WEBVTT 00:00:00.800 --> 00:00:03.600 It is the 14th of August, 2026. 00:00:03.800 --> 00:00:04.720 I am Corey J. 00:00:04.720 --> 00:00:07.240 Moller, and this is At Any Cost. 00:00:07.700 --> 00:00:09.620 This is episode 38. 00:00:10.820 --> 00:00:17.940 And I have just a little bit of housekeeping before I get into the questions for this evening. 00:00:18.380 --> 00:00:36.100 If the camera is a little bit off, it is because I discovered one minute before hitting go live, that apparently the company that made the mount I use for my iPhone, which is my camera, decided it was unnecessary to thread the connecting piece, and so it literally fell off. 00:00:36.500 --> 00:00:40.140 So hopefully, it will not do that again during the stream. 00:00:40.140 --> 00:00:42.980 I think it's on sturdy enough for tonight. 00:00:44.140 --> 00:00:57.640 Insofar as questions are concerned, again, the standard reminder I give at the end of streams, if you do not see your question in my list of pending questions on the forum, it means that I have not noticed it. 00:00:57.660 --> 00:00:58.920 It got missed somehow. 00:00:58.920 --> 00:01:00.800 So please go ahead and submit that again. 00:01:01.400 --> 00:01:12.620 I wanted to specifically mention there is a pending question about the Opium Wars and how that has influenced the relationship basically between the West and China. 00:01:13.080 --> 00:01:15.320 And I intend to answer that next week. 00:01:15.640 --> 00:01:18.620 That one is a little more involved than some of the others. 00:01:18.620 --> 00:01:32.040 I already did some of the groundwork for that question with an earlier question about differences between and among the Asian races and their religious differences, that there's sort of a feedback loop there. 00:01:32.040 --> 00:01:35.440 And that lays some of the foundation, saving face, things like that. 00:01:36.260 --> 00:01:38.800 So if you didn't listen to that one, go back and listen to that one. 00:01:39.880 --> 00:01:45.680 I think that is it for the housekeeping for tonight. 00:01:45.680 --> 00:01:49.520 So I will move into the questions now and pull up the first question here. 00:01:51.320 --> 00:01:55.200 The first question is one that I mentioned last week that I said I would answer this week. 00:01:55.520 --> 00:02:00.160 And it is a question about witchcraft, past practice of witchcraft. 00:02:00.160 --> 00:02:01.520 And so question one. 00:02:02.480 --> 00:02:05.440 I was a witch for most of my life. 00:02:05.440 --> 00:02:09.100 Wicca delved into the Keys of Solomon, demon summoning, etc. 00:02:10.160 --> 00:02:11.740 It is something I really struggle with. 00:02:11.740 --> 00:02:21.080 I was called to Christ five years ago, but if lapsed twice back into witchcraft, my faith is now stronger than ever, but I am concerned about lapsing again. 00:02:21.620 --> 00:02:24.220 Even seeing the moon at night is challenging to me. 00:02:24.300 --> 00:02:25.680 It was an object of worship. 00:02:26.500 --> 00:02:34.920 Why are some people more drawn to paganism or demonology, and what do you think I should do to avoid being drawn back into it? 00:02:38.840 --> 00:02:49.800 I think that there are a lot of reasons that certain people are more attracted to things like demonology, witchcraft, neopaganism, all of these things. 00:02:50.260 --> 00:02:55.540 And I think part of it, and I've said this many times, is due to the current weakness of the churches. 00:02:55.540 --> 00:03:09.880 This is particularly true for men, certainly, because you'll have men who see the current state of the churches don't do their research, to be completely blunt and honest, about how that happened. 00:03:09.880 --> 00:03:12.360 And I pointed out before that the churches fell last. 00:03:13.180 --> 00:03:18.200 Everything else in society had already fallen to the enemy by the time the churches fell, right? 00:03:18.320 --> 00:03:26.340 The schools were captured, the media was captured, the government was captured, the institutions were captured, everything else was captured before the churches gave in. 00:03:26.680 --> 00:03:31.660 So, the churches deserve some credit for holding out, they deserve condemnation for finally caving. 00:03:32.160 --> 00:03:37.140 But take the totality, not just the narrative that certain people want you to believe. 00:03:37.700 --> 00:03:45.800 But there are men who look at that and think, well, if the churches are in the current state in which they are, then surely there must be something that's better. 00:03:46.280 --> 00:04:02.740 And they're not wrong in part of the reasoning, because the reasoning that that which is true should also be manly and strong is correct, because the truth is manly and strong, because the truth is God, God himself is truth. 00:04:03.020 --> 00:04:06.420 And so, you should look to Christ for that. 00:04:06.780 --> 00:04:24.260 And if you look at actual Christianity, which plenty of examples down through history, we had Christendom for over a thousand years, that was manly and strong, and that fought the Crusades, that kept out all of the various peoples conducting slave raids into Europe, and the list goes on and on. 00:04:24.860 --> 00:04:26.080 That's Christianity. 00:04:26.080 --> 00:04:28.080 What we have today in the churches is not. 00:04:28.080 --> 00:04:31.780 And so, you'll have men who look at that and want to find something strong. 00:04:31.780 --> 00:04:43.240 And the neo-pagans are right there willing to tell them, no, look, what we have is strong, we have the old gods that wanted, you know, X, Y, and Z, whatever it is you want to hear, they're going to tell you. 00:04:44.220 --> 00:04:45.560 The demons know this, right? 00:04:45.740 --> 00:04:49.100 The demons are going to offer you something that looks good. 00:04:49.960 --> 00:04:51.680 This is something that comes up all the time. 00:04:51.680 --> 00:04:57.660 Sin is never going to look really bad if you just look at the surface level, right? 00:04:57.940 --> 00:05:02.920 There would be no attraction to engaging in sin if sin were all bad. 00:05:03.700 --> 00:05:08.600 It is all bad finally in the end analysis, but it looks good in the interim, right? 00:05:08.680 --> 00:05:10.740 Fornication is fun. 00:05:11.040 --> 00:05:12.760 No one is going to tell you otherwise. 00:05:13.180 --> 00:05:20.500 The downstream consequences for you personally, for your partners, and for society are catastrophic. 00:05:21.860 --> 00:05:24.180 But it has that appeal initially. 00:05:24.400 --> 00:05:29.600 The same thing is true with stuff like paganism, and demonology, and wicca, whatever it happens to be. 00:05:30.040 --> 00:05:32.100 Because it promises you secret knowledge. 00:05:32.100 --> 00:05:34.120 It's ultimately a lot of it's gnosticism, right? 00:05:34.180 --> 00:05:35.960 It promises you secret knowledge. 00:05:36.040 --> 00:05:39.220 It promises you strength and power, all these things. 00:05:39.300 --> 00:05:40.380 It never delivers. 00:05:41.320 --> 00:05:49.000 If it does deliver, it's that little bit in the beginning, just like fornication delivers a little bit of fun in the beginning, at the immense cost down the line. 00:05:49.180 --> 00:05:51.560 The same thing is true here, as you undoubtedly know. 00:05:52.300 --> 00:06:07.220 You start off, and it seems like you found something that gives you meaning and purpose, and then the more deeply you get involved, the more you realize not only are you in over your head, but it's actively destroying you, and you participate in your own destruction. 00:06:08.140 --> 00:06:15.200 So, there's a lot of psychology going on as to why certain men and certain women are more attracted to these things than others. 00:06:16.320 --> 00:06:23.200 The demons are always going to use the temptation for you that they believe is going to work best on you. 00:06:23.580 --> 00:06:33.100 And so, maybe your temptation is gluttony, maybe it's food, or it's sex, it's fornication, or it's something like Wicca or neo-paganism. 00:06:33.360 --> 00:06:37.180 The demons aren't going to waste time using a temptation that won't work on you. 00:06:37.420 --> 00:06:39.400 That would be dumb, and they're not dumb. 00:06:39.480 --> 00:06:40.040 They're evil. 00:06:40.040 --> 00:06:42.820 There's a difference between stupid and evil. 00:06:43.120 --> 00:06:44.560 They don't always coincide. 00:06:44.560 --> 00:06:48.960 Sometimes they're very intelligent men, or entities in this case, who are evil. 00:06:49.400 --> 00:06:52.300 They're going to use the thing that will work on you. 00:06:52.800 --> 00:06:58.340 And perhaps in your case, it happens to be that you are attracted to esoteric knowledge. 00:06:58.580 --> 00:07:02.560 That happens a lot with individuals who sort of have the academic bent. 00:07:02.740 --> 00:07:05.440 They're going to be men for whom that works better than others. 00:07:05.480 --> 00:07:08.520 There's a question coming up later in the stream related to that. 00:07:08.800 --> 00:07:10.060 I may get to it, I may not. 00:07:10.060 --> 00:07:12.020 I don't know how many questions I'll do tonight. 00:07:12.460 --> 00:07:17.520 And so, your attraction to this is part due to who and what you are. 00:07:17.680 --> 00:07:21.000 The demons are going to tempt you with what they believe will work for you. 00:07:22.400 --> 00:07:29.540 But then the other part of the question, perhaps the more important, practical part of the question, as it were, is what do you do about that? 00:07:29.920 --> 00:07:43.820 I think in your case, one of the best things you can do is read the creation narrative in Genesis, so Genesis 1 and 2, perhaps read 3 as well, and then read the narrative of the Exodus. 00:07:44.460 --> 00:07:56.140 And the reason that I want you to read those is, and I think you'll probably, given your background, perhaps get more out of this than others would initially, you have to recognize those are not just narratives, right? 00:07:56.640 --> 00:08:03.680 Both of those are also polemics, because this is something actually that is missed by many Christians, unfortunately. 00:08:03.680 --> 00:08:08.200 It's one of the reasons I want to get back to my series that I was almost completed on Genesis. 00:08:08.200 --> 00:08:09.960 I need to invest that time. 00:08:10.400 --> 00:08:20.040 But the narrative of creation is itself a polemic against the pagan gods, because the pagan gods, what are the pagan gods typically? 00:08:20.240 --> 00:08:26.780 You have the sun and the moon and the stars and maybe the planets, you know, the Romans, Mars, the god of war, etc. 00:08:27.180 --> 00:08:33.480 You have celestial bodies, you have the animals, you have the natural world, you have the creatures in the sea. 00:08:34.080 --> 00:08:37.680 All of these things are what are deified in various pagan myths. 00:08:37.680 --> 00:08:43.400 Different pagan mythologies have different gods, different things are deified. 00:08:43.400 --> 00:08:50.220 Some focus more on the animal, some focus more on the natural world, in the sense of the physical world, whatever it happens to be. 00:08:50.800 --> 00:08:58.160 All of that is condemned in the creation narrative, because what is the sun in the creation narrative? 00:08:58.160 --> 00:08:59.580 Well, it's just the sun. 00:08:59.960 --> 00:09:03.100 It's the light that governs the day created by God. 00:09:03.100 --> 00:09:08.640 It is God's creature created for our good and for the design of his universe. 00:09:09.000 --> 00:09:13.200 It's not the sun, uppercase S, in the sense of being a deity. 00:09:13.420 --> 00:09:15.240 It's not an angel. 00:09:15.240 --> 00:09:17.580 It's not an entity to be worshiped. 00:09:17.680 --> 00:09:20.100 It is just a physical thing. 00:09:20.200 --> 00:09:21.300 It's part of creation. 00:09:21.580 --> 00:09:31.000 Of course, we also know that from science, so if that helps you to think of it that way as well, go ahead, because it is literally just a fusion reactor in the sky. 00:09:31.000 --> 00:09:32.660 And the same thing for the moon, right? 00:09:32.660 --> 00:09:34.260 In its own way, the moon reflects the sun. 00:09:34.260 --> 00:09:36.180 The moon is just a celestial body. 00:09:36.520 --> 00:09:39.420 It's a giant chunk of rock orbiting the earth. 00:09:40.980 --> 00:09:47.340 I'm aware that technically the earth and the moon orbit each other in a certain way, so please do not get into that in the comments. 00:09:47.340 --> 00:09:48.860 I'm aware of the distinction there. 00:09:50.780 --> 00:10:13.700 It helps to go through that polemical narrative and recognize that the Lord God is the one who created all these things, and He has already gone through the trouble of condemning all of these sorts of groups that want to claim that the sun is a god, that there are other gods, that these things are actually deities, that these influence your life in some way, that these control your destiny, whatever it happens to be. 00:10:14.240 --> 00:10:16.700 God already wrote a polemic against that. 00:10:17.500 --> 00:10:28.720 And then He enacted that polemic in the specific case of the Egyptian mythology of their gods, because if you look at the plagues, there are plenty of places you can see this drawn out by various exegetes. 00:10:28.720 --> 00:10:31.280 There are men who have done very good work on this. 00:10:31.480 --> 00:10:34.580 I can't think of the names on the top of my head, but they're easy to find. 00:10:35.560 --> 00:10:39.780 The plagues are condemnations of the Egyptian pantheon. 00:10:40.020 --> 00:10:46.940 They are specific condemnations of the various entities that the Egyptians believed controlled their lives. 00:10:47.080 --> 00:10:51.460 And so you had gods that were associated with the Nile, condemned by some of the plagues. 00:10:51.460 --> 00:10:55.600 You have gods associated with various animals, condemned by some of the plagues. 00:10:56.360 --> 00:11:06.320 All of these things are condemnations of that form of belief, and a proof of the existence and the power of the Lord God, being God over all of these things. 00:11:07.640 --> 00:11:13.520 And incidentally, the angel of death is either Christ himself, or an angel commanded by Christ himself. 00:11:13.560 --> 00:11:20.420 Do remember, when you have a physical theophany, an appearance of God in the Old Testament, it's actually a Christophany. 00:11:20.620 --> 00:11:25.140 It's Christ appearing in the flesh, which he does, for instance, in the Garden to Adam and Eve. 00:11:25.580 --> 00:11:38.780 So, I would say go and read through those narratives and recognize that all of these things that you used to think were deities or in some way controlled your life were created by the God you now know to be your Lord and Savior. 00:11:39.160 --> 00:11:40.700 He created those things. 00:11:40.800 --> 00:11:42.380 They're part of his creation. 00:11:42.460 --> 00:11:48.320 So, it's not wrong to look up at the natural night sky and have awe and wonder. 00:11:48.320 --> 00:11:49.580 You should have that response. 00:11:49.580 --> 00:11:55.940 God created it for both his glory and our edification, and just because it's beautiful to look at. 00:11:56.240 --> 00:12:02.940 So, once you have this in the right mindset, there's nothing wrong with looking at the moon and feeling a sense of awe. 00:12:03.400 --> 00:12:05.060 The moon is not a deity. 00:12:05.060 --> 00:12:07.860 The moon is not a god or a goddess. 00:12:08.520 --> 00:12:13.900 The moon is something created by God, and it's created for his glory and for our enjoyment. 00:12:13.900 --> 00:12:19.300 So, look at it in the right mindset, in the right frame, and you can avoid some of these problems. 00:12:19.340 --> 00:12:37.240 But I would definitely highly recommend going through that creation narrative in Genesis, repeatedly until the point where you've almost memorized it, and then going through, point by point, the Exodus narrative, and looking at how God judged and dismissed all of the Egyptian deities. 00:12:37.240 --> 00:12:41.760 He could have done the same thing for any other pantheon, any other pagan pantheon. 00:12:51.460 --> 00:12:55.160 Question two is about divisions within the churches. 00:12:55.840 --> 00:13:04.900 Is it your hope, or should it be a goal for denominations to agree and reconcile, or is it necessary and good for division and disagreement in order to enable debate and discussion? 00:13:05.560 --> 00:13:11.940 Do you believe Lutheranism is the correct theology or just most concordant with scripture, and you are German? 00:13:12.380 --> 00:13:12.780 True. 00:13:13.120 --> 00:13:22.020 Recently, I listened to a Catholic admit to his understanding being imperfect, and that it was okay because we are all limited, and can make some adjustments after death. 00:13:22.420 --> 00:13:26.380 Do you believe we can perfect, trim, and correct our understanding after death? 00:13:26.380 --> 00:13:35.400 So, there are several questions in there, and I think I'll answer the last two, as it were, first, just because they're easy and quick to answer. 00:13:36.240 --> 00:13:45.700 In the resurrection of the just, which is to say, when you spend eternity in paradise, you're going to have your misunderstandings all resolved. 00:13:45.700 --> 00:13:49.900 God is not going to leave you in error and imperfect knowledge for all of eternity. 00:13:50.700 --> 00:13:53.220 You aren't correcting those gods, correcting them for you. 00:13:53.220 --> 00:13:59.040 So, yes, it is corrected in a sense after death, but not necessarily in the sense that he meant. 00:13:59.300 --> 00:14:04.220 I don't know if he's referencing purgatory, which the Roman Catholics believe exists, and Lutherans and others deny. 00:14:05.240 --> 00:14:09.760 But at any rate, your views of these things will be perfected in eternity. 00:14:09.760 --> 00:14:10.800 So, it's not really a concern. 00:14:10.800 --> 00:14:12.640 It's a concern for here and now, here and time. 00:14:13.720 --> 00:14:16.560 And the answer is yes and no. 00:14:16.560 --> 00:14:23.280 And the reason the answer is yes and no is because unity among brothers is one of the highest goods. 00:14:23.740 --> 00:14:26.300 It's worth pointing out, unity is one of the transcendentals, right? 00:14:26.300 --> 00:14:29.780 We always talk about beauty, goodness, and truth being the core three. 00:14:29.980 --> 00:14:31.700 But there's also being in unity. 00:14:32.160 --> 00:14:34.620 And unity is good. 00:14:34.920 --> 00:14:39.620 We should want to have unity of belief, of purpose, all of these things. 00:14:40.080 --> 00:14:44.200 That is one of the highest things to which a race, a nation of people, can aspire. 00:14:44.540 --> 00:14:48.940 And certainly we should also desire that for the church, indeed, across nations as well. 00:14:49.300 --> 00:14:54.500 Not in the sense of mixing and destroying the nations, because that would be against God's will and God's design. 00:14:54.560 --> 00:14:55.500 That would be evil. 00:14:56.220 --> 00:15:08.740 But in the sense that we should have the same Christian religion here, and in England, in Germany, in Russia, all places in the world should have unity of doctrine, dogma, etc. 00:15:08.760 --> 00:15:10.320 You don't have to have unity of practice, right? 00:15:10.320 --> 00:15:11.620 I've gone over that previously. 00:15:12.800 --> 00:15:13.780 Will it happen? 00:15:14.620 --> 00:15:17.040 The answer is no, it's not going to happen in this lifetime. 00:15:17.040 --> 00:15:21.660 We can have greater unity than we have now, and I think that should be a goal. 00:15:22.100 --> 00:15:33.180 If each nation had a national church, and then we had these discussions between and among nations, as if not peers than near peers, in many cases, that would be a good thing. 00:15:33.740 --> 00:15:44.220 National unity should be our paramount goal, because within our own nation, we should want to have one church to which every member of the nation belongs, we all worship God as one. 00:15:44.620 --> 00:15:46.600 That would be a great good thing. 00:15:48.520 --> 00:16:07.260 That is a very difficult thing to achieve, particularly perhaps in a nation like America, where we are indeed fractured along a number of different lines, perhaps easier modulo removing all of the so-called immigrants in certain parts of Europe, where you have greater unity already in terms of ethnicity, etc. 00:16:08.660 --> 00:16:16.680 So, yes, of course, I'm aware of the scripture verse that says there must be differences among you brothers, right? 00:16:16.680 --> 00:16:18.020 So that the truth can come out. 00:16:19.160 --> 00:16:20.600 And that's just how it's going to be. 00:16:20.600 --> 00:16:26.600 There are always going to be debates, divisions, things like that among human beings in any pursuit. 00:16:26.600 --> 00:16:28.720 That happens everywhere, not just in the churches. 00:16:28.900 --> 00:16:32.480 It happens in the churches because people in the churches are indeed still human. 00:16:33.760 --> 00:16:37.660 So, how do we solve the problem, as it were? 00:16:38.380 --> 00:16:46.280 The goal should be to have the greatest level of unity that we can achieve, but then leave that space to have these debates and these arguments. 00:16:46.480 --> 00:16:52.600 But insofar as we can have them without letting them lead to schism or division, that would be best. 00:16:53.440 --> 00:16:58.000 Remember, the goal of the Lutheran reformers during the Reformation was not schism. 00:16:58.000 --> 00:17:17.000 The goal was not the creation of a new church or the separating off of parts of the church, however you want to formulate what exactly happened, because Lutherans are of the view that Rome is in schism, that Rome departed from the universal church, and that Lutherans continued in the faith. 00:17:17.000 --> 00:17:18.100 That's the Lutheran view. 00:17:18.240 --> 00:17:19.760 The Roman view is the inverse. 00:17:20.400 --> 00:17:29.960 But what the reformers wanted was to have a council, to have a discussion within Christianity, among Christians as brothers, to lead back to unity. 00:17:29.960 --> 00:17:31.080 That was always the goal. 00:17:31.140 --> 00:17:32.400 That should always be the goal. 00:17:33.320 --> 00:17:38.160 We should not look at what happened in the reformation as an unadulterated good. 00:17:38.340 --> 00:17:45.240 It was good insofar as it restored the right worship of God, right belief about justification, etc., etc. 00:17:45.880 --> 00:17:49.800 It was not good insofar as, yes, division was necessary. 00:17:50.280 --> 00:17:51.680 Division is never good. 00:17:52.100 --> 00:17:57.960 Division may be necessary in order that the good may triumph, but division itself is not a good. 00:17:58.340 --> 00:17:59.940 So we do the best that we can. 00:18:00.180 --> 00:18:05.880 We try to unify as best we can, but you can't unify at the cost of the truth. 00:18:06.460 --> 00:18:09.500 That's one of the foundational realities here. 00:18:09.500 --> 00:18:14.640 You must always go for truth above unity, because truth is the greater pursuit. 00:18:15.460 --> 00:18:22.320 I'm not getting into the difference among the transcendentals, right, because then we're talking about the attributes of God and using human terms to describe these things. 00:18:22.600 --> 00:18:30.020 But with regard to life here and now, we should preference at least certain truths above unity. 00:18:30.160 --> 00:18:35.320 So the gospel is more important than unity with regard to various church bodies. 00:18:36.720 --> 00:18:46.640 But the overall answer is that we seek unity where we can, and we try not to let certainly our divisions and things like that rise to the level of, say, the 30 years war. 00:18:47.180 --> 00:18:48.260 That should never have happened. 00:18:48.260 --> 00:18:49.360 That was unacceptable. 00:18:49.920 --> 00:18:53.820 But we should certainly continue to have debates and discussions and things like that. 00:18:53.820 --> 00:18:55.660 Not in the sense of online debates. 00:18:55.660 --> 00:18:56.900 Those are almost never useful. 00:18:57.240 --> 00:19:04.740 But in the sense of formal academic debates of these things grounded in what we all agree is the truth, which is to say scripture. 00:19:09.900 --> 00:19:16.560 So, I'm going to go ahead and copy a couple of things from the chat here so that I do not miss them later. 00:19:20.420 --> 00:19:34.900 I probably will not get to any more questions that come in the chat from here forward for this stream because I have a lot of questions already, but I will try to get to at least a handful. 00:19:57.460 --> 00:20:02.180 Obviously, I need an office manager, stream manager, as it were, but this will have to do for now. 00:20:03.320 --> 00:20:07.880 Question three is about... 00:20:08.000 --> 00:20:09.800 Well, I'll just read it since it's nice and short. 00:20:10.040 --> 00:20:11.080 What did Jesus... 00:20:11.260 --> 00:20:14.340 Why did Jesus say what he said in Mark 10, 17? 00:20:14.760 --> 00:20:17.920 So, obviously, we'll go ahead and pull that up. 00:20:17.920 --> 00:20:24.680 I have a feeling he probably means Mark 10, 17 and following, not just the verse itself. 00:20:25.820 --> 00:20:27.140 Go ahead and pull up Logos. 00:20:31.500 --> 00:20:32.280 Floating window. 00:20:34.980 --> 00:20:35.500 Okay. 00:20:38.960 --> 00:20:39.260 So. 00:20:47.940 --> 00:20:48.960 Yes, okay. 00:20:48.960 --> 00:21:08.280 So, I don't know specifically what this questioner is asking, because I don't know if he's asking about Jesus saying, no one is good except God alone, or if he's talking about the difficulty of the rich man entering into paradise, right? 00:21:08.580 --> 00:21:15.320 So, I'll just go ahead and read the first paragraph of this, so we all have the text in the context. 00:21:16.220 --> 00:21:23.260 And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? 00:21:23.720 --> 00:21:26.860 And Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good? 00:21:27.060 --> 00:21:29.120 No one is good except God alone. 00:21:29.120 --> 00:21:30.460 You know the commandments. 00:21:30.660 --> 00:21:38.020 Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother. 00:21:38.620 --> 00:21:42.960 And he said to him, Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth. 00:21:43.320 --> 00:21:53.020 And Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, You lack one thing, go sell all that you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come follow me. 00:21:53.720 --> 00:21:58.000 Disheartened by this saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. 00:21:59.680 --> 00:22:06.680 And then, of course, there's Jesus' comment right after, how difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God, which may be the question here. 00:22:07.040 --> 00:22:11.780 I'll just go ahead and answer, I guess, both sub-questions as it were. 00:22:13.600 --> 00:22:16.980 When Jesus says no one is good except God alone, he's testing the men. 00:22:17.420 --> 00:22:20.060 He does this all throughout the New Testament. 00:22:20.060 --> 00:22:26.340 He tests individuals by saying certain things and giving them the opportunity to respond correctly or incorrectly. 00:22:26.880 --> 00:22:32.600 And so saying no one is good except God alone is an invitation to say, but you are God. 00:22:32.920 --> 00:22:34.240 You are the son of God. 00:22:34.240 --> 00:22:34.920 You are the lamb. 00:22:34.920 --> 00:22:35.940 You are God. 00:22:36.140 --> 00:22:38.200 It's an invitation to make that confession. 00:22:39.580 --> 00:22:42.640 And there are a number of times that comes up in the New Testament. 00:22:42.980 --> 00:22:52.520 But the question about how difficult it will be for the rich to enter the kingdom of God is because mammon is a very strong draw for human beings, right? 00:22:53.600 --> 00:23:08.100 Luther has some particularly choice words on this in the Large Catechism and elsewhere, but wealth and money and material possessions, things like that, exert a very strong influence on most men. 00:23:08.420 --> 00:23:12.980 And they tend to start to put their trust in those things when they have them. 00:23:12.980 --> 00:23:26.620 And so men who have tens of millions of dollars or billions of dollars or these days hundreds of billions of dollars tend to start putting their trust in their wealth and their own abilities and what that wealth can buy them. 00:23:27.340 --> 00:23:44.540 And it's going to be very difficult for many of those men to look at all of that wealth and power they've accumulated and realize it all means nothing, and that they are actually still mortal, they're still human beings, they're still going to die, and they get to take absolutely none of it with them. 00:23:45.600 --> 00:23:49.580 That's a hard thing for many of the wealthy to do, and that's what Christ is pointing out here. 00:23:49.580 --> 00:23:54.780 But of course, later on, he also says, right, with man it is impossible, but not with God. 00:23:54.860 --> 00:23:57.400 It's impossible for any man to be saved. 00:23:57.500 --> 00:24:08.080 He's highlighting one of the particular besetting sins that is common to certain men and that makes it difficult for them to trust in God and recognize the only way they can be saved, which is Christ. 00:24:08.400 --> 00:24:10.280 Not their own works, nothing like that. 00:24:11.480 --> 00:24:15.340 He's giving an example, he could have given other ones as well, right? 00:24:16.080 --> 00:24:18.700 There are men in positions of power who trust in their power. 00:24:19.500 --> 00:24:25.360 It happens to be that the wealthy, typically here you're going to have wealth and power being almost one to one. 00:24:25.640 --> 00:24:32.520 There's a bit of a merchant class, but it's not the same as we have today, where there can be a division between political power and actual wealth. 00:24:33.300 --> 00:24:38.060 You can parlay one into the other sometimes, but there's a distinction we have today that's not as much back then. 00:24:39.080 --> 00:24:42.140 If you were the ruler of a territory, you probably also had money. 00:24:43.020 --> 00:24:49.960 So, he's pointing out that it is impossible for men to be saved without God, because it's possible only with God. 00:24:50.120 --> 00:25:02.620 He's just using an example that would have been well known to everyone to whom he was speaking, and there's also the additional layer of many of the Jews believed that you could be saved by works, right? 00:25:02.620 --> 00:25:18.860 They thought that if you had this extreme wealth, you could pay for things like the construction of a synagogue, or donations to the temple, or renovation of this or that, sacrifices, all these things you could do with wealth that got you brownie points with God, right? 00:25:18.860 --> 00:25:21.340 That got you in good standing with God, they believed. 00:25:21.720 --> 00:25:24.380 Christ is pointing out, you aren't saved by those things. 00:25:24.840 --> 00:25:26.640 You can't be saved by those things. 00:25:26.840 --> 00:25:28.940 It is impossible with man. 00:25:29.040 --> 00:25:30.540 You can only be saved by God. 00:25:30.540 --> 00:25:32.700 You can only be saved by belief in Christ. 00:25:33.400 --> 00:25:34.620 So he's just teaching here. 00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:38.380 And many times, yes, you do have to think about the things that he's teaching. 00:25:38.400 --> 00:25:39.800 It's not always just surface level. 00:25:40.160 --> 00:25:41.360 He is God, after all. 00:25:41.360 --> 00:25:44.060 He's saying things that have multiple levels to them. 00:25:45.160 --> 00:25:51.760 So depending on which one your question is, hopefully I answered the question, since I don't believe it was probably just Mark 17. 00:25:53.780 --> 00:25:54.840 Just the one verse. 00:26:00.620 --> 00:26:02.740 Question four. 00:26:08.160 --> 00:26:13.340 Is plastic surgery permissible for a Christian wife after childbirth to please her husband? 00:26:13.740 --> 00:26:17.180 Diet and exercise already controlled and consistent? 00:26:18.680 --> 00:26:22.920 Of course, ask the Californian about plastic surgery, right? 00:26:24.560 --> 00:26:31.940 But as a general rule, I don't think that all plastic surgery is morally impermissible. 00:26:31.940 --> 00:26:33.320 I don't think it's all wrong. 00:26:33.320 --> 00:26:37.180 I don't think it is something Christians cannot do in good conscience. 00:26:38.100 --> 00:26:41.180 With that said, I think there's a very large caveat. 00:26:41.560 --> 00:26:52.740 I think it should be used as a corrective, not in the sense of trying to achieve some sort of unobtainable, it's worth noting, state of perfection in this life, right? 00:26:53.900 --> 00:26:57.140 We are all more or less slowly falling apart. 00:26:57.140 --> 00:26:57.880 That's what aging is. 00:26:57.880 --> 00:26:59.680 Aging is your body falling apart, right? 00:27:00.240 --> 00:27:06.360 You start to get bags under your eyes, your skin starts to not look the same as it did when you were much younger, etc., etc. 00:27:06.780 --> 00:27:08.860 Your joints make weird noises when you stand up. 00:27:09.520 --> 00:27:13.620 You are going to fall apart as you age, more or less. 00:27:13.620 --> 00:27:17.620 It depends on your genetics and your fitness level and your activity and all these things. 00:27:17.760 --> 00:27:20.420 But plastic surgery is not a cure-all. 00:27:20.980 --> 00:27:22.600 Are there things that it does very well? 00:27:22.740 --> 00:27:31.440 Certainly, reconstructive surgery, if you suffer some particular injury, it can help you get restored to a certain degree from that. 00:27:31.660 --> 00:27:36.960 If you have, say, burns, it can sometimes fix that with skin grafts and things like that. 00:27:37.320 --> 00:27:44.340 If you have cancer that is removed, say you have a chunk of your face removed, plastic surgery can repair that to a certain degree. 00:27:44.840 --> 00:27:46.320 I don't think those are bad things. 00:27:46.640 --> 00:27:55.640 I think that's using the intelligence, the abilities, the skills that God has given us to attempt to ameliorate some of the problems caused by the fall. 00:27:55.840 --> 00:27:56.960 I don't think that's bad. 00:27:57.320 --> 00:28:01.980 It's sort of the physical equivalent of gardening, right? 00:28:01.980 --> 00:28:02.620 What is gardening? 00:28:02.620 --> 00:28:04.840 Gardening is reversing some of the effects of the fall. 00:28:05.060 --> 00:28:06.920 It's bringing order to disorder. 00:28:07.600 --> 00:28:12.080 You're doing the same thing with plastic surgery, as long as you don't go overboard, right? 00:28:13.100 --> 00:28:20.680 Don't make it your personality, don't make it a hobby, don't start to look like some people, we can all think of examples, start to look. 00:28:21.380 --> 00:28:27.440 And incidentally, California is known for plastic surgery, but the plastic surgery out there is generally better than what you see on TV. 00:28:29.220 --> 00:28:31.000 But I think that it's not impermissible. 00:28:31.020 --> 00:28:40.440 Should it be, like, a big thing, a super important part of your marriage, like, you're demanding your wife go and get this or that fixed in order to... 00:28:41.380 --> 00:28:43.040 Don't start down that road. 00:28:43.040 --> 00:28:44.720 I think it leads to a bad place. 00:28:45.060 --> 00:28:50.460 But if she wants to get a little lift or a tuck here or there, I don't think it's a bad thing. 00:28:50.780 --> 00:28:57.160 And it is also very helpful for women with regard to their ego and their self-image, right? 00:28:57.380 --> 00:28:58.640 Some women more than others. 00:28:58.640 --> 00:29:08.560 You just, as a husband, be careful there, because that could become an obsession and a worse problem for her than if she had just not had anything done, right? 00:29:09.040 --> 00:29:11.400 So, is it morally impermissible? 00:29:11.440 --> 00:29:11.760 No. 00:29:11.760 --> 00:29:13.000 Is it a matter of wisdom? 00:29:13.000 --> 00:29:14.020 Absolutely yes. 00:29:14.380 --> 00:29:19.000 So, generally speaking, corrective procedures are going to be fine. 00:29:19.720 --> 00:29:25.340 Do your homework, make sure that someone who knows what he's doing, and don't go overboard, right? 00:29:26.840 --> 00:29:30.180 But yes, plastic surgery is not morally impermissible per se. 00:29:36.480 --> 00:29:43.640 I guess, a tangentially related question, but make a note for myself here. 00:29:46.960 --> 00:29:48.600 Question five. 00:29:49.860 --> 00:29:55.360 You have talked at length on Stone Choir and X about the big lie of the Holocaust. 00:29:55.360 --> 00:30:00.580 Can you please address Josef Mengele and the experiments he performed on people? 00:30:02.360 --> 00:30:04.740 The answer to this is both yes and no. 00:30:04.740 --> 00:30:14.260 And the reason that it's yes and no is because the records from the so-called doctors' trials from Nuremberg are, in fact, still sealed. 00:30:14.260 --> 00:30:18.280 They will be sealed for, I'm not even certain how long it is, but it's still quite some time. 00:30:19.620 --> 00:30:34.780 However, that being said, what we do have of his records and what he maintained until the day he died, and it is worth noting that he never renounced his Christian faith, as far as we know, Yosef Mengele was a Christian his whole life. 00:30:35.180 --> 00:30:45.560 He may not have attended services as often as we would necessarily prefer for a Christian, but he was also in hiding most of his life, trying not to get kidnapped and murdered by Israel, so-called. 00:30:45.560 --> 00:30:48.700 So, with a grain of salt, as it were. 00:30:49.360 --> 00:30:57.540 What we know from the information that we still have available that isn't classified, hidden away, whatever it happens to be. 00:30:58.380 --> 00:31:02.940 In these days, if something's unclassified, how trustworthy is it post-AI? 00:31:03.500 --> 00:31:04.520 That's a problem too. 00:31:05.040 --> 00:31:13.240 But what we have show that he was very much interested in anthropology, he was interested in twins for psychology and anthropology, and other reasons related to that. 00:31:13.880 --> 00:31:18.880 We don't actually have proof that he conducted invasive surgical procedures. 00:31:19.900 --> 00:31:29.240 That is on the same level as the death roller coaster, the electrified floor, the bear and eagle cage and all that stuff. 00:31:29.760 --> 00:31:38.740 So, we have wild accusations that are totally unbelievable, and we have actual evidence showing that basically, he was interested in anthropology. 00:31:40.300 --> 00:31:44.600 And again, he denied until the day he died that he did the things he's accused of doing. 00:31:45.320 --> 00:31:50.460 So, I don't think we have warrant to believe that the accusations are legitimate. 00:31:50.760 --> 00:31:56.940 You can also go to Carl Raddle on X, and search for Mengele, and many resources will come up. 00:31:57.140 --> 00:32:01.340 There's a lot of documentation there if you're interested in reading about this specific topic. 00:32:01.660 --> 00:32:15.860 But I think generally speaking, we shouldn't believe it because it comes from the same people, again, who were saying there was a death roller coaster, and that the Germans built a fake village, and then used a nuclear weapon to kill people in the fake village they built. 00:32:16.540 --> 00:32:18.640 It's just wild, unbelievable nonsense. 00:32:26.100 --> 00:32:28.440 I am sensing a theme in some of these questions. 00:32:28.780 --> 00:32:31.920 Question 6 is about the Hitler Youth. 00:32:33.520 --> 00:32:36.200 Let me pull up the actual questions here. 00:32:37.340 --> 00:32:43.420 I read online, first red flag, that's fair, that the Hitler Youth met on Sunday to decouple children from the church. 00:32:43.760 --> 00:32:47.500 Can you please address what actually happened, or if there is a kernel of truth to this? 00:32:47.900 --> 00:32:56.540 So, this is one of those examples, where we actually have solid evidence of exactly what their practices were, because the documents still exist. 00:32:56.820 --> 00:32:59.260 And their meetings were on Wednesday and Saturday. 00:32:59.860 --> 00:33:02.540 So this is just false. 00:33:02.980 --> 00:33:16.440 They had what they call, I can't remember the term they use now, but they had ideological training on Wednesday, where they studied national socialism, and all the various stuff from the party about being a good member of the nation, things like that. 00:33:16.900 --> 00:33:21.300 And then on Saturday, they had all the stuff of which you've seen all the videos, right? 00:33:21.300 --> 00:33:25.580 The various sports training, and all of that stuff was conducted on Saturdays. 00:33:26.220 --> 00:33:39.900 In fact, they specifically avoided having stuff on Sundays in order not to conflict with the church, and not to cause that conflict with people who attended church services, given that overwhelmingly, massively overwhelmingly, Germans were Christian. 00:33:40.640 --> 00:33:47.580 They did occasionally have large events and things like that on Sundays, like hikes or rallies or that. 00:33:47.940 --> 00:33:51.900 But those would have been after the church services, which were in the morning. 00:33:52.140 --> 00:33:53.020 So it didn't conflict. 00:33:53.020 --> 00:33:54.100 Like these days, right? 00:33:54.100 --> 00:33:56.240 You can go for a hike after your church service. 00:33:56.240 --> 00:33:58.320 That doesn't stop you from going to church. 00:33:58.320 --> 00:33:59.720 It just means you go later in the day. 00:33:59.720 --> 00:34:00.720 You go in the afternoon. 00:34:01.180 --> 00:34:10.400 So no, the accusation is just completely groundless, because it was Wednesday and Saturday, with occasional special events on Sunday, which is perfectly permissible. 00:34:10.480 --> 00:34:11.600 Still, we do that today. 00:34:12.160 --> 00:34:19.000 I don't think it's necessarily wrong to have, say, a rally on a Sunday after the church services have concluded. 00:34:28.020 --> 00:34:30.680 Question seven. 00:34:33.280 --> 00:34:37.960 This is the one I mentioned earlier that I thought I would probably get to, and indeed we will. 00:34:38.520 --> 00:34:46.260 When does man's curiosity, Proverbs 25 2, go beyond its limits and become the practice of satanic arts? 00:34:47.060 --> 00:34:50.840 Throughout history, men of great intellect have often flirted with esoteric topics. 00:34:50.840 --> 00:34:53.220 Martin Chemnitz in astrology comes to mind. 00:34:54.040 --> 00:35:02.400 We live in a world in which a significant amount of modern technology came about with the help of men who engaged in open witchcraft or other forms of degeneracy. 00:35:02.400 --> 00:35:03.400 That is very true. 00:35:03.860 --> 00:35:04.620 For example, L. 00:35:04.620 --> 00:35:15.000 Ron Hubbard and Alan Turing, let alone the number of Jews involved in the, at least these sciences, is it wrongful to keep some knowledge away from the majority of men? 00:35:15.960 --> 00:35:22.520 And so the ultimate question there, as it were, is very easy to answer, and the answer is no. 00:35:23.500 --> 00:35:30.520 Information should be tailored to the men who can handle it, because some men don't need to know certain things, right? 00:35:30.760 --> 00:35:32.880 That's just the reality of it. 00:35:33.840 --> 00:35:41.220 As I mentioned earlier, there are going to be men who are tempted by various things in various ways, and to various degrees. 00:35:41.840 --> 00:35:46.860 There are men who can look at some of this esoteric stuff and never be tempted by it. 00:35:47.280 --> 00:35:52.020 And there are men who, if they engage in it at all, will be completely destroyed by it. 00:35:52.640 --> 00:35:58.500 So, there's nothing wrong with gatekeeping, as it were, for this kind of knowledge. 00:35:58.720 --> 00:36:03.480 Now, should anyone delve too deeply into something like demon knowledge or something like that? 00:36:03.480 --> 00:36:15.560 And the answer is no for that, because, one, it's not good knowledge to possess, and two, it's not knowledge that's actually accessible to human beings, because something like that would have to be revealed. 00:36:16.100 --> 00:36:17.620 God has not revealed it. 00:36:17.760 --> 00:36:27.260 And so the men who start delving into that stuff start trying to ask demons questions, and you probably shouldn't trust the answers given by a literal demon, right? 00:36:28.000 --> 00:36:41.960 This is a problem that runs, pops up all the time on line and other places, where you have supposed exorcists who have commanded demons to give answers and then relied on the accuracy of the answer from a demonic entity. 00:36:42.820 --> 00:36:44.380 Probably not a good plan. 00:36:45.500 --> 00:36:47.180 What is Satan called in scripture? 00:36:47.180 --> 00:36:48.580 He's the father of lies. 00:36:48.580 --> 00:36:51.100 I have a feeling his children are going to lie as well. 00:36:51.480 --> 00:36:54.080 So, don't delve into that stuff. 00:36:54.080 --> 00:36:56.220 No one should delve into that stuff ever. 00:36:56.680 --> 00:37:04.160 As far as astrology and things like that are concerned, I think a lot of the engagement is ultimately harmless, stupid, and harmless. 00:37:05.120 --> 00:37:11.220 If it becomes an obsession and you start organizing your life around it, okay, back off a little bit, stop doing that. 00:37:11.220 --> 00:37:18.420 But this is particularly a vice of women more so than men, although historically there were men who were, like you mentioned, Martin Chemnitz, who were interested in it. 00:37:18.780 --> 00:37:20.260 It's not wrong. 00:37:20.260 --> 00:37:22.300 There's not no truth there, right? 00:37:22.500 --> 00:37:24.780 To use a double negative, but necessary in this case. 00:37:26.500 --> 00:37:30.880 How did the wise men know where and when the Christ was born? 00:37:31.440 --> 00:37:32.440