The Required Confession

0:37 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. I am Cory J. Mahler, and I'm still woe. It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom one hundred and twenty satraps, to be throughout the whole kingdom, and over them three high officials, of whom Daniel was one, to whom these satraps should give account, so that the king might suffer no loss. Then this Daniel became distinguished above all the other high officials and satraps him because an excellent spirit was in him, and the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. Then the high officials and the satrap sought to find a ground for complaint against Daniel, with regard to the kingdom, but they could find no ground for complaint or any fault, because he was faithful,

1:22 and no error or fault was found in him. Then these men said, We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel, unless we find it in connection with the law of his God. Then these high officials and satraps came by agreement to the king and said to him, O King Darius, live forever. All the high officials of the kingdom, the prefects and the satraps, the counsellors and the governors, are agreed that the king should establish an ordinance and enforce an injunction, that whoever makes petition to any god or man for thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions. Now, O King, establish the injunction and sign the document, so that it cannot be changed, according to the law of the Medes and

2:06 the Persians, which cannot be revoked. Therefore King Darius signed the document and injunction. When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house, where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three times a day, and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously. Then these men came by agreement, and found Daniel making petition and plea before his God. Then they came near and said before the king, concerning the injunction, O king, did you not sign an injunction, that anyone who makes petition to any god or man, within thirty days except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of Lionel. The king answered and said, The thing stands fast, according to the

2:53 law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be revoked. Then they answered and said before the king, Daniel, who was one of the exiles from Judah, pays no attention to you, O king, or the injunction you have signed, but makes his petition three times a day. Then the king, when he heard these words, was much distressed, and set his mind to deliver Daniel, and he labored till the sun went down to rescue him. Then these men came by agreement to the king and said to the king, Know, O king, that it is a law of the Medes and Persians, that no injunction or ordinance that the king establishes can be changed. Then the king commanded, and Daniel was brought and cast into the den of lions. The king declared to Daniel May your God, whom you serve continually,

3:41 deliver you. The story of Daniel, as he was serving his king, is instructive for this week's episode. Because although Jesus obviously correctly calls Daniel a prophet, Daniel's day job was not as a prophet. He was a public employee. He worked for the king, he worked for a pagan king, all of his co-workers, the men whom he served and whom he supervised, they were all pagans. And so he just had a public job. And we're opening with this passage from Daniel six to six today because it is a prime example of what we as Christians are faced with in our own day in current year. And in fact, in the past week a circumstance similar to this has arisen in one of the states in the United States. When Daniel was faced with these evil pagan men who hated him

4:37 because God had blessed him, and even though the king was not a Christian, was not a believer in the true God, he still respected Daniel for the gifts he'd been given. So those men set about to change the law in order to destroy Daniel. And the destruction they hoped would take the form of Daniel violating the law, which prohibited praying to anyone but the king for a period of thirty days. The reason this is instructive for us is that a law was passed and a believer in the true God responded. The impetus for today's episode, this week's episode, is a law that was passed last week in the state of South Dakota. It was a law that was modeled after an international international definition of anti Semitism that was ratified in twenty sixteen.

5:27 It's been upheld as a model for stamping out hate globally by the UN, by the European Commission, by a bunch of other groups, lots of acronyms, lots of very serious faces, all saying anti-Semitism is very bad, we gotta stamp it out. The reason we're talking about it this week is that one of the provisions in that law, which we're gonna discuss in a bit In a bit, but the reason we're talking about this today is that that law effectively makes the Bible illegal in the state of South Dakota. We'll talk about the details. They don't really matter all that much in terms of legality. And that's one of the first points I want to make here. Because when you look at the example of Daniel, he didn't think

6:07 like an American. He didn't think, oh, they've passed a law that impinges upon my freedom of religion. I need to petition the ruler to get the law changed. What did he do? He did what he always did. He prayed to his Lord three times a day, and he did it in front of the window because that was his habit. He wasn't making a spectacle, which is something that's condemned in the New Testament correctly. He wasn't he wasn't putting on a show. He just wasn't hiding when he was praying. He had always done it. The other evil satraps knew that, and they knew that if he continued to be faithful to his God, they'd be able to catch him and accuse him, take him before the king, and see him killed. That was their principal goal.

6:47 However, they could also destroy Daniel if he obeyed the law, if he stopped praying to his God, and if he did pray to the king instead of to the true God, that would also be a victory. They probably would have been more satisfied with him being thrown into the lion's den. That's always principally what evil men were. They want to see the physical destruction of their enemies. But to see their enemy Daniel humiliated by causing him to apostatize would have been very satisfying. Frankly, in the long term, that may have been even more satisfying to the To them because it would have permitted them to co-opt him, to make him one of them, and then to pull him into their evil schemes and to separate him from the true God.

7:29 So what did Daniel do? He did not pray to the king. That would have been adherence to the law. He did not take a prayer fast. He didn't say, you know what, I'm just not going to pray for 30 days. I'm not going to disobey the law, but I'm not gonna obey it either. He didn't try to split the difference and stay out of trouble, which in the case of this kingdom, legal trouble, meant execution. So he could have just stopped praying. He could have said, you know what, I'm not gonna pray to the king, I'll just I'll not pray for anything. Or I'll pray in my head, but they won't know. God knows what's in my heart, so I don't need anyone to find out about it. He could have done that, and he didn't. And the model that Daniel provides is the model that we need

8:13 to have in mind as we're confronting everything that happens in the world going forward from this day on. One of the things that I said on Telegram in response to this when it came out, somebody said something, and I'm gonna use a few responses to this story as it was breaking from guys who listen to Stone Choir and interact with me on Telegram or on Twitter. Please don't feel like I'm picking on you, not in the slightest. The things that were said were prime examples of the way we're all taught to think. Somebody basically made some reference to the obvious American solution of, well, this has got to be litigated. Clearly, the South Dakota law that says that the classic anti Semitism in the specific of the law says that the Jews killed Christ.

8:56 That is classic anti-Semitism. It is illegal to say that, and there are contexts in which you can be punished legally in the state of South Dakota. The typical American response is, well, that obviously violates the first amendment of the United States Constitution. I want to see this litigated. You know, maybe someone would choose to violate it knowing that it was going to be litigated and they could be the poster child defendant. The problem with that, and the thing that I rebuked at the time, and I subsequently said on Twitter, I'm going to say here, stop thinking like an American and start thinking like a Christian. Look Look to Daniel for an example when anything like this comes up that impinges upon our spiritual duties to God.

9:36 What did Daniel do? He didn't go to the king and say, Oh mighty king, if I obey this law, I will be violating my conscience and praying in a manner that I find to be untenable. I can't worship you, and I must continue to worship my God. Please don't throw me into the lion's den. He didn't ask for reprieve. He didn't ask for an excuse, he didn't ask for the law to be changed. He did exactly what he always did. That is the Christian response in the case of something where you were told to apostatize, which is precisely what the law was. The law was no one may pray to any god except for the king for thirty days. It didn't say you had to replace your God with another god. It specifically said don't pray to another god except for the king

10:20 for thirty days. It was time limited. They had a sunset clause. It was not exclusive in terms of belief or even confession. It was just prayer. Don't offer petitions to anyone except for the king. As God, as a deed. The legal outs there, if you're thinking like an American, are abundant. You cannot pray. You can pray secretly so that no one knows. You can pray publicly, hoping to challenge it in court, so that you can you know assert your rights and and fight back in that way. None of those occurred to Daniel. He said nothing. You know he didn't argue. He was basically led like a lamb to the slaughter, simply by doing what he always did, which was to pray three times a day to the true God, and he was thrown into the lion's

11:04 den for it. This is an example for us today simply by virtue of the fact of all the things that Daniel didn't do, because the instincts that we have all been given today are to focus on things that are gonna keep us out of trouble. And just as happened last year, in the context of Stone Choir itself, and the church more broadly, satanic attacks often occur during Lent, during the Easter season. We did an episode just at the end of last calendar year about the liturgical life where we talked about the church calendar, which is held by almost all churches and it should be held by all because it's a useful teaching tool. And we pointed out in that episode and something that's reiterated here by example, when you look at the church calendar that has seasons

11:52 of Easter and Lent and Christmas and then Pentecost, which is the big one that fills most of the year, each of these seasons is designed to emphasize a different part of the faith, a different part of the story of God and creation and Christ's sacrifice for us and all the teachings of scripture. The reason we have to spread it out is that there's so much in the Bible that you can never possibly fit it all into one Sunday. You can't fit the whole Bible into one sermon. You can't fit the whole Bible into one lifetime. They're men who dedicate entire lives to studying a couple books of the Bible and they never get to the bottom of it. They can bring together a lot of connections, but the depth of

12:34 the richness and wisdom and knowledge of God, it's more than a human mind can comprehend. That's a blessing. So the church calendar gives us structure by saying, you know what, in this time, particularly as we're recording this now, it is during Lent. We have Palm Sunday coming up in just a couple weeks. In this penitential season, we're particularly focused on the crucifixion of Christ, on the events that led to it, and reflecting on the fact that the reason for the crucifixion was our sin. That's why it's a penitential season. It's a downer. It is something that weighs on consciences, rightly, that our sin caused Christ to have to sacrifice himself for us. And that's also the gospel, that God loved us so much that

13:18 while we were yet his enemies, he did this, the ultimate act of love in all of history to do something for people who were nailing him to the cross by our wickedness, he did it so that we could be saved from the penalties for the very wickedness that he was paying. That is That is the law, that is the gospel, that is the entire arc of the Christian faith in one moment. That is the cross. And so oftentimes in the church, we will focus on something like the cross, we'll point to Good Friday, which is coming up soon, and we'll also point to Easter, which happens a few days later. Because if Jesus is dead in the tomb and that's the end of the story, that's the hope of the world. That's no hope at all.

13:59 It's just death, and then you're gone. That's basically nihilism. The story of the Christian faith is that there's an Easter Sunday when the sun rises, three days later, the tomb is empty. And the celebration and the joy that we feel in that moment is that God had fulfilled all the promises that led to the cross, led to the crucifixion. And so all the miracles were performed, all of the prophecies that were fulfilled, the fact that Christ raised from the dead is the ultimate proof that everything was kept. Everything he said he was going to do, he did, and he proved it. And so we can count on every promise that God makes to us because it's from God and He proved it and he delivered. But if your church is only Easter every Sunday, if every Sunday

14:47 is Easter at your church and the cry is always Christ is risen, he is risen indeed, hallelujah. Something that we all know the call and response is baked into our hearts. If every single Sunday is only about Easter, how do you understand why the tomb is empty? Why is there a tomb in the first place? Well, it's because he died. Well, why did he die? Because he was crucified. Why was he crucified? So you have to work back through the entire story to understand any of it. You can't understand the joy of Easter. You can't have the joy of Easter if you don't first have the weight of the sin and the death that came to that moment. The joy is in contrast to that which led to it. And so the problem that we have in the church, that is

15:31 really the point of this episode, is something that I referred to a couple weeks ago. It's going to become a recurring theme now. And that is doctrine versus emphasis. Because the problem that we have in the Christian church today is that every denomination has its particular doctrines. It has these are the temple features of the Christian faith. This is how we orient our lives. It's how we orient our belief. Everything that we do, everything we know revolves around this. That's not inherently bad. The problem is when those doctrines are permitted to have an emphasis that obscures the rest of Scripture. Because if every Sunday at your church is Easter Sunday, I'm sorry, but you're not a Christian.

16:15 That's not a Christian church. Because there's more to the Christian life than Easter Sunday is the entire story. It doesn't make sense without Good Friday. It doesn't make sense without everything that led up to it. So for the Christian, it is imperative for us to focus on these various doctrines at certain times so that we don't forget them, so that we incorporate them. But that emphasis cannot be exclusive. And the problem that we have today that's exemplified by this one law and by the example of Daniel is that he could have emphasized the doctrine, well, I'm not going to pray to that king. That would be idolatry, that would be sin. I will absolutely not do that. But I don't need to make a big deal out of it.

16:56 I don't need to say anything publicly. I can stay out of trouble, I can just keep my head down for 30 days, the law's gonna sunset and I can go back to praying to God. Never gonna pray to anyone else. I'm just gonna take a fast from prayer. It's kind of what we all did during COVID, isn't it? The problem with that is the the doctrine that is true that why I haven't prayed to other gods is is at odds with the doctrine of, you know, for example, remembering the Sabbath day, to pray, praise, and give thanks to God in all times and in all places. And particularly when the world says you can't do it. And that's the reason we're doing this episode today, is that we in current year are faced with the circumstances in the world where

17:37 the world is now saying there are parts of the Bible that are illegal. There are parts of the Bible that are classic anti-Semitism. And therefore, be a good little Christian, you can't say that. And the problem that is occurring is that when the world says, well, that's anti-Semitism, say that the Jews killed Christ. If the response, which is what someone gave me on Twitter, again, I'm not picking on you at all, please don't feel like this you're being singled out for this. It's a perfectly natural response. Somebody said, My sins crucified Christ. And that's the entire point of this episode. That is entirely true doctrine, and it is a completely false confession. Here's why. There are five things that are true about the crucifixion.

18:20 My sins crucified Christ, just as yours did. Pontius Pilate crucified Christ, the Roman centurions crucified Christ, the Pharisees crucified Christ, the crowd of braying Jews crucified Christ. All five of those facts are true. All five of them are scriptural. It is entirely permissible to say all five of them as a Christian. And yet the world only cares about the last two in a And especially the last one. You can say my sins crucified Christ all you want. You won't get banned from Twitter for it. The UN won't care. Satan doesn't care. And I think that's the crucial point that we need to get through today. There are certain confessions of the Christian faith that the world is completely fine with.

19:04 You can say something that's completely Christian and Satan's like, Yeah, keep that up. That's why we're doing this episode today. Why is it that Satan cares about some confessions but not others? If I say that I crucified Christ with my sins, Satan's like, great. If I blame the Romans, okay, yeah, that's that's a great excuse. It keeps the Jews out of the spotlight. If I say the Pharisees did it, well that's kind of anti Semitic because they were the leaders of the Jews, but at least it's not all Jews. But if I say what scripture also says, which is that the Jews, the crowd of braying Jews, all of them, called for Called for Christ's blood. That is impermissible. And I've said before, I've actually heard Lutheran pastors in the pulpit

19:45 change the text of that story to remove Jews and say Pharisees. That is a false confession because the question is not which of those five is the most important. The most important one is my sins. The Christian faith is that it's my sins are crucified Christ. No argument there. But when someone in the world attacks one of the others, that becomes the crucial Christian confession for a moment, not in replacement of, but when we continue to cling to the emphasis on the traditional correct doctrine that Christ died for our sins, Satan's like, Yeah, that's great. Keep on doing that. Just don't say the Jews killed Christ. Just by example, this one place where the emphasis of a true doctrine it becomes a false confession by omission of the truth that

20:36 is also in scripture. So that's the reason we're talking about this today. Essentially Any problem that we are going to face when it comes to religion or really almost any issue can be derived from statements in scripture or supported by them once otherwise derived. Now I want to be very clear about what I am saying with those twin statements. I am not saying that every truth is contained in Scripture because not every truth is contained in Scripture. Scripture is not meant to be a comprehensive statement of truth. Scripture first and foremost is a statement of religious truth, of doctrinal truth, of theological truth, so anything having to do with those subjects can be derived from or supported by a statement in Scripture.

21:37 The reason that I am making those two statements, those twin statements, is because it is not always the case that every single thing is going to be grounded explicitly in a verse that addresses it explicitly. For instance, headship as a doctrine, as an entire area of theology, quite francally is derived from many places in Scripture from many verses. If you read through all of those sections, you will come away with the right understanding, but you can also derive that doctrine from reality, from biology, from psychology, from this world and our lives as we live them, you can derive them from the created order, because God is also the God of nature. He is the one who has created creation, as the name

22:30 would imply, and instilled that order into it. And the reason I want to make that point is that it leads into my next one, which is that it is possible to lie with a truth. Now I want to distinguish again two things that are going to sound relatively similar. It is possible to lie with a truth. It is not possible to lie with the truth. The distinction there is key. And what that distinction means is that if a given situation calls for you to speak a certain truth and you do not speak that truth, that is the truth you did not speak, and speaking that truth would not have been lying. If you speak another truth, that truth may be lying with the truth because it is a lie by omission

23:31 Let me give an example to make this more clear. From Luke four. And he took him to Jerusalem, and set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, He will command his angels concerning you to guard you, and on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. And Jesus answered him, it is said, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Satan was speaking a truth, two of them in fact. He quotes from scripture What he said was in fact true. He was using those verses in an attempt to deceive. Of course he can't deceive Christ, but nonetheless that is what he was attempting to do, and he can certainly deceive men.

24:24 He was doing that with truth. Now the truth, the truth, that was key here, is the one that is spoken by Christ, and so Christ speaks the truth that is on point, that is relevant here you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Satan attempts to deceive through lying by omission And this is something that we see frequently in our day and age. Woe just went over a key example of it. If you say the Romans killed Christ, that's true, they did. Now Scripture never says the Romans were seeking to kill Christ, because the Romans did not want to kill Christ. Pilate's hands were forced, as it were, that doesn't absolve him of guilt, but certainly he has the lesser sin, and if you're inclined to squabble or quibble with me over that, I'm quoting Christ directly,

25:21 so perhaps think about why you have that response. But if someone asks you, Did the Jews murder Christ? And you say, Well, my sins crucified Christ, or you say the Romans crucified Christ, or you say Pilate ordered the crucifixion of Christ, all of those statements are true. It is a truth to say that my sins crucified Christ. But it is not the truth that is called for in that situation. The truth that is called for in that situation is to affirm what Scripture says in many places, the Jews murdered Christ. And incidentally, I want to briefly address the fact that some will try to say, well, it was just the leaders, it was the Pharisees, it was the rulers. God has essentially preempted every single sort of heresy that will ever

26:15 come up from the beginning of time until the last day. This This one he addresses directly in Luke, because there it says the chief priests and the rulers and the people. All three are listed. And so those who try to say that it is just the Pharisees, or just the rulers, or the scribes, or whomever it happens to be they choose as their scapegoat. No. Scripture gives us the list, and the last group is the people, the Jews themselves, the Jews as a collective people are listed there as guilty of the murder of Christ. And so just because you are stating a truth does not mean that you are stating the truth that needs to be spoken in a given situation. And as a Christian, it is incumbent on you to speak the

27:10 truth. Now this does not mean that you have to go around picking fights at all times in all places. You don't have to stand up in your workplace and yell the Jews murdered Christ. That's not what we're saying. These matters, as we have highlighted so many other times in so many other episodes, are matters of wisdom to some degree. When it comes to bringing up the conversation, it is certainly a matter of wisdom when, where, and with whom you do that, and how you do it, of course. But if you are challenged on your Christian faith, if someone says, Isn't it true that Christians teach, then you are required to speak the truth as it is written in Scripture. If someone says, Isn't it true that Scripture says the Jews murdered

28:04 Christ, you have to affirm that, yes it's true, because it is written in many places. If someone says the inverse, isn't it true that Scripture says that it was the Pharisees or it was the Romans, or that it wasn't the Jews. You have to affirm what Scripture says. You have to say, no, it says the Jews murdered Christ. You are, of course, supposed to affirm all of those if it is a listing, so yes the Romans, yes Pilate, yes the Jews. You do not have the sort of dispensation, as it were, that Muslims have. Islam teaches its followers to lie. There are four different kinds. We're not going to go through them in this episode because that's not the point. But there are different types of lying that are outlined in Islam

28:54 as being explicitly commanded intended, or at the very least permissible, for Muslims to use against non-believers, against non-Muslims. There is no such thing in Christianity. As a Christian, even if you know that speaking the truth will destroy your life, that you'll be thrown to the lions, you are required to speak the truth. You are required to do the same thing that Daniel did. And it is up to God whether He preserves you or whether you become a martyr to His glory. That is what Christians are required to do, and we very much see that increasing in likelihood in our day. There are very real consequences of Christendom being destroyed in the past handful of generations. We are going to face challenges that our ancestors did not face.

29:47 Because those who were living in the centuries long life span of Christendom were never brought up on charges for saying, Well, you said that slavery is fine. That's evil. No, because the authorities would have said it's in Scripture, because the authorities were Christian. And so affirming what Scripture said was not a risk. Yes, of course, there were times where people were brought up on heresy charges when they were actually teaching teaching the truth, but that was nearer to the end and that was a different issue we've gone over the Reformation previously. But by and large, affirming the things that were in Scripture, assuming you were literate and could read Scripture, would not have been something for which you would have been put

30:31 on trial or put in prison. Today, that is a very real potential risk, because these sorts of laws are being enacted in more and more places, and yes, also in the United States. And so I know that those who are perhaps of a former libertarian bent, and it should indeed be former, but those who are of that bent may think, well, what about the First Amendment? That is, as Woe said, the wrong frame of mind. You need to be thinking as a Christian, not as a constitutionalist, not as an American, not as whatever other category you want to believe. The Constitution does not matter in this. Yes, it may very well be used as a weapon by our side in court and we'll see how that goes, but fundamentally the

31:21 issue for individual Christians is when you are presented with this sort of challenge, when you are presented with the opportunity or the demand to confess the faith fully, every word of Scripture, and that doesn't just mean Christ crucified for sinners. Confessing the fullness of the faith is more than just confessing the gospel, the literal, simple gospel itself. It means confessing that every word spoken by God, every word written down in Scripture, is true, regardless of how uncomfortable that word may make modern men feel. Does Scripture say that slavery is morally permissible? The answer is yes. Does Scripture teach that women are headless? The answer is yes. Because that's headship, we've gone over that previously.

32:12 And a dozen other issues. We've gone over many of these issues, often in dedicated episodes or even spanning multiple episodes in a series. Each and every one of those things must be affirmed by a Christian when those things are challenged. It actually even goes further than that. There are certain things that by and large are just are generally not binding upon the Christian. We call these things of course adephora things that are indifferent, literally understood. Which means that you are permitted to do them or not to do them. A great example would be candles or liturgical vestments. These things are not specifically required in scripture. However, if the secular authorities if the state if the world tells you

33:05 you may not use candles, you may not use liturgical vestments, you may not sing this list of hymns. The Christian response is to continue doing those things. They are no longer a matter of indifference because once it has been commanded by the anti Christian authorities that you are not permitted to do those things, doing them becomes a confession of faith. And so there are things that are even not explicitly parts of Scripture or parts of the faith that may very well be displayed, be required of Christians as part of our public confession before the world, when the world tells us we may not engage in them. And so yes, literally it may be the case that lighting candles may be a necessary part of your confession of the Christian faith

33:58 in the coming years. That one perhaps is not as likely as some of the others, but the big ticket ones obviously are going to be did the Jews murder Christ and things like that. The ones where the world has already built up this cult, this false religion, this idolatry, and told you you have to give the pinch of incense to Caesar, it's often more than a pinch of incense these days, but you have to give this false confession. Because as we've said so many times, if you confess a false sin, it is worship of a false God, it is idolatry and it is damnable. These are not minor matters. Nothing in Scripture is a minor matter when the world demands that you lie about it. When Satan demands that you speak one truth and not another, then

34:53 you speak both, you most certainly speak the one that he told you not to speak. Because to do otherwise is to deny Christ before men. I want you to think about a particular issue, a particular way that things are worded in Scripture, just something to contemplate. I won't go into it in depth in this episode. But I want you to read the beginning of John. In the beginning was the word. And then I want you to think about the fact that Christ is called the Word and scripture is called the word. Think about that interplay and the implications of it, and then think about the implication of denying any particular part of scripture. These are matters of eternal life or eternal death. Nothing in Scripture is minor when the world or Satan says you

35:47 must not speak that truth. To give another more worldly illustration of how telling the truth can in fact be a lie by omission, I'm going to give a completely over the top hypothetical because it's a really good illustration. Imagine that you and I are standing near the woods outside having a conversation. We're just chatting. Maybe we're talking about this. And I'm doing most of the talking and your back is to the woods. And as we're speaking, you think you hear something kind of in the tree line. And as it's dawning on you that maybe you should look over your shoulder, I start speaking more loudly. And my expressions get bigger, my hands start moving more. I'm keeping your attention. And I talk faster and faster and I keep you from turning

36:31 around because I've distracted you and this goes on for a little while. And suddenly I turn and bolt. And as I get about three steps away and you're trying to figure out what's going on, you feel a bear's teeth sinking into your neck. Because while I was standing there talking to you, I wasn't telling you if there was a bear stalking both of us and it was about to eat one of us. Now, this is an overtop example, but imagine that my argument to say well yeah I didn't kill you because you know, everything I was saying was true. Every word that I was speaking to you is like a transcript of this episode. Everything I'm saying right now I believe is true. I can in good conscience say all Say all these things.

37:09 But if we're doing it face-to-face and there's a nine-foot-tall grizzly bear behind you, it's about to eat you, have I lied to you by having this conversation? Absolutely. I murdered you because I distracted you by not telling you the one thing that you had to know to save your life. This is what we're talking about here. There are things that are true doctrinally that are true because they're in Scripture, but if they're the emphasis in the face of the world saying no, you can't say that, the world is saying it's not true doctrine. And you're saying, well, I'm going to focus on this other stuff. So again, South Dakota passed a law. Here's the particular wording that is used. What happened?

37:50 They passed a one-paragraph bill that incorporated by reference a long definition of anti-Semitism from the IHRA, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Why you need a global alliance to remember the Holocaust? I'm not entirely sure. Personally, I also find it highly offensive in White Erasure that they're taking IHRA from the International Hot Rod Association on behalf of Big Daddy Don Garless, that ticks me off. But the fact that they have defined this elsewhere in the world in twenty sixteen, and now South Dakota is the first state to incorporate that definition by reference on the books as a law in South Dakota. And immediately the governess of South Dakota got on Fox News and

38:33 all the other TV stations saying this is gonna be a model for every other state. And she's absolutely right. This is something that I said, UNESCO, the UN, the European Commission are all saying this is really good. We got to stamp down on this anti-Semitism. It's a global problem. And here is the definition. I'm going to read to you the one line of the entire thing that we've dealt with some of the other things in the overall definition. We'll give a link so you can read it all. I obviously disagree with every part of it, but as Christians, even if you don't care about the rest, this one line alone morally obligates us to speak against it is this. Part of the definition of anti-Semitism is according to them, using the

39:15 symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism, for example, claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel to characterize Israel or Israelis. So what has happened in South Dakota and is going to happen in other states is to say it is a criminal act of anti Semitism to say that Jews killed Jesus. As we said earlier, the question is not what is the most important of those five? Obviously the most important of the five things that killed Jesus, there's perhaps more, but just for the sake of argument, those five specific entities, my sins and your sins, are the most important thing. Jesus Jesus would not have been crucified, he would not have been incarnate if not for my sins and your sins.

40:00 That is the most important thing. That is the law of God, and we stand condemned by it. This is true doctrine, and it is the most important Christian doctrine. And the UN and the European Commission and the IHRA and Satan don't care about it. At least not for right now. That's not what they're attacking. What are they attacking? They're attacking claims the Jews killed Jesus. Well, okay, claims. Is that true or false? Historically, they want to say we had nothing to do with that. Although at the same time, you have guys like Ben Shapiro saying that Jesus was a rebel and deserved to be murdered. He dances in the blood of Jesus, as they all do, as they have for two thousand years. But when it comes to Christians in our own nation saying just

40:48 simply as a matter of Christian confession, the Jews killed Jesus, this is now a criminal act. This podcast episode is a criminal act in the state of South Dakota now. As are many of the past episodes we've done, we specifically dealt with some of the other details. I want to give you a couple examples and just not to very lead, but at the very end of this episode, on our way out, we are going to read back and forth a litany of passages from scripture that specifically say the Jews killed Christ. So after we make the whole argument for what we're claiming here, that it is necessary for us as Christians to say the Jews killed Christ when they say we can't. We're just gonna leave you with the words of scripture echo in

41:31 your ears. So the last thing you remember is not gonna be us making any points. It's gonna be God's word saying that over and over and over again. We cherry picked a dozen or so, there are a whole bunch more. And these are just passages that are directly addressing that claim. There are many, many more that incorporate it more obliquely. The very first time that this claim is made after the crucifixion is in Acts 2. Go read the first few chapters of Acts after this and see if you don't find exactly what we're saying here. Peter, I've said before, Peter was kind of a bumbling idiot when Jesus was conducting his earthly ministry. As soon as the ascension occurred, Peter became this incredible preacher.

42:17 He was eloquent, he was prolific, and he went to town on his audience. One of the very first sermons that he preached, he says this in Acts two, let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ this morning this Jesus whom you crucified. And listen to the response of the Jews in the temple when he said this. Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brothers, what shall we do? And Peter said to them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And about five thousand were baptized that day.

42:56 So here is Peter, and what effectively the first sermon of the church, of the Christian church, what does he say? Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made both him Lord, made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. He wasn't speaking to Pilate or Roman centurions. He wasn't talking directly to me. He was talking to a crowd of Jews. And what was their response? They were cut to the heart and they said, What do we do? And he said, Repent and be baptized. And they were saved that day. How are they saved? They were saved by the words that are il illegal under this statute in the state of South Dakota. So you tell me Which is the true confession? If I tell you, as Peter did, that the Jews killed Christ,

43:46 if your instinct is to argue with me and say, no, no, no, no, I did it, what problem are you trying to solve? This episode is fundamentally the synthesis of probably about half of the episodes that we've done in the past. Because when you take a moment, when you're confronted with a situation and think, what problem am I trying to solve and what is the genealogy of this particular idea? It becomes very clear what we as Christians must do. And so we began with the example of Daniel is he exemplifies what we as Christians must do. You don't appeal to the king, you keep on doing it. And if God says to do it, you do it even harder. As I've said in the past, there is an instinct among many Christians today to take worldly things and to attempt to bring them

44:27 into our churches and to baptize them and to say, well, I can make this sound Christian and then I can fit in with the world, which is a completely evil and insane approach. Why are we taking our doctrine from outside of Scripture? Why aren't we taking it from Scripture? And so when confronted with this particular circumstance, where the IHRA hands a draft to your state legislature and says, this needs to be your law for anti-Semitism. And the law is then gonna read that it is illegal to make claims of Jews killing Jesus. The very first sermon that Peter preached said that the Jews killed Jesus and they were saved by hearing that. That makes it the gospel. It's also the law. I'm not confusing law and gospel for all you Lutheran listeners.

45:14 The gospel is every word from the mouth of God. It's not just the good parts. You can go read the definition in Revelation. It's very clear that the gospel is not just we're saved. The gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ, which is that we are sinners and that we are damned without him, and therefore he came to save us from our sin. If you don't understand the damnation, the gospel is incoherent. Like Jesus raised from the dead, I don't care what what does that have to do with me? I'm not doing anything wrong. That's the approach of most people in the world today. They don't care because they don't think it has anything to do with them. Until they hear the law, until they hear the good news that

45:52 they're damned, they can't possibly respond to the gospel. There's no possible response if you don't believe that you're in trouble. You're not gonna run if I don't tell you there's a bear behind you. So where's the good news? The good news is I'm gonna be a Christian and say, hey, let's get out of here. And you run as fast as you can because there's something dangerous. When the world is saying you can't say the Jews killed Christ, the response cannot be, well, that's true. It's really more important than my sins killed Christ. No, that is completely impermissible. Something which is doctrinally correct, that my sins kill Christ, that your sins kill Christ, is in this moment irrelevant. And to emphasize that, to emphasize that true doctrine in the face

46:38 of a false confession, coming from Christ killers who hate God and hate the gospel, and forbid us from saying what's in Scripture, if we agree with them by the smallest degree, we have apostatized. It is apostasy to refuse to say that the Jews killed Christ when they tell you you can't say it. Why? Because it's in scripture. When Peter preached it to that crowd, they were converted. Their consciences were convicted. Because they weren't just the Pharisees. It wasn't just the leaders and the teachers. It was all the other Jews. He hung it around all their necks. And the very next chapter, we don't know how much longer, it was not too much longer. longer in chapter three of Acts, And when Peter saw it, he

47:18 addressed the people, men of Israel, why do you think that this is or why do you stare at us as though by our power or piety we have made him walk? The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him, but you denied the holy and righteous one, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and you killed the author of life whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. That's about as hard as anyone can ever go at the Jews. And it was a whole bunch of them. And you know what they did? They repented. We're gonna give a bunch more examples like I said at the

47:58 end. We're not gonna belabor all the points in the middle of the episode, but throughout scripture, over and over in the New Testament, it is a recurring theme that the Jews murdered Christ. Now, is it the only doctrine? No. My sins killed Christ. I murdered Christ by my wickedness. We all do this. And we do it every day. And that is why we need penitential seasons like Lent to remind us. Because even though the Christian life should be one reflecting on our sin and our penitence, on and on repenting and turning away from our wickedness, God knows that we need to be reminded at certain times, really, look at this. Look at what you did. And simultaneously, look at what I did for you. The cross is both of those things.

48:44 The cross is a condemnation of our wickedness and is a proclamation of God's love for us. It's all happening simultaneously. God is wonderful in this way. That in one symbol, He can encapsulate all this teaching. But you have to keep it all in your head. You have to receive it faithfully. So So the chief focus of the Christian life is not that the Jews killed Christ. We don't think that. Well, the early episodes we did was on forgotten doctrines, neglected doctrines, and we talked about usury and women covering their heads and a few others and we use them as examples of specifically saying this is not the whole Christian life, this is not the meat of the Christian faith. But we pointed out in that episode, you know what, these things

49:26 are also in scripture and they just kind of vanished from our churches. What's going on? How can we claim to be the church of Peter if we're throwing away the doctrines that the church upheld for centuries or millennia? How is that happening? How do we forget the things that our forebears in the faith simply held as the faith? And now today, not only don't we believe them, but when the world says you can't do that anymore, like, yeah, that's terrible. We never did that in the first place, despite the fact that Christians did it for hundreds and thousands of years. Slavery is a prime example. Did a whole episode about that. How is it that the past is damned by the present when those people were supposed to be the same faith as us.

50:06 Somebody's lying. And we of course know today that it is we who are the liars by pointing back to faithful Christians whose teachings were in accordance with scripture and we condemn them. And we don't condemn them scripturally, we condemn them in worldly fashions because these things that are coming from outside of scripture, from outside of the church, are being hauled in off the sidewalk, and people are saying, Yeah, this is really good, this is Christian teaching. This is really This is really what MLK and Bonhoeffer did most the some of the most damage in the twentieth century. They denied the resurrection, they effectively denied the purpose of the crucifixion because they replaced the Jesus who died for our sins with the

50:46 Jesus who set an example. And yes, Jesus did set an example. That's very important. But they eliminate the rest in their teaching. Because when Jesus is just one of many examples, then there's just one of many religions. And there's things you can learn from all religions. And so then at that point, you know, maybe you can learn something about Christianity from the UN. Maybe UNESCO and the European Commission can teach us something about how to be better Christians. Because really there are a lot of different sources of morality. That's deranged. When I say that out loud, you're you're either laughing or cringing like that's just stupid. It's such a ridiculous thing. But that's exactly what's happening today.

51:22 We have these things being drafted by these evil, wicked pagans, and then being handed to our states. And see, it's not a direct assault on the gospel. They're not saying John three sixteen is illegal. They're saying that Acts two is illegal, just partially, just a couple verses. And just to tell you at the end when we read through all those verses, there can be no citations verbally. We will put them in the show notes so you can look each of them up. If you think we're lying, if you think we're cherry picking and we're taking things out of context, great. Go read the entire chapters. Go read the entire books, prove us wrong by reading the Bible. You're not going to find anything different than what we've said here.

51:57 The Bible says over and over again, the Jews killed Christ. Christians must say the Jews killed Christ. And we're not saying it's a primary emphasis, as Corey said, you don't need to stand up in church and shout this, but in the specific case where there's a law passed, you are now bound. Certainly, and this is something I I said on Twitter last week. This lie thing was ratified, I believe, on Friday of last week, as we're recording. I tweeted that every pastor in South Dakota was morally obligated to God to get up in his pulpit on Sunday and specifically say that the Jews killed Christ. Why? Because what scripture says. And the moment that the king says you're not allowed to pray for 30 days to anyone but me, that you're not allowed to

52:40 say that the Jews killed Christ. Obedience to God requires doing the exact opposite. You do have to manifest what psychologists today call opposition defiant disorder, where you rigorously do the exact opposite of what you're told to do. Now, most of the time, that's not how Christians behave, but in this one specific case where the specific demand from the world, from the lawgiver, is you must deny what's in scripture, we must confess what's in scripture. Even if we don't usually talk about it, even if we don't usually think about it. And that's why this is where Satan's attacking. He knows he's doing an end run around all of our defenses. Cause the normal rote response is, Well, my sins killed Christ.

53:22 Well, I'm gonna focus on the cross. And yeah, the fact that there were Jews involved, well, that's just cause that you know is Israel. it's what happens. But they're not guilty of it. Certainly not more guilty than me. Corey said, Jesus says the opposite. He says that those who handed me over to you have the greater sin. He said that the Jews were more guilty of his murder than Pilate. He said it again with the centurions. That absolution was not given to the braying crowds. They did not receive absolution. They received condemnation in the very first sermons preached in the church from Peter's own mouth. Said, You people killed Christ. That is Christian doctrine. And whether or not we talk about it every day, I don't

54:02 think we need to. I don't want to be the guys who talk about Jews all the time, and we don't, despite the fact that many people think that. But when this particular thing comes up, the state of South Dakota decided we had to do this episode this week. Regardless of what else we had planned, when this law was passed that says you cannot say that the Jews killed Christ, we have to say it. We have to say it loud and clear, and we have to embolden others to remember that the examples given in the past of the Christian faith did the same thing. When a law was passed, they didn't appeal to Caesar, they didn't appeal to the king, asking for mercy. They said, I gotta do what I gotta do. I answer to God.

54:41 And if I answer to you in this life, God's gonna take care of me, no matter what happens. If I live, if I die, I don't care. This is my confession. I submit to the Lord. In case anyone listening is inclined to be contentious needlessly, I would say in this case, I am not going to disagree with Woe's characterization of this law as being a criminal matter. Yes, by and large, Title Twenty of the South Dakota laws, and quite frankly their laws are a bit of a mess. But anyway, Title Twenty is largely dealing with civil matters. However, if you actually read through Title twenty, it has criminal penalties mixed in. And more importantly, than the specifics of how South Dakota is bringing about this particular regime regime because it is a regime they're attempting

55:31 to import from European countries. We already know how this plays out because we have seen it in Europe, in Western Europe, and in Eastern Europe, quite frankly, in many places, particularly Poland, these things start out as being a minor civil matter. And so here you have largely a matter of discriminatory practices or or unfair practices, depending on how they're charging you. And so maybe it's a civil matter. It starts out as a fine, or a black mark, on your record, if you happen to hold a state license. That's another way they go about enforcing these things. It eventually becomes a crime, and then it's a misdemeanor. Some of the things in this section in Title twenty are misdemeanors. And then it becomes a felony.

56:19 And then you get prison time We already see that happening in Europe. There are men in prison today because they have said things that were classified under this definition as anti Semitic. And to be clear, anti Semitism is not a sin. Nowhere in scripture do you find that as a sin. We have gone over this at length in previous episodes, the issue of racism, because really this is just a particular special kind of racism against the Jews. It isn't a sin. So confessing it, because this is an attempt to extract a religious confession, confessing it is confessing a false sin, which is confessing a false god, which is apostasy. To go over this law just a little more, I don't intend to go over it at length because this is not a legal

57:11 podcast, and as I mentioned it's not the point. The point for Christians is that you have to confess the truth. The specifics of this law and how it gets appealed and how it gets enforced and all of that stuff is really tangential. Yes, it's important in its own right, but I'm not going to talk about void for vagueness and strict scrutiny and prior restraint. That's not the sort of podcast this is. But it is worth highlighting just how expansive and vague this law is. Because the goal is basically to make a blanket possibility of charging anyone who says anything negative about the Jews or Israel. This is part and parcel of the same sort of scheme we see being enacted in many states. And so you may think, oh, it's just South Dakota.

58:00 It's no. Many states have enacted laws that punish at least civil servants because those are the ones over whom they have direct control. But they will expand that as far as they are permitted, as far as they possibly can. But they have enacted laws that punish those who participate in boycotts of the state of so called Israel. We have that in a majority of states now, and so it's not just South Dakota. This is the majority of the United States at this point. And it is going to continue because they are going to keep pushing these laws. And so yes, it is incumbent on Christians to push back against this in the political realm, in the legal realm, but it is incumbent on individual Christians to give the good confession when these matters

58:54 come up. And as Woe said, pastors have to respond to this by preaching the full counsel of God, the full truth of Scripture, specifically those parts that are condemned by this law. And the examples that are given for this are very clearly meant to destroy, to gut the Christian faith. Because the definition, here's the definition, I'll just read the full thing for you because it's so vague. Not the law, but the definition of anti Semitism that the law references and incorporates by reference. Here's the definition. Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non

59:42 Jewish individuals and or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities. Setting aside the bad grammar, certainly you can see how broad that is. It literally defines anti Semitism as a certain perception of Jews. Because the rest of it is explanatory. That's the definition. That is maximally vague. And here are the examples, just a couple of the examples. Woe gave one, but this is targeted at the Christian faith in many of these examples. So for instance, if you say that here's the quote, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government, or other societal institutions. There are many Jewish directors and others on record saying the Jews

1:00:36 control Hollywood. If you quote them, you are guilty under this law. Another denying the fact, scope, mechanisms, or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II in parentheses, the Holocaust. The episode we did on The Big Lie clearly violates that, and a number of other episodes we've done also violate it. But that is so broad that if you question any part of the narrative, you violate this law. So if you question the electrified floors, the masturbation machines, the death roller coaster, if you question any of that, you have violated this law. Any outlandish claim falls under the scope of this definition.

1:01:24 And Woe brought up the one where it mentions, of course, the blood libel and the Jews killing Christ Well, we mentioned, and we've gone over at length the issue of the Jews killing Christ, and we'll certainly go over that at the end of this episode with reference to many parts of scripture. But the blood libel, if you say that Saint Simon of Trent was killed by the Jews, you're guilty under this definition. That was the position of the historic church from the murder of Saint Simon until I believe it was the nineteen sixties that Rome did away with that. It is still the position of any church that hasn't already bent the knee to the Jews. This is unbelievably broad, and that is of course the point.

1:02:09 Yes, it does mean that legally it can be challenged. But the point is not the legality, the point is how strongly Satan is pushing for these things. And just how much of the board he is attempting to take in one fell swoop. And very few Christians are fighting back against this, partly because of the cancer of dispensationalism in so many churches, but also because Christians look at it and say, oh, it's just Caesar being Caesar. It's not attacking the core of the faith. They're not saying that we can't say Jesus is God, not that most Christians so called in the United States even believe that anymore when you look at the survey data. Data, but they'll say it's not attacking the core of the faith.

1:02:53 It's not saying he wasn't God, it's not saying he didn't die for sin, it's not saying he didn't rise again, etc. That's not the point. Any attack on any part of Scripture is an urgent matter. Because Satan certainly has a plan, and we've seen that play out. So many of the episodes we've done have been on things that are not the core of the faith. Because Satan is not attacking the core of the faith. Because by and large we have answers to that, we have wrote responses as it were. The matter of justification, Article four for Lutherans, it's a solved problem. Satan can attack that all he wants, we have a response. It is bulletproof, we know exactly what to say. And that is the case for so many things.

1:03:44 If Satan attacks the Trinity, we have the Athanasian Creed. We don't need to explain or even understand more than that. We simply affirm what it says. And with so many other issues, that is the case. But Satan knows that he doesn't have to attack the core of the faith. Satan is not an idiot, he's evil, but he's not dumb. If you are attacking an entrenched enemy position, you don't do a frontal assault because that's stupid. You attack where they are weakest. You don't attack the Maginot line. You go through Belgium. That's what Satan is doing. Satan is going to find whatever little weak spot there is, whatever chink there happens to be in the Christian armor, and that's where he's going to come in.

1:04:34 Not for nothing is he called a snake. If a snake can get its head through an opening, the whole snake is coming in, and they can get through very small openings. Same with rodents. Satan is a rat. But that is why he's attacking these issues because Christians don't have the proper response most of the time. Most Christians look at this and think, oh, it's a minor matter or it's a tangential matter. It's not. If Satan is attacking it, it is incumbent on Christians to respond in the strongest of terms. Particularly when it's something that is explicit in scripture. This is not even a matter where you have to derive it. This is a literal direct refutation, a direct condemnation of an actual quote from Scripture.

1:05:26 And so this should be an easy one for Christians. This should not be a complicated matter. And speaking of things for which we have specific responses, written responses, wrote responses in the good sense of that term. Because some people will think that wrote is a bad thing, that oh, it's just a wrote response. No. Sometimes you should have a wrote response. If someone asks you what the commandments are, you have a wrote response to that. The same is true for many of these attacks. But not all of them. And that's why we're addressing these sorts of attacks, because for these ones, most Christians do not have that rote response. But earlier I mentioned that even adiaphora can become binding under certain

1:06:14 circumstances. For Lutherans, the Solid Declaration should come to mind, because the formula of Concord actually explicitly addresses this matter, because this was a live issue to some degree during parts of the Reformation era. And so I'll read just a little bit from Article Ten of the Solid Declaration. We believe, teach, and confess that at the time of confession, that is, when a confession of the heavenly truth is required, when the enemies of God's Word desire to suppress the pure doctrine of the Holy Gospel, the entire congregation of God, yea, every Christian, but especially the ministers of the Word, as the leaders of the congregation of God, are bound by God's word to confess freely and openly the

1:07:02 godly doctrine, and what belongs to the whole of pure religion, not only in words, but also in works and with deeds, and that then, in this case, even in such things truly and of themselves Adiaphora, they must not yield to the adversaries, or permit these Adiaphora to be forced upon them by their enemies, whether by violence or cunning, to the detriment of the true worship of God, and the introduction and sanction of idolatry. Moreover, by such yielding and conformity in external things, where there has not previously been Christian union and doctrine, idolaters are confirmed in their idolatry. On the other hand, the true believers are grieved, offended and weakened in their faith, both of which every Christian, for the sake

1:07:54 of his soul's welfare and salvation, is bound to avoid. In absolutely no uncertain terms, we confess, as Lutherans specifically in this case, that this is a matter of salvation. Let me repeat that. We confess that this is a matter of salvation. If we deny Christ by denying the word, we are apostate. If we yield in matters that are actually not in and of themselves binding, which is again to say Adiaphora, if we yield in those matters, because Satan, the world, the adversaries, the enemies are demanding that we yield, that endangers our soul, that is also a matter of salvation. These are not trivial issues. This may seem like something that's tangential to the Christian faith, and

1:08:54 to a certain degree and in a certain light, it is. But it's not because of the simple fact that if you confess a false sin, so in this case anti Semitism, you are thereby confessing a false God. If you fail to speak a truth about the true God, you are again confessing a false God because you are violating both the first and the second commandments, the second because you are speaking falsely about God. Because not only are you required not to speak falsely about God, you are required by the same commandment to speak truthfully about God. To violate it in either direction, is damnable, is sin. And if you are engaged in that sin, and you are impenitent, you have no promise of salvation. And when it comes to the first commandment, the matter is simple,

1:09:50 as I have said many times before, and as well as said in other episodes, if you are confessing a false sin, you are confessing a false God. And so if you confess that this thing is a sin and it's something that Christians can just ignore, we can just let the State do what it wants with regard to the Christian faith. The State can just say Just say, you cannot speak these words from God's word. You cannot say these things that are contained in this book or that book. You have to excise these things from Scripture. If you go along with that, you are confessing another God. Whatever name that God may have, whether you've deified the state, or you've deified the so-called state of Israel or the Jews, or you've

1:10:37 deified whatever it happens to be. You have taken God off the throne in your heart and placed an idol there, and you are no longer a Christian. These matters are essential, and whether or not we like it, we live in that time of confession, as stated in Article 10 of the Solid Declaration. This is when a confession of the heavenly truth is required, because the enemies of God's Word are seeking to suppress it, and we as Christians are required to speak the fullness of it. Not just bits and pieces, not just the parts that don't make people uncomfortable, not just the parts that make us comfortable. We are required to confess the fullness of God's truth because to do otherwise is to be apostate.

1:11:38 As I mentioned earlier, while we were recording this, we are in the season of Lent with Palm Sunday just a couple weeks away. This is another moment when Satan is using the life of the Christian church collectively through the church calendar to attack God's people. Lent culminates in Good Friday and then Easter. Just this week, the U.S. Bishops Conference of the Catholic Church announced that it will require a pastoral note on anti-Semitism to be placed in worship aids and pew missiles ahead of all Good Friday Passion narratives beginning this year. I want to read you the note The note that they have that is going to be available in English and Spanish, it's supposed to be in every single parish in the United States.

1:12:28 Reads as follows: The Passion narratives are proclaimed in full so that all see vividly the love of Christ for each person. In light of this, the crimes during the Passion of Christ cannot be attributed in either preaching or catechesis indiscriminately to all Jews of that time nor to Jews today. The Jewish people should not be referred to as though rejected or cursed as if this view followed from Scripture. The church ever keeps in mind that Jesus, his mother Mary, and the apostles all were Jewish, as a church has always held, Christ freely suffered his passion and death because of the sins of all, that all might be saved. As we said in the past, what they've wrapped the statement in is Jesus butter, saying a bunch of things that are doctrinally true.

1:13:16 Yes, true that Mary was a Jew. Jesus was a Jew. We talked in the episode Hebrews, Jews, and Israelites to what extent those types of labels apply to certain groups, but as shorthand, sure, that's fine. The reason that they get wrapped up in these details is so that when they tell you you can't indiscriminately apply to the Jews of all time that Christ's passion was was their fault. Well is the preaching of Peter in his first sermon, which they claim he was the first pope, it's nonsense, but even if you take their argument at face value, if Peter was the first pope, would he have been able to preach his sermons in Acts two and three with this bulletin insert? Absolutely not. Peter's preaching, the first pope's so called preaching, is in direct violation

1:14:08 of what today's pope is saying is the universal Christian faith. Somebody's a liar here. Either this Pope is a liar or Peter's a liar. Well, Peter's in Scripture, whether he's a Pope or not, he's not. But he is an apostle, and the words that are recorded in Scripture are infallibly true. Not because Peter spoke them, but because the Holy Ghost expressed them to us for all time. Peter preached to the crowd and said, You people killed Christ, and they said, The Lord have mercy, what do we do? And he said, Repent and be baptized, that you may be saved. And about five thousand were converted one day, about three thousand another day. It was the beginning of the church. All those Jews converted to Christianity by repenting of their Jewish wickedness,

1:14:52 by repenting of their Jewish murder of Christ. So So when this attack comes, whether it's from North South Dakota or from the Pope or from every other direction, because again, everybody's on the same page, when we routinely call this stuff the new global religion, that's why the Pope is saying the same thing as South Dakota, is saying the same thing as the European Commission. Excuse me, this is our source of doctrine. No. That's why Corey and I will always and only point to Scripture as a source of these things. And we reference the things in the Lutheran Confessions, it's because we believe they're in accord with Scripture. We believe that the lesser document points to the greater document.

1:15:32 Scripture's infallible, the things that point to it faithfully are true. We don't call them infallible, we just say it's true. The creeds are true because every word of them accords with Scripture. But the infallibility rests in Scripture alone because that is what's breathed out by God. And when God breathed out Scripture, he repeatedly breathed out the Jews killed Christ. As we look at these situations today, we must recognize that as Christians, we don't always get to pick our battles. It is perfectly fine to run through the liturgy and the lectionary and focus on whatever the pericopey is for a particular Sunday. That's good, that's blessed, it's what we should do. However, there are moments, there are inflection points like this, where the

1:16:20 world demands a false confession, and we don't get to stick to the script. We don't get to use what is a salutary practice as an excuse to avoid the one confession that actually matters. If I'm talking to you and the bear's right behind you and I don't say, hey dude, there's a bear right behind you, let's get out of here. I've lied to you. No matter how true the words that I spoke. This is equally true of preaching. It's equally true of all doctrines that we espouse. I don't care how true the doctrine is if you're using it as a smoke screen for avoiding where Satan is bringing the battle, you're a liar, you are condemned, and you will not have a promise of salvation. How can you? Yeah, how can you just point to the parts of scripture that

1:17:05 keep you out of trouble? Is that what Daniel did? Is that what the other prophets did? Is that what the other martyrs did? They didn't keep themselves out of trouble. They didn't go picking fights either. They continued to be faithful even in the face of consequences that may be murderous. That's up to God. What's going to happen is up to him. That's why we've done episodes on fear of God and trust in God. When the doctrine is around emphasizing Jesus' love and God's love to the exclusion of fearing God, you end up with a different God. You don't end up with the God of the Bible because the God that's preached in many churches today is one that doesn't inspire any fear. That should fill you with terror.

1:17:51 If you go back and listen to the Fear of the Lord episode, when you understand properly who God is, He's terrifying. He's properly terrifying. It's made clear in scripture that if anyone beholds the Father, he's struck dead. You can't do it. that's awesome power that we don't even have words or comprehension for. We know that the awesomeness of God is more than our human bodies as creatures can withstand. From our sinfulness and from the fact that we are not infinite as God is. We don't know how to explain it, but we know that it's fearful. Even God's messengers, the angels, when they're described in their true forms, are terrifying. And they say frequently when the when the angels appear and they're

1:18:34 not appearing in human form, they will often say, Be not afraid. An angel that just looks like a dude doesn't need to say don't be afraid. Like maybe if he appears in a room, you might be a little bit unnerved. But God's messengers and God himself are terrifying because they're holy, they're pure and they're perfect, and God has infinite power. When we reduce all of that to the loving boyfriend Jesus, who just wants to hang out and you know I don't know. It's like we we we reduce God to the mockery of Buddy Christ, where he just hangs out and he's a pal and he never condemns anything. And that's really comforting because it doesn't put any pressure on you. Now, there's a sense in which you are not under pressure when

1:19:24 you're in God's presence because you know there's nothing you can possibly do. It's not that we can stand face to face because we're equals. It's because God's covered our sins and our imperfection with his perfection. So as we're able to stand face to face with him after judgment, it's because he's elevated us. It's not because we began as equals. And by elevated, I don't mean we become equal with God. It's simply that we're allowed to be in his presence without dying. That's miraculous unto itself. These people who want to reduce what is in scripture, whether they're trying to uphold feminism or decry slavery or make up things like racism and anti-Semitism or all the other doctrines so called that we've

1:20:09 discussed in past episodes, fundamentally what they're doing is they're whittling away at scripture around the edges. And what you're left with if you believe them is not the true God. You can't possibly have a God who isn't also terrifying. Is he only terrifying? No, absolutely not. I'm not terrified of God. I know the God is terrifying and I'm thankful for his love that despite the sheer terror that he inspires, I don't have to be afraid because I'm an adopted son of God. That is his mercy, that is his love. That's why Easter happened. If you strip away all of that and then you only talk about Easter, what's the point? there's no story there if you don't have everything that leads up to it.

1:20:52 And so when these attacks come, and they're gonna continue to come, it's part of why we're doing this episode, it's not just about one statute and one state, or you know, this false declaration from Rome, you know, count ten thousand in the last thousand years. It's about the fact that this is not only an ongoing attack, but it's an escalating one As I said earlier, this legislation is being hailed as model legislation for all the other states. Why do you think it's South Dakota, one of the least populous states in the country where Zionism is off the charts, where it was a very easy sell. There's I don't I didn't follow it. I didn't after it had been ratified because I don't really pay attention to politics.

1:21:35 And we're not trying to make a politics episode, we're trying to make a scripture episode. Daniel 6 is not about politics. Daniel 6 is about the true confession of God. When you are told by the world you can't do this in God's name, at that moment you must do it. We're gonna face more and more of these. Part of the reason we did the episode late last year on normalcy bias as Admiral Stockdale on the cover. We are getting to the point in the timeline where these birth pangs are getting closer and closer together. And there's no reason to expect that going back to normal is in the cards. I hope it does happen. It would be nice if it did happen. I like to go back to the world of my childhood. It seemed pretty great.

1:22:22 Like morally by comparison in the arc of history, it was still a disaster. But yet compared to today, to m compared to kids who are growing up, you know, forty years after me as seven-year-olds, it's a completely different, far worse world. The escalating nature of these attacks attacks needs to be something that emboldens us. Yeah, there was another guy from Twitter, a right wing guy named Stone Toss, who was doxxed this week by the same group that doxed me. And he's just a normal guy. He just a cartoonist. he he writes brilliant and devastating cartoons mocking the evil of this stuff. And I only mention this because I think that as these attacks come more and more. One of the things that we want to inspire by Stone Choir

1:23:13 in general is to embolden men, to not be afraid to do what Daniel did in your own context. Again, we're not saying I don't want every guy to become a podcaster. There should be fewer podcasts, not more. I regret being one. It's a horrible thing. But we have to do it. You don't have to go out and do exactly what other guys are doing but you have a life you have a family you have a situation in a neighborhood where these things will come up you don't have to pick the fight but if the fight comes up you must confess faithfully whatever that means, and whatever the consequences are. If you prayed three times a day in front of the door and a law is passed that says you're gonna be executed if you keep doing that, you must keep doing it.

1:23:58 You don't have to do anything different, but you have to keep doing that. And frankly, when these things come along that have laws that say it's illegal to say that the Jews killed Christ, if you weren't already saying that the Jews killed Christ, you stand condemned. But there is hope for you. Repent. Go ahead and listen to the repents episode. What does it look like to repent from failing to say that the Jews killed Christ? Doesn't mean you feel bad about it. It means you change your mind and you start doing it. Not to do it all the time. We're not going to do it all the time. We're going to talk about this for a while. But in this moment, as this thing is happening, we must point to it and say, look, right here, this is what's coming for

1:24:34 all of us. It will almost certainly be passed in my state. Will they come for me? I don't know. Maybe. Probably, we'll see. Am I gonna change my tune in the slightest? No. What's gonna happen? I have no idea. I don't care. It's in God's hands. All these things are in God's hands. And that is why we need to have confident faith and we need to trust in the Lord and we need to fear a God who inspires that. When you have that supplicative posture towards the Lord, all the stuff gets a lot easier. You don't have to worry about how the legal ramifications are going to play out. You don't have to worry about what the consequences will be in your life. Are you doing the right thing? If you're doing the right thing, that's the end of it.

1:25:17 God will take care of the rest. And if he protects you from the lions, or if he uses you as a martyr who is an example to others of what true faith looks like, it's a blessing no matter what. It's not up to you. We are instruments in God's plan. All of us are. And when we are faithful in that manner, it means that when things like this come along, they're going to be more. And you know, at some point we're going to get knocked off the line. You'll never hear from us again. We hope that we can equip everyone at that point to have enough of this in mind that you can open your Bibles and you say, hey, what's happening here is not what scripture says. They're telling me to do one thing and I remember from somewhere

1:25:55 in the Bible it says the opposite. Go looking for it. Or go talk to someone who knows the Bible better than you and figure out if you're being told to apostatize. Because guess what? You probably are. There's nothing that's going to come from the world that is going to enhance your faith. So back to the earlier point, when these things come from the UN expressing doctrinal statements like it's forbidden to say that the Jews killed Christ, what problem are they trying to solve? They're trying to camouflage the Jews who are burning down the world, which is another thing that's illegal to say. Even if you don't believe that's true, you must believe what scripture says that the Jews killed Christ.

1:26:32 You must believe it, or you go to hell. As Corey repeated, I'm gonna repeat again. If you don't believe that the Jews killed Christ, you are going to hell because Scripture says it and you deny it. If you don't take that seriously, then why are you pretending to be a Christian in the first place? What a waste of time. What an inconvenient thing to be, especially in this world. How stupid to be a Christian. There's so many more intelligent things to be in the world if you want to get along with the world. If you want to get along with God and you want to actually be a Christian, then every word breathed from the mouth of God is what you need to confess. You can't confess it all at once. Nobody can.

1:27:11 Every one of these episodes is, you know, some sort of even a superficial deep dive on a subject. You know, we did an entire episode on Galatians 3.28. We barely scratched the surface. We can never possibly confess everything. That's fine. But when Satan says you can't confess this, guess what? That is the next thing that needs to come out of your mouth. It's a very simple rule. When Satan cares about you agreeing with God, you're obligated to do it. And you don't get to hide behind your true confession of something else. In the moment that you say something that is true that is not in opposition to the world, you're a liar. It is cowardice in the very moment when we are called to have Christian boldness.

1:27:55 That's the entire point of this episode. You don't get to pick these fights. It's not all the time, it's not every day, it's not even every year, but it's gonna get worse and it's gonna come for you. Your state's gonna pass this stuff. It's gonna come up in conversation of your church. Are you going to be apostate like Doug Wilson and double down on defending the Jews? Or are you going to say what scripture says? Or are you going to say that, well, we don't say the Jews kill Christ 'cause that's just envy. No, you say what God says and you defend God. And if that puts you against the UN and Doug Wilson, then God will be with you in opposing his enemies. This is the fight. It's gonna divide households.

1:28:36 It's gonna divide churches as Christ promised it would. It stinks. It's unpleasant. This isn't fun. This isn't good news in the sense of, hey, you won the lottery, or hey, I found your dog. It's good news in the sense that God has told us that these things will happen. And even when the bad things happen, we know, well, that's my God. My God told me what was going to happen that it did. I can keep trusting him because he always keeps his promises, even when he promises something terrible. Some days that's all we're gonna have, and it still needs to be enough to keep us in the fight until God calls us home. I would like to give the pastors in the audience a very concrete step that they can take in pursuit of being faithful in this particular

1:29:19 matter, but just more generally. As Woe said, and as you all well know, Good Friday is coming up shortly. Here is the traditional text of a prayer that the Church has long used on Good Friday. Let us pray also for the perfidious Jews, that Almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts, so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish perfidiousness, hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people, that acknowledging the light of thy truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness, through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.

1:30:16 Amen. I would first note that this is a prayer that every single one of you should be able to pray for from the heart. We do pray for, we do desire the conversion of the Jews to Christianity, because we desire that for all men, because Christ died for all men. He died to atone for everything, the scope of the atonement, as I have said before, is universal. He redeemed creation, and so of course we want them to turn from their wickedness and come to faith. But the second point, reintroduce this into your liturgy, if you have a liturgy, and if you don't, that's a separate problem. But at least reintroduce this into your prayers. And perhaps use this explicit form. This is the pre-1955 form as used by the Roman Church and

1:31:11 used by a number of other churches. Lutherans have historically used one that's almost identical. Call them the perfidious Jews. Speak the truth, as Scripture says it, as the church has proclaimed it, every year without fail, for centuries. This was changed only recently, as you may have noticed, I said, this is the pre nineteen fifty five form. I wonder why it would have changed then. In nineteen forty nine, Pope Pius, I believe it was Pius the Second, at that point. Any rate, it doesn't really matter, in nineteen forty nine, he issued a statement that oh Perfidus in Latin just means faithless. Well I have Whitaker's words here, and those of you who know any Latin will definitely know that name.

1:32:07 Perfidus means faithless, treacherous, false, deceitful. All of those are in view in this traditional prayer. And that is why we use perfidious in English, because perfidus in Latin and perfidious in English basically have the same scope conveniently, we just happen to have the same word here because of course it is the Latin word just imported into English. So use the historic prayer because it's true. You are calling the Jews what they are, and you are praying for their conversion, which is something we should do as Christians. This is a concrete step that you can take in the direction of being a faithful Christian. This is particularly, again, particularly true of pastors. This is incumbent on you

1:33:04 As the statement from the Solid Declaration, as that section I read from Article 10 said, pastors are in fact meant to be leaders of the congregation of God. That is supposed to be one of your roles. And so introduce this, reintroduce this, use something that is part of the historic practices of the church, and is a good thing, because it is a true statement, it is a conversion of what Scripture commands us to believe, and also of what Scripture commands us to do. So this is a concrete step. You can make this change two weeks from today. Well, not two weeks from today, because this will be released on Thursday, but two weeks and a day from today. These are not matters where it's some Nebulous issue or something that's

1:33:58 vague or difficult. It may be challenging because there may be very real consequences for doing these things, but being faithful is a fairly simple matter. It's as simple as praying that one or two paragraph prayer that I just read, readily available. You can modify it if you're so inclined, you can add to it from scripture, but if you use that exact form, that is a step in the direction of faithfulness, and it is something that every single Christian church should be doing, particularly because it is a refutation of what Satan is saying we have to do. So reject what Satan is saying, pick up the historic praxis of the church, and be faithful. Be a Christian. So we're going to leave you now with quite a few minutes

1:34:47 of readings from scripture. As we did at the end of the Big Lie episode, Cory and I are gonna take turns just reading these. Unlike that episode, we're not gonna be laughing at any of this. This is deadly serious. We're also not gonna give any of the citations. Those will be in the show notes. We're just going to give you words only. So we're leaving you with the words of scripture on this particular matter. Think about this. For the rest of the week and whenever you reflect on this episode, when scripture says these things and the world is saying that is classic anti Semitism, that is wickedness, according to the UN and Doug Wilson, what are you gonna do? Whom will you serve in that environment?

1:35:32 You don't get to hide behind, well, Jesus died for my sins. That is a false confession, no matter how true the doctrine is, because it's not the question. You're You're answering a different question when you espouse that doctrine. It is a deceitful response. It is a faithless response. And it's a very easy response for cowardly Christians to offer because it keeps you out of the fight. Do you think that you're in a day and an age where staying out of the fight is an option? I hope that no one who's a stone choir listener actually believes that. I don't think it's really possible. We create our episodes and our topics around emboldening men to first believe the truth and then to obey God. And I don't think we really leave room for the sort of

1:36:19 man who could have that view. Again, we're gonna leave you with the words of God. Think about it. This should be your confession. And if you hear words from our mouths in the last minutes of this episode that caused you discomfort, figure out why. Because it didn't come from the word of God. We're going to be reading nothing but scripture. If that makes you uncomfortable, makes you squirm, if it's something that you couldn't say to another Christian, if it's something that wouldn't be said in your church, if these are words that maybe your pastor would change the wording, or when he finished, he would explain it away somehow. Either that was a different time, or here's what those words actually

1:36:58 mean, but it it's not really all Jews, don't worry about that. You have a problem in your life. All we can do is tell you what God says. You gotta figure out from there whether you're gonna believe it or not, and whether you're gonna obey it. Will you have the faith of Daniel, or will you be faithless, when the matter is the most urgent? You stiff necked people, uncircumcised and hardened ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit Spirit, as your fathers did so do you, which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the righteous one, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the laws delivered by angels, and did not keep it.

1:37:40 Jesus answered them truly I say to you, every one who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever, the son remains forever. So if the sun sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are offspring of Abraham, yet you seek to kill me, because my word finds no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my father, and you do what you have heard from your father. They answered him, Abraham is our father. Jesus said to them, If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did.

1:38:29 They said to him, We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one father, even God. Jesus said to them, If God were your father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell you the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me?

1:39:21 Whoever is of God hears the words of God. reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God. But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him against him how to destroy him. This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal with God. After this Jesus went about in Galilee. He would not go about in Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill him. Has not Moses given you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law? Why do you seek to kill me? The crowd answered, You have a demon. Who is seeking to kill you? The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. The disciples said to him, Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking

1:40:12 to stone you, and are you going there again? So from that day on the Jews made plans to put him to death. Then the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and plotted together in order to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him. And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, My Father is working until now and I am working. Men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs, that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know, this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified, and killed by the

1:41:02 hands of lawless men. Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brothers what shall we do? And Peter said to them, Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself, and with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, Save yourselves from this crooked generation.

1:41:41 So those who received his word were baptized, and they were added that day about three thousand souls. But you Jews denied the holy and righteous one, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and you Jews killed the author of life, whom God raised from the dead, to this we are witnesses. And when they had brought them, they set them before a council, and the high priest questioned them, saying, We strictly charge you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you attend to pring this man's blood upon us. But Peter and the apostles answered, We must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised Jesus whom you killed by hanging on a tree.

1:42:23 God exalted him at his right hand as leader and savior to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him. When they heard this they were enraged and wanted to kill them. For you brothers became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen, as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all mankind, by hindering us from speaking to the nations Pilate then called together the chief priests and the rulers and the people, And said to them, You brought me this man as one

1:43:14 who is misleading the people, and after examining him before you, behold, I did not find this man guilty of any of your charges against him, neither did Herod, for he sent him back to us. Look, nothing deserving death has been done by him. I will therefore punish and release him. Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus. But they all cried together, Away with this man and release to us Barabbas, a man who had been thrown into prison for an insurrection started in the city and for murder. Pilate addressed them all once more, desiring to release Jesus, but they kept shouting, crucify, crucify him. A third time he said to them, Why, what evil has he

1:43:57 done? I have found in him no guilt deserving death. I will therefore punish and release him. But they were urgent, demanding with loud cries that he should be crucified, and their voices prevailed. So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water, and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, I am innocent of this man's blood, see to it yourselves. And all the people answered, His blood be on us and on our children.