 --> 01:27:20.640 We are not Aramaic speakers. 01:27:20.640 --> 01:27:22.480 We are English speakers. 01:27:22.480 --> 01:27:28.160 In English, his name is Jesus. 01:27:28.160 --> 01:27:32.400 In In whatever your mother tongue happens to be, use the name 01:27:32.400 --> 01:27:36.320 Jesus, whatever it happens to be translated as, it's Jesus if you 01:27:36.320 --> 01:27:38.240 speak Spanish. 01:27:38.240 --> 01:27:41.920 Use the name for Christ in your language. 01:27:42.240 --> 01:27:45.680 Because again, it is not a magic spell. 01:27:45.680 --> 01:27:51.760 It is not, if you say these sounds in this order, something 01:27:51.760 --> 01:27:52.560 necessarily happens. 01:27:52.720 --> 01:27:54.960 It's not ex opre operato. 01:27:54.960 --> 01:27:58.560 Again, we'll come back to that because we will always return to 01:27:58.560 --> 01:28:00.640 this point. 01:28:00.640 --> 01:28:04.480 Things that are of the devil, things that are evil, things that 01:28:04.480 --> 01:28:09.680 are black magic or the occult often are ex operato. 01:28:09.680 --> 01:28:12.800 You do the thing, you get the result. 01:28:12.800 --> 01:28:16.480 You ask for demons to join you, you're probably going to get 01:28:16.480 --> 01:28:18.880 demons. That's how evil works. 01:28:19.440 --> 01:28:21.520 That is not how God works. 01:28:21.520 --> 01:28:25.200 The things of God depend on faith. 01:28:25.200 --> 01:28:29.760 And so it is not that you utter this particular series of 01:28:29.760 --> 01:28:35.840 sounds, and then God does something because you said the magic word. 01:28:35.840 --> 01:28:41.760 No. You pray to God, using the names God has given us 01:28:42.000 --> 01:28:48.400 in your language, because again we have shown amply that God intended 01:28:48.400 --> 01:28:51.760 for his name to be translated, gave it in a way that 01:28:51.760 --> 01:28:55.280 can be translated, and even caused it to be translated in the 01:28:55.280 --> 01:28:57.680 case of the Septuagint. 01:28:57.760 --> 01:29:01.680 You use that name, and you use it in faith. 01:29:01.680 --> 01:29:04.240 Because the things of God depend on faith. 01:29:04.240 --> 01:29:08.640 They do not occur simply because you did the sequence of things 01:29:08.800 --> 01:29:11.120 or made the sequence of sounds. 01:29:11.120 --> 01:29:12.480 That is black magic. 01:29:12.640 --> 01:29:15.600 Christians need to avoid it. 01:29:16.400 --> 01:29:20.560 Just to reiterate the point one more time, the Septuagint, the Bible 01:29:20.560 --> 01:29:26.720 that Jesus used, translates YHWH, the Tetragrammaton, as either I am or 01:29:26.720 --> 01:29:30.880 God. It shows up a bunch of times, and the Greek Bible 01:29:31.040 --> 01:29:34.960 never once plays any games with sounds. 01:29:34.960 --> 01:29:39.040 It either translates the word or just calls them God because they're 01:29:39.040 --> 01:29:41.600 synonymous. I am is God. 01:29:41.600 --> 01:29:43.920 That's a permissible thing to say. 01:29:43.920 --> 01:29:48.400 And when God inspired the translation of the Septuagint, that's what he 01:29:48.400 --> 01:29:52.000 did. And it's what Jesus preached from and it's what Paul cited. 01:29:52.000 --> 01:29:54.640 It was almost universal. 01:29:54.640 --> 01:29:58.000 Over ninety percent of the quotations in the New Testament of the 01:29:58.000 --> 01:30:04.320 Old Testament are either directly or consistent with the Septuagint. 01:30:04.320 --> 01:30:08.320 And a significant portion of the quotations are not consistent with the 01:30:08.320 --> 01:30:09.680 Masoretic text. 01:30:09.680 --> 01:30:12.880 Again we'll we'll do a future episode where we specifically talk about 01:30:12.880 --> 01:30:14.720 those details because it's fascinating. 01:30:14.720 --> 01:30:16.800 And it's another example the the 01:30:17.840 --> 01:30:24.240 the widespread abandoning of the Greek Septuagint as the Old Testament basis 01:30:24.240 --> 01:30:28.320 for scripture, the early church held that universally. 01:30:28.320 --> 01:30:29.280 Everyone did. 01:30:29.280 --> 01:30:30.640 It was It was the only one. 01:30:30.640 --> 01:30:34.640 For centuries, before Jesus and after Jesus, it was preserved. 01:30:34.640 --> 01:30:38.720 And then as, you know, eventually not everyone spoke Greek, so they 01:30:38.720 --> 01:30:40.400 needed another vernacular. 01:30:40.400 --> 01:30:43.440 And in the West, they shifted into Latin. 01:30:43.440 --> 01:30:48.560 And unfortunately Jerome had some very deep seated problems. 01:30:48.560 --> 01:30:54.000 In fact he had significant contact with Talmudic scholars who did some 01:30:54.000 --> 01:30:56.320 very real damage to some of his theology. 01:30:56.640 --> 01:31:01.600 He ended up using some of the Hebrew text for the Vulgate. 01:31:01.600 --> 01:31:04.880 And then on down the road, everyone sort of fell into the 01:31:04.880 --> 01:31:08.720 same view that is widely held today that the Hebrew is more 01:31:08.720 --> 01:31:10.880 authentic because it's older. 01:31:11.040 --> 01:31:12.320 Simply not true. 01:31:12.320 --> 01:31:15.920 And also it's not consistent when you look at the mechanisms of 01:31:15.920 --> 01:31:20.800 translation. It's not consistent with what was done in scripture itself. 01:31:20.800 --> 01:31:23.680 So the fundamental point there is is not, you know, just that 01:31:23.680 --> 01:31:27.040 word and again, I've probably used it at some point, although I'm 01:31:27.040 --> 01:31:30.000 kind of viscerally even before I knew what was going on, I 01:31:30.000 --> 01:31:31.200 really didn't like the word. 01:31:31.200 --> 01:31:33.120 I probably said it unironically. 01:31:33.120 --> 01:31:35.280 I won't again, now that I know. 01:31:35.440 --> 01:31:38.480 That's pr that's part of a lot of what this is about. 01:31:38.480 --> 01:31:42.800 We often act in good conscience not knowing that we've done something 01:31:42.800 --> 01:31:44.160 that's in error. 01:31:44.160 --> 01:31:47.360 And the Christian response when you find out you're in error, as 01:31:47.360 --> 01:31:50.800 Corey was saying at the beginning, is not to double down. 01:31:50.800 --> 01:31:53.520 It's not once you find out that you've made a mistake, that 01:31:53.680 --> 01:31:58.160 was an innocent mistake, but it was nevertheless a wicked thing that 01:31:58.160 --> 01:31:59.600 you did, you didn't know it. 01:31:59.600 --> 01:32:01.200 You didn't know where it came from. 01:32:01.200 --> 01:32:03.120 You trusted someone who taught you. 01:32:03.120 --> 01:32:04.640 You repeated what they said. 01:32:04.640 --> 01:32:06.320 It turned out was bad. 01:32:06.320 --> 01:32:08.400 The Christian response is repentance. 01:32:08.400 --> 01:32:10.880 Matanoia. Turn away from it. 01:32:10.880 --> 01:32:11.520 Condemn it. 01:32:11.920 --> 01:32:15.520 Point to it and say what I did was sin. 01:32:15.520 --> 01:32:17.040 I reject my sin. 01:32:17.040 --> 01:32:19.840 I reject this sin as not mine anymore. 01:32:19.840 --> 01:32:21.280 I'm not going to do it again. 01:32:21.280 --> 01:32:23.280 You shouldn't do it again. 01:32:23.280 --> 01:32:27.920 If you are living a life where that never happens, I hate 01:32:27.920 --> 01:32:29.520 to be the one to break it to you, but you're not 01:32:29.520 --> 01:32:33.440 a Christian because we all sin knowingly and unknowingly. 01:32:33.440 --> 01:32:37.520 And when you find out, the Christian response is like, that's awful. 01:32:37.520 --> 01:32:39.200 Lord forgive me. 01:32:39.200 --> 01:32:42.720 We should that should be a part of the regular Christian daily 01:32:42.720 --> 01:32:45.920 life. Lord forgive me what I didn't even know I was doing 01:32:45.920 --> 01:32:48.000 wrong. But you, Lord, know everything. 01:32:48.000 --> 01:32:51.200 So of course you knew about that too. 01:32:51.200 --> 01:32:54.320 When we double down on our air, that's when, as Corey said, 01:32:54.320 --> 01:32:55.680 we get into real trouble. 01:32:55.680 --> 01:32:59.120 Because then it's not just, you know, this translation issue versus a 01:32:59.120 --> 01:33:03.760 sound and you know, the circumcision, you know, as Corey said, circumcision 01:33:03.760 --> 01:33:04.640 doesn't damn. 01:33:04.640 --> 01:33:05.840 It shouldn't be happening. 01:33:06.080 --> 01:33:07.120 I think it's 01:33:08.080 --> 01:33:13.040 the criminality of the torture involved is certainly damnable, but that's not 01:33:13.040 --> 01:33:17.920 what's in the minds of those who are typically permitting it. 01:33:17.920 --> 01:33:20.880 Nevertheless, once you realize what's going on, you have to respond as 01:33:20.880 --> 01:33:24.000 a Christian, and that means to flee from evil. 01:33:24.160 --> 01:33:29.920 In order to head off some potential questions in the future, particularly 01:33:29.920 --> 01:33:32.720 for myself, I want to point out 01:33:33.680 --> 01:33:38.240 that the phrase I am who I am has been translated slightly 01:33:38.240 --> 01:33:41.840 differently in different languages. 01:33:41.840 --> 01:33:45.520 And again, this is a case where we have this between the 01:33:45.520 --> 01:33:51.040 Hebrew and the Greek, again the Greek Septuagint being an inspired translation, 01:33:51.040 --> 01:33:53.600 we have this in other languages as well. 01:33:53.600 --> 01:33:58.640 And so those who know German may decide to ask me questions 01:33:58.720 --> 01:34:05.040 because Woe mentioned the future tense, and arguably Luther's translation is future 01:34:05.040 --> 01:34:07.360 tense in the German, although I will comment more on that in 01:34:07.360 --> 01:34:08.400 a second here. 01:34:08.400 --> 01:34:12.800 In English, it's I am who I am, which I don't have 01:34:12.800 --> 01:34:16.480 to translate for you because you are an English speaking audience. 01:34:16.480 --> 01:34:22.160 The Greek is ego emhaon, I am the one. 01:34:22.160 --> 01:34:25.840 The Latin is ego sum quisum. 01:34:25.840 --> 01:34:28.160 I am who I am. 01:34:28.160 --> 01:34:31.680 So exactly the same, incidentally, as the English. 01:34:31.680 --> 01:34:37.600 Luther translates it isn sein, der Is Seinwerde I shall be who 01:34:37.840 --> 01:34:40.320 I shall be. 01:34:40.320 --> 01:34:44.400 You really shouldn't take that necessarily as a simple future. 01:34:44.400 --> 01:34:47.600 Bear in mind this is five hundred years ago for this translation, 01:34:47.600 --> 01:34:50.880 you're making You're making the transition from Middle High German to modern 01:34:50.880 --> 01:34:55.680 German, which Luther incidentally spurred with his translation of scripture, and I 01:34:55.680 --> 01:34:56.640 translated it. 01:34:56.640 --> 01:35:00.640 I shall be who I shall be, because it is more emphatic. 01:35:00.640 --> 01:35:02.400 It is God making an emphatic statement 01:35:03.600 --> 01:35:08.320 of I am, which is how we would translate it in English. 01:35:08.320 --> 01:35:12.960 And you'll see this incidentally later in the exact same verse, because 01:35:13.040 --> 01:35:16.560 later in the same verse, God gives a shortened version of his 01:35:16.720 --> 01:35:19.920 name, and he does this in any of the various languages and 01:35:19.920 --> 01:35:24.240 translations we have, because he doesn't repeat I am who I am 01:35:24.640 --> 01:35:28.320 when telling Moses to say, Well, who sent you? 01:35:28.320 --> 01:35:29.200 Who sent you? 01:35:29.200 --> 01:35:33.440 When they are asked, when Moses is asked, Who sent you to 01:35:33.440 --> 01:35:35.760 us? Why should we believe you? 01:35:35.760 --> 01:35:36.800 Well, what does he say? 01:35:36.800 --> 01:35:40.000 He says, I am has sent me to you. 01:35:39.840 --> 01:35:43.840 in the German Ichwerde sein hat mich zu euch gesandt. 01:35:43.840 --> 01:35:48.000 And incidentally in the Latin it doesn't even use the exact same 01:35:48.000 --> 01:35:55.520 terms, because it says Qui est mised me advos, so quiest. 01:35:55.520 --> 01:36:00.000 This difference across the translations is not something about which we have 01:36:00.000 --> 01:36:00.560 to worry. 01:36:00.560 --> 01:36:04.960 There are minor differences in emphasis in the way that you relay 01:36:04.960 --> 01:36:08.560 concepts in different languages. 01:36:08.560 --> 01:36:13.680 These translators were faithful to the original in translating in a way 01:36:13.680 --> 01:36:16.240 that worked in the target language. 01:36:16.240 --> 01:36:20.320 And so Ishva Design is not the same thing as what Woe 01:36:20.320 --> 01:36:23.440 was saying about the future tense, because it's not saying I am 01:36:23.440 --> 01:36:25.120 the one who will come. 01:36:25.120 --> 01:36:27.920 It says I shall be. 01:36:27.920 --> 01:36:31.440 It's an emphatic statement of I am the one. 01:36:31.440 --> 01:36:35.280 It's really, if you want to extrapolate out of this, what you 01:36:35.280 --> 01:36:37.760 can take away from this name is God is saying that He 01:36:37.760 --> 01:36:40.240 is the root of all being. 01:36:40.240 --> 01:36:44.000 Because as we would say philosophically, He is being. 01:36:44.000 --> 01:36:46.160 He is being itself. 01:36:46.160 --> 01:36:50.400 That is, again, going back to the transcendentals, that is one of 01:36:50.400 --> 01:36:52.800 the five transcendentals. 01:36:52.800 --> 01:36:56.160 Being and unity are fourth and fifth, whatever order you want to 01:36:56.160 --> 01:36:57.120 place them. 01:36:57.360 --> 01:36:58.240 God is being. 01:36:58.640 --> 01:37:01.280 God is the fundamental ground of all things. 01:37:01.280 --> 01:37:02.720 That is what he is saying here. 01:37:02.720 --> 01:37:06.160 That is his name, because that is his essence, because again, God 01:37:06.320 --> 01:37:08.480 is his essence. 01:37:08.480 --> 01:37:09.600 Because God is simple. 01:37:09.600 --> 01:37:11.520 You cannot have a division in God. 01:37:11.520 --> 01:37:14.080 And so that is how you should think about this, regardless of 01:37:14.080 --> 01:37:16.000 the language that you are using. 01:37:16.000 --> 01:37:19.120 So I just wanted to head off those potential future questions and 01:37:19.120 --> 01:37:21.040 answer them here and now. 01:37:23.200 --> 01:37:25.440 So next we'll deal with 01:37:26.960 --> 01:37:29.360 a relatively modern issue actually. 01:37:29.360 --> 01:37:36.560 This came into specifically the Lutheran Church in America in relatively recent 01:37:36.640 --> 01:37:41.120 years, and by relatively recent, admittedly I mean a century ago, but 01:37:41.360 --> 01:37:47.200 we're talking about things that span millennia, not things that happened yesterday. 01:37:47.200 --> 01:37:50.640 So put yourself in the right mindset for recent. 01:37:50.640 --> 01:37:53.440 I was just talking about Luther's translation, which is from the fifteen 01:37:53.520 --> 01:38:00.640 hundreds. And we're talking about the Septuagint, which is considerably older. 01:38:00.640 --> 01:38:06.080 But we're going to talk about the rite of baptism as it 01:38:06.080 --> 01:38:14.560 was practiced historically in the LCMS, in the Lutheran Church in America. 01:38:14.560 --> 01:38:21.200 And until And until the early nineteen hundreds, essentially right around the 01:38:21.200 --> 01:38:24.240 time of the First World War, which you should bear in mind 01:38:24.240 --> 01:38:27.520 some of the things we've talked about previously historically with some of 01:38:27.520 --> 01:38:33.440 the currents that were happening around that time, a curious thing was 01:38:33.440 --> 01:38:38.640 dropped from the rite of baptism. 01:38:38.640 --> 01:38:43.120 The rite today, as it now stands, is essentially just do you 01:38:43.120 --> 01:38:44.240 renounce the devil? 01:38:44.240 --> 01:38:46.240 Yes. And all his works. 01:38:46.240 --> 01:38:48.480 Yes. And all his ways. 01:38:48.480 --> 01:38:52.160 Yes. It depends on the specific setting you have and the rubrics 01:38:52.240 --> 01:38:55.840 as to what exactly The language is, but basically you're denouncing the 01:38:55.840 --> 01:38:58.560 devil, his works, and his ways. 01:38:58.560 --> 01:39:02.560 In the older version, and we'll go right ahead and say this 01:39:02.560 --> 01:39:06.560 is more appropriate, there was an additional renunciation. 01:39:06.560 --> 01:39:11.680 And that additional renunciation applied to specific groups. 01:39:11.680 --> 01:39:18.240 Now it could be used conditionally depending on the relevant group. 01:39:18.240 --> 01:39:22.960 If you came from heathen, pagan parents, you could be asked to 01:39:22.960 --> 01:39:26.400 specifically renounce the old heathen ways. 01:39:26.400 --> 01:39:30.800 And this is a carryover, incidentally, from very early on. 01:39:30.800 --> 01:39:34.960 This was part of the baptism rite in Germany, in the German 01:39:34.960 --> 01:39:39.760 lands, when they were first converting to Christianity, they were asked to 01:39:39.760 --> 01:39:44.640 renounce the ways, the false ways of their pagan ancestors, the worship 01:39:44.640 --> 01:39:50.080 in groves and the worship of false deities of the pagan gods. 01:39:50.320 --> 01:39:55.280 In the American context you also have the Unitarians, there's the separatist 01:39:55.280 --> 01:39:58.880 group which is really a specific sort of Lutheran historical matter that 01:39:58.880 --> 01:40:03.120 isn't relevant today but obviously Unitarians are still relevant, and so if 01:40:03.120 --> 01:40:06.720 you came from a Unitarian background, you would be asked to specifically 01:40:06.720 --> 01:40:11.680 denounce the blasphemy, the heresy of Unitarianism. 01:40:12.000 --> 01:40:16.240 But for the sake of this episode, the most salient one is 01:40:16.240 --> 01:40:22.480 that they were asked to renounce the Jewish unbelief and blasphemy. 01:40:22.480 --> 01:40:26.080 This was part of our baptismal rite. 01:40:26.560 --> 01:40:29.360 Up until the nineteen hundreds. 01:40:29.360 --> 01:40:31.840 Up until right around World War One. 01:40:33.200 --> 01:40:37.600 But you can see why this would have been dropped. 01:40:37.600 --> 01:40:41.200 But the fact that it was dropped is Judaizing. 01:40:41.200 --> 01:40:45.680 Because what you're doing is you're trying to minimize the fact that 01:40:45.680 --> 01:40:51.280 the Jewish unbelief and blasphemy is something from which a convert to 01:40:51.280 --> 01:40:54.160 Christianity needs to sever himself. 01:40:54.160 --> 01:40:59.280 He needs to say that my past in Judaism was a wicked 01:40:59.280 --> 01:41:03.520 and evil thing, because they deny Christ, they do not believe in 01:41:03.520 --> 01:41:06.080 Christ, they blaspheme Christ. 01:41:06.080 --> 01:41:10.880 I am renouncing the devil and all his works and all his 01:41:11.120 --> 01:41:16.960 ways, which include the Jewish faith. 01:41:17.280 --> 01:41:19.520 This is something that should be included today. 01:41:19.520 --> 01:41:22.320 We should have this in our baptismal rite. 01:41:22.320 --> 01:41:25.920 It isn't necessarily the case that every single candidate should have to 01:41:25.920 --> 01:41:30.720 say this, because, for instance, if you happen to have a pagan 01:41:30.720 --> 01:41:33.680 background, you probably don't need to renounce Judaism. 01:41:33.680 --> 01:41:37.680 You probably don't have a Jewish background as well, although you may. 01:41:37.680 --> 01:41:42.320 You should renounce what is relevant to you because you are converting 01:41:42.320 --> 01:41:50.480 to Christianity, you are renouncing your old unbelief and blasphemous ways. 01:41:50.480 --> 01:41:54.160 But this isn't what modern Christians want to hear, and modern pastors 01:41:54.160 --> 01:41:56.480 are made uncomfortable by this. 01:41:56.480 --> 01:41:59.280 Because you have people who want to say, Well, the Jews are 01:41:59.280 --> 01:42:04.560 just our our older brothers, they're the old version of Christianity, as 01:42:04.560 --> 01:42:05.600 it were. 01:42:05.600 --> 01:42:09.760 And as we have gone over repeatedly, that is not the case. 01:42:09.760 --> 01:42:14.080 Christianity does not derive from Judaism. 01:42:14.080 --> 01:42:17.520 Judaism is younger than Christianity. 01:42:17.520 --> 01:42:24.400 Judaism is a wicked offshoot that denies the divinity of Christ, that 01:42:24.400 --> 01:42:30.240 denies the sacrifice of Christ, that denies the resurrection. 01:42:30.240 --> 01:42:35.600 Judaism, quite frankly, is a pagan religion, but it is a pagan 01:42:35.600 --> 01:42:39.920 religion that is a perversion of the Christian faith. 01:42:39.920 --> 01:42:44.400 The faith of Abraham, the faith of Adam, the faith of Noah, 01:42:44.400 --> 01:42:45.360 all of these 01:42:47.360 --> 01:42:51.600 Judaism is not related to them because they were not Jews, they 01:42:51.600 --> 01:42:53.360 were Christians. 01:42:53.360 --> 01:42:57.520 And so we see, even today, relatively recently, in the recent past 01:42:57.600 --> 01:43:02.720 in our own country, this sort of Judaism has crept into the 01:43:02.720 --> 01:43:08.160 church. We had the right belief previously, we had the right praxis 01:43:08.160 --> 01:43:10.480 as well. 01:43:10.480 --> 01:43:14.480 When you get rid of these safeguards, that's when the Judaism, the 01:43:14.640 --> 01:43:18.160 Judaizing, when all of these problems start to creep back into the 01:43:18.160 --> 01:43:22.400 church, because you've removed the guardrails. 01:43:22.400 --> 01:43:24.960 And all Satan looks for is that little opening. 01:43:24.960 --> 01:43:25.840 He's a rat. 01:43:25.840 --> 01:43:28.400 He just has to find that little opening and he'll squeeze himself 01:43:28.400 --> 01:43:30.000 right through. 01:43:30.000 --> 01:43:33.600 And that's what we gave him by dropping this from our Baptismal 01:43:33.600 --> 01:43:34.960 Rite. 01:43:35.360 --> 01:43:38.720 have the link in the show notes to this uh recent discovery, 01:43:38.720 --> 01:43:44.160 but again this Was the LCMS baptismal rite in German in 1922, 01:43:44.160 --> 01:43:46.320 just over one century ago? 01:43:46.320 --> 01:43:51.120 Any Jew who wanted to become a Christian, as a condition of 01:43:51.120 --> 01:43:57.120 baptism, baptism was denied to every Jew who would refuse to renounce 01:43:57.120 --> 01:44:00.800 Jews. Because it's important to read how this you will you can 01:44:00.800 --> 01:44:03.840 see the link in the show notes with the translation how it's 01:44:03.840 --> 01:44:06.560 actually phrased. 01:44:06.560 --> 01:44:12.400 The public confession is not simply a confession of personal guilt for 01:44:12.400 --> 01:44:14.720 having been a Jew in the past. 01:44:14.720 --> 01:44:17.680 It says do you renounce the devil and all his works and 01:44:17.680 --> 01:44:18.800 all his ways, especially 01:44:19.680 --> 01:44:22.960 the Jewish unbelief and blasphemy. 01:44:22.960 --> 01:44:26.720 For a Jew to become a Christian and to make this public 01:44:26.720 --> 01:44:32.000 confession is to denounce every other Jew, is to publicly damn all 01:44:32.000 --> 01:44:36.560 Jews, to say they are of the devil because they are unbelievers 01:44:36.640 --> 01:44:38.640 and they are blasphemers. 01:44:38.640 --> 01:44:43.600 To make that a necessary precondition for someone to become a Christian 01:44:43.760 --> 01:44:46.000 is the true Christian faith. 01:44:46.000 --> 01:44:47.760 It is a precondition. 01:44:47.760 --> 01:44:52.480 No Jew can actually be a Christian unless this is their confession. 01:44:52.480 --> 01:44:54.640 Whether or not a church makes them say it. 01:44:54.640 --> 01:44:58.560 The reason this was necessary, because that there are many who will 01:44:58.560 --> 01:45:01.280 pretend they will try to slide in. 01:45:01.280 --> 01:45:05.200 But I can name pastors in the LCMS today who would refuse 01:45:05.200 --> 01:45:08.720 to make this confession, that was the public confession of the LCMS, 01:45:08.720 --> 01:45:11.440 one hundred years ago, because they don't believe it. 01:45:11.760 --> 01:45:15.840 Do they not believe it because politics changed or because of the 01:45:15.840 --> 01:45:18.720 Holocaust? Well, yeah. 01:45:18.720 --> 01:45:22.640 It's not about it's not about Christianity anymore for any of them. 01:45:22.640 --> 01:45:27.840 Christianity is no longer in view when these subjects come up. 01:45:27.840 --> 01:45:34.000 And that's I think the crux of the entire Judaizing heresy is 01:45:34.000 --> 01:45:38.160 that it sets aside Christianity by bits and pieces and by degrees 01:45:38.320 --> 01:45:40.720 and says, Well, yeah, you have your gospel stuff and your Jesus 01:45:40.720 --> 01:45:42.160 stuff, but not this. 01:45:42.160 --> 01:45:46.480 We got to have this older thing, this more Jewy thing. 01:45:46.480 --> 01:45:49.600 We have this thing that's more Jewish than what we have because 01:45:49.600 --> 01:45:51.920 that's going to be more authentic. 01:45:51.920 --> 01:45:57.280 I reject and denounce the unbelief and blasphemy of all Jews. 01:45:57.280 --> 01:46:02.640 I despise the wickedness of these people who murdered Christ and dance 01:46:02.640 --> 01:46:04.080 in his blood to this day? 01:46:04.080 --> 01:46:07.760 That's my confession because a Christian confession. 01:46:07.760 --> 01:46:09.920 And so in the church I'm despised. 01:46:09.920 --> 01:46:12.320 It's a despicable thing to say. 01:46:12.320 --> 01:46:16.480 According to Christianity, no, it's a necessary precondition of Christianity. 01:46:16.480 --> 01:46:20.720 It's a necessary precondition to enter the kingdom of heaven. 01:46:20.720 --> 01:46:24.960 That's what denying baptism to someone who refuses to say that means. 01:46:24.960 --> 01:46:26.560 That's literally what it means. 01:46:26.560 --> 01:46:28.320 So this is not a small point. 01:46:28.320 --> 01:46:31.680 This fact that this is buried in an agenda for a baptism 01:46:31.680 --> 01:46:35.040 rite and like that's a one-off thing, you know, whatever. 01:46:35.040 --> 01:46:39.040 This is a choke point that excludes this is this is the 01:46:39.040 --> 01:46:42.400 narrow path versus the wide way to hell. 01:46:42.400 --> 01:46:44.480 That's precisely why it used to be done. 01:46:44.720 --> 01:46:46.800 Why it was the Christian confession. 01:46:46.800 --> 01:46:48.960 And it still is the Christian confession. 01:46:48.960 --> 01:46:51.520 It's just one that's by and large rejected. 01:46:51.520 --> 01:46:56.640 As Corey said, this these sorts of things function as guardrails, because 01:46:56.960 --> 01:47:01.600 if for example, the LCMS to this day required every Jew who 01:47:01.600 --> 01:47:05.120 would enter into fellowship with us and say I am a Christian 01:47:05.120 --> 01:47:08.640 just like you, if they had to denounce all Jews as children 01:47:08.640 --> 01:47:13.200 of the devil for their unbelief and their blasphemy, which is active, 01:47:13.200 --> 01:47:15.840 Jewish blasphemy is active. 01:47:15.840 --> 01:47:19.440 They don't simply blaspheme by existing the way they live their lives 01:47:19.600 --> 01:47:23.200 and the things that they say blaspheme God Almighty. 01:47:23.200 --> 01:47:25.360 Christians must condemn that. 01:47:25.360 --> 01:47:28.880 And for a Jew to become a Christian must condemn it as 01:47:28.880 --> 01:47:29.840 a first party. 01:47:29.840 --> 01:47:32.640 But even then the way this is phrased isn't I r I 01:47:32.640 --> 01:47:34.800 repent of my being a Jew. 01:47:34.800 --> 01:47:37.520 They have to say, I condemn all Jews. 01:47:37.520 --> 01:47:39.360 That's a radical difference. 01:47:39.360 --> 01:47:42.880 It's not a small little personal I'm here for Jesus thing. 01:47:42.880 --> 01:47:45.760 It's every Jew is going to hell unless they also repent as 01:47:45.760 --> 01:47:50.240 I am, and as less unless they also denounce all Jewry. 01:47:50.240 --> 01:47:51.600 That's a big deal. 01:47:51.600 --> 01:47:54.400 And it would have prevented many of the problems that we see 01:47:54.400 --> 01:47:57.520 in our church today, because most of the people who are hanging 01:47:57.520 --> 01:48:00.160 around today would have long since left. 01:48:00.160 --> 01:48:01.760 They would hate this. 01:48:01.760 --> 01:48:03.440 Because it's not Christian. 01:48:03.440 --> 01:48:05.440 Well, was it Christian a hundred years ago? 01:48:05.440 --> 01:48:06.560 'Cause that's really the question. 01:48:06.960 --> 01:48:08.720 it's the stone choir question. 01:48:08.720 --> 01:48:11.120 If it was Christian a hundred years ago, when did it stop 01:48:11.200 --> 01:48:12.160 being Christian. 01:48:12.160 --> 01:48:15.120 If we were Christian 100 years ago, when did we stop? 01:48:15.120 --> 01:48:20.000 Well, we stopped and we started rejecting basic Christian beliefs. 01:48:20.000 --> 01:48:22.880 So keep all this in mind in view of what we said 01:48:22.880 --> 01:48:25.280 in the first episode about where are you getting your morality? 01:48:25.280 --> 01:48:26.240 This is another part of it. 01:48:26.560 --> 01:48:28.560 Where are you getting your beliefs? 01:48:28.560 --> 01:48:33.440 If you're getting them from people who murdered Christ, who hate God, 01:48:33.440 --> 01:48:37.440 who blaspheme him with everything that they do in their lives, if 01:48:37.440 --> 01:48:41.760 this is the source of some of your theology, how much room 01:48:41.760 --> 01:48:42.800 is left for God? 01:48:42.800 --> 01:48:45.920 And can you have competing religions at the same time? 01:48:45.920 --> 01:48:48.400 That's what we're dealing with here. 01:48:48.400 --> 01:48:53.040 The situation that we face today is that we are trying to 01:48:53.040 --> 01:48:56.400 hold multiple competing religions simultaneously. 01:48:56.400 --> 01:48:59.360 We are trying to take these things that came from evil men, 01:48:59.360 --> 01:49:02.720 whether it was thousands of years ago or hundreds of years ago, 01:49:02.720 --> 01:49:07.520 or decades ago, we're taking things that come from evil and we're 01:49:07.520 --> 01:49:09.120 trying to baptize them. 01:49:09.120 --> 01:49:12.400 I was reminded earlier as I was thinking about this, how much 01:49:12.960 --> 01:49:17.920 a lot of these Judaizing problems are captured by what Tolkien did 01:49:17.920 --> 01:49:20.240 with the one ring. 01:49:20.240 --> 01:49:25.600 Remember, Sauron poured his malice and his hatred and his evil into 01:49:25.600 --> 01:49:27.760 this talisman that was the ring. 01:49:27.760 --> 01:49:32.640 Part of his soul, his essence essence as an evil being was 01:49:32.640 --> 01:49:34.000 put into the ring. 01:49:34.000 --> 01:49:36.240 And it was fine because it was a weapon for him. 01:49:36.240 --> 01:49:38.000 But then he lost the ring. 01:49:38.000 --> 01:49:42.480 And so when he lost access to that part of his wicked 01:49:42.480 --> 01:49:44.640 power, he was diminished. 01:49:44.720 --> 01:49:47.040 But what happened with the ring? 01:49:47.040 --> 01:49:49.600 The ring was captured by Isildur. 01:49:49.600 --> 01:49:53.280 He found it, he wore it, he used it, he was he 01:49:53.280 --> 01:49:55.920 died because of it. 01:49:55.920 --> 01:50:00.800 There was the covetousness of men for that power because they misunderstood 01:50:00.800 --> 01:50:02.960 what the power of the one ring was. 01:50:02.960 --> 01:50:05.520 That was basically what Lord of the Rings was about. 01:50:05.520 --> 01:50:10.080 The covetousness of that power, believing, oh, this power of the great 01:50:10.080 --> 01:50:12.480 enemy, if only I took it into my hands I could use 01:50:12.480 --> 01:50:13.280 it for good. 01:50:13.280 --> 01:50:16.320 That's what they all wanted to believe, that they could take this 01:50:16.320 --> 01:50:19.360 evil thing and use it for good purposes. 01:50:19.360 --> 01:50:22.960 What they did not appreciate in the essence of the story of 01:50:22.960 --> 01:50:23.440 the ring 01:50:24.800 --> 01:50:28.000 was that it was itself evil. 01:50:28.000 --> 01:50:30.800 It did not cease to be evil because it was no longer 01:50:30.800 --> 01:50:32.640 in the possession of Sauron. 01:50:32.640 --> 01:50:37.200 He had put his malice into it, and whoever be wielded it 01:50:37.520 --> 01:50:41.440 possessed his malice, and the malice acted on its own. 01:50:41.440 --> 01:50:45.760 When we look at these evil things, now is saying Yahweh is 01:50:45.760 --> 01:50:46.960 evil as the one ring. 01:50:46.960 --> 01:50:50.000 I mean, from it's more evil because it's real and the ring's 01:50:49.920 --> 01:50:53.440 made up, but it's not simply a question of degrees, it's a 01:50:53.440 --> 01:50:54.800 question of genealogy. 01:50:54.800 --> 01:50:56.480 Where did this thing come from? 01:50:56.480 --> 01:50:59.920 If you found the one ring and you knew that it had 01:50:59.920 --> 01:51:03.440 all of the devil's malice poured into it. 01:51:03.440 --> 01:51:06.080 Would you pick it up knowing how powerful it was and say, 01:51:06.080 --> 01:51:07.520 I'm gonna use this for good? 01:51:07.520 --> 01:51:10.400 Or would you know this thing is pure evil and I can 01:51:10.400 --> 01:51:14.320 only possibly use it for evil because it has not only evil 01:51:14.320 --> 01:51:17.680 intent, but it has a life of its own. 01:51:17.680 --> 01:51:20.080 Evil ideas have a life of their own. 01:51:20.080 --> 01:51:22.640 We cannot co opt hell. 01:51:22.640 --> 01:51:27.280 We can't take Satan's things and use them for our purposes. 01:51:27.280 --> 01:51:30.640 We can only use things from God for godly purposes. 01:51:30.640 --> 01:51:35.040 When we use evil things, things from hell, things that are teachings 01:51:35.040 --> 01:51:38.880 of demons, which we'll talk about a lot next week. 01:51:39.120 --> 01:51:43.040 We can only possibly use those things for evil. 01:51:43.040 --> 01:51:49.920 The genealogy of the practice of modern amputation circumcision is pure evil. 01:51:49.920 --> 01:51:53.040 There's no godly outcome for it. 01:51:53.040 --> 01:51:55.920 And it is a false confession to do it. 01:51:55.920 --> 01:52:00.000 To say Yahweh is itself an evil thing. 01:52:00.000 --> 01:52:03.200 It didn't exist for nearly two thousand years, and then a couple 01:52:03.200 --> 01:52:07.040 pagan unbelievers made it up and turned it into something that they 01:52:07.040 --> 01:52:08.880 used for evil purposes. 01:52:08.880 --> 01:52:12.480 And then what has happened in the last few decades really? 01:52:12.480 --> 01:52:16.720 Christians discovered the Yahweh ring and picked it up and said, I'm 01:52:16.720 --> 01:52:17.760 going to use this for good. 01:52:17.760 --> 01:52:19.360 Why? Because it's more authentic. 01:52:19.360 --> 01:52:21.360 It's more like that old time religion. 01:52:21.360 --> 01:52:22.400 It's Judeo. 01:52:22.400 --> 01:52:24.800 I need more Judeo and less Christian. 01:52:24.800 --> 01:52:26.880 Well, that's exactly what they're getting. 01:52:26.880 --> 01:52:30.160 When you start talking about Yahweh and you stop talking about God, 01:52:30.160 --> 01:52:33.760 which is incidentally what all these people do, that's what you get. 01:52:33.760 --> 01:52:37.120 You lose You lose God and you're gonna get Yahweh, you're gonna 01:52:37.120 --> 01:52:39.920 get a faceful of Yahweh, but it's not gonna be what you 01:52:39.920 --> 01:52:43.200 thought it was, because you can't use an evil thing for good 01:52:43.200 --> 01:52:46.720 purposes. All these things follow the same pattern. 01:52:46.720 --> 01:52:49.520 We can get into Seder meals today, but it's the same thing. 01:52:49.520 --> 01:52:54.640 It's a completely new made-up way for Christians to adopt evil pagan 01:52:54.640 --> 01:52:57.200 practices because it seems more authentic. 01:52:57.200 --> 01:53:00.320 Why? Because Jews do it. 01:53:00.320 --> 01:53:05.280 The purpose of those things is always to deny Christ, small degrees, 01:53:05.280 --> 01:53:08.000 but is to say what we received in the church, what we 01:53:08.000 --> 01:53:11.920 received in Christian history, is not as good as the other thing, 01:53:11.920 --> 01:53:14.480 as the secrets, as the mysteries that were lost. 01:53:14.480 --> 01:53:16.080 And we're going to pick them up and we're going to adopt 01:53:16.080 --> 01:53:16.560 them all. 01:53:16.560 --> 01:53:20.320 And we're going to make Christianity this brand new, more powerful thing 01:53:20.320 --> 01:53:22.320 by making it even older. 01:53:22.320 --> 01:53:27.440 When we on Stonequar are talking about adopting old beliefs, it's consistent 01:53:27.440 --> 01:53:28.640 with scripture. 01:53:28.640 --> 01:53:33.760 You know, if God says yes, keep circumcising, who are we to 01:53:33.760 --> 01:53:36.800 disagree? But the very first thing that happened in the early church 01:53:36.800 --> 01:53:38.560 was it got shut down. 01:53:38.560 --> 01:53:40.880 It was said you never understood in the first place. 01:53:40.880 --> 01:53:42.720 You never knew what you were doing with this. 01:53:42.720 --> 01:53:45.760 And today you're using it for evil, and you can only possibly 01:53:45.760 --> 01:53:47.440 do evil with it. 01:53:48.560 --> 01:53:52.320 These tendencies that we have to just adopt random crap and think 01:53:52.320 --> 01:53:55.520 it's gonna be hunky dory are a threat to souls. 01:53:55.520 --> 01:53:57.360 Because nobody takes it seriously. 01:53:57.360 --> 01:53:59.280 Nobody cares where they get their ideas. 01:53:59.280 --> 01:54:00.960 Like, oh Yahweh, that sounds fine. 01:54:00.960 --> 01:54:05.040 Like, that's I remember that that tetragrammaton thing in some translations where 01:54:05.040 --> 01:54:06.160 it won't translate it. 01:54:06.160 --> 01:54:09.280 It would just say Y H up W H, which is also 01:54:09.280 --> 01:54:12.400 dumb. That's the the point of scriptures you're supposed to be able 01:54:12.400 --> 01:54:13.280 to read it. 01:54:13.440 --> 01:54:14.880 the Septuagint did. 01:54:14.880 --> 01:54:17.120 It said God or it said I am because that's what it 01:54:17.120 --> 01:54:20.400 is. You don't need special incantations. 01:54:20.400 --> 01:54:21.760 And it's fine to acknowledge. 01:54:21.760 --> 01:54:26.240 Like in the ESV, when the tetragrammaton is used, they will translate 01:54:26.240 --> 01:54:27.600 Lord in all caps. 01:54:27.600 --> 01:54:28.240 That's fine too. 01:54:28.480 --> 01:54:30.240 God and Lord are synonymous. 01:54:30.240 --> 01:54:33.520 You know Lord, as we said before, is a synonym for master. 01:54:33.520 --> 01:54:35.760 That's how you should think of God as your master. 01:54:35.760 --> 01:54:38.800 And you will answer to your master for what we do with 01:54:38.800 --> 01:54:42.400 these things, me included, not preaching to you here, like we're all 01:54:42.400 --> 01:54:44.400 guilty of something. 01:54:44.400 --> 01:54:47.520 When we take seriously where we're getting these ideas, we're going to 01:54:47.520 --> 01:54:51.520 be armored against the very sort of errors that Satan exploits. 01:54:51.520 --> 01:54:54.640 As Cory just said, Satan just needs a little crack. 01:54:54.640 --> 01:54:59.360 You know, as we said at the beginning, the Judaizing attack that 01:54:59.360 --> 01:55:04.800 Satan leveled instantaneously in the church was about circumcision, which was from 01:55:04.800 --> 01:55:06.480 God. God said to circumcise. 01:55:07.360 --> 01:55:11.760 Jesus ascends into heaven, and then Satan says to circumcise, circumcise, circumcise. 01:55:11.760 --> 01:55:13.760 The Pharisees show up and say circumcise. 01:55:13.760 --> 01:55:17.680 There's a circumcision party running around and telling everybody to circumcise. 01:55:17.680 --> 01:55:19.200 Well, isn't that what God said? 01:55:19.200 --> 01:55:20.240 They shut it down. 01:55:20.240 --> 01:55:24.320 God said no, you didn't understand, you weren't obeying, you weren't believing. 01:55:24.320 --> 01:55:26.800 It was pro forma garbage. 01:55:26.800 --> 01:55:29.920 That is ended because it served its purpose. 01:55:29.920 --> 01:55:31.440 It is no longer mine. 01:55:31.440 --> 01:55:34.320 When they hang on to things that are no longer from God, 01:55:34.320 --> 01:55:36.400 they're necessarily from the devil. 01:55:36.400 --> 01:55:37.600 That's why this stuff matters. 01:55:37.600 --> 01:55:39.440 Like it's not just matters of opinion. 01:55:39.440 --> 01:55:41.360 Well, I think I can do this or that or the other 01:55:41.360 --> 01:55:44.800 thing. If something has evil origins, we must excise it. 01:55:45.440 --> 01:55:47.600 We can't permit it to be among us. 01:55:47.600 --> 01:55:51.920 Because even the things that seem small, like Yahweh, well suddenly you 01:55:51.920 --> 01:55:54.720 have to start saying Yahweh when you're talking about the old testament 01:55:54.720 --> 01:55:57.840 God. And then the old testament god is the really mean one, 01:55:57.840 --> 01:56:00.000 and then new testament god is the loving one. 01:56:00.000 --> 01:56:01.280 And so you know what? 01:56:01.280 --> 01:56:04.240 That Yahweh God, he was he was pretty tough and he had 01:56:04.240 --> 01:56:05.200 a lot of rules. 01:56:05.200 --> 01:56:08.960 This new Jesusy New Testament God, he's a lot more loving. 01:56:08.960 --> 01:56:12.080 That sort of division suddenly pops into people's heads, and it's very 01:56:12.080 --> 01:56:15.840 difficult for them to get away from because most people don't have 01:56:15.840 --> 01:56:18.480 the mental sophistication to keep all the stuff in their heads at 01:56:18.480 --> 01:56:20.960 once. You just learn Yahweh, you think, yeah, that's the old thing. 01:56:20.960 --> 01:56:21.840 Okay, great. 01:56:21.840 --> 01:56:25.840 And then someone separately sets Yahweh against Jesus. 01:56:25.920 --> 01:56:27.920 You're like, well, yeah, like Jesus better than Yahweh. 01:56:27.920 --> 01:56:29.840 And suddenly there's no God in the Old Testament. 01:56:29.840 --> 01:56:30.160 You know what? 01:56:30.160 --> 01:56:31.520 That's what Martin Luther King Jr. 01:56:31.600 --> 01:56:33.760 believed. That's what Bonhoeffer believed. 01:56:33.760 --> 01:56:35.200 They believed in the demiurge. 01:56:35.200 --> 01:56:38.960 They thought they thought there was evil before, and then something new 01:56:38.960 --> 01:56:42.480 came in the New Testament, that he who was coming would arrive. 01:56:42.480 --> 01:56:46.720 It's bad news for Christians, but it's what these men will preach. 01:56:46.720 --> 01:56:50.800 So these tiny errors that seem like it's just fiddly academic garbage. 01:56:50.800 --> 01:56:53.520 It's always a building block for Satan. 01:56:53.520 --> 01:56:54.960 We have building blocks too. 01:56:54.960 --> 01:56:56.480 They're on the God gave us. 01:56:56.480 --> 01:56:58.320 And so when he says do this, we should do it. 01:56:58.400 --> 01:57:00.480 And when he says stop, we should stop. 01:57:00.480 --> 01:57:02.480 And when he says to believe him, when he says I am 01:57:02.560 --> 01:57:05.840 and I am God, that should be the end of it. 01:57:05.840 --> 01:57:08.320 If it's good enough for God, it's good enough for me. 01:57:08.320 --> 01:57:10.960 I hope it'll be good enough for you two, because that's what 01:57:10.960 --> 01:57:12.400 all this is about. 01:57:12.400 --> 01:57:12.560 I 01:57:12.560 --> 01:57:15.440 am glad you mentioned the Seder meal because I had three points 01:57:15.760 --> 01:57:18.640 with which I wanted to end, and that was one of them. 01:57:18.640 --> 01:57:21.280 But on the topic of Seder, because of course I can't leave 01:57:21.280 --> 01:57:26.960 it untouched, I would just recommend that all of you go and 01:57:26.960 --> 01:57:28.880 read Hebrews 7. 01:57:30.560 --> 01:57:35.120 And then bear in mind two things, both while reading it and 01:57:35.120 --> 01:57:36.800 after reading it. 01:57:36.800 --> 01:57:43.280 One, Christ is the perfect Passover Lamb, he completed the shadow of 01:57:43.280 --> 01:57:45.280 the things that were to come. 01:57:45.280 --> 01:57:47.920 And we have a Passover meal, a better one. 01:57:47.920 --> 01:57:49.840 We have the Lord's Supper. 01:57:49.840 --> 01:57:51.840 But do go and read Hebrews seven. 01:57:51.840 --> 01:57:54.800 I recognize I'm giving reading homework in this episode, but I think 01:57:54.800 --> 01:57:56.400 that's fine. 01:57:56.400 --> 01:58:00.560 And then second of the three points. 01:58:00.560 --> 01:58:05.040 I mentioned that I would comment on the word gentiles and why 01:58:05.040 --> 01:58:07.040 I do not use it. 01:58:07.040 --> 01:58:12.560 And just very quickly, we get Gentile from Latin. 01:58:12.560 --> 01:58:14.960 Gens is the Latin word. 01:58:15.280 --> 01:58:17.520 the G is pronounced that way in Latin. 01:58:17.520 --> 01:58:19.600 That means clan or tribe. 01:58:19.600 --> 01:58:20.880 And then ille 01:58:22.160 --> 01:58:26.640 is the adjectival suffix, so it just means of or belonging to 01:58:26.960 --> 01:58:34.320 the same people, nation, clan, gentilis, which we get Gentiles in English. 01:58:34.320 --> 01:58:37.600 And so if you understand the Latin, it makes perfect sense because 01:58:37.600 --> 01:58:41.760 it is translating ethnos or ethne if it's in the plural, nations 01:58:41.920 --> 01:58:46.000 or people, in the ethnic sense, in the racial sense. 01:58:46.000 --> 01:58:49.120 And so if you understand the Latin underlying the word, it makes 01:58:49.120 --> 01:58:51.280 perfect sense. 01:58:51.280 --> 01:58:55.280 But very few modern readers know any Latin, and so it is 01:58:55.440 --> 01:58:59.680 a misleading term to the modern ear, because it sets up this 01:58:59.680 --> 01:59:04.560 false distinction between the Jew on the one hand and the Gentile 01:59:04.560 --> 01:59:06.160 on the other. 01:59:06.160 --> 01:59:09.120 And that is alien to scripture. 01:59:09.360 --> 01:59:12.720 We will get into that more in another episode when we deal 01:59:12.720 --> 01:59:18.080 with deal with Galatians, but there is neither Jew nor Greek in 01:59:18.080 --> 01:59:22.720 Christ. And that is the point, and that is my third point 01:59:22.720 --> 01:59:28.720 here. The term Jew has become extremely misleading for a number of 01:59:28.720 --> 01:59:33.120 reasons. It's used in a number of senses in scripture, it's used 01:59:33.120 --> 01:59:36.400 in a number of senses in our everyday lives. 01:59:36.400 --> 01:59:39.520 But it is important, setting all of that aside, it is important 01:59:39.520 --> 01:59:40.240 to keep in mind 01:59:41.600 --> 01:59:46.560 what exactly is meant by Scripture, and the best way to keep 01:59:46.560 --> 01:59:51.840 that in view is to keep the gospel in view and Yes, 01:59:51.840 --> 01:59:54.640 we speak of the law quite a lot on this podcast because 01:59:54.640 --> 01:59:57.360 part of this is the and then what of Christian life. 01:59:57.360 --> 01:59:58.480 You believe, and now what? 01:59:58.480 --> 01:59:59.440 Now what do you do? 01:59:59.440 --> 02:00:00.960 How do you live your Christian life? 02:00:00.960 --> 02:00:03.280 What should you do or not do? 02:00:03.760 --> 02:00:07.280 But all of it is in light of the gospel. 02:00:07.280 --> 02:00:08.800 And what is the gospel? 02:00:08.800 --> 02:00:13.520 You are saved by faith, which is a free gift, due to 02:00:13.520 --> 02:00:19.760 Christ's perfect life, his work, death, resurrection That's the gospel. 02:00:19.760 --> 02:00:23.600 You aren't saved by your blood, and that's true whether you're Jewish 02:00:23.680 --> 02:00:27.920 or German or French or Japanese or any of whatever other ethnicity 02:00:27.920 --> 02:00:29.840 I could list. 02:00:29.840 --> 02:00:33.120 No one will be saved by his own blood. 02:00:33.120 --> 02:00:40.400 Everyone who will be saved will be saved by Christ's blood. 02:00:40.400 --> 02:00:44.640 And so when you see the word Jew in Scripture, which probably 02:00:44.640 --> 02:00:48.080 shouldn't be translated Jew because the underlying word in the New Testament 02:00:48.080 --> 02:00:52.400 is Judahite, which is useful for a number of reasons, partly because 02:00:52.400 --> 02:00:55.200 it reminds us that the ten northern tribes are gone at this 02:00:55.200 --> 02:00:59.120 point in history, but that is a topic for another time. 02:00:59.120 --> 02:01:03.680 When you see the word Jew in scripture, don't think that this 02:01:03.680 --> 02:01:08.400 is some special group that is set aside, that gets special treatment, 02:01:08.400 --> 02:01:11.120 and God has some special relationship and they have another way to 02:01:11.520 --> 02:01:16.240 paradise, because that's Christian Zionism, which is another Judaizing heresy, but we 02:01:16.240 --> 02:01:18.480 did an episode on that, so you can go and listen to 02:01:18.480 --> 02:01:22.640 that. But think of the words of Romans three. 02:01:22.640 --> 02:01:28.400 Because you'll hear these words many times from Christian so called Zionists. 02:01:28.400 --> 02:01:30.880 Then what advantage has the Jew? 02:01:30.880 --> 02:01:33.360 Or what is the value of circumcision? 02:01:33.360 --> 02:01:35.600 Much in every way. 02:01:35.600 --> 02:01:38.480 And of course they'll end there, they won't mention the rest of 02:01:38.480 --> 02:01:40.480 it because it gives the value. 02:01:40.480 --> 02:01:45.280 To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. 02:01:45.280 --> 02:01:49.280 That is a magnificent blessing from God to be entrusted with his 02:01:49.440 --> 02:01:54.560 word, and the ancient Israelites, the Hebrews, were greatly blessed with that. 02:01:54.560 --> 02:01:57.520 Granted for them because they were unfaithful it wasn't much of a 02:01:57.520 --> 02:02:01.520 blessing. But if they had been faithful, it would have been a 02:02:01.520 --> 02:02:02.320 great blessing. 02:02:02.320 --> 02:02:05.840 They at least had the ability to read God's word because they 02:02:05.840 --> 02:02:07.680 physically had it. 02:02:07.680 --> 02:02:11.520 Which again, without faith, is of no blessing to you, is of 02:02:11.520 --> 02:02:12.160 no good to you. 02:02:12.160 --> 02:02:15.040 It is in fact worse to have the oracles of God and 02:02:15.040 --> 02:02:18.800 reject them than not to have them. 02:02:18.800 --> 02:02:22.720 But you'll notice that the Christian Zionist never goes on and reads 02:02:22.880 --> 02:02:24.000 verse 9. 02:02:24.000 --> 02:02:25.120 What then? 02:02:25.120 --> 02:02:27.200 Are we Jews any better off? 02:02:27.200 --> 02:02:29.600 No, not at all. 02:02:29.600 --> 02:02:33.440 For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks are 02:02:33.440 --> 02:02:34.960 under sin. 02:02:34.960 --> 02:02:38.160 Which is to say that all are under sin. 02:02:38.560 --> 02:02:40.800 This is one of the ways in 02:02:42.960 --> 02:02:46.880 Hebrew, in Aramaic, in a number of these Shemitic languages in this 02:02:46.880 --> 02:02:50.000 region, they speak of the totality of a thing. 02:02:50.000 --> 02:02:53.920 They speak of the totality by listing two opposite ends of a 02:02:53.920 --> 02:02:57.040 spectrum. And so when it says that God created the heavens and 02:02:57.040 --> 02:03:00.560 the earth, that's saying that He created all things, He created the 02:03:00.560 --> 02:03:04.800 universe. And so here when it says both Jews and Greeks, what 02:03:04.800 --> 02:03:09.280 that means is all men, all men are under sin, for all 02:03:09.280 --> 02:03:12.400 have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, in Adam 02:03:12.640 --> 02:03:14.480 all men fell. 02:03:14.480 --> 02:03:18.160 And so Christ as the second and better Adam, is the redemption 02:03:18.160 --> 02:03:19.600 of all mankind? 02:03:19.600 --> 02:03:23.760 Yes, of course there is the objective justification, but there is the 02:03:23.760 --> 02:03:25.520 subjective which is faith. 02:03:25.520 --> 02:03:29.360 If you have faith, then you are numbered amongst the elect, then 02:03:29.360 --> 02:03:30.480 you are saved. 02:03:30.480 --> 02:03:32.640 Again it all comes back to faith. 02:03:32.640 --> 02:03:37.840 It is not your bloodline, whether it be Jew or Greek. 02:03:37.840 --> 02:03:40.240 And that is the point. 02:03:40.240 --> 02:03:46.880 Any time you see anyone arguing that there is some special character 02:03:46.880 --> 02:03:51.520 of the Jews, or that they have some special route to God, 02:03:51.520 --> 02:03:54.880 or special relationship, whatever it happens to be. 02:03:54.880 --> 02:03:57.120 Look at the actual words of Scripture. 02:03:57.120 --> 02:03:57.920 What then? 02:03:57.920 --> 02:04:00.240 Are we Jews any better off? 02:04:00.240 --> 02:04:04.160 No, not at all. 02:04:04.160 --> 02:04:08.880 Anytime you see someone rejecting those words, you are dealing with someone 02:04:08.880 --> 02:04:12.480 who is Judaizing, and if you listen to that person, if you 02:04:12.480 --> 02:04:16.160 believe what he is saying, your soul is in danger. 02:04:16.160 --> 02:04:20.320 Because these are things that Satan attempts to bring into the church, 02:04:20.320 --> 02:04:24.400 to steal away the gospel, to bring back in works righteousness, to 02:04:24.400 --> 02:04:27.200 get you to attempt to work your way to God or find 02:04:27.200 --> 02:04:31.120 some alternative route to God instead of the only way God is 02:04:31.120 --> 02:04:33.360 given. What does Christ say? 02:04:33.360 --> 02:04:36.480 I am the way, the truth, and the life. 02:04:36.480 --> 02:04:40.000 He doesn't say that he's one way of many, which is what 02:04:40.000 --> 02:04:43.360 we hear from so many today when they speak about all paths 02:04:43.360 --> 02:04:44.160 lead to God. 02:04:44.160 --> 02:04:45.040 No they don't. 02:04:45.040 --> 02:04:47.360 Most paths lead to hell. 02:04:47.360 --> 02:04:50.480 For broad is the way that leads to hell, for narrow is 02:04:50.480 --> 02:04:55.120 the way that leads to paradise. 02:04:55.120 --> 02:04:57.120 And so be on your guard. 02:04:57.120 --> 02:05:00.720 As a Christian, that is your duty, particularly as a Christian man, 02:05:00.720 --> 02:05:03.440 that is your duty because you have a duty to instruct and 02:05:03.440 --> 02:05:06.400 to lead your wife if you have one and your children if 02:05:06.400 --> 02:05:10.240 you have them, but also others entrusted to your care, because if 02:05:10.240 --> 02:05:14.800 you're an uncle, you have duties to your nephews and nieces. 02:05:14.800 --> 02:05:17.840 You have duties with regard to your parents and your siblings and 02:05:17.840 --> 02:05:22.320 all those entrusted to your care in whatever capacity in your life. 02:05:22.320 --> 02:05:25.840 And so you need to be on your guard against these heresies 02:05:25.840 --> 02:05:28.560 that have been with us from the beginning, as we covered at 02:05:28.560 --> 02:05:32.880 the beginning of the episode, this was a problem starting with the 02:05:32.880 --> 02:05:38.480 apostles. This has always been one of Satan's tactics. 02:05:38.480 --> 02:05:41.840 Judaizing is one of his favorite tactics, and it will undoubtedly be 02:05:41.840 --> 02:05:46.640 so until the So until the end, because it's effective. 02:05:46.640 --> 02:05:51.680 Because in a sense, all of this is a form of Gnosticism. 02:05:51.680 --> 02:05:56.240 It is that desire that is inherent in some men, at least, 02:05:56.240 --> 02:06:00.480 many men most likely, to have a secret knowledge, a secret way, 02:06:00.480 --> 02:06:05.280 to have something, some connection, some ability or path, or whatever it 02:06:05.280 --> 02:06:09.600 happens to be, that elevates them above everyone else. 02:06:10.560 --> 02:06:12.960 And that is not what Scripture says. 02:06:12.960 --> 02:06:14.960 Scripture says all have sinned. 02:06:14.960 --> 02:06:18.800 Scripture says the only way is Christ. 02:06:18.800 --> 02:06:20.640 That is what Christians believe. 02:06:20.640 --> 02:06:23.440 That is what Christians have Christians have always held, and that is 02:06:23.440 --> 02:06:25.920 what we as Christians have to defend. 02:06:25.920 --> 02:06:31.440 And part of defending that is pushing back against the rampant Judaizing 02:06:31.440 --> 02:06:33.760 that we see in the church today. 02:06:33.760 --> 02:06:38.080 Because it is destroying the church, and too few men are fighting 02:06:38.080 --> 02:06:38.960 back against 02:06:38.960 --> 02:06:40.240 it.