“Amongst the Ashes”
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the
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Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. I am Corey J. Moller and I'm
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well. Today we are talking about the fact that we are living in the ashes of
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Christendom. We're living in an age where we have part of an inheritance that
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came from those before us that used to be Christian and some of us are still
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Christian but the structures underneath the the foundational aspects of what
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gave us the world that was inherited have really gone away and so today's
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episode is about the fact that different people from different groups as they
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look at the state of the world as you like you you turn on the news or you hear
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reports of what's going on in your community or in other communities are
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just nationally or globally it's not just that it's bad news and it's not just
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that the news seems to be getting worse it's that the news seems to be horrific
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and it's becoming horrific in a way that's almost impossible for some people to
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categorize and so as a result there has been a real movement especially
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online it's visible because you can sort of find all sorts of communities
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there there's been a movement to sort of return to tradition you know it's a
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meme you've probably heard and everybody wants to sort of pick their own
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tradition they think that there's a period and time that's going to work great
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you know for some of the zoomers it's the eighties you know they look at vapor
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wave and think that must have been you know it's kind of the peak human
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experience some folks look to the fifties and look at you know sort of the
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June cleaver suburban post-World War II neighborhood as the ideal if you're
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a southerner you may look to the antebellum south as sort of peak
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civilization some people go back to the Renaissance and some people particularly
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if they're not Christians will prefer to point back to ancient Greece and
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ancient Rome or even you know the Phoenicia or the Etruscans because if you go
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back far enough and you cherry pick what it is you're looking at you can sign
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find something that seems good and beautiful and certainly seems like an
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improvement over what we have today but what we want to talk about is why those
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things were good and why they seemed good and whether or not we can just return
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whether you can reboot the eighties or the fifties or the 1850s or there
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there's something that Dr. Koons on the brief history of power podcast mentioned
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it last year I think talking about the the pernicious notion of nostalgia that's
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kind of popped up where we have these affections for periods without
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understanding what was good about them and we think that we can just go
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backwards and get it and so I want to begin today briefly with a story it's
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something that I just serendipitously read this morning 21 years ago over the
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Atlantic Ocean in the middle of the night there was an Airbus A330 that was
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flying it six and a half miles up and unbeknownst to the flight crew or to the
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passengers a few days before maintenance crew had made some mistakes when they
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were placing one of the engines and so when those mistakes started causing
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problems during the flight the pilot and co-pilot also made mistakes as they
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were processing the inputs they were getting from their lights they were
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flashing and basically the problem was that they had a fuel leak one of the
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engines had burst a fuel line directly to the engine and so it was just pumping
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fuel overboard in addition to some of the fuel getting into the engine so it was
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still running and I'll put the link in the show notes case you're
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interested in the sort of the process how they figured it out the reason I'm
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mentioning this story now is I think it's a really good example of what it is
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that we're doing as we look at the state of the world because what happened at
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six and a half miles up it like four in the morning the the jet lost and
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exhausted the last of its fuel and so one second the jet was traveling like
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400 knots at 34 and a half thousand feet the lights were on the people knew
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something was wrong but you know it was still flying it was a jet and it was
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flying to its destination when the last of the fuel was exhausted and the engine
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flamed out they were plunged into darkness and there was total silence on that
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plane except for the sound of their screaming because that was obviously
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terrifying now from their perspective on the jet they knew that they were in real
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trouble because the lights were out and you know it's obviously this was bad and
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it wasn't going to get any better but as an external observer I want you to
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think about the fact that 10 seconds before the jet engine went out it was a
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six and a half miles up it was going up 400 knots everything seemed fine it was
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flying when the fuel ran out five seconds after that it was still going up 400
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knots and it was still a six and a half miles up so as you're measuring it kind
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of from a distance it seems like everything's okay it still has the momentum
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ahead before the fuel was exhausted and if you took a measurement a minute
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later they're probably going about 30 knots slower they were down about two
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thousand feet the good news in this case is that the pilot although he had
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misdiagnosed the failures he was a former bush pilot and he was actually a
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former narco trafficker so he'd been on some sketchy planes before and he was
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able to fly this plane with no power just he wasn't really flying it it was
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a glider at that point he managed to get it 75 miles to the Azores because
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again they were over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean he found the nearest
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airport where they could land that thing and he successfully got everyone
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there there were a few minor injuries from the landing but no loss of life so
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had a happy ending in that case but I think it's an example for us it as soon
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as I read that it struck me as I knew we were going to be talking about this
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today it's similar to our situation in this the thesis of this episode is that
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Christianity is and has been the fuel of Christendom's scent and trajectory for
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the last 1500 years and the fuel has run out and we're not even coasting on
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fumes anymore we are just gliding and so the reason that we're losing
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altitude and things are getting bumpy and people are starting to scream is
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that the fuel is gone and we want to talk about today the fact that most
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observers don't understand they haven't diagnosed the problem just like the
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pilot hasn't diagnosed the problem until the very last minute so they don't
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realize it's out of fuel they just think well the plane's going down it should
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go back up you know maybe they just need to return to their prior trajectory
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not understanding that the thing that made it a plane in the first place the
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thing that was keeping it in the air was the fuel and so as we are living
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today in the ashes of Christendom if we don't recognize the Christianity has
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been the fuel that has given the West all of the good things that it has not
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only are we not going to be able to diagnose the problem but we're not in any
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position to restore any of the former glory that we have and the reason that's
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important to Cory and I to frame this in terms of Christianity is that we're
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gonna talk about about Greece and Rome but we're going to make the case that the
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things that we think are good about the world that we have lost are the things
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that Christianity gave us and the things that we look back with nostalgia that
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seemed beautiful in the distance didn't necessarily have that tenor at the
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time if you had modern Christian morals all you don't have to be Christian
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hold them like Western morality as you know as it existed a hundred years ago
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most people even if they weren't Christian they still basically believed in
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good and evil from somewhere they believed in not robbing not murdering not
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doing any harm to your neighbor and so we're making the case that when the
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fuel went out of Christianity and it began to die in the West we lost the
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momentum that was keeping us in the air and the problems we see today are
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because of that loss and we see this in so many of our institutions not just our
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government institutions but also our social institutions our universities our
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corporations so many places it's inertia is what we're running on things were
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going at such a speed and for such a period of time with so much mass behind
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them that even though the engine is now dead and cut out because the fuel is
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gone things continue for a while as if there are no problems but as we go
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things get worse and worse just as if you're in a plane that is runoff fuel you
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cannot help but notice at some point in your descent things are a little off
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and so we see the cracks in the fissures forming in our institutions and
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academia is a great example I'm sure many listening will have at some point
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ban on a university campus as a student perhaps some as professors what
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have you and you can see this happening the quality of the education dropped
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off precipitously long ago but the reputation of the institutions remains and so
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we are turning out students graduates who know far less who are far less
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capable and that will have ramifications down the line for society and we see
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that with collapsing bridges and our space program that it basically defunct
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for decades the private sector has started it up a little bit again we could
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debate exactly the specifics of that another time but we see all of these
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consequences building up as that inertia spends itself and so there are those
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who try to look for some other explanation of what has happened and if you
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don't get to the root causes you won't propose solutions that will actually
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address the problems you see if you happen to be a new listener to this episode
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this episode will stand alone but if you want to check the back archives we've
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only this is an episode of thing 11 so we don't have that many but I would
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recommend beginning with the Christian nationalism episode and then the one
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after it about election in view of headship that was kind of a two-parter in
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one where the first part was about doctrine of the doctrine of election so
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that's a very explicitly Christian part of it and the second half was really
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about the history of Christendom not not at a deep level but but focusing in our
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case on the spread of the gospel and how everything that we think of today as
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Western civilization after Roman Greece has been a fundamentally Christian
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and obviously there was a period of time from about 500 to 1000 AD when
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different parts of Europe were being Christianized to different rates and
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different times but by about a thousand give or take it was the transition was
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pretty well over and so generally as Westerners today when we look back at
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our history and that is our history both the parts that were Christian and
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the parts that were pagan and I I should note I don't think I've mentioned this
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before but when when we use the term pagan it doesn't mean Thor worshiper which
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is really a modern LARP that's not even that's a reinvention of something
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and it's certainly not an insult I say pagan in contrast to Christian another
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term might be unbeliever but that kind of kind of seems more adversarial
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because if I say you're an unbeliever it begs the question that you should be
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believing in something which I obviously as a Christian believe but I don't
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want to pose that challenge to someone who's listening so if I say pagan
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or unbeliever it means the same thing and neither neither should be taken as a
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pejorative so those European nations beginning with Greece and Rome and
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their follow-ons as they became Christian they largely gave a transfer of
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what they had into the more modern era now there there are a few different
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groups of people on the internet which are obviously just people in real life
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but it plays out very clearly online as I mentioned you have kind of zoomers
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looking at the vaporment wave nostalgia there's some 50s nostalgia but for the
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most part I think a lot of people have a good sense of proper sense that a lot
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of our problems begin with the enlightenment which is absolutely true the
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reason that Christendom is dead today is that the enlightenment happened and we'll
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do an episode on them the future but it's just a given for everything that
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Cory and I say about this stuff
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prior to the enlightenment Western Europe Christianity Christendom reached its
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pinnacle in terms of arts in terms of cultural advancement which is kind of a
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dangerous word because that's what's been happening ever since there's been the
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promise of what's called progress the promise of improvement over previous
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eras where it's been done through the lens and with the ethos of the
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enlightenment where it wasn't a question of how can we serve God better it was a
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question of can we do this without God at all because look how well we're
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doing today look at all look at everything that we have built and the mistake
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that I think that a lot of people make today especially in the sphere of the
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right is to think that the greatness of Europe's history existed without
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Christianity without its influence and that's a really dangerous
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presupposition we'll talk about that in a few minutes but there's there's a
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clear dividing line in groups because if if you're not a Christian if you're a
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pagan you're gonna want to find something like ancient Greece and Rome where
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they had beautiful architecture they had art they had science they had civilization
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it was a proper civilization it was a godless civilization you can also look
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east to China if you've ever had the privilege of seeing some 3,000 year old
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Chinese art it is absolutely stunning it is it is far ahead of what the west was
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doing 3,000 years ago and I say that as someone who looked at that stuff not
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wanting to find out but just objectively the beauty and the intricacy and the
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advancement of the art that the Chinese had 3,000 years ago it's it's breathtaking
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that's beautiful I think that those periods of time are very interesting because
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if you're a Christian then you must necessarily be a young earth creationist and so
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we have the flood and we have Babel about 4,500 years ago so 3,000 years ago is
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only 1,500 years from the Tower of Babel where man was scattered and most of
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the men who were scattered abandoned God that was that was part of the the
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election episode but then succeeding generations fell away from God to different
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degrees and suffered different degrees of punishment and decay as a result I'm
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not I'm not making that is is a doctrinal claim I just personally based on
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observing the timeline and observing the state of the very civilizations I
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think it can be derived from the facts that we find from archaeology and from
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anthropology we can dig stuff up and we can see the state of civilizations
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3,000 years ago versus 2,000 versus 1,000 and I think that if you look at that
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history through the view of knowledge of the true God it's clear at least to
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me and I hope to to some of you that the further we got from Babel the worse it
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got for people who had not maintained a connection with God no obviously by
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the time that Jesus arrived it was really just the Jews and a few others who
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knew of God and even many of them hated and didn't believe him so it's not
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the claim of material gain it's the claim that without God you will lose
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other things even if you lose those things with God through Chastisement but
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the fact that China was frankly greater 3,000 years ago and it was 2,000 years
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ago I think demonstrates that point and that's the case when you look at Rome
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and Greece they were degenerate before the birth of Christ yeah they the in so
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to address those who might happen to be listening who are not Christians who
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maybe have a great fondness for ancient Greece and Rome particularly because a
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it seems beautiful and b there was no Jesus around so you don't have to buy
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any of this stuff that you know we're selling if you actually look at what
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life was like in that period it was basically like we have today there was
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abortion there was Sodomy there was Euthanasia there was cruelty a boundless
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cruelty based on disqualifying the humanity of other people and in our case
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we're not talking about slavery we're talking just about people who would just
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be killed because they were they were in the wrong class and you could treat
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them like animals you can mistreat them like animals even if you deal with
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slavery although that's an episode from their time but just briefly many people
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like to bring up that there was a reform under I cannot remember which emperor
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now but there was a reform of slavery around the time of the New Testament and all
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that it changed was that you needed a reason why you killed your slave and
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almost any reason would do because before that in the Roman Empire you could just
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kill your slave because you were bored that might still have been a good
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enough reason after the reform even but that's the sort of thing you had at the
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height of the power of the Roman Empire and obviously you had the the social decay
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creeping in as well and Greece had already fallen at this point so and you
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mentioned Phoenicia earlier they were known for child sacrifice that was their
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big contribution despite some of the things they achieved in their
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civilization they burned children alive to their gods in order to get a good
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harvest or favorable winds so you can't look back at these societies and not
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look at the totality of what they were doing they were doing all of the
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sorts of evil things our society is doing today just in a different way and
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it's particularly the things that I think the people looking back fondly to
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those periods are trying to escape if you're if you want to return to
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tradition you want to return to the Roman tradition because they had indoor
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plumbing and you know law and order you're going to get all of the things that
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you're trying to escape today as well because they were godless and they were
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in a period of decay even as they were building their empire now there's a lot
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of political stuff that we're not going to get into this because it's not a
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political podcast but I just want to point we want to point to those areas in
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particular to to try to make the case that the winds the the nostalgia that we
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have for those periods if you if you feel that I would strongly encourage you to
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look at what life was actually like in those times because I think you'll find
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that the things that are decaying today and the things that the
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Christianization of the West solved are the very things that you're trying to
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escape today and we're making the case that you're escaping it today because
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the Christianization of that the West ended and so we're we still have the
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technology we have the indoor plumbing we have some of the laws but they're
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rapidly being destroyed one by one precisely because the thing that got us
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here was not they were white they were high IQ that were good unto ourselves
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those to whatever degree those things are blessings they are not intrinsic goods
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if we are setting ourself against God and I think that the so that societal
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state of Greece and Rome in my opinion demonstrates that they were again they
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were just they were depraved they were doing the same sort of depravity that
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makes us recoil with your Christian or a pagan today you see the stuff that's
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going on in parades and everywhere and you're just you're rightly horrified you
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don't need to know God to know that this is the face of evil the face of evil was
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the norm 2500 years ago in 2000 years ago as well because although they had
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technological advancement and some of it was stunning what they didn't have was
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the source of moral authority that does not change across time and the loss of
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that structure as Corey said the the fact that the underpinnings have been
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knocked out and yet we still have the facade I think makes Christians as well as
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unbelievers look at and say well it's still basically mostly Christian you
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know some people go to church and yeah it's not as good as it used to be the
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reality is that we're not only running on fumes but the engine is out we're
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still at 30,000 feet but we're on a glide path to the middle of the ocean and in
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our case there's not going to be an azure's island for us to land it because the
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problems that we have are the destruction of the air pain like you know the
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analogy breaks down to some point you can't you can't save the craft unless you
23:13.960 --> 23:17.680
put the fuel back in it and in their case there is no putting a fuel until they
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landed for us the only landing we're gonna have if we don't get this going in
23:22.280 --> 23:26.280
mid air is going to be the complete destruction of everything and
23:26.280 --> 23:33.480
rewinding 30 or 40 or 100 or 200 or 2000 years won't fix our problems if we
23:33.480 --> 23:39.120
don't know what solved the absence of the problems in the first place the word
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progress is one of those curious little words that people always get wrong and
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so in keeping with a general theme terms and their meanings matter progress
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because of the fact that it starts with pro as opposed to say con leads many to
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conclude that it is necessarily good that is a secondary meaning of it it is
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come to be one of the meanings but that's not inherently what the term means the
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term comes from pro in Latin which just means forward and forward is not always
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good if you're walking forward and there's a cliff that's generally bad and the
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verb for to walk that's all it is to walk forward that's what progress means and
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and so what matters is your destination anyone who goes hiking or camping knows that if you're
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making progress down the wrong trail that's not a good thing so it matters what your destination is
24:34.240 --> 24:40.160
yes our society is still in some ways making progress but toward what are we progressing
24:40.160 --> 24:45.840
we're progressing toward evil no longer toward good and so you have to be careful when you use
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these terms like progress because it is 100% a matter of the destination not just of the fact that
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well I'm still upright and walking it must be good that's not necessarily the case
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and this is something that we in the church have fallen for hook line and sinker as well as
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the post enlightenment expansion of a fundamentally new religion without God progressed the way
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cancer progresses in a dying person's body there was the sense that we were leaving the old
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things behind and we were discovering new things and new ways of doing things and what's funny is
25:27.360 --> 25:32.080
that if you know history especially you know the history of heresy and the history of ancient
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degenerate civilizations we weren't inventing anything new we were rediscovering the same old gods
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that had been cast down by prep previous generations there's there's truly nothing new under the sun
25:45.760 --> 25:51.760
you're not going to find something that you think is better and clever that has not been tried
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before by people who got it from someplace evil and ran with it and so what's happened particularly
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I think since you know I mentioned the antebellum south I think since particularly in the United
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States slavery was ended as a legal institution outside of prisons which would be something we'll
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talk about in the slavery episode because slavery is still 100% legal in the United States today
26:19.360 --> 26:24.800
go read the 13th amendment if you think I'm wrong slavery is legal it they changed for whom it was
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legal that was done principally not by Christians at the time the abolitionists were principally
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radicals non-Christians in some cases they were anarchists and so they were fighting in moral terms
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for something that when they would try to sell it to Christians it was sold as a moral good as a
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Christian good and Christians are commanded to test the spirits it's one of the things that God
26:53.920 --> 26:59.040
says don't just believe somebody that they show up whether it's somebody with a collar or somebody
26:59.040 --> 27:04.080
with a podcast don't just believe them because they say something that sounds convincing test the
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spirits does this accord with scripture what happened particularly in the 19th century in the west
27:11.440 --> 27:18.640
was that things like slavery and then following hot on its heels the so-called emancipation of
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women funny how they use the same language when women were given the franchise it was done in
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moral terms it was done in terms of expanding freedom and expanding so-called rights and in terms
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of progress and it was sold in terms that Christians would gobble up because like oh that sounds
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Jesus-y because we stopped looking it was scripture says about any of those things scripture has a
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lot to say about slavery and it has a lot to say about women and about a woman's place in society and
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today when someone hears just the phrase a woman's place it sounds like a physical assault it sounds
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like I'm this madman that wants to chain women and wants to belittle and just treat them as subhuman
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to know your place in life is one of the greatest blessings it's the reason that teenagers are so
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angsty they don't know their place in life because they've been told their teenagers we stop saying
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that they're young men and young women where they have a clear trajectory to adulthood and to
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entering into civilization with their elders we start calling them teenagers whereas this transit
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of property and you know your role of dice and who knows what's gonna come out but you don't have
28:37.040 --> 28:43.920
any idea what your place in life is and so for us to say a woman's place it's intended as a
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blessing because God gives clear instructions for what that is and the women who are happiest in
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this world today are the ones who are closest to God's model for what they should be doing
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because ontology and vocation the more they overlap the more joy we are given
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and the attack on slavery and the attack on the absence of feminism which was itself an attack
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on civilization the creation of feminism as an idea was done specifically to knock some of these
29:20.480 --> 29:26.000
supports out of civilization not to be clear I'm not saying the slavery was a supportive civilization
29:26.000 --> 29:30.240
I don't believe that I don't think it's a moral good or evil and I think scripture makes that
29:31.200 --> 29:35.040
someone wants to misquote me they're gonna do that anyway I'm not saying you need slavery to have
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civilization I don't believe that however if you're a Christian you can have reasons to not want
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or to not like slavery but you cannot have reasons that you ascribe to God because God doesn't do
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that and what has been happening ever since the 1850s and really since the Enlightenment one by
29:55.680 --> 30:02.720
one we've been taking things where God was clear as we talked about early on the genealogy of ideas
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there's never been any doubt about these questions in all of Christian history until suddenly
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these questions arose and people like wow this is fascinating I'm really concerned that everyone
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before me isn't hell because they were underpentant centers for doing these things and so more and
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more today worldly ideas that have no genesis and scripture they have no nexus to God are
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imported they're slathered in Jesus butter and everyone is told yeah that's Christian because
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it sounds loving and that has to be the end of the argument and if you point to scripture and say
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well what does scripture say about slaves or what does scripture say about women you're attacked
30:42.080 --> 30:47.600
you're shouted down as an evil person now are there evil people who've asked those questions I don't
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probably but is the question evil no as a Christian the question is vital and as someone
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trying to undo the damage civilizationally they were facing today the questions must be asked
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because the fuel ran out of Christianity as we stopped believing the Bible even as we talk about
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solar scripture and how yeah I believe everything in there we just say well yeah but that's not what
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that means or that was in that day it doesn't really apply well no one ever thought that before
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and the fact that we freely think that now is precisely why civilization and Christendom are in a
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nose dive and we don't know how to fix it because we refuse to actually turn back to the God who gave
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us the tools to prevent the decay that is frankly being given to us as punishment God is abandoning
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us to our base or passions and we deserve the destruction if we don't return to godly living
31:48.800 --> 31:53.680
and so we're trying to reframe this episode in Christian in terms of Christianity because it is
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the only source of truth they can maintain these things over extended periods of time if you live
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a life in a court with God you will live a blessed life you might not be prosperous but you will
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be prospered by God even if you're poor even if all your children die in infancy you will still be
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prospered we don't know what form it's going to take but we know the God will bless us and we
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also know the God will punish us when we turn our backs on him and we've done that and
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Cory and I want people to ask the questions about you know maybe we need to turn on the lights in
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here so we can see what we're doing because we're not looking to scripture when these problems arise
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and if Christians can't look to scripture to help guide the rest of the world
32:37.120 --> 32:44.000
how are we doing our duty as Christians are we not hiding our light under a bushel if we can't
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even explain how evil is evil and good is good and maybe we should do one and not the other and
32:50.080 --> 32:57.120
here's why and if you look at all these movements that were born really as the children of the
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enlightenment which would be the anti-slavery feminism all of these various things one of the
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underlying goals is atomization the goal is to separate people men and women from the groups
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into which God placed them it's to separate women from their families it's to separate men from
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their families it's to say you're not a member of a class or a group or a race or any of these
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other things you're an individual and it's only you you're the only one who matters and that's
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not how God made us and that's the reason it's fundamentally subversive all of these various
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movements and the reason that it knocks the legs out from under any civilization that's the
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death of Christendom that's the death of civilization when people when men and women start thinking
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of themselves as an individual first and foremost instead of a father or a mother or a son or a
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daughter or a brother or a sister because these are the things God made you
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you are in the family God gave you because God gave you that family God created you in the womb
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to make you part of that family to make you a child of your mother and your father
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God made you the race that you are God made you all of the various things where the attributes
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you have are gifts from God so when you just start denying these things and saying that no I am
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this self-sufficient island I stand alone and I need no one else and nothing
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you are denying the reality of creation you are denying what God created and you are becoming
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part of the problem you are becoming part of what is destroying civilization all around us
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and that is what these have in common and of course they have that in common because they have a
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common motivating intelligence behind them and as I've said before no human beings could not
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form these sorts of conspiracies over a course of centuries and orchestrate these things we know
35:09.200 --> 35:13.680
historically humans are not very good at working on that scale at least in secret for that long
35:14.800 --> 35:23.520
but Satan is and ultimately that is the power behind all of these movements and that's why they
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have a coherent goal that's why they all work toward that goal because there is actually a plan
35:29.360 --> 35:36.720
and so you can choose do you want to be on that side with Satan supporting his forces or do you
35:36.720 --> 35:42.400
want to be on God's side it's a very stark choice and one would think it would be an easy choice
35:43.040 --> 35:49.760
but so many today make the choice that no I like these things that the enlightenment has given me
35:49.760 --> 35:55.200
even though they're cancer in the short run they're pleasant some of them and so people opt to
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keep those instead of asking the hard questions actually looking at scripture seeing what it is
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that God says is right and true and good and as Christians first and foremost we should be looking
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to scripture to see what God has said about these things not looking to what the world has done
36:15.760 --> 36:22.000
not looking to what we are told is progress a great example of looking to scripture and
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atomization can be found in 2nd Corinthians 12 where God says for children are not obligated
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to save up for their parents but parents for their children now try saying that in a room full of
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boomers and see if you don't get lynched because that the idea of atomization and individualization
36:44.720 --> 36:50.320
and I got mine and you need to earner yours and pick yourself up from by your bootstraps
36:50.320 --> 36:56.960
have become so normal that those are now moral claims it's not simply wisdom whether it's true
36:56.960 --> 37:04.560
or false but those are moral dicta that are given by older generations to younger generations
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without regard to their circumstances without regard to the fact that picking yourself up by your
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bootstraps isn't possible today the way it was 50 years ago well and only that it's fundamentally
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impossible which is one thing that I think is funny because it came over from a German fairy tale
37:24.000 --> 37:28.960
it's Baron Moonchausen and one of the the famous stories about him it's it's told in various ways
37:28.960 --> 37:35.920
but he saves himself and his horse from quicksand or a muddy trap whatever it happens to be in the
37:35.920 --> 37:42.480
particular tale by pulling himself and his horse up by his hair well some of them are pulling
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himself up by his bootstraps that's where we literally get it from it was meant to be something
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that is literally impossible and it's become this phrase in the US that's practically sacrosanct
37:52.960 --> 37:57.600
that will know you pull yourself up by your boot it's meant to be something that is impossible
37:58.160 --> 38:03.280
and so this is great irony that it's used so frequently to mean that that somehow this is
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something you can do if you just work hard enough I guess we can all be Baron Moonchausen and pull
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our horse out of a muddy puddle by pulling our own hair that's amazing there's another application
38:15.760 --> 38:23.360
of that same technique in a different fairy tale of Rumpel Stiltskin in the original ending the way
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he died when she guessed his name was he stamped his foot so hard that he got one of his feet stuck
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in the ground and he pulled his other foot up over his head and tore himself in half and died
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so when he tried to pull himself up by his bootstraps that's how it actually ends up you end up
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eviscerated and dead and you know it's so atomized as yeah return to the dust I guess that's
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the only biblical part of the whole thing it's you know the fact that scripture says the
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women are to be silent and this slaves are to obey their masters and that parents are to save
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up for their children these are countercultural things today these are things that will make
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people so angry that they will say you're not Christian simply for quoting scripture
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and the reason we're doing this podcast series the reason that were that we had spent the
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money and the time to do any of this was that more and more we saw Christians reacting with visceral
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hatred to the plain words of scripture and as we look like I've said before and Cory and I
39:38.720 --> 39:45.280
both spent a lot of time reaching out to people who are not Christians to explain the world
39:46.080 --> 39:52.720
in Christian terms that they can understand yet it's funny when the the communion thing blew up
39:52.720 --> 39:58.320
in the last couple weeks there were at least two different one was a not a Lutheran one wasn't a
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Christian at all who asked if I could briefly explain what the controversy was and in both cases
40:04.160 --> 40:10.160
in like four tweets which is 280 characters each I was able to explain it well enough that they
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said thank you I understand perfectly what's going on now now that sort of clarity of speech and
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thought and communication should be the bare minimum that should be table stakes for any pastor who
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wants to speak on any issue and as Christians we should be equipped whenever we're speaking about
40:27.280 --> 40:33.440
the world to speak in such a way that if someone doesn't know God and they don't care about God
40:33.440 --> 40:40.400
maybe we can make the pragmatic case for God that's not a bad thing to say you know what the
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suffering in the misery in your family for the last couple generations you know this isn't
40:45.680 --> 40:50.720
your opening salvo but at some point you should be able to make the point to them that the decay
40:50.720 --> 40:56.800
in the misery that you're suffering from is due to disobedience to God the the fact that the
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you know grandpa was alcoholic and mom was abusive and the kid is now looking a hormone replacement
41:02.960 --> 41:09.840
therapy and you just found Jesus and you're like once you once those people find Jesus they
41:09.840 --> 41:17.520
understand what was missing from all those previous generations but the curse of sin
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is baked into the acts of sinfulness the fact that when you do evil you will typically get
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walloped immediately with the evil consequences there might be a delay of you know a few minutes or
41:31.600 --> 41:37.440
six months or a year but you're always going to pay the price for whatever evil you do not just
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from guilt and not talking about the eternal price talking about in this life you know sometimes
41:43.520 --> 41:49.600
people can steal stuff and get away with the consequences yeah and and temporal consequences are
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are something that Christians used to believe in it's something that we you know Lutherans confess
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every Sunday when we confess our sins but if you don't believe that how can you explain to
42:02.640 --> 42:07.360
someone who's not a Christian who's looking at you know we're sitting in the ashes of Christ
42:07.360 --> 42:14.800
and we're seeing everything collapsing around us and we don't understand why and on one hand
42:15.760 --> 42:21.120
like we're not simply saying well yeah this is God punishing us like that's true but it's not
42:21.600 --> 42:28.240
it's not even close to the most interesting part of what's going on because God's punishment
42:28.240 --> 42:37.200
is reversible when the sin ends when Israel repented God stopped chastising them and then they would
42:37.200 --> 42:42.000
fall into sin again and they would be chastised again and it was a cycle and it's a human cycle
42:42.000 --> 42:47.040
it wasn't particular to them it's particular to all of us and what we've seen and what we
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described in the election episode and are continuing here is that for Western
42:54.640 --> 43:00.240
society and civilization we had an incredibly long long arc of well over a thousand years
43:00.720 --> 43:06.800
where God's blessings were poured out pretty much continuously and we had exponential growth
43:06.800 --> 43:13.920
of population in a entirely sustainable manner it wasn't simply ballooning as has happened
43:13.920 --> 43:20.640
in Africa and they're only kept alive completely artificially by drug and food subsidies are
43:20.640 --> 43:26.240
shipped in from outside their natural population is 20% or less of what they have today
43:26.960 --> 43:32.880
and that was not the case in Europe Europe grew as God gave the growth and we were able to
43:32.880 --> 43:37.920
continue to feed ourselves despite not having a whole lot of arable land through improvements
43:37.920 --> 43:43.040
and technology which are the result of wisdom which are the result of blessing and so
43:43.920 --> 43:48.800
Christians shouldn't be afraid of science and we shouldn't be afraid of knowledge but we should
43:48.800 --> 43:54.400
because we should understand that those good things come from God but they're gifts just like
43:55.040 --> 44:00.080
if you are given a million dollars from some long dead aunt that you didn't even know existed
44:00.720 --> 44:06.480
that's a gift from God what kind of person are you after that are you the kind of goes and blows
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it all on drugs or on fast cars or on gambling or do you save it away or do you put it to work
44:12.880 --> 44:17.920
in the church or you know there's not a right answer but there are a lot of wrong answers
44:18.480 --> 44:26.640
and when God gives us gifts we need to be conscious of the fact one that they're coming from God
44:26.640 --> 44:33.760
and two that they're not just for us to sit on or to be happy they're for us to be a blessing in
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the lives of others so if you're given the gift of being able to explain things clearly use that
44:40.320 --> 44:45.600
gift to explain important things clearly to people who need them explained and if you're not given
44:45.600 --> 44:52.160
the gift please don't try beyond your limits please find someone who can help explain things so
44:52.160 --> 44:58.960
that you don't make things worse the gifts that God has given God will also withdraw you know we
44:59.920 --> 45:05.280
we see this with the weather and we see this with famine scriptures very clear that the storehouses
45:05.280 --> 45:11.040
of the winds are controlled by God and the fact that today we understand that the sun heats
45:11.040 --> 45:16.880
the earth's crust and gives rise to currents that rise and fall and cause the winds to blow
45:17.520 --> 45:23.680
doesn't change the fact that God controls the winds there can be both sides of the sun so
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yes yeah just moves at one step yeah exactly but that's that's the way God designed the system
45:31.360 --> 45:36.320
and that's the system that God is operating and continuing to maintain and I think that
45:37.760 --> 45:43.760
the reason one of the reasons that the enlightenment was so damaging was that on one hand our
45:43.760 --> 45:50.240
scientific and we talked about this a little bit a couple weeks ago but Scantia is Latin for
45:50.240 --> 45:58.800
knowledge it doesn't mean truth that's where it's us Scantia means knowledge science is the
45:58.800 --> 46:05.920
pursuit of knowledge and knowledge is implicitly of truth you can't know something false you can
46:05.920 --> 46:13.360
be misled but you have knowledge if you have knowledge you have knowledge of a true thing so science
46:14.080 --> 46:19.600
properly understood can only ever be right to the degree that it understands something
46:19.600 --> 46:25.680
and a lot of science involves speculation and hypothesis and proving and disproving hypotheses
46:25.680 --> 46:31.920
but ultimately the things that we understand about the world if you have a Christian worldview it's
46:31.920 --> 46:40.640
simply laying bare more of what God is doing and again we shouldn't be afraid of thinking and talking
46:40.640 --> 46:46.000
in these ways because there are people who don't know God but they know science maybe they know
46:46.000 --> 46:52.240
the crappy modern version of science that's really nothing of the sort but they see some value at
46:52.240 --> 47:00.480
least in the historical trajectory of gaining knowledge of the universe if we can only as Christians
47:00.480 --> 47:04.480
argue with them and say well that's not true that's not true and have no other explanation for
47:04.480 --> 47:11.040
anything we look stupid as Cory said last week you just look dumb because they don't know God
47:11.120 --> 47:15.840
but they know that that's nonsense and if you're telling them nonsense in a way that's
47:15.840 --> 47:21.520
verifiable to them is untrue they will never listen to you and believe things that they don't
47:21.520 --> 47:32.000
have knowledge of and so the trajectory of God's work in history and the manner in which he works
47:32.000 --> 47:40.160
in space and time is important to us because his wrath ebbs and flows according to our sin
47:40.160 --> 47:45.200
and so do his blessings and I'm not trying to do you know the jury fall while throwing a
47:45.200 --> 47:49.840
attributing a particular storm to a particular sin I don't necessarily think that's invalid but
47:50.960 --> 47:56.640
I think it's typological they're small and big ways that these things manifest and we're not
47:56.640 --> 48:03.360
prophets we can't correlate these things in without with perfect certainty but we can know in general
48:03.360 --> 48:08.880
that when things are getting worse is a Christian we need to understand that's chastisement
48:09.440 --> 48:15.200
and we have to ask the question chastisement for what and so we're talking about the ashes of
48:15.200 --> 48:21.600
Christendom because we're so far down the path of the what that we can't even see it anymore we
48:21.600 --> 48:27.840
got to throw this thing in reverse and go full blast just to get back to where we can have some
48:27.840 --> 48:33.280
semblance of Christianity even while we're still celebrating the liturgy in church and we still
48:33.280 --> 48:39.360
have the Bible and we're still Christians on Sunday the point we're trying to make is let's be
48:39.360 --> 48:46.960
Christians every day not about doing good works for salvation but about being beacons of God's
48:46.960 --> 48:54.640
truth in every step of your life because if you're doing that God will continue to open doors for
48:54.640 --> 48:59.360
you to be able to explain things to people that would never have happened if you don't let people
48:59.360 --> 49:04.080
know your Christian and let them know you have something to say and maybe they won't believe you
49:04.080 --> 49:09.200
maybe they'll think it was stupid who cares I get called stupid all the time by people who are
49:09.200 --> 49:12.880
aren't even close to how smart I am and I don't take it personally they don't they don't understand
49:13.600 --> 49:19.760
that's that's for the IQ episode but you can't care you can't care if people don't like you or
49:19.760 --> 49:25.280
don't believe you tell the truth and let that be its own reward and you'll be surprised and blessed
49:25.280 --> 49:29.360
by who does hear you because it'll be something you didn't even know was listening but we got to
49:29.360 --> 49:34.480
talk about these things frankly and we got to talk about them to people who think we're stupid
49:34.480 --> 49:40.000
when we say the believe in Jesus that's part of it that's part of being a Christian and modern
49:40.000 --> 49:46.880
evangelism is about talking about these things the entire project of the enlightenment essentially was
49:46.880 --> 49:54.160
to remove God from everything because the animating intelligence behind the enlightenment I would hope
49:54.160 --> 50:00.240
would be obvious by now but that was accomplished by redefining knowledge and truth
50:02.000 --> 50:09.840
and for centuries it had been the case that the physical sciences the artist's surveillance the
50:09.840 --> 50:17.200
survival arts were considered secondary to the artist's liberales the liberal arts which would
50:17.200 --> 50:24.560
include such things as philosophy and theology theology was originally conceived of as the queen
50:24.560 --> 50:31.200
of the sciences it was the pinnacle of human knowledge everything else flowed from that because
50:31.200 --> 50:39.520
that was knowledge of ultimate things ultimate truth ultimate good and so in so far as things
50:39.520 --> 50:48.400
agreed with truth they were considered useful or good and so science was a method so developed
50:48.960 --> 50:54.800
in the more modern sense of the term to go about acquiring knowledge that was consistent with the
50:54.800 --> 51:02.800
good the beautiful and the true however it is still the case that truth is prior to knowledge
51:03.520 --> 51:09.120
what the enlightenment attempted to do was redefine it so that truth is merely the cumulative
51:10.080 --> 51:18.080
noun in order to describe its sort of the plural of plurals of data of knowledge and so if you acquire
51:18.080 --> 51:24.640
enough data well that adds up to a truth that's not how it works truth is something fundamentally
51:24.640 --> 51:30.160
different and so what we're talking about here is truth we're talking about ultimate realities
51:30.720 --> 51:37.680
not just a collection of data points that give us a pattern and point to something a probabilistic
51:37.680 --> 51:47.040
reality as it were but to go back for a second here to God blessing and cursing because both are
51:47.040 --> 51:52.880
of course present in scripture I thought of Jeremiah 18 and so I'll read verses 7 through I think 10
51:52.880 --> 51:59.920
here if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will pluck up and break down
52:00.000 --> 52:06.160
and destroy it and if that nation concerning which I have spoken turns from its evil I will
52:06.160 --> 52:11.360
relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it and if at any time I declare concerning a
52:11.360 --> 52:17.200
nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it and if it does evil in my sight not listening to
52:17.200 --> 52:25.200
my voice then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it right now we are a bit of
52:25.200 --> 52:31.120
both of those because obviously in centuries past we were the kingdom God planted and blessed
52:31.120 --> 52:39.280
and we turned from him now we are the wicked kingdom that God is going to curse and if we turn
52:39.280 --> 52:43.600
back to God of course he will bless us again in the words of David I believe that I will see the good
52:43.600 --> 52:51.680
of the Lord and the land of the living and so if we turn back to God he will relent of the judgment
52:51.760 --> 52:54.800
that's just in his word that's what he promises we believe his word
52:56.960 --> 53:02.320
but currently our society is not turning back to God it is doubling down on rejecting him
53:03.280 --> 53:08.960
and part of that is because Christians no longer know how to talk about God how to actually
53:08.960 --> 53:15.280
believe in God and to act as Christians out in the world where Christians as was said for an hour
53:15.280 --> 53:20.320
an hour and a half three hours whatever it is on Sunday for the liturgy and Bible study and then
53:20.320 --> 53:24.560
we live the rest of our life that's not how it's supposed to be we are supposed to be Christians
53:25.200 --> 53:34.400
24-7 our entire lives not just for an hour or two on Sunday so if you apply that frame to the
53:34.400 --> 53:39.200
the different time periods that I mentioned towards the beginning of the episode going back to the
53:39.200 --> 53:45.040
80s is I can us all of this problem you know and everything's the pink and lasers no
53:45.280 --> 53:50.800
hey there's Christianity was already dead at that point it's just that there was less momentum lost
53:50.800 --> 53:56.880
than than we're seeing now going back to the 50s no better the same problems because you're
53:56.880 --> 54:03.280
already centuries into the enlightenment you're over a century into the revolution against headship
54:03.280 --> 54:10.800
that occurred first in the civil war and then in the 19th amendment going back to the renaissance
54:10.800 --> 54:17.360
doesn't help either because even when you get there the question is what good did they have why
54:17.360 --> 54:21.840
did they have it it's not because they were European it's not because they were white it's not
54:21.840 --> 54:28.640
because they had a monarchy although that's an improvement that's what God has ordained since
54:28.640 --> 54:35.840
we cease to have his direct intervention what was good about them was that they lived and walked
54:36.560 --> 54:40.880
and obviously there were terrible things that happened then too we're not we're not making the
54:40.880 --> 54:46.720
error that we're trying to condemn here by saying that it was a true pure golden age were only
54:46.720 --> 54:52.240
Christianity prevailed obviously you can look at the wars and the famines and the things and see
54:52.240 --> 54:58.240
that there was chastisement them then as well so the reason that we're highlighting those things
54:58.240 --> 55:04.720
and that we previously highlighted Rome and Greece is to point to in all of these periods the only
55:04.720 --> 55:12.400
good things that we had were because we were living in accord with God yeah I mentioned we talked
55:12.400 --> 55:18.560
I think last week about BLM and about their web page where they talked about attacking slavery
55:18.560 --> 55:25.360
attacking the patriarchy attacking heteronormativity very interesting and I forgot to mention at
55:25.360 --> 55:33.680
then but that their manifesto was basically a complete inversion of Galatians 328 and 329
55:34.720 --> 55:47.120
God Satan knows scripture Satan when Satan laid out his roadmap on the BLM website for what he
55:47.120 --> 55:54.720
was planning to do in 2020 and beyond it's no coincidence that it reads like Galatians 328 and when
55:54.720 --> 56:00.000
you read that verse there's a tremendous amount to unpack their quarries probably gonna write a book
56:00.000 --> 56:06.240
about it pretty soon if he finishes if he hasn't run out of ink well I won't run out of ink
56:06.240 --> 56:11.120
thankfully I do have enough of that it's just there's that matter of time if God gives me the time
56:13.200 --> 56:19.360
but if you're not looking at scripture if you're looking at it through enlightenment eyes you're
56:19.360 --> 56:27.040
gonna read Galatians 328 in a very particular way that no one received it prior to the enlightenment
56:28.480 --> 56:32.080
the way it was received in Christianity prior to us
56:32.960 --> 56:36.400
ceasing to believe in God even while we still call ourselves Christians
56:36.400 --> 56:40.640
what it was strictly sociological it is strictly about how faith
56:41.840 --> 56:48.080
saves us and how God acts within creation without regard to class without regard to race without
56:48.080 --> 56:56.400
regard to sex and the fact that God vertically interacts with us in that way does not change the
56:56.400 --> 57:04.320
horizontal interactions that we have with each other it's an interpretation of those yes it has
57:04.320 --> 57:09.600
precisely because it's using yeah it's using real things in order to make an important point if
57:09.600 --> 57:14.560
these were all illusory if these were false that they were not real then the verse would be either
57:14.560 --> 57:21.120
incoherent or useless but it's not because these are all real I've practically memorized it by now
57:21.120 --> 57:27.200
but I'll I'll go ahead and pull it up I've got I have log us up in the background so there is neither
57:27.200 --> 57:33.520
June or Greek there is neither slave nor free there is no male and female for you are all one in Jesus
57:33.520 --> 57:42.640
Christ and what people latch on to is that one in Jesus Christ now that's referring to the church
57:42.640 --> 57:50.960
that's referring to Christ's bride we are unified through faith as the bride of Christ with our head
57:50.960 --> 57:59.120
who is the head of the church that's salvation talk that's not in this life talk we are not all
57:59.120 --> 58:04.640
one in this life and that was never God's intention you know who's intention it was to be all
58:04.640 --> 58:10.480
one in this life that's the cry of Babel that was what they were saying at the tower of Babel we
58:10.480 --> 58:16.960
will we will show the whole world that we are unified that we can do things that are unthinkable
58:18.080 --> 58:24.560
they had technological advancement they had pride and God scattered them by confusing our language
58:24.560 --> 58:32.160
specifically so that man would no longer be one and today when you say man is not one no
58:32.480 --> 58:42.000
we're not setting Galatians 3 28 against Genesis 9 or 10 or 11 wherever is where is thing 9
58:42.640 --> 58:47.840
anyway we're not setting against the tower of Babel we're specifically saying that when God saw
58:47.840 --> 58:55.360
that man was trying to be one God saw was evil it was one of the most profound evils in human
58:55.360 --> 59:01.040
history it was probably an evil second only to the flood because how many times does God
59:01.040 --> 59:09.280
intervene globally with a curse that affects every man not often you'll have localized curses
59:09.280 --> 59:14.960
but the flood wiped out all but eight and Babel confused all language for all time even in heaven
59:15.680 --> 59:21.600
languages are preserved they're no longer confused in Revelation 7 9 and following it talks about
59:21.600 --> 59:27.680
how every tongue was represented they still have their tongues in heaven we will be able to
59:27.680 --> 59:32.720
understand each other but are unique distinctive identities as different races with different
59:32.720 --> 59:38.560
languages we have no reason believe that those won't be preserved now I think it's important to
59:38.560 --> 59:45.760
note when we're talking about this that Pentecost didn't undo Babel Pentecost was the fulfillment of
59:45.760 --> 59:51.920
Galatians 3 28 if you look at it closely the words that they were speaking at Pentecost they couldn't
59:51.920 --> 59:55.680
just understand each other they weren't just sitting around having a conversation what could they
59:55.680 --> 01:00:01.840
understand they understood the gospel the preaching of the word of God and the announcement of
01:00:02.320 --> 01:00:08.160
Jesus Christ coming as the Savior is what they understood in their own tongues it was
01:00:08.160 --> 01:00:13.280
salvific it pointed to God it didn't mean that they could order off a Chinese menu even though
01:00:13.280 --> 01:00:18.640
they were Greek that was not the point that was not the gift God did not use Pentecost and he
01:00:18.640 --> 01:00:26.560
did not use Christianity to turn mankind back into one and today to say that we'll probably get
01:00:26.560 --> 01:00:32.160
you kicked out of even a lot of Lutheran churches because we are again we're so inculcated in the
01:00:32.160 --> 01:00:39.760
the enlightenment viewpoint that is fundamentally satanic it is an undoing of Babel it's an undoing
01:00:39.760 --> 01:00:46.240
of Galatians 3 28 it's a reversal of the things that God has done and God has declared and it's
01:00:46.240 --> 01:00:53.200
saying no humanity will once again be united but not in Jesus when God says we are one in Jesus
01:00:53.920 --> 01:01:01.520
that's about faith we're only one in so far as we are the elect we are not one because we're all
01:01:01.520 --> 01:01:07.840
human that's there's no such thing and that is that's basically the gospel today to most people
01:01:07.840 --> 01:01:16.560
it's a false gospel from a false God but it's presented in terms that sound Jesusy they sound
01:01:16.560 --> 01:01:22.400
sort of Christian and even Christians fall for it and then Satan can keep going he can keep
01:01:22.400 --> 01:01:28.880
marching because like we see keeps saying if you fall for one trick if you fall for one lie you're
01:01:28.880 --> 01:01:34.080
going to fall for one after another and eventually you're going to find yourself so far separated
01:01:34.080 --> 01:01:38.960
from God that you won't even realize that you've run out of fuel and that you're coasting
01:01:39.520 --> 01:01:43.680
into the the Atlantic Ocean for the morning and there's no island for you to land on
01:01:45.440 --> 01:01:52.160
speaking of lies when we use Galatians 3 28 we should probably really use 3 29 as well
01:01:52.720 --> 01:01:58.400
just because it refutes one of the most common lies in particularly American Christianity today
01:01:59.040 --> 01:02:06.160
and just to read that verse and if you are Christ's then you are Abraham's offspring
01:02:06.160 --> 01:02:12.800
heirs according to the promise which of course is a blunt and complete refutation of Zionism
01:02:13.600 --> 01:02:22.160
sometimes called Christian Zionism the Jews aren't chosen the elector chosen and you are amongst
01:02:22.160 --> 01:02:26.880
the elect if you are heirs according to the promised which is to say if you are in Christ
01:02:27.600 --> 01:02:32.800
and so really we should make sure to include that verse just because it is such an important verse
01:02:32.800 --> 01:02:40.800
for our context and again it's it's another one of the lies that yes these ethnic distinctions race
01:02:40.800 --> 01:02:47.840
these are real things these do matter but 3 28 this part of Galatians is dealing with so
01:02:48.000 --> 01:02:55.440
tearyology not with the physical reality that we live in now not with horizontal relationships
01:02:56.720 --> 01:03:02.560
or even more will be preserved in heaven because the nations are there well because they're good
01:03:03.280 --> 01:03:08.800
the destruction of that which is good is evil and so God is not going to destroy these things
01:03:08.800 --> 01:03:16.640
because they are part of his good creation the nations probably were part of his design from the
01:03:16.640 --> 01:03:23.040
beginning perhaps babble accelerated things we don't know exactly how that worked out but we know
01:03:23.040 --> 01:03:28.880
that the nations are good because in revelation they are preserved the kings of the nations will
01:03:28.880 --> 01:03:35.120
bring the glory of the nations into the new heavens and the new earth that means they are preserved
01:03:35.120 --> 01:03:40.320
and only that which is good is preserved because there is nothing wicked or evil or wrong in
01:03:40.320 --> 01:03:47.360
paradise and so we know the nations the races are good I think we can absolutely say that because
01:03:47.360 --> 01:03:51.760
the God the command that God gave to Abraham and that he reiterated to Noah or sorry not to Abraham
01:03:51.760 --> 01:03:59.520
to add him and reiterated to Noah was be fruitful and multiply fill the earth and subdue it
01:03:59.520 --> 01:04:05.840
and babble was about refusing to fill the earth now earth doesn't just mean the Mesopotamian
01:04:05.840 --> 01:04:14.240
it means the whole planet and what happens when you move from Mount Ararat to Norway you get pale
01:04:14.240 --> 01:04:19.360
and you get light eyes because because it's the only way that you don't go snow blind because it's
01:04:19.360 --> 01:04:24.160
really bright up there and there's hardly any sunshine and you need vitamin D and you need to be
01:04:24.160 --> 01:04:30.320
able to see so you turn into a Norwegian when you move to Norway when you move to Ethiopia not any
01:04:30.480 --> 01:04:37.360
more dark skin yes yeah that was that was a one time thing God built in same for dogs you can't
01:04:37.360 --> 01:04:42.640
go from a Chihuahua back to a golden retriever but from the original breed stock you could get both
01:04:43.680 --> 01:04:48.720
yeah and so all of the genetic diversity that we observed today was preserved and
01:04:49.680 --> 01:04:56.960
Noah and his sons and their wives and the diversity of the three distinct major nations almost
01:04:56.960 --> 01:05:01.600
certainly comes from the three wives of the men who were they were descended from people who
01:05:01.600 --> 01:05:06.080
were killed in the flood they were descended from people who were different and there'd been about
01:05:06.080 --> 01:05:14.640
10 generations so there had been time for genetic divergence at that point and that filtering and
01:05:14.640 --> 01:05:19.840
that winnowing and then that expansion through babble ensured that people went where God wanted
01:05:19.840 --> 01:05:25.920
them to go act 1726 that says that God appointed the dwelling places of the nations and the boundaries
01:05:26.720 --> 01:05:32.560
God ordained for nations to go to places you ordained for Ethiopians to live in Ethiopia
01:05:32.560 --> 01:05:42.320
and Norwegians to live in Norway and the undoing of that is contrary to God's will and yet today
01:05:42.320 --> 01:05:49.360
it's practically the rallying cry many of our I'd say churches in the most small sea version possible
01:05:49.840 --> 01:05:55.600
their pastors who advocate these things again in view of the enlightenment and so the reason
01:05:55.600 --> 01:06:03.040
that we're ending this episode about chrysanthemes ashes is that it's not just cultural it's not just
01:06:03.040 --> 01:06:10.480
about the law and about good behavior in public it's about our ability to even hear the word of God
01:06:11.200 --> 01:06:18.080
you know when King Josiah rediscovered the law that had been lost they didn't simply lost
01:06:18.240 --> 01:06:23.680
part of the Torah they forgot it existed because they weren't looking for it a workman found it in
01:06:23.680 --> 01:06:28.880
some rubble as they were doing construction and say hey look what I found he brought to al-Qaeda
01:06:28.880 --> 01:06:34.640
and when Josiah heard he was horrified and he he rent his robes because he knew that even though
01:06:34.640 --> 01:06:39.920
he was a faithful king who had been had been repairing the temple and he thought that he was
01:06:39.920 --> 01:06:46.000
observing the law he realized that not only had he not been observing all but but he'd forgotten
01:06:46.000 --> 01:06:51.440
part of it existed and it wasn't his doing it was fathers his fathers and grandfather's doing
01:06:51.440 --> 01:06:57.920
that that had been lost that's where we are at today with scripture but without misplacing it
01:06:57.920 --> 01:07:02.480
we have the whole Bible we have as many Biles as we need we're not reading and believing any of
01:07:02.480 --> 01:07:11.440
every single person in his pocket yes and yet today we have pastors who hate Korean me absolutely
01:07:11.520 --> 01:07:17.280
with every fiber of their being I have never seen them fight any evil in their lives as hard as
01:07:17.280 --> 01:07:22.320
they fight us saying what we're saying on this podcast and fighting as hard as they can to keep
01:07:22.320 --> 01:07:27.920
you from hearing it now these are men who were trained in the word of God who had been ordained
01:07:27.920 --> 01:07:34.320
by our own churches who were sent forth to proclaim the word and yet when we say the very same
01:07:34.320 --> 01:07:40.960
things that God says were told and they tell the world that were damned that's why we're talking
01:07:40.960 --> 01:07:46.880
about christened some dead christened them zashes because it's not just it's not just on tv it's in
01:07:46.880 --> 01:07:52.720
our own pulpits and it's in our own churches and in some cases it's in our own hearts where we have
01:07:52.720 --> 01:08:00.160
grown so cold and so deaf to God's voice that when the master speaks the sheep no wrong no longer
01:08:00.160 --> 01:08:06.640
recognize him and that is truly terrifying that is something that we must reverse before we can
01:08:06.640 --> 01:08:12.320
reverse the cultural decline before we can fix the other things we need to have faithful faithful
01:08:12.320 --> 01:08:18.160
preachers preaching faithfully and they can only do that if they believe the whole word of God
01:08:18.160 --> 01:08:23.840
you need to believe genesis one and two you need to believe that the world was created in six
01:08:23.840 --> 01:08:30.080
twenty four hour days if you believe anything else you are cursing God you are calling him a liar
01:08:30.080 --> 01:08:34.400
and you're saying you don't want anything else the he has because he's not going to give it to
01:08:34.400 --> 01:08:39.360
you if you call him a liar it's not a it's not an alaqar menu where we get to pick and choose
01:08:39.360 --> 01:08:44.960
which parts of scripture are from God and which parts we have better ideas about every word is
01:08:44.960 --> 01:08:52.080
from the mouth of God and to reject any of it or to poo poo it or to try to translate and interpret it
01:08:52.080 --> 01:08:59.360
away is to renounce your own salvation even while you confess it and so we're doing this episode
01:08:59.440 --> 01:09:06.080
in this series because this is the chief challenge of our day there won't be any Lutheranism in 20
01:09:06.080 --> 01:09:11.600
years if these things continue because our churches are dying and the boomers who were paying
01:09:11.600 --> 01:09:16.480
all the bills are dying literally their children are apostate their grandchildren are obviously
01:09:16.480 --> 01:09:23.920
apostate there's nobody coming that is God's punishment too the grandfathers were faithless and
01:09:23.920 --> 01:09:30.480
so the grandchildren are faithless it may be two different modes of faithlessness but the result
01:09:30.480 --> 01:09:37.520
is the same and it's a curse from God yes and it will keep getting worse you know they're big parts
01:09:37.520 --> 01:09:41.840
of this country where you're not only dealing with atheist neighbors but you're dealing with second
01:09:41.840 --> 01:09:46.400
and third generation atheists where not only were they not baptized not only did they grow up
01:09:46.400 --> 01:09:50.960
around the church or the word et al but their parents didn't either in some cases their grandparents
01:09:50.960 --> 01:10:00.560
didn't to think that we can preserve the Christian civilization that we inherited without the
01:10:00.560 --> 01:10:08.160
foundation of that civilization is the very definition of insanity in some places we're actually
01:10:08.160 --> 01:10:14.160
dealing now with Muslim and other neighbors as well which again scripture very clear about this
01:10:15.120 --> 01:10:21.840
that's a curse from God to have foreigners come into your country and take over your country
01:10:22.400 --> 01:10:30.240
is a curse from God God has used that many times throughout history in order to punish an apostate
01:10:30.240 --> 01:10:39.920
people and we have to be ruled by women yes or women or children directly compare the same yeah
01:10:40.720 --> 01:10:45.760
but we have pastors who say this is a good thing that we have oh well all this opportunity to
01:10:45.760 --> 01:10:54.000
outreach to no being cursed by God is not a good thing I can't believe we even have to say that
01:10:54.000 --> 01:11:00.560
and yet people no longer see that this is a curse from God I'm not saying you don't proselytize
01:11:00.560 --> 01:11:09.360
those who are not of the same race as you of course not we as Europeans took Christendom to the
01:11:09.360 --> 01:11:16.640
entire rest of the world with the sole exception being a tiny part of the Levant and a church in
01:11:16.640 --> 01:11:22.320
India and of course Ethiopia which had things for other historical reasons we've touched on that
01:11:22.320 --> 01:11:29.680
in other episodes that is the reason Satan hates us of course because we built Christendom and then
01:11:29.680 --> 01:11:36.880
we took the gospel to everyone else that is how you do it because that is how you are blessed by God
01:11:36.880 --> 01:11:42.480
God will bless you if you are faithful in that way having your nation invaded by foreigners
01:11:43.360 --> 01:11:51.680
is not an opportunity it is a curse and it's an act of war and both must be responded to
01:11:51.680 --> 01:11:57.360
absolutely in the so called left and the right hand kingdoms of God one other point I want to
01:11:57.360 --> 01:12:02.000
make about culture because I don't you know well we're going to do an episode soon about Jews and
01:12:02.000 --> 01:12:10.480
Judaism but a lot of times you will find even fairly good pastors use the term Judeo Christian
01:12:10.480 --> 01:12:16.240
you know we're talking about culture and ethics is sort of implied and then so you'll talk you'll
01:12:16.240 --> 01:12:23.600
hear people talk about the Judeo Christian roots of our laws or of our culture of our ethics
01:12:24.160 --> 01:12:30.800
that's a brand new term that term was invented after Jews started showing up in the United States
01:12:30.800 --> 01:12:37.280
because this is one of the places where they began to integrate and they wanted to not be
01:12:38.480 --> 01:12:45.280
treated as outsiders and how do you do that you co-opt the existing population you say oh you guys
01:12:45.280 --> 01:12:50.480
are Christian we're Jews you're Judeo Christian it's it's the same thing it's two sides of the
01:12:50.480 --> 01:12:56.880
same coin guys you got your religion from us we had it first and then we gave it to you which is
01:12:56.880 --> 01:13:02.640
pure nonsense and pure blasphemy as we've said before Adam believed in the promise of the
01:13:02.640 --> 01:13:09.600
Christ given to him in Genesis 315 that's Christianity Noah believed the same promise Abraham
01:13:09.600 --> 01:13:14.800
received believe the same promise and his faith was counted to him was a courted to him
01:13:16.160 --> 01:13:25.120
everyone who's in heaven is Christian some of them were also Jews not because of the so-called
01:13:25.120 --> 01:13:30.240
Jewish faith but because they had the Christian faith within the Jewish tradition
01:13:30.240 --> 01:13:34.480
now's the point that we'll make more clear them it's I'm not gonna make a good case for it now but
01:13:35.120 --> 01:13:40.880
it is fundamentally subversive when someone says Judeo Christian what they are doing is they're
01:13:40.880 --> 01:13:46.880
advancing the enlightenment because there's a whole lot of Judeo going on TV right now when you see
01:13:46.880 --> 01:13:53.360
transexuals and you see transgender surgeries for children that's the Judeo in Judeo Christian
01:13:53.920 --> 01:13:59.840
we've all seen that the the terrifying horrifying pictures of books being burned in Germany in the
01:13:59.840 --> 01:14:04.400
1930s nobody tells you what those books were that they were burned or if they tell you they saw
01:14:04.400 --> 01:14:09.760
yeah those they were Burnham Bibles those guys hated God no the books that they were burning
01:14:09.760 --> 01:14:16.560
specifically burning and those literal pictures were from Magnus Hirschfeld's disease
01:14:17.520 --> 01:14:24.000
they were the original transgender surgery materials they were the original material
01:14:24.000 --> 01:14:31.280
about homosexuality and sawdemy and transgenerism and how to spread this filth in this evil in the
01:14:31.280 --> 01:14:38.080
West when you hear about Weimar Germany that period that happened before the 30s and you hear
01:14:38.080 --> 01:14:43.680
about the cultural decay and the depravity that's what they're talking about what happened in the
01:14:43.680 --> 01:14:51.280
30s was a collective political response from the German people in opposition to the terrible
01:14:51.280 --> 01:14:57.680
societal decay that they had been exposed to and it was the Judeo half of Judeo Christianity that
01:14:57.680 --> 01:15:03.280
was doing all that there were no Christians involved at any point you know as I mentioned recently
01:15:03.280 --> 01:15:09.680
in the episode we mentioned head coverings it was a Jew who told churches to burn their veils
01:15:09.680 --> 01:15:15.040
and we all responded and now 50s years later it's it's nearly unthinkable in both churches
01:15:15.600 --> 01:15:20.880
for a girl to wear a veil let alone for us to say you should veil let alone you must veil
01:15:21.600 --> 01:15:28.080
that wasn't Christian that was the Judeo half of that so-called two sides to one coin
01:15:29.040 --> 01:15:34.480
there's a clear and market difference in the God that we worship and the God that they worship
01:15:34.960 --> 01:15:40.640
they worship the God of the Enlightenment they worship the Prince of this world we worship the one
01:15:40.640 --> 01:15:48.000
true God and the fruits of the two opposing religions could not be more clear that's the reason
01:15:48.000 --> 01:15:51.360
we're going to do an episode on that you may hear this and think that we're just the most evil
01:15:51.360 --> 01:15:56.080
people in the world you know if you don't hate us enough that you can listen to the future episode
01:15:56.080 --> 01:16:00.880
where we go into depth on it you can either really hate us or you can say well you know I don't
01:16:00.880 --> 01:16:05.280
like how that sounds but I got to think about it because they made some points it's funny every
01:16:05.280 --> 01:16:10.320
time somebody posts on Reddit or somewhere else about listening to this that's frequently the
01:16:10.320 --> 01:16:15.760
claim either I hate those guys but they made some really good points or I want to hate them but
01:16:15.760 --> 01:16:20.960
I can't because they made some really good points or I want to disagree with what they said but
01:16:20.960 --> 01:16:26.160
it all makes sense that's the reason that people are terrified of you listening to us we're not
01:16:26.160 --> 01:16:32.400
playing rhetorical games Corey and I could both run circles around people rhetorically we speak
01:16:32.400 --> 01:16:39.440
clearly precisely to avoid that it's easy to deceive someone it's hard to tell someone the truth
01:16:39.440 --> 01:16:46.240
especially in this day and age and so there are people who go around some of them have collars on
01:16:46.240 --> 01:16:53.680
who say the word deceivers well if saying the very words that God says the way that God intended
01:16:54.400 --> 01:17:00.240
is deception in your religion you know I'm not going to be in the same line as you on judgment day
01:17:00.240 --> 01:17:07.920
that's all I can say but to get back to the theme of this episode Christendom's ashes are not
01:17:07.920 --> 01:17:14.320
just cultural and are not just religious either because as we've said in past episodes you don't
01:17:14.320 --> 01:17:20.720
have to be Christian to live a godly life we've seen that for that past couple generations and
01:17:20.720 --> 01:17:26.240
that's precisely by people been deceived and to thinking you don't need Christianity to have
01:17:26.240 --> 01:17:32.880
a good life because they were coasting on the fumes of Christendom they were coasting on the fumes
01:17:32.880 --> 01:17:40.160
of morals and laws and society that was explicitly and openly and unapologetically Christian
01:17:40.800 --> 01:17:45.200
and when those supports God knocked out there were still some momentum left in the thing
01:17:45.520 --> 01:17:54.640
so you don't have to believe in God to do godly things but you cannot do godly things in the long
01:17:54.640 --> 01:18:00.320
term if you don't know where they come from because soon as somebody else comes along with a better
01:18:00.320 --> 01:18:06.160
idea or some new progressive solution for a problem you didn't even know you have eventually you're
01:18:06.160 --> 01:18:09.760
going to fall for it or your neighbor will fall for it and so you'll try it out because you don't
01:18:10.320 --> 01:18:18.080
you don't want to rock the boat and you will ultimately inevitably lose the godly things as every
01:18:18.080 --> 01:18:22.720
civilization in history did you know we mentioned at the beginning Greece and Rome and China
01:18:24.080 --> 01:18:31.040
they lost God after Bable and they were on the downslope which is why the cultures and societies
01:18:31.040 --> 01:18:37.680
collapsed Chinese art 3000 years ago is better than it was 2500 years ago and 2000 years ago there
01:18:37.680 --> 01:18:42.320
was a downslope and then it started to get better and it was for other reasons but
01:18:43.840 --> 01:18:48.480
they were coasting on the fumes of a religion that was no longer theirs and that's what we're
01:18:48.480 --> 01:18:56.480
doing today as the western world and we need to point to the truth underlying all the reasons that
01:18:56.480 --> 01:19:02.320
we do things otherwise we cannot possibly repair the damage let alone explain to people why things
01:19:02.480 --> 01:19:09.200
are going wrong in the first place the moral law is written in the heart of every man
01:19:10.880 --> 01:19:19.120
however we have run this experiment we know what happens if you have over a course of generations
01:19:19.120 --> 01:19:26.000
and it may be many generations or it may be only a few look at the sons of ham it did not take very
01:19:26.000 --> 01:19:31.760
long look at the sons of shaman japhith it took longer but eventually it may not be you you
01:19:31.760 --> 01:19:38.880
may not be the one who loses the moral law it may be your great great great great great great grand
01:19:38.880 --> 01:19:47.600
child or even farther into the distance however it will eventually be lost because you lost the
01:19:47.600 --> 01:19:55.440
actual foundation the actual truth you lost christendom you lost god's favor and you are running
01:19:55.440 --> 01:20:01.920
on the fumes and so it is only a matter of how long and how far you manage to make it but you are
01:20:01.920 --> 01:20:09.120
going to crash and that is what we want to restore we want to restore christendom because that is the
01:20:09.120 --> 01:20:16.400
only way to get out of the dive in which we find ourselves and so yes there may have been virtuous
01:20:16.400 --> 01:20:23.520
pagans because they had the moral law written in their heart but there will always be that competition
01:20:23.520 --> 01:20:29.040
against it because there's Satan out there who wants to steal that from you there's your neighbor
01:20:29.040 --> 01:20:34.720
who wants to try something new in novel or something a demon told him in the woods in the case for
01:20:34.720 --> 01:20:41.440
many pagans historically and eventually that will take over because you are not fighting against it
01:20:42.080 --> 01:20:47.040
and christians today we have the tools to fight against it we have god's word we have it everywhere
01:20:47.040 --> 01:20:51.280
I have it on my computer right now it's on my phone I have multiple bibles on my desk
01:20:51.760 --> 01:20:58.080
but if we don't read these things if we don't use them if we don't actually speak the words god
01:20:58.080 --> 01:21:03.760
has spoken to us then all of that does nothing for us we may as well have lost it in a wall in a
01:21:03.760 --> 01:21:14.160
rundown temple like the Jews did at one point god has given us his word we do not have the luxury
01:21:14.160 --> 01:21:20.160
or the option to ignore the things he has said and as said before to ala carte pick the bits we
01:21:20.240 --> 01:21:27.120
like and leave the rest everything god has said is true and good and we have to hold to every
01:21:27.120 --> 01:21:33.360
single word of it and that is quite simply our goal here our goal is to be true to scripture
01:21:35.120 --> 01:21:40.960
one because we are christians and that is our duty to because we have taken up the task of teachers
01:21:42.000 --> 01:21:47.120
and the stricter judgment does await and so no we are not going to lie or deceive or play
01:21:47.120 --> 01:21:52.000
rhetorical games we're not going to do that because we will be called to account for every
01:21:52.000 --> 01:21:58.640
idle word and we know that so we are going to speak the truth in the way god has spoken it to us
01:21:59.680 --> 01:22:09.840
in his word amen
01:22:17.260 --> 01:22:18.260
you
01:22:22.360 --> 01:22:24.360
you
01:22:42.960 --> 01:22:44.960
you
01:22:47.120 --> 01:22:49.120
you
WEBVTT
00:00:00 – 00:00:26: the
00:00:26 – 00:00:41: Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. I am Corey J. Moller and I'm
00:00:41 – 00:00:48: well. Today we are talking about the fact that we are living in the ashes of
00:00:48 – 00:00:55: Christendom. We're living in an age where we have part of an inheritance that
00:00:55 – 00:01:01: came from those before us that used to be Christian and some of us are still
00:01:01 – 00:01:08: Christian but the structures underneath the the foundational aspects of what
00:01:08 – 00:01:14: gave us the world that was inherited have really gone away and so today's
00:01:14 – 00:01:18: episode is about the fact that different people from different groups as they
00:01:18 – 00:01:22: look at the state of the world as you like you you turn on the news or you hear
00:01:22 – 00:01:27: reports of what's going on in your community or in other communities are
00:01:27 – 00:01:33: just nationally or globally it's not just that it's bad news and it's not just
00:01:33 – 00:01:39: that the news seems to be getting worse it's that the news seems to be horrific
00:01:39 – 00:01:45: and it's becoming horrific in a way that's almost impossible for some people to
00:01:45 – 00:01:51: categorize and so as a result there has been a real movement especially
00:01:51 – 00:01:54: online it's visible because you can sort of find all sorts of communities
00:01:54 – 00:01:59: there there's been a movement to sort of return to tradition you know it's a
00:01:59 – 00:02:03: meme you've probably heard and everybody wants to sort of pick their own
00:02:03 – 00:02:06: tradition they think that there's a period and time that's going to work great
00:02:06 – 00:02:12: you know for some of the zoomers it's the eighties you know they look at vapor
00:02:12 – 00:02:15: wave and think that must have been you know it's kind of the peak human
00:02:15 – 00:02:19: experience some folks look to the fifties and look at you know sort of the
00:02:19 – 00:02:26: June cleaver suburban post-World War II neighborhood as the ideal if you're
00:02:26 – 00:02:30: a southerner you may look to the antebellum south as sort of peak
00:02:30 – 00:02:35: civilization some people go back to the Renaissance and some people particularly
00:02:35 – 00:02:40: if they're not Christians will prefer to point back to ancient Greece and
00:02:40 – 00:02:46: ancient Rome or even you know the Phoenicia or the Etruscans because if you go
00:02:46 – 00:02:50: back far enough and you cherry pick what it is you're looking at you can sign
00:02:50 – 00:02:54: find something that seems good and beautiful and certainly seems like an
00:02:54 – 00:03:00: improvement over what we have today but what we want to talk about is why those
00:03:00 – 00:03:05: things were good and why they seemed good and whether or not we can just return
00:03:05 – 00:03:11: whether you can reboot the eighties or the fifties or the 1850s or there
00:03:11 – 00:03:18: there's something that Dr. Koons on the brief history of power podcast mentioned
00:03:18 – 00:03:24: it last year I think talking about the the pernicious notion of nostalgia that's
00:03:24 – 00:03:28: kind of popped up where we have these affections for periods without
00:03:28 – 00:03:32: understanding what was good about them and we think that we can just go
00:03:32 – 00:03:38: backwards and get it and so I want to begin today briefly with a story it's
00:03:38 – 00:03:45: something that I just serendipitously read this morning 21 years ago over the
00:03:45 – 00:03:51: Atlantic Ocean in the middle of the night there was an Airbus A330 that was
00:03:51 – 00:03:57: flying it six and a half miles up and unbeknownst to the flight crew or to the
00:03:57 – 00:04:02: passengers a few days before maintenance crew had made some mistakes when they
00:04:02 – 00:04:07: were placing one of the engines and so when those mistakes started causing
00:04:07 – 00:04:13: problems during the flight the pilot and co-pilot also made mistakes as they
00:04:13 – 00:04:16: were processing the inputs they were getting from their lights they were
00:04:16 – 00:04:20: flashing and basically the problem was that they had a fuel leak one of the
00:04:20 – 00:04:25: engines had burst a fuel line directly to the engine and so it was just pumping
00:04:25 – 00:04:29: fuel overboard in addition to some of the fuel getting into the engine so it was
00:04:29 – 00:04:34: still running and I'll put the link in the show notes case you're
00:04:34 – 00:04:39: interested in the sort of the process how they figured it out the reason I'm
00:04:39 – 00:04:43: mentioning this story now is I think it's a really good example of what it is
00:04:43 – 00:04:48: that we're doing as we look at the state of the world because what happened at
00:04:48 – 00:04:55: six and a half miles up it like four in the morning the the jet lost and
00:04:55 – 00:05:02: exhausted the last of its fuel and so one second the jet was traveling like
00:05:02 – 00:05:07: 400 knots at 34 and a half thousand feet the lights were on the people knew
00:05:07 – 00:05:11: something was wrong but you know it was still flying it was a jet and it was
00:05:11 – 00:05:17: flying to its destination when the last of the fuel was exhausted and the engine
00:05:17 – 00:05:22: flamed out they were plunged into darkness and there was total silence on that
00:05:22 – 00:05:25: plane except for the sound of their screaming because that was obviously
00:05:25 – 00:05:30: terrifying now from their perspective on the jet they knew that they were in real
00:05:30 – 00:05:35: trouble because the lights were out and you know it's obviously this was bad and
00:05:35 – 00:05:39: it wasn't going to get any better but as an external observer I want you to
00:05:39 – 00:05:44: think about the fact that 10 seconds before the jet engine went out it was a
00:05:44 – 00:05:48: six and a half miles up it was going up 400 knots everything seemed fine it was
00:05:48 – 00:05:54: flying when the fuel ran out five seconds after that it was still going up 400
00:05:54 – 00:05:59: knots and it was still a six and a half miles up so as you're measuring it kind
00:05:59 – 00:06:04: of from a distance it seems like everything's okay it still has the momentum
00:06:04 – 00:06:10: ahead before the fuel was exhausted and if you took a measurement a minute
00:06:10 – 00:06:13: later they're probably going about 30 knots slower they were down about two
00:06:13 – 00:06:19: thousand feet the good news in this case is that the pilot although he had
00:06:19 – 00:06:24: misdiagnosed the failures he was a former bush pilot and he was actually a
00:06:24 – 00:06:29: former narco trafficker so he'd been on some sketchy planes before and he was
00:06:29 – 00:06:34: able to fly this plane with no power just he wasn't really flying it it was
00:06:34 – 00:06:39: a glider at that point he managed to get it 75 miles to the Azores because
00:06:39 – 00:06:42: again they were over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean he found the nearest
00:06:42 – 00:06:47: airport where they could land that thing and he successfully got everyone
00:06:47 – 00:06:52: there there were a few minor injuries from the landing but no loss of life so
00:06:52 – 00:06:58: had a happy ending in that case but I think it's an example for us it as soon
00:06:58 – 00:07:01: as I read that it struck me as I knew we were going to be talking about this
00:07:01 – 00:07:07: today it's similar to our situation in this the thesis of this episode is that
00:07:07 – 00:07:15: Christianity is and has been the fuel of Christendom's scent and trajectory for
00:07:15 – 00:07:22: the last 1500 years and the fuel has run out and we're not even coasting on
00:07:22 – 00:07:27: fumes anymore we are just gliding and so the reason that we're losing
00:07:27 – 00:07:32: altitude and things are getting bumpy and people are starting to scream is
00:07:32 – 00:07:37: that the fuel is gone and we want to talk about today the fact that most
00:07:37 – 00:07:43: observers don't understand they haven't diagnosed the problem just like the
00:07:43 – 00:07:46: pilot hasn't diagnosed the problem until the very last minute so they don't
00:07:46 – 00:07:49: realize it's out of fuel they just think well the plane's going down it should
00:07:49 – 00:07:52: go back up you know maybe they just need to return to their prior trajectory
00:07:52 – 00:07:57: not understanding that the thing that made it a plane in the first place the
00:07:57 – 00:08:01: thing that was keeping it in the air was the fuel and so as we are living
00:08:01 – 00:08:08: today in the ashes of Christendom if we don't recognize the Christianity has
00:08:08 – 00:08:13: been the fuel that has given the West all of the good things that it has not
00:08:13 – 00:08:17: only are we not going to be able to diagnose the problem but we're not in any
00:08:17 – 00:08:22: position to restore any of the former glory that we have and the reason that's
00:08:22 – 00:08:26: important to Cory and I to frame this in terms of Christianity is that we're
00:08:26 – 00:08:32: gonna talk about about Greece and Rome but we're going to make the case that the
00:08:32 – 00:08:36: things that we think are good about the world that we have lost are the things
00:08:36 – 00:08:41: that Christianity gave us and the things that we look back with nostalgia that
00:08:41 – 00:08:46: seemed beautiful in the distance didn't necessarily have that tenor at the
00:08:46 – 00:08:53: time if you had modern Christian morals all you don't have to be Christian
00:08:53 – 00:08:57: hold them like Western morality as you know as it existed a hundred years ago
00:08:57 – 00:09:01: most people even if they weren't Christian they still basically believed in
00:09:01 – 00:09:05: good and evil from somewhere they believed in not robbing not murdering not
00:09:05 – 00:09:10: doing any harm to your neighbor and so we're making the case that when the
00:09:10 – 00:09:15: fuel went out of Christianity and it began to die in the West we lost the
00:09:15 – 00:09:19: momentum that was keeping us in the air and the problems we see today are
00:09:19 – 00:09:26: because of that loss and we see this in so many of our institutions not just our
00:09:26 – 00:09:31: government institutions but also our social institutions our universities our
00:09:31 – 00:09:37: corporations so many places it's inertia is what we're running on things were
00:09:37 – 00:09:42: going at such a speed and for such a period of time with so much mass behind
00:09:42 – 00:09:47: them that even though the engine is now dead and cut out because the fuel is
00:09:47 – 00:09:56: gone things continue for a while as if there are no problems but as we go
00:09:56 – 00:10:01: things get worse and worse just as if you're in a plane that is runoff fuel you
00:10:01 – 00:10:05: cannot help but notice at some point in your descent things are a little off
00:10:05 – 00:10:11: and so we see the cracks in the fissures forming in our institutions and
00:10:11 – 00:10:16: academia is a great example I'm sure many listening will have at some point
00:10:16 – 00:10:21: ban on a university campus as a student perhaps some as professors what
00:10:21 – 00:10:27: have you and you can see this happening the quality of the education dropped
00:10:27 – 00:10:35: off precipitously long ago but the reputation of the institutions remains and so
00:10:35 – 00:10:40: we are turning out students graduates who know far less who are far less
00:10:40 – 00:10:45: capable and that will have ramifications down the line for society and we see
00:10:45 – 00:10:50: that with collapsing bridges and our space program that it basically defunct
00:10:50 – 00:10:54: for decades the private sector has started it up a little bit again we could
00:10:54 – 00:10:59: debate exactly the specifics of that another time but we see all of these
00:10:59 – 00:11:06: consequences building up as that inertia spends itself and so there are those
00:11:06 – 00:11:11: who try to look for some other explanation of what has happened and if you
00:11:11 – 00:11:17: don't get to the root causes you won't propose solutions that will actually
00:11:17 – 00:11:22: address the problems you see if you happen to be a new listener to this episode
00:11:22 – 00:11:27: this episode will stand alone but if you want to check the back archives we've
00:11:27 – 00:11:32: only this is an episode of thing 11 so we don't have that many but I would
00:11:32 – 00:11:36: recommend beginning with the Christian nationalism episode and then the one
00:11:36 – 00:11:40: after it about election in view of headship that was kind of a two-parter in
00:11:40 – 00:11:46: one where the first part was about doctrine of the doctrine of election so
00:11:46 – 00:11:50: that's a very explicitly Christian part of it and the second half was really
00:11:50 – 00:11:56: about the history of Christendom not not at a deep level but but focusing in our
00:11:56 – 00:12:02: case on the spread of the gospel and how everything that we think of today as
00:12:02 – 00:12:09: Western civilization after Roman Greece has been a fundamentally Christian
00:12:09 – 00:12:13: and obviously there was a period of time from about 500 to 1000 AD when
00:12:13 – 00:12:17: different parts of Europe were being Christianized to different rates and
00:12:17 – 00:12:23: different times but by about a thousand give or take it was the transition was
00:12:23 – 00:12:30: pretty well over and so generally as Westerners today when we look back at
00:12:30 – 00:12:33: our history and that is our history both the parts that were Christian and
00:12:33 – 00:12:38: the parts that were pagan and I I should note I don't think I've mentioned this
00:12:38 – 00:12:43: before but when when we use the term pagan it doesn't mean Thor worshiper which
00:12:43 – 00:12:47: is really a modern LARP that's not even that's a reinvention of something
00:12:47 – 00:12:53: and it's certainly not an insult I say pagan in contrast to Christian another
00:12:53 – 00:12:56: term might be unbeliever but that kind of kind of seems more adversarial
00:12:56 – 00:13:01: because if I say you're an unbeliever it begs the question that you should be
00:13:01 – 00:13:05: believing in something which I obviously as a Christian believe but I don't
00:13:05 – 00:13:09: want to pose that challenge to someone who's listening so if I say pagan
00:13:09 – 00:13:12: or unbeliever it means the same thing and neither neither should be taken as a
00:13:12 – 00:13:19: pejorative so those European nations beginning with Greece and Rome and
00:13:19 – 00:13:27: their follow-ons as they became Christian they largely gave a transfer of
00:13:27 – 00:13:33: what they had into the more modern era now there there are a few different
00:13:33 – 00:13:38: groups of people on the internet which are obviously just people in real life
00:13:38 – 00:13:42: but it plays out very clearly online as I mentioned you have kind of zoomers
00:13:42 – 00:13:47: looking at the vaporment wave nostalgia there's some 50s nostalgia but for the
00:13:47 – 00:13:52: most part I think a lot of people have a good sense of proper sense that a lot
00:13:52 – 00:13:56: of our problems begin with the enlightenment which is absolutely true the
00:13:56 – 00:14:00: reason that Christendom is dead today is that the enlightenment happened and we'll
00:14:00 – 00:14:03: do an episode on them the future but it's just a given for everything that
00:14:03 – 00:14:07: Cory and I say about this stuff
00:14:07 – 00:14:15: prior to the enlightenment Western Europe Christianity Christendom reached its
00:14:15 – 00:14:22: pinnacle in terms of arts in terms of cultural advancement which is kind of a
00:14:22 – 00:14:26: dangerous word because that's what's been happening ever since there's been the
00:14:26 – 00:14:32: promise of what's called progress the promise of improvement over previous
00:14:32 – 00:14:37: eras where it's been done through the lens and with the ethos of the
00:14:37 – 00:14:43: enlightenment where it wasn't a question of how can we serve God better it was a
00:14:43 – 00:14:47: question of can we do this without God at all because look how well we're
00:14:47 – 00:14:52: doing today look at all look at everything that we have built and the mistake
00:14:52 – 00:14:57: that I think that a lot of people make today especially in the sphere of the
00:14:57 – 00:15:04: right is to think that the greatness of Europe's history existed without
00:15:04 – 00:15:09: Christianity without its influence and that's a really dangerous
00:15:09 – 00:15:13: presupposition we'll talk about that in a few minutes but there's there's a
00:15:13 – 00:15:16: clear dividing line in groups because if if you're not a Christian if you're a
00:15:16 – 00:15:22: pagan you're gonna want to find something like ancient Greece and Rome where
00:15:22 – 00:15:27: they had beautiful architecture they had art they had science they had civilization
00:15:27 – 00:15:32: it was a proper civilization it was a godless civilization you can also look
00:15:32 – 00:15:36: east to China if you've ever had the privilege of seeing some 3,000 year old
00:15:36 – 00:15:42: Chinese art it is absolutely stunning it is it is far ahead of what the west was
00:15:42 – 00:15:47: doing 3,000 years ago and I say that as someone who looked at that stuff not
00:15:47 – 00:15:51: wanting to find out but just objectively the beauty and the intricacy and the
00:15:51 – 00:15:56: advancement of the art that the Chinese had 3,000 years ago it's it's breathtaking
00:15:56 – 00:16:02: that's beautiful I think that those periods of time are very interesting because
00:16:03 – 00:16:08: if you're a Christian then you must necessarily be a young earth creationist and so
00:16:08 – 00:16:15: we have the flood and we have Babel about 4,500 years ago so 3,000 years ago is
00:16:15 – 00:16:21: only 1,500 years from the Tower of Babel where man was scattered and most of
00:16:21 – 00:16:25: the men who were scattered abandoned God that was that was part of the the
00:16:25 – 00:16:34: election episode but then succeeding generations fell away from God to different
00:16:34 – 00:16:40: degrees and suffered different degrees of punishment and decay as a result I'm
00:16:40 – 00:16:45: not I'm not making that is is a doctrinal claim I just personally based on
00:16:45 – 00:16:49: observing the timeline and observing the state of the very civilizations I
00:16:49 – 00:16:55: think it can be derived from the facts that we find from archaeology and from
00:16:55 – 00:16:58: anthropology we can dig stuff up and we can see the state of civilizations
00:16:58 – 00:17:04: 3,000 years ago versus 2,000 versus 1,000 and I think that if you look at that
00:17:04 – 00:17:11: history through the view of knowledge of the true God it's clear at least to
00:17:11 – 00:17:16: me and I hope to to some of you that the further we got from Babel the worse it
00:17:16 – 00:17:22: got for people who had not maintained a connection with God no obviously by
00:17:22 – 00:17:27: the time that Jesus arrived it was really just the Jews and a few others who
00:17:27 – 00:17:33: knew of God and even many of them hated and didn't believe him so it's not
00:17:33 – 00:17:38: the claim of material gain it's the claim that without God you will lose
00:17:38 – 00:17:45: other things even if you lose those things with God through Chastisement but
00:17:45 – 00:17:50: the fact that China was frankly greater 3,000 years ago and it was 2,000 years
00:17:50 – 00:17:54: ago I think demonstrates that point and that's the case when you look at Rome
00:17:54 – 00:18:04: and Greece they were degenerate before the birth of Christ yeah they the in so
00:18:04 – 00:18:07: to address those who might happen to be listening who are not Christians who
00:18:07 – 00:18:13: maybe have a great fondness for ancient Greece and Rome particularly because a
00:18:13 – 00:18:17: it seems beautiful and b there was no Jesus around so you don't have to buy
00:18:17 – 00:18:22: any of this stuff that you know we're selling if you actually look at what
00:18:22 – 00:18:27: life was like in that period it was basically like we have today there was
00:18:27 – 00:18:34: abortion there was Sodomy there was Euthanasia there was cruelty a boundless
00:18:34 – 00:18:42: cruelty based on disqualifying the humanity of other people and in our case
00:18:42 – 00:18:45: we're not talking about slavery we're talking just about people who would just
00:18:45 – 00:18:50: be killed because they were they were in the wrong class and you could treat
00:18:50 – 00:18:53: them like animals you can mistreat them like animals even if you deal with
00:18:53 – 00:18:59: slavery although that's an episode from their time but just briefly many people
00:18:59 – 00:19:04: like to bring up that there was a reform under I cannot remember which emperor
00:19:04 – 00:19:09: now but there was a reform of slavery around the time of the New Testament and all
00:19:09 – 00:19:15: that it changed was that you needed a reason why you killed your slave and
00:19:15 – 00:19:19: almost any reason would do because before that in the Roman Empire you could just
00:19:19 – 00:19:22: kill your slave because you were bored that might still have been a good
00:19:22 – 00:19:28: enough reason after the reform even but that's the sort of thing you had at the
00:19:28 – 00:19:33: height of the power of the Roman Empire and obviously you had the the social decay
00:19:33 – 00:19:38: creeping in as well and Greece had already fallen at this point so and you
00:19:38 – 00:19:42: mentioned Phoenicia earlier they were known for child sacrifice that was their
00:19:42 – 00:19:46: big contribution despite some of the things they achieved in their
00:19:46 – 00:19:52: civilization they burned children alive to their gods in order to get a good
00:19:52 – 00:19:58: harvest or favorable winds so you can't look back at these societies and not
00:19:58 – 00:20:02: look at the totality of what they were doing they were doing all of the
00:20:02 – 00:20:09: sorts of evil things our society is doing today just in a different way and
00:20:09 – 00:20:14: it's particularly the things that I think the people looking back fondly to
00:20:14 – 00:20:19: those periods are trying to escape if you're if you want to return to
00:20:19 – 00:20:24: tradition you want to return to the Roman tradition because they had indoor
00:20:24 – 00:20:29: plumbing and you know law and order you're going to get all of the things that
00:20:29 – 00:20:34: you're trying to escape today as well because they were godless and they were
00:20:34 – 00:20:39: in a period of decay even as they were building their empire now there's a lot
00:20:39 – 00:20:41: of political stuff that we're not going to get into this because it's not a
00:20:41 – 00:20:46: political podcast but I just want to point we want to point to those areas in
00:20:46 – 00:20:52: particular to to try to make the case that the winds the the nostalgia that we
00:20:52 – 00:20:58: have for those periods if you if you feel that I would strongly encourage you to
00:20:58 – 00:21:03: look at what life was actually like in those times because I think you'll find
00:21:03 – 00:21:07: that the things that are decaying today and the things that the
00:21:07 – 00:21:12: Christianization of the West solved are the very things that you're trying to
00:21:12 – 00:21:16: escape today and we're making the case that you're escaping it today because
00:21:16 – 00:21:21: the Christianization of that the West ended and so we're we still have the
00:21:21 – 00:21:25: technology we have the indoor plumbing we have some of the laws but they're
00:21:25 – 00:21:30: rapidly being destroyed one by one precisely because the thing that got us
00:21:30 – 00:21:37: here was not they were white they were high IQ that were good unto ourselves
00:21:37 – 00:21:43: those to whatever degree those things are blessings they are not intrinsic goods
00:21:43 – 00:21:50: if we are setting ourself against God and I think that the so that societal
00:21:50 – 00:21:55: state of Greece and Rome in my opinion demonstrates that they were again they
00:21:55 – 00:21:59: were just they were depraved they were doing the same sort of depravity that
00:21:59 – 00:22:03: makes us recoil with your Christian or a pagan today you see the stuff that's
00:22:03 – 00:22:08: going on in parades and everywhere and you're just you're rightly horrified you
00:22:08 – 00:22:13: don't need to know God to know that this is the face of evil the face of evil was
00:22:13 – 00:22:19: the norm 2500 years ago in 2000 years ago as well because although they had
00:22:19 – 00:22:24: technological advancement and some of it was stunning what they didn't have was
00:22:24 – 00:22:31: the source of moral authority that does not change across time and the loss of
00:22:31 – 00:22:36: that structure as Corey said the the fact that the underpinnings have been
00:22:36 – 00:22:41: knocked out and yet we still have the facade I think makes Christians as well as
00:22:41 – 00:22:45: unbelievers look at and say well it's still basically mostly Christian you
00:22:45 – 00:22:48: know some people go to church and yeah it's not as good as it used to be the
00:22:48 – 00:22:53: reality is that we're not only running on fumes but the engine is out we're
00:22:53 – 00:22:59: still at 30,000 feet but we're on a glide path to the middle of the ocean and in
00:22:59 – 00:23:04: our case there's not going to be an azure's island for us to land it because the
00:23:04 – 00:23:08: problems that we have are the destruction of the air pain like you know the
00:23:08 – 00:23:13: analogy breaks down to some point you can't you can't save the craft unless you
00:23:13 – 00:23:17: put the fuel back in it and in their case there is no putting a fuel until they
00:23:17 – 00:23:22: landed for us the only landing we're gonna have if we don't get this going in
00:23:22 – 00:23:26: mid air is going to be the complete destruction of everything and
00:23:26 – 00:23:33: rewinding 30 or 40 or 100 or 200 or 2000 years won't fix our problems if we
00:23:33 – 00:23:39: don't know what solved the absence of the problems in the first place the word
00:23:39 – 00:23:44: progress is one of those curious little words that people always get wrong and
00:23:44 – 00:23:51: so in keeping with a general theme terms and their meanings matter progress
00:23:51 – 00:23:57: because of the fact that it starts with pro as opposed to say con leads many to
00:23:57 – 00:24:01: conclude that it is necessarily good that is a secondary meaning of it it is
00:24:01 – 00:24:07: come to be one of the meanings but that's not inherently what the term means the
00:24:07 – 00:24:11: term comes from pro in Latin which just means forward and forward is not always
00:24:11 – 00:24:16: good if you're walking forward and there's a cliff that's generally bad and the
00:24:16 – 00:24:20: verb for to walk that's all it is to walk forward that's what progress means and
00:24:20 – 00:24:26: and so what matters is your destination anyone who goes hiking or camping knows that if you're
00:24:26 – 00:24:33: making progress down the wrong trail that's not a good thing so it matters what your destination is
00:24:34 – 00:24:40: yes our society is still in some ways making progress but toward what are we progressing
00:24:40 – 00:24:45: we're progressing toward evil no longer toward good and so you have to be careful when you use
00:24:45 – 00:24:52: these terms like progress because it is 100% a matter of the destination not just of the fact that
00:24:52 – 00:24:57: well I'm still upright and walking it must be good that's not necessarily the case
00:24:58 – 00:25:03: and this is something that we in the church have fallen for hook line and sinker as well as
00:25:05 – 00:25:13: the post enlightenment expansion of a fundamentally new religion without God progressed the way
00:25:13 – 00:25:22: cancer progresses in a dying person's body there was the sense that we were leaving the old
00:25:22 – 00:25:27: things behind and we were discovering new things and new ways of doing things and what's funny is
00:25:27 – 00:25:32: that if you know history especially you know the history of heresy and the history of ancient
00:25:32 – 00:25:39: degenerate civilizations we weren't inventing anything new we were rediscovering the same old gods
00:25:39 – 00:25:45: that had been cast down by prep previous generations there's there's truly nothing new under the sun
00:25:45 – 00:25:51: you're not going to find something that you think is better and clever that has not been tried
00:25:51 – 00:26:00: before by people who got it from someplace evil and ran with it and so what's happened particularly
00:26:00 – 00:26:06: I think since you know I mentioned the antebellum south I think since particularly in the United
00:26:06 – 00:26:13: States slavery was ended as a legal institution outside of prisons which would be something we'll
00:26:13 – 00:26:19: talk about in the slavery episode because slavery is still 100% legal in the United States today
00:26:19 – 00:26:24: go read the 13th amendment if you think I'm wrong slavery is legal it they changed for whom it was
00:26:24 – 00:26:31: legal that was done principally not by Christians at the time the abolitionists were principally
00:26:32 – 00:26:40: radicals non-Christians in some cases they were anarchists and so they were fighting in moral terms
00:26:41 – 00:26:46: for something that when they would try to sell it to Christians it was sold as a moral good as a
00:26:46 – 00:26:53: Christian good and Christians are commanded to test the spirits it's one of the things that God
00:26:53 – 00:26:59: says don't just believe somebody that they show up whether it's somebody with a collar or somebody
00:26:59 – 00:27:04: with a podcast don't just believe them because they say something that sounds convincing test the
00:27:04 – 00:27:11: spirits does this accord with scripture what happened particularly in the 19th century in the west
00:27:11 – 00:27:18: was that things like slavery and then following hot on its heels the so-called emancipation of
00:27:18 – 00:27:25: women funny how they use the same language when women were given the franchise it was done in
00:27:25 – 00:27:32: moral terms it was done in terms of expanding freedom and expanding so-called rights and in terms
00:27:32 – 00:27:39: of progress and it was sold in terms that Christians would gobble up because like oh that sounds
00:27:39 – 00:27:45: Jesus-y because we stopped looking it was scripture says about any of those things scripture has a
00:27:45 – 00:27:52: lot to say about slavery and it has a lot to say about women and about a woman's place in society and
00:27:53 – 00:28:00: today when someone hears just the phrase a woman's place it sounds like a physical assault it sounds
00:28:00 – 00:28:08: like I'm this madman that wants to chain women and wants to belittle and just treat them as subhuman
00:28:09 – 00:28:15: to know your place in life is one of the greatest blessings it's the reason that teenagers are so
00:28:15 – 00:28:20: angsty they don't know their place in life because they've been told their teenagers we stop saying
00:28:20 – 00:28:25: that they're young men and young women where they have a clear trajectory to adulthood and to
00:28:25 – 00:28:32: entering into civilization with their elders we start calling them teenagers whereas this transit
00:28:32 – 00:28:37: of property and you know your role of dice and who knows what's gonna come out but you don't have
00:28:37 – 00:28:43: any idea what your place in life is and so for us to say a woman's place it's intended as a
00:28:43 – 00:28:51: blessing because God gives clear instructions for what that is and the women who are happiest in
00:28:51 – 00:28:58: this world today are the ones who are closest to God's model for what they should be doing
00:28:59 – 00:29:04: because ontology and vocation the more they overlap the more joy we are given
00:29:05 – 00:29:13: and the attack on slavery and the attack on the absence of feminism which was itself an attack
00:29:13 – 00:29:20: on civilization the creation of feminism as an idea was done specifically to knock some of these
00:29:20 – 00:29:26: supports out of civilization not to be clear I'm not saying the slavery was a supportive civilization
00:29:26 – 00:29:30: I don't believe that I don't think it's a moral good or evil and I think scripture makes that
00:29:31 – 00:29:35: someone wants to misquote me they're gonna do that anyway I'm not saying you need slavery to have
00:29:35 – 00:29:42: civilization I don't believe that however if you're a Christian you can have reasons to not want
00:29:42 – 00:29:49: or to not like slavery but you cannot have reasons that you ascribe to God because God doesn't do
00:29:49 – 00:29:55: that and what has been happening ever since the 1850s and really since the Enlightenment one by
00:29:55 – 00:30:02: one we've been taking things where God was clear as we talked about early on the genealogy of ideas
00:30:02 – 00:30:09: there's never been any doubt about these questions in all of Christian history until suddenly
00:30:09 – 00:30:13: these questions arose and people like wow this is fascinating I'm really concerned that everyone
00:30:13 – 00:30:18: before me isn't hell because they were underpentant centers for doing these things and so more and
00:30:18 – 00:30:26: more today worldly ideas that have no genesis and scripture they have no nexus to God are
00:30:26 – 00:30:31: imported they're slathered in Jesus butter and everyone is told yeah that's Christian because
00:30:31 – 00:30:35: it sounds loving and that has to be the end of the argument and if you point to scripture and say
00:30:35 – 00:30:42: well what does scripture say about slaves or what does scripture say about women you're attacked
00:30:42 – 00:30:47: you're shouted down as an evil person now are there evil people who've asked those questions I don't
00:30:47 – 00:30:55: probably but is the question evil no as a Christian the question is vital and as someone
00:30:56 – 00:31:02: trying to undo the damage civilizationally they were facing today the questions must be asked
00:31:02 – 00:31:09: because the fuel ran out of Christianity as we stopped believing the Bible even as we talk about
00:31:09 – 00:31:14: solar scripture and how yeah I believe everything in there we just say well yeah but that's not what
00:31:14 – 00:31:19: that means or that was in that day it doesn't really apply well no one ever thought that before
00:31:19 – 00:31:27: and the fact that we freely think that now is precisely why civilization and Christendom are in a
00:31:27 – 00:31:34: nose dive and we don't know how to fix it because we refuse to actually turn back to the God who gave
00:31:34 – 00:31:42: us the tools to prevent the decay that is frankly being given to us as punishment God is abandoning
00:31:42 – 00:31:48: us to our base or passions and we deserve the destruction if we don't return to godly living
00:31:48 – 00:31:53: and so we're trying to reframe this episode in Christian in terms of Christianity because it is
00:31:53 – 00:31:59: the only source of truth they can maintain these things over extended periods of time if you live
00:31:59 – 00:32:04: a life in a court with God you will live a blessed life you might not be prosperous but you will
00:32:04 – 00:32:10: be prospered by God even if you're poor even if all your children die in infancy you will still be
00:32:10 – 00:32:15: prospered we don't know what form it's going to take but we know the God will bless us and we
00:32:15 – 00:32:20: also know the God will punish us when we turn our backs on him and we've done that and
00:32:22 – 00:32:27: Cory and I want people to ask the questions about you know maybe we need to turn on the lights in
00:32:27 – 00:32:32: here so we can see what we're doing because we're not looking to scripture when these problems arise
00:32:32 – 00:32:36: and if Christians can't look to scripture to help guide the rest of the world
00:32:37 – 00:32:44: how are we doing our duty as Christians are we not hiding our light under a bushel if we can't
00:32:44 – 00:32:50: even explain how evil is evil and good is good and maybe we should do one and not the other and
00:32:50 – 00:32:57: here's why and if you look at all these movements that were born really as the children of the
00:32:57 – 00:33:04: enlightenment which would be the anti-slavery feminism all of these various things one of the
00:33:04 – 00:33:15: underlying goals is atomization the goal is to separate people men and women from the groups
00:33:15 – 00:33:20: into which God placed them it's to separate women from their families it's to separate men from
00:33:20 – 00:33:27: their families it's to say you're not a member of a class or a group or a race or any of these
00:33:27 – 00:33:34: other things you're an individual and it's only you you're the only one who matters and that's
00:33:34 – 00:33:39: not how God made us and that's the reason it's fundamentally subversive all of these various
00:33:39 – 00:33:46: movements and the reason that it knocks the legs out from under any civilization that's the
00:33:46 – 00:33:51: death of Christendom that's the death of civilization when people when men and women start thinking
00:33:51 – 00:33:59: of themselves as an individual first and foremost instead of a father or a mother or a son or a
00:33:59 – 00:34:04: daughter or a brother or a sister because these are the things God made you
00:34:05 – 00:34:13: you are in the family God gave you because God gave you that family God created you in the womb
00:34:13 – 00:34:18: to make you part of that family to make you a child of your mother and your father
00:34:19 – 00:34:25: God made you the race that you are God made you all of the various things where the attributes
00:34:25 – 00:34:31: you have are gifts from God so when you just start denying these things and saying that no I am
00:34:31 – 00:34:36: this self-sufficient island I stand alone and I need no one else and nothing
00:34:38 – 00:34:43: you are denying the reality of creation you are denying what God created and you are becoming
00:34:43 – 00:34:49: part of the problem you are becoming part of what is destroying civilization all around us
00:34:50 – 00:34:54: and that is what these have in common and of course they have that in common because they have a
00:34:54 – 00:35:03: common motivating intelligence behind them and as I've said before no human beings could not
00:35:03 – 00:35:09: form these sorts of conspiracies over a course of centuries and orchestrate these things we know
00:35:09 – 00:35:13: historically humans are not very good at working on that scale at least in secret for that long
00:35:14 – 00:35:23: but Satan is and ultimately that is the power behind all of these movements and that's why they
00:35:23 – 00:35:28: have a coherent goal that's why they all work toward that goal because there is actually a plan
00:35:29 – 00:35:36: and so you can choose do you want to be on that side with Satan supporting his forces or do you
00:35:36 – 00:35:42: want to be on God's side it's a very stark choice and one would think it would be an easy choice
00:35:43 – 00:35:49: but so many today make the choice that no I like these things that the enlightenment has given me
00:35:49 – 00:35:55: even though they're cancer in the short run they're pleasant some of them and so people opt to
00:35:55 – 00:36:00: keep those instead of asking the hard questions actually looking at scripture seeing what it is
00:36:00 – 00:36:09: that God says is right and true and good and as Christians first and foremost we should be looking
00:36:09 – 00:36:15: to scripture to see what God has said about these things not looking to what the world has done
00:36:15 – 00:36:22: not looking to what we are told is progress a great example of looking to scripture and
00:36:22 – 00:36:29: atomization can be found in 2nd Corinthians 12 where God says for children are not obligated
00:36:29 – 00:36:35: to save up for their parents but parents for their children now try saying that in a room full of
00:36:35 – 00:36:44: boomers and see if you don't get lynched because that the idea of atomization and individualization
00:36:44 – 00:36:50: and I got mine and you need to earner yours and pick yourself up from by your bootstraps
00:36:50 – 00:36:56: have become so normal that those are now moral claims it's not simply wisdom whether it's true
00:36:56 – 00:37:04: or false but those are moral dicta that are given by older generations to younger generations
00:37:04 – 00:37:10: without regard to their circumstances without regard to the fact that picking yourself up by your
00:37:10 – 00:37:18: bootstraps isn't possible today the way it was 50 years ago well and only that it's fundamentally
00:37:18 – 00:37:24: impossible which is one thing that I think is funny because it came over from a German fairy tale
00:37:24 – 00:37:28: it's Baron Moonchausen and one of the the famous stories about him it's it's told in various ways
00:37:28 – 00:37:35: but he saves himself and his horse from quicksand or a muddy trap whatever it happens to be in the
00:37:35 – 00:37:42: particular tale by pulling himself and his horse up by his hair well some of them are pulling
00:37:42 – 00:37:46: himself up by his bootstraps that's where we literally get it from it was meant to be something
00:37:46 – 00:37:52: that is literally impossible and it's become this phrase in the US that's practically sacrosanct
00:37:52 – 00:37:57: that will know you pull yourself up by your boot it's meant to be something that is impossible
00:37:58 – 00:38:03: and so this is great irony that it's used so frequently to mean that that somehow this is
00:38:03 – 00:38:07: something you can do if you just work hard enough I guess we can all be Baron Moonchausen and pull
00:38:07 – 00:38:15: our horse out of a muddy puddle by pulling our own hair that's amazing there's another application
00:38:15 – 00:38:23: of that same technique in a different fairy tale of Rumpel Stiltskin in the original ending the way
00:38:23 – 00:38:29: he died when she guessed his name was he stamped his foot so hard that he got one of his feet stuck
00:38:30 – 00:38:36: in the ground and he pulled his other foot up over his head and tore himself in half and died
00:38:37 – 00:38:41: so when he tried to pull himself up by his bootstraps that's how it actually ends up you end up
00:38:42 – 00:38:53: eviscerated and dead and you know it's so atomized as yeah return to the dust I guess that's
00:38:53 – 00:38:59: the only biblical part of the whole thing it's you know the fact that scripture says the
00:38:59 – 00:39:05: women are to be silent and this slaves are to obey their masters and that parents are to save
00:39:05 – 00:39:10: up for their children these are countercultural things today these are things that will make
00:39:10 – 00:39:15: people so angry that they will say you're not Christian simply for quoting scripture
00:39:16 – 00:39:23: and the reason we're doing this podcast series the reason that were that we had spent the
00:39:23 – 00:39:30: money and the time to do any of this was that more and more we saw Christians reacting with visceral
00:39:30 – 00:39:38: hatred to the plain words of scripture and as we look like I've said before and Cory and I
00:39:38 – 00:39:45: both spent a lot of time reaching out to people who are not Christians to explain the world
00:39:46 – 00:39:52: in Christian terms that they can understand yet it's funny when the the communion thing blew up
00:39:52 – 00:39:58: in the last couple weeks there were at least two different one was a not a Lutheran one wasn't a
00:39:58 – 00:40:04: Christian at all who asked if I could briefly explain what the controversy was and in both cases
00:40:04 – 00:40:10: in like four tweets which is 280 characters each I was able to explain it well enough that they
00:40:10 – 00:40:16: said thank you I understand perfectly what's going on now now that sort of clarity of speech and
00:40:16 – 00:40:21: thought and communication should be the bare minimum that should be table stakes for any pastor who
00:40:21 – 00:40:27: wants to speak on any issue and as Christians we should be equipped whenever we're speaking about
00:40:27 – 00:40:33: the world to speak in such a way that if someone doesn't know God and they don't care about God
00:40:33 – 00:40:40: maybe we can make the pragmatic case for God that's not a bad thing to say you know what the
00:40:40 – 00:40:45: suffering in the misery in your family for the last couple generations you know this isn't
00:40:45 – 00:40:50: your opening salvo but at some point you should be able to make the point to them that the decay
00:40:50 – 00:40:56: in the misery that you're suffering from is due to disobedience to God the the fact that the
00:40:56 – 00:41:02: you know grandpa was alcoholic and mom was abusive and the kid is now looking a hormone replacement
00:41:02 – 00:41:09: therapy and you just found Jesus and you're like once you once those people find Jesus they
00:41:09 – 00:41:17: understand what was missing from all those previous generations but the curse of sin
00:41:18 – 00:41:25: is baked into the acts of sinfulness the fact that when you do evil you will typically get
00:41:25 – 00:41:31: walloped immediately with the evil consequences there might be a delay of you know a few minutes or
00:41:31 – 00:41:37: six months or a year but you're always going to pay the price for whatever evil you do not just
00:41:37 – 00:41:43: from guilt and not talking about the eternal price talking about in this life you know sometimes
00:41:43 – 00:41:49: people can steal stuff and get away with the consequences yeah and and temporal consequences are
00:41:50 – 00:41:55: are something that Christians used to believe in it's something that we you know Lutherans confess
00:41:55 – 00:42:02: every Sunday when we confess our sins but if you don't believe that how can you explain to
00:42:02 – 00:42:07: someone who's not a Christian who's looking at you know we're sitting in the ashes of Christ
00:42:07 – 00:42:14: and we're seeing everything collapsing around us and we don't understand why and on one hand
00:42:15 – 00:42:21: like we're not simply saying well yeah this is God punishing us like that's true but it's not
00:42:21 – 00:42:28: it's not even close to the most interesting part of what's going on because God's punishment
00:42:28 – 00:42:37: is reversible when the sin ends when Israel repented God stopped chastising them and then they would
00:42:37 – 00:42:42: fall into sin again and they would be chastised again and it was a cycle and it's a human cycle
00:42:42 – 00:42:47: it wasn't particular to them it's particular to all of us and what we've seen and what we
00:42:47 – 00:42:53: described in the election episode and are continuing here is that for Western
00:42:54 – 00:43:00: society and civilization we had an incredibly long long arc of well over a thousand years
00:43:00 – 00:43:06: where God's blessings were poured out pretty much continuously and we had exponential growth
00:43:06 – 00:43:13: of population in a entirely sustainable manner it wasn't simply ballooning as has happened
00:43:13 – 00:43:20: in Africa and they're only kept alive completely artificially by drug and food subsidies are
00:43:20 – 00:43:26: shipped in from outside their natural population is 20% or less of what they have today
00:43:26 – 00:43:32: and that was not the case in Europe Europe grew as God gave the growth and we were able to
00:43:32 – 00:43:37: continue to feed ourselves despite not having a whole lot of arable land through improvements
00:43:37 – 00:43:43: and technology which are the result of wisdom which are the result of blessing and so
00:43:43 – 00:43:48: Christians shouldn't be afraid of science and we shouldn't be afraid of knowledge but we should
00:43:48 – 00:43:54: because we should understand that those good things come from God but they're gifts just like
00:43:55 – 00:44:00: if you are given a million dollars from some long dead aunt that you didn't even know existed
00:44:00 – 00:44:06: that's a gift from God what kind of person are you after that are you the kind of goes and blows
00:44:06 – 00:44:12: it all on drugs or on fast cars or on gambling or do you save it away or do you put it to work
00:44:12 – 00:44:17: in the church or you know there's not a right answer but there are a lot of wrong answers
00:44:18 – 00:44:26: and when God gives us gifts we need to be conscious of the fact one that they're coming from God
00:44:26 – 00:44:33: and two that they're not just for us to sit on or to be happy they're for us to be a blessing in
00:44:33 – 00:44:40: the lives of others so if you're given the gift of being able to explain things clearly use that
00:44:40 – 00:44:45: gift to explain important things clearly to people who need them explained and if you're not given
00:44:45 – 00:44:52: the gift please don't try beyond your limits please find someone who can help explain things so
00:44:52 – 00:44:58: that you don't make things worse the gifts that God has given God will also withdraw you know we
00:44:59 – 00:45:05: we see this with the weather and we see this with famine scriptures very clear that the storehouses
00:45:05 – 00:45:11: of the winds are controlled by God and the fact that today we understand that the sun heats
00:45:11 – 00:45:16: the earth's crust and gives rise to currents that rise and fall and cause the winds to blow
00:45:17 – 00:45:23: doesn't change the fact that God controls the winds there can be both sides of the sun so
00:45:23 – 00:45:31: yes yeah just moves at one step yeah exactly but that's that's the way God designed the system
00:45:31 – 00:45:36: and that's the system that God is operating and continuing to maintain and I think that
00:45:37 – 00:45:43: the reason one of the reasons that the enlightenment was so damaging was that on one hand our
00:45:43 – 00:45:50: scientific and we talked about this a little bit a couple weeks ago but Scantia is Latin for
00:45:50 – 00:45:58: knowledge it doesn't mean truth that's where it's us Scantia means knowledge science is the
00:45:58 – 00:46:05: pursuit of knowledge and knowledge is implicitly of truth you can't know something false you can
00:46:05 – 00:46:13: be misled but you have knowledge if you have knowledge you have knowledge of a true thing so science
00:46:14 – 00:46:19: properly understood can only ever be right to the degree that it understands something
00:46:19 – 00:46:25: and a lot of science involves speculation and hypothesis and proving and disproving hypotheses
00:46:25 – 00:46:31: but ultimately the things that we understand about the world if you have a Christian worldview it's
00:46:31 – 00:46:40: simply laying bare more of what God is doing and again we shouldn't be afraid of thinking and talking
00:46:40 – 00:46:46: in these ways because there are people who don't know God but they know science maybe they know
00:46:46 – 00:46:52: the crappy modern version of science that's really nothing of the sort but they see some value at
00:46:52 – 00:47:00: least in the historical trajectory of gaining knowledge of the universe if we can only as Christians
00:47:00 – 00:47:04: argue with them and say well that's not true that's not true and have no other explanation for
00:47:04 – 00:47:11: anything we look stupid as Cory said last week you just look dumb because they don't know God
00:47:11 – 00:47:15: but they know that that's nonsense and if you're telling them nonsense in a way that's
00:47:15 – 00:47:21: verifiable to them is untrue they will never listen to you and believe things that they don't
00:47:21 – 00:47:32: have knowledge of and so the trajectory of God's work in history and the manner in which he works
00:47:32 – 00:47:40: in space and time is important to us because his wrath ebbs and flows according to our sin
00:47:40 – 00:47:45: and so do his blessings and I'm not trying to do you know the jury fall while throwing a
00:47:45 – 00:47:49: attributing a particular storm to a particular sin I don't necessarily think that's invalid but
00:47:50 – 00:47:56: I think it's typological they're small and big ways that these things manifest and we're not
00:47:56 – 00:48:03: prophets we can't correlate these things in without with perfect certainty but we can know in general
00:48:03 – 00:48:08: that when things are getting worse is a Christian we need to understand that's chastisement
00:48:09 – 00:48:15: and we have to ask the question chastisement for what and so we're talking about the ashes of
00:48:15 – 00:48:21: Christendom because we're so far down the path of the what that we can't even see it anymore we
00:48:21 – 00:48:27: got to throw this thing in reverse and go full blast just to get back to where we can have some
00:48:27 – 00:48:33: semblance of Christianity even while we're still celebrating the liturgy in church and we still
00:48:33 – 00:48:39: have the Bible and we're still Christians on Sunday the point we're trying to make is let's be
00:48:39 – 00:48:46: Christians every day not about doing good works for salvation but about being beacons of God's
00:48:46 – 00:48:54: truth in every step of your life because if you're doing that God will continue to open doors for
00:48:54 – 00:48:59: you to be able to explain things to people that would never have happened if you don't let people
00:48:59 – 00:49:04: know your Christian and let them know you have something to say and maybe they won't believe you
00:49:04 – 00:49:09: maybe they'll think it was stupid who cares I get called stupid all the time by people who are
00:49:09 – 00:49:12: aren't even close to how smart I am and I don't take it personally they don't they don't understand
00:49:13 – 00:49:19: that's that's for the IQ episode but you can't care you can't care if people don't like you or
00:49:19 – 00:49:25: don't believe you tell the truth and let that be its own reward and you'll be surprised and blessed
00:49:25 – 00:49:29: by who does hear you because it'll be something you didn't even know was listening but we got to
00:49:29 – 00:49:34: talk about these things frankly and we got to talk about them to people who think we're stupid
00:49:34 – 00:49:40: when we say the believe in Jesus that's part of it that's part of being a Christian and modern
00:49:40 – 00:49:46: evangelism is about talking about these things the entire project of the enlightenment essentially was
00:49:46 – 00:49:54: to remove God from everything because the animating intelligence behind the enlightenment I would hope
00:49:54 – 00:50:00: would be obvious by now but that was accomplished by redefining knowledge and truth
00:50:02 – 00:50:09: and for centuries it had been the case that the physical sciences the artist's surveillance the
00:50:09 – 00:50:17: survival arts were considered secondary to the artist's liberales the liberal arts which would
00:50:17 – 00:50:24: include such things as philosophy and theology theology was originally conceived of as the queen
00:50:24 – 00:50:31: of the sciences it was the pinnacle of human knowledge everything else flowed from that because
00:50:31 – 00:50:39: that was knowledge of ultimate things ultimate truth ultimate good and so in so far as things
00:50:39 – 00:50:48: agreed with truth they were considered useful or good and so science was a method so developed
00:50:48 – 00:50:54: in the more modern sense of the term to go about acquiring knowledge that was consistent with the
00:50:54 – 00:51:02: good the beautiful and the true however it is still the case that truth is prior to knowledge
00:51:03 – 00:51:09: what the enlightenment attempted to do was redefine it so that truth is merely the cumulative
00:51:10 – 00:51:18: noun in order to describe its sort of the plural of plurals of data of knowledge and so if you acquire
00:51:18 – 00:51:24: enough data well that adds up to a truth that's not how it works truth is something fundamentally
00:51:24 – 00:51:30: different and so what we're talking about here is truth we're talking about ultimate realities
00:51:30 – 00:51:37: not just a collection of data points that give us a pattern and point to something a probabilistic
00:51:37 – 00:51:47: reality as it were but to go back for a second here to God blessing and cursing because both are
00:51:47 – 00:51:52: of course present in scripture I thought of Jeremiah 18 and so I'll read verses 7 through I think 10
00:51:52 – 00:51:59: here if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will pluck up and break down
00:52:00 – 00:52:06: and destroy it and if that nation concerning which I have spoken turns from its evil I will
00:52:06 – 00:52:11: relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it and if at any time I declare concerning a
00:52:11 – 00:52:17: nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it and if it does evil in my sight not listening to
00:52:17 – 00:52:25: my voice then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it right now we are a bit of
00:52:25 – 00:52:31: both of those because obviously in centuries past we were the kingdom God planted and blessed
00:52:31 – 00:52:39: and we turned from him now we are the wicked kingdom that God is going to curse and if we turn
00:52:39 – 00:52:43: back to God of course he will bless us again in the words of David I believe that I will see the good
00:52:43 – 00:52:51: of the Lord and the land of the living and so if we turn back to God he will relent of the judgment
00:52:51 – 00:52:54: that's just in his word that's what he promises we believe his word
00:52:56 – 00:53:02: but currently our society is not turning back to God it is doubling down on rejecting him
00:53:03 – 00:53:08: and part of that is because Christians no longer know how to talk about God how to actually
00:53:08 – 00:53:15: believe in God and to act as Christians out in the world where Christians as was said for an hour
00:53:15 – 00:53:20: an hour and a half three hours whatever it is on Sunday for the liturgy and Bible study and then
00:53:20 – 00:53:24: we live the rest of our life that's not how it's supposed to be we are supposed to be Christians
00:53:25 – 00:53:34: 24-7 our entire lives not just for an hour or two on Sunday so if you apply that frame to the
00:53:34 – 00:53:39: the different time periods that I mentioned towards the beginning of the episode going back to the
00:53:39 – 00:53:45: 80s is I can us all of this problem you know and everything's the pink and lasers no
00:53:45 – 00:53:50: hey there's Christianity was already dead at that point it's just that there was less momentum lost
00:53:50 – 00:53:56: than than we're seeing now going back to the 50s no better the same problems because you're
00:53:56 – 00:54:03: already centuries into the enlightenment you're over a century into the revolution against headship
00:54:03 – 00:54:10: that occurred first in the civil war and then in the 19th amendment going back to the renaissance
00:54:10 – 00:54:17: doesn't help either because even when you get there the question is what good did they have why
00:54:17 – 00:54:21: did they have it it's not because they were European it's not because they were white it's not
00:54:21 – 00:54:28: because they had a monarchy although that's an improvement that's what God has ordained since
00:54:28 – 00:54:35: we cease to have his direct intervention what was good about them was that they lived and walked
00:54:36 – 00:54:40: and obviously there were terrible things that happened then too we're not we're not making the
00:54:40 – 00:54:46: error that we're trying to condemn here by saying that it was a true pure golden age were only
00:54:46 – 00:54:52: Christianity prevailed obviously you can look at the wars and the famines and the things and see
00:54:52 – 00:54:58: that there was chastisement them then as well so the reason that we're highlighting those things
00:54:58 – 00:55:04: and that we previously highlighted Rome and Greece is to point to in all of these periods the only
00:55:04 – 00:55:12: good things that we had were because we were living in accord with God yeah I mentioned we talked
00:55:12 – 00:55:18: I think last week about BLM and about their web page where they talked about attacking slavery
00:55:18 – 00:55:25: attacking the patriarchy attacking heteronormativity very interesting and I forgot to mention at
00:55:25 – 00:55:33: then but that their manifesto was basically a complete inversion of Galatians 328 and 329
00:55:34 – 00:55:47: God Satan knows scripture Satan when Satan laid out his roadmap on the BLM website for what he
00:55:47 – 00:55:54: was planning to do in 2020 and beyond it's no coincidence that it reads like Galatians 328 and when
00:55:54 – 00:56:00: you read that verse there's a tremendous amount to unpack their quarries probably gonna write a book
00:56:00 – 00:56:06: about it pretty soon if he finishes if he hasn't run out of ink well I won't run out of ink
00:56:06 – 00:56:11: thankfully I do have enough of that it's just there's that matter of time if God gives me the time
00:56:13 – 00:56:19: but if you're not looking at scripture if you're looking at it through enlightenment eyes you're
00:56:19 – 00:56:27: gonna read Galatians 328 in a very particular way that no one received it prior to the enlightenment
00:56:28 – 00:56:32: the way it was received in Christianity prior to us
00:56:32 – 00:56:36: ceasing to believe in God even while we still call ourselves Christians
00:56:36 – 00:56:40: what it was strictly sociological it is strictly about how faith
00:56:41 – 00:56:48: saves us and how God acts within creation without regard to class without regard to race without
00:56:48 – 00:56:56: regard to sex and the fact that God vertically interacts with us in that way does not change the
00:56:56 – 00:57:04: horizontal interactions that we have with each other it's an interpretation of those yes it has
00:57:04 – 00:57:09: precisely because it's using yeah it's using real things in order to make an important point if
00:57:09 – 00:57:14: these were all illusory if these were false that they were not real then the verse would be either
00:57:14 – 00:57:21: incoherent or useless but it's not because these are all real I've practically memorized it by now
00:57:21 – 00:57:27: but I'll I'll go ahead and pull it up I've got I have log us up in the background so there is neither
00:57:27 – 00:57:33: June or Greek there is neither slave nor free there is no male and female for you are all one in Jesus
00:57:33 – 00:57:42: Christ and what people latch on to is that one in Jesus Christ now that's referring to the church
00:57:42 – 00:57:50: that's referring to Christ's bride we are unified through faith as the bride of Christ with our head
00:57:50 – 00:57:59: who is the head of the church that's salvation talk that's not in this life talk we are not all
00:57:59 – 00:58:04: one in this life and that was never God's intention you know who's intention it was to be all
00:58:04 – 00:58:10: one in this life that's the cry of Babel that was what they were saying at the tower of Babel we
00:58:10 – 00:58:16: will we will show the whole world that we are unified that we can do things that are unthinkable
00:58:18 – 00:58:24: they had technological advancement they had pride and God scattered them by confusing our language
00:58:24 – 00:58:32: specifically so that man would no longer be one and today when you say man is not one no
00:58:32 – 00:58:42: we're not setting Galatians 3 28 against Genesis 9 or 10 or 11 wherever is where is thing 9
00:58:42 – 00:58:47: anyway we're not setting against the tower of Babel we're specifically saying that when God saw
00:58:47 – 00:58:55: that man was trying to be one God saw was evil it was one of the most profound evils in human
00:58:55 – 00:59:01: history it was probably an evil second only to the flood because how many times does God
00:59:01 – 00:59:09: intervene globally with a curse that affects every man not often you'll have localized curses
00:59:09 – 00:59:14: but the flood wiped out all but eight and Babel confused all language for all time even in heaven
00:59:15 – 00:59:21: languages are preserved they're no longer confused in Revelation 7 9 and following it talks about
00:59:21 – 00:59:27: how every tongue was represented they still have their tongues in heaven we will be able to
00:59:27 – 00:59:32: understand each other but are unique distinctive identities as different races with different
00:59:32 – 00:59:38: languages we have no reason believe that those won't be preserved now I think it's important to
00:59:38 – 00:59:45: note when we're talking about this that Pentecost didn't undo Babel Pentecost was the fulfillment of
00:59:45 – 00:59:51: Galatians 3 28 if you look at it closely the words that they were speaking at Pentecost they couldn't
00:59:51 – 00:59:55: just understand each other they weren't just sitting around having a conversation what could they
59:55 – 01:00:01
understand they understood the gospel the preaching of the word of God and the announcement of
01:00:02 – 01:00:08: Jesus Christ coming as the Savior is what they understood in their own tongues it was
01:00:08 – 01:00:13: salvific it pointed to God it didn't mean that they could order off a Chinese menu even though
01:00:13 – 01:00:18: they were Greek that was not the point that was not the gift God did not use Pentecost and he
01:00:18 – 01:00:26: did not use Christianity to turn mankind back into one and today to say that we'll probably get
01:00:26 – 01:00:32: you kicked out of even a lot of Lutheran churches because we are again we're so inculcated in the
01:00:32 – 01:00:39: the enlightenment viewpoint that is fundamentally satanic it is an undoing of Babel it's an undoing
01:00:39 – 01:00:46: of Galatians 3 28 it's a reversal of the things that God has done and God has declared and it's
01:00:46 – 01:00:53: saying no humanity will once again be united but not in Jesus when God says we are one in Jesus
01:00:53 – 01:01:01: that's about faith we're only one in so far as we are the elect we are not one because we're all
01:01:01 – 01:01:07: human that's there's no such thing and that is that's basically the gospel today to most people
01:01:07 – 01:01:16: it's a false gospel from a false God but it's presented in terms that sound Jesusy they sound
01:01:16 – 01:01:22: sort of Christian and even Christians fall for it and then Satan can keep going he can keep
01:01:22 – 01:01:28: marching because like we see keeps saying if you fall for one trick if you fall for one lie you're
01:01:28 – 01:01:34: going to fall for one after another and eventually you're going to find yourself so far separated
01:01:34 – 01:01:38: from God that you won't even realize that you've run out of fuel and that you're coasting
01:01:39 – 01:01:43: into the the Atlantic Ocean for the morning and there's no island for you to land on
01:01:45 – 01:01:52: speaking of lies when we use Galatians 3 28 we should probably really use 3 29 as well
01:01:52 – 01:01:58: just because it refutes one of the most common lies in particularly American Christianity today
01:01:59 – 01:02:06: and just to read that verse and if you are Christ's then you are Abraham's offspring
01:02:06 – 01:02:12: heirs according to the promise which of course is a blunt and complete refutation of Zionism
01:02:13 – 01:02:22: sometimes called Christian Zionism the Jews aren't chosen the elector chosen and you are amongst
01:02:22 – 01:02:26: the elect if you are heirs according to the promised which is to say if you are in Christ
01:02:27 – 01:02:32: and so really we should make sure to include that verse just because it is such an important verse
01:02:32 – 01:02:40: for our context and again it's it's another one of the lies that yes these ethnic distinctions race
01:02:40 – 01:02:47: these are real things these do matter but 3 28 this part of Galatians is dealing with so
01:02:48 – 01:02:55: tearyology not with the physical reality that we live in now not with horizontal relationships
01:02:56 – 01:03:02: or even more will be preserved in heaven because the nations are there well because they're good
01:03:03 – 01:03:08: the destruction of that which is good is evil and so God is not going to destroy these things
01:03:08 – 01:03:16: because they are part of his good creation the nations probably were part of his design from the
01:03:16 – 01:03:23: beginning perhaps babble accelerated things we don't know exactly how that worked out but we know
01:03:23 – 01:03:28: that the nations are good because in revelation they are preserved the kings of the nations will
01:03:28 – 01:03:35: bring the glory of the nations into the new heavens and the new earth that means they are preserved
01:03:35 – 01:03:40: and only that which is good is preserved because there is nothing wicked or evil or wrong in
01:03:40 – 01:03:47: paradise and so we know the nations the races are good I think we can absolutely say that because
01:03:47 – 01:03:51: the God the command that God gave to Abraham and that he reiterated to Noah or sorry not to Abraham
01:03:51 – 01:03:59: to add him and reiterated to Noah was be fruitful and multiply fill the earth and subdue it
01:03:59 – 01:04:05: and babble was about refusing to fill the earth now earth doesn't just mean the Mesopotamian
01:04:05 – 01:04:14: it means the whole planet and what happens when you move from Mount Ararat to Norway you get pale
01:04:14 – 01:04:19: and you get light eyes because because it's the only way that you don't go snow blind because it's
01:04:19 – 01:04:24: really bright up there and there's hardly any sunshine and you need vitamin D and you need to be
01:04:24 – 01:04:30: able to see so you turn into a Norwegian when you move to Norway when you move to Ethiopia not any
01:04:30 – 01:04:37: more dark skin yes yeah that was that was a one time thing God built in same for dogs you can't
01:04:37 – 01:04:42: go from a Chihuahua back to a golden retriever but from the original breed stock you could get both
01:04:43 – 01:04:48: yeah and so all of the genetic diversity that we observed today was preserved and
01:04:49 – 01:04:56: Noah and his sons and their wives and the diversity of the three distinct major nations almost
01:04:56 – 01:05:01: certainly comes from the three wives of the men who were they were descended from people who
01:05:01 – 01:05:06: were killed in the flood they were descended from people who were different and there'd been about
01:05:06 – 01:05:14: 10 generations so there had been time for genetic divergence at that point and that filtering and
01:05:14 – 01:05:19: that winnowing and then that expansion through babble ensured that people went where God wanted
01:05:19 – 01:05:25: them to go act 1726 that says that God appointed the dwelling places of the nations and the boundaries
01:05:26 – 01:05:32: God ordained for nations to go to places you ordained for Ethiopians to live in Ethiopia
01:05:32 – 01:05:42: and Norwegians to live in Norway and the undoing of that is contrary to God's will and yet today
01:05:42 – 01:05:49: it's practically the rallying cry many of our I'd say churches in the most small sea version possible
01:05:49 – 01:05:55: their pastors who advocate these things again in view of the enlightenment and so the reason
01:05:55 – 01:06:03: that we're ending this episode about chrysanthemes ashes is that it's not just cultural it's not just
01:06:03 – 01:06:10: about the law and about good behavior in public it's about our ability to even hear the word of God
01:06:11 – 01:06:18: you know when King Josiah rediscovered the law that had been lost they didn't simply lost
01:06:18 – 01:06:23: part of the Torah they forgot it existed because they weren't looking for it a workman found it in
01:06:23 – 01:06:28: some rubble as they were doing construction and say hey look what I found he brought to al-Qaeda
01:06:28 – 01:06:34: and when Josiah heard he was horrified and he he rent his robes because he knew that even though
01:06:34 – 01:06:39: he was a faithful king who had been had been repairing the temple and he thought that he was
01:06:39 – 01:06:46: observing the law he realized that not only had he not been observing all but but he'd forgotten
01:06:46 – 01:06:51: part of it existed and it wasn't his doing it was fathers his fathers and grandfather's doing
01:06:51 – 01:06:57: that that had been lost that's where we are at today with scripture but without misplacing it
01:06:57 – 01:07:02: we have the whole Bible we have as many Biles as we need we're not reading and believing any of
01:07:02 – 01:07:11: every single person in his pocket yes and yet today we have pastors who hate Korean me absolutely
01:07:11 – 01:07:17: with every fiber of their being I have never seen them fight any evil in their lives as hard as
01:07:17 – 01:07:22: they fight us saying what we're saying on this podcast and fighting as hard as they can to keep
01:07:22 – 01:07:27: you from hearing it now these are men who were trained in the word of God who had been ordained
01:07:27 – 01:07:34: by our own churches who were sent forth to proclaim the word and yet when we say the very same
01:07:34 – 01:07:40: things that God says were told and they tell the world that were damned that's why we're talking
01:07:40 – 01:07:46: about christened some dead christened them zashes because it's not just it's not just on tv it's in
01:07:46 – 01:07:52: our own pulpits and it's in our own churches and in some cases it's in our own hearts where we have
01:07:52 – 01:08:00: grown so cold and so deaf to God's voice that when the master speaks the sheep no wrong no longer
01:08:00 – 01:08:06: recognize him and that is truly terrifying that is something that we must reverse before we can
01:08:06 – 01:08:12: reverse the cultural decline before we can fix the other things we need to have faithful faithful
01:08:12 – 01:08:18: preachers preaching faithfully and they can only do that if they believe the whole word of God
01:08:18 – 01:08:23: you need to believe genesis one and two you need to believe that the world was created in six
01:08:23 – 01:08:30: twenty four hour days if you believe anything else you are cursing God you are calling him a liar
01:08:30 – 01:08:34: and you're saying you don't want anything else the he has because he's not going to give it to
01:08:34 – 01:08:39: you if you call him a liar it's not a it's not an alaqar menu where we get to pick and choose
01:08:39 – 01:08:44: which parts of scripture are from God and which parts we have better ideas about every word is
01:08:44 – 01:08:52: from the mouth of God and to reject any of it or to poo poo it or to try to translate and interpret it
01:08:52 – 01:08:59: away is to renounce your own salvation even while you confess it and so we're doing this episode
01:08:59 – 01:09:06: in this series because this is the chief challenge of our day there won't be any Lutheranism in 20
01:09:06 – 01:09:11: years if these things continue because our churches are dying and the boomers who were paying
01:09:11 – 01:09:16: all the bills are dying literally their children are apostate their grandchildren are obviously
01:09:16 – 01:09:23: apostate there's nobody coming that is God's punishment too the grandfathers were faithless and
01:09:23 – 01:09:30: so the grandchildren are faithless it may be two different modes of faithlessness but the result
01:09:30 – 01:09:37: is the same and it's a curse from God yes and it will keep getting worse you know they're big parts
01:09:37 – 01:09:41: of this country where you're not only dealing with atheist neighbors but you're dealing with second
01:09:41 – 01:09:46: and third generation atheists where not only were they not baptized not only did they grow up
01:09:46 – 01:09:50: around the church or the word et al but their parents didn't either in some cases their grandparents
01:09:50 – 01:10:00: didn't to think that we can preserve the Christian civilization that we inherited without the
01:10:00 – 01:10:08: foundation of that civilization is the very definition of insanity in some places we're actually
01:10:08 – 01:10:14: dealing now with Muslim and other neighbors as well which again scripture very clear about this
01:10:15 – 01:10:21: that's a curse from God to have foreigners come into your country and take over your country
01:10:22 – 01:10:30: is a curse from God God has used that many times throughout history in order to punish an apostate
01:10:30 – 01:10:39: people and we have to be ruled by women yes or women or children directly compare the same yeah
01:10:40 – 01:10:45: but we have pastors who say this is a good thing that we have oh well all this opportunity to
01:10:45 – 01:10:54: outreach to no being cursed by God is not a good thing I can't believe we even have to say that
01:10:54 – 01:11:00: and yet people no longer see that this is a curse from God I'm not saying you don't proselytize
01:11:00 – 01:11:09: those who are not of the same race as you of course not we as Europeans took Christendom to the
01:11:09 – 01:11:16: entire rest of the world with the sole exception being a tiny part of the Levant and a church in
01:11:16 – 01:11:22: India and of course Ethiopia which had things for other historical reasons we've touched on that
01:11:22 – 01:11:29: in other episodes that is the reason Satan hates us of course because we built Christendom and then
01:11:29 – 01:11:36: we took the gospel to everyone else that is how you do it because that is how you are blessed by God
01:11:36 – 01:11:42: God will bless you if you are faithful in that way having your nation invaded by foreigners
01:11:43 – 01:11:51: is not an opportunity it is a curse and it's an act of war and both must be responded to
01:11:51 – 01:11:57: absolutely in the so called left and the right hand kingdoms of God one other point I want to
01:11:57 – 01:12:02: make about culture because I don't you know well we're going to do an episode soon about Jews and
01:12:02 – 01:12:10: Judaism but a lot of times you will find even fairly good pastors use the term Judeo Christian
01:12:10 – 01:12:16: you know we're talking about culture and ethics is sort of implied and then so you'll talk you'll
01:12:16 – 01:12:23: hear people talk about the Judeo Christian roots of our laws or of our culture of our ethics
01:12:24 – 01:12:30: that's a brand new term that term was invented after Jews started showing up in the United States
01:12:30 – 01:12:37: because this is one of the places where they began to integrate and they wanted to not be
01:12:38 – 01:12:45: treated as outsiders and how do you do that you co-opt the existing population you say oh you guys
01:12:45 – 01:12:50: are Christian we're Jews you're Judeo Christian it's it's the same thing it's two sides of the
01:12:50 – 01:12:56: same coin guys you got your religion from us we had it first and then we gave it to you which is
01:12:56 – 01:13:02: pure nonsense and pure blasphemy as we've said before Adam believed in the promise of the
01:13:02 – 01:13:09: Christ given to him in Genesis 315 that's Christianity Noah believed the same promise Abraham
01:13:09 – 01:13:14: received believe the same promise and his faith was counted to him was a courted to him
01:13:16 – 01:13:25: everyone who's in heaven is Christian some of them were also Jews not because of the so-called
01:13:25 – 01:13:30: Jewish faith but because they had the Christian faith within the Jewish tradition
01:13:30 – 01:13:34: now's the point that we'll make more clear them it's I'm not gonna make a good case for it now but
01:13:35 – 01:13:40: it is fundamentally subversive when someone says Judeo Christian what they are doing is they're
01:13:40 – 01:13:46: advancing the enlightenment because there's a whole lot of Judeo going on TV right now when you see
01:13:46 – 01:13:53: transexuals and you see transgender surgeries for children that's the Judeo in Judeo Christian
01:13:53 – 01:13:59: we've all seen that the the terrifying horrifying pictures of books being burned in Germany in the
01:13:59 – 01:14:04: 1930s nobody tells you what those books were that they were burned or if they tell you they saw
01:14:04 – 01:14:09: yeah those they were Burnham Bibles those guys hated God no the books that they were burning
01:14:09 – 01:14:16: specifically burning and those literal pictures were from Magnus Hirschfeld's disease
01:14:17 – 01:14:24: they were the original transgender surgery materials they were the original material
01:14:24 – 01:14:31: about homosexuality and sawdemy and transgenerism and how to spread this filth in this evil in the
01:14:31 – 01:14:38: West when you hear about Weimar Germany that period that happened before the 30s and you hear
01:14:38 – 01:14:43: about the cultural decay and the depravity that's what they're talking about what happened in the
01:14:43 – 01:14:51: 30s was a collective political response from the German people in opposition to the terrible
01:14:51 – 01:14:57: societal decay that they had been exposed to and it was the Judeo half of Judeo Christianity that
01:14:57 – 01:15:03: was doing all that there were no Christians involved at any point you know as I mentioned recently
01:15:03 – 01:15:09: in the episode we mentioned head coverings it was a Jew who told churches to burn their veils
01:15:09 – 01:15:15: and we all responded and now 50s years later it's it's nearly unthinkable in both churches
01:15:15 – 01:15:20: for a girl to wear a veil let alone for us to say you should veil let alone you must veil
01:15:21 – 01:15:28: that wasn't Christian that was the Judeo half of that so-called two sides to one coin
01:15:29 – 01:15:34: there's a clear and market difference in the God that we worship and the God that they worship
01:15:34 – 01:15:40: they worship the God of the Enlightenment they worship the Prince of this world we worship the one
01:15:40 – 01:15:48: true God and the fruits of the two opposing religions could not be more clear that's the reason
01:15:48 – 01:15:51: we're going to do an episode on that you may hear this and think that we're just the most evil
01:15:51 – 01:15:56: people in the world you know if you don't hate us enough that you can listen to the future episode
01:15:56 – 01:16:00: where we go into depth on it you can either really hate us or you can say well you know I don't
01:16:00 – 01:16:05: like how that sounds but I got to think about it because they made some points it's funny every
01:16:05 – 01:16:10: time somebody posts on Reddit or somewhere else about listening to this that's frequently the
01:16:10 – 01:16:15: claim either I hate those guys but they made some really good points or I want to hate them but
01:16:15 – 01:16:20: I can't because they made some really good points or I want to disagree with what they said but
01:16:20 – 01:16:26: it all makes sense that's the reason that people are terrified of you listening to us we're not
01:16:26 – 01:16:32: playing rhetorical games Corey and I could both run circles around people rhetorically we speak
01:16:32 – 01:16:39: clearly precisely to avoid that it's easy to deceive someone it's hard to tell someone the truth
01:16:39 – 01:16:46: especially in this day and age and so there are people who go around some of them have collars on
01:16:46 – 01:16:53: who say the word deceivers well if saying the very words that God says the way that God intended
01:16:54 – 01:17:00: is deception in your religion you know I'm not going to be in the same line as you on judgment day
01:17:00 – 01:17:07: that's all I can say but to get back to the theme of this episode Christendom's ashes are not
01:17:07 – 01:17:14: just cultural and are not just religious either because as we've said in past episodes you don't
01:17:14 – 01:17:20: have to be Christian to live a godly life we've seen that for that past couple generations and
01:17:20 – 01:17:26: that's precisely by people been deceived and to thinking you don't need Christianity to have
01:17:26 – 01:17:32: a good life because they were coasting on the fumes of Christendom they were coasting on the fumes
01:17:32 – 01:17:40: of morals and laws and society that was explicitly and openly and unapologetically Christian
01:17:40 – 01:17:45: and when those supports God knocked out there were still some momentum left in the thing
01:17:45 – 01:17:54: so you don't have to believe in God to do godly things but you cannot do godly things in the long
01:17:54 – 01:18:00: term if you don't know where they come from because soon as somebody else comes along with a better
01:18:00 – 01:18:06: idea or some new progressive solution for a problem you didn't even know you have eventually you're
01:18:06 – 01:18:09: going to fall for it or your neighbor will fall for it and so you'll try it out because you don't
01:18:10 – 01:18:18: you don't want to rock the boat and you will ultimately inevitably lose the godly things as every
01:18:18 – 01:18:22: civilization in history did you know we mentioned at the beginning Greece and Rome and China
01:18:24 – 01:18:31: they lost God after Bable and they were on the downslope which is why the cultures and societies
01:18:31 – 01:18:37: collapsed Chinese art 3000 years ago is better than it was 2500 years ago and 2000 years ago there
01:18:37 – 01:18:42: was a downslope and then it started to get better and it was for other reasons but
01:18:43 – 01:18:48: they were coasting on the fumes of a religion that was no longer theirs and that's what we're
01:18:48 – 01:18:56: doing today as the western world and we need to point to the truth underlying all the reasons that
01:18:56 – 01:19:02: we do things otherwise we cannot possibly repair the damage let alone explain to people why things
01:19:02 – 01:19:09: are going wrong in the first place the moral law is written in the heart of every man
01:19:10 – 01:19:19: however we have run this experiment we know what happens if you have over a course of generations
01:19:19 – 01:19:26: and it may be many generations or it may be only a few look at the sons of ham it did not take very
01:19:26 – 01:19:31: long look at the sons of shaman japhith it took longer but eventually it may not be you you
01:19:31 – 01:19:38: may not be the one who loses the moral law it may be your great great great great great great grand
01:19:38 – 01:19:47: child or even farther into the distance however it will eventually be lost because you lost the
01:19:47 – 01:19:55: actual foundation the actual truth you lost christendom you lost god's favor and you are running
01:19:55 – 01:20:01: on the fumes and so it is only a matter of how long and how far you manage to make it but you are
01:20:01 – 01:20:09: going to crash and that is what we want to restore we want to restore christendom because that is the
01:20:09 – 01:20:16: only way to get out of the dive in which we find ourselves and so yes there may have been virtuous
01:20:16 – 01:20:23: pagans because they had the moral law written in their heart but there will always be that competition
01:20:23 – 01:20:29: against it because there's Satan out there who wants to steal that from you there's your neighbor
01:20:29 – 01:20:34: who wants to try something new in novel or something a demon told him in the woods in the case for
01:20:34 – 01:20:41: many pagans historically and eventually that will take over because you are not fighting against it
01:20:42 – 01:20:47: and christians today we have the tools to fight against it we have god's word we have it everywhere
01:20:47 – 01:20:51: I have it on my computer right now it's on my phone I have multiple bibles on my desk
01:20:51 – 01:20:58: but if we don't read these things if we don't use them if we don't actually speak the words god
01:20:58 – 01:21:03: has spoken to us then all of that does nothing for us we may as well have lost it in a wall in a
01:21:03 – 01:21:14: rundown temple like the Jews did at one point god has given us his word we do not have the luxury
01:21:14 – 01:21:20: or the option to ignore the things he has said and as said before to ala carte pick the bits we
01:21:20 – 01:21:27: like and leave the rest everything god has said is true and good and we have to hold to every
01:21:27 – 01:21:33: single word of it and that is quite simply our goal here our goal is to be true to scripture
01:21:35 – 01:21:40: one because we are christians and that is our duty to because we have taken up the task of teachers
01:21:42 – 01:21:47: and the stricter judgment does await and so no we are not going to lie or deceive or play
01:21:47 – 01:21:52: rhetorical games we're not going to do that because we will be called to account for every
01:21:52 – 01:21:58: idle word and we know that so we are going to speak the truth in the way god has spoken it to us
01:21:59 – 01:22:09: in his word amen
01:22:17 – 01:22:18: you
01:22:22 – 01:22:24: you
01:22:42 – 01:22:44: you
01:22:47 – 01:22:49: you