# Election in View of Headship **URL:** \ **Category:** SC Episodes\ **Tags:** stone-choir, sc-episode, episode\ **Created:** [November 23, 2022, 8:00pm UTC](https://omnifora.com/t/election-in-view-of-headship/276 "2022-11-23T20:00:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![stonechoir](https://omnifora.com/user_avatar/omnifora.com/stonechoir/32/261_2.png) [@stonechoir](https://omnifora.com/u/stonechoir)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2022, 8:00pm UTC](https://omnifora.com/t/election-in-view-of-headship/276/1 "2022-11-23T20:00:00Z")
God acts in time via means. When it comes to faith, He acts through the Means of Grace. When it comes to Election, He acts through headship — fathers, grandfathers, chiefs, kings, tribes, nations. God does not act arbitrarily, and this is no less true of His actions in time than it is of His actions in eternity. Fairness plays no role in the matter, for fairness is not a thing. Man is finite; God is infinite. There are doctrines that can be thoroughly understood, explored, and grasped, and there are doctrines that contain mystery — Election is a mystery. When it comes to the mysteries of the faith, we affirm the Word of God and then, with Paul, declare: > Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways! ### Show Notes - The Spread of Christianity - [Part 1](https://youtu.be/sPudO9NjdBE) - [Part 2](https://youtu.be/obI0F-SMzUI) - [Rick McCafferty (is a demon)](https://vimeo.com/698251723) - [The Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord, Art. XI — Election](https://thebookofconcord.org/formula-of-concord-solid-declaration/article-xi/) #### See Also - _None._ #### Further Reading - _None._ #### Parental Warnings _None._ * * * This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at [https://stone-choir.com/election-in-view-of-headship](https://stone-choir.com/election-in-view-of-headship) ---
**Author:** ![stonechoir](https://omnifora.com/user_avatar/omnifora.com/stonechoir/32/261_2.png) [@stonechoir](https://omnifora.com/u/stonechoir)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2025, 4:22am UTC](https://omnifora.com/t/election-in-view-of-headship/276/2 "2025-10-26T04:22:56Z")
# Episode Resources **Discussion Topic** : [Discussion: Election in View of Headship](https://omnifora.com/t/discussion-election-in-view-of-headship/4625/) ---
**Author:** ![stonechoir](https://omnifora.com/user_avatar/omnifora.com/stonechoir/32/261_2.png) [@stonechoir](https://omnifora.com/u/stonechoir)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2025, 4:24am UTC](https://omnifora.com/t/election-in-view-of-headship/276/3 "2025-10-26T04:24:00Z")
# Transcript _Part 1 of 2_ WEBVTT 00:00:37.476 → 00:00:39.476 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.636 → 00:00:40.536 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.556 → 00:00:40.956 Mahler. 00:00:41.516 → 00:00:42.296 And I’m Woe. 00:00:44.056 → 00:00:49.276 As a sort of warning to the listener, today’s episode does run a little long. 00:00:49.796 → 00:00:58.756 Undoubtedly, your podcast app has already notified you of the length of the episode, so I don’t need to repeat it, not least of all because I do not yet know the exact length. 00:00:59.576 → 00:01:00.716 It is over two hours. 00:01:01.296 → 00:01:12.036 Really it is a two-part episode, but we do ask that you listen to the entire episode, preferably in one sitting and preferably with minimal distractions. 00:01:12.776 → 00:01:17.156 This is an important topic and the entire thing hangs together. 00:01:17.836 → 00:01:28.496 It is important to listen to the entirety of the episode to get the proper doctrine and theology and the proper context because all of it is connected. 00:01:29.296 → 00:01:45.216 We try to aim for roughly an hour with episodes, but some things simply require more time because they are important and we want to make sure that we cover them adequately and correctly. 00:01:48.096 → 00:01:54.616 Welcome to the delayed election episode when we originally decided we wanted to tackle election next. 00:01:54.616 → 00:02:05.016 The timing was that it was going to be the day after the midterm election, so I was going to make a stupid joke about that, but you’ve been spared by that by multiple hardware malfunctions. 00:02:05.756 → 00:02:16.656 My very expensive microphone died, and it died in such a way that it took me about 40 hours of debugging and buying several hundred dollars more equipment to isolate that it was, in fact, the microphone. 00:02:16.716 → 00:02:20.536 So I apologize for the two weeks that we were down. 00:02:22.076 → 00:02:29.796 I love listening to podcasts, too, and I always count on showing up on time and our goal is absolutely to make sure that we always deliver every episode on time. 00:02:29.816 → 00:02:31.956 So that will be the case in the future, I think. 00:02:32.776 → 00:02:41.776 Now that we’re back up and running, we will try to get a couple episodes in the can so that we’ll be able to deliver even in the event that calamity befalls us. 00:02:42.936 → 00:02:46.116 On that note, I would like to ask for something of our listeners. 00:02:46.356 → 00:02:51.556 First, thank you to everyone who’s been sharing the podcast with friends and online and elsewhere. 00:02:51.576 → 00:02:59.416 It means a lot because this is obviously an incredibly niche sort of thing that will also never have any marketing budget. 00:02:59.436 → 00:03:04.916 So the only way anyone’s going to hear it is if someone shares it with someone and says, hey, we think this is worth your time. 00:03:05.476 → 00:03:08.636 So we appreciate each and every share that you provide. 00:03:10.956 → 00:03:26.136 When Corey and I set out to do this, when we finally decided to pull the trigger on a project we’ve been talking about pretty much since we were introduced, within about 24 hours of us deciding to do this, all hell broke loose. 00:03:26.636 → 00:03:39.136 We started having equipment malfunctions, software malfunctions, not just related to the stuff we were using for the podcasting, but just in general in life, a whole lot of stuff went wrong. 00:03:39.156 → 00:03:42.956 And some of it went wrong in ways that are literally impossible. 00:03:42.996 → 00:03:53.176 Like some of the malfunctions that my microphone in recording stuff exhibited, it was the technological equivalent of water flowing uphill. 00:03:53.196 → 00:04:01.536 There was no rational explanation for what was going on, which is part of why it took me so long to figure out that it was in fact the mic that needed to be replaced. 00:04:03.356 → 00:04:20.936 So my request to the audience, if you would consider saying a prayer for us once in a while to keep Cory and I faithful and steadfast to God’s Word and to give us the strength to persevere through the slings and arrows that Satan is throwing at us. 00:04:21.396 → 00:04:29.876 You know, audio hardware is kind of a possessed all by itself without any special intervention by the devil. 00:04:30.196 → 00:04:42.496 But the volume and the nature of the things that have gone wrong are such that I personally think there’s no argument that Satan really doesn’t want us to be doing this thing, which we knew going into it. 00:04:42.516 → 00:04:44.076 That’s precisely why we’re doing it. 00:04:44.116 → 00:04:51.796 Despite not really wanting to undertake this, we knew that we had to because of the challenges that were being faced in the world. 00:04:51.796 → 00:04:57.816 So if you would just say a prayer for our protection and faithfulness, it would be greatly appreciated. 00:05:00.136 → 00:05:09.336 Just the sheer unlikeliness of both of us having a mic die because I also had a mic that bricked itself, and it happened within the same week. 00:05:10.236 → 00:05:16.436 Totally different mics, different manufacturers purchased at different times, died within a week of each other. 00:05:16.816 → 00:05:17.676 Very unlikely. 00:05:18.736 → 00:05:18.996 Yeah. 00:05:19.356 → 00:05:23.936 I mean, a microphone is basically a solid state device. 00:05:23.956 → 00:05:26.576 There’s one moving part and it barely moves. 00:05:26.976 → 00:05:28.556 It’s not something you would expect to fail. 00:05:29.076 → 00:05:29.956 Yeah, mine’s a digital. 00:05:29.976 → 00:05:32.176 Anyway, yeah. 00:05:32.716 → 00:05:42.776 It’s just the things that we’re talking about and the people that we’re addressing and the problems that we’re addressing are, we believe, vital. 00:05:43.096 → 00:05:44.476 And that’s why we’re here. 00:05:44.656 → 00:05:49.556 So we thank you for listening and we hope that you’ll consider keeping us in your prayers once in a while. 00:05:51.116 → 00:05:57.436 The reason that we’re talking about election today, it was not a, it wasn’t just a gimmicky choice based on the timing. 00:05:58.176 → 00:06:09.436 But election, other words for it are predestination or having your name written eternally in the Book of Life and Heaven from before eternity. 00:06:10.356 → 00:06:14.836 These are all ways that the doctrine of election are described in scripture. 00:06:15.916 → 00:06:29.016 The reason that we wanted to talk about it next is that it flows naturally from episodes, episode two’s discussion of genealogy and episode three’s discussion of nationality. 00:06:30.096 → 00:06:51.756 When you look at how election plays out, both as it is described in scripture and then what happens in the world and time and space, it is clear that it is also a manifestation of God’s will through lineal inheritance, which is not to say that it is only inherited. 00:06:51.856 → 00:06:55.916 We’ll get into that, but it does flow naturally from our previous discussions. 00:06:56.376 → 00:07:06.936 And all of these are laying the groundwork for additional future episodes that are going to get into some of the most controversial issues that are, frankly, they’re going to split the church in some really ugly ways. 00:07:07.576 → 00:07:13.276 And our fear is that there will be good men on the wrong side of those splits because they have not thought these things through. 00:07:13.296 → 00:07:14.976 So that’s why we’re talking about them now. 00:07:15.996 → 00:07:23.256 The three things that I hope the audience today will keep in mind as we’re talking about this particular doctrine. 00:07:23.996 → 00:07:26.396 First, this is not going to be a Systematics podcast. 00:07:26.416 → 00:07:30.536 We’re not going to be doing deep dives on doctrines as a matter of course. 00:07:30.976 → 00:07:37.636 The reason that we are tackling election in particular is that it touches directly on things that we’re facing today. 00:07:37.736 → 00:07:40.276 In the second half of the episode, we’ll be making that case. 00:07:40.896 → 00:07:43.976 But election is a doctrine that is found everywhere in scripture. 00:07:44.776 → 00:07:52.436 Once you realize the different terms that are being used for it by God, you basically can’t turn from justice to revelation. 00:07:52.456 → 00:07:54.416 You’re going to find it smacking you in the face continuously. 00:07:55.396 → 00:08:01.316 So it’s a doctrine that is universal. 00:08:01.336 → 00:08:02.856 It’s not Lutheran doctrine. 00:08:02.876 → 00:08:04.136 It’s not Protestant doctrine. 00:08:04.176 → 00:08:05.276 It’s Christian doctrine. 00:08:05.856 → 00:08:13.776 And it is the key way that God helps to explain our salvation and the gift of faith that is given to us. 00:08:14.216 → 00:08:21.876 So the first thing I want everyone to keep in mind is that the doctrine of election is given for our comfort. 00:08:22.376 → 00:08:31.256 When we’re talking about election and predestination, it should never be thought of in the sense of the condemnation of those who are not believers. 00:08:31.616 → 00:08:33.436 And we’ll get into why that is. 00:08:34.396 → 00:08:36.876 But election is given for comfort. 00:08:36.896 → 00:08:39.936 It is not given for punishment or for doubt. 00:08:41.456 → 00:08:51.956 The second thing that you need to keep in mind as you’re listening to this episode is that this is one of the very short lists of doctrines in Scripture that is beyond reason. 00:08:53.216 → 00:08:55.216 It’s like the Trinity in that sense. 00:08:55.256 → 00:09:06.756 When you look at everything in Scripture that describes the Trinity, and a great encapsulation of this if you haven’t seen it before, not only the Apostle and Nicene creeds, but the Athanasian creed. 00:09:07.436 → 00:09:11.256 It’s something that in Lutheran churches is typically only read once a year. 00:09:11.656 → 00:09:13.116 It is well worth studying. 00:09:13.296 → 00:09:18.356 I actually memorized it in seventh grade for extra credit, and that was fun because it’s a couple pages long. 00:09:19.316 → 00:09:38.776 When you read the Athanasian creed, what you will find is a faithful confession of what Scripture says about God in such a way that there are no errors in the Athanasian creed because it agrees with Scripture, but when you look at it in totality, it’s kind of confusing. 00:09:39.576 → 00:09:45.156 It doesn’t really make sense how there can be not three eternals, but one eternal. 00:09:45.416 → 00:09:48.076 What’s the difference between a person and the God? 00:09:48.096 → 00:09:50.536 How can there be three persons, but one God? 00:09:51.416 → 00:09:57.096 Our human reason fails when we’re trying to introspect God, which shouldn’t surprise us. 00:09:57.116 → 00:09:58.216 We’re creatures. 00:09:58.536 → 00:10:07.936 We have a Creator who is infinite, so the idea that we can’t fit our Creator inside our little tiny created meat minds shouldn’t surprise or upset us. 00:10:09.356 → 00:10:18.176 The essence of the Christian faith is believing that, which is taught, not making it subject to intellectual ascent. 00:10:18.696 → 00:10:22.536 And that’s a place where some denominations kind of go off the rails. 00:10:22.776 → 00:10:33.816 They look at scripture faithfully and they say, okay, I’m going to believe this, but then they run into things where it seems like it doesn’t add up and reason has made the master of their doctrine. 00:10:33.976 → 00:10:36.836 And that is how you invent heresies. 00:10:36.996 → 00:10:45.276 The reason that the creeds were originally written was to deal with the heresies that came from the very intelligent men who were looking at scripture and trying to make sense of the Trinity. 00:10:45.676 → 00:10:57.436 And they made a mess because they made their reason the master when God must be the master and what he reveals must be binding upon us whether or not we understand it. 00:10:57.856 → 00:11:09.536 When Christ talks about us having the faith of a child, that’s what it means to receive teaching without requiring that it pass some smell test of our own reason. 00:11:10.056 → 00:11:14.456 That’s not to say that you should just blindly listen to whatever you hear. 00:11:14.476 → 00:11:24.376 And this is the reason why faithful teachers, faithful pastors are so crucial because most people are not equipped to understand and reason these things out. 00:11:25.136 → 00:11:29.416 We have thousands of years of faithful doctrine being developed and understood. 00:11:30.516 → 00:11:31.756 Develop is a weak word. 00:11:32.036 → 00:11:39.516 Being properly fleshed out in such a way that when you say everything that scripture says in a certain way, you can know that you’re being faithful. 00:11:39.696 → 00:11:44.856 And so there are a few doctrines like the Trinity, like the nature of Christ, the hypostatic union. 00:11:45.156 → 00:11:47.836 How can he be both fully God and fully man? 00:11:48.496 → 00:11:49.416 It doesn’t make sense. 00:11:49.916 → 00:11:53.716 And as Lutherans were comfortable saying that, we don’t understand. 00:11:53.736 → 00:11:54.436 It’s a mystery. 00:11:54.716 → 00:12:00.436 We can say what God says, but we can’t make sense of it in such a way that it’s going to add up in our minds. 00:12:01.276 → 00:12:04.016 The same is true of communion, of the Eucharist. 00:12:04.536 → 00:12:11.196 When God says, this is my body, this is my blood, he also says this is bread and this is wine. 00:12:11.896 → 00:12:18.796 And the Reformed and the Catholics both agree that it can only be one or the other by reason. 00:12:18.816 → 00:12:22.396 It can’t possibly be blood if it’s wine, and it can’t be wine if it’s blood. 00:12:23.196 → 00:12:26.256 So each of them pick one and they go in opposite directions. 00:12:27.036 → 00:12:36.436 Lutherans and to their credit, the Eastern Orthodox, say, look, we don’t understand how it works, but God says it’s bread, God says it’s his flesh, so it is. 00:12:36.936 → 00:12:39.816 This is the same God who spoke the universe into existence. 00:12:40.176 → 00:12:44.716 He’s the same God who spoke Lazarus back to life by saying, Lazarus, come out. 00:12:45.336 → 00:12:47.696 That wasn’t a descriptive thing, that was proscriptive. 00:12:47.696 → 00:12:49.236 When God speaks, it is true. 00:12:49.736 → 00:13:01.296 So when there are doctrines that are revealed in such a way that we can’t make them subject to our reason, once we’ve exhausted all other possibilities as faithful Christians, we simply have a duty to believe them. 00:13:01.596 → 00:13:05.516 And election predestination is one of those where it’s challenging. 00:13:05.536 → 00:13:17.056 So as you hear us talking about it today, please don’t cherry-pick 30-second or two-minute segments of this and try to say, well, that’s wrong, that’s contrary to Scripture. 00:13:17.576 → 00:13:20.336 Because in isolation, you’re probably right. 00:13:21.296 → 00:13:29.016 The doctrine of predestination, the doctrine of faith, the doctrine of salvation, it doesn’t make sense. 00:13:29.336 → 00:13:36.936 And you can say what God says, but if you try to apply reason to it rigorously, you’re going to make a mess. 00:13:37.056 → 00:13:45.736 And so I just encourage people to please listen to the whole thing as one piece and then take it as a coherent whole, because that’s the only way it can be presented. 00:13:46.256 → 00:13:48.276 This is not something that can fit on a bumper sticker. 00:13:49.196 → 00:13:59.376 And the third point I just like to make before we launch into this is that election is not simply some hypothetical doctrine that doesn’t have any applicability. 00:14:00.336 → 00:14:10.496 It is a doctrine which is central to all of the most painful problems that the church and the world are facing today. 00:14:11.056 → 00:14:14.156 And this is the case that we’ll be making in the second half of the episode. 00:14:15.396 → 00:14:27.476 Every major modern fight about racism, about colonialism, about cultural and racial supremacy, about patriarchy, all of these things are ultimately attacks on doctrine and on salvation. 00:14:28.236 → 00:14:37.836 And we are doing this episode in order to make the case for the necessity of us returning to a faithful belief of election. 00:14:37.856 → 00:14:49.436 Because frankly, while Lutherans certainly say that we subscribe to the doctrine of election, when push comes to shove, our churches are full of universalists. 00:14:49.456 → 00:14:58.696 They’re full of people who reject election, who try to be so quote unquote gospel focused that they end up contradicting scripture left and right. 00:14:59.036 → 00:15:00.536 And they’re doing it in the name of love. 00:15:00.736 → 00:15:15.716 So we’re going back to first principles here in order to try to get our feet under us so that when these discussions are had in future episodes and elsewhere, you will be equipped to understand what it is that you’re facing. 00:15:15.796 → 00:15:18.516 Because like you said, this is not just an academic thing. 00:15:18.536 → 00:15:23.716 This is a live issue that is, it’s shaping the world around you. 00:15:23.976 → 00:15:27.176 And that is something, the doctrine of election is not novel. 00:15:27.196 → 00:15:29.016 It’s something that’s been around forever. 00:15:29.316 → 00:15:32.556 Everyone in Christianity and the faith has always known about it. 00:15:33.036 → 00:15:38.676 But the modern implications are something that, personally, I haven’t seen discussed elsewhere. 00:15:38.696 → 00:15:46.636 And that’s the reason we’re doing this episode, is to make the connection between the doctrine of scripture and the events that we’re seeing in the world today. 00:15:47.476 → 00:15:51.196 So that, like the preamble out of the way, let’s get into what election is. 00:15:53.396 → 00:16:04.116 Just briefly before we get into election proper, I want to address at the outset an issue that some will have approaching the matter of election and related things. 00:16:04.476 → 00:16:06.636 And that is, as you said, it’s a mystery. 00:16:07.416 → 00:16:12.876 Now the word mystery is going to raise the hackles of some people. 00:16:12.896 → 00:16:18.056 Some people are trained so that they don’t like the idea that some things are beyond our knowledge. 00:16:18.276 → 00:16:20.956 And we’ll get into that later in the episode. 00:16:21.436 → 00:16:32.096 But I just want to point out the word for mystery, the word that is translated as mystery appears 35 times in scripture, 27 of which are in the New Testament. 00:16:32.116 → 00:16:33.516 That is musterion in the Greek. 00:16:33.956 → 00:16:36.836 This is not, as mentioned, something that appears in one place. 00:16:36.856 → 00:16:38.716 This appears throughout the scriptures. 00:16:39.776 → 00:16:42.256 And it is mystery or secret, a thing that is hidden. 00:16:42.736 → 00:16:44.856 There are things that are beyond our understanding. 00:16:45.636 → 00:16:46.896 And that just makes sense. 00:16:46.916 → 00:16:49.336 We worship an infinite God who created the universe. 00:16:49.956 → 00:16:53.736 There are going to be things in his council that we cannot understand fully. 00:16:53.756 → 00:16:59.436 We can understand them to the extent that they are revealed to us, primarily in scripture. 00:17:00.556 → 00:17:06.296 And so I just wanted to deal with that issue of the word mystery and the fact that it makes some people uncomfortable. 00:17:07.856 → 00:17:22.956 And as a lifelong Lutheran, that’s one of the things that I appreciate the most about our doctrine, is that we are content to run out of runway and say, you know what, we’re not going to be able to understand this. 00:17:22.956 → 00:17:26.396 We can say what God says, but we’re not going to be able to make sense of this. 00:17:26.416 → 00:17:31.896 And that’s okay, because we acknowledge that we are creatures and that our God, our Creator is greater than us. 00:17:32.516 → 00:17:35.776 And we say right back to Him what He says. 00:17:36.436 → 00:17:38.956 And if we don’t make sense of it, that’s okay. 00:17:39.336 → 00:17:40.856 We are children in the faith. 00:17:40.896 → 00:17:42.856 We do not need to be the masters of these things. 00:17:44.256 → 00:17:49.436 And in a very real sense, we do actually have these things revealed to us in Scripture. 00:17:49.456 → 00:17:56.436 So they’re a mystery in the sense of they are unknowable with regard to human reason, but they are knowable with regard to Revelation. 00:17:57.456 → 00:18:03.516 Because we actually can understand election in a final sense. 00:18:03.536 → 00:18:05.496 We understand what election is, what election does. 00:18:05.776 → 00:18:12.676 We cannot necessarily get all of the steps leading up to election, explain the why and the how and all of these things. 00:18:13.656 → 00:18:19.996 But the actual doctrine itself is revealed in Scripture in a way that it is knowable to those who have the Holy Spirit. 00:18:21.336 → 00:18:22.236 And it’s very simple. 00:18:23.056 → 00:18:27.156 When we talk about it being a mystery, the mystery is that when you… 00:18:28.176 → 00:18:35.656 Election in a nutshell is that God is the cause of our salvation solely, not us, only God. 00:18:36.116 → 00:18:39.556 We are the cause of our damnation solely, not God. 00:18:40.236 → 00:18:50.596 When you try to synthesize those two things, when you try to rationalize them and say, well, if X and not Y, then I’m going to infer a bunch of things, you can’t, your inferences are going to be wrong. 00:18:50.616 → 00:18:53.516 And so when we talk about reason failing, that’s where it fails. 00:18:53.576 → 00:19:04.196 It’s the reasonable inferences that try to fill in the blanks between God chooses those whom he saves, but God did not choose those who are damned. 00:19:05.196 → 00:19:06.236 That’s where it doesn’t make sense. 00:19:06.336 → 00:19:15.456 And when people try to reconcile those two things beyond saying what God says, you’re going to make some profound errors that will themselves have knock-on effects that are very harmful. 00:19:16.356 → 00:19:17.596 It’s the Crux Theologorum. 00:19:17.596 → 00:19:33.136 It’s the problem of attempting to resolve the statements in Scripture, God does not wish that any would perish, but that all would repent, turn, and be saved, and God chose those who are saved by giving them faith in time. 00:19:34.336 → 00:19:48.556 Now, he chose them in eternity, and through faith in time is how he saves them, but attempting to reconcile those two things is beyond the capabilities at least of fallen human reason and possibly of human reason entirely. 00:19:50.036 → 00:19:50.276 Yeah. 00:19:51.676 → 00:19:57.776 So do you want to get into making the scriptural case for where this came from and why we speak the way we do? 00:19:58.956 → 00:19:59.216 Sure. 00:20:00.296 → 00:20:05.456 We could at some point, I guess, go through the eight points that the Book of Concord makes. 00:20:06.016 → 00:20:07.076 We’ll do that in a little bit. 00:20:07.096 → 00:20:11.756 It’s actually a very brief section there in one of the last articles in the Solid Declaration. 00:20:12.296 → 00:20:18.656 But just as a summary of election, I think it’s best to turn to Romans 8. 00:20:19.996 → 00:20:25.156 And that is starting with verse 28, which I am obligated to mention as my confirmation verse every time I bring it up. 00:20:25.836 → 00:20:40.936 And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose, for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the first born among many brothers. 00:20:41.456 → 00:20:44.076 And those whom he predestined, he also called. 00:20:44.456 → 00:20:46.976 And those whom he called, he also justified. 00:20:47.276 → 00:20:49.996 And those whom he justified, he also glorified. 00:20:51.176 → 00:20:55.216 We have the entirety of the Christian life in these verses. 00:20:55.916 → 00:21:01.816 And we have what it means to be a Christian, how you are made a Christian, why you are made a Christian in these verses. 00:21:03.076 → 00:21:09.096 It is only those who are predestined to faith, who are ultimately saved. 00:21:09.936 → 00:21:14.256 All of those who are predestined will ultimately be saved. 00:21:14.816 → 00:21:16.036 Which is to say the elect. 00:21:16.116 → 00:21:18.236 These terms are interchangeable. 00:21:19.116 → 00:21:26.756 God in eternity chose those that he would save in time via faith. 00:21:27.236 → 00:21:28.396 By grace through faith. 00:21:28.996 → 00:21:29.936 That’s how we’re saved. 00:21:29.956 → 00:21:34.376 He uses means in time to affect what he decided in eternity. 00:21:35.516 → 00:21:37.396 And that’s all that predestination is. 00:21:38.456 → 00:21:47.836 Now, as mentioned in the opening, it is important to understand that to bring up the law-gospel distinction, predestination is gospel. 00:21:48.296 → 00:21:49.676 Predestination is not law. 00:21:50.156 → 00:22:00.376 Some take it as really not even law so much as just a depressing military muster, as it has been described in the literature from time to time. 00:22:01.396 → 00:22:13.616 Because if you take election predestination to mean that God simply rolled dice or in eternity saw everyone and pointed left and right, a military muster, then that’s depressing. 00:22:14.156 → 00:22:25.856 And that leads to the problems of either security, because, well, if I’m elect, then I can do anything I want, and regardless of that, ultimately I will be safe because I am elect. 00:22:26.376 → 00:22:36.736 Or it leads to despair, on the other hand, being, well, it doesn’t matter what I do, because if I am not elect, anything I do doesn’t matter because I am ultimately damned. 00:22:38.036 → 00:22:41.016 And that is the wrong way of looking at the doctrine. 00:22:41.036 → 00:22:43.316 Again, we can judge trees by their fruit. 00:22:44.276 → 00:22:48.376 Not to directly apply that here, but it can be used as a guide. 00:22:49.736 → 00:23:02.916 Predestination, election, is gospel, because what it means is you were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, and he will not lose you out of his hand. 00:23:04.256 → 00:23:06.096 Your faith is not in your own hands. 00:23:06.116 → 00:23:09.096 It is in his hands, and he will see you through to the end. 00:23:09.116 → 00:23:11.256 He who began the good work will see it through. 00:23:12.436 → 00:23:13.736 And that is why it is gospel. 00:23:13.756 → 00:23:20.516 This is something that is meant to be preached to the sheep in the church, because it is for the comfort of consciences. 00:23:21.656 → 00:23:28.316 It is to secure those who are feeling weak in the faith, who are weighed down by the troubles of the world. 00:23:28.796 → 00:23:39.376 It is to let them know God knew them before anything had been created and chose them in his son to save them, and that he will see them through to the end. 00:23:39.956 → 00:23:44.056 That is the right way of looking at election, of looking at predestination. 00:23:44.616 → 00:23:47.056 Any other way of looking at it is incorrect. 00:23:48.976 → 00:23:52.016 And this is why God has given us the sacraments. 00:23:52.036 → 00:23:53.316 That’s why we have baptism. 00:23:53.336 → 00:23:54.456 That’s why we have communion. 00:23:54.476 → 00:24:01.216 Because in addition to the assurances and the reassurances and the word, God knows that we will doubt. 00:24:01.236 → 00:24:07.676 He knows that we will need something more concrete than a promise because we’re faithless, we’re weak. 00:24:08.316 → 00:24:19.116 And because of that, in baptism, God puts his name on us to seal us into himself, to say, I mark this child as an adopted son of myself. 00:24:19.576 → 00:24:23.756 This child is now my son because I place my name on him in baptism. 00:24:25.476 → 00:24:37.996 It connects the flesh and blood world, the physical reality of our lives to the eternal promise in such a way that it takes it out of our hands. 00:24:38.016 → 00:25:04.316 And like you said, it’s for comfort when it’s the reason that Lutherans continuously point back to baptism as the touch point in the Christian life when, even if someone had faith before baptism by hearing the word, which happens very often, God promises that no matter what, he has given faith in baptism and that that is a comfort to those who need to hear it most. 00:25:05.756 → 00:25:09.016 And this is one of the reasons that Lutherans tend to die well. 00:25:09.996 → 00:25:14.036 Ask a pastor who has been bedside with a number of dying Lutherans. 00:25:14.796 → 00:25:17.956 Lutherans don’t die in fear and uncertainty and doubt. 00:25:17.976 → 00:25:29.796 Lutherans die secure in the knowledge that they belong to Christ and that when they wake up on the other side of that door, they will be face to face with their Savior. 00:25:31.296 → 00:25:35.116 That is true doctrine, comforts the sheep. 00:25:35.136 → 00:25:36.536 It does not terrify the sheep. 00:25:36.556 → 00:25:38.496 It does not make them doubt whether they are saved. 00:25:39.976 → 00:25:50.336 If a doctrine brings those who are on their deathbed to the point of despair and doubt, that doctrine is false if that person, of course, is a sheep. 00:25:51.436 → 00:25:54.936 Because the sheep are comforted by the words of the shepherd. 00:25:56.296 → 00:26:04.176 And with regard to the sacraments, there are those who contend that God doesn’t work with means at all. 00:26:05.316 → 00:26:08.036 Largely, this would be the enthusiast Pentecostals. 00:26:09.216 → 00:26:16.936 And there are those who contend that God uses only one means, which is to say scripture, although typically those who consider it one means wouldn’t call it a means. 00:26:17.256 → 00:26:22.776 But nonetheless, Lutherans look at it, and those who believe in the sacraments look at it rightly. 00:26:23.556 → 00:26:30.856 God has multiple means of bringing his grace to us, of bringing forgiveness of sins to us. 00:26:31.276 → 00:26:33.076 God is super abundant with his grace. 00:26:33.096 → 00:26:34.056 He is not stingy. 00:26:34.556 → 00:26:37.536 God does not give us no means or just one means. 00:26:37.876 → 00:26:39.316 He gives us the word. 00:26:39.316 → 00:26:40.796 He gives us absolution. 00:26:40.816 → 00:26:41.956 He gives us baptism. 00:26:41.976 → 00:26:43.216 He gives us the Lord’s Supper. 00:26:43.556 → 00:26:50.676 We have these many ways that God comes to us and comforts us, lets us know that yes, we are his children. 00:26:51.336 → 00:27:00.516 Even though we are still in this world, we are still beset by sin and death, we are beset by the flesh and the devil and the world, we are still his. 00:27:01.516 → 00:27:02.376 We are in his hands. 00:27:02.376 → 00:27:03.616 He will see us through. 00:27:04.136 → 00:27:06.096 And he is superabundant with his grace. 00:27:06.116 → 00:27:10.256 That’s why there are these multiple means, not just one or none. 00:27:10.676 → 00:27:21.576 And it is also because, as Luther and some other theologians have pointed out, my mind, my soul can grasp the promises, the words of God. 00:27:22.696 → 00:27:23.856 My flesh really can’t. 00:27:24.656 → 00:27:27.056 But my flesh understands water. 00:27:27.696 → 00:27:29.916 My flesh understands bread and wine. 00:27:30.836 → 00:27:33.196 And human beings are not just a soul. 00:27:33.216 → 00:27:36.536 You are not a spirit operating a meat suit. 00:27:37.136 → 00:27:40.356 That conception of what human beings are is Gnostic. 00:27:40.556 → 00:27:41.196 It is false. 00:27:41.196 → 00:27:41.856 It’s heretical. 00:27:42.496 → 00:27:43.516 You are your body. 00:27:44.916 → 00:27:49.276 Because human beings are a body, a mind, and a soul as one. 00:27:49.656 → 00:27:52.696 We’re our own sort of minor Trinity, as it were. 00:27:54.036 → 00:27:58.476 And so it is important to have these things that the flesh can also grasp. 00:27:59.236 → 00:28:08.436 Because it’s meant so the totality of the human being can grasp what God is doing and hold tightly to something when weighed down by the world. 00:28:09.576 → 00:28:22.096 One of the things that is a classic tell that you’re dealing with the Lutheran is that we constantly point to the cross as the moment in time when God fulfilled all of his promises. 00:28:22.716 → 00:28:37.636 And so I can imagine someone hearing us today pointing to the doctrine of election, pointing to the Book of Life, which had our full names first and last written in eternity as a source of comfort. 00:28:37.656 → 00:28:40.616 And I can see someone potentially saying, well, you’re not pointing at the cross. 00:28:41.096 → 00:28:43.716 When in fact, that’s the exact opposite of what’s happening. 00:28:44.196 → 00:28:54.976 When you point to election, when you point to the Book of Life, those are pointing to the cross because the cross where Christ sacrificed his precious blood is where the promise was fulfilled. 00:28:54.996 → 00:28:57.856 It is where salvation took place. 00:28:58.276 → 00:29:07.696 It is where the punishment for every sin that every person in the history of the universe has ever or will ever commit were paid by God. 00:29:08.596 → 00:29:17.936 And that’s one of the things we’ll get into here shortly, is that there’s the question of completeness when you’re talking about both the Book of Life and the cross. 00:29:18.476 → 00:29:26.376 When you apply reason to this, you’re like, well, if God omitted some names, then did Jesus not pay for their sins on the cross? 00:29:26.956 → 00:29:32.656 And that’s one of the things that Five Point Calvinism says, absolutely, Jesus didn’t die for everyone. 00:29:32.676 → 00:29:40.016 He only died for the elect, which is a tremendously harmful false representation of what scripture says. 00:29:40.616 → 00:30:22.896 And I think that the reason that we point to election and to the Book of Life in this episode is because, as I’ll demonstrate later, there are aspects of these promises that were known throughout the world before the cross, that the prophecy of the Christ, which began in Genesis 315, and then we see it coming to a greater completion in Isaiah just 700 years before Christ’s birth, there were other things that were told to believers in between those two periods of time, some of which are not recorded in Scripture, but which are observable in time. 00:30:23.456 → 00:30:37.296 And so the reason that we want to point today to election and to connect it to genealogy and to the religions of kings and of their nations is that that is how the faith is propagated. 00:30:37.616 → 00:30:49.216 And ultimately, your name is, Corey, as you just said, your name is written in the Book of Life, and God gives you faith, which receives the sacrifice on the cross, and you are saved. 00:30:49.896 → 00:30:51.896 All of that goes together. 00:30:52.216 → 00:30:54.416 And God speaks of it as a unified whole. 00:30:54.816 → 00:30:57.196 God doesn’t speak of these as piecemeal things. 00:30:57.216 → 00:31:00.836 These ideas are all connected repeatedly in Scripture. 00:31:01.476 → 00:31:19.656 And it’s one of the weaknesses of systematic theology is when you take Scripture and you try to break it down like a butcher and say, well, the liver goes over here and the shanks go over here, you end up with something that doesn’t look like what you started with because you’ve chopped it up in little pieces. 00:31:19.776 → 00:31:25.636 So when we talk about specific doctrines, it’s never to separate it from the whole. 00:31:26.136 → 00:31:33.116 It is to highlight, to X-ray or to do an MRI on how this one piece of the whole works within the whole. 00:31:33.496 → 00:31:35.076 And again, it’s always for comfort. 00:31:35.096 → 00:31:37.676 It’s never for judgment or for condemnation. 00:31:38.456 → 00:31:41.956 And it should be never used as a distraction. 00:31:41.976 → 00:31:48.136 It should never, the Book of Life should not be the focus of the Christian faith apart from the cross. 00:31:48.756 → 00:31:52.296 But we can’t forget about it either, because God talks about it many times. 00:31:53.216 → 00:31:58.836 I found just seven verses among many that specifically talk about the Book of Life. 00:32:00.056 → 00:32:05.896 In Exodus 32, God said to Moses, whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book. 00:32:06.816 → 00:32:11.856 In Psalm 69, it’s recorded, let them be blotted out of the Book of the Living. 00:32:12.136 → 00:32:14.396 Let them not be enrolled among the righteous. 00:32:15.356 → 00:32:23.276 In Luke 10, nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. 00:32:24.196 → 00:32:37.216 In Philippians 4, it says, yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women who have labored side by side with me in the Gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the Book of Life. 00:32:37.236 → 00:32:45.596 Now, that’s an interesting one, because Paul is making a pronouncement in time of believers whom he knows their confession and he knows their works. 00:32:45.956 → 00:32:48.936 And he says, these people, their names are in the Book of Life. 00:32:49.356 → 00:32:52.296 I can tell by looking at their Christian lives that this is the case. 00:32:52.816 → 00:32:54.096 So again, that’s not judgment. 00:32:54.116 → 00:33:02.636 It’s not talking about fruit checking to determine if you’re saved or not, but it is saying the Christian life is not a hypothetical. 00:33:03.296 → 00:33:04.596 It’s not just a name in a book. 00:33:04.616 → 00:33:06.136 It’s not a line item in a ledger. 00:33:06.596 → 00:33:17.276 It is a real and living thing that God has given to us to live for His glory, and our names are recorded in eternity as a part of that whole. 00:33:18.876 → 00:33:28.816 In Revelation 3, Jesus himself writes to the Church of Sardis, The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the Book of Life. 00:33:29.436 → 00:33:32.556 I will confess his name before my father and before his angels. 00:33:33.456 → 00:33:39.156 And again, in chapter 13 of Revelation, and all who dwell on earth will worship it. 00:33:39.536 → 00:33:45.896 Everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the Book of Life of the Lamb who was slain. 00:33:45.916 → 00:34:00.256 That’s an interesting verse because it points to one of the really difficult things about speaking about this subject in that Revelation 13 acknowledges there are names that are not written in the Book of Life. 00:34:00.976 → 00:34:14.496 And we’ll talk about predestination and double predestination here in a minute, but this is why I did that lengthy preamble, is that when you try to apply reason to this, you’re going to say, well, God picked some people to be damned. 00:34:14.796 → 00:34:19.496 And that’s not the case, and that should never be the conclusion that is drawn from Scripture because it’s not there. 00:34:20.296 → 00:34:35.116 But it is permissible under the right circumstances to say, there are names that are not in the Book of Life, and that those names who are not written there, those people are damned, not because of God’s actions, because of their own. 00:34:35.856 → 00:34:42.616 But in the second half of the conversation, we’re going to talk about why that’s relevant to what’s blowing up today. 00:34:43.656 → 00:34:47.196 The last verse I want to highlight is from Chapter 7, even in Revelation. 00:34:47.656 → 00:34:56.476 And the dwellers on earth whose names have not been written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world will marvel to see the beast because it was and is not and is to come. 00:34:57.316 → 00:35:10.136 So again, their names in the Book of Life and their names that are not and those whose names are not present will be damned, not because God didn’t write their name in the Book of Life, but because they rejected God’s sacrifice on the cross. 00:35:10.956 → 00:35:16.056 So maybe that’s a good place for us to speak briefly about Intuitu Fide. 00:35:17.136 → 00:35:29.896 Because that’s one of the areas where Lutherans, in particular, have contributed to some false teachings about this in periods of time where we struggled with trying to be too reasonable and reach some conclusions that were false. 00:35:30.876 → 00:35:44.716 Before we get into Intuitu Fide, I just want to highlight that you actually reinforced the fact that when we point to election predestination, when we point to the Book of Life, we are in fact still pointing to the cross. 00:35:45.776 → 00:35:48.276 Because that’s exactly what Revelation 13 says. 00:35:48.856 → 00:35:53.416 And far be it from me to give the King James only crowd any ammunition. 00:35:54.736 → 00:36:00.736 Not that this is ammunition, but I like the formulation in the King James of Revelation 13. 00:36:01.916 → 00:36:09.256 Because it is, And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the Book of Life of the Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world. 00:36:10.576 → 00:36:16.536 I like the placement of that modifying phrase, slain from the foundation of the world, applying to the Lamb. 00:36:16.556 → 00:36:18.836 Because that is what we are pointing to. 00:36:19.176 → 00:36:23.116 We are pointing to Christ was slain from eternity. 00:36:24.116 → 00:36:25.436 That was God’s plan. 00:36:25.456 → 00:36:35.176 That was God’s purpose to bring humanity, the elect, back to himself, to restore us to cleanses from our sins. 00:36:35.656 → 00:36:41.356 And so when we point to election, we point to predestination, we are in fact still pointing to the Lamb. 00:36:42.316 → 00:36:46.016 And just to point out, the Luther translation has the same wording. 00:36:46.836 → 00:36:52.576 So just like that wording a little more than the way the ESV moved that phrase around. 00:36:52.596 → 00:36:53.836 I’m not saying the ESV is wrong. 00:36:54.036 → 00:36:57.036 It’s just a different way of writing that particular verse. 00:36:57.496 → 00:37:16.156 But then to speak of Intuitu Fidei, and this is going to come up in mostly Lutheran circles, but other places as well, because it has become a common error in some denominations, in some traditions, whether or not the term is used to view election in this light. 00:37:17.656 → 00:37:23.876 Now, there are multiple ways that Intuitu Fidei has been used, and we should probably define it. 00:37:23.896 → 00:37:30.236 That means just in view of faith in Latin, or in view of foreseen faith sometimes. 00:37:31.796 → 00:37:49.716 It has been used in multiple senses, not all of which are incorrect, because some of them get into hyper-technical, philosophical discussions of Aristotelian cause and, you know, what is the formal cause, or the final cause, or the instrumental cause. 00:37:50.736 → 00:37:55.036 When you get into that kind of stuff, one, there’s a question of the utility of it. 00:37:55.536 → 00:38:11.436 I’m not saying that philosophy is always useless, but I am saying that philosophy is often useless, particularly when you are trying to pick apart doctrines of scripture that are largely beyond human reason when it comes to those, let’s call them finer details. 00:38:12.516 → 00:38:13.056 And also these were… 00:38:14.256 → 00:38:14.916 Yes, exactly. 00:38:14.936 → 00:38:15.316 It’s harmful. 00:38:15.336 → 00:38:19.016 And these were discussions, in part, they were discussions being had by academics. 00:38:20.036 → 00:38:24.756 And in that setting, okay, fine, maybe you can have these discussions, but they bled out into the church. 00:38:25.556 → 00:38:35.676 And these cause real harm to the sheep when they are exposed to these things, because they will not be understood correctly, or they will be filtered through false teachers who corrupt them. 00:38:36.016 → 00:38:41.036 And so, for instance, in the Lutheran tradition, we have Gerhard, who did use Intuitu Fidei in his writings. 00:38:41.716 → 00:38:46.716 But he used it in a way that was sound, doctrinally and theologically. 00:38:46.736 → 00:38:50.436 And I could list off many quotes from him to that effect. 00:38:50.756 → 00:38:52.156 He was sound on the doctrine. 00:38:52.796 → 00:39:06.576 He used it in the sense of faith is the instrumental cause used by God in order to save us in time according to his eternal ordination, which is predestination or election. 00:39:07.396 → 00:39:08.596 That is a fine formulation. 00:39:08.616 → 00:39:09.336 That is correct. 00:39:10.496 → 00:39:33.876 The incorrect formulation, how it has been used in a heretical sense from really around the same time as Gerhard to now is that God in eternity foresaw those who would in time persevere in faith to the end and therefore their names are written in the Book of Life because God foresaw that they would persevere. 00:39:34.476 → 00:39:37.056 And so it’s the same Arminian problem. 00:39:37.076 → 00:39:40.016 It’s the same free will issue that constantly recurs. 00:39:40.596 → 00:39:43.156 It’s the idea that man saves himself. 00:39:44.676 → 00:39:49.996 And that’s not what scripture teaches because scripture teaches that you were dead in your sin and your trespass. 00:39:50.656 → 00:39:51.836 Corpses do not act. 00:39:52.256 → 00:39:53.016 Go to the morgue. 00:39:53.476 → 00:39:54.096 Wait around. 00:39:54.176 → 00:39:55.376 None of them are going to stand up. 00:39:55.956 → 00:39:57.476 Unless someone really botched something. 00:39:58.936 → 00:39:59.876 The dead do not act. 00:40:00.316 → 00:40:04.096 And so you who were dead in your sin and trespass cannot save yourself. 00:40:04.416 → 00:40:13.296 So a doctrine that tells you, oh, you just have to persevere to the end, and then God will elect you because of the faith that you held on. 00:40:13.516 → 00:40:14.376 That’s not how it works. 00:40:15.456 → 00:40:16.436 God gave you faith. 00:40:16.956 → 00:40:17.756 Faith is a gift. 00:40:18.216 → 00:40:21.576 God creates faith in you via means of grace. 00:40:22.396 → 00:40:29.256 Baptism, reinforced with the Lord’s Supper, hearing of the Word, reinforced with the Absolution. 00:40:30.016 → 00:40:31.496 God gave you faith as a gift. 00:40:32.176 → 00:40:36.656 It is that gift that receives forgiveness of sins and eternal life. 00:40:37.176 → 00:40:38.256 It is reliant on God. 00:40:38.276 → 00:40:39.456 It is not reliant on you. 00:40:40.256 → 00:40:58.076 And so if a theology is telling you, if a tradition is telling you that you have to grasp this faith and hold it to the end, and it is reliant on you, it is not reliant on God, that is a recipe for despair. 00:40:59.076 → 00:41:02.956 How will I ever know that I have done enough to persevere? 00:41:03.236 → 00:41:05.036 Yes, Scripture tells us to persevere. 00:41:05.056 → 00:41:06.696 Yes, you should make your election certain. 00:41:06.996 → 00:41:08.336 Yes, you should have good works. 00:41:08.536 → 00:41:10.356 We are not denying any of that. 00:41:11.416 → 00:41:29.096 But as soon as you make justification a matter of your works, a matter of your perseverance, a matter of what you do, you are taking the glory from Christ, you are denigrating Christ’s death, his work, and you are dooming yourself. 00:41:29.216 → 00:41:32.476 Because ultimately you will figure out, I cannot do this. 00:41:33.176 → 00:41:37.656 And so if you believe that you have to do it, and you figure out that you cannot do it, you will despair. 00:41:38.916 → 00:41:40.876 And that is a recipe for being an apostate. 00:41:41.556 → 00:41:42.976 And that is why this doctrine matters. 00:41:42.996 → 00:41:44.936 You have to get the doctrine right. 00:41:46.776 → 00:41:48.756 And it seems like a subtle distinction. 00:41:48.776 → 00:41:55.056 And when the philosophers were tackling it, they were originally making a subtle distinction. 00:41:55.076 → 00:41:57.236 As you said, it leaked out into the world. 00:41:57.256 → 00:41:58.656 And it does tremendous harm. 00:41:58.676 → 00:42:07.756 Because again, by pointing to your name being in the Book of Life, you’re pointing forward to the cross and to Christ’s propitiation for your sins. 00:42:08.296 → 00:42:12.316 There’s no you in there except as the object of God’s mercy. 00:42:12.976 → 00:42:17.716 You are not ever the subject in true Christian doctrine. 00:42:17.736 → 00:42:18.976 You are always the object. 00:42:19.436 → 00:42:30.716 Even when you do good works, you are doing the good works which you received from God, which were also prepared from before the foundation of world for you to do them for God’s glory. 00:42:31.196 → 00:42:34.636 So there’s nothing that we can ever take credit for, ever. 00:42:34.956 → 00:42:38.196 Not a single thing that we can take credit for, for our salvation. 00:42:39.516 → 00:42:50.276 On the other hand, because God is so merciful, because He paid for all of our sins, every single good thing that we do, that He gave us to do, He gives us credit for it. 00:42:50.916 → 00:42:59.256 Just as He gave us unfairly the credit for Christ’s death on the cross, He also gives us credit for the good works that we do, that He gave us to do. 00:42:59.736 → 00:43:02.736 Just as He gives us salvation because He gave us faith. 00:43:03.276 → 00:43:08.056 Like it’s all just God pouring out continuously and eternally for our benefit. 00:43:08.376 → 00:43:09.796 None of it is ever fair. 00:43:10.356 → 00:43:15.796 And that’s what we’re going to be talking about in the second half, is that none of this is fair in either direction. 00:43:16.096 → 00:43:20.016 It’s not fair for the elect and it’s not fair for those who are not elect. 00:43:20.556 → 00:43:25.996 And that is not accusing God of sin because God simply isn’t fair. 00:43:26.496 → 00:43:29.716 And that’s one of the places where our reason rebels against God. 00:43:30.116 → 00:43:41.956 Anytime we hear it, anytime someone says, well, people aren’t equal, the human mind in the 21st century raves furiously against God at the idea that all men are not equal. 00:43:42.636 → 00:43:43.336 It’s nonsense. 00:43:43.636 → 00:43:44.756 Scripture denies it. 00:43:45.316 → 00:43:46.616 Our own reason denies it. 00:43:46.616 → 00:43:48.116 Everything we see denies it. 00:43:48.576 → 00:43:59.556 And yet when we come into contact with these things in the world, people either attribute sin to God or they deny that God has anything to do with it, which is equally bad. 00:44:00.916 → 00:44:09.056 And so these discussions must always be focused on the comfort to the believer and the warning to the unbeliever. 00:44:09.436 → 00:44:19.216 Now, the Book of Life is not given as a warning to the unbeliever in the sense that, well, as you said, if your name is not in the Book of Life, I guess you’re just out of luck. 00:44:19.236 → 00:44:22.556 So you drink and be merry because there’s nothing you can do. 00:44:22.996 → 00:44:23.916 That’s not the message. 00:44:23.936 → 00:44:32.376 But the message is all of these benefits, which accrue to the elect, which accrue to believers, are denied to those who deny Christ. 00:44:32.996 → 00:44:43.936 And if someone is an unbeliever, if they’re living a godless life, if they do not confess that all of their sins were also paid for at the cross, they don’t receive those gifts. 00:44:43.936 → 00:44:45.336 They don’t receive the forgiveness. 00:44:45.616 → 00:44:51.256 Because although Christ did pay for them, if you reject the credit, you’ve got a debit on your bill. 00:44:51.736 → 00:44:54.476 You have a huge debit and you will spend eternity paying for it. 00:44:54.976 → 00:45:08.316 And so these discussions ultimately either end up in a faithful confession of election or they end up in some flavor of universalism, which is what we’re literally seeing in the Missouri Senate today. 00:45:08.336 → 00:45:17.816 We are seeing pastors openly espouse universalism in opposition to election for the sake of anti-racism, which we’ll get to later. 00:45:19.356 → 00:45:27.236 Universalism has been a constant plague for the Church for basically all of history, but it does wax and wane in cycles. 00:45:27.256 → 00:45:36.276 It is currently growing globally, realistically, but it is a problem we notice in our own backyard because, well, it’s our backyard. 00:45:37.356 → 00:45:42.816 But you touched again on an important thing that we should probably expand on a little bit. 00:45:43.196 → 00:45:44.856 That is the scope of the atonement. 00:45:45.756 → 00:45:49.696 You have those who argue based on reason. 00:45:49.716 → 00:45:51.316 I don’t want to go into their actual argument. 00:45:52.696 → 00:45:54.396 They know the argument well enough themselves. 00:45:55.436 → 00:45:59.456 But they argue that there is a limited atonement, that it is only for the elect. 00:46:00.156 → 00:46:16.136 And part of the reason that they are able to maintain that delusional belief, because it is in fact delusional and wrong, is that they don’t understand from the outset what Christ said about to do, what God did in Christ with the atonement. 00:46:17.736 → 00:46:20.696 The atonement does not cover just the elect. 00:46:22.216 → 00:46:24.716 The atonement does not cover just men. 00:46:25.876 → 00:46:37.476 The atonement was of all things, ton cosmon, the universe, everything, absolutely everything in existence, was redeemed through Christ. 00:46:38.536 → 00:46:48.116 And so if you try to limit it to men, then yes, you can maybe argue yourself into a position where it makes some sense to believe in a limited atonement. 00:46:50.496 → 00:46:58.096 But if you’re dealing with the actual scope of the atonement, God redeemed plants and animals and rocks and stars. 00:46:58.896 → 00:47:00.556 He redeemed everything. 00:47:01.436 → 00:47:08.416 And so if you deal with that frame, well, now it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to try to argue that some men aren’t covered by the atonement. 00:47:09.556 → 00:47:16.476 And so you have to take scripture at its word, and the word it uses is ton cosmon, from which we get, of course, cosmos. 00:47:18.276 → 00:47:24.656 And the reason, and this is going to be one of the recurring themes probably in virtually every episode we do, is headship. 00:47:25.156 → 00:47:28.176 The universe fell because Adam was its head. 00:47:28.736 → 00:47:32.636 Adam was the head of everything because God gave him that crown. 00:47:33.136 → 00:47:38.096 He was the first fruits of creation to be the ruler over the world. 00:47:38.696 → 00:47:43.456 And when Adam, as the head of the world, sinned, the whole world fell. 00:47:43.876 → 00:47:51.676 The rocks, the trees, the animals, everything fell into disobedience because Adam was its head because of his disobedience. 00:47:52.296 → 00:48:00.336 And this is another place where when people talk about, well, that’s fair, that’s not fair, shut up. 00:48:00.696 → 00:48:01.836 There’s no fair with God. 00:48:02.096 → 00:48:04.136 There’s no such thing as fair with God. 00:48:04.716 → 00:48:05.936 You will die. 00:48:05.956 → 00:48:06.336 I will die. 00:48:06.356 → 00:48:07.016 I will die. 00:48:07.036 → 00:48:13.256 I will be eaten by worms and I will decay into dust because Adam ate the wrong piece of fruit. 00:48:14.236 → 00:48:21.256 Even if I had a perfect life, I would still be killed by God and I would be worm food because Adam ate the wrong piece of fruit. 00:48:21.716 → 00:48:25.436 Now, I’ve committed a dozen sins today more serious than eating the wrong piece of fruit. 00:48:25.656 → 00:48:27.096 And I’ll commit more once we hang up. 00:48:27.376 → 00:48:32.996 Hopefully, I won’t commit any on this podcast, but the Christian life is knowledge of how evil we are. 00:48:33.916 → 00:48:40.396 What Adam did was insignificant by any standard of fairness, but it was disobedience to God. 00:48:41.196 → 00:48:45.916 Adam elevated himself above God and said, I don’t like what you told me not to do. 00:48:46.376 → 00:48:48.056 I think I can be a better God than you. 00:48:48.076 → 00:48:48.936 I think I can do it. 00:48:49.196 → 00:48:49.736 And he did. 00:48:50.096 → 00:48:55.276 And because we are his children, because we are of his seed, we inherit his sin. 00:48:56.076 → 00:49:07.136 And that is the reason that Jesus had to come into time and into creation as a man to be the new Adam, to undo the damage that Adam did to the whole universe. 00:49:07.536 → 00:49:12.616 And Christ is the ultimate head of the universe, both of the church and of all creation. 00:49:12.636 → 00:49:16.456 He’s the king over all things, not only those things that believe in him. 00:49:17.676 → 00:49:21.656 His perfect redemption redeemed the whole universe, as you said. 00:49:21.856 → 00:49:41.716 And that’s why when you start talking about limited atonement, if you understand it in terms of, well, this isn’t about individuals, this isn’t about persons, this is about everything, then the notion that there would be some small carve out only for unbelievers starts to not even make a lot of rational sense. 00:49:41.736 → 00:49:47.176 Like you said, you can get into it rationally if you have the wrong understanding of the redemption. 00:49:47.576 → 00:49:52.976 But if Christ did in fact redeem all things as he says he did, then it doesn’t add up. 00:49:52.996 → 00:50:01.556 I just have one other point that I wanted to draw out and make sure that we’re abundantly clear. 00:50:03.576 → 00:50:11.796 What we’re talking about here is a number of different issues when we talk about the Christian life and modernism versus synergism. 00:50:11.816 → 00:50:20.376 Modernism being a single actor, in this case God, synergism being multiple actors, in this case God and man. 00:50:21.276 → 00:50:23.556 Justification is monergistic. 00:50:24.356 → 00:50:31.296 God alone acts in your justification, and that is good news because your debt was infinite. 00:50:32.016 → 00:50:36.436 You would never be able to repay it, no matter how long you suffer in hell. 00:50:37.956 → 00:50:42.756 And so it is good news that justification is monergistic. 00:50:43.956 → 00:50:51.856 Sanctification, which will include good works because good works naturally flow from a living faith, Christians will have good works. 00:50:51.876 → 00:50:55.056 Good works do not save you, but you must have them. 00:50:56.236 → 00:51:12.336 Sanctification is synergistic, because as a not fully yet restored, because of course you won’t be fully restored until the second resurrection, which is, say, into eternal life, baptism being the first, of course. 00:51:14.596 → 00:51:17.116 You participate in those good works. 00:51:17.616 → 00:51:27.976 You work with the Holy Spirit in sanctification, because your will is restored to the extent that you can work toward God in that way. 00:51:27.996 → 00:51:30.136 You can work with the Holy Spirit. 00:51:30.856 → 00:51:44.256 And so, monergistic for justification, synergistic for sanctification, which is to say we are not saying that Christians cannot do good works, or God forbid, we’re not saying Christians should not do good works. 00:51:44.996 → 00:51:48.796 We are saying that Christians will cooperate, will have good works. 00:51:51.296 → 00:51:56.996 And both the cooperation and the good works themselves are also gifts of God through the Holy Spirit. 00:51:57.536 → 00:51:58.656 Again, it’s all receiving. 00:51:59.316 → 00:52:02.036 God gets all the credit, which is good news for us. 00:52:02.436 → 00:52:08.936 We don’t want the credit, because if you have the credit, well now you also have duties, and things are reliant on you. 00:52:09.276 → 00:52:11.636 You don’t want it reliant on you, because again, infinite debt. 00:52:13.636 → 00:52:14.756 Yeah, I don’t want the blame. 00:52:14.776 → 00:52:15.836 I’m not going to take the credit. 00:52:15.856 → 00:52:17.656 Let God take everything. 00:52:17.696 → 00:52:25.196 I’m a creature and he’s a creator, and I want to be a slave to that kind of God, because I don’t have anything to worry about. 00:52:26.316 → 00:52:29.876 The little brick that says the buck stops here, you want it to stay on God’s desk. 00:52:31.496 → 00:52:31.936 Yeah. 00:52:32.016 → 00:52:33.516 Don’t try to steal it for yourself. 00:52:33.576 → 00:52:34.436 That ends poorly. 00:52:37.516 → 00:53:11.036 So I think one of the other doctrines, the most obvious one that we need to speak to, because when most people hear predestination, they probably think of, the Calvinists don’t call it this, but the doctrine of double predestination, which is the logical conclusion that if God predestined some to be damned or to be saved, and that’s a subset of all of those men who were born, you have a leftover set, they must also have been predestined to be damned, because it’s the only thing that makes sense. 00:53:11.416 → 00:53:12.016 And that’s true. 00:53:12.256 → 00:53:14.016 It is the only thing that makes sense. 00:53:14.276 → 00:53:20.676 The problem is it’s contrary to scripture, because there are many places where God says that he desires that all men be saved. 00:53:20.976 → 00:53:26.096 And he says that the sacrifice on the cross was for all men, not only those who believe. 00:53:26.616 → 00:53:34.316 And so predestination is heard in most people’s minds as double predestination, which is false. 00:53:34.716 → 00:53:41.756 And as we’ve said earlier, when you get these things wrong, you will cause despair in the hearer. 00:53:41.956 → 00:53:51.056 Any false doctrine will ultimately, potentially lead to damnation, because a false doctrine is a lie, and a lie has a father, and his name is Satan. 00:53:51.716 → 00:54:09.416 And I don’t mean to be harsh against the Tulip Calvinists, but double predestination to say that there is limited atonement, and that not all men are able to receive the sacrifice that God paid on the cross is false. 00:54:10.096 → 00:54:13.716 And it is, as we described, it does tremendous harm to hearers to hear that. 00:54:14.336 → 00:54:31.736 So the reason that we, the reason it’s so difficult to talk about this is that, like I said up front, like if you just listen to two minutes of this, you’re going to think that it’s crazy, because you’re saying that God picked some men, and that means that he picked other men, and either I don’t like the sound of that, or I believe that, and both of those are wrong. 00:54:31.976 → 00:54:37.616 You shouldn’t believe it, and you shouldn’t really like the sound of it, because it doesn’t, it’s not true. 00:54:38.416 → 00:54:44.976 It is true that God is the sole reason for our salvation, and we are the sole reason for our damnation. 00:54:45.536 → 00:54:52.496 And there’s no math that can fill in the blanks or connect the dots between those two scriptural facts. 00:54:52.936 → 00:55:08.316 And so it’s vital for us when we’re thinking about this and applying this doctrine elsewhere in the Christian life, and it does have application, never to think that God created a man in order to damn him, because that’s utterly false and it’s a terrible thing. 00:55:09.736 → 00:55:20.276 To quickly address an argument directly to the Reformed, this is one that should be compelling for the Reformed, if they will simply hear it out and listen to it. 00:55:21.736 → 00:55:26.056 The Reformed have a tendency to want to reduce things, to reason. 00:55:26.776 → 00:55:28.816 We know that, the Reformed know that as well. 00:55:29.416 → 00:55:34.816 I don’t think they would necessarily say that that characterization is wrong or unfair. 00:55:36.036 → 00:55:49.676 And so we have Calvin’s famous comment, the finite is not capable of the infinite, which is a generally true statement with regard to human reason. 00:55:51.676 → 00:56:07.036 But of course, we have the incarnation in which an infinite God, because the fullness of deity dwelt bodily in Christ, as Scripture says, so you have finite human form containing the infinite. 00:56:08.076 → 00:56:09.296 That’s not my argument, though. 00:56:09.316 → 00:56:11.156 My argument for the Reformed is this. 00:56:11.916 → 00:56:41.216 If you try to say that these statements in Scripture, whatever they happen to be, do not make sense together, and so we have to do something, you know, thinglies, aliases, whatever it happens to be, in order to make them make sense, what you are ultimately saying is that I, you in this case, are saying, I, a finite, the finitum in Calvin’s statement, am capable of understanding the infinite. 00:56:42.096 → 00:56:45.936 And of course, to understand the infinite, you must be infinite. 00:56:48.196 → 00:56:49.056 That’s incoherent. 00:56:49.816 → 00:56:50.676 It’s contradictory. 00:56:50.696 → 00:56:51.696 It’s self-defeating. 00:56:52.216 → 00:57:03.536 And so the central claim of reformed doctrine in this way doesn’t even stand up to the general rules of reformed doctrine that things must submit to reason. 00:57:04.756 → 00:57:15.816 So if you actually think through your statement, your axiom, finitum non infiniti capax, if you think it through, it doesn’t even meet its own standard. 00:57:17.416 → 00:57:19.796 Just believe what the Word of God says. 00:57:20.776 → 00:57:28.496 We have an infinite God who is infinitely good, who has elected us before the foundation of the world in His Son. 00:57:29.776 → 00:57:33.996 Believe what He tells us, because that’s the right way to come to all of these things. 00:57:34.956 → 00:57:43.636 You don’t come to it first by looking at Scripture, resolving all of the issues and saying, okay, this makes sense to me, therefore, there must be a God. 00:57:44.276 → 00:57:45.256 That’s exactly wrong. 00:57:46.816 → 00:57:54.176 You come to Scripture with the knowledge there is a God and believe what Scripture says because God is the one who has given it to you. 00:57:55.096 → 00:57:59.796 The causation flows the opposite way from the way many people approach Scripture. 00:58:01.016 → 00:58:07.336 And so if you look at it as God gave me this, we’re to believe and then we’re to try to understand, not the other way around. 00:58:07.356 → 00:58:10.036 Yeah, now believing it makes perfect sense. 00:58:10.736 → 00:58:22.196 I don’t have to be able to resolve everything in Scripture to the satisfaction of my fallen reason, because I know the source and I can trust him so I can trust what it says. 00:58:24.156 → 00:58:35.656 And that should be the root of all sound doctrine, is that if you fear love and trust in God above all things, you don’t worry when you’re confused. 00:58:35.796 → 00:58:37.276 You don’t worry when you’re scared. 00:58:37.656 → 00:58:44.516 You don’t worry when you’re worrying, because I realize that sounds silly, but I mean it. 00:58:46.736 → 00:59:10.636 When you are facing the worst moments in your life, your faith should and will, when you are faithful and you understand God as a human can, you’ll know that when the worst thing is happening to you, when you’re dying, maybe you’re dying terribly, you are still God’s and God is still God. 00:59:11.056 → 00:59:18.376 You belong to him because he put his name on you in baptism, because he wrote your name down in the Book of Life before eternity. 00:59:18.816 → 00:59:27.616 So there’s nothing that can happen to you, even if it’s falling into an industrial shredder, it’s going to hurt a lot and then you’re going to die. 00:59:28.056 → 00:59:31.876 But that’s nothing in comparison to the promises of the God who created you. 00:59:32.796 → 00:59:41.876 And a faith that is rooted in that sort of certainty of God, of who God is, is a faith that cannot be shaken. 00:59:42.296 → 00:59:46.756 And it’s the reason that everything that we say tries to point us away from ourselves. 00:59:47.316 → 01:00:01.796 And Christian doctrine should always seek to point away from the individual and his actions as a means of salvation or as a means of comfort, because if that’s where you’re rooting your confidence, you’re going to fail yourself. ---
**Author:** ![stonechoir](https://omnifora.com/user_avatar/omnifora.com/stonechoir/32/261_2.png) [@stonechoir](https://omnifora.com/u/stonechoir)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2025, 4:24am UTC](https://omnifora.com/t/election-in-view-of-headship/276/4 "2025-10-26T04:24:20Z")
_Part 2 of 2_ 01:00:02.116 → 01:00:07.636 And on the day where you need yourself the most and you’re failing, you have nothing. 01:00:08.316 → 01:00:16.376 Whereas if you’re rooting your confidence in God, on the day when you need God most, he’s there because he’s been there every day since before there were days. 01:00:16.976 → 01:00:21.996 And that sort of certainty defies the worst things that could happen to anyone. 01:00:22.596 → 01:00:26.236 And that is the comfort of the gospel, properly understood. 01:00:29.036 → 01:00:46.176 And just to repeat myself and to repeat what you’ve said, we do not ultimately have to understand everything God tells us, because we understand enough of what God tells us, and we understand enough of God to know that we should trust him. 01:00:47.636 → 01:00:58.076 My dog is the same way, and the difference between my dog and me is significantly smaller than the difference between me and God. 01:00:59.296 → 01:01:00.256 My dog trusts me. 01:01:00.696 → 01:01:06.436 He does not always understand what I am telling him to do, but he does it because he trusts me. 01:01:08.116 → 01:01:11.956 I believe what God has told me because I trust God. 01:01:12.156 → 01:01:14.416 I have excellent warrant. 01:01:14.556 → 01:01:16.356 I have perfect warrant to trust God. 01:01:17.236 → 01:01:19.336 And so it makes sense. 01:01:19.556 → 01:01:23.696 It is actually ultimately rational to believe what God says in his word. 01:01:24.396 → 01:01:25.696 Because God is trustworthy. 01:01:27.976 → 01:01:32.576 Is there anything else that you would like to say about election before we move on to how it happens in time? 01:01:32.596 → 01:01:39.456 The only thing I do is a tangent on fairness, but I think we can leave that for another time. 01:01:40.716 → 01:01:44.016 Well, I think that’s actually what we’re just about to get into. 01:01:44.676 → 01:01:46.156 That’s actually true. 01:01:46.376 → 01:01:49.576 Fairness is nonsense is the short version, but let’s go with the longer one. 01:01:49.596 → 01:01:49.856 Yeah. 01:01:51.756 → 01:02:14.616 So we’ve been talking about election and your name being written in the Book of Life from before eternity, which is a mouthful, but it’s vitable to get every word in there because each of those words is comforting and each of those words means something, including that your name was written in the Book of Life, not your Social Security number, not an ID number or something, your name. 01:02:15.396 → 01:02:16.796 And we’ll get into that in a minute. 01:02:17.116 → 01:02:23.056 But first, as we’ve been saying all along, God foreknew you. 01:02:23.076 → 01:02:24.856 He foreordained your salvation. 01:02:24.876 → 01:02:28.396 He gave you the gift of faith to receive that salvation. 01:02:28.676 → 01:02:29.616 You receive faith. 01:02:29.816 → 01:02:30.616 You are saved. 01:02:32.116 → 01:02:33.296 How do you come to faith? 01:02:33.756 → 01:02:43.756 And that’s where all the people who say they believe in the doctrine of election, when push comes to shove in the modern world, many of them fall away and they no longer believe it. 01:02:44.676 → 01:02:50.836 In Romans 10, it’s recorded, How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? 01:02:51.376 → 01:02:54.296 And how are they to believe in him whom they have never heard? 01:02:54.696 → 01:02:57.236 And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 01:02:57.556 → 01:02:59.696 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? 01:03:00.736 → 01:03:26.296 Now, when you take that in the context of Romans in the first century, after Jesus has come and ascended, as Christians, we think about that strictly in terms of the New Testament Gospel, that Jesus, the promise of the Messiah was fulfilled, the sacrifice on the cross was made, he was raised from the dead, he ascended into heaven, it’s done. 01:03:26.856 → 01:03:31.336 As Christ said, it is finished on the cross, the propitiating work is complete. 01:03:31.996 → 01:03:39.316 And so when we think about how will they believe in him and who they have never heard, we’re thinking about that. 01:03:39.916 → 01:03:58.976 But the point that I want to make now is that when you look at human history, not only Christian history, not only history of believers in God, but of every people, of every tribe and every nation, the manner in which they have believed reflects upon this too. 01:04:00.196 → 01:04:06.796 As we’ve talked about in previous episodes, as Europeans, we are, as humans, we’re sons of Adam. 01:04:07.436 → 01:04:09.076 As humans, we’re sons of Noah. 01:04:09.556 → 01:04:12.956 As Europeans, we’re sons of Japheth, Bar Noah. 01:04:13.456 → 01:04:14.476 That was his father. 01:04:17.256 → 01:04:28.776 I have and you have, as a European, the faith of Japheth, the faith that Noah gave to him as his father, transmitting to him by teaching him. 01:04:29.496 → 01:04:47.036 Now Noah predated Abraham, predated the covenant that God gave Abraham that included circumcision, that included the law as it was laid out to preserve the Hebrew people as they were bounced through time as frankly objects of wrath on many occasions. 01:04:49.796 → 01:04:52.896 The faith that Noah had is the same faith that we have today. 01:04:54.116 → 01:05:00.536 And I was watching a show recently that talked about ancient history. 01:05:00.916 → 01:05:05.956 And it was done by a pagan who was clearly denied God, and he was clearly an evolutionist. 01:05:05.976 → 01:05:19.856 And so some of his dates were wrong, but the work that he had done I found invaluable as a Christian who believes that the earth is about 6,000 years old and that the flood was a global event as recorded in Scripture. 01:05:21.016 → 01:05:34.496 What he found as he’s traveled all over the world, doing excavations and learning about cultures that were separated from the Tower of Babel, these are people who clearly went in different directions. 01:05:34.516 → 01:05:50.656 We’re talking about Aztecs, we’re talking about Egyptians, we’re talking about people in the Far Eastern Asia, people who never heard about Isaiah promising the virgin birth, people who never heard that Jesus had died until after it had occurred. 01:05:52.236 → 01:06:05.956 There is still the case even in those scattered civilizations, those scattered nations where some of the nascent elements of the Christian faith are found. 01:06:06.356 → 01:06:08.216 Now, they’re not found in a salvific sense. 01:06:08.236 → 01:06:31.456 I’m not saying that these people were Christians secretly, but if you look at, for example, Egyptian mythology, the Egyptians about 1350 BC, they were originating the myth of Osiris and Iris and Horus where there was a virgin birth of a god who then died sacrificially. 01:06:32.296 → 01:06:40.416 Now, the timing of that is interesting because the virgin birth thing doesn’t show up in scripture until 700 BC. 01:06:40.636 → 01:06:48.256 650 years after they were coming up with this is the first time it’s recorded that there would be a virgin born. 01:06:48.916 → 01:07:08.096 The import of that is that the first record that we have is in Isaiah, but if you look at how many places this shows up, now with the Egyptians, you could say maybe they heard it from the Hebrews who had just left 100 years earlier. 01:07:08.496 → 01:07:13.296 So for the 400 years that the Hebrews were there, they may have been sharing the faith. 01:07:13.356 → 01:07:27.156 But even then, for the Egyptians who had picked up the virgin birth of a god who would sacrifice himself, that story, that myth would have had to have been known to the Hebrews centuries prior to Isaiah. 01:07:28.056 → 01:07:34.936 And even then, you would have contact between the Hebrews and the Egyptians to transmit that, and they were in the same place and time. 01:07:35.316 → 01:07:36.956 So that’s conceivable. 01:07:37.236 → 01:07:38.776 We don’t know if that was the case or not. 01:07:39.296 → 01:07:56.256 However, you can look even further far afield to the Vietnamese and to the Aztecs who also have similar, more corrupted stories, but stories that repeat some of the same elements, that there would be a virgin birth of a god and that there would be some sort of sacrifice. 01:07:57.016 → 01:08:14.696 And there are some other cultures where some of those elements are present, but they’re bastardized to the point that it’s really impossible to infer whether they came via transmission or they arrived at independently, not as some sort of prophecy that was originally rooted in Christianity. 01:08:15.456 → 01:08:28.756 But the point I’m making with this is that the only way that the Egyptians and the Aztecs and the Vietnamese and others would have heard about the virgin birth of a god would have come from the time of the Tower of Babel. 01:08:29.736 → 01:08:36.156 Long before there was an Abraham, long before there was a covenant, long before there was an Isaiah, they would have heard those promises. 01:08:36.396 → 01:08:41.676 And that’s entirely consistent with Scripture, which doesn’t say anything about it. 01:08:42.116 → 01:08:47.376 But the promises that are given in Scripture were given to the Hebrews and were given to us. 01:08:48.416 → 01:08:49.596 Noah was a prophet. 01:08:50.356 → 01:08:53.916 The men of Noah’s day and earlier, many of them were prophets. 01:08:53.936 → 01:08:55.896 They walked with God, they spoke with God. 01:08:56.456 → 01:09:03.556 There is every reason for us to believe that they would have had more than just the Genesis 315 promise, because there’s not much there. 01:09:03.956 → 01:09:10.696 You could read it and if you didn’t know anything about Jesus, it might not occur to you that that was a fulfillment. 01:09:11.136 → 01:09:26.976 And it is only later on in Scripture where other elements of, I think there are at least 300 odd prophecies of Christ’s birth and his life and his death and his resurrection in the Old Testament, that doesn’t mean that that was a complete picture. 01:09:27.136 → 01:09:38.056 There may well have been more and the anthropological evidence strongly, strongly indicates that that was the case. 01:09:38.476 → 01:09:46.196 That the promise of a Messiah was known, we know was known to Noah and his children because they were Noah’s. 01:09:46.736 → 01:09:49.276 Their faith was transmitted by their father to them. 01:09:49.796 → 01:09:52.856 We know that Japheth was blessed and we know that Shem was blessed. 01:09:53.156 → 01:09:58.776 We know that Ham was cursed by God and his descendants bear that curse. 01:10:00.096 → 01:10:01.016 Noah was a prophet. 01:10:01.036 → 01:10:03.976 He didn’t have any authority to curse anyone or to bless anyone. 01:10:04.416 → 01:10:08.176 Any curses or blessings coming from him came from God. 01:10:08.376 → 01:10:11.536 That’s the only Christian conclusion that we can reach. 01:10:12.276 → 01:10:31.416 So when we look in the historical record and we see those people who branched out from Babel, scattered across the earth as God had commanded them to do, carrying elements of the true Christian faith, again, bastardized to the point that they were no longer salvific. 01:10:31.436 → 01:10:35.536 They no longer knew God, but they all knew about the flood. 01:10:35.916 → 01:10:44.236 That’s something that’s preserved even in cultures that have no record whatsoever of anything that we would consider Christian doctrine. 01:10:44.756 → 01:10:46.396 They still record that historical event. 01:10:47.576 → 01:10:54.436 After that, many of them do also record things that could be considered to have been elements of the Christian faith. 01:10:54.576 → 01:11:01.076 Now, this is a tricky area to get into because most of the people talking about it are atheists. 01:11:01.336 → 01:11:07.036 They’re worldly men who deny and hate God simultaneously. 01:11:07.076 → 01:11:10.396 Those men will twist what has occurred. 01:11:10.736 → 01:11:44.136 So you have Jordan Peterson today and you have his spiritual father Joseph Campbell and you have Carl Jung before him, all basically making the claim that the reason that we have these repeated stories popping up globally, their rationalization for how that could occur, they say that it’s an upwelling of man’s own spirit, that there’s some indwelling of our own human nature that manifests these stories, these myths that are not connected to God because God doesn’t exist. 01:11:44.356 → 01:11:45.876 They’re just us. 01:11:45.896 → 01:11:50.496 They’re us doing our own thing in space and time and across space and time. 01:11:51.256 → 01:11:54.316 And when they delete God, that’s the best they can do. 01:11:54.336 → 01:11:54.996 It’s silly. 01:11:55.476 → 01:12:04.816 But if you look at it scripturally, you can see that the opposite was true, that when the people got off the Ark, they were Christians. 01:12:04.936 → 01:12:09.136 They had a belief in the Messiah who was to come at that time. 01:12:09.756 → 01:12:21.716 They knew what God had revealed to them, which was clearly more than is revealed in scripture at that point for our benefit because it’s recording what we need and not what they needed at the time. 01:12:22.116 → 01:12:23.516 Noah was talking directly to God. 01:12:23.536 → 01:12:24.816 He didn’t have to write this stuff down. 01:12:25.316 → 01:12:30.816 If he did, it was for the benefit of future generations. 01:12:30.836 → 01:12:41.476 So as we look at this, it’s important to understand that the transmission of faith, how can they call on him in whom they have not believed and how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard? 01:12:42.356 → 01:12:43.016 How do you hear? 01:12:43.296 → 01:12:44.476 You hear from your father. 01:12:45.436 → 01:12:50.396 You hear from the man that God has placed in your family as your head. 01:12:50.896 → 01:12:51.816 You are his seed. 01:12:51.836 → 01:12:52.796 You are your father’s seed. 01:12:53.476 → 01:12:57.876 And he transmits the faith to you or he fails to transmit the faith to you. 01:12:58.656 → 01:13:09.456 And so in time, we see that there were some fathers who came off the ark and their children and their children’s children who preserved the faith that was transmitted to them by their fathers. 01:13:10.636 → 01:13:20.956 We see other fathers who were fateless, who were evil, who abandoned God just as quickly as their ancestors before the flood had abandoned God and went off in tremendously evil directions. 01:13:21.836 → 01:13:30.716 And so the inheritance of those men for both good and evil is either faith or lack of faith. 01:13:31.216 → 01:13:39.936 And that’s where we’re going to get into the intersection of election and faith in time, because you inherit faith one way or another. 01:13:39.956 → 01:13:50.376 Either it’s inherited directly from your parents who give it to you, or if you were not blessed with faithful parents, you may have to rebel against them and inherit it through adoption. 01:13:50.456 → 01:13:52.716 And we’re all adopted sons of God through baptism. 01:13:52.736 → 01:14:02.856 I’m not saying that there’s not a sense here where there is a hereditary claim to God, which was what the Israelites misunderstood the Pharisees later on. 01:14:02.876 → 01:14:04.336 They thought that it was a genetic claim. 01:14:04.716 → 01:14:05.856 That was never the case. 01:14:06.196 → 01:14:07.756 And what CI claims today. 01:14:08.156 → 01:14:09.056 Yeah, absolutely. 01:14:09.136 → 01:14:16.856 It’s the Christian identity and various other heresies all make a complete mess of these things because they don’t want to believe what is true. 01:14:18.716 → 01:14:21.416 Abraham’s faith was counted to him as righteousness. 01:14:21.796 → 01:14:24.816 It wasn’t that God had given him a covenant and made a promise to him. 01:14:25.096 → 01:14:27.176 It was that he believed the promises of God. 01:14:27.556 → 01:14:29.336 That was counted to him as righteousness. 01:14:29.356 → 01:14:30.596 That’s not the way of saying faith. 01:14:31.196 → 01:14:33.616 Abraham had faith because he received faith. 01:14:34.016 → 01:14:37.856 He gave faith to his children by transmitting the word to them. 01:14:38.076 → 01:14:39.036 He preached to them. 01:14:39.056 → 01:14:41.756 He told them about God and they received faith. 01:14:42.416 → 01:14:49.796 So when we talk about election, it is always in terms of faith and faith is always transmitted. 01:14:50.236 → 01:15:02.456 And the point of that, that historical snippet is that the faith was transmitted for a time outside of the sons of Shem, outside of the line that became the line of David. 01:15:03.536 → 01:15:06.616 It was transmitted by fathers to their sons. 01:15:07.076 → 01:15:07.696 That’s hereditary. 01:15:08.236 → 01:15:11.156 Their posterity received the blessing of their faith. 01:15:12.216 → 01:15:19.376 There were a couple recent surveys in the last decade that were done by some reformed and Baptist. 01:15:20.256 → 01:15:34.156 According to data collected by Promise Keepers and Baptist Press, if a father does not go to church, even if his wife does, only one child in 50, one child in 50, that’s 2%, will become regular worshiper. 01:15:34.696 → 01:15:41.956 If a father does go regularly, regardless of what the mother does, between two-thirds and three-quarters of their children will attend church as adults. 01:15:42.596 → 01:15:48.956 That’s a difference of either 2% without the father or between 66% and 75% with the father. 01:15:49.476 → 01:15:50.576 That is radical. 01:15:51.436 → 01:15:56.996 And that is far more than simply a sociological effect. 01:15:57.556 → 01:16:09.076 Because what we found, what another survey showed, was that if the first person in a household to become a Christian was a child, there’s about a 3.5% chance that everyone else in the house would follow. 01:16:09.676 → 01:16:13.576 If the mother is the first person to become a Christian, there’s about a 17% chance. 01:16:13.856 → 01:16:18.696 So quite a bit better than a child adopting Christianity first, if the mother did. 01:16:19.976 → 01:16:26.536 When the father was the first to become a Christian, there’s a 93% chance that everyone else in the house will follow. 01:16:27.576 → 01:16:30.516 Now this is not a sociological consequence. 01:16:32.036 → 01:16:36.336 This is not something for demographers and sociologists to discuss. 01:16:36.576 → 01:16:38.436 This is a theological discussion. 01:16:38.776 → 01:16:40.976 This is a theological discussion of headship. 01:16:41.336 → 01:16:43.096 The father is the head. 01:16:43.696 → 01:16:45.476 That’s not just a metaphor. 01:16:45.496 → 01:16:46.596 It is a reality. 01:16:46.936 → 01:16:48.476 The father is the head of the wife. 01:16:48.496 → 01:16:50.156 The father is of his wife. 01:16:50.416 → 01:16:51.776 He’s the head of his children. 01:16:52.076 → 01:16:54.856 He’s the head of everyone under his roof, in his household. 01:16:57.956 → 01:17:02.136 And his faith becomes their faith on contact. 01:17:02.696 → 01:17:03.736 Now, this is remarkable. 01:17:03.756 → 01:17:06.916 We’re talking about what we must presume to be true faith. 01:17:07.656 → 01:17:15.936 If children began attending church because their father does, and they do it into adulthood, for the most part, those are probably Christians. 01:17:16.556 → 01:17:19.816 Whereas if only the mother does, it’s inconsequential. 01:17:23.476 → 01:17:34.516 And so it’s a fundamental element of the manner in which election is delivered in time, that the faith of the father becomes the faith of the children. 01:17:35.036 → 01:17:39.676 And the faithlessness of the father also becomes the faithlessness of the children. 01:17:42.116 → 01:17:52.976 Well, that’s also why in Scripture, when we look at how God deals with humanity, he doesn’t actually typically deal with individuals. 01:17:52.976 → 01:17:55.696 God works with families and nations. 01:17:55.716 → 01:18:03.616 Yes, individuals are also involved, but God didn’t just call Abram, who would become Abraham. 01:18:04.436 → 01:18:10.856 He called him to bring his family at the time, of course, just his wife and his cousins. 01:18:10.896 → 01:18:34.976 But it is the head of the family that represents the family, in the same way that Adam represented creation, and so creation fell when Adam sinned, in the same way that Christ is the head of the new creation, and so those of us who are in Christ are also part of that new creation. 01:18:34.996 → 01:18:43.116 That’s why you have to be in Christ in order to actually be part of that new creation, in order to see paradise, in order not to spend eternity in hell. 01:18:44.696 → 01:18:50.156 But to go back briefly, I guess we’re going to mention CI, we may as well also mention a little more paganism. 01:18:52.316 → 01:19:08.576 When it comes to myths and the various peoples who preserved them or failed to preserve them, I think one of the best examples, and I know there are those who will comment that this was written down in the 10th century, and that’s true, but it was an oral history before that, and I happen to believe it’s an ancient one. 01:19:09.056 → 01:19:18.636 The Havamal is a great example of a corruption, but also a maintenance of some Christian truths in a number of places. 01:19:18.656 → 01:19:27.356 I think one of the best ones though, Odin, in part of the Havamal, is hanged on the World Tree, Yggdrasil. 01:19:28.596 → 01:19:32.996 He offers himself to himself on the World Tree. 01:19:33.976 → 01:19:36.056 He’s stabbed with a spear. 01:19:36.616 → 01:19:38.996 He receives neither food nor drink. 01:19:39.276 → 01:19:40.716 He peers into the deep. 01:19:40.876 → 01:19:44.636 One could consider that a corruption of the descent into hell. 01:19:46.296 → 01:19:51.956 These parallels are extremely close to what we actually have as the truth in Christianity. 01:19:52.236 → 01:20:02.216 And so you can see a preservation of the faith of the forefathers, even if corrupted by demons, by Gnosticism, over a course of time. 01:20:02.876 → 01:20:05.576 And these sorts of things do not just happen. 01:20:06.436 → 01:20:16.056 This is not something people in far-flung parts of the world do not create the same myths out of whole cloth with no interaction. 01:20:17.456 → 01:20:22.956 And the Vikings and the Vietnamese were not really interacting in BC. 01:20:23.376 → 01:20:24.316 That just wasn’t a thing. 01:20:26.036 → 01:20:44.176 But just another example of the carrying forward of mythology, Christian mythology, and it’s not wrong to call it that because the term has multiple senses, the carrying forward, if also the corruption in time, because of the faithlessness of some of the fathers in that line. 01:20:44.556 → 01:20:47.476 They failed to transmit the faith correctly. 01:20:47.996 → 01:20:55.176 They permitted it to become corrupted, and so their children, instead of carrying forward the true faith, carried forward that corruption. 01:20:55.716 → 01:21:06.576 Now, we have an advantage today that basically none of our ancestors until the last handful of centuries did, and that advantage figuratively is the printing press. 01:21:07.716 → 01:21:14.516 Today, of course, we have iPads and computers and all that, but ultimately printed books do have more staying power. 01:21:14.536 → 01:21:15.476 Computers can die. 01:21:15.936 → 01:21:19.116 Yes, books can burn, but they are typically easier to preserve. 01:21:20.276 → 01:21:29.916 And so we have the advantage, if we have a number of faithless generations as we have recently had, we can still return to the true faith. 01:21:30.476 → 01:21:31.296 And what are we doing? 01:21:31.316 → 01:21:42.636 We are returning to the faith of our fathers who gave us the sound doctrine, who preserved for us the Bible, who gave us these truths, carried them forward. 01:21:43.576 → 01:21:55.876 We don’t have to, as many of our ancestors did, carry on the false and the corrupted faith of our immediate forebears, because that is all they had, because theirs would have been orally transmitted. 01:21:56.196 → 01:22:12.676 And if all you heard was the corrupted version of the truth, well, all you had was the corrupted version of the truth, because that’s what you received from your head, whether it was your father or your grandfather or your king or just the leader of your tribe, you received that from your head. 01:22:13.796 → 01:22:19.096 Today, again, we can actually go back to the truth. 01:22:19.636 → 01:22:26.296 We can go back to things before they were corrupted by faithless generations, because we have that luxury, thanks be to God. 01:22:27.216 → 01:22:33.936 But it is still a matter of headship, because that was transmitted to us by a far distant head. 01:22:33.956 → 01:22:37.676 So for instance, Japheth is head of the European peoples. 01:22:38.996 → 01:22:41.836 Ashkenaz is head of the Germans. 01:22:42.636 → 01:22:48.316 And so you have nations descended from individual men. 01:22:49.176 → 01:22:56.436 All mankind descended from Adam, and all mankind descended from Noah, because of course there was a little bit of a bottleneck there. 01:22:57.476 → 01:22:58.896 Europe descended from Japheth. 01:22:59.776 → 01:23:03.296 The East, roughly speaking, descended from Shem. 01:23:03.976 → 01:23:05.396 Africa descended from Ham. 01:23:05.696 → 01:23:09.296 And so those men are the heads of those large people groups. 01:23:09.716 → 01:23:13.256 But within those, you have nations and tribes. 01:23:13.896 → 01:23:16.256 And then under that, you have families. 01:23:16.276 → 01:23:23.076 It’s all a matter of hierarchy and headship and what is transmitted faithfully or faithlessly. 01:23:23.136 → 01:23:23.896 All right, ready to go. 01:23:26.256 → 01:23:41.836 And that’s why I mentioned up front that election is connected to all of this, to the way that the gospel is spread, to the way that we come to faith, and the way that the problems that we’re facing in the church today are really rooted in this. 01:23:44.936 → 01:23:51.616 When you look in scripture, you see that men are identified by name, but it’s not just their name. 01:23:51.776 → 01:23:54.916 It’s, for example, Jonah, the son of Amittai. 01:23:55.796 → 01:23:59.216 The prophet Zechariah was the son of Barakhiah, son of Edo. 01:24:00.076 → 01:24:06.656 When Samuel was born, there was a certain man of the hill country whose name was Elkanah, the son of Jerome. 01:24:07.276 → 01:24:11.596 And he gives his father’s name and his father’s name and his father’s name in the country that he was from. 01:24:13.156 → 01:24:21.996 That wasn’t simply genealogy for the sake of narrowing down which Samuel or which Zechariah or which Jonah was. 01:24:22.996 → 01:24:28.936 That was identifying the men in space and time as God created them. 01:24:28.956 → 01:24:34.176 And most of the names that are given in scripture in those ways are usually of faithful men. 01:24:34.736 → 01:24:37.496 There are not a lot of faithless men whose names are given. 01:24:39.196 → 01:24:50.436 In the show notes, there’s going to be two video links on YouTube that are an absolutely vital part of understanding the point that we’re trying to make with this episode. 01:24:51.576 → 01:24:53.996 The reason that there are two of them, it’s split into two parts. 01:24:54.116 → 01:24:55.056 It’s not very long. 01:24:56.036 → 01:24:57.816 One is The Spread of Christianity. 01:24:58.536 → 01:25:14.016 It’s basically just a map, a visual representation of where Christianity was held between year one and 81,000 and then from 81,000 to current day. 01:25:15.376 → 01:25:30.276 The reason that I want to talk about those videos as we wrap up here is that when we talk about election, when we talk about Christianity, we’re not simply talking about the hypothetical, well, one may have faith and one may be saved. 01:25:30.656 → 01:25:35.116 But we can point to particular people in space and time who were saved. 01:25:35.516 → 01:25:46.516 And we know that they were saved just as Paul knew when he was referring to those people who were known to him whose names he said were written in the Book of Life because of their confession and because of their Christian life. 01:25:47.016 → 01:25:52.916 So there was an immediate connection between their life and the fact that they were saved. 01:25:52.936 → 01:25:54.416 Those are demonstrable facts. 01:25:54.816 → 01:26:01.496 No, it’s not to suggest that you can perfectly judge someone’s heart the way that God can and will. 01:26:02.996 → 01:26:09.956 But in general, you’re going to be able to tell a Christian from a non-Christian just by talking to them, by looking at how they live. 01:26:10.796 → 01:26:12.676 And that’s always been the case throughout time. 01:26:12.856 → 01:26:21.356 So the reason that these videos are important is where the video shows Christianity spreading. 01:26:21.956 → 01:26:31.036 Like we said a minute ago, the faith was transmitted from Adam through Noah, through Japheth and through Shem to their sons. 01:26:31.216 → 01:26:36.616 And then most of them lost it over time, but they lost it to varying degrees. 01:26:36.916 → 01:26:38.596 Some lost it entirely. 01:26:38.616 → 01:26:46.116 Not to say that salvation comes by degrees, but a memory of the true faith can be lost by degrees. 01:26:46.136 → 01:26:48.476 And that’s clearly what we see in the historical record. 01:26:50.276 → 01:27:00.616 When you get back to Jesus’ birth, death and resurrection, the beginning of the church, the spread of the knowledge of the true faith begins again. 01:27:01.296 → 01:27:02.516 Now, it was always the case. 01:27:02.536 → 01:27:09.676 It wasn’t the great commission that Jesus gave to his disciples, saying go there for and baptize all nations in my name. 01:27:11.156 → 01:27:35.636 That wasn’t the first time that that had ever been true, but it was a command that was specifically given to them in the place of Rome and Judea, in a time when Greek and Latin were widely spoken, and in a place and time where the roads could carry the message of the gospel faster than the guards and the men chasing the apostles, trying to kill them. 01:27:36.416 → 01:27:43.916 So it was a very efficacious moment that God chose to enact the Great Commission. 01:27:45.136 → 01:27:51.116 And the maps and the video show where and how that Great Commission was followed. 01:27:51.736 → 01:27:55.936 And what you see in the maps is that almost immediately, St. 01:27:55.956 → 01:28:07.316 Mark, I believe, goes to the western coast of India, where to this day, there’s a tiny sliver on the coast of India where there have been Christians for 2,000 years. 01:28:07.736 → 01:28:12.576 It was an apostolic church that has been preserved there by God’s grace throughout time. 01:28:13.616 → 01:28:15.916 Now, it never spread beyond that place. 01:28:16.616 → 01:28:24.236 It never went to the rest of the Indian people, but at least within that tiny sliver, the word was rightly preached and those people did have faith. 01:28:26.256 → 01:28:36.416 The first thousand years of the video omits something that’s important for this conversation, but it does show up in the second thousand years, and that is Ethiopia and Sudan or the modern countries thereof. 01:28:37.536 → 01:28:41.956 Ethiopia is interesting because they claim a Solomonic dynasty. 01:28:41.976 → 01:28:56.156 They claim that they’re descended from the House of Solomon and continuously to living memory that some of their leaders have had that blood, and the faith has been preserved there as well. 01:28:56.996 → 01:29:12.256 What’s interesting is if you look at the many of the leaders for whom we have photographs in modern Ethiopia, they look more Persian than they do sub-Saharan African, even though Ethiopia is a sub-Saharan African country. 01:29:14.376 → 01:29:19.096 Ethiopia and Sudan, modern day, have had the faith since the beginning. 01:29:19.116 → 01:29:25.456 There were churches that were planted there because although it’s sub-Saharan Africa, it’s also adjacent to the Red Sea. 01:29:25.876 → 01:29:28.536 So there was maritime travel that was able to get there. 01:29:28.556 → 01:29:33.756 It didn’t have to go too far inland in order for those people to receive the gospel and to believe it. 01:29:34.216 → 01:29:37.176 And they too have kept it and preserved the faith under this day. 01:29:37.676 → 01:29:44.776 So as I said, the first thousand years of the video will omit Africa, but it’s there continuously in that one tiny corner. 01:29:45.156 → 01:29:48.736 Now Africa is an unfathomably large continent. 01:29:48.756 → 01:29:51.876 It’s three times the size of North America. 01:29:52.796 → 01:29:55.596 But in that one small place, there were believers continuously. 01:29:56.996 → 01:30:07.856 Real quick, in the case of Ethiopia, it’s also worth mentioning that the language they use, Amharic, is not a Hemitic, not an African language, but a Shemitic language, a Near Eastern language. 01:30:08.636 → 01:30:20.596 And so we also see that interchange, that relationship of the peoples in the area in the language they speak, which is further proof that you had this interaction and explains why they had the faith. 01:30:21.816 → 01:30:23.196 Yep, that’s a very good point. 01:30:23.956 → 01:30:38.216 And the reason that I’ve highlighted India and Africa is because those are the only places outside of the Middle East and Europe where Christianity existed prior to the 1500s. 01:30:38.856 → 01:30:40.516 And this is what the video shows. 01:30:40.536 → 01:30:44.516 It shows the spread of Christianity proper. 01:30:44.656 → 01:30:49.336 It shows the spread of Arianism, which is a heresy, a bastardization of Christianity. 01:30:51.996 → 01:31:03.096 One thing that’s omitted in the video, it doesn’t show that Arianism did make inroads as far as China, and I believe was preserved until well into the 10th and 11th century, and then it was stamped out. 01:31:03.596 → 01:31:22.636 Now, the Arian doctrine, which denies the divinity of Christ fully, it’s properly condemned as a heresy, but it is fair to say that even when there were Arian heretics that were in control, the word of God was still in those places. 01:31:22.816 → 01:31:32.476 So while their confession may not have been true, there are many cases where people are taught one thing and they believe another, and they believe what’s in Scripture. 01:31:33.116 → 01:31:49.256 That’s something that, as Lutherans, you and I run into all the time, where we’re talking to someone who has been raised Baptist or raised Reformed or something, and we’re talking about areas where we know that Lutheran and Baptist doctrine differ, and they say, oh no, that’s what I’ve always believed. 01:31:49.716 → 01:31:57.516 And it’s always interesting because we know for a fact that that’s not what any Baptist would have ever taught them, but it is what they read in the Bible. 01:31:57.936 → 01:32:18.576 And so it’s called Felicitous Inconsistency, that you may say one thing, you may be taught one thing, but in your heart, if you have faith and you’re receiving God’s Word, you may ultimately believe something that is true, even if what you’re taught, and maybe even what you think about when you’re just sort of mouthing the words, is contrary to it. 01:32:18.616 → 01:32:29.016 So I wouldn’t go so far as to say that where Arianism was spread, everyone is damned, although it is a false confession. 01:32:29.316 → 01:32:33.256 But I will say that where the Word of God is spoken, it is not returned to avoid. 01:32:33.276 → 01:32:35.016 So there’s hope in those places. 01:32:36.016 → 01:32:40.016 It’s better to be partly right than entirely wrong. 01:32:40.496 → 01:32:47.856 And we’re not saying that it will save you being partly right if you’re wrong about the core things. 01:32:47.876 → 01:32:54.096 If you get the atonement wrong and you’re right about some ancillary things, that’s not going to save you. 01:32:54.336 → 01:33:01.316 But there are still blessings, there is still good that is attached to believing the truth. 01:33:02.376 → 01:33:07.756 And if you get some of the things right, you are still believing some of the truth and there are still benefits to that. 01:33:08.116 → 01:33:19.076 And as mentioned, if at least these heretics believe that they are Christian, the Word of God will be present and the Word of God does not return to him void. 01:33:22.776 → 01:33:33.716 And so in the early part of the video, in the first five centuries or so, you’ll see that there’s a back and forth between Aryan Christianity, and I think they call it Nicene Christianity in the video. 01:33:34.776 → 01:33:47.396 Eventually Nicene, which is to say Trinitarian Christianity, which is to say Christianity, it’s redundant, but proper Christian doctrine did begin to prevail, and eventually Aryanism was effectively wiped out in Europe. 01:33:50.276 → 01:34:23.036 The import of the videos and the reason that we are talking about it is that if we truly believe the doctrine of election, that God elected those unto salvation for himself from before creation, and he knew those men’s names, and he wrote them in the Book of Life, then when you watch that video, you cannot help but conclude that virtually all of those who were elected to faith were sons of Japheth. 01:34:24.376 → 01:34:48.396 It’s the only possible conclusion when you look at the map because it’s showing the whole known world where Christianity was believed, and then it eventually zooms out in the second thousand years to show the entire globe, and there’s nothing until Columbus comes to the Americas outside of Europe and in the Middle East. 01:34:48.816 → 01:34:57.776 Now, when I say Japheth, obviously many of the sons of Shem, not many, but some of the sons of Shem did come to faith in the Middle East. 01:34:57.796 → 01:34:59.156 There were some Jews who converted. 01:34:59.836 → 01:35:03.716 Those men ceased to be Jewish in not too much time. 01:35:03.736 → 01:35:15.756 They simply became men of their area, but they eventually abandoned those cultures and that custom and became integrated as Europeans with their neighbors and brothers. 01:35:16.616 → 01:35:23.916 But that was still a small portion of those who received the faith. 01:35:25.256 → 01:35:34.196 Overwhelmingly, the number throughout time has been in Europe, which is, as Corey mentioned, you mentioned Christian identity. 01:35:34.216 → 01:35:35.576 They’re heretics. 01:35:35.596 → 01:35:38.076 They believe that only white people can be saved. 01:35:38.396 → 01:35:40.776 They believe that only white people, I think, are human. 01:35:40.776 → 01:35:45.316 They say some terrible things that are simply false, that are blatantly contrary to scripture. 01:35:45.556 → 01:35:49.796 They also happen to deny the Trinity because once you’re being a heretic, why not go all in? 01:35:50.576 → 01:35:58.116 Well, their history is also wildly incorrect because they couldn’t be right about anything, so they have to be wrong about everything. 01:35:58.616 → 01:36:04.776 I mean, they try to argue that the kings, in some cases, the kings of England are descended from David. 01:36:04.796 → 01:36:08.496 They make all sorts of just insane arguments. 01:36:09.416 → 01:36:10.716 Yeah, it’s insane. 01:36:10.736 → 01:36:11.256 It’s false. 01:36:11.316 → 01:36:19.976 And these are people with whom we are lumped in by those who say that we’re going to hell for what we’re saying right now, which is straight from scripture. 01:36:20.056 → 01:36:24.196 And it’s straight from history, not in contradiction to scripture. 01:36:26.336 → 01:36:27.856 I did some math. 01:36:27.856 → 01:36:30.676 This is my own work. 01:36:30.756 → 01:36:32.256 These are very rough estimates. 01:36:32.696 → 01:36:39.496 Basically what I did, I took the best estimates by century of the population of Europe. 01:36:41.436 → 01:36:46.316 So 700, 800, 900, 1000, up through the year 1900. 01:36:46.336 → 01:36:50.936 I took a look at the estimates of the population of Europe. 01:36:51.676 → 01:36:59.336 I then took a look at the estimate of approximately what percent of those people were nominally Christian. 01:36:59.636 → 01:37:05.476 That is to say that their king was Christian, they were baptized and lived Christian lives. 01:37:06.056 → 01:37:11.276 Now, obviously, that is not by itself proof that any particular individual is a Christian. 01:37:11.296 → 01:37:12.196 That’s not what I’m saying. 01:37:12.216 → 01:37:22.196 But when someone’s confession in their life claims to be Christian, that’s not something that I’m not going to question that when I’m looking back through time. 01:37:22.436 → 01:37:24.276 So these are very rough estimates. 01:37:24.836 → 01:37:36.616 But what I found was that in part of the reason that it’s possible to give a very rough estimate of the number of believers is when the kings converted. 01:37:37.176 → 01:37:39.436 Because that’s what’s borne out in history. 01:37:39.456 → 01:37:46.916 When the king converted, the head of a nation converted, generally within a generation or two, most of the people followed. 01:37:47.576 → 01:37:56.076 So in about the year 700 AD, about 25% of Europe’s population of about 32 million people were Christians. 01:37:56.096 → 01:38:00.856 So there were around 8 million Christians in Europe in the year 700, roughly. 01:38:02.616 → 01:38:11.916 That’s an interesting number because that is at least four, five times more than the number who have ever lived in Ethiopia and Sudan. 01:38:12.396 → 01:38:18.176 The area that we’re talking about where Christianity has been preserved there was never very populous. 01:38:18.356 → 01:38:20.116 The land simply couldn’t sustain it. 01:38:20.136 → 01:38:21.336 The people couldn’t sustain it. 01:38:21.796 → 01:38:28.236 So when we’re talking about, I don’t want to call it a numbers game because this is, we’re talking about salvation, we’re not talking about a game. 01:38:28.836 → 01:38:42.636 But when we’re talking about the number of names that are in the Book of Life, the number of African names prior to European colonization of Africa, which we’ll get to, was very small. 01:38:42.916 → 01:38:48.576 There were some, by God’s grace, and thank God that there were Ethiopians who were preserved. 01:38:50.536 → 01:38:53.616 But by and large, they were believers in Europe and nowhere else. 01:38:54.436 → 01:39:01.956 By Europe, I mean Greater Europe, so the Mediterranean, Northern Africa, which is like the Mediterranean is effectively Europe, not Africa. 01:39:02.836 → 01:39:08.996 Those countries were soon lost to Islam, which began to make inroads even into the rest of Europe. 01:39:10.616 → 01:39:20.696 By 81,000, the population had gone up about 10 million to about 42 million, and the percentage of Christians was probably about 85%, give or take. 01:39:21.256 → 01:39:25.956 So you’re looking at about 35, 36 million Christians in 81,000. 01:39:26.636 → 01:39:38.916 Fast forward another 300 years, and the population has gone up about 50% to around 60 million, and probably about 95% of those were at least culturally Christian. 01:39:38.936 → 01:39:43.236 Again, I’m not claiming that virtually everyone who’s ever been European is saved. 01:39:43.556 → 01:39:49.396 There’s no way to know that, and realistically, that’s probably not the case. 01:39:49.416 → 01:39:51.636 But they were in Christian lands with Christian kings. 01:39:51.916 → 01:39:53.136 They were living as Christians. 01:39:53.156 → 01:39:54.136 They were attending church. 01:39:54.156 → 01:39:55.316 They were hearing the Word of God. 01:39:56.216 → 01:40:00.216 There’s more hope for them than there is for the vast majority of America. 01:40:00.376 → 01:40:07.116 So if I’m going to place a stake somewhere, it’s going to be to say that most of those people are probably in heaven. 01:40:08.416 → 01:40:13.716 By 1900, Europe’s population had increased to about 240 million, and still about 90% were Christian. 01:40:15.856 → 01:40:26.416 Now, adding all of those up just at the century marks was about roughly a billion souls would have likely been Christian in Europe. 01:40:26.936 → 01:40:34.916 Now, when you compare that billion people, and that’s only at the century marks, obviously there are people who lived and died in between the century marks. 01:40:34.936 → 01:40:40.676 So again, these are numbers that I did this work myself. 01:40:40.696 → 01:40:50.816 I’m not claiming that these are absolute or they’re precise, but they’re definitely in the ballpark in terms of the ratios relative to other people groups. 01:40:51.196 → 01:40:55.416 So I would not stake a claim on these numbers being precision numbers. 01:40:56.336 → 01:40:57.716 They’re not at all unrealistic. 01:40:57.736 → 01:40:59.956 They’re based on what we know of history. 01:41:00.716 → 01:41:14.536 And so if there were a billion people alive right at the century marks between 700 and 1900, my guess is that there’s probably about two and a half billion Christians in that time period in those places. 01:41:14.656 → 01:41:19.576 Beginning in the 1800s, I also included the Americas, which was a very small number. 01:41:19.636 → 01:41:25.336 In 1800, there was about 5.3 million Christians in America, 5 million. 01:41:25.376 → 01:41:28.056 In 1900, there was about 69 million. 01:41:28.516 → 01:41:34.316 So about 10% of the total European population of Christians was in the Americas. 01:41:34.616 → 01:41:46.916 So give or take, you’re looking at about two and a half billion Christians, all of European descent, all sons of Japheth, all holding to the faith of Japheth in that time period. 01:41:47.516 → 01:41:54.716 Now, as I said, when you look to Sudan and Ethiopia, those numbers are minuscule by comparison. 01:41:54.936 → 01:42:03.696 Again, the tiny sliver in Somalia or Ethiopia and India, those numbers are necessarily minuscule by comparison. 01:42:04.276 → 01:42:15.836 And we as Christians should be able to say this without fear that we’re going to be murdered by someone calling us racist, calling us evil, calling us hateful. 01:42:16.356 → 01:42:19.976 I am simply recounting what has happened in time. 01:42:20.676 → 01:42:22.376 I was not the causal effect of that. 01:42:22.896 → 01:42:24.416 It is not what I would have wished. 01:42:24.776 → 01:42:29.096 I wish what God wishes, which is that all people would know Christ and would come to salvation. 01:42:30.636 → 01:42:33.516 The reality is that that is not what has happened in time. 01:42:33.976 → 01:42:52.816 And so the reason for discussing election in terms of genealogy and nationality and now specifically honing in on the sons of Japheth is that Japheth’s children were faithful where other children were not. 01:42:53.656 → 01:43:09.176 When you look at the second half, the second video, and it shows beginning with European exploration and colonization of the Americas, and then in about the 1700s, colonization and exploration began in Africa. 01:43:09.956 → 01:43:22.356 Those are the very first times for 4,000 years since the flood that the people living in those places would have actually heard the Christian faith. 01:43:23.356 → 01:43:33.216 Now, like I said earlier, there were elements of the faith that had been preserved as mythology among them, but it was no longer efficacious. 01:43:33.296 → 01:43:41.656 It was just a few tiny mangled bits and pieces, but that is in fact the demonstration that they had lost the faith. 01:43:41.976 → 01:43:47.036 There’s no way to say that someone who was an Aztec in the year 1300 went to heaven. 01:43:47.736 → 01:43:49.316 100% of them went to hell. 01:43:49.656 → 01:43:56.476 I can say that with certainty because the Christian faith, the true faith could not have existed in those places. 01:43:57.336 → 01:44:18.016 And when the Spaniards showed up and they saw what the Aztecs were doing, when Pizarro and his men went into the Aztec temples, they literally vomited because the stench was so vile from the death, the murder of humans who were sacrificed to the demon gods of the Aztec. 01:44:18.356 → 01:44:28.536 So although they had preserved some tiny piece of the virgin birth of a god and his death for some purpose, they were worshiping demons. 01:44:28.996 → 01:44:34.156 The ancestors of those people were worshiping demons until the Europeans showed up. 01:44:34.536 → 01:44:40.836 The sons of Japheth showed up, colonized those places and gave them the gospel for the first time. 01:44:41.496 → 01:44:54.416 And that’s why we’re talking about this story, because when you look at the video and you see the way in which Christianity spread, after about the first couple centuries where, you know, Paul obviously was a Jew who went to the Gentiles. 01:44:54.796 → 01:44:59.156 There were other Jews who converted to Christianity and became Christian. 01:44:59.176 → 01:45:00.096 They ceased to be Jews. 01:45:02.056 → 01:45:14.296 Apart from that little explosion in the Middle East at the very beginning of the church, virtually all of the spread and keeping of the gospel has been in white lands. 01:45:15.576 → 01:45:18.456 So think about that fact if you’re Satan. 01:45:19.276 → 01:45:33.076 If you seek that all men be destroyed, that every life is a life of evil and that they are cast bodily and soul upon death into the eternal lake of fire with Satan, who will be right there with them being punished. 01:45:35.576 → 01:45:51.396 To have white people showing up in the 1500s and 1600s and 1700s in Africa and in the Americas, going to people who had all been going to hell for three and four thousand years, and suddenly they began converting to Christianity. 01:45:51.936 → 01:46:06.136 When the colonizers showed up with crucifixes and they told these people about the Gospel and they baptized them, in some cases forcibly, those people were converted to Christianity and many of them were saved. 01:46:06.556 → 01:46:19.196 And there are places to this day that are now Christian in Africa and the Americas, among native populations who would never have had the Gospel if the sons of Japheth had not shown up. 01:46:20.136 → 01:46:39.876 So think about that when you hear rabid anti-white hatred, when you hear hatred against colonialism, when you hear hatred against patriarchy, when you hear hatred against kings versus democracy, where it’s a free for all and we do what we think is best in our own eyes. 01:46:40.616 → 01:46:42.516 Think about that like Satan would think about that. 01:46:42.716 → 01:46:53.756 When white people showed up happy, when they came under the cross, what was the response of the demons that the Aztecs were worshiping and sacrificing all those innocent people to? 01:46:54.616 → 01:46:58.296 They were not happy and they’re still not happy because demons don’t die. 01:46:58.396 → 01:46:59.676 Those demons didn’t go away. 01:47:00.116 → 01:47:06.116 They were still out there in the jungle and by many accounts, they are back on the prowl today. 01:47:06.736 → 01:47:27.556 And the backlash that we see against Europeans in particular, against Germans in particular, against Christianity, against patriarchy, against every form of headship that is ordained by God both for salvific purposes and for the purpose simply of proper order in this life. 01:47:28.036 → 01:47:31.076 Those are the things that the most evil people on the planet hate. 01:47:31.816 → 01:47:49.776 And I fundamentally believe that that is the root of all of these societal issues that we’re seeing that God’s election, his predestination, which was unfair, predominantly predestined Europeans for salvation. 01:47:50.756 → 01:47:51.416 I didn’t do it. 01:47:51.796 → 01:47:52.436 God did it. 01:47:52.796 → 01:47:57.556 But again, when you look at how were they saved, they weren’t saved because they were white. 01:47:57.876 → 01:48:01.456 They weren’t saved because their parents were anything in particular. 01:48:01.776 → 01:48:04.236 They were saved because their fathers were faithful. 01:48:04.736 → 01:48:12.096 And the Africans and the South Americans and the North American Indians were damned because their fathers were faithless. 01:48:12.556 → 01:48:13.696 They abandoned God. 01:48:13.896 → 01:48:15.856 They ceased to teach his word. 01:48:16.276 → 01:48:25.596 And just as you will die because Adam sinned, those people are in hell because their fathers failed to transmit the faith to them. 01:48:25.936 → 01:48:28.376 They inherited damnation and they lived up to it. 01:48:28.636 → 01:48:31.196 And now they’re suffering under it. 01:48:31.756 → 01:48:32.536 Is that fair? 01:48:32.956 → 01:48:33.276 No. 01:48:33.696 → 01:48:42.616 But at the same time, we look at that in the context of the spread of the gospel from the first century and think, oh, well, they were never told about Jesus. 01:48:42.636 → 01:48:43.336 How could they know? 01:48:43.856 → 01:48:45.136 They were told about Jesus. 01:48:45.396 → 01:48:49.176 Their fathers were told about Jesus 4,000 years ago when they got off the ark. 01:48:49.596 → 01:48:51.896 And those fathers ceased to believe. 01:48:52.336 → 01:48:55.456 And that is why their children are not believers. 01:48:56.016 → 01:49:13.996 And just as salvation is transmissible, not as a physical inheritance, but as a spiritual inheritance that comes directly by hearing from one’s father in an absolutely efficacious manner, so too unbelief is transmissible, it is heritable, and it’s inevitable. 01:49:14.196 → 01:49:26.456 If your father is evil, and as you said, Corey, without the benefit of access to go around your father, to go around your nation, to find the truth as we can do today, there’s no way for someone to be saved. 01:49:27.256 → 01:49:34.796 And that’s not fair, but that is God’s will, because if their fathers had been faithful and had obeyed, they would have been saved. 01:49:35.356 → 01:49:49.216 So election intersects with reality in ways that makes us extremely uncomfortable, because all of this sounds like it’s totally contrary to the gospel, and it’s certainly contrary to modern beliefs of morality outside the church. 01:49:50.156 → 01:49:50.876 But it’s true. 01:49:52.496 → 01:49:57.636 The reason it makes so many people uncomfortable is because it runs counter to the Enlightenment. 01:49:58.556 → 01:50:04.476 It’s not that it runs counter to Scripture, because obviously we have demonstrated this is all grounded in Scripture. 01:50:04.496 → 01:50:10.736 This is readily discoverable for anyone who reads Scripture, at least anyone who has the Holy Spirit. 01:50:13.036 → 01:50:17.216 But Heaven looks rather a lot like Europe at present. 01:50:18.436 → 01:50:28.136 Of course, depending on how long things continue and which areas become or remain Christian and which ones do not, that composition could change. 01:50:28.816 → 01:50:33.776 But as of today, Paradise is going to be very white. 01:50:35.196 → 01:50:38.236 And that is simply the fact of the matter from history. 01:50:38.596 → 01:50:41.296 That is how things have worked out in time. 01:50:41.836 → 01:50:47.556 And those who say that, well, that’s not fair, like I said, they are appealing to the Enlightenment. 01:50:47.636 → 01:50:54.996 To harken back to an earlier episode where I pointed out that that’s not fair is the cry of a child who didn’t get his way. 01:50:56.496 → 01:50:59.116 And that’s ridiculous to side with the child in that. 01:50:59.996 → 01:51:02.456 Because fairness is incoherent. 01:51:03.416 → 01:51:06.916 No one really actually wants fairness in the final assessment. 01:51:08.016 → 01:51:16.176 When we speak about fairness, if we are using it in a way that makes any sense whatsoever, then that would be that we want justice, not fairness. 01:51:17.416 → 01:51:23.016 You don’t want fairness because if God is perfectly fair, you get to spend eternity in hell. 01:51:25.336 → 01:51:35.436 Because charging your sin to Christ, crucifying Christ, and then attributing his righteousness to you is not fair. 01:51:36.356 → 01:51:38.276 But it is the only way that you can be saved. 01:51:38.556 → 01:51:41.516 It is the only way that any of the sons of Japheth were saved. 01:51:42.716 → 01:51:47.296 And so fairness is this concept that comes from the Enlightenment. 01:51:47.596 → 01:51:49.156 It is built on tabla rasa. 01:51:49.176 → 01:51:58.536 It is built on that blank slate idea that human beings are just little lumps of clay that arise by chance in a time and place. 01:51:58.556 → 01:52:01.976 They’re not really connected to the time, the place, their ancestry, any of that. 01:52:02.416 → 01:52:09.776 God flings a soul at random into this little lump of clay, and we should treat that as a blank slate. 01:52:10.616 → 01:52:13.376 Whatever that person does in life is the only thing that matters. 01:52:13.856 → 01:52:30.536 But of course, that’s completely ridiculous, because what the person does in life flows from what the person is, flows from where the person was born, flows from the family, flows from headship and hierarchy and all of these things we have been mentioning, because you are not an individual. 01:52:31.376 → 01:52:35.136 You are not an individual with no tethers, no ties, no connections. 01:52:35.776 → 01:52:47.836 You are the son of your father, who is the son of his father, who is the son of his father, all the way back through whichever son of Noah, through Noah to Adam. 01:52:49.596 → 01:52:51.096 You are part of that line. 01:52:51.336 → 01:52:53.996 You are part of a tribe and a nation. 01:52:54.016 → 01:52:56.596 You are part of a people, and these things matter. 01:52:56.616 → 01:52:58.916 This is the way God has designed creation. 01:52:58.996 → 01:53:01.476 This is the way God has designed humanity. 01:53:02.576 → 01:53:08.856 And so these appeals to concepts like fairness are not born of scripture. 01:53:09.276 → 01:53:10.536 Find it in scripture. 01:53:10.996 → 01:53:14.716 If you want to argue for fairness, go ahead, try to find it. 01:53:15.636 → 01:53:17.456 See if God has acted in that way. 01:53:17.616 → 01:53:19.316 See if that is what God wants us to do. 01:53:19.636 → 01:53:20.996 You won’t because it isn’t there. 01:53:22.456 → 01:53:28.756 That is something born of the mind of secular, which is to say atheist philosophers, not of Christians. 01:53:31.016 → 01:53:35.416 And you had mentioned the composition of Europe today, or sort of the composition of heaven. 01:53:37.256 → 01:53:50.056 I think that it’s important to acknowledge and to be grateful for the spread of Christianity in Asia and Africa in places that historically have rejected the gospel, have rejected God’s word. 01:53:50.756 → 01:53:52.036 They are now turning around. 01:53:52.056 → 01:54:03.256 And although African Christianity has some very serious problems with syncretism and demon worship and things, there are certainly many believers there. 01:54:03.276 → 01:54:21.036 And there are, based on looking at the numbers that have lived in Ethiopia for the last 2,000 years and before that, there are more living Africans who are Christians who will go to heaven than there are Africans in heaven. 01:54:21.536 → 01:54:23.376 That is an easy claim to make. 01:54:23.636 → 01:54:26.296 If you look at the simple numbers of history. 01:54:26.956 → 01:54:31.156 And again, none of this is what you or I would wish for anything. 01:54:31.596 → 01:54:32.396 I am thankful. 01:54:32.396 → 01:54:33.176 I am grateful. 01:54:33.196 → 01:54:38.796 It gives me joy to see Christians in Africa worshipping in their own languages. 01:54:39.176 → 01:54:55.496 It’s amazing in particular to see some of the churches there that are Lutheran churches that are trying to be confessional who are happily adopting the liturgy and the vestments that they’re inheriting from their European brothers. 01:54:55.956 → 01:54:59.576 They’re saying, if this is how God is worshipped, we want to worship this God. 01:54:59.596 → 01:55:00.756 This is how we want to do it. 01:55:01.236 → 01:55:03.296 They don’t seek to do it in their own way. 01:55:03.316 → 01:55:08.016 They don’t seek to do it as worship of old took place for the demons. 01:55:08.616 → 01:55:09.776 New God, new worship. 01:55:09.936 → 01:55:10.856 They’re fine with that. 01:55:11.236 → 01:55:13.176 And so it’s a wonderful thing to see. 01:55:13.836 → 01:55:18.056 And frankly, it’s at odds with some of the pastors in the Missouri Synod. 01:55:19.376 → 01:55:37.436 There is a man in the Northwest District named Rick McCafferty who is on the Northwest District’s web page, on the Vimeo page, giving a talk about how he and his Eskimo and other Indian ancestors always worshiped God. 01:55:37.796 → 01:55:42.016 Long before the white man showed up, they knew the Creator and they worshiped the Creator. 01:55:42.656 → 01:55:45.376 And they knew the Holy Spirit who was the Great Spirit. 01:55:45.396 → 01:55:46.136 These are his words. 01:55:46.316 → 01:55:47.416 These are his direct claims. 01:55:47.996 → 01:56:07.956 And the reason that he made the video, which is an anti-racist video directed at us, was to implore all of the Lutherans who want to evangelize the Indians to stop telling those Indians who have been communing with demons for 4,000 years to stop telling them that the way they’re worshiping is wrong. 01:56:09.236 → 01:56:16.336 He literally says in the video, well, Lincoln, he says, don’t tell us we can’t beat drums at the sunrise to our God. 01:56:16.696 → 01:56:18.816 He’s always been the same God you guys worship. 01:56:19.136 → 01:56:20.796 Don’t tell us we need to have a liturgy. 01:56:20.816 → 01:56:22.076 Don’t tell us how to worship. 01:56:22.396 → 01:56:23.656 We’ve always known God. 01:56:24.016 → 01:56:27.916 The only thing, we’re missing the details about the great warrior who is Jesus. 01:56:28.256 → 01:56:29.076 Again, his words. 01:56:29.776 → 01:56:37.736 So that’s pure syncretism and that’s pure universalism, because I say that all of Rick McCafferty’s ancestors are burning in hell. 01:56:38.096 → 01:56:39.456 He says that they’re in heaven. 01:56:39.796 → 01:56:50.576 He says that they’ve always worshiped God, and that it’s these Lutherans who are coming to their reservations, trying to tell them about the triune God and show them how to worship as Christians have always worshiped. 01:56:50.976 → 01:56:51.936 We are the problem. 01:56:52.616 → 01:56:57.896 Well, one of us is wrong and one of us is going to hell, because we do not worship the same God. 01:56:59.656 → 01:57:01.916 And again, this is an LCMS pastor. 01:57:02.296 → 01:57:06.996 We’re not talking about someone who’s just a random person on the internet. 01:57:07.516 → 01:57:14.956 He was ordained to evangelize to these people who need to hear the word of God, and he’s depriving them of it, because he’s a universalist. 01:57:14.976 → 01:57:17.536 He’s saying the exact opposite of what God says. 01:57:17.836 → 01:57:19.296 He’s saying, you’ve always worshiped God. 01:57:19.316 → 01:57:20.056 You guys are great. 01:57:20.316 → 01:57:23.096 Let me tell you about Jesus, but it’s a Jesus you already knew. 01:57:23.116 → 01:57:28.356 You just knew him by another name, which is not at all the point of the discussion early about mythology. 01:57:28.796 → 01:57:30.916 We are not saying that these people knew God. 01:57:31.036 → 01:57:36.976 We’re saying that a reflection of the truth echoed through time, but it was never salvific. 01:57:37.216 → 01:57:50.836 It was simply evidence of the fact that the truth at one point had been transmitted to them by their fathers, and then the children of some of those fathers at some point long ago abandoned God and damned their children to hell. 01:57:51.136 → 01:57:56.476 They damned Rick McCafferty’s ancestors to hell because they did not worship the true God. 01:57:56.696 → 01:58:00.276 They communed with demons and they did so in many cases to this day. 01:58:01.376 → 01:58:20.136 I have heard stories of actual Lutheran churches near reservations where the people come off the reservation targeting the Lutheran churches, and they will have demonic ceremonies in their parking lot to try to bind the spirits in those churches to keep them from threatening the reservation. 01:58:20.696 → 01:58:21.936 Those people serve demons. 01:58:22.036 → 01:58:30.776 Today, in the current year 2022, they are having demonic ceremonies in our church parking lots to stop the spread of the gospel. 01:58:31.416 → 01:58:33.596 Don’t tell me that this isn’t spiritual warfare. 01:58:34.056 → 01:58:35.676 We’re not talking about hypotheticals. 01:58:35.696 → 01:58:40.656 We’re not talking about some lethno doctrine that’s not relevant to life. 01:58:41.056 → 01:58:50.976 We’re talking about souls that will either go to heaven if they repent and believe the true God, or they will go to hell if they continue to worship as these demon-worshipping Indians do. 01:58:51.576 → 01:59:05.536 And in a future episode, we’ll talk about some of the other rejected doctrines in scripture, but one of them is the doctrine of shaking the dust off your feet as a curse against those who refuse to hear the gospel. 01:59:06.036 → 01:59:10.956 This is something that Jesus repeatedly commanded to his apostles, to the disciples. 01:59:11.536 → 01:59:18.116 And in Acts, as soon as Jesus ascended into heaven, there are multiple instances of them doing that very thing. 01:59:18.396 → 01:59:26.316 They literally shake the dust off their feet against a place to curse it, to say, you have rejected God, you are now rejected. 01:59:26.536 → 01:59:28.076 We take the gospel elsewhere. 01:59:28.716 → 01:59:30.276 Find a Christian who will do that today. 01:59:30.736 → 01:59:39.096 Find a Christian who will not spend a hundred years pouring good money after bad to people who want to worship demons. 01:59:39.496 → 01:59:40.776 They don’t want to hear about Jesus. 01:59:41.116 → 01:59:42.576 They want to do what they’re doing. 01:59:43.076 → 01:59:52.296 And in the name of a false gospel, we think that we have to just continue pouring out our treasure when there are people who need it. 01:59:53.656 → 02:00:00.736 There’s an example of a pastor in Ohio, Ben Meyer, an LCMS pastor, who was called to rural Ohio. 02:00:00.896 → 02:00:02.156 That’s kind of the middle of the nowhere. 02:00:03.916 → 02:00:05.236 An area without many people. 02:00:05.236 → 02:00:05.996 They’re all white. 02:00:06.856 → 02:00:19.516 And he gets up in the morning, and he drives 45 minutes to Columbus so that he can spend time spreading the gospel, in his words, to Ethiopian immigrants. 02:00:20.096 → 02:00:27.496 And I was fascinated by that because when he’s raising money for this project, when he’s telling all the gullible Lutherans, oh, this is so wonderful. 02:00:27.516 → 02:00:31.716 We have these Africans who are coming here who need to hear the Word of God. 02:00:31.736 → 02:00:33.896 Well, yes, everyone needs to hear the Word of God. 02:00:34.156 → 02:00:35.376 But for you to suggest… 02:00:36.096 → 02:00:41.996 I think that the Ethiopian immigrant, an immigrant is not a word, these people are being shipped here. 02:00:43.116 → 02:00:49.796 When an Ethiopian leaves Ethiopia and comes to Ohio, he’s going from a Christian country to a pagan state. 02:00:50.276 → 02:00:54.756 There are more Christians in Ethiopia today, by percentage, than there are in Ohio. 02:00:55.456 → 02:00:57.016 But where is Ben Meyers’ heart? 02:00:57.376 → 02:01:01.916 Is it with the people that God sent to him, to whom God sent him? 02:01:02.516 → 02:01:06.156 No, it’s 45 minutes away where he can preach to black people, because they’re foreign. 02:01:06.496 → 02:01:15.956 And he gets the benefit of all the social status of, oh, look at me, I’m so good, I’m reaching out to these Africans, when they’re Christian. 02:01:16.676 → 02:01:20.776 Now, some of them are Muslim, because that’s the other problem that Ethiopia has. 02:01:21.216 → 02:01:24.756 They’ve had problems with Muslims for many years, centuries. 02:01:26.716 → 02:01:31.816 But to pretend that it’s a non-Christian place where these people have never heard the gospel is insane. 02:01:31.976 → 02:01:32.636 It’s a lie. 02:01:33.276 → 02:01:34.656 It is a damnable lie. 02:01:35.096 → 02:01:37.016 Ethiopia is a Christian country. 02:01:37.516 → 02:01:39.536 And as a Christian, I’m thankful for that. 02:01:40.076 → 02:01:42.216 I don’t want anyone to go to hell. 02:01:42.656 → 02:01:46.556 And it’s got nothing to do with their skin color, their race, with their fathers. 02:01:47.056 → 02:01:50.576 I want the same thing that God wants, which is for all men to be redeemed. 02:01:51.256 → 02:01:57.156 But guys like Ben Meyer will drive right past all of those souls in Ohio. 02:01:57.176 → 02:02:03.996 You know, the Lutheran population in Ohio is something like 0.4% or something. 02:02:04.016 → 02:02:05.116 It’s miniscule. 02:02:05.596 → 02:02:06.796 It’s effectively zero. 02:02:07.056 → 02:02:08.096 It’s a rounding error. 02:02:08.796 → 02:02:11.916 And the number of Christians is not a whole lot better. 02:02:12.576 → 02:02:21.416 When you look at actual church attendance at actual churches and people who actually believe what their actual church teaches, it’s a tiny number. 02:02:22.256 → 02:02:35.116 He is neglecting white people because they’re white, even though they’re his neighbors, in the place where God sent him, so that he can tell people who already know Jesus about Jesus, because that scores good boy points. 02:02:36.296 → 02:02:37.816 That’s what these fights are about. 02:02:38.036 → 02:03:04.716 That is how much race matters to people who despise election, that they will drive past their white neighbors for the sake of an alien from 3,000, 4,000 miles away, because that person who looks completely different and sounds completely different and seems exotic, somehow is more worthy of the gospel than the men who live down the road from this man, who will never tell them, he’s not gonna spend all that time, he’s gotta go somewhere else and do it for strangers. 02:03:05.776 → 02:03:07.676 This is not love and this is not the gospel. 02:03:07.736 → 02:03:09.136 This is how the church dies. 02:03:12.096 → 02:03:32.356 And the men who are engaged in syncretistic arguments and worship, if we’re being very loose with the term, they are going to damn people to hell, because those who hear, well, no, your ancestors who were worshiping demons, he won’t say that, of course, but your ancestors, they were worshiping the true God. 02:03:32.376 → 02:03:34.876 You can continue to do what they were doing. 02:03:35.276 → 02:03:37.576 That’s the voice of Satan speaking. 02:03:37.596 → 02:03:38.336 That’s what that is. 02:03:39.396 → 02:03:41.716 I’m looking at a picture right now. 02:03:41.896 → 02:03:44.976 It’s a class of seminarians from Madagascar. 02:03:46.376 → 02:03:51.436 There are about three million Lutherans, baptized Lutherans in Madagascar. 02:03:51.456 → 02:03:54.116 It’s a country of about 28 million, give or take a bit. 02:03:55.036 → 02:04:30.196 And the reason there are three million believing, baptized Christians in the Lutheran churches in Madagascar is because two Norwegian men, John Eng and Niels Nilsson, I’m sure I didn’t get the last names entirely right, but you can look up their names, because those two Norwegian Lutheran men went there and spread the gospel to them, set up a seminary, started instructing them so they could teach their own people so you could have proper headship, so you can have fathers learn from their pastors who then turn around and teach their wives and their children. 02:04:30.876 → 02:04:32.416 And that’s the reason that you have them. 02:04:32.436 → 02:04:41.496 And they didn’t go over there and tell them, keep worshiping your ancestors, because ancestor worship is a problem in Madagascar, a huge problem in large parts of Africa. 02:04:41.516 → 02:04:44.436 They didn’t say, continue your animistic practices. 02:04:44.496 → 02:04:48.156 No, they said, your ancestors worship demons. 02:04:48.596 → 02:04:50.976 We are going to tell you about the true God. 02:04:50.996 → 02:04:52.396 We are going to tell you about Christ. 02:04:52.416 → 02:04:55.556 We are going to tell you how to be saved. 02:04:56.436 → 02:04:59.236 They did not let them continue syncretistic practices. 02:04:59.256 → 02:05:05.396 They fought against those, because these are men who actually want their brothers in Africa to be saved. 02:05:06.796 → 02:05:17.356 The men here and other places who tell them to continue traditional so-called practices, which aren’t even traditional, because if you go back far enough, the actual practices would have been worshipping the Lord God. 02:05:17.956 → 02:05:24.096 The men who tell them to continue those syncretistic and pagan practices are damning them to hell. 02:05:25.136 → 02:05:28.096 Maybe not the men who hear it, but their grandchildren. 02:05:28.616 → 02:05:30.816 How do you think all of this stuff was lost in the first place? 02:05:31.276 → 02:05:44.296 It was lost in the first place because someone loosened something here, changed something there, said, no, it’s okay if we engage in this heterodox practice over time that accumulates. 02:05:45.096 → 02:05:47.236 It never gets better, it always gets worse. 02:05:47.256 → 02:05:52.236 And that’s why you have to fight against it as soon as it crops up, no matter how trivial it may seem. 02:05:52.596 → 02:05:57.656 And it would be a blessing from God if the issues we have today were trivial. 02:05:58.956 → 02:06:03.816 We have serious issues that are matters of eternal life or eternal death. 02:06:04.416 → 02:06:09.236 We’re not dealing with squabbles over the color of the pyramids or something of that nature. 02:06:10.536 → 02:06:13.476 We are dealing with core issues of the faith. 02:06:14.156 → 02:06:16.036 Core truths about creation. 02:06:16.556 → 02:06:27.096 And if you deny core truths about creation, you are denying the first article of the creed because we believe in God who is the creator of heaven and earth. 02:06:29.236 → 02:06:34.336 And so these issues over which we are fighting are vitally important to the church. 02:06:35.296 → 02:06:44.396 The outcome of these issues will determine, will decide whether or not there is a Christian church on this continent in a hundred years. 02:06:45.496 → 02:06:46.576 Because we’ve seen it elsewhere. 02:06:47.256 → 02:06:48.476 You can have the gospel. 02:06:48.856 → 02:06:49.876 You can have the truth. 02:06:49.976 → 02:06:51.656 You can have the worship of the Lord God. 02:06:52.576 → 02:06:55.396 And a hundred years later, all of your children are apostate. 02:06:55.756 → 02:06:56.416 Look at Europe. 02:06:56.836 → 02:07:00.696 Because it depends on, exactly, look at Ham. 02:07:01.276 → 02:07:03.296 How quickly did the children of Ham apostatize? 02:07:04.716 → 02:07:07.236 It seems in scripture like it was almost immediate. 02:07:08.456 → 02:07:12.376 And then you had thousands of years of almost no Christians in Africa because of that. 02:07:13.276 → 02:07:20.256 Most of the children of Shem apostatized, and so you had thousands of years of most of those in the Near Middle East, no Christians. 02:07:20.836 → 02:07:24.116 There are real consequences for this, and that’s why it matters. 02:07:24.756 → 02:07:27.956 Fathers have to be faithful, or else they will not have faithful children. 02:07:28.896 → 02:07:32.316 It takes one faithless generation to lose this. 02:07:33.156 → 02:07:34.116 And we have had several. 02:07:34.696 → 02:07:36.496 We are in dire straits. 02:07:37.736 → 02:07:42.756 Again, we do have the advantage of we have the written material to which we can return that is sound. 02:07:43.016 → 02:07:49.716 So we are not in as bad of a situation as those 4,000, 6,000 years ago, whatever it happens to be. 02:07:51.356 → 02:07:57.656 But we are still living in a country where a tiny percentage of people believe that Christ is God. 02:07:58.916 → 02:07:59.976 Look at the survey data. 02:08:00.976 → 02:08:03.616 If you ask the question, Is Jesus Christ God? 02:08:04.656 → 02:08:10.376 Most who claim to be Christian, even those who claim to be evangelical Christians, will say no. 02:08:11.476 → 02:08:16.636 We are surrounded by apostates because of faithless fathers and grandfathers. 02:08:18.796 → 02:08:20.016 And you’re absolutely right. 02:08:20.036 → 02:08:28.716 We have a presumption that we’re living in the ashes of the faithful grandsons of Japheth. 02:08:29.296 → 02:08:33.996 Obviously, at some point, they lost their way and descended into paganism. 02:08:34.976 → 02:08:39.676 They quickly took back to the true God when he came to them in the Word. 02:08:40.516 → 02:08:43.196 And that was the inheritance that their children received. 02:08:43.396 → 02:08:52.496 That’s the reason that we are Christian today because our fathers were Christian going back 1500 years in some cases, including my own. 02:08:54.376 → 02:08:57.856 The inheritance only works when it is transmitted. 02:08:59.296 → 02:09:05.816 And that is why there’s never been any claim that there is a genetic inheritance of faith. 02:09:05.856 → 02:09:06.856 That’s not the claim. 02:09:07.436 → 02:09:15.356 But the same father who gives you genes gives you belief in something, for better or worse, your father is going to teach you. 02:09:15.876 → 02:09:23.336 And either you’re, the only choice you have when your father teaches you is to obey him or to rebel. 02:09:24.076 → 02:09:27.456 And if your father is faithful and you obey him, you’re blessed. 02:09:27.996 → 02:09:30.296 If he’s faithful and you rebel, you fall away. 02:09:30.856 → 02:09:42.516 Now, if he’s faithless, you must rebel in order to obey God, but only narrowly within the confines of what is necessary to believe in God and to obey him. 02:09:42.936 → 02:09:48.916 In other ways, you should still obey your father, even if he’s faithless, as much as is possible within your conscience. 02:09:49.696 → 02:10:13.196 But we live in a time today where if the pastors who are running things and are synod and in the other Christian denominations in this country, if they continue on the trajectory they have chosen, not only will there not be any Lutheranism in a century, Christianity will be wiped out on this continent because there is no one left defending it. 02:10:13.776 → 02:10:17.936 And as I’ve said before, you can recite the creeds all you want. 02:10:18.336 → 02:10:22.056 You can point to scripture, and you can point to the Book of Concord all you want. 02:10:22.536 → 02:10:29.836 But if you tell lies in God’s stead, you are serving Satan no matter what else you do. 02:10:30.336 → 02:10:32.076 You can’t lie about any of this stuff. 02:10:32.456 → 02:10:50.556 And all that we see online, all that we see whenever these questions come up about race, about evangelism, about colonialism, and all these things that are, when those words are used, things like colonialism and patriarchy, they’re thought of as secular. 02:10:50.656 → 02:10:52.456 They’re thought of as political things. 02:10:52.736 → 02:10:53.396 They’re not. 02:10:53.996 → 02:10:55.496 They’re Christian things. 02:10:55.896 → 02:11:01.596 They are profoundly fundamental and vital to the faith, to saving faith. 02:11:02.116 → 02:11:04.996 And their absence proves the absence of that faith. 02:11:05.616 → 02:11:09.336 And we are in churches today where those things are despised. 02:11:09.556 → 02:11:10.716 Those things are attacked. 02:11:10.736 → 02:11:11.936 Those things are forbidden. 02:11:12.476 → 02:11:15.456 To speak truthfully is forbidden on many subjects. 02:11:15.816 → 02:11:19.876 In our churches, that’s only going to end one way. 02:11:20.836 → 02:11:22.356 That’s why we’re talking about these things. 02:11:23.256 → 02:11:42.796 If we can change minds, if we can help point people to scripture to understand that this is going on and here’s why it matters, hopefully a few more voices will arise and eventually we will begin to see the only sort of change that will be able to present the death of Christianity on this continent. 02:11:43.356 → 02:11:49.976 Because who knows what sort of faith came across the land bridge when the American Indians came here? 02:11:50.296 → 02:11:51.056 Probably none. 02:11:51.516 → 02:11:53.956 But if they had anything, it long since died. 02:11:54.416 → 02:11:56.616 It’s going to die again if it’s not preserved. 02:11:56.636 → 02:12:05.356 And as you said, it is up to us to preserve it because it doesn’t take more than a generation to lose something entirely. 02:12:05.796 → 02:12:08.276 And we’re several generations deep in that apostasy. 02:12:13.076 → 02:12:18.396 We often hear that everything is political, particularly given the realities of the age in which we live. 02:12:19.216 → 02:12:26.756 But what we never hear is the more true and the more important statement, everything is also theological. 02:12:28.136 → 02:12:33.856 Because everything you do or fail to do is a confession of what you believe or what you do not believe. 02:12:35.256 → 02:12:48.356 And so when we have pastors lying about demonstrable facts, what does that say to the world about what those pastors believe? 02:12:49.316 → 02:12:50.356 It certainly isn’t good. 02:12:50.636 → 02:12:52.436 There are many things you could take away from that. 02:12:52.936 → 02:12:56.356 You could take away from it that they don’t really believe the things they say on Sunday morning. 02:12:57.416 → 02:13:01.736 You could take away from it that lying about these core truths is entirely fine. 02:13:02.716 → 02:13:15.536 You could take away from it that maybe they don’t really believe in a creator God who created this world and all the constituent parts of it, who set it up in a certain way if they are willing to lie about the way that He did things. 02:13:17.956 → 02:13:30.256 And so the witness that they are presenting, they are giving to the world, is going to, if not drive men away from Christianity, at least prevent them from ever coming into the Church. 02:13:31.136 → 02:13:32.796 And that is exactly what we see happening. 02:13:33.636 → 02:13:43.516 The Zumer generation and younger, many of them are not even going to consider Christianity because of what these faithless pastors are doing. 02:13:44.096 → 02:13:51.476 Because they see these faithless pastors just parroting all of the lies and the condemnation and the slander of the world. 02:13:52.356 → 02:13:58.496 So when they see that, why on earth would you go to service on Sunday morning? 02:13:59.356 → 02:14:00.116 Why would you do that? 02:14:00.596 → 02:14:11.916 If I’m just going to hear the exact same thing that I hear from university professors and the media and all of these others, why would I wake up early to go hear it at church? 02:14:13.156 → 02:14:15.976 Makes much more sense just to wake up late and go get brunch. 02:14:16.456 → 02:14:17.736 And this is not a hypothetical. 02:14:17.756 → 02:14:23.676 You and I have borne witness to this over and over again personally with our own eyes online as we talk to people. 02:14:25.716 → 02:14:34.596 It’s gotten so bad in the Missouri Senate that I honestly, in good faith and good conscience, could not recommend that someone join our churches anymore. 02:14:35.096 → 02:14:42.756 Now, that’s not to say that there are not specific congregations with pastors who are known to me to be faithful, where I could direct someone. 02:14:43.316 → 02:14:46.076 But as a church body, we are apostate. 02:14:46.156 → 02:14:46.976 We are shameful. 02:14:47.416 → 02:14:54.276 I am disgraced by what I see our pastors, by what I see our seminaries, by what I see our synod doing. 02:14:54.596 → 02:14:56.096 They are a disgrace to God. 02:14:56.336 → 02:15:02.976 These men are ashamed of Jesus, and they think that they are going to go to heaven because they said the right words in church. 02:15:05.256 → 02:15:06.296 God warns them differently. 02:15:06.456 → 02:15:09.556 And the worst part is, we are basically the best off. 02:15:09.936 → 02:15:12.336 Yeah, yeah, and that’s the thing. 02:15:12.436 → 02:15:15.396 That’s the terrible part. 02:15:15.536 → 02:15:19.536 We cannot make a blanket recommendation for our own churches. 02:15:20.276 → 02:15:25.176 We can make recommendation for specific ones, and I do that all the time, as I know you do as well. 02:15:25.716 → 02:15:32.696 But we cannot make the general recommendation because we know there are these apostates in some of our pulpits. 02:15:33.196 → 02:15:35.556 And nothing is being done to remove them. 02:15:35.776 → 02:15:48.916 And as we have mentioned many times, the district presidents and the presidents so-called, God is not going to judge you differently from a bishop because you declined to use the term. 02:15:49.536 → 02:15:55.416 You are going to receive the stricter judgment of a bishop because you held the office. 02:15:55.696 → 02:15:58.896 And so those men should fear, even though they don’t. 02:15:59.136 → 02:16:09.896 But when it comes to the other churches in the US, absolutely cannot make a recommendation to join them because we know the false doctrines that are being taught in those churches. 02:16:09.916 → 02:16:13.896 So we can’t any longer just tell someone, go to church on Sunday. 02:16:13.916 → 02:16:16.816 I mean, yes, I do post, go to church tomorrow every Saturday evening. 02:16:17.816 → 02:16:25.596 But we have so many apostate churches that it is nearly impossible to give a general recommendation. 02:16:26.476 → 02:16:29.796 And in particular parts of the country, there are no faithful churches. 02:16:30.256 → 02:16:30.676 Not one. 02:16:34.276 → 02:16:45.016 I mean, I live in the south now, and I can say with absolute certainty that the number of truly faithful churches here is tiny. 02:16:46.336 → 02:16:50.776 I can probably count on one hand the number of faithful ones within driving distance of where I live. 02:16:51.636 → 02:16:55.276 And I’m being quite liberal in terms of driving distance. 02:16:55.296 → 02:16:58.296 I used to live in LA, so driving distance for me is a considerable thing. 02:16:58.476 → 02:17:01.256 And you’re also lucky, because that’s an incredible concentration. 02:17:01.456 → 02:17:05.596 Many people in most parts of the country would be lucky to have one. 02:17:07.876 → 02:17:09.136 It’s why we’re doing this podcast. 02:17:09.156 → 02:17:10.656 It’s why we’re talking about these things. 02:17:11.076 → 02:17:25.256 Because the intersection of everything that people see on MSNBC that’s called politics, that’s called worldly, that’s called left-hand kingdom, all of it is rooted in attacking the fundamentals of the Christian faith. 02:17:25.876 → 02:17:27.736 It’s not attacking justification. 02:17:28.076 → 02:17:30.156 It’s not attacking Jesus died for you. 02:17:30.436 → 02:17:32.896 And that’s why all these Lutherans have lost their minds. 02:17:33.076 → 02:17:34.176 They’ve lost their bearings. 02:17:34.196 → 02:17:36.276 They have no understanding of what’s going on. 02:17:36.556 → 02:17:42.616 Because all they can see is a battlefield in terms of 16th century wars that they’re not fighting. 02:17:43.096 → 02:17:45.396 We’re not fighting a battle for justification. 02:17:45.676 → 02:17:47.456 We’re fighting a battle for creation. 02:17:47.836 → 02:17:51.376 We’re fighting a battle for how God operates in space and time. 02:17:51.916 → 02:17:58.616 And he operates using election through fathers who transmit the faith for their sons. 02:17:59.056 → 02:18:00.076 That is racial. 02:18:00.356 → 02:18:04.896 Whatever the race is, you are of your father’s race going back to Adam. 02:18:05.316 → 02:18:08.396 But as those races branched out, they became distinct. 02:18:08.716 → 02:18:10.216 They became distinct physically. 02:18:10.436 → 02:18:12.236 They became distinct intellectually. 02:18:12.256 → 02:18:14.996 They became distinct culturally. 02:18:16.696 → 02:18:18.016 And those things are permissible. 02:18:18.036 → 02:18:19.256 Those are part of God’s order. 02:18:19.676 → 02:18:24.376 What is not permissible is that they also became distinct religiously. 02:18:25.176 → 02:18:26.636 They adopted different faiths. 02:18:27.156 → 02:18:33.616 These men who went to all these various parts of the world began worshiping the demons they found there instead of worshiping the true God. 02:18:35.256 → 02:18:38.316 And it happened as soon as they got off the ark. 02:18:38.336 → 02:18:42.416 By the time you get to the story of Babel, they’ve lost their minds. 02:18:42.496 → 02:18:45.316 They’re doing evil on an industrial scale again. 02:18:45.976 → 02:18:51.336 After God literally destroyed everything on the planet except for eight people, they’re right back at it. 02:18:52.796 → 02:18:54.716 And Noah was probably still living. 02:18:58.876 → 02:18:59.996 Noah wasn’t even dead yet. 02:19:02.576 → 02:19:02.756 Yeah. 02:19:02.776 → 02:19:13.236 So these subjects and these fights, I hope that the narrative arc that we’re starting to build here will become clear to people in the fullness of time. 02:19:13.676 → 02:19:14.896 These things are connected. 02:19:15.236 → 02:19:19.636 And the reason that we talk about race is not because we care about race. 02:19:20.196 → 02:19:22.616 It’s because we care about how God made us. 02:19:23.176 → 02:19:25.616 And we care about how God made us Christian. 02:19:25.976 → 02:19:28.436 And our race is part of both of those. 02:19:29.676 → 02:19:38.156 And to deny that or to attack that is to deny and attack your creator, which is the first article of the creed. 02:19:38.556 → 02:19:42.056 If you don’t have the first article, you don’t get the second article. 02:19:42.476 → 02:19:46.596 You don’t get Christ’s salvation on the cross if you deny your creator. 02:19:47.456 → 02:19:50.976 And we have churches who are second article only. 02:19:51.436 → 02:19:53.796 They’re Jesus on the cross and they’re gospel only. 02:19:54.036 → 02:19:55.216 But it’s not the real gospel. 02:19:55.236 → 02:19:56.636 It’s not the gospel of scripture. 02:19:57.076 → 02:20:02.656 It’s a fabricated gospel that plays well on the internet with people who hate God. 02:20:03.356 → 02:20:06.976 And that should be a warning to any Christian. 02:20:07.276 → 02:20:08.656 It’s not a warning to these men. 02:20:08.676 → 02:20:12.716 And I think that on Judgment Day, we’ll see how that plays out. 02:20:12.936 → 02:20:15.976 But I am not optimistic. 02:20:16.296 → 02:20:20.976 But at the same time, I’m not despairing either, because all we can do is obey God. 02:20:21.496 → 02:20:27.456 And it is tremendously comforting to know that my name is written in the Book of Life from before eternity. 02:20:27.876 → 02:20:30.456 And the gifts that I have are all from God. 02:20:30.796 → 02:20:33.316 And whatever good I do in this life is from God. 02:20:33.756 → 02:20:34.916 It is not of me. 02:20:35.356 → 02:20:38.056 It is not to my credit of my own volition. 02:20:38.476 → 02:20:42.036 It is solely of and for and by God. 02:20:43.116 → 02:20:45.856 And that’s enough. 02:20:45.856 → 02:20:47.856 My relationship is with my Creator. 02:20:48.336 → 02:20:51.316 My church is where I attend and I’m thankful to have a good one. 02:20:51.816 → 02:20:57.556 But these men will not ruin Christianity, even if they burn our churches to the ground. 02:20:58.176 → 02:21:04.216 And we will continue to fight to make sure that we don’t have to deal with either one of those because it should not be the case. 02:21:04.516 → 02:21:10.216 And as long as there are faithful men who draw breath, even who are willing to speak publicly, that will not be the case. 02:21:10.576 → 02:21:13.396 It’s only when the last man goes silent that that happens. 02:21:13.996 → 02:21:18.516 And we are on the tail end of generations who did go completely silent. 02:21:18.876 → 02:21:20.476 They abandoned all of these things. 02:21:20.836 → 02:21:23.676 The inheritance we have been given today is an evil inheritance. 02:21:24.136 → 02:21:29.716 In our own churches, the only good things that we are inheriting in our churches are centuries old. 02:21:30.136 → 02:21:34.536 All of the new things that we’re inheriting need to be set on fire and destroyed. 02:21:34.936 → 02:21:39.336 And if the men responsible will not relent, then they can be put on the pyre too. 02:21:39.356 → 02:21:51.196 I mean, in the Lutheran case, there’s really no better example than we have the Book of Concord, 1580, centuries old. 02:21:51.836 → 02:21:56.336 And then we have, in contrast, the CTCR documents that should all be put in a pile and burned. 02:21:57.936 → 02:21:58.936 Like you said, it’s word. 02:21:58.996 → 02:22:01.096 And those, of course, are largely from the 60s. 02:22:01.456 → 02:22:04.956 Yeah, no, they had everything on. 02:22:05.376 → 02:22:08.416 Oh, yes, but the 60s were a truly apostate decade. 02:22:08.436 → 02:22:08.716 They were. 02:22:09.116 → 02:22:13.656 Everything that came from the 50s and 60s needs to be erased from history. 02:22:14.116 → 02:22:15.296 Nothing can be left standing. 02:22:15.416 → 02:22:15.716 Yes. 02:22:17.296 → 02:22:33.356 Well, it is the election episode, so I think we’ll close out here, go through just briefly basically eight sentences describing the eight points on election, what election is from the Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord. 02:22:33.816 → 02:22:40.456 So point one, the human race is truly redeemed and reconciled with God through Christ. 02:22:40.956 → 02:22:49.836 Point two, such merit and benefits of Christ are presented, offered, and distributed to us through his word and sacraments. 02:22:50.216 → 02:22:57.796 Point three, Christ will be effective and active in us, will convert hearts to true repentance, and preserve them in the true faith. 02:22:58.296 → 02:23:04.936 Point four, the Spirit will justify all those who in true repentance receive Christ by a true faith. 02:23:05.436 → 02:23:10.356 Point five, he will also sanctify and love those who are justified. 02:23:10.716 → 02:23:16.956 Point six, he also will protect them in their great weakness against the devil, the world, and the flesh. 02:23:17.416 → 02:23:23.916 Point seven, he will also strengthen, increase, and support to the end the good work that he has begun in them. 02:23:24.896 → 02:23:34.516 Last point, point eight, finally, he will eternally save and glorify in life eternal those whom he has elected, called, and justified.