This transcript:- Was machine generated.
- Has not been checked for errors.
- May not be entirely accurate.
WEBVTT
00:30.000 --> 00:42.640
Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast.
00:42.640 --> 00:47.920
I am Corey J. Moller, and I'm well in this episode, we will be discussing the issues
00:47.920 --> 00:52.920
of headship, teaching, and women in the church.
00:52.920 --> 01:00.760
So the question that's been raging lately on the Lutheran Twitter sphere has been
01:00.760 --> 01:03.040
Can Girls Teach.
01:03.040 --> 01:07.280
It's an interesting question because it's not a Lutheran question, it's one that's been
01:07.280 --> 01:12.760
really facing the whole church for Japan, how far back you go centuries, but certainly
01:12.760 --> 01:18.320
in the last 50 years, Can Girls Teach has been in the forefront of what's happening in
01:18.320 --> 01:20.760
our Christian churches.
01:21.480 --> 01:25.640
The reason we're going to talk about it today is that in part, that's not actually the
01:25.640 --> 01:27.600
right form of the question.
01:27.600 --> 01:31.800
Form of the question is May Girls Teach, but before we can answer that, we have to answer
01:31.800 --> 01:35.600
a few predicate questions to define our terms.
01:35.600 --> 01:40.120
The first is, what is a girl, what is a woman, where did they come from, what are they
01:40.120 --> 01:46.240
for, and then once we understand that, we can add, address the question, what is teaching?
01:46.240 --> 01:51.840
So Corey, what is a girl?
01:51.840 --> 01:59.560
Well a girl is defined in part, you could define a girl as in contrast to a man, and what
01:59.560 --> 02:06.600
a girl is, is a help meet, woman is made for man, not man for woman, as scripture very
02:06.600 --> 02:15.240
clearly states, and so woman is made in Genesis 1.
02:15.240 --> 02:20.880
We have, of course, we have the more elaborate detail later on in Genesis, but we have in
02:20.880 --> 02:22.760
Genesis 1.27.
02:22.760 --> 02:27.440
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female
02:27.440 --> 02:33.120
he created them, and of course we'll get to some of the grammar and such there a little
02:33.120 --> 02:41.560
bit later, but the whole purpose of a girl is to help her husband, before she has a husband,
02:41.560 --> 02:43.560
it's to help her family.
02:43.560 --> 02:50.080
But that is the purpose of a girl, it is not to be an equal or a competitor to man,
02:50.080 --> 02:55.720
which is sort of what we've allowed girls to become today.
02:55.720 --> 03:00.720
So we have in Genesis 1.27, so God created man in his own image, in the image of God he
03:00.720 --> 03:06.280
created him, male and female he created them.
03:06.280 --> 03:16.120
Now the question of course arises here, is woman is the female made in the image of God?
03:16.120 --> 03:21.560
And we have other places in scripture that will shed light on this, because man is the
03:21.560 --> 03:25.040
glory of God, man is made in the image of God.
03:25.040 --> 03:31.640
Woman is the glory of man, so there's a difference there, is woman ultimately made in the image
03:31.640 --> 03:37.560
of God, yes, in a transitive sense, because she's the image and glory of man who is the
03:37.560 --> 03:39.800
image and glory of God.
03:39.800 --> 03:47.880
And we have that here in Genesis 1.27, because if you actually look at Genesis 1.27, what
03:47.880 --> 03:50.400
is said there?
03:50.400 --> 04:01.160
God created man in his own image, and that is of course masculine singular man.
04:01.160 --> 04:07.880
In the image of God he created him, and again masculine singular.
04:07.880 --> 04:12.560
And then, and the ESV actually does a good job here because there's a semicolon after him,
04:12.560 --> 04:16.080
and then male and female he created them.
04:16.080 --> 04:22.320
Related matter, not the exact same thing, there is a distinction, even here, in the very
04:22.320 --> 04:27.400
beginning, between man and woman and the creation of man and woman.
04:27.400 --> 04:30.160
So what is woman made to do?
04:30.160 --> 04:35.480
She is made to be a help meet, she is made to help her husband, and there's actually
04:35.480 --> 04:43.000
some useful language from Luther here in his actually volume 1, in the American edition,
04:43.000 --> 04:47.920
because the first eight volumes are Luther's commentary on Genesis.
04:47.920 --> 04:54.880
So for Luther's commentary here for Genesis 1.27, I'll skip the first couple paragraphs
04:54.880 --> 04:59.280
here, they're just about similitude and image and comment on the sentences.
04:59.280 --> 05:04.240
But male and female he created them, and this is a quote from Luther.
05:04.240 --> 05:09.200
In order not to give the impression that he was excluding the woman from all the glory
05:09.200 --> 05:13.760
of the future life, Moses includes each of the two sexes.
05:13.760 --> 05:18.240
For the woman appears to be a somewhat different being from the man, having different members
05:18.240 --> 05:20.120
and a much weaker nature.
05:20.120 --> 05:24.480
Although Eve was a most extraordinary creature, similar to Adam so far as the image of God
05:24.480 --> 05:30.600
is concerned, that is, in justice, wisdom and happiness, she was nevertheless a woman.
05:30.600 --> 05:34.560
For as the son is more excellent than the moon, although the moon too was a very excellent
05:34.560 --> 05:39.840
body, so the woman, although she was the most beautiful work of God, nevertheless was
05:39.840 --> 05:44.560
not the equal of the male in glory and prestige.
05:44.560 --> 05:51.360
And so Luther properly recognizes that even in the garden, before the fall, in the state
05:51.360 --> 05:56.160
of perfection, woman is not equal to man.
05:56.160 --> 05:58.400
Men and women are different.
05:58.400 --> 06:02.800
The girl was made for the man, not vice versa.
06:02.800 --> 06:08.720
I think you mentioned early the transitive property, and I'm sure there are people listening
06:08.720 --> 06:13.440
who think that we are denying that women are made in the image of God.
06:13.440 --> 06:21.320
And that's not the point, but it's a subtle distinction that relies on the sort of
06:22.120 --> 06:26.840
reason that really isn't taught anymore that people don't understand, don't think in those terms.
06:26.840 --> 06:31.800
So when you say similar to and you say transitive property, what are you actually saying?
06:31.800 --> 06:35.960
What is the A to B and B to see doing in this scenario?
06:39.080 --> 06:46.200
The point that we are attempting to make is that if you say that two things are entirely equal,
06:46.200 --> 06:49.800
of course, well, that gets into the laws of logic then because two things that can't be
06:49.800 --> 06:55.560
distinguished are of course the same thing. But if man is made in the image of God,
06:55.560 --> 07:00.600
to be made in the image of God means something, it does not mean to be equal to God,
07:00.600 --> 07:04.200
it does not mean to be identical to God because of course it cannot mean that,
07:04.200 --> 07:06.600
because we are finite, God is infinite.
07:06.600 --> 07:12.360
And so if we are created in the image of God, we are a lesser creature than God.
07:13.880 --> 07:19.160
Woman is made in the image of man. Woman is a lesser creature than man.
07:19.400 --> 07:27.320
Still made in the image of God. Still partakes of if she is Christian, salvation and the eternal life,
07:27.960 --> 07:31.880
the good version of the eternal life, you do get the other one if you're not a Christian.
07:32.520 --> 07:36.760
But she is a lesser creature, but still made in the image of God.
07:37.400 --> 07:40.680
There's that difference there. It's important to note that difference.
07:42.440 --> 07:46.760
What is an image in the internet age? We just think of JPEGs.
07:47.640 --> 07:53.880
Frankly, that's about as far as people can take it. But when theologians talk about image,
07:53.880 --> 08:03.400
what does that mean? Well, we could actually go to the Greek here so we can perhaps address
08:03.400 --> 08:09.240
some potential pastoral detractors because what does it actually say in the Greek?
08:09.320 --> 08:17.400
Icona. It's an icon or an idol. Man is meant to image or to represent God in creation.
08:17.400 --> 08:26.360
So man is the pinnacle of creation. Man is at the top of the hierarchy. Man represents God
08:26.360 --> 08:31.560
to creation. And that is what man is supposed to do. And we still have this to some degree today.
08:31.560 --> 08:37.480
Yes, it is to some degree lost and corrupted because of the fall. But if you have a dog,
08:37.640 --> 08:42.360
particularly if you selected well and have a good breed, your dog is going to look to you.
08:43.640 --> 08:48.600
After a fashion, as if you were God, because your dog looks to you for everything good in his life,
08:48.600 --> 08:52.840
he looks to you for food, for shelter, for warmth, for care, affection,
08:53.480 --> 09:00.760
your dog looks to you as the representative of God in creation. So your dog is not necessarily
09:00.760 --> 09:05.880
looking exactly through you to God, but after a fashion, that is what's happening. And that is how
09:06.760 --> 09:15.400
woman properly interfaces and interacts with God because the wife is not the head. The husband is
09:15.400 --> 09:20.360
the head. And so the body interacts with the head, the head interacts with God. That's how things
09:20.360 --> 09:27.320
are supposed to work. There's a natural hierarchy there. There's a footnote reference that is also
09:27.320 --> 09:34.200
relevant from the same work in Lutheran references. Luther's later comments on marriage. And it's
09:34.200 --> 09:39.560
important to to bring this up as well, because I'm sure we'll discuss marriage a little more
09:39.560 --> 09:46.600
shortly. But what appears in the Latin text Luther was reading the Vulgate, as likened to himself
09:46.600 --> 09:52.920
is in Hebrew, which should be about him. With this expression, the text also makes a difference
09:52.920 --> 09:58.040
between the human female and the females of all the remaining animals, which are not always
09:58.040 --> 10:03.640
about their mates. The woman was so created that she should everywhere and always be about her
10:03.640 --> 10:09.720
husband. Thus imperial law also calls the life of married people an inseparable relationship.
10:10.280 --> 10:15.000
The female of the Brutes has a desire for the male only once in a whole year. But after she
10:15.000 --> 10:19.400
has become pregnant, she returns to her home and takes care of herself. For her young born another
10:19.400 --> 10:24.600
time, she has no concern, and she does not always live with her mate. But among men, the nature of
10:24.600 --> 10:30.440
marriage is different. There the wife so binds herself to a man that she will be about him and will
10:30.440 --> 10:39.080
live together with him as one flesh. And so there is this difference between man and the wild
10:39.080 --> 10:44.600
creatures. Now, perhaps the wild creatures were somewhat different before the fall, but
10:45.640 --> 10:53.240
his point about woman is very important to note. What does it say in Scripture about the wife?
10:53.960 --> 11:01.320
She is to obey her husband in everything as she would obey the Lord. That is an exceptionally
11:01.320 --> 11:07.720
high bar. And so woman is supposed to be about her husband, which makes perfect sense if you
11:07.720 --> 11:14.200
understand headship. Because the head is in charge. The body is supposed to follow the head. Your
11:14.200 --> 11:19.240
foot isn't supposed to tell you, no, I don't feel like going for a walk today. That's not how things
11:19.240 --> 11:27.000
are supposed to work. We were talking about this privately recently that until the last really
11:27.640 --> 11:36.600
two generations maybe, whenever a married woman was referenced by a third party, it was as Mrs.
11:36.600 --> 11:43.240
Robert Price. It was never by her first name. Sure, she didn't have her own distinct identity
11:43.240 --> 11:49.720
apart from her husband. And that's one of the things that feminism has sought in greater
11:49.720 --> 11:57.560
nessness for 100 years to cast down to ensure that every woman can be defined entirely apart from
11:57.560 --> 12:05.240
any man, whether it's her father or her husband or the absence of husband. The essence of feminism
12:05.800 --> 12:14.280
is ultimately that girls are first party members of everything and therefore must be granted
12:14.280 --> 12:20.440
all of the same privileges and ultimately the same authority that men have because we're all
12:20.440 --> 12:28.120
the same. And Christians hear those things that did not originate within Christianity. They hear
12:28.120 --> 12:34.520
them and they try to find in scripture where they can justify them. And so you end up people
12:34.600 --> 12:40.040
making an argument about the Amago Dei that, well, yes, women were made an image of God too. So
12:40.680 --> 12:45.000
of course they can do all these things. And that's why we're discussing this right up front is that
12:45.720 --> 12:52.440
the headship that predates the fall, the headship that is the very essence of the created order
12:53.080 --> 12:59.480
is not set of, it is, it's damaged by the fall. It is harmed in its unity by the fall,
12:59.480 --> 13:06.120
but is not set aside. And it's not set aside in redemption either when we are sanctified by Christ
13:06.120 --> 13:15.480
when we are a new creation as brothers in Christ in scripture refers to girls as brothers in
13:15.480 --> 13:20.600
Christ as well for the sake of inheritance, which is something we may not get to today. But if you
13:20.600 --> 13:27.080
read the passages where Paul deals with inheritance, he refers to everyone as a son of God, whether
13:27.080 --> 13:34.920
they're male or female, because inheritance had to belong to the man. And so these categories
13:34.920 --> 13:41.080
in these terms are not, they're not cultural things that we have just sort of read about recently
13:41.080 --> 13:46.840
online and decided that we need to fight over about the Bible. This is how scripture talks about
13:46.840 --> 13:53.640
what God has done in creation since the beginning. And these attacks coming from outside the church
13:53.720 --> 13:59.320
are fundamental attacks on creation itself. And I think as Lutherans, we're not good at
13:59.320 --> 14:05.400
defending attacks against creation because Lutheranism was defined when the attack was against
14:05.400 --> 14:10.920
sanctification and justification. And we were not fighting the Pope anymore, we're fighting,
14:11.560 --> 14:18.120
we're fighting people who deny the first three books of the Bible. And that that's part of this
14:18.360 --> 14:24.520
fight as well. You know, Satan doesn't sleep and he's realized that he can attack us
14:25.480 --> 14:31.160
at something that is tangential and yet still very much connected to the fight that we had
14:31.960 --> 14:39.960
centuries ago. And when it comes to the issue of the use of either the masculine or the feminine
14:39.960 --> 14:46.520
pronouns and such, there are those who will try to argue that, well, the masculine encompasses
14:46.520 --> 14:53.080
the feminine grammatically. And one, there's some irony there because these will be the same people
14:53.080 --> 14:58.600
who like to say she and he, they'll even go so far as to list both and list the feminine first,
14:58.600 --> 15:05.320
just completely throwing grammar aside. But they are correct that the masculine can encompass
15:05.320 --> 15:11.720
the feminine because as we've discussed previously in Latin, if there's a group of a thousand
15:11.720 --> 15:17.080
women and one man, you use the masculine because that's just how it works. And that's how it works
15:17.080 --> 15:25.960
in most languages typically. However, scripture does have places where it says he or she,
15:25.960 --> 15:32.200
effectively, because they man or woman. And so scripture is very clear when men and women are
15:32.200 --> 15:37.800
being addressed separately or when they are being addressed collectively. And so most of the
15:37.800 --> 15:43.000
scripture is in fact written with a male audience in mind. It is written toward men. And that is
15:43.000 --> 15:47.720
of course only right as we even recognize, of course, in the small catechism, as the head of the
15:47.720 --> 15:53.000
household should teach his household. Guess that's how it works. The head is supposed to teach.
15:55.640 --> 16:03.720
It's funny. You mentioned the the fact that we, we look at those language features as quirks,
16:04.520 --> 16:11.160
let's just the sexist, misogynistic past. When in reality, those ancient languages reflected
16:11.160 --> 16:16.440
headship, they reflected created order, they reflected a basic fundamental understanding of what
16:16.440 --> 16:23.480
we're trying to establish with this episode, which is that the presence of a man in a community,
16:23.480 --> 16:28.600
even if it's a one-to-many relationship with one man and lots of women, the man is in charge
16:28.680 --> 16:35.320
period by default. There cannot be an exception if you want to be godly and we're up against a lot
16:35.320 --> 16:40.360
of people, including a lot of pastors who just don't buy that. There are pastors who are very proud
16:40.360 --> 16:48.520
about the fact that they have girls teaching at synodical conferences, teachings theology to pastors.
16:48.520 --> 16:53.320
And I think it's the best thing ever. They're so delighted to be so progressive and so
16:53.320 --> 17:00.680
forward-looking in such celebrators of the quote-unquote gospel. When in reality, what they're doing is
17:00.680 --> 17:07.800
a abdicating their own offices on the spot and be defiling and mocking gods created order.
17:08.360 --> 17:14.280
And they're doing it in a very public way and they're doing it unrepentantly. And I pray that
17:14.280 --> 17:18.920
people will begin to take this issue more seriously because it's not, it's not a small
17:18.920 --> 17:25.880
linguistic matter and it's not about publishing books. It's about whether we submit to God
17:26.600 --> 17:33.160
and if we as all Christians submit to God, then all girls will submit to men in all cases.
17:33.160 --> 17:37.880
There's not a case where a girl cannot submit to a man. There's a question of order. There's
17:37.880 --> 17:43.320
a question of hierarchy and not every girl automatically submits to every man. But the factor
17:44.280 --> 17:50.040
remains, a man will always be in the lead and on top in the superior position. And as you
17:50.040 --> 17:57.400
mentioned, men are superior. And that's something that just sets the egalitarian mind on edge today
17:57.400 --> 18:04.440
because the idea that superior and inferior must necessarily reflect the value of those involved.
18:04.440 --> 18:10.360
And it's simply not the case. If you have a general and you have a colonel, the general is his
18:10.360 --> 18:15.800
superior. That's literally what it's called. It doesn't necessarily mean he's a better soldier.
18:15.800 --> 18:21.480
He might be. He should be. But it means that he is in the superior position and his authority
18:21.480 --> 18:27.800
must be obeyed because of his position. And what God has revealed in Scripture is that man
18:28.520 --> 18:34.920
is superior by virtue of the position that he holds in creation over all of it. And you mentioned
18:34.920 --> 18:41.640
earlier that man was over all of creation. That's why all of creation fell when when Jesus died
18:41.640 --> 18:49.880
in redeemed creation. He didn't just pay for our personal sins. He paid for the disobedient
18:49.880 --> 18:55.320
tree that he cursed that didn't produce fruit. And he paid for the wind that he had to rebuke
18:55.320 --> 19:00.040
because it was blowing and trying to kill them. All of creation fell. And while we wouldn't
19:00.360 --> 19:07.000
categorize the disobedience of creation as sin per se, it is the result of the fall. It's the
19:07.000 --> 19:14.680
result of everything that was under Adam's dominion having lost that proper order. And you will
19:14.680 --> 19:20.280
see, as you mentioned, there's there's a reflection of this thing where sometimes that order is
19:20.280 --> 19:25.720
still properly established where your dog should obey you and your dog shouldn't naturally obey
19:26.440 --> 19:31.640
you. But you must assert your superiority. And in dog training, one of the worst, really the
19:31.640 --> 19:37.080
worst mistake you can make is letting your dog run wild. If your dog is in charge, if your dog
19:37.080 --> 19:43.560
is calling the shots, he will think, well, there's a hierarchy and you're not on top. So I must be.
19:43.560 --> 19:48.760
And as soon as your dog realizes that he's going to run wild and you will never get him back under
19:48.760 --> 19:56.680
control. And that reality does not only apply to animals. It applies to people too, where there is
19:56.680 --> 20:02.600
an order and it is usurped. There's no way to get it properly restored without a lot of pain
20:02.600 --> 20:06.680
because everyone is like, well, hey, I was getting away with it. Why should I stop now?
20:07.960 --> 20:15.240
And we're at the tail end of a century or so of exactly that people just running entirely wild
20:15.320 --> 20:20.520
and doing as they please. And as you mentioned, egalitarianism, we have these priors, these
20:20.520 --> 20:26.120
presuppositions that we inherited from the Enlightenment and they go completely unexamined.
20:26.840 --> 20:33.160
And so this presupposition, this egalitarian prior, this belief that all men are created equal
20:34.040 --> 20:41.800
is just false. It is objectively, demonstrably false and we all know it because we have all been
20:41.800 --> 20:48.280
in a situation where someone was either significantly better or significantly worse at something
20:48.920 --> 20:55.800
than we were at the time. And so there are those who are significantly better at task A, those who
20:55.800 --> 21:02.520
are significantly better at task B. They're not equal with respect to those tasks at which they
21:02.520 --> 21:07.800
are better or worse. And the same thing is true of human attributes. There are those who are
21:07.800 --> 21:13.160
more intelligent. There are more those who are more attractive. There are all sorts of differences.
21:13.160 --> 21:21.560
Man to man is not equal. Man to woman is certainly not equal. And so these fundamentally flawed
21:21.560 --> 21:29.640
priors that we have imported from the secular world from objectively, aggressively, godless world
21:30.600 --> 21:36.280
are just corrupting the church because they go unexamined and even pastors have bought into them.
21:36.280 --> 21:42.280
And we see that like you mentioned when they have women stand up and speak at even worse teach,
21:42.280 --> 21:50.840
but just speaking at a pastor's conference. That is that enlightenment coming back to bite us because
21:50.840 --> 21:58.280
well, we are truly progressive and we are including women and you're not being inclusive. You're not
21:58.280 --> 22:02.600
being progressive and we can discuss whether progressive is even a good thing, but it's not is the
22:02.600 --> 22:09.560
short version. What you are doing is undermining what God built. You are undermining his order.
22:09.560 --> 22:17.240
You are being faithless if you are a pastor to your office. And actually I almost skipped over
22:17.240 --> 22:24.280
something that is worth mentioning with regard to Genesis 127 because we miss it in the English.
22:24.280 --> 22:29.400
And this is one of those cases where it actually surprisingly Hebrew helps a little bit
22:30.360 --> 22:38.280
because it's even more blatant what is being said in Genesis 127 in the Hebrew because we have
22:38.280 --> 22:44.840
of course Anthropone in the Greek, but what word is that translating from the Hebrew Adam?
22:45.720 --> 22:53.080
The word for man is Adam. So you have, he made the man Adam in his image.
22:53.080 --> 23:01.080
There is no missing what is being said there. Adam is the one who is made in the truest,
23:01.080 --> 23:07.080
strictest and highest sense in the image of God. And specifically Adam because all of us who
23:07.080 --> 23:13.720
followed after him are fallen until of course we get to the new Adam. Absolutely.
23:14.920 --> 23:20.360
You had mentioned or referred back to talking about the pastor's conferences and girls teaching
23:20.360 --> 23:25.080
pastors anything it's time to move on to defining what teaching is.
23:28.200 --> 23:34.200
First I just want to go over the fall because I want to point out something vitally important
23:34.200 --> 23:43.480
about women in the fall. And so of course in the fall God's cursing of creation. You have first
23:43.480 --> 23:48.600
the serpent who is essentially just dismissed. There's no discussion here because the serpent is
23:48.600 --> 23:55.880
just cursed because of course it's Satan. But to the woman he said, I will surely multiply your
23:55.880 --> 24:02.440
pain in childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband
24:03.160 --> 24:09.160
and he shall rule over you. But of course as has been mentioned a number of times by a number of
24:09.160 --> 24:14.840
commentators that your desire shall be for your husband is actually better rendered into the English
24:15.000 --> 24:20.920
as your desire shall be against your husband. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband.
24:20.920 --> 24:29.240
And so how is woman cursed? Woman is cursed in the same not the same exact way but in the same
24:29.240 --> 24:36.200
sense as man is cursed. Man is cursed with regard to the soil of course by the sweat of your face
24:36.200 --> 24:45.640
you shall eat bread because the curse falls on the core of the duties what that person is.
24:45.640 --> 24:50.920
And so man is cursed with regard to his work because work isn't supposed to be labor and toil.
24:50.920 --> 24:55.080
Work was something God made for us to do. It's one of the things we are supposed to do
24:55.800 --> 25:04.840
but it was not suffering before the fall. And so woman is cursed in two ways. Really one way to
25:04.840 --> 25:12.680
aspects of it. She is cursed with regard to womanhood, motherhood, and of course being a wife
25:13.800 --> 25:19.800
all tied together. She is cursed in regard to being a mother by having childbearing be painful.
25:19.800 --> 25:26.520
It is now a process that will come at a cost that was not the case before the fall. And so that
25:26.520 --> 25:33.160
strikes at the core of what woman is supposed to be which is wife and mother. And so the desire
25:34.120 --> 25:39.640
against your husband strikes at that other aspect, the central aspect of being a wife because
25:39.640 --> 25:49.080
first wife then mother. And so woman after the fall desires to rule. She desires to usurp the
25:49.080 --> 25:55.480
office that rightly belongs to her husband. She desires to become head. And that is the case
25:56.200 --> 26:01.800
even for women who are attempting to live as they ought and to behave as they ought.
26:02.920 --> 26:09.320
Those women will struggle against that sinful nature in themselves and will try to suppress
26:09.320 --> 26:14.440
the desire to usurp the office of their husbands, to actually submit to their husbands as they
26:14.440 --> 26:19.080
are commanded to do and as they would have been able to do without effort prior to the fall.
26:19.880 --> 26:26.120
But today of course, it requires effort on the part of both the woman and the man.
26:26.840 --> 26:33.240
And man's head of course has the higher duty. He has to keep the women in his life under control.
26:33.800 --> 26:37.480
That is part of what it means to be the head. That is part of what it means to be a man.
26:39.480 --> 26:43.000
As you mentioned there, I just want to reiterate this because it's so important.
26:43.400 --> 26:50.360
And man's work was cursed. His work is a ground. Woman's work is cursed. Her work is childbearing
26:50.360 --> 26:56.760
and obviously child rearing, raising children. Her work is in cursed in the field because she
26:56.760 --> 27:03.800
shouldn't properly be in the field. The man should be providing. Yes, there's that too.
27:05.720 --> 27:11.880
There's two types of working the field that man does. Woman is a field. Indeed.
27:11.880 --> 27:19.880
And to get back to what I said about feminism, it exists to upend all of this, all of it.
27:19.880 --> 27:28.840
First wave, second wave, there's no version of the pro-female machinations in the secular or
27:28.840 --> 27:35.960
religious well realm. They can be sanctified. You cannot take Scripture and take 19th and 20th
27:35.960 --> 27:42.680
century values and somehow legitimize them. And that's something we'll get into in a little bit.
27:42.680 --> 27:47.800
But there's the genealogy these ideas that we need to take seriously because people want to
27:47.800 --> 27:52.440
just grab whatever from the world, which is something that we were actually accused of tonight
27:52.440 --> 27:57.640
by one of the pastors on Twitter of just sort of borrowing cultural things and importing them
27:57.640 --> 28:02.920
into Christianity. Nothing to be further from the truth. All we're doing is pointing to Scripture.
28:02.920 --> 28:07.640
We're having to point to Scripture about the issue of girls teaching and girls writing books
28:07.640 --> 28:14.840
in doing this other work that rightly belongs to men exclusively because, as you said, even
28:14.840 --> 28:18.840
well-meeting, well-intentioned, otherwise faithful Christian men and women
28:20.120 --> 28:25.160
have been so secularized that they don't know they're being secular. They don't know that they're
28:25.160 --> 28:30.680
being worldly when they whitenite for girls who are doing things that they shouldn't be doing.
28:30.680 --> 28:34.440
And when a man speaks up and says, hey, that's not your job.
28:35.560 --> 28:41.160
There's a dog pile against the man who's pointing to Scripture in defense of a girl who is usurping
28:41.160 --> 28:44.040
her father, her son, her husband, and God himself.
28:47.800 --> 28:53.720
And it just comes back to we live at the tail end of generations of faithlessness. And that is a
28:53.720 --> 29:00.360
very hard thing to undo because you have these presuppositions and these priors and indoctrination.
29:00.360 --> 29:05.240
It's not even right to call it education over a course of decades, almost a century,
29:05.800 --> 29:10.840
generations where they have just wholesale adopted the secular culture.
29:12.120 --> 29:19.080
And that comes out everywhere. Just look at the, you could look at the timeline and see what happens.
29:19.080 --> 29:25.000
Well, we have the 19th Amendment. Now women are able to exercise political power, which of course
29:25.000 --> 29:30.040
is an exercise of headship. And we can discuss whether it's right for all men to exercise that
29:30.040 --> 29:35.400
even. Of course, it's not, but it is absolutely wrong for women to exercise it. And what does the
29:35.400 --> 29:40.680
church do in response? Well, now women can vote in our congregations. It follows the culture.
29:40.680 --> 29:47.960
It doesn't follow Scripture. It doesn't listen because we know what the church is. The church is a
29:47.960 --> 29:55.560
harlot. The church rebels against Christ in the same way Eve rebels against Adam in the same
29:55.560 --> 30:02.280
way woman rebels against man. And Christ has to bring the church back to himself. Man has to
30:02.280 --> 30:08.440
bring woman back to himself. It is that constant fight against that fallen nature until things are
30:08.440 --> 30:16.120
perfected in the new creation. Absolutely. And I, I think one of the problems that we struggle with
30:16.120 --> 30:23.240
is that so many pastors and others want to define these battles and terms of the quote unquote
30:23.240 --> 30:29.880
culture war as though there's somehow this political sphere that exists sort of in the in the
30:29.880 --> 30:36.680
periphery or in the distance. And people are importing political things into the church and into
30:36.680 --> 30:42.760
the Christian life. And it's sometimes it's causing harm and sometimes it's doing good. And what
30:42.760 --> 30:50.040
happens is when everyone has a tendency to think, well, I'm a Christian. And I'm not sorry for
30:50.280 --> 30:54.920
anything I'm doing right now. Therefore everything I'm doing right now and everything I believe
30:54.920 --> 31:00.920
must be Christian because I'm a Christian and I believe the Bible. So it's not possible for me to be
31:00.920 --> 31:07.960
disobeying God in an idolatrous and wicked way because I love God. And that is the exact
31:07.960 --> 31:12.360
opposite of what Christians should be thinking. And frankly, it's what we're accused. I've
31:12.360 --> 31:18.680
worked used of ignoring what Scripture says in doing what we want. And I personally find that
31:18.680 --> 31:25.000
laughable because if I were to invent a religion, it would absolutely not be Christianity. If I wanted
31:25.000 --> 31:29.480
to make up my own rules, there would be a lot more some things and a lot less of others. It would
31:29.480 --> 31:36.360
not look like what we do. This is not self-serving. When I open Scripture to any page, I see myself
31:36.360 --> 31:44.120
in my own personal sims condemned. And so it's no surprise to me when I examine my priors after
31:44.120 --> 31:50.280
decades of believing, for example, things like libertarianism were fine. I never examine those
31:50.280 --> 31:54.680
priors. They were sold to me by Christians. There were Christians who said, oh, yeah, this is great.
31:54.680 --> 31:59.800
This is fine. It's political. It's totally consistent with God's word. It's in this separate
31:59.800 --> 32:05.240
sphere. So to have fun, it's better than communism. Like, well, I don't like communism. So libertarian
32:05.240 --> 32:14.280
ism must be fine. And so when we escape from examining our priors rigorously as they relate
32:14.280 --> 32:19.480
to Scripture, you can justify anything. And the problem is what we're facing now is that
32:21.080 --> 32:27.640
proof texting is a terrible thing. And it's something that's easy to do and it's hard to get
32:27.640 --> 32:33.960
away from. But it's why I mentioned the genealogy of ideas earlier. And also we both talked about the
32:34.040 --> 32:42.040
timeline of these things. There's a timeline of what women have done in the church, what women
32:42.040 --> 32:48.600
have done in the home, what women have done in the workplace. In every century, where Christianity
32:48.600 --> 32:56.360
exists, you will see roles of a certain nature. Like I said, the outset, Mrs. Robert Price was
32:56.360 --> 33:04.680
married to Mr. Robert Price or Dr. Robert Price. Her identity was as her husband's wife,
33:04.680 --> 33:10.920
first and foremost, to him. He didn't call her Mrs. Robert Price because she belonged to him.
33:10.920 --> 33:15.400
He called her in a much more personal way, but strangers or those who were not intimately
33:15.400 --> 33:25.320
familiar as they were should not do that. And that was the norm until our grandparents basically.
33:25.320 --> 33:30.360
And what's happening everywhere now is this is a Lutheran problem. This is a societal problem.
33:31.000 --> 33:36.360
And it's the reason that the quote-unquote based and trad crowd constantly gets dragged by
33:36.360 --> 33:41.320
these pastors is that we're skipping right over all the crap that they've been selling us
33:41.320 --> 33:45.960
and their grandparents have been selling us. And we're looking back to prior centuries. And
33:46.840 --> 33:54.120
I think that Lutherans are particularly vulnerable to rejecting appeals to history because Rome did
33:54.120 --> 33:58.920
it to us when Luther popped up and is like, Hey, I'm reading the Bible and I'm not finding this
33:58.920 --> 34:04.200
stuff you're teaching. I think we're doing it wrong. Their argument was, well, we've been doing this
34:04.200 --> 34:09.400
for forever. The church has always believed this and said, you're wrong. And he said, but scripture
34:09.400 --> 34:14.440
says otherwise. And then his others have mentioned he and he and the other Lutherans basically invented
34:14.440 --> 34:20.600
a pitristics to demonstrate that no actually many in the church didn't believe what we believe
34:20.680 --> 34:26.680
in the 16th century and today. And it was in fact Rome who had departed from tradition.
34:27.480 --> 34:37.080
So tradition appeals are not per se invalid, but they are, they can either be good or bad.
34:37.080 --> 34:42.280
They always need to be examined in terms of their priors. And the priors in Latin and Greek and
34:42.280 --> 34:49.560
these other languages were that women had headship under men. The woman was the body that man was the
34:49.560 --> 34:55.480
head. And so that's reflected even in the most basically linguistic elements. It's reflected in
34:55.480 --> 35:02.280
job roles of which the woman existed in the home to be helped me to her husband in his household
35:02.280 --> 35:09.240
for his, his vocation, whatever it was. She was to act and service to that and everything that she
35:09.240 --> 35:20.920
did. A woman is given by the father to the husband to be married. And that is a transfer of title
35:20.920 --> 35:28.040
that no one wants to deal with today. But even the even the forms of the ceremony and the ways
35:28.040 --> 35:34.040
we describe things, at least until very recently, reflected the past that the fact that the headship
35:34.120 --> 35:39.400
went from the father to the husband. And that is godly and that is proper. And wherever you have
35:39.400 --> 35:45.880
girls acting in a way that is contrary to the dominion of either a husband or a father,
35:46.760 --> 35:51.400
whatever they do after that is inherently illegitimate because they're in rebellion. They're
35:51.400 --> 35:58.600
in open rebellion by virtue of their life. And that's also the norm today. And we see pastors
35:58.680 --> 36:03.800
worrying about, well, where do I send my girl to college? And we beg them, please, please don't.
36:03.800 --> 36:07.960
Don't send them to college. Your daughter will become a whore in college, even if she goes to
36:07.960 --> 36:12.680
a Lutheran college. And it was like, oh, no, well, the Christian colleges are fine. It's the
36:12.680 --> 36:18.120
it's those pagans like, no, it isn't. It is rebellion for her to leave your household without
36:18.120 --> 36:24.440
being sent to a man's house to be his husband. And because we've spent so many decades in
36:24.520 --> 36:30.200
now centuries in engaging in some of these activities that we think that since we're Christian,
36:30.200 --> 36:34.680
it must be fine. When in fact, we're Christian, we've been told better when the world hasn't.
36:34.680 --> 36:40.680
And not only we disobey God, but we are setting the worst example for others. And so when the
36:40.680 --> 36:46.840
based and trad crowd looks at what our own churches are teaching today, and they see it's inconsistent
36:46.840 --> 36:51.160
with scripture and with the history of the Christian church, they just look elsewhere because
36:51.160 --> 36:59.160
we don't look Christian to them in they're not wrong. It's absolutely true. And we have the
36:59.160 --> 37:07.720
serious problem where we actually have pagans who are being more faithful in some ways than Christians.
37:07.720 --> 37:13.880
Of course, they're wrong when it comes to the core theological questions. They're wrong,
37:13.880 --> 37:19.240
obviously, unjustification and soteriology. They don't understand those things. But when it comes
37:19.320 --> 37:24.920
to ontology, when it comes to creation, when it comes to the nature of God, there are a lot of
37:24.920 --> 37:32.840
pagans who understand it a lot better than most Christians, including many pastors. And that is not
37:34.440 --> 37:39.240
what we need to have happening. We cannot permit that because as you mentioned, what does that do?
37:39.240 --> 37:43.560
It drives all the young men out of the church. And if you drive all the young men out of the church,
37:43.560 --> 37:49.640
you have killed the church. The church cannot exist with just women. That's not a church.
37:50.200 --> 37:56.760
The church has to have men, not least of all because only men can be pastors, but also because men
37:56.760 --> 38:01.960
as head have to be the ones in charge, have to be the ones who are teaching. And some men
38:03.720 --> 38:08.760
are simply resorting to permitting women to do these things because those men are lazy. They are
38:08.840 --> 38:13.480
derelict in their duty. They don't want to have to do the things they are supposed to do. So they
38:13.480 --> 38:17.880
figured, well, women are good enough at it. Or even if you find a woman who is better at it,
38:17.880 --> 38:22.760
it is still the man's duty to do the task if it falls within the things assigned to man.
38:23.800 --> 38:27.240
But those men don't want to do it because it's so much easier if you just let women do it. And you
38:27.240 --> 38:32.120
don't have to fight with them then. Woman is naturally rebellious. You are going to have to
38:32.840 --> 38:37.560
train a woman. You're going to have to train a wife. You are going to have to deal with this constant
38:37.560 --> 38:42.920
desire she has because she is a fallen creature. And the curse that she has is rebellion
38:42.920 --> 38:47.880
against rightful authority. You have to deal with that. And most men, today at least don't want to
38:47.880 --> 38:50.920
have to deal with it. And you don't have to deal with it if you just let her do whatever she wants.
38:51.720 --> 38:57.240
But if you let her do whatever she wants, she will tear down everything. She will tear down society
38:57.240 --> 39:03.400
and the church. And we see that happening. And she will do that even when she is well-meaning
39:03.400 --> 39:08.200
because the very act itself is usurpation. It has nothing to do with good intentions.
39:08.200 --> 39:13.080
It has nothing to do with how well she knows the catechism or loves Jesus. If she's doing these
39:13.080 --> 39:19.000
things, she is acting in an evil way per se. And that must be stopped per se.
39:21.080 --> 39:26.760
And that is one thing that so many pastors and others do not understand or at least refuse to
39:26.760 --> 39:36.120
accept. You can do something that for all appearances is a great thing. It is a good thing.
39:37.000 --> 39:44.120
But because of who you are, because of the actor, because of the nature, the status of the actor,
39:44.120 --> 39:50.040
the act itself is evil. And pastors should understand that. As should every Christian,
39:50.760 --> 39:56.600
particularly Lutherans, because our doctrine on this is exactly correct, is perfectly sound.
39:57.160 --> 40:04.360
If you do good works and you are not a Christian, they are sin. If you go out and feed the homeless,
40:04.360 --> 40:09.960
you provide them with shelter, you clothe them, you visit people in prison, you do all of these
40:09.960 --> 40:17.320
wonderful things, but you aren't a Christian. They're filthy rags. It's sin. None of it is good.
40:17.320 --> 40:23.960
If you are a Christian, the sin that taints those things is removed, is not counted against you
40:23.960 --> 40:29.400
because you are in Christ, again, headship. And because you are in Christ, your good works are good.
40:30.280 --> 40:37.880
And so it is the status of the individual that matters. And so woman cannot exercise headship.
40:37.880 --> 40:43.160
No matter how well she may do it, you can have someone who is extremely good at the task
40:44.120 --> 40:50.200
and is still prohibited from engaging in that task. And we just look at it because we,
40:51.160 --> 40:55.800
at least in the US, we're largely coming at it with this capitalist mindset of what we should
40:55.800 --> 41:01.000
just pick the person who is best at the job and that person should do it. And that's just not how
41:01.000 --> 41:06.600
it works because there are certain people who should or should not do the job. And so, for instance,
41:06.600 --> 41:13.640
you should not have female soldiers. Is there possibly a woman who is a better soldier than a
41:13.640 --> 41:19.480
particular man? Yes, that could happen. Not often, most women are terrible soldiers compared to men,
41:19.480 --> 41:26.120
but you could conceivably find one who is better. But it would still be sin for her to be a soldier,
41:26.120 --> 41:33.000
it would still be sin to permit it because that is a task that is restricted to men. Women should not
41:33.000 --> 41:39.720
be engaged in it. And so we have to understand ontology, the nature of things. And of course, duty.
41:41.880 --> 41:46.920
Absolutely. So let's talk about teaching. That's why we're here today.
41:47.320 --> 41:59.720
Teaching gets to the heart of the Lutheran conception of vocation. Lutherans have this correct
42:00.360 --> 42:09.160
doctrine of vocation. There is the same as vocal. It means a calling. In this case, a calling from
42:09.160 --> 42:16.840
God. It means that God both created you and then called you to a purpose. So there are vocations
42:16.840 --> 42:22.760
like father and husband of being a pastor as a vocation, being a mother as a vocation.
42:23.960 --> 42:31.480
When God calls you into a vocation, there are certain duties that go along with it. And you are
42:31.480 --> 42:38.280
to fulfill those duties, not because it's the job, but because it is your duty to God. You have been
42:38.280 --> 42:45.400
entrusted with the care of whatever that duty is and is obedience to God for a man or a woman
42:45.400 --> 42:55.240
to faithfully execute those duties in his or her vocation. So as we mentioned in the part about
42:55.240 --> 43:03.720
Genesis, there are vocations that rightly, strictly can only belong to men. That which is work,
43:03.720 --> 43:13.080
that which is outside the household, you will find that those both inscripture and elsewhere
43:13.960 --> 43:20.600
rightly belong to men and a girl will not be called to them by God. She may be thrust into them
43:20.600 --> 43:27.320
by evil circumstance or she may be usurping interactions. But if she ends up wearing one of
43:27.560 --> 43:34.280
those hats, it's because she and others have disobeyed God. And so the question that arose on
43:34.280 --> 43:41.400
Twitter in the last few weeks and elsewhere is, is it teaching to write a book? Is it teaching
43:41.400 --> 43:47.560
for a girl to write a book? Is it pastoral teaching for a girl to write a theological book?
43:48.280 --> 43:55.800
So the first thing we need to talk about is whether teaching is inherently done with authority.
43:56.520 --> 44:01.640
And this is where the Lutheran doctrine of vocation completely falls apart. I'm going to say
44:01.640 --> 44:04.760
some things here. They'll probably make a lot of Lutherans very angry because they'll be
44:04.760 --> 44:10.680
uncomfortable with the idea that maybe the way we talk about things can lead to error. But that's
44:10.680 --> 44:15.960
exactly what's out going on here. And we've seen a left and right from especially pastors
44:16.680 --> 44:24.120
discussing the intersection of the passage in 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Corinthians 14 regarding
44:24.120 --> 44:32.920
the proper role of women in the church. I have the first Timothy 2 section pulled up your
44:32.920 --> 44:39.800
space. We'll read it so at least we remind people of what it says. Hopefully most of our audience
44:39.800 --> 44:45.160
will be familiar with it, but nevertheless, I desire then that in every place the men should
44:45.160 --> 44:50.440
pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling. Likewise also that women should adorn
44:50.440 --> 44:55.960
themselves in respectable apparel with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and
44:55.960 --> 45:01.800
gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness with good
45:01.800 --> 45:08.600
works. That a woman learn quietly in all submissiveness, I do not permit a woman to teach or to
45:08.600 --> 45:15.480
exercise authority over a man, rather she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve,
45:15.480 --> 45:21.000
and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor, yet she will be
45:21.000 --> 45:28.760
saved through childbearing if they continue in faith. Now there's just, I was going to point out
45:28.760 --> 45:33.960
there are a lot of things in there that need to be addressed because there are so many places
45:33.960 --> 45:39.880
that modern Christians and unfortunately many pastors go off the rails. One in particular,
45:39.880 --> 45:46.600
I'll address before we move on to the next part of this, nowhere in there does it say this is
45:46.600 --> 45:53.480
restricted to the church. Nothing in there says it's restricted to the church. In fact, what does it
45:53.480 --> 45:59.960
say? I desire then that in every place, it doesn't say in every church, just in the church,
45:59.960 --> 46:05.960
in houses of worship, in every Christian home. No, it says every place. These are instructions
46:06.040 --> 46:12.680
for life and the appeal is to the order of creation to the nature of men and women. It is not
46:13.480 --> 46:20.360
simply a set of rules for how we conduct things in the church. This is a statement about the reality
46:21.080 --> 46:27.000
of the world in which we live, the reality of man and woman, and just how things should be
46:27.000 --> 46:33.480
conducted, if we are to be Christians in our lives and not just for an hour on Sunday.
46:34.040 --> 46:42.040
Absolutely. If you were to look at that list of things that God commands through
46:42.680 --> 46:49.320
Paul's writing and limit it to one hour during the divine service on Sunday, you would create
46:49.320 --> 46:54.360
hell on earth. If we're going to be given a world where all these things are permissible for
46:54.360 --> 47:01.320
everyone except when they're in church, you have destroyed civilization. And frankly, we're not
47:01.320 --> 47:05.720
far from it when you go through that list of things. As you said, they're all happening.
47:05.720 --> 47:09.480
They're happening outside of church. And then, of course, they're being brought into church
47:09.480 --> 47:16.280
because when Christians fail to listen to God, when Christians are ashamed of what God has said,
47:16.280 --> 47:22.840
and they backpedal, and they circumscribe, and they narrow down God's law until they're so
47:22.840 --> 47:30.040
little of it left that pretty much anyone can buy into it. Satan is one. And that is what we are
47:30.040 --> 47:37.400
battling today. And the reason that I said that the Lutheran doctrine of vocation falls apart.
47:37.400 --> 47:43.560
It's for that very reason. Is it because Timothy is a pastoral epistle and around that,
47:44.360 --> 47:50.200
Paul is describing things within the church. Christians read that and say, well, this can only
47:50.200 --> 47:55.320
apply to the church because I don't want to deal with the implications of it not applying to the
47:55.320 --> 48:02.360
church. If it applies to the grocery store, if it applies to the school, if it applies to
48:02.360 --> 48:07.480
the government, then we're in trouble. I'm in trouble because I am participating in sin.
48:07.480 --> 48:12.920
And I know that I am free from sin. That's kind of where we are. And it's simply false.
48:14.520 --> 48:21.480
It's interesting to note that grammatically, the Holy Spirit says,
48:21.480 --> 48:27.560
little women learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not a woman permit a woman to teach or
48:27.560 --> 48:33.880
to exercise authority. So teaching is separate from exercising authority because there are
48:33.880 --> 48:40.120
kinds of exercising authority that are not teaching. But it is also connected in the same sense
48:40.120 --> 48:45.880
because teaching is a form of the exercise of authority. And that's been one of the roots of
48:46.120 --> 48:52.360
the argument online that I want to address now. When a Lutheran thinks about authority,
48:53.080 --> 48:58.520
we think about it in terms of vocation. So we think father, we think husband, we think teacher
48:58.520 --> 49:06.760
in a classroom or a pastor over his flock or a prince over his dominion. And those are all
49:06.760 --> 49:14.440
vocations where God has called a particular person, a particular man to a place has given him a
49:14.440 --> 49:22.360
domain, has given him people under his care. And rebellion against that authority is sin
49:22.360 --> 49:27.720
all by itself. If you disobey your father and he is not doing something is
49:28.680 --> 49:35.800
if assuming that he is not directly contributing God, your disobedience to your father is disobedience
49:35.800 --> 49:42.840
to God because of his authority as your father. So when Lutheran think about vocation, they think
49:42.920 --> 49:50.520
that will all authority stems from and flows from vocation. And that's simply not true because
49:50.520 --> 49:55.720
there are two kinds of authority. And this is something that we all understand naturally. And I'll
49:55.720 --> 50:02.840
give you the example of this very podcast is Corey and I are speaking to you. We are teaching.
50:02.840 --> 50:09.720
We are exercising authority. How so? Because I have the microphone and you have the speakers.
50:10.360 --> 50:17.960
I am actively speaking and you are passively listening. I am giving and you are receiving.
50:17.960 --> 50:24.920
That is inherently authority per se just by virtually virtue of the structure of the thing.
50:25.480 --> 50:32.600
Now that is not to suggest that if you disagree with me, you're you're sinning, you're transgressing
50:32.600 --> 50:39.320
against God because this is the type of authority where although it is inherent in the act,
50:39.320 --> 50:44.120
it does not compel submission except through the veracity of its claims.
50:44.840 --> 50:52.120
So if I sit here and talk and I cite scripture and you agree with what I say about scripture,
50:52.760 --> 50:59.240
you're doing that because the Holy Spirit acting in you hears the voice of God in the way I'm
50:59.240 --> 51:05.560
framing something, not that I'm a prophet, not that I'm speaking as God, but that I'm saying what
51:05.560 --> 51:12.360
God says in God within you hears and says, yes, I believe that. That's between you and God. If you
51:12.360 --> 51:17.240
agree with that, you're not submitting to me, you're submitting to God. And if you disagree with it,
51:18.040 --> 51:22.840
if I'm wrong, then you're just disagreeing with me. If I'm right, you're disagreeing with me and
51:22.840 --> 51:29.160
God, but your only sin would be against God because the authority of my speech does not extend to
51:29.160 --> 51:36.280
condemnation of someone who doesn't like it. There are lots of examples of this in the world.
51:36.280 --> 51:45.240
If you go to a lecture, whoever the lecture is is standing. He's typically standing behind a podium.
51:45.240 --> 51:51.880
It's raised. You are seated. You're lower than him. Every physical element of the process of
51:51.880 --> 51:59.080
teaching reinforces the authority of the speaker and the submission of the listener.
51:59.960 --> 52:04.520
Now, in the case of teaching, there are also actually two different kinds of teaching. I had
52:04.520 --> 52:13.240
mentioned that teacher is a vocation. It is a vocation in the realm where a student goes to a classroom,
52:13.240 --> 52:20.600
the teacher takes attendance. In that case, the student has been assigned to that teacher by the
52:20.600 --> 52:26.040
school system by the parents, whatever. There is a one-to-many relationship of the teacher to the
52:26.040 --> 52:33.640
students, but there is a relationship of authority and accountability because the teacher has a
52:33.640 --> 52:39.240
responsibility for the performance of the students. And that is unlike a lecture, that is unlike a
52:39.240 --> 52:45.880
podcast, and that is unlike a book where there is also a one-to-many relationship. But the many
52:45.960 --> 52:54.360
are typically anonymous. There is no accountability from the one to God to make sure that the many
52:55.160 --> 53:01.080
cue to whatever has been said. So the authority is very limited, but nevertheless it is authority
53:01.080 --> 53:10.360
for a man to stand up and pronounce something is done as an act of authority.
53:10.360 --> 53:14.360
Now, maybe usurpation, depending on vocation. There may be cases where, you know,
53:14.360 --> 53:20.120
for example, in the middle of a church service where the pastor is speaking, he's preaching.
53:20.120 --> 53:24.200
If some man stands up in the middle of the service and starts arguing with him,
53:25.160 --> 53:33.400
he's the man is acting with authority, but it's evil. It's a bad type of usurpation
53:33.400 --> 53:39.800
because you're usurping that which the pastor is rightly doing, even if the pastor is wrong.
53:40.600 --> 53:45.240
They're very limited circumstances where it would ever be permissible to do that. I wouldn't say
53:45.240 --> 53:49.400
this should never be done, but there should be so struck, stored, so extraordinary that you should
53:49.400 --> 53:54.600
probably never hear about it. One would hope. Basically, they'd have to be outright heresy.
53:55.240 --> 54:02.120
Yeah, and that does occur, but God willing, it won't happen in our church as at least for a while.
54:02.760 --> 54:08.360
So the reason for pointing out that there are two different kinds of authority and teaching
54:08.360 --> 54:14.440
is to get to the heart of what has been discussed online about girls writing books and girls
54:14.440 --> 54:19.800
writing theology books, because that's exactly what's happening in the Missouri Senate today,
54:19.800 --> 54:26.200
and has been going on for quite some time. Concordia Posh publishing now, CPH is an arm of the
54:26.200 --> 54:33.240
Missouri Senate. It is a holy captive business that belongs to the corporation of the LCMS.
54:33.240 --> 54:39.320
It's a business entity, and this is a game that gets played whenever these questions come up.
54:40.040 --> 54:45.560
On one hand, everything that CPH publishes must go through doctrinal review,
54:46.520 --> 54:52.440
because CPH is the church for the purposes of publishing things that should be sound doctrine.
54:53.880 --> 55:01.400
But when men stand up and say, hey, but we have girls teaching, suddenly the church says,
55:01.400 --> 55:06.760
it's just a publishing, it's like print on demand. They can say what they say, and it's not the
55:06.760 --> 55:13.880
church saying it, and you just need to settle down and quit hating women, which is not what anyone
55:13.880 --> 55:21.160
has said at any point. What has been said is that, again, there are several tiers of this question,
55:21.960 --> 55:29.240
is the publishing house that belongs to a church teaching? Now, the Missouri Senate
55:29.240 --> 55:33.160
played lots of games I don't even want to get into, because I just find them disgusting. But
55:33.160 --> 55:37.640
the answer is yes or no, depending on how you want to interpret it, it's all whistling.
55:38.280 --> 55:43.800
The more basic question, which is what we want to talk about, is whether publishing a book
55:43.800 --> 55:50.680
period is teaching. And again, first Timothy says that teaching is exercising of authority.
55:51.720 --> 55:57.720
And that is the point that I'm trying to make. And when the pastor say, well, no, it can't be
55:58.680 --> 56:02.920
not all teaching can be with authority because it doesn't touch on the pastoral office.
56:02.920 --> 56:07.720
The point that we're trying to make is it doesn't matter because that section of first Timothy
56:07.720 --> 56:15.000
is not about the pastoral office. It is not about what pastors do in the pulpit versus what the
56:15.000 --> 56:22.120
lady are permitted to do, whether male or female. The question is much more fundamental. And this is
56:22.120 --> 56:26.520
where Lutherans have gotten, we just become retarded. We don't understand these ontological
56:26.600 --> 56:33.160
questions of what is the root of the authority to do this. And thank God for telling us right in
56:33.160 --> 56:42.600
the text that the order of creation is the revealed nature of the difference. Eve was deceived.
56:43.160 --> 56:47.400
Now that's that's profound. If you're talking about girls publishing theological books,
56:47.400 --> 56:52.280
God said it wasn't Adam who was tricked by Satan. It was the girl who was tricked by Satan.
56:52.360 --> 56:57.320
And that is the reason why girls can't teach. And for pastors to stand up and say, well,
56:57.320 --> 57:01.800
that just means in church, or that just means, you know, maybe not theological books or certain
57:01.800 --> 57:06.680
kinds of theological books, but maybe not the really hardcore ones. It's nonsense. If a girl
57:06.680 --> 57:13.080
is teaching, and she is the one who was deceived by Satan, she is usurping the created order
57:13.080 --> 57:18.760
by opening her mouth. And this is where the egalitarian thing really just causes everyone to have
57:18.760 --> 57:26.920
a meltdown. The bottom line is very simple. If you are a girl, your will should be expressed
57:26.920 --> 57:32.120
through your father or through your husband. You should not have a public will expressed in any
57:32.120 --> 57:37.080
other way. That is headship. His query talked about, you know, the foot doesn't decide where to go.
57:37.080 --> 57:43.160
The foot doesn't talk. The mouth is on the head. The head speaks. And that's the reason that
57:43.160 --> 57:47.960
it's Mrs. Robert Price and not whatever her name was. I don't even have to know her name. I know
57:47.960 --> 57:55.640
she was Mrs. Robert Price. She was his wife. There's not a permissible circumstance under which
57:55.640 --> 58:03.640
a woman has her views of expressed in public. And that was the root of the 19th amendment. It's
58:03.640 --> 58:08.520
the root of all of this. It's the root of the feminist attack on the created order for the last
58:08.520 --> 58:14.200
hundred and however many years is to say, you know what? Girls, you know, it's girl power. Girls
58:14.280 --> 58:18.760
are going to express themselves. They're going to make their mark. They're going to do those things
58:18.760 --> 58:25.080
which they are capable of doing. And that's another part of the argument is that as Cory mentioned,
58:25.080 --> 58:30.200
you know, you said that it's not about whether or not they are good at it. And honestly, I think one
58:30.200 --> 58:36.280
of the reasons that a lot of these pastors are so willing to embrace all these girls doing
58:36.280 --> 58:41.400
stuff in their churches is that inside they know that they should never have been ordained.
58:41.400 --> 58:45.560
I think they know that they're not competent. And when they see the teaching abilities of some
58:45.560 --> 58:53.560
of the girls in their under their care, under their superior rule, they're ashamed because they
58:53.560 --> 58:59.000
can't do as well as the girls under them. And rather than trying to be by their pastors or maybe
58:59.000 --> 59:03.560
stepping down and saying, you know what? I'm not fit for this office. Instead, they choose to you
59:03.560 --> 59:08.680
serve God's order by elevating girls to do the job that God has tasked them with doing.
59:09.640 --> 59:16.040
There's that. And there is also they know that if they promote women, or at least they believe
59:16.040 --> 59:21.640
that if they promote women in today's society, it's true, that that will insulate them from criticism
59:21.640 --> 59:26.440
from others because look at how progressive I'm being. And I am including women. And I'm doing all
59:26.440 --> 59:32.040
these things that the culture loves which that should set off alarm bells for any Christian. But
59:32.040 --> 59:38.520
they do that because then they're insulated from being criticized by other men. And if they
59:38.520 --> 59:44.360
were instead selecting competent men in their congregations, which unless they've absolutely failed
59:44.360 --> 59:48.600
as a pastor, they should have those in their churches because they don't necessarily want to
59:48.600 --> 59:55.240
select the men because that's competition, which is not how a man would actually see it. Yes,
59:55.240 --> 59:59.880
competition is healthy and it's a good thing. But ultimately, I'm not trying to destroy you
59:59.880 --> 01:00:04.920
if I'm teaching and I'm better at teaching a particular subject. It's simply a recognition that
01:00:04.920 --> 01:00:09.320
God has given me certain abilities. God has given you certain abilities and they should be used
01:00:09.320 --> 01:00:20.040
to serve the church. And we don't, but modern Christians try to weasel around everything in
01:00:20.040 --> 01:00:26.760
scripture. Lutherans do this with some things. Thankfully, we do not do it when it comes to
01:00:26.760 --> 01:00:33.160
justification, when it comes to sanctification, when it comes to these core issues that we got
01:00:33.160 --> 01:00:40.520
absolutely right 500 years ago. And we have held correctly for 500 years, which thanks be to God
01:00:40.520 --> 01:00:47.800
that we have those. But that doesn't excuse us when it comes to all these other issues that
01:00:47.800 --> 01:00:53.160
if we don't get them wrong, we certainly don't get them right. And the CTCR and those who have
01:00:53.160 --> 01:00:59.320
crafted some of the documents made in the 60s definitely got them wrong. And so we have the
01:00:59.320 --> 01:01:05.880
injunctions in 1 Timothy that relate to creation that relate to things. How they are supposed to be
01:01:05.880 --> 01:01:12.280
in a Christian society. What Christians should attempt to create wherever they live? Well, we also
01:01:12.280 --> 01:01:19.880
have 1 Corinthians, which addresses the church explicitly. So we have society generally and the
01:01:19.880 --> 01:01:25.960
church explicitly. Well, what is 1 Corinthians say to women? As in all the churches of the saints,
01:01:25.960 --> 01:01:31.080
the women should keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be
01:01:31.080 --> 01:01:37.160
in submission as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their
01:01:37.160 --> 01:01:44.760
husbands at home, for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. This could not possibly
01:01:44.760 --> 01:01:52.280
be more clear. It says that women are to be silent in the churches. It does not say that women are
01:01:52.360 --> 01:01:59.320
supposed to speak only if the pastor permits it or the pastor wants to have women lecturers or
01:01:59.320 --> 01:02:05.640
anything like that. No, women are to be silent in the church. Women should not be heard in the church.
01:02:06.280 --> 01:02:12.440
And yes, that applies to the Bible study as well as to the service. As much as we'd like to think
01:02:12.440 --> 01:02:17.000
that, oh, well, it's just no, don't weasel out of it by saying it's just the service. Where does it
01:02:17.000 --> 01:02:22.760
say just during the liturgy? Where does it say just during the service of the sacrament? Where does
01:02:22.760 --> 01:02:27.240
it say just during the service of the word? It doesn't say that anywhere because it says women are to
01:02:27.240 --> 01:02:33.800
be silent in the churches. Period. No exceptions. And now, of course, you'll have those who try to wiggle
01:02:33.800 --> 01:02:41.160
out of it by saying, well, a woman's not speaking if she writes a book. Yes, she is. If I write something
01:02:41.160 --> 01:02:47.160
and someone else reads it, I'm speaking in his head. That's what that is. So if I write a book
01:02:47.160 --> 01:02:54.360
and it is then used by a pastor to teach his sheep, I am teaching his sheep. I am exercising
01:02:54.360 --> 01:02:59.880
authority. And so if a woman writes a book and the pastor uses that in church, that woman is
01:02:59.880 --> 01:03:06.360
exercising authority over those sheep and that pastor is facilitating it. So he is now participating
01:03:06.440 --> 01:03:12.120
in her sin and making it worse because of his office and what he should be doing. And he,
01:03:12.120 --> 01:03:17.560
as a rightful head, is going to be held to a higher standard. And pastors should tremble at the
01:03:17.560 --> 01:03:22.040
fact that yes, you have opted for the stricter judgment. Maybe worry about that a little more.
01:03:24.120 --> 01:03:30.440
And that's a vital point is that this podcast is us speaking with authority. We may be completely
01:03:30.440 --> 01:03:35.080
wrong. That doesn't mean we're not speaking authority authoritatively. It means that we're
01:03:35.080 --> 01:03:38.440
sinning if we're in error because we're saying things that are lies.
01:03:39.960 --> 01:03:45.160
The example you gave of these pastors who say that they're excited to take these books published
01:03:45.160 --> 01:03:52.920
by girls and teach them in their congregations takes the other kind of authority and directly
01:03:52.920 --> 01:03:59.160
applies it because the crucial difference between you and I and a pastor is that we don't have a
01:03:59.160 --> 01:04:05.800
caller. When we speak, we do not bind consciences. And we see this every day whenever we've said
01:04:05.800 --> 01:04:11.480
anything online for years, we get dog piled by people who'd never give us the best construction.
01:04:11.480 --> 01:04:15.080
We're told that we're not brothers in Christ. We're told that we're evil. We're told
01:04:15.080 --> 01:04:23.720
every malign thing possible has been said about us directly for citing scripture. And frankly,
01:04:23.800 --> 01:04:31.160
that's okay. The point is that when I speak, when you speak, we don't bind anyone's conscience
01:04:31.160 --> 01:04:37.160
unless the Holy Spirit binds their conscience because although speaking has authority inherent
01:04:37.160 --> 01:04:43.640
to itself, that ends the moment that the person is done listening or reading because they go
01:04:43.640 --> 01:04:48.920
and process it and they decide, am I going to believe this or not? That's not the case when a pastor
01:04:49.400 --> 01:04:55.160
speaks. And that's not the case when a pastor sanctifies teaching that's usurping the order of
01:04:55.160 --> 01:05:02.040
creation by a girl doing it. When he does it, a pastor binds consciences. Anything a pastor says,
01:05:02.040 --> 01:05:07.400
where these wearing his collar or not says, this is what God says. It's implicit. And a lot of these
01:05:07.400 --> 01:05:13.240
guys are afraid of that because they know that the strict for judgment awaits. And so they just
01:05:13.240 --> 01:05:17.000
think, well, either, you know, it's on Twitter. So it's not really a big deal or I'm not going to
01:05:17.000 --> 01:05:21.000
say what I think because I don't want to get in trouble or cause a cause of kerfuffle.
01:05:22.360 --> 01:05:29.240
When these pastors sanctify usurpation of God's order, they are sinning. They're sinning against
01:05:29.240 --> 01:05:34.600
their flock. They're sinning against God. They're acting an idolatrous way and an evil way.
01:05:36.520 --> 01:05:40.520
I think as we're getting to the end of their time in this first episode, I want to point out that
01:05:41.320 --> 01:05:48.200
part of the reason that we chose the name stone choir is from the verse where Jesus describes
01:05:48.200 --> 01:05:53.960
how the very stones would cry out when the Pharisees implored him to silence his followers.
01:05:54.440 --> 01:06:00.120
The Pharisees were tired of Jesus followers praising him and giving adoration to his word.
01:06:00.600 --> 01:06:05.000
And Jesus understanding the vocation of a follower better than any man could
01:06:05.640 --> 01:06:12.440
under also understands creation itself. And Jesus told the Pharisees, if I tell my people to stop
01:06:12.440 --> 01:06:18.840
confessing me and to stop praising me, it will be creation itself. It will be a stone whose vocation
01:06:18.840 --> 01:06:24.520
is to just sit there silently and be a stone and do nothing. They would literally cry out. And
01:06:24.520 --> 01:06:29.800
that wasn't figurative. That wasn't a metaphor. Any more than bayonet Balum's donkey speaking to warn
01:06:29.800 --> 01:06:36.840
him was true. These stones would literally cry out if every man went silent. So the reason
01:06:36.840 --> 01:06:43.800
that we chose that name for this podcast is that you and I are layman. We have no vocation to speak
01:06:43.800 --> 01:06:51.480
apart from that vocation of Christian of Christian man of Christian man who has been given the aptitude
01:06:51.480 --> 01:06:57.800
and the discernment to read these things and to understand them and to explain them in a way
01:06:57.800 --> 01:07:04.840
that is accessible to any many people. And for all the pastors who accuse us of being cowards
01:07:04.840 --> 01:07:10.760
and being trolls and ogres and all sorts of other nonsense, the bottom line is this what we are
01:07:10.760 --> 01:07:16.440
saying is what scripture is saying. And I will tell Hans and all the other guys that the reason
01:07:16.440 --> 01:07:21.640
that that conversation started a few weeks ago was downstream from conversations that you and I
01:07:22.600 --> 01:07:28.360
have had. And our churches are full filled with men who agree with you and agree with me, Corey.
01:07:28.360 --> 01:07:35.320
And we're not usurping. In our own congregations, we don't pick fights. We don't cause trouble.
01:07:35.320 --> 01:07:41.880
What we do is we step forward. So in all these cases where we see girls usurping, whether they
01:07:41.880 --> 01:07:47.560
deliberately usurper not, when they're acting is ushers and lectures and all these other things,
01:07:48.200 --> 01:07:54.520
the men who agree with us, rather than arguing with those girls, they're stepping forward in the
01:07:54.520 --> 01:08:00.520
church. We are doing those things that men have advocated. And that's fundamentally the root of
01:08:00.520 --> 01:08:08.360
all of this. From start to finish, the only reason that a girl would ever write a book or try to
01:08:08.360 --> 01:08:15.320
be an elder or a lector or any of the other things that goes on is if a man has failed to do so.
01:08:15.880 --> 01:08:22.520
And by our publishing house, publishing all these books by girls, what the LCMS is saying is that
01:08:22.520 --> 01:08:27.320
there are no pastors to say these things. There are no pastors to teach. We need girls to teach
01:08:27.320 --> 01:08:33.720
our theology now. We need girls to teach anything because there are no men to do it. And that's
01:08:33.720 --> 01:08:40.520
simply not the case. This got his blessed Lutheranism and his blessed Christianity outside Lutheranism
01:08:40.600 --> 01:08:46.600
with faithful Christians who hear his word and obey it, even in the face of the most vicious and
01:08:46.600 --> 01:08:53.720
murderous slander. And we are speaking out, we start of this podcast and we will continue to speak
01:08:53.720 --> 01:08:58.840
as long as pastors run faithful, as long as we're the only voices who are saying these things to
01:08:58.840 --> 01:09:04.520
need to be said, we will be here saying them. It was hilarious that earlier this evening, Hans
01:09:05.400 --> 01:09:10.040
posted that thread where he basically said, yeah, for 50 years, all these problems have been going
01:09:10.040 --> 01:09:14.760
on in the church and no one said anything until these anonymous cowards started this fight.
01:09:14.760 --> 01:09:21.080
But they have a good point. Well, that's exactly why a lot of guys are anonymous. And that's why
01:09:21.080 --> 01:09:26.920
Cory and I are never going to pursue the pastoral office despite the fact that virtually every pastor,
01:09:26.920 --> 01:09:32.200
both of us have ever talked to his in our first conversation with them. I haven't pastors
01:09:32.280 --> 01:09:37.720
interrupt me after 15 minutes saying you should go to seminary. That's the kind of men that we are
01:09:37.720 --> 01:09:43.160
in person. And all these guys that think that we're stupid or we're evil or we're up to no good,
01:09:43.880 --> 01:09:47.400
not only are they being uncharitable in slanders, but they're also just wrong.
01:09:48.760 --> 01:09:54.920
We will remain layman because layman do not have a vocation to a congregation.
01:09:55.800 --> 01:10:00.680
I think one of the greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses of the Missouri Synod
01:10:00.760 --> 01:10:06.040
is our congregational polity means that every pastor can just be head down with his own sheep
01:10:06.040 --> 01:10:11.160
and pretending these other things are not happening. But that's not the way the world works,
01:10:11.160 --> 01:10:15.880
especially when you have the internet and you have publishing houses and you have catalogs
01:10:15.880 --> 01:10:21.960
where error in any one place will rapidly propagate everywhere. And for every pastor that wants
01:10:21.960 --> 01:10:27.160
to pretend this stuff is not happening, his congregation is full of people who are lapping it up
01:10:27.160 --> 01:10:33.400
167 hours a week. And that one hour a week that he's preaching faithfully isn't going to cut it
01:10:33.400 --> 01:10:39.320
when Satan is catacizing them for the other 167 hours. So as much as we can do anything,
01:10:39.320 --> 01:10:44.360
we are going to speak faithfully and may God help us to reach those who are willing to listen.
01:10:47.640 --> 01:10:55.080
I want to add a little bit of emphasis to the point that we both made about what is actually
01:10:55.080 --> 01:11:01.000
happening when a pastor or another teacher in the church uses materials written by a woman.
01:11:02.440 --> 01:11:09.560
And of course, that is the pastor permitting that woman to exercise authority through him.
01:11:11.240 --> 01:11:17.160
But it's worse than that. And the reason it's worse than that is because what is a pastor
01:11:17.160 --> 01:11:24.200
actually doing? What is a pastor supposed to be doing? A pastor speaks in the stead of Christ.
01:11:24.840 --> 01:11:31.400
When a pastor is up there speaking, he is speaking with the voice of God. At the very least,
01:11:31.400 --> 01:11:35.960
he is supposed to be speaking with the voice of God. So if a pastor is up there teaching
01:11:36.600 --> 01:11:44.200
and he is using materials produced by a girl, he is saying that a girl can speak with the voice
01:11:44.200 --> 01:11:53.320
of God. And that is simply not true. Men speak for God. God chose men to speak for him. God made
01:11:53.320 --> 01:12:00.440
men to speak for him. He did not make girls to do that. Yes, in public, of course. A woman can
01:12:00.440 --> 01:12:06.680
teach her children at home. Absolutely. She should do that. That is one of her duties. We recognize
01:12:06.680 --> 01:12:13.720
that because that is her sphere. And a mother can rightly exercise a sort of headship over her
01:12:13.720 --> 01:12:20.360
children just as children can exercise a sort of headship over their pets. There are different
01:12:20.360 --> 01:12:26.040
levels to the hierarchy. But when it comes to speaking in public, a woman cannot speak with
01:12:26.040 --> 01:12:30.920
the voice of God in public in that way. That is something that is restricted to men. And so the
01:12:30.920 --> 01:12:37.480
pastor is misrepresenting God ultimately is what he is doing. And that is a grievous sin. And
01:12:37.480 --> 01:12:43.480
that should absolutely terrify these men when they stand up and defend the indefensible.
01:12:44.440 --> 01:12:49.560
And I just have to say it is funny that they always go after the anonymity thing as if
01:12:49.560 --> 01:12:58.360
I've ever been anonymous. They just name and face everywhere. I am very subtle about it. Yes,
01:12:58.360 --> 01:13:03.480
they're just absolute hypocrites. And they know it. They're just insufferable hypocrites.
01:13:04.440 --> 01:13:10.600
To preantively address one of the criticisms at the last point you made, the argument has been
01:13:10.600 --> 01:13:17.400
made against the position that has been advanced against girls publishing books. Well, what about
01:13:17.400 --> 01:13:25.320
the grocery store? The distinction in teaching is public. It is the one to many relationship. Every
01:13:25.320 --> 01:13:31.480
Christian, male or female has a duty at all times. Young or old, you're five-year-old, whether it's
01:13:31.480 --> 01:13:37.080
a boy or a girl, has a duty to share his or her faith in Christ with anyone who will listen. But
01:13:37.080 --> 01:13:42.280
those are one-to-one relationships. They're interpersonal. If you're in the grocery store and
01:13:42.360 --> 01:13:48.280
your mother and you have an opportunity to share the gospel, you are commanded to do that by God.
01:13:48.280 --> 01:13:53.960
We are not speaking against that because although that is a public place for legal purposes,
01:13:53.960 --> 01:13:58.600
that is not public preaching or teaching. When a woman shares her faith in Christ,
01:13:59.640 --> 01:14:06.040
she's sharing what she knows, hopefully faithfully. But that conversation should always end with,
01:14:06.680 --> 01:14:13.960
let me introduce you to my pastor. That's the part that's missing from this. That is where we too,
01:14:15.240 --> 01:14:20.680
you and I between us have probably put, I know I personally put at least 100 souls in Lutheran
01:14:20.680 --> 01:14:26.360
churches. I'm not taking credit. I did that. The fact that I have represented myself as a Lutheran
01:14:26.360 --> 01:14:32.760
online has caused well over 100 men, women, and children to join Lutheran congregations. Not
01:14:32.840 --> 01:14:38.600
once have I ever said, join the church of woe. What I have said is, let me help you find a faithful
01:14:38.600 --> 01:14:46.680
pastor under whose care you and supervision you will be. And then go and be the best layman that you
01:14:46.680 --> 01:14:52.920
can be in that congregation, where you will hopefully someday serve as an elder, where you can
01:14:52.920 --> 01:14:58.040
volunteer, where you can set a good example, where you can learn to cataclyze your own family
01:14:58.200 --> 01:15:05.640
faithfully. So we are not usurpers of the church. We are attempting to enable the church in a way
01:15:05.640 --> 01:15:13.640
that is being battled by the very men who are sworn to God not to do so. And I pray that we can
01:15:13.640 --> 01:15:20.760
once again be on the same side, because we ultimately want everyone to hear the gospel. And as I
01:15:20.760 --> 01:15:26.760
mentioned earlier, a lot of the men that Cory and I have reached through the work that we have done
01:15:27.720 --> 01:15:32.120
have been men. Some of them were baptized as a result. There are several who have been
01:15:32.120 --> 01:15:37.720
baptized and cataclyzed just in the last year, because of me posting the very things that pastors
01:15:37.720 --> 01:15:44.200
say I'm going to go to hell for. And now these men are attending every Sunday. They are excited
01:15:44.760 --> 01:15:50.440
about watching the four-way and daily stream of services. They're reading their Bibles
01:15:50.680 --> 01:15:59.240
voraciously. They are working with their pastors. If that is the fruit of an evil tree, then I
01:15:59.240 --> 01:16:09.480
don't know what a good tree is supposed to look like. It's just ultimately we actually intend
01:16:09.480 --> 01:16:14.600
all of this for the good. Absolutely. There are those who believe that we don't.
01:16:15.560 --> 01:16:20.040
And if they're going to believe that, then they can go ahead and believe that. But nothing
01:16:20.040 --> 01:16:26.200
we have said, nothing we have posted, nothing we've written, we give any indication that we
01:16:26.200 --> 01:16:33.160
desire anything other than what we have stated. We want to get men back into the churches.
01:16:33.960 --> 01:16:39.960
And men are not going to come back into the churches, as long as they are just hearing a water
01:16:39.960 --> 01:16:46.360
down 20-year-old version of what the culture tells them every day echoed from the pulpits.
01:16:47.560 --> 01:16:53.160
Because if we have pastors like that, why on earth would I go to church? It makes so much more
01:16:53.160 --> 01:16:59.000
sense to wake up late and go have brunch instead of going to a church where I'm just going to hear
01:16:59.000 --> 01:17:07.000
the same nonsense the culture tells me every single day. So instead, we want pastors to be faithful
01:17:07.000 --> 01:17:14.920
and actually teach what Christianity is. Not this water down culturally sensitive
01:17:15.640 --> 01:17:24.120
version of Christianity that is not. As this podcast goes along, I hope that
01:17:25.560 --> 01:17:29.960
I hope that we'll reach the right people. And as we do this, we're going to name names,
01:17:29.960 --> 01:17:34.760
we're going to go after people by name for what they've said in public. And it is never done
01:17:34.760 --> 01:17:43.160
with malicious intent. It is not with the intent of destruction. It is done with the intent of
01:17:43.160 --> 01:17:50.440
calling to repentance because as long as these errors persist, men will be chased away.
01:17:50.440 --> 01:17:54.760
And one of the things that we have seen repeatedly is that there are a lot of pastors that think
01:17:54.760 --> 01:18:00.440
it's hilarious for the type of men who have come into their very own churches because of the things
01:18:00.440 --> 01:18:05.000
that we have said over the past few years. Pastors want those guys to go to hell. They don't want
01:18:05.000 --> 01:18:13.400
them in their pulp and they're in their pews. And you could not find a more different spirit dichotomy
01:18:13.400 --> 01:18:19.080
than what we see with the response to men who've hold the opinions that are contrary to the world.
01:18:19.080 --> 01:18:24.440
And in some cases, as they are learning about Christianity, are contrary to Christianity.
01:18:24.920 --> 01:18:30.200
They're ignorant. They've been raised outside the church by an evil world.
01:18:30.200 --> 01:18:35.160
We are trying to connect them with pastors who will be faithful to the teachings of God.
01:18:35.160 --> 01:18:40.760
And it's astonishing and depressing to me how difficult that is. But the reason that we are
01:18:40.760 --> 01:18:46.440
speaking again, it's not it's not to condemn just for the sake of condemnation. It is because I
01:18:46.440 --> 01:18:52.680
want there to still be Lutheran churches in 20 years for us and for all of these people who are
01:18:52.680 --> 01:18:59.800
trying to come to God to find and to find faithful preaching. And on the trajectory that we're
01:18:59.800 --> 01:19:05.080
on today, that's not going to be the case. There will not be a Christian church in 20 years.
01:19:05.080 --> 01:19:10.280
And I know the pastors think that's not the case because the case of hell not prevailing and all
01:19:10.280 --> 01:19:16.280
that stuff. Yes, that's true. Christianity will always be preserved. But God also promised there
01:19:16.280 --> 01:19:21.640
would be a remnant. And God promised there would be a great apostasy. And God promised that many of
01:19:21.640 --> 01:19:26.920
those who cry out, Lord, Lord, do we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons?
01:19:27.880 --> 01:19:33.880
God will say to them, you workers of lawlessness, I never knew you. We want that to happen to the
01:19:33.880 --> 01:19:40.120
pastors who hate us. We want them to repent and we want the people who want to come to our churches
01:19:40.120 --> 01:19:44.600
to find churches that are faithful to God so that we can all meet in heaven and not have any of
01:19:44.600 --> 01:19:50.040
these problems. And we can live the perfect lives that God created us to live in the first place.
01:19:52.600 --> 01:20:01.960
I think we can sum up, in large part, in addition to the stones crying out, we can sum up the
01:20:01.960 --> 01:20:10.520
purpose of this podcast with Ezekiel 33. So you son of man, I have made a watchman for the house
01:20:10.520 --> 01:20:16.600
of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to
01:20:16.600 --> 01:20:22.120
the wicked, a wicked one, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn
01:20:22.120 --> 01:20:28.520
from his way, that wicked person shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand.
01:20:29.000 --> 01:20:33.880
But if you warn the wicked to turn away from his way, and he does not turn from his way,
01:20:33.880 --> 01:20:38.040
that person shall die in his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul.
01:20:39.800 --> 01:20:42.760
And that's what it comes down to. We don't have a choice.
01:20:43.720 --> 01:20:49.880
If Christ disciples, his followers have been silent, the stones would have cried out. The stones
01:20:49.880 --> 01:20:54.440
would not have had a choice. The stones would have to have cried out. It would have been their
01:20:54.440 --> 01:21:00.680
duty to cry out. Well, it's our duty to address these things, because as was stated previously,
01:21:00.680 --> 01:21:05.880
God has given us the ability to see them and the ability to address them. And so we do not have a
01:21:05.880 --> 01:21:13.560
choice. This isn't a project because it's necessarily enjoyable or fun. This is something that
01:21:13.560 --> 01:21:20.600
has to be done, because there is a duty to do it, and because the consequences of not doing it
01:21:20.600 --> 01:21:23.640
are unthinkable. Amen.