SPEAKER_1: It is the 13th of February, 2026.
SPEAKER_1: I am Corey J.
SPEAKER_1: Mahler, and this is At Any Cost.
SPEAKER_1: Before we get into the questions for this evening, I would like to address something that's related to some previous questions, but also somewhat separate from them.
SPEAKER_1: I said that I would address the, we'll call it an issue, it's not really an issue, but Ash Wednesday and how it is observed.
SPEAKER_1: And so, I'm going to start there tonight, as soon as I pull up my actual notes here.
SPEAKER_1: So, when it comes to Ash Wednesday, there are obviously going to be a number of issues for those who come from primarily the low church tradition, which the distinction between low church and high church, for those who don't know, is basically the degree of ceremony and liturgy and things like that that are present in the church service.
SPEAKER_1: And so, Lutherans, with some exceptions, are high church.
SPEAKER_1: The Roman Catholics are high church.
SPEAKER_1: The Baptist church down the street is low church.
SPEAKER_1: That's the distinction there.
SPEAKER_1: It's not necessarily implying that one is really good because it's high church and one is really bad because it's low church.
SPEAKER_1: It's sort of the equivalent of, in languages, a lot of times, you'll have a high and a low version.
SPEAKER_1: And a lot of times, it means geographically.
SPEAKER_1: So, for instance, low German is called low German because it's from an area that is closer to sea level.
SPEAKER_1: That's all it means.
SPEAKER_1: High German happened to become the standard largely because of Martin Luther, but that's a separate topic.
SPEAKER_1: And so, the first thing that I would say about observing Ash Wednesday, and of course, I'm getting into this because Ash Wednesday is coming up very soon here, but the first thing that I would say about it is that observing the church year itself is good.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying that you have to have one church year for the entirety of the world.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think you should because, for instance, you are going to have different saints in different nations, and I think that's perfectly fine.
SPEAKER_1: You can have your own calendar of saints for your nation.
SPEAKER_1: There are going to be saints that were particularly relevant, particularly significant to your people, that maybe don't matter to someone on the other side of the world, at least not as much.
SPEAKER_1: And so, the Germans will have different saints from the Americans, will have different saints from the French, will have different saints from, if the church is revived there, the Japanese.
SPEAKER_1: So, that's fine.
SPEAKER_1: But the basics of the church year are universal and should be universal because the basics of the church year, of course, and I will link to a church year calendar in the notes here.
SPEAKER_1: I'll put a note for myself, because I think it's very good to have that.
SPEAKER_1: And it's nice to have a poster of it.
SPEAKER_1: I have some posters that I need to get framed, but there's some very nice posters for the church year now, if that is the sort of thing you like to have in your home.
SPEAKER_1: But the basics are that you have the festival part of the church year and you have the time of the church part of the church year.
SPEAKER_1: Basically, it's split in half.
SPEAKER_1: And so, you have the lead up to Christmas, you have Christmas, you have the lead up to Easter, and you have Easter.
SPEAKER_1: That's sort of a very rough outline of it.
SPEAKER_1: Of course, there's other stuff in there as well.
SPEAKER_1: You have Epiphany and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: We're in Epiphany right now, for those who don't know.
SPEAKER_1: Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent.
SPEAKER_1: And I'm just going to go over how the Western church practices these things, because those of you who have decided to become very interested in the Eastern church have probably already delved into this, and you don't need me to tell you how your tradition practices it.
SPEAKER_1: And I'm a Western Christian, so I'm going over what the West does.
SPEAKER_1: In the Western tradition, Lent is the 40-day period, starting with Ash Wednesday, including Ash Wednesday, leading up to Easter Sunday.
SPEAKER_1: Now, that does not include the Sundays in that period.
SPEAKER_1: And the reason for that, this is actually a distinction between the East and the West, but the reason for that is that Sundays are always feast days.
SPEAKER_1: The distinction there is that you are fasting in some way, typically, that's part of the observation of the Lenten period.
SPEAKER_1: You don't fast on Sunday.
SPEAKER_1: It doesn't mean you can't, because if you give up whatever it happens to be, you give up coffee.
SPEAKER_1: And I went over that in a previous episode, so I'm not going to reiterate all of that here, but you give up something to remind you of Christ and his sacrifice, to serve as just that little impetus to remind you and make you think about these things.
SPEAKER_1: That's the goal there.
SPEAKER_1: It's not because you're worshiping God and warranting your salvation.
SPEAKER_1: It's not works righteousness, and I'll get into that more, but you don't have to go back to having that on Sundays, but that is traditionally how Western Christians have observed it, because Sunday again is a feast day.
SPEAKER_1: It is meant to be a celebration.
SPEAKER_1: Every Sunday church service is a celebration.
SPEAKER_1: And so that conflict there that you would have if you were fasting and celebrating at the same time, that was not a thing in the Western church, because we simply don't fast in that way on Sundays.
SPEAKER_1: As I pointed out before, some forms of fasting, completely fine on Sunday.
SPEAKER_1: I, for instance, hold to the ancient practice of fasting before you receive the sacrament on Sunday.
SPEAKER_1: Nothing wrong with that, completely fine.
SPEAKER_1: But then after that, celebrate that as a feast day.
SPEAKER_1: I think that is the correct practice.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying you have to.
SPEAKER_1: I think it is good practice.
SPEAKER_1: And so the 40 days are not including the Sundays in that period.
SPEAKER_1: 40, of course, being a number that is related to how God deals with men and a period of some importance in the life of a person or the life of a nation, history, God's salvation, all these things.
SPEAKER_1: God likes the number 40 when dealing with human beings.
SPEAKER_1: You see this all over in the scriptures, all over in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_1: And the focus then of this Lenten period in total, not just Ash Wednesday itself, but Ash Wednesday in particular has these elements, would be the nature and the reality of sin, the consequences of sin, which of course is death, death being the wages of sin, and then Christ's redemptive work.
SPEAKER_1: And the way that we have this, of course, on Ash Wednesday, is that it's hard not to remember that, you know, from dust you came into dust you shall return.
SPEAKER_1: It says earth in the Septuagint, but taking a little bit of literary license there, you recognize it means the same thing.
SPEAKER_1: You are the man of dust, the man of the earth.
SPEAKER_1: That's how mankind was made, formed from the dust to the ground.
SPEAKER_1: And so, you are reminding yourself, and through that church service, being reminded of the fact that you are of the earth, you are God's creation, but you are also fallen, and you will return to the dust, because you will die, unless God happens to come back right now, in which case, those of us who are currently alive don't die, we're transformed, it's a different thing, but everyone else dies.
SPEAKER_1: But you have that reminder of Christ's redemptive work as well, because you have the imposition of ashes in the symbol of a cross.
SPEAKER_1: That's your reminder.
SPEAKER_1: Yes, I am dust, but my sins have been forgiven by Christ, and so I will be resurrected, I will see eternal life, I will not taste the second death.
SPEAKER_1: But I want to go over some passages in scripture as well, and I know there's one in particular that those who have, will say, some hesitance with regard to Ash Wednesday and the way it's practiced.
SPEAKER_1: I will go over that one last, but I'm going to go over some other ones as well.
SPEAKER_1: So I will pull up Logos here.
SPEAKER_1: Thankfully, it cooperated.
SPEAKER_1: Always good to see that.
SPEAKER_1: And the first one I want to pull up here is, of course, from Jonah, and that's Jonah chapter three.
SPEAKER_1: Starting with verse five here.
SPEAKER_1: I will change the names to what you're used to, because this version of, this translation of scripture is very literal to the Greek.
SPEAKER_1: And the men of Nineveh believed God and proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth from the great among them unto the small among them.
SPEAKER_1: And the news reached the king of Nineveh, and he rose from his throne and removed his robe from himself, and covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes.
SPEAKER_1: And a proclamation was made, and it was spoken in Nineveh by the king and his nobles, saying, Let people and animals and cattle and sheep not taste anything or feed or drink water.
SPEAKER_1: And the people and animals put on sackcloth, and they cried fervently to God.
SPEAKER_1: And they turned each from his evil way, and from the injustice in his hands, saying, Who knows if God will repent and turn from the anger of his wrath, and we will not perish?
SPEAKER_1: And God saw their deeds, that they turned from their evil ways, and God repented at the calamity, which he said he would do to them, and he did not do it.
SPEAKER_1: Part of the reason to have a period, a season of penance, a season of fasting, is to recognize that we live in a sinful society, and we desperately need God's forgiveness.
SPEAKER_1: And these days, it is perhaps even more relevant for those of us living in the West, and for many of us living in America, because much of the audience is going to be American, not all, but much of the audience.
SPEAKER_1: Our government is incredibly wicked.
SPEAKER_1: We are living in a society that is incredibly evil, that is doing horrendously evil things, even as we speak.
SPEAKER_1: Perhaps more of them, because this is Friday night instead of Thursday night, but we live in evil times among evil people.
SPEAKER_1: That is unfortunate, and it would be great if we could have a king who would proclaim this sort of thing, and we would have a national period of fasting and repentance, calling on God to forgive us our sins and turn from our evil ways.
SPEAKER_1: But we as Christians, at the very least, we can personally do that, and we can do that in a corporate sense as Christian congregations.
SPEAKER_1: That's part of what this is.
SPEAKER_1: You are repenting of your sins, and there's nothing wrong with doing something that demonstrates that in a concrete fashion.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying you have to put on sackcloth and go about gloomy and do all of those things.
SPEAKER_1: Part of that is going to be cultural.
SPEAKER_1: We're dealing with a different people here in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_1: But the imposition of ashes and reminding ourselves and others, because it serves that purpose as well, of the fact that we are fallen and we are sinful and we need God's forgiveness is a good thing.
SPEAKER_1: And it is part of making our society Christian.
SPEAKER_1: Having these sorts of practices in society demonstrates that the very least we want to have a Christian society, even if we currently very much do not.
SPEAKER_1: Then another example from the Old Testament here in Daniel 9.
SPEAKER_1: And I gave my face to the Lord God to find prayer and compassion with fasting and with ashes and sackcloth.
SPEAKER_1: And I prayed to the Lord God and acknowledged him and said, and I will let you read that if you are so inclined.
SPEAKER_1: And of course, I highly recommend you read through Daniel if you've never read it in the proper translation, which is from the Septuagint, of course.
SPEAKER_1: But again, you see fasting, sackcloth, ashes as part of repentance and part of calling on the Lord for deliverance in this case.
SPEAKER_1: And then the final example here, I'll pull from the New Testament.
SPEAKER_1: This is Luke 10, starting with verse 13.
SPEAKER_1: Woe to you, Chorazin, woe to you, Bethsaida, for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.
SPEAKER_1: But it will be more bearable in the judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you.
SPEAKER_1: And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven.
SPEAKER_1: You shall be brought down to Hades.
SPEAKER_1: These are the words of Christ, saying that that is how they would have responded, and it is a good thing that they would have done so.
SPEAKER_1: That is what we are doing when we observe Ash Wednesday.
SPEAKER_1: In the traditional way, the church has observed it for well over a thousand years, probably about fifteen or sixteen hundred years.
SPEAKER_1: This is a good tradition of the church, and I will get into more of that in just a second.
SPEAKER_1: But I know there's another passage that there are those who, again, don't like Ash Wednesday, or have some reason they believe that they should object to it, and they're going to want...
SPEAKER_1: I believe it's Matthew 6.
SPEAKER_1: Let me pull that up.
SPEAKER_1: Yes, it was.
SPEAKER_1: Matthew 6, of course, is the one they're going to think of.
SPEAKER_1: Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your father who is in heaven.
SPEAKER_1: Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others.
SPEAKER_1: Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.
SPEAKER_1: But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you.
SPEAKER_1: And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others.
SPEAKER_1: Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.
SPEAKER_1: But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door, and pray to your father who is in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you.
SPEAKER_1: And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the heathen do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.
SPEAKER_1: Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him.
SPEAKER_1: And then skipping ahead to the verse, of course, which people have in mind here.
SPEAKER_1: And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces, that their fasting may be seen by others.
SPEAKER_1: Truly I say to you, they have received their reward.
SPEAKER_1: But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your father who is in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you.
SPEAKER_1: And so, the objection that some people will bring up here is they'll try to say that, well, you're disfiguring your face, right?
SPEAKER_1: It's not the same thing here that is meant by disfiguring, but they'll try to say, you're doing it to be seen by others.
SPEAKER_1: You're doing this so you practice your righteousness before other men, and so you have your reward.
SPEAKER_1: It's not really for God.
SPEAKER_1: And the problem I have with that is that if you look at the fullness of the context here, the same exact argument could be leveled against public church services.
SPEAKER_1: Do you object to praying in a public church service?
SPEAKER_1: Do you object to singing hymns to God in a gathered congregation?
SPEAKER_1: You're doing it before others.
SPEAKER_1: The issue here is hypocrisy, as is often the case in scripture, as is often the case when Christ is condemning the wicked Jews, which is part of what he's doing here.
SPEAKER_1: The issue is not that you are necessarily doing something in public.
SPEAKER_1: Most of the Old Testament worship of God was conducted very publicly.
SPEAKER_1: Think of the temple service.
SPEAKER_1: Was that necessarily hypocritical because it was done in public?
SPEAKER_1: The answer is no.
SPEAKER_1: The problem here is if you do these things hypocritically, there is nothing wrong with having part of the practice of your Christianity be public.
SPEAKER_1: In fact, if you live in a Christian society, and we should all want to do so, part of the practice, part of the praxis of Christianity is necessarily going to be public.
SPEAKER_1: That's a good thing.
SPEAKER_1: So, what is being condemned here is not Ash Wednesday, it's not the imposition of ashes, it's not praying in public, it's not singing hymns in public, it's being a hypocrite, it's doing it to be seen by others instead of doing it for the sake of God.
SPEAKER_1: And that's a matter between the individual and God.
SPEAKER_1: If you are having the ashes imposed on your forehead so that you can go out and have other people see and say, look at what a righteous person I am, and I could certainly think of, there are some instances where the ashes have been used in a way that is inappropriate.
SPEAKER_1: You can think of some people who have gone on TV and said some things while wearing ashes on their forehead, that they should have been ashamed to say regardless.
SPEAKER_1: But the issue is hypocrisy, so don't be a hypocrite.
SPEAKER_1: But that almost goes without saying.
SPEAKER_1: And then the final point that I want to make about Ash Wednesday is really a matter of observing traditions and when it is good to do so.
SPEAKER_1: And the fundamental rule is very simple, very straightforward.
SPEAKER_1: As long as the tradition is not contrary to scripture, and as long as you are not using it in a way that is impermissible, which usually means believing that you are justified by your works, you're permitted to do it.
SPEAKER_1: And if it is for the sake of good order in the church or in society, then in some cases, you even should do it.
SPEAKER_1: I'm willing to go that far and say you should do it.
SPEAKER_1: I have an article on my site on the topic.
SPEAKER_1: I'll put that in the show notes as well.
SPEAKER_1: But these are to use the technical term adiaphora, adiaphora, whichever way you want to pronounce that.
SPEAKER_1: It is Greek translated into English, so use it whatever way you want.
SPEAKER_1: It's not binding, but in many cases, it is good.
SPEAKER_1: I would say the practice, the observance of these feasts and festivals in the church year, in the church calendar are good and that we should retain them.
SPEAKER_1: We observed them for a thousand years, more than a thousand years in Christendom.
SPEAKER_1: They were part of what reminded people they're Christian, their society is Christian, and it means something to be a Christian.
SPEAKER_1: And I think that's good.
SPEAKER_1: So, if you don't want to observe Ash Wednesday, it's not required of you.
SPEAKER_1: I think that you should.
SPEAKER_1: I think it's a good thing.
SPEAKER_1: I think it is part of the practice of Christianity, but it's not binding.
SPEAKER_1: It's not a sin not to observe it.
SPEAKER_1: And that's the same with many of these traditions.
SPEAKER_1: And I want to add a quote from Valter, the founder of the LCMS.
SPEAKER_1: And, yes, it does condemn Roman Catholicism in this case, but, and some other things as well.
SPEAKER_1: That's not the point.
SPEAKER_1: I want you to get the core point of what he is saying about the practice, about traditions, observing these things.
SPEAKER_1: We refuse to be guided by those who are offended by our church customs.
SPEAKER_1: We adhere to them all the more firmly when someone wants to cause us to have a guilty conscience on account of them.
SPEAKER_1: It is truly distressing that many of our fellow Christians find the difference between Lutheranism and Papism in outward things.
SPEAKER_1: It is a pity and dreadful cowardice when one sacrifices the good ancient church customs to please the deluded American sects, lest they accuse us of being papistic.
SPEAKER_1: There are many good church customs that have been handed down to us over the centuries, in some case millennia plus.
SPEAKER_1: They do not become bad because they were practiced by men who held false beliefs.
SPEAKER_1: The custom itself can be perfectly good and serviceable, and there's a related question I know coming up later in this episode, and I'll tie it back then.
SPEAKER_1: But the traditions can be good even if the men practicing at times had bad theology.
SPEAKER_1: The church year is one of those.
SPEAKER_1: Ash Wednesday is certainly one of those.
SPEAKER_1: And I think that suffices for addressing Ash Wednesday before it comes up this year, which it will shortly in the calendar here.
SPEAKER_1: The next question is a shorter one than the Ash Wednesday bit.
SPEAKER_1: What is the correct position on divorce?
SPEAKER_1: Can you explain in which cases divorce can be approved by the church, if ever?
SPEAKER_1: As I understand it, the conservative Roman Catholic position is never, unless your spouse dies, which makes the most sense to this questioner.
SPEAKER_1: What is the correct or Lutheran position on this?
SPEAKER_1: And he does say correct Lutheran position.
SPEAKER_1: So, the position on this, I'm just going to say that this is the correct position.
SPEAKER_1: I know there are men who would argue with me to some degree, but I think this is very clear from scripture.
SPEAKER_1: Obviously, the most straightforward, clear thing you can get is that Christ says, in cases of adultery, divorce is permitted.
SPEAKER_1: Period.
SPEAKER_1: That's straight from scripture.
SPEAKER_1: You cannot possibly argue with that and believe what scripture says, what Christ says.
SPEAKER_1: So, if your spouse commits adultery, you are, in fact, already divorced by the act of adultery, but you are permitted to then legally recognize that divorce, make it official as it were.
SPEAKER_1: That is permitted in scripture very clearly.
SPEAKER_1: I would say, and there are a number of theologians who have also said this, there are other things that are tantamount to infidelity, that are tantamount to adultery, and therefore, they are also permissible grounds for divorce.
SPEAKER_1: I think basically the only one that is ever relevant is abandonment, because there are requirements of spouses with regard to one another, and some of them cannot be fulfilled if you are physically absent.
SPEAKER_1: And so, abandonment, I believe, rises to the level of infidelity, because one of the things that you are supposed to do is make yourself available for your spouse.
SPEAKER_1: Not doing so is, I want to say, and it is accurate to say, that it's a mild form of adultery.
SPEAKER_1: I know there are people who object to that wording, but I could explain exactly why.
SPEAKER_1: But it is a form of infidelity.
SPEAKER_1: And so, I would say that abandonment then rises to the level of adultery.
SPEAKER_1: So, those are basically the two cases.
SPEAKER_1: I think maybe edge cases that could happen that rise the level of infidelity, but those are the ones that are going to actually happen that aren't just a philosophical experiment, which is very typically useless, often harmful in theological matters.
SPEAKER_1: So, that's the shorthand for when is divorce permissible, adultery, and things that are equivalent to adultery, which is, in the case of the adultery, the explicit adultery is just what Christ says.
SPEAKER_1: It's what Scripture says very clear, very plain.
SPEAKER_1: We are not allowed to change what Scripture says when it says something very clearly like that.
SPEAKER_1: We are not always required to punish things in the same way as Scripture does, because, for instance, some of the civil law in the Old Testament is not binding on us as Christians, so it's a recommendation.
SPEAKER_1: But, historically, the punishment in many times, in many places, for adultery has been the death penalty.
SPEAKER_1: And if the punishment for adultery is the death penalty, the issue of divorce kind of becomes irrelevant, for rather obvious reasons.
SPEAKER_1: I think we should return to punishing adultery much more severely, possibly even including capital punishment, which, again, makes the issue irrelevant, for obvious reasons.
SPEAKER_1: The next question is related to marriage, but not about marriage per se.
SPEAKER_1: In the past year, I have become fully convinced of all you said on Stone Choir.
SPEAKER_1: My wife is equally persuaded.
SPEAKER_1: She now feels isolated from making or keeping friends, because every time she brings up, they are replacing us, which is true, or our people, she is called a racist by others in the mom group.
SPEAKER_1: I nearly banned her from X, so she wouldn't see any more awful news, but she says the people there are her only community.
SPEAKER_1: Please help me think about this well.
SPEAKER_1: This is a very real challenge, because obviously, if you know the truth about something, or you have learned some deeper aspect of the truth, and it is something other people do not know, or worse, reject, that is going to estrange you from them to some degree, and that's kind of inevitable.
SPEAKER_1: I think there are maybe three things that I want to say about this.
SPEAKER_1: The first one, I would say, we all recognize that we have different friend groups, right?
SPEAKER_1: I have friends I know from being an attorney.
SPEAKER_1: I have friends I know from being involved in animal conservation.
SPEAKER_1: I have friends I know from being a right-wing white nationalist.
SPEAKER_1: The overlap for just those three groups, I'll just use those three and no more, not necessarily very high in some cases.
SPEAKER_1: So I'm probably not going to bring up what I've read about nationalist philosophy at an animal conservation event.
SPEAKER_1: I don't really go to those anymore since moving out of California, but for the sake of the hypothetical, we all recognize we have different groups of friends, and different groups of friends permit different topics.
SPEAKER_1: There's nothing necessarily wrong with that.
SPEAKER_1: There are cases in which it can rise the level of, you can't go along with evil, but you aren't necessarily always dealing with evil in these cases.
SPEAKER_1: So maybe just don't bring up certain topics with certain groups.
SPEAKER_1: Tell your wife to focus on some of the trivial stuff that's probably being discussed in those groups.
SPEAKER_1: If they start getting into things where, you know, they're evil, they could be, I don't know what this group is like.
SPEAKER_1: If it's a group of antifa moms, well, it's a real problem, she needs to not associate with those people because they're evil.
SPEAKER_1: You can't associate with them without becoming party to their evil.
SPEAKER_1: But if they're just not involved in this stuff, or they don't know about it, you don't necessarily have to bring them along all at once.
SPEAKER_1: You can drop little hints and things like that and kind of nudge them in the right direction if you have the skills to do that.
SPEAKER_1: But don't take the shotgun approach and try to get someone to believe all of the things that you've learned all at once, because it took you time.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe in this case, not as much time as some, but some people take years, some people take longer.
SPEAKER_1: You're not necessarily going to bring them up to speed right away, and if you try to, they're going to get shell shock.
SPEAKER_1: So I think that's the first point I would make is recognize you have different friend circles, and you're going to have to treat the people in them differently, because they are in fact different.
SPEAKER_1: So there's that aspect.
SPEAKER_1: That's really kind of the second point.
SPEAKER_1: The first point is just there are different kinds of truths, right?
SPEAKER_1: And maybe recognize that not everyone is ready for everything, which is related to that second point of the different friend circles.
SPEAKER_1: But the sort of final point that I would make is that things are progressing in our direction, and so in some ways, there will be doors that are open for things you can discuss that you couldn't discuss before.
SPEAKER_1: I think the most obvious example right now is, I don't know if I even want to say the name, because it probably gets you flagged in some way, but the gentleman who owned an island, I think that has opened up some doors for discussion of things that were previously unthinkable.
SPEAKER_1: You could not even consider broaching the topic of, did you know there are people who kidnap children and drink their blood?
SPEAKER_1: That would probably have got you some very strange looks, historically, and in fact it would, that you might not get today, because now people recognize that, oh wait, we actually have physical proof that this stuff was happening.
SPEAKER_1: So, as things continue to progress and trend in that direction, it opens up doors for that, which means you will find those like-minded people, or maybe bring some people along.
SPEAKER_1: And I guess a fourth point, sort of, you can find like-minded people.
SPEAKER_1: It is difficult in some places, I don't know what part of the country you're in, please don't tell me, because, you know, don't dox yourself, but if you can find like-minded people, great, so for instance, in your case, if you can find other men who are like-minded, who have managed to bring their wives along, introduce your wives.
SPEAKER_1: Have them become friends, and do whatever it is they're going to do with their time.
SPEAKER_1: That's a good thing, and that will help her a lot, even if it's just one or two additional friends, because depending on the kind of person, if you're an introvert or an extrovert, it's going to depend on how big your circle is, right?
SPEAKER_1: But just having a few like-minded friends you can be open and honest with is going to make a huge difference.
SPEAKER_1: You know that, and it's going to be the same way for her.
SPEAKER_1: So if you can find those married men who get along with you, and by all means, if they brought their wives along, introduce your wife to them.
SPEAKER_1: Those will be good friends for her.
SPEAKER_1: But no, it's a very serious topic.
SPEAKER_1: And yes, obviously, there is going to be some isolation when you know a truth that other people do not know, and it's an important one that you can't really let go.
SPEAKER_1: Particularly when you start seeing all of the evil things happening in our society, and you recognize them now, because you're looking at it and going, I know why that's happening, I know who's behind it, I know why that's done, I know why those words and those image, whatever it happens to be, we all know.
SPEAKER_1: It makes it more difficult not to say something, but sometimes you don't have a choice.
SPEAKER_1: You can't speak every truth at every instant in every situation.
SPEAKER_1: Some of these things call for wisdom and self-control.
SPEAKER_1: But again, yes, it's a difficult situation.
SPEAKER_1: So do the best that you can do to try to find her those friends.
SPEAKER_1: And yeah, I do think backing off on social media a little bit is probably extremely good for most people generally, but particularly for women.
SPEAKER_1: Because women are very subject to those social pressures, and the Skinner box is not good for women, which is just, that's all social media really is.
SPEAKER_1: The next question is one that I will answer it directly, but also answer sort of a more important, higher level question related to it.
SPEAKER_1: I heard that our worship practices were taken from the pagan Romans.
SPEAKER_1: What would you say about this?
SPEAKER_1: So, this is a question that comes up all the time.
SPEAKER_1: It comes up with regard to Easter and Ishtar and Christmas and Mithras and Sol Invictus and a thousand different things.
SPEAKER_1: The first answer is, it's complete nonsense.
SPEAKER_1: They're trying to connect things that in many cases aren't connected, or they're trying to claim things that are complete and utter insane nonsense.
SPEAKER_1: I can think of one in particular.
SPEAKER_1: There was a gentleman in, I believe, it was the 1800s.
SPEAKER_1: I've forgotten his name now, but he proclaimed himself an Egyptologist, didn't know anything about the subject, and then started saying that basically Jesus Christ was just a narrative of Horus.
SPEAKER_1: The problem is, he made a bunch of claims about Horus that have literally zero evidence anywhere.
SPEAKER_1: He just made them up, and now neo-pagans and some others will repeat them sometimes online, but they're just absurd, abject nonsense, literally without a shred of evidence.
SPEAKER_1: One in particular, not in the case of Horus, but say Mithras, right?
SPEAKER_1: Someone will try and claim, well, Mithras was born of a virgin, he was born of a rock.
SPEAKER_1: Read the story, go read the actual thing.
SPEAKER_1: It's not what they claim.
SPEAKER_1: So in many cases, just complete and utter nonsense and lies, because they're trying to deceive you, trying to make you doubt.
SPEAKER_1: But the more important question here than that is, is it wrong to take, so this is the hypothetical case, right?
SPEAKER_1: Is it wrong to take pagan practices and Christianize them?
SPEAKER_1: The answer is no.
SPEAKER_1: Nothing wrong with that.
SPEAKER_1: We're right back to tradition, right?
SPEAKER_1: This is the question I mentioned, ties into traditions.
SPEAKER_1: So I would use the Christmas tree.
SPEAKER_1: It's one everyone's thinking, right?
SPEAKER_1: But Martin Luther actually invented that one.
SPEAKER_1: So the pagans don't even get that one.
SPEAKER_1: But let's say, for instance, and also it ties all the way back into the first worship of God, which took place in a sacred grove.
SPEAKER_1: So the fact that we still have trees involved in worship is not bad.
SPEAKER_1: But let's say, you have some pagan practice, right?
SPEAKER_1: Gift giving, okay?
SPEAKER_1: Some Roman traditions, so directly answering the question, perhaps, had some gift giving involved.
SPEAKER_1: Does that make it bad to give gifts?
SPEAKER_1: No, of course not.
SPEAKER_1: It would be ridiculous to claim that.
SPEAKER_1: So you are permitted to give gifts, and you're even permitted to do it connected with something related to the Christian faith.
SPEAKER_1: So, Christmas.
SPEAKER_1: The sin or the problem would be if you do it in connection with a false god.
SPEAKER_1: There's nothing wrong with giving gifts and also having that as part of your celebration of the reminder of Christ's birth, the greatest gift ever given to humanity.
SPEAKER_1: Completely fine.
SPEAKER_1: It is morally permissible to Christianize pagan holidays.
SPEAKER_1: The issue is that you don't want to shade into syncretism, which happens, so I'll just give an extremely obvious case.
SPEAKER_1: You have the cult of the dead in the Mexican practice of Roman Catholicism.
SPEAKER_1: That's not permissible.
SPEAKER_1: That is actually worshiping a false god.
SPEAKER_1: That is idolatry.
SPEAKER_1: That is polytheism.
SPEAKER_1: That is a problem.
SPEAKER_1: You can't do that.
SPEAKER_1: And so it's not a balancing act so much as just there's a line that you cannot cross.
SPEAKER_1: So you can't worship false gods.
SPEAKER_1: You can't do things that are inherently in their nature, the worship of a false god.
SPEAKER_1: So no human sacrifice.
SPEAKER_1: You can't cleanse that of the pagan element because it is itself pagan in the broad sense of pagan, not European pagan, because human sacrifice was not really a part of European paganism, except little pockets here and there, and very rarely.
SPEAKER_1: Typically not something that was part of European neo-paganism, paganism, depending on the case.
SPEAKER_1: But that can't be Christianized, but other things can.
SPEAKER_1: And so there's nothing wrong with taking a practice and removing the objectionable elements and having it be something that's good.
SPEAKER_1: Think of it the same way that we deal with furniture or a house or anything like that.
SPEAKER_1: If you buy a house and it has some damage, let's say smoke damage to the walls, do you knock down the entire house?
SPEAKER_1: No, you just fix the parts that need fixed.
SPEAKER_1: The same thing can be done with traditions taking from our ancestors who were not Christian.
SPEAKER_1: Nothing wrong with that.
SPEAKER_1: Perfectly morally permissible.
SPEAKER_1: But the surface level answer is that almost all the claims about relationships between Christian practice and pagan practices are nonsense.
SPEAKER_1: And the ones in which we do have a relationship there, are usually so superficial that it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_1: There'll be something like, well, you just have Christmas in December, because it's related to Saturnalia.
SPEAKER_1: Okay, so we celebrate at the same time.
SPEAKER_1: Doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_1: Means nothing.
SPEAKER_1: Doesn't mean we have a pagan practice.
SPEAKER_1: It means we happen to have an overlap.
SPEAKER_1: And Christ very well probably was born around that time, if you actually look at the evidence in scripture and elsewhere in history.
SPEAKER_1: So even that one may not be an actual connection.
SPEAKER_1: It may just be coincidence.
SPEAKER_1: The next question, I am not yet married, but I would like to know how I, as a man, can keep my marriage and family focused on Christ.
SPEAKER_1: Besides just going to church and doing family devotions, I am afraid of being spiritually blindsided.
SPEAKER_1: I don't necessarily want to get into this too deeply because this one could take up a lot of time, but the basic answer to that is that you need to actually invest the time in your wife and in your children.
SPEAKER_1: You need to know where they are in their faith, what they know about their faith, if they have any doubts or concerns or anything like that, and you need to be there to address them.
SPEAKER_1: And part of that is just investing the time.
SPEAKER_1: One of the major problems that we have in the last, say, probably 50, 60 years at this point, is you have had, maybe not quite that much, maybe 40, but you've had those who just pass their children off to the state for X hours per day, for Y years out of their life, and then they send them off to university, and they come back, and they don't believe the Christian faith, and they become a Marxist and all these things, and then they wonder, well, how did that happen?
SPEAKER_1: Well, probably because you invested 30 minutes per week in your child with regard to the Christian faith, and you handed them over to atheists for, I don't know, 35 hours out of the week.
SPEAKER_1: What did you expect was going to happen?
SPEAKER_1: That is not even negligence, it's recklessness, or even something worse, almost wanton.
SPEAKER_1: So don't do that.
SPEAKER_1: You have to know what is going on with your children, what is going on with your wife.
SPEAKER_1: You are responsible for the things that happen under your roof.
SPEAKER_1: Part of it will be regulating what is permitted in your house.
SPEAKER_1: Don't allow evil media in your house.
SPEAKER_1: Don't allow evil books in your house.
SPEAKER_1: If someone brings in a Ouija board, burn it.
SPEAKER_1: Right?
SPEAKER_1: There are certain things you have to do as a father.
SPEAKER_1: That's going to be a big part of it.
SPEAKER_1: Just don't pass your children off to others to raise them, and then be surprised at the outcome.
SPEAKER_1: It's one of those things where there are things in life that require a lot of hard work.
SPEAKER_1: They have great payoffs.
SPEAKER_1: They have eternal payoffs, but they require hard work.
SPEAKER_1: This is definitely one of them.
SPEAKER_1: So make sure you invest the time.
SPEAKER_1: Make sure you are available.
SPEAKER_1: Make sure that they know they can bring these questions to you.
SPEAKER_1: You don't want to be some figure that's off in the corner, and they're scared to approach you, right?
SPEAKER_1: You need to be the father and act as the head of the household.
SPEAKER_1: Make sure that I have my correct numbering here, just for my sake.
SPEAKER_1: The next question, encouraging RC or EO Christians.
SPEAKER_1: With the current state of the Protestant churches, how do we encourage RC slash EO people in the Trinitarian faith and higher orthodoxy, especially given that some of them may not be genuinely saved?
SPEAKER_1: And of course, that applies to Protestant churches as well.
SPEAKER_1: There's some who are not genuinely saved, so I'm not necessarily picking on the RC or the EO here.
SPEAKER_1: Because I do believe, even in the case of the Eastern Orthodox, that there are saved individuals in those churches.
SPEAKER_1: Despite the things that I have said about the Eastern Orthodox on Stone Choir and in my article on it and elsewhere debates, things like that, there are individuals who are saved in those churches, because I brought this up before, and it'll come up many times subsequent to this, but Lutherans have specifically a concept called Felicitous Inconsistency, which means that there are those who, despite the false things their churches officially teach, don't believe them.
SPEAKER_1: They are felicitously inconsistent, because they don't believe those things, but they do believe that Jesus Christ is their Lord and Savior, died on the cross, rose again, and that if they believe in him, they will have eternal life.
SPEAKER_1: And so they're Christian.
SPEAKER_1: And that is the case for a great many in the Roman Catholic Church and a great many in the Eastern churches as well.
SPEAKER_1: And I say that for the Roman Catholic Church, because if you believe absolutely everything taught by Rome these days, you are damned.
SPEAKER_1: Period.
SPEAKER_1: Rome teaches things that are simply bluntly contrary to the Christian faith.
SPEAKER_1: They teach that Muslims and Jews are included in the plan of salvation, as they call it.
SPEAKER_1: You cannot believe that as a Christian, because they reject Christ.
SPEAKER_1: If you reject the son, you don't have the father.
SPEAKER_1: If you reject Christ, you cannot be saved.
SPEAKER_1: And so, I don't believe that most Roman Catholics believe that.
SPEAKER_1: I think most of them don't even know their church teaches that.
SPEAKER_1: But to get to the question here, the heart of the question, how do we encourage these individuals and try to bring them along?
SPEAKER_1: Well, the challenge here is that we sort of need to clean our own house first.
SPEAKER_1: And I'm almost tempted to bring up, and I'm sure some of you have thought of it as well, but I'm almost tempted to bring up, right?
SPEAKER_1: If your brother has a speck in his eye, remove the log from your eye first.
SPEAKER_1: But in this case, it's not a log from our eye and a speck from his.
SPEAKER_1: We kind of both have a log in our eyes.
SPEAKER_1: And maybe theirs is worse in some cases.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe it's not.
SPEAKER_1: But we need to clean our own house first, because we need to be coming to them in a position of strength and authority, not in a position of you need to do X, Y, and Z, because that's how you could be better.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying that you can't help people when your life isn't perfect, because if that were the standard, no one would ever help anyone else, right?
SPEAKER_1: But at the same time, you don't want to be the guy who is a drug addict, an enormous mess, crying on camera and looks like a disaster.
SPEAKER_1: And you all know of whom I am speaking right now, in particular, the example I have in my mind, and then telling people, you need to go clean your room.
SPEAKER_1: You kind of look ridiculous if you're that guy.
SPEAKER_1: So we don't want to be him.
SPEAKER_1: We need to get our own house in order.
SPEAKER_1: In our case, for Protestants, it's somewhat easier because we can start new churches.
SPEAKER_1: In the case of the congregation itself, the parish, not in the case of Upper KC Church, that's the church universal of which all Christians are members.
SPEAKER_1: But we can start new church bodies.
SPEAKER_1: We're not prohibited from doing that.
SPEAKER_1: We don't have theological objections to it other than we should do it only when it is necessary.
SPEAKER_1: It's necessary these days.
SPEAKER_1: And so we already have some that have started up.
SPEAKER_1: There are good churches that have started up.
SPEAKER_1: And as those grow and the wicked churches continue to lose members as they are doing, I brought up before that one of the biggest line items in Elka's budget, for those who don't know, Elka is the branch in the United States that claims to be Lutheran but isn't even Christian.
SPEAKER_1: And so if you want to criticize Lutherans by all means, please use the LCMS and the Wells, both of which are kind of dumpster fires right now.
SPEAKER_1: Don't use Elka.
SPEAKER_1: Elka is not Christian.
SPEAKER_1: That's hypocritical and unfair.
SPEAKER_1: Don't do that.
SPEAKER_1: Don't be that guy.
SPEAKER_1: But one of the biggest line items for Elka is selling their buildings because they're in freefall.
SPEAKER_1: They're just collapsing.
SPEAKER_1: So as those bodies die off and the faithful ones grow in numbers, then we will be in a position where we can start to address some of these things.
SPEAKER_1: It's mentioned in the Book of Concord even.
SPEAKER_1: One of the things that Luther points out, because at that time it was very much true, is our churches are daily growing because we are preaching the Word, we are teaching rightly, and God is blessing us.
SPEAKER_1: And the Roman parishes were being deserted at that time.
SPEAKER_1: You could point that out in the early days of the LCMS.
SPEAKER_1: The LCMS was the fastest growing church body, probably on the face of the planet for a period of time, certainly in the US, when they were faithful.
SPEAKER_1: When you are in that position, you can certainly then go to other Christians and have these discussions.
SPEAKER_1: It is difficult, at least more difficult, to have them when the room behind you is a disaster, which is what we have right now.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying we stop engaging with the Roman Catholics and even the Eastern Orthodox, but our efforts need to be focused on getting our own houses in order first, because that's sort of the hierarchy of the duties there.
SPEAKER_1: So if you find yourself in a position where you can try to discuss these things with the Roman Catholics productively, then by all means, do so.
SPEAKER_1: But we need to focus on our own mess first, as is almost always the case.
SPEAKER_1: See what my next question here is.
SPEAKER_1: I can answer a very short one.
SPEAKER_1: If not JD Vance, then who?
SPEAKER_1: I don't know.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think we necessarily have anyone who's particularly good.
SPEAKER_1: And you are correct to say I don't particularly like JD Vance for some obvious reasons.
SPEAKER_1: Not least of all that he seems to have been stood up in a somewhat shady fashion, but I don't necessarily have a person.
SPEAKER_1: You don't always have to.
SPEAKER_1: You can say something that is bad without having an alternative ready, right?
SPEAKER_1: You are about to drink a glass of poison, I can tell you don't drink that.
SPEAKER_1: And if you respond with, well, where's my drink?
SPEAKER_1: You know, asking me if I have something in the alternative for you to drink.
SPEAKER_1: I don't have to have a replacement for the poison to tell you not to drink the poison.
SPEAKER_1: I can still tell you not to drink the poison, because that would be bad.
SPEAKER_1: Two separate things, related but distinct.
SPEAKER_1: Someone asked last week when I posted about going, someone said, Mike Pence, that would be somehow even worse than Vance.
SPEAKER_1: So, Pence is a mess.
SPEAKER_1: But anyway, someone asked last week, what happens if we go to war?
SPEAKER_1: Well, that kind of happens on with whom?
SPEAKER_1: I think he probably meant Iran, just given the context of things today.
SPEAKER_1: And if we were to go to war with Iran, if you can possibly do so, refuse to go.
SPEAKER_1: Don't fight the Jews wars for them.
SPEAKER_1: Don't do it.
SPEAKER_1: It's evil, don't be part of it.
SPEAKER_1: That's the baseline answer for that.
SPEAKER_1: So, as best you can, refuse.
SPEAKER_1: If there's a draft, absolutely refuse.
SPEAKER_1: Do not be drafted into a war and go fight for the Jews.
SPEAKER_1: Don't do it.
SPEAKER_1: See, the next question.
SPEAKER_1: I want to get the wording from this one, if I copied it, which I believe I did.
SPEAKER_1: You subscribe to the concept of biological determinism in reference to temperament and behavioral proclivities people are born with.
SPEAKER_1: How do you reconcile this with free will?
SPEAKER_1: For me, anywhere I try to point to free will, it seems to vanish.
SPEAKER_1: Could an African have done otherwise, as an example, obviously, there?
SPEAKER_1: I don't necessarily subscribe to determinism.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think that I would use that term because it's sort of a fraught theological term.
SPEAKER_1: But I do affirm free will, of course, because I think free will is the way that we deal with the problem of evil.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think there's any other way to deal with it.
SPEAKER_1: If you negate free will, then you necessarily make God the cause of evil, and that's morally impermissible, so you have to affirm free will.
SPEAKER_1: But I don't think that you necessarily have a conflict here.
SPEAKER_1: I think that biology bounds free will in some ways.
SPEAKER_1: So I think a good analogy would be looking at, for instance, intelligence.
SPEAKER_1: Intelligence is set genetically as a range.
SPEAKER_1: Your environment, so nature, but your nurture, determines where you fall within the range.
SPEAKER_1: You can't fall outside of it, other than obviously severe brain damage, things like that.
SPEAKER_1: You can drop lower, you can always do that.
SPEAKER_1: You can't go higher.
SPEAKER_1: We don't have the technology for that, even if it's theoretically possible.
SPEAKER_1: So biology sets that range, and then other things set where you fall within the range.
SPEAKER_1: I think that there's a relationship there of how free will operates with regard to biology and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: So one of the examples I've used before, and I think it's a good one for people to bear in mind, is that certain men have proclivities towards certain sins, and there are differences in sin with regard to sex.
SPEAKER_1: So for instance, and I mean biological sex in this case, men are prone to different sins from those to which women are prone.
SPEAKER_1: Women are more prone to gossip than men.
SPEAKER_1: Men are more prone to certain kinds of lust than women.
SPEAKER_1: So does that mean that men and women don't have free will because they have different proclivities?
SPEAKER_1: I don't think that it does.
SPEAKER_1: I think that it influences your free will, it makes it harder to do things, but just because something is harder to do doesn't mean you don't have a choice.
SPEAKER_1: And I think free will kind of obviously does exist.
SPEAKER_1: You know, I have a collection of pens sitting here next to me, I could pick up any one I want right now and write with it.
SPEAKER_1: I can pick whatever color ink I want to use and write with that.
SPEAKER_1: That's a free choice that I have.
SPEAKER_1: I have the choice to do this Q&A right now.
SPEAKER_1: I could hit stop, I could hit the power button on my computer and walk away.
SPEAKER_1: I could take a sip of tea right now or not do that.
SPEAKER_1: I think the claims of those who try to go with sort of the hard version of determinism are just patently absurd on their face.
SPEAKER_1: For many reasons, and I could formalize that argument more, but I think they're absurd to the point where there's no reason to take them seriously.
SPEAKER_1: Do I think there's a relationship between biology and various things like that and our free will?
SPEAKER_1: Of course, but I think it's one of influence and bounding, not one of control.
SPEAKER_1: So, to get to the example then, could an African have done otherwise, which we could think of, for instance, impulsivity and the inclination toward violence, so-called warrior gene, which is very misnamed, but, and of course IQ.
SPEAKER_1: So, yes, his free will is more severely bounded than yours, most likely, in many ways.
SPEAKER_1: His influences are heavier, in a way.
SPEAKER_1: They are going to be greater in the scale with regard to what he can and cannot do.
SPEAKER_1: And there will be things he can't do, because a person with an IQ of 75 cannot do the same things as a person with an IQ of 150 plus.
SPEAKER_1: But he still has free will, with, in those bounds.
SPEAKER_1: Now, another part of this, of course, and this is the part that most modern Christians forget, because it makes them uncomfortable in some cases, most cases.
SPEAKER_1: Part of the decisions that were free, that have led to the decisions that you can now make, were made by your ancestors.
SPEAKER_1: And we just have to accept that as Christians.
SPEAKER_1: One of the reasons we have to accept it is called original sin.
SPEAKER_1: You do not have the choice not to be a sinner, because Adam sinned, and all men fell in Adam.
SPEAKER_1: And so you are a sinner, and I've gone into this before, where you sin because you're a sinner, it's not you're a sinner because you sin.
SPEAKER_1: That distinction is important, because that's the teaching of original sin, distilled down to sort of an axiom.
SPEAKER_1: Adam sinned and bounded your free will with regard to his decision.
SPEAKER_1: His decision was completely free.
SPEAKER_1: He had the choice to sin or not to sin.
SPEAKER_1: He had the ability to sin or not to sin.
SPEAKER_1: You do not have that same ability, because you are a sinner because of Adam.
SPEAKER_1: And so, yes, what our ancestors have done or failed to do has bounded our own free will down through the generations of man that preceded us.
SPEAKER_1: And so, we do not have the same scope of free will that they had in some cases.
SPEAKER_1: We are more degenerated in some ways than they were.
SPEAKER_1: The best example, of course, is Adam being free to sin or not sin.
SPEAKER_1: We certainly don't have that choice.
SPEAKER_1: And so, free will is not an absolute thing, because the only will that is absolutely free in that sense is God.
SPEAKER_1: And, of course, even God, there are things God can't do.
SPEAKER_1: Not in the sense of potential or possibility, but in the sense of incoherence, right?
SPEAKER_1: That's the way I've usually explained it.
SPEAKER_1: God can't sin.
SPEAKER_1: So, as I sort of got into with that debate with James White, right, I was getting at that point.
SPEAKER_1: But God has the highest free will.
SPEAKER_1: God has the absolutely free will in the proper sense of free.
SPEAKER_1: We don't have that.
SPEAKER_1: But it doesn't mean we don't have free will.
SPEAKER_1: It just means ours is bounded and influenced by, for instance, our biology.
SPEAKER_1: A light-hearted, easy question for this one.
SPEAKER_1: What is the best Germanic dog breed, and why is it the Dachshund?
SPEAKER_1: And the person says hi to Gizmo.
SPEAKER_1: The answer to that is that it depends.
SPEAKER_1: Just to answer the question a little more seriously than it was asked, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_1: The Dachshund is a great dog, probably not if you want to go on a 20-mile hike.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think he's going to carry his own water or his own food, or in fact his own self.
SPEAKER_1: I think you're going to have to carry him in your pack.
SPEAKER_1: So it depends, right?
SPEAKER_1: You want a guard dog, probably not the Dachshund.
SPEAKER_1: Gizmo actually makes a great guard dog, but obviously his job is to go get the bigger dogs.
SPEAKER_1: He's not going to do much on his own weighing what he does.
SPEAKER_1: Incidentally, he also goes in the pack after about mile five.
SPEAKER_1: And straight from that one to a much more serious one, what is the protocol for handling a parent practicing witchcraft in the house you live in?
SPEAKER_1: Well, that's a serious question, and also quite the problem.
SPEAKER_1: I think the most obvious answer is get out of that house if you can.
SPEAKER_1: If this person is seriously practicing witchcraft in your home, which obviously in the case of a parent, it makes it more of a problem.
SPEAKER_1: It depends on the age.
SPEAKER_1: I have no idea how old this person is.
SPEAKER_1: So if this is, say, your mother is collecting crystals, it's not as serious, just to be blunt, you know.
SPEAKER_1: Is it something that Christians shouldn't do?
SPEAKER_1: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_1: Is it foolish?
SPEAKER_1: Yes.
SPEAKER_1: Does it open the door in some minor way?
SPEAKER_1: Yes.
SPEAKER_1: Is it as bad as the person who is sacrificing chickens and spraying blood all over and drawing pentagrams and really going whole hog with the Satanism thing?
SPEAKER_1: No.
SPEAKER_1: So it's going to depend on what sort of thing this person is doing.
SPEAKER_1: If you can talk to the parent and say it makes you deeply uncomfortable, maybe the parent will listen, and maybe that's the resolution in this case.
SPEAKER_1: But if it can't be resolved in that way, I think your best bet, assuming that you are of a reasonable age, which this person at least had access to Twitter X now, get out of the house to get away from it.
SPEAKER_1: But if it is a serious thing, that is a real spiritual threat.
SPEAKER_1: And pray.
SPEAKER_1: Of course, always pray.
SPEAKER_1: So I'll pray for you as well.
SPEAKER_1: I hope that that resolves itself in a positive fashion.
SPEAKER_1: I hope this person stops doing that.
SPEAKER_1: But I think those are really the sort of two levels to it.
SPEAKER_1: Talk to the person, see if he or she will stop, and then get away if you possibly can.
SPEAKER_1: It's real.
SPEAKER_1: Witchcraft, Satanism, those things, they are to a degree real.
SPEAKER_1: And spiritual evil is real, and it should be taken very seriously.
SPEAKER_1: It's not a joke, it should not be taken lightly.
SPEAKER_1: The Ouija board is not a toy.
SPEAKER_1: Do not buy one, do not have one in your house.
SPEAKER_1: If there is one in your house, go burn it after...
SPEAKER_1: Pause this, go burn it right now.
SPEAKER_1: But those things are real.
SPEAKER_1: They should be taken very seriously.
SPEAKER_1: They should never be taken lightly.
SPEAKER_1: I think now I will look for questions in the chat.
SPEAKER_1: So the first question I see here in the chat is about Indians and from which son of Noah they descend.
SPEAKER_1: In the case of the Indians, it is mixed, because they have been at least partially conquered a number of times, and subsequent to the conquest, there has been admixture.
SPEAKER_1: And so primarily, they are from Shem.
SPEAKER_1: And the question also asked, how do we know that?
SPEAKER_1: The way that we know, foundationally, where the sons of Noah went is two, I will go backwards, two, we have tradition, and we have myth and things like that, tracing these things all the way back.
SPEAKER_1: And then one, we have scripture, because scripture basically tells us where the three sons went.
SPEAKER_1: Egypt is called the land of Ham, a number of times in scripture.
SPEAKER_1: Well, that's pretty easy, Ham went south and went into Africa.
SPEAKER_1: And then obviously, we have descendants of Shem in the Near East, the Israelites and others.
SPEAKER_1: Well, Shem went east.
SPEAKER_1: What does that leave?
SPEAKER_1: Because the three great races of men would be Africans, the Asians in the broad sense or the British sense of the term, and then Europeans.
SPEAKER_1: Well, that leaves only one place for Japheth.
SPEAKER_1: So, we know from scripture.
SPEAKER_1: The Shemites then took the east.
SPEAKER_1: That includes India.
SPEAKER_1: But the other way we can do this is we can obviously run genetic analysis these days because we have those tools.
SPEAKER_1: There's nothing wrong with using those.
SPEAKER_1: We can run that sort of analysis and figure out these family lines and how they've moved over time and the admixture and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: So, for the Indians, you have the South Asians would be sort of the predominant group there.
SPEAKER_1: Then you have the ancient farmer group from sort of Iran and that area.
SPEAKER_1: You have some admixture from them.
SPEAKER_1: And then you have the Eurasian pastoralists, sort of the steppe people, which would have been largely from Japheth, who conquered them.
SPEAKER_1: And you can see this in India today with their caste system.
SPEAKER_1: You have the Brahmin at the top, and you have the Dalit at the bottom, right?
SPEAKER_1: You have different groups based essentially on this admixture from the Eurasian populations that came in and conquered them.
SPEAKER_1: If you have more of that, you're higher up in their scale.
SPEAKER_1: And so largely Shem but with admixture is the short answer.
SPEAKER_1: And how we know is from scripture plus genetic research.
SPEAKER_1: Someone asked about my thoughts on George Rockwell.
SPEAKER_1: It's of course George Lincoln Rockwell.
SPEAKER_1: I think he was very good with some things.
SPEAKER_1: I think he was right that being out there and action and having a face to a movement is very important.
SPEAKER_1: I wish he'd had better Christian friends, because I think that was something that was very much missing.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think that nationalism works without the religious element, and I think the religious element has to be Christianity, because Christianity is true.
SPEAKER_1: And nationalism is also truth, and I've gone over this obviously at length many times.
SPEAKER_1: Christianity and nationalism complement each other.
SPEAKER_1: Christianity demands nationalism.
SPEAKER_1: Nationalism needs Christianity.
SPEAKER_1: And so I'm not just a nationalist, I'm not just a Christian.
SPEAKER_1: I am a Christian white nationalist.
SPEAKER_1: I am a white Christian nationalist.
SPEAKER_1: I've said before, you can put those adjectives in whichever order you please.
SPEAKER_1: It remains true.
SPEAKER_1: I'm a white nationalist Christian.
SPEAKER_1: You can do it that way if you like.
SPEAKER_1: So I think he had some good ideas, and I think he did some good things, but he definitely needed some better Christian friends, which I could say that about a number of men historically.
SPEAKER_1: Nietzsche comes to mind.
SPEAKER_1: Lovecraft comes to mind.
SPEAKER_1: Just to name two sort of at random.
SPEAKER_1: Did you know or get a chance to talk to Aaron D.
SPEAKER_1: Wolfe before he died?
SPEAKER_1: He was a Lutheran minister and editor of Chronicles.
SPEAKER_1: I did not.
SPEAKER_1: So kind of a short answer, but no.
SPEAKER_1: Someone said, I read that Jesus was probably born in September, shepherds don't have flocks in the field in December.
SPEAKER_1: We're not actually certain on that point historically, as to what, I know that point's come up before I've read that.
SPEAKER_1: We're not 100% certain what they did in the era with regard to their sheep in the dead of winter.
SPEAKER_1: They may have been in the field, they may not.
SPEAKER_1: So if they were, December's fine.
SPEAKER_1: If they weren't, September, it honestly doesn't matter what day of the year Christ was born.
SPEAKER_1: I know we would all like to know, but we don't.
SPEAKER_1: We'd like to know the day of creation, but we don't.
SPEAKER_1: If these things had been necessary for us, God would have told us.
SPEAKER_1: It would have been written down in scripture in a way that we could actually interpret.
SPEAKER_1: And I've got into the calendar issues before, so I won't get into those again.
SPEAKER_1: But God didn't record it because it's not necessary for us to know it.
SPEAKER_1: We can just pick a day.
SPEAKER_1: That's fine.
SPEAKER_1: We're celebrating his birth.
SPEAKER_1: We're not necessarily so much celebrating the day.
SPEAKER_1: We're just celebrating the fact that, yes indeed, Christ was physically born at some point, specifically in history.
SPEAKER_1: So we've picked one on which we all agree.
SPEAKER_1: Same thing as we picked Sunday, right?
SPEAKER_1: We all worship on Sunday, not because we have to worship on Sunday, but because we kind of need to know the day to meet.
SPEAKER_1: And for the sake of order, it should be the same day.
SPEAKER_1: A question here, have been listening so much to Stone Choir lately, amazing work, thank you.
SPEAKER_1: How do we organize and make changes?
SPEAKER_1: Much love from an Eastern Orthodox.
SPEAKER_1: I've got into this one before, but I'll go over a little bit of it again, because the most important thing in many cases, and part of this is going to be, I see the, there was a donation attached to this, it's in euros, so obviously some of it is going to be a little different depending on where you're located, right?
SPEAKER_1: There are different considerations.
SPEAKER_1: There are things I am permitted to say right now, sitting in Tennessee, that if I had said them when I was living in Berlin and the police had found out, I would have been deported.
SPEAKER_1: And so there are different considerations based on where you are located and your laws and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: But, so there's that aspect of wisdom, right?
SPEAKER_1: Local organization is absolutely vital.
SPEAKER_1: You have to know the people around you, you have to know your neighbors, you have to get to know them, you have to be able to rely on each other.
SPEAKER_1: That is very important for a number of reasons.
SPEAKER_1: Not least of all, morally you are required to do that.
SPEAKER_1: Part of what you should be doing is caring for your neighbors.
SPEAKER_1: And if you don't even know their names, you can't really care for or about them very well then.
SPEAKER_1: And part of how nationalist groups have always done well in the past is that they have demonstrated in concrete ways that they have an actual care for their fellow man, that they actually care about their compatriots, they care about their co-ethnics, they care about the people of their nation.
SPEAKER_1: So do that.
SPEAKER_1: Do things that are constructive, that are locally focused.
SPEAKER_1: Help the elderly in your community if you can.
SPEAKER_1: And they're probably elderly that need basic things fixed around the house.
SPEAKER_1: That's something that's fairly easy for a lot of men to do.
SPEAKER_1: You can do that on your day off or whatever it happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: It could be something as easy as changing light bulbs.
SPEAKER_1: But if you have a neighbor who's 85, that may be something she can no longer do.
SPEAKER_1: There are cases like that.
SPEAKER_1: Or you get to know your neighbor and maybe one day he's unloading feed for his animals.
SPEAKER_1: I'm giving that example because I'm in semi-rural Tennessee, but it'll be different if you're in a city, right?
SPEAKER_1: Maybe he needs to move a heavy piece of furniture, whatever it is, be there to help the people around you.
SPEAKER_1: Do things that are constructive, things that are concrete.
SPEAKER_1: That is important, not just as a nationalist, not just as part of the nationalist movement, but it's important to do that as a Christian and as a neighbor.
SPEAKER_1: That is what we are called to do, is what we're supposed to do with one another.
SPEAKER_1: We are supposed to be there to help the people God has put in our lives, and part of that is getting to know them.
SPEAKER_1: So, doing those concrete and local things is vitally important.
SPEAKER_1: And then from there, obviously, it scales up.
SPEAKER_1: It's going to depend on your country, because if you're in a country of 5 million people, that's a lot easier to organize and get something done than a country of however many millions the US is now, 330, 340, whatever it is.
SPEAKER_1: That's a lot harder.
SPEAKER_1: So, part of it is just logistics, but things scale up.
SPEAKER_1: You have the local group, which could be even something as small as your neighborhood, and then you have your town and your city and your county region, however things are labeled and scaled in your area, you need to build out those networks.
SPEAKER_1: And part of it is identifying the sort of men who can lead at each level in an organization, and then getting them into those positions and supporting them.
SPEAKER_1: This is one of those ongoing problems on the American right and other places as well.
SPEAKER_1: We haven't necessarily been particularly great at supporting our guys, and we need to do more of that.
SPEAKER_1: And I spoke about that in a previous episode with regard to artwork and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: That's also vital to a movement.
SPEAKER_1: You need to have the cultural aspect, or else your movement doesn't have a soul, right?
SPEAKER_1: Effectively is what you've done.
SPEAKER_1: You've deprived it of that spirit, of that essence that you need to have to actually accomplish something.
SPEAKER_1: But part of it is of course supporting our guys.
SPEAKER_1: And that is going to be a matter of if God has given you the means, because I spoke about this in Stone Choir, of course, and elsewhere, you have greater duties to those closer to you.
SPEAKER_1: So never go ahead and give money to some national level, right?
SPEAKER_1: Nationalist cause, or leader, individual, wherever it happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: If doing that would deprive those closest to you of something they need, don't do that.
SPEAKER_1: Focus on your family, your close friends, your neighbors, those who are around you first.
SPEAKER_1: You owe them a higher duty.
SPEAKER_1: But if God has given you the means, then by all means support those who are doing things at the regional level, in the US case, the state level, or the county level, who are doing things that need to be done and need the resources to do them.
SPEAKER_1: It's the basic rule.
SPEAKER_1: Use the things that God has entrusted to your care to do your duty.
SPEAKER_1: If it's money, then use your money to fund things.
SPEAKER_1: If it's the ability to write well, then use that talent to serve others.
SPEAKER_1: It is always a matter of using the things that God has given you to do good for those to whom God has entrusted, right?
SPEAKER_1: Those who are entrusted to your care.
SPEAKER_1: That's the basics of it.
SPEAKER_1: It is a matter of scaling up from that local level to the national level and however many levels are in between depending on the size of your country.
SPEAKER_1: So the best thing you can do is just do those concrete things, and it will help you as well, because you will feel like you are actually getting something done and accomplishing something.
SPEAKER_1: And I've spoken of that before.
SPEAKER_1: It is important for men in particular to do something concrete.
SPEAKER_1: Men don't feel like they've accomplished something if they've just done something virtual.
SPEAKER_1: There are certain men who can get by because they can understand that, but most men want to be able to look at it and go, I made that thing.
SPEAKER_1: I did that thing.
SPEAKER_1: I put a new door on my barn today.
SPEAKER_1: I put up chicken wire.
SPEAKER_1: You want to be able to look at something concrete.
SPEAKER_1: God built us to do that.
SPEAKER_1: That's part of how God formed us.
SPEAKER_1: And so there are some men who can go ahead and write something and feel like they truly accomplished something in writing that, but for most men, they want something perhaps a little more concrete than that.
SPEAKER_1: So going out and helping your neighbor is going to help you as well, because you'll be able to look at it and say, I did that concrete thing for that person.
SPEAKER_1: I built that section of fence or whatever it happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: So do things locally and build up from there is the short version of the answer.
SPEAKER_1: Let's see.
SPEAKER_1: Is the Platonic or Aristotelian conception of the good more consonant with scripture, which is say truth.
SPEAKER_1: I will leave that one for next time, I think, because I think that may get a little more involved.
SPEAKER_1: I wanna think about exactly how I wanna answer that one, but I will write that down, I will note it.
SPEAKER_1: I do have quite a backlog of questions, but I want to try to get to the chat just for the sake of getting through those.
SPEAKER_1: I see we have quite the discussion of dogs going in the chat.
SPEAKER_1: Obviously, I'm going to be partial to Golden Retrievers because I've always had Golden Retrievers my entire life.
SPEAKER_1: Other than Gizmo, I now have a Pomeranian, so.
SPEAKER_1: Someone asked about Arabs.
SPEAKER_1: Arabs are actually dressed in scripture because we are told that they come from Abraham and his Hamite concubine.
SPEAKER_1: So they're half.
SPEAKER_1: But obviously, they have been additionally mixed.
SPEAKER_1: They're in that part of the world where it's a confluence of peoples, and so it's going to depend on which particular group within that large umbrella you mean.
SPEAKER_1: They've had different mixtures over many centuries, so.
SPEAKER_1: But they are from both Shem and Ham, originally at least.
SPEAKER_1: As we pointed out before in Stone Quire and elsewhere, if, say, you had an ancestor, let's say you are a descendant of Shem, right?
SPEAKER_1: And you had one ancestor who was a descendant of Japheth, but he's 30 generations back.
SPEAKER_1: You effectively are 100% Shemite.
SPEAKER_1: That's just math.
SPEAKER_1: Divide 100 by 2 30 times and see how big the number is.
SPEAKER_1: I don't have that number in my head, but obviously mathematics plays a role here.
SPEAKER_1: I think that's pretty much most of the questions from the chat there.
SPEAKER_1: I had someone ask about the Delamo Mall, and I don't know if he was asking someone else in the chat or me.
SPEAKER_1: I have not been to the Delamo Mall in a long time.
SPEAKER_1: That's just a mall in Southern California for those who don't know.
SPEAKER_1: But no, I have not been there in quite some time.
SPEAKER_1: Let me pull up my other list of questions here.
SPEAKER_1: Or let me see if OBS will not freeze on me.
SPEAKER_1: Come on now.
SPEAKER_1: Well, Firefox has decided, you know, technology is great sometimes when it works.
SPEAKER_1: Firefox has now decided to freeze on me, so I can't pull up my other list of questions.
SPEAKER_1: I think I'm kind of getting near to the end here.
SPEAKER_1: We've run for about an hour, which is sort of the goal.
SPEAKER_1: I may run a little longer next week to answer a few more questions.
SPEAKER_1: I think I will try to do that to get through more, hopefully on Thursday.
SPEAKER_1: But I will answer, I think, this one last question here.
SPEAKER_1: I've answered it before, but I'll go over it again.
SPEAKER_1: So what is your stance on Christian identity?
SPEAKER_1: My stance on Christian identity is that I would put Christian single quotation marks because it's not.
SPEAKER_1: Because scripture is abundantly clear that Israel is descended, ethnic Israel, I mean, and I mean the man Israel, Jacob, is descended from Shem.
SPEAKER_1: Europeans are descended from Japheth, and so we are not ethnic Israel.
SPEAKER_1: And as I pointed out before, why would you want to be descended from ethnic Israel?
SPEAKER_1: Read the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_1: Read how those people behaved.
SPEAKER_1: This is also a point for proving that we're not Old Testament Israel.
SPEAKER_1: Look at how Europeans behave.
SPEAKER_1: Look at how modern Jews behave.
SPEAKER_1: Which people match the group of people who decided to have an orgy in the desert and worship a golden calf while the physical manifestation of God was on an adjacent mountain?
SPEAKER_1: I'm going to go ahead and say that my ancestors would not have done that.
SPEAKER_1: I pointed this out before.
SPEAKER_1: I firmly believe that if Jesus Christ had appeared to most other peoples in the world, they would have recognized he was at least a god.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe they wouldn't have understood son of God and all that stuff, but they would have said he is a god and worshiped him.
SPEAKER_1: Even the Africans would have done that.
SPEAKER_1: Some tiny percentage of them would have tried to eat him to get his magical power, but anyone else in the world would have worshiped him and not murdered him.
SPEAKER_1: I don't want to be related to the Old Testament Jews.
SPEAKER_1: I look at their behavior, I do not see my people, and I look at what scripture says about which group went where, and it doesn't make any sense.
SPEAKER_1: Christian identity is just a rehashed and repainted version of British Israelism, and it is as nutty to believe that we are descended from those people as to say that there are supposedly lost tribes that went north and became Britain.
SPEAKER_1: Also, worth pointing out, the Assyrians destroyed the northern kingdom.
SPEAKER_1: They did not exile them, they did not disperse them, they destroyed them through miscegenation.
SPEAKER_1: The ten northern tribes are gone, which is important for understanding eschatology and things like that, right?
SPEAKER_1: Those who try to say the 144,000 revelation are literal, don't know the Old Testament, because the Old Testament says the Assyrian exile was the Assyrians taking people out of the northern kingdom and moving them to other parts of the Assyrian empire, incidentally not north into Europe, that's not where their empire was, and then taking people from other parts of their empire and putting them into the northern kingdom, and then encouraging intermarriage.
SPEAKER_1: That's how the Assyrians destroyed conquered peoples, through miscegenation.
SPEAKER_1: And so what happened to the northern kingdom?
SPEAKER_1: They became the Samaritans.
SPEAKER_1: They're no longer Israelites in the ethnic sense.
SPEAKER_1: And so those who think that, you know, dispensationalists and other things like that, oh, there's some future for ethnicists, there isn't because they're gone.
SPEAKER_1: They were destroyed as a judgment from God.
SPEAKER_1: So we're not descended from them because they're gone, and they're also from a different son of Noah.
SPEAKER_1: So, no, I don't think that Christian identity makes any sense whatsoever, or is Christian.
SPEAKER_1: I think it is a very weird larp, and I don't know why anyone would want to be related to those people.
SPEAKER_1: I mean, they could theoretically convert.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think any of them will.
SPEAKER_1: I certainly don't want to be related to them.
SPEAKER_1: I am very much glad that I am descended from Japheth, from the Germanic line of Japheth.
SPEAKER_1: And the greater promises, this is also another aspect of it that I think is ridiculous.
SPEAKER_1: These people just don't know the Old Testament, but another ridiculous part of it is that they want to have some sort of ethnic promise they think is still outstanding for Old Testament Israel.
SPEAKER_1: One, there's no such promise.
SPEAKER_1: And then two, the greatest promise in Scripture after the Gospel itself is the promise to Japheth, that he would dwell in the tents of Shem, which is that Japheth would become Christendom.
SPEAKER_1: Why would you want to be descended from Shem when Japheth has the greater promise?
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying you can't be saved as a Shemite because of course you can, but Japheth has the greater promise.
SPEAKER_1: Japheth is the first born.
SPEAKER_1: Europeans are Japheth.
SPEAKER_1: I'm happy to be what I am.
SPEAKER_1: I don't need a LARP as an Old Testament Jew.
SPEAKER_1: That's ridiculous.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not going to wear a tiny hat, even though it might cover the bald spot.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not going to wear the tiny hat.
SPEAKER_1: That's silly.
SPEAKER_1: I don't want to be that.
SPEAKER_1: It's not Christian.
SPEAKER_1: I want nothing to do with it.
SPEAKER_1: I wish they would just be Christians.
SPEAKER_1: I recognize the impulse they have.
SPEAKER_1: They want to reject the philo-Semitism of the modern so-called church, but it's not the church.
SPEAKER_1: It's a bunch of heretics.
SPEAKER_1: Read the actual scripture, look at what it actually says about the sons of Noah, and accept the fact that you have been blessed to be a son of Japheth.
SPEAKER_1: You should be proud of your people and their history.
SPEAKER_1: You shouldn't want to pretend to be descended from some other line that is not as blessed and in many cases is cursed.
SPEAKER_1: Someone brought up the Israelites being white.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think that's wrong because you lowercase the W, because when scripture speaks about individuals who are part of Old Testament ethnic Israel, it does speak of them in terms that relate to light skin.
SPEAKER_1: But as I pointed out many times before, and this is unfortunately something people have very hard time grasping, because they don't know history in this case, many people in the Levant are even today fair-skinned.
SPEAKER_1: Fair skin is not exclusive to the sons of Japheth.
SPEAKER_1: That is not something that only we have.
SPEAKER_1: There are fair-skinned Koreans, there are fair-skinned Japanese, there are fair-skinned people in Syria, right?
SPEAKER_1: These people exist.
SPEAKER_1: And so, Christ, probably fair-skinned.
SPEAKER_1: I would go so far as to say, he was fair-skinned.
SPEAKER_1: Probably had light brown hair, fair skin, but we would consider tanned.
SPEAKER_1: So, you know, southern Italian kind of look.
SPEAKER_1: People don't understand how populations have migrated and things have changed in the intervening 2,000 years.
SPEAKER_1: Because do remember, the Arab conquest swept through that part of the world, and changed many of those populations.
SPEAKER_1: So, when these people are described as fair-skinned, or being able to blush, or having red hair, things like that, it doesn't mean they're European.
SPEAKER_1: It means that they are people from the Levant prior to the Arab conquest.
SPEAKER_1: Which, of course, they were, because we're talking about thousands of years prior, or at least a thousand years depending on the people.
SPEAKER_1: So, that's part of it.
SPEAKER_1: There's a difference between white in the sense of fair-skinned and white, uppercase W, in the case and the sense of descendant of Japheth, which is to say European.
SPEAKER_1: Different things.
SPEAKER_1: So, it's one of those cases where people just aren't very careful with their terms.
SPEAKER_1: There's nothing wrong with saying that Jesus is white in the case of fair skin, because I think that he was.
SPEAKER_1: I think that our understanding of population genetics and the words of scripture do support that.
SPEAKER_1: But he was not white in the case of European, in the sense of European, because he wasn't descended from Japheth.
SPEAKER_1: He was descended from Shem.
SPEAKER_1: My camera is slightly blocking the comment, but I think I have an Italian here saying that he's Southern Italian descent and has back hair, which, understandable, that part of the world.
SPEAKER_1: But I think that I will call it here for this episode.
SPEAKER_1: Someone asked me my thought on Bob Matthews.
SPEAKER_1: I don't know who that is.
SPEAKER_1: So I have no thoughts on him.
SPEAKER_1: So I think I will call it here for this week.
SPEAKER_1: I may run a little longer next week to try to get through a bit of the backlog I have.
SPEAKER_1: I would like to prepare a couple more of those questions.
SPEAKER_1: I know that I have some outstanding questions, but some of you have asked ones that are going to take a while to answer properly, which I do want to do.
SPEAKER_1: I don't want to just give a cursory answer.
SPEAKER_1: So I will push those to future episodes so that I can answer them more extensively, more completely.
SPEAKER_1: But again, I think I will call it here for this evening.
SPEAKER_1: Thank you for those of you who contributed questions.
SPEAKER_1: Thank you for those who participated in the chat.
SPEAKER_1: And I guess I will add one quick one.
SPEAKER_1: People ask about the Americas.
SPEAKER_1: Largely sons of Shem.
SPEAKER_1: Go ahead, run the genetic analysis.
SPEAKER_1: You can see they're related to Asians.
SPEAKER_1: That's the answer for that one.
SPEAKER_1: I'll just answer that really quickly here as I'm closing out.
SPEAKER_1: But thank you for participating in the chat, for submitting questions.
SPEAKER_1: If you would like to submit questions, omniforda.com should be a link in the description.
SPEAKER_1: In other places, it'll be in the show notes as well.
SPEAKER_1: For those who don't know, if you don't necessarily care about the video, if you just don't want to stare at me for an hour, by all means, there is audio only that I make available, usually two or three days after the show is streamed.
SPEAKER_1: And so if you want that, you can have that.
SPEAKER_1: It is generally a little higher quality when I remember to hit record on that.
SPEAKER_1: So I think that pretty much closes it out.
SPEAKER_1: If you want to submit questions elsewhere, I do try to collect them and answer them.
SPEAKER_1: But if you submit them on the forum, that is particularly helpful for me, because then I can keep them organized and point people to the answers more easily in the future.
SPEAKER_1: So that is it for this week.
SPEAKER_1: And I guess Lent is coming up.
SPEAKER_1: And so we went over that.
SPEAKER_1: And so you can be prepared to observe Lent in whatever way it is that you have chosen for your own personal observation of that, along with the historic practices of the Church.
SPEAKER_1: And I wish you all a great weekend, since it is Friday now instead of Thursday, which is sort of my original goal.
SPEAKER_1: But I hope you have a great rest of your weekend, and may God bless you all until I see you next week.
SPEAKER_1: I will of course continue to torment our enemies on X in the interim.
SPEAKER_1: They are very angry with the current thread I have going, that I have no intent of stopping anytime soon.
SPEAKER_1: So, again, thank you for your time, and have a great evening and weekend.
SPEAKER_1: God bless.