SPEAKER_1: It looks like everything is working, so at least it is working on my end.
SPEAKER_1: If you are in the chat, please let me know if there's any trouble with the audio or anything like that.
SPEAKER_1: I don't have any headphones in, since I'm not listening to anyone on my end.
SPEAKER_1: So with a couple of the questions that I have here, I'll start with, one is, let me pull up the exact wording here, since I don't currently have a way to show it on the screen, so I will just read it.
SPEAKER_1: Question is, what motivates you?
SPEAKER_1: Does stone choir keep you pressing forward?
SPEAKER_1: And the short version is one word, truth.
SPEAKER_1: Truth is what motivates me.
SPEAKER_1: My desire is to see that the truth is out there, to see that the truth is defended, and to see that people believe the truth.
SPEAKER_1: It's one of the reasons that we did the episode on being convincing, for instance.
SPEAKER_1: It's important not only to portray the truth, not only to deliver the truth, but also to defend the truth in a way that encourages other men to believe the truth.
SPEAKER_1: And so, primarily, yes, it would be the truth that does motivate me.
SPEAKER_1: Of course, there's also the fact that I simply have this sort of personality, where I'm not going to leave this sort of thing alone.
SPEAKER_1: When I encounter something that is false, my inclination is to correct it, or at least figure out why it is false, and then, of course, correct it.
SPEAKER_1: It's simply sort of a personality trait from a number of different things.
SPEAKER_1: Part of it is the Germanic ancestry, of course.
SPEAKER_1: The Scottish adds to it a little bit, too.
SPEAKER_1: There's a confrontational aspect there.
SPEAKER_1: There's the fact that I have an intj personality.
SPEAKER_1: Certainly, I am inclined to care more about the truth than about the fact that it is going to inevitably offend some people, because that's simply the reality of it.
SPEAKER_1: There will always be those people who are offended by the truth, particularly if you state it in a blunt way, which sometimes you have to do.
SPEAKER_1: You don't always have to state the truth bluntly.
SPEAKER_1: Sometimes it's important to be tactful.
SPEAKER_1: Sometimes it's important to lead people slowly into the truth.
SPEAKER_1: But a lot of times, it's important to shock people out of the rut in which they have found themselves, or not found themselves in more cases.
SPEAKER_1: And in shocking them out of that, you can get them to actually consider what it is that you're saying.
SPEAKER_1: And so, yes, Stone Choir in part does encourage me to keep pressing forward, because obviously it's a very good outlet for talking about these issues that are very important.
SPEAKER_1: But I would probably be doing this anyway.
SPEAKER_1: If I weren't doing Stone Choir and I didn't have a public persona, if I didn't have all of my views out there in the open, so my website and my ex-account and all these other things, Telegram, if I didn't have that, then I would probably be practicing law, and no one would know my name outside of the area of law in which I was practicing anyway.
SPEAKER_1: But that is sort of no longer an option at this point, as most of you probably know.
SPEAKER_1: The second question, sort of a change of pace and tone here, I guess, is really about two different things.
SPEAKER_1: One is the morality of suicide, and then secondarily, specifically, the specific case of Hitler's suicide, the morality of that.
SPEAKER_1: And so I'll start first with the general case.
SPEAKER_1: Is suicide an unforgivable sin?
SPEAKER_1: The answer for Christians is pretty straightforward, because Scripture says there's only one unforgivable sin.
SPEAKER_1: That's the sin against the spirit.
SPEAKER_1: It's unbelief.
SPEAKER_1: If you die in unbelief, you go to hell.
SPEAKER_1: Very simple, very straightforward.
SPEAKER_1: And so, suicide is not the unforgivable sin.
SPEAKER_1: I'm just going to pull up Twitter here quickly, X, whatever you want to call it.
SPEAKER_1: Suicide not being the unforgivable sin means that suicide is not necessarily or per se damning.
SPEAKER_1: I, quite frankly, firmly believe there are situations in which suicide is the right course of action, not just an acceptable course of action, but the right course of action that will lead into answering the more specific case.
SPEAKER_1: But it's going to depend on the person and the circumstances.
SPEAKER_1: So, for instance, if you are a man and you have the chance to fight to the death, say you're in an actual battle, a war situation, then perhaps you should fight to the death.
SPEAKER_1: But if you are someone else and you are going to be tortured for some indeterminate amount of time, particularly horrible torture, then it may be that the suicide option is the right way out.
SPEAKER_1: And I know that many Christians don't want to hear that.
SPEAKER_1: They've been told their whole lives, pretty much mostly in the Roman Catholic traditions, but a few others as well.
SPEAKER_1: Mostly because they've imported things from Rome on this particular issue with regard to this doctrine.
SPEAKER_1: Because Rome sort of teaches that it's an unforgivable sin.
SPEAKER_1: The logic of Rome is that if you commit suicide, you don't have the chance to repent.
SPEAKER_1: Well, the problem with their doctrine of repentance, and I know that I'm getting off on a tangent here a little bit, but it's important because it's related.
SPEAKER_1: The problem with their doctrine of repentance is that most likely, we are all going to die having not repented of something.
SPEAKER_1: Because unless you happen to have the good fortune to die in your bed with a pastor at your bedside to hear your final confession, you're probably not going to have repented of all of the sins you committed, at least that day up to the point you die, because we all commit sins all the time.
SPEAKER_1: Because don't forget that concupiscence is itself also sin.
SPEAKER_1: The desire to sin is sin, not just active sin.
SPEAKER_1: So even if you're bedridden at the end of your life, you're still going to have sinful desires.
SPEAKER_1: And perhaps you die without confessing those.
SPEAKER_1: You don't have to confess all of your sins in order to be forgiven.
SPEAKER_1: Your sins have already been forgiven.
SPEAKER_1: The issue with regard to confession and sins is when you have an impenitent sin.
SPEAKER_1: It is something you're holding on to.
SPEAKER_1: It is some sin that you sort of made your own and decided, no, this one is mine.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not going to let God have this one.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not going to repent of this one.
SPEAKER_1: This is something I want to keep doing.
SPEAKER_1: That's impenitence.
SPEAKER_1: That's a different thing.
SPEAKER_1: And so, suicide does not necessarily damn.
SPEAKER_1: The logic that Rome employs to argue for that end, to argue for that conclusion, would put basically all of us in jeopardy.
SPEAKER_1: And that is simply not what scripture teaches.
SPEAKER_1: Now, in the specific case of Hitler and his suicide in the bunker, and I do believe that he committed suicide, I don't believe that he escaped to Argentina or whatever else.
SPEAKER_1: I don't really care if people believe one way or the other, I think it's better to believe that he did commit suicide for various reasons, and I think the argument, the evidence, much stronger.
SPEAKER_1: But that's not the most interesting case there.
SPEAKER_1: The most interesting case really is Goebbels and his family.
SPEAKER_1: But in the case of Hitler, I'll deal with that one first, because it's sort of the easier case.
SPEAKER_1: It's certainly the easier case for people to hear.
SPEAKER_1: In the case of Hitler, his suicide was the right thing to do.
SPEAKER_1: And the reason that it was the right thing to do, is because he was the leader of a defeated nation.
SPEAKER_1: The only thing, literally the only thing that lay ahead of him, was torture being paraded around as a war trophy by the Soviet Union, one of the most evil things ever to exist politically in history.
SPEAKER_1: Rivals, certainly any of the ancient empires, Babylon, the Aztecs, anything like that, being paraded around by them as a war trophy to demoralize the German people further, and basically everyone else who had fought on that side of the war.
SPEAKER_1: And quite frankly, they would have probably done horrible things and demoralized the West as well.
SPEAKER_1: So he had a duty to his people, and his duty to his people necessitated that he preclude them from having that opportunity.
SPEAKER_1: And that's exactly what he did by committing suicide.
SPEAKER_1: Now I know that I'm currently streaming this on YouTube.
SPEAKER_1: I don't have the DVR functionality listed.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not trying to be monetized, of course, but I'd like not to get a strike.
SPEAKER_1: But I'm going to be frank about these topics.
SPEAKER_1: Perhaps I won't stream to YouTube in the future.
SPEAKER_1: I don't know.
SPEAKER_1: It depends on their policies and how they view this sort of thing.
SPEAKER_1: So I'll try not to get too far off into that sort of territory.
SPEAKER_1: That being said, the next one is the harder case.
SPEAKER_1: And it's the harder case largely because it's emotional for people.
SPEAKER_1: It's not because it's the harder case, say, logically or rationally or even theologically.
SPEAKER_1: It's not that hard of a case.
SPEAKER_1: But the question is, was it right for Gebel's to kill his family before he committed suicide?
SPEAKER_1: And really, the question is, you have to take a step back, and you have to look at what is happening in the bunker at that time, in this situation, because what are the options?
SPEAKER_1: You need to look at your options.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying that consequentialist morality is always correct.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying that deontological morality is always correct.
SPEAKER_1: I think both of those are important.
SPEAKER_1: I think you should look at the nature of the act itself, whether the act itself is moral or immoral per se, because sometimes that's true.
SPEAKER_1: There are certain things you simply cannot do.
SPEAKER_1: Killing is not one of them, notably.
SPEAKER_1: Killing is not something that is always per se immoral.
SPEAKER_1: Murder is per se immoral.
SPEAKER_1: And so the question is, is it murder or is it not murder?
SPEAKER_1: Which really comes down to a question of what is a moral warrant for killing?
SPEAKER_1: And I think in that particular situation, he was right to do what he did, because his options were give his children the cleanest death that he possibly could, or basically hand them over to the Soviets.
SPEAKER_1: And I won't go into the details, because quite frankly, they're lurid and Christians shouldn't even want to hear them.
SPEAKER_1: Sometimes it's necessary, because of course we need to realize how evil the world is, and look evil straight in the face, and accept the reality of it.
SPEAKER_1: But, for various reasons, you can guess some of them, I won't go into the specific details, but we all know what would have happened if his children had fallen into the hands of the Soviets.
SPEAKER_1: The same sort of thing that happened to so many German and Czechoslovakian and various other women, mostly women, and children in the aftermath of that war.
SPEAKER_1: The same thing would have happened to his children.
SPEAKER_1: He was faced with a horrible set of decisions.
SPEAKER_1: His choices were awful.
SPEAKER_1: All he had to choose from was kill his own children, or permit them to fall into the hands of monsters.
SPEAKER_1: I think that he did the right thing, because I think he picked the least bad option, and I don't think it qualifies as murder, because I think there are times where killing is necessary, and I think that was one of them.
SPEAKER_1: We recognize this to some degree in some places.
SPEAKER_1: For instance, no one actually objecs to a soft form of euthanasia.
SPEAKER_1: I won't say no one, of course, because there's probably someone out there who does, but the specific kind that I have in mind is the form of euthanasia, where we basically give someone so much painkiller that death is inevitable.
SPEAKER_1: And there are times where that's necessary.
SPEAKER_1: For instance, someone who has a large part of his body burned in a fire, there's nothing we currently, with current medical technology, can do for that person.
SPEAKER_1: Literally, all we can do is give him as much morphine, or something stronger these days, as possible to try to dull the pain.
SPEAKER_1: That's it, that's all we can do.
SPEAKER_1: And in fact, we wind up giving those people so much that we know they are going to die from an overdose, but that is better than the horrendous pain of having third degree burns over 70% of your body.
SPEAKER_1: And so, is that euthanasia?
SPEAKER_1: The answer, of course, is yes, because strictly speaking, it is literally the killing of a person, but with a good intent.
SPEAKER_1: Now, the question, of course, is does it matter if your intent is to kill the person, or if your intent is to relieve pain?
SPEAKER_1: There's a distinction there, but I don't think it's a distinction that really matters in this case.
SPEAKER_1: Because if you do something with the intent to do something good, but you know that it will necessarily eventuate in the death of that person, that is essentially morally indistinguishable from that intent to kill.
SPEAKER_1: If the end is a good end, of course.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying you can do this for a wicked end.
SPEAKER_1: These are edge cases.
SPEAKER_1: These are difficult questions to answer for most men.
SPEAKER_1: I recognize that.
SPEAKER_1: And I recognize that most Christians are not particularly fond of these sorts of answers.
SPEAKER_1: But, when you are involved in that sort of war, or when you have horrendous burns all over your body, it's certainly an edge case.
SPEAKER_1: And there are going to be times where there are no good options.
SPEAKER_1: There's not going to be, this is obviously the best and the moral option, we have to do this.
SPEAKER_1: It's going to be a set of terrible options, and you have to pick the least terrible one.
SPEAKER_1: And I don't think that as Christians, we are prohibited in all cases, from enacting euthanasia.
SPEAKER_1: I do think that we don't get to do it because someone is sad, or someone is in a little bit of pain, or someone is going through a rough spot in life.
SPEAKER_1: In those cases, we have better treatments, we have things we can do for those people.
SPEAKER_1: The person who's in a bunker in Berlin in the 1940s, surrounded by the Soviets, doesn't have another option.
SPEAKER_1: The person who has third degree burns over 90% of his body, doesn't have other options.
SPEAKER_1: There are times where there are, again, no good options, and you have to do the best thing that you can do in the situation with what you have been given.
SPEAKER_1: We'll check the replies here and see what else we have.
SPEAKER_1: First one that I see here, X is not the best platform for trying to do this live, but, what is the best way to answer slash refute the God is not finished with Israel mantra?
SPEAKER_1: We have touched on this in a number of different episodes, of course, undoubtedly the one on dispensationalism, chief among them, but also dealing with the Israelites, Hebrews, Jews, et cetera.
SPEAKER_1: The question of whether or not God is done with Israel, and of course, here we mean ethnic Israel, which is, say, the Jews, Old Testament Israel, which the problem with Old Testament Israel is it no longer exists, of course.
SPEAKER_1: God destroyed it.
SPEAKER_1: Christ was very clear, destroyed in 70 AD.
SPEAKER_1: That was the end of Old Testament Israel.
SPEAKER_1: That was actually the final destruction of the last bit of surviving Hebrew, incidentally.
SPEAKER_1: That was when the scrolls were burned on the temple steps.
SPEAKER_1: But how do we deal with the question of whether or not God has some future return of the Jews to the land?
SPEAKER_1: Was that a fulfillment of prophecy?
SPEAKER_1: And, of course, the answer is no.
SPEAKER_1: And we all know that the answer is no.
SPEAKER_1: But how do we get those who believe that that was prophecy, a fulfillment of prophecy, to see that it was not?
SPEAKER_1: And part of that is, of course, properly defining Israel.
SPEAKER_1: If we don't properly define Israel, we are going to find it difficult, virtually impossible, to get anywhere on any of these issues.
SPEAKER_1: Most people, when they see Israel, think the Jews.
SPEAKER_1: They simply think, oh, every single time it says Israel, it must be the Jews.
SPEAKER_1: And that's simply not true.
SPEAKER_1: If you actually read through the Old Testament, and pay attention to what is being said in the Old Testament, clearly, many of the times, it's not the Jews.
SPEAKER_1: In fact, quite frankly, probably most of the time, it's not the Jews.
SPEAKER_1: Israel has always been the believers.
SPEAKER_1: Israel has always been the Israel of God, those who are believers in either the Messiah who was to come, or now, the Messiah who has come.
SPEAKER_1: And so, the true Israel is not the Jews.
SPEAKER_1: It's never been the Jews.
SPEAKER_1: For a period of time, you had Old Testament Israel, and the purpose of Old Testament Israel was very specific and very limited.
SPEAKER_1: It was the fulfillment of the promise of a Messiah from the line of Abraham, of course, through the line of Israel, through the line of David.
SPEAKER_1: That was fulfilled.
SPEAKER_1: That's it for the Jews.
SPEAKER_1: That was the only promise they had.
SPEAKER_1: Now they had other contingent promises, conditional promises, and that's one of the big things here.
SPEAKER_1: There are many who will say, well, all of these promises, look at all of the promises that God has for the Jews, and yes, let's look at them.
SPEAKER_1: They're conditional.
SPEAKER_1: They say, if you are faithful, if you follow my rules, if you follow my commandments, if you do not worship other gods.
SPEAKER_1: And then look at what usually comes after that as well, because usually what follows those promises is all of the curses when you don't obey.
SPEAKER_1: In fact, oftentimes, the curses are longer.
SPEAKER_1: The curses are more extreme.
SPEAKER_1: God goes so far as to say that he will walk contrary to them for evil.
SPEAKER_1: God threatens to destroy those who do not obey him.
SPEAKER_1: The same thing applies to us.
SPEAKER_1: Incidentally, when you start to read the Old Testament correctly, one of the things that you get to see is that so much of this, so many of these things, apply to us today.
SPEAKER_1: These are not just promises and curses for some people in the distant past living over there, and this doesn't have any meaning for us, right?
SPEAKER_1: No, this has meaning for us, because those are the very same sorts of promises and curses that apply to us if we are faithful or faithless.
SPEAKER_1: And so when someone tries to basically get rid of all these promises that apply to the church, that apply to Christians, what they're really doing is they're saying, oh, the Old Testament doesn't apply to me.
SPEAKER_1: It's a sort of weak form of Marcionism, saying that the Old Testament is a different sort of book.
SPEAKER_1: It's for a different people.
SPEAKER_1: It's a different God, right?
SPEAKER_1: That's the God of Old Testament Israel.
SPEAKER_1: My God as a Christian, right, is the New Testament God.
SPEAKER_1: That's Jesus.
SPEAKER_1: He's a nicer God.
SPEAKER_1: He's not the fire and brimstone God of the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_1: And that's just not true.
SPEAKER_1: That's entirely false.
SPEAKER_1: It's the wrong way to look at these things.
SPEAKER_1: And so the short answer really is you want someone, if he's willing to do so and capable of doing so, to look at the actual promises in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_1: You will find that basically all of them, except for the promise of the Messiah, are contingent, are conditional.
SPEAKER_1: They're not a blanket promise.
SPEAKER_1: God is just going to do all these great things for you, regardless of what you do.
SPEAKER_1: Those are not the sort of promises that God makes.
SPEAKER_1: Because those who receive good things from God are those who are in Christ.
SPEAKER_1: And the way you're in Christ in the Old Testament, of course, is belief in the Messiah who is to come.
SPEAKER_1: And our belief today is in this Messiah who has come.
SPEAKER_1: But all of these promises, all these good things apply to you only if you are in Christ.
SPEAKER_1: God does not give good things to evil people.
SPEAKER_1: That's not to say, I'm not saying, you know, prosperity gospel or nonsense like that.
SPEAKER_1: Because, of course, no Christian believes that.
SPEAKER_1: That's clearly false.
SPEAKER_1: Do bad things happen to good people?
SPEAKER_1: Yes.
SPEAKER_1: Do good things happen to bad people?
SPEAKER_1: Yes.
SPEAKER_1: There is a sort of natural good in the world.
SPEAKER_1: You know, the rain falls on the wicked and the righteous alike.
SPEAKER_1: But, the promises of long-term good, the promises of all of these blessings down through generations, do not apply to those who are wicked apostates who worship other gods.
SPEAKER_1: And we see that.
SPEAKER_1: Look at the various nations of the world.
SPEAKER_1: The ones that apostatized very early on, and worshiped demons for thousands of years, are clearly cursed by God.
SPEAKER_1: They are much worse off than those of us who belong to nations that were faithful for much longer, and then were faithful again when the New Testament reached us.
SPEAKER_1: Faithful for a thousand years.
SPEAKER_1: Fifteen hundred years.
SPEAKER_1: Almost two thousand years in some cases.
SPEAKER_1: And so, when someone brings up Israel, it's important first to point out that Israel is not the Jews.
SPEAKER_1: Israel is the Israel of God.
SPEAKER_1: And of course, you can look at Romans for that.
SPEAKER_1: There are various places.
SPEAKER_1: I know that sometimes, they will try to argue with regard to Romans that those who are of Israel but not of Israel are believing Jews versus unbelieving Jews.
SPEAKER_1: That's clearly not what the text is saying.
SPEAKER_1: What the text is saying is that you have Jews who are Old Testament Israel, physical descendants of Israel, ethnic Israel, and you have the church.
SPEAKER_1: You have spiritual Israel.
SPEAKER_1: You have the Israel of God.
SPEAKER_1: Not all of those who are descended lineally by blood from Jacob, from Israel, belong to the Israel of God.
SPEAKER_1: We very clearly see that.
SPEAKER_1: Look at what God does to many, if not most, of the Israelites in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_1: He sets them on fire, He plagues them with disease, He sends snakes after them, He swallows them up with the earth.
SPEAKER_1: These people did not go to paradise.
SPEAKER_1: These people do not all get into heaven.
SPEAKER_1: And so, when it says, all Israel will be saved, well, it can't mean ethnic Israel, because not all of ethnic Israel was saved.
SPEAKER_1: In fact, probably most of them in the Old Testament went to hell.
SPEAKER_1: If you look at the times they were faithful, the times they were faithful were tiny slivers compared to how often they were faithless.
SPEAKER_1: And so, when you see things saying, all Israel will be saved, it clearly can't be ethnic Israel, because if it were ethnic Israel, God would be a liar.
SPEAKER_1: And God is not a liar.
SPEAKER_1: God is always telling the truth.
SPEAKER_1: So, if Scripture says that all of this group will be saved, it can only possibly mean those who have faith.
SPEAKER_1: It can only possibly mean the Church.
SPEAKER_1: Now, on a purely practical sort of note, you're going to find it very difficult to get most of those who have been steeped in dispensationalism for a long period of time, particularly baby boomers, which is very relevant for many of those who listen to Stone Choir, because many of those who listen are millennials.
SPEAKER_1: I'm also a millennial.
SPEAKER_1: And so, your parents are baby boomers.
SPEAKER_1: And they have probably heard dispensationalist talking points, probably not from a strictly dispensationalist church, but from a Baptist church or a non-denominational so-called a megachurch, whatever it happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: They've heard these dispensationalist talking points for decades.
SPEAKER_1: They bought into them.
SPEAKER_1: Probably have a study Bible that has the notes.
SPEAKER_1: So some sort of updated version of Scofield, maybe the Ryrie Study Bible, one of those.
SPEAKER_1: You are going to find it very difficult to get them to change their views.
SPEAKER_1: And in some cases, the best thing that you can do is, and this is sort of a practical bit of advice, particularly again, for millennials who have baby boomers as parents, who probably will not change.
SPEAKER_1: Sixty, seventy-year-old men don't typically make radical changes with regard to their world view.
SPEAKER_1: It's just the reality of things.
SPEAKER_1: You still have the Fourth Commandment in play.
SPEAKER_1: Honor thy father and thy mother.
SPEAKER_1: You have to work around the fact that you are never going to get, particularly your father, which is true for many men who listen, you're just not going to get him to change.
SPEAKER_1: And so, do the best that you can.
SPEAKER_1: If the issue comes up, by all means, you can discuss it earnestly and honestly.
SPEAKER_1: You can point to scripture.
SPEAKER_1: You can go through scripture with your father, your mother, whoever it happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: But don't make it the singular point of that relationship.
SPEAKER_1: Don't press the point until you alienate everyone around you.
SPEAKER_1: That doesn't serve God.
SPEAKER_1: It doesn't serve your parents.
SPEAKER_1: It doesn't serve the interests of the Commandments.
SPEAKER_1: And by the way, of course, I'm using the Lutheran numbering.
SPEAKER_1: So, the Fourth Commandment for us.
SPEAKER_1: You have to work with what you have in front of you.
SPEAKER_1: You're not always going to be able to convince people of these things.
SPEAKER_1: So, are there sound arguments?
SPEAKER_1: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_1: And you can just go through scripture, and there's argument after argument after argument.
SPEAKER_1: Go and read the prophets.
SPEAKER_1: Look at what the prophets say about Israel versus what the prophets say about the promises.
SPEAKER_1: And note also, this is an important point.
SPEAKER_1: I just read through some of the prophets for the Through the Bible podcast last night.
SPEAKER_1: And many of those promises, when you look at them, can only be eschatological promises.
SPEAKER_1: They cannot be temporal, because they are speaking about things like, all Israel will believe.
SPEAKER_1: That's never happened.
SPEAKER_1: It's not going to happen, with regard to the ethnic Jews.
SPEAKER_1: They'll never again be removed from their land.
SPEAKER_1: No one will make them afraid.
SPEAKER_1: All of these promises are clearly about the New Jerusalem, which is used to mean the New Earth.
SPEAKER_1: They're talking about the church in the New Earth.
SPEAKER_1: That is when no one will make us afraid.
SPEAKER_1: That is when we will no longer have to worry about sickness, about disease, and death, and all these problems, and warfare, and everyone will know God.
SPEAKER_1: That is consistent language in the Old Testament and the New Testament.
SPEAKER_1: When it speaks of those things, it is speaking about the Eshketon.
SPEAKER_1: It's speaking about the New Heavens and the New Earth, not Old Testament Israel, not ethnic Jews.
SPEAKER_1: And again, one of the reasons that it's important to have this frame in mind when you're dealing with the Old Testament, is that if you are looking at it through a lens of thinking, you know, this is the Jewish book, then you're going to miss what God is saying to you, because God isn't speaking exclusively to the Jews.
SPEAKER_1: He's speaking to them as well, of course, and it's often very bad news for them, but He is speaking to His people.
SPEAKER_1: He is speaking to anyone who has ears to listen, anyone who has ears to hear.
SPEAKER_1: He is speaking to that man.
SPEAKER_1: And if you have the right mind, if you have the right frame of mind, when you are going through the Old Testament, it will mean more to you, you will get more out of it, because God will be speaking to you through His Word as He intends, instead of having it at this sort of arms distance, this history of a foreign people.
SPEAKER_1: That's not what it is.
SPEAKER_1: It is a book for us today.
SPEAKER_1: It is a book for God's Church.
SPEAKER_1: Let's see what we have here.
SPEAKER_1: Following the Septuagint series, do you consider anything from the traditional church to be beyond reproach?
SPEAKER_1: Has your framework for assessing the validity of things changed?
SPEAKER_1: Or could anything be subject to scrutiny ultimately?
SPEAKER_1: For instance, the creeds' confessions.
SPEAKER_1: With regard to the creeds, there is nothing in the creeds that changes.
SPEAKER_1: And do remember, the men who wrote the creeds were using the Septuagint.
SPEAKER_1: So in that case, we have no danger whatsoever.
SPEAKER_1: With regard to some of the confessions that come centuries later, as Woe pointed out, there will be some questions with some of those.
SPEAKER_1: Now, personally, I can point out that I have not found anything in the Book of Concord that is actually in jeopardy, anything that changes whatsoever.
SPEAKER_1: Incidentally, I've been looking at it as I've been reading through it for the Daily Devotions podcast and just my personal reading.
SPEAKER_1: And all of the references are basically identical in the Old Testament, in the so-called Masoretic, and in the Septuagint.
SPEAKER_1: Fortuitous, divine intervention, whatever you want to call it, that happens to be the case.
SPEAKER_1: I am not as familiar with the Reformed Confessions.
SPEAKER_1: I haven't gone through them.
SPEAKER_1: I don't read them daily, certainly, because again, I'm not Reformed.
SPEAKER_1: And so that is going to be a task for men who are from the Reformed camp.
SPEAKER_1: I think that some of them are going to run into some problems.
SPEAKER_1: And we'll point it out one of the reasons for that.
SPEAKER_1: Some of them state explicitly that they believe the Old Testament is in Hebrew.
SPEAKER_1: And very clearly, we demonstrated that is not the case.
SPEAKER_1: And so the question for those who hold to those confessions that make those sorts of claims is, can you jettison the part that says the Old Testament is in Hebrew and retain the rest of the confession?
SPEAKER_1: That's not a question for me to answer.
SPEAKER_1: That is a question for the men who adhere to those confessions to answer.
SPEAKER_1: Personally, I would have some doubts about the confessions then.
SPEAKER_1: I would have doubts about the Book of Concord if one of the first things it said was, the Old Testament is Hebrew, period, you have to read the Hebrew, you have to learn Hebrew.
SPEAKER_1: It doesn't say that.
SPEAKER_1: There's actually no enumeration of the books of the Bible, even the Book of Concord.
SPEAKER_1: That's something for which Lutherans are kind of notorious, but that's simply the state of affairs as it stands.
SPEAKER_1: So, it's a question for those in camps that hold to confessions that say things about the Hebrew being the word of God.
SPEAKER_1: Not a problem for Lutherans.
SPEAKER_1: So, in my case, nothing changes.
SPEAKER_1: I would just prefer to have a Septuagint in a good English translation.
SPEAKER_1: Unfortunately, it doesn't exist yet, because, as it turns out, we basically just have some stilted academic ones, and then the Brenton, which is kind of like a weird, almost KJV translation of the Septuagint, but sometimes it uses the Masoretic without noting it.
SPEAKER_1: I wish we had something better.
SPEAKER_1: We don't have it yet.
SPEAKER_1: We will get there, because, again, translating Greek into English is not the most daunting or impossible task in the world.
SPEAKER_1: Almost anyone can do it.
SPEAKER_1: We want men with the specific qualifications.
SPEAKER_1: We laid out in the episode, we did on translating the Greek, but it's not something about which I'm concerned.
SPEAKER_1: It's just inconvenient for me today, because if I wanted to, say, switch to the Septuagint for the daily readings, for the Daily Devotions podcast that I do, it would be somewhat difficult to do that, because I have a number of options that are kind of good, but not one that I can just say, I'm going to read this one now.
SPEAKER_1: Because the Nets, for instance, gets weirdly academic in some places, and the name translations are kind of crazy in some points.
SPEAKER_1: A little hilarious, honestly.
SPEAKER_1: Sometimes they're quite funny, but it's not what I want when I'm reading just to read the Daily Devotions, just to record that.
SPEAKER_1: And it's not something that you want in your daily reading, because you don't want an academic translation for that.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying an academic translation is bad.
SPEAKER_1: Like we said in the episode, an academic translation has its place, but it's not the everyday translation we should be using to read when we're just reading the Word of God.
SPEAKER_1: So, the short answer is no.
SPEAKER_1: Nothing has really changed for me, except for that desire to read the actual Old Testament in the Greek with the caveat that, yes, I do find myself, if I'm reading it in one of my existing Bibles, which is sort of unfortunate, because I have a decent collection of Bibles at this point, I find that I am cross-referencing constantly to the Greek or translation of the Greek into English, and making sure that things match, making sure that it actually says what it's supposed to say, which, like I said, I have, I don't know how many Bibles, some number of dozens of Bibles, and most of them, of course, are based on the Masoretic text.
SPEAKER_1: I do have a number of Septuagint translations, but I now have some very nice Bibles that are more shelf decoration than necessarily something I would use, which is unfortunate, but it's the reality of it, because our forefathers decided to trust the Jews when they said, here, this is the word of God, trust us.
SPEAKER_1: Probably not the best plan, as we went over at length in the Septuagint series.
SPEAKER_1: As far as the greater question, whether or not things from the Church, from the history of the Church, are reliable?
SPEAKER_1: Well, the early Church, of course, was using the Septuagint exclusively.
SPEAKER_1: They didn't even have the so-called Masoretic Text, and so they couldn't have relied on that, because they didn't have it.
SPEAKER_1: Things that came after the Masoretic Text was brought into the Church, there are some questions.
SPEAKER_1: If someone is exegeting a passage, and that passage is different in the Masoretic Text from what it should be, what it is in the Septuagint, then that exegesis is probably wrong, probably unhelpful, and something we should ignore.
SPEAKER_1: And so it's going to be necessary when we look at the older exegetes, but not the really old exegetes, but the older exegetes, it's going to be necessary to assess whether or not they were commenting on a passage that is different between the texts.
SPEAKER_1: And of course, as we pointed out, and as should be very obvious, by and large, the Septuagint and the Masoretic do actually agree.
SPEAKER_1: The Jews played games, they did so pervasively.
SPEAKER_1: In some books, they did so thoroughly.
SPEAKER_1: But by God's protection by divine providence, much of the text remains essentially identical between the Septuagint and the Masoretic text.
SPEAKER_1: So, in all of those cases where the text is the same, where we don't have these concerns of, they changed things, they played games, then we can certainly rely on those old exegetes the same way we would before.
SPEAKER_1: But of course, none of this really changes anything fundamentally with regard to how we treat exegetes, because those who exegete scripture are not perfect.
SPEAKER_1: They're fallen men, they're imperfect men, they make errors, they make mistakes, they misunderstand things.
SPEAKER_1: We have to run an assessment when we are reading those works.
SPEAKER_1: We don't just read them uncritically and say, well, Augustine said it, it must be true.
SPEAKER_1: Now, in Augustine's case, generally, if he said it, it very well probably is true.
SPEAKER_1: But even Augustine is not perfect.
SPEAKER_1: Calvin was not perfect.
SPEAKER_1: Luther was not perfect.
SPEAKER_1: Not one of these men was divinely inspired in the sense of being a prophet who could speak without error with regard to the things of God.
SPEAKER_1: And so it is necessary to cross check these things when we read these exegetes, cross check them against scripture.
SPEAKER_1: We should always be doing that.
SPEAKER_1: Now does it mean we can't rely on them?
SPEAKER_1: Of course not, because many of these men were very gifted.
SPEAKER_1: They had a gift of intelligence and insight, discernment.
SPEAKER_1: They knew what they were doing, and so we can rely on them.
SPEAKER_1: We can look at the things as they interpreted them, and then use the gifts, the skills, the abilities God has given us to assess that in the light of scripture.
SPEAKER_1: That's always going to be the case.
SPEAKER_1: It's why when anyone makes the argument that, well, we just have to rely on the fathers, or we have to rely on this theologian or that theologian, that's complete nonsense, because it is always going to be a question of what is reliable and what is true.
SPEAKER_1: And even if you are saying, well, we just have to rely on Calvin, I'm not beating up on Calvin because I like doing so, it's just because I'm picking him.
SPEAKER_1: And I saw one of his books on my shelf over here.
SPEAKER_1: You can't just say, well, we're going to rely on Calvin, because you have to rely on the Word of God, you have to rely on scripture.
SPEAKER_1: And what are you doing if you say, we're just going to rely on Calvin?
SPEAKER_1: You've made the same sort of assessment with regard to his reliability that you should be making with regard to what scripture says.
SPEAKER_1: Now, it may very well be that he has very good interpretations, and he does in some cases.
SPEAKER_1: As a Lutheran, I can agree with some of the things that he says.
SPEAKER_1: But you don't uncritically agree with what he says.
SPEAKER_1: And so, overall, we're still running the same sort of assessment we've always had to run with regard to church fathers, with regard to the Reformation fathers, all of these men down through history, that God is gifted to the church, who had various levels of various abilities.
SPEAKER_1: We have to assess their work in the light of scripture, because scripture is always the standard.
SPEAKER_1: That's what we mean when we say sola scriptura.
SPEAKER_1: We mean by scripture alone, because remember, again, and I've said this before, but it's good to have it here, so it's documented, I guess.
SPEAKER_1: That's in the ablative, which is something that means absolutely nothing to most people these days, because no one learns grammar anymore, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_1: And in English, we are a little weird with our declensions, but the ablative essentially deals with means.
SPEAKER_1: It is the means by which something is accomplished.
SPEAKER_1: And so when we say faith alone, we're not saying faith alone, we're saying by faith alone.
SPEAKER_1: You are justified by faith alone.
SPEAKER_1: When we say scripture alone, we're not saying scripture alone, we're saying by scripture alone, which is to say that all doctrine, all theology ultimately is judged by scripture alone.
SPEAKER_1: It is not judged by what men argue, what men say.
SPEAKER_1: Even the most gifted man can err.
SPEAKER_1: Men are fallen, men make mistakes.
SPEAKER_1: And so any man must be subjected to the word of God.
SPEAKER_1: We do that regardless of the text on which he based his argument, in some cases, will his argument be faulty because he used a text that was faulty?
SPEAKER_1: Of course.
SPEAKER_1: But in most cases, again, the texts are going to agree in large part, and so we just run the same sort of reliability assessment that we would otherwise run.
SPEAKER_1: Very little has changed on that front.
SPEAKER_1: It just means that we have this extra little nuance, this extra analysis to run with regard to those who are exegeting the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_1: Which is something that we've done down through history anyway, because sometimes you have textual variants and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: So in large part, no, it hasn't changed.
SPEAKER_1: In my specific case, my reliance on the Book of Concord hasn't changed, but I do find myself checking the Greek more often than I would have before, because before I basically just would have used a handful of different English translations because obviously I don't know Hebrew.
SPEAKER_1: I know that the adversaries try to make a big deal of that, but quite frankly, not knowing Hebrew is helpful to exegete scripture, because then you don't have the poison of the rabbis in your mind when you're doing it.
SPEAKER_1: And so I never looked at the Hebrew when I was doing it, except for if I happened to look at a word here or there, sometimes I'd look something up.
SPEAKER_1: I don't do that anymore, obviously.
SPEAKER_1: I look at the Greek, I rely on the Greek, because the Greek is the word of God, the Septuagint is the word of God.
SPEAKER_1: So that small change, yes, I've made that change.
SPEAKER_1: Referring to the theory of demon worship and racial degeneration, what is your take on the St.
SPEAKER_1: Thomas Christians of India?
SPEAKER_1: If you look at many of the statistics for the region of India that is Christian, basically everything there is better.
SPEAKER_1: The crime is lower, it's cleaner, they're just generally better off.
SPEAKER_1: And so even in the case of a race that engaged in open and particularly pernicious demon worship for thousands of years, turning to Christ still improved them, still made them better, certainly seems to have stopped them from degenerating further.
SPEAKER_1: And so the other parts of India are much worse off.
SPEAKER_1: Perhaps I should have encrypted this stream so Indians can't join, but I'm not watching the comments on X anyway, so it doesn't matter that much.
SPEAKER_1: They're better off for being Christians.
SPEAKER_1: And that is the case for basically any population.
SPEAKER_1: You can look at the Ethiopians in Africa, the same thing is true.
SPEAKER_1: It's better to be in Ethiopia than many other places in Sub-Saharan Africa.
SPEAKER_1: They've been Christian for many years.
SPEAKER_1: Granted, they have a significant Islam problem these days, but they at least had that trade with Old Testament Israel, and so they had access to the scriptures, and so they did have a form of Christianity for a very long time, and they still have Christianity today.
SPEAKER_1: Incidentally, and perhaps interestingly, they had the same problem with their language that Hebrew had.
SPEAKER_1: It was an abjad.
SPEAKER_1: They didn't write down the vowels, and they didn't actually have a full and proper written language until two Greek Christians were captured and sold into the court, who then improved their written language, and basically gave them a way to write down scripture fully in Amharic, which is the language they use, the main language they use.
SPEAKER_1: Excuse me, the next question, any book collection recommendation to start a home library with, particularly theology or history related?
SPEAKER_1: That is a difficult one to answer, because there are so many good options.
SPEAKER_1: I would say, and I know that some people are probably going to disagree with me, because the Lutherans want me to say, oh, you should definitely just grab Luther and the Reform, depending on which flavor of Reform we'll say, whichever their favorite one is, Knox, Calvin, whoever it happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: I think probably grab the number one book from the best theologian in your particular tradition, in your denomination.
SPEAKER_1: At least have that on your shelves.
SPEAKER_1: Read that one, be familiar with it, because you should know what you believe, and you should be comfortable believing it.
SPEAKER_1: If you're part of a tradition, and you know nothing about what they believe, then there's some questions about why you're part of that tradition.
SPEAKER_1: Obviously, I'm talking to men who care about theology, who are going to actually do this sort of reading in this study, because the average man is just going to go to church, believe what his pastor and his elders tell him, and there's nothing wrong with that.
SPEAKER_1: It's one of the reasons that scripture is so clear about what is going to happen to bad teachers, false teachers.
SPEAKER_1: It will not be good.
SPEAKER_1: And that's not to say that if you have imperfections in your teaching, you're going to go to hell and be tormented for all of eternity.
SPEAKER_1: It's to say that you are going to be judged strictly, and maybe you're going to be a door sweeper, or whatever the equivalent is in paradise, because you taught falsely.
SPEAKER_1: And so, teachers should be terrified.
SPEAKER_1: The passages in scripture that say that you're going to receive the stricter judgment should scare most men out of wanting to teach.
SPEAKER_1: Bo and I both very clearly said early on that we have elected the stricter judgment.
SPEAKER_1: We know that that is exactly what is coming for us when we die.
SPEAKER_1: I have no illusions about that.
SPEAKER_1: It's one of the reasons that I'm so insistent on being precise and being consistent and being clear about the things that I teach, the things that I believe, and why I spend the amount of time and effort that I do in order to back them up, because I want to be completely right on these issues.
SPEAKER_1: Not just because, of course, I have my own concerns about what is coming for me at the judgment, but I also want other men to stand before God with a clean conscience, and with a true confession that doesn't have errors and other problems.
SPEAKER_1: I want that for all the men who listen to me as well, because I recognize that I am in a position where men listen to me and weigh somewhat heavily the things that I say.
SPEAKER_1: They are going to hear the words as I choose to speak them, and in some cases just simply believe them.
SPEAKER_1: And so I recognize the sort of burden, the sort of duty that comes along with that.
SPEAKER_1: But to return specifically to your question, and I'm looking at just a tiny fraction of my library I have here in my study, most of it's down the hall in another room, but as far as which books I would recommend you grab, again, part of it is going to depend on your tradition, on your denomination, because you should be reading the things from your theologians, because again, you should know why you believe the things you believe, and just knowing the things you believe, first off.
SPEAKER_1: Certainly have a copy of your confession, know that well, know what it says, know if you agree with it, because if you don't, then you have some problems.
SPEAKER_1: But more general recommendations, I would definitely say, if you can find it used by all means, do that.
SPEAKER_1: But grab a PDF copy if you don't want to spend the money, because I hate the prices from CPH and others.
SPEAKER_1: It's highway robbery, it's terrible, it's anti-Christian.
SPEAKER_1: But the eight-volume set of Luther's commentary on Genesis is very worth having.
SPEAKER_1: Unfortunately, it's $45 to $50 a volume, which again, is highway robbery.
SPEAKER_1: I hate that they do that, but it's just the reality of where we are right now.
SPEAKER_1: Capitalism has infested the church as well.
SPEAKER_1: In addition to sort of that Luther volume, then it's going to be which sort of areas interest you.
SPEAKER_1: If you're more interested in election, collect volumes on that.
SPEAKER_1: If you're interested in the history of the church, you can grab volumes on that.
SPEAKER_1: There are great volumes on that.
SPEAKER_1: You can read some of the church fathers, Eusebius and others who collected and wrote things about the history of the church.
SPEAKER_1: There is a wealth of information out there, but I want to offer a sort of general recommendation.
SPEAKER_1: That is, don't just collect books to collect books.
SPEAKER_1: There's not necessarily anything wrong with that.
SPEAKER_1: And if they're good books, then maybe building the library so you can one day pass it down, that's fine.
SPEAKER_1: That's perfectly acceptable.
SPEAKER_1: There's a reason to do that.
SPEAKER_1: That's good that some men do it.
SPEAKER_1: But don't just read books to read books.
SPEAKER_1: That's not beneficial to anyone.
SPEAKER_1: If you're doing it with fiction, that's fine, because that's entertainment, that's leisure, it's a different thing.
SPEAKER_1: But if you're just trying to power through as many theology books as you possibly can, you're going to get very little out of it.
SPEAKER_1: What you're going to do is you're going to have it go in one ear and out the other.
SPEAKER_1: That's just the reality of it, because you're not going to be able to retain 50, 60, 70 books a year, whatever it is these people who try to power through book after book after book.
SPEAKER_1: It is much better to know something well than to have this sort of surface level knowledge of a whole bunch of things, and never actually dive into any of them, and never actually have a deep understanding of any of the topics.
SPEAKER_1: And so find an area that particularly interests you, figure out which volumes in that area are considered the pinnacle of scholarship in the history of the church, and then move outward from there.
SPEAKER_1: Basically, take a deeper dive in things, instead of the surface level in which so many engage these days.
SPEAKER_1: The point isn't to say, you know, I've read, and I realize some are going to say, oh, there's hypocrisy here.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think that there's necessarily hypocrisy here.
SPEAKER_1: Yes, I've certainly read a lot.
SPEAKER_1: But in part, it has helped me to recognize, and I certainly then have the sort of standing, as it were, to say, it's better to have a deeper knowledge of a handful of things than a trivial knowledge of a thousand things.
SPEAKER_1: You know, it's the old, a man who's practiced one kick a thousand times, or a thousand kicks one time sort of thing.
SPEAKER_1: So, that's sort of my general recommendation with regard to these things.
SPEAKER_1: But of course, the primary recommendation is just read the scriptures.
SPEAKER_1: Too many men spend a hundred hours a week, whatever it happens to be, that's obviously sort of the far end of things, an exaggeration almost, hyperbole.
SPEAKER_1: They spend a hundred hours a week reading theology, and then they spend twenty minutes a day reading God's Word.
SPEAKER_1: Don't do that.
SPEAKER_1: Spend at least as much time in God's Word as you do in various other books.
SPEAKER_1: God is the one who's going to speak to you through his Word.
SPEAKER_1: Yes, he can speak to you through these other men as well, but you want to spend your time with God.
SPEAKER_1: And a related, a tangentially related thing here, sort of a little off from the question, of course, but pray.
SPEAKER_1: This is one of those things that I have been thinking about recently, and really for a number of years, but most of us don't pray enough.
SPEAKER_1: It's one thing to spend hours and hours in God's Word and in theology and discussing it and all of these things.
SPEAKER_1: These are important.
SPEAKER_1: They're parts of the Christian life.
SPEAKER_1: It's important to discuss these things with other men.
SPEAKER_1: But pray.
SPEAKER_1: We're supposed to be constantly in prayer, and prayer is part of how we have this conversation with God.
SPEAKER_1: We talk to God in prayer, God talks to us in His Word.
SPEAKER_1: And if we're just reading His Word or we're just reading theology, we're missing half of what's supposed to be a conversation.
SPEAKER_1: We're supposed to have, and I know some men hate to hear this word because it's been so abused in the churches in recent decades.
SPEAKER_1: We're supposed to have a relationship with God.
SPEAKER_1: We are.
SPEAKER_1: And we know that.
SPEAKER_1: It's not what the modern non-denominational churches and other made.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying that.
SPEAKER_1: But what does God say He is to us?
SPEAKER_1: What does He say that we are to Him?
SPEAKER_1: He's our Father, and we're His sons.
SPEAKER_1: You're supposed to have a relationship with your earthly father.
SPEAKER_1: You're certainly supposed to have a relationship with your heavenly father.
SPEAKER_1: And so, make sure that prayer is part of this, not just reading as many books as possible, or even just spending untold hours in Scripture, and never talking to God.
SPEAKER_1: At the very least, as I recommended so many times, just pray the Lord's Prayer.
SPEAKER_1: It's the one that Christ said we should pray.
SPEAKER_1: And if God Himself says, this is how you should pray, we should at least use it sometimes.
SPEAKER_1: I personally recommend the traditional way of saying, you know, say it before meals.
SPEAKER_1: Say it when you wake up, say it before you go to sleep.
SPEAKER_1: That gives you four or five times a day.
SPEAKER_1: That's at least a foundation for building that sort of relationship, that right mindset, that right orientation toward God.
SPEAKER_1: And of course, you're returning thanks to Him for all these things as well, which is a very important part of the Christian life.
SPEAKER_1: Advice or reading material for long-term political or grassroots work, particularly when things get uglier in America?
SPEAKER_1: There is a non-trivial chance, of course, that things are going to get very ugly.
SPEAKER_1: There's also a chance that things will get better, because, of course, miracles exist.
SPEAKER_1: And I know there are those who will say that, oh, we can't just rely on a miracle.
SPEAKER_1: Well, every day is a miracle, quite frankly.
SPEAKER_1: Yes, there are extraordinary miracles, but the fact that I'm still breathing is a miracle.
SPEAKER_1: The fact that any of us is alive is a miracle.
SPEAKER_1: The fact that we have faith is a miracle, because that's a specific miracle.
SPEAKER_1: God actually had to reach down into creation and give you the gift of faith.
SPEAKER_1: That's a miracle, certainly.
SPEAKER_1: But with regard to reading material and things like that, get practical books.
SPEAKER_1: I have an entire section of my library that is just practical stuff.
SPEAKER_1: I have thank you to the person who sent a new one, by the way.
SPEAKER_1: I have books on beekeeping.
SPEAKER_1: I have some books on woodworking.
SPEAKER_1: I hope I don't have to personally do that, because I'd like to keep all of my fingers.
SPEAKER_1: I have books on various forms of regenerative farming, both forest and open field.
SPEAKER_1: It's good to have that practical knowledge, because that's something that's fallen away in recent years.
SPEAKER_1: Many of us, and particularly with this audience, it's undoubtedly true.
SPEAKER_1: You get the theoretical knowledge and all these other subjects, but we let the practical things fall to the wayside.
SPEAKER_1: And I don't think that's a good way to go through life, because it's important to spend time on things that are sort of purely of the mind.
SPEAKER_1: But we're not just mind.
SPEAKER_1: We're not just spirit.
SPEAKER_1: I believe in the tripartite division of man, of course.
SPEAKER_1: We're also flesh.
SPEAKER_1: We're also body.
SPEAKER_1: It's important to have that real anchor into the world.
SPEAKER_1: And part of the way you can do that is to have things that are concrete in your life.
SPEAKER_1: I, of course, have chickens, and I have to take care of them.
SPEAKER_1: I have to go down there and feed them and muck them out, do all those various things.
SPEAKER_1: It's important to have that tangible concrete relationship and connection to the world.
SPEAKER_1: And that will also serve you well if things go sideways with regard to our country, because you will have practical skills.
SPEAKER_1: You will have things that are actually useful, regardless of what society is currently doing, because people are always going to need food.
SPEAKER_1: If you have books on growing food in the forest, or growing food in the field, and doing it in a regenerative way, doing it in a sustainable way, in a way that is better for not just humanity, not just for the people you're feeding, but also for your land, because don't forget, if you don't take care of your land, well, it stops feeding you eventually.
SPEAKER_1: We're running into that problem now with huge chunks of our farmland in the middle of the United States.
SPEAKER_1: If you have those sorts of skills, they're going to be valuable at all times.
SPEAKER_1: Even today, where we live with relative abundance, if you're able to grow some of your own produce, for instance, it's going to be far better than what you'd get in those grocery stores.
SPEAKER_1: I know that basically everything that comes out of my garden is better than what I can get at the store.
SPEAKER_1: Certainly, produce is a world of difference, and the eggs I get are better from the chickens.
SPEAKER_1: So, having a practical section for your library is incredibly important, with regard to the perhaps specifically political.
SPEAKER_1: If that is something in which you are interested and you have the capacity to read that sort of thing and dedicate the time and the effort and can see some sort of return on it, classical political theory is the way to go.
SPEAKER_1: And a huge component of that that is often neglected, and I'm looking at a book on my shelf that I have related to it, rhetoric.
SPEAKER_1: Get classic books on rhetoric.
SPEAKER_1: That is a huge part of these things, because if you are doing anything in the political space and you are not able to speak in a way that can actually get men to become engaged, that can get men to listen, not only listen to your words, but listen to your words and want to act, and then go on to act, because of the things that you have said.
SPEAKER_1: If you can't do that, you are never going to be effective in politics.
SPEAKER_1: There are men who are geniuses, who know certain areas of whatever it happens to be, regulatory law or some aspect of the government, forward, backward, inside out, upside down.
SPEAKER_1: They know it better than any man who's ever lived.
SPEAKER_1: But they are more boring to listen to than watching paint dry.
SPEAKER_1: They are never going to get anywhere unless they can find a man who can translate that into actually effective rhetoric.
SPEAKER_1: The Greeks and the Romans understood this far better than most men in modern society.
SPEAKER_1: There are a handful of political exceptions, some more obvious than others.
SPEAKER_1: Bismarck is a great one.
SPEAKER_1: If you are good at rhetoric, you are going to be more effective in most parts of your life.
SPEAKER_1: It's one of the things that good pastors should certainly study, because even if you're not using it, say, to manipulate people, which of course is one of the things you can do with rhetoric, it's one of the sort of abuse, not always an abuse, but often an abuse.
SPEAKER_1: Even if you are just trying to get men to listen, to learn something, to pay attention to your words, being able to deliver them in an effective way is going to make you far more effective.
SPEAKER_1: You are going to actually see returns on your investment.
SPEAKER_1: You are going to achieve something.
SPEAKER_1: Because any man can learn a great deal about a particular area, and then go and shout into the void.
SPEAKER_1: That doesn't accomplish anything, except maybe entertaining him if he's a little strange.
SPEAKER_1: You have to be able to speak to other men, to convince other men, to get other men to change their opinions, and to follow you if you're going to be a political leader, certainly.
SPEAKER_1: And so, the short recommendation is practical books, political theory, and rhetoric, included in that political theory.
SPEAKER_1: Most of these things have been known since ancient times.
SPEAKER_1: Much of it's contained in scripture as well, because, of course, read Proverbs, read Ecclesiastes.
SPEAKER_1: But these things are not new, they're not novel.
SPEAKER_1: These books have existed for a long time.
SPEAKER_1: We've just neglected to read them in the modern world.
SPEAKER_1: We'll.
SPEAKER_1: Not certain how long I will go tonight, but I guess at least another, say, 20 minutes.
SPEAKER_1: Easy question here, how is Gizmo and how are the chickens?
SPEAKER_1: They're both doing well.
SPEAKER_1: They're quite happy.
SPEAKER_1: Have a new kitten, and Gizmo has very mixed feelings about that.
SPEAKER_1: But other than that, all is well.
SPEAKER_1: He's been hanging out in my study, making sure that he's still the favorite, so.
SPEAKER_1: And sulking a little bit, but he is a Pomeranian, so I did kind of expect that.
SPEAKER_1: The question about the Russian Revolution when the country was almost entirely orthodox.
SPEAKER_1: That starts to be a fairly long and complicated topic.
SPEAKER_1: I think I may save that one for next time, or perhaps the time after that.
SPEAKER_1: The short answer is, it is always possible to subvert something.
SPEAKER_1: And Satan is particularly good at it.
SPEAKER_1: He has always been very effective at finding fault lines or creating fault lines and leading men astray.
SPEAKER_1: And this is one of the reasons that teachers and political leaders and others are so important.
SPEAKER_1: And it is important to make sure that they're not just good at their job, as it were, but they actually have right beliefs and want to translate those into policy.
SPEAKER_1: Because a wicked man who is competent can do an unfathomable amount of harm.
SPEAKER_1: Stalin was an unbelievably evil man.
SPEAKER_1: He is undoubtedly in one of the deepest pits of hell right now.
SPEAKER_1: But he was a very effective political leader, one of the most effective, probably, in history.
SPEAKER_1: And it is vitally important that those sorts of men are identified and removed by the state, because they can cause untold harm.
SPEAKER_1: In fact, there were many opportunities leading up to the Russian Revolution, to remove some of those revolutionaries, and the various leaders of Europe neglected to do so.
SPEAKER_1: They simply watched them, in some cases, aided them, unfortunately, and so tens of millions died as a result.
SPEAKER_1: And it is a warning to us, that even in a Christian nation, at least a largely Christian nation, there's a question about how deep the faith was at the time, of course.
SPEAKER_1: Many of them are Christians, I won't deny that for a second.
SPEAKER_1: There were some very dedicated Christians, many of them died in the gulags.
SPEAKER_1: But even in a Christian nation, that sort of subversion and wickedness is possible, because there is always evil in the hearts of men, and Satan will always find a way to latch on to that and organize evil toward his own ends.
SPEAKER_1: It is something against which we have to be constantly vigilant.
SPEAKER_1: It is part of the Christian life, it's part of being a Christian man.
SPEAKER_1: There is no rest, as it were, in this life, because you enter God's rest, that's the next life, that's paradise.
SPEAKER_1: In this life, it's work.
SPEAKER_1: In this life, it's toil, it's hardship, it's suffering in many cases, and that is the reality of life.
SPEAKER_1: Of course, there's joy as well, because we still live in God's world.
SPEAKER_1: God's world is still good, His good gifts still exist, we still have all of the various blessings, but we don't get to rest on our laurels ever, no matter how good it is.
SPEAKER_1: At the height of Christendom, men became too lax.
SPEAKER_1: They should have been vigilant to maintain that, and then it would have been passed down to us.
SPEAKER_1: We would have inherited something far better than what we have today.
SPEAKER_1: They were not vigilant.
SPEAKER_1: It is our duty to be vigilant if God puts us in such a position where we again have those opportunities, where we have the blessings our ancestors had.
SPEAKER_1: It is something that was neglected in Europe during that period, and it caused untold suffering.
SPEAKER_1: We're still suffering the consequences of it.
SPEAKER_1: What is your take on why women go to non-denominational churches and men go to traditional churches?
SPEAKER_1: I sort of answered that one earlier when I posted that the women who are going to the non-denominational churches are largely headless, and that's just the reality of it.
SPEAKER_1: Women who have a head, an actual head who does what he is supposed to do, are by and large not the ones going to those churches, certainly not the ones who are being shown in the images that have been passed around on X and other places recently.
SPEAKER_1: Because the men in their lives should be the ones who are leading them to the truth, who are leading them to where they should be, the women are not going to do this on their own, because women are not their own heads.
SPEAKER_1: They cannot be.
SPEAKER_1: Definitionally, a woman is not her own head, someone else is.
SPEAKER_1: And so the question is, who is the head with regard to these women?
SPEAKER_1: Well, the father is clearly absent in many of these cases, which is a big part of the problem.
SPEAKER_1: Many of them are at the age where they should have been married already, and so there's no husband to act as the head.
SPEAKER_1: That's part of the problem.
SPEAKER_1: And most of them have elected a head that is either the state or some random political figure.
SPEAKER_1: That's a recipe for disaster.
SPEAKER_1: God has not given women collectively to be wards of the state.
SPEAKER_1: A woman is supposed to have a husband, and she's supposed to have a father who's active and involved in her life and has trained her up in the way she should go, and then passes her to a godly husband.
SPEAKER_1: That is the way things are supposed to be.
SPEAKER_1: And so these women are headless, and so they're basically running around like headless chickens.
SPEAKER_1: That's exactly what they're doing.
SPEAKER_1: The men are not doing that, because a man is his own head once he reaches a certain age.
SPEAKER_1: And so men don't have that problem.
SPEAKER_1: That's why you see the women doing these things, and you don't see the men doing them.
SPEAKER_1: It is a problem on both sides, of course.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not going to say that you can just blame women entirely, because of course, women aren't their own head.
SPEAKER_1: And if a woman is not her own head, then the men who have neglected to act as head, who were given that office, that position by God, ultimately they are to blame, and they will answer to God for that.
SPEAKER_1: Yes, of course, women still answer for their own sins.
SPEAKER_1: I'm never going to be the one who says, oh, no, women can't sin because women don't have autonomy, or whatever it happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: No, women are still responsible for their own sins.
SPEAKER_1: Eve was still responsible for eating the apple.
SPEAKER_1: Adam had the greater sin, because he did not act as her head, as he was supposed to do.
SPEAKER_1: What he should have done is rebuked her and killed the snake, and he didn't do it.
SPEAKER_1: That's why we have these problems today.
SPEAKER_1: We have a lack of headship.
SPEAKER_1: Part of it, of course, is our society is incredibly, deeply wicked, designed in order to make it difficult or nearly impossible in some cases for men to exercise headship.
SPEAKER_1: But just because something is difficult does not mean we are absolved of the duty to do it.
SPEAKER_1: And so fathers still have a duty to raise their daughters well.
SPEAKER_1: Husbands still have a duty to lead their wives.
SPEAKER_1: And they should be doing so.
SPEAKER_1: That's why we see this sort of split, because women are headless, and men are not doing what they're supposed to do.
SPEAKER_1: How familiar are you with Eastern Germany, any places you would suggest visiting?
SPEAKER_1: I am familiar with Berlin and the surrounding area, and it's worth a visit.
SPEAKER_1: There are certain neighborhoods that are not great, but they're pretty easy to identify, just don't go there.
SPEAKER_1: And they're not the ones you want to visit anyway, because as a tourist, you're going to want to be in Mitte, which is the center of the town, Prenzlauer Berg and a couple places like that, which have the restaurants and the museums and all those things.
SPEAKER_1: So just go to those places, and you've basically seen what you want to see if you just go there.
SPEAKER_1: Berlin is nowhere near as bad as Paris, for instance.
SPEAKER_1: I did not particularly enjoy visiting Paris, unfortunately, because Paris is a wonderful city.
SPEAKER_1: The people currently occupying Paris are not wonderful.
SPEAKER_1: But Berlin has world-class museums, probably the best museums in the world, despite seemingly no one actually knowing that.
SPEAKER_1: And they are in large part concentrated in one part of the city, conveniently called Museum Island.
SPEAKER_1: But there are some others that are spread throughout the city that are also worth visiting.
SPEAKER_1: So that would be one of my recommendations.
SPEAKER_1: As far as other parts of East Germany are concerned, I'm less familiar with East Germany, of course.
SPEAKER_1: I am less familiar with that because I did spend most of my time in Berlin.
SPEAKER_1: I think that I am going to have to get to some of these next time because they are lengthier answers to some of these questions.
SPEAKER_1: Given the framework handed to us by the actions of the prophets, for example, Daniel, could it be within reason to agree that prophecy has reached individuals post-Christ even within apostatized nations?
SPEAKER_1: And how should we as Christians navigate self-proclaimed prophets and their messages?
SPEAKER_1: I am not a cessationist, because Lutherans aren't cessationists.
SPEAKER_1: We've never been so.
SPEAKER_1: That's not part of our confession.
SPEAKER_1: There are some who are cessationists, not Lutherans, but there are some Christians who are.
SPEAKER_1: And I'm not saying they don't have no argument whatsoever.
SPEAKER_1: I don't believe that there are any prophets, except for the final two in Revelation.
SPEAKER_1: That's a different thing.
SPEAKER_1: But the problem with a prophet, a so-called prophet, rising up today, would be if he says anything that's at odds with Scripture, he's not a prophet.
SPEAKER_1: Anything else he says is just going to be repeating what we have in Scripture.
SPEAKER_1: And so, of what value is he?
SPEAKER_1: And it seems like most of the sign gifts ended with the Apostolic age.
SPEAKER_1: So basically, they died at the same time as John.
SPEAKER_1: That's not to say that God can't hand out extraordinary gifts today.
SPEAKER_1: I think that he still does in some cases.
SPEAKER_1: But by and large, we don't see miraculous healing.
SPEAKER_1: We don't, despite what some TV preachers claim.
SPEAKER_1: We don't see the dead coming back to life.
SPEAKER_1: These sorts of gifts that were given out in order to stamp what the apostles were preaching and teaching with God's stamp of approval, with his authority, that was closed in the Apostolic age, largely.
SPEAKER_1: Again, not in the sense of being a firm closure of God can't.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying that, because certainly God can.
SPEAKER_1: But I personally do not believe there are any prophets today.
SPEAKER_1: I think perhaps there are those who are given certain gifts that look a little bit like prophecy, but they're not giving any new message from God.
SPEAKER_1: God has given us the final word in the Old Testament and the New Testament.
SPEAKER_1: And as Revelation says, anyone who adds to or subtracts from is cursed.
SPEAKER_1: And so, no prophet is going to arise that's going to give us anything new, certainly.
SPEAKER_1: And so, the question would be, again, of what utility would someone saying, I'm a prophet, and then saying the same thing we have in Scripture be, is he a prophet or is he just repeating what we already have?
SPEAKER_1: Because in the sort of limited sense of prophet, you can say that anyone who is teaching God's word is a prophet, because that's one of the things called a prophet in Scripture, is someone who is teaching God's word.
SPEAKER_1: But of course, when we think of prophet, and undoubtedly what the question is, is someone who has a new word from God.
SPEAKER_1: And Revelation clearly forecloses that.
SPEAKER_1: So, no, I do not think there are any prophets today, and basically they're all at the absolute best scammers.
SPEAKER_1: They are just making money off of the gullible.
SPEAKER_1: Some of them are very clearly demonically oppressed.
SPEAKER_1: I can think of some certain pastors in mega churches in Texas, who I don't know how anyone sits in the pews and doesn't realize that it's an actual demon standing there preaching to them.
SPEAKER_1: I do think that most of the rest of these questions are going to have to be for next time, because they are, again, longer answers, and I didn't tend to run for about an hour, and I think we're just a bit over that now.
SPEAKER_1: So, see if there's a short one here.
SPEAKER_1: Is the crucifix the Lutheran norm?
SPEAKER_1: The answer to that one is indeed very short and easy, yes.
SPEAKER_1: Our churches, essentially, always have a crucifix, but the use of the ordinary cross without the corpus, without the body, also very standard.
SPEAKER_1: You can see behind me, there's both a crucifix and, on this side, actually, also an iron cross there.
SPEAKER_1: And I'm wearing a necklace that is not a crucifix.
SPEAKER_1: It's just a cross, incidentally made of Irish marble.
SPEAKER_1: So, for the Irish listeners, a little...
SPEAKER_1: a nod to my Celtic brothers there.
SPEAKER_1: I do not think that I have any other short ones right now, so I think I may bring this to a close for this episode, as it were.
SPEAKER_1: I will try to do this every Thursday.
SPEAKER_1: I think that's the goal going forward.
SPEAKER_1: The overall point is basically to make a library of answers to questions so that I can point people to them instead of answering the same question over and over and over.
SPEAKER_1: It's much more efficient use of my time and more helpful to others if there's a library and then other people can point to my answers as well.
SPEAKER_1: So I will make the video of this available, I will make the audio available, I'll run off a transcript so it's searchable, and perhaps figure out how to insert the time stamps into the video so that people can go to the exact question and answer instead of having to listen to the whole thing.
SPEAKER_1: So thank you for those who sent in questions, and thank you for those who listened to this, and for those who listen in the future.
SPEAKER_1: And keep sending questions so that I have them for next week, and if you send them earlier, then I have a little more time to prepare to answer them instead of answering them on the spot.
SPEAKER_1: So for some of the more complicated questions I saw in the queue, as it were, there, I will take the intervening time to prepare answers for those.
SPEAKER_1: And I think that's all for tonight, so may God bless all of you, and again, thank you for your time.
SPEAKER_1: Have a nice evening.