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Topics Covered
- Genetic Predisposition to Disbelief?
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- Regarding the Theater and Cinema
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- Not only does Scripture tell us it is useless, Luther himself plainly and strongly condemned circumcision. Why has the lutheran church ignored him on this topic? It is satanic.
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- Do you believe America is doomed? Due to their ongoing actions against the world and especially Germany specifically in WW1/WW2. Israel has America totally under their control. The demographic collapse since after ww2 seems to indicate being under quite the curse from God.
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- What is your opinion on the Empty Vessel theory, that there are people on the earth that are only flesh with no soul
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- I am considering joining the US navy after college. I love my nation and I believe it would be a great way to set up my life. Would it be wrong for me to join the military knowing that I may be serving those who hate Christ?
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- I know genocide is biblical, what about Eugenics? The kind that involve involuntary neutering.
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- Favorite Whiskey/bourbon/Scotch?
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- Can you explain more about why beauty is a moral issue/ has a moral quality?
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- How can there be no dogs in heaven? Cats I can understand should not be allowed, but all the dogs must be there.
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- Since we do not choose what race or ethnicity we are born into and is completely out of our control, is it not unjust to hate others for their race and/or ethnicity
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- Earth, is it flat? Round? Genesis 1:6-8 Genesis 1:14-20
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- Corey, what of my forefathers who were freemasons? Are they in hell, and what do I tell the ones who are still alive about their lifestyle. Thanks.
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- What is your biggest critique of confessional calvinists (e.g. Presbyterians) and do you consider them brothers in Christ? Also, what is your take on the puritans?
- Does a validly adopted son get firstborn rights?
- Divorce is permitted in case of infidelity and abandonment,would it be also fair to say in cases of abuse and wickedness.
- could we get a deep dive into polygamy as it was mentioned on SC but never made
Transcript
WEBVTT
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It is Friday, the 20th of March, 2026.
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I am Corey J.
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Mahler, and this is At Any Cost.
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The slight delay there when it said beginning now was my having to do a sanity check on my end.
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I reconfigured some storage stuff, and I had to make sure it was actually recording the file so that I can post that later.
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At any rate, I don’t believe there is any housekeeping for this week, so I can get right into the question.
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I see that there are some questions in the chat.
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I’ve been noting those down as they come in.
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So as always, if I don’t notice your question in the chat, go ahead and post it on the forum or ask me elsewhere so I can make sure to answer that.
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The first question for this week is, do certain ethnicities have a genetic or epigenetic predisposition to disbelief or a rejection of God?
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If the answer is no, then what is the mechanism that explains why ethnic Jews have largely rejected God continually since their inception?
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If the answer is yes, how do we reconcile genetic predisposition with double predestination, or without resorting to, really?
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Am I in danger of becoming proud or arrogant toward the branches that were broken off in Romans 11 for believing that ethnic Jews face greater temptation to reject God in light of the false ethno-religion they’ve created?
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The short answer is that yes, there is a sort of genetic component to belief or unbelief.
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It is not so powerful that it is in itself determinative, but it is going to make it more difficult for some races and less difficult for some other races to believe, and it is going to make converting some races more difficult, as we of course see, with the Jews are a good example, but Europeans are a good example in the inverse.
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Europeans were the easiest to convert to Christianity in part for racial reasons, because we had not fallen as far with regard to false worship, we had not fallen into the same sort of evil kinds of demon worship that were rampant in, say, Africa, India, other places like that, certainly parts most of the new world.
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And with regard to the Jews, the big thing for them is, as scripture says all over the place, you are a stiff-necked people, they are a stubborn people, they don’t agree with God, they rebel against God constantly, they rebel against God at the foot of the mountain while God is physically present on the mountain, they make a golden calf.
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Even the Africans, the Hamites would not have done that, right?
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So, there’s very clearly a racial component when it comes to belief or unbelief.
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But with the Jews, it’s not just that, it’s also the fact that, as I mentioned last week, culture downstream from race, there’s an interconnection there, there’s a feedback loop.
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The entirety of Jewish culture post the New Testament era, right?
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So, after really the destruction of the temple, is when they really sort of double down on this, into Rabbinic Judaism and Talmudism, which the Talmud then formalized in its current form in the 500s, AD, not BC.
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In the process of doubling down into that, they create their entire culture as being contrary to Christ.
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They hate Christ.
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That has become essential to their identity as Jews.
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It’s why we said in Stone Choir, and why we have said elsewhere, that for Jews, in order to convert, it’s not the same as other peoples, because the entirety of their cultural and their racial identity has become that rejection of Christ.
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No one else has that as a core component of their culture.
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Now, could some other people over a course of centuries develop that?
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Sure, the Indians seem well on their way to doing that, with how they behave with any depiction or mention of Christ.
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But that requires them to essentially reject being a Jew, in order to convert.
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That’s one of the reasons it’s so difficult for them.
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You don’t have to reject being a Frenchman, or a Dutchman, or British, or German, in order to convert to Christianity, back when neo-pagans, pagans at that point, were actually a thing.
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Right, all you had to do was recognize that you had a portion of the truth, and now the fullness had come back and been re-revealed to you.
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And so, it wasn’t a fundamental rejection of who and what you are, it was simply a rejection of false beliefs that had crept in over time, and a return to the true faith.
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The Jews can’t do that so easily, because their entire culture, again, and their racial identity is bound up in that rejection of Christ.
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And that’s not double predestination, that’s just biological consequences of sin.
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There’s a spiritual component as well.
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We should never fully disconnect the spiritual, the soul, and the body, because, again, you’re a Gestalt, you’re not one or the other, you’re not a ghost piloting a meat mech, right, as the atheists like to joke.
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Although I guess for them, it’s not really a joke, it’s incoherent.
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But you are the totality, not any individual component.
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And so you are not just biologically, whatever race you are, you are spiritually that race as well.
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So there are both aspects to that.
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It will be more difficult for some people to convert than others.
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That doesn’t mean double predestination is true, because the biological consequences of longitudinal or generational sin are not equivalent to God condemning someone before creating him to be that thing.
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It’s not the libertarian sense of individuality and free will, which is sort of where the tension is here.
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There are those who want to look at every person as tabula rasa, right?
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They want you to be the blank slate.
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You just start off, you’re a person, you’re cast into the world, and then you become whatever you’re going to become on account of your own decisions and your own actions.
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And that’s just not true.
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You bring a lot of things to the table when you are born, because you’re not just born a human.
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You’re born, again, list any race you want.
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You’re born a German, you’re born an American, you’re born a Scotsman.
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And that brings things to the table that other races do not have in the same amounts or have in greater amounts, right?
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There are differences there.
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So the sins of our fathers do not damn us, but they can certainly make it more difficult for us to convert.
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Similarly to the sins of the fathers can so mentally impair you, cognitively compare you, where you can never produce your race in this case, not just you personally, but you personally as well.
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You can never produce a theologian, someone who could truly defend the Christian faith at a high level.
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Races that have fallen that far can be Christianized, but they can only remain Christian in so far as someone else is shepherding them.
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They are sheep, and if they don’t have a shepherd, they are going to go astray.
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So, it’s not a pride thing, it’s not, oh, look at me, I’m so great, and these other people are so terrible.
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It’s recognizing that God has built a system where there are real consequences for sin, and they do accumulate down through the years.
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We have them as well, I pointed it out before, right?
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Disease, the way that we age, the various maladies that are common to certain groups and not to others, right?
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There are groups that have autism at higher rates, there are groups that have coronary disease at higher rates.
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These things are also consequences of sin accumulating over time.
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Not all of these are going to affect you in the same way with regard to being able to convert to Christianity.
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So, it’s not a matter of arrogance, and you can have a certain degree of pride, and you should have a certain degree of pride in the accomplishments of your ancestors.
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That’s rightful, that’s honoring your father and your mother as you are commanded to do.
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So, it’s not the arrogance toward the branches that were broken off that’s being spoken of in Romans 11.
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That would be like saying, look at how great I am, I was chosen because I’m a great person, and the Jews are rejected because they’re an evil…
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No, I am elect because God decided to count me among the elect.
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I have benefits that have accrued to me due to the relative faithfulness, and in some cases, more recently, of course, the true faithfulness, and all the way back with Japheth as well, of my ancestors, I benefit from those things.
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So, it’s right to recognize that you have those benefits, and you’re just recognizing the way God built the system, designed the system, you’re not being impermissibly arrogant.
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That’s not what’s in view there.
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So, you know, don’t brag, oh, look at me, I’m so great.
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I’m great, and God chose me because I’m great.
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That’s what’s in view there, don’t do that.
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Because, of course, it’s all grace, it’s all faith.
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You didn’t have anything to do with saving yourself.
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But there is a very real component there with regard to biology and your spirituality, your soul, in this case, not in the modern sense of that term.
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That’s very real, and it influences how likely you are going to be to convert.
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Is there a tension here that we can’t resolve?
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Of course.
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We can’t ever, in this life, fully resolve the tension of how exactly election works.
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All we can do is look at it in scripture, accept that it is true, accept that God has put it in His Word, that’s how He operates, and then we live with it.
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God also works through means, though, and so we should continue to read His Word, study His Word, spread His Word, partake of the sacraments, because God works through means.
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If you believe that there’s a bit of a tension there, that’s fine.
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There’s going to be some tension in life with regard to some of these things.
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It doesn’t have to be resolved to the satisfaction of human reason.
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If God said it, it’s true, that is sufficient for Christians.
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The second question for tonight is perhaps a little bit Lutheran-specific, but it has applicability to everyone.
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It’s Lutheran-specific because of some lectures turned into, I believe they were lectures first, and then turned into essays from CFW Valter, the founder of the LCMS.
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He gave two lectures, a series of four actually, two lectures against the theater, and then two lectures against…
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Now I can’t remember what the…
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Dancing, that was it.
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Two lectures against dancing, two lectures against the theater, for a series of four lectures.
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I don’t 100% agree with him, but I’ll read the question first, so we can see where we’re going with this.
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What is the place, if any, in a Christian society, this site of eternity for the theater, cinema, opera, etc.?
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Apart from the subversive elements in places like Hollywood and Broadway, can the performing arts be of any edifying use?
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If there is a proper use of these arts, what is it and how should we use them?
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So I believe that they do have a great deal of utility, and I’m not just biased because I happen to like opera and plays and things like that.
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There were some very good companies in LA.
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I had, I guess, full disclosure, I had season tickets to the LA opera for years, and I didn’t go to all of the operas because obviously it’s LA, it’s the LA opera.
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Some of them are going to be, well, many of them I didn’t go to because they were terrible, because they were doing the DEI and nonsense, but some of them I just didn’t go to because they were not something that really a Christian should be attending.
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And that’s true with regard to many plays, not as many with regard to operas, but certainly many plays, particularly the modern ones, and particularly movies, right?
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When we start expanding out into the totality of the visual arts.
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I do think there’s a place for it in society because I think that it is instructive, and I think it’s part of human culture.
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It’s been part of our culture for millennia at this point.
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I don’t think that all of it is wicked.
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I see someone mentioned, saw Don Giovanni in LA.
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That was a good production.
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Depending which one you saw, one was very good.
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There was one that was also good, but not quite as good.
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So, with regard to the theater, I think we should still have it in a Christian society.
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But we have to have it with some caveats, right?
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There are some problems that we need to avoid.
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You wind up with some unportantness, some things that are inappropriate, particularly when you’re mixing young unmarried women and men, which happens with regard to the theater and ballet and things like that.
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That’s something for which society has to account.
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Part of that will necessarily be changing how we structure how these things are done.
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I don’t think it’s good to have individuals where that’s the entirety of their career.
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Like, you devote your life to this.
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I think that we’re going to have to accept that, particularly for women, you know, you can have a certain number of years and a certain amount of time you devote to this.
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But for a woman, being a wife and a mother is really what she’s supposed to do.
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Her efforts, her energy, her time should be focused on that.
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Necessarily, that’s going to change how we balance these things with regard to the theater.
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At some point, I think I would actually like to go through and look at Luther, not Luther, Vaulter’s essays and perhaps go through them more thoroughly, sort of point by point.
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So, I’ll make a note for myself to do that.
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Going to close my window, the dog is barking.
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But I do not think that these things are simply negative.
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I think that they have utility in society.
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I think that they are particularly good at instructing with regard to morals in many cases.
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Now, does that mean that we should maintain all of them, that we should keep all of them, that we should just have no sort of control over these things?
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No.
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I have, for a very long time, thought that one of the most important aspects of any proper government is control over things like this.
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A Christian government, a Christian prince, should determine what is permissible and what is not permissible in his territories.
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He should not just permit anything goes in the theater, right?
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And there is also an aspect of it.
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Some men are going to get more out of the theater than others.
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And some men are going to be endangered by certain things in the theater more than others.
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I can think of a good example, and I’m not necessarily making a recommendation to go out and find a production of this and see it.
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There was a production of a picture of Dorian Gray, not obviously the book, but a staged version of it, a play, when I was living in LA.
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And obviously, if you know anything about the book and anything about Oscar Wilde, it deals with some themes that are not Christian, but can have a Christian tenor depending on how they’re presented.
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And the reason I bring it up is that Oscar Wilde clearly didn’t intend this, and I highly doubt the playwright did.
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I don’t know that much about him.
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But it was probably the single most compelling and strongest condemnation of homosexuality I have ever seen in my life.
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Which, if you’ve read the novel alone, you probably wouldn’t necessarily pull that out.
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It’s there as well as an undercurrent.
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Not necessarily intended by the author, but sometimes authorial intent is not what actually tends to come through.
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Sometimes the author manages to say something that he didn’t necessarily intend, right?
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You can think of Dune and Herbert trying to say Paul is the villain, right?
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No one comes away thinking Paul is the villain.
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He’s the hero of the story, no matter what Frank Herbert tried to do.
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So that’s an example where I think for a certain type of man, you can go and see that and see it as a moral play condemning a sort of wickedness in Christian terms.
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And I think that has value.
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I would agree with the person in the chat who said that the underlying morality was Christian.
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He was in a Christian society, and so he was inculcated, he was steeped in that, even if he himself rejected it in some ways.
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It came through in his writing, because you benefit from the, or suffer from, the culture around you, because you absorb it to some degree.
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There is a feedback loop with you and your culture as well.
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So, I think it is something that we need to be careful about as Christians, and we should not have the degree of license we’ve granted to the art set these days.
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But I think it still has a place in society.
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And like I said, I would like to go through those essays more closely and maybe go point by point right.
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Not a refutation, but perhaps sort of a clarification.
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In some cases, yes, I’m going to disagree bluntly with Valter because he sort of hated dancing and the theater, and I think both are fine.
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Not all dancing, obviously.
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There are some kinds of dancing that Christians should just not do.
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Don’t participate in that.
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But the waltz, ballroom dancing, those things, I don’t have any objection to them.
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I think they are a part of our culture, and I think they’re a necessary part of our culture.
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I think they should be maintained.
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And with the right sort of structure in society, there’s nothing wrong with those.
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If they’re used as an avenue for licentiousness, that’s a problem.
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But if you have a more structured, proper understanding of an interaction of the sexes, dances in the theater are perfectly fine.
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And in fact, I do think they’re also good.
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And I should mention explicitly one of the things that I have in the back of my mind the whole time I’ve been saying this.
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Some of the ancient Greek plays are great in terms of the morality they teach.
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So I don’t agree with Walter when he says that it is anti-Christian virtues, in some cases, or pagan virtues that are praised, and to the detriment of Christian, I think you can praise both at the same time.
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You don’t have to denigrate the Christian virtues in order to esteem what some would call pagan virtues, and I don’t think they’re pagan virtues, because being strong and capable and knowing who you are and going through life with courage, things like that, those are themes in many of the Greek plays.
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I think those are consonant with Christian morality as well.
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So the short answer is yes, it has a place.
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The longer answer is obviously a lot longer.
00:20:11.232 → 00:20:14.492
The third question is about circumcision.
00:20:14.492 → 00:20:17.292
Not only does scripture tell us it is useless, correct?
00:20:17.292 → 00:20:21.592
Luther himself plainly and strongly condemned circumcision.
00:20:21.592 → 00:20:24.712
Why is the Lutheran Church ignored him on this topic?
00:20:26.532 → 00:20:48.712
I don’t necessarily know that it’s the Lutheran Church that ignored him on this topic, because certainly those who came from a Lutheran background, so Germans, Scandinavians, and some others, were by and large not circumcised until relatively recently, I think it’s about the 1950s, that really became popular.
00:20:48.712 → 00:20:52.132
I may be off by a little bit, but I think it was right around then.
00:20:53.472 → 00:21:10.252
It was pushed by both Jews and just some crazies over in non-denominational territory, arguing that it was a measure against masturbation, that it would decrease the incidence of that.
00:21:10.252 → 00:21:21.372
These were also the men who were advocating for eating very high-fiber food and having frequent enemas, though, so I’m not sure I would particularly take their advice on anything.
00:21:21.372 → 00:21:27.292
But they also tried to argue that it was for cleanliness, and that was always just a post-Holk rationalization.
00:21:27.292 → 00:21:34.292
That was them trying to say, well, we want to achieve this end, we want to do this thing, and so we have to justify it.
00:21:34.292 → 00:21:36.732
Oh, we’ll say it’s about cleanliness.
00:21:36.732 → 00:21:40.752
You know, the same thing could be said with regard to your fingers, right?
00:21:40.752 → 00:21:44.792
If you don’t have any fingers, it’s a lot easier to keep them clean.
00:21:44.792 → 00:21:49.732
You don’t remove parts of your body because you have to wash them.
00:21:49.732 → 00:21:58.692
That argument is so completely ridiculous and evil that it’s quite frankly insane that anyone ever parrots it.
00:21:58.692 → 00:22:01.732
But people repeat it without thinking about it, right?
00:22:01.732 → 00:22:08.492
You know, if you shave all the hair off your body, if you’re completely bald, you never have to wash your hair.
00:22:08.492 → 00:22:12.392
Yes, true, but do we want everyone to be bald?
00:22:12.392 → 00:22:13.212
Right?
00:22:13.212 → 00:22:20.732
You know, I say that as someone who’s mostly bald, but I have a beard and other hair, I’m not going to shave all of it off because then I wouldn’t have to shampoo it ever.
00:22:20.732 → 00:22:21.972
That’s a dumb argument.
00:22:22.112 → 00:22:25.872
And so, no, Christians should absolutely oppose circumcision.
00:22:25.872 → 00:22:34.692
It is Judaizing, it is wicked, and it is worth saying, of course, that the modern version is not the ancient version.
00:22:34.692 → 00:22:35.792
Very different practices.
00:22:35.792 → 00:22:37.512
You can look that up and they have diagrams.
00:22:37.512 → 00:22:43.212
I’m not going to show the diagrams on the stream, but there are significant differences.
00:22:43.212 → 00:22:58.272
It was not the total removal of the foreskin, it was basically a cut, which is why when you see the Israelites, the second generation, after the wandering in the desert, are circumcised, and then recover quickly and go fight a battle.
00:22:58.272 → 00:23:07.652
I think all of the men listening recognize that if someone removed your whole foreskin, you would probably not recover quickly and go fight a battle.
00:23:07.652 → 00:23:11.252
I think you would want to take a little bit longer to heal.
00:23:11.252 → 00:23:14.952
And so it’s very clearly a different practice.
00:23:14.952 → 00:23:16.512
The modern one is just evil.
00:23:16.992 → 00:23:23.172
It is meant as a form of basically torture and judaizing, and it should absolutely be opposed by Christians.
00:23:26.652 → 00:23:37.652
The fourth question is back to a topic that we all know and love, World War II, and consequences of it basically in this case.
00:23:37.652 → 00:23:48.732
Do you believe America is doomed due to their, Americans, ongoing actions against the world, and especially Germany, specifically in World War I and World War II?
00:23:48.732 → 00:23:51.772
Israel has America totally under their control.
00:23:51.772 → 00:23:58.252
The demographic collapse since after World War II seems to indicate being under a curse from God.
00:23:59.652 → 00:24:03.752
I will not disagree with regard to us being under a curse from God.
00:24:03.752 → 00:24:07.132
I think that is very true that we are.
00:24:07.132 → 00:24:10.512
Does that mean that we cannot repent?
00:24:10.512 → 00:24:14.752
I don’t think so, because I don’t think we are so far gone that we can’t repent.
00:24:14.752 → 00:24:18.752
So the answer to are we doomed is no, I don’t think that we are doomed.
00:24:21.232 → 00:24:27.372
But some sins bring their own punishment with them, right?
00:24:27.372 → 00:24:29.332
You go back to the Oscar Wilde example, right?
00:24:29.332 → 00:24:32.872
Homosexuality brings some of the punishment with it.
00:24:32.872 → 00:24:36.852
Abortion is one of the greatest sins of America, in many other nations at this point.
00:24:36.852 → 00:24:42.032
I’m not just singling out Americans, but I’m American, so I’m answering in that context, in the context of the question.
00:24:43.672 → 00:24:53.212
Abortion brings part of the punishment with it, because part of the punishment is that you don’t have a next generation, because you have murdered them.
00:24:53.212 → 00:25:17.532
That is one of the reasons that we are under God’s curse, because we permit abortion is still rampant in this country, and I was actually drafting an article, I need to finish that one, about one of the ways in which we have just sort of normalized abortion, and very few people think about it, which is to say hormonal birth control is an abortifacient.
00:25:17.532 → 00:25:18.992
That’s another thing.
00:25:18.992 → 00:25:33.092
So, women who have been on hormonal birth control, if they have engaged in sexual intercourse while on it, which if you’re on it, you’re probably sexually active, or else there’s no real reason to be on it, right?
00:25:33.092 → 00:25:37.592
I know there’s the medical justification, supposedly, of regulating your cycle.
00:25:37.592 → 00:25:41.932
That’s nonsense made up by evil doctors who want to ruin your life.
00:25:41.932 → 00:25:50.152
So, those women need to repent, and the men who have been with them need to repent, because that is a great wickedness.
00:25:50.152 → 00:25:59.672
It is at least accepting the possibility of murder, which is very close to being morally tantamount to committing murder.
00:25:59.672 → 00:26:05.912
So, not in the terms of the punishment and things like that, but it’s certainly something of which we need to repent as a nation.
00:26:05.912 → 00:26:08.272
And so, are we cursed with regard to that?
00:26:08.272 → 00:26:10.352
I think absolutely yes.
00:26:10.352 → 00:26:18.952
But, like I said, I don’t believe that it is to such a degree that we cannot repent.
00:26:18.952 → 00:26:21.972
And I want to bring up a relevant verse here.
00:26:21.972 → 00:26:27.432
I want to switch over to a different window in Logos, so it’s not taking up the whole screen here.
00:26:29.952 → 00:26:37.032
So, the one that comes to mind for me, at least immediately, with regard to questions like this, is from Joel 2.
00:26:37.032 → 00:26:54.672
Even now says the Lord your God, return to me with all your heart, with fasting and with weeping and with mourning, and rend your hearts and not your clothing, and return to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and compassionate, patient and very beneficent, and repenting concerning evils.
00:26:54.672 → 00:27:02.372
Who knows whether he will turn and repent and leave a blessing behind him, a sacrifice and a libation for the Lord your God?
00:27:02.372 → 00:27:18.232
Trumpet with a trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, proclaim a service, gather the people, sanctify an assembly, welcome the aged, gather the infant sucking the breast, let the bridegroom come from his bedroom, and the bride from her chamber.
00:27:18.232 → 00:27:33.872
Between the fountain and the altar, the priests who minister to the Lord shall weep and say, spare your people, O Lord, and do not subject your inheritance to the reproach of being ruled over by nations, lest they say among the nations, where is their God?
00:27:35.812 → 00:27:41.012
The first point I’d like to make is, do remember the Old Testament is for Christians.
00:27:41.012 → 00:27:45.012
It’s not a Jewish book, it’s not for the Jews, it’s for Christians.
00:27:45.012 → 00:27:53.092
And so when you read things like this, read them as God speaking to you, speaking to your nation, telling you what he is going to do with your people.
00:27:53.872 → 00:28:02.932
And so, I guess the great challenge here is that we don’t have Christian rulers.
00:28:02.932 → 00:28:27.452
We don’t have true Christians really in any of the positions of power in our nation, which of course makes it very hard to call a national assembly and sanction a national day of fasting and repentance and prayer and mourning, which is what we should do with regard to a number of our sins as a nation, not least of all abortion and unjust wars, things like that.
00:28:29.132 → 00:28:36.172
But we can do this with regard to the Christians who have ears to hear, right?
00:28:36.172 → 00:28:44.852
I think that we should definitely have a period of national fasting, mourning, and repentance annually.
00:28:44.852 → 00:29:04.972
I think that’s just good practice, generally speaking, but specifically in terms of these national sins of which we have not repented as a people, the best we can do as Christians is to do this ourselves until we have rulers who can do it at a national level in an official capacity.
00:29:04.972 → 00:29:09.592
And so there are obvious times during the year where this can be done.
00:29:09.592 → 00:29:15.032
I think the period around All Saints, All Souls is sort of the Halloween.
00:29:15.032 → 00:29:18.272
I think that’s sort of the natural period for this.
00:29:18.272 → 00:29:26.272
That’s something that I’ve recommended in the past, and certainly I will sort of tune that and recommend it again this year.
00:29:26.272 → 00:29:30.072
So I don’t think we’re doomed, but I don’t think we’re in good shape.
00:29:30.072 → 00:29:34.732
And I think that we definitely need to repent.
00:29:34.732 → 00:29:38.532
We need to turn back to God, and I think God is true to his word.
00:29:38.532 → 00:29:41.952
If we do that, I believe he will still bless us.
00:29:42.632 → 00:29:46.172
I don’t think we’re so far gone that we can’t repent.
00:29:46.172 → 00:29:49.432
But it doesn’t mean that we should test the limits.
00:29:49.432 → 00:29:53.132
The goal should never be to find the red line.
00:29:53.132 → 00:29:55.212
We need to repent of our national sins.
00:29:55.212 → 00:30:05.372
We need to turn back to God, and we certainly need to stop committing those sins and change the laws so that some of these things are no longer permitted in our lands, right?
00:30:05.372 → 00:30:17.332
It’s not enough to be a Christian and not engage in these sins because if we do absolutely nothing, to ban these things from happening in our lands.
00:30:17.332 → 00:30:19.172
God is very clear.
00:30:19.172 → 00:30:21.952
That kind of blood pollutes the land.
00:30:21.952 → 00:30:29.972
Look at all of the rules for sanctification, for sacrifices, for dealing with these things in the Old Testament.
00:30:29.972 → 00:30:36.712
Even a homicide that happens in the countryside, where the perpetrator is unknown, there’s a provision for that, right?
00:30:36.712 → 00:30:38.472
God cares deeply about these things.
00:30:39.692 → 00:30:41.652
We should care about them as well.
00:30:41.652 → 00:31:00.692
And again, as Christians, the best we can do in the interim, while we do not have Christian rulers, is get as many of our Christian brothers to participate in what is sort of a partial national repentance, the best that we can do under the circumstances.
00:31:05.012 → 00:31:07.412
The fifth question is about NPCs.
00:31:09.012 → 00:31:15.732
What is your opinion on the empty vessel theory, that there are people on the earth that are only flesh with no soul?
00:31:15.732 → 00:31:18.732
I do not subscribe to it.
00:31:18.732 → 00:31:24.552
And I don’t like to go too far down that road because I think it leads into dangerous territory.
00:31:26.552 → 00:31:37.032
But sort of the fundamental recognition, realization there is that there are different levels of sort of awareness for human beings, right?
00:31:37.092 → 00:31:48.632
Which is really just recognizing the difference in spirituality, again, in the proper sense, not the novel modern sense, across people groups.
00:31:48.632 → 00:31:50.452
And part of it’s just intelligence, right?
00:31:50.452 → 00:31:53.512
We’re talking about, can a person understand a hypothetical?
00:31:53.512 → 00:31:55.912
Can a person plan for the future?
00:31:55.912 → 00:32:08.092
Does a person recognize that he will still be around a year from today, and that’s him a year from today, and so he should not do things that will harm that person because he is that person, right?
00:32:09.952 → 00:32:20.032
I don’t think, just because you have these different levels of awareness and intelligence, and we could pick on all sorts of other attributes, right?
00:32:20.032 → 00:32:33.512
Recognition of beauty, recognition of the good and the true, recognition of God’s hand in creation, all of these things relate to man and also with regard to the Imago Dei.
00:32:33.512 → 00:32:46.712
And there was a thread that I did with a hostile pastor at one point on X talking about the Imago Dei and its presence and the way in which it is present across people groups, right?
00:32:46.712 → 00:32:50.992
Because the classical understanding of the Imago Dei is twofold.
00:32:50.992 → 00:32:52.692
There are two senses.
00:32:52.712 → 00:32:56.072
One is you’re a human being, you’re made in the image of God, period.
00:32:56.932 → 00:33:10.572
The other, and this is all through the church fathers and theologians and others, is that you are in the image of God with regard to the attributes that God gave us that sets us apart from the rest of creation.
00:33:10.572 → 00:33:23.472
So part of that, of course, is going to be original righteousness, which is lost in the fall and then restored juridically in baptism and then actually in the general resurrection.
00:33:24.692 → 00:33:28.692
But there are also other aspects and attributes I mentioned as well.
00:33:28.692 → 00:33:48.152
Intelligence, recognition of the beautiful, recognition of the good, recognition of the true, recognition of God’s control and God’s goodness with regard to his creation and his organization of things, trusting in God, believing that God will work all things out for the good, having hope with regard to God.
00:33:48.152 → 00:33:50.332
All of these different things are also part of that.
00:33:50.952 → 00:33:56.592
And, yes, they vary across not just individual men but across groups of men.
00:33:56.592 → 00:34:03.432
But I don’t think it rises to the level where we can say that any particular person doesn’t have a soul.
00:34:03.432 → 00:34:07.352
I just don’t think that we can go that far.
00:34:07.352 → 00:34:10.992
This isn’t good news for many men, right?
00:34:10.992 → 00:34:21.632
Because if you think about the people groups that have, say, an IQ of 55 and completely reject Christ, is it good they have a soul in their case?
00:34:21.632 → 00:34:23.272
For them, that’s terrible news, right?
00:34:23.272 → 00:34:26.292
You can think of what Christ says about Judas.
00:34:26.292 → 00:34:29.552
It would be better for that one if he had not been born.
00:34:29.552 → 00:34:37.772
So I think the empty vessel or the NPC theory would be good news if it were true for many who are now on the earth.
00:34:37.772 → 00:34:39.452
But I don’t find it compelling in that way.
00:34:39.452 → 00:34:40.232
I don’t think it’s true.
00:34:44.492 → 00:34:47.212
The sixth question.
00:34:47.212 → 00:34:49.112
I am considering joining the US.
00:34:49.112 → 00:34:50.252
Navy after college.
00:34:50.252 → 00:34:54.492
I love my nation, and I believe it would be a great way to set up my life.
00:34:54.492 → 00:34:59.612
Would it be wrong for me to join the military knowing that I may be serving those who hate Christ?
00:35:00.792 → 00:35:08.112
This question came in before the Iran War, so I think maybe there may be some slight differences in how this individual views things now.
00:35:08.512 → 00:35:11.172
Maybe not, I don’t know.
00:35:11.172 → 00:35:13.692
Is it per se sin to join the military?
00:35:13.692 → 00:35:14.952
No.
00:35:14.952 → 00:35:18.612
Is it a matter of wisdom to join the military?
00:35:18.612 → 00:35:19.432
Yes.
00:35:19.432 → 00:35:23.312
At the current time, is it wise?
00:35:23.312 → 00:35:34.552
I would have to say probably not, because your odds of being sent into a foreign theater to fight on behalf of the Jews are certainly non-zero.
00:35:34.552 → 00:35:39.492
That’s been the case for decades, of course, but they’re pretty high right now.
00:35:39.492 → 00:35:44.832
They’re discussing landing ground troops in Iran, which would be a disaster.
00:35:44.832 → 00:36:02.992
But if you can join the military in a capacity that does not see you being landed in a foreign country, armed to fight foreign peoples, that’s probably the way to go.
00:36:02.992 → 00:36:05.212
I don’t think it’s bad to have our guys in the military.
00:36:05.792 → 00:36:11.412
And it’s even good to have our guys as special forces and things like that, and just rank and file soldiers.
00:36:11.412 → 00:36:21.252
But I can’t, in good conscience, recommend that any of our guys join these days, because the odds of dying for the Jews are too high.
00:36:21.252 → 00:36:25.892
And that’s a loss of one of our guys.
00:36:25.892 → 00:36:27.432
That’s a bad thing.
00:36:27.432 → 00:36:33.212
And it’s a loss in pursuit of interests that are contrary to our own.
00:36:34.492 → 00:36:38.412
So, it’s going to depend on what you’re going to do, right?
00:36:38.412 → 00:36:47.312
If you’re going to go into the Navy and be an IT guy in the Navy, okay, fine, that’s a fundamentally different thing from being a Navy SEAL, right?
00:36:47.312 → 00:36:52.272
Your risk profile is very different between those two career paths.
00:36:52.272 → 00:36:55.592
So, it’s a matter of wisdom.
00:36:55.592 → 00:37:09.412
If you feel so personally compelled by it, say you come from a family that has been Navy for, you know, eight generations, nine generations, whatever it happens to be, then certainly I understand.
00:37:10.632 → 00:37:12.072
Apply your wisdom.
00:37:12.072 → 00:37:24.732
Don’t put yourself in a position where you are likely to have your military career and what is required of you at odds with your Christian faith.
00:37:26.732 → 00:37:30.312
So, like I said, it’s a matter of wisdom and a matter of conscience.
00:37:30.892 → 00:37:35.892
I personally would not, but that doesn’t mean that no one should.
00:37:35.892 → 00:37:37.572
It doesn’t mean it’s sin to do it.
00:37:37.572 → 00:37:41.112
It’s not sin, but it may be unwise.
00:37:42.232 → 00:37:51.412
So, if there aren’t compelling reasons, I wouldn’t join up where there is a high likelihood of being sent into combat at this point.
00:37:51.412 → 00:37:53.952
That’s sort of the baseline recommendation.
00:37:53.952 → 00:37:57.652
From there, you apply the wisdom God gave you and your conscience.
00:37:57.652 → 00:37:59.912
Make sure you do not violate your conscience.
00:38:00.032 → 00:38:01.992
God gave it to you for a reason.
00:38:04.392 → 00:38:07.992
The next question, the seventh question.
00:38:07.992 → 00:38:11.052
I know genocide is biblical.
00:38:11.052 → 00:38:17.072
What about eugenics, the kind that involve involuntary neutering?
00:38:17.072 → 00:38:23.092
I’ve actually commented on this one in an archival episode of this show.
00:38:23.092 → 00:38:28.552
The audio quality is not particularly great, because I happened to have a relatively bad cold at the time.
00:38:28.552 → 00:38:33.832
And my sinuses were completely clogged, so I do not sound very good in that episode.
00:38:33.832 → 00:38:38.752
I’ve been tempted to re-record it just for the sake of sound quality, but it’s there.
00:38:38.752 → 00:38:43.812
And I’ve also commented on it a number of times on X and elsewhere.
00:38:43.812 → 00:38:45.652
I’ve written about it a little bit.
00:38:45.652 → 00:38:47.952
Eugenics is permissible.
00:38:47.952 → 00:38:54.972
The distinction, though, before anyone gets out the pitchforks and gets really angry at me, they’ll do that anyway.
00:38:54.972 → 00:39:02.072
There’s active eugenics, and there’s passive eugenics is the way that I like to divide them up.
00:39:02.072 → 00:39:04.172
Active eugenics is euthanasia.
00:39:04.172 → 00:39:06.132
That’s morally impermissible.
00:39:06.132 → 00:39:10.152
You are not allowed to just kill people because they’re inconvenient.
00:39:10.152 → 00:39:18.732
They have to have done something that rises to the level where it is morally warranted to exercise the death penalty.
00:39:18.732 → 00:39:21.052
Sterilization is a fundamentally different thing.
00:39:21.052 → 00:39:25.692
I do not think the Supreme Court was wrong when they said that three generations of…
00:39:25.932 → 00:39:28.752
I can’t remember if they said idiots or retards is enough.
00:39:28.752 → 00:39:30.752
That was the Supreme Court opinion.
00:39:30.752 → 00:39:31.872
I don’t think that’s wrong.
00:39:31.872 → 00:39:35.092
I think that is morally permissible to do.
00:39:36.252 → 00:39:58.692
That comes along with the fact that those who are members of our society, those who are born into our society, our own people, regardless of their condition, so even if we have someone who was born horribly disfigured, mentally impaired, just the worst absolute lot in life, we are responsible to care for that person.
00:39:58.692 → 00:40:02.432
So that’s part of the reason that we have to undertake these sorts of things, right?
00:40:02.432 → 00:40:07.792
If you wind up with an entire society of people like that, you can’t care for yourself anymore.
00:40:07.792 → 00:40:11.332
You wind up like the worst parts of India or Africa.
00:40:11.332 → 00:40:12.392
We want to avoid that.
00:40:13.072 → 00:40:15.052
Eugenics is part of that.
00:40:15.052 → 00:40:24.852
And one of the warrants, the lines of argument I’ve used for this, is that God makes man steward of creation.
00:40:24.852 → 00:40:30.692
And so, God doesn’t say you’re the steward of this part of creation.
00:40:30.692 → 00:40:34.712
He doesn’t say you’re the steward of all of, except this part.
00:40:34.712 → 00:40:40.252
No, he says that we’re the stewards of creation, and we’re part of creation.
00:40:40.252 → 00:40:41.392
Man is part of creation.
00:40:42.152 → 00:40:49.252
Part of stewarding any population is attempting to ensure the population has sound genetics.
00:40:49.252 → 00:40:56.072
Anyone who is a farmer or a dog breeder, whatever it happens to be, recognizes this truth.
00:40:56.072 → 00:41:01.932
We like to try to draw this artificial distinction when we come to human beings, but we’re mammals.
00:41:01.932 → 00:41:03.452
The same as our dogs.
00:41:03.452 → 00:41:05.112
The same as our cats.
00:41:06.332 → 00:41:10.472
We are not exempt from the harsh reality of biology.
00:41:11.532 → 00:41:18.552
And if we do not pursue these sorts of policies, the odds are that things will turn out horribly, right?
00:41:18.552 → 00:41:25.932
And another part of this that I point out for those who will object to some of the things I’ve said, we already practice eugenics.
00:41:25.932 → 00:41:30.612
In fact, we practice it pretty pervasively.
00:41:30.612 → 00:41:33.032
We’ve done it more in the past than today.
00:41:33.032 → 00:41:37.652
But one example, you’re not legally allowed to marry your sister.
00:41:37.652 → 00:41:38.912
That’s a eugenic policy.
00:41:40.332 → 00:41:41.252
No one objects to that.
00:41:41.252 → 00:41:43.412
No sane person objects to that.
00:41:43.412 → 00:41:50.112
Most places, you are not morally or legally allowed to marry your first cousin.
00:41:50.112 → 00:41:52.812
That’s a eugenic policy.
00:41:52.812 → 00:42:00.192
In some places, you are not morally, you are not legally allowed to marry if you have certain conditions.
00:42:00.192 → 00:42:04.892
All of these are eugenic policies that we already pursue.
00:42:04.892 → 00:42:09.212
Sterilizing certain individuals is just part of that.
00:42:09.212 → 00:42:12.472
It’s on the passive side, because you are not euthanizing someone.
00:42:12.472 → 00:42:19.052
You are just ensuring that you do not pass on these problems to future generations and say, you deal with it.
00:42:19.052 → 00:42:20.452
Don’t kick the can down the road.
00:42:20.452 → 00:42:22.492
That’s morally impermissible.
00:42:22.492 → 00:42:27.552
Burdening your children with a problem that you can solve is never the solution.
00:42:27.552 → 00:42:32.392
And so, with regard to certain conditions, I don’t think it’s morally impermissible.
00:42:32.392 → 00:42:34.112
I think it is a policy that we shouldn’t act.
00:42:34.212 → 00:42:45.412
So, members of society who have an IQ below a certain point, whatever the cutoff is, 75, 80, 85, whatever it happens to be, sterilization, I think, is a good option there.
00:42:45.412 → 00:42:46.872
We still care for them.
00:42:46.872 → 00:42:48.372
We provide for them.
00:42:48.372 → 00:42:58.452
We give them a good life, but we don’t permit that burden to continue on indefinitely for each subsequent generation.
00:42:58.452 → 00:43:11.492
That would be foolish, and I also would say that it is morally impermissible, because again, you’re burdening those future generations with a problem you could have solved, in part because, quite frankly, I think cowardice.
00:43:11.492 → 00:43:14.732
So, is eugenics morally permissible?
00:43:14.732 → 00:43:22.552
Yes, as long as you understand it as the passive policies, the passive means, and not the active ones that are being pursued.
00:43:22.552 → 00:43:28.932
Christians should absolutely be against euthanasia, doctor-assisted suicide, whatever it is.
00:43:28.932 → 00:43:30.452
That’s all morally impermissible.
00:43:31.792 → 00:43:39.792
The only sort of carve-out there is, there are the rare cases where burn victims are the usual example.
00:43:39.792 → 00:43:48.192
We know that if we keep upping the dose of painkillers, eventually we will cross a line, and the person will overdose and die.
00:43:48.192 → 00:43:51.252
Is that physician-assisted suicide?
00:43:51.252 → 00:43:55.912
Kind of, but I think it’s morally permissible, because the goal is not to kill the person.
00:43:56.652 → 00:44:01.952
The goal is to address a problem that is ultimately insoluble, right?
00:44:01.952 → 00:44:08.592
To get rid of as much of the pain as we can for someone who has horrible burns or something.
00:44:08.592 → 00:44:10.652
There’s only so much you can do.
00:44:10.652 → 00:44:14.552
I don’t think that that is morally impermissible, because again, the intent does matter there.
00:44:14.552 → 00:44:18.552
You’re not trying to kill the person, you’re trying to alleviate pain.
00:44:18.552 → 00:44:25.192
You just don’t have the tools to do it without risking killing the person in the process, which is always a risk with surgery, right?
00:44:25.772 → 00:44:30.212
It’s also a risk with pain management, particularly in those severe cases.
00:44:35.590 → 00:44:40.230
The next question, slightly lighter topic.
00:44:40.230 → 00:44:46.690
The eighth question, what is your favorite whiskey, bourbon, or scotch?
00:44:46.690 → 00:44:53.530
That is a broad question, and it’s really going to depend on what I am doing with it.
00:44:53.530 → 00:44:55.390
And yes, everyone’s thinking, well, you drink it, right?
00:44:55.390 → 00:44:59.650
Well, it depends if you’re mixing it with what you’re pairing it.
00:44:59.650 → 00:45:01.890
I like Isla’s, usually for scotch.
00:45:01.890 → 00:45:06.910
I like really heavily peated stuff, Lefroy, Yucadal, things like that.
00:45:06.910 → 00:45:14.870
For bourbons, I usually drink rye because my drink of choice is usually a Manhattan, not an old fashioned.
00:45:14.870 → 00:45:18.750
So, Woe likes the old fashioned, I like the Manhattan.
00:45:18.750 → 00:45:20.970
So I usually go with the rye.
00:45:20.970 → 00:45:22.710
There are a number of good rye whiskies.
00:45:22.710 → 00:45:25.030
It sort of just depends on how you’re pairing it.
00:45:25.030 → 00:45:30.350
Some vermouths go well with better, go better with certain whiskies than others.
00:45:31.250 → 00:45:34.170
That’s actually a good point worth making here as well.
00:45:34.170 → 00:45:43.050
For those who aren’t familiar with cocktails, vermouth is very wild in terms of price range.
00:45:43.050 → 00:45:48.770
The most expensive one may not be the best option for what you’re doing.
00:45:48.770 → 00:45:54.290
Sometimes the really cheap ones pair really well with pretty good whiskey.
00:45:54.290 → 00:45:55.070
It just depends.
00:45:55.070 → 00:45:56.510
It’s a flavor profile thing.
00:45:56.510 → 00:46:02.750
It’s how the liquors interact, and it’s going to be partly a matter of taste.
00:46:02.750 → 00:46:05.570
You’re just going to have to figure out which ones pair well.
00:46:05.570 → 00:46:12.750
So if you’re a Manhattan drinker, you probably have a preference for, I like this rye with this vermouth, I like that vermouth with this rye.
00:46:12.750 → 00:46:14.250
It’s not a matter of price.
00:46:14.250 → 00:46:18.210
This is not one of those places where you pay more, it’s better.
00:46:18.210 → 00:46:24.170
This is one of those places where it’s better because it’s better in this specific case.
00:46:24.170 → 00:46:27.790
But I guess that’s sort of the general answer to that question.
00:46:27.830 → 00:46:29.590
There are actually a number of distilleries around here.
00:46:29.590 → 00:46:36.190
I obviously live pretty close to Kentucky, and there are some in Tennessee as well, including one here in Knoxville.
00:46:36.190 → 00:46:37.850
And they have some pretty good stuff.
00:46:37.850 → 00:46:48.530
It’s nice that we’re sort of getting back to having micro distilleries and things like that with some better local options instead of just the giant names in the field, right?
00:46:48.530 → 00:46:50.490
The same thing with beer.
00:46:50.490 → 00:46:54.790
We used to have a lot of breweries.
00:46:54.790 → 00:46:58.230
We used to have tons of breweries, quite frankly.
00:46:58.230 → 00:47:01.930
Almost every town used to have its own brewery.
00:47:01.930 → 00:47:05.070
And then, because of prohibition, that was all destroyed.
00:47:05.070 → 00:47:11.810
And then, when it started back up, you basically get these behemoth brewing companies that just took over the entire market.
00:47:11.810 → 00:47:19.530
I’m glad that we’re going back to things that are more local, produced in a more reliable and sustainable way.
00:47:19.530 → 00:47:20.790
It’s great to have those options.
00:47:20.790 → 00:47:24.150
It’s great to have that as part of our cultural fabric again.
00:47:24.150 → 00:47:30.310
And of course, I know that anyone listening who thinks that alcohol is a sin is going to be mad at me, but it’s not.
00:47:30.310 → 00:47:33.590
God says specifically that drinking liquor can be one of the ways you praise Him.
00:47:33.590 → 00:47:34.570
It’s called Sekeira.
00:47:34.570 → 00:47:36.190
It’s in the Old Testament.
00:47:36.190 → 00:47:37.950
It’s one of the things you could do to praise God.
00:47:37.950 → 00:47:46.170
If you sold and then took your money and went to Jerusalem and bought something, you could buy beer.
00:47:46.170 → 00:47:47.650
Probably wasn’t the best beer.
00:47:47.650 → 00:47:52.330
You could buy sort of low ABV liquor was one of the options.
00:47:52.330 → 00:47:55.830
We don’t know exactly how they distilled it, so we don’t know exactly the ABV.
00:47:56.070 → 00:47:59.150
But it was certainly higher than wine and beer.
00:48:02.570 → 00:48:03.710
Question number nine.
00:48:03.710 → 00:48:08.590
Can you explain more about why beauty is a moral issue, has a moral quality?
00:48:08.590 → 00:48:12.210
I included this one specifically so that I could mention.
00:48:12.210 → 00:48:16.250
I published the article on that, The Moral Salience of Beauty.
00:48:16.250 → 00:48:19.790
I said that I would get that done, and I did.
00:48:22.470 → 00:48:27.570
So you can go ahead and read that.
00:48:27.570 → 00:48:35.330
That is sort of the baseline of my argument there and the foundation of the argument there.
00:48:35.330 → 00:48:44.710
I’m going to expand on it because there are some things I deliberately did not address in the article that need to be addressed, sort of population level realities and things like that.
00:48:45.370 → 00:48:52.110
I will record a stand-alone episode of this show and just release that into the RSS stream to comment on those issues.
00:48:52.110 → 00:49:03.230
But for those who asked about why I was tweeting about the moral salience of beauty and how beauty is related to morality, this article answers that.
00:49:07.470 → 00:49:13.450
Question number ten is about whether or not there are dogs in heaven.
00:49:14.230 → 00:49:27.410
And I don’t know if this was as sort of tongue-in-cheek, but I left it in because I wanted to comment on something that is rampant in American Christianity and elsewhere, because we have a lot of bad teachers.
00:49:28.950 → 00:49:32.430
You are not going to spend eternity in heaven.
00:49:32.430 → 00:49:47.030
You are going to spend eternity in paradise, which is why I have been deliberately using the term paradise for a number of years now, instead of saying heaven, because there is a new heaven and a new earth.
00:49:47.030 → 00:49:48.370
Man, again, is a gestalt.
00:49:48.370 → 00:49:49.630
You are not just a soul.
00:49:49.630 → 00:49:53.370
You are not just going to exist as a spirit in heaven.
00:49:53.370 → 00:49:55.630
God, the Father, is spirit.
00:49:55.630 → 00:49:58.290
The Holy Spirit is obviously spirit.
00:49:58.290 → 00:49:59.950
The angels are spirit.
00:49:59.950 → 00:50:04.330
And so heaven is the natural abode for them, because they are spirit.
00:50:04.330 → 00:50:05.670
You are not just spirit.
00:50:05.670 → 00:50:07.250
You are also your body.
00:50:07.250 → 00:50:09.550
You are the sum, right, the gestalt.
00:50:09.870 → 00:50:11.490
To use the word again.
00:50:12.710 → 00:50:17.290
You are going to spend eternity in the new earth, in paradise.
00:50:17.290 → 00:50:26.770
And so it’s not going to just be a bunch of human beings wandering around with nothing else on the planet, or multiple planets, however that’s going to work.
00:50:26.770 → 00:50:29.170
Scripture doesn’t tell us exactly how that works.
00:50:30.270 → 00:50:32.910
God is going to renew all things.
00:50:32.910 → 00:50:34.190
It speaks of that in the New Testament.
00:50:34.190 → 00:50:37.850
It says, the creation is groaning together for the renewal of all things.
00:50:37.970 → 00:50:42.790
Because Christ redeemed all things in his death, in his atonement.
00:50:42.790 → 00:50:49.230
It’s not just human beings, it’s not just the elect, it is everything in creation was redeemed.
00:50:49.230 → 00:50:53.410
And so there will be animals in the New Earth.
00:50:53.410 → 00:50:56.170
There will be plants in the New Earth.
00:50:56.170 → 00:51:00.990
It is going to be what God wanted this creation to be.
00:51:00.990 → 00:51:05.190
And due to the fallen original sin, it did not become.
00:51:05.190 → 00:51:06.130
That is what it’s going to be.
00:51:06.250 → 00:51:09.150
And so, yes, there will be dogs.
00:51:09.150 → 00:51:15.330
Insofar as whether it’s your specific dogs that you’ve had through your life, I don’t know exactly how that works.
00:51:15.330 → 00:51:22.150
I think it probably will be, in some way, the perfect version of that dog you used to have that you loved.
00:51:22.150 → 00:51:29.270
That seems consonant with how God has designed things, God’s character, God’s intention for man.
00:51:29.270 → 00:51:32.150
So scripture is not clear on that.
00:51:32.150 → 00:51:33.690
It doesn’t give us a definitive answer.
00:51:33.690 → 00:51:34.850
That’s what I happen to believe.
00:51:36.050 → 00:51:37.510
You can believe it or not, that’s up to you.
00:51:37.510 → 00:51:40.270
You’re not bound to believe one way or the other.
00:51:40.270 → 00:51:42.470
But there will be animals in paradise.
00:51:42.470 → 00:51:47.830
It’s not going to be human beings standing around on a naked rock, staring at each other for eternity.
00:51:47.830 → 00:51:49.650
That would not be much of a paradise.
00:51:52.730 → 00:51:55.690
Question 11, I’m going to drink some tea before I answer.
00:52:06.905 → 00:52:18.805
Since we do not choose what race or ethnicity we are born into, and this is completely out of our control, is it not unjust to hate others for their race or ethnicity?
00:52:18.805 → 00:52:22.825
I won’t get into the distinction between race and ethnicity.
00:52:22.825 → 00:52:24.965
They’re basically the same.
00:52:24.965 → 00:52:28.645
Think of them, just briefly, in the same way as sex and gender, right?
00:52:28.645 → 00:52:39.725
The biological reality, and then the expression of it that is consonant with the underlying biological reality in terms of a totality, basically, is the…
00:52:39.725 → 00:52:40.385
how to think of that.
00:52:40.385 → 00:53:00.605
But with regard to whether or not we hate other races, I have for quite some time now drawn a distinction between racial animus and sort of the proper hatred for those who are our enemies out of our control.
00:53:00.605 → 00:53:05.925
Because do remember that scripture tells you to be at peace with others insofar as it depends on you, right?
00:53:07.765 → 00:53:15.485
So, if others decide they hate us, and they are at war with us, it no longer depends on us to be at peace with them.
00:53:15.485 → 00:53:19.745
We would be at peace with them if they were at peace with us.
00:53:19.745 → 00:53:21.685
So do we hate…
00:53:21.685 → 00:53:24.045
I’ll just pick the Indians, because why not?
00:53:24.045 → 00:53:26.765
Do we hate the Indians because they’re Indian?
00:53:26.765 → 00:53:27.925
No.
00:53:27.925 → 00:53:45.945
If they were Indian in India, and not causing problems for the rest of the world, like polluting the oceans, fine, great, be Indian over there, we have no problem with you, we don’t want to go to war with you, we don’t want to harm you, we don’t want bad things for you.
00:53:45.945 → 00:53:57.725
We would prefer they all convert to Christianity and desist from worshipping demons and things like that and all those other problems, but as long as they’re over there, why would we even think about them?
00:53:57.725 → 00:53:59.785
They would not be relevant to our lives.
00:53:59.785 → 00:54:02.285
The problem is they’re invading our country.
00:54:03.965 → 00:54:06.325
The same thing is true for many other groups.
00:54:06.325 → 00:54:14.345
I could think of any of a number of dozens of groups who are doing that, depending on how large you want to draw those groups, right?
00:54:14.345 → 00:54:19.525
So, the issue is not that we hate them because they’re different.
00:54:19.525 → 00:54:31.405
It’s that they have chosen to make themselves our enemies by their actions, and so we hate them with a perfect hatred because they are our enemies.
00:54:31.785 → 00:54:42.305
And they’re God’s enemies as well because they are violating his intention for creation, his laws, and generally being a nuisance.
00:54:42.305 → 00:54:48.305
It’s not, again, it’s not a matter of hating other people because they’re different.
00:54:48.305 → 00:54:50.245
We don’t hate the Chinese because they’re Chinese.
00:54:50.245 → 00:54:56.925
We don’t hate the Japanese because they’re Japanese, or the Koreans because they’re Koreans, or whatever other group.
00:54:56.925 → 00:55:04.125
If they are causing harm to our nation, if they are causing harm to our people, then it is a problem.
00:55:04.125 → 00:55:09.225
And then it no longer depends on us because they are the ones causing the harm.
00:55:09.225 → 00:55:21.505
We are fully within our rights, and quite frankly, within our duty as well, to respond to that with animosity, with enmity, because that is what they have done.
00:55:21.505 → 00:55:38.605
If we are, instead of this moral way of going about things, if we were simply naked aggressors, and we decided to declare war on some random country, and attack them just because they’re different, that’s not morally permissible.
00:55:38.605 → 00:55:40.425
That would be sin.
00:55:40.425 → 00:55:52.765
But if some nation is invading our nation, or otherwise causing harm to our nation, then yes, having hatred for them is permissible, because they are enemies.
00:55:52.765 → 00:55:57.385
And yes, you are supposed to hate public enemies, which is the distinction.
00:55:57.385 → 00:55:58.205
I’ve drawn that before.
00:55:58.305 → 00:56:02.845
I’ll put the article on that in the show notes.
00:56:02.845 → 00:56:08.385
There is a difference between public and private enemies.
00:56:08.385 → 00:56:21.145
When God says that you are to forgive your enemies and pray for them, He’s speaking about your private enemies, so your neighbor who keeps borrowing your tools and never returning them.
00:56:21.145 → 00:56:22.085
I’m not talking about it.
00:56:22.085 → 00:56:23.145
I don’t have a neighbor who does that.
00:56:23.145 → 00:56:28.465
But as a hypothetical, if you had a neighbor who does that, that’s kind of your personal enemy.
00:56:28.465 → 00:56:34.125
Or if you have someone who just doesn’t like you, you pray for him, you forgive him.
00:56:34.125 → 00:56:37.005
You cannot forgive your public enemies.
00:56:38.645 → 00:56:50.085
If we had another nation at war with us, currently bombing us, you can’t just say, well, I’m a Christian, and so I forgive you, and then do nothing.
00:56:50.085 → 00:56:57.325
That actually just makes you a coward and a traitor, and condemned both by scripture and just general revelation.
00:56:57.325 → 00:57:01.285
So, you forgive and pray for your private enemies.
00:57:01.285 → 00:57:03.005
You can pray for your public enemies as well.
00:57:03.005 → 00:57:12.185
You pray they stop being your enemy, you pray they stop being evil, but you can’t forgive them because they are not your enemy to forgive.
00:57:12.185 → 00:57:16.005
To forgive someone, there has to be that relationship with you.
00:57:16.005 → 00:57:21.205
It’s a relationship of enmity in this case, but the public enemy has that with your nation.
00:57:22.245 → 00:57:23.945
You are not the avatar of your nation.
00:57:23.945 → 00:57:28.505
You do not stand in for your nation and forgive the enemies of your nation.
00:57:28.505 → 00:57:34.545
An easier way for people to grasp this than perhaps national enemies is the enemies of God.
00:57:35.865 → 00:57:37.525
Can you forgive Satan?
00:57:38.885 → 00:57:43.265
If you can’t forgive Satan, then there’s an enemy you can’t forgive.
00:57:43.265 → 00:57:45.505
The question now is, where is the line?
00:57:45.505 → 00:57:50.085
Where do you draw the line for enemies you forgive and enemies you cannot forgive?
00:57:50.425 → 00:57:52.405
You can’t be more moral than God.
00:57:52.405 → 00:57:54.045
You can’t forgive his enemies.
00:57:54.045 → 00:57:56.065
You can’t forgive your national enemies.
00:57:56.065 → 00:58:01.125
You can pray for them, but you do forgive your personal enemies because that is what God commands you to do.
00:58:07.290 → 00:58:10.730
Little change of pace with question 12.
00:58:10.730 → 00:58:13.670
Is the earth flat or round?
00:58:13.670 → 00:58:19.050
I left this one in, not because I find the question compelling.
00:58:19.050 → 00:58:21.110
The earth is round.
00:58:21.110 → 00:58:25.430
Oblate spheroid, so roundish, round enough.
00:58:25.430 → 00:58:33.230
I left it in to mention that we have an episode of Stone Choir that touches on this, the moon landing, conspiracy theories, things like that.
00:58:33.230 → 00:58:35.410
Well worth listening, I’ll put that in the show notes.
00:58:38.430 → 00:58:52.550
But with regard to this one, there’s Bible verses, there are two here that are cited by the person who asked the question, and I want to bring those in here, so I’ll pull up Logos.
00:58:54.470 → 00:58:58.370
The ones that come up, I don’t actually want the Greek necessarily.
00:58:58.370 → 00:59:06.630
Genesis 1, 6, And God said, Let a firmament come into being in the midst of the water, and let it be a separator between water and water.
00:59:06.630 → 00:59:08.190
And it became so.
00:59:08.190 → 00:59:15.570
And God made the firmament, and God separated between the water that was under the firmament, and the water that was above the firmament.
00:59:15.570 → 00:59:24.530
And God called the firmament sky, and God saw that it was good, and it came to be evening, and it came to be morning, a second day.
00:59:24.530 → 00:59:26.370
So we actually already have the answer here, right?
00:59:27.710 → 00:59:29.710
The firmament is called the sky.
00:59:29.710 → 00:59:31.030
That’s all it is.
00:59:31.030 → 00:59:36.410
It is simply a poetic version of referencing the sky.
00:59:36.410 → 00:59:44.210
It is not some solid thing through which you cannot penetrate that you can’t get into outer space, right?
00:59:44.210 → 00:59:52.810
We know this both because, well, we’ve done it, and if you read scripture in the context, we know that this is poetic language.
00:59:52.870 → 00:59:58.170
The other, of course, is Genesis 1, 14, at sec.
00:59:58.170 → 01:00:08.270
And God said, let luminaries come into being in the firmament of the sky for illumination of the earth to separate between the day and between the night, and so on and so forth, right?
01:00:08.270 → 01:00:13.750
This is poetic language speaking about how these things look from earth.
01:00:13.750 → 01:00:17.870
It looks like the stars are stuck in the sky, right?
01:00:17.870 → 01:00:18.630
We know they’re not.
01:00:18.630 → 01:00:22.110
We know there are some that are significantly further away from us.
01:00:24.050 → 01:00:28.390
God is not saying here that there is a hard barrier.
01:00:28.390 → 01:00:33.830
Now, between the waters and the waters, that may be language that is pertinent pre-flood.
01:00:33.830 → 01:00:48.330
That may reference something that was different about the way God had organized the earth, or it may simply be a way about speaking of the sky as waters, not just because of the color, but the reality that a lot of it is, in fact, water vapor.
01:00:50.230 → 01:00:59.690
We have other parts of scripture where it speaks about things like this that also highlight God speaks about the sky in figurative or poetic language in a number of places.
01:00:59.690 → 01:01:02.170
One that came to mind was Deuteronomy 28.
01:01:02.170 → 01:01:06.670
And the sky over your head shall be bronze for you, and the earth under you iron.
01:01:06.670 → 01:01:14.690
May the Lord render the rain of your land as powder, and dust from the sky shall come down upon you until it wipes you out and until it destroys you.
01:01:16.330 → 01:01:26.110
So, obviously, the land is not going to transform into iron if the Israelites are disobedient to God, because otherwise, it would be iron, and it’s not.
01:01:26.110 → 01:01:28.710
Neither is the sky going to turn into bronze.
01:01:28.710 → 01:01:43.290
This is, again, a poetic way of speaking about the way it’s going to look, partly because of the lack of clouds and rain, because the heat and the dryness are part of the punishment, and partly because of the great amount of dust in it, it’s going to have a bronze hue.
01:01:44.050 → 01:01:49.050
And the earth is described as iron because of the hardness of it due to the lack of rain.
01:01:49.050 → 01:01:55.350
This is one of the punishments, of course, for disobedience, for not obeying God’s covenant.
01:01:55.350 → 01:01:58.130
It’s not saying God will transform the sky into bronze.
01:01:58.130 → 01:02:05.990
Similarly, when it speaks of the firmament, it’s not saying that it is a shield, an impenetrable barrier.
01:02:05.990 → 01:02:25.630
It is simply God spreading out the sky over the earth, and it being this great expanse that looks, in a certain way, from our perspective here on earth, to be not necessarily solid, but it looks like it’s sort of one layer with things moving across it.
01:02:25.630 → 01:02:28.350
But we know today that it is not.
01:02:28.350 → 01:02:36.070
And I would say go listen to the episode on conspiracy theories and read the Wikipedia article on retro reflectors.
01:02:37.170 → 01:02:39.290
They don’t occur in nature, they’re on the moon.
01:02:39.730 → 01:02:41.690
They’re on the moon because we put them there.
01:02:41.690 → 01:02:46.170
And with a couple thousand dollars in hardware, you can test it yourself.
01:02:46.170 → 01:02:53.610
You can bounce a laser beam off it and detect it coming back to you because we built them and put them there.
01:02:53.610 → 01:03:07.210
And also as sort of a more practical standpoint, I think that these conspiracy theories about things like the moon landing and things like that are 100% designed to denigrate European civilization.
01:03:07.210 → 01:03:13.090
Because the moon landing was one of the heights of our civilization, certainly the technological height of our civilization.
01:03:13.090 → 01:03:20.890
And to say that, oh man could never do that, is just denigrating our ancestors in a way that is impermissible.
01:03:20.890 → 01:03:23.410
It is not something we should be doing.
01:03:23.410 → 01:03:28.950
They built those rockets, they got to the moon, using impressive technology for the era certainly.
01:03:28.950 → 01:03:32.330
We’re having a hard time now replicating it.
01:03:32.330 → 01:03:37.230
We can get things into space trivially easily, but getting people to the moon now is quite the undertaking.
01:03:38.550 → 01:03:41.430
And yes, I know there are those who try to say that, oh, well, that’s the…
01:03:43.250 → 01:03:48.550
We’ve literally lost the ability to maintain some of our current airplanes.
01:03:48.550 → 01:03:51.250
We couldn’t rebuild the B-2.
01:03:51.250 → 01:03:53.590
The B-2 exists.
01:03:53.590 → 01:03:58.510
Just because we can’t build more of them right now doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
01:03:58.510 → 01:04:00.410
Doesn’t mean they’re impossible.
01:04:00.410 → 01:04:03.390
It means we lost some of the technology.
01:04:03.390 → 01:04:16.530
Another example similar to that, there are only a tiny handful of men currently living who understand the highest level of processor construction, of microchip construction.
01:04:16.530 → 01:04:23.790
If those men were to die simultaneously, we would lose the ability to make some of those things, in short order.
01:04:23.790 → 01:04:27.530
Does that mean, or would that mean, they don’t exist?
01:04:27.530 → 01:04:29.350
Well, obviously, no.
01:04:29.390 → 01:04:30.810
Knowledge can be lost.
01:04:30.810 → 01:04:34.890
Just because we can’t do something today, doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been done 50 years ago.
01:04:45.689 → 01:04:47.729
Question 13.
01:04:49.969 → 01:04:56.849
What of my forefathers who were freemasons, are they in hell, and what do I tell the ones who are still alive about their lifestyle?
01:04:58.509 → 01:05:02.789
The Lutheran answer to this is actually very easy, because we call it felicitous inconsistency.
01:05:02.789 → 01:05:11.389
And this is the same thing we would apply to heterodox, or even in terms of the group, but not the individual, heretical Christian groups.
01:05:13.289 → 01:05:28.129
The basics of this would be that we hope that an individual relies on Christ alone for his salvation, despite the official teachings of his church.
01:05:28.129 → 01:05:36.129
And this is going to be the same for any number of groups, particularly, of course, from the Lutheran perspective, which is, as Lutheran, my perspective.
01:05:36.129 → 01:05:39.709
Are there Christians in Masonic lodges?
01:05:39.709 → 01:05:54.609
I would say yes, particularly, at the lower level, because there are many men, unfortunately, most of the older generation at this point, not as many younger men, millennials and younger, not joining in very large numbers, for a number of reasons.
01:05:54.609 → 01:05:59.949
There are many men at the lower level who simply look at it like a boys club, a men’s group, right?
01:05:59.949 → 01:06:06.049
You go and you have a beer or whatever, it’s like the Elks Lodge or something, but I don’t know which one they view as more prestigious.
01:06:06.049 → 01:06:12.909
Probably they view the Masons as more prestigious because of the men who have been members historically.
01:06:12.909 → 01:06:18.769
But the actual teachings of Freemasonry are incompatible with Christianity.
01:06:18.769 → 01:06:20.569
They’re wicked, they’re evil, they’re demonic.
01:06:20.569 → 01:06:22.889
I’m going to be completely blunt about that.
01:06:22.889 → 01:06:27.549
One of the best ways to describe it is that it is Talmudism for the Goyim.
01:06:27.549 → 01:06:30.229
That’s sort of how a Jew would describe it, right?
01:06:30.229 → 01:06:32.009
So don’t join it.
01:06:32.009 → 01:06:33.769
Do not be part of it.
01:06:33.769 → 01:06:42.029
The men who are part of it need to recognize that it is wicked, it is something in which they should not participate.
01:06:42.029 → 01:06:48.689
And the best way to go about it is going to depend on the man with whom you’re interacting.
01:06:48.689 → 01:07:02.949
If you are dealing with a man who is a Christian, who is a Christian who is firm in his beliefs, who is sound in his beliefs, then you can point out the incompatibility of the Masonic teaching that basically all religions are a way to God.
01:07:02.949 → 01:07:07.869
Because as a Christian, he’s going to recognize, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
01:07:07.869 → 01:07:13.689
Not one of many, I am the way, the truth, the life.
01:07:13.689 → 01:07:20.129
So if you’re dealing with a man who will be open to that sort of argument, that’s the obvious path to take.
01:07:20.129 → 01:07:32.929
If you’re dealing with someone who believes that all pathways lead to God, you have other groundwork you need to do first, because you need to get him to be an actual Christian before you can tell him that Freemasonry is incompatible with Christianity.
01:07:33.669 → 01:07:37.049
So, are these men in hell?
01:07:37.049 → 01:07:38.869
Probably not.
01:07:38.869 → 01:07:46.749
If they were high up and they understood what the Masons teach and they kept going, then yes, they’re probably in hell.
01:07:46.749 → 01:08:09.849
But if they just joined the local lodge because they wanted to hang out with their other friends who were also Masons, and they never really got very deeply involved into it, I think Felicia’s inconsistency probably is going to cover them, because I think that they were a Christian, but had some weird views and did some dumb stuff.
01:08:09.849 → 01:08:21.969
If doing dumb sinful stuff disqualified one from being a Christian, heaven, paradise more appropriately, as I commented on earlier, would be empty, right?
01:08:21.969 → 01:08:24.829
So should you be a Freemason as a Christian?
01:08:24.829 → 01:08:26.529
Absolutely not.
01:08:26.589 → 01:08:30.669
Can you possibly be a Christian and a Freemason at the same time?
01:08:31.469 → 01:08:34.109
Yes, but you should not.
01:08:34.109 → 01:08:41.689
So it’s sort of the same as with regard to some of the more fringe Christian groups, right?
01:08:41.689 → 01:08:49.669
What their group teaches is incompatible with Christianity, but many of the rank and file don’t believe any of that.
01:08:49.669 → 01:08:54.829
They just really like Jesus, and they’ve always gone to this church.
01:08:54.829 → 01:09:08.349
I would say similarly, there are probably a lot of Mormons who are Christian despite the evil of Mormonism, despite what the Mormon church so-called teaches, because they don’t believe any of it.
01:09:08.349 → 01:09:28.209
They just say they’re Mormon, because their family’s been Mormon for a while, they’re barely involved in the church, they tithe because the elders come to your house and actually audit your finances, but they don’t believe the things the church teaches, and so they actually have a faith in Christ and rely on that.
01:09:28.209 → 01:09:29.949
These things are dangerous to your soul.
01:09:29.949 → 01:09:34.169
Don’t think what I’m saying is minimizing any of this.
01:09:34.169 → 01:09:36.009
It’s a danger to your soul.
01:09:36.009 → 01:09:38.329
It should not be permitted in Christian lands.
01:09:38.329 → 01:09:43.829
We should ban Masonic Lodges and the Mormon Church, Church, so-called.
01:09:43.829 → 01:09:50.989
But just because someone participated in these organizations does not mean that he is necessarily in hell.
01:09:52.269 → 01:10:02.549
So, I can’t obviously give a definitive answer for any particular man, but I can say that, no, you don’t have to go, oh, he’s a Freemason, he’s absolutely in hell.
01:10:02.549 → 01:10:08.489
No, he was probably just a member of a local lodge, and didn’t know what he was supporting.
01:10:09.889 → 01:10:10.849
It wasn’t good.
01:10:10.849 → 01:10:11.669
It was sin.
01:10:11.669 → 01:10:13.149
He should not have done it.
01:10:13.149 → 01:10:19.849
But when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we also pray that God would forgive our trespasses, of which we are not aware.
01:10:20.649 → 01:10:23.149
Because we don’t know all of our sins.
01:10:23.149 → 01:10:25.389
We can’t list all of our sins.
01:10:25.389 → 01:10:26.789
The Psalms are very clear about that.
01:10:32.650 → 01:10:34.450
Question 14.
01:10:35.650 → 01:10:37.370
Let’s see what the time is here.
01:10:37.370 → 01:10:39.070
Not too bad.
01:10:39.070 → 01:10:44.690
What is your biggest critique of confessional Calvinists, for example, the Presbyterians?
01:10:44.690 → 01:10:46.630
And do you consider them brothers in Christ?
01:10:46.630 → 01:10:50.670
So I guess sort of tangentially related to the last question.
01:10:50.670 → 01:10:52.870
Also, what is your take on the Puritans?
01:10:52.870 → 01:10:56.790
To be clear, I’m not saying that all of the Presbyterians are Freemasons.
01:10:58.070 → 01:11:00.350
I do consider Calvinists to be brothers in Christ.
01:11:00.350 → 01:11:05.430
I consider them to be brothers in error, incidentally, but I do consider them to be brothers in Christ.
01:11:06.830 → 01:11:29.650
The two biggest problems that I would say I have with Calvinism, and really it’s one, because only one’s specific to Calvinism, because obviously there is the issue of their understanding and teaching on the nature of the sacraments, particularly the sacramental union, which is, say, the real presence of Christ in the supper.
01:11:30.370 → 01:11:35.610
I believe they’re wrong on that, but obviously that applies to everyone else, right?
01:11:35.610 → 01:11:41.610
I agree with the Lutheran teaching on that, which means I disagree with Rome, because I do not believe in transubstantiation.
01:11:41.610 → 01:11:54.730
I disagree with the non-denominational, who all say, including the Baptists, who all say that it is purely symbolic, and I disagree with the Reformed, who think that it is a real spiritual presence.
01:11:54.730 → 01:11:56.850
Sneak that word in there between the two terms.
01:11:58.950 → 01:12:05.670
But specifically, with regard to Calvinists, I don’t hold to double predestination.
01:12:05.670 → 01:12:17.290
I don’t believe that you can actually justify it from scripture without ignoring very clear teachings in scripture, right?
01:12:17.370 → 01:12:23.410
Or resorting to some form of Swingley’s aliocis, right?
01:12:23.410 → 01:12:29.190
In order to try and change the predicate because the subject doesn’t match in your mind.
01:12:29.190 → 01:12:35.750
So, God very clearly says, He does not desire that any be lost.
01:12:35.750 → 01:12:40.610
He desires that all would come to repentance and faith and be saved.
01:12:40.610 → 01:12:43.850
Well, that’s the end of double predestination to my mind.
01:12:43.850 → 01:12:44.950
It’s gone at that point.
01:12:45.510 → 01:12:50.590
You can’t have it and reconcile those verses.
01:12:50.590 → 01:12:54.370
There’s a lot more to it, but I don’t think that you can even get past that point.
01:12:54.370 → 01:12:56.050
That hurdle is insurmountable.
01:12:57.330 → 01:13:04.030
Just logically speaking, I know the Calvinists like logic, so go ahead and deal with the logic of that one.
01:13:04.030 → 01:13:05.950
I don’t see any way to get past that.
01:13:05.950 → 01:13:07.650
And so, I can’t be a Calvinist.
01:13:07.650 → 01:13:11.190
I couldn’t be a Calvinist because I believe it is at odds with scripture.
01:13:11.190 → 01:13:14.090
And so, that would be my biggest disagreement with the Calvinists.
01:13:14.910 → 01:13:16.690
But, yes, I consider them brothers in Christ.
01:13:16.690 → 01:13:19.510
I think Felicis and Consistency.
01:13:19.510 → 01:13:21.450
I do believe that they rely on Christ.
01:13:21.450 → 01:13:28.770
I think that they trust in the free gift of faith that is God’s grace, and I think that they are saved.
01:13:28.770 → 01:13:36.830
I don’t think they’re damned because they get some theological questions wrong, because they misinterpret some doctrines.
01:13:38.090 → 01:13:44.810
Same thing with regard to Rome and the Baptists and the Unnominational, even some of the Pentecostals, right?
01:13:47.310 → 01:13:54.470
Insofar as a take on the Puritans, I think, maybe go look at Ryan Turnipseed on X.
01:13:54.470 → 01:13:57.010
He’s done a lot more reading in the Puritans than I have.
01:13:57.010 → 01:13:59.110
I’m fairly certain.
01:13:59.110 → 01:14:00.570
They’re not my favorite.
01:14:00.570 → 01:14:20.970
They get into the equivalent of what Lutherans would call pietism a little bit, and I think they’ve caused some problems for the United States culturally, and I think they definitely laid the groundwork, or at least created the fertile soil in which Christian Zionism, so called, took root.
01:14:20.970 → 01:14:21.870
So I do think they caused…
01:14:21.870 → 01:14:24.810
and obviously I’m not fond of Cromwell at all.
01:14:24.810 → 01:14:35.910
But other than that, I don’t have an expansive view of individual thinkers and writers in the Puritan tradition, because I just did not spend as much time reading them.
01:14:35.910 → 01:14:39.530
I didn’t find them compelling, so I didn’t spend as much time with them.
01:14:39.530 → 01:14:45.730
I spent much more time with the Reformed and the Roman Catholics and others like that.
01:14:48.490 → 01:14:53.370
Question 15, Does a validly adopted son get firstborn rights?
01:14:54.710 → 01:14:59.810
That’s going to depend on whether or not you have a firstborn son.
01:14:59.810 → 01:15:10.690
So if you adopt a son but have a firstborn son, I think the natural son would be the one to whom the rights would fall.
01:15:10.690 → 01:15:28.630
I think we have to conclude that I don’t think you can supplant the firstborn son, the natural firstborn son, via positive law means, because that would be a way to circumvent God’s design.
01:15:28.630 → 01:15:40.790
And God’s design is very clearly that the firstborn biological son receives a double portion of the inheritance, basically preeminence, and various other things like that.
01:15:40.790 → 01:15:41.830
That’s the right of the firstborn.
01:15:41.830 → 01:15:46.870
Premogeniture is basically what we have called it, down through European history.
01:15:46.870 → 01:16:05.690
So I do not think that you can circumvent God’s law with regard to adoption, but if, say, your wife is infertile, or you’re infertile, and you cannot have children, then yes, the first male that you adopt should receive those rights, his first born son.
01:16:05.690 → 01:16:13.950
He’s not first born son, but he is your first son, because you couldn’t have one naturally, right?
01:16:16.230 → 01:16:17.810
Question 16.
01:16:19.030 → 01:16:22.430
Divorce is permitted in cases of infidelity and abandonment.
01:16:22.430 → 01:16:26.930
Would it also be fair to say in cases of abuse and wickedness?
01:16:30.050 → 01:16:47.610
I think at some point abuse is going to rise to the level of being abandonment, tantamount to abandonment, and insofar as wickedness is concerned, the issue is really going to be on the kind of wickedness, right?
01:16:47.610 → 01:17:00.230
Because a lot of these problems are solved, obviously, if you’re living in a Christian country, because a truly wicked individual is probably not going to live long in a Christian country, the prince is going to deal with him.
01:17:00.230 → 01:17:05.830
And then, you know, until death do us part, death has done you part.
01:17:05.830 → 01:17:13.170
So under ideal circumstances, I don’t think wickedness is going to necessarily be a real live issue here.
01:17:13.170 → 01:17:21.650
Under our circumstances, if there is sufficient wickedness, I think it could rise to the level of abandonment.
01:17:21.650 → 01:17:24.730
Because say, we’ll take an extreme example.
01:17:24.730 → 01:17:32.230
Say you’re married to someone, and your spouse starts sacrificing animals in your living room to Satan, right?
01:17:32.230 → 01:17:39.330
You’re allowed to leave, you do not have to stay and be a participant in that by proximity.
01:17:39.330 → 01:17:42.310
And you can take the children with you, hopefully the law will support you.
01:17:42.350 → 01:17:43.490
Good luck.
01:17:44.530 → 01:17:54.790
And if that person persists in that, I think that rises to the level of abandonment, and I think that would then morally justify divorce, because that is the other spouse leaving, right?
01:17:54.790 → 01:17:59.370
There’s the verses in scripture speaking of if the unbelieving spouse leaves.
01:17:59.370 → 01:18:02.210
Well, this is the unbelieving spouse leaving, I think.
01:18:02.210 → 01:18:06.710
I think that is equivalent there and sufficient moral warrant.
01:18:06.710 → 01:18:14.430
Again, in a truly Christian society, not going to be a problem, because the Christian prince is going to make that person about a foot shorter.
01:18:15.470 → 01:18:26.150
With regard to abuse, sort of the traditional way of dealing with that was the church elders, and it’s going to usually be the man abusing the woman, right?
01:18:26.150 → 01:18:37.910
I mean, yes, obviously, there are plenty of times where women abuse men, but men can hold their own, and if you have to, you can truly hold your own, and the law should respect that.
01:18:39.210 → 01:18:43.490
But how it usually went, if a man was abusing his wife, was the church elders paid him a visit.
01:18:43.490 → 01:18:50.710
The pastor didn’t have to go, but the church elders paid him a visit, and by the time they left, he got the point.
01:18:50.710 → 01:18:55.650
So that’s sort of the way these problems were traditionally handled, and that’s a good thing.
01:18:55.650 → 01:18:57.310
That’s how it should be handled.
01:18:57.310 → 01:19:03.450
If the problem continues, then you hand him over to the judge, and if the problem continues, you hand him over to the hangman, right?
01:19:03.450 → 01:19:06.590
Or if Luther’s preferred term, you hand him over to Master Hans.
01:19:08.990 → 01:19:19.170
So, I do think there are cases, particularly given the reality of our current society, where these things are going to rise to the level of abandonment and therefore warrant for divorce.
01:19:19.170 → 01:19:30.370
But in a Christian society, I don’t think they would ever rise to that level, because the wicked individual would be removed, and the marriage would be dissolved by virtue of that person’s removal.
01:19:34.490 → 01:19:38.570
Question 17, could we get a deep dive into polygamy?
01:19:38.570 → 01:19:47.550
Really more polygyny, because polyandry, a woman having multiple husbands, is always morally impermissible, so that one’s very easy to address.
01:19:47.550 → 01:19:53.510
As it was mentioned in Stone Choir, but we did not make an episode on it.
01:19:53.510 → 01:20:04.370
I’m sort of going to leave that one for, perhaps next time I will get to that, because that’s going to take a little while to address, so I don’t think I’ll do it tonight.
01:20:04.370 → 01:20:11.930
But obviously, the basic answer is that polygyny is morally permissible, but society can still ban it.
01:20:11.930 → 01:20:13.230
It’s not morally required.
01:20:13.230 → 01:20:15.510
God doesn’t say you have to permit this.
01:20:15.510 → 01:20:18.290
God simply says it is morally permissible.
01:20:18.290 → 01:20:26.510
I’m not going to get into the argument right now, so for anyone who wants to object, wait until I do the argument, and then respond to the evidence I’ll provide.
01:20:26.570 → 01:20:29.710
And there’s plenty of evidence from scripture, incidentally.
01:20:32.030 → 01:20:37.670
Those are all of the questions that I had for tonight, and that I pulled out of the chat at the start.
01:20:37.670 → 01:20:46.850
I will scroll through the chat quickly and see if there are any more questions before calling it a night.
01:20:46.910 → 01:20:47.250
Let’s see.
01:20:57.140 → 01:21:00.140
I think the states are headed towards Balkanization.
01:21:00.140 → 01:21:01.880
If so, what does that look like?
01:21:01.880 → 01:21:03.560
Why did you move to Tennessee?
01:21:05.260 → 01:21:22.420
I don’t personally think Balkanization is particularly likely, because given the realities of the geography and the demographics and things like that, you’re always going to wind up with some hegemonic power in this geography.
01:21:22.420 → 01:21:28.480
Whether it starts as a regional power and then conquers adjacent territory or not, is up for debate.
01:21:28.480 → 01:21:37.960
But I don’t think that Balkanization is something that is likely, and if it did happen, I don’t think it would persist for very long.
01:21:37.960 → 01:22:05.160
So, if it happened, the obvious Balkanization for the US., just given demographics and things like that, you have the south, you have the northeast, you have the Pacific Northwest, you have the middle of the country, the northern part, the Germanic, Scandinavian, and now, unfortunately, some other things as well, and then the Pacific part of the southwest, right?
01:22:05.160 → 01:22:09.500
And then maybe you can say sort of the Texas high desert area is another area.
01:22:09.500 → 01:22:13.860
That’s sort of the general breakup just because of demographics and geography.
01:22:13.860 → 01:22:17.220
But again, I don’t find it particularly likely.
01:22:17.220 → 01:22:26.860
For the Balkans, it made more sense because of you had more of the history of different groups in different localities.
01:22:26.860 → 01:22:30.380
So you had some natural lines there along which things could break.
01:22:30.380 → 01:22:32.780
Obviously, still very messy.
01:22:32.780 → 01:22:39.860
You know, the Austrians won a war with the Turkish Empire and their consolation prize as it were.
01:22:40.080 → 01:22:42.920
The Balkans, not necessarily the best thing in the world.
01:22:42.920 → 01:22:44.940
Kind of a mess for them.
01:22:44.940 → 01:22:48.820
But I don’t think it is going to happen in the US case.
01:22:48.820 → 01:22:51.280
So why did I move to Tennessee?
01:22:52.400 → 01:22:53.660
I have family here.
01:22:53.660 → 01:22:59.980
And it was also, a number of boxes were checked.
01:22:59.980 → 01:23:02.740
That part of it was family considerations.
01:23:02.740 → 01:23:06.780
Part of it was just, yes, it is more conservative.
01:23:06.780 → 01:23:08.440
It is more Christian.
01:23:08.440 → 01:23:12.740
There’s a lot of Christian Zionism, unfortunately, but the taxes are better.
01:23:12.740 → 01:23:14.080
The laws are better.
01:23:14.080 → 01:23:15.280
There’s a lot of considerations.
01:23:15.280 → 01:23:19.440
But I’ve had family in this part of the country for a very long time, longer than the state existed.
01:23:20.580 → 01:23:28.840
I can drive out to Cades Cove, not too far from me, and there are grave markers out there with headstones with family names on them.
01:23:28.840 → 01:23:31.800
Not Mahler, but other family names.
01:23:32.600 → 01:23:39.340
The German line from which I have my last name moved mostly to other parts of the country, unsurprisingly.
01:23:39.340 → 01:23:41.380
Michigan and some in Iowa.
01:23:41.900 → 01:23:42.040
But.
01:23:51.296 → 01:23:54.076
And yes, obviously, part of it was just getting out of California.
01:23:58.036 → 01:24:00.836
Hopefully, the mic is not picking up my stomach rumbling.
01:24:03.176 → 01:24:11.196
Are the self-identified Jews in Israel in 2026 actually Canaanites, those warned of in Revelation that claim to be Jews but are not?
01:24:12.736 → 01:24:19.056
They are genetically, ethnically related to the Old Testament Jews, and also they behave exactly like them.
01:24:20.236 → 01:24:21.836
It’s the same people.
01:24:21.836 → 01:24:24.736
Do they have admixture from the Canaanites?
01:24:24.736 → 01:24:26.476
Of course, they do.
01:24:26.476 → 01:24:29.896
But they were also related to the Canaanites in the first place.
01:24:29.896 → 01:24:33.576
In many cases, they were killing distant cousins.
01:24:33.576 → 01:24:41.116
Yes, there was some admixture there, because obviously, Canaan is a descendant of Ham, and so there’s admixture between Ham and Shem in that part of the world.
01:24:41.116 → 01:24:44.756
Unsurprising, it’s sort of the nexus of all of that.
01:24:44.756 → 01:24:48.096
But are they related to the Old Testament Israelites?
01:24:48.176 → 01:24:50.396
Yes, they are.
01:24:50.396 → 01:25:02.396
But again, there’s some admixture, because miscegenation is one of the ways that the empires that conquered them, particularly the Assyrians, of course, in the case of the ten northern tribes, they just erased them.
01:25:02.396 → 01:25:13.736
That was one of the things they used to conquer and control people, because if you destroy the identity of a people, they are much easier to control.
01:25:13.736 → 01:25:16.796
So, are they pure Israelite?
01:25:17.316 → 01:25:19.496
No, but are they related?
01:25:19.496 → 01:25:21.716
Yes, they are descended from them.
01:25:25.196 → 01:25:32.276
If Christ died for all the sins of all the world, then his atonement covers the sin of unbelief as well.
01:25:32.276 → 01:25:37.736
How does the Lutheran view of the atonement not contradict its premise of universal atonement?
01:25:39.196 → 01:25:42.096
I addressed this one in a previous episode.
01:25:42.096 → 01:25:47.456
I can’t remember which one in particular, but obviously we also did it in Stone Quire episode dealing with justification.
01:25:48.796 → 01:25:54.816
There’s a difference between the objective justification and the subjective justification.
01:25:54.816 → 01:26:02.896
The objective justification was Christ’s redemption of all things in his perfect obedience, death, resurrection.
01:26:02.896 → 01:26:05.576
So, that’s the redemption of all of creation.
01:26:05.576 → 01:26:08.236
Creation is groaning, waiting for the redemption, right?
01:26:08.296 → 01:26:17.056
All of these passages speaking about ton cosmon, the totality of all things, that is what is redeemed objectively.
01:26:17.056 → 01:26:22.976
The subjective justification is by faith.
01:26:22.976 → 01:26:29.276
That is applied to you via the means of grace, which is to say the word and the sacraments.
01:26:29.276 → 01:26:41.796
So, whether you receive faith in baptism or you receive it when you hear or read the word, whatever it happens to be, the spirit acts through those means to give you the free gift of faith, and then you are justified by that faith.
01:26:41.796 → 01:26:44.436
That is the subjective justification.
01:26:45.756 → 01:26:54.176
It is worth mentioning, every single person in hell has had his sins forgiven, but he rejected it.
01:26:54.176 → 01:26:57.476
They are paying an infinite debt that was already paid.
01:26:57.476 → 01:26:59.496
That’s sort of the…
01:26:59.496 → 01:27:03.316
It’s almost not an irony, but I guess it is to some degree, in some sense.
01:27:04.216 → 01:27:08.676
They are paying a debt that Christ already paid, but they rejected it.
01:27:08.676 → 01:27:11.456
The objective justification covers them.
01:27:11.456 → 01:27:15.956
The subjective justification does not, because they do not have faith.
01:27:15.956 → 01:27:23.596
And so, it is that unbelief that damns, because it is rejecting the justification.
01:27:23.596 → 01:27:27.016
It is rejecting the free gift of salvation.
01:27:33.641 → 01:27:39.501
Scroll past about 40 messages from Kick with bots.
01:27:39.501 → 01:27:41.521
Apparently their bot control is not particularly good.
01:27:51.042 → 01:27:53.522
Yes, Gizmo was one of the dogs barking earlier.
01:27:53.522 → 01:27:55.642
I saw someone mention Gizmo.
01:27:55.642 → 01:27:57.582
I have two golden retrievers as well as Gizmo.
01:28:05.461 → 01:28:07.281
Someone asked about abortion.
01:28:07.281 → 01:28:10.101
Is all abortion sin?
01:28:10.101 → 01:28:15.861
If the abortion is protecting the life of the mother, or if the child is severely disabled, could abortion be a wisdom case?
01:28:15.861 → 01:28:18.281
I sort of touched on that with regard to the euthanasia question.
01:28:18.281 → 01:28:22.021
We do not get to abort children simply because they’re severely disabled.
01:28:23.081 → 01:28:33.721
And with regard to saving the life of the mother, if there is a case where the mother is endangered by the pregnancy, then we do absolutely all that we can to save both lives.
01:28:34.501 → 01:28:37.681
We do not terminate one life to save the other.
01:28:37.681 → 01:28:41.281
God has not given us that particular option.
01:28:41.281 → 01:28:57.041
So, abortion is not an option in the sense of abortion we mean here, because obviously the medical procedure abortion is broader, right?
01:28:57.041 → 01:29:11.001
So, for instance, if you have an ectopic pregnancy, or you have some other non-viable pregnancy, the procedure to terminate that is still called abortion, but that is not abortion as we mean it here.
01:29:11.001 → 01:29:15.601
And I’m pointing this out, because sometimes leftists and others like to play little games like this.
01:29:15.601 → 01:29:23.081
They’ll say, well, technically speaking, right, a miscarriage is an involuntary abortion.
01:29:23.081 → 01:29:24.461
Okay, but that’s not what we’re talking about.
01:29:24.461 → 01:29:26.521
We’re talking about the one that has intent.
01:29:26.521 → 01:29:28.881
We’re talking about the moral issue.
01:29:28.881 → 01:29:33.381
So, no, abortion is not a permissible thing to do in either of those cases.
01:29:33.381 → 01:29:35.741
You try to save both lives.
01:29:35.741 → 01:29:55.721
And with regard to severely disabled children, if that happens, again, referencing back to the question about eugenics and things like that, if that happens, if that child is born, and you should not terminate that pregnancy simply because the child is disabled, we care for that child as best we can.
01:29:55.721 → 01:29:58.961
We just try not to continue on that problem to future generations.
01:30:04.992 → 01:30:12.612
Another question, also related to euthanasia, about Action Te Fia, Action T4, from Third Reich.
01:30:12.612 → 01:30:19.912
I read your article about Hitler being a Christian, but what are your thoughts on him signing to have the mentally ill euthanized?
01:30:19.912 → 01:30:22.092
Would he not be responsible for that?
01:30:22.092 → 01:30:30.792
Yes, insofar as he permitted that, he is responsible, but he is notably the one who personally ended that program.
01:30:31.672 → 01:30:39.512
And we also, I don’t want to say too much about it, not because I’m, you know, hesitant or anything like that.
01:30:39.512 → 01:30:41.532
The records are still sealed.
01:30:42.892 → 01:30:45.532
We actually don’t know the extent of the program.
01:30:45.532 → 01:30:48.572
We don’t know a lot of the specifics of the program.
01:30:48.572 → 01:30:54.612
So I can’t speak to it because I don’t know and neither does anyone else.
01:30:54.612 → 01:30:57.352
It’s curious that those records are still sealed.
01:30:57.412 → 01:31:10.752
You would think, if they had gone wildly overboard and done horrible things with regard to euthanizing the infirm, that the Allies would have used that as a great propaganda piece.
01:31:10.752 → 01:31:18.012
But as it turns out, all we have is a little bit of testimony from the doctor trials, and everything else has been sealed.
01:31:18.012 → 01:31:19.952
I find that highly suspicious.
01:31:19.952 → 01:31:26.212
What we do know is that he personally ended the program after some members of the Church came to him and discussed it with him.
01:31:27.392 → 01:31:31.592
That’s the Christian choice under those circumstances to end it.
01:31:31.592 → 01:31:43.192
I don’t know enough about the program specifics again, because the records are sealed, to say what sort of wrongs were done or were not done, and what his culpability would be.
01:31:43.192 → 01:31:47.772
As the leader, he’s absolutely culpable for whatever happened.
01:31:47.772 → 01:31:50.032
But we don’t know what happened, because the records are sealed.
01:31:56.843 → 01:32:02.003
I am interested in whether or not you could explain the history or the meaning of the Hakenkreuz.
01:32:02.003 → 01:32:05.703
This symbol was used by the sons of Japheth spanning much of our history.
01:32:05.703 → 01:32:11.943
It’s the Big Dipper orbiting around in the course of the four seasons.
01:32:13.143 → 01:32:15.183
It’s a symbol from the sky.
01:32:15.183 → 01:32:22.283
And scripture is very clear that the celestial bodies were for signs and seasons.
01:32:23.483 → 01:32:27.483
We seem to have lost the signs’ knowledge.
01:32:27.483 → 01:32:29.963
We don’t know at what point that was lost.
01:32:29.963 → 01:32:33.783
Adam clearly knew more about that than we do.
01:32:33.783 → 01:32:39.043
The three wise men who visited Christ do more about it than we do.
01:32:39.043 → 01:32:43.743
So does that mean you should try to find esoteric knowledge in the stars?
01:32:43.743 → 01:32:44.323
I don’t think so.
01:32:44.323 → 01:32:47.063
I think you’re going to be wasting your time at best.
01:32:47.063 → 01:32:48.763
But there is something there.
01:32:48.763 → 01:32:54.343
And it’s one of the symbols related to the stars that we’ve used for a very long time.
01:32:54.343 → 01:32:55.563
I have no objection to it.
01:32:55.563 → 01:32:56.903
It’s just a cross.
01:32:56.903 → 01:32:58.063
It’s a stylized cross.
01:33:04.200 → 01:33:16.200
I think I will end with this next question, since I think we’re right at about the two hour total mark, including the intro.
01:33:16.200 → 01:33:23.260
Is lying to preserve the innocent as permissible as killing to preserve the innocent?
01:33:23.260 → 01:33:24.720
Hard to think, no.
01:33:24.720 → 01:33:37.640
I do not agree with the, I would say uncharitable, perhaps even incorrect interpretation of conscience ethics and some things like that, where they say, no, you always have to tell the truth.
01:33:37.640 → 01:33:45.360
I don’t agree with their interpretation, where they try to say that, oh, you have to tell the truth if a murderer comes to your door and says, is your wife home?
01:33:45.360 → 01:33:47.280
You’re allowed to lie.
01:33:47.280 → 01:33:51.600
Lying is not always morally impermissible.
01:33:51.600 → 01:33:57.760
There’s a difference in lying to preserve life and lying to cause harm, right?
01:33:57.760 → 01:33:59.580
You’re not allowed to lie to cause harm.
01:34:00.660 → 01:34:04.160
All sorts of lies like that, God hates.
01:34:04.160 → 01:34:11.620
God is not going to condemn you because you told the axe murderer, your children are not home.
01:34:13.080 → 01:34:18.960
I think any ethics that tries to draw out that conclusion is just completely absurd.
01:34:18.960 → 01:34:26.040
So, lying under certain circumstances is morally permissible is fine.
01:34:26.040 → 01:34:28.000
It’s the intent here, really, that we’re looking at.
01:34:28.080 → 01:34:33.100
The intent, and to some degree, the consequences of the action do matter.
01:34:33.100 → 01:34:36.240
So, not all lying is the same, right?
01:34:36.240 → 01:34:39.880
Lying to preserve life versus lying to destroy life.
01:34:41.300 → 01:34:45.420
And also, we all tell little white lies all the time, right?
01:34:45.420 → 01:34:46.880
Those aren’t necessarily always bad.
01:34:46.880 → 01:34:50.240
Sometimes those are just to maintain peace in the home.
01:34:50.240 → 01:34:54.520
You don’t speak the full truth on every topic at all times to all people.
01:34:55.460 → 01:34:59.000
That’s how you wind up alone and hated.
01:34:59.000 → 01:35:01.400
It’s just the reality of living in this world.
01:35:05.620 → 01:35:06.320
Let’s see.
01:35:06.320 → 01:35:13.120
Can you go into depth on how the swastika and national socialism is Christian?
01:35:13.120 → 01:35:21.560
Would greatly appreciate and apologetic on this as men are being barred from the table over their political stance.
01:35:21.560 → 01:35:32.060
I’m going to note this one down for next time because this one’s obviously going to be a little bit more involved, and I’m already a little over my intended one hour per week, but that’s fine.
01:35:32.380 → 01:35:35.040
I don’t mind running over a little bit.
01:35:39.800 → 01:35:42.340
I will save that one for next week.
01:35:42.340 → 01:35:45.120
I’ll make sure that I answer that one next week.
01:35:45.120 → 01:35:46.560
I already answered a little bit of it right.
01:35:46.560 → 01:35:47.800
The symbol is a cross.
01:35:47.800 → 01:35:48.940
It’s a stylized cross.
01:35:48.940 → 01:35:53.820
It’s also linked to symbols in the heavens, which God says that these things are for signs and seasons.
01:35:53.820 → 01:35:55.900
So, that’s not Christian.
01:35:55.900 → 01:35:59.220
It’s not impermissible with regard to Christian morality.
01:36:02.100 → 01:36:13.600
But the sort of practical issue is going to be that you have, particularly the boomer generation, are never going to change their views with regard to World War II and the Third Reich.
01:36:13.600 → 01:36:24.580
So, the best thing that you can do is hide your power level until you have a majority of the elders and then oust them.
01:36:24.580 → 01:36:27.100
That’s just the practical way to do it.
01:36:27.100 → 01:36:31.560
But I’ll get into the specifics of the question next week.
01:36:31.560 → 01:36:35.160
I think that’s going to be it for this week.
01:36:35.160 → 01:36:39.840
As always, if you would like to submit a question, you can do that on omnifora.com.
01:36:39.840 → 01:36:43.420
There is a request category for At Any Cost.
01:36:44.220 → 01:36:47.440
If you can’t find it, then submit wherever you can manage to do that.
01:36:47.820 → 01:36:48.660
I don’t mind moving them.
01:36:48.660 → 01:36:49.820
It’s fine.
01:36:51.100 → 01:36:58.340
You can also contact me with regard to questions, either the chat on X or Telegram.
01:36:58.340 → 01:37:05.880
I try to collate all of those, collect them together, and I have an ongoing thread of those on the forum.
01:37:05.880 → 01:37:12.900
So if you see your question in that thread, it means that I found it, and I have put it there, and I will answer it in the future.
01:37:13.460 → 01:37:26.780
If you do not see it there, then go ahead and send it to me some way, so that I can add it to that list, because it means I probably didn’t notice it, or perhaps I wrote it down and just haven’t transcribed it yet.
01:37:26.780 → 01:37:34.400
Thank you for those who submitted questions, and thank you for participating in the chat, and spending some of your Friday evening with me.
01:37:34.400 → 01:37:41.100
So it’s always nice to be able to answer these questions, and I look forward to doing it next week as well.
01:37:41.460 → 01:37:51.200
Make sure that you go to church on Sunday, and I hope all of you have a great weekend, and may God bless you all until I see you next week.
01:37:51.200 → 01:37:51.820
Have a nice evening.