Transcript: Episode 0011

“Amongst the Ashes”

This transcript:
  1. Was machine generated.
  2. Has not been checked for errors.
  3. May not be entirely accurate.
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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