According to Their Generations

0:37 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. I am Corey J. Mahler. And I'm Wo. In this episode, we will be discussing the issues of genealogy, ideas, the genealogy of ideas, the fourth commandment, ancestry, morality, and a number of related issues. We now live in a time when few care about the provenance, the source, the genealogy of the things they consume, whether it is physically, intellectually, or spiritually, or the things they believe. Is this how God wants us to operate? Is this how God operates? Now some know these things matter at least to a degree and in a certain way. There are those who will go out of their way to purchase heirloom seeds, to buy organic produce, to avoid soy at least in

1:27 certain forms, to avoid high fructose corn syrup, other various things in their diet, who will carefully select the breed of their dog for certain behaviors. But do people actually apply this to what they believe? By way of example, if I handed you a picture and told you that it was taken by a propagandist from the USSR, would you believe that picture is true? Would you believe that it represents reality? Probably not, because the USSR was known for lying, doctoring photos, and so forth. Similarly, if I gave you information and said that it came from an avowed Marxist Marxist. Would you be inclined to believe or disbelieve it? And I don't mean just CRT, but all of the various things that come from particularly the Frankfurt School, you probably would be disinclined

2:21 to believe it, and that is a good thing, but it's important to distinguish between, say, the unwitting and the witting Marxist, because sometimes the unwitting deceiver is more dangerous than the witting. But to move on to the actual topic of today's episode, genealogy and scripture. And actually I don't mean that because first we have to discuss a couple of other issues related to genealogy in scripture, because I want to get something out of the way that will definitely come up, that will be raised by adversaries, and that is the seeming condemnation of genealogies in Scripture. Now there are two core verses for this. There are some other verses that are related, but the two core ones are Titus 3.9 and 1 Timothy one four Titus three nine

3:16 but avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless. And of course, first Timothy one four, the second, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. But of course it is important always to add the context, and if you were actually looking at the verse you'll notice that nor at the beginning of first Timothy one four is lowercase. We've started off in the middle of a sentence. So I'd like to add that context back. Here's verse three and four. As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus, so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any

3:59 different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. So what is the word that we actually have in these two verses for genealogy? It is Genelogia, which is an account of ancestry, and it is in fact the word from which we get genealogy. You can probably see the two parts in there gene and logia, the study of genes, more or less broken down. And this should bring to mind another verse from the New Testament. It should bring to mind Matthew one one. And why should it bring to mind Matthew one one? Biblas Genesios Iesu Christu Chuiu Dawid Huiu Abraham. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David,

4:53 the Son of Abraham. There's that same word Now that is gynesios, ginomai comes from, related to, to become or to take place. This should also raise, bring to mind, something else in scripture, Genesis, Genesis, the very beginning of Scripture. But before we get back into that, I want to address a particular word from that verse in Titus, and that is the word that is translated worthless Mato and that word means pertaining to being of no use, idle, empty, fruitless, useless, powerless, lacking truth. We see this in a lot of places in Scripture, but particularly one that it should bring to mind, and that it will bring to mind if you are familiar with Scripture, is Ecclesiastes. Now it will bring it to mind even more readily if you

5:50 have If you happen to have read Luther's translation, and I do mean the German, because here is a verse from Ecclesiastes Es ist alles ganz eitel Sprach der Brediger Es ist alles ganz eitel and of course that will be familiar, even if you don't know German, you may understand the cadence there what is being said, because what is that? That's vanity of vanities, says the preacher. Vanity of vanities. All is vanity. And the word being translated, the Hebrew word is Hebel, vapor or breath figuratively translated here as vanity. Now Titus three nine in German Derrichten Fragen Abba de Grisleckish Register de Zankis Unstreitis Uber das Gesetz and Schlag, den Zisintunst und Idle. I only want you to pay attention to that last word because

6:43 I want you to see this connection Idle Allist Gans Idle Idle Worthless useless vain and of course, to read Titus three night again in the German to remind you, but avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless. Now knowing Scripture thoroughly is vital because you will be able to make these sorts of connections if you have scripture in your mind. And so what is one of our general canons of construction of interpretation when it comes to scripture? scriptura interpreture Scripture interprets Scripture, and so let us look to Titus again, Titus one fourteen. Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith,

7:34 not devoting themselves to Jewish myths, and the commands of people who turn away from the truth. Focus on what is being told to the recipient of the letter, which of course, Titus, and then us, what are we being told to avoid? Jewish myths. This should bring to mind Matthew three, specifically verses nine through ten. And do not presume to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our father, for I tell you. is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So what are we being told to avoid here when we're told to avoid genealogies and this useless speculation, these worthless things?

8:23 We are being told to avoid what so many of the Jews presumed. Well of course I'm saved. I'm a son of Abraham. I'm descended from him by blood. Salvation belongs to us. That is useless genealogy. That is worship of your race of your ancestors. That is idolatry. That is what we are being told to avoid. And now let us turn back to genealogy in scripture, and particularly, of course, we will start with Genesis. So Genesis two four. Aute e Biblas Genesios Urranu Kaiges Hot Egenata These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. These are the generations of I want you to focus on that little bit of the text there, because that is Toledot in Hebrew, it occurs ten times in Genesis.

9:23 Genesis two four, Genesis five one, Genesis six nine, Genesis ten one, Genesis eleven ten, Genesis eleven twenty seven, Genesis twenty five twelve, Genesis twenty five nineteen, Genesis thirty six one, Genesis thirty six nine, Genesis thirty seven two. Now, these are major divisions in scripture. The attentive reader may have noticed I actually listed eleven, but that is because Genesis thirty six nine is a repetition, emphasizing Genesis thirty six one with relation to Esau and his progeny. So for instance in Genesis five one, Aute, He Biblas, Genes, Anthropon, these are the generations of man Genesis six nine Altai de Genesis No These are the generations of Noah. Now these are both of course Hutas, that is the reference there.

10:23 They may be a different form, it is declined, but these are the same statements. And then of course we have one of the major ones in Genesis, Genesis ten one Aotai de Gineses, Toan, Huun, Noe. These are the generations of the sons of Noah, otherwise known as the Table of Nations Genesis ten. I want to turn to Genesis Genesis 1032, which I do not have up here, so I will pull that up. Just want to read that the English instead of the Greek. These are the clans of the sons of Noah. Note the word clans, according to their genealogies, there is that word again, in their nations, and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood. Of course we are dealing with Genesis again. That word turns up constantly, so let's do a word study of

11:26 it very briefly. It appears forty times in the Old Testament. And to look here at Logos, the Word Study, the scope, it appears a number of times in the ESV as well, translated from the Greek, but the forty times in the Old Testament translating various Hebrew terms extended family, clan, types, descendants, successors, seed, descendants, stage in life, cycle, lifetime, descent, generation, descendants, relations, relatives, descent, you can see these are all related words, these are all the same sort of word family. And so we also wind up tying in to genos. That's the word for nation, people, class, or kind, a related word. And you're going to see also the word ethnos, which is another related word, which has a similar meaning.

12:19 So let us turn to Acts seventeen, twenty six through twenty seven A, which is a verse that always comes up when discussing these issues. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods, and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him, and find him. Speaking of the nations, ethnos is the word for nation, which is a body of persons united by kinship culture and common traditions, or people groups foreign to a specific people group. So for instance you will see that usage when you are contrasting Old Testament Israel versus the nations, because the nations are foreign nations

13:04 with regard to Israel in that reference. And then a third usage those who do not belong to groups professing faith in the god of Israel. We used to translate this as heathen in the Luther Bible translated as Haydn, the same word. That is a more useful translation than Gentiles, which is a carryover from Latin which just tends to confuse things. Better to use heathen. And so I turn back to Genesis to look at Genesis three. Now I'm going to use the uh Septuagint numbering here because quite frankly it's better. For some reason we've decided that Genesis 2025 belongs in chapter 2. It really is part of chapter 3. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of

13:54 the field, that the Lord God had made. said to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit, and ate, and she also gave some to her husband,

14:36 who was with her, and he ate. Now, here is the core of what we are discussing today when it comes to genealogy. This is the genealogy of ideas. Look at the ideas that are present here in the narrative of the fall. Which ideas do we have? Whence do they come? You have statements from God, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden. That is a truth, it flows from God. That is the genealogy of that idea. It is traced directly back to statements God made to Adam and Eve. What else do we have here? Did God actually say? We have ideas from Satan, questioning whether or not God has actually said what he said. And then of course we have Satan simply lying. You will not surely die.

15:33 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. What is the genealogy of that idea, of that statement? The genealogy of that, of course, is Satan. It comes from him. And so, the point here, the vitally important takeaway, is that the genealogy of an idea matters. Where the idea originated does say something about the truth of the idea. This is something that pops up throughout scripture whenever there is a discussion of fruits and trees and branches. Uh you'll find this uh for example in Matthew 7, Jesus says, Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves, you will recognize them by their fruits, are

16:29 grapes gathered gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles. So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. And again, this this is a reinforcement of the point that the place from which something came affects the nature of the thing. All of the generations of man and of beast throughout scripture are reinforcing that this is how God within creation made certain things by whence they came. They came down through history through the seed of men, and they were passed on to their sons who inherited for good or evil

17:23 whatever the fathers bequeathed them. And this is something that's completely lost from from modern thought is the notion that there's any connection to history beyond accidents. We're we we live in a time where it's reinforced continuously to us that You basically just appear in the timeline when God decided to create you. And basically there was your mother and father conceived you through God's blessing, and God stuck the next soul available in the soul hopper into that embryo and then you became you by virtue of really happenstance on the creative part and then whatever God did in the spirit realm. But that's not really you. You're the spirit thing. You're the soul. You're not the body.

18:10 That's completely contrary to what's actually happening. When God gives life to a man, the soul and the body in those two cells, the the ovum and the sperm, are united, and the three come together to become one thing, which is a human. And that has roots and it has a miraculous aspect. And as Christians, we we have a tr a tendency to only focus on the miraculous and the instantaneous in conception or in the conception of ideas and we don't really care where they came from. But that's it's never how God speaks at any point in scripture. there's no point where God is indifferent to whence things came. Um in fact there was the I mentioned it last week, there was the the fig tree that didn't bear fruit when Jesus came

19:01 to it. And so he cursed it because it was failing to do its do its duty as a fig tree. Um, when you see a tree or you see any any creature, what it produces is flowing from its nature. This applies to people who are not individuals and that's something that we'll touch on today and we're we're definitely going to do a a full episode in the future about the enlightenment and individualism, but we're not just atomized bits of souls with flesh attached who appear and disappear appear from the timeline. We have an inheritance and we pass that on to those who are descended from us and to those who inherit the ideas that we propagate. And that's why it's vitally important as you mentioned and mentioned earlier.

19:49 There are a lot of times when people propagate evil ideas that came from evil sources, but they are choosing to do something that they believe is good. They do it with a clean conscience. And in many cases they're Christians who are propagating ideas that came from an evil tree, but because they didn't see the evil in the tree, they can't discern the evil in the fruit. And so when they willingly pass it on to someone else, they do tremendous harm and they do it under the cloak of Christianity itself. They do it in the name of God, which is a tremendously evil and destructive thing because as a Christian our hackles aren't up when we're talking to each other. We're not we're not preparing to be deceived.

20:35 It would be as if Adam had deceived Eve in the garden rather than the serpent. She should have known that the serpent was creepy, but she didn't because the Because there was nothing creepy. It was it was perfection and she didn't see it coming. And the the real thrust of this discussion today is around teaching Christians to see it coming because you don't have to simply evaluate the merits of an argument. You first and foremost have to evaluate the tree from which it came. There's a sort of general idea that ideas stand on their own, that we can assess something in a vacuum, we can simply look at it as some sort of little logic puzzle. But that's not how ideas work. That's how logic puzzles work, yes.

21:25 If A, then B, if B then C, A, therefore C. Yes, that stands on its own. Kind of, because it does still depend on the laws of logic which flow from the nature of God and therefore have a good tree as their source and are true, but they can be assessed more or less in a vacuum. You cannot do that with ideas that are simply they're more complex than a simple logical statement. And so we cannot take a book in a vacuum and just look at the book, look at the content of the book, and assess whether or not we think it's good based on that contact. Because what is the source of this book? What is this book trying to accomplish? What was the person who wrote this book trying to accomplish? What else did he do in his life?

22:12 We want to pretend like works are separate from the worker, and they're not because works flow from the worker. Creation is good because it is a work that flows from God. Sin is bad because it is a work that flows from sinners and from Satan. So the genesis, the source, truly matters. And so we we know that because we see it in Scripture. The first book is called Genesis, and yes, I know the name isn't technically part of the book itself, but the word appears all throughout the book, so it is part of the book. And how does the New Testament start? The New Testament starts with a genealogy. So we can't obviously take the supposed blanket prohibition on genealogies, which is what some people try to turn it into as an actual

23:06 blanket prohibition on genealogies because otherwise we would have scripture condemning scripture. Because Matthew 1 1 is Biblas Genesios Jesus Christu Huyu Dawid Huiyu Abraham, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. The genealogy matters. God's promises have reference. God makes promises to individuals, to groups, to nations, to all of mankind depending on the particular promise. So the Messiah promised to Adam and Eve, the seed shall crush the serpent's head, the Messiah promised to come from Abraham. The Messiah promised to come from David. This is God making promises to individuals that they will have progeny, from which will come the eventual Messiah, to peoples, because it is

23:58 promised to this people the Messiah will come from them, God very clearly cares about genealogies. And another way we know this is the fourth commandment. Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother, that it mayest go well with thee, and thou mayest live long in the land. Yes, I know I memorized from the the KGV the older versions. But this is genealogy being raised up to the level of God cares about it so much it's one of the Ten Commandments. Because as we know, honor thy father and thy mother is not just your immediate flesh and blood, father and mother. It also includes your flesh and blood grandparents, your flesh and blood great grandparents, and if you're so lucky to meet them, your great

24:43 great grandparents. But also, all those ancestors you didn't meet, because they have bequeathed things to you that were gifts to them from God. They held them in trust and gave them to you, and so you have duties with regard to those things not to destroy them, but to pass them on to future generations. Because God actually cares about you honoring your ancestors. No, it's not ancestor worship, no, it's not idolatry. There is a difference between worship and honoring. Yes, when it comes to God, we worship him in part by honoring him, but we're not talking about the same concept here. Because God obviously does not command you to idolize your father and mother. He does not command you to worship them, but he does

25:26 command you to honor them And the that's why the the the reason that we're doing this episode is to to make it crystal clear to to our listeners that we have roots and there's a we'll we'll get into this in a few minutes, but just as a as a preview, there's a notion today in the modern post-Enlightenment world that you know, as as you mentioned, Corey, you know, every every idea is basically treated as if it's a it's a virgin idea that it doesn't matter where it came from, maybe it's good, maybe it's bad. Let's just see how it looks, let's see how it works. People are presumed to be the same, to be a blank slate, uh, tabula rasa. Um, nothing could be further from the truth. You are not a blank slate.

26:16 I am not a blank slate, I am my my father's seed and he is his father's seed going back to Adam. And the reason that I am a sinner is that Adam sinned and his sin was passed down for all however many hundreds of generations until today to me in the flesh through his seed. The transmission of sinfulness, the transmission of the curses of God in Genesis 3 occur generally through flesh. And this is something that we I think we don't even believe anymore today as Christians because again, if everyone's a blank slate, if if all you are permitted to do is judge a man by the content of his character, then you can't notice that the man is a Cretan and that when the Holy Spirit said that all Cretans are gluttons and liars, well I I I guess maybe God

27:15 sinned when he said that because that's not permissible. There may be some creeds that have good character and so we can't know that about creedons until we until we talk to each of them individually and make individual judgments. That's simply false. A people is a family. Ideas how come from families. They all are transmitted through time sequentially, inheriting what came before them. And the reason that we're talking about roots today versus a blank slate is that when the blank slate theory was originally proposed, the first record we have it was from Addist Aristotle, you know, over two thousand years ago, it was specifically a philosophical inquiry into the nature of thought itself. So originally blank slate wasn't referring to a human being with regard

28:10 to their their moral qualities. It was regard with regard to the contents of their mind. The question was when a baby is born, what do they know? Do they inherit knowledge or do they know nothing? And then whatever they absorb from the world accumulates and that be helps to define them. And this was the use of blank slate whenever it popped up across philosophers until the seventeen hundreds. Um when John Locke came along, he decided that it wasn't enough just to say that it was about thought, but he wanted to turn the blank slate of a human being into a moral blank slate as well, and to say that individuals we define our moral character as well by our choices, and that we build up from nothing into either a good person or a bad person based on

29:07 based on the information we receive and then the choices that we make. And that sort of self-determination is the root of libertarian thought today. And it's it's something that so many l Christians have fallen for and it's it's really a shame because that's the argument that Satan made to Eve in the gospel in the sorry in Genesis. Satan's argument to Eve was, you can be like God. You can choose to be better than you are. This obedience stuff isn't Uh that's not really a question. The question is how much can you become? And that was this the lie that Satan sold to Eve, and she ate it up because she had not been properly catechized, because Adam was not a faithful husband who kept Satan at bay, and

29:54 she was the weaker vessel, and she fell for it. And that lie has been repeated for six thousand years and it keeps getting repackaged and people keep swallowing it because they don't look at its origin. Once you understand the form of the argument that you can be as God, once you s when you get a whiff of that, it should terrify and you should run screaming and you should silence whoever is bringing that argument to you because that person is Satan's vessel. A person is there as an emissary for the devil. And we don't have any concept of that today. We don't have any discernment when we we look at ideas. We just think about it in pragmatic terms because we assume that all all since all people are blank slates and all de ideas

30:44 are blank slates, when when a Christian comes to you with some new idea that they heard, their arguments are going to be well, here's the pragmatic value to it. Let's see if we can make this work. And then let's see if we can find it in scripture. And if you can go back to scripture and sort of import some Bible verses and proof text and say, okay, here we go. Now we have officially sanctified this brand new idea that no Christian, no believer for six thousand years have ever held. We now hold it and we've now justified it in view of Scripture. Toda, it's Christian. No. Absolutely not. That idea has roots that are not from God. Because if the roots were from God, other believers would have held

31:28 it too. And And this is the the essence of I I mentioned this last week. Lutherans in particular and I think the post Reformation believers in general are extremely vulnerable to To resisting any notion that if you make an argument from the historicity of a fact, you're somehow gonna turn into a papist. Because Because when Rome made arguments about, well, no one's ever believed this. We we've done this for hundreds of years and thousands of years. This is the official teaching. It's our tradition. You can't do otherwise. It wasn't that that was a bad argument. It was that it was a false argument. When Rome said that the teachings on justification that Luther found in Romans were not historically accurate, they were lying.

32:26 They were lying. And in and l the Lutherans of that day and others went back to the early church fathers and found that they all believed those things. And then they were lost at some point. New ideas were imported and they became sanctified by everyone repeating the same lies over and over again. And then eventually the inheritance became such that no one could remember what was originally taught, and people stopped looking at scripture as the source. And that that's the error that that every Christian must resist. Tradition is not the principal argument, but tradition is substantiation for a claim. If you claim that something is scriptural, you are tacitly claiming, and really you're implicitly claiming one of two things.

33:12 Either you have discovered something that all Christians didn't believe, they sinned but in disbelieving it, and you are condemning every forefather in the faith, all of your ancestors who held to the Christian faith, they sinned by not believing the thing that you're saying they should have believed, that you now believe, and that you're saying is coming from God. And it's conceivable that that's true. But if that's an argument that's to be made, it must be made out in public. You can't just say, Well, Luther said mean things about this certain group and that was evil. Well Luther was unrepentant. Did he go to hell for it? he never repented for the things that he said about certain people groups, neither did Walther, neither did all these other men.

33:58 They went to their graves boldly proclaim proclaiming in Christ's name things that are to day called sinful. And so the reason we're talking about the genealogy of ideas, the roots of these ideas, is that if you got something brand new, you got to admit it's new. And you have to explain to everyone why this new thing that you're trying to sell is consistent with what the Christian church has always held. And if you can't do that, you should be silent. Uh and that's the reason we're spending so much time on talking about the scriptural basis for talking about this in this way is that we we want to make sure that we are not guilty of that which we are challenging elsewhere in the church If we

34:46 say something and we can't back it out from what God says, we should be silent. What we're saying is that the idea that where something came from has an inherent inherent moral tenor is scriptural. The saying that where a man came from, who his ancestors were, shapes who he is, not who he might be, but sh who he is apart from his own will. That's something that's never been controversial in all of human history until the last couple hundred years. And today it's something that will get you expelled from churches, it will get you i fired from your job, it will get you completely destroyed in our modern world for saying what Christians have always said until recently. And so it's incredibly important to deal with this issue of w

35:38 what are these ideas based on? Where did they come from? Where do their roots? Because if you're getting ideas that are rooted in false teachings Uh you're serving Satan. I th there's no other way to put it. Uh in in the future we will we'll do a general episode just on truth. Um but there are two points that that I hammer uh every time I get the chance. One is that Satan is The father of lies, not just lies about John 3:16. Satan is not only the father of lies about how you go to heaven. Satan is the father of every single lie. And Satan doesn't care which lie you adopt. You can love Jesus and you can think the cross is great and you can be delighted at the prospect of going to heaven. And if you start embracing lies that are contrary to what Scripture

36:31 says, that are contrary to reality, you are also embracing Satan, even while you're embracing Jesus. Uh this is something that's pointed out in in First Timothy five where there are a couple examples of what Paul calls teachings of demons. And if you look at them, it's abstention from eating certain meats. Uh and it's th it's trivialities. It's n it's something it's something that we would never call heresy or blasphemy today. we would say, well yeah, I don't know, I mean maybe that's okay. Paul says those are teachings of demons, and he says it because Satan is the father of lies lies. And when the demons go out and they spread these lies, it's the little stuff. It's the it's the penny annie stuff that no one cares about

37:16 because even if you're wrong, it's no big deal. Yeah, I'm still focused on the cross, so I'm gonna be fine. Satan knows that's not true. And so does God. And the battleground that we all face today. Again, it goes back to Genesis. It goes back to the lies that Satan told Eve. But it's also a constantly evolving battle where the lives are changing periodically, the approaches are changing, and as the world becomes worse, as fewer and fewer people care what scripture says, or even acknowledge that God exists, the easier it is for Satan to use these small lies as huge wedges to divide us from our own east own salvation. And that is why this fight is worth fighting, it's why it's worth mentioning these things.

38:05 Because as long as people are willing to disregard the history of ideas and just look at them in a vacuum and adopt them wholesale, if they can somehow find justification in scripture through proof texting, we will lose the church. We will lose souls to Satan. It happens every day. And it's uh weird I don't have examples to to provide, but you see this happening over and over again where someone, you know, on Twitter or elsewhere, just someone who's no longer connected to the church at all will say, I used to believe, but then I went down this path of, you know, drugs or music or some some worldly thing that when it was served first adopted by that person didn't seem like a big deal. And they will give those things credit for separating their souls from

38:57 God and they'll say, and I don't care. I'm glad I'm I'm glad I'm done with the church. I hated that part of my life. It was terrible. It was I was I was abused uh spiritually and I thank I thank no one because there is no God. I I am thankful to have been freed from the shackles of all of those Christians trying to tell me how to live. That's the end game for adopting these little lies. And so it's it's vital that people take the notion of where did that idea come from seriously? If you don't, you are wide open for deception from at all directions. There's a form of fishing where you tie a bunch of hooks along a single line and then you toss that line out. Now as a fisherman, you don't care which hook the fish bites,

39:54 because if he bites any hook, you've caught the fish. Satan is the same way with his deceptions. If he can get you on anything, he's going to try to reel you in. And then he'll get you on something else and something else. Because once you've bought into one lie, it's easier to get you to buy into the next lie. It's the same thing as when a large company takes over a market. And I guess I'll delve into my specialty here for a a brief moment. One of the problems with a monopoly is that a monopoly can use its power in one market to leverage itself into an adjacent market and take over. And Satan does the same thing with lies, with deception. If he can get you to believe one, he will use that belief in that one to undermine your belief in some other truth

40:49 and then get you to accept another lie, another deception, and you just find yourself more and more mired, more and deeper stuck in this morass. And so you cannot give him that foothold. If you give Satan a toe hold, he's never going away. He's going to keep trying to grasp at more. And that is how falsehood works. If you believe a lie, you are it is a sin, first off, because you are believing something that is false, depending on the falsehood you believe, of course. If I simply have a mistaken belief, if I believe my dog is in the next room when he's actually at my feet. That's not a sin, that's a mistake. But if I believe something false about God, about God's creation, about the truth, that's sinful.

41:36 And believing that opens me up to other attacks. Now on the topic of traditions, can't say how many times I have encountered those who will say, well we both agree that Jesus died and so we're both saved, and all this other stuff doesn't matter. And that's just an insane position to take. And we know that because yes, soteriology matters, yes, the gospel matters, yes, this is the core of our faith. Yes, Article four, Justification, all important. But if you get that right and everything else wrong, the odds of you remaining a Christian are very slim, because you can't hold on to that one truth in the face of this storm of lies and deceit. You will eventually lose that too. And that's what happened with Rome.

42:28 Rome slowly adopted a little lie here, a little mistake there, this cult of Mary here, this syncretistic practice there, and Rome lost the gospel because of it. And it's the same thing the Jews did in the Old Testament. Oh well we'll just adopt this particular form of worship on this high place from this Canaanite tribe. It'll be fine. And then another and another. And all of a sudden, you don't even know where the Torah is anymore, you've literally lost the scriptures. That is what Satan wants. And he's good at this game, he's been playing it for a very long time, and he has a lot of time on his hands. So the the goal here isn't to outwit Satan. The goal is to stand steadfast on the truth and rely on

43:20 God. And to rely on God, we need to believe true things about God instead of all these lies from the world, instead of, you know, Rawls' veil of ignorance, and all of the various underpinnings of libertarian thought which when you start to compare them, libertarianism and Satanism look a lot alike, and that should deeply worry Christians, and also there's quite a bit of overlap with individuals involved in the two but Because what is the core command, as it were, the rule in Satanism? Do as thou wilt, and thou shalt be the whole of the law. Well libertarianism is pretty much the same thing. It's do whatever you want, but don't harm others, typically is the formulation, something along those lines.

44:12 And Satanism has other additional rules that basically say well don't harm others. You know, don't take what they say seriously, but it should worry Christians that these are the same things being said by libertarianism, which is construed as well, it's just a political ideology. It's just a theory. We're permitted to accept that because again, they don't look at the genealogy of these ideas. And Satanism, which obviously most Christians, I would hope, will be able to say, well, obviously we can't accept that. But if they're saying the same thing, why are you accepting one and not the other? Why don't you look at the genesis of these things to give a a concrete example, just to make some people particularly uncomfortable.

44:57 How about Harry Potter? Did you let your children read that book? Do you have it in your house? Have you watched the movies? Do you support these things? Well, the author of that book for a very long time, her social media background, was Tarot Cards from Crowley's Deck. Open, outright, blunt Satanism. And so you are exposing your children to things that have literal black magic, satanic magic in them, because you didn't pay attention to the genealogy. You did not pay attention to whence this particular work came. The author matters, so look into the author. Well the author is involved in the occult. If this author involved in the occult, promoting occult practices and having all sorts of occult images, if she is the one who wrote

45:50 it, you should probably be worried about providing that to your children. It's not just a cutesy story about wizards. That's not what it is. Pay attention to the source of the materials you are ingesting and you are providing for your children. And it's important when when people here look at the source that we're talking about the original source. So it may well be that your pastor pushes libertarianism or says that Harry Potter is fine or shares books with you in your congregation that should never be shared or read by any Christian because of their origins. We're saying to look past the pastor regardless of his intentions. If he's doing those things and he is an heir, that is grievous sin on his part.

46:43 But it's grievous sin not because he is aware that he is doing something evil. It's evil because he doesn't realize he's doing something evil and he is giving it his imprimatur. He is blessing and sanctifying things which are evil, which are satanic, which are demonic lies, he is saying in the name of God, I tell you you're fine to eat this or to read this or to listen to this. It's not going to hurt you. You raise an important point here, and that is whether or not intent matters. The answer to that is kind of like our answer to whether or not baptism is absolutely necessary. Does intent matter? No, but yes, but no. And intent doesn't matter in the sense that an act can be evil itself, in and of itself, regardless of intent.

47:39 Intent is an additional sin potentially on top of that. So what does it say about the fall? What does Scripture say about Eve? She was deceived. Did she intend to sin? It says she was deceived, she misunderstood, she did not know what was happening. It doesn't say that of Adam, notably. But But Eve was deceived. Was what she did still sin? Absolutely. The intent does not always matter. Acts themselves can be evil. And when we propagate them, we can't make them clean because we're Christian. And I think this is where a lot of people break down is that we have a notion that people hear the term Christian freedom and they don't know what it means or what where it came from, but it sounds pretty good,

48:29 so they're just gonna run with it and make it whatever they want it to mean. and people think that if you confess that Jesus is God and you know that He died for your sins, then as long as you're not deliberately sinning too much, you're gonna be okay. And while there is a is a way in which it is possible to say that that is true. It should never be what anyone clings to. I you you had mentioned uh talk earlier about uh where things come from and and who says things first. I I think it's very important to point out to people who like to cling to the verses about whoever confesses Jesus will be saved. Yes, that's true. But remember this, the very first confession in all of Scripture, in all of history, the very first time that anyone said Jesus is

49:26 the Holy One of God, it was a demon. In Luke 4, there was a man who had a demon, and he screamed to Jesus, What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the holy one of God. Now that was a confession of Jesus as the Christ. Was it salvific? No. And it wasn't just because it was a demon speaking. It was not salvific because it was a confession in the sense that it was anguish, it was terror, and it was a confession that the demon in opposition to God knew that God was superior superior, infinitely so. And so he knew that when Jesus the Christ came to him, he was powerless and he was in anguish as a result. But he did say Jesus was God. And I think that far too many people who call themselves Christians

50:17 today, just Genuinely believe that all someone has to do is cry, Lord, Lord, and that's the end of it. And we're gonna talk probably in virtually every episode about soteriology, which is how we're saved in contradistinction to the Christian life after salvation, because this this is where Protestant theology really gets into trouble. We spent so much time battling Rome's semi-Pelagian teachings that you can save yourself in part. You know, Jesus did some work on the cross, but you got to do good works. You have to buy the indulgences, you have to make the pilgrimages, you have to do certain confessions as a wrote right, not as a confession of I confess that I am a sinner, but you must perform these acts in order to be saved.

51:09 No Christian can believe that, and we are never arguing that. Anytime you hear Corey or I talking about what we must do, it is in the sense of when James was writing to the believers to the church. He was not addressing people who were not Christians, who were trying to discover how to come to faith. James wrote his epistle to an established congregation filled with believers, addressing believers and telling them here is what the Christian life looks like. That's what you and I are doing with this slab this podcast. We are talking to believers. Like I'd I'd be thrilled if if someone who wasn't a Christian or didn't know uh uh didn't know Jesus listened as well. I hoped that there would be something that would resonate in the

51:55 in their minds to hear that yeah they're actually Christians who don't sound completely gutless when they talk about this stuff. Because we don't have a gutless God. We have a God of strength and compassion and mercy and infinite love and infinite patience and infinite wrath. And each of those things must be emphasized at different times for different purposes. But modern Christianity has just kind of become afraid of emphasizing the parts that that scare people. Never mind the fact that the fear of the Lord is a virtue of a Christian. It is a virtue of a believer. And not fear. Like we don't even think about that word, what that means. That word is means what it says. It means terror. Not that the thought of God should terrorize us at all times,

52:46 but that the recognition that we as fallen sinful creatures have lived and behaved in ways that is contrary to our Creator's will and that He has infinite power should give us a sense of terror, which is what makes the comfort of the gospel all the sweeter because we know we don't deserve it, we know we haven't earned it, we know that there's nothing we could ever do to merit it, and God gave it to us freely because his love is as great as his wrath. But on judgment day, there's gonna be just as much wrath poured out as love. And given that the narrow gate is the one through which we as believers have passed, the Y Gate is gonna you know, by volume, there's gonna be a lot more wrath passed out on judgment

53:33 day then there is love. And that's not because God is not a loving God. It is because we as believers and as humans have in many cases failed to hear God's call. And we'll we're going to do future episodes on Christian nationalism and on race in particular. And so a lot of the things that we've discussed today will be themes that are going to recur because all of this is really one big argument pointing back to scripture to make the case that the way that God has arranged the world is when we obey God, when we do what God says and when we believe what He teaches, we are blessed by it. And getting back to the the earlier promise of uh actually I guess we didn't this episode, but God promises to visit the wrath

54:26 unto the third and j fourth generations of them that hate him. Is a is an American that's not fair. Why would a great grandchild be punished for what the great grandfather did? That's just not fair at all. The grandkid didn't do anything. Well it's for the same reason that I inherit Adam's sin, because I came from his seed. Is that fair? I Who cares? That that's not a Christian principle. Fairness is not something that is applied in the Christian life at all. It is a fundamentally unfair religion where we are spared the eternal consequences of all of the wrath that we earn every day for the evil that we do, both knowingly and unknowingly. Yeah, fairness is basically, along with niceness, one of the items, one

55:18 of the actual gods of most Americans. And I always love when people make the appeal to children as being some sort of arbiters of morality. Because, well, even children understand fairness. One they really don't, because if you actually look at the use of that isn't fair when it comes to children, it's generally the child making an argument that he didn't get something. The that isn't fair is almost never used when he got something and someone else didn't. But also appealing to children is just completely ridiculous. Why would you appeal to this sort of understanding and morality in children when these are creatures that were not so long ago chasing their other siblings with a stick and trying to stab them.

56:11 Like the morality of children is not a developed thing. Yes, there's a a degree to which the law is written in all human beings, but there's a development there before you can really understand these things. And so it's just it's a ridiculous, silly argument that so many people will try to make. Fairness isn't a thing. Fairness is nonsense drawn up by the Enlightenment and various philosophers, and then imported into the culture, and then unfortunately imported into the church, because many Christians blindly believe it, because again, they don't look to the genealogy of the things they profess. But then there's one other bit of irony that I'd like to bring up, because I just find it funny.

56:54 The Jews in Christ's time got so many things about him wrong. Yes, there were those who followed him, he had disciples, some of them understood, to some degree, varying degrees, but in his hometown, they didn't understand that he was the Messiah, not even his own family understood that he was the Messiah. But the Jews in his hometown did get something right. And I'm going to turn to Matthew 13. And when Jesus had finished these parables, he went away from there, and coming to his hometown, he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished and said, Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?

57:41 And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things? And they took offence at him. But Jesus said to them, A prophet is not without honor except in his home town and his own household, and he did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief. Did you catch what the Jews said about him? Where did this man get this wisdom in these mighty works? And then is not this the carpenter's son? They understood implicitly that the genealogy mattered, and they should understand that living where and when they did, because they should have been told what their ancestors had done by importing false beliefs, false religion, false practices from the surrounding nations that worshipped demons.

58:27 They would implicitly understand this genealogy matters. They wanted to know he's speaking with authority, but where did he learn these things? What's the genealogy these ideas? They got the answer completely wrong when it comes to the fact that he got them from God because he is God. But they understood the general concept, and it's so funny to me that these people who got almost everything else wrong happened to get this one vitally important thing right. But again, it does show that you can get one vitally important thing right, say soteriology, and get a lot of other things wrong, and look at where these people most likely ended up in many cases. That's a good point, and I think that they got it right

59:12 because the only reason we don't get it right today is been it's been beaten out of us. It's not it's not an evolution or a greater understanding that the Western mind has today. It's a devolution. it's a losing the basic connection with created reality. Uh and we've all fallen victim to and I have. I've I've fallen for lies in the past and I've adopted beliefs that were false and I did so with a clean conscience because I didn't I didn't examine the priors and the givens, which is why it's so important to me to warn others. Uh as we wrap this episode up, I want to tie this back to the first episode where we were talking about girls teaching. Uh I neglected to mention this in the in the previous episode,

59:58 but uh there's a a man online named Matt Cochrane who's a brilliant a brilliant man. He's a very clear thinker, an outstanding writer. Uh we'll I'll link his blog in the show notes. He made a great point that he was was completely missing from all of the conversation about whether girls should be teaching theology by writing books. All of the opponents, including now the majority of pastors who call themselves confessional Lutherans, who have aligned themselves on the side of girls teaching theology do so by pointing to various passages in scripture that have been found just in the in the twentieth century to justify these things. The point that Matt made on his blog was that there is actually a particular passage in scripture that tells girls to teach, where

1:00:51 God specifically commands the female to teach. And I want to read it to you because it's hilarious because none of the pastors who were quoting all the other p scriptural passages as proof texts to justify these girls teaching, they don't believe this passage. Listen to this from Titus II. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They're to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. Now show me a single pastor who's cheerleading CPH publishing books of girls teaching, twenty-five year old girls teaching theology, two pastors.

1:01:42 Find a single one of 'em that believes this. They can't, because they stand condemned by the very worse, very verse which says that these women should be at home. Now it's interesting about this, I I found on uh Google Books uh last week, I'll put this in the show notes as well. I was looking for the the history of deaconesses and and the like in the church, just 'cause I was curious, you know, are are you and I crazy, or are we the novelty seekers who are trying to end a proud church tradition. And so I found a book from the 1700s by a Catholic writer. Uh the twelfth chapter of the book is thirty pages or so the basically gives the entire history of the service of women in the church. And it begins with the the first, second, third century, where there

1:02:32 were in fact women who were called deaconesses. But when it gives a description of what those deaconesses did, it was Titus II. Some of the original restrictions were that the woman had to be over sixty. That meant that she was menopausal. That meant she was probably a great grandmother, certainly a grandmother. And it meant that she was no longer serving in the home the way she had when she was a mother. These older women who were the the younger youngest permissible age was forty, to be a deaconess to privately teach and catechize other girls only. So it was private, it was only limited to girls being taught, and it was only older women, which was a direct reflection of this dictatum in Titus II.

1:03:22 Now with the reason we talk about the genealogies of ideas, that's a I think a perfect microcosm. In the entire discussion about whether girls could be writing theological books, not one pastor who used scripture used this verse because this verse condemns them. It condemns the men who say the girls should be teaching when they're 25-year-olds in public teaching pastors and other Christians. There's simply no permissible Christian argument for it. And so what do they do? On one hand, they're confessional guys, they're Lutherans, they're Christian, they hew to sola scriptura, but when they find a verse they don't like, well, that's not what that means. Did God really say, No, we have a better idea, we have

1:04:06 a new idea that we're gonna pretend is an old idea so that we can cause something to happen in the church that has never happened in its entire history. And that needs to end because that is Satan chipping and chipping and chipping away until we will have nothing else. We think we can cling to the cross when we despise Christ's words. If you are ashamed of God, he will be ashamed of you on judgment day. And I pray that no man would would feel that way because in the final judgment, it will be perfectly just and there will be many who cry out and say that they were Christians and God will say no you weren't. And that should fill any man with terror if he is acting in a way that is with a clean conscience.

1:04:54 I think there's another verse that we probably will never see the adverse Adversary's quoting, and that would of course be the first verse of the curse God spoke to Adam in Genesis, because you have listened to the voice of your wife. And that is of course repeated other places places in Scripture, and that is hearkening back of course to headship. Adam is cursed in part because he abdicated headship, but Eve usurped it. both sinned. Neither is acceptable, and women teaching in public is a usurpation of their proper role of head, whether it be their husband, pastor, someone else in the church, this is not a proper role for women. It is not what Scripture permits them to do. It is sinful to permit it.

1:05:48 And we absolutely need to eliminate it because we have to be true to the word of God, what God has commanded us to do and not to do. I agree. It's um These are battles that we are fighting because we don't see them being fought by one anyone else. there are there are pastors who are faithful and there are pastors who understand some of these things, but in most cases they're afraid to speak publicly. The only pastors who are not afraid to speak publicly against what we are saying do so slanderously and they do so with murder in their hearts and they do so in concert with the world. And it's it's sad to see that happen, but neither of us can be remotely surprised by it because again, we believe scripture.

1:06:42 We believe God's blessings that those who are God's promises and blessings to to be hated for the sake of Christ's name is a blessing. Some days it doesn't feel like it, but that is often how God's blessings work. the thing that that hurts hurts the most in the moment may be the thing that God is He is using for the greatest benefit to to an individual. And I I encourage everyone to look to where things are coming from, to look at the roots of their own ideas of what are things based on? What you know, it's it's a zoom or trope to call things based and it's it's a great word. Something that's based. It's not cringe. It's based. It's something that is based on something. And so the show art has a a meme that I made

1:07:29 that says based based on what? The uh eternal word of God? Yes, absolutely based. uh that is our goal with everything that we speak is to do so in a manner that is based on God's words and God's promises. And God will judge each of us for what we have done and for what we have failed to do. And And thank God that all the evil that we do is covered by Christ's blood and the good that we do is to his glory. Um but in every life there is the opportunity to do less evil and to do more good and that is a conscious choice for the believer, but it can only be made as a conscious choice when the believer is actually thinking about it. So I hope that everyone will will spend more time in the Word and to spend time in in faithful churches where they are

1:08:22 hearing hearing the Word rightly preached and the sacraments properly administered and to to always focus on what God wants because that is a blessing. The law is not only a curse against us, but it is a guidepost to show us how to live the life that God intended for us to live in the first place. And although we can never do it perfectly in this life, we can do it better than we would have if we weren't thinking about what God wants. We often take that lex semper acusat a little too far. We morph it instead into Lex Sola Akusat, as it were. The law does not only accuse the law always accuses because so long as we are in this life we are sinners. But God's law is good. God's law has real tangible benefits.

1:09:13 If we obey God's law, adhere to his rules and his truth, we will simply live better lives. And of course, we don't do it simply because of the reward, we do it because it is our duty to God, but it is also we were made to do this. It is properly aligning ourselves to our teleological purpose if we at least attempt to adhere to God's laws, to live our lives within the bounds that He's set, recognizing that those bounds are good. And just want to make one more point before we close out this episode, a tangentially related point to the genealogy of ideas related to looking at the source of your ideas, the things you believe, who wrote it, who advanced it, who argues for it. Look to your right and look to your left.

1:10:09 Who is standing with you defending it? Because if you look to your right and your left and you see Satan's minions, you're probably on the wrong side of the battlefield. Absolutely. I can say for a fact that the only people on the internet who have ever hated me wanted to dox me, to cause harm to my family, to my reputation, to my career are literal Satanists, literal pedophiles, and Lutherans. And they all use the same arguments, they all use the same words they all get angry at the very same things that I've said. To a T. There's 100% overlap between what the Satanist hates about me and what some of these Lutheran pastors hate about me. And if I were the Lutherans, uh that I I I would not be able to sleep a wink until I figured out why

1:11:10 that was and how I could fix it. But these men they do so with a clear conscience. And again, I I hope that for the sake of their souls they will will hear our words and they'll think about these things because when you are joining in lockstep with evil men You cannot sanctify the evil that you're doing by saying, Oh yeah, I'm doing it for Jesus. And frankly, that's uh I think the your last comments and my last comments are a great plug for next week's episode, which is going to be about Christian nationalism. Because Because Christian nationalism is the synthesis of obedience to God, allying with God's people in opposition to evildoers, because we will have a lot to say about the Two kingdoms Doctrine and the the Three

1:11:58 Estates and the misrepresent representations made about things like the term Christian nationalism online, but the very The very same pastors who hate us are again in lockstep with the most evil people on the planet. And I'm not saying that lightly. I'm not saying the pastors in the and the other Lutherans and other Christians are the most evil people on the planet. I'm saying they are best friends with them. On this issue and on other issues, they are in lockstep with Satan. If you care about where your ideas come from and you realize that all of your allies are the people who are going to hell, pause. Just hit the pause button. Take a look at where you got those ideas because you you are on a path to hell.

1:12:49 And I I don't want that for anyone. I don't want it for the people who are going to have it happen anyway. And I certainly don't want it to happen to people who have confessed Christ in this life and who believe the creeds and the confessions and have mostly led good lives. But when it comes to these modern issues where there is silence in the historical record from the Christian Reformation on, people who adopt these new ideas find that they are bedfellows with demons. And it that's only in one of two ways. Either you get out of bed or you are gonna sleep there in eternity.