SPEAKER_1: Welcome to the At Any Cost Podcast.
SPEAKER_1: I am Corey J.
SPEAKER_1: Mahler, and it is the 4th of December, 2025.
SPEAKER_1: This is episode six, which also happens to be the sixth Q&A episode.
SPEAKER_1: I have a number of questions that were submitted various ways, including via the forum, thankfully.
SPEAKER_1: I'll go over that at the end.
SPEAKER_1: I think that I will be able to get through all of the questions tonight, most likely.
SPEAKER_1: I think that it won't take more than an hour or so.
SPEAKER_1: Watch it wind up taking an hour and a half now that I've said that.
SPEAKER_1: At any rate, I see green for all of the platforms except for Kick.
SPEAKER_1: I know why that one's not working.
SPEAKER_1: It's because apparently their bitrate cap is even lower than I thought it was.
SPEAKER_1: So either I might not use them, or I'll figure out some way to transcode that so that the quality is not terrible elsewhere, because other platforms happily accept a higher bitrate.
SPEAKER_1: It's just apparently Kick does not.
SPEAKER_1: So...
SPEAKER_1: That being said, there will be links, of course, to where you can submit questions and everything like that.
SPEAKER_1: In the description should already be there in this case.
SPEAKER_1: And high quality audio is available after the fact, usually a day or two lag for that, because I record the audio locally and then upload that high quality audio.
SPEAKER_1: And you can subscribe to that the same way you would any other podcast.
SPEAKER_1: You can use the direct RSS link, which is obviously recommended, because that can't be censored, unless Cloudflare decides to censor me, in which case, there's nothing I can do about that.
SPEAKER_1: So, that being said, we will jump into the first question here.
SPEAKER_1: The first question is about introductory resources for Lutheranism.
SPEAKER_1: What books would you recommend as an introduction to Lutheranism, especially for someone from a reformed background?
SPEAKER_1: I read long, dense books, so I'm open to reading such resources if they are worthwhile.
SPEAKER_1: Now for that, obviously, the first recommendation is just going to be the Book of Concord, which will already get you about 1,000 to 1,200 pages worth, so I guess that meets the requirement for long, dense books.
SPEAKER_1: But parts of it aren't that dense.
SPEAKER_1: The Augsburg Confession is very readable, the Catechism is very readable, but it is a long book.
SPEAKER_1: And so that would be my first recommendation.
SPEAKER_1: I was going to see if I had it on my desk here, but it's up on my shelf, so I won't bother grabbing one.
SPEAKER_1: You can either read that via the physical book, you can purchase that from CPH, or find it secondhand, you'll find it much cheaper.
SPEAKER_1: Any of the translations that exist in English are going to be fine.
SPEAKER_1: You don't have to worry about those.
SPEAKER_1: They have not played games with translating the Book of Concord yet.
SPEAKER_1: So, whichever one you want.
SPEAKER_1: I would recommend the Reader's Edition second, not because it's my favorite in terms of the translation quality, and by that I don't mean, I want to be specific, I don't mean that the other translations are inferior in terms of accuracy, but the type of English that is used in the translation, I prefer the older, more complex English of the Triglada, which is available free online.
SPEAKER_1: That's the website that I maintain, the bookofconghor.org.
SPEAKER_1: So either way is fine.
SPEAKER_1: But in addition to that, you should grab Melonkhthen's and Caridion, his basically small catechism.
SPEAKER_1: He has a condensed version of what Lutherans teach.
SPEAKER_1: That has always been very highly recommended down through the centuries, so I would definitely recommend grabbing that book.
SPEAKER_1: In addition to that, Luther on Galatians is an excellent book.
SPEAKER_1: That one is just a general recommendation for any Christian.
SPEAKER_1: Luther treats the Gospel in the Book of Galatians excellently in that volume, so go ahead and grab his Commentary on Galatians.
SPEAKER_1: For those who want denser materials, and so that goes to sort of the second part of this question, or the subset of the question, Martin Chemnitz is going to be the general recommendation.
SPEAKER_1: Now, many things by Luther are of course worth your time.
SPEAKER_1: You can go and read those.
SPEAKER_1: Pick whichever one interests you.
SPEAKER_1: He has collections of sermons.
SPEAKER_1: He has commentaries on various books.
SPEAKER_1: He has an eight-volume set on Genesis, for instance.
SPEAKER_1: I have that on my shelves here.
SPEAKER_1: But Martin Chemnitz is going to be the one you want for sort of a dense theological treatment of these topics from a Lutheran perspective.
SPEAKER_1: In particular, I'm looking at the set here on my shelves.
SPEAKER_1: That's why I'm looking at direction.
SPEAKER_1: In particular, he treats the Council of Trent in four volumes, so that's a response to the Roman Catholics, the Council of Trent being their response to the Reformation, to the Lutherans.
SPEAKER_1: He also has a multi-volume.
SPEAKER_1: It's three volumes, but unfortunately, CPH published it as two, which means the second one is enormous, quite frankly.
SPEAKER_1: His Losy Theologiki, which is various different subjects in theology.
SPEAKER_1: That one is very worthwhile.
SPEAKER_1: He has an apology of the Book of Concord, which goes into depth on some of those things a little bit.
SPEAKER_1: Those are very worth grabbing.
SPEAKER_1: In addition to those resources, two that I would very highly recommend, particularly for someone in the American context, Franz Pieper, his Christian Dogmatics, which is a three-volume, goes over basically all of theology in three volumes, does a very good job of it, many references in that, so you can find additional resources.
SPEAKER_1: And then CFW Valter, the founder of the LCMS.
SPEAKER_1: He has a number of volumes, really almost anything written by him, you're going to enjoy reading, and it will be profitable.
SPEAKER_1: But particularly in this case, I would say, grab Law and Gospel, and his book on predestination for obvious reasons.
SPEAKER_1: If you're coming from a reform background, you're going to have questions about the differences with regard to our teachings on election.
SPEAKER_1: And so his volume on predestination is excellent.
SPEAKER_1: And then finally, if you are really into sort of the getting into the weeds, Gerhard would be the recommendation from the Lutheran camp.
SPEAKER_1: That's not a general recommendation, because most people will not read him very profitably, but it's there if you are deeply invested and interested in these subjects.
SPEAKER_1: And he has many volumes.
SPEAKER_1: They have not all been translated yet, so I guess bonus points if you know Latin and German, and a few other things.
SPEAKER_1: But if you don't know those, many of them have been translated.
SPEAKER_1: CPH is currently working through translating them, so you can grab many of those volumes.
SPEAKER_1: I have a number of those here on my shelves as well.
SPEAKER_1: Those are the basic recommendations.
SPEAKER_1: And then probably grab a copy of the Lutheran Study Bible, because the notes in that are actually very good.
SPEAKER_1: I object to relatively little in them, which is surprising.
SPEAKER_1: I'm sure you all know that's surprising, but it is a very good resource, really, for any Christian.
SPEAKER_1: I would highly recommend that.
SPEAKER_1: It's probably the best Study Bible currently available.
SPEAKER_1: So moving on to the next question.
SPEAKER_1: This is a continuation from last week.
SPEAKER_1: Someone asked a question.
SPEAKER_1: I didn't really answer the entirety of it.
SPEAKER_1: It was about Germany's alliance with Japan and why Japan didn't open a front with the Soviet Union.
SPEAKER_1: I answered the second part, but not really the underlying question of, when should Christians form alliances with non-Christians?
SPEAKER_1: Because obviously, in this case, Germany, a Christian country, Japan, not a Christian country.
SPEAKER_1: Still to this day, Japan, not a Christian country, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_1: Largely due to MacArthur, of course.
SPEAKER_1: But insofar as alliances are concerned, I guess the general way that I could start would be by saying, Christians are permitted to use the imperial laws.
SPEAKER_1: Now, that's going to sound perhaps crazy to modern ears, but what that means, and the context in which that was said originally, was during the Reformation.
SPEAKER_1: Because you had the Anabaptists and others who were basically saying that Christians shouldn't have any dealings with the world, they shouldn't use anything that is so-called secular, which is kind of ironic, given they're dealing with the Holy Roman Empire at the time.
SPEAKER_1: It's not even actually truly secular like our modern government.
SPEAKER_1: But the general rule is that Christians are allowed to use the secular courts, the secular laws, all of these things that are not indeed Christian, and today, unfortunately, are anti-Christian in many cases.
SPEAKER_1: Because you are permitted to live your life, and states are also permitted to do things, like have alliances with other states, even if they are not Christian.
SPEAKER_1: And so it's going to be a wisdom call.
SPEAKER_1: This is a political call.
SPEAKER_1: This is not really a Christian call.
SPEAKER_1: It's not really a religious or a theological question so much.
SPEAKER_1: This is politics.
SPEAKER_1: Whether or not you have an alliance with another nation is a matter of politics.
SPEAKER_1: Now as Christians, should we try to use that in order to have missionaries in those lands, to try to convert them to Christianity?
SPEAKER_1: The answer, of course, is yes.
SPEAKER_1: To go back to the example of Japan, MacArthur should have told the emperor, you're Christian now, convert your people.
SPEAKER_1: That would have been the Christian response.
SPEAKER_1: In fact, that's how most Christians were converted.
SPEAKER_1: They didn't go around trying to convert every single man on the street as it were.
SPEAKER_1: They converted the kings, they converted the princes, they converted the tribal chieftains, who then converted their people.
SPEAKER_1: That is the usual way it goes.
SPEAKER_1: And so politics has a role to play.
SPEAKER_1: I could go back to the Book of Concord, which I just mentioned.
SPEAKER_1: The documents in that are signed by Christian princes.
SPEAKER_1: They're not signed by pastors.
SPEAKER_1: In most cases, there are some documents that are.
SPEAKER_1: But the men who presented those things, the men who advanced them, the men who championed them, made them possible, were politicians.
SPEAKER_1: Were, of course, hereditary politicians because it was an aristocracy.
SPEAKER_1: This is the Holy Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_1: But those men were not first and foremost pastors or theologians.
SPEAKER_1: This was a matter of politics.
SPEAKER_1: And so there is an intersection between Christianity and politics that many men modernly do not want to recognize because it makes them uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_1: There are a number of reasons for that.
SPEAKER_1: I won't get into them now, perhaps in response to a future question, but I think that generally addresses the question here of what Christian nations should do with regard to alliances specifically with non-Christian nation.
SPEAKER_1: The answer is, it's politics.
SPEAKER_1: It's a wisdom call.
SPEAKER_1: The third question here, I will read the content of that one.
SPEAKER_1: Can you recommend works that explain to me why some art is beautiful and some art is degenerate?
SPEAKER_1: What factors make art beautiful or degenerate?
SPEAKER_1: I know Jackson Pollock paintings are degenerate, but I cannot entirely explain why.
SPEAKER_1: Do the transcendentals play into this?
SPEAKER_1: And so the answer, of course, to the last question there is yes.
SPEAKER_1: The transcendentals play a role in this.
SPEAKER_1: In fact, the transcendentals are a huge part of this, because beauty is a transcendental.
SPEAKER_1: And so what you're really recognizing is that some things are not beautiful.
SPEAKER_1: And there are a number of ways that Christians down through the centuries have explained this, have addressed this topic.
SPEAKER_1: But to answer the question here for reading recommendations, really, and then I'll get into the transcendentals a little more, perhaps.
SPEAKER_1: You are going to find this in many of the Church Fathers and many theologians, but not necessarily an in-depth treatment.
SPEAKER_1: We are going to find a deeper treatment, perhaps more expansive, would be St.
SPEAKER_1: Augustine deals with this in his Confessions.
SPEAKER_1: I believe it's Book 10, but he deals with the issue of beauty and incidentally also the issue of art, because anytime you are dealing with beauty, you are going to be dealing with art, because that's the question here.
SPEAKER_1: Is there a sort of connection between the two, a necessary connection?
SPEAKER_1: The answer is yes.
SPEAKER_1: Art that is beautiful is art.
SPEAKER_1: Art that is ugly isn't actually art.
SPEAKER_1: It's deliberately destructive, it's subversive, and of course, you see the Jews involved very deeply in art that is meant, so called art, that is meant to undermine society and destroy it.
SPEAKER_1: They'll call all sorts of things art, but really the goal is the destruction of the beautiful, so it's sort of the antithesis of art.
SPEAKER_1: It's an anti-art.
SPEAKER_1: It's something deeply evil.
SPEAKER_1: But to keep up with the recommendations for readings, another one would be St.
SPEAKER_1: Thomas Aquinas in his Summa.
SPEAKER_1: He addresses this in the first part.
SPEAKER_1: Boethius is going to be a general recommendation here that you're going to see from basically anyone who answers this question and is familiar with the literature, the Consolation of Philosophy.
SPEAKER_1: He deals with the issue in that book.
SPEAKER_1: I would highly recommend that one.
SPEAKER_1: Pseudodinicius is going to be another recommendation you'll see here.
SPEAKER_1: Someone of a mixed bag.
SPEAKER_1: He gets into the mysticism a little bit more than I would prefer anyway.
SPEAKER_1: Perhaps he will find something valuable there.
SPEAKER_1: That is another potential reading for you.
SPEAKER_1: The Divine Names will be the book you want from him.
SPEAKER_1: And then I actually have a specific recommendation other than those ones as well.
SPEAKER_1: I'll go into sort of the philosophy a little bit more in a second here.
SPEAKER_1: But another recommendation I have that came to mind when I was looking at this question would be Leisure as the Basis of Culture.
SPEAKER_1: And I would recommend getting the double volume that also has The Philosophical Act, which is an essay.
SPEAKER_1: Those are by Josef Pieper.
SPEAKER_1: I grabbed my copy off my shelves before I started recording here.
SPEAKER_1: I don't know that I would recommend it to everyone, but any man who is Christian or even not a Christian and has an interest in the transcendentals, in beauty, in art, in philosophy particularly, I would very highly recommend reading this book.
SPEAKER_1: It is a very good, very important book.
SPEAKER_1: And you can think of it in some ways as sort of a superior philosophical, theological version of Hayek's Road to Serfdom.
SPEAKER_1: It's more than that, but that can sort of couch it for men who are more familiar with that side of things than philosophy and theology.
SPEAKER_1: But definitely highly recommend grabbing that book.
SPEAKER_1: I think it's a pretty cheap book these days.
SPEAKER_1: But insofar as, I'll go with Thomas Aquinas, insofar as Thomas Aquinas is concerned, he describes beauty and, of course, the convertibility of the transcendentals because God's nature is one, God being one.
SPEAKER_1: He is not composed to parts, the transcendentals are all one.
SPEAKER_1: We speak of them in different terms because we're human and we're limited.
SPEAKER_1: We can only deal with them in this sort of partitioned state and sense.
SPEAKER_1: We can't deal with them in terms of the totality because that would be dealing with an infinite, and we're a finite.
SPEAKER_1: We can't deal with the infinite, of course.
SPEAKER_1: But insofar as that goes, I actually want to pull up his quote here.
SPEAKER_1: I'll give it in Latin first.
SPEAKER_1: But the quote from Aquinas is integrita siva perfectio debita proportio sive consonanti et claretas, which translated is just integrity or perfection.
SPEAKER_1: This is speaking of the nature of the beautiful.
SPEAKER_1: And so, it ties into artwork.
SPEAKER_1: Integrity or perfection do proportion or harmony and clarity.
SPEAKER_1: That is how he described beauty.
SPEAKER_1: Those are the things that go into making up what we perceive as and call beauty.
SPEAKER_1: And so, again, we're dividing this into parts in order to speak of it in human comprehensible terms.
SPEAKER_1: Because, again, God is infinite.
SPEAKER_1: We can only look at him in portion.
SPEAKER_1: We can look at him in part.
SPEAKER_1: Except, of course, beholding Christ in which the fullness of deity dwells bodily.
SPEAKER_1: So that's a different topic for a different time, perhaps, though.
SPEAKER_1: But insofar as the reading recommendations go, I think those are probably a good starting place.
SPEAKER_1: And then you can get into a few of the other Church Fathers deal with beauty.
SPEAKER_1: But I would say start there.
SPEAKER_1: And if you read through all of that and want more recommendations, I can maybe make some more recommendations, or you'll find them along the way.
SPEAKER_1: Because some of these men will reference other authors, and then you can get into that stuff as well, sort of like looking at the footnotes.
SPEAKER_1: They're not going to have footnotes in most cases, but effectively the same thing.
SPEAKER_1: But insofar as beauty and artwork is concerned a little more generally, yes, we're dealing with the transcendentals here.
SPEAKER_1: And so something that is not good, ultimately is also not beautiful.
SPEAKER_1: Something that is not true ultimately is not beautiful because of the convertibility of the transcendentals.
SPEAKER_1: So when you look at artwork that is degenerate, you recognize that, hopefully, you recognize that.
SPEAKER_1: You should be very worried if you don't, because if you don't recognize something as degenerate when you see it, then it means that your sense of the beautiful, the true and the good has been dulled.
SPEAKER_1: You have been poisoned by the culture to the extent where you no longer recognize these things when you see them.
SPEAKER_1: So I think, of course, as partly as an attorney and partly as someone who's dealt with the philosophy and things, I think of the famous comment from one of our Supreme Court justices when he was dealing with obscenity, speaking about pornography, he said, I know it when I see it.
SPEAKER_1: And he's absolutely right, because you do know evil when you see it, and you do know the good when you see it, because God has given you those things, he has built that into you.
SPEAKER_1: You have a conscience, and you have a sense of the beautiful, you have a sense of the true, you have a sense of the good.
SPEAKER_1: And things that run counter to those, which is to say, things that are opposed to God, things that run counter to God, are going to trigger that sense in you, and you're going to recognize them as degenerate, as wicked, as evil.
SPEAKER_1: And that's why when you see paintings and other things by these evil men, and that's part of it, of course, you can look at the nature of the man who created the work.
SPEAKER_1: It is almost always going to follow.
SPEAKER_1: Seldom is there going to be any disconnect there.
SPEAKER_1: I can't even think of an example.
SPEAKER_1: As I sit here, I'm trying to think of one.
SPEAKER_1: I can't bring one to mind.
SPEAKER_1: But even, I mean, maybe there are going to be men who are truly wicked degenerates in their life and produce a great work of literature.
SPEAKER_1: That sometimes happens, but you're going to know it when you see it, when it comes to artwork that is degenerate.
SPEAKER_1: There are certain things, and of course, you can get into the mathematics, and you can start trying to break these things down.
SPEAKER_1: But ultimately, it is a Gestalt.
SPEAKER_1: It is something that is greater than the sum of its parts.
SPEAKER_1: And so just looking at the fact that it has the golden ratio, or it has these other proportions that are pleasing to the human eye, or it does this, that, and the other, those things are important.
SPEAKER_1: There's nothing wrong with studying it in that way, but you have to recognize that it is a larger whole.
SPEAKER_1: There is more to it than just those parts.
SPEAKER_1: But it's sort of like studying God.
SPEAKER_1: We can study the different aspects, as we call them, of God, in an attempt to understand something of the totality, something of the whole.
SPEAKER_1: You'll never get to the whole in that way, but you will gain something.
SPEAKER_1: By studying God's goodness, you will gain something.
SPEAKER_1: It won't be a full understanding of God, but that's not the point.
SPEAKER_1: It's sort of similar to when I make arguments for the existence of God, and someone will tell me, well, you didn't prove the existence of the Christian God.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not, that's not what I'm doing.
SPEAKER_1: I'm proving the existence of God first, and then you build up from there.
SPEAKER_1: It's similar to what you do here.
SPEAKER_1: So, yes, you have a sense of the beautiful, and when you recognize something is degenerate, it's because it's gone against that sense of the beautiful.
SPEAKER_1: It's triggered a revulsion in you.
SPEAKER_1: The same sort of thing that happens when functional men see homosexuality.
SPEAKER_1: They respond in the same way they respond to literal garbage and rotting meat.
SPEAKER_1: That's because God has built that into you.
SPEAKER_1: Unless society and your own degenerate behavior have so dulled your sense of the beautiful, of the true, of the good, you are going to recognize evil when you see it.
SPEAKER_1: And so, that's sort of my short answer on artwork and beauty and related matters, the transcendentals.
SPEAKER_1: But definitely look at those reading recommendations.
SPEAKER_1: I think those are probably, definitely the top ten, in the top ten, not the fullness of the top ten.
SPEAKER_1: The next question is also a theological question, perhaps not surprisingly.
SPEAKER_1: You have said that God hates sinners, not just sin.
SPEAKER_1: How should we reconcile that with Romans 5.8, which says that God loves sinners?
SPEAKER_1: And related to that, do you believe God has any love for the damned?
SPEAKER_1: So, this one I actually want to start off by reading through a number of different verses.
SPEAKER_1: This is a little bit of a Bible study here.
SPEAKER_1: I will pull up Logos for that, because I think that's going to certainly help us here.
SPEAKER_1: And so, it probably helps if I have it open on my screen as well.
SPEAKER_1: Okay.
SPEAKER_1: We will start in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_1: We will start with 1 John.
SPEAKER_1: And I'm sorry for the keyboard noise, but I have a mechanical keyboard.
SPEAKER_1: And I did not swap out for my quieter one.
SPEAKER_1: Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
SPEAKER_1: And that's an important place to start.
SPEAKER_1: We're sort of getting back to the previous question with the transcendentals and the nature of God.
SPEAKER_1: But God is his attributes.
SPEAKER_1: But God is also described as hating, and there are many places in Scripture for that.
SPEAKER_1: I won't sort of jump ahead here.
SPEAKER_1: But obviously, the next one has to be John 3.16.
SPEAKER_1: We have to deal with this one, because obviously this is going to come up anytime we're talking about love.
SPEAKER_1: For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
SPEAKER_1: And I'll stop there for now, although you should certainly go on and read the rest of at least John 3, perhaps the whole book of John.
SPEAKER_1: But then the verse from Romans here that was part of the question, But God shows his love for us, and that while we were sinners, Christ died for us.
SPEAKER_1: Which of course is true, absolutely, because we're all born in sin, and sin, to my mother, conceived me to quote the Psalms.
SPEAKER_1: However, it's worth noting for this particular verse, that it says, while we were sinners.
SPEAKER_1: This is speaking of those who are among the elect, those who are going to be justified before that happened.
SPEAKER_1: And so, is this speaking of all sinners?
SPEAKER_1: Not necessarily in this case.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not going to say, and I'm not saying here, that God doesn't love sinners in a certain sense.
SPEAKER_1: Because that is the ultimate conclusion here that I'm going to draw, is that God both loves and hates sinners, those who are still in impenitent sin.
SPEAKER_1: But to continue the sort of hodgepodge Bible study here, we will go also in Romans, but back to chapter 2.
SPEAKER_1: Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?
SPEAKER_1: And we'll come back to that one in just a little bit here.
SPEAKER_1: In fact, I'll open a new window, so I don't have to type that one again.
SPEAKER_1: But continuing on here, we'll go to 2nd Peter.
SPEAKER_1: The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promises, some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
SPEAKER_1: And of course, this is a constant refrain throughout all of scripture.
SPEAKER_1: God does not desire that any one spend eternity in hell.
SPEAKER_1: God wants all to repent.
SPEAKER_1: And in keeping with that theme, we'll go to basically what Peter is paraphrasing here, which of course is Ezekiel.
SPEAKER_1: Actually, I will pull this up in the Septuagint.
SPEAKER_1: I'll open a new tab here.
SPEAKER_1: Always better to use the Septuagint when the option is there.
SPEAKER_1: Say to them, I live, says the Lord.
SPEAKER_1: I do not wish the death of the impious.
SPEAKER_1: Rather, that the impious turn back from his way and live.
SPEAKER_1: Turn back from your way by turning back.
SPEAKER_1: And why are you dying, O house of Israel?
SPEAKER_1: This is essentially what Peter is paraphrasing.
SPEAKER_1: God wants the wicked to turn from their way.
SPEAKER_1: He wants them to return to the right path.
SPEAKER_1: He wants them to repent.
SPEAKER_1: And that is for all sinners.
SPEAKER_1: God does not begrudge anyone's salvation.
SPEAKER_1: God has not damned anyone from eternity past.
SPEAKER_1: That is not how this works.
SPEAKER_1: God wants everyone to repent.
SPEAKER_1: And so does he love them necessarily, of course, or he wouldn't want them to repent.
SPEAKER_1: He would just cast them into hell and be done with it.
SPEAKER_1: There wouldn't be any desire to see them turn from their wicked ways.
SPEAKER_1: And so, yes, God does love sinners.
SPEAKER_1: But, of course, we have to deal with verses like...
SPEAKER_1: Actually, I don't want that one.
SPEAKER_1: This is what happens when you are dealing with the Septuagint versus the Masoretic text.
SPEAKER_1: Of course, the numbers are different.
SPEAKER_1: But David, of course, you know which one I want here.
SPEAKER_1: Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
SPEAKER_1: I hate them with a perfect hatred.
SPEAKER_1: I count them my enemies, right?
SPEAKER_1: And so, when you are dealing with this, you have to deal with the fact, this is David speaking in the Spirit, saying what God desires.
SPEAKER_1: God hates sinners.
SPEAKER_1: And this sort of gets into sort of a philosophical problem here for the other side of this, not on my side, because I think my side is very consistent, and I will prove that here.
SPEAKER_1: If someone says that they hate murder, that doesn't really have any meaning.
SPEAKER_1: Okay, you hate the abstraction that is murder.
SPEAKER_1: Great.
SPEAKER_1: But murderers commit murder.
SPEAKER_1: And without a murderer, there is no murder.
SPEAKER_1: The same thing for sin.
SPEAKER_1: Without a sinner, there is no sin.
SPEAKER_1: And so you can't just hate the sin, because you don't just hate some abstraction.
SPEAKER_1: You hate the person who is doing the thing that you find detestable.
SPEAKER_1: And so God hates the sinner, because God hates sin.
SPEAKER_1: The sinner is the one who commits the sin.
SPEAKER_1: Without the sinner, there is no sin.
SPEAKER_1: Back to the murderer example.
SPEAKER_1: Then to go to Hebrews, before I go back to Romans.
SPEAKER_1: For if we go on sinning deliberately, after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for us, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.
SPEAKER_1: So does God love sinners?
SPEAKER_1: Yes.
SPEAKER_1: Does God hate impenitent sinners?
SPEAKER_1: There's no other way to deal with this verse.
SPEAKER_1: The answer is yes, he certainly does.
SPEAKER_1: And then to go back, as I said I would, to the book of Romans, starting with verse five this time.
SPEAKER_1: But because of your hard and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.
SPEAKER_1: And so I guess that leads into the question, the last question there, in the series of questions here.
SPEAKER_1: Does God have any love for the damned?
SPEAKER_1: I think that the necessary answer to that is yes, because God loves the good.
SPEAKER_1: And I've gone into this previously in previous episodes, but I'll do it here as well.
SPEAKER_1: Go over this again.
SPEAKER_1: Everything that God creates is good.
SPEAKER_1: Sin is not part of your essence.
SPEAKER_1: Speaking in philosophical terms, difference between essence and accident.
SPEAKER_1: An accident is a non-essential thing, basically.
SPEAKER_1: It's the summary of that.
SPEAKER_1: So, your essence is good, because your essence, your nature, these things created by God, corrupted by sin.
SPEAKER_1: So, sin is the accident corrupting your nature.
SPEAKER_1: God does not love sin.
SPEAKER_1: God hates sin.
SPEAKER_1: And so, insofar as those who are in hell are impenitent sinners, God hates them.
SPEAKER_1: But God loves them because they are his good creation.
SPEAKER_1: This is, of course, somewhat difficult to deal with, but we recognize that there are times where you can hate and love something at the same time.
SPEAKER_1: God can do it in an infinite way, because God is infinite and we are not.
SPEAKER_1: So, the short answer is that, yes, God loves sinners, but he does also hate sinners.
SPEAKER_1: And, of course, it should be a call to repentance, because you want to be someone who is in Christ, someone who is no longer juridically, someone who has been declared righteous for the sake of Christ.
SPEAKER_1: And so, you are no longer counted a sinner, even though, of course, in this life, you are still a sinner up to the end, but you are not counted a sinner, because you're in Christ.
SPEAKER_1: So, all of these verses about wrath and eternal fire and all those things, and God's hatred for sin, and, yes, the sinner should be a call to repentance, a call to be in Christ, to be someone who is no longer counted as a sinner, because you are covered by the blood of Christ.
SPEAKER_1: The next question here, those are actually all the questions that I had from the forum for this particular episode.
SPEAKER_1: I don't believe there were any that I missed.
SPEAKER_1: I will check just briefly here to make sure.
SPEAKER_1: But I saw a few in the chat, so I will address those now, since I think we've got plenty of time right now, so.
SPEAKER_1: Those are all of the questions from the forum for this episode, so I will scroll through the chat to look for some other ones.
SPEAKER_1: I noticed one before I started recording, so I will address that one first.
SPEAKER_1: The question that I noticed was about the Tish Raiden.
SPEAKER_1: And I've addressed this one a number of times, and I could of course just point to that.
SPEAKER_1: I've posted about it on X and my Telegram channel, but one of the things you have to understand, first and foremost, about Tish Raiden, is that they're unreliable.
SPEAKER_1: Because what a Tish Raiden is, is table talks.
SPEAKER_1: It's table speeches, but table talks, you can translate it either way into English.
SPEAKER_1: For those who are wondering what on earth I'm talking about here as I keep saying a German word, table talks.
SPEAKER_1: You've probably heard them only in regard to two men, Martin Luther and Adolf Hitler.
SPEAKER_1: And they're almost always used to attack those men by those who hate those men.
SPEAKER_1: The problem is the essence of the thing.
SPEAKER_1: A table talk is basically a dinner conversation, often involving beer, particularly in Martin Luther's case, of course.
SPEAKER_1: At this point, Adolf Hitler didn't drink, so not in his case, but in the case of Martin Luther, he was probably drinking beer while he was saying these things.
SPEAKER_1: If he said them, which is the problem here, he probably didn't say them because it is recorded second, third, sometimes fourth hand, sometimes many years after the fact by someone who talked to someone who perhaps another level of abstraction talked to someone who was there.
SPEAKER_1: Probably not the most reliable memory if you spent an evening drinking beer and joking, and then someone records it years later after a game of telephone.
SPEAKER_1: So this is not the sort of source that a Christian should use or consider reliable.
SPEAKER_1: We should rely on the writings and the actual speeches of these men that we have in copious amounts in both cases, instead of relying on hearsay, which is what would be called in a court of law.
SPEAKER_1: And it would not be admissible in a court of law, because it's completely ridiculous, the circumstances under which it was supposedly recorded and then transmitted.
SPEAKER_1: Is that to say that there's nothing in there that either of those men said?
SPEAKER_1: No, the answer is probably they said some of those things.
SPEAKER_1: But we cannot possibly discern which the men said and which the men did not say.
SPEAKER_1: And so the Christian is going to want to rely on sources that are reliable, sources that are provable, and there are many of those.
SPEAKER_1: In some case where Tisch-Reytner all that you have, that's a more difficult call, because then it's the only resource you have.
SPEAKER_1: What do you do?
SPEAKER_1: Well, you probably, as a Christian, give the man the benefit of the doubt.
SPEAKER_1: But in the case of these two men, there's no reason to resort to table talks.
SPEAKER_1: There's an entire bookshelf, a large bookshelf worth of Martin Luther's writings.
SPEAKER_1: We can go to those to see what he actually thought.
SPEAKER_1: In the case of Hitler, of course, we have his book and many speeches.
SPEAKER_1: We can go to those to see what he thought.
SPEAKER_1: And so, of course, the part of the question here is Gerber's diary and the table talks dealing with supposed anti-Christian sentiments.
SPEAKER_1: And I'll deal with Gerber's diary after this bit here about the table talks.
SPEAKER_1: When it comes to the table talks, again, unreliable, and so we look at the words of the man.
SPEAKER_1: But one in particular that I want to turn to here, so I will actually pull up the browser here.
SPEAKER_1: Let me pull that up.
SPEAKER_1: I want to read just a little bit of a quote.
SPEAKER_1: The Almighty created our nation by defending its existence.
SPEAKER_1: We defend his work.
SPEAKER_1: The fact that this defense is linked with unspeakable misfortune, suffering and pain beyond compare only makes us more attached to this nation.
SPEAKER_1: But it also gives us the hardness we need to fulfill our duty, even in the worst crises.
SPEAKER_1: Take a sip of tea here.
SPEAKER_1: He of course goes on to speak about the bomb that detonated one and a half meters away from me on July 20th failed to wipe me out.
SPEAKER_1: I see the fact that the Almighty protected me on that day as a confirmation of the mission given to me.
SPEAKER_1: And of course he goes on, but this is the final radio broadcast to the German people.
SPEAKER_1: He had no reason to lie here.
SPEAKER_1: He would be dead shortly after this.
SPEAKER_1: And so if he had actually believed the things that are claimed about him with regard to Christianity, this would have been the time to say them, because if you're going to be dead shortly, there's no where for propaganda at this point, because it doesn't matter anymore with regard at least to this subject.
SPEAKER_1: And I should be clear, this is the same thing that he said all through his political career, all through his life.
SPEAKER_1: And so I would recommend reading that article that I wrote on Adolf Hitler's Christianity.
SPEAKER_1: It's conveniently titled Adolf Hitler Christian.
SPEAKER_1: You can find that probably just by Googling it.
SPEAKER_1: You can probably find it with that term.
SPEAKER_1: If you don't find it, then just go to my website directly or add my last name, and then you'll probably find it.
SPEAKER_1: But the second part of the question is the Goebbels Diaries.
SPEAKER_1: Why do I not find those reliable?
SPEAKER_1: The reason I don't find those reliable is very straightforward, very simple.
SPEAKER_1: They were held for decades by the Soviets, and they did not permit anyone else to have access to them.
SPEAKER_1: I don't trust anything that comes out of the Soviets.
SPEAKER_1: These are the people who started and perfected, before Photoshop, notably, editing political pictures to remove people they didn't like.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not going to trust something that they held for decades and say, oh, no, of course, we took this.
SPEAKER_1: And notably, they don't have the originals.
SPEAKER_1: They basically have the equivalent at the time of a scan.
SPEAKER_1: That's what they have in their archives.
SPEAKER_1: That's what they claim to have in their archives.
SPEAKER_1: I don't believe it.
SPEAKER_1: I simply do not believe that those men were trustworthy, because those were evil men.
SPEAKER_1: Nothing the Soviets said is trustworthy.
SPEAKER_1: Nothing they said should be believed.
SPEAKER_1: In particular, when you're dealing with someone, again, who is a Christian brother, or at least someone we should give the benefit of the doubt about being a Christian brother, and has this wealth of resources on these specific questions, we should rely on the things that are reliable, not the things that were held by godless communists.
SPEAKER_1: Let me see if there is another question here.
SPEAKER_1: Someone asked where to submit questions.
SPEAKER_1: That should be in the description.
SPEAKER_1: I see you are listening on X, so there should be a description there.
SPEAKER_1: If there's no description there, then you can just go to omnifora.com and find the requests category, or any of the other platforms will have a description.
SPEAKER_1: You can find it there.
SPEAKER_1: I will also link it in my Telegram chat after this, just to make that a little easier.
SPEAKER_1: My Telegram channel, I should say.
SPEAKER_1: Is what David is saying about hatred descriptive or prescriptive.
SPEAKER_1: I think it is very clearly both, because God calls David a man after his own heart, and then he calls him a man of blood.
SPEAKER_1: So I don't think that those are incompatible.
SPEAKER_1: It is possible to be the sort of man David was, a warrior who killed many thousands.
SPEAKER_1: We have no idea how many, quite frankly, but many thousands of men himself, and then many more with his armies.
SPEAKER_1: And God calls him a man after his own heart.
SPEAKER_1: And don't forget, of course, this is the same God who told them to go in and wipe out the Canaanites, including men, women, children, and animals.
SPEAKER_1: So God is not against hatred.
SPEAKER_1: God doesn't think that hatred is wrongful.
SPEAKER_1: Because it's not.
SPEAKER_1: If you don't hate that which is seeking to destroy the good, then you don't truly love the good.
SPEAKER_1: You cannot love without hate, because you must hate that which would destroy that which you love.
SPEAKER_1: So hatred is a necessary component of love in a fallen world.
SPEAKER_1: Now, in perfection, in paradise, when there's no longer anything seeking to destroy, hatred, at least for us, God still has to deal with hell, but hatred for us is no longer a thing.
SPEAKER_1: It's no longer some part of our life.
SPEAKER_1: It's no longer necessary, because there's no longer any threat to the things we love.
SPEAKER_1: Woe mentioned having doubts about the Great Isaiah Scroll.
SPEAKER_1: Are you able to elaborate on those doubts about its authenticity?
SPEAKER_1: I will probably save that one for later, but it's sort of similar to the Gerberle's diary question.
SPEAKER_1: It's a question of chain of custody.
SPEAKER_1: And do you trust the people who had it in custody?
SPEAKER_1: And the answer is no, because I don't trust godless communists.
SPEAKER_1: For the same reason, I don't trust Jews, because they're the same group.
SPEAKER_1: Do you believe that there is still Old Testament prophecy yet to be fulfilled?
SPEAKER_1: Well, we certainly have the apocalyptic visions of Daniel, and so the eschaton is still out there somewhere in the future.
SPEAKER_1: We don't know how far.
SPEAKER_1: Scripture is very clear about that.
SPEAKER_1: No one knows when it's coming, so don't believe any man who tells you, oh, I know, because he's lying, or he's insane.
SPEAKER_1: So that one's sort of easy to say that, yes, there are things in the Old Testament that have not come to pass yet.
SPEAKER_1: The overwhelming majority of the prophecies were fulfilled in Christ, of course, but are there things that have not been fulfilled?
SPEAKER_1: Yes, I think so.
SPEAKER_1: Does Woe have any plans for a podcast?
SPEAKER_1: The answer to that is definitely no, he does not.
SPEAKER_1: He has no plans for that.
SPEAKER_1: I'm sure he may do an appearance here or there, but that's not really his desire at this point.
SPEAKER_1: What do you think of Vladimir Putin?
SPEAKER_1: I think Vladimir Putin is KJB.
SPEAKER_1: And not just KJB, but Berlinov is KJB.
SPEAKER_1: So he's not a good man.
SPEAKER_1: Is he doing some things that are good?
SPEAKER_1: In some cases, sure.
SPEAKER_1: But wicked men sometimes do good things.
SPEAKER_1: I hope that he becomes an actual Christian.
SPEAKER_1: I, quite frankly, I really don't think that he is.
SPEAKER_1: I think that there's very little evidence of that.
SPEAKER_1: But I also am not particularly familiar with his statements on religion.
SPEAKER_1: I only know a little bit about it, so I'm not willing to conclude, you know, conclusively one way or the other.
SPEAKER_1: But I do not find him to be a good man for the reasons stated.
SPEAKER_1: Because someone who works in the KJB, particularly the Berlinov is, is not going to be someone I would certainly trust with anything.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think I trust that kind of person.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe I trust him by wallet just because it's trivial, he wouldn't steal that.
SPEAKER_1: But not the kind of man I'm going to hold in high regard.
SPEAKER_1: And there's also the fact that he leads a nation that is essentially apostate.
SPEAKER_1: I know that in the West, in certain subgroups anyway, Russia has this reputation as being a great defender of the Christian faith, the Christian religion, of all these things, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_1: The problem is the Russians don't even attend church.
SPEAKER_1: They barely go on Christmas and Easter.
SPEAKER_1: And abortion, granted, I will point out, and this is something that you just definitely do when it happens, their numbers are improving, but the abortion numbers from Eastern Europe, particularly from Russia, are abhorrent.
SPEAKER_1: Russia was the worst example for many years.
SPEAKER_1: And so I don't see the actual Christianity playing out in Russia that is claimed to exist there.
SPEAKER_1: And to some degree, a leader is a reflection of the nation, and the nation is a reflection of the leader.
SPEAKER_1: And so, when I look at the nation, I don't see good things.
SPEAKER_1: When I look at the leader, I don't see good things.
SPEAKER_1: And of course, you have the problem of still kind of glorifying the Soviet era and the communists and all the evils they did, because there's a very real problem with regard to Russia and getting over that and recognizing that what was done in that era was evil.
SPEAKER_1: But this sort of gets off into the political weeds.
SPEAKER_1: Obviously, that starts to cause problems with how they have propped up their government as legitimate over previous decades, and so that gets into a big mess.
SPEAKER_1: But that's my short version of what I think about Vladimir Putin.
SPEAKER_1: There's also the fact that he's very old at this point for a politician, particularly one in such a stressful position.
SPEAKER_1: He'll probably be retiring at some point in the not too distant future, and so he won't be relevant forever.
SPEAKER_1: He's just been relevant for a large part of certainly my life, and undoubtedly for many of you listening.
SPEAKER_1: So I think that sort of covers my views on that subject anyway.
SPEAKER_1: So I think I'll do maybe one or two more questions, since I think we're right about at the hour mark here, if I'm not mistaken.
SPEAKER_1: Let me look up the actual recording here.
SPEAKER_1: I guess we're only at about the 45, 50 minute mark, not counting the countdown, which it's not fair to include the countdown.
SPEAKER_1: So, can you discuss swearing?
SPEAKER_1: What words are swearing and who defines it?
SPEAKER_1: I think this is similar to the, that's just as Potter Stewart, I didn't mention his name last time, but I think it's similar to the pornography question.
SPEAKER_1: You know when you see it and hopefully you don't see it.
SPEAKER_1: With regard to swearing, however, I'm not saying that it's equivalent morally to pornography, because I don't think that it is something you should never do.
SPEAKER_1: You should never look at pornography.
SPEAKER_1: Pornography shouldn't exist, it should all be destroyed, it should be a capital crime.
SPEAKER_1: But swearing is a time and a place.
SPEAKER_1: We have those words for a reason.
SPEAKER_1: That's not to say that everything that exists has a reason, because certainly there are combinations of words that should never be spoken, ones that amount to blasphemy, for instance.
SPEAKER_1: So the tendency of English speakers and some others to use Jesus as a swear word, as an expletive.
SPEAKER_1: You should not do that ever, period.
SPEAKER_1: That should be a never thing.
SPEAKER_1: But with regard to other words that we consider to be swear words, and I'm not going to use them for obvious reasons, partly because I do think that you should not use them on women and children.
SPEAKER_1: And women and children may very well see this, so it would be inappropriate.
SPEAKER_1: But can you, particularly talking to men among other men in certain circumstances use expletives?
SPEAKER_1: The answer is yes, and I think that they have a time and a place, and I think they are right to use in certain times under certain conditions.
SPEAKER_1: I think that any ex-military listening or active military listening are certainly going to agree with me on that one.
SPEAKER_1: So who defines what they are?
SPEAKER_1: That's a cultural matter.
SPEAKER_1: These things are a natural outgrowth of the culture.
SPEAKER_1: They develop over time in the same way that language develops.
SPEAKER_1: And so a word that is totally innocuous 500 years ago may be an expletive today, or vice versa.
SPEAKER_1: Or cross-language, of course, because I won't say it, because it's going to sound bad to English ears.
SPEAKER_1: But the Latin verb for to do sounds like an English swear word, but it's not in that context.
SPEAKER_1: And so, yes, these things are context specific, but I know some people who get into, you know, chompsky or something else like that, they start to think weird things, they have odd thoughts about, well, is it a swear word?
SPEAKER_1: Because it's not actually bad inherently, it's according to context.
SPEAKER_1: Well, of course, it's according to context.
SPEAKER_1: Almost everything in life is according to context.
SPEAKER_1: So, you know, if I toss water on you, just a glass of water on you, in the middle of, you know, a meeting, that's different from if I throw a water balloon at you during the summer out running around, right?
SPEAKER_1: Or at a water park.
SPEAKER_1: Does the context matter?
SPEAKER_1: Yes, the context matter for the act.
SPEAKER_1: Context also matters for the words being said.
SPEAKER_1: There are things that are not appropriate in some places that are appropriate in others.
SPEAKER_1: And so, you know, there are things that you can say to your wife that you probably shouldn't say to people you pass in the street and vice versa.
SPEAKER_1: So just because things are context dependent does not mean that they aren't real.
SPEAKER_1: So that whole argument when you get in to semiotics and stuff like that, complete nonsense.
SPEAKER_1: It's not that the word in itself, the set of sounds, is essentially bad, is in and of itself bad.
SPEAKER_1: It's that in the context of the language you are speaking, it has a certain meaning.
SPEAKER_1: And that meaning is one that should not be spoken in certain company, but may be spoken in other company.
SPEAKER_1: And so, that's basically my view of the use of expletives and swear words and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think that they're per se wrongful, but I think that they should be used sparingly, partly because they don't have any power, unless they're used sparingly, but also because it's inappropriate to use them in certain places at certain times.
SPEAKER_1: Which SC episodes were your favorite to actually record?
SPEAKER_1: I don't really know which were my favorite to record.
SPEAKER_1: They were all kind of similar, except for some were much less fun than others.
SPEAKER_1: So topics that are very serious, very weighty, are going to be a little less fun as it were to record.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not even sure fun is really necessarily the right description here, but those are going to be a little less fun just because you have to take those more seriously.
SPEAKER_1: It's a heavier subject.
SPEAKER_1: When you deal with heavy subjects, they take a certain sort of toll.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not going to say that it took years off my life or something like that, but I would think sort of the analogy would be certain areas of law are harder to practice because of the subject matter.
SPEAKER_1: And I am thinking specifically of the sex crimes unit in the DA's office.
SPEAKER_1: I know some people who have done that as their career choice, and it takes a toll on you unless you're the kind of person who can really sort of partition your life and sort of tune those things out when you're no longer at work, but very few men can do that.
SPEAKER_1: So certain subjects are going to be more difficult just because they are weightier, they are more important.
SPEAKER_1: So I don't know if I would say that there's anyone that was like particularly fun to record, but it's not that I didn't like recording Stone Choir, of course, but I don't know that I'd have like a top 10 most fun to record episodes.
SPEAKER_1: Why do you think God permits the Jews to continue existing?
SPEAKER_1: Their sin is not yet complete, end quotes, worries me for the fate of all people, but makes me wonder how sinful the Jews can get.
SPEAKER_1: This is perhaps a difficult question, and one that I can't necessarily answer fully in this place at this time, but part of it is judgment.
SPEAKER_1: If God permits a people to go on sinning, to fill up their cup of wrath, as he did with the Canaanites, as he did with many other groups, we see that in pages of scripture and the pages of history, it is a form of judgment, because actually the greatest mercy God could have on you, if you were never going to convert, like you are the sort of person who is just going to adamantly, persistently, defiantly walk contrary to God your entire life, and you were going to waltz straight into hell, the kindest thing God could do would be to kill you in the womb.
SPEAKER_1: But God doesn't do that, because God permits us to live at our lives, to exercise our free will, and in some cases, that is defiantly not a good thing, because some people use their free will to make their eternity much, much worse, and that is essentially what the Jews are doing.
SPEAKER_1: They are making their eternity worse every time they do something evil.
SPEAKER_1: And that is very unfortunate, for them and for everyone else, of course.
SPEAKER_1: But that is the reality of it, and it also falls to good men to stop evil men.
SPEAKER_1: And so one of the reasons, possibly one of the most important reasons, when you can say that evil men continue to exist and continue to do evil things in the world, it is because good men have failed to remove them.
SPEAKER_1: That is one of the reasons that we had capital punishment for centuries in Europe, and we basically just got rid of all of the men who were inclined toward criminality.
SPEAKER_1: And that's one of the reasons that European countries had such a very low crime rate prior to so-called immigration.
SPEAKER_1: It is incumbent on good men, particularly the Christian prince, to whom is entrusted the sort of state to remove evil men from society.
SPEAKER_1: And when that does not happen, their evil continues to compound and grow over a course of centuries.
SPEAKER_1: And that is exactly what we see happening with the Jews.
SPEAKER_1: Do you foresee a rise in right-wing paganism or Nietzscheanism in the future, or do you think it's more of an internet larp or fad?
SPEAKER_1: It's a larp, to be completely blunt and honest.
SPEAKER_1: And the men who are in that, who listen to me, and I know there may be some in the chat very well, but I've said that to their faces, they know what I think.
SPEAKER_1: So that's nothing new for them.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not going to sugarcoat it.
SPEAKER_1: And it is sort of ironic that some of them will hold up the national socialists and try to tie them into paganism when Adolf Hitler is literally the source of calling them a larp.
SPEAKER_1: That he's actually literally the source of that anti-meme, as it were, or meme, whichever way you want to call it, of calling them just a weird, nonsensical, unserious larp.
SPEAKER_1: That's not to say that I don't recognize why they do it.
SPEAKER_1: And I've gone into this before, but I'll go into it again.
SPEAKER_1: I recognize why they have the interest in those things.
SPEAKER_1: Why they have a distaste for the church.
SPEAKER_1: Because the church is currently weak.
SPEAKER_1: The church is currently infested with weak men, with effeminate men, with men who are not Christians, and yet they're wearing the trappings of Christians and pretending to be Christians.
SPEAKER_1: And so when the church looks weak, it is going to drive away men who are disgusted rightfully by weakness, by that sort of just spinelessness that you see rampant in the churches.
SPEAKER_1: And so they're looking for something that is powerful, something that is strong.
SPEAKER_1: And there's nothing wrong with that, because as I remind people all the time, God's power, God's position of authority, rests on his power, on his strength, on his ability to inflict infinite torture on all of his enemies.
SPEAKER_1: And so it's completely ridiculous to think that being strong is not part of Christianity.
SPEAKER_1: That's what God has designed men to be.
SPEAKER_1: And so, men who are weak are actually condemned in the pages of scripture.
SPEAKER_1: Because if feminacy is condemned, and it's not just in the sexual context, if feminacy is condemned with regard to men, I want to be clear, I'm not saying with regard to women, because of course it's praised for women.
SPEAKER_1: But for men, it is a deep and abiding wickedness.
SPEAKER_1: And so, when you have these men who recognize the evils that are taking place in the church and want to escape that evil, they're doing it the wrong way, but I understand why they're doing it.
SPEAKER_1: And the impulse is not wrong.
SPEAKER_1: They are drawing the wrong conclusion from the evidence.
SPEAKER_1: But no, I don't think it's going to be a serious long-term force.
SPEAKER_1: I think that as Christianity turns and becomes Christianity again, those men are going to come back to the churches, and we will welcome them back to the churches, because, sure, they went on a detour for a while, and I think that it was foolish, and I think that it was wrong, but they are my brothers, and I want them back in the churches, because that is one of my overriding goals, is to get white men back into the churches.
SPEAKER_1: Do you think that there is an opportunity for a new far right-wing party in the United States?
SPEAKER_1: That one is somewhat difficult to answer because there are a lot of moving parts there.
SPEAKER_1: But I think the first thing that I would say about it is sort of political science answer.
SPEAKER_1: The US does not have what is called party discipline.
SPEAKER_1: We could contrast this perhaps with Great Britain.
SPEAKER_1: The way that party discipline works in the UK context is that they have lists for politicians.
SPEAKER_1: And when they reach a certain level of votes, depending on where you are on the list, you may get an office.
SPEAKER_1: Now, I'm simplifying a little bit, but this is basically how it works.
SPEAKER_1: And so part of how they have party discipline, which I'll define that briefly so people know what I'm talking about before I keep talking about something that makes no sense.
SPEAKER_1: Party discipline is the ability of the party authorities to get the party members, in this case politicians, not individual voters, to follow the party line, to do what they want, to follow orders.
SPEAKER_1: So how they do that is they determine your place in the list.
SPEAKER_1: If you don't follow orders, you get bumped down the list, and then you probably don't get elected.
SPEAKER_1: Very easy for them, very good party discipline.
SPEAKER_1: The party higher-ups can tell you what to do, and you either play ball or you get kicked out.
SPEAKER_1: We don't really have that in the US context, because the central parties, so the GOP and the DNC, don't actually have enforcement mechanisms except money.
SPEAKER_1: And so if you can raise money in a grassroots fashion, if you can raise it through many small donations, you are not ultimately beholden to the national party.
SPEAKER_1: All they can do is, you know, maybe censure you or publish a mean media piece about you, whatever it is, a hit piece.
SPEAKER_1: They can't actually tell you what to do, because we don't have the enforcement mechanisms because of the way our system is built.
SPEAKER_1: Now, if you get to the national system, it's a little different because they can shut you out of, say, committees and things in Congress, and they can very much limit your authority or your ability to exercise your authority at least.
SPEAKER_1: But at the state level, and particularly at, say, the city level or the county level, the national parties don't have that much power.
SPEAKER_1: So can you run as a Republican in a county and actually attain office and have some autonomy and do something good?
SPEAKER_1: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_1: So if that stuff starts happening, then there is a chance at least particularly develop a regional power base for our people and for the actual right wing, not the establishment, the kosher right wing.
SPEAKER_1: But if you could do that in a regional area, then sure, you can be the Republican party, but are you really the Republican party?
SPEAKER_1: The answer is yes and no.
SPEAKER_1: No in the sense that you're not obeying the party leadership, but yes in the sense that who cares what they say.
SPEAKER_1: They don't have an enforcement mechanism to force you to do it.
SPEAKER_1: The alternative is, of course, starting up a new party, which is somewhat difficult, and you wind up doing the same thing.
SPEAKER_1: And the reason you wind up doing the same thing is because in the US., if you were to start up a new party, it would not initially at least be a national undertaking.
SPEAKER_1: It would inherently just by the nature of our system be regional, particularly focused in some state, I would say, is probably best.
SPEAKER_1: I'm personally going to say Tennessee, partly because I live here, partly because that's just where I see things going.
SPEAKER_1: Tennessee seems to be a nexus for whatever reason, a couple dozen different reasons, but topic for another time, perhaps.
SPEAKER_1: If you have that national goal in mind, then you can start with a regional buildup.
SPEAKER_1: And so, you know, if you start in East Tennessee, and then you associate with middle and West Tennessee, and then Kentucky, right, and then the rest of the deep south, and you build up a network in that sort of way, you can absolutely do that with a new party.
SPEAKER_1: Do I think that a new party is optimal or necessary?
SPEAKER_1: I think that it's probably more likely that is the route than taking over the Republican Party.
SPEAKER_1: So, maybe 60-40, if I were to assign numbers to it, percentages, likelihoods.
SPEAKER_1: So not 100%, but certainly more likely than the alternative, just because the structure of the Republican Party is going to shut you out of funding, and certainly out of committees and things, if you happen to get someone into the national government.
SPEAKER_1: And so, that's an additional hurdle to overcome.
SPEAKER_1: But at the same time, they're going to do the same thing.
SPEAKER_1: If you send someone to Washington, DC., as a representative who's part of the nationalist party, or whatever you happen to call your party.
SPEAKER_1: Those are very real hurdles you have to overcome.
SPEAKER_1: The way forward for the right, ultimately, and I'm not revealing anything great here.
SPEAKER_1: Plenty of men can recognize this is going to happen.
SPEAKER_1: You need to have a number of leaders who are gifted at speaking, who are able to cogently, coherently broadcast our points, our talking points, our position to the masses, and get those men to come on board.
SPEAKER_1: And it shouldn't be that hard, in some cases, because we are the ones who actually want what is best for them.
SPEAKER_1: We are the ones who have policies that will actually benefit them.
SPEAKER_1: The average American would have a far better life if so-called far-right men were in charge running the country.
SPEAKER_1: But it's a matter of getting them to recognize that.
SPEAKER_1: And the thing is, I don't think that it's going to be that difficult in many cases, because I've been putting up feelers, as it were, in looking at politics and how things are on the ground.
SPEAKER_1: Men, who you would not expect, are very willing to hear our talking points these days, even among the baby boomer generation.
SPEAKER_1: So things are definitely shifting.
SPEAKER_1: So I guess that's sort of a meandering answer to your question, but it's sort of a nebulous question, and a necessarily nebulous answer for that.
SPEAKER_1: Why did you only make X episodes of your Tish Raiden podcast?
SPEAKER_1: I really enjoyed those, and it sounded like you were going to make more.
SPEAKER_1: I guess I can actually just go ahead and share, because I think people will probably find it funny, and I am not legally bound not to share it.
SPEAKER_1: I got banned from that brewery for that podcast.
SPEAKER_1: So recording that podcast in particular cost me the ability to go to a brewery that I actually like.
SPEAKER_1: I do not call and harass them, do not pester them about that.
SPEAKER_1: I know why they did it, I understand why they did it, they weren't mean about it.
SPEAKER_1: So I 100% understand their position and why they did what they did.
SPEAKER_1: So do not harass them, don't pester them.
SPEAKER_1: I don't hold it against them.
SPEAKER_1: They were being harassed by Antifa and others and having nasty messages, and I don't even know the nature of the voicemails of things that were being left.
SPEAKER_1: But that sort of thing was happening.
SPEAKER_1: Am I against recording something like that in the future?
SPEAKER_1: I would say no.
SPEAKER_1: I might take a few more measures to sort of disambiguate things, or at least to sort of attenuate the connection between me and whatever place happens to be hosting it.
SPEAKER_1: I don't object to doing that, but I don't necessarily see doing that in the immediate future, because that would require me to find some people who are also willing to do that, who are public with their views as well.
SPEAKER_1: And there are some of those, so maybe that's something for the future.
SPEAKER_1: But yes, the reason that I stopped doing that is quite literally because we got banned from that location.
SPEAKER_1: So it happens.
SPEAKER_1: That's part of being a dissident movement, as it were.
SPEAKER_1: And if you are very public with your views, you're going to sort of pay for them every so often in some ways.
SPEAKER_1: I am going to leave this question about book recommendations for understanding the modern West until next time, because I do have some of those in mind, but I want to think about that question a little bit, so I will wait until next time.
SPEAKER_1: And I think I will also leave the question about the Tetragrammaton, because I have a short answer to that, but I think I'd want to expand on that a little bit.
SPEAKER_1: So I think I will call it here for this week, since I think we're just over an hour of actual Q&A now, not counting that countdown, which again shouldn't be counted.
SPEAKER_1: So thank you all for your time.
SPEAKER_1: Thank you for those who submitted questions.
SPEAKER_1: Again, if you would like to submit questions, there is a link in the description.
SPEAKER_1: I will also be posting that in my Telegram channel, but it is just omnifora.com, and it is the request category.
SPEAKER_1: Please put it in that category.
SPEAKER_1: If you don't, I can move it.
SPEAKER_1: It's not a big deal, it just saves me 10 seconds.
SPEAKER_1: But if you submit a question there, just submit the question, and then you can vote on other ones that are there.
SPEAKER_1: Currently, I've answered basically all of the ones that are there, so there's no need to vote on them right now.
SPEAKER_1: But if you vote on them, then as they rise to the top, say if there are a lot of questions in the future, I can prioritize them, that will help me.
SPEAKER_1: And like I've said before, the reason I do that is because I'm creating a library, and then I can point people, and other men can also point other men to my answers, so they can find them more easily.
SPEAKER_1: Instead of sort of the ephemera that is social media, this is something that has a little more staying power.
SPEAKER_1: And unlike other platforms, I actually have control over it, so I don't have to worry about someone deleting all of my content or shutting me down, or what have you.
SPEAKER_1: Like, you know, YouTube, as it were, could, tomorrow, delete all my videos and give me no recourse.
SPEAKER_1: With this, I don't have that problem.
SPEAKER_1: I still have all the local recordings, so I could theoretically make them all available that way.
SPEAKER_1: It's a lot of bandwidth, but if necessary, I would do that in the future.
SPEAKER_1: So that's how you submit questions.
SPEAKER_1: I will get to them as I can.
SPEAKER_1: I'll write down the couple of questions I see here in the chat so that I do have those for next time.
SPEAKER_1: But again, thank you for your time, and I hope that I answered the questions satisfactorily for those of you whose questions I actually answered this time.
SPEAKER_1: And I will see you next week.
SPEAKER_1: God bless you all, have a nice evening.