SPEAKER_1: It is the 20th of February, 2026.
SPEAKER_1: I am Corey J.
SPEAKER_1: Mahler, and this is At Any Cost.
SPEAKER_1: This is episode 17.
SPEAKER_1: It is a Q&A episode.
SPEAKER_1: And I have a little bit of housekeeping before I get into the questions for tonight.
SPEAKER_1: I have 12 questions I would like to get through in addition to perhaps some from the chat.
SPEAKER_1: The little bit of housekeeping is, if anyone from ReStream sees this, please stop signing me out of the plugin in OBS.
SPEAKER_1: I don't need to reauthenticate.
SPEAKER_1: I am using the same hardware.
SPEAKER_1: Just verify it's the same hardware and stop doing that.
SPEAKER_1: It's very annoying for a service that is supposed to make things more convenient, not less.
SPEAKER_1: I think that's pretty much all of the housekeeping, so irrelevant for most of you.
SPEAKER_1: But if someone from ReStream happens to see this, it would be nice of them to fix that.
SPEAKER_1: So getting right into the questions here.
SPEAKER_1: This is going to be a little bit of a Bible study tonight, and I'm fairly certain we're going to run a little bit long because of that.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think those who are watching this on a Friday night are going to object to running a little bit long though.
SPEAKER_1: So the first topic, it's not really a question, just a topic that I wanted to address.
SPEAKER_1: No one specifically asked about this, but the issue has come up a number of times, and I posted about it earlier.
SPEAKER_1: We are at a point now where technology is good enough with regard to faking a person's likeness and voice that you really need to have a discussion, assuming most of those listening to this are on the younger end of things.
SPEAKER_1: Most of you probably are not in your 50s and 60s.
SPEAKER_1: Most of you are going to be 20s, 30s, maybe 40s.
SPEAKER_1: So you're elderly parents in some cases.
SPEAKER_1: You're not so elderly parents in others, or you're less tech-adept family members, because we all typically have those as well.
SPEAKER_1: You need to have a discussion with them about the state of technology and how easy it is to get scammed.
SPEAKER_1: And part of that for elderly parents is going to be awkward, because you may have to take away their debit cards.
SPEAKER_1: Now, credit cards are probably less of a problem because they have fraud protection, but debit cards and wire transfers and things like that, if you can, you probably need to restrict your elderly parents from access to those things, because they will probably be scammed eventually.
SPEAKER_1: It's the reality of the situation in which we live right now.
SPEAKER_1: The scams are getting particularly bad.
SPEAKER_1: And it's because, like I said, deepfakes, the fake videos and the fake audio, are so good now that even those who know for what to look can be deceived by some of them.
SPEAKER_1: We're to the point where you basically can't believe your eyes.
SPEAKER_1: It's going to be a major problem for the courts, obviously, with regard to that sort of evidence.
SPEAKER_1: Perhaps it's going to bring back the importance of eyewitness evidence.
SPEAKER_1: But for those who are in a position without, again, elderly parents or less tech adept members of your family, have that discussion with them, basically tell them, never trust anything that's just video or audio because it can be faked.
SPEAKER_1: And you're not going to have any way to be able to tell if it is fake, because it is that good now.
SPEAKER_1: If I had been so inclined and desired to do so, I could have made this introduction me but AI.
SPEAKER_1: I'm never going to do that.
SPEAKER_1: I don't like using it, so I'm not going to do that.
SPEAKER_1: But I could have done that to prove the point and then cut in with me.
SPEAKER_1: And many of you would have been fooled by that, because that's how good it is now if you use the best available tools.
SPEAKER_1: So, just a couple little tips for how you can help parents deal with this and others in your family.
SPEAKER_1: Set up a key phrase, a passphrase, whatever you want to call it.
SPEAKER_1: It doesn't have to be a word.
SPEAKER_1: It can be a full sentence.
SPEAKER_1: Because, for instance, you can use a sentence as a password on your computer.
SPEAKER_1: Your password does not have to be gibberish or one word.
SPEAKER_1: It could be a sentence.
SPEAKER_1: It could be the first sentence from your favorite poem, say, something you can remember easily.
SPEAKER_1: That's part of it.
SPEAKER_1: You need to be able to remember this thing.
SPEAKER_1: But set up some sort of phrase where your family knows it, and then you can work it into a conversation to let the other person know it's actually me, because no one else would know it.
SPEAKER_1: So do make sure it's something no one else would know.
SPEAKER_1: Don't make it something that's super common.
SPEAKER_1: Make it something your family can remember, and that someone else will not be able to easily discover.
SPEAKER_1: Another thing that you can do, this is sort of the second tip here.
SPEAKER_1: There are additional things, but these are two good things for a starting place.
SPEAKER_1: Set up a question and answer, but you may be thinking, well, that's like my bank tells me, what's my favorite restaurant, or where were you born?
SPEAKER_1: Those questions are actually fine.
SPEAKER_1: Those are totally fine questions.
SPEAKER_1: You can pick any question you want.
SPEAKER_1: The key here, the little trick I want to teach you, make the answer unrelated to the question, because then it makes it very difficult, if not almost impossible, to guess.
SPEAKER_1: So if someone has their question as, what is your favorite restaurant, right?
SPEAKER_1: Say the answer is purple snow.
SPEAKER_1: No one is ever going to think of that answer or come across it randomly, but you've now created a pair, a question and answer pair, that is actually quite secure, because no one is going to guess it, and it's unrelated, right?
SPEAKER_1: That's what you want.
SPEAKER_1: You want that disconnect.
SPEAKER_1: The problem is when you use those questions, they're terrible questions, if you give the right answer, because quite frankly, for a scammer who has access to your personal information, say some of your bank records were leaked, or your credit card statements got leaked.
SPEAKER_1: Well, they might have a pretty good idea of what your favorite restaurant is, if it's the one you've been charging on your card twice a week for 10 years.
SPEAKER_1: So those questions are not good when you give the real answer.
SPEAKER_1: When you give a constructed answer, they're very good because then they're basically immune to equivalent brute force, right?
SPEAKER_1: So just two little tips to help with these things with your family.
SPEAKER_1: In addition to the one of, just don't talk to people who randomly call and claim to be your son or your daughter or your cousin or whatever it happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: You cannot do that these days because of where the technology is and how many scammers there are.
SPEAKER_1: Part of it, of course, is that we need to disconnect certain countries from the internet, but that has not happened yet.
SPEAKER_1: So, on to the second question for tonight.
SPEAKER_1: This one from the forum.
SPEAKER_1: Does your family know about your views?
SPEAKER_1: And if so, have they shunned you or have they expressed disapproval of your views?
SPEAKER_1: How do you recommend we deal with our families if they discover without us telling them that we espouse certain viewpoints that they may vehemently disagree with?
SPEAKER_1: This is quite similar to a question that I answered last time about a man dealing with his wife and her feeling isolated because of her views and trying to find friends that have similar views and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: So, in part, I would say go back and listen to that answer because that is a big part of the answer to this question.
SPEAKER_1: But insofar as I am concerned, I'm willing to go so far.
SPEAKER_1: I usually don't answer personal questions that involve other people.
SPEAKER_1: That's my general rule.
SPEAKER_1: But I'm willing to say that I'm on good terms with my family.
SPEAKER_1: Certainly, there are some extended family back in California who do not agree with my views.
SPEAKER_1: That's just the reality of it.
SPEAKER_1: That's not unexpected these days, certainly, given my views, right?
SPEAKER_1: And the state of our country and propaganda and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: But no, I'm on good terms with my immediate family.
SPEAKER_1: We don't necessarily agree on everything, but even if you have a family that is right wing, say, far right wing, right?
SPEAKER_1: You probably still won't agree on everything.
SPEAKER_1: That's just the nature of being a human being.
SPEAKER_1: We are going to disagree over sometimes stupid stuff, sometimes serious stuff.
SPEAKER_1: But with your family, there are going to be some differences concerning distance.
SPEAKER_1: If you have your immediate family, particularly if you're living in the same house as your immediate family, you need to get along with them.
SPEAKER_1: And I would say go read the article that I just wrote on women in defense of women.
SPEAKER_1: I'll put it in the show notes, because it's similar to some of the things I said there that need to be repeated here.
SPEAKER_1: There are times when you are dealing with immediate family, particularly in your own household, where winning does not need to be the goal, because winning comes at too high of a cost in those circumstances, because you need to keep the peace.
SPEAKER_1: That's basically the baseline there.
SPEAKER_1: You need to keep the peace in the home as best you can.
SPEAKER_1: You know, insofar as it depends on you, live at peace with all, right?
SPEAKER_1: So with your immediate family, that's the general rule.
SPEAKER_1: Or distant family, you can have a little more conflict because you don't live with them.
SPEAKER_1: You don't see them as often.
SPEAKER_1: If it's family, you see once a year, and you get into an argument about politics, at your family potluck, maybe don't do that because there's not really any reason to.
SPEAKER_1: But if you do, the consequences are not as dire, as if you are at enmity with someone who lives literally down the hall from you in the same building.
SPEAKER_1: That's more of a challenge.
SPEAKER_1: So, it's going to depend on that immediate versus distant family, and then part of it overlapping with my previous answer from the last episode regarding that man and his wife, just don't bring some things up.
SPEAKER_1: Yes, your question asks specifically, if they happen to discover them without you telling them, then you have to address it.
SPEAKER_1: And you should make clear that you value that relationship with your family, with your family members, highly, and you do not want to let politics and social issues and things like that destroy that relationship.
SPEAKER_1: And so basically, you agree to disagree.
SPEAKER_1: That is not something that we can do in the larger society, because that's a different arena.
SPEAKER_1: It's the public square versus the private home.
SPEAKER_1: In the private home, we can agree to disagree, because keeping the peace is very important.
SPEAKER_1: And so if it comes up in the way that they have discovered your views, make it very clear, again, that you value the relationship with your family, and you want to live at peace in your home.
SPEAKER_1: You don't want to be fighting over these things all the time.
SPEAKER_1: So maybe you set some ground rules.
SPEAKER_1: We don't discuss X, Y, and Z topic.
SPEAKER_1: We don't discuss politics at the dinner table.
SPEAKER_1: There's nothing wrong with that.
SPEAKER_1: Growing up, that's certainly something my family did not do.
SPEAKER_1: We've always been discussed religion, politics, social, whatever it happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: But in many families, you're going to not want to do that, because you don't need to have that sort of strife and fighting in the family, and the stress and things that attend it for many people.
SPEAKER_1: That's not what the home is supposed to be.
SPEAKER_1: The home is supposed to be a sanctuary.
SPEAKER_1: It's supposed to be a refuge from the world.
SPEAKER_1: And you will not have that if you're constantly fighting over certain things.
SPEAKER_1: So set bounds.
SPEAKER_1: There are topics that are out of bounds, or we don't discuss these topics at home, but maybe you go out with your father and have a beer at a bar or something, and then you discuss politics there.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe that's how you bound it.
SPEAKER_1: So you can keep the piece at home, but still have the option to discuss it.
SPEAKER_1: It's going to depend on your circumstances, your family, your tolerance for argument and strife and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: Some families have a very high tolerance for it, and so you discuss politics at the dinner table.
SPEAKER_1: Some families have a very low tolerance for it, and so you avoid it totally.
SPEAKER_1: The goal is to keep that piece in the home and not let these issues that we know are important and that are worth having a knockdown, drag-out, knives-out fight in the public square, obviously I'm speaking about metaphorical in this case, not literal knives, metaphorical in this case, but worth having that sort of fight in the public square, but you don't have it at home.
SPEAKER_1: These things are different and they should be treated differently.
SPEAKER_1: The third question, trying to number the questions as I go to make it easier to tag them in the future so people can find things easily.
SPEAKER_1: This one has a number of subtopics, so I will get into each of those.
SPEAKER_1: What should devout Christian men in modern America do about the lack of marriageable women?
SPEAKER_1: I was wondering if you could comment on each of these strategies.
SPEAKER_1: And so he has a number of strategies here.
SPEAKER_1: There are seven of them.
SPEAKER_1: Dating women from other major traditional Christian denominations, for example, Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Presbyterianism.
SPEAKER_1: So, asking this obviously from given that list has to be a Lutheran or Baptist, which doesn't narrow it too much.
SPEAKER_1: But temporarily moving abroad, for example, to Eastern Europe, where feminism is not as pervasive.
SPEAKER_1: Find a European woman who speaks English and bring her back here.
SPEAKER_1: Dating Anabaptist or Mormon women who grew up under male authority.
SPEAKER_1: Dating women who have lapsed in their faith yet may still have maintained their purity.
SPEAKER_1: Dating women with some type of learning disability that has prevented her from attending college.
SPEAKER_1: I will go ahead and not make the obvious joke there.
SPEAKER_1: Dating half-damaged women who may have retained some aspects of purity, but not all aspects.
SPEAKER_1: Dating women who have a small percent of non-white admixture.
SPEAKER_1: Is this ever acceptable?
SPEAKER_1: If so, do you have a recommended cutoff?
SPEAKER_1: In the Stone Quire episode, Entirely Young Man's Life, you seem to advocate approaching baristas and cashiers.
SPEAKER_1: Yet my experience has been that approaching women already puts you in their frame.
SPEAKER_1: That is, they see you as needy or desperate.
SPEAKER_1: Should I just be content with being single, I am at the point where I really think it's better for me to just focus on myself and not actively try to pursue women who don't seem to be interested in getting married anyway.
SPEAKER_1: So, obviously, a number of sub-questions here and topics to address.
SPEAKER_1: Insofar as that last bit is concerned, focusing on yourself in the sense of, you know, getting in shape and focusing on your hobbies and having a life is important, because women recognize if you have that or don't.
SPEAKER_1: And yes, as a man, you don't want to come across as desperate because that gives women the Ick, as they would call it.
SPEAKER_1: Even if they don't recognize the reality of it, that's just a biological and a psychological reaction women have.
SPEAKER_1: They can't even control it, so don't get mad at them for it.
SPEAKER_1: That's just how they are.
SPEAKER_1: It's how God made them.
SPEAKER_1: So, yes, focusing on those things and making sure that you have a personality and a life, because a wife is something you bring into your life, that is a piece of it.
SPEAKER_1: She's not the total.
SPEAKER_1: She's not the sum of your life.
SPEAKER_1: She's not everything you have.
SPEAKER_1: In fact, you should be more of her life than she should be of yours.
SPEAKER_1: That is how it works when things are functioning properly, which makes perfect sense because, of course, she's the one keeping the home, she's the one taking care of the children, the house, all those things.
SPEAKER_1: You have more of a life outside the home than she does.
SPEAKER_1: It's not to say she can't have friends and hobbies and things like that, but the larger chunk of a man's life is outside his home, often.
SPEAKER_1: Not always, you can have a little bit of a balance there, but you have things you go out and do in the world.
SPEAKER_1: That's important.
SPEAKER_1: You need to have that.
SPEAKER_1: Even if you work at home, you need to have a part of the house set aside for when you work at home, close it off, and don't deal with your wife during certain hours, because psychologically, she is not going to like the fact that it looks like you're just staying home all the time.
SPEAKER_1: There are some women who can sort of deal with that, and deal with the dissonance there, and not have that reaction, but most women can't.
SPEAKER_1: And so you need to have that separation.
SPEAKER_1: For men who go outside and work outside the home, it's not as much of an issue.
SPEAKER_1: But to get into the specific sub-questions here, dating outside, your particular strain of Christianity is entirely fine.
SPEAKER_1: I've spoken to the topic before, and the big question is going to be, will she follow your lead?
SPEAKER_1: Does she recognize that you are the head?
SPEAKER_1: Does she recognize that you get to make these decisions because you are the one who will answer to God for them?
SPEAKER_1: And so if she is Presbyterian and you are Lutheran, she has to become Lutheran.
SPEAKER_1: That is part of the deal if she is going to marry you.
SPEAKER_1: It is not being unequally yoked in the fullest sense, because obviously you're not just marrying an outright pagan, which is what we get into later here.
SPEAKER_1: But it is being unequally yoked in a minor sense, because she is going to have a lot of the duties and a lot of the time raising your children.
SPEAKER_1: Part of that will be instructing them in the faith.
SPEAKER_1: Now, it is incumbent on you to see that they are instructed rightly, but you will not be the one doing all of that.
SPEAKER_1: She will do part of that.
SPEAKER_1: And so you need to make sure that she is teaching the things that you believe, because you are the head and she has to follow.
SPEAKER_1: And if she's not willing to do that, then you are just signing up for strife in your marriage and suffering in your home.
SPEAKER_1: So you need to take that into account.
SPEAKER_1: But yes, it is generally fine to date Christians outside your denomination, outside your tradition.
SPEAKER_1: That's not a problem.
SPEAKER_1: The problems arise tangentially related to that.
SPEAKER_1: If she will not follow your lead, if she will not submit, which Scripture says wives are to submit to their husbands in all things, then you have a very real problem.
SPEAKER_1: If she was raised as a proper Christian, you shouldn't have as much of an issue.
SPEAKER_1: Do also recognize, of course, there is the issue that comes alongside that.
SPEAKER_1: How will her family react to her marrying outside their tradition, outside their denomination?
SPEAKER_1: Is that going to be a source of strife?
SPEAKER_1: Generally speaking, this, of course, does not always happen, particularly these days, but historically the woman became part of the man's family.
SPEAKER_1: And so she had significantly less interaction with her family, her parents, grandparents, cousins, siblings, all of that, because she became part of your family, part of your clan.
SPEAKER_1: These days, that's not always going to be the case, and it doesn't even necessarily have to be the case.
SPEAKER_1: You'd like to get along with your in-laws, and she'd like to get along with hers.
SPEAKER_1: That's how it should be.
SPEAKER_1: But if her family is going to be very involved in your life, say, her mother is going to do a lot of babysitting, things like that, then it is a very real concern if they are going to cause strife for you in your marriage, because they disagree with you on these issues.
SPEAKER_1: It's a matter of wisdom.
SPEAKER_1: You have to investigate this and make sure that her parents aren't going to cause trouble for you, because they are Roman Catholic and think that you are an evil Presbyterian, or whatever it happens to be, or they are Baptist and think that you are an evil baby sprinkling Presbyterian, or whatever they want to call you.
SPEAKER_1: Make sure you are not signing up for strife there, and you may have to have a very frank discussion with them about how you are going to raise your children and what the boundaries are for what they are permitted to say to your children or not say to your children.
SPEAKER_1: Because ultimately, they are your children, you are the one who will answer for them.
SPEAKER_1: So apply your wisdom there, investigate these issues.
SPEAKER_1: As far as temporarily moving abroad, I obviously don't recommend that, because I don't think men should go shopping for wives in other countries.
SPEAKER_1: You should marry a wife from your own country.
SPEAKER_1: Now, is there as much of a problem if, say, I'm not saying go shopping for a wife, but let's say you're English, right?
SPEAKER_1: English descent, just for the sake of the hypothetical, and you live in the US, and you meet a nice English girl from England, somehow.
SPEAKER_1: She's hiking, you meet her, however it happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: Is there a problem there?
SPEAKER_1: No, there's no problem there, that's totally fine.
SPEAKER_1: You can do that.
SPEAKER_1: It's not going to happen that often, but it's not objectionable, because you are ultimately from the same nation.
SPEAKER_1: Just a little bit of separation there.
SPEAKER_1: Same thing for if you're German, and marry a German from Germany, versus a German descended person from the US.
SPEAKER_1: Or again, it's this matter of concentric circles, right?
SPEAKER_1: You are more closely related to those of your nation, and then of your larger nation.
SPEAKER_1: So say, in the case of Germany versus Germanics, versus Western Europe, versus Europe, concentric circles.
SPEAKER_1: You are going to encounter more and greater problems, the greater the distance.
SPEAKER_1: And so yes, if you are German, and you marry someone who is Chinese, significantly more problems you have created for yourself and your children than if you marry someone who is Dutch.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe a little bit of tension there, because the Germans and the Dutch are different, but they are not that different.
SPEAKER_1: The Germans and the Chinese are extremely different.
SPEAKER_1: So no, I don't recommend going and shopping for wives in other countries.
SPEAKER_1: Don't do that.
SPEAKER_1: Dating an Anabaptist or a Mormon who grew up under male authority.
SPEAKER_1: That's fine.
SPEAKER_1: There are plenty of Anabaptists, plenty of Mormons here, and they are of our nation.
SPEAKER_1: So same blood, same race.
SPEAKER_1: That's completely fine.
SPEAKER_1: Again, you're going to have the same sort of issues that you had with dating someone from another denomination, but perhaps a more extreme version of that.
SPEAKER_1: Do recognize that in those communities, typically if someone leaves, they are going to be shunned.
SPEAKER_1: Now, as you are a man and you're looking for a wife, it's not as big of an issue because again, she is properly joining your family.
SPEAKER_1: You're not joining hers really.
SPEAKER_1: And so, the fact that she's going to be shunned is going to be a problem for her.
SPEAKER_1: That's going to be hard for her emotionally, psychologically, recognize there are going to be hurdles to overcome.
SPEAKER_1: But as long as you have family who are going to support you and support her, you can probably do that and you'll be just fine.
SPEAKER_1: You probably want to move away from the Anabaptists of the Mormon community though.
SPEAKER_1: You probably don't want to live right next door and have stolen one of their women, as some of them will view it.
SPEAKER_1: The next part, dating women who have lapsed in their faith yet may still have maintained their purity, completely fine.
SPEAKER_1: Same sort of consideration.
SPEAKER_1: Bring them back into the faith.
SPEAKER_1: In fact, you're doing a good thing.
SPEAKER_1: Bring them back into the faith.
SPEAKER_1: Make sure that they are willing to follow your lead.
SPEAKER_1: Recognize that maybe you're going to have some challenges there, some struggles because she's had struggles with her faith.
SPEAKER_1: Make sure your faith is firm enough to be able to support hers.
SPEAKER_1: So, make sure you're ready to do that role.
SPEAKER_1: You have to do that anyway as a husband because God is going to ask you, where is your wife when you get to the judgment because you're her head.
SPEAKER_1: So, same sort of challenge there.
SPEAKER_1: The question about women with a learning disability, that's going to depend really heavily on what you mean by that because there's a wide spectrum.
SPEAKER_1: There's a difference between a woman who has really mild autism or a woman who is profoundly mentally retarded in the technical sense, right?
SPEAKER_1: Wild difference there.
SPEAKER_1: So, I can't really give a general answer to that one.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think producing severely mentally disabled children would be wise.
SPEAKER_1: I think I've been fairly clear about that many times in many places.
SPEAKER_1: But if it's a woman who has some mild problem, dyslexia or something, something mild, there's no problem there, there's no objection there.
SPEAKER_1: Again, just recognize that if it's something that has a genetic component, you will pass it on to your children potentially, and so there are risks.
SPEAKER_1: But, you know, weigh these things.
SPEAKER_1: Everyone has problems, generally speaking.
SPEAKER_1: There are very few people who don't have some sort of mild genetic something, or some sort of baggage, right?
SPEAKER_1: And it obviously depends on how broad you cast that net, how broadly you define it, you know.
SPEAKER_1: I have gray hair, like, is that genetic?
SPEAKER_1: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_1: Some men grow gray much earlier than others.
SPEAKER_1: I'm 40, and my beard is, you know, half gray at this point.
SPEAKER_1: So it just depends on how broadly you define these categories.
SPEAKER_1: The next one, dating half-damaged, in quotes here, women who have maintained some aspects of purity, but not all aspects.
SPEAKER_1: So basically, these are women who have been not necessarily wildly promiscuous, but have not been entirely chased, I think, is what we're getting to here.
SPEAKER_1: This is going to be a matter of wisdom.
SPEAKER_1: Do you have what it takes to deal with a woman who has that baggage, and part of it is going to be baggage that she literally cannot herself get rid of, because it is genetic baggage in some cases.
SPEAKER_1: There are some things where this is now just part of who she is biologically and psychologically, and she will never get rid of it until the resurrection, the general resurrection, right, in the new creation.
SPEAKER_1: And so make sure you are the sort of man who can handle that.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not going to say it's always unwise or it's always bad.
SPEAKER_1: I did set a general sort of formula for how to calculate that, and you can go find that in my comments archive.
SPEAKER_1: I won't say it here because it'll probably get the video flagged in some way, but you can go and find that, and I stand by it.
SPEAKER_1: I think it is a general rule of thumb.
SPEAKER_1: There are men who can have a fudge factor, deal with women who are a little more damaged, and there are men who can't.
SPEAKER_1: You know the sort of man you are.
SPEAKER_1: You know what you can handle, what you can't handle, and whether or not you will be comfortable settling a little bit.
SPEAKER_1: And do, of course, recognize that women these days are also settling because men are also damaged goods in a lot of cases.
SPEAKER_1: So recognize that maybe you're damaged goods a little bit too.
SPEAKER_1: So give her a little grace, a little leeway, and hopefully she will return that.
SPEAKER_1: But the central part there is recognize that maybe you are the sort of man who can deal with that, and maybe you aren't.
SPEAKER_1: And if you have a great opportunity to marry a good woman who was maybe a little bit off the reservation in university, not wild party girl, right?
SPEAKER_1: But maybe she made some mistakes, did some things she should not have done.
SPEAKER_1: And yes, they're more than mistakes, they're sin.
SPEAKER_1: But does that mean she can't be a good wife?
SPEAKER_1: I don't think so.
SPEAKER_1: You know, if she had one or two serious boyfriends in university, and yes, she slept with them, does that mean that she absolutely can never be a wife?
SPEAKER_1: No, that would be ridiculous to claim that.
SPEAKER_1: Is it ideal?
SPEAKER_1: Absolutely not.
SPEAKER_1: Of course not.
SPEAKER_1: Because a woman is supposed to be a virgin on her wedding night.
SPEAKER_1: And one of the ways you can look at that is that one of the examples that is held up for marriage in scripture is the requirements for the priests.
SPEAKER_1: And what was the requirement?
SPEAKER_1: They had to marry a wife of their own race, and she had to be a virgin.
SPEAKER_1: God's pretty clear about what he wants for marriage.
SPEAKER_1: And so there is an ideal, but we live in a fallen world.
SPEAKER_1: And, you know, if you're millennial, you're getting up there in years.
SPEAKER_1: I know that personally.
SPEAKER_1: And so maybe there will be a little bit of settling in order to find a wife.
SPEAKER_1: And you just have to make it through this life that's not fatalist or pessimistic or cynical or whatever it happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: But I think this is something that we don't really think of enough.
SPEAKER_1: All you have to do with your marriage is survive for 60 years, right?
SPEAKER_1: Find the happiness where you can, live a good life together, let small things slide, but recognize that it's really only about 60 years.
SPEAKER_1: Or if you're a millennial, then maybe, you know, 40 years or something.
SPEAKER_1: But it's not the highest bar to hurdle.
SPEAKER_1: And all the problems we have today are gone in the next life.
SPEAKER_1: You just have to get through this one.
SPEAKER_1: So keep a perspective on things.
SPEAKER_1: Don't look for perfection because you won't find it in this life.
SPEAKER_1: It doesn't exist in this life.
SPEAKER_1: Find something that is good for you and that you can make into a good life.
SPEAKER_1: The next sub-question is dating women who have a small percent of non-white admixture.
SPEAKER_1: I'm sort of tempted to get out my tablet, which I have set up here.
SPEAKER_1: Of course, now it's decided to disconnect.
SPEAKER_1: I think it probably went to sleep.
SPEAKER_1: But I don't think I need to do that because I think everyone kind of understands the percentages here.
SPEAKER_1: They're pretty straightforward, right?
SPEAKER_1: So you are effectively half your father, 25% your grandfather, 12.5% your great grandfather, and then, you know, 6.25, 3.125, so on and so forth back.
SPEAKER_1: So after a certain number of generations, it becomes trivia, if even that.
SPEAKER_1: So you get people sometimes in the US context, usually they've just had some sort of weird family legend that's a complete wild fabrication.
SPEAKER_1: Someone said it while he was drunk 100 years ago or something.
SPEAKER_1: And they'll say, oh, I'm part Cherokee.
SPEAKER_1: And you do a genetic test, and they're 0% Cherokee.
SPEAKER_1: Well, let's say you had an ancestor at some point way back who was Cherokee.
SPEAKER_1: Let's say it's 9, 10 generations ago.
SPEAKER_1: You are effectively 0% Cherokee.
SPEAKER_1: So marrying someone who has some small admixture from another race is not going to be a problem, generally speaking.
SPEAKER_1: Is there a slightly elevated risk of genetic and other issues?
SPEAKER_1: Of course, that's the reality of it.
SPEAKER_1: But that doesn't mean that it rises to the level where it would be unwise to marry a woman who has a 16th, a 32nd, whatever it happens to be from some other group.
SPEAKER_1: Part of it is also going to depend on which other group, because again, it's that matter of distance.
SPEAKER_1: If you are half-Irish and half-Russian, that is not going to give you the same risk of genetic disorders and psychological stresses that you would have if you were half-Russian and half-Thai.
SPEAKER_1: It's that distance, it's that incompatibility of the cultures.
SPEAKER_1: You are going to have more problems.
SPEAKER_1: And anyone who is of mixed race, who is being honest with you, is going to say, yes, I feel torn between two worlds, because you literally are biologically in yourself, you are torn between those two worlds.
SPEAKER_1: And so, if you marry a woman who has that, recognize she is going to have those issues, right?
SPEAKER_1: That's going to be part of her psychological makeup, and the biology as well, because that is how she was made, because her parents made that unwise decision.
SPEAKER_1: But if it's four, five, six, seven, eight generations back, she is not going to care.
SPEAKER_1: That's faded into time, it's not going to matter.
SPEAKER_1: So you're not going to have issues with that.
SPEAKER_1: Again, is it ideal?
SPEAKER_1: No.
SPEAKER_1: But we don't live in an ideal world.
SPEAKER_1: There are going to be things where you have to give a little bit of leeway, a little bit of grace basically.
SPEAKER_1: And this is one of them.
SPEAKER_1: So no, if it's something like that, I don't think it's really worth having that consideration.
SPEAKER_1: Again, it depends on the admixture.
SPEAKER_1: You know, someone who is half Japanese is not going to have the same sort of stresses and psychological baggage as someone who is half Ugandan and half, you know, European.
SPEAKER_1: I'm using European because that's obviously most of the audience and what I am.
SPEAKER_1: So use wisdom there.
SPEAKER_1: I've spoken about that a number of times before, touched on it in Stone Choir.
SPEAKER_1: But yes, once you start getting into 1st 16th, 1st 32nd, 1st 64th, it's practically not even worth considering anymore.
SPEAKER_1: So I think that pretty much answers all of the sub-questions there.
SPEAKER_1: Except for, no, I don't think you have to be content being single.
SPEAKER_1: Just go out and find a woman.
SPEAKER_1: You're a man, find a younger woman.
SPEAKER_1: Go date a zoomer.
SPEAKER_1: Good luck.
SPEAKER_1: I recognize there are problems, but there are problems with men as well.
SPEAKER_1: We're all damaged.
SPEAKER_1: We're all kind of broken goods.
SPEAKER_1: We're living in an interim generation, essentially.
SPEAKER_1: So the goal is to get through this, to make a better world for those who come after us.
SPEAKER_1: And part of that is that there have to be those who come after us to have that better world.
SPEAKER_1: So go find yourself a 24-year-old and date her.
SPEAKER_1: That's entirely fine.
SPEAKER_1: The next question, question four, is about English and the Septuagint.
SPEAKER_1: Do you think God is preparing to use English as a new scriptural language similar to Greek for the Septuagint?
SPEAKER_1: Will the future faithful English translation of scripture be used similar to the Septuagint to spread the word of God?
SPEAKER_1: Thoughts behind the question.
SPEAKER_1: In your series on the Septuagint, the basic idea was that the scriptures needed to be translated into Greek because it was the lingua franca, which is a term I always find funny.
SPEAKER_1: This permitted its spread throughout the Greek and Roman empires.
SPEAKER_1: English is known worldwide now and likely to remain the lingua franca for quite some time.
SPEAKER_1: Even far-flung tropical islands know some English due to commerce.
SPEAKER_1: That is true.
SPEAKER_1: This seems to me like a similar set of factors for why God preserved the word of Greek after he permitted Hebrew to die.
SPEAKER_1: I might go so far as to say he killed Hebrew, but I don't necessarily know that it is the equivalent for a number of reasons.
SPEAKER_1: I think that English, I'll start out by saying, I think that the English translation will be the word of God, the sort of official word of God in English for English speakers.
SPEAKER_1: But I don't think that we're at a point in history, given just the realities of technology and commerce and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: Where we need to have one language of scripture as the universal one.
SPEAKER_1: Because, like I said previously, I have a German translation of the Septuagint somewhere in this room.
SPEAKER_1: I don't know where I've said it.
SPEAKER_1: But there's no reason the Germans should use English.
SPEAKER_1: The German is just fine.
SPEAKER_1: You can translate Greek into German with minimal difficulty.
SPEAKER_1: And you can do the same thing for French and Dutch and Danish and whatever else.
SPEAKER_1: So, I think that is what should be done today, because we don't have these prohibitive costs with regard to printing, and everyone can buy a copy.
SPEAKER_1: You know, unfortunately, the German copy of the Septuagint I ordered from Germany, and so it wasn't cheap.
SPEAKER_1: But at the same time, it's trivial compared to what these things used to cost, because it used to be a significant chunk of your wages for the year.
SPEAKER_1: If not more than that, at some points in history, it could have been multiple years' worth of the wages of a day laborer.
SPEAKER_1: And I just don't think we're in a situation where we have to have English as the one copy used everywhere.
SPEAKER_1: And there's also the fact that, as a general rule, and I guess this sort of gets into a question for later, but I think I won't address that sub-point then.
SPEAKER_1: The question is, have we already completed the spread of the gospel to all nations?
SPEAKER_1: Traditionally, a number of Lutheran theologians and teachers have believed that was fulfilled in the time of the apostles, and then, if not in the time of the apostles, that plus the age of Christendom.
SPEAKER_1: I am inclined to believe that is true, because at this point, pretty much everyone on the planet has access to scripture in a comprehensible language, except for obviously those who are profoundly mentally disabled or speak some very weird language that doesn't have a ready translation, but even those are extremely uncommon these days.
SPEAKER_1: And then you're getting, I think, a little too fine in the resolution of nation, nation meaning race, because all the great races of man, which is, say, Europeans, Africans, and Asians, in the broad sense of Asian and the broad sense of race, have the word of God, have been proselytized, have heard the gospel.
SPEAKER_1: And so I think the Great Commission has been effectively completed.
SPEAKER_1: So I don't think we need English to pursue that at this point, because I don't think it's something we need to pursue.
SPEAKER_1: I think we're more in the stage of knocking the dust off our sandals for those who have rejected God.
SPEAKER_1: Does that mean that we should stop all efforts to proselytize other nations?
SPEAKER_1: No, I don't think so.
SPEAKER_1: But I think we should focus only on those who are eager to hear the word and willing to receive it.
SPEAKER_1: So, you know, I'd like to see Japan proselytized, because MacArthur botched that one.
SPEAKER_1: And I wouldn't want to be serving his eternity currently, on account of that and some other things.
SPEAKER_1: But, you know, that is something that we could still do, because many of them are willing to receive the word greatly and happily.
SPEAKER_1: Whereas some places are not.
SPEAKER_1: Should we be proselytizing the Jews?
SPEAKER_1: No.
SPEAKER_1: They rejected God.
SPEAKER_1: They have rejected efforts to convert them for centuries, millennia at this point.
SPEAKER_1: And they spit on God, they hate God, they pray against Christians, they spit on Christians, knock the dust off your sandals and be done with it.
SPEAKER_1: But the basic answer to the question is, I think we can translate scriptures into every language that warrants it, and so we don't need to have a lingua franca for scripture.
SPEAKER_1: The English translation will be the translation for English speakers, but I think there should also be an equivalent the translation for German, and for French, and for other languages as well.
SPEAKER_1: Question five is going to be where we get into the Bible study, and I'm definitely going to run long on this episode because there is a fair amount to go over for this.
SPEAKER_1: So I will first do some readings of scripture because the question, actually I'll first read the question, but then I will do some readings of scripture to set sort of the background and then give my answer to the question.
SPEAKER_1: I don't want to be a bother, as I know you are generally not fond of End Times discussion.
SPEAKER_1: More or less true.
SPEAKER_1: But I'm curious as to what signs are not yet fulfilled.
SPEAKER_1: As I have heard you mention over the years, I have been listening that there are a few that remain outstanding.
SPEAKER_1: And I think that is true.
SPEAKER_1: But in order to couch that properly, we sort of need to understand what the signs of the End Times are.
SPEAKER_1: So, I'm going to go through a number of readings here.
SPEAKER_1: Some of them are a little long.
SPEAKER_1: This one is going to take a little while.
SPEAKER_1: But like I said, this is going to be where the Bible study starts, which again, I don't think anyone who's listening to this on a Friday night is going to object to a Bible study.
SPEAKER_1: So, of course, log off is going to be uncooperative here.
SPEAKER_1: There we go.
SPEAKER_1: So I am going to open up both log-offs and the Septuagint, because there are a couple of times where I know I'm going to get different numbering in the Septuagint, and I want to be able to use the one with which I'm familiar just so I can find it more easily.
SPEAKER_1: We will start with the New Testament, though.
SPEAKER_1: We'll start with Matthew 24.
SPEAKER_1: And this will be verses 3 through 14 is what I'll read here.
SPEAKER_1: As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, Tell us when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming into the end of the age?
SPEAKER_1: And Jesus answered them, See that no one leads you astray, for many will come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and they will lead many astray.
SPEAKER_1: And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars.
SPEAKER_1: See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.
SPEAKER_1: For nation will rise against nation, and notably there that could be translated, race will rise against race, it is the same word in Greek, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.
SPEAKER_1: All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.
SPEAKER_1: Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake.
SPEAKER_1: And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another, and many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.
SPEAKER_1: And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold, but the one who endures to the end will be saved, and the gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, or races, and then the end will come.
SPEAKER_1: And yes, of course, there's the abomination of desolation, which you see next, but I'm just going to read that section for now.
SPEAKER_1: The next section will be from 2 Thessalonians 2, and I'll read from 3 through 12 for this one.
SPEAKER_1: Let no one deceive you in any way, for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of god, proclaiming himself to be god.
SPEAKER_1: Do you not remember that when I was still with you, I told you these things, and you know what is restraining him now, so that he may be revealed in his time?
SPEAKER_1: For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work.
SPEAKER_1: Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way, and then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth, and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming.
SPEAKER_1: The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan, with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved.
SPEAKER_1: Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
SPEAKER_1: And the next section I'll read is from 2nd Timothy, getting a collection of the signs here, for the end times, of course.
SPEAKER_1: Read 1 through 9.
SPEAKER_1: But understand this, that in the last days, there will come times of difficulty, for people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.
SPEAKER_1: Avoid such people, for among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.
SPEAKER_1: Just as Janus and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith.
SPEAKER_1: But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.
SPEAKER_1: The next section from 1st John this time.
SPEAKER_1: Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, so now many Antichrists have come.
SPEAKER_1: Therefore we know that it is the last hour.
SPEAKER_1: They went out from us, but they were not of us, for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.
SPEAKER_1: But they went out, that it might be complained that they are all not of us.
SPEAKER_1: But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge.
SPEAKER_1: I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth.
SPEAKER_1: Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?
SPEAKER_1: This is the Antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.
SPEAKER_1: No one who denies the Son has the Father.
SPEAKER_1: Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.
SPEAKER_1: Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you.
SPEAKER_1: If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father.
SPEAKER_1: And this is the promise that he made to us, eternal life.
SPEAKER_1: I write these things to you, about those who are trying to deceive you.
SPEAKER_1: But the anointing that you receive from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you.
SPEAKER_1: But as his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and is no lie, just as it has taught you, abide in him.
SPEAKER_1: Just a couple, few more here actually.
SPEAKER_1: One more from a gospel, and then on to revelation, of course, as you would expect for signs of the end times.
SPEAKER_1: Next one from Luke.
SPEAKER_1: I think it's 25.
SPEAKER_1: Yes.
SPEAKER_1: And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations, again, or races, in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves, people fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world.
SPEAKER_1: For the powers of the heavens will be shaken, and then they will see the son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
SPEAKER_1: Now, when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.
SPEAKER_1: And then I will read some passages from Revelation.
SPEAKER_1: I think one of them I will just recommend that you read, because it's an entire chapter, but starting with Revelation 6.
SPEAKER_1: When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth.
SPEAKER_1: The full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale.
SPEAKER_1: The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.
SPEAKER_1: Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the lamb.
SPEAKER_1: For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?
SPEAKER_1: Revelation 7 is also relevant here.
SPEAKER_1: I won't necessarily read this one, but that is about the tribulation, the end times, the period of tribulation where things get worse near to the end.
SPEAKER_1: And I think the last one that I will read, I'm not going to read Revelation 13 because it's the whole chapter.
SPEAKER_1: It's about the beasts, right?
SPEAKER_1: The two beasts.
SPEAKER_1: And then Revelation 11, I'll read part of that.
SPEAKER_1: And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.
SPEAKER_1: These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth.
SPEAKER_1: And if anyone would harm them, fire pours from their mouth and consumes their foes.
SPEAKER_1: If anyone would harm them, this is how he is doomed to die.
SPEAKER_1: They have the power to shut the sky, that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood, and to strike the earth with every kind of plague as often as they desire.
SPEAKER_1: And you can read the rest of that section, if you are so inclined, which I do recommend, of course.
SPEAKER_1: And then, like I said, Revelation 13 is the other section there.
SPEAKER_1: But what do we pull out of this?
SPEAKER_1: What are the signs of the end times, right?
SPEAKER_1: Well, I will break it down into seven categories of signs.
SPEAKER_1: Some very clearly fulfilled, some pretty much all cyclical in terms of their fulfillment, but some not yet fulfilled, depending on how you exegete these passages.
SPEAKER_1: And so the first one is wars, rumors of wars, famines, pestilence, earthquakes, those sorts of things.
SPEAKER_1: These are always with us, they get worse near the end.
SPEAKER_1: Are they getting worse now?
SPEAKER_1: Some of them perhaps, we've had some bad pestilence, there's bad famines in some places.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think earthquakes are necessarily getting worse right now.
SPEAKER_1: We certainly have wars and rumors of wars, and perhaps we're going to war, we'll see what happens there.
SPEAKER_1: So is that fulfilled?
SPEAKER_1: I think sufficiently, it will get worse near the end, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be the end now or very soon, according to this sign.
SPEAKER_1: The second set, false prophets, again, always an issue ongoing from the beginning.
SPEAKER_1: You have the Mormons, right?
SPEAKER_1: You have their false prophets.
SPEAKER_1: You have various other false prophets.
SPEAKER_1: Islam started as essentially a Christian heresy.
SPEAKER_1: False prophets there, abound in that part of the world.
SPEAKER_1: It will get worse near the end.
SPEAKER_1: It's pretty bad now, and it's been getting worse.
SPEAKER_1: So, I think that one counts as fulfilled.
SPEAKER_1: The third one is the great apostasy.
SPEAKER_1: You have many whose love will grow cold near the end, who will turn away from the faith.
SPEAKER_1: And I think that you could reasonably interpret current conditions as being the great apostasy.
SPEAKER_1: If this is not the great apostasy, I hesitate even to consider how bad things will get when it does occur, because things are pretty bad right now with regard to Christianity the world over.
SPEAKER_1: And so, we may be in the middle of it, and it may be fulfilled, or the one that is the real one may be even worse.
SPEAKER_1: The fourth one, antichrists, which again is going to be those who either claim that they are speaking for God and are lying or false teachers.
SPEAKER_1: Typically, that's what the antichrists are.
SPEAKER_1: Always with us.
SPEAKER_1: Get worse near the end.
SPEAKER_1: Things are pretty bad right now with regard to that as well.
SPEAKER_1: Plenty of false teachers out there, lying about God, lying in God's name.
SPEAKER_1: The fifth, the antichrist.
SPEAKER_1: This one depends upon your exegesis, because there are those who say there is going to be one final antichrist who stands up, declares himself to be God, and then he's the last one.
SPEAKER_1: He's Satan's man on earth.
SPEAKER_1: Right.
SPEAKER_1: So, the Book of Concord says that the popes are antichrist.
SPEAKER_1: Each one of the popes is a sort of mini antichrist, insofar as he teaches falsely, and says that you have to obey him in order to be saved, and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: Of course, I hold to that, because I do hold to the Book of Concord as a Lutheran.
SPEAKER_1: But whether or not there is a final antichrist, I'm sort of inclined towards saying yes.
SPEAKER_1: And so, that person hasn't appeared.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think we can reasonably say anyone on the stage right now is acting like that person.
SPEAKER_1: It doesn't mean he couldn't be that person, but I don't think we have a final one.
SPEAKER_1: So if you believe there is a final antichrist that is a specific man, not fulfilled.
SPEAKER_1: That would be one of the answers to the question.
SPEAKER_1: That hasn't been fulfilled.
SPEAKER_1: The next one is the cosmic signs, right?
SPEAKER_1: The moon blood red and the stars falling from the skies and the sun being darkened and things like that, pretty obviously not fulfilled.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think the blood moon that's coming up counts as the moon turning to blood, right?
SPEAKER_1: I think it's something more extreme than that.
SPEAKER_1: And so the cosmic signs have not been fulfilled.
SPEAKER_1: The seventh and final one here, the two witnesses, prophets, martyrs, all of those things.
SPEAKER_1: If it is two specific men, and if it's not symbolic of the church and the church age and the church's witness and however you want to exegete that, if it's not symbolic, if it is two literal men who are the final prophets on the earth before the second coming, before the trumpet sound and Christ returns and draws it all to a close, well, they haven't appeared yet.
SPEAKER_1: I don't see them.
SPEAKER_1: I think it's going to be very obvious who they are if they are two specific men and they appear.
SPEAKER_1: So that one also not fulfilled.
SPEAKER_1: I know some people who have joked that the final two prophets are Woe and I, but I don't think so.
SPEAKER_1: And I kind of hope not.
SPEAKER_1: And at any rate, I don't have the ability to call down fire.
SPEAKER_1: So I don't fulfill the prophecy, right?
SPEAKER_1: So, no, I don't think that they've appeared either.
SPEAKER_1: So those would be the signs that have not occurred.
SPEAKER_1: And so sort of the mini Bible study on the end times, maybe eventually I'll get around to something longer.
SPEAKER_1: But part of it is because obviously it takes a long time to go through all these verses, and a lot of it is unknown.
SPEAKER_1: I didn't even get into Daniel, right?
SPEAKER_1: So the signs that are very clearly not fulfilled would be a final Antichrist, and then the cosmic signs, and the two final prophets.
SPEAKER_1: I think you can say very clearly those are not fulfilled, unless you take the final prophets as symbolic, in which case it's a relationship to the Church and the Church's witness and persecution, then you can say that one's fulfilled, but the others remain.
SPEAKER_1: The most obvious and the one that no one can deny, the cosmic signs.
SPEAKER_1: They aren't occurring right now.
SPEAKER_1: When they occur, I do not think there will be any way to deny that they are occurring, unless you simply don't want to believe it and hate God.
SPEAKER_1: The sixth question.
SPEAKER_1: You mentioned in passing that multigenerational households are more natural.
SPEAKER_1: How does this work with patriarchy and a son leaving his father and mother?
SPEAKER_1: Who rules the household?
SPEAKER_1: It seems to me this creates longhouse conditions, and many say it is Third World favela coded.
SPEAKER_1: There are a number of aspects to this.
SPEAKER_1: The patriarch always rightfully, correctly exercises some authority and some control.
SPEAKER_1: And that's true whether you are under his roof or not, because you should still honor your father even when you no longer live near him, even if you live on the other side of the country from him.
SPEAKER_1: It doesn't mean you have to obey everything he says, but you still honor him as your father.
SPEAKER_1: The fourth commandment is still binding on you.
SPEAKER_1: He's still the patriarch.
SPEAKER_1: He's still the head of the clan, the tribe, right?
SPEAKER_1: He still has authority because of that, in the same way that the firstborn has certain privileges for his entire life, because he is the firstborn.
SPEAKER_1: So, does the father have some authority?
SPEAKER_1: Yes, regardless of whether you're in his house or not.
SPEAKER_1: But does the patriarch, does your father or his father, if he's still alive, have the right to tell your wife and your children what to do?
SPEAKER_1: The answer is no, because you're the head, and so he should come to you and talk to you.
SPEAKER_1: But once you reach that age of maturity, he should talk to you man to man.
SPEAKER_1: He's no longer issuing you commands as a father to his young son.
SPEAKER_1: He is talking to you as another man who has his own household, who has duties.
SPEAKER_1: He should speak to you in that way, and you still respect him as your father, as your elder.
SPEAKER_1: Again, the fourth commandment is still binding on you.
SPEAKER_1: But that power dynamic changes as you age, and once he gets very old, it changes again, because now someone, some other male, has stepped into that role because he can no longer fulfill it.
SPEAKER_1: You can think of, you know, the priest retiring at 50.
SPEAKER_1: These days, obviously, you live longer than that, and so you are going to be around much longer.
SPEAKER_1: But a man who is 80, 90 years old is not going to have the same active role in heading up his clan, his tribe, his extended family, in the way he did when he was 55 or 60.
SPEAKER_1: So, the power dynamics and the duties and things evolve over time, just because of the reality of being mortal.
SPEAKER_1: So, does your father have some authority?
SPEAKER_1: Absolutely yes.
SPEAKER_1: But does he have the same sort of authority he had when you were a child?
SPEAKER_1: The answer is absolutely no.
SPEAKER_1: You have to deal with that and balance that.
SPEAKER_1: This is part of just living around other human beings.
SPEAKER_1: But really, the word that is probably more accurate than multi-generational house is compound.
SPEAKER_1: I know the FBI hates that word, and they probably flagged me for using it.
SPEAKER_1: But that's the reality of it.
SPEAKER_1: Having a chunk of land and a number of houses on it, even if you have a big house that's connected, maybe you have a wing with your family, and then your parents on the other side, you don't have to all be in the exact same spot.
SPEAKER_1: You have to have some separation.
SPEAKER_1: But leaving your father and mother is not in the sense of being totally disconnected from family.
SPEAKER_1: That's entirely contrary to everything else said in scripture.
SPEAKER_1: So we can't possibly interpret it in that way, because that would be to set scripture against scripture, be set God against himself.
SPEAKER_1: So leaving your father and mother is coming out from under the sort of control they had when you were a child.
SPEAKER_1: But it doesn't mean to abandon them or physically separate from them.
SPEAKER_1: It just means that you are now the head of your household, you now have these duties and responsibilities, and your father is going to deal with you as he would deal with another man instead of as a child.
SPEAKER_1: Yes, you're always going to be his son, but you're no longer a child.
SPEAKER_1: You're a man and have to be treated as a man, and he has to recognize that, and you have to recognize it as well.
SPEAKER_1: So no, living in a multi-generational house or particularly a compound of multiple generations of your family is a good thing.
SPEAKER_1: That is something that should be done.
SPEAKER_1: And not just because of the fact that then your parents can help with child care, but you can take care of your parents when they get elderly, which is one of the duties of the firstborn, which is why the firstborn received the double share of the inheritance.
SPEAKER_1: Part of the thing that came along with that was, your parents are your duty when they get old.
SPEAKER_1: You have to provide for and care for them.
SPEAKER_1: And so, that's one of the reasons that has always been recognized.
SPEAKER_1: It's in scripture, it's been recognized in European law and elsewhere in the world for basically the entirety of human history.
SPEAKER_1: The firstborn has duties, the firstborn has privileges, and that is how it should be.
SPEAKER_1: The seventh question here, hopefully the dog barking does not come through, I have my window open, which is why I'm in short sleeves, because apparently spring has begun here in the south.
SPEAKER_1: We get up and down little winters, but it was quite warm today.
SPEAKER_1: It was almost 80.
SPEAKER_1: The seventh question, what is your response to people who say that the West was so successful purely because of genetics, and that it had nothing to do with it being Christian for so long, and cite ancient Greece or Rome as proof?
SPEAKER_1: I'm going to take a sip of tea before I answer this one.
SPEAKER_1: So I would start by pointing out, neither Rome nor Greece was the peak of Western civilization.
SPEAKER_1: And I know there are people who try to say that, you know, Rome was the height of Western civilization.
SPEAKER_1: Well, sure, if you want to say, Rome in the sense of the Holy Roman Empire, then I would agree with you, because I would say that was the peak, the true peak of Western civilization.
SPEAKER_1: And we have been sort of writing on the coattails of that ever since.
SPEAKER_1: Granted, we're sort of riding it into the ground at this point, because we've not maintained it.
SPEAKER_1: So I guess you could think of an airplane that still has forward momentum, but the engines have died.
SPEAKER_1: So, no, I wouldn't say that Greece and Rome were the height of our civilization.
SPEAKER_1: I wouldn't even say that they were particularly impressive compared to what we achieved under Christendom.
SPEAKER_1: And you can think of any number of examples, but I would say, obviously, yes, philosophy.
SPEAKER_1: The Greeks and the Romans contributed a great deal, but much of what we have in terms of modern, formalized, and systematized philosophy was done by Germans in the Holy Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_1: And then, of course, Prussians as well, which were the inheritors of the Holy Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_1: But insofar as Greece and Rome are concerned, they still had a number of extremely backwards and immoral practices, and those were not purged until they were Christianized.
SPEAKER_1: And many of the things that we take for granted today as being part of a proper civilization, I'm going to go ahead and assume the person asking the question is moral, these are things that came along because of Christianity, right?
SPEAKER_1: We don't expose infants anymore.
SPEAKER_1: We don't leave out infants we think are not worthy of being preserved in the wilderness to die.
SPEAKER_1: Now, of course, yes, we have abortion, and that is a great moral evil.
SPEAKER_1: We have sort of regressed into pagan practice with regard to abortion because that's what we're doing.
SPEAKER_1: It's child sacrifice.
SPEAKER_1: It's worse actually than Rome because Rome didn't engage in ritualized child sacrifice.
SPEAKER_1: They just exposed infants they thought were not worth preserving and other cultures did that as well in that time.
SPEAKER_1: Human sacrifice was not really a thing though.
SPEAKER_1: It's one of the reasons they hated the Carthaginians because they participated in human sacrifice because of the relationship to the Canaanites, and that's sort of a whole rabbit trail.
SPEAKER_1: But that's part of the reason they opposed them.
SPEAKER_1: So the fundamental point, starting point, is the foundation that Roman Greece were not the height of Western civilization.
SPEAKER_1: So if you want to look at the height, the height was under Christianity.
SPEAKER_1: And no, the outcome was not inevitable because of our genetics, because if it had been, our people would have been more advanced in other parts of the world before Christianity.
SPEAKER_1: And you would see the advance continuing as Christianity is declining.
SPEAKER_1: What are we doing?
SPEAKER_1: We're regressing as Christianity falls away.
SPEAKER_1: Sure, our science is progressing in some very limited areas.
SPEAKER_1: So rocketry, AI, and a little bit with regard to medicine, which is really mostly just because of AI and computing power.
SPEAKER_1: But in every other area, we are regressing.
SPEAKER_1: Look at our arts.
SPEAKER_1: Is that progressing?
SPEAKER_1: Would you say that's in a better position than it was under Christendom?
SPEAKER_1: Absolutely not.
SPEAKER_1: We have degenerated.
SPEAKER_1: And that's regardless of which art you look at, whether it is music or the theater or poetry or painting, stained glass, whatever it happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: I'm always going to be partial to stained glass since it's literally my last name.
SPEAKER_1: But all of these areas, we have regressed.
SPEAKER_1: We are less advanced.
SPEAKER_1: We are less advanced than our ancestors.
SPEAKER_1: We are degenerate compared to them in every sense of that term.
SPEAKER_1: And so I don't think that anyone looking to Rome or Greece has a proper understanding of history.
SPEAKER_1: Because again, I think the height of Western civilization was the Holy Roman Empire, which lasted into the 1800s.
SPEAKER_1: And then I would say briefly resurged in the mid 1900s.
SPEAKER_1: That was the last gasp of old Christendom.
SPEAKER_1: Our goal is to rebuild Christendom, because Christendom was effectively slaughtered as a sacrificial victim in the last century.
SPEAKER_1: But a nation is not just blood.
SPEAKER_1: I think this is another...
SPEAKER_1: This is sort of my second fundamental point here.
SPEAKER_1: A nation is not just blood.
SPEAKER_1: And a nation isn't just blood and soil.
SPEAKER_1: This is always the part that everyone forgets.
SPEAKER_1: And some people sort of touch on it with regard to culture and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: But the three elements of what make up a nation are blood, soil, and myth.
SPEAKER_1: And I don't want to get into it too deeply here, because it's a very complicated topic, and it would take a long time to cover.
SPEAKER_1: And I'm not even sure that I've necessarily drawn out all the conclusions from it yet.
SPEAKER_1: But without that myth aspect, you don't have a proper nation.
SPEAKER_1: And so, you can't disentangle these things.
SPEAKER_1: They are all part of the sum.
SPEAKER_1: It is gestalt.
SPEAKER_1: The sum is greater than its parts.
SPEAKER_1: The myth of Western civilization, the myth of more properly called Christendom, is Christianity.
SPEAKER_1: And so, you can't look at just blood and soil and say, well, these two things would necessary...
SPEAKER_1: Because you can't do that.
SPEAKER_1: You've removed a necessary element, something that is integral, that cannot be removed from the equation, and then tried to extrapolate out with what is left that is insufficient.
SPEAKER_1: Western civilization, Christendom became great because of all three of those things.
SPEAKER_1: Our people, our territory, and our myth, our religion, Christianity.
SPEAKER_1: And for those who are offended by the term myth, I mean it in a very specific philosophical sense.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying something that is false because myth, in a very real way, is a distilled truth that is greater than a blunt truth.
SPEAKER_1: I'll get into that at some point to explain it in a more thorough fashion, but just know that myth doesn't mean false.
SPEAKER_1: When I say myth, I mean something that is true in a fundamental sense.
SPEAKER_1: And Christianity is a core part of that.
SPEAKER_1: So I don't think that you can remove that part and then say that it would have been the same outcome.
SPEAKER_1: It wouldn't have been.
SPEAKER_1: It would have been something fundamentally different.
SPEAKER_1: And you get into some of the aspects of can you really draw out a counterfactual right?
SPEAKER_1: It's a proven negative sort of thing.
SPEAKER_1: But you didn't have this great takeoff of our civilization in parts of our lands, parts of our territory, that had not been Christianized until they were Christianized.
SPEAKER_1: And just as one example of that, one of the reasons our science took off and became what it became, one of the reasons that we're doing what we're doing right now, you are all watching someone who is potentially thousands of miles away from you, we can do that because the men who discovered all the fundamental principles that made all these things possible, who made those advances, with very few exceptions, essentially no exceptions early on, believed in God.
SPEAKER_1: And so, when they went to look at the natural world, they believed firmly they were going to find laws, they were going to find order, because they believed in a divine lawgiver.
SPEAKER_1: That's the reason that our, one of the reasons that our science took off, and the rest of the world didn't, because the rest of the world did not believe in a divine lawgiver.
SPEAKER_1: They believed in a bunch of warring, squabbling, minor gods or chaotic gods who did not deal in order, but dealt in caprice and punishment.
SPEAKER_1: And so, you didn't have that fundamental conception of the world as something that was designed and ordered, and with rules that could be discovered.
SPEAKER_1: Christianity gave us that, and so Christianity restored that to us, because of course we had it before we fell into paganism, and then were brought back to Christianity.
SPEAKER_1: But that was a necessary part of our civilization achieving things that others did not.
SPEAKER_1: The Chinese aren't dumb.
SPEAKER_1: The Chinese have the intelligence to achieve many of the things we've achieved.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe not some of the things in the arts, and other things like that, because Confucianism sort of crushed the Chinese soul.
SPEAKER_1: So whatever they used to be, they're not, because of their ideology, because of their myth.
SPEAKER_1: And so you can look at it.
SPEAKER_1: We sort of ran the counter example.
SPEAKER_1: We ran an A-B experiment.
SPEAKER_1: You have the myth of Christianity in Europe.
SPEAKER_1: You have the myth of Confucianism in the East, because the Chinese, again, aren't dumb.
SPEAKER_1: They have an average IQ that enables them.
SPEAKER_1: They have a smaller standard deviation, things like that, but they have enough highly intelligent men that they could achieve great things.
SPEAKER_1: They never did.
SPEAKER_1: It's only recently when they had been able to benefit from taking all of these things from the West and using them, that they have achieved anything of note.
SPEAKER_1: So we ran the example, we ran the experiment, and we discovered that, yes, Christianity is a necessary part of the equation.
SPEAKER_1: So I think that people who try to advocate that it would have been inevitable just because of blood and soil don't understand the issue and are typically just arguing in a mercenary fashion because they don't like Christianity.
SPEAKER_1: And it's largely because they don't understand Christianity.
SPEAKER_1: They think that so-called Judeo-Christianity is Christian, and it's not, because Christianity is antithetical to Judaism.
SPEAKER_1: Judaism is our enemy, and there is no overlap there except for enmity.
SPEAKER_1: So I think that's really the reason that these people try to say that Christianity was not a necessary part of it.
SPEAKER_1: It's mercenary, it is seeking an end that is not warranted or justifiable according to history or according to reason.
SPEAKER_1: So I think that answers that question.
SPEAKER_1: Definitely going to run a little over this time, like I said, but that's fine.
SPEAKER_1: So I think I'd like to try to get through the questions I prepared, and then maybe a couple of questions from the chat.
SPEAKER_1: Was...
SPEAKER_1: this is the eighth question.
SPEAKER_1: Make sure to remember to do that.
SPEAKER_1: Was the second temple legitimate in the way the first was?
SPEAKER_1: Was God present in it?
SPEAKER_1: I don't see anything about his entering it like the first, and of course, the ark is gone, correct?
SPEAKER_1: If he is not there, the tearing of the curtain has a new complexion.
SPEAKER_1: Are the Levites or the Jews just larping?
SPEAKER_1: This is a broad topic, and I think I would like to get into it more deeply in the future at some point, but I can certainly answer a lot of it now.
SPEAKER_1: And the answer is the second temple was legitimate, but it was not as impressive, it was not as holy, it was not the same thing as the first.
SPEAKER_1: God clearly did not deal with the second temple in the way he dealt with the first temple.
SPEAKER_1: And sort of the starting point there would be, if you read the Old Testament, this will perhaps be new information for some of you, but I want you to keep this in mind when you read the Old Testament, and you should go and read the parts of the Old Testament that deal in these things.
SPEAKER_1: When you look at the Old Testament, there are many places in which there is no reasonable way to read what is happening, other than God being physically present.
SPEAKER_1: And the God who is physically present, of course, has to be Christ.
SPEAKER_1: The Father is spirit only, the Spirit is spirit only.
SPEAKER_1: Christ has a physical body.
SPEAKER_1: And so, when you have a theophany, a physical manifestation, appearance of God in the Old Testament, it is actually a Christophany, that is Christ.
SPEAKER_1: And I don't want to get into the issue of time, and whether it's the pre-incarnate Christ, or whether it has any meaning for God, but because it's off in the weeds, it's not essential, it's not necessary what we're talking about here.
SPEAKER_1: But there are times where God is literally physically present speaking to people in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_1: Perhaps one of the most obvious examples would be, and this is one that people love to argue about, and I'll keep adding to my list of things to do, but I will write an article on this one at some point because it's important, needs to be addressed, when Aaron and Miriam object to Moses and are basically trying to usurp.
SPEAKER_1: That's the fundamental point, that they're trying to usurp the authority of Moses, they're insulting God in the process because they're saying, is this really your prophet, God?
SPEAKER_1: Right?
SPEAKER_1: They're just behaving like Jews.
SPEAKER_1: And what happens there is you have, it says God came down in the cloud and spoke to them.
SPEAKER_1: God's physically present, speaking, that's Christ speaking to Moses and Miriam and Aaron face to face.
SPEAKER_1: And so you have a physical manifestation of God.
SPEAKER_1: This time, it's the Tent of Witness, instead of the temple, right?
SPEAKER_1: The first temple, the tabernacle is what this is, whichever one you want to call it.
SPEAKER_1: And so you have this presence of God, but you have the same thing happen in some places with regard to the temple.
SPEAKER_1: God is physically present with Old Testament Israel in these instances.
SPEAKER_1: It doesn't happen with the second temple.
SPEAKER_1: It's not that God isn't present in the second temple, but he's not present in the same way, because the Jews have turned against him, they have rejected him, and he has withdrawn from them.
SPEAKER_1: He is no longer present in the same way with them that he was with the first temple.
SPEAKER_1: And you can see this in many places in scripture when you actually read it.
SPEAKER_1: I recommend go read the Book of Haggai.
SPEAKER_1: You can read the whole thing.
SPEAKER_1: It's two chapters.
SPEAKER_1: It takes almost no time.
SPEAKER_1: And it speaks of the glory of God in the temple, and it speaks of a greater glory that is coming.
SPEAKER_1: The greater glory in this case is the New Jerusalem, which is to say paradise.
SPEAKER_1: That is one of the terms used for paradise.
SPEAKER_1: One of the ways you can see that is that the things said about it cannot be for this world, this fallen world in which sin still exists.
SPEAKER_1: It's for the new world, the new creation in which sin has been removed and erased.
SPEAKER_1: But one of the examples here, and perhaps I should have just left up the scripture on my screen there, because I'm going to go back to it.
SPEAKER_1: But an example that we have, let me pull up the scripture for you here, is in Ezra 6, which of course is second Ezra's 6 in the Septuagint.
SPEAKER_1: And I think I want to start with, verse 13, perhaps.
SPEAKER_1: I won't read all of it, because there are some crazy names in this one.
SPEAKER_1: The person who is going to translate the Septuagint really needs to anglicize some of these names, because Thoth thanai is not a great thing to have to try to say in English.
SPEAKER_1: But here you have the rebuilding of the temple, right?
SPEAKER_1: And they completed this house until the third day of the month of Adar, which was the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king.
SPEAKER_1: And then you have all of the sacrifices in the next chapter, and what I want you to recognize here, what I want you to notice is that what do you not have?
SPEAKER_1: There's no mention of the glory of God filling the temple.
SPEAKER_1: It's not the same sort of presence as you had with the first temple, where you have the glory of God filling the temple in such a way that people can't even enter it.
SPEAKER_1: And so, for instance, we'll compare this to second chronicles here.
SPEAKER_1: Pull up second chronicles, which actually I could have just done that in the Septuagint because it is the same numbering in this case.
SPEAKER_1: So in second chronicles, you have the consecration here, Solomon consecrating this, and then you have the glory of the Lord filling the temple in a way that again, did not happen with the second temple.
SPEAKER_1: You have the glory of the Lord filling it in such a way that people can't enter into the house because God's presence is so overwhelming.
SPEAKER_1: They can't be in His presence.
SPEAKER_1: One of the reasons you have the veil and the high priest can only go in certain times and all these things, because to be in the presence of that sort of holiness as a fallen being is to be destroyed.
SPEAKER_1: It's why when you have some of the prophets who encounter God, say, woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips, and I have seen the Lord God.
SPEAKER_1: That would strike you dead if you were not sanctified in some way.
SPEAKER_1: And so, you have the embers and things like that, that sanctify these men so they're not destroyed by being in the presence of a holy God as a sinful being.
SPEAKER_1: But one that I actually want to read here is from Exodus 40.
SPEAKER_1: Let me pull that up.
SPEAKER_1: So this is Moses setting up the tent of witness.
SPEAKER_1: This is one of the great examples of this.
SPEAKER_1: And he positioned the gold altar and the tent of witness in front of the veil, and he burnt on it the incense of the mixture, according as the Lord instructed Moses.
SPEAKER_1: And the altar of the offerings he placed near the doors of the tent of witness, and he set up the courtyard around the tent and the altar, and Moses finished all the works.
SPEAKER_1: This is Moses setting up the tabernacle, of course.
SPEAKER_1: And the cloud covered the tent of witness, and the tent was filled with the glory of the Lord.
SPEAKER_1: And Moses was unable to enter into the tent of witness, because the cloud was overshadowing it, and the tent was filled with the glory of the Lord.
SPEAKER_1: You do not see this description in scripture of the second temple, because the second temple does not have the glory of the Lord in the same way as the first, because again, the Old Testament Israelites, the Jews rejected God, and so God withdrew his presence.
SPEAKER_1: It's one of the reasons they were defeated in war, they were destroyed, they had famines, they were sent to exile, the ten northern tribes were completely destroyed, turned into the Samaritans, destroyed through miscegenation, which is what the Assyrians did.
SPEAKER_1: You had the Babylonian captivity exile of the southern kingdom of Judah, you had the destruction of Jerusalem, you had the burning of the first temple, all these things because they rejected their God.
SPEAKER_1: I hope that when I say these things, you're recognizing that maybe we should take them as a warning.
SPEAKER_1: It's one of the chief purposes for having the history of Old Testament Israel documented, is for us to take it as a warning of what we should not do, and what will happen to us if we do.
SPEAKER_1: But the final part that I want to read for this is from Matthew 27, which of course was mentioned in the question, starting with verse 50, 51.
SPEAKER_1: And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom, and the earth shook and the rocks were split.
SPEAKER_1: The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.
SPEAKER_1: And coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.
SPEAKER_1: When the centurion and those who were with him said, When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, Truly, this was the son of God.
SPEAKER_1: This is, of course, the crucifixion narrative, and you have this tearing of the temple, of the curtain in the temple.
SPEAKER_1: Why do you have that?
SPEAKER_1: This is symbolic, because what does the curtain do?
SPEAKER_1: It separates the large part of the temple from the holy of holies, from the presence of God.
SPEAKER_1: And so this is torn into, because now man is in the presence of God, because if you are Christian, you have the Holy Spirit, you can't get closer to God than that.
SPEAKER_1: And so you have the indwelling of the Spirit, you have the indwelling of God.
SPEAKER_1: God is no longer separated from his people in the way that he was separated in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_1: And so is God present in the temple until this point?
SPEAKER_1: I think it's very clear that yes, he is, but just not in the same way as he was with the first temple before they betrayed him and lost any status they had.
SPEAKER_1: This is where God finally leaves the temple.
SPEAKER_1: He's done.
SPEAKER_1: He's done with that because, of course, this is the new covenant in Christ's blood.
SPEAKER_1: And so the old one no longer has any meaning, no longer has any force, there's no longer any sacrifice or anything like that.
SPEAKER_1: And so the tearing of the curtain is the final straw.
SPEAKER_1: It is the definitive period, it is God removing his presence from this temple, in this case, the rebuilt one, not the first one, because the first one was destroyed.
SPEAKER_1: And so it's worth noting the sort of tangential point, no one should try to rebuild this.
SPEAKER_1: That is an insult to God, that is blasphemous.
SPEAKER_1: That is something that should never be permitted.
SPEAKER_1: And so the people we have today who are trying to do that are evil.
SPEAKER_1: But God sort of put another capstone on this obviously with AD 70 when he came and completely destroyed Jerusalem using the Romans as his weapon of choice.
SPEAKER_1: But yes, the basic answer to that is that the fullness of the presence of God among Old Testament Israel was in the Tent of Witness, first the Tabernacle, then the first temple, and only in a diminished way with regard to the second temple.
SPEAKER_1: So, were they right to still treat it as holy?
SPEAKER_1: Yes, because God's presence is always holy even if it is sort of withdrawn to some degree.
SPEAKER_1: But it was not the fullness of his presence that they would have had if they'd stayed faithful.
SPEAKER_1: And I think that is true in a sense of every nation on earth, because God is going to be with his people the more faithful they are.
SPEAKER_1: It's not a quid pro quo.
SPEAKER_1: It's not any of the various heresies, you know, prosperity gospel or therapeutic gospel, so called, or anything like that.
SPEAKER_1: It's God is true to his promises.
SPEAKER_1: He is promised to be with his people, and he is promised to care for his people and provide for them and do these things if we are faithful.
SPEAKER_1: So we should take the narrative, we should view all of these things as a warning, as a possibility for us, whether we are faithful and receive the benefits or faithless and receive the curses.
SPEAKER_1: The next one is just sort of a little comment on something that I said in a previous episode.
SPEAKER_1: I'm going to take another sip of tea first.
SPEAKER_1: I'm getting a little cold now, but...
SPEAKER_1: I'm actually going to refresh my tea because it is cold.
SPEAKER_1: I guess that answers the question in the chat about what's burning in the background.
SPEAKER_1: It is a tea candle.
SPEAKER_1: It is a beeswax tea candle, to be specific.
SPEAKER_1: The ninth question, great episode.
SPEAKER_1: I am really glad you are doing this podcast.
SPEAKER_1: It's been personally helpful to me.
SPEAKER_1: I have a disagreement.
SPEAKER_1: It's not hard for Americans to follow leaders.
SPEAKER_1: It is hard to find the leaders capable of leading Americans.
SPEAKER_1: If we ever find those leaders, men will fall in line with gusto.
SPEAKER_1: I think it's a bit of both.
SPEAKER_1: I think it's fair to say that it is both.
SPEAKER_1: Americans are a little less orderly, a little less hierarchical for a number of historical reasons.
SPEAKER_1: Perhaps that will be cured in time.
SPEAKER_1: But yes, there is also the challenge of finding the right sort of man who has the abilities and the disposition, the presence, all these things that are necessary for someone who's going to lead Americans.
SPEAKER_1: And I know there are those who are currently thinking, well, George Washington had all those.
SPEAKER_1: Was George Washington really leading what we would call Americans at that point?
SPEAKER_1: Because many of those men would have considered themselves British still.
SPEAKER_1: Yes, they were breaking from Britain because of the things Britain was doing, but they still would have considered themselves Englishmen, more so than specifically American in many cases.
SPEAKER_1: So we've had developments since then.
SPEAKER_1: We are definitely more entrenched in some of our behaviors and our predispositions than we were back then.
SPEAKER_1: So there are some very real challenges for any leader in the American context, and I think it is both.
SPEAKER_1: I think there's always the challenge of finding the right man for the time and the place and the people and all those things, but there's also the fact that we are a more difficult people to lead than some.
SPEAKER_1: You could take extreme examples, right?
SPEAKER_1: The Japanese are going to fall in line, the Chinese are going to fall in line as long as you threaten them and pay them, right?
SPEAKER_1: It's a different sort of culture there.
SPEAKER_1: The Germans are going to follow orders more readily and more strictly than Americans.
SPEAKER_1: And that's true with regard to the Germans versus the British, or the Germans versus the French, right?
SPEAKER_1: So different races, different cultures are going to behave differently, and Americans are not the easiest culture in the world to lead.
SPEAKER_1: Sometimes kind of squabble like drunken cats.
SPEAKER_1: It's just the reality of it, and the right wing also has a little bit more of it than the left, for a number of reasons I've got into before in previous episodes.
SPEAKER_1: So no, I do think it's both.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think it's one or the other in this case.
SPEAKER_1: The tenth question.
SPEAKER_1: I asked this in the chat, and I hope you will help me understand.
SPEAKER_1: You often cite the passage in the Old Testament, where King Josiah rediscovers the law, which was written in Hebrew.
SPEAKER_1: Hebrew at the time was an abjad, and according to your argument in Stone Choir, cannot be read perfectly without knowing what the text already says.
SPEAKER_1: For those who don't know, an abjad is a language, a writing system for a language that has only the consonants, not the vowels.
SPEAKER_1: A number of languages are written that way.
SPEAKER_1: Ethiopic used to be written that way, for instance.
SPEAKER_1: How can it be that the scriptures were either fully lost or fully recovered?
SPEAKER_1: Thanks.
SPEAKER_1: This one's actually very easy to answer, because if you have the abjad and you have the priesthood, you can read it.
SPEAKER_1: And if you have trouble, you can ask God, because the priests actually were permitted to do that.
SPEAKER_1: They could ask God.
SPEAKER_1: And you could use the…
SPEAKER_1: There are a couple of different terms for it.
SPEAKER_1: The urum and the thumim, right?
SPEAKER_1: You can ask God questions.
SPEAKER_1: And so if they did not know how to read this, they had an option to directly ask God what they got wrong or what they didn't understand.
SPEAKER_1: If you just have the abjad and you no longer have the priesthood, which we just went over when that was completely destroyed, then it's no longer of any use, because you don't have the option to appeal to an actual authority when you don't know.
SPEAKER_1: So you need a full language like Greek, which does indeed have written vowels.
SPEAKER_1: As any proper language should, the abjad just seems like a crazy way to write things down to me.
SPEAKER_1: But the basic answer is they had the priesthood still.
SPEAKER_1: So it was not a problem for them.
SPEAKER_1: But if you were, say today, you were to discover a pristine, perfect copy of the original Hebrew language, and I mean ancient Hebrew scriptures, preserved in a salt cave somewhere, you found a perfect copy you knew for absolute certainty that it was an exact copy.
SPEAKER_1: You would not be able to read it because you're under the priesthood.
SPEAKER_1: So it would not be superior to the Greek in any way because you would have to use the Greek to read the Abjad.
SPEAKER_1: We'll just use the Greek.
SPEAKER_1: We have the word of God.
SPEAKER_1: He preserved it in the Greek for us for a number of reasons.
SPEAKER_1: We went over in the Septuagint series, and I've gone over elsewhere.
SPEAKER_1: So yeah, the short answer is just the priesthood existed.
SPEAKER_1: No longer does.
SPEAKER_1: And those were the 10 questions that I had written down that I wanted to answer.
SPEAKER_1: And so I will move on to the questions from the chat.
SPEAKER_1: Very easy one to start off.
SPEAKER_1: Someone asked me about the length of my beard, how long that took.
SPEAKER_1: I have never run the experiment of shaving it and then seeing how long it takes to grow.
SPEAKER_1: But not very long.
SPEAKER_1: My beard grows very fast.
SPEAKER_1: I get a 5 o'clock shadow at about 10 in the morning.
SPEAKER_1: So I'm very glad that I have never had a job where I had to shave every day.
SPEAKER_1: That would have driven me insane.
SPEAKER_1: I would have had to shave at lunch.
SPEAKER_1: The next question, that was the 11th, this is the 12th.
SPEAKER_1: Someone just asked about Indian genetics.
SPEAKER_1: And go listen to the last episode.
SPEAKER_1: I actually answered that one.
SPEAKER_1: They are primarily from Shem, but with some admixture.
SPEAKER_1: It is correct to say that Hindi is an Indo-European language, but it is specifically an Indo-Iranian language.
SPEAKER_1: And the reason for that is what I went into, thankfully consonant here, what I went into last time, in that some of the admixture for the Indian people is from the Iranian region, from the groups that were there.
SPEAKER_1: And then obviously also the pastoralist and others.
SPEAKER_1: But I went into that last time, so just go and listen to the episode from last week.
SPEAKER_1: And now I will try to scroll through the chat and see other questions.
SPEAKER_1: With regard to, for example, hatred and other sins, in quotes here, notably, what do you make of the argument that something God does can still be a sin if you do it?
SPEAKER_1: For example, vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, so it is God's to hate, and if you hate, you are putting yourself in God's place.
SPEAKER_1: There are times where things like that can be sinful.
SPEAKER_1: The clear example would be, I have to be careful how I say this, because vigilante justice is not always necessarily sinful, but if you have a proper government that is in place, enforcing the moral law, performing its role, assigned by God, then vigilante justice would be sinful, it would be improper, assuming again the government is doing what it should.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not going to condemn certain instances, we can all think of them, I'm not going to name them, where individuals have done things because the government failed.
SPEAKER_1: But the question of vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, right?
SPEAKER_1: Well, you can't read that as saying that men can never punish sins, crimes, whatever it is you're calling them, because that would be to set scripture against itself, because Genesis 9, 6, he who sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed, for man was made in the image of God, right?
SPEAKER_1: So, God commands vengeance in Genesis 9, 6.
SPEAKER_1: He commands the death penalty.
SPEAKER_1: He requires it of us.
SPEAKER_1: And so, you can't read that as being a blanket prohibition.
SPEAKER_1: Rather, it is, can be read in a number of different ways.
SPEAKER_1: Two key ways, I would say.
SPEAKER_1: One is that you do not avenge yourself, you do not take vengeance on your personal enemies.
SPEAKER_1: And then, second, is what I would over with regard to vigilante justice.
SPEAKER_1: It is left to those to whom God has entrusted the sword of the state, assuming everything is functioning as it should.
SPEAKER_1: So, is it a sin for us to hate?
SPEAKER_1: Not when we are required to do so.
SPEAKER_1: Because, you know, David says, do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
SPEAKER_1: I hate them with a perfect hatred.
SPEAKER_1: That's David speaking in the Spirit, a man after God's own heart.
SPEAKER_1: So, there are things we are required to hate, but this is again, a matter of wisdom.
SPEAKER_1: This is something where you don't just have a blanket command that you always do this one thing, right?
SPEAKER_1: Forgive your personal enemies, hate God's enemies.
SPEAKER_1: You have to do both.
SPEAKER_1: You don't get to forgive God's enemies, because they're his enemies, not yours.
SPEAKER_1: He chooses to forgive them or not, not you.
SPEAKER_1: But he commands you to forgive your personal enemies.
SPEAKER_1: That was the thirteenth question.
SPEAKER_1: Let me look for the next one.
SPEAKER_1: Fourteenth question, assuming I am numbering these correctly, which I believe that I am.
SPEAKER_1: I should probably note these down so I can add it to the show notes.
SPEAKER_1: My church is planning a Seder meal.
SPEAKER_1: You have expressed in the past, this is Judaizing, I agree.
SPEAKER_1: Glad we agree.
SPEAKER_1: Is it worth addressing my church leadership regarding this?
SPEAKER_1: If so, any advice or resources to help pull from when formulating my argument, I attend a Presbyterian church.
SPEAKER_1: I would have to look into which specific resources for that.
SPEAKER_1: Let me note that down.
SPEAKER_1: See that was asked on X, so I can reply to that one later.
SPEAKER_1: Obviously, yes, Judaizing, don't do it.
SPEAKER_1: It is sort of a constructed thing that the Jews have created as part of Judaism, not part of the Old Testament practice of the ceremonial religion of the Old Testament, which was not Judaism, not part of Christianity.
SPEAKER_1: It's not something Christians should be doing.
SPEAKER_1: It is, it's larping, and it's doing it in a particularly pernicious way because it is giving the Jews legitimacy they do not have.
SPEAKER_1: So, yeah, don't participate in that.
SPEAKER_1: Insofar as addressing your leadership is concerned, if you do that, there is a non-trivial chance, I'd say probably about a coin flip, as to whether or not they will take that as a direct assault against them, and choose to persecute you and drive you from the church.
SPEAKER_1: It may be that's worth doing.
SPEAKER_1: It may be that that is important enough that you need to do it.
SPEAKER_1: I would do it if I were in your shoes, because what I would be doing is testing them.
SPEAKER_1: I would be giving them the opportunity to turn from their wicked path, or to double down and prove that they have decided to be evil.
SPEAKER_1: And that gives you the information you need to know as to whether you should find a new church or not.
SPEAKER_1: Because if they are willing to repent of wickedness, that's a great sign.
SPEAKER_1: Christians commit sins.
SPEAKER_1: Christians make errors.
SPEAKER_1: Christians misjudge things.
SPEAKER_1: That happens.
SPEAKER_1: We're imperfect.
SPEAKER_1: We're fallen.
SPEAKER_1: The issue is whether or not you repent when you are called to repent, when you are informed of your error.
SPEAKER_1: Because once you have been informed of the error, and then you double down, it is now willful sin.
SPEAKER_1: It's a different thing.
SPEAKER_1: And you need to not be in a church that is committing that sort of willful sin, because at that point, they're wicked.
SPEAKER_1: They're evil leadership.
SPEAKER_1: You should not want to be under an evil shepherd.
SPEAKER_1: So, I would probably say it would be a good idea to go ahead and address your leadership, but bear in mind that you may very well be driven from your church because of it.
SPEAKER_1: So, there is some wisdom there that needs to be applied.
SPEAKER_1: There's an issue of wisdom.
SPEAKER_1: If you have a wife, children, others entrusted to your care, bring that into your calculus.
SPEAKER_1: Don't just do this, and consequences be what they are, because then you have other considerations, because God has entrusted things to your care, God has given you duties.
SPEAKER_1: If you are a single man, then it's probably a different thing, because the worst they can do is harass you and cause you trouble, which is not nothing.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not trying to trivialize that, but it's not as weighty of a consideration in this case as if you have others under you entrusted to your care.
SPEAKER_1: But I will try to look into some sources on that.
SPEAKER_1: I don't necessarily have any of that off the top of my head.
SPEAKER_1: The biggest thing would just be God fulfilled all of the things in the Old Testament, but why are you still participating in them?
SPEAKER_1: Ask them if they would be comfortable sacrificing a goat or praying over a goat and sending him into the wilderness.
SPEAKER_1: That's no longer a thing.
SPEAKER_1: That was never a thing for those of us who are not part of Old Testament Israel.
SPEAKER_1: That was the ceremonial law.
SPEAKER_1: We're Christians, we don't do that stuff.
SPEAKER_1: Someone asked me about determinism.
SPEAKER_1: I think I will note that for later and not get into that right now because that is a can of worms.
SPEAKER_1: I can certainly say go read the article that I wrote on fate, because I think that's probably a good starting place for my position on those issues.
SPEAKER_1: Someone said, hibiscus tea, it's actually earl grey, but at least you got, there's an herbal component in it.
SPEAKER_1: The 15th question.
SPEAKER_1: Why myth and not worship as the third pillar of civilization?
SPEAKER_1: I can sort of answer that one quickly because I would say worship is under myth.
SPEAKER_1: It is part of the practice of the myth.
SPEAKER_1: It's sort of the myth, perhaps you could say concretized or actualized into society, into the culture itself.
SPEAKER_1: Because worship is part of the culture, which is going to be an outgrowth of all three of those components, blood, soil, and myth.
SPEAKER_1: And so I think that myth is the umbrella, the overarching reality, and worship is part of that.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think worship is the umbrella itself, rather it is a sub-component of it.
SPEAKER_1: The next question, and I think perhaps the last question for this episode, I didn't actually run quite as long as I thought I would, but an hour and 40 minutes, give or take.
SPEAKER_1: Have you heard of the Wisconsin Synod?
SPEAKER_1: There is a, I have to turn to the side here because my camera's in my way, there is a lot of them around here.
SPEAKER_1: I assume you mean wells, which yes, I've heard of wells, and the LCMS and wells have similar problems.
SPEAKER_1: The LCMS has a little bit more protection against it with regard to individual congregations, partly because of the side, partly the size rather, and partly because of the bureaucratic structure of the LCMS, whereas wells is going to very quickly follow wherever the leadership of wells is going, and they're not going good places.
SPEAKER_1: I have not been particularly impressed with what I have seen from them.
SPEAKER_1: And I'm not saying I like the LCMS leadership either, obviously, I do not.
SPEAKER_1: Matt Harrison and I are not friends, let's say.
SPEAKER_1: So wells is going to have the same problems as the LCMS.
SPEAKER_1: It's going to depend on the leadership.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe they're good congregations, but I think in the wells context, good congregations will have more trouble with standing evil demands, wicked demands from sinned leadership.
SPEAKER_1: Whereas in the LCMS, you're going to have a little more leeway, you're going to have a little more wiggle room for dealing with and avoiding whatever sinned would like you to do.
SPEAKER_1: And my recommendation stands as, if you are a Lutheran church, leave your sinned.
SPEAKER_1: Join up with faithful Lutheran bodies outside of the LCMS, Wells, the existing structures, because not one of them is good.
SPEAKER_1: And I'm not just condemning Lutherans here.
SPEAKER_1: I am specifically condemning Lutherans here, but not just Lutherans.
SPEAKER_1: I don't believe there's a single faithful corporate church body in the United States.
SPEAKER_1: They are all wicked, they all have leadership that are going after the world and the approval of the world, and all of the various things that have come along with it, all of these false doctrines, all of these various forms of wickedness.
SPEAKER_1: So, leave.
SPEAKER_1: You have the advantage, speaking to Protestants, you probably own your building, you probably own your land or rent it, whatever it happens to be, lease it.
SPEAKER_1: Your overarching corporate body doesn't own your building.
SPEAKER_1: You're not a Roman Catholic.
SPEAKER_1: Roman Catholics can't leave, regardless of what evil thing the Pope does, because the Pope owns their building, the Pope commands everyone in the leadership above them, the Pope can remove their priest, so on and so forth.
SPEAKER_1: In the LCMS context, Lutheran context, or the Presbyterians, or Baptists, Baptists probably don't have an overarching body anyway, but if you have an overarching corporate structure, they don't have that much control over you.
SPEAKER_1: You can leave, you can remain faithful, regardless of the evil things they're doing.
SPEAKER_1: So just don't be part of it.
SPEAKER_1: And whatever you do, do not rewrite your bylaws so that in the case of a split or anything like that, your property reverts, or whatever language they use, to the corporate body.
SPEAKER_1: That is one of the sneaky things they've been trying to do to try to enforce control over congregations, sort of control they do not have, because of the way these things have been structured in the US context.
SPEAKER_1: So take advantage of the structure we have.
SPEAKER_1: Whether it's good or bad could be debated.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think our structure is great.
SPEAKER_1: I don't like congregationalist polity.
SPEAKER_1: But it has benefits today.
SPEAKER_1: Take advantage of those before it winds up being a problem for you.
SPEAKER_1: Don't wait until Synod tells you to do something evil.
SPEAKER_1: Get out from under them before they try to do that to you.
SPEAKER_1: So, that's my general recommendation, and sort of a brief comment on the LCMS vs.
SPEAKER_1: Wells.
SPEAKER_1: And I think the last question I will answer tonight, notice down, if you get excommunicated with a family in tow, is it permissible to have communion with your wife in a house church until you find a new church?
SPEAKER_1: So if it's just your wife or just your wife and children, I would say that probably is just the other side of don't do it.
SPEAKER_1: Because the Lord's Supper is supposed to be something for the gathered church.
SPEAKER_1: And yes, where two or three are gathered in my name, and we'll count your wife as separate for the sake of this and not go with the headship count versus the individual body count, I guess, as it were, here.
SPEAKER_1: So, yes, God is present, yes, Christ is present as he promises, but it is supposed to be the gathered church that partakes of the sacrament.
SPEAKER_1: And so, get together with two or three like-minded men, go ahead and ordain one of you as being the head of this home church, and then by all means, have the Lord's Supper as part of what is now your church service, because now you have a home church.
SPEAKER_1: But I do think that it is proper to form that home church.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying you have to have a legal document or anything like that, but I do think it is proper to take that step of forming a home church first, instead of using it in a way that, if you're Lutheran, you'll be familiar with the confession, say, as a form of private practice or private devotion, which is something that is not how it should be used.
SPEAKER_1: It's not how it's intended to be used.
SPEAKER_1: It's not how it's spoken of in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_1: So, take the time and the effort to form that home church.
SPEAKER_1: And, yes, it's a good thing that you want to have the Lord's Supper, and you think that it is not a good thing to go without it for a period of time, but you're not going to be damned because you don't have the Lord's Supper for a few weeks or a few months or even a few years.
SPEAKER_1: Preferably don't go that long, you know, form a home church.
SPEAKER_1: But it is not absolutely necessary that you have the Lord's Supper, every week.
SPEAKER_1: It's a good thing.
SPEAKER_1: It's a good thing to have every week.
SPEAKER_1: I'm glad that we have moved to having it that way in the Lutheran Church.
SPEAKER_1: There were historical reasons that that wasn't the case in some places.
SPEAKER_1: But I do think it's good to have it every week, but it is not absolutely necessary in the sense that you have to worry for your soul because you have not had it in a few weeks.
SPEAKER_1: So form the home church and worship together and have the Lord's Supper as part of that worship.
SPEAKER_1: That's how it's meant to be used.
SPEAKER_1: It's meant to be the gathered church participating in the body and blood of our Lord and Savior as the gathered church.
SPEAKER_1: I think that I got through all of the questions in the chat.
SPEAKER_1: If I missed one, by all means, add it to the forum.
SPEAKER_1: I know that there are some outstanding questions, and I created a thread on the forum where I will be adding those so people can see.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe if I noticed your question, I will have added it to that thread.
SPEAKER_1: So if you do not see it there, that means I missed it.
SPEAKER_1: Please add it to the requests category on Omnifor.
SPEAKER_1: There's a link in the description, regardless of on which platform you are watching this.
SPEAKER_1: So that is the best way to submit questions because that helps me to organize them.
SPEAKER_1: Then I can mark them as red.
SPEAKER_1: When I remember to do that, I try to do that.
SPEAKER_1: And I can tag them in the individual episode where I answered them.
SPEAKER_1: So it's easier for people to find them in the future and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: But that is just the preferred way.
SPEAKER_1: If you ask in the chat or on X or wherever else, I will try to note it down, write it down, add it to a future episode.
SPEAKER_1: But like I said, I know there are some outstanding questions.
SPEAKER_1: One in particular I know people have wanted me to answer is I had a viral post on X about beauty, which was not necessarily my intent, but that is sort of how it went, about the nature of beauty and the morality and how you index these things.
SPEAKER_1: And I want to do that one as a standalone episode, so I'll release that as at least audio.
SPEAKER_1: I'll post it on YouTube and elsewhere as well, probably just with an image, because I'm not going to record video necessarily for that one.
SPEAKER_1: But I want to do that one as a standalone, because it's going to be longer form, and it is an important question that bears careful addressing, because of the reality of the transcendentals and the nature of God and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not going to get into it right now, obviously, but I do remember that one has been asked a number of times.
SPEAKER_1: I will get into it.
SPEAKER_1: I will answer that one.
SPEAKER_1: It is on my to-do list.
SPEAKER_1: But I think that is going to be it for this week.
SPEAKER_1: I did get through the questions that I had prepared and then some other ones from the chat.
SPEAKER_1: So, again, if you have questions, please do submit those on the forum, preferably, but other places are fine, too.
SPEAKER_1: Thank you for those of you who submitted questions and for those who participated in the chat.
SPEAKER_1: It is always nice to have the opportunity to answer these questions, and I'm glad that all of you find this useful enough, at least, to join me on a Friday night.
SPEAKER_1: So, I hope you have a great rest of your weekend.
SPEAKER_1: Make sure that you, of course, go to church on Sunday.
SPEAKER_1: And until hopefully Thursday, I would like to do it Thursday instead of Friday next week.
SPEAKER_1: Until Thursday, I hope that God is with all of you and continues to bless you.
SPEAKER_1: So, God bless, and have a great evening and a great weekend.
SPEAKER_1: Till next week.