SPEAKER_1: It is the 18th of December.
SPEAKER_1: I am Corey J.
SPEAKER_1: Mahler, and this is At Any Cost.
SPEAKER_1: I think I will probably just jump right into the questions and answers section since there's not really any housekeeping this time, except for the usual sort of things at the end of the episode.
SPEAKER_1: I will assume that the audio is fine for everyone since I don't see any comments in the chat that it is not.
SPEAKER_1: So I will simply pull up the first question here.
SPEAKER_1: The first question is relatively long, but a very simple question, straightforward.
SPEAKER_1: So I will just give sort of the Cliffnote version of it, as it were.
SPEAKER_1: How do we have faith and not doubt is essentially the question.
SPEAKER_1: And so there are a lot of places in scripture where it says basically, if you have faith and you don't doubt, then certain things will happen.
SPEAKER_1: This is not sort of a prosperity gospel or therapeutic gospel or any of those various other, I'll be generous and call them heterodoxies, but you have to look at the places in which this is said in scripture.
SPEAKER_1: And many times you're dealing with Christ speaking in parables or speaking in riddles, which he very much enjoyed doing while he was serving in his ministry here on earth.
SPEAKER_1: And so, for instance, I think it's probably good to start by looking at the fig tree, because when Christ curses the fig tree, and then it withers basically immediately, and then will no longer produce fruit, and so he basically may no one ever eat fruit from you again.
SPEAKER_1: Does that mean that it is bad for the tree not to produce fruit in an off season?
SPEAKER_1: The answer for the tree is no.
SPEAKER_1: The answer for a human being, which is what he's getting at there, is yes.
SPEAKER_1: It's sort of akin to all of the parables about the thief coming in the night.
SPEAKER_1: You do not know when Christ is going to return, and so you shouldn't think, well, I'm young, I can sin for 30 years, and then I'll repent and everything will be fine, because Christ could come tomorrow.
SPEAKER_1: He could come in the middle of this recording.
SPEAKER_1: And so, probably not in the middle of this recording, there are some signs that aren't fulfilled, but he could come relatively soon.
SPEAKER_1: So, the point of the fig tree is that you don't put off producing those good fruits, because you are a Christian, and you should be producing those all the time.
SPEAKER_1: The point is not the tree itself, because obviously trees have a season, God created the seasons.
SPEAKER_1: It's not bad for the tree itself to not be producing in season.
SPEAKER_1: And so, with regard to having faith and not doubting, part of it comes down to the measure of faith that God has given you, of course, and you can think of the father who exclaims, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.
SPEAKER_1: There's nothing wrong with that prayer.
SPEAKER_1: That's a perfectly legitimate prayer for a man to pray, because the measure of faith that you have been given is a gift from God.
SPEAKER_1: That's always important to remember that, that your faith is not your own work.
SPEAKER_1: It is something given you by God.
SPEAKER_1: Now, you can pray for an increase of your faith.
SPEAKER_1: Of course, that's part of what you're praying for every time you pray the Lord's prayer and, really, any other prayers, particularly if you're going through the Psalms and use them as a prayer book, which they're sort of a hymnal slash prayer book, so you can use it in both ways.
SPEAKER_1: But, insofar as not doubting is concerned, basically, don't dwell on, basically, doubts, the possibility of doubts, because you can always find some little thread to pull at with anything.
SPEAKER_1: And, in basically anything in life, if you start down that path, you're going to destroy whatever the thing is, which is why it's good to use the illustration of pulling on a thread.
SPEAKER_1: If I find a thread in my scarf and start pulling on it, pretty soon I'm not going to have a scarf.
SPEAKER_1: Now, granted, this one is wool, and so it'd be kind of hard to do, but you get the idea.
SPEAKER_1: If, for instance, in your relationship with your spouse, you find something that annoys you about your spouse, and you dwell on it, and you pick at it, and you poke at it, you're going to wind up divorced, and you're going to have done that to yourself.
SPEAKER_1: So, with regard to your faith, don't make shipwreck of your faith by finding some way in order to doubt, because you can always find some way to try to walk away from things.
SPEAKER_1: Apostasy is very possible, so don't apostatize as sort of the basic thing here, the foundational truth.
SPEAKER_1: When it comes to having that certainty of faith, you need to be active in your prayer life, you need to read the Word of God, because that is how God interacts with you, and trust in God that he will give you the measure of faith that is necessary to meet the challenges in your life, and to meet the challenges that will be brought up by the world, the flesh, and the devil, with regard to your faith.
SPEAKER_1: And there are a number of verses and passages of scripture of the individual cited here, and of course, anyone can go look at that.
SPEAKER_1: This one happens to be on the forum, and I try to do the ones on the forum first.
SPEAKER_1: So I think that's sort of the basic answer to that question.
SPEAKER_1: Perhaps I'll come back to that one at some point in the future.
SPEAKER_1: I think it's an important question that perhaps I will address in greater depth, so I'll make a note to do that.
SPEAKER_1: The next question is about pacifism, and particularly with a reference to Dirk Willems.
SPEAKER_1: I'll just read this one because it's relatively short.
SPEAKER_1: Among pacifists, one of the great heroes is Dirk Willems, who saved his enemy and got killed as a consequence.
SPEAKER_1: How do we argue against suicidal empathy?
SPEAKER_1: Anabaptists claim many martyrs.
SPEAKER_1: How to differentiate true martyrs from foolish people who got executed?
SPEAKER_1: And so, a number of related questions there.
SPEAKER_1: I'll start by just briefly recounting who Dirk Willems is, because many people are not going to know that name.
SPEAKER_1: There are, of course, many who will, if they're familiar with Anabaptists and their claims, but many others have no idea who that man is.
SPEAKER_1: So, Dirk Willems was, as you might have guessed, an Anabaptist who was imprisoned for being an Anabaptist, because at the time, in that particular area, it was a crime to be an Anabaptist.
SPEAKER_1: He escaped.
SPEAKER_1: And as he was fleeing, his pursuer fell through some thin ice.
SPEAKER_1: He turned around to help his pursuer and was recaptured as a result.
SPEAKER_1: Notably, the man who fell through the ice wanted to let him go, but he was reminded it was his duty, he was basically the captor, the jailer, and so it was his duty to recapture him.
SPEAKER_1: And subsequent to being recaptured, he was burned at the stake.
SPEAKER_1: So the question would be, in his case, was it right or foolish to do what he did?
SPEAKER_1: And that one comes down to how you view Anabaptist teaching, because if you come down on the side of Anabaptist teaching, being something that should be punished by the state, then he was a wicked man who needed to be punished.
SPEAKER_1: And so fleeing punishment for a crime you have, in fact, committed is anti-Christian.
SPEAKER_1: If you come down on the other side, and you're someone who believes in not freedom of religion, but freedom of denomination, and you think that he should have the right to teach whatever he pleases about scripture, maybe not whatever he pleases, that's a little too broad, but within reason, you think that he should be at least able to disagree, permitted to disagree, without repercussions with regard to the sacraments, with regard to baptism, specifically in this case, of course.
SPEAKER_1: If you come down on that side, then you're probably going to say, well, no, he was fleeing unjust persecution, and so he's permitted to do that.
SPEAKER_1: But of course, in both cases, it raises the question of, which is sort of the core of this, the underlying question, when is it your duty as a Christian to stand your ground, even if it results in your death, versus when are you permitted or even required according to wisdom and your duties before God and men, not to do that, not to basically surrender yourself to death.
SPEAKER_1: And this is partly a wisdom call, but partly not, because it's going to be very obvious if you are called on to confess Christ, and there is going to be very real consequences for doing that.
SPEAKER_1: So, for instance, if we happen to have a particularly wicked government, which we do, and they start calling Christians before tribunals and saying, renounce God, then you have to confess Christ and go to your death if necessary.
SPEAKER_1: That makes you a martyr, of course, and I'll get into what a martyr is in a second here, but that makes you a martyr, but that is your duty as a Christian.
SPEAKER_1: You do not get to deny Christ.
SPEAKER_1: We are not Muslims, we don't have a bunch of different kinds of lies that we are permitted to tell in order to make our life easier or more convenient, but we're not going so far as the sort of mischaracterization, I would say, of Kant, but the one of which everyone is aware of when you get into this area of discussion with regard to when you have to be truthful.
SPEAKER_1: The example that is usually used is if a psychopathic killer comes to your door, do you have to say, yes, my wife and children are home and they're hiding in the closet?
SPEAKER_1: The answer is no.
SPEAKER_1: And as a Christian, you have no duty to tell that person the truth, because you don't have a duty to tell all truths at all times to all men.
SPEAKER_1: You have a duty to speak the truth about Christ and never deny him.
SPEAKER_1: And so that is sort of the dividing line there.
SPEAKER_1: But with regard to a martyr, a martyr is someone who dies for the faith, who dies because of his Christian faith.
SPEAKER_1: And you're going to get people who get very nitpicky about that, because they'll say, well, he died because he had political disagreements, but he was also killed because he was a Christian.
SPEAKER_1: I would say he's a martyr, if that happens.
SPEAKER_1: This is a hypothetical man.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying this individual, in this case, Willems.
SPEAKER_1: But whether or not someone is a martyr is a question, essentially, of whether or not he died because of his Christian faith.
SPEAKER_1: And so perhaps an abstracted political example, an illustration, the Rwandan genocide, if you actually run the numbers as it were, you can make a very strong argument that it was a politicide instead of a genocide.
SPEAKER_1: Now, does that mean that it didn't have elements of being a genocide even if it were in fact mostly a politicide?
SPEAKER_1: The answer would be no, it still was a bit of both.
SPEAKER_1: Regardless of that, I have a particular professor from undergrad who wouldn't want me to make that argument, but he's just wrong if he disagrees.
SPEAKER_1: When it comes to someone being a martyr, even if there are elements of having died for something else, so you were killed because you were a member of a political party that the ruling class didn't like, but also because you're a Christian, I would say that counts as the person being a martyr.
SPEAKER_1: Now, I'm not getting into the specific definition that the Roman Catholic Church uses because I don't believe in it, because anyone who dies for the faith is a martyr.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not going to add additional requirements to that.
SPEAKER_1: And so, perhaps another ancillary point, but the traditional distinction between a martyr and a confessor is that a confessor doesn't die for the faith.
SPEAKER_1: He confesses the faith.
SPEAKER_1: And so, Martin Luther was a confessor of the faith, not a martyr, because he was, in fact, not killed for the faith, despite the fact that both the emperor and the pope tried for quite a while, and they just didn't succeed.
SPEAKER_1: So, he almost became a martyr many times, but he was not a martyr, he was a confessor.
SPEAKER_1: Sort of the distinction there.
SPEAKER_1: And so, when it comes down to assessing whether someone did something foolish or not, it is really that question of did you have to confess Christ?
SPEAKER_1: Were you called on to either confess or deny Christ before men?
SPEAKER_1: And if you die for that, you're a martyr.
SPEAKER_1: If you weren't called on to confess Christ, and you sort of just chose to die, that's probably foolish.
SPEAKER_1: And so, I'm thinking of the gentleman who decided he was going to sail onto an island full of crazed cannibals, essentially.
SPEAKER_1: That is definitely more foolish than martyr.
SPEAKER_1: I don't know that I'd be willing to say that he...
SPEAKER_1: there's absolutely nothing of martyrdom there, but he shouldn't have done it.
SPEAKER_1: It was dumb.
SPEAKER_1: It was foolish.
SPEAKER_1: That's not the way to evangelize some random tribe like that.
SPEAKER_1: That's essentially suicide.
SPEAKER_1: It's not something you should do.
SPEAKER_1: And then the last question here that I haven't really addressed yet is the suicidal empathy issue.
SPEAKER_1: And you can't really fix that issue without causing a lot of other problems, because it's not so much an individual issue, it's a structural issue.
SPEAKER_1: If you don't have a bunch of individuals living around your people who will take advantage of that, it's not a problem to have that desire to help others around you, if you're living in a society that is properly ordered.
SPEAKER_1: Our problem today is that we are not living in a properly ordered society.
SPEAKER_1: We are living around some much more than others, unfortunately, for them, but we are living around hostile foreigners who do not have the same morals, who do not have the same concerns, who are going to take advantage of us because of the fact that we have empathy, sympathy, whatever you want to call it.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not getting into that nest of vipers, quite frankly, with regard to people who think that empathy is a sin.
SPEAKER_1: It comes down to how you're defining your terms.
SPEAKER_1: But in this case, can you train someone to care about others and not run some risk of that being exploited?
SPEAKER_1: I think the answer is no.
SPEAKER_1: So you have to set up structural safeguards in your society and then it's a good thing to have.
SPEAKER_1: Now, at the same time, you can certainly train up, for instance, your children, not to simply care for everyone in the world, because you can't do that.
SPEAKER_1: You have to train them who is your neighbor, care for your neighbor, to whom do you owe a higher duty?
SPEAKER_1: If you have a higher duty to these people, so your family, for instance, probably the best example, naturally, can you fulfill that duty if instead you run off and pursue foreigners 4,000 miles away who kill you and eat you?
SPEAKER_1: Well, the answer is no.
SPEAKER_1: What you've done is you have neglected the higher and greater duty in pursuit of something that is not perhaps a duty at all, which would be sin, at the very least the sin of foolishness.
SPEAKER_1: And yes, it is sinful to be a fool.
SPEAKER_1: Scripture is abundantly clear on that one.
SPEAKER_1: Many, many examples.
SPEAKER_1: I think that pretty much answers that question, so I will move on to the next one.
SPEAKER_1: This one is another exegetical question, this one about Colossians 3, 5 through 8.
SPEAKER_1: So we'll actually just pull that up, since it's the best way to do that.
SPEAKER_1: Pull up Logos here.
SPEAKER_1: Logos just likes to add more steps in order to...
SPEAKER_1: Of course, now it looks like...
SPEAKER_1: Well, that's an interesting quirk.
SPEAKER_1: Looks like OBS actually focuses on the individual tab instead of the window, which makes that a little harder.
SPEAKER_1: Let me see if I can get it to do the right thing here.
SPEAKER_1: Okay, here we go.
SPEAKER_1: So, reading from Colossians 3.
SPEAKER_1: Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.
SPEAKER_1: On account of these, the wrath of God is coming.
SPEAKER_1: In these, you too once walked, when you were living in them.
SPEAKER_1: But now you must put them all away, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.
SPEAKER_1: And so, the question here, essentially, given the title of this particular post on the Forum, what does it mean to put to death what is earthly in you?
SPEAKER_1: And I think really, in a large way, the answer to the question, is there in the verse?
SPEAKER_1: Because when it speaks about that which is earthly in you, it gives the list of things that are earthly.
SPEAKER_1: It's not an exhaustive list, of course.
SPEAKER_1: Seldom are the lists in the New Testament exhaustive.
SPEAKER_1: They're usually illustrative.
SPEAKER_1: But sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, idolatry, these are the things you are meant to put away.
SPEAKER_1: And so what it's saying is you have to master the flesh in the sense of the flesh being fallen and trying to pull you away from the things that are good.
SPEAKER_1: Because the traditional formulation, I used it earlier already in this episode, but the traditional formulation is that you are beset by the world, the flesh, and the devil.
SPEAKER_1: And you can put those in whichever order you want.
SPEAKER_1: They're going to differ over time.
SPEAKER_1: Sometimes you'll be more tempted by the flesh.
SPEAKER_1: Sometimes you'll be more tempted by the devil, sometimes by the world.
SPEAKER_1: So, you know, sort of concrete examples, sexual immorality is going to be a temptation of the flesh.
SPEAKER_1: Pretty obvious on that one.
SPEAKER_1: When it comes to money, mammon, greed, that's more of a temptation of the world.
SPEAKER_1: There's a little bit of the flesh in there as well.
SPEAKER_1: But the other ones here, idolatry, obviously, that's going to be a temptation of the devil to some degree.
SPEAKER_1: But yes, there's the world as well, because what is the worship of mammon ultimately?
SPEAKER_1: It's idolatry.
SPEAKER_1: You've set up another god in your heart, another thing to which you look for all good in your life, and you've made that your god, because the things to which you look for all good are in fact your god, to paraphrase the large catechism.
SPEAKER_1: And so, when it comes to putting to death the flesh, the things that are earthly in you, it's not that the body is bad.
SPEAKER_1: Don't ever read it in that way.
SPEAKER_1: It's not in a gnostic sense.
SPEAKER_1: It's in the sense of our current flesh is fallen, because in sin did my mother conceive me.
SPEAKER_1: I'm going to wind up using that verse in almost every episode, seemingly, but our flesh is fallen, because we inherit original sin from our original father Adam.
SPEAKER_1: It is passed down from generation to generation to generation until the end of this universe, because once we are regenerated in the next life, in paradise, the sinfulness that attaches to this flesh is removed, it's gone.
SPEAKER_1: We are no longer sinners, and so we will not sin.
SPEAKER_1: And so, when it comes to this issue of putting to death the things in you that are earthly, it's earthly in the sense of the fallen earth, not earthly in the sense of just fleshly.
SPEAKER_1: Granted, fleshly can mean either sinful or just of the flesh.
SPEAKER_1: I'm talking about the latter sense.
SPEAKER_1: And so, food and drink aren't bad, right?
SPEAKER_1: Having sex with your spouse, not bad.
SPEAKER_1: Sexual immorality is bad.
SPEAKER_1: Drunkenness is bad.
SPEAKER_1: Gluttony is bad.
SPEAKER_1: Those are the things that you are putting to death.
SPEAKER_1: Those are the things that you are disciplining your body to keep it under control.
SPEAKER_1: So, that's basically the exegesis of that verse, and it really is sort of present there in the verse itself.
SPEAKER_1: But there's some things on which we can expand to get a fuller sense.
SPEAKER_1: So, the next question is about the Nicene Creed, really about apostolic succession, but in the light of the Nicene Creed.
SPEAKER_1: Go back to not having log-offs on the screen, we don't need it there.
SPEAKER_1: I think everyone knows the Nicene Creed, so I won't pull that one up.
SPEAKER_1: But, last week you suggested to someone to start their own home church if needed.
SPEAKER_1: That got me thinking about apostolic succession.
SPEAKER_1: The Nicene Creed contains the line, we believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church.
SPEAKER_1: What does apostolic mean here?
SPEAKER_1: Being based on the teaching of the apostles, but not successive passing of office.
SPEAKER_1: And yes, that basically is the sense here.
SPEAKER_1: The apostolic succession is not the laying on of hands.
SPEAKER_1: And one of the ways you can actually look at this is, there are instances in the New Testament when the Holy Spirit is received via the laying on of hands.
SPEAKER_1: And there are instances where that is not the case.
SPEAKER_1: You can look at one of the cases with a centurion.
SPEAKER_1: There are a number of centurions in the New Testament, unsurprisingly, for various historical reasons.
SPEAKER_1: But you have an instance where the Holy Spirit falls on these individuals as they hear the word.
SPEAKER_1: There's no laying on of hands.
SPEAKER_1: Now granted, this is not apostolic succession.
SPEAKER_1: We're not talking about bishops or anything here.
SPEAKER_1: But it's an important distinction to recognize.
SPEAKER_1: It is not necessary to have the laying on of hands to receive the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_1: It is not necessary to have the laying on of hands to have apostolic succession.
SPEAKER_1: Because apostolic succession is a matter of teaching.
SPEAKER_1: It is a matter of following the doctrine of the apostles, which is to say Christianity, to obey the New Testament, what it teaches.
SPEAKER_1: Because what is the most important tradition that we have from the apostles?
SPEAKER_1: Well, it's the New Testament.
SPEAKER_1: It's the thing that they wrote down under the inspiration of the Spirit and passed on Christianity to us.
SPEAKER_1: That's what you have to follow to have apostolic succession.
SPEAKER_1: I know that there are churches, of course, and I'm just going to decline to name them here.
SPEAKER_1: You all know which ones I mean, because they're the only ones that make the claim.
SPEAKER_1: Modulo, a couple of exceptions.
SPEAKER_1: But you have churches that will try to claim that they have a direct line traced back all the way to the apostles.
SPEAKER_1: And the simple fact of the matter is, there isn't a single church that can actually truthfully make that claim.
SPEAKER_1: There's a pretty significant gray area where they can kind of argue that maybe this man knew this man and this man knew that man, but not really.
SPEAKER_1: There's no concrete proof.
SPEAKER_1: They can't prove it.
SPEAKER_1: They don't have any proof of it.
SPEAKER_1: And that's not cause for concern, because apostolic succession is not the laying on of hands.
SPEAKER_1: It's not the physical.
SPEAKER_1: The spirit is not transmitted with a physical touch of one man giving another man the backslap.
SPEAKER_1: And I'm not being dismissive or, you know, dealing with holy things in a light way.
SPEAKER_1: You can call it the holy backslap, because that's basically what they're trying to argue.
SPEAKER_1: And now, were it something that were necessary, were this something that were a sacrament instituted by God and necessary to the faith, I would never speak about it in that way.
SPEAKER_1: But it's not.
SPEAKER_1: Because, again, what is succession is teaching the doctrine of the apostles.
SPEAKER_1: Was Paul an apostle before he had hands laid on him?
SPEAKER_1: The answer is yes.
SPEAKER_1: Now, of course, there are those who will try to argue, well, it was because he got it from God directly.
SPEAKER_1: Well, but okay.
SPEAKER_1: At the very least, we've established the laying on of hands is not necessary.
SPEAKER_1: That's very clear from scripture.
SPEAKER_1: Just the same as it's not necessary for receiving the Holy Spirit to have the laying on of hands.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying it's a bad thing.
SPEAKER_1: There's nothing wrong with it as a tradition, but it's not necessary.
SPEAKER_1: And so, no, there's nothing wrong with starting up a home church.
SPEAKER_1: You're not breaking with tradition, and you're not causing problems with the guard to apostolic succession.
SPEAKER_1: Do bear in mind that most of the early churches were in fact home churches, because they were meeting in secret.
SPEAKER_1: Sometimes they were literally meeting in the tombs, and not all of them had an apostle present, certainly.
SPEAKER_1: The next one is sort of shifting gears, I guess, to the political, although also with a religious element still, unsurprisingly.
SPEAKER_1: You have stated on many occasions that you believe we will win because God has made promises to Japheth, which is true.
SPEAKER_1: To play devil's advocate, isn't it possible that these promises have already been fulfilled and that we truly are in the last days?
SPEAKER_1: There are really two questions there, and I'll answer them in order, as it were.
SPEAKER_1: The first one is whether or not there's a possibility that those promises, and of course, we're speaking about Noah's prophecy, whether or not those promises have been fulfilled.
SPEAKER_1: The answer is that they have, but not fully, because there's no end point.
SPEAKER_1: The promise to Japheth is that he will be Christendom.
SPEAKER_1: He will dwell in the tents of Shem.
SPEAKER_1: And there's a little bit of hostility there in the actual grammar, if you look at the Greek terms used, and the context, of course.
SPEAKER_1: But with regard to being Christendom, that is an ongoing promise.
SPEAKER_1: That is from basically the New Testament era, as soon as the scriptures and the gospel reach Greece, and then spread from there to the rest of the Roman Empire, and then the rest of Europe, of course.
SPEAKER_1: It's from that point to the end of time.
SPEAKER_1: And so there's a partial fulfillment, but not the full fulfillment.
SPEAKER_1: We see this all the time with prophecy.
SPEAKER_1: There's often either a cyclical fulfillment, or a repeated fulfillment, or a lesser and then a greater.
SPEAKER_1: That's sort of what we have here.
SPEAKER_1: There is the major fulfillment, in a sense, with regard to the centuries during which Europe was Christendom and Europe was ascendant, and then there is the not yet fulfilled, with regard to the future.
SPEAKER_1: Because it is an open-ended promise, an open-ended prophecy.
SPEAKER_1: There's no end date to it, except for, of course, the expiration date of this universe itself.
SPEAKER_1: And so, the next question would be, are we in the last days?
SPEAKER_1: Well, I actually already pointed out in this episode that there are some signs and things that have not been fulfilled yet.
SPEAKER_1: And so, are we in the last days?
SPEAKER_1: Maybe, but are we in the ones that are right at the end?
SPEAKER_1: No, we're not yet.
SPEAKER_1: Because there are things that must take place before Christ's return.
SPEAKER_1: Now, there aren't a lot, certainly, if you look at the way that things are going and how many things have been fulfilled.
SPEAKER_1: But not a lot is still some.
SPEAKER_1: So, are we in the absolute last days?
SPEAKER_1: I would say, no.
SPEAKER_1: And personally, I also don't think this is not necessarily like, you should believe this, or you must believe this.
SPEAKER_1: It's just my personal belief with regard to this.
SPEAKER_1: This is take it or leave it, choose whatever you like.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think that we're in the last days.
SPEAKER_1: I think we will see a resurgence.
SPEAKER_1: I think that God is not quite done with this universe yet.
SPEAKER_1: I could be wrong on that, and I guess we will simply see.
SPEAKER_1: But as sort of a tangential issue, there are always those who want to discuss, if we're in the last days, is this the tribulation?
SPEAKER_1: Has Satan been unchained?
SPEAKER_1: You know, all these related questions.
SPEAKER_1: And to some degree, it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_1: Of course, it matters in the sense that we kind of want to know what the ground rules are right now.
SPEAKER_1: Is Satan off his leash?
SPEAKER_1: Is he allowed to do whatever he pleases?
SPEAKER_1: Are we in the tribulation?
SPEAKER_1: Are things going to get significantly worse than they already are?
SPEAKER_1: It would be nice to know those things, certainly.
SPEAKER_1: But at the same time, the way that I've always pointed out is that just because we aren't in the last days, so say you lived in the 1300s, you're nowhere near the last days, obviously, because we're living in the 2000s.
SPEAKER_1: And so, they were nowhere near the last days.
SPEAKER_1: Well, at the same time, they were, because there isn't a man listening to me right now who is more than, at the absolute most, 80 years away from the grave.
SPEAKER_1: Okay, modulo advances in technology that may be giving you an extra 40 years.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe, that's pretty optimistic at this point.
SPEAKER_1: You are close to the end days, because the end days are the final judgment.
SPEAKER_1: Well, you are close to the final judgment, because you are mortal.
SPEAKER_1: And so, you should always live as if you are not really far away from the last days, because you personally are not.
SPEAKER_1: And in a very real sense, it doesn't matter to you, if this universe is close to the last days, because you will always be close to the last days, because again, you are mortal.
SPEAKER_1: And I do notice there have been a few questions in the chat.
SPEAKER_1: I don't know that I will necessarily get to those tonight, because I have quite a few questions in my list, as is, but I will note those down and add them to the growing list.
SPEAKER_1: So, the next question is actually about Bible translation versions.
SPEAKER_1: This one's a specific version.
SPEAKER_1: It asks if I have any thoughts on the anointed standard translation.
SPEAKER_1: And I had actually not seen this one before.
SPEAKER_1: Apparently, it came out not that long ago.
SPEAKER_1: I say not that long ago, 30 years.
SPEAKER_1: But that's not that long in the grand scheme of things.
SPEAKER_1: Time flies.
SPEAKER_1: But the question is what I think about it.
SPEAKER_1: It says that it's not based on the Masoretic.
SPEAKER_1: It's based on the Septuagint.
SPEAKER_1: And it's touted as the translation for whites, which I don't like that framing.
SPEAKER_1: Not because I have a problem necessarily with, you know, tailoring something to a particular group, because if you translate something into German, you're kind of tailoring it to the Germans.
SPEAKER_1: Same for French and Dutch and Russian and everything else.
SPEAKER_1: And so in that sense, you are tailoring it to a particular race when you're translating to the language of that race.
SPEAKER_1: Now in the case of English, English has become the lingua franca, which is a mildly amusing term at this point in history for a number of reasons.
SPEAKER_1: But if you're translating to English, you're still very much targeting the Anglo-Saxon race, essentially, and our very large diaspora at this point.
SPEAKER_1: So I went ahead and looked at the version.
SPEAKER_1: I didn't read a huge chunk of it.
SPEAKER_1: I read basically a bit of Romans.
SPEAKER_1: I was not particularly impressed.
SPEAKER_1: It does some weird things and is very heavy-handed with what is essentially Christian identity, which is not Christian and also gets the identity wrong usually.
SPEAKER_1: So great deal of irony in that.
SPEAKER_1: I would not recommend it.
SPEAKER_1: Don't use it.
SPEAKER_1: Quite frankly, I don't think there's anything really wrong fundamentally with the ESV or the NASB or the NKJV or any of the others with regard to the New Testament.
SPEAKER_1: Because obviously in the New Testament, they're based on the Greek because there's nothing else.
SPEAKER_1: It's only Greek.
SPEAKER_1: It's only ever been Greek.
SPEAKER_1: You have crazy people off in the corner arguing that Matthew was originally Hebrew.
SPEAKER_1: Well, we don't have any transcripts of that.
SPEAKER_1: We don't have any pieces of papyri.
SPEAKER_1: We don't have anything because it was and it's written in Greek.
SPEAKER_1: There's plays on words and things that work only in Greek and not Hebrew.
SPEAKER_1: But the New Testament is Greek.
SPEAKER_1: Everyone agrees on that except for some crazy people.
SPEAKER_1: So all of these translations are based on the Greek in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_1: So it's just fine to use any of them.
SPEAKER_1: With the tiny caveats that I've mentioned before, basically the word Gentiles is nonsense.
SPEAKER_1: And so when you see Gentiles, just read nations.
SPEAKER_1: Ninety five percent of the time, it means nations.
SPEAKER_1: Every so often, it means member of the nations or something very close to nations.
SPEAKER_1: But sometimes it means heathen, which is a word we don't use that much anymore, which just means unbelieving nations.
SPEAKER_1: That's all it means.
SPEAKER_1: So just read nations when you see Gentiles, and you basically got there.
SPEAKER_1: One other thing that I will mention with regard to the New Testament, certain translators play games because they're Judaizers, is really what it comes down to.
SPEAKER_1: But so, for instance, one of the times when Paul is addressing one of the groups of Jews that want to kill him, it says that he addresses them in the Hebrew language, is what some modern translations say.
SPEAKER_1: Well, the problem is what it actually says in the Greek is addresses them in the language of the Hebrews.
SPEAKER_1: This is an important point.
SPEAKER_1: Those sound exactly the same, and they can be the same in a certain way.
SPEAKER_1: But what is meant when you say in the language of the Hebrews is the language that is used by the Hebrews at the time, which means Aramaic.
SPEAKER_1: That's what it's saying.
SPEAKER_1: We would just say Aramaic.
SPEAKER_1: But you could look at this, for instance, there are a number of different times down through history where a population has adopted a foreign language and it has become the language of that population, that entire population.
SPEAKER_1: You can look particularly at the peoples we colonized.
SPEAKER_1: And so if you were to say, the language of this group is X, it doesn't mean that X is the language that corresponds to that name.
SPEAKER_1: So, for instance, American.
SPEAKER_1: We, yes, speak American English, but we speak English.
SPEAKER_1: We don't speak American.
SPEAKER_1: We speak English.
SPEAKER_1: And so you wouldn't say, the language of the Americans, that sounds weird to our ear.
SPEAKER_1: And so they should not have translated that way, because what they were doing was Judaizing.
SPEAKER_1: They were trying to imply that he was speaking Hebrew, which he wasn't.
SPEAKER_1: He was speaking Aramaic.
SPEAKER_1: So that's one of the only other little nitpicky things that I would say with the translation.
SPEAKER_1: But other than that, by and large, any modern translation in English of the New Testament is going to be fine.
SPEAKER_1: The Old Testament is a different matter, but I've gone over that previously, so I won't repeat that here.
SPEAKER_1: The next question, sort of a practical one.
SPEAKER_1: How ought men to find good husbands for their daughters?
SPEAKER_1: That is a load-bearing prepositional phrase, if ever there were one.
SPEAKER_1: Since sending them to college is so foolish.
SPEAKER_1: Yes, I'm going to agree, of course, that sending them off to college is incredibly foolish these days, and pretty much always has been.
SPEAKER_1: It's not advantageous.
SPEAKER_1: It is designed basically to destroy women, and also the university system in the process.
SPEAKER_1: Discussion for another time.
SPEAKER_1: But the question then is, how do you find husbands for your daughters, basically, to keep them out of trouble?
SPEAKER_1: Because if you marry them off younger, you're going to avoid a lot of the issues.
SPEAKER_1: Simple fact of the matter.
SPEAKER_1: I would say, first, you want to look at how God has designed the system to work ideally.
SPEAKER_1: And we went over this in Stone Choir a little bit, and I've addressed it elsewhere as well.
SPEAKER_1: But if you look at the way God designed the system, and I'm just going to speak about Europeans at this point, because talking about the third world with all of the inbreeding and other problems is a whole can of worms I just don't want to get into, and it's not relevant, quite frankly, to answering the question for this audience.
SPEAKER_1: With regard to marriage, you're going to look at the way God has designed the system, and the best indicator we have for that is peak fertility, because children are blessing from the Lord.
SPEAKER_1: Marriage is partly, not even necessarily primarily, but partly, for the creation of children, the propagation of the species.
SPEAKER_1: So, what is peak fertility?
SPEAKER_1: Peak fertility for white populations is essentially third or fourth cousins.
SPEAKER_1: Now, some people hear third or fourth cousin, and they think, ah, I don't want to marry my relative.
SPEAKER_1: Okay, your third or fourth cousin is pretty distant.
SPEAKER_1: I could pull up a chart, I think, but let's see if I have a cousin chart for those who aren't familiar with how this works.
SPEAKER_1: So, it sounds like, you know, third or fourth cousin is closely related, but it's not.
SPEAKER_1: When you're talking about problems with consanguinity or inbreeding, whichever term you want to use for that, you're really talking about first cousins, and a lot of places in the Western world have banned first cousin marriage, and we should all ban it, because it is not a good idea, that one is a bad idea.
SPEAKER_1: But when you get out to third or fourth cousin, you're not talking about any of those problems with being too closely genetically related or anything like that.
SPEAKER_1: You're talking about the way God has designed it, because you are meant to marry people within your own nation, and by the time you start getting out to a certain number of cousins, you basically out to the edges of your own nation.
SPEAKER_1: And so you want to look for places where you can find someone who is that level of related to you to be a husband for your daughters.
SPEAKER_1: Now, historically, the way that that's going to work is that you're going to have...
SPEAKER_1: This is probably going to be a little bit small on the screen, but I guess I will put a link to it in the show notes.
SPEAKER_1: But historically, with regard to trying to find a spouse for your daughters, you're going to have a lot of good options because you'll have extended family, you'll have family get-togethers, you'll have all these opportunities in order to find someone who is compatible.
SPEAKER_1: There's nothing wrong with talking about compatibility.
SPEAKER_1: Some of that grows over time, but some of it should be there at the beginning.
SPEAKER_1: You had opportunities to find compatible individuals for your daughters.
SPEAKER_1: That is somewhat challenging today for a number of reasons.
SPEAKER_1: One of the chief reasons is that most people have so few children, and so there are simply fewer individuals available.
SPEAKER_1: And there's also the issue of many of them have gone off to university, and then they have moved away, they've gone out of state, they're 5,000 miles away from their family, they're living in a foreign country, whatever it happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: That makes things more challenging.
SPEAKER_1: And so you're going to have to do the best you can with what is available to you.
SPEAKER_1: Part of that is going to be spending the time, investing the time and the effort in simply having the connections that make it possible to know who is available.
SPEAKER_1: Just knowing how many men are around who are the right sort of men and the right age.
SPEAKER_1: The age is, of course, broader for men than women, but part of it is building up those connections.
SPEAKER_1: This is something that, historically, was one of the duties, as it were, of women, because the women were the ones who kept track of what was going on in the extended family.
SPEAKER_1: And then the father, of course, was the one who had the veto power, the sign off on, okay, yes, you can marry my daughter, no, you cannot marry my daughter.
SPEAKER_1: But the women sort of kept track of that.
SPEAKER_1: That's something that we need to rebuild, because we have allowed it to just completely atrophy, basically to turn to dust.
SPEAKER_1: It no longer exists in our minds.
SPEAKER_1: We don't even send holiday cards to people anymore, which seems like such a trivial thing, but it's not.
SPEAKER_1: It's sort of the bare minimum level of maintaining that relationship with your extended family.
SPEAKER_1: You should be doing things with them when you can, if they live nearby.
SPEAKER_1: So, given the challenges that we face, I think the first thing you want to do is identify the potential pool, and then from there, pick the best candidate for your daughters.
SPEAKER_1: But it's going to take some time and effort in order to identify that pool of men.
SPEAKER_1: Now, if you can't find someone who's within that ideal window of, you know, third to fifth cousin, whatever it happens to be, it varies a little, one population to the next.
SPEAKER_1: But if you can't find someone who is within that, just find someone who is of the same nation as you.
SPEAKER_1: That's fine.
SPEAKER_1: There's nothing wrong with that.
SPEAKER_1: And you're going to find plenty of those men around.
SPEAKER_1: Where are you going to find them?
SPEAKER_1: Quite frankly, these days, actually, you're probably going to have an easier time finding men than women in the churches, which is a different problem and a different thing to address another time.
SPEAKER_1: But there are going to be plenty of good men in the churches, in the good churches, particularly now that we have better churches starting up.
SPEAKER_1: And so those connections are being rebuilt, particularly in the actually proper traditional conservative churches that are now being started up in order to basically rescue people out of the shipwreck that is the mainstream churches, as it were.
SPEAKER_1: So, there's no easy answer, really.
SPEAKER_1: There's no just, you know, here's where you find husbands for your daughters.
SPEAKER_1: That's not the world we live in, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_1: We face challenges that previous generations never had to face.
SPEAKER_1: There are fewer children, there are more spread out.
SPEAKER_1: Many people have delayed marriage.
SPEAKER_1: There are some very real troubles, very real problems.
SPEAKER_1: But, with regard to your daughters, the recommendation, the strong recommendation I would still give is marry them off young.
SPEAKER_1: You're going to avoid a lot of problems.
SPEAKER_1: Now, when I say young, I'm not saying 16.
SPEAKER_1: So, for the crazy people, I'm a Western European.
SPEAKER_1: The average age for marriage for women historically in Western European countries was somewhere between 21 and 24.
SPEAKER_1: That's what I mean by young, because that is old enough that you don't run into the weirdness of marrying off your teenage daughter.
SPEAKER_1: And you also will run, you will not run into the problems of having a woman who is in her late 20s, or late 30s, or worse, unmarried.
SPEAKER_1: Because by the time a woman gets to that age, there are a lot of other problems.
SPEAKER_1: A topic for another time to get into that one, because that one's sort of long and involved.
SPEAKER_1: But I think that's sort of the short version of the advice in order to try and find proper Christian husbands for your daughters.
SPEAKER_1: You aren't going to find perfect men, and your daughters aren't perfect.
SPEAKER_1: You know that better than any other man on the base of the planet, undoubtedly.
SPEAKER_1: But, you want to find them good spouses.
SPEAKER_1: And there are men still available.
SPEAKER_1: So put in the time and the effort.
SPEAKER_1: Build up that network.
SPEAKER_1: Have other people help you.
SPEAKER_1: It always helps to have more eyes on the problem.
SPEAKER_1: If you're the only one doing the work, the only one putting in the time, it may seem insurmountable.
SPEAKER_1: But if you get all of the old ladies at church to help, it's probably going to be a lot easier.
SPEAKER_1: The question about my favorite tank and words of encouragement to younger men.
SPEAKER_1: I think I will save both of those for next time simply because they are totally unrelated, as it were, but asked as sub points of a major question.
SPEAKER_1: What is with the music of the Stone Choir podcast?
SPEAKER_1: Does it have meaning or is it just crazy, literally synths and sped up hymns?
SPEAKER_1: It is, in fact, basically that, yes.
SPEAKER_1: No, I picked them intentionally.
SPEAKER_1: I did pick them deliberately.
SPEAKER_1: And the information about the hymns is available on the Stone Choir website under the resources tab, so you can go and look at that.
SPEAKER_1: But I'm just going to plead that Germans are allowed to resort to electronica.
SPEAKER_1: That's going to be my answer for that one.
SPEAKER_1: Drink a little bit of tea.
SPEAKER_1: The next question, another question about marriage.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe sensing a theme, unsurprising, given the current challenges of which we're all certainly aware.
SPEAKER_1: I'm really struggling with how to inform future spouse material on my beliefs.
SPEAKER_1: The last time I did, it ended in her divorcing me.
SPEAKER_1: I know that they have zero political opinions with any weight, but issues like not allowing my future children to marry non-whites is a real problem.
SPEAKER_1: The first sort of initial response to this would be, you don't need to inform your girlfriend, your fiance, your wife, about everything when it comes to politics, because quite frankly, women shouldn't care that much.
SPEAKER_1: Women should be involved with other things in politics.
SPEAKER_1: Politics is a man's game, and it is unfortunate how many women are deeply invested in it now, partly because men have abandoned the field, partly because women are doing things they shouldn't be doing, but you just don't need to discuss everything with her.
SPEAKER_1: You don't.
SPEAKER_1: Just like you don't need to discuss everything about your job with your wife.
SPEAKER_1: You can leave some of that stuff at the office, as it were, whatever your office happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: So, do you need to discuss it with her?
SPEAKER_1: Maybe think about that.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe don't bring up every topic with her.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying that you keep things from your wife.
SPEAKER_1: I know there are some women who will hear what I said and get all up in arms about it.
SPEAKER_1: Rather, I'm saying there are simply things that do not concern women.
SPEAKER_1: And so they don't need to hear about them.
SPEAKER_1: They don't need to know about them.
SPEAKER_1: If you want to discuss them, discuss them with your male friends.
SPEAKER_1: So, that addresses sort of the initial part of the question, but then the weightier, the more important part of the question is, really, in essence, how do you manage to get your wife to agree with you on the major important issues so that you don't wind up with some enormous fight in the future over what you want to do with regard to your children?
SPEAKER_1: And that's a legitimate concern.
SPEAKER_1: That is important, certainly.
SPEAKER_1: I think, in part, it's not going to matter.
SPEAKER_1: And the reason I say that is because there's not that much time left before things are pretty well decided in most Western nations.
SPEAKER_1: It's going to be very obvious, even to women who are not political and not involved in this stuff, just how bad things are for the white population, and just how things are trending in basically every Western nation.
SPEAKER_1: And so, you're not going to have to explain it to her, because it's going to be extremely obvious.
SPEAKER_1: What you want to do is, when she starts to notice those things, and she inevitably will notice some of them, not all of them, but some of them, you want to be there in order to help her through that, in order to help guide her through that, and discuss these things with her, and recommend easily digestible resources.
SPEAKER_1: Don't hand her, you know, here's Mein Kampf.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe don't start there.
SPEAKER_1: But you want to be the one who is there for her when the world looks like it is all going to pieces, because that's one of your roles as a husband.
SPEAKER_1: Your role as the man is to be the rock, to be the one who is firmly founded.
SPEAKER_1: You have to make her feel safe.
SPEAKER_1: And so if you start bringing up issues about how bad the world is and everything is falling apart, and this is terrible, and if you do that, you're going to make her feel insecure and unsafe.
SPEAKER_1: You're doing the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do as a man.
SPEAKER_1: That is going to be disastrous for your relationship.
SPEAKER_1: What you want to do is be the one who has the answers, who can reassure her and tell her there is a right way, there is a correct way to work through these things.
SPEAKER_1: That's what you want to do, because that's going to give her that security that she needs, and that is going to make her depend on you even more, which is a good thing.
SPEAKER_1: That's what she should do.
SPEAKER_1: That's what a wife is supposed to do with regard to her husband.
SPEAKER_1: So, the overall answer, essentially, is, don't run headlong into this, trying to bring a woman up to speed with everything you believe about politics and society and race and all that stuff.
SPEAKER_1: That's a recipe for disaster.
SPEAKER_1: It's not what you're supposed to have in a marriage.
SPEAKER_1: We have this tendency in the modern world to try and treat a wife as if she's just another male friend.
SPEAKER_1: Your wife should not be your male friend.
SPEAKER_1: Your male friends should be your male friends.
SPEAKER_1: Discuss politics and all of these things with them.
SPEAKER_1: Go out to the pub, have a beer, discuss politics there, go home, discuss something else with your wife.
SPEAKER_1: She's not your male friend with whom you discuss these issues, but when she starts to recognize these things, when she starts to have concerns and worries and questions, be there for her to be someone who can answer them in a way that helps make her feel secure.
SPEAKER_1: You don't have to lie to her, you don't have to tell her that everything's going to be fine, the world is great.
SPEAKER_1: You can be honest about the state of the world without making her feel like everything has gone completely out of control and is on fire.
SPEAKER_1: Because again, the last thing you want to do as a man is make a woman feel like she is not secure.
SPEAKER_1: Now, there's a different relationship there with regard to her feeling like she's in a little bit of danger, but that's a different issue.
SPEAKER_1: With regard to this stuff, she has to feel like she's secure.
SPEAKER_1: That's your job.
SPEAKER_1: So don't run headlong into the wood chipper, basically.
SPEAKER_1: You're not going to gain anything, she's not going to gain anything, and your marriage is going to suffer.
SPEAKER_1: So can you bring her along on some of these things?
SPEAKER_1: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_1: Do you want to bring her along on all these things?
SPEAKER_1: Absolutely not.
SPEAKER_1: I think that's sort of the basic answer to that question there.
SPEAKER_1: I see a question that I can answer just quickly in the chat caught my eye.
SPEAKER_1: Do I believe that we are limited to 120 years?
SPEAKER_1: No, I think that when God says the days of man shall be, and there are a couple of different places it says that, I think that he's basically giving an average for what we are descending down to from what the ancient patriarchs were back when men lived for centuries.
SPEAKER_1: Obviously, originally Adam in definite lifespan.
SPEAKER_1: But I think it's saying where things are going to level off.
SPEAKER_1: It can get worse.
SPEAKER_1: Look at the, say, Australian Aborigines.
SPEAKER_1: If you are so genetically degenerate that you have so many problems, such a cumulative mutational load, that you basically can't even hope to get to 85, unless you're some weird outlier fluke, then obviously you've fallen well below that.
SPEAKER_1: But if you don't have those problems, and you have the medical interventions, and various things like that, yes, I believe we could live much longer.
SPEAKER_1: I do actually, in fact, think that if we, I'm going to say we could, I'm not saying we should, I'll get to that.
SPEAKER_1: But if we went sort of wholesale in on the technology to extend life, yes, I think we could achieve something approximating in definite lifespan because insofar as we are aware at this point, there are a number of big hurdles with regard to human longevity.
SPEAKER_1: One is that the systems for clearing out basically detritus in the brain aren't very good because they're fallen.
SPEAKER_1: It's not because God designed them poorly, it's because they're fallen and corrupt in a fallen world.
SPEAKER_1: And so after a while, stuff starts to build up in the brain, causes all sorts of problems, contributing to dementia, Alzheimer's, all sorts of the things that eventually wind up killing us.
SPEAKER_1: But there's that issue.
SPEAKER_1: And then the other major one would obviously be the DNA tail, right?
SPEAKER_1: Because every time our cells replicate, they lose a little bit of that tail.
SPEAKER_1: It's basically a protective buffer.
SPEAKER_1: Well, we do actually know how to restore that buffer.
SPEAKER_1: And so in theory, if we could chain a few things together, a number of different treatments, and we have some ideas how to wash some of the stuff out of the brain too, if we could get to that point, then theoretically, we wouldn't have a biological, which is noteworthy, expiration date.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think psychologically we can make it much past, like, 150, 180.
SPEAKER_1: I think modern humanity would just kind of go insane after you've lived much longer than that.
SPEAKER_1: And perhaps it would be those of higher intelligence would go crazy sooner if you live that long.
SPEAKER_1: I don't know.
SPEAKER_1: I might lean that way a little bit, with regard to that being the case.
SPEAKER_1: So yes, I think we could live longer.
SPEAKER_1: No, I don't think that we really can, because I think there are psychological limitations that we basically can't overcome.
SPEAKER_1: Unless you have that sort of person who's just happy to do the exact same thing day in and day out, with no novelty, no change, and no thought.
SPEAKER_1: That person maybe could live forever.
SPEAKER_1: But that's a different question.
SPEAKER_1: So yes, the short answer is I do think that we could biologically live more than 120.
SPEAKER_1: Let's see, what is the next question here?
SPEAKER_1: I remember you speaking on how scripture says, when you fast and not if, in a Stone Choir episode, could you consider going into fasting and when and how someone should go about it?
SPEAKER_1: Fasting is one of those practices that it has both a personal and a corporate dynamic, or an element to it.
SPEAKER_1: And so, personally fasting is going to be a matter of your own personal practice, your own personal practice of the Christian faith.
SPEAKER_1: So maybe you pick one day a week where you fast for all the daylight hours of that day, or you fast from evening the day before until evening the next day, or the morning of the day after.
SPEAKER_1: Or whatever it happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: Or maybe it's every other week, and you fast for a couple of days.
SPEAKER_1: The point with regard to fasting is that the time that you would have spent eating, and so if particularly historically, this is more relevant because historically, you spent more time on this because you had to prep everything from scratch after you went out in the garden and collected it and you had to grind your own flour and all these things.
SPEAKER_1: And so, the amount of time spent on prep plus eating plus clean up was pretty big historically, unless you were a nobleman, of course, in which case you had servants to do that for you, which is effectively what we have today, because you can go to the store and buy food that's pre-made.
SPEAKER_1: The point is that time that you would have spent doing these things, you dedicate to the things of God.
SPEAKER_1: That's the point of it being Christian fasting.
SPEAKER_1: Just abstaining from food isn't necessarily a Christian practice.
SPEAKER_1: Now, it has health benefits.
SPEAKER_1: There are very real health benefits of fasting, and the scientific literature has proved that conclusively at this point, and they keep finding other things.
SPEAKER_1: So, there is that element to it as well.
SPEAKER_1: There's nothing wrong with doing something because it is good for the body, but also as a spiritual element.
SPEAKER_1: And that's certainly the case with fasting.
SPEAKER_1: So, when you fast is going to be a personal decision as part of your personal practice of the Christian faith.
SPEAKER_1: It is something that you should do.
SPEAKER_1: It is something that is part of the Christian religion.
SPEAKER_1: It is not something that is optional even.
SPEAKER_1: It is absolutely something that you should do.
SPEAKER_1: Now, the corporate aspect, and I do think this is important.
SPEAKER_1: I think it is something that we sort of lost along the way in our over reaction to correcting the abuses of Rome.
SPEAKER_1: I think that having national days of prayer and fasting is a good thing.
SPEAKER_1: I think we should return to having that.
SPEAKER_1: I think we should have periods in the calendar when we fast as a nation.
SPEAKER_1: I think that is something that is absolutely part of being a Christian people.
SPEAKER_1: Now, I don't think it's the sort of thing where, you know, you eat fish on Friday or something like that.
SPEAKER_1: I think that's turning it into what is effectively works righteousness.
SPEAKER_1: That is making it into an observance of a ceremony for the sake of the ceremony, not for the sake of the thing that is the purposes of observing the ceremony.
SPEAKER_1: So, like I said, you want to do this in order to focus on the things of God.
SPEAKER_1: You're not fasting just to fast.
SPEAKER_1: That's not the point.
SPEAKER_1: When you start having the sort of silly practices like, well, you can't have meat, but fish, fish isn't meat, or even some sillier options in some places down through history, I don't think that that's what we should be doing.
SPEAKER_1: But if we have, say, a three-day period in the calendar, where, except for, of course, pregnant women and those who are usually accepted from fasting, because we recognize that there's some people who cannot fast, diabetics can't really do the same things as others when it comes to fasting, they should look into some of this stuff, though.
SPEAKER_1: Tangent.
SPEAKER_1: But we should have, you know, a three-day period in the calendar where everyone fasts, the entire nation fasts, repents of our sins, and the sins of our fathers, because that is a Christian confession, focuses on the things of God, because God promises to hear when his people humble themselves before him and come to him in prayer.
SPEAKER_1: Fasting and prayer go together, and so absolutely it should be part of our national practice of the faith, as well as our personal practice.
SPEAKER_1: But the personal aspect is going to be something that you have to decide.
SPEAKER_1: And there's nothing wrong with making it match your calendar and your family's calendar and things like that, because certainly if you're married and you have children and things, you're going to have to work this around your family life.
SPEAKER_1: That's perfectly acceptable as a Christian.
SPEAKER_1: Well, I can answer this one easily.
SPEAKER_1: Are you invested in the stock market?
SPEAKER_1: No.
SPEAKER_1: So, that's a pretty easy one to answer.
SPEAKER_1: Nice short answer for that one.
SPEAKER_1: I think the last question that I will do today, because I believe I'm right, in a little over an hour, I think.
SPEAKER_1: Modulo that intro.
SPEAKER_1: What are your thoughts on Memento 70?
SPEAKER_1: So, I think what I will do is pull that up, and we can look at it a little bit.
SPEAKER_1: So, Memento 70 is actually quite related to the last question.
SPEAKER_1: It is a Christian men's group, I guess, as it were.
SPEAKER_1: I looked at it a little bit before I picked the question for this episode, but I have some serious misgivings about it.
SPEAKER_1: I don't necessarily have misgivings about the content, because I didn't pay for it, so I don't have access to their various prayers or whatever it is they provide you with, devotional materials.
SPEAKER_1: I do find it weird that they have a mission statement, and the word Lutheran never appears in it.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying that because I'm a Lutheran.
SPEAKER_1: I'm saying that because I look at the contributors, and they're all Lutherans.
SPEAKER_1: I find it a little weird when men are something and sort of hide that in what they're doing.
SPEAKER_1: Now, obviously, they're clearly admitting to being Lutheran, as it were, in their bios here.
SPEAKER_1: But not having it in their other materials seems very odd to me.
SPEAKER_1: Because if they are earnestly Lutheran, then certainly that is going to show up in their teaching.
SPEAKER_1: And I think they should be upfront about that.
SPEAKER_1: I also, and I know some men are a little uncomfortable with this, but that's fine because they should be.
SPEAKER_1: I don't like that they're charging for it.
SPEAKER_1: I have no problem with these sorts of sites taking donations.
SPEAKER_1: There's nothing wrong with that.
SPEAKER_1: I do not like charging for Christian materials, because I don't think they belong to the man, they belong to God, they belong to the church.
SPEAKER_1: If you are producing something that is consonant with the Word of God, if you are producing something that is theologically and doctrinally sound, you should give that away for free.
SPEAKER_1: Because regardless of the ability of other men to pay for it, they should have access to it if it is sound.
SPEAKER_1: If it's not sound, you shouldn't have made it.
SPEAKER_1: And so, I would just never charge for this sort of thing.
SPEAKER_1: I don't charge for any of the things that I do.
SPEAKER_1: I don't charge for this.
SPEAKER_1: I don't charge for my website.
SPEAKER_1: I don't charge for any of that stuff.
SPEAKER_1: Stone Choir is free.
SPEAKER_1: I know that someone somewhere is going to say, oh, you have a $10 registration free on the forum.
SPEAKER_1: That's to cut down on spam, because I can't possibly deal with the flood of spam any more than I have.
SPEAKER_1: And quite frankly, the majority of the questions that I've answered have not been submitted on the forum.
SPEAKER_1: They've been in the chat or on X or Telegram or various other places.
SPEAKER_1: And I've sort of collected them as I go.
SPEAKER_1: But I just don't think that you can charge for these things.
SPEAKER_1: I think that it is morally wrongful to do so.
SPEAKER_1: And I would go so far as to say that it includes Christian books.
SPEAKER_1: They should be released for free.
SPEAKER_1: You can charge for the print version, because there is a real cost attached to producing the thing, but the PDF should always be free.
SPEAKER_1: There should be a web version, something like that.
SPEAKER_1: That should be available, because I just think that it's wrong not to have that be available.
SPEAKER_1: Because again, it doesn't belong to you.
SPEAKER_1: I don't know why it randomly decided to change the size of the browser there, but apparently it's just being uncooperative.
SPEAKER_1: Anyway, another issue that I had when I was looking at it, I noticed that when I pulled up how it works, I'm going to try to get OBS to agree with me and stop changing the size.
SPEAKER_1: This is in theory something made by American Lutherans, American Christians, aimed at, I believe, American men most likely between the ages of say 20 and 60, right?
SPEAKER_1: Somewhere in there.
SPEAKER_1: One of the first issues they talk about is pornography.
SPEAKER_1: So, you know, obviously younger men.
SPEAKER_1: OBS is just going to keep changing it, so I can't make my point because I want the picture there.
SPEAKER_1: They choose to use a black guy as their website image.
SPEAKER_1: I just find that fundamentally unserious.
SPEAKER_1: If you're going to target a particular group, show that group in your materials.
SPEAKER_1: The same sort of thing when I went to buy a new sweater recently, and a bunch of the models for wool sweaters were blacks.
SPEAKER_1: I have never in my life seen a black man wearing the style of sweater I was trying to buy.
SPEAKER_1: It's just completely ridiculous.
SPEAKER_1: It shows not just a sort of fundamental unseriousness with regard to these men, but an evil.
SPEAKER_1: There's something wicked about it.
SPEAKER_1: There's something wrong about what they are doing.
SPEAKER_1: And so, no, I would not recommend this group.
SPEAKER_1: I cannot recommend this group.
SPEAKER_1: And I say that, while looking at some of these contributors, and some of these contributors aren't bad men.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not going to go through and pick out which ones I like and which ones I don't.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not going to do that here.
SPEAKER_1: But I am going to say that, given the current state of the LCMS, particularly the pricidium, so called, which is the president and vice presidents, I am not going to recommend anything that has an LCMS president or vice president involved in the project, because thus far I have not seen a single one of them stand up and do anything about the extreme wickedness that is infesting the Lutheran Church in America.
SPEAKER_1: And they are in a position of authority to do that.
SPEAKER_1: They are in the position of essentially bishops.
SPEAKER_1: There's some weirdness because you have president, vice president, and you have district presidents, but at any rate, they have ecclesiastical authority.
SPEAKER_1: They're going to receive the stricter judgment.
SPEAKER_1: They haven't done anything to avert the problems, despite being warned repeatedly by many men.
SPEAKER_1: They continue to cover up problems.
SPEAKER_1: They continue to permit them to occur.
SPEAKER_1: And in some cases, they are overseeing them and even causing them.
SPEAKER_1: And so, no, I can't recommend anything that has any LCMS vice president involved in it, because I don't trust a single one of them.
SPEAKER_1: Does that mean that the materials they will produce will all be bad?
SPEAKER_1: No, I don't think so.
SPEAKER_1: Some of them will undoubtedly be good.
SPEAKER_1: But, again, they should be available for free if they're sound, because Christian men should not charge for things that belong to God.
SPEAKER_1: And sound theology, sound doctrine belongs to God.
SPEAKER_1: This is one of those areas where just because you invested a bunch of time and effort, doesn't mean you get a charge for it.
SPEAKER_1: You have no right to do that.
SPEAKER_1: And if you want to charge for your written works, whatever it happens to be, great, go write fiction, go write nonfiction, not theology, not Christian materials, not devotional materials, because those belong to God and to the church.
SPEAKER_1: And so you do not get to charge for them.
SPEAKER_1: So if they want to do this and they do a good job, great.
SPEAKER_1: But they need to drop that introductory fee down to zero dollars a month.
SPEAKER_1: If men want to donate, fine, so be it.
SPEAKER_1: And you should.
SPEAKER_1: If you use the materials from some Christian teacher, you should donate something to that teacher, because scripture is very clear, the workman is worth his wages, and those who teach the gospel, who preach the gospel, should make their living by the gospel.
SPEAKER_1: That doesn't mean that every man who teaches and preaches needs to be supported by the church at large, as it were, because of course, there are plenty of men who don't do it full time or whatever it happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: There's some reason they shouldn't, necessarily, be supported fully by the church.
SPEAKER_1: But at the same time, we've sort of lost this general societal sense of supporting things that need to be supported.
SPEAKER_1: Historically, many of these things would have been supported by the nobility, who would have been able to retain various individuals, including artists and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: It's the reason we have the great stained glass in the cathedrals in Europe.
SPEAKER_1: Those were not crowdfunded, as it were, which is sort of how things work today.
SPEAKER_1: Those were paid for by kings and electors and great nobles.
SPEAKER_1: But that's not what we have today, because things are not rightly ordered, and so we have to make do with what we have.
SPEAKER_1: And part of that is developing a culture, redeveloping a culture, of paying for things when we find them useful, even if there isn't a paywall.
SPEAKER_1: Just because you didn't have to pay to access it doesn't mean that you shouldn't pay for having had access to it.
SPEAKER_1: I can think of a particular concrete example.
SPEAKER_1: There is, fairly close by to where I live here in East Tennessee, a particular driving loop out in the National Park.
SPEAKER_1: It is called Cades Cove, and it's beautiful.
SPEAKER_1: If you ever happen to be in the area, and it is not the height of tourist season, you should do the drive.
SPEAKER_1: If it's the height of tourist season, block out six hours of your day, you might literally be stuck in traffic that long.
SPEAKER_1: Not the point I'm making, but just a warning.
SPEAKER_1: At the entrance and the exit, there is a little box where you can give a little bit of money.
SPEAKER_1: And the reason it's a little box where you can give a little bit of money is because there's absolutely no signal there.
SPEAKER_1: You will not be able to pay with a credit card or whatever it happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: There's not going to be Venmo at this point.
SPEAKER_1: But for those who are visiting the National Park, this one doesn't have an entrance fee.
SPEAKER_1: There are no fees for anything except for you're supposed to pay for parking, but it's very loosely enforced.
SPEAKER_1: And so if you drive through this and you enjoy this beautiful scenery and all of the work that has gone into that, because there's a lot of time and effort and expense that goes into maintaining the national parks.
SPEAKER_1: And so if you enjoyed that, I do think that you have a moral obligation to put something in that box.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe you can only put $5, so be it.
SPEAKER_1: There's nothing wrong with putting what you were able to put.
SPEAKER_1: You can think of the two pennies with the widow in the temple box.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying give everything in which you have to live, of course.
SPEAKER_1: But we need to support these things, because if we don't support them, what happens to them?
SPEAKER_1: They get destroyed.
SPEAKER_1: It's the tragedy of the commons or the tragedy of the anti-commons, depending on the particular workings, in this case, obviously, the commons.
SPEAKER_1: But if you don't support these things, they don't keep going.
SPEAKER_1: They don't just fall out of the sky, because with regard to, say, very useful resources, I'm not going to give a particular example, because I'm not going to necessarily endorse anything right now, but if there are good Christian materials being produced, we need to support those Christian authors.
SPEAKER_1: I think they should give away their work for free.
SPEAKER_1: I think the PDF should be available.
SPEAKER_1: Again, you can charge for the physical copy, because there's a real cost attached to producing that thing.
SPEAKER_1: But you should give away the electronic copy.
SPEAKER_1: But then men who use those materials, who profit from them, should support the men who created them, because that enables those men to continue making those materials, and it also fulfills the obligation that we have as Christians to support our Christian brothers, particularly those who are teaching and preaching, because Scripture is very clear.
SPEAKER_1: They are supposed to be supported by other Christians.
SPEAKER_1: Now, again, if they're doing it part-time, then yes, they should work as well.
SPEAKER_1: They should do other things as well.
SPEAKER_1: But we do have that moral obligation.
SPEAKER_1: And it's something that has simply fallen away in our society for a number of reasons, largely because of the just complete chaos we have today with so-called multiculturalism and all those other problems, because we don't have the societal cohesion that we once had.
SPEAKER_1: But we can't allow that to destroy our own groups.
SPEAKER_1: Within our own in-groups, we need to support people, because that is vitally important, because if we don't, we will lose access to the wealth of materials that we have today.
SPEAKER_1: So I think that sort of both answers the question and goes off on a bit of a tangent, but one that I think that is vitally important to mention, and, you know, it is the giving season, as it were, which I don't think there's anything wrong with the Christmas season being a season of giving.
SPEAKER_1: Gifts should not be the focus.
SPEAKER_1: Christ is the focus.
SPEAKER_1: We're in the season of Advent.
SPEAKER_1: It's a penitent season, penitential season.
SPEAKER_1: But there's nothing wrong with having that focus on being charitable, because charity, being charitable, is indeed a Christian virtue, and a very important one.
SPEAKER_1: Particularly care for the poor and less fortunate, which we should certainly remember this time of year.
SPEAKER_1: And I guess that's a good way to close out this particular episode, particularly because there will be an episode next week, but it will not be Thursday, because Thursday is Christmas, and you should all be with your families.
SPEAKER_1: I'll be spending time with my family as well, and you should be doing that instead of asking me questions and listening to me answer them.
SPEAKER_1: I will be back on Friday, so I will the day after Christmas, instead of Christmas, so it will not be much delayed, but it will be slightly delayed.
SPEAKER_1: So, thank you for those of you who submitted questions, and for those whose questions I did not answer, I have written them down, I have a list of them, I will get to them as I can in the coming weeks, in the coming months, perhaps, because the list keeps growing rather rapidly.
SPEAKER_1: But again, thank you for your time, thank you for submitting the questions, and I hope you all have a wonderful evening, a great rest of Advent, not much of it left, but the balance of Advent, and Merry Christmas to all of you.
SPEAKER_1: God bless.