AAC: 14 Aug 2026 (Q&A)

[mahler (Corey J. Mahler)]

Episode Information

• Date: 2026-08(Aug)-14(Fri)
• Number: e0038

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  • Episode: 14 Aug 2026 (Q&A) | Corey J. Mahler Podcasts
  • Transcript: e0038.vtt

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[mahler (Corey J. Mahler)]

Episode Wiki

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Topics Covered

1. Past Witchcraft
   • ::–::
2. Divisions within the Church(es)
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3. What is the meaning of this verse & what Jesus was saying?
   • ::–::
4. Plastic Surgery
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5. Josef Mengele Allegations
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6. Alleged Hitler Youth Sunday Meeting
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7. Wisdom and the persuit of knowledge
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8. The restoration of Christendom
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9. Blacks not Being People
   • ::–::
10. Logos
11. Alternative/Supplemental Income
    • ::–::
12. Predators on the Ark
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13. Being Honest with Dishonest People
    • ::–::
14. Brain Fog and Lack of Attention
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15. In a recent episode you said the gov already has the tools they need to dox anyone they want no problem. If this is the case, why the recent gov push for ID verification to use smartphones etc.?
    • ::–::
16. Can I in any way be sure that I am being sanctified, and that there are real works flowing from my faith, thus proving that my faith is not dead?
    • ::–::
17. Can someone, possibly, fully believe in god yet not have faith?
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18. Is someone who maintains things like a literal third temple with the animal sacrificial system (for sake of argument - it is a memorial only) a Judaizer? Would Luther view this as Jewish opinion?
    • ::–::
19. Is there sheet music available anywhere for the intro and outro songs for the podcasts on Confident Faith?
    • ::–::
20. I have a friend whom I will not see in person for several months who grew up Lutheran, is considering Eastern “Orthodoxy” and has been going to one of their churches. How can I best help him?
    • ::–::
21. is there any value in reading the “gnostic gospels” or should they be ignored outright?
    • ::–::
22. What is your opinion on female Kantors?

[mahler (Corey J. Mahler)]

Transcript

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WEBVTT

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It is the 14th of August, 2026.

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I am Corey J.

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Moller, and this is At Any Cost.

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This is episode 38.

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And I have just a little bit of housekeeping before I get into the questions for this evening.

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If the camera is a little bit off, it is because I discovered one minute before hitting go live, that apparently the company that made the mount I use for my iPhone, which is my camera, decided it was unnecessary to thread the connecting piece, and so it literally fell off.

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So hopefully, it will not do that again during the stream.

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I think it’s on sturdy enough for tonight.

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Insofar as questions are concerned, again, the standard reminder I give at the end of streams, if you do not see your question in my list of pending questions on the forum, it means that I have not noticed it.

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It got missed somehow.

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So please go ahead and submit that again.

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I wanted to specifically mention there is a pending question about the Opium Wars and how that has influenced the relationship basically between the West and China.

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And I intend to answer that next week.

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That one is a little more involved than some of the others.

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I already did some of the groundwork for that question with an earlier question about differences between and among the Asian races and their religious differences, that there’s sort of a feedback loop there.

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And that lays some of the foundation, saving face, things like that.

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So if you didn’t listen to that one, go back and listen to that one.

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I think that is it for the housekeeping for tonight.

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So I will move into the questions now and pull up the first question here.

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The first question is one that I mentioned last week that I said I would answer this week.

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And it is a question about witchcraft, past practice of witchcraft.

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And so question one.

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I was a witch for most of my life.

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Wicca delved into the Keys of Solomon, demon summoning, etc.

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It is something I really struggle with.

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I was called to Christ five years ago, but if lapsed twice back into witchcraft, my faith is now stronger than ever, but I am concerned about lapsing again.

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Even seeing the moon at night is challenging to me.

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It was an object of worship.

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Why are some people more drawn to paganism or demonology, and what do you think I should do to avoid being drawn back into it?

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I think that there are a lot of reasons that certain people are more attracted to things like demonology, witchcraft, neopaganism, all of these things.

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And I think part of it, and I’ve said this many times, is due to the current weakness of the churches.

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This is particularly true for men, certainly, because you’ll have men who see the current state of the churches don’t do their research, to be completely blunt and honest, about how that happened.

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And I pointed out before that the churches fell last.

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Everything else in society had already fallen to the enemy by the time the churches fell, right?

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The schools were captured, the media was captured, the government was captured, the institutions were captured, everything else was captured before the churches gave in.

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So, the churches deserve some credit for holding out, they deserve condemnation for finally caving.

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But take the totality, not just the narrative that certain people want you to believe.

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But there are men who look at that and think, well, if the churches are in the current state in which they are, then surely there must be something that’s better.

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And they’re not wrong in part of the reasoning, because the reasoning that that which is true should also be manly and strong is correct, because the truth is manly and strong, because the truth is God, God himself is truth.

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And so, you should look to Christ for that.

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And if you look at actual Christianity, which plenty of examples down through history, we had Christendom for over a thousand years, that was manly and strong, and that fought the Crusades, that kept out all of the various peoples conducting slave raids into Europe, and the list goes on and on.

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That’s Christianity.

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What we have today in the churches is not.

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And so, you’ll have men who look at that and want to find something strong.

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And the neo-pagans are right there willing to tell them, no, look, what we have is strong, we have the old gods that wanted, you know, X, Y, and Z, whatever it is you want to hear, they’re going to tell you.

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The demons know this, right?

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The demons are going to offer you something that looks good.

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This is something that comes up all the time.

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Sin is never going to look really bad if you just look at the surface level, right?

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There would be no attraction to engaging in sin if sin were all bad.

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It is all bad finally in the end analysis, but it looks good in the interim, right?

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Fornication is fun.

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No one is going to tell you otherwise.

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The downstream consequences for you personally, for your partners, and for society are catastrophic.

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But it has that appeal initially.

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The same thing is true with stuff like paganism, and demonology, and wicca, whatever it happens to be.

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Because it promises you secret knowledge.

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It’s ultimately a lot of it’s gnosticism, right?

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It promises you secret knowledge.

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It promises you strength and power, all these things.

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It never delivers.

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If it does deliver, it’s that little bit in the beginning, just like fornication delivers a little bit of fun in the beginning, at the immense cost down the line.

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The same thing is true here, as you undoubtedly know.

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You start off, and it seems like you found something that gives you meaning and purpose, and then the more deeply you get involved, the more you realize not only are you in over your head, but it’s actively destroying you, and you participate in your own destruction.

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So, there’s a lot of psychology going on as to why certain men and certain women are more attracted to these things than others.

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The demons are always going to use the temptation for you that they believe is going to work best on you.

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And so, maybe your temptation is gluttony, maybe it’s food, or it’s sex, it’s fornication, or it’s something like Wicca or neo-paganism.

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The demons aren’t going to waste time using a temptation that won’t work on you.

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That would be dumb, and they’re not dumb.

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They’re evil.

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There’s a difference between stupid and evil.

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They don’t always coincide.

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Sometimes they’re very intelligent men, or entities in this case, who are evil.

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They’re going to use the thing that will work on you.

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And perhaps in your case, it happens to be that you are attracted to esoteric knowledge.

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That happens a lot with individuals who sort of have the academic bent.

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They’re going to be men for whom that works better than others.

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There’s a question coming up later in the stream related to that.

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I may get to it, I may not.

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I don’t know how many questions I’ll do tonight.

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And so, your attraction to this is part due to who and what you are.

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The demons are going to tempt you with what they believe will work for you.

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But then the other part of the question, perhaps the more important, practical part of the question, as it were, is what do you do about that?

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I think in your case, one of the best things you can do is read the creation narrative in Genesis, so Genesis 1 and 2, perhaps read 3 as well, and then read the narrative of the Exodus.

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And the reason that I want you to read those is, and I think you’ll probably, given your background, perhaps get more out of this than others would initially, you have to recognize those are not just narratives, right?

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Both of those are also polemics, because this is something actually that is missed by many Christians, unfortunately.

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It’s one of the reasons I want to get back to my series that I was almost completed on Genesis.

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I need to invest that time.

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But the narrative of creation is itself a polemic against the pagan gods, because the pagan gods, what are the pagan gods typically?

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You have the sun and the moon and the stars and maybe the planets, you know, the Romans, Mars, the god of war, etc.

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You have celestial bodies, you have the animals, you have the natural world, you have the creatures in the sea.

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All of these things are what are deified in various pagan myths.

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Different pagan mythologies have different gods, different things are deified.

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Some focus more on the animal, some focus more on the natural world, in the sense of the physical world, whatever it happens to be.

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All of that is condemned in the creation narrative, because what is the sun in the creation narrative?

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Well, it’s just the sun.

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It’s the light that governs the day created by God.

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It is God’s creature created for our good and for the design of his universe.

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It’s not the sun, uppercase S, in the sense of being a deity.

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It’s not an angel.

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It’s not an entity to be worshiped.

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It is just a physical thing.

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It’s part of creation.

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Of course, we also know that from science, so if that helps you to think of it that way as well, go ahead, because it is literally just a fusion reactor in the sky.

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And the same thing for the moon, right?

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In its own way, the moon reflects the sun.

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The moon is just a celestial body.

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It’s a giant chunk of rock orbiting the earth.

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I’m aware that technically the earth and the moon orbit each other in a certain way, so please do not get into that in the comments.

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I’m aware of the distinction there.

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It helps to go through that polemical narrative and recognize that the Lord God is the one who created all these things, and He has already gone through the trouble of condemning all of these sorts of groups that want to claim that the sun is a god, that there are other gods, that these things are actually deities, that these influence your life in some way, that these control your destiny, whatever it happens to be.

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God already wrote a polemic against that.

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And then He enacted that polemic in the specific case of the Egyptian mythology of their gods, because if you look at the plagues, there are plenty of places you can see this drawn out by various exegetes.

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There are men who have done very good work on this.

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I can’t think of the names on the top of my head, but they’re easy to find.

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The plagues are condemnations of the Egyptian pantheon.

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They are specific condemnations of the various entities that the Egyptians believed controlled their lives.

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And so you had gods that were associated with the Nile, condemned by some of the plagues.

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You have gods associated with various animals, condemned by some of the plagues.

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All of these things are condemnations of that form of belief, and a proof of the existence and the power of the Lord God, being God over all of these things.

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And incidentally, the angel of death is either Christ himself, or an angel commanded by Christ himself.

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Do remember, when you have a physical theophany, an appearance of God in the Old Testament, it’s actually a Christophany.

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It’s Christ appearing in the flesh, which he does, for instance, in the Garden to Adam and Eve.

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So, I would say go and read through those narratives and recognize that all of these things that you used to think were deities or in some way controlled your life were created by the God you now know to be your Lord and Savior.

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He created those things.

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They’re part of his creation.

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So, it’s not wrong to look up at the natural night sky and have awe and wonder.

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You should have that response.

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God created it for both his glory and our edification, and just because it’s beautiful to look at.

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So, once you have this in the right mindset, there’s nothing wrong with looking at the moon and feeling a sense of awe.

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The moon is not a deity.

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The moon is not a god or a goddess.

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The moon is something created by God, and it’s created for his glory and for our enjoyment.

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So, look at it in the right mindset, in the right frame, and you can avoid some of these problems.

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But I would definitely highly recommend going through that creation narrative in Genesis, repeatedly until the point where you’ve almost memorized it, and then going through, point by point, the Exodus narrative, and looking at how God judged and dismissed all of the Egyptian deities.

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He could have done the same thing for any other pantheon, any other pagan pantheon.

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Question two is about divisions within the churches.

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Is it your hope, or should it be a goal for denominations to agree and reconcile, or is it necessary and good for division and disagreement in order to enable debate and discussion?

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Do you believe Lutheranism is the correct theology or just most concordant with scripture, and you are German?

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True.

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Recently, I listened to a Catholic admit to his understanding being imperfect, and that it was okay because we are all limited, and can make some adjustments after death.

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Do you believe we can perfect, trim, and correct our understanding after death?

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So, there are several questions in there, and I think I’ll answer the last two, as it were, first, just because they’re easy and quick to answer.

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In the resurrection of the just, which is to say, when you spend eternity in paradise, you’re going to have your misunderstandings all resolved.

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God is not going to leave you in error and imperfect knowledge for all of eternity.

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You aren’t correcting those gods, correcting them for you.

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So, yes, it is corrected in a sense after death, but not necessarily in the sense that he meant.

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I don’t know if he’s referencing purgatory, which the Roman Catholics believe exists, and Lutherans and others deny.

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But at any rate, your views of these things will be perfected in eternity.

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So, it’s not really a concern.

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It’s a concern for here and now, here and time.

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And the answer is yes and no.

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And the reason the answer is yes and no is because unity among brothers is one of the highest goods.

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It’s worth pointing out, unity is one of the transcendentals, right?

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We always talk about beauty, goodness, and truth being the core three.

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But there’s also being in unity.

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And unity is good.

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We should want to have unity of belief, of purpose, all of these things.

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That is one of the highest things to which a race, a nation of people, can aspire.

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And certainly we should also desire that for the church, indeed, across nations as well.

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Not in the sense of mixing and destroying the nations, because that would be against God’s will and God’s design.

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That would be evil.

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But in the sense that we should have the same Christian religion here, and in England, in Germany, in Russia, all places in the world should have unity of doctrine, dogma, etc.

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You don’t have to have unity of practice, right?

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I’ve gone over that previously.

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Will it happen?

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The answer is no, it’s not going to happen in this lifetime.

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We can have greater unity than we have now, and I think that should be a goal.

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If each nation had a national church, and then we had these discussions between and among nations, as if not peers than near peers, in many cases, that would be a good thing.

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National unity should be our paramount goal, because within our own nation, we should want to have one church to which every member of the nation belongs, we all worship God as one.

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That would be a great good thing.

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That is a very difficult thing to achieve, particularly perhaps in a nation like America, where we are indeed fractured along a number of different lines, perhaps easier modulo removing all of the so-called immigrants in certain parts of Europe, where you have greater unity already in terms of ethnicity, etc.

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So, yes, of course, I’m aware of the scripture verse that says there must be differences among you brothers, right?

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So that the truth can come out.

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And that’s just how it’s going to be.

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There are always going to be debates, divisions, things like that among human beings in any pursuit.

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That happens everywhere, not just in the churches.

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It happens in the churches because people in the churches are indeed still human.

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So, how do we solve the problem, as it were?

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The goal should be to have the greatest level of unity that we can achieve, but then leave that space to have these debates and these arguments.

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But insofar as we can have them without letting them lead to schism or division, that would be best.

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Remember, the goal of the Lutheran reformers during the Reformation was not schism.

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The goal was not the creation of a new church or the separating off of parts of the church, however you want to formulate what exactly happened, because Lutherans are of the view that Rome is in schism, that Rome departed from the universal church, and that Lutherans continued in the faith.

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That’s the Lutheran view.

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The Roman view is the inverse.

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But what the reformers wanted was to have a council, to have a discussion within Christianity, among Christians as brothers, to lead back to unity.

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That was always the goal.

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That should always be the goal.

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We should not look at what happened in the reformation as an unadulterated good.

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It was good insofar as it restored the right worship of God, right belief about justification, etc., etc.

00:17:45.880 → 00:17:49.800
It was not good insofar as, yes, division was necessary.

00:17:50.280 → 00:17:51.680
Division is never good.

00:17:52.100 → 00:17:57.960
Division may be necessary in order that the good may triumph, but division itself is not a good.

00:17:58.340 → 00:17:59.940
So we do the best that we can.

00:18:00.180 → 00:18:05.880
We try to unify as best we can, but you can’t unify at the cost of the truth.

00:18:06.460 → 00:18:09.500
That’s one of the foundational realities here.

00:18:09.500 → 00:18:14.640
You must always go for truth above unity, because truth is the greater pursuit.

00:18:15.460 → 00:18:22.320
I’m not getting into the difference among the transcendentals, right, because then we’re talking about the attributes of God and using human terms to describe these things.

00:18:22.600 → 00:18:30.020
But with regard to life here and now, we should preference at least certain truths above unity.

00:18:30.160 → 00:18:35.320
So the gospel is more important than unity with regard to various church bodies.

00:18:36.720 → 00:18:46.640
But the overall answer is that we seek unity where we can, and we try not to let certainly our divisions and things like that rise to the level of, say, the 30 years war.

00:18:47.180 → 00:18:48.260
That should never have happened.

00:18:48.260 → 00:18:49.360
That was unacceptable.

00:18:49.920 → 00:18:53.820
But we should certainly continue to have debates and discussions and things like that.

00:18:53.820 → 00:18:55.660
Not in the sense of online debates.

00:18:55.660 → 00:18:56.900
Those are almost never useful.

00:18:57.240 → 00:19:04.740
But in the sense of formal academic debates of these things grounded in what we all agree is the truth, which is to say scripture.

00:19:09.900 → 00:19:16.560
So, I’m going to go ahead and copy a couple of things from the chat here so that I do not miss them later.

00:19:20.420 → 00:19:34.900
I probably will not get to any more questions that come in the chat from here forward for this stream because I have a lot of questions already, but I will try to get to at least a handful.

00:19:57.460 → 00:20:02.180
Obviously, I need an office manager, stream manager, as it were, but this will have to do for now.

00:20:03.320 → 00:20:07.880
Question three is about…

00:20:08.000 → 00:20:09.800
Well, I’ll just read it since it’s nice and short.

00:20:10.040 → 00:20:11.080
What did Jesus…

00:20:11.260 → 00:20:14.340
Why did Jesus say what he said in Mark 10, 17?

00:20:14.760 → 00:20:17.920
So, obviously, we’ll go ahead and pull that up.

00:20:17.920 → 00:20:24.680
I have a feeling he probably means Mark 10, 17 and following, not just the verse itself.

00:20:25.820 → 00:20:27.140
Go ahead and pull up Logos.

00:20:31.500 → 00:20:32.280
Floating window.

00:20:34.980 → 00:20:35.500
Okay.

00:20:38.960 → 00:20:39.260
So.

00:20:47.940 → 00:20:48.960
Yes, okay.

00:20:48.960 → 00:21:08.280
So, I don’t know specifically what this questioner is asking, because I don’t know if he’s asking about Jesus saying, no one is good except God alone, or if he’s talking about the difficulty of the rich man entering into paradise, right?

00:21:08.580 → 00:21:15.320
So, I’ll just go ahead and read the first paragraph of this, so we all have the text in the context.

00:21:16.220 → 00:21:23.260
And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

00:21:23.720 → 00:21:26.860
And Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good?

00:21:27.060 → 00:21:29.120
No one is good except God alone.

00:21:29.120 → 00:21:30.460
You know the commandments.

00:21:30.660 → 00:21:38.020
Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.

00:21:38.620 → 00:21:42.960
And he said to him, Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.

00:21:43.320 → 00:21:53.020
And Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, You lack one thing, go sell all that you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come follow me.

00:21:53.720 → 00:21:58.000
Disheartened by this saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

00:21:59.680 → 00:22:06.680
And then, of course, there’s Jesus’ comment right after, how difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God, which may be the question here.

00:22:07.040 → 00:22:11.780
I’ll just go ahead and answer, I guess, both sub-questions as it were.

00:22:13.600 → 00:22:16.980
When Jesus says no one is good except God alone, he’s testing the men.

00:22:17.420 → 00:22:20.060
He does this all throughout the New Testament.

00:22:20.060 → 00:22:26.340
He tests individuals by saying certain things and giving them the opportunity to respond correctly or incorrectly.

00:22:26.880 → 00:22:32.600
And so saying no one is good except God alone is an invitation to say, but you are God.

00:22:32.920 → 00:22:34.240
You are the son of God.

00:22:34.240 → 00:22:34.920
You are the lamb.

00:22:34.920 → 00:22:35.940
You are God.

00:22:36.140 → 00:22:38.200
It’s an invitation to make that confession.

00:22:39.580 → 00:22:42.640
And there are a number of times that comes up in the New Testament.

00:22:42.980 → 00:22:52.520
But the question about how difficult it will be for the rich to enter the kingdom of God is because mammon is a very strong draw for human beings, right?

00:22:53.600 → 00:23:08.100
Luther has some particularly choice words on this in the Large Catechism and elsewhere, but wealth and money and material possessions, things like that, exert a very strong influence on most men.

00:23:08.420 → 00:23:12.980
And they tend to start to put their trust in those things when they have them.

00:23:12.980 → 00:23:26.620
And so men who have tens of millions of dollars or billions of dollars or these days hundreds of billions of dollars tend to start putting their trust in their wealth and their own abilities and what that wealth can buy them.

00:23:27.340 → 00:23:44.540
And it’s going to be very difficult for many of those men to look at all of that wealth and power they’ve accumulated and realize it all means nothing, and that they are actually still mortal, they’re still human beings, they’re still going to die, and they get to take absolutely none of it with them.

00:23:45.600 → 00:23:49.580
That’s a hard thing for many of the wealthy to do, and that’s what Christ is pointing out here.

00:23:49.580 → 00:23:54.780
But of course, later on, he also says, right, with man it is impossible, but not with God.

00:23:54.860 → 00:23:57.400
It’s impossible for any man to be saved.

00:23:57.500 → 00:24:08.080
He’s highlighting one of the particular besetting sins that is common to certain men and that makes it difficult for them to trust in God and recognize the only way they can be saved, which is Christ.

00:24:08.400 → 00:24:10.280
Not their own works, nothing like that.

00:24:11.480 → 00:24:15.340
He’s giving an example, he could have given other ones as well, right?

00:24:16.080 → 00:24:18.700
There are men in positions of power who trust in their power.

00:24:19.500 → 00:24:25.360
It happens to be that the wealthy, typically here you’re going to have wealth and power being almost one to one.

00:24:25.640 → 00:24:32.520
There’s a bit of a merchant class, but it’s not the same as we have today, where there can be a division between political power and actual wealth.

00:24:33.300 → 00:24:38.060
You can parlay one into the other sometimes, but there’s a distinction we have today that’s not as much back then.

00:24:39.080 → 00:24:42.140
If you were the ruler of a territory, you probably also had money.

00:24:43.020 → 00:24:49.960
So, he’s pointing out that it is impossible for men to be saved without God, because it’s possible only with God.

00:24:50.120 → 00:25:02.620
He’s just using an example that would have been well known to everyone to whom he was speaking, and there’s also the additional layer of many of the Jews believed that you could be saved by works, right?

00:25:02.620 → 00:25:18.860
They thought that if you had this extreme wealth, you could pay for things like the construction of a synagogue, or donations to the temple, or renovation of this or that, sacrifices, all these things you could do with wealth that got you brownie points with God, right?

00:25:18.860 → 00:25:21.340
That got you in good standing with God, they believed.

00:25:21.720 → 00:25:24.380
Christ is pointing out, you aren’t saved by those things.

00:25:24.840 → 00:25:26.640
You can’t be saved by those things.

00:25:26.840 → 00:25:28.940
It is impossible with man.

00:25:29.040 → 00:25:30.540
You can only be saved by God.

00:25:30.540 → 00:25:32.700
You can only be saved by belief in Christ.

00:25:33.400 → 00:25:34.620
So he’s just teaching here.

00:25:35.000 → 00:25:38.380
And many times, yes, you do have to think about the things that he’s teaching.

00:25:38.400 → 00:25:39.800
It’s not always just surface level.

00:25:40.160 → 00:25:41.360
He is God, after all.

00:25:41.360 → 00:25:44.060
He’s saying things that have multiple levels to them.

00:25:45.160 → 00:25:51.760
So depending on which one your question is, hopefully I answered the question, since I don’t believe it was probably just Mark 17.

00:25:53.780 → 00:25:54.840
Just the one verse.

00:26:00.620 → 00:26:02.740
Question four.

00:26:08.160 → 00:26:13.340
Is plastic surgery permissible for a Christian wife after childbirth to please her husband?

00:26:13.740 → 00:26:17.180
Diet and exercise already controlled and consistent?

00:26:18.680 → 00:26:22.920
Of course, ask the Californian about plastic surgery, right?

00:26:24.560 → 00:26:31.940
But as a general rule, I don’t think that all plastic surgery is morally impermissible.

00:26:31.940 → 00:26:33.320
I don’t think it’s all wrong.

00:26:33.320 → 00:26:37.180
I don’t think it is something Christians cannot do in good conscience.

00:26:38.100 → 00:26:41.180
With that said, I think there’s a very large caveat.

00:26:41.560 → 00:26:52.740
I think it should be used as a corrective, not in the sense of trying to achieve some sort of unobtainable, it’s worth noting, state of perfection in this life, right?

00:26:53.900 → 00:26:57.140
We are all more or less slowly falling apart.

00:26:57.140 → 00:26:57.880
That’s what aging is.

00:26:57.880 → 00:26:59.680
Aging is your body falling apart, right?

00:27:00.240 → 00:27:06.360
You start to get bags under your eyes, your skin starts to not look the same as it did when you were much younger, etc., etc.

00:27:06.780 → 00:27:08.860
Your joints make weird noises when you stand up.

00:27:09.520 → 00:27:13.620
You are going to fall apart as you age, more or less.

00:27:13.620 → 00:27:17.620
It depends on your genetics and your fitness level and your activity and all these things.

00:27:17.760 → 00:27:20.420
But plastic surgery is not a cure-all.

00:27:20.980 → 00:27:22.600
Are there things that it does very well?

00:27:22.740 → 00:27:31.440
Certainly, reconstructive surgery, if you suffer some particular injury, it can help you get restored to a certain degree from that.

00:27:31.660 → 00:27:36.960
If you have, say, burns, it can sometimes fix that with skin grafts and things like that.

00:27:37.320 → 00:27:44.340
If you have cancer that is removed, say you have a chunk of your face removed, plastic surgery can repair that to a certain degree.

00:27:44.840 → 00:27:46.320
I don’t think those are bad things.

00:27:46.640 → 00:27:55.640
I think that’s using the intelligence, the abilities, the skills that God has given us to attempt to ameliorate some of the problems caused by the fall.

00:27:55.840 → 00:27:56.960
I don’t think that’s bad.

00:27:57.320 → 00:28:01.980
It’s sort of the physical equivalent of gardening, right?

00:28:01.980 → 00:28:02.620
What is gardening?

00:28:02.620 → 00:28:04.840
Gardening is reversing some of the effects of the fall.

00:28:05.060 → 00:28:06.920
It’s bringing order to disorder.

00:28:07.600 → 00:28:12.080
You’re doing the same thing with plastic surgery, as long as you don’t go overboard, right?

00:28:13.100 → 00:28:20.680
Don’t make it your personality, don’t make it a hobby, don’t start to look like some people, we can all think of examples, start to look.

00:28:21.380 → 00:28:27.440
And incidentally, California is known for plastic surgery, but the plastic surgery out there is generally better than what you see on TV.

00:28:29.220 → 00:28:31.000
But I think that it’s not impermissible.

00:28:31.020 → 00:28:40.440
Should it be, like, a big thing, a super important part of your marriage, like, you’re demanding your wife go and get this or that fixed in order to…

00:28:41.380 → 00:28:43.040
Don’t start down that road.

00:28:43.040 → 00:28:44.720
I think it leads to a bad place.

00:28:45.060 → 00:28:50.460
But if she wants to get a little lift or a tuck here or there, I don’t think it’s a bad thing.

00:28:50.780 → 00:28:57.160
And it is also very helpful for women with regard to their ego and their self-image, right?

00:28:57.380 → 00:28:58.640
Some women more than others.

00:28:58.640 → 00:29:08.560
You just, as a husband, be careful there, because that could become an obsession and a worse problem for her than if she had just not had anything done, right?

00:29:09.040 → 00:29:11.400
So, is it morally impermissible?

00:29:11.440 → 00:29:11.760
No.

00:29:11.760 → 00:29:13.000
Is it a matter of wisdom?

00:29:13.000 → 00:29:14.020
Absolutely yes.

00:29:14.380 → 00:29:19.000
So, generally speaking, corrective procedures are going to be fine.

00:29:19.720 → 00:29:25.340
Do your homework, make sure that someone who knows what he’s doing, and don’t go overboard, right?

00:29:26.840 → 00:29:30.180
But yes, plastic surgery is not morally impermissible per se.

00:29:36.480 → 00:29:43.640
I guess, a tangentially related question, but make a note for myself here.

00:29:46.960 → 00:29:48.600
Question five.

00:29:49.860 → 00:29:55.360
You have talked at length on Stone Choir and X about the big lie of the Holocaust.

00:29:55.360 → 00:30:00.580
Can you please address Josef Mengele and the experiments he performed on people?

00:30:02.360 → 00:30:04.740
The answer to this is both yes and no.

00:30:04.740 → 00:30:14.260
And the reason that it’s yes and no is because the records from the so-called doctors’ trials from Nuremberg are, in fact, still sealed.

00:30:14.260 → 00:30:18.280
They will be sealed for, I’m not even certain how long it is, but it’s still quite some time.

00:30:19.620 → 00:30:34.780
However, that being said, what we do have of his records and what he maintained until the day he died, and it is worth noting that he never renounced his Christian faith, as far as we know, Yosef Mengele was a Christian his whole life.

00:30:35.180 → 00:30:45.560
He may not have attended services as often as we would necessarily prefer for a Christian, but he was also in hiding most of his life, trying not to get kidnapped and murdered by Israel, so-called.

00:30:45.560 → 00:30:48.700
So, with a grain of salt, as it were.

00:30:49.360 → 00:30:57.540
What we know from the information that we still have available that isn’t classified, hidden away, whatever it happens to be.

00:30:58.380 → 00:31:02.940
In these days, if something’s unclassified, how trustworthy is it post-AI?

00:31:03.500 → 00:31:04.520
That’s a problem too.

00:31:05.040 → 00:31:13.240
But what we have show that he was very much interested in anthropology, he was interested in twins for psychology and anthropology, and other reasons related to that.

00:31:13.880 → 00:31:18.880
We don’t actually have proof that he conducted invasive surgical procedures.

00:31:19.900 → 00:31:29.240
That is on the same level as the death roller coaster, the electrified floor, the bear and eagle cage and all that stuff.

00:31:29.760 → 00:31:38.740
So, we have wild accusations that are totally unbelievable, and we have actual evidence showing that basically, he was interested in anthropology.

00:31:40.300 → 00:31:44.600
And again, he denied until the day he died that he did the things he’s accused of doing.

00:31:45.320 → 00:31:50.460
So, I don’t think we have warrant to believe that the accusations are legitimate.

00:31:50.760 → 00:31:56.940
You can also go to Carl Raddle on X, and search for Mengele, and many resources will come up.

00:31:57.140 → 00:32:01.340
There’s a lot of documentation there if you’re interested in reading about this specific topic.

00:32:01.660 → 00:32:15.860
But I think generally speaking, we shouldn’t believe it because it comes from the same people, again, who were saying there was a death roller coaster, and that the Germans built a fake village, and then used a nuclear weapon to kill people in the fake village they built.

00:32:16.540 → 00:32:18.640
It’s just wild, unbelievable nonsense.

00:32:26.100 → 00:32:28.440
I am sensing a theme in some of these questions.

00:32:28.780 → 00:32:31.920
Question 6 is about the Hitler Youth.

00:32:33.520 → 00:32:36.200
Let me pull up the actual questions here.

00:32:37.340 → 00:32:43.420
I read online, first red flag, that’s fair, that the Hitler Youth met on Sunday to decouple children from the church.

00:32:43.760 → 00:32:47.500
Can you please address what actually happened, or if there is a kernel of truth to this?

00:32:47.900 → 00:32:56.540
So, this is one of those examples, where we actually have solid evidence of exactly what their practices were, because the documents still exist.

00:32:56.820 → 00:32:59.260
And their meetings were on Wednesday and Saturday.

00:32:59.860 → 00:33:02.540
So this is just false.

00:33:02.980 → 00:33:16.440
They had what they call, I can’t remember the term they use now, but they had ideological training on Wednesday, where they studied national socialism, and all the various stuff from the party about being a good member of the nation, things like that.

00:33:16.900 → 00:33:21.300
And then on Saturday, they had all the stuff of which you’ve seen all the videos, right?

00:33:21.300 → 00:33:25.580
The various sports training, and all of that stuff was conducted on Saturdays.

00:33:26.220 → 00:33:39.900
In fact, they specifically avoided having stuff on Sundays in order not to conflict with the church, and not to cause that conflict with people who attended church services, given that overwhelmingly, massively overwhelmingly, Germans were Christian.

00:33:40.640 → 00:33:47.580
They did occasionally have large events and things like that on Sundays, like hikes or rallies or that.

00:33:47.940 → 00:33:51.900
But those would have been after the church services, which were in the morning.

00:33:52.140 → 00:33:53.020
So it didn’t conflict.

00:33:53.020 → 00:33:54.100
Like these days, right?

00:33:54.100 → 00:33:56.240
You can go for a hike after your church service.

00:33:56.240 → 00:33:58.320
That doesn’t stop you from going to church.

00:33:58.320 → 00:33:59.720
It just means you go later in the day.

00:33:59.720 → 00:34:00.720
You go in the afternoon.

00:34:01.180 → 00:34:10.400
So no, the accusation is just completely groundless, because it was Wednesday and Saturday, with occasional special events on Sunday, which is perfectly permissible.

00:34:10.480 → 00:34:11.600
Still, we do that today.

00:34:12.160 → 00:34:19.000
I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to have, say, a rally on a Sunday after the church services have concluded.

00:34:28.020 → 00:34:30.680
Question seven.

00:34:33.280 → 00:34:37.960
This is the one I mentioned earlier that I thought I would probably get to, and indeed we will.

00:34:38.520 → 00:34:46.260
When does man’s curiosity, Proverbs 25 2, go beyond its limits and become the practice of satanic arts?

00:34:47.060 → 00:34:50.840
Throughout history, men of great intellect have often flirted with esoteric topics.

00:34:50.840 → 00:34:53.220
Martin Chemnitz in astrology comes to mind.

00:34:54.040 → 00:35:02.400
We live in a world in which a significant amount of modern technology came about with the help of men who engaged in open witchcraft or other forms of degeneracy.

00:35:02.400 → 00:35:03.400
That is very true.

00:35:03.860 → 00:35:04.620
For example, L.

00:35:04.620 → 00:35:15.000
Ron Hubbard and Alan Turing, let alone the number of Jews involved in the, at least these sciences, is it wrongful to keep some knowledge away from the majority of men?

00:35:15.960 → 00:35:22.520
And so the ultimate question there, as it were, is very easy to answer, and the answer is no.

00:35:23.500 → 00:35:30.520
Information should be tailored to the men who can handle it, because some men don’t need to know certain things, right?

00:35:30.760 → 00:35:32.880
That’s just the reality of it.

00:35:33.840 → 00:35:41.220
As I mentioned earlier, there are going to be men who are tempted by various things in various ways, and to various degrees.

00:35:41.840 → 00:35:46.860
There are men who can look at some of this esoteric stuff and never be tempted by it.

00:35:47.280 → 00:35:52.020
And there are men who, if they engage in it at all, will be completely destroyed by it.

00:35:52.640 → 00:35:58.500
So, there’s nothing wrong with gatekeeping, as it were, for this kind of knowledge.

00:35:58.720 → 00:36:03.480
Now, should anyone delve too deeply into something like demon knowledge or something like that?

00:36:03.480 → 00:36:15.560
And the answer is no for that, because, one, it’s not good knowledge to possess, and two, it’s not knowledge that’s actually accessible to human beings, because something like that would have to be revealed.

[mahler (Corey J. Mahler)]

Transcript

2/3

00:36:16.100 → 00:36:17.620
God has not revealed it.

00:36:17.760 → 00:36:27.260
And so the men who start delving into that stuff start trying to ask demons questions, and you probably shouldn’t trust the answers given by a literal demon, right?

00:36:28.000 → 00:36:41.960
This is a problem that runs, pops up all the time on line and other places, where you have supposed exorcists who have commanded demons to give answers and then relied on the accuracy of the answer from a demonic entity.

00:36:42.820 → 00:36:44.380
Probably not a good plan.

00:36:45.500 → 00:36:47.180
What is Satan called in scripture?

00:36:47.180 → 00:36:48.580
He’s the father of lies.

00:36:48.580 → 00:36:51.100
I have a feeling his children are going to lie as well.

00:36:51.480 → 00:36:54.080
So, don’t delve into that stuff.

00:36:54.080 → 00:36:56.220
No one should delve into that stuff ever.

00:36:56.680 → 00:37:04.160
As far as astrology and things like that are concerned, I think a lot of the engagement is ultimately harmless, stupid, and harmless.

00:37:05.120 → 00:37:11.220
If it becomes an obsession and you start organizing your life around it, okay, back off a little bit, stop doing that.

00:37:11.220 → 00:37:18.420
But this is particularly a vice of women more so than men, although historically there were men who were, like you mentioned, Martin Chemnitz, who were interested in it.

00:37:18.780 → 00:37:20.260
It’s not wrong.

00:37:20.260 → 00:37:22.300
There’s not no truth there, right?

00:37:22.500 → 00:37:24.780
To use a double negative, but necessary in this case.

00:37:26.500 → 00:37:30.880
How did the wise men know where and when the Christ was born?

00:37:31.440 → 00:37:32.440
That was astrology.

00:37:32.860 → 00:37:44.520
So, God says explicitly in scripture, the stars, the heavenly bodies were made for signs, and we’ve lost that, right?

00:37:45.140 → 00:37:47.780
Our ancestors knew something we don’t know.

00:37:48.200 → 00:37:50.180
Can we regain that knowledge?

00:37:50.220 → 00:37:50.960
I don’t know.

00:37:51.040 → 00:37:51.840
I don’t think we…

00:37:51.840 → 00:37:53.280
I think we probably cannot.

00:37:53.440 → 00:37:55.920
I think most likely it’s gone for good.

00:37:56.380 → 00:38:03.420
So, there was something there, created by God, knowable by man, known to the ancients, lost to us.

00:38:04.300 → 00:38:10.020
So, you get men who try to investigate these things, to try to bring it back, to try to reclaim that knowledge, rediscover it.

00:38:10.500 → 00:38:12.680
Like you said, many intelligent men have tried.

00:38:12.680 → 00:38:14.100
They’ve all utterly failed.

00:38:14.100 → 00:38:16.120
So, I think, probably just stop.

00:38:16.360 → 00:38:19.260
I don’t think we’re going to gain anything from that particular field.

00:38:20.300 → 00:38:25.560
But, generally speaking, esoteric is going to depend on what is meant by it.

00:38:25.560 → 00:38:35.580
If it’s just esoteric in the sense of known by few men, or knowable to few men, if you’re given the gifts necessary to pursue it, I don’t think necessarily it’s going to harm you.

00:38:35.840 → 00:38:38.440
Although, make that call for yourself, right?

00:38:38.440 → 00:38:40.940
This partly depends on your spiritual disposition.

00:38:41.160 → 00:38:45.220
Do you have a strong enough faith that you’re not going to be endangered by this?

00:38:45.220 → 00:38:47.420
Because some men will be, some men won’t be.

00:38:48.200 → 00:38:52.140
If you mean esoteric in the sense of the occult, stay away from it.

00:38:52.380 → 00:38:53.640
It’s only going to harm you.

00:38:53.920 → 00:38:59.700
You don’t gain anything by, you know, trying to talk to the machine elves, whatever it happens to be.

00:39:00.000 → 00:39:00.980
Don’t do that.

00:39:01.100 → 00:39:02.800
It will always harm you.

00:39:02.800 → 00:39:04.040
Do not play with the demonic.

00:39:04.040 → 00:39:05.320
Do not play with the occult.

00:39:06.620 → 00:39:16.000
So it depends on what’s meant by esoteric, but yes, the ultimate answer is that some knowledge should be kept away from some men, and they shouldn’t want to pursue it.

00:39:16.620 → 00:39:26.020
You know, if you have some occupation in life that doesn’t call for ever knowing any of this stuff, consider yourself blessed that you don’t have to deal with it.

00:39:26.500 → 00:39:31.380
There’s, I’ve mentioned this many times before, there is some knowledge you don’t want to have.

00:39:31.900 → 00:39:39.420
And if you gain it, you are never going to get rid of it until you die, until the resurrection of the just.

00:39:39.420 → 00:39:43.400
That’s when, because this kind of stuff passes away with this creation, with this earth.

00:39:44.300 → 00:39:47.560
You are not going to have to know anything about demonology in paradise.

00:39:47.560 → 00:39:51.960
And so, is there something useful in some of these fields for men to know here and now?

00:39:51.960 → 00:39:52.760
Absolutely.

00:39:53.480 → 00:39:56.540
I’ve mentioned one of the most obvious examples many times before.

00:39:57.020 → 00:40:00.700
There are men who deal with particularly heinous crimes.

00:40:01.140 → 00:40:06.840
They have to know things about those fields and about those crimes no man should want to know.

00:40:07.220 → 00:40:11.040
And those men don’t want to know, but they do it because someone has to do it.

00:40:11.120 → 00:40:13.280
It’s the same case with some of these fields.

00:40:13.700 → 00:40:17.160
If you’re not one of those men, why would you want that knowledge?

00:40:18.300 → 00:40:22.580
Why would you willingly take on that burden if it’s not going to benefit you or anyone else?

00:40:22.580 → 00:40:23.780
It’s only going to harm you.

00:40:24.900 → 00:40:27.100
Same thing about people who get obsessed with serial killers.

00:40:27.100 → 00:40:28.760
Probably find a better hobby.

00:40:29.760 → 00:40:32.080
Take a knitting, crocheting, anything else.

00:40:34.620 → 00:40:37.560
Let’s see, question eight.

00:40:40.580 → 00:40:52.700
As a political starting point to begin restoring Christendom, I believe we should focus on the full re-implementation and liberal application of the death penalty in accordance with God’s orders in Genesis 9, 5 through 6.

00:40:53.460 → 00:40:58.600
In theory, it should assist against the demographic replacement of Europeans and dissuade criminality.

00:40:59.200 → 00:41:03.020
Do you also see this as most important, or would you start somewhere else?

00:41:03.020 → 00:41:14.520
So, I don’t know that I’d classify it as most important, but, as I’ve said many times before, it is necessary because it is something that God commands us, and it is something that is part of the moral law.

00:41:14.840 → 00:41:17.420
And given that it’s part of the moral law, it’s unchanging.

00:41:17.860 → 00:41:26.280
And so, we do not have the option to ignore what God has commanded that we absolutely must do.

00:41:26.540 → 00:41:34.800
And one of those things is very clearly that he who sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed, for God created man in his image.

00:41:35.720 → 00:41:36.760
Genesis 9, 6.

00:41:36.820 → 00:41:41.680
It is required of us to apply the death penalty at least in cases of murder.

00:41:42.820 → 00:41:44.440
Abortion is murder, incidentally.

00:41:44.840 → 00:41:46.000
I wrote an article about that.

00:41:46.000 → 00:41:48.180
It’s on my site, for those who have not read that one.

00:41:48.700 → 00:41:50.740
So, is it the most important thing?

00:41:51.580 → 00:41:55.420
No, with regard to trying to restore Christendom, right?

00:41:55.420 → 00:41:57.520
Is it an important part of the puzzle?

00:41:57.540 → 00:41:58.400
Absolutely.

00:41:58.600 → 00:42:04.240
It’s one of the reasons that we had such a low crime rate historically, and why white populations in the West still do.

00:42:05.300 → 00:42:09.220
We executed 1-2% of every generation for hundreds of years.

00:42:09.600 → 00:42:13.960
We got rid of all the criminals and the genes that impact criminality.

00:42:13.960 → 00:42:17.740
I’m not going to say genes control criminality, but they do impact it.

00:42:17.880 → 00:42:19.440
And we know this from many studies, right?

00:42:19.440 → 00:42:24.520
The so-called warrior gene, which should probably be called the thief gene instead, or the robber gene, or something.

00:42:24.520 → 00:42:28.400
But we know there’s a feedback there, right?

00:42:28.500 → 00:42:29.440
There’s a relationship.

00:42:29.440 → 00:42:30.540
Because we’re not gnostics.

00:42:30.540 → 00:42:31.980
We don’t deny the reality of the flesh.

00:42:31.980 → 00:42:39.540
We don’t deny that we are human beings in physical bodies, and that genetics is what produces that physical body.

00:42:39.880 → 00:42:45.600
So, yes, it’s an important part of the puzzle, but not necessarily the most important part.

00:42:46.460 → 00:42:49.280
But again, required by God, so not optional.

00:42:53.440 → 00:42:56.720
I guess we’re going for related questions here.

00:42:58.160 → 00:42:59.580
Question 9.

00:43:02.480 → 00:43:06.480
How do you refute the CI heresy that blacks are not people?

00:43:08.960 → 00:43:22.560
So, for those who don’t know, CI is Christian identity, and really both of those should be in quotes, because it’s neither Christian, because it denies core beliefs, and nor is it identitarian, because it denies that we are, in fact, sons of Japheth.

00:43:23.320 → 00:43:38.280
So, aside from the contradiction in terms, this is an issue that I have been meaning to write an article about for a while, and I really should invest the time and get that done.

00:43:38.960 → 00:43:41.660
I’m not saying that I will necessarily in the near future, but I will try.

00:43:43.300 → 00:43:53.580
The issue is that you can come at the explanation for the state of the various races of men in two ways, right?

00:43:55.060 → 00:43:57.100
One way is the Christian way.

00:43:58.080 → 00:44:00.340
One way is the Darwinian way.

00:44:00.360 → 00:44:01.560
And we’ll call it Darwinian.

00:44:01.560 → 00:44:04.680
I recognize that, yes, the modern stuff is different.

00:44:04.680 → 00:44:07.280
I’ve gone over that before, particularly in the Stone Quire episode.

00:44:07.640 → 00:44:09.160
Neither here nor there for the answer.

00:44:10.560 → 00:44:15.140
The two differences would basically be whether you’re coming at it from above or below, right?

00:44:16.020 → 00:44:17.120
We’ll start with Darwin.

00:44:17.440 → 00:44:22.700
The Darwinian says that we have come from pond scum, from sludge up.

00:44:23.140 → 00:44:44.180
And so, their argument is that whites, that Western Europeans in particular, have achieved such a level of ability, genetically, civilizationally, all of these things, by the slow increase incrementally, ratcheting over time, over many, many, many, many, many generations, right?

00:44:44.940 → 00:44:47.300
Ignoring the problems of the math and all that for now.

00:44:47.840 → 00:44:49.080
Their argument is bottom up.

00:44:49.800 → 00:44:56.080
The actual belief, the truth, is the Christian answer, which is not as optimistic.

00:44:56.480 → 00:45:05.440
And this is a major problem for the non-Christians on the right, because what they’re arguing ultimately undermines what has to be done and where we need to go.

00:45:05.800 → 00:45:10.940
But the Christian argument is that it’s top down, in the sense of, there was a pinnacle.

00:45:11.140 → 00:45:11.940
That was Adam.

00:45:12.500 → 00:45:15.260
Adam was the height of what humanity could be.

00:45:15.260 → 00:45:16.620
He is the father of all of us.

00:45:16.620 → 00:45:18.040
He had the greatest potential.

00:45:18.660 → 00:45:20.400
We are his degenerate children.

00:45:21.160 → 00:45:23.180
We are less capable than our ancestors.

00:45:23.360 → 00:45:24.680
We have fallen further.

00:45:24.980 → 00:45:26.940
We have more defects.

00:45:27.000 → 00:45:28.580
We have less capability.

00:45:28.840 → 00:45:31.940
We are lesser than those who came before us.

00:45:32.460 → 00:45:33.780
We’re not better than them.

00:45:33.860 → 00:45:40.800
We’re not going to exceed them over time by, you know, careful eugenics or whatever it happens to be.

00:45:41.160 → 00:45:42.680
Should we practice that sort of stuff?

00:45:42.680 → 00:45:43.340
Absolutely.

00:45:43.340 → 00:45:50.340
But for the sake of preserving what we still have, I don’t think that we’re going to get back to what our ancestors were.

00:45:50.400 → 00:45:56.240
And I’m talking about, you know, the far back patriarchs, not European ancestors from 800 years ago.

00:45:56.240 → 00:45:58.080
I think we’re basically equivalent to them.

00:45:58.960 → 00:46:00.440
I think probably go back 4,000 years.

00:46:00.440 → 00:46:01.660
We’re probably pretty close still.

00:46:02.980 → 00:46:04.680
You can see the problem here, right?

00:46:05.060 → 00:46:16.680
Because if the issue is that you lose things over time through bad policy, which basically usually just means bad marriages, and then dysgenic policies that…

00:46:18.240 → 00:46:25.100
I’m not going to get into that too deeply right now, but those policies lead to the decrease in the fitness of the population over time, right?

00:46:25.100 → 00:46:31.840
That’s why you see all the problems in places like India and Africa, because they have degenerated from what their ancestors were.

00:46:32.320 → 00:46:41.220
We have degenerated less as Europeans, and so we want to preserve that, because once you lose it, you cannot get it back.

00:46:42.360 → 00:46:49.100
The only potential that people have these days of hoping you can get that kind of stuff back is with gene editing, right?

00:46:49.160 → 00:46:52.060
With just completely rewriting the human genome.

00:46:53.180 → 00:46:55.120
But that’s a clean break, as it were.

00:46:55.120 → 00:47:00.860
You’re not, if you completely rewrite the genome of your child, it’s no longer your child.

00:47:01.340 → 00:47:05.820
It’s an organism that you created in a sense by manipulation.

00:47:05.820 → 00:47:07.420
It’s a fundamentally different thing.

00:47:07.700 → 00:47:11.000
You’ve broken the chain finally and fully.

00:47:11.380 → 00:47:20.340
And so, if you were to take random individuals from Africa or India, and then take a zygote, right?

00:47:20.360 → 00:47:22.640
And fully edit the genome, remove all…

00:47:22.640 → 00:47:23.720
This is in theory, right?

00:47:23.720 → 00:47:25.380
Say you have the knowledge to do this.

00:47:25.960 → 00:47:32.600
Remove all of the genetic problems, all of the issues, give them an IQ of 250, whatever it happens to be.

00:47:32.600 → 00:47:34.120
Make the perfect human being.

00:47:34.420 → 00:47:35.920
Is that a child of the parents?

00:47:36.360 → 00:47:37.320
The answer is no.

00:47:37.620 → 00:47:40.360
You have not restored anything.

00:47:40.360 → 00:47:43.460
You’ve created something new to a certain degree.

00:47:44.320 → 00:47:46.140
There’s an evil there in which we should not…

00:47:46.140 → 00:47:49.420
into which we should not delve, but a topic for another time.

00:47:51.820 → 00:47:57.160
The fundamental issue with CI arguing that blacks are not people, they call them the beasts of the field, right?

00:47:57.160 → 00:48:06.260
This is essentially what they try to argue, is that they are removing one of the most powerful arguments we have for why we want to do what we need to do.

00:48:06.980 → 00:48:20.140
Because our goal is the preservation, not just of civilization and of the ability to produce civilization and all the things that go along with it, beauty and truth and all these things, but the Christian faith itself.

00:48:20.660 → 00:48:32.660
Because the Christian faith itself cannot be transmitted and defended by those who have degenerated so far, they no longer recognize hypotheticals, or truth, or the existence of tomorrow.

00:48:34.060 → 00:48:36.200
That is what we risk losing.

00:48:36.460 → 00:48:44.280
And so our argument is that it is necessary to preserve European populations in order to preserve the Christian faith.

00:48:44.400 → 00:49:03.740
If you take the Darwinian position, you can just say, well, eventually these other populations can be brought up to our level in the same way that we came to this level through very careful or just chance, whatever it happens to be, breeding over millions of years or thousands of years or ten, whatever their timeline happens to be, they all use a different one.

00:49:06.440 → 00:49:16.420
In their conception, in their frame, there’s nothing wrong with treating the various third world populations the same as you treat us, because they can be brought up to our level.

00:49:17.040 → 00:49:24.560
If you take the real position and follow the real logic, they can’t be brought up to our level because what they have lost was a one-way street.

00:49:25.240 → 00:49:34.920
And so, the CI argument fundamentally undermines the very thing they claim they want to achieve, which is the preservation of Europeans and the European races.

00:49:36.720 → 00:49:37.920
It’s complete nonsense.

00:49:38.560 → 00:49:49.260
It’s not defensible in scripture, it’s not even defensible in the purely material realm because it also runs counter to at least Neo-Darwinian evolution and things like that.

00:49:50.120 → 00:49:51.920
It is fundamentally incoherent.

00:49:52.440 → 00:49:59.340
It is something no one should believe, and it’s just basically Talmudism applied to Europeans instead of to Jews, right?

00:49:59.480 → 00:50:08.920
It’s saying, we are this special, chosen, we’re the only people, everyone else is a monkey, everyone else is subhuman, and so X, Y, and Z.

00:50:09.440 → 00:50:13.860
It doesn’t even fit the classical definition of species, which can produce fertile offspring, right?

00:50:13.860 → 00:50:17.260
Because Africans and Europeans can produce fertile offspring.

00:50:17.260 → 00:50:19.820
We all know that’s true, for better or worse.

00:50:20.240 → 00:50:24.220
So, it’s just not a defensible position in any real way.

00:50:24.220 → 00:50:27.000
It’s, again, it’s complete nonsense.

00:50:27.000 → 00:50:34.420
And they’re only arguing it because they want to, just like the Jews say, we’re special and everyone else is not.

00:50:35.760 → 00:50:36.160
Why?

00:50:36.300 → 00:50:37.440
Why make that argument?

00:50:37.440 → 00:50:43.340
You have the foundation in scripture to say that there are special promises to the sons of Japheth.

00:50:43.540 → 00:50:50.260
You can look at all of history and say, we are the ones who most carefully preserved what God gave us.

00:50:50.260 → 00:50:52.300
Everyone else squandered their gifts.

00:50:53.080 → 00:50:56.440
Look at the reality, instead of building up some false mythology.

00:50:56.840 → 00:50:58.620
It just doesn’t make any sense.

00:50:58.920 → 00:51:03.700
Regardless of the angle you choose to attack it, it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

00:51:14.640 → 00:51:24.520
I will just quickly insert another question here, because it’s easy for me to answer it quickly, although it messes up my numbering, so I’ll fix that later.

00:51:25.700 → 00:51:30.660
Question 10, which software am I using for showing scripture?

00:51:30.840 → 00:51:33.380
Which I guess I should show the software if I’m going to do that.

00:51:33.460 → 00:51:37.340
It’s Logos, is what it’s called, L-O-G-O-S.

00:51:38.160 → 00:51:44.280
And it is probably the best software right now for Bible study and things like that.

00:51:45.020 → 00:51:54.080
I very strongly disagree with their practices regarding how much they charge for resources and things like that, because you can certainly spend an awful lot of money on it.

00:51:55.060 → 00:52:00.740
But there are some free resources, and there’s, I believe, a free tier as well.

00:52:01.060 → 00:52:06.360
So, you know, at the very least, you can use it to study certain things without having to spend money.

00:52:06.680 → 00:52:10.480
But if you want all of the features, you’re going to spend a lot of money on it.

00:52:10.700 → 00:52:19.420
So, and like I’ve said many times, and as we mentioned in Stone Quire and elsewhere, this should not be a for-profit industry.

00:52:19.520 → 00:52:24.320
These men should not be making however much money it is they’re making off of this kind of stuff.

00:52:24.320 → 00:52:27.600
These are God’s things, and they should be available for free.

00:52:28.920 → 00:52:34.120
Which is why I never charge for any of the essays or things that I write, and never will.

00:52:34.760 → 00:52:38.620
Because if I’m writing about the things of God, those things belong to God.

00:52:50.240 → 00:52:54.460
So, someone mentioned that he was having trouble with YouTube comments.

00:52:55.120 → 00:52:58.600
I see them in my interface, so I assume they’re working now.

00:52:58.600 → 00:53:00.460
It must have just been a transitory issue.

00:53:02.700 → 00:53:05.660
But last week, I know that the comments were not working.

00:53:05.660 → 00:53:18.040
This is not really an answer or anything, but last week, they were not working because YouTube decided to toggle my stream in the background, and I did not notice it, and say that it was designed for children, which disables your comments.

00:53:18.360 → 00:53:26.080
So, I added that to my checklist in order to make sure that things are working before I hit go live, as it were.

00:53:27.560 → 00:53:33.360
Just one more thing in the checklist, the sanity check for the IT gremlins.

00:53:36.040 → 00:53:40.920
Let me add that to my list, so that I don’t forget, and ruin my numbering.

00:53:49.100 → 00:53:49.560
Okay.

00:53:54.180 → 00:53:55.780
Question 11.

00:53:57.440 → 00:53:58.400
I am a programmer.

00:53:58.400 → 00:54:05.480
Thankfully, I am in a situation where I feel secure in my current job, but I have recently started wondering what to expect in the future.

00:54:05.940 → 00:54:11.420
I worry that depending on how things progress politically, my skills may not end up particularly useful.

00:54:11.940 → 00:54:14.780
I have not been working long enough to really build up anything tangible.

00:54:15.360 → 00:54:25.520
Do you have any advice for men like me who wonder about career longevity and are considering alternate or supplemental routes of building wealth for the future and for my future descendants?

00:54:25.520 → 00:54:30.220
For example, I’ve considered building my own apps, but I’d hate to produce more slop for the world.

00:54:32.360 → 00:54:36.740
I think the general rule here is going to be, and I can perhaps not have log-offs on the screen right now.

00:54:37.080 → 00:54:43.080
I think that the general rule is going to be, do the things for which you are most suited, right?

00:54:44.000 → 00:54:46.260
It’s sort of an opportunity cost calculation.

00:54:46.620 → 00:54:59.740
If you have the ability to do some particular thing that requires education or resources or abilities, whatever it happens to be, things you have that most men don’t, your time is probably better spent doing those things.

00:55:00.380 → 00:55:08.280
But at the same time, and on the other hand, I have always strongly recommended, and I still do, do something tangible as well, right?

00:55:08.640 → 00:55:11.460
So, farm.

00:55:12.320 → 00:55:15.620
I’m not saying you have to take up a thousand head of cattle or something like that.

00:55:15.880 → 00:55:19.840
Grow your own tomatoes, grow your own basil, grow your own cucumbers.

00:55:19.840 → 00:55:24.160
Do the things that everyone used to do, and everyone should still be doing.

00:55:24.520 → 00:55:26.480
Because some of these things are very easy to do, right?

00:55:26.840 → 00:55:33.760
I had two cucumber plants, and I had, I don’t know, 150, 200 cucumbers off two plants.

00:55:33.760 → 00:55:38.400
So, I mean, I live in the south, the growing season’s long, et cetera.

00:55:38.820 → 00:55:41.560
But you can certainly do those things that are tangible.

00:55:41.560 → 00:55:49.380
I think it’s important to do those things as well, and not just do, you know, things in the virtual world, as it were.

00:55:49.980 → 00:55:53.660
Take up woodworking, or whatever happens to be.

00:55:53.660 → 00:56:09.500
Have some skill that will always have value, regardless of how things go in the future, not just skills that are useful only if things go well, or if the infrastructure stays as it currently is, you know, the lights stay on.

00:56:10.860 → 00:56:13.540
But generally speaking, you can pursue both, right?

00:56:13.560 → 00:56:20.340
Use the skills that are peculiar to you relative to other men, and then also take up something that is concrete.

00:56:20.680 → 00:56:27.600
And, you know, you can have a supplemental income off of your hobby, woodworking, or whatever it happens to be.

00:56:27.600 → 00:56:28.920
It doesn’t have to be woodworking, right?

00:56:28.920 → 00:56:30.420
Maybe you want to keep all your fingers.

00:56:31.420 → 00:56:33.380
Could be gardening, could be any number of things.

00:56:33.380 → 00:56:41.840
There are plenty of things out there that you can use, and you can even get, you know, your wife and children involved, certainly, when you’re running sort of a small business for your home.

00:56:45.820 → 00:56:49.500
Question 12, I’ll make a note for myself here.

00:56:53.700 → 00:56:56.260
Why didn’t the predators on the ark kill the prey?

00:56:56.280 → 00:56:59.200
Was that just God’s will, or is there more to it?

00:57:00.340 → 00:57:05.860
This one comes up all the time, and usually it is atheists trying to use the ark as a gotcha.

00:57:06.360 → 00:57:16.860
And I always find that funny, because they use the ark or something similar to the ark as a gotcha, and completely ignore the fact that it’s a miracle, right?

00:57:17.600 → 00:57:26.320
No Christian is saying that, like, Noah, just a man, built a giant boat, shoved a bunch of animals in it, and saved the world.

00:57:26.960 → 00:57:28.500
And Christians don’t believe that.

00:57:28.520 → 00:57:33.560
Christians believe that God used the ark to perform a miracle.

00:57:35.120 → 00:57:36.640
The whole thing is a miracle, right?

00:57:36.860 → 00:57:38.340
The flood is a miracle.

00:57:38.580 → 00:57:40.400
That the ark worked is a miracle.

00:57:40.400 → 00:57:42.560
That the animals came to Noah is a miracle.

00:57:42.700 → 00:57:44.640
That the animals survived is a miracle.

00:57:44.640 → 00:57:46.360
That Noah survived is a miracle.

00:57:47.000 → 00:57:48.480
The whole thing is a miracle.

00:57:48.980 → 00:57:53.220
So, getting hung up on any part like the predators, right?

00:57:53.220 → 00:57:55.360
Things like that, doesn’t make any sense.

00:57:56.200 → 00:58:01.500
I personally believe that God put most of the animals into a state of torpor, which is just, you know, diminishing.

00:58:01.920 → 00:58:09.240
Not quite a coma, but close for the duration, because I don’t think Noah was having to, you know, shovel feces the whole time he was on the ark.

00:58:09.240 → 00:58:11.280
That’s what he would have been doing if they were not.

00:58:11.820 → 00:58:18.620
So, I think that they were probably just in a torpor, and God performed a miracle, keeping both the predator and prey alive.

00:58:19.020 → 00:58:28.680
And bear in mind that he had to also have enough food for all the animals on the ark, and the ark’s probably not large enough to have that much food.

00:58:28.680 → 00:58:32.920
So, God put them in a state of lower metabolism torpor.

00:58:34.180 → 00:58:37.760
But again, the baseline reality is that it’s a miracle, right?

00:58:38.140 → 00:58:42.480
It’s like trying to find a rational explanation for how Christ rose from the dead.

00:58:42.480 → 00:58:43.100
It’s a miracle.

00:58:43.100 → 00:58:43.740
It’s not…

00:58:44.080 → 00:58:46.700
We’re not saying that this has a naturalistic explanation.

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That’s in fact the opposite of the whole point of the story.

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The point of the ark is that it is a symbol.

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The point of the ark is the typology.

00:58:55.900 → 00:59:01.280
Because the ark is the type, the church is the anti-type.

00:59:01.700 → 00:59:04.040
That’s the whole point of Noah’s Ark.

00:59:04.040 → 00:59:12.100
Yes, it’s also the destruction of the wicked and the rescue of the righteous and things like that, but the typology is really what we should take out of that as Christians.

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And then, yes, obviously, it’s a miracle, so we don’t have to try to give a naturalistic explanation, because the whole point of a miracle is that it breaks the naturalistic laws.

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It’s God directly intervening in making an exception.

00:59:32.220 → 00:59:34.020
Question 13.

00:59:40.500 → 00:59:44.280
Why should one be honest or good with dishonest or immoral people?

00:59:44.460 → 00:59:46.800
Why should one bother to maintain morals?

00:59:47.280 → 00:59:48.860
When it will get you screwed over.

00:59:50.560 → 00:59:50.860
So.

00:59:52.080 → 00:59:55.640
The answer to this is going to sort of be twofold.

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One, you do have a general duty to be honest and forthright and good, right?

01:00:02.220 → 01:00:04.000
God hates.

01:00:04.300 → 01:00:09.000
It is an abomination to God to use unequal scales, for instance.

01:00:09.220 → 01:00:14.540
So you are required to be honest in your dealings with other people, even people who are dishonest.

01:00:14.720 → 01:00:23.060
So your price doesn’t change, and you don’t give someone a half measure, because that person is obnoxious or dishonest or whatever it happens to be.

01:00:24.760 → 01:00:27.360
But at the same time, as a Christian, you are commanded to be wise.

01:00:27.360 → 01:00:29.880
You don’t let these people take advantage of you.

01:00:30.140 → 01:00:34.060
You don’t let them exploit you, because you are being honest and they are being dishonest.

01:00:34.340 → 01:00:37.660
You just don’t exploit them, because they are bad people.

01:00:38.100 → 01:00:40.760
It’s up to God to punish them and up to the magistrate.

01:00:40.760 → 01:00:42.300
Hopefully, he is doing his job.

01:00:42.680 → 01:00:46.920
It’s not up to you to do that by being dishonest and using false scales.

01:00:47.440 → 01:00:52.240
So be honest, but don’t let someone just take advantage of you.

01:00:53.080 → 01:00:55.020
Don’t be a fool, basically, is what I’m saying.

01:01:00.500 → 01:01:02.580
Let’s see, question 14.

01:01:05.300 → 01:01:09.960
Lately, I have been feeling like my IQ has gone down, and I am suffering from brain fog.

01:01:09.960 → 01:01:11.840
I will also forget the simplest things.

01:01:12.060 → 01:01:16.560
It is hard to read a paragraph in a book without losing my place or even comprehending what I’m reading.

01:01:16.840 → 01:01:18.320
Do you have any remedies for this?

01:01:18.900 → 01:01:26.360
So, this is an extremely common problem these days, and there are a number of things that contribute to it.

01:01:26.440 → 01:01:34.120
You know, it’s nutrition, it’s exercise level, it’s most certainly our media, particularly social media and things like that.

01:01:34.480 → 01:01:40.720
So, you kind of have to take an holistic approach to how you solve how you address this issue.

01:01:41.240 → 01:02:01.000
One thing is going to be, as best you can, do not consume short form content, whether it’s YouTube shorts or what is it called, reels or any of these various things, these snippets of content that are deliberately designed to break your ability to concentrate on anything over a long period of time.

01:02:01.960 → 01:02:07.980
And in place of that, you need to rebuild your ability to focus on things for a long period of time.

01:02:08.420 → 01:02:10.880
Sit quietly in a room and read for an hour.

01:02:11.180 → 01:02:12.420
Force yourself to do it.

01:02:12.800 → 01:02:15.600
You should be able to do that without it being excruciating.

01:02:16.120 → 01:02:21.500
The modern world has deliberately programmed you to lose the ability to do that.

01:02:22.380 → 01:02:26.320
Above and beyond that, make sure you get exercise, drink water.

01:02:26.400 → 01:02:28.200
Creatine is a great supplement.

01:02:28.460 → 01:02:34.140
There are, you know, people will fight about supplements all day and all night, and I don’t want to get into that.

01:02:34.740 → 01:02:37.480
Creatine is one that I can just say is good.

01:02:37.740 → 01:02:40.040
All of our research shows that it’s beneficial.

01:02:40.400 → 01:02:43.100
It doesn’t have downsides, except you’re going to have to drink some more water.

01:02:44.100 → 01:02:47.020
And do drink more water because your body needs more water to process it.

01:02:47.020 → 01:02:52.500
But otherwise, it’s relatively cheap, easily available, works really well.

01:02:52.520 → 01:02:54.200
So you should be taking creatine.

01:02:54.200 → 01:03:00.560
You should also be taking vitamin D because your body stops producing enough after age like 30.

01:03:01.680 → 01:03:03.460
It’s unfortunate, it’s like 30, 35.

01:03:03.820 → 01:03:07.780
You could spend all day outside naked and you will not produce enough vitamin D.

01:03:07.780 → 01:03:12.380
So you should be supplementing that as well because your body also needs that for brain and other functions.

01:03:12.380 → 01:03:15.320
So those are two of the easy supplements that I’d say take.

01:03:15.320 → 01:03:18.720
But walking is great exercise and it’s great for your brain.

01:03:18.920 → 01:03:26.800
All of the studies show walking is one of the best things you can do for brain fog, for clarity, just for thinking your brain processes thing better.

01:03:28.040 → 01:03:34.760
You should do some kind of cardio before you do any intense mental task that prepares your body.

01:03:34.760 → 01:03:36.680
So walking is a great option.

01:03:41.380 → 01:03:43.980
And, you know, caffeine is not necessarily bad.

01:03:43.980 → 01:03:46.240
Maybe don’t drink caffeine this time of night.

01:03:46.240 → 01:03:52.900
That’s probably not the best of my hobbies, but I don’t think caffeine in the morning is bad for you.

01:03:56.480 → 01:04:01.960
I’m just going to try and copy some questions from the chat.

01:04:01.960 → 01:04:04.260
I don’t know that I’ll get to them, but I don’t want to lose them.

01:04:27.120 → 01:04:33.920
I am definitely not getting to them, because I am now in the 20s for the questions tonight, we just did question, what was that, 13, 14?

01:04:34.760 → 01:04:35.100
13.

01:04:45.740 → 01:04:48.020
Okay, question, can we load?

01:04:49.320 → 01:04:53.380
That was question 14, right, because I inserted that question in the middle there.

01:04:59.300 → 01:05:00.440
Okay, question 15.

01:05:01.760 → 01:05:07.200
In a recent episode, you said the government already has the tools they need to dox anyone they want with no problem.

01:05:07.200 → 01:05:08.120
That is correct.

01:05:08.580 → 01:05:14.540
If this is the case, why the recent government push for ID verification to use smartphones, etc.?

01:05:14.600 → 01:05:21.640
So, there’s a bit of this going on pretty much everywhere in the world right now, anywhere worth mentioning, at least.

01:05:22.380 → 01:05:32.320
You have this rolling out of the EU, you have it certainly in the UK, which is already one of the most surveilled states on the face of the planet, perhaps even more so than China at this point.

01:05:33.000 → 01:05:39.060
You certainly have it in China, and it’s certainly a growing thing in the US with flock and other things.

01:05:39.060 → 01:05:40.680
Flock isn’t even the worst defender.

01:05:40.680 → 01:05:43.640
Everyone, this is probably worth mentioning here.

01:05:43.840 → 01:05:45.440
Everyone picks out flock, right?

01:05:46.040 → 01:05:49.420
There’s always going to be sort of the poster child, the whipping boy, as it were.

01:05:50.140 → 01:05:56.260
Flock is not the worst defender, because flock actually is exclusively used currently.

01:05:56.260 → 01:05:57.660
That could change in the future, of course.

01:05:57.780 → 01:06:10.660
But flock is exclusively used by law enforcement and government agencies that do, in theory, at least, have some sort of legal oversight, and they can be sued, right?

01:06:11.460 → 01:06:23.200
You have other entities doing similar sorts of surveillance, perhaps using credit cards and things like that, and they actually sell that information to anyone who wants to pay a fee.

01:06:24.000 → 01:06:24.720
That’s worse.

01:06:25.240 → 01:06:29.580
So flock’s not good, but flock’s not the worst as well.

01:06:29.720 → 01:06:30.960
I’m not saying I approve of it.

01:06:30.960 → 01:06:36.740
Again, I don’t think flock is good, and I think that that stuff should be removed, we’ll say.

01:06:37.840 → 01:06:41.440
I think it should be struck down legally, and it should not be something that’s permissible.

01:06:42.200 → 01:06:57.320
But the reason the government is still pushing for these programs is that, on the one hand, you have times where basically it’s just pork barrel stuff, they’re just giving money to their contractors, their vendors, their friends, right?

01:06:58.200 → 01:06:59.180
And also it’s easier.

01:07:00.060 → 01:07:04.820
Some of these systems are rolled out because it’s easier to track you if they have X, Y, or Z.

01:07:05.460 → 01:07:14.300
Just because you can do something under existing conditions doesn’t mean you don’t want to change those conditions so that it’s easier to do that same thing, right?

01:07:15.180 → 01:07:22.020
If they could implant you a little chip that just tracked you via satellite, then they wouldn’t need all this expensive hardware everywhere because they just know where you are.

01:07:22.240 → 01:07:23.300
That would be easier.

01:07:23.940 → 01:07:27.060
If they could get away with rolling out that system, they would do so.

01:07:27.720 → 01:07:28.900
Same thing’s happening here.

01:07:29.720 → 01:07:42.060
And it’s just obviously part of it is the oppression of the system is part of the goal itself, is just to make you feel like you are always under surveillance, which you kind of are these days, and to make you feel like you can’t do anything about it.

01:07:42.380 → 01:07:45.040
That’s part of the purpose, that’s why they roll out some of these things.

01:07:45.040 → 01:07:46.780
It’s why flock cameras are so visible.

01:07:47.300 → 01:07:48.960
They don’t need to be that visible.

01:07:49.360 → 01:07:50.360
They could be hidden.

01:07:50.920 → 01:07:57.200
Part of what they’re doing is the omnipresent feel of being surveilled is going to modify your behavior.

01:08:02.080 → 01:08:06.720
Question 16, going back to theology here.

01:08:08.680 → 01:08:16.920
Can I in any way be sure that I am being sanctified and that there are real works flowing from my faith, thus proving that my faith is not dead?

01:08:17.960 → 01:08:26.800
This is sort of not equivalent to but related to questions that asked fairly often about the unforgivable sin, right?

01:08:27.120 → 01:08:29.360
If you can worry about it, you haven’t committed.

01:08:29.860 → 01:08:33.640
In this case, if you can worry about it, you’re being sanctified.

01:08:34.500 → 01:08:36.020
So you can take comfort in that.

01:08:36.020 → 01:08:47.080
But then on top of that, you should also just recognize that all of the good works you do in service of neighbor are good because God designed them for you.

01:08:47.080 → 01:08:48.680
He prepared them for you to do.

01:08:49.020 → 01:08:53.180
And so, when you help your neighbor take in the groceries, that’s a good work.

01:08:53.300 → 01:08:57.620
When you help your neighbor repair some broken thing of his property, that’s a good work.

01:08:58.020 → 01:09:03.640
All of the things you do that are helpful for your neighbor, for those God has placed into your life, are good works.

01:09:03.640 → 01:09:04.780
They’re proof of faith.

01:09:06.200 → 01:09:07.320
You’re justified.

01:09:08.200 → 01:09:11.300
If you’re asking this question, I’m going to just go ahead and assume you’re justified, right?

01:09:11.300 → 01:09:14.580
You have been baptized, you have faith.

01:09:15.020 → 01:09:19.700
All of the good works then, because you’re justified, are counted toward you.

01:09:19.900 → 01:09:22.180
You get credit because you’re in Christ.

01:09:22.960 → 01:09:26.040
So, just continue doing good works.

01:09:26.420 → 01:09:27.700
You’re being sanctified.

01:09:28.300 → 01:09:38.780
Continue to engage in the scripture, continue to go to church, continue to do all the things that you should do as a Christian, but recognize that you’ve already been justified, you’re already a child of God.

01:09:39.060 → 01:09:43.620
All of your good works that God prepared for you are counted to you.

01:09:43.760 → 01:09:46.040
You are given credit because you’re in Christ.

01:09:47.080 → 01:09:48.640
And it’s the everyday, right?

01:09:49.540 → 01:09:51.040
Don’t go looking for exceptional works.

01:09:51.040 → 01:09:57.280
This is one of the problems that happened at certain points in past centuries and still happens to some degree today.

01:09:57.860 → 01:10:10.320
The good works that God finds truly great and glorious are not putting on a full suit of armor and walking a hundred miles on a pilgrimage to pay homage to a saint, stuff that actually happened in history.

01:10:11.580 → 01:10:14.480
The good works are those that God gave you in the Ten Commandments.

01:10:15.320 → 01:10:17.300
Honor thy father and thy mother, right?

01:10:18.340 → 01:10:19.720
That’s a good work.

01:10:19.920 → 01:10:25.660
As a child, honoring your father, honoring your mother, honoring your parents is a good work.

01:10:25.660 → 01:10:27.040
It says, thou shalt not murder.

01:10:27.120 → 01:10:33.700
Well, helping your neighbor with regard to the things of life is what you do, because remember, there’s the negative, there’s also the positive, right?

01:10:33.760 → 01:10:36.420
You don’t do the negative, you do do the positive.

01:10:36.900 → 01:10:43.740
God has given you the list of good works, so you don’t even need to go looking for works, because God has told you exactly what he desires you to do.

01:10:44.580 → 01:10:47.860
So, don’t worry about this sort of thing.

01:10:47.860 → 01:10:51.280
It’s not necessarily a bad thing that you’re a little concerned, because you should be.

01:10:51.280 → 01:10:53.800
The fact that you can be concerned about it is a good sign.

01:10:54.220 → 01:11:03.740
But don’t let the worry or anxiety overtake you, because the everyday stuff you do, those little good works, those are the things God wants you doing.

01:11:03.780 → 01:11:05.780
Because that’s what it means to live a Christian life.

01:11:35.780 → 01:11:42.480
And I have some in the chat that are going to be longer ones to answer, so I will just save those for next week.

01:11:43.900 → 01:11:58.200
Particularly, I see someone ask the difference between the German and the Scandinavian churches, and there are practical differences, doctrinally, historically, less so, but I will get into that, I think, next week, because that’s longer to give the full answer there.

01:12:01.760 → 01:12:02.980
Question 17.

01:12:03.340 → 01:12:07.740
Can someone possibly fully believe in God yet not have faith?

[mahler (Corey J. Mahler)]

Transcript

3/3

01:12:11.980 → 01:12:15.460
I think the answer here has to be no.

01:12:15.460 → 01:12:25.540
And the reason that it has to be no is that if you fully believe in God, that would mean to believe in the God who exists, right?

01:12:25.660 → 01:12:28.500
It’s not a misconception of God in your own mind.

01:12:29.140 → 01:12:37.980
So if you believe in what you believe, right, in your head, to be God, but that God is not the triune God, you don’t believe in God.

01:12:38.140 → 01:12:41.300
You believe in a fantasy that you’ve created.

01:12:41.540 → 01:12:58.760
So if you believe in the Lord God, you will then have faith, because you would have to believe in the God of Scripture, the God of creation, the God who sent his son to die for you and did all these things, because if you don’t believe in that God, you don’t actually believe in God.

01:12:59.620 → 01:13:12.540
So perhaps a technical answer, but I think just logically, philosophically, if you fully believe in God, you will have faith, you must have faith to fully believe in the Lord God, not in a misconception of God.

01:13:13.260 → 01:13:18.420
This is related to why we baptize Mormons, right?

01:13:18.820 → 01:13:26.560
We baptize Mormons because they say they believe in God, but they don’t believe in the Lord God because they deny him with their doctrine.

01:13:26.840 → 01:13:36.720
So we baptize Mormons because their baptisms, what they call baptism, are invalid because they do not believe in God, no matter what they claim.

01:13:40.160 → 01:13:51.080
Question 18, is someone who maintains things like a literal third temple with the animal sacrificial system for the sake of argument as a memorial only?

01:13:51.440 → 01:13:53.960
So, a sort of lesser version of it, not for…

01:13:54.180 → 01:13:56.920
and it was, incidentally, all along.

01:13:56.920 → 01:13:59.180
You were not atoned for…

01:13:59.180 → 01:14:00.960
the animal did not take away your sin, right?

01:14:00.960 → 01:14:03.620
The blood of sheep and goats cannot wash away sin.

01:14:05.180 → 01:14:06.780
Is that person a Judaizer?

01:14:06.780 → 01:14:09.360
Would Luther view this as a Jewish opinion?

01:14:11.340 → 01:14:16.500
Luther would have had some very strong words for someone who believed or advocated for that sort of thing.

01:14:16.760 → 01:14:18.080
It is rank Judaizing.

01:14:19.080 → 01:14:22.800
There is no Christian third temple.

01:14:23.180 → 01:14:28.760
If the Jews manage to build a temple and start sacrificing sheep and goats, they are sacrificing those two Satan.

01:14:29.140 → 01:14:37.080
And if you join them in that, then you are also worshipping Satan, and you will get to participate in their eternal reward, which is going to be quite fiery.

01:14:37.080 → 01:14:38.660
And so I don’t recommend doing that.

01:14:39.040 → 01:14:41.120
But yes, this is just rank Judaizing.

01:14:41.120 → 01:14:45.900
It’s something you see in certain subsets of the dispensationalist circles.

01:14:46.440 → 01:14:50.740
They don’t all necessarily believe in this, but they all believe in something that leads to this.

01:14:51.180 → 01:14:54.060
So yes, it is Judaizing, and you should absolutely avoid it.

01:15:00.100 → 01:15:03.520
And part of the Christian answer, of course, is that the true temple is Jesus Christ.

01:15:04.240 → 01:15:06.840
So we no longer need types and shadows.

01:15:07.320 → 01:15:08.360
We have the real thing.

01:15:10.360 → 01:15:15.960
And in a sense, you are also the true temple, because the deity dwells in you, right?

01:15:16.320 → 01:15:18.740
God dwells in you via faith.

01:15:19.060 → 01:15:26.020
So that’s part of what it means to be a Christian, is to have the Holy Spirit, and of course, having the Holy Spirit, you have God, God is a Trinity.

01:15:26.560 → 01:15:27.860
All three persons are present.

01:15:28.520 → 01:15:31.560
So in a sense, you are also the true temple of God.

01:15:38.320 → 01:15:46.920
Question 19, is there sheet music available anywhere for the intro and outro songs for the podcast on Stone Choir?

01:15:47.680 → 01:15:50.800
The answer to that is yes.

01:15:50.860 → 01:15:55.520
And for at least some of them, it is just a mighty fortress.

01:15:55.520 → 01:15:57.480
And so you can certainly find the…

01:15:58.400 → 01:15:59.820
there are two versions, incidentally.

01:15:59.820 → 01:16:01.920
You want the rhythmic version, that’s the real Lutheran one.

01:16:02.240 → 01:16:03.080
The other one’s fine.

01:16:03.080 → 01:16:04.900
I’m not condemning Bach, right?

01:16:05.320 → 01:16:10.760
Certainly a wonderful piece of music as well, but a different one from the hymn.

01:16:10.960 → 01:16:12.980
The original Lutheran one is better as a hymn.

01:16:13.360 → 01:16:19.080
The one from Bach is quite enjoyable as something that’s performed professionally.

01:16:19.640 → 01:16:22.340
So you can find the sheet music for that very easily.

01:16:22.620 → 01:16:28.960
And I don’t remember if the outro is also a mighty fortress.

01:16:28.960 → 01:16:32.800
I believe that it’s just a different section of a mighty fortress.

01:16:33.480 → 01:16:38.680
I’m sure someone in the chat or elsewhere can comment on that.

01:16:39.500 → 01:16:44.000
But at any rate, yes, I don’t remember if I put that on the website.

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You can always go to hymnary.org.

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That is probably one of the better sites for looking up sheet music and things like that.

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You can usually find them very easily on there.

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I’ve had this asked a number of times about Stone Choir, and there’s an information page for Stone Choir for the intro and the outro.

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Again, it is two Lutheran hymns, but different ones.

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But yes, the answer, of course, is that sheet music is very much available for that.

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Question 20.

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I think I will get to a couple more questions here.

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I have not eaten dinner yet, so I tend to go do that after I answer a couple more questions.

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But question 20.

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I have a friend whom I will not see in person for several months who grew up Lutheran, is considering Eastern Orthodoxy and has been going to one of their churches.

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How can I best help him?

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So my recommendation here would of course be to listen to the episode on Eastern Orthodoxy and read the article on my site that covers Eastern Orthodoxy as well.

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I don’t think the debates are ultimately helpful because online debates about Christianity and things like that are always just entertainment for the audience.

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I’m not saying they’re useless because, you know, they’re entertainment.

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But I think that with regard to topics that are this important, it should not be a circus.

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These are serious matters.

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They’re souls at stake.

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We shouldn’t necessarily take this as being, you know, how we spend our Friday evening being entertained by men making largely unsound arguments one way or the other.

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So listen to the Stone Choir episode.

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Read the article on my site.

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And then part of it is just going to be seeing what he says.

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What is his issue?

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What are his issues?

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What are his arguments?

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And then responding to those.

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One of the biggest issues is going to be that they deny the gospel.

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The Eastern Orthodox simply reject the gospel because they deny penal substitutionary atonement.

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There is juridical, there is legal language all throughout scripture.

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It is a legal matter.

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You are guilty under the law.

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You think that it being law would cue them in, right?

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You think they’d figure that out, clue them in.

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It doesn’t, unfortunately.

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But you are guilty under the law.

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Christ takes your place, fulfills the demands of the law in your place, and so you are declared righteous by virtue of his work.

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You are made righteous via sanctification, and then finally in the resurrection of the just.

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But it is necessary to understand the gospel in order to be saved.

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You must understand that it is penal substitutionary atonement.

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If you reject that, you have rejected Christ, you’ve rejected his work, you have a different god, you are not saved.

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So in particular, if you go from Western Christianity to Eastern Orthodoxy, that’s one of the worst things you can do.

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There are those who grow up in that tradition and don’t believe the esoteric nonsense from Palamas and others, because by and large, most of those in most traditions don’t know everything their tradition teaches, right?

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Roman Catholics don’t know everything Rome teaches.

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Eastern Orthodox don’t know everything their churches supposedly believe.

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Most Lutherans don’t know the full book of Concord.

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That’s just the reality of it.

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It’s not always bad.

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It’s definitely not always good.

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But those who grow up in it many times will have a true faith, because ultimately they just believe in Christ.

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And the rest of the stuff is out there, but they don’t care about it.

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They ignore it.

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It’s just, you know, I’m Greek.

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My parents are Greek.

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My grandparents are Greek.

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We’ve always gone to Greek Orthodox, so I go to this.

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There are many good Christians in those churches.

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In the West, when they do that, the convertodox, they are rejecting Christianity explicitly in doing so, because they had the truth, they had the fullness of it.

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In theory, they understood it, because they’ve made some sort of decision to reject it, and they have rejected Christ in his truth.

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They’ve rejected the gospel.

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So make that very clear to him, that that is what he’s doing.

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And as a Lutheran, also remind him, he gave an oath to die before he would reject the truth that is taught by the Lutheran confessions when he was confirmed.

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So if his word means anything to him, that should have some purchase, because that is the confirmation oath in the Lutheran church, that you would sooner suffer and die than reject the gospel.

01:21:41.260 → 01:21:44.400
Question 21, I guess it’s tangentially related.

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Is there any value in reading the so-called Gnostic Gospels, or should they be ignored outright?

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In this case, just ignore them, because they are the equivalent of bad fan fiction.

01:21:58.240 → 01:22:25.660
So with regard to the Apocrypha, right, which is related, but in a certain sort of way before anyone gets too angry at me, the Apocryphal books can be read profitably, because even if they are not scripture, which they are not scripture, like Maccabees, not scripture, they can be read as history, and can be of some value with regard to understanding, particularly the intertestamental period.

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So these things can be read profitably, just like the fathers of the church can be read, some of them, profitably.

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They’re not scripture.

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They can still be read.

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The Didache, right, can be read profitably, not scripture.

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The Book of Concord, which I believe to be true, is my confession, can be read profitably, is not scripture.

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With regard to the Gnostic Gospels, so called, though, they reject core parts of Christian teaching and teach things that are antithetical to Christianity.

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And so there is no prophet in reading them.

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They are just wild nonsense.

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They are the equivalent of some of the crazier stuff that people sometimes try to argue as part of the Old Testament canon and very clearly is not.

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So there’s just no benefit in reading them.

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They’re the equivalent of basically a fiction work, but the problem is they’re a fiction work claiming to be part of scripture, and that’s the danger, right?

01:23:27.080 → 01:23:32.840
There’s no danger in reading Dune, because no one reads Dune and says, well, this should go between Genesis and Exodus.

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I don’t think anyone has ever said those words in that order before now.

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There are people who try to argue the Gnostic Gospels, so-called, are actual scripture, and so they’re dangerous.

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So there’s just no benefit in reading them for a Christian.

01:23:58.000 → 01:24:03.960
I am going to leave the question about the Two Kingdoms doctrine until next time, because that is a longer answer.

01:24:05.620 → 01:24:09.560
See if there’s a short one here I can answer before I call it for tonight.

01:24:11.380 → 01:24:12.980
Someone asked if I own white shirts.

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I do, but that’s not going to be a question and answer for tonight, but…

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I do legitimately think I probably only own one, though.

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Button down, white shirt.

01:24:24.900 → 01:24:26.360
I just usually don’t wear white shirts.

01:24:29.600 → 01:24:36.560
And I see someone has been discussing what creatine does for the body, so I can go ahead and just leave that to chat.

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What is your opinion on female cantors?

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So I think I will call that the final question for tonight.

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That is question 22.

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I think that women should not be standing up in front of the congregation and doing anything that we consider leading or teaching.

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And I would go so far as to include saying women should not be making the announcements, even though that’s not technically part of the service.

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All of those things should be reserved to men, because anything that gives the impression of being wielding of authority, or any position of authority or influence in the church, should be and is rightfully, exclusively reserved to men.

01:25:25.120 → 01:25:27.340
So, women should not be doing those things.

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Can you have women in your choir?

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Absolutely, because the choir is not leading in any sense, in any sort of sense of that word, right?

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The choir director should be a man.

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You should have women in your choir, particularly because we have four-part harmony in many of our older hymns, particularly Lutheran’s beautiful hymns, we should return to using those things.

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But no, women should never be in a position that could be construed as leadership.

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And particularly one of the problems is going to be that you can mislead children and others who are new in the faith if they see women doing something like that and think, oh, this is…

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women are allowed to lead, and they can…

01:26:04.450 → 01:26:04.940
no.

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It gives the wrong impression.

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It gives the impression of impropriety, and I think it is actually also improper in and of itself.

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So no, we should not have women cantors.

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For those who don’t know, the cantor is the one leading sort of the…

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the young part of worship.

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For those of you who don’t have that in your tradition.

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That was something that Bach actually did for part of his career.

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But I think that will be it for tonight.

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I am going to go have dinner before it gets too late, despite the fact that I’m drinking coffee at almost 9 o’clock my time.

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Thank you for those who submitted questions, and thank you for participating in the chat.

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If you have questions, you can always submit those via the forum, via the chat, on X, via Telegram.

01:26:53.400 → 01:26:59.760
The forum is preferred because it’s just easiest for me to get to them, notice them, and not lose them in the shuffle, as it were.

01:27:00.080 → 01:27:05.220
And sometimes X in other places just deletes things in my threads.

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I’ve literally seen it happen where I’ve had a question gone to copy it over, and it refreshed and was gone.

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Didn’t even say deleted, just disappeared.

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So we all know that the platforms play games.

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At any rate, I try to do this on Thursday.

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Usually winds up being Friday each week.

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Just sort of depends how my week goes.

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Usually go for an hour, hour and a half.

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Just sort of depends on the week.

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But always good to be able to answer your questions.

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Given that it’s Friday, I hope you all have a good weekend.

01:27:35.760 → 01:27:39.640
As discussed earlier in the stream, definitely go get some walking in.

01:27:39.640 → 01:27:40.760
Cardio is good for you.

01:27:41.060 → 01:27:44.000
Even if like me, you live in the south and it’s very warm during the day.

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Go a little later in the evening or very early in morning, particularly if you have dogs.

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It’s pretty hot out there.

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At any rate, I hope you have a good weekend.

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I will see you all next week.

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And of course, go to church on Sunday.

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And until I see you next Thursday or Friday, God bless.