The Left Hand of Christ

0:37 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. I am Corey J. Mahler. And I'm still Woe. On today's Stone Choir, we are going to be discussing godly government. We're going to go over the scriptural history of a couple different types of government and highlight some of the examples of the moral principles by which we should judge any government. One of the pressing issues of the modern political context is the legitimacy of any particular government. And while we're not gonna get into American politics or anything specifically, this is a very much a live issue and especially on the internet, especially in the dissident right, a lot of people have a lot of stark opinions about different forms of government being better for

1:28 solving our problems. And so this is not this is not in any way intended to foment revolution or anything. We're simply highlighting that if you have a pet type of government, whether you're NRX, you want monarchy, maybe you're a full-blown libertarian, a minarchist. Uh whatever flavor of government you find to be most appealing, part of that appeal is inherently going to be based on an appeal to the moral legitimacy of that government. And obviously moral legitimacy can only possibly come from God. we all inherently know that it's crucial for whatever the government or whatever the state is to have moral legitimacy. In other words, there's always going to be someone ruling you. You want to be happy about that to some degree.

2:21 Now, happy can vary widely, you know, if if you are blessed in a time of peace and prosperity with a godly faithful ruler of whatever stripe, you're gonna be pretty happy because your kids are gonna be okay, your family's gonna be okay, your property's gonna be okay. Like just basically good times, peace. You know, the the times that don't really show up in history because there aren't wars or death or famine or any of the horrors That really are how we define the arc of human history, because that's the stuff to talk about. The peaceful, quiet times, nobody's writing because everyone's just outside enjoying a blessed life, you know, had the sort of life that God wants for all of us. So there's inherently in an innate notion that whoever's in charge can't just

3:11 have legitimacy by force. And that's one of the definitions. As we go throughout this, we'll be at various times referencing some of the different views. I spent a long time being a hardcore libertarian, decades. I have all the books, you know, spent. I gave tens of thousands of dollars to the Mises Institute. I want to specifically address a few of those notions, the framing that that uh libertarians use specifically because A, I know that there are a lot of folks in the audience, especially new folks who probably are either still in the libertarian space or or have come from it in the recent past. This episode, part of the reason we're just doing one kind of framing doctrinally how to judge a given government, an arbitrary government, is

3:58 that future episodes coming up pretty soon will be on specifically the enlightenment and you know the American government and the other forms of modern democracy in Christendom, what used to be Christendom. Uh we will do an episode entirely on libertarianism. We'll do an episode on probably communism, probably one on fascism. Uh this is kind of the kickoff for that arc. Uh we kind of painted ourselves into a corner by doing this show weekly because uh it takes a lot of time and a lot of prep, especially for a lot of the ideas for episodes that we have coming up. So we're we're committing to doing those episodes. I can't promise that they will be next week and the following week. We may not necessarily do them serially just based on time

4:40 and availability. But we want to lay the groundwork today for whatever government type you are evaluating, whether it's the current year American administration, or it's some hypothetical future, or it's a view of some Halcyon day in the past where it's your particular year in a given century where you're like, yeah, that's exactly when we had government figured out and we need that again. Scripture has a lot to say about how to evaluate those things. Yeah, and so we're going to go through some of the things that scripture says and some of the things that it doesn't, including a number of things that most people just completely gloss over that are actually very relevant to us today. So once we've laid this framework, this groundwork, it'll be easier in

5:25 the future episodes to say, here's how you know the American government, as it was conceived, you know, 250 years ago and as it's playing out today, how does that interact with the godly form? But upfront, we want to state that there's not necessarily a single perfect ideal godly form. There are things that are revealed in scripture that are necessary elements, and the absence of which necessarily indicates you're not dealing with a godly government, but there's not necessarily just a single way to do this. We don't think that. We think that there are pragmatic arguments why in a given environment, you know, for a particular race of people, for a particular circumstance, there will be perhaps only one

6:07 ideal solution, one that's going to solve the most problems. You know, we're still living in a fallen world, we're dealing with fallen human beings. Whoever's in charge is going to be a sinner. And so the system of government that we have needs to account for that somehow. And we as the ruled also need to account for that. We need to understand what that means when you're ruled by someone who's fallible, who's going to make mistakes. But to begin, we're going to go back to Genesis 1 and Genesis 9, which is really the birth of any notion of government. This is something that Luther writes about indirectly in the large catechism when he discusses the third commandment about honoring your father and mother,

6:53 because the traditional Christian view is that the family, namely the father, over his wife and over his children, is actually the root of government, and that the things downstream that occur within any given government or state are necessarily mirrors of a father's rule of his household. And so the very first example we have is Adam in the garden. And then the second example that we have mirrored almost exactly millennium later is Noah, because everyone was killed God killed all the men that he had created except for four men and four women because he regretted making man. So he started again and he repeated the same commands that he gave to Adam to Noah, and he expanded a little bit. So we'll begin in Genesis 128.

7:42 And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food, and it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good, and there was evening, and there was morning the sixth

8:17 day. So one of the things that we should note here at the outset is that early on in creation, in God's design, you don't have the divisions in certain roles that we see today and just later on in creation post fall. Adam in the garden is prophet, priest, and king. These are three roles that coincide with a number of men in Scripture, Adam being the first, of course, then Noah, and later on David Solomon. But today these roles have become separated. We're not advocating for having a king who is also your high priest. That is no longer how things work. We are far separated from the ideal that God had in the garden, what God wanted for creation.

9:18 Now of course that is restored in the new creation, because ultimately we have Christ as our high prophet, priest, and king. But today we do have a separation between those, and I think it's safe to say that we affirm that separation not saying in the sense of the wall of separation that has come to be the interpretation in unfortunately, not just the secular world, but also the religious world, we have many Christians who think that there's supposed to be this separation between the two, and that's just not what we see in Scripture. And of course we can't have that because ultimately both kingdoms, the right hand kingdom, the church, the left hand kingdom, the state, are founded morally ultimately on God's word, on God's authorization

10:14 of those estates, of those kingdoms. And those are the lines that we're exploring here in Scripture, those are the lines that cannot be transgressed, and so a proper government will adhere to those lines, the places in Scripture, where God has said The leader must do this, the leader must not do this, or society must not do this, or must do this, because when the people are ordered to do something, oftentimes the people act on those things through a leader. And so for instance, we come very early on in Scripture to Genesis nine six. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. This is not something that is optional. This is the death penalty, this is capital punishment, and it is

11:17 required. God requires that a godly government execute murderers. It's not an option you don't get to simply say, oh no, we're going to have mercy because of X, Y, and Z. No. The requirement from God is explicit here, and this is moral law. This is unchanging, it flows from God's nature. This is not something that is done away with in the New Testament or any of the various arguments you've heard. This is God's eternal will, and a godly government will obey this. I think the crucial fact to keep in mind in Genesis nine is that when God said that, he was addressing Noah and his sons. He was literally addressing the only men on the planet. There were four men. Noah was their patriarch, and Noah was the head.

12:11 God said, Anyone who kills, you kill them. That was a universal dictum to all mankind. And as Corey said that that stands to this day. This is not given to Israel. We're talking about Noah. We're not talking about after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is not a law for the Jews. This is a law for mankind. And it's crucial because this is one of the foundational tenets of government. In the the libertarian conception of government, I think one of the useful definitions in part, it's not entirely complete, but one of the crucial aspects of the state is that it will have a monopoly on violence in a given geography. That's essentially the libertarian definition of the state. Wherever you have a zip code or a continent, whoever is

13:10 the man who claims sole authority to commit violence is the state, is the government. What this is saying is that there is licit violence by some authority. It needs to be a God-ordained authority. This isn't saying it's a free-for-all. It's saying that there will be justice, there will be God's justice, and it does require the shedding of blood. So this also incidentally, and we'll like I I said we'll be doing an entire episode on libertarianism. We're not going to tear into it today. To give you guys who are who are listening who are libertarians, we are going to deal with it in a negative fashion, but the the point to make today is that the notion the libertarians have of aggression as being

14:00 wicked per se. I think that's a general view. Well, aggression is always illicit. The question is: when is violence not aggression? So that's the part of the non-aggression principle in libertarianism. As long as the other guy aggresses first, then you are not being aggressive, you are responding if you respond in kind with violence by the property of a stoppel that's permissible. And so that is a camp encapsulated in part in this, but not in the sense the libertarians' view, because God is saying, I demand retribution, I demand justice when a man is killed. There's inherent violence in whoever has authority. Even if the violence isn't acted upon, there's inherent violence in a father. If you're a father and a husband who is incapable of

14:51 violence, you're a bad father. You're a bad husband. Period. Now, the fact that you might not be good at violence is not the same as being incapable of it. But if someone is a pacifist who says I would I would never lift a finger to defend my family. You're an evil man. You need to repent of that. You need to change your ways because God has put you in the place to protect your family, to protect your wife and your children. There's no one else to protect them. And this is part of the veneer of modern society that because the state has a monopoly on violence in a given geography, it's not my job to do anything. Now, there are rules of engagement in any society. You know, this was revealed in the Levitical laws.

15:39 It's revealed in the code of Ramurabi. We see in our laws today. Just because someone harms you doesn't automatically give you a buy to go hurt them. However, in the moment, if someone breaks into your home, call cops if you can, try to avoid violence if it's possible, but in the case where a criminal, an aggressor, forces a protector of his home to be violent, the law acknowledges, as God does, that that is permissible. So wherever the hierarchy is, whether it's within the home or it's a clan leader or it's a monarch over a nation, there's always someone who's responsible for delivering justice, and that sometimes means violence. Violence is not inherently sinful. This is we see this throughout the Old Testament.

16:32 God frequently commands violence. Now, this is something that we always have to be careful about because we're sinful. And some people, if they think, oh, violence is okay. All right, well, sounds good to me. I I got some people I like to be violent towards. It's never license. It's not a license to do the thing that you want to do. Someone who is engaging in violence in a godly manner generally tends to either regret it to some degree or to be just ambivalent. It's his duty. It's not something he looks forward to, but And so far as a man may delight in violence against evildoers, it's because he's doing something godly. If it's just I want to crack people's heads in, and if I get a badge and that makes it okay, so much the

17:16 better. Yeah, it's he he's treading a moral line there, but it's important to always remember that there are there's a time and a place for violence. Obviously, we're not advocating violence, we're saying that when it is permissible, the state will usually be involved, but the state, as we said earlier on, according to a Christian conception, is fundamentally downstream from the father's authority over his household. As a father's duty to protect his wife and his children and his neighborhood, incidentally. You have a duty to neighbor. You know, the duty to neighbor, according to the Good Samaritan, is not simply to care for someone who needs to be bandaged and healed. You may need to go protect your neighbor if someone else

18:00 is seeking to harm them. And this scales up at the neighborhood level, it scales up at the state level and at the national level. So these levels are part of the scope of government, but the principles that we're they're highlighting here scripturally always hold. the principle always holds and then the scale determines whether the principal is illicit for one actor according to his office or not. I don't, as a private individual, have license or permission from God or from the state to enact violence against someone who has nothing to do with me. That's there's no there's never any permissible case where that could happen. There are narrow cases where perhaps violence, accord under the law, is

18:43 permitted to an individual. And so Distinguishing between different forms of government and the legitimacy of government and actions at various levels is always predicate on what's the underlying principle. In this case, one of the principles is that taking of life and violence are sometimes permissible. So if someone is an over pacifist, if they say violence is never permissible, the state can never do any violence, that person is godless. That person is fundamentally an anarchist. they're doing something wicked because evil men are not gonna stop. You know, the reason one of the reasons for the execution of violence within a lawful state is that after Absent that, evil men will run wild. We see that all over the country today, where you know, places

19:32 like San Francisco and and so many of the big cities now are being completely overrun by criminals because no one will physically stop them. And that's a that's a powder keg. Because at some point individuals are going to say if the cops aren't gonna do it, I'm gonna do it. If I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna I'm gonna satisfy whatever evil pen up rage I have at this injustice, and things are gonna get really ugly. So it's necessary for the state when it has that monopoly to exercise it. It's necessary for the state to execute murderers. If the state fails to do that, that absence of justice creates the opportunity for evil. And we have as individuals to make sure that we're fostering environments

20:16 where sound godly states emerge so that there isn't an occasion for evil. So that when evil emerges through an individual, they're dealt with in a godly fashion, then it's over, and everyone can go back to behaving himself As a general rule, God does not give the power or authority to do a thing unless he intends for you to do the thing. In the case of government, government is given the sword, and we're told that the prince is not to wield the sword in vain that is a definition of a prince, that is not just an off handed remark about princes, that is giving a definition of the prince. A prince will not wield the sword in vain. He will use that authority granted him by God, and if he does not use it, then he is no prince.

21:12 And a few of the things you say brought to mind, of course, the quote by Ernst Junger, and I'll just read the quote, because I it's a great encapsulation of several of these points. Long periods of peace and quiet favor certain optical illusions. Among them is the assumption that the invulnerability of the home is founded upon the contradiction and safeguarded by it. In reality, it rests upon the father of the family who, accompanied by his sons, appears with the axe on the threshold of his dwelling. And there's some fundamentally important points in there that I'd like to draw out. First, yes, the government has a duty to ensure there is order and peace within the borders it controls. And so a government that lets anarchists cause well anarchy and other

22:13 problems that allows crime to run rampant, that does not punish evildoers, that punishes the good instead is not a legitimate government, because it does not fit the definition of a legitimate government as given us by God. There's also the point, to emphasize what Woe already said, that ultimately speaking it falls to the father of a family to protect his family, to protect his household. And that is against all the various dangers of the world, and so you have, if you are a father, a duty to instruct your children, to warn them about the evils of the world, a duty to instruct your children in the faith, to bring them up the right way. And you do also have, yes, a duty to defend them physically,

23:04 if necessary, if called upon to do so it is your duty to give your life in defence of your family. That is one of the duties that falls to men. And yes there's also a version of that duty that you will have if you are a brother or an uncle or what have you, some other male relative. But to focus on that idea of patriarchy, I'd like to outline some different levels of patriarchy as it were, to give a sort of conceptual framework for what we're talking about here with government. And so first I would say there are two different categories of government. We won't go over the totality of this right now. We're going to stick to the patriarchy part, but the two categories overarching are autocracy and mob rule.

23:59 Now patriarchy is autocratic because God gives an absolute authority to the housefather, to the father of a family, to the head of the household. Now of course that is circumscribed by Scripture, by what God says he may and may not do, but autocracy does not mean absolute power. Autocracy means that it is a power that subsists in itself to a degree, really. And the contrast here is between autocracy and totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is a power that says I may do as I please, with no strictures. That's communism. That is not a Christian system. Autocracy is different. Autocracy is an absolute power vested in the head of whatever it

24:59 happens to be, in this case a family, so the father, in order to do his duty as given him by God. And so the first level of course is the family. That's the natural first unit of all society. Everything else flows from the family. Because without the family you don't have anything else. And because the family is what God created first with regard to mankind. Because that's what God created. In the garden, when he created Eve and gave her to Adam, He was creating the first human family. And so the first patriarchy, the core of everything, is the family. Then from there you extend out to the clan. The clan is just a number of families that are related, and so you will probably have One man, the great grandfather, whatever he

25:57 happens to be, the oldest male in the clan, has headship. Then from there you expand out to the tribe, which is merely more families, a larger grouping, multiple clans, perhaps, and then after that you have the nation. And the nation is merely a very extended family, depending on the size of the nation, some are smaller, and so it's not that extended, but some are very large. And so, for instance, the American Nation. The American Nation is a largely Anglo Saxon people. Yes, there's also some Celtic and other things in there as well, but it is a European descended nation. And at that level, when you have a proper patriarch, when you have a proper leader, we call him a king. That's all monarchy is.

26:52 Monarchy is patriarchy at a national level. And so that gives a conceptual framework for what we're discussing in this episode, at least part of that framework, the part that specifically deals with patriarchy. Yeah, I think the perfect example shortly after Genesis 9 of that sort of patriarch is in Genesis fourteen. Shortly after Abram is called by God. It's recorded in in Genesis fourteen. When Abram heard that his kinsmen had been taken captive, he led forth his trained men born in his house, three hundred eighteen of them, and went and pursued as far as Dan, and he divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and defeated them and pursued them to Hobah, the north of Damascus.

27:39 Then he brought back all the possessions, and also brought back his kinsmen Lot, with his possessions and the women and the people. So Abram, before he had any children of his own, in his household, his his in his house. He had a standing army. He had three hundred and eighteen trained men suitable for combat, and he prevailed. And how did he what did he do? He went and rescued Lot. He rescued his relative and his relative's family and their possessions. He was a king, as Corey just said. He was a patriarch, a small one at that time, you know, kingship, by whatever name, you don't have to call him a king, and he certainly wasn't called a king, but functionally, that's what's going on there.

28:25 Because again, to arcane back to some of the libertarian val uh concepts that can be valuable, there's the notion within libertarianism of there are two different kinds of anarchy. There's the kind of anarchy that that Corey just described briefly where you basically have lawlessness within a place. The libertarian conception where it's not necessarily seen as evil per se, I'm not saying I agree with this, I'm just giving a sense of scope, is that to Two entities may exist in anarchy with regard to each other if there's no one above them. So Abram existed in a state of anarchy relative to his neighbors because he didn't report to anyone. There was no king over him. He answered to God, as his neighbors did, whether they were godly

29:12 or not. You know, and that's a separate question do we answer in this life or the next? God was speaking directly to Abram, but even if he hadn't been, even if Abram were not a believer, he would still be entirely permitted to have a standing Arby and to go rescue his relatives from neighbors who harmed them. So that that notion of anarchy where one one man and another man don't have anyone above them is one of the aspects that we have to deal with as human groups. Is there someone is there someone who's a tiebreaker? You know, in the twentieth century this was the reason that evil men created the Leave League of Nations and then created the United Nations to say ah yes there will be an end of war

29:57 and we will have this deliberative body, and it's going to decide winners and losers, and anyone who steps out of line with the international norms is to be punished globally by all of us collectively voting as nations. If everyone were Christian, maybe some form of that could work, but when you have a bunch of pagans or even one pagan in the mix, when you're voting on how to deal with misbehaving neighbors, things are necessarily going to go wrong. So So it's just worth noting that God never condemns this. Abram has a standing army. He is king unto himself, and it's never condemned. That is not an argument from silence. It was it was licit. This is an example of a godly man, a godly patriarch doing

30:43 that which is his duty. And in this case, his duty was to get a bunch of armed guys together and go kill the people who harmed his relatives. Literally godly. There's no place for that in the current political structures, again, because of the geographic monopoly of violence, but in the situation where such structures devolve where where governments crumble, these duties remain. So whether Abram petitions the court to say, This guy hurt my neighbor, we need to do something about it, or if there's no court to appeal to, or perhaps in the case where the court won't do anything, he may still have a moral duty, in fact does have a moral duty to do exactly what he did in Genesis fourteen. So this is one of those small examples of this is godly

31:34 government. This is this is governance. There was no government in the sense of voting or you know rallies or consent. It was the patriarch, blessed by God, and those under him, as we discussed in the episode we did a while ago on slavery. If you were Abram's slave, you were blessed. You know, the we're talking about his household. Again, he had he had no kids yet. His household, the the these were relatives and these were slaves, these were men under him whom he owned. They were blessed to be owned by Abram because he was a godly man. And so as as their king, everything that he did should be to their benefit. That's the duty, and that's a fundamental part of this, is that there's duty up and down the chain when you have someone in

32:21 any sort of autocratic position because the man that doesn't answer to you still answers to God, which is something that God makes clear in the New Testament when He's talking about slaves and masters, saying, Masters, you too have a master in heaven, so treat your slaves well, because you will answer to me, not in this life, but in the next. When it comes to the duties of a good government, a godly government, what do mention Genesis nine six, the requirement of not only having a death penalty, but actually enforcing the death penalty, which it's that latter one that tends to be a problem these days for certain countries. We also have Romans 13. We will get to that perhaps a little bit in this episode,

33:10 but that probably fits better in a future episode for various reasons. But one of the core points to make with regard to the duties of a godly government is that the entirety of the second table of the Ten Commandments is about interacting with our neighbors in this life. And those are the duties, not only of individuals, but also of a godly prince, or king, or whatever title he happens to have Because each one of those commandments four through ten contains within it various duties for the individual and for the government. Because for many of these the government should have laws against these on the books, so these should be transposed, to use a technical term, from the moral law into the positive law.

34:08 The moral law is the eternal law that flows from God's nature, it is unchanging. It is ultimately true. The positive law is the written law of a given political entity. And that's all of the various laws. It's not just the moral laws. So it's not just the laws against murder, it's also parking tickets and all of that. But in this case it's transposing the moral law into the positive law, but they're still moral laws just in the lowercase M sense, because they deal with morality. Whereas a parking ticket isn't really a moral issue. It's just a matter of whether or not you could find. But obviously we understand some of them are very clearly issues of morality that should be addressed by the government.

35:00 Because the fifth commandment, thou shalt not murder. Well obviously the government, as we've discussed already, has to have laws against murder and has to prosecute and punish murderers. But the government should also ban adultery. We used to have those laws on the books, because we used to have, relatively speaking, Christian government, in many places in the West. Those laws, even where they exist now, are typically not enforced, the one possible exception might be the military where that is still a crime. Which is an interesting note, but that's just historical reasons it's played out that way. We also mentioned the problems in certain big cities. Well, that's the seventh commandment. Thou shalt not steal.

35:48 The government has a duty to punish thieves. Because the government has a duty with regard to each one of these commandments, because these are moral law. These are the unchanging will because they flow from the unchanging nature of God. A government that does not enforce these, a government that does not uphold these, is not a legitimate government. That is the Christian position. And so if you have a government that's decided, well, we won't prosecute theft, in so far as that government no longer prosecutes theft, that government is to that degree illegitimate. Now, of course, that raises a lot of other questions, and we will be getting to some of those in a future episode because they're beyond the scope of this introductory episode.

36:38 These are issues that Christians must consider. These are not irrelevant matters. This is not something you just oh well that's politics and I can ignore that and just focus on. No, you do not get to do that, particularly as a man. Because part of your duty is caring for your family, and part of the way you do that is understanding these issues and understanding what is going on in the world. Now we mentioned earlier a question, sort of a foundational question for this what is a good government? Well one of the things that a good government is, and I think this is a a good metric for assessing a government, is that a good government sort of fades into the background. Because if you have a good government, it's kind of like having

37:28 a good foundation for your house. If you have a good solid foundation for your house, you never have to think about it. The only time you really have to think about your foundation is when there's a problem, and you have to really think about it when there's a serious problem. Governments are the same way to a certain degree. Yes, if you have a king and a royal family and all that, you'll have coronations and celebrations and those things. But by and large, a functional government is going to provide that foundation on which you can live your life, but otherwise not be something about which you have to concern yourself. If you find that you're having to concern yourself for constantly about

38:13 the government, it's probably a fairly good indicator that the government is not behaving as a Christian government would behave. On the subject of Romans thirteen, we will link in the show notes a three-part series from the Godestines crowd. Uh Pastor David Ramirez did a great three part series. It's about three hours in total on Romans 13 about two years ago. So this was post-COVID, you know, lockdowns and masking and churches being closed forcibly, in some cases churches being closed voluntarily. He does a great job going through some of these questions. And he addresses what does a Romans thirteen government look like and what does Romans thirteen obedience look like. So we're as Corey said, we're not going to get into that

39:04 today. We may touch on it some point in the future. The Goddess Dean's crowd did a great job. I I truly commend that. Especially lately I've seen quite a few questions on Twitter of people bringing up some of these subjects. You know, it's it's in the news now. You know, the they may be inventing another COVID scare. They may be trying to lock us in our homes again. And so we saw this happen a couple years ago, and most people went along to some degree, you know, early on, no one knew what was going on. Even if you thought you knew, you didn't know. You could speculate. If you turned out to be right, congratulations, you you had a great gut. If you went along with it and then you really later realized

39:42 that was crap, that was we were lied to, we were abused. A lot more people today have decided I'm not doing that again. But as Christians, we still have to grapple with the entirely necessary moral question: how do we as Christians live in a society? How do how do we live under a government? They may be acting evilly. What is the Christian response? what is the what is permissible? What is necessary? So Pastor Ramirez does a great judge going over that. We'll link those. Please go listen to them. I I can't recommend them highly enough. I need to go listen to them. I've recommended it too a few times in the last couple weeks, but it's very much a live issue. And Again, that's part of why we're tackling the subject of a

40:26 legitimacy of government, because although we're not here to make any particular claims about the state of the United States, I think that if you think that the 2020 election was stolen, which I do, you can't possibly think that the same thing is not going to occur in 2024. And so as a pragmatic matter, we have to, as individuals and as Christians, work through what are the implications as things continue to devolve as they seem to me. If men are going to be lawless while claiming to be the law, where are those lines? We're not going to give you those lines. We're just going to talk about what does God say in Scripture about what it should look like. And each man, as Corey said, each father must examine Scripture and

41:12 examine his conscience and determine what am I obligated to God to do, even in the face of what men say to do? This is a this is a question that goes back through the Old Testament and the New Testament. There are many cases where the rightful ruler commanded evil, and the believers were forbidden from doing the evil. And evil is not necessarily simply an act, it can be the omission of an act as well. It is evil not to go to church. If you're forbidden to go to church, that is evil. So there these are live issues, and we're not gonna we never want to be the guys who are trying to pretend to give a roadmap where a couple of random podcasters, but Christians should always be thinking about these things and we want to try to root these

41:58 conversations in scripture because since these are political discussions, a lot of the questions very easily get derailed into the pragmatic. And again, as I said earlier, it goes back into, well, I want to be an RX or I want to be a minarchist or I wanna be you know a fascist. I want to be a communist. Whatever you think is going to be the best solution, if you're only talking about it pragmatically and talking about just kind of moving pieces around the board and you're ignoring ignoring the supernatural, the the fact that there is a divine element to this, you're going to fall into error. And I think as we wind through some of the final good examples in scripture of what godly governance looks like, it's important just to

42:46 mention Moses and Joshua. These were men who were similar to Abram and to Noah and Adam. They were effectively autocrats. They were in charge of their people. They were in charge because God put them in charge and God spoke to them directly. And this is one of the crucial points that I hope we can get across in this episode to everyone is that The question comes up: well, they had theocracy in the Old Testament, but God doesn't talk to us anymore, so we can't have a theocracy, so we have to have something different. And I think that's a crucial error to make. I think it misconstrues what was actually going on in the Old Testament with regard to what goes on today. In the Old Testament, the patriarchs spoke directly to God.

43:36 God has never spoken directly to me. I don't hear voices, I don't have dreams or visions. God speaks to me in scripture. He speaks to you in scripture and in faithful preaching from a someone who's illicit to be giving that sort of preaching. So God does speak today, but he speaks through his word, which is given to us in scripture. And I think the crucial distinction when we're looking back at the Old Testament Testament, where we had these prophets and patriarchs who spoke directly to God. I think that it's important to remember that that was necessary because they did not have the Holy Spirit, not as it was given at Pentecost. Since Pentecost, all believers are given the Holy Spirit. It comes to us by the Word, it comes to us by

44:23 the by baptism. That's how God gives the Holy Spirit to believers to make them believers. As far as political roadmaps go, I'm certainly not going to give one here, but I won't say that I would never give one elsewhere. But that's not the point of this podcast, it's not the point, certainly, of this episode. I do think it is likely that we will get into Romans thirteen in some future episode, although I also recommend the podcast that will be in the show notes because it covers the topic quite well. But one of the reasons that I think that we will get into it is because from the Lutheran tradition we have a particular particularly strong case already laid out for us with regard to issues of a tyrannical sovereign, of a tyrannical government, of a prince

45:20 who may no longer be a legitimate prince. And that is called the Magdeburg Confession. I'll put that in the show notes as well. I'm not going to bury the lead. If you want to read it before we get to the episode, by all means it's great to have the background. We won't go over the specifics here because that's for a future time. But on the topic of theocracy, I think the modern conception of theocracy is often deeply mistaken. Because when you mention theocracy, most modern minds are immediately going to turn to men in funny hats and long robes making pronouncements in the name of God and ruling as if they are basically an avatar of God. And that's just not what theocracy in Scripture was. It may have been in some other parts of the world.

46:20 And it's certainly not what we mean if we call something theocratic and I would use that term more than theocracy, I would say theocratic, because I think theocratic is a proper way to describe to add to the description of another system because theocracy isn't properly a system of government. Now you can have a theocratic government, so you can have a theocratic patriarchy or a theocratic monarchy. But that's not a theocracy. And today you're probably not going to have that, and I would go so far as to say it's probably not something you want. Because again, this goes back to what I said earlier, there is a division, not a wall, not some sort of hard separation between church and state. But there is a division.

47:20 They have different spheres, they're different estates, they have different duties. And so you don't want your pastor to be your prince, and you don't want your prince to be your pastor. Now you do want Do want your pastor to have proper politics in so far as that is necessary. You don't want your pastor to be a communist, and you certainly want your prince to have right theology. You want your prince to be a sound Christian Prince. And so there's overlap in that way. But it's no longer like it was in the Garden or with Noah or at certain times in the history of Israel, where you had one man occupying the office of prophet, priest, and king And king. not least of all because we don't have prophets in that

48:13 sense anymore. Now of course in the broader sense, as simply meaning one who speaks God's Word. we have many prophets, because when a pastor stands up and speaks God's word, he is a prophet in that broader sense. Because that's all a prophet is. A prophet is one who relays God's word. Not in the specialized sense of the prophets who spoke directly with God or heard directly from God. But I think it's important to make a slight a little nuance there. God does speak to you directly through Scripture. He does not speak to you directly in the same way as he spoke to, say, Moses. He spoke with Moses face to face. That's not how Scripture works. If you pick up a book, in a very real way, the author is speaking to you directly.

49:12 Now, for the average author, he probably didn't write it with you in mind. There's a slight difference here, obviously, God being infinite, omniscient. I won't go so far as to say that God wrote it specifically for and with you in mind, but at the same time, it is written for every Christian, and it is written to every Christian, and God being infinite has the capacity certainly to do that, whereas a human author most certainly does not. And so yes, Scripture is God speaking directly to you, but still in a very different way from how he spoke directly to Moses or Joshua or Solomon. Well I think that's the importance of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is that when God speaks to believers through the word, the Holy

50:06 Spirit within us receives the word given in scripture. So God is both the giver and the receiver of the Word. And that's what makes it fundamentally different from just reading some other book is that you don't have to into the author's intent or anything like that. God is working within you. You know, we are in a sense possessed by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us to receive those things. And so that is I think that is fundamentally different. But it doesn't it's not a license for someone to say, oh well I have a brand new interpretation of this because God revealed it to me. You know, no, that's not that's not what we're saying. But I the reason I highlighted Pentecost and the indwelling in the

50:47 Holy Spirit is that God speaking to Abraham face to face is was a tremendous blessing, something that we will not will not receive until we die and we are in heaven and the new earth. However, God had to speak to them because they didn't have the Holy Spirit to receive his word. You know, it's over and over and over again in the Old Testament, and even in the New Testament, but mostly in the Old Testament, God would speak to His people, He would speak to Israel, He would speak to the elect, and they would listen for five minutes and they would wander off and do evil again. Now, I'm not blaming the absence of the Holy Spirit for that, but I think it's important to note that the way that they

51:31 behaved and the way that they were hearing hearing God it was in some ways worse. I mean the behavior is obviously worse. I think that the way that they were hearing God's voice, I mean obviously the the patriarchs, the prophets who spoke to God were were definitely blessed by that. But as we were saying in prep, when it's then relayed to another man, the other man is just you know, even though in the case of Moses, Moses literally led the Israelites out of Egypt, the miracles happened before their eyes. They walked across the sea. All these things happened right in front of them. And as soon as the miracle occurs on the mountain where Moses goes up to speak face to face with God to receive the

52:15 law, the people apostatize. The people revert into idolatry to worship Egyptian gods and say this is the God who brought us out of Egypt. It was just it was incomprehensible to us that level of apostasy. This is something that continued throughout the period of the Judges. In Judges 2, it's recorded, then the Lord raised up judges, and this was after Moses, this was after Joshua had died, the period of the judges began. The Lord raised up judges who saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them, yet they did not listen to their judges, for they hoard after other gods and bowed down to them. They soon turned aside from the way in which their fathers had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the Lord, and they did

53:01 not do so. Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge, and he saved them from the hands of their enemies all the days of the judge. But the l for the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning, because of those who afflicted and oppressed them. But whenever the judge died, they turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers, going after other gods, serving them and bowing down for before them. They did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways, so the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. So this was the pattern over and over. God was speaking directly to the judges as he spoke to Joshua and Moses and to Samuel and the other prophets in the future.

53:40 And maybe they would listen, but for the most part, they didn't listen. So there was this oscillation where most of the old Testament period of the Israelites, most of the time they're disobeying and disregarding God, and then he's chastising him. He continued to send messengers to whom he spoke directly because the people continue not to listen to those messengers, even though they knew that the messengers had direct communication with God. And I think that God that did things perfectly then, He does things perfectly now. We no longer have priests as mediators between us and God, as one of the crucial distinctions between the Old and the New Testament. The sacrificial system has ended, the Holy Spirit is given to us,

54:23 we are given the ability to understand scripture on our own. Now, that doesn't mean that you don't need someone to explain it to you. We all need faithful Christian men to explain scripture to us. Because as we've said many times in the past, these matters of faith are not simply matters of intellectual ascent. Scripture is not a guidebook and it's not a puzzle book that if you just think about it really hard and you move all the pieces around just right, you're gonna unlock the puzzle and see it all. It's not that kind of book. That's why the Holy Spirit is necessary. That's why teachers are necessary. It's particularly why faithful teachers are necessary, because a faithless teacher, a corrupt teacher, a wolf who seeks to lead us away from what

55:03 God actually says will do the very sort of damage that the Israelites were suffering of their own accord. They had faithful prophets and they had faithless hearts. We today have hearts who seek to be faithful, and in many cases we have faithless prophets in the small piece sense who are leading a men astray at the very moment where they're seeking answers from God. And that's why these conversations are not just political, but they're also within the church. We need to get all of this stuff right simultaneously. As Corey said, that's not mixing church and state. It's not saying we want to have the church running the state as one entity. It's saying that we have to be faithful in whatever our vocation.

55:45 The king has to be faithful to God. The teachers, the pastors have to be faithful to scripture. And we as hearers must be faithful to God above all of them. We have to be faithful to God even in the face of faithless pastors. We have to be faithful to God even in the faith even in the face of faithless leaders or rulers. It's ultimately on us. We are the ones who are judged by God for what we do or fail to do in this life. And scripture is given to us for our edification and for our guidance. So that when these questions come up, we don't have to wait for God to appear to us in a vision or a dream or to speak to us out loud. These answers are given in scripture. Again, not as a guidebook, not as a there's not a decodering

56:30 in well here's you know chapter and verse to to have a proof text for everything, but when the examples are given, for example, the Genesis 9:6 example of properly executing murderers, that's the principle. So we don't need to second guess the principle later on when related questions come up. We can rely on solid foundations and extrapolate from that using God God given reason. God gives us reason to understand the things that He reveals to us. Not that everything is subject to reason, but much of it is not subject to reason, but it is apprehensible through reason. That's what God has given us. So part of the reason that we started so inquire and we're thankful for people listening is that we as individuals, as laymen, and

57:16 for the pastors who are listening, who are trying to be faithful, we each have a duty to listen to God's voice in scripture and try to get this stuff right and to talk about it, to hammer these things out. To have all these conversations split into a million pieces where the guys with strictly political opinions don't have any input from the church and the guys in the church don't want to talk about politics at all, that is a recipe for disaster. You don't have to mingle the two to the point that you have just one, you have church and state as one, in order to have godliness in all things. That should be what everyone desires, whatever whatever his approach is, and we have a number of podcasters now who are listening, which is

57:55 awesome, who don't have religious principally podcasts. That's great. I I am delighted to know that there is a Christian voice in their ears to help them navigate some of these problems that we're all facing. Because whether you're Christian or not, you're facing the same evil men. As we've said before, the evil in the world is one of the things that's driving men to the church. And so the church, the faithful Christians, ideally in the pulpits would be getting these questions right to the extent that they can speak to the man who's politically minded and say, yes, God doesn't want this evil in the world either, and we're not just going to give up on this life. I want you to have a wife and children.

58:34 I don't want them to be chemically castrated. I don't want them to be taken by the state. They're things that are godly that are in the left hand kingdom. And if we can all talk about these together, we can come up with some ideas that are going to be consonant with scripture. And you know, part of the reason we're doing this episode on different types of governments is that it's going to be one, it's going to be some variation on one of these themes. And obviously it's ironic for us to be talking about deciding that ideally if if you listen to us and you believe the trajectory of these episodes, democracy is evil. Spoil the the future episodes there. Democracy is evil. It's an evil thing. That does not mean that input from men is evil.

59:17 That's something else that we see, but there's often the case in both the old and the next where the elders, godly men, speak and reach a cord together to determine who is going to be a faithful leader from among them. That's not the consent of the government. That's not the consent of the governed. That is godly men seeking that which is godly and then frankly burdening someone with the yoke of duty to be a ruler, to be a leader, because that man who has no one over him has God over him. He has no one to answer to but God. And that is a terrifying position to for anyone to be in if they actually take it seriously. If the buck stops with you and you know that you only answer to God, you can't get anything wrong.

1:00:02 And so those men above all else need scriptural warrant for what they do and scriptural bounds for how they do it. As a general if also extremely obvious rule a Christian or even just a reasonable man is going to want to be blessed by God instead of cursed by God. And scripture is very clear in a number of places, really throughout scripture, that you will suffer as an individual, as a people, if you have faithless rulers, but it goes the other way as well, a faithful ruler, if he has faithless people, will also suffer. And so we should desire to have both faithful people, who are attending church and doing their duty with regard to the right hand kingdom, and also faithful rulers.

1:01:04 If we say that we don't care about one of these, so we say that, well, we're Christian and we're only concerned with the church and we don't care about the state, what you're really saying is I don't care about being blessed by God. That's spitting in God's face. That's sin. That is something that Christians are not permitted to do. You are required to desire the blessings of God, because that is what a Christian does. That is going to flow out of a living faith. And as I said, if you are simply a rational human being, you are going to desire to be blessed by God instead of cursed by Him, most certainly. But on top of this, if you ignore one or the other, and really I should say three, because there are the three estates:

1:01:58 there's the family, the church, and the state, and it is important to maintain the family as distinct in any of these discussions because the family is distinct. There is a special honor, reverence. The family is supposed to be held in a certain kind of esteem, both by the church and by the state, and if either one is not doing that, it is illegitimate insofar as it is not doing that, and today we most certainly see that the state is not honoring the family and certainly not honoring the father as head of the family. But with regard to these three estates, it's important to recognize that they are all interdependent. You do not get to ignore one because you're focused on the other. Because the ones you ignore will be the ones that destroy

1:02:54 the thing to which you are actually paying attention. If you focus only on your family, and in so doing, you lose the church and the state. You will lose your family too. If you focus only on the church and you lose the state, chances are you won't keep the church for very long. That has not gone well historically when atheists have taken over the state in Totot, think the USSR, things did not go well for the Church. The Church basically died in large parts of Eastern Europe, under communism. And of course, if you lose the church, well, you lose everything. But in addition to this, there are some commands in scripture that really go to part of the core of what we're discussing here. There's one from Proverbs that I want to highlight here, and

1:03:57 that's from Proverbs twenty seven. Know well the condition of your flocks and give attention to your herds. God isn't primarily concerned with animals here. Yes, you should be concerned about your animals if you have them as well. I do feed and water my chickens, I take care of them. I went out early and chased them around because they were hiding in the coop instead of going outside. These are important things to do if God has given you animals to take care of. But this is more about the people entrusted to your care. Your family is your flock, first and foremost. If you're a pastor, your church, your congregation is your flock. If you're a prince, the nation is your flock, and, as was mentioned,

1:04:48 that's a terrifying position in which to find yourself, because you are the top of the pyramid as far as humanity is concerned. There are no men above you, and so you answer directly to God. Now of course every man will have to answer directly to God at the judgment for what he did or failed to do. But there are certain positions that are that have higher duties, and will be judged with greater strictness. Teachers and princes are in that category. And in the case of a prince, there's no one above him. In the case of most teachers there's at least someone who is on equal standing with you, you can talk to him and discuss things. The prince has no such thing, and so those who would and Envy the prince, the position he has, should maybe consider exactly

1:05:43 what comes along with that because it's not just privilege, it's mostly duties. But on the topic of democracy to switch over to that since it was mentioned. No we're not burying the lead. Democracy is a wicked system. And that's the division from earlier that I mentioned the two categories. There's autocracy and there's mob rule. Under mob rule you have democracy, totalitarianism, and anarchy. These are the three evil systems. Under autocracy you have four options you have patriarchy, monarchy, which is really patriarchy, so really it's three options, oligarchy which is distinct enough to warrant separation, and then fascism. And so those are the options under autocracy, and now you sort of have the full outline of framework within which to think about

1:06:39 these issues and to assess, because as we've said a number of times, these are issues on which men can disagree. You can debate these. You can say, well no, I think that this particular structure is better suited to us. And that's another point that was already made, but deserves to be emphasized. There are systems that can be good for a period. But will not work if you simply lift them out of that period and stick them in another, particularly if at the same time you cross national borders. Because what works really well for the Germans may not work as well for the Russians or may not work as well for Americans. Because nations are distinct. And so different nations are going to have different requirements, just as

1:07:35 different times are going to have different requirements. Now I'm not saying that the duties of the state change, because they don't, but how the state enacts those duties, how the state pursues those duties, will necessarily have to change with regard to the climate in which the state is operating. Because fundamentally politics is a practical art. I'm not saying it's devoid of morality, that it's amoral, and it shouldn't be immoral, but it often is, unfortunately. No, it should be bounded by morality, but it also has to take into account practical considerations. That's one reason that I personally have no economic ideology. Because I see it as a tool, and I shouldn't have an ideology about hammers.

1:08:35 And so I'm not going to have an ideology about markets, or an ideology about the economy, because it is something that the state uses to achieve proper ends. And one of the ends that is a proper end should be family formation, just to give an example. And so the state should pursue economic policies that create incentives, or at least make it easier, to pursue family formation. That's just the Christian position, because what is one of the earliest commands given by God and repeated by God in Scripture? Be fruitful and multiply. Well, the only way in which humans can be fruitful and multiply, that is sanctioned by God, is marriage, is family formation. And so a godly nation, a godly prince, is going to attempt

1:09:29 to create conditions under which that can occur. A nation that is pursuing that, a government that is pursuing that, is godly in so far as it is doing that. A nation that is harming family formation, is ungodly, is wicked. And that is of course what we have today for many reasons. These are not issues that Christians get to ignore, again, to hammer on this point. You do not get to ignore these. Yes, I mentioned earlier, if you happen to be blessed with a godly government, and you're living in a time of peace and prosperity and stability, you have to spend very little cognitive bandwidth thinking about these issues. We are not living in one of those eras. We are living in a time where a great many things are in shambles and a great many

1:10:28 others are on fire. And so we do not have the luxury of ignoring these. As Christian men, it is our duty to pay attention to these issues. Now, each man must pay attention to the issues to the extent that God has given them the ability to do so. If God has not given you the mind for politics, I'm not saying you have a duty to draft a ten-year plan. First off, a ten-year plan is probably insane because in politics you're never going to get that far out. But you do have a duty to have some understanding of the issues and to at least have staked out a position that is consonant with your beliefs, with Christianity. Don't just blindly believe that what party A or Party B tells you is right. Yes, you can trust men who have proven themselves trustworthy over a

1:11:27 course of time by proving that they have good intentions and they are true to God's word. But ultimately it still falls on you to do what God gave you to do as a man, particularly if you are a father. Because then you have care, you have a duty of care with regard to your wife and your children, your household. And so what we are trying to do with this episode and future episodes in this series is give you some of the framework within which to think about these issues and some of the foundational information that The foundational knowledge, both in terms of the theory side to some degree with regard to the systems and what they entail, and also what Scripture says. What God's Word says about these issues.

1:12:24 Because ultimately that is the Christian standard. It is what God says about the issues that matters. If God says we must do A, and a certain political system says you must not do a, that's a very easy question for a Christian whether or not you can support that political system. And so there's no such thing as an apolitical Christian. It's one of the major issues that Christians have had with the anabaptists historically. Many of them have tended toward the pacifist or the anarchist, and Christians cannot be either of those things, because God commands us not to be. And it is that fidelity to God's word that is the real hallmark of a Christian. Because yes, obviously we are not discounting the gospel, we're never doing

1:13:15 that on this podcast. But we're dealing with the and then what? You're a Christian. You've been regenerated, you've been given faith by God, you believe, you're saved. You're justified. Okay. And now what? We're talking about the Christian life. What you do as a Christian. And so the law still remains, because the law is God's eternal will. And the law is curb, mirror, and guide. The mirror part is personal. That's you look at the law and you see yourself as a sinner. You see that you need a savior, you see that you need to repent, that you need to attempt, at least, to amend your ways. The curb and the guide the guide are both personal and public. Because the curb is to decrease the amount of wickedness in the

1:14:12 world, insofar as is possible, and that can be done both with regard to the law being the law, acting on the wicked, insofar as the wicked are not completely seared and impenitent. But the prince can also use the positive law, modeled on the moral law, to curb evil in the world. And the same thing with the guide, because even the upstanding citizen, there's some power of incentive in knowing that you will be punished if you transgress the moral law, and so it is still acting as a guide. The prince is still coming alongside the upstanding citizen and helping him to remain a good citizen, a good Christian. And so there are duties, both for the private individual and for the state, that flow from God's law.

1:15:06 On the subject of the transition between one form of government and another, I think it's worth touching on one of the last things in scripture where as I had mentioned, they were ruled by judges, they were ruled by men of God directly. And then at one point Israel said, We want a king like our pagan neighbors. And God said it's a bad idea. Samuel said that's a bad idea. They said, No, we want it anyway. And so God said, Okay, here's what's gonna happen. And so in just a minute we're gonna read that passage, but it's important because this is a passage that's used by those who are both pro monarchy and those who are anti monarchy to make their own points. And it can only mean one of those things.

1:15:48 I want to highlight simply to be consistent with many past episodes of Stone Choir, when you look at the history of the church in the last two millennia, wherever there were Christian nations, they were monarchies, almost without exception, the until the Enlightenment, until we started murdering kings and saying no godsmo masters. So it's relevant to look at how Christians historically have always governed ourselves because that should frankly be the first immediate reference by which we judge how we are ruled today. Part of the reason we began here is uh in the subsequent episode when we deal specifically with the enlightenment, it's going to be to highlight in depth how it was an overt rejection of actual

1:16:37 godly governance in the name of Of deity, in the name of things like liberty as its own deity. Liberty was a god, that there was an altar to liberty. we'll get to that in the enlightenment episodes. But these people were very religious, what they were not was Christian. They were overthrowing Christendom, they were slaughtering kings, and continued for a century whether by politics or by force to kill those kings. And it resulted in the world that we have today. And so we're living in time. We don't get to just be theoretical about this stuff. We're here now, stuck down in it. We have to try to figure out how did we get here and what is necessary to stop the evil and then to replace it with something that will be good for us pragmatically and will

1:17:28 be in accord with God, which incidentally is always the same thing. When you obey God, when you love and fear God, you are blessed by God. It's only the nations that reject God that suffer chastisement. Scripture says that over and over again. If you are being invaded by foreigners and you're being cast down and devoured, God is judging you. Whether you're Christian or non-Christian, Christians are the only ones who are equipped to actually know it. Everyone else just thinks, oh, this is bad times. Christians know I have caused bad times by my faithlessness. I need to repent and get back on track. So we're going to look now at uh first Samuel eight, I think verses four through twenty two, just to cover that story of

1:18:09 the Israelites demanding a king, and then ultimately God giving it to them. Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, and said to him, Behold you are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations. But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord said to Samuel, Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt, even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you.

1:18:57 Now then, obey their voice, only you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them. So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you. He will take your sons, and appoint them to his chariots, and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots, and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands, and commanders of fifties, and some to plough his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war, and the equipment of his chariots, he will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers, he will take the best of your fields and vineyards, and olive orchards,

1:19:44 and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain, and of your vineyards, and give it to his officers, and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants, and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves, and in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day. But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel, and they said, No No, but there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us, and go out before us and fight our battles.

1:20:30 And when Samuel had heard all the words of the people, he repeated them in the ears of the Lord, and the Lord said to Samuel, Obey their voice, and make them a king. Samuel then said to the men of Israel, Go every man to his city. I think it's important to note that in the subsequent chapter, God then selects Saul to be their king. He was a head taller than any of them, he was very handsome, he was naturally the men, the man that they would have chosen to be their king, and so God selected him and had Samuel anoint him as their king. One of the interesting things about anointing is we saw earlier this year when King Charles III was coronated as King of England. They went through the the whole rigor and roll and there was

1:21:20 a great deal of pomp and circumstance and the ceremony was very was very ancient. And they highlighted some of the details as there. I I didn't I don't really particularly care, but I was actually familiar with some of that ceremony as a result of something I saw in a in a museum like 20 years ago. Uh if you ever have a chance at the University of Chicago, there's something called the Oriental Institute. It's a a great old museum from the the time before patriarchy and colonization were bad when Europeans were going around the world and collecting the very best examples of all of the world's cultures and gathering them in one place and examining them and them and bring them together and trying to understand history.

1:22:06 Now U of C is a very pagan place, but there was one particular exhibit that I haven't been able to find a reference for it. One of the reasons I'm mentioning it now is I'm hoping against hope that someone who's listening will be able to find me a really good link that we can put in the show notes. if it shows up so I'll mention in a subsequent episode. But there was an exhibit that I don't think is there anymore and I couldn't find reference for it online. The exhibit was specific to coronation procedures and ceremonies in ancient Near East. It was going back four and five thousand years. And what I found incredibly fascinating, and it was something that was mirrored entirely in King Charles's coronation, was common to every king in

1:22:52 this time. So when the Israelites were demanding of God and of Samuel, give us a king like the other nations, is God said this was one of the principal problems. It wasn't that a king per se was the problem, it was that they were a rejecting God's direct rule over them and B they were lusting after what their neighbors had. Their neighbors had kings and they just had judges. And kings are more impressive. They're more glorious. There's more pomp and circumstance. It's just cooler. Everybody loves the optics of kings to this day. Even if you hate monarchy, you still think it looks really cool. And if you were king, maybe it wouldn't be so bad. What was in this exhibit was that there were three elements for

1:23:34 every coronation of kings for thousands of years. One was the anointing of oil with oil. This was something that was common again across numerous far-flung civilizations in this day and continuing to this day. This is something that occurred with King Charles. They put up a shield and then they did it for they've done it every for I think at least 800 years since they have records of them coronating English kings, they applied oil, they anointed with oil. This is something that was done by Samuel to Saul when he was anointed as king. The other two elements, however, are not present in scripture as being present for this godly king. The first was a crown. Now later on David did take a crown, but it was one

1:24:23 that he plucked off of one of the other kings that he had vanquished. So he took somebody else's crown and put it on, but it was not a crown that was given to him by God. Pagan kings always had a crown. They were always anointed with oil. And the third element that was always given to a king at his coronation was a scepter, a rod in his hand. I can't remember which hand was important, but what I think one of them was important. I think it was consistent if I remember correctly. So the the crown, the scepter, and the anointing with isle were were present for numerous civilizations and cultures for thousands of years. And we saw it on TV in 2023. That wasn't just LARPing, that wasn't just some sort of tradition, that

1:25:07 was an ancient pagan practice. That was the English doing what the Israelites demanded from God and from Samuel. We want a king like our pagan neighbors. What does it look like? It looks like a crown anointing with oil and scepter. And I'm not saying that that scepters and crowns are inherently pagan per se, because obviously when you look at the disp depictions in scripture, it's clear that God holds a scepter and God has a crown. And I think that's one of the reasons why it wasn't given to David. Corey, you can correct me if you think I'm wrong. Maybe if someone else has an opinion I'd like to hear about it. but I think it's conspicuous that of those three elements there were particular to the pagan kings, God only used one of them

1:25:53 for his first king, for Saul. And that was the oil, the scepter, and the the oil, and then the scepter and the crown were something that in scripture is mostly reserved to God himself. I think there could be an argument that David may have had a scepter of office, even if it's not explicitly mentioned in Scripture, except insofar as it is mentioned in the blessing for Judah, in that the scepter will not depart. Now of course that is largely figurative, meaning that the kingship will not depart from Judah, ultimately fulfilled in Christ, although also typologically fulfilled in the various kings leading up to Christ in his line, certainly chief among them David and Solomon. But I think it's probably reasonable to assume that they had a

1:26:45 scepter, some sort of mark of office that was just standard, they would have had something. But as for the the crown, I think we can certainly see symbolism there in that ultimately the crown belongs to Christ. That's why we have the kings throwing their crowns before Christ at in the end times. Because Christ is the King of Kings, which notably he is called the King of Kings. Not the king of presidents, per se, or something of that order. So I think it is fair to look into that and see a sort of symbolism there with regard to David as a type but not the antity. He's not the ultimate fulfillment of ironically the Davidic king, because that is of course Christ. Did you have any other comments on this passage as it relates

1:27:42 to the pro and con monarchy arguments? Aaron Powell I guess I could address the the fact that some try to argue that this passage is anti-monarchy. I've heard this many times. I've personally argued with people on this point, debated this point. And the passage is very clear if you just read the text. The passage is not anti-monarchy. The passage is not saying you may not have a king. Having a king is wicked, desiring to have a king is wicked. the peoples around Israel aren't condemned for having kings. Israel isn't condemned for wanting or having a king. Israel here is condemned for being wicked in rejecting God as king. They had God as their king. God interacted with them through the judges, through prophets.

1:28:40 They wanted a flesh and blood king they could see and point at who would go out and fight their battles. Despite the fact that God fought their battles for them, and they had judges to lead them when it was necessary, that wickedness was the rejection of God, not the desire for a king. Scripture does not condemn having a king anywhere. In fact, having a king is just the natural order of things in Scripture. As we mentioned before, Adam was a king. Noah was a king. Abraham was a king. No, not in the modern sense where you conjure up images of the palace of Versailles or some grand hall and the crown jewels and all of those things. But on a smaller scale, these men were kings. Most of the kings spoken of in Scripture, even the foreign kings

1:29:41 when they are spoken of, ruled relatively small areas by our standards today, partly because the population of the world was smaller, and so they simply had fewer men over whom to rule, they didn't have seven billion people on the planet back then. But they were still kings, and they are not condemned for being kings. And so, again, to emphasize, the point in the passage is that they wickedly rejected God because they wanted to be just like every other nation, when God had specifically set them apart for a purpose. And so it's just a continuation of their wickedness. They are disobeying and rejecting God again. And I guess I'll add one more point about King David and his crown. We could also

1:30:37 read into that a typology with regard to David seizing the crown of a wicked king and taking it for himself as his crown. that's also what Christ has done. Christ has plundered the wicked rulers of the world, and seized their crowns, and ultimately he will receive all of the crowns, because he is the King of Kings, and so he is the anti type. Of David being the type seizing the crown from the wicked and turning it into his own righteous crown, insofar as David was righteous, Christ, of course, being the antity for that as well. One of the other aspects of the kingship of nations that existed in this day, and as we've said we've mentioned this point in a past episode post Tower of Babel

1:31:40 people scattered across the earth and at some point almost all of them ceased to be believers. But they ceased to be believers by degrees. So they they remembered bits and pieces of what God had commanded, but they forgot important details. And they eventually apostatized, but they didn't all simply devolve into something totally unrelated from godly order. And one of the very common things among pagan nations from Egypt to today, whether you're talking about pharaohs in Egypt or the Emperor of Japan in the 20th century, they were revered as gods. The Emperor of Japan, Emperor Hirohito, you know, in living memory, was the god of Japan to his people. In fact, we uncovered a passage from letters regarding MacArthur last week

1:32:38 where when Hirohito surrendered, there was discussion at some point between the Emperor and General MacArthur on whether or not Japan would convert to Christianity, because the Japanese properly understood that you have defeated us, that makes your gods stronger. If you demand that we worship your gods, we will. And MacArthur demurred. He's like, No, I I would never do that. That wouldn't be that wouldn't proper. So Japan is a pagan nation today because Americans refused to Christianize it. And the reasoning was, well, you can't do that by force. Well, as we mentioned in the Christian national nationalism episode, Europe was Christianized by force. You are a Christian because of force. Force is a stupid concept when it comes to

1:33:28 what we call the gospel. When a man becomes a Christian, he has his household baptized. His children are baptized, his wife is baptized, his family becomes Christian. That's in scripture. That is the norm. Also including slaves, incidentally, full-grown adults directly reporting to the father had no choice but to become Christian. And some people say, well that's not a real conversion. Tell that to God. Because the fruits of that are that for thousands of years since then those are nations remained Christian. You can't tell me that that wasn't true or sincere or anything else. The history of Christianity is one where the king becomes Christian and then the people become Christian, for much the same reason.

1:34:20 As I just mentioned, Pharaoh was a god, his people revered him as a god. Emperor Hirohito was a god to them. Obviously, it's not true. But the important part, and the part that ties in with the rest of this, is that although there that was idolatry, it was false worship of a false god, it was rooted in an entirely true principle. And the principle is this the king or the pharaoh or the emperor, whatever the godly head of the nation is, is standing in the stead of God. And so what was lost when the Tower of Babel caused didn't cause, but when men scattered from there and then apostatized, they remembered that the king stood in the stead of God, but they forgot about God. So what were they left with?

1:35:07 The king is some sort of God figure. And then that's what got locked in. In some cases, probably took a generation or two. We see within the history of Israel how quickly people can apostatize, even in the most overwhelming face of evidence, of the one true God. So when these other nations revere their kings as gods, we should not view that as parochial backwater superstition. In a very real sense, worshipping Pharaoh as God is more is more godly than the pagan United States, where we just have no regard for our our heads of state whatsoever, because sometimes they're so contemptible, how could we possibly bring ourselves to do that? It's interesting that immediately after Saul's coronation, one of the very first

1:35:54 things that happened at the end of that chapter was that some men went off and they were grumbling about it. That should not be the believer's response to someone being placed in charge. Now obviously as we said before, if you're the king, if you're the potentate, if you are the ruler over all people and in in your nation, and you answer only to God, that's a tremendous burden on you. And so we should when someone's being godly, we should give them some room and pray for them. God commands that. But those who look at the king as a god are frankly more properly ordered than a democracy that just despises all headship and says, well, I can do better than that guy. I'm gonna be in charge next.

1:36:42 That's not there's no God in that picture at all. It le at least the pagans, when they worship their king, at least they have some headship in play. It doesn't save them. It's not saying they're not evil, but it is still a less evil version of government than what we have managed to concoct in our day. I want to add some emphasis on the point that when the father, when the head of the household converts, his household converts. And also add some emphasis on the point of force as used in conversions. For most Christians, historically, the way you are brought into the church is you are baptized as an infant. Now I'll get to the point for those listening who don't believe in infant baptism. We'll discuss that in another episode, but

1:37:38 typically speaking, historically, you were brought into the church as an infant through baptism. An infant has no say. An infant goes where he is carried and eats what he is given. Insofar as he doesn't object to it, obviously, yes, babies object, but infants have very little say in anything in their lives. They have no power over anything, it is one hundred percent a matter of force. Now it's not overwhelming force in the sense of violence, but it is force. It is the use of the physical strength of one to control another. And that is your duty as a parent, that is your duty as a father. And so most Christians in the history of Christendom have been brought into the faith by being baptized as an infant with absolutely no

1:38:32 say in the matter. And now today for those who supposedly wait until a supposed age of accountability or whatever term is used Used. If you did your job as a father, it's the same thing. Yes, I would say obviously you should have had your child baptized, but if you did your duty as a father, the reason your child now says that he wants to be baptized is because you indoctrinated him into the faith over a course of years, which incidentally is what you're supposed to do after you have your child baptized as well. You don't just baptize him and then abandon him. You teach him the faith, you catechize him, you indoctrinate him into the faith. And now again we've said this in previous episodes, but I will

1:39:19 note again, indoctrination is not an inherently negative term, the same as propaganda. It is a neutral term. It depends on into what you are indoctrinating the person. It can be good or bad, depending on the subject, the material, the end goal, other things like that. In this case it's good. And so in either case, you are, as the head of the household, bringing your child into the faith. Your child does not actually have a say in this. Because as the father, if you are instructing your child properly, your child will believe what you are teaching him. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. That's a promise from God. So if you train up your child in the way he should

1:40:15 go, of course he is going to want to be baptized. Yes, you should have baptized him as an infant, but better late than never. In either case, you are using force to bring your child into the faith. And that is simply how it goes. Because as we mentioned earlier, authority, in a very real sense, is based on force. Yes, of course. It is also an issue of justice and morality and right, truth, etc. However, God can bring absolutely overwhelming force against any other being in existence, because He created each and every one. And so in a sense, and to a certain degree, God's power rests on his ability to bring overwhelming force. And he uses this in Scripture. See the number of times that God fights for the Israelites, that

1:41:15 he appeals to his Majesty in power, that he appears in Majesty in power. There is nothing inherently morally wrongful about the use of force. Now, of course, again, we have to give the disclaimer, we're not advocating for violence, but we are pointing out that from a Christian perspective, there is nothing objectionable in this sort of use of force in bringing people into the faith. In fact, it is a good thing, because the alternative is that they do not come to the faith, and that they spend eternity in hell. And I'm going to go ahead and say that no matter how much force was used to bring someone into the Christian faith, when you meet that man in paradise he's going to be very happy he is there instead of the alternative, regardless of how unpleasant the

1:42:10 process may have been in this life. Now, as Christians, I'm not saying that we go out and forcibly baptize and convert everyone. That's not the point. The point is that you have to think about these issues in the right context, with the right background. A prince converting his nation to Christianity, even if he must use force to do so, is in the right. A father, converting his family to Christianity, even if he must use force in doing so, is in the right. It's not the ends justify the means, it's that force for the head of the family or the state is a permissible tool. That's the moral argument. That's the point that I am making with this particular argument here in this part of this episode.

1:43:11 It is not morally wrongful for those to whom God has entrusted the use of force, to use that force for legitimate ends, for godly ends. And of course that includes conversion to the Christian faith. So to wrap this up, I'm gonna shift gears just a little bit. As I mentioned at the beginning, there's something about kingship and governance in general as it relates to the nations in scripture that is revealed in scripture that we just kind of gloss over. And before I get into this, I want to make a point clear. I'm not a Michael Heiser guy. I'm not trying to latch on to one small corner of something and weave some huge elaborate tapestry of narrative around something we can't possibly know. There's one narrow place in scripture where God says something

1:44:07 truly remarkable. And so I'm gonna discuss it now because it has very profound implications for us understanding that something God says in in scripture when in Daniel 10 Daniel is receiving a vision from God. Jesus, the the preincarnate Christ, is appearing to Daniel in a vision. So we have a prophet of God, we have immediate revelation, and we have a vision. That's three levels removed from what is humanly ascertainable. So as I talk about this, again, I just want to reinforce, I'm not saying that we can figure that stuff out today. I'm simply highlighting that this existed, and we have no reason to believe that it doesn't still exist. In fact, I think that we should rightly confess that it still

1:44:56 does exist. We just can't see it any more than they could see it in their day. But as we'll get to at the end, it's referenced numerous times in scripture, just not as directly as here. In Daniel 10. And behold, a hand touched me and set me trembling on my hands and knees and he said to me, O Daniel, man greatly loved, understand the words that I speak to you, and stand upright, for now I have been sent to you. And when he had spoken this word to me I stood up trembling. Then he said to me, Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand, and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. The Prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty one days,

1:45:37 but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia, and came to make you understand what is to happen to your people in the latter days. For For this the vision is for days yet to come. And again one having the appearance of man touched me and strengthened me. And he said, O man, greatly loved, fear not, peace be with you, be strong and of good courage. And as he spoke to me I was strengthened, and he said, Let my lord speak, for you have strengthened me. Then he said, Do you know why I have come to you? But now I will return to the fight against the prince of Persia, and when I go out, behold the prince of Greece will come. But I will tell you what is inscribed in the book

1:46:16 of truth. There is none who contends by my side against these except Michael, your prince. So the reason why I highlight this passage is that in this particular Vision when God is referring to princes, he's not talking about human beings. This is one of the ranks of the angelic. We usually call them angels, but that's also a narrow term for one particular type of servant of God who is eternal and supernatural. So Prince is one of the ranks. We know that God is a God of order. He's a God of hierarchy. We know that there's hierarchy in a heaven as there is an earth. And so when God refers to Michael, one, that's the archangel Michael, which again is a rank. Angels and archangels, archangels are obviously higher than angels.

1:47:14 And then princes are further up the chain than that, maybe. there's debate around that. I'm not trying to take a particular position on what the hierarchy looks like. But it's important to note that when God refers to the prince of Persia, which is a phrase probably a lot of us, at least if we're old enough, have heard, because that was a name of a video game. I didn't know this until you know years later that Prince of Persia came from of a vision of God. And Prince of Persia, again, it's not a man, it's referring to a demon. Because this is the Archangel Michael, and this is the second person of the Trinity waging war against this prince of Persia. A house cannot be divided against itself, which means necessarily that this

1:47:59 was a supernatural entity, which makes it a demon, and Prince is its rank. And so God references the Prince of Persia, he references the Prince of Greece, and he references Michael, your Prince, referring to Daniel, who was of course the the prophet to the people of Israel, even while they were under subjection by the Babylonians. The reason that this is important is that it highlights that there is A supernatural element to governance that's simply invisible to us. But it exists. It existed in that day. And remember that angels and demons are they're supernatural. They don't die. They were created during the six days of creation, and they're perpetual from that point on. So, whoever the prince of Persia was, whatever his name was, we

1:48:48 don't know. I'm not gonna speculate. Don't go Don't go looking for the names of demons because they have names and that's a place you don't want to go. I'm not trying to stir up interest in delving deeper. I'm simply pointing specifically to this passage because when God refers to the Prince of Persia, he's referring to a demon that ruled over the kingdom of Persia. There was the ruler of that place, the human physical ruler, and there was also side by side, a demon, the prince of Persia, who also ruled. In Greece had one, in Israel had one, in Daniel's day. These entities still exist. Again, we're given the name Michael, we're not given the other names. I don't want to know them. I'm not encouraging any sort of speculation around where these people, these

1:49:35 entities, the angels and demons went. But I think it's vital to know that the supernatural and al interacts with the political. That's why I wanted to end on this, is that there's a lot of debate today, especially as Satan's forces in the world are rebelling against the idea of people even talking about Christian nationalism. People are freaking out. The devil's people are freaking out, because that is the antidote to the evil evil that we're facing. Christian nationalism, as we've said, doesn't necessarily mean fascism or monarchy or whatever. It's not a particular type of government. It means an autocracy ruled by a godly ruler, someone who's in charge. He must be godly above all other things.

1:50:20 These These angels and demons interact with the nations in this way. We don't know how they interact, it's not revealed to us. But this is something that's repeated, as I said, many places in the New Testament where you hear rulers, thrones, dominions, principalities, powers. Those are different names and different translations. But the hierarchy is clear, or the existence of some sort of distinctions are clear. Hierarchy is not necessarily clear. I think we can infer some of it. But again, it's I don't want to entice excitement about the esoteric or about the occult. It's simply believe Colossians 1 16 for by him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and

1:51:05 invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created by him and for him. This is obviously referring to Christ, the second person of the Trinity, by whom all things were created. This includes both things in heaven and earth, things visible and invisible, and then God lists some of the invisible things, and he lists thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers. These are not referring to earthly states. We're not talking about physical flesh and blood kings and princes and so forth. These These demons, and then in some cases angels, are waging a spiritual war between physical political nations that exist. That's the whole point of highlighting this, is that today, in current

1:51:55 year, as we look at the devolution of society and the death of Christendom and the death throes of Christianity, if we lose this fight, and we look at countries being collapsed politically through violence, through subversion. As we've said in the past, there's clearly a spiritual element to everything that's going on. And I think that a proper scriptural understanding of that claim is found here. There's a demon of Persia, you know, twenty six hundred years ago. There's a demon of Iran today. Not saying it's the same one. We know it's a demon because Iran is not a Christian nation. And it's interesting the Prince of Greece that's mentioned here, this was given the timing of Daniel, this would have been shortly before the

1:52:44 birth of democracy. So So Greece, the you know, that location was a pagan area at this time. Democracy was created in that place, starting in Athens, and they continued to be pagans. That means that they were ruled by demons. If they were ruled by angels, if they had been ruled by one of God's servants, they would have not worshipped false idols. They'd have would have not had things like the Parthenon that were huge temples to false gods, to idols, and also to demons, incidentally. I think that's one of the things that we miss when we look back at the pantheon of Greek and Roman gods as we think, oh well that's all made up. Well, they were worshiping something. We know that demons appear to men to seek their worship because

1:53:34 what what does God Satan achieve? He misdirects the human desire to worship God and redirects it to something evil, which ultimately separates souls from God. So it doesn't matter that there's some particular form It only matters that there's disobedience. And so we both see the physical manifestation in the case of temples and thrones that are erected by these countries, these nations, and we also see scripture revealing that there are Actual demons behind the scenes doing something. And that's not us claiming that we can say what their names are or what they're doing or where they are. That's not important. It's simply important to acknowledge that this is both a spiritual and a political battle.

1:54:18 And if you properly understand it, there's no difference. Because it is God's people waging war with and against Satan's people. Satan has people too. And they're trying to destroy Christendom. And so the political fights and the religious fights, all the fights, are fundamentally simultaneously natural and supernatural. And it's a it's a tough thing. It's a tough thing to delve into because we're not given very much. And as I said, I don't want people to try to extrapolate a whole lot more. It's simply to acknowledge that we're facing a spiritual war, and we should act accordingly.