Transcript: Episode 0042

“The Left Hand of Christ”

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 – 00:00:29:	music

00:00:30 – 00:00:45:	Welcome to the Stone Choir podcast. I am Corey J. Moeller, and I'm still whoa. On today's Stone

00:00:45 – 00:00:52:	Choir, we are going to be discussing godly government. We're going to go over the scriptural

00:00:52 – 00:00:59:	history of a couple different types of government and highlight some of the examples of the

00:00:59 – 00:01:06:	moral principles by which we should judge any government. One of the pressing issues of the

00:01:06 – 00:01:11:	modern political context is the legitimacy of any particular government. And while we're not

00:01:11 – 00:01:17:	going to get into American politics or anything specifically, this is a very much a live issue.

00:01:17 – 00:01:23:	And especially on the internet, especially in the distant right, a lot of people have a lot of

00:01:23 – 00:01:30:	stark opinions about different forms of government being better for solving our problems. And so

00:01:30 – 00:01:35:	this is not this is not any way intended to foment revolution or anything. We're simply

00:01:35 – 00:01:41:	highlighting that if you have a pet type of government, whether you're nrx, you want monarchy,

00:01:41 – 00:01:49:	maybe you're a full blown libertarian, a minarchist, whatever flavor of government you find to be

00:01:49 – 00:01:57:	most appealing. Part of that appeal is inherently going to be based on an appeal to the moral

00:01:57 – 00:02:02:	legitimacy of that government. And obviously moral legitimacy can only possibly come from God.

00:02:02 – 00:02:09:	We all inherently know that it's crucial for whatever the government or whatever the state is

00:02:09 – 00:02:18:	to have moral legitimacy. In other words, there's always going to be someone ruling you. You want

00:02:18 – 00:02:25:	to be happy about that to some degree. Now, happy can vary widely. If you are blessed any time of

00:02:25 – 00:02:32:	peace and prosperity with a godly, faithful ruler of whatever stripe, you're going to be pretty

00:02:32 – 00:02:37:	happy because your kids are going to be okay, your family is going to be okay, your property is

00:02:37 – 00:02:42:	going to be okay. I just basically good times peace. The times that don't really show up in

00:02:42 – 00:02:47:	history because there aren't wars or death or famine or any of the horrors that really are how

00:02:47 – 00:02:53:	we define the arc of human history because that's the stuff to talk about. The peaceful quiet times,

00:02:53 – 00:03:00:	nobody's writing because everyone's just outside enjoying a blessed life, the sort of life that

00:03:00 – 00:03:10:	God wants for all of us. So there's inherently an innate notion that whoever's in charge can't

00:03:10 – 00:03:16:	just have legitimacy by force. And that's one of the definitions. As we go throughout this,

00:03:17 – 00:03:22:	various times referencing some of the different views. I spent a long time being a hardcore

00:03:22 – 00:03:28:	libertarian. Decades I have all the books spent, I gave tens of thousands of dollars to the Mises

00:03:28 – 00:03:37:	Institute. I want to specifically address a few of those notions that framing that libertarians use,

00:03:37 – 00:03:41:	specifically because A, I know that there are a lot of folks in the audience, especially new

00:03:41 – 00:03:46:	folks who probably are either still in the libertarian space or have come from it in the

00:03:46 – 00:03:56:	recent past. Part of the reason we're just doing one framing doctrinally how to judge a given

00:03:56 – 00:04:01:	government and arbitrary government is that future episodes coming up pretty soon will be on

00:04:01 – 00:04:07:	specifically the Enlightenment and the American government and the other forms of modern democracy

00:04:07 – 00:04:13:	in Christendom, what used to be Christendom. We will do an episode entirely on libertarianism.

00:04:13 – 00:04:18:	We'll do an episode on probably communism, probably one on fascism. This is kind of the

00:04:18 – 00:04:24:	kickoff for that arc. We kind of painted ourselves into a corner by doing this show weekly because

00:04:24 – 00:04:29:	it takes a lot of time and a lot of prep, especially for a lot of the ideas for episodes

00:04:29 – 00:04:35:	we have coming up. So we're committing to doing those episodes. I can't promise that they will

00:04:35 – 00:04:40:	be next week in the following week. We might not necessarily do them serially just based on time

00:04:40 – 00:04:47:	and availability. But we want to lay the groundwork today for whatever government type you're

00:04:47 – 00:04:53:	evaluating, whether it's the current year American administration, or it's some hypothetical future,

00:04:53 – 00:05:00:	or it's a view of some halcyon day in the past where it's your particular year in a given century

00:05:00 – 00:05:04:	where you're like, yeah, that's exactly when we had government figured out and we need that again.

00:05:05 – 00:05:11:	Scripture has a lot to say about how to evaluate those things. So we're going to go through some of

00:05:11 – 00:05:14:	the things that Scripture says and some of the things that it doesn't, including a number of

00:05:14 – 00:05:19:	things that most people just completely gloss over that are actually very relevant to us today.

00:05:19 – 00:05:26:	So once we've laid this framework, this groundwork, it'll be easier in the future episodes to say,

00:05:26 – 00:05:32:	here's how the American government, as it was conceived 250 years ago and as it's playing out

00:05:32 – 00:05:38:	today, how does that interact with the godly form? But upfront, we want to state that there's not

00:05:38 – 00:05:44:	necessarily a single perfect ideal godly form. There are things that are revealed in Scripture

00:05:44 – 00:05:50:	that are necessary elements and the absence of which necessarily indicates you're not dealing with

00:05:50 – 00:05:56:	the godly government. But there's not necessarily just a single way to do this. We don't think that.

00:05:56 – 00:06:01:	We think that there are pragmatic arguments why in a given environment, for a particular

00:06:01 – 00:06:09:	race of people, for a particular circumstance, there will be, perhaps, only one ideal solution,

00:06:09 – 00:06:14:	one that's going to solve the most problems. We're still living in a fallen world. We're

00:06:14 – 00:06:19:	dealing with fallen human beings. Whoever's in charge is going to be a sinner. And so the system

00:06:19 – 00:06:26:	of government that we have needs to account for that somehow. And we, as the ruled, also need to

00:06:26 – 00:06:31:	account for that. We need to understand what that means when you're ruled by someone who's

00:06:31 – 00:06:37:	fallible, who's going to make mistakes. But to begin, we're going to go back to Genesis 1 and

00:06:37 – 00:06:43:	Genesis 9, which is really the birth of any notion of government. This is something that

00:06:43 – 00:06:50:	Luther writes about indirectly in the Large Catechism when he discusses the Third Commandment

00:06:50 – 00:06:57:	about honoring your father and mother. Because the traditional Christian view is that the family,

00:06:58 – 00:07:03:	namely the father, over his wife and over his children, is actually the root of government.

00:07:04 – 00:07:12:	The things downstream that occur within any given government or state are necessarily mirrors of

00:07:12 – 00:07:17:	a father's rule of his household. And so the very first example we have is Adam in the garden.

00:07:17 – 00:07:25:	And then the second example that we have mirrored almost exactly a millennium later is Noah,

00:07:25 – 00:07:29:	because everyone was killed. God killed all the men that he created, except for four men and four

00:07:29 – 00:07:35:	women, because he regretted making man. So he started again, and he repeated the same commands

00:07:35 – 00:07:41:	that he gave to Adam to Noah, and he expanded a little bit. So we'll begin in Genesis 128.

00:07:42 – 00:07:45:	And God blessed them, and God said to them,

00:07:45 – 00:07:50:	Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea

00:07:50 – 00:07:54:	and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

00:07:54 – 00:07:59:	And God said, Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of the earth

00:07:59 – 00:08:04:	and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food, into every beast of the earth,

00:08:04 – 00:08:08:	into every bird of the heavens, into everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has

00:08:08 – 00:08:13:	the breath of life. I have given every green plant for food, and it was so. And God saw everything

00:08:13 – 00:08:17:	that he had made, and behold, it was very good, and there was evening and there was morning the

00:08:17 – 00:08:25:	sixth day. So one of the things that we should note here at the outset is that early on in creation,

00:08:26 – 00:08:33:	in God's design, you don't have the divisions in certain roles that we see today and

00:08:33 – 00:08:43:	just later on in creation post-fall. Adam in the garden is prophet, priest, and king.

00:08:45 – 00:08:52:	These are three roles that coincide with a number of men in Scripture, Adam being the first,

00:08:52 – 00:09:01:	of course, then Noah, and later on David, Solomon. But today these roles have become separated.

00:09:01 – 00:09:09:	We're not advocating for having a king who is also your high priest. That is no longer how things

00:09:09 – 00:09:17:	work. We are far separated from the ideal that God had in the garden, what God wanted for creation.

00:09:18 – 00:09:24:	Now, of course, that is restored in the new creation, because ultimately we have Christ

00:09:24 – 00:09:33:	as our high prophet, priest, and king. But today we do have a separation between those, and

00:09:34 – 00:09:40:	I think it's safe to say that we affirm that separation, not saying in the sense of the wall

00:09:40 – 00:09:47:	of separation that has come to be the interpretation in, unfortunately, not just the secular world,

00:09:47 – 00:09:51:	but also the religious world. We have many Christians who think that there's supposed

00:09:51 – 00:09:55:	to be this separation between the two, and that's just not what we see in Scripture.

00:09:56 – 00:10:04:	And, of course, we can't have that, because ultimately both kingdoms, the right-hand kingdom,

00:10:04 – 00:10:12:	the church, the left-hand kingdom, the state, are founded morally, ultimately, on God's word,

00:10:12 – 00:10:20:	on God's authorization of those estates, of those kingdoms. And those are the lines that

00:10:20 – 00:10:26:	we're exploring here in Scripture. Those are the lines that cannot be transgressed, and so a proper

00:10:26 – 00:10:33:	government will adhere to those lines, the places in Scripture where God has said,

00:10:33 – 00:10:41:	the leader must do this, the leader must not do this, or society must not do this, or must do this,

00:10:41 – 00:10:48:	because when the people are ordered to do something, oftentimes the people act

00:10:48 – 00:10:57:	on those things through a leader. And so, for instance, we come very early on in Scripture

00:10:57 – 00:11:05:	to Genesis 9.6, whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed,

00:11:05 – 00:11:12:	for God made man in his own image. This is not something that is optional.

00:11:13 – 00:11:17:	This is the death penalty, this is capital punishment, and it is required.

00:11:18 – 00:11:26:	God requires that a godly government execute murderers. It's not an option you don't get to

00:11:26 – 00:11:32:	simply say, oh, no, we're going to have mercy because of X, Y, and Z, no. The requirement from

00:11:32 – 00:11:37:	God is explicit here, and this is moral law, this is unchanging, it flows from God's nature.

00:11:38 – 00:11:42:	This is not something that is done away with in the New Testament, or

00:11:44 – 00:11:49:	any of the various arguments you've heard. This is God's eternal will,

00:11:51 – 00:11:58:	and a godly government will obey this. I think the crucial fact to keep in mind in Genesis 9 is that

00:11:59 – 00:12:05:	when God said that, he was addressing Noah and his sons. He was literally addressing

00:12:05 – 00:12:10:	the only men on the planet. There were four men, Noah was their patriarch, Noah was the head.

00:12:11 – 00:12:19:	God said, anyone who kills, you kill them. That was a universal dictum to all mankind,

00:12:19 – 00:12:26:	and as Corey said that, that stands to this day. This is not given to Israel. We're talking about

00:12:26 – 00:12:33:	Noah, we're not talking about after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is not a law for the Jews,

00:12:33 – 00:12:43:	this is a law for mankind. It's crucial because this is one of the foundational tenets of

00:12:44 – 00:12:50:	government in the libertarian conception of government. I think one of the useful definitions

00:12:50 – 00:12:57:	in part, it's not entirely complete, but one of the crucial aspects of the state is that it will

00:12:57 – 00:13:03:	have a monopoly on violence in a given geography. That's essentially the libertarian definition of

00:13:03 – 00:13:11:	the state. Wherever you have a zip code or a continent, whoever is the man who claims

00:13:11 – 00:13:18:	sole authority to commit violence is the state, is the government. What this is saying is that

00:13:18 – 00:13:28:	there is illicit violence by some authority. It needs to be a God-ordained authority. This isn't

00:13:28 – 00:13:33:	saying it's a free-for-all, it's saying that there will be justice, there will be God's justice,

00:13:33 – 00:13:40:	and it does require the shedding of blood. This also, incidentally, and like I said, we'll be

00:13:40 – 00:13:44:	doing an entire episode on the libertarianism. We're not going to tear into it today to give

00:13:44 – 00:13:49:	you guys who are listening or libertarians, we are going to deal with it in a negative fashion.

00:13:49 – 00:13:58:	But the point to make today is that the notion that libertarians have of aggression as being

00:14:00 – 00:14:07:	wicked, per se, I think that's a general view. Well, aggression is always illicit. The question is

00:14:07 – 00:14:13:	when is violence not aggression? It's part of the non-aggression principle in libertarianism.

00:14:13 – 00:14:18:	As long as the other guy aggresses first, then you are not being aggressive, you are responding

00:14:18 – 00:14:23:	if you respond in kind with violence by the property of a stop-all that's permissible.

00:14:26 – 00:14:32:	That is encapsulated in part in this, but not in the sense of the libertarian's view, because

00:14:32 – 00:14:37:	God is saying, I demand retribution, I demand justice when a man is killed.

00:14:38 – 00:14:45:	There's inherent violence in whoever has authority. Even if the violence isn't acted upon,

00:14:45 – 00:14:52:	there's inherent violence in a father. If you're a father and a husband who is incapable of violence,

00:14:53 – 00:14:59:	you're a bad father, you're a bad husband, period. Now, the fact that you might not

00:14:59 – 00:15:05:	be good at violence is not the same as being incapable of it. But if someone is a pacifist who

00:15:05 – 00:15:10:	says, I would never lift a finger to defend my family, you're an evil man. You need to repent

00:15:10 – 00:15:15:	of that. You need to change your ways, because God has put you in the place to protect your family,

00:15:15 – 00:15:20:	to protect your wife and your children. There's no one else to protect them. This is part of the

00:15:20 – 00:15:29:	veneer of modern society that because the state has a monopoly on violence in a given geography,

00:15:30 – 00:15:36:	it's not my job to do anything. Now, there are rules of engagement in any society.

00:15:36 – 00:15:41:	This was revealed in the Levitical Laws. It's revealed in the Code of Ramarabbi

00:15:41 – 00:15:47:	we see in our laws today. Just because someone harms you, doesn't automatically give you a

00:15:47 – 00:15:54:	buy to go hurt them. However, in a moment, if someone breaks into your home, call cops if you

00:15:54 – 00:16:01:	can, try to avoid violence if it's possible. But in the case where a criminal and aggressor

00:16:01 – 00:16:09:	forces a protector of his home to be violent, the law acknowledges, as God does, that that is permissible.

00:16:10 – 00:16:16:	So wherever the hierarchy is, whether it's within the home, or it's a clan leader,

00:16:16 – 00:16:21:	or it's a monarch over a nation, there's always someone who's responsible for

00:16:22 – 00:16:29:	delivering justice, and that sometimes means violence. Violence is not inherently sinful.

00:16:30 – 00:16:35:	We see this throughout the Old Testament. God frequently commands violence. Now,

00:16:37 – 00:16:40:	this is something that we always have to be careful about because we're sinful.

00:16:40 – 00:16:45:	In some people, if they think, oh, violence is okay, all right, well, sounds good to me. I got

00:16:45 – 00:16:50:	some people I like to be violent towards. It's never a license. It's not a license to do the

00:16:50 – 00:16:54:	thing that you want to do. Someone who is engaging in violence in a godly manner

00:16:55 – 00:17:00:	generally tends to either regret it to some degree or to be just ambivalent. It's his duty.

00:17:00 – 00:17:06:	It's not something he looks forward to. And so far as a man made delight in violence against

00:17:06 – 00:17:13:	evildoers, it's because he's doing something godly. If it's just I want to crack people's heads in,

00:17:13 – 00:17:19:	and if I get a badge and that makes it okay, so much the better, he's treading a moral line there.

00:17:21 – 00:17:26:	It's important to always remember that there's a time and a place for violence. Obviously,

00:17:26 – 00:17:32:	we're not advocating violence. We're saying that when it is permissible, the state will usually

00:17:32 – 00:17:39:	be involved. But the state, as we said earlier on, according to a Christian conception, is fundamentally

00:17:39 – 00:17:45:	downstream from the father's authority over his household as a father's duty to protect his wife

00:17:45 – 00:17:51:	and his children and his neighborhood. Incidentally, you have a duty to neighbor. The duty to neighbor,

00:17:51 – 00:17:56:	according to the Good Samaritan, is not simply to care for someone who needs to be bandaged

00:17:56 – 00:18:01:	and healed. You may need to go protect your neighbor if someone else is seeking to harm them.

00:18:01 – 00:18:06:	And this scales up at the neighborhood level. It scales up at the state level and the national

00:18:06 – 00:18:12:	level. So these levels are part of the scope of government. But the principles that we're

00:18:12 – 00:18:19:	highlighting here, scripturally, always hold. The principle always holds. And then the scale

00:18:19 – 00:18:25:	determines whether the principle is illicit for one actor, according to his office or not.

00:18:26 – 00:18:32:	I don't, as a private individual, have license or permission from God or from the state to enact

00:18:32 – 00:18:38:	violence against someone who has nothing to do with me. There's never any permissible case

00:18:38 – 00:18:43:	where that could happen. There are narrow cases where perhaps violence, according to the law,

00:18:43 – 00:18:50:	is permitted to an individual. And so distinguishing between different forms of government and the

00:18:50 – 00:18:56:	legitimacy of government and actions at various levels is always predicated on what's the underlying

00:18:56 – 00:19:02:	principle. In this case, one of the principles is that taking of life and violence are sometimes

00:19:02 – 00:19:09:	permissible. So if someone is an over-passivist, if they say violence is never permissible,

00:19:09 – 00:19:15:	the state can never do any violence, that person is godless. That person is fundamentally an anarchist.

00:19:15 – 00:19:22:	They're doing something wicked because evil men are not going to stop. One of the reasons for

00:19:22 – 00:19:28:	the execution of violence within a lawful state is that, absent that, evil men will run wild.

00:19:28 – 00:19:34:	We see that all over the country today where places like San Francisco and so many of the

00:19:34 – 00:19:40:	big cities now are being completely overrun by criminals because no one will physically stop them.

00:19:40 – 00:19:44:	And that's a powder keg because at some point individuals are going to say,

00:19:44 – 00:19:47:	if the cops aren't going to do it, I'm going to do it. If I'm going to do it, I'm going to

00:19:48 – 00:19:54:	satisfy whatever evil pen-up rage I have at this injustice and things are going to get really ugly.

00:19:54 – 00:20:00:	So it's necessary for the state when it has that monopoly to exercise it. It's necessary for the

00:20:00 – 00:20:07:	state to execute murderers. If the state fails to do that, that absence of justice creates the

00:20:07 – 00:20:16:	opportunity for evil. And we have as individuals to make sure that we're fostering environments

00:20:16 – 00:20:21:	where sound godly states emerge so that there isn't an occasion for evil. So that when evil

00:20:21 – 00:20:26:	emerges through an individual, they're dealt with in a godly fashion, then it's over and everyone

00:20:26 – 00:20:35:	can go back to behaving himself. As a general rule, God does not give the power or authority to do a

00:20:35 – 00:20:44:	thing unless he intends for you to do the thing. In the case of government, government is given

00:20:44 – 00:20:51:	the sword. And we're told that the prince is not to wield the sword in vain. That is, a definition

00:20:52 – 00:20:59:	of a prince. That is not just an offhanded remark about princes. That is giving a definition of

00:20:59 – 00:21:06:	the prince. A prince will not wield the sword in vain. He will use that authority granted him by

00:21:06 – 00:21:15:	God. And if he does not use it, then he is no prince. And a few of the things you say brought to mind,

00:21:15 – 00:21:21:	of course, the quote by Ernst Junger. And I'll just read the quote because it's a great encapsulation

00:21:21 – 00:21:29:	of several of these points. Long periods of peace and quiet favor certain optical illusions.

00:21:29 – 00:21:36:	Among them is the assumption that the invulnerability of the home is founded upon the constitution

00:21:36 – 00:21:43:	and safeguarded by it. In reality, it rests upon the father of the family who, accompanied by his

00:21:43 – 00:21:51:	sons, appears with the axe on the threshold of his dwelling. And there's some fundamentally

00:21:51 – 00:22:01:	important points in there that I'd like to draw out. First, yes, the government has a duty to

00:22:01 – 00:22:09:	ensure there is order and peace within the borders it controls. And so a government that lets anarchists

00:22:10 – 00:22:17:	cause well anarchy and other problems that allows crime to run rampant that does not punish

00:22:17 – 00:22:24:	evildoers that punishes the good instead is not a legitimate government. Because it does not fit

00:22:24 – 00:22:30:	the definition of a legitimate government as given us by God. There's also the point

00:22:30 – 00:22:38:	to emphasize what Woe already said. That ultimately speaking, it falls to the father of a family to

00:22:38 – 00:22:46:	protect his family to protect his household. And that is against all the various dangers

00:22:46 – 00:22:53:	of the world. And so you have, if you are a father, a duty to instruct your children to warn

00:22:53 – 00:22:57:	them about the evils of the world, a duty to instruct your children in the faith to bring

00:22:57 – 00:23:05:	them up the right way. And you do also have, yes, a duty to defend them physically, if necessary,

00:23:05 – 00:23:10:	if called upon to do so, it is your duty to give your life in defense of your family.

00:23:11 – 00:23:16:	That is one of the duties that falls to men. And yes, there's also a version of that duty

00:23:16 – 00:23:23:	that you will have if you are a brother or an uncle or what have you some other male relative.

00:23:25 – 00:23:31:	But to focus on that idea of patriarchy, I'd like to outline

00:23:32 – 00:23:38:	some different levels of patriarchy, as it were, to give a sort of conceptual framework for what

00:23:38 – 00:23:45:	we're talking about here with government. And so first, I would say there are two different

00:23:45 – 00:23:51:	categories of government. We won't go over the totality of this right now, we're going to stick

00:23:51 – 00:23:57:	to the patriarchy part, but the two categories overarching are autocracy and mob rule.

00:23:58 – 00:24:09:	Now, patriarchy is autocratic, because God gives an absolute authority to the housefather,

00:24:10 – 00:24:17:	to the father of a family, to the head of the household. Now, of course, that is circumscribed

00:24:17 – 00:24:25:	by scripture, by what God says he may and may not do. But autocracy does not mean absolute power.

00:24:26 – 00:24:29:	Autocracy means that it is

00:24:31 – 00:24:39:	a power that subsists in itself to a degree, really. And the contrast here is between autocracy

00:24:39 – 00:24:47:	and totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is a power that says, I may do as I please with no strictures.

00:24:47 – 00:24:55:	That's communism. That is not a Christian system. Autocracy is different. Autocracy is an

00:24:55 – 00:25:02:	absolute power vested in the head of whatever it happens to be, in this case, a family, so the father

00:25:03 – 00:25:10:	in order to do his duty as given him by God. And so the first level, of course, is the family.

00:25:10 – 00:25:18:	That's the natural first unit of all society. Everything else flows from the family. Because

00:25:18 – 00:25:25:	without the family, you don't have anything else. And because the family is what God created

00:25:25 – 00:25:32:	first with regard to mankind. Because that's what God created in the garden when he created

00:25:32 – 00:25:38:	Eve and gave her to Adam. He was creating the first human family. And so the first

00:25:39 – 00:25:46:	patriarchy, the core of everything, is the family. Then from there you extend out to the clan.

00:25:47 – 00:25:53:	The clan is just a number of families that are related. And so you will probably have

00:25:53 – 00:25:59:	one man, the great grandfather, whatever he happens to be, the oldest male in the clan

00:26:00 – 00:26:05:	has headship. Then from there you expand out to the tribe, which is merely

00:26:06 – 00:26:13:	more families, a larger grouping, multiple clans, perhaps. And then after that you have the nation.

00:26:15 – 00:26:22:	And the nation is merely a very extended family, depending on the size of the nation. Some are

00:26:22 – 00:26:28:	smaller and so it's not that extended, but some are very large. And so for instance, the American

00:26:28 – 00:26:37:	nation. The American nation is a largely Anglo-Saxon people. Yes, there's also some Celtic and other

00:26:37 – 00:26:45:	things in there as well, but it is a European descended nation. And at that level, when you

00:26:45 – 00:26:51:	have a proper patriarch, when you have a proper leader, we call him a king. That's all monarchy

00:26:51 – 00:27:01:	is. Monarchy is patriarchy at a national level. So that gives a conceptual framework for what

00:27:01 – 00:27:07:	we're discussing in this episode, at least part of that framework, the part that specifically deals

00:27:07 – 00:27:13:	with patriarchy. I think the perfect example, shortly after Genesis 9 of that sort of patriarch

00:27:13 – 00:27:21:	is in Genesis 14. Shortly after Abram is called by God, it's recorded in Genesis 14,

00:27:21 – 00:27:27:	when Abram heard that his kinsmen had been taken captive, he led forth his trained men, born in

00:27:27 – 00:27:33:	his house, 318 of them, and went and pursued as far as Dan. And he divided his forces against them

00:27:33 – 00:27:39:	by night, he and his servants, and defeated them and pursued them to Hobba, the north of Damascus.

00:27:39 – 00:27:43:	Then he brought back all the possessions and also brought back his kinsmen lot

00:27:43 – 00:27:49:	with his possessions and the women and the people. So Abram, before he had any children of his own,

00:27:49 – 00:27:57:	in his household, in his house, he had a standing army. He had 318 trained men,

00:27:57 – 00:28:04:	suitable for combat, and he prevailed. And what did he do? He went and rescued a lot.

00:28:04 – 00:28:13:	He rescued his relatives family and their possessions. He was a king, as Cory just said.

00:28:14 – 00:28:20:	He was a patriarch, a small one at that time. By whatever name, you don't have to call him a king,

00:28:20 – 00:28:25:	and he certainly wasn't called a king. But functionally, that's what's going on there,

00:28:25 – 00:28:31:	because, again, to tark and back to some of the libertarian concepts that can be valuable,

00:28:32 – 00:28:36:	there's the notion within libertarianism of, there are two kinds of anarchy. There's the kind

00:28:36 – 00:28:42:	of anarchy that Cory just described briefly, where you basically have lawlessness within a place.

00:28:44 – 00:28:49:	The libertarian conception, where it's not necessarily seen as evil per se, I'm not saying

00:28:49 – 00:28:57:	I agree with this, I'm just giving a sense of scope, is that two entities may exist in anarchy

00:28:57 – 00:29:04:	with regard to each other, if there's no one above them. Abram existed in a state of anarchy

00:29:04 – 00:29:08:	relative to his neighbors, because he didn't report to anyone. There was no king over him.

00:29:08 – 00:29:14:	He answered to God, as his neighbors did, whether they were godly or not. That's a separate question,

00:29:14 – 00:29:19:	do we answer in this life or the next. God was speaking directly to Abram, but even if he hadn't

00:29:19 – 00:29:24:	been, even if Abram were not a believer, he would still be entirely permitted to have a standing

00:29:24 – 00:29:32:	army and to go rescue his relatives from neighbors who harmed them. That notion of anarchy, where

00:29:33 – 00:29:41:	one man and another man don't have anyone above them, is one of the aspects that we have to deal

00:29:41 – 00:29:49:	with as human groups. Is there someone who's a tiebreaker? In the 20th century, this was the

00:29:49 – 00:29:55:	reason that evil men created the League of Nations, and then created the United Nations,

00:29:55 – 00:29:59:	to say, ah yes, there will be an end of war, and we will have this deliberative body,

00:29:59 – 00:30:04:	and it's going to decide winners and losers. Anyone who steps out of line with the international

00:30:04 – 00:30:12:	norms is to be punished globally by all of us, collectively voting as nations. If everyone

00:30:12 – 00:30:16:	were Christian, maybe some form of that could work, but when you have a bunch of pagans,

00:30:16 – 00:30:23:	or even one pagan in the mix, when you're voting on how to deal with misbehaving neighbors,

00:30:24 – 00:30:31:	things are necessarily going to go wrong. So, it's just worth noting that God never condemns this.

00:30:31 – 00:30:36:	Abram has a standing army, he is king unto himself, and it's never condemned. Now,

00:30:36 – 00:30:41:	there's not an argument from silence, it was listed. This is an example of a godly man,

00:30:41 – 00:30:46:	a godly patriarch, doing that which is his duty. And in this case, his duty was to get a bunch of

00:30:46 – 00:30:52:	armed guys together, and go kill the people who harmed his relatives, literally godly.

00:30:53 – 00:30:58:	There's no place for that in the current political structures, again because of the

00:30:58 – 00:31:04:	geographic monopoly of violence, but in the situation where such

00:31:04 – 00:31:13:	structures devolve, where where governments crumble, these duties remain. So, whether Abram

00:31:13 – 00:31:18:	petitions the court to say, this guy hurt my neighbor, we need to do something about it,

00:31:18 – 00:31:23:	or if there's no court to appeal to, or perhaps in the case where the court won't do anything,

00:31:24 – 00:31:28:	he may still have a moral duty, in fact, does have a moral duty to do exactly what he did in

00:31:28 – 00:31:35:	Genesis 14. So, this is one of those small examples of, this is godly government, this is

00:31:35 – 00:31:45:	governance. There was no government in the sense of voting, or rallies, or consent. It was the patriarch,

00:31:45 – 00:31:51:	blessed by God, and those under him, as we discussed in the episode, we did a while ago on slavery.

00:31:51 – 00:31:56:	If you were Abram's slave, you were blessed. We're talking about his household, again, he had

00:31:56 – 00:32:02:	no kids yet. His household, these were relatives, and these were slaves. These were men under him,

00:32:02 – 00:32:09:	whom he owned. They were blessed to be owned by Abram because he was a godly man. And so, as

00:32:09 – 00:32:15:	their king, everything that he did should be to their benefit. That's the duty, and that's a

00:32:15 – 00:32:21:	fundamental part of this, is that there's duty up and down the chain when you have someone

00:32:21 – 00:32:27:	in any sort of autocratic position, because the man that doesn't answer to you still answers to God,

00:32:27 – 00:32:32:	which is something that God makes clear in the New Testament when he's talking about

00:32:32 – 00:32:38:	slaves and masters, saying, masters, you too have a master in heaven, so treat your slaves well,

00:32:38 – 00:32:42:	because you will answer to me, not in this life, but in the next.

00:32:43 – 00:32:50:	When it comes to the duties of a good government, a godly government, we mentioned Genesis 9.6,

00:32:50 – 00:32:57:	the requirement of not only having a death penalty, but actually enforcing the death penalty,

00:32:58 – 00:33:02:	which it's that latter one that tends to be a problem these days for certain countries.

00:33:04 – 00:33:11:	We also have Romans 13. We will get to that perhaps a little bit in this episode, but that

00:33:11 – 00:33:15:	probably fits better in a future episode for various reasons.

00:33:15 – 00:33:22:	But one of the core points to make with regard to the duties of a godly government

00:33:23 – 00:33:27:	is that the entirety of the second table of the Ten Commandments

00:33:28 – 00:33:35:	is about interacting with our neighbors in this life. And those are the duties,

00:33:35 – 00:33:41:	not only of individuals, but also of a godly prince, or king, or whatever title he happens to have,

00:33:41 – 00:33:48:	because each one of those commandments four through ten

00:33:49 – 00:33:56:	contains within it various duties for the individual and for the government.

00:33:57 – 00:34:01:	Because for many of these, the government should have laws against these on the books,

00:34:01 – 00:34:07:	so these should be transposed, to use a technical term, from the moral law into the positive law.

00:34:08 – 00:34:13:	The moral law is the eternal law that flows from God's nature. It is unchanging.

00:34:15 – 00:34:23:	It is ultimately true. The positive law is the written law of a given political entity.

00:34:24 – 00:34:29:	And that's all of the various laws. It's not just the moral laws. So it's not just the laws

00:34:29 – 00:34:34:	against murder. It's also parking tickets and all of that. But in this case, it's transposing the

00:34:34 – 00:34:41:	moral law into the positive law. But they're still moral laws just in the lower case M sense,

00:34:41 – 00:34:46:	because they deal with morality. Whereas a parking ticket isn't really a moral issue.

00:34:47 – 00:34:53:	It's just a matter of whether or not you could find. But obviously, we understand some of them

00:34:53 – 00:34:59:	are very clearly issues of morality that should be addressed by the government.

00:35:00 – 00:35:05:	Because the fifth commandment, Thou shalt not murder, will obviously the government,

00:35:05 – 00:35:11:	as we've discussed already, has to have laws against murder and has to prosecute and punish

00:35:11 – 00:35:17:	murderers. But the government should also ban adultery. We used to have those laws on the books,

00:35:19 – 00:35:24:	because we used to have, relatively speaking, Christian government in many places in the West.

00:35:25 – 00:35:28:	Those laws, even where they exist now, are typically not enforced. The

00:35:29 – 00:35:33:	one possible exception might be the military, where that is still a crime.

00:35:34 – 00:35:39:	Which is an interesting note, but that's just historical reasons it's played out that way.

00:35:41 – 00:35:46:	We also mentioned the problems in certain big cities. Well, that's the seventh commandment.

00:35:46 – 00:35:51:	Thou shalt not steal. The government has a duty to punish thieves.

00:35:52 – 00:35:58:	Because the government has a duty, with regard to each one of these commandments,

00:35:58 – 00:36:03:	because these are moral law, these are the unchanging will, because they flow from the

00:36:03 – 00:36:09:	unchanging nature of God. A government that does not enforce these, a government that

00:36:09 – 00:36:15:	does not uphold these, is not a legitimate government. That is the Christian position.

00:36:16 – 00:36:20:	And so if you have a government that's decided, well, we won't prosecute theft.

00:36:21 – 00:36:27:	Insofar as that government no longer prosecutes theft, that government is to that degree illegitimate.

00:36:28 – 00:36:32:	Now, of course, that raises a lot of other questions, and we will be getting to some of

00:36:32 – 00:36:37:	those in a future episode, because they're beyond the scope of this introductory episode.

00:36:38 – 00:36:44:	These are issues that Christians must consider. These are not irrelevant matters. This is not

00:36:44 – 00:36:48:	something you just, oh, well, that's politics, and I can ignore that and just focus on,

00:36:48 – 00:36:55:	no, you do not get to do that, particularly as a man. Because part of your duty

00:36:56 – 00:37:01:	is caring for your family, and part of the way you do that is understanding these issues and

00:37:01 – 00:37:07:	understanding what is going on in the world. Now, we mentioned earlier a question,

00:37:07 – 00:37:14:	sort of a foundational question for this, what is a good government? Well, one of the things that

00:37:14 – 00:37:21:	a good government is, and I think this is a good metric for assessing a government, is that a good

00:37:21 – 00:37:27:	government sort of fades into the background. Because if you have a good government, it's kind

00:37:27 – 00:37:33:	of like having a good foundation for your house. If you have a good solid foundation for your house,

00:37:33 – 00:37:39:	you never have to think about it. The only time you really have to think about your foundation

00:37:39 – 00:37:43:	is when there's a problem, and you have to really think about it when there's a serious problem.

00:37:45 – 00:37:50:	Governments are the same way to a certain degree. Yes, if you have a king and a royal family and

00:37:50 – 00:37:58:	all that, you'll have coronations and celebrations and those things. But by and large, a functional

00:37:58 – 00:38:05:	government is going to provide that foundation on which you can live your life, but otherwise not

00:38:06 – 00:38:10:	be something about which you have to concern yourself. If you find that you're having to

00:38:10 – 00:38:16:	concern yourself constantly about the government, it's probably a fairly good indicator that the

00:38:16 – 00:38:24:	government is not behaving as a Christian government would behave. On the subject of Romans 13,

00:38:24 – 00:38:31:	we will link in the show notes a three-part series from the Goddustines crowd. Pastor David

00:38:31 – 00:38:37:	Ramirez did a great three-part series, it's about three hours in total, on Romans 13 about two years

00:38:37 – 00:38:45:	ago. So this was post-COVID lockdowns and masking and churches being closed forcibly,

00:38:45 – 00:38:51:	in some cases churches being closed voluntarily. He does a great job going through

00:38:53 – 00:38:59:	some of these questions, and he addresses what does a Romans 13 government look like and what

00:38:59 – 00:39:04:	does Romans 13 obedience look like. So as Corey said, we're not going to get into that today,

00:39:04 – 00:39:10:	we may touch on it some point in the future. The Goddustines crowd did a great job. I truly

00:39:10 – 00:39:16:	commend that, especially lately I've seen quite a few questions on Twitter of people bringing up

00:39:16 – 00:39:22:	some of these subjects. It's in the news now, they may be inventing another COVID scare,

00:39:22 – 00:39:28:	they may be trying to lock us in our homes again. And so we saw this happen a couple of years ago,

00:39:28 – 00:39:33:	and most people went along to some degree early on, no one knew what was going on.

00:39:33 – 00:39:37:	Even if you thought you knew, you didn't know. You could speculate if you turned out to be right,

00:39:37 – 00:39:42:	congratulations, you had a great God. If you went along with it and then you later realized

00:39:42 – 00:39:48:	that was crap, that was we were lied to, we were abused. A lot more people today have decided,

00:39:48 – 00:39:53:	I'm not doing that again. But as Christians, we still have to grapple with the entirely

00:39:53 – 00:40:01:	necessary moral question. How do we as Christians live in a society? How do we live under a

00:40:01 – 00:40:09:	government? They may be acting evilly. What is the Christian response? What is permissible?

00:40:09 – 00:40:13:	What is necessary? So Pastor Ramirez does a great judge going over that. We'll link those.

00:40:13 – 00:40:18:	Please go listen to them. I can't recommend them highly enough. I need to go listen to them. I've

00:40:18 – 00:40:23:	recommended it a few times in the last couple of weeks. But it's very much a live issue. Again,

00:40:23 – 00:40:28:	that's part of why we're tackling the subject of legitimacy of government, because although we're

00:40:28 – 00:40:35:	not here to make any particular claims about the state of the United States, I think that

00:40:35 – 00:40:42:	if you think that the 2020 election was stolen, which I do, you can't possibly think that the

00:40:42 – 00:40:48:	same thing is not going to occur in 2024. And so as a pragmatic matter, we have to, as individuals

00:40:48 – 00:40:54:	and as Christians, work through what are the implications as things continue to devolve,

00:40:54 – 00:40:59:	as they seem to me. If men are going to be lawless while claiming to be the law,

00:41:00 – 00:41:04:	where are those lines? We're not going to give you those lines. We're just going to talk about

00:41:04 – 00:41:10:	what does God say in Scripture about what it should look like. And each man, as Corey said,

00:41:10 – 00:41:16:	each father must examine Scripture and examine his conscience and determine what am I obligated to

00:41:16 – 00:41:23:	God to do, even in the face of what men say to do. This is a question that goes back through the

00:41:23 – 00:41:29:	Old Testament and the New Testament. There are many cases where the rightful ruler commanded evil,

00:41:30 – 00:41:35:	and the believers were forbidden from doing the evil. And evil is not necessarily simply an act,

00:41:35 – 00:41:41:	it can be the omission of an act as well. It is evil not to go to church. If you're forbidden to go

00:41:41 – 00:41:50:	to church, that is evil. So these are live issues. And we're not going to, we never want to be the

00:41:50 – 00:41:55:	guys who are trying to pretend to give a roadmap. We're a couple of random podcasters. But Christians

00:41:55 – 00:42:00:	should always be thinking about these things. We want to try to root these conversations in Scripture,

00:42:00 – 00:42:09:	because since these are political discussions, a lot of the questions very easily get derailed into

00:42:09 – 00:42:14:	the pragmatic. And again, as I said earlier, it goes back into, well, I want to be on our X,

00:42:14 – 00:42:19:	or I want to be a menarchist, or I want to be a fascist, I want to be a communist. Whatever you

00:42:19 – 00:42:24:	think is going to be the best solution. If you're only talking about it pragmatically and talking

00:42:24 – 00:42:31:	about just kind of moving pieces around the board, and you're ignoring the supernatural, the fact that

00:42:31 – 00:42:40:	there is a divine element to this, you're going to fall into error. And I think as we wind through

00:42:40 – 00:42:46:	some of the final good examples in Scripture of what godly governance looks like, it's important

00:42:46 – 00:42:52:	just to mention Moses and Joshua. These were men who were similar to Abram and to Noah and Adam.

00:42:52 – 00:42:59:	They were effectively autocrats. They were in charge of their people. They were in charge,

00:42:59 – 00:43:05:	because God put them in charge, and God spoke to them directly. And this is one of the crucial

00:43:05 – 00:43:12:	points that I hope we can get across in this episode to everyone, is that the question comes up,

00:43:12 – 00:43:17:	well, they had theocracy in the Old Testament, but God doesn't talk to us anymore, so we can't

00:43:17 – 00:43:25:	have a theocracy, so we have to have something different. And I think that's a crucial error

00:43:25 – 00:43:30:	to make. I think it misconstrues what was actually going on in the Old Testament

00:43:30 – 00:43:36:	with regard to what goes on today. In the Old Testament, the patriarch spoke directly to God.

00:43:36 – 00:43:41:	God has never spoken directly to me. I don't hear voices. I don't have dreams or visions.

00:43:42 – 00:43:47:	God speaks to me in Scripture. He speaks to you in Scripture and in faithful preaching

00:43:48 – 00:43:54:	from someone who's illicit to be giving that sort of preaching. So God does speak today,

00:43:54 – 00:44:00:	but he speaks through his word, which is given to us in Scripture. And I think the crucial

00:44:00 – 00:44:05:	distinction when we're looking back at the Old Testament, where we had these prophets and patriarchs

00:44:05 – 00:44:11:	who spoke directly to God, I think that it's important to remember that that was necessary

00:44:11 – 00:44:18:	because they did not have the Holy Spirit, not as it was given at Pentecost. Since Pentecost,

00:44:18 – 00:44:24:	all believers are given the Holy Spirit. It comes to us by the word, it comes to us by baptism.

00:44:24 – 00:44:28:	That's how God gives the Holy Spirit to believers, to make them believers.

00:44:30 – 00:44:33:	As far as political roadmaps go, I'm certainly not going to give one here,

00:44:33 – 00:44:39:	but I won't say that I would never give one elsewhere. But that's not the point of this

00:44:39 – 00:44:47:	podcast. It's not the point, certainly, of this episode. I do think it is likely that we will

00:44:48 – 00:44:54:	get into Romans 13 in some future episode, although I also recommend the podcast that

00:44:54 – 00:44:59:	will be in the show notes because it covers the topic quite well. But one of the reasons

00:44:59 – 00:45:07:	that I think that we will get into it is because from the Lutheran tradition, we have a particularly

00:45:07 – 00:45:17:	strong case already laid out for us with regard to issues of a tyrannical sovereign,

00:45:17 – 00:45:22:	of a tyrannical government, of a prince who may no longer be a legitimate prince.

00:45:24 – 00:45:29:	And that is called the Magdeburg Confession. I'll put that in the show notes as well. I'm not going

00:45:29 – 00:45:34:	to bury the lead if you want to read it before we get to the episode. By all means, it's great to

00:45:34 – 00:45:40:	have the background. We won't go over the specifics here because that's for a future time.

00:45:43 – 00:45:50:	But on the topic of theocracy, I think the modern conception of theocracy is often deeply mistaken.

00:45:51 – 00:45:59:	Because when you mention theocracy, most modern minds are immediately going to turn to

00:46:00 – 00:46:06:	men in funny hats and long robes making pronouncements in the name of God and ruling

00:46:06 – 00:46:17:	as if they are basically an avatar of God. And that's just not what theocracy in Scripture was.

00:46:17 – 00:46:22:	It may have been in some other parts of the world. And it's certainly not what we mean if we call

00:46:22 – 00:46:29:	something theocratic. And I would use that term more than theocracy, I would say theocratic.

00:46:30 – 00:46:38:	Because I think theocratic is a proper way to describe, to add to the description of

00:46:39 – 00:46:45:	another system. Because theocracy isn't properly a system of government.

00:46:45 – 00:46:51:	Now, you can have a theocratic government. So you can have a theocratic patriarchy or a theocratic

00:46:51 – 00:46:59:	monarchy. But that's not a theocracy. And today, you're probably not going to have that. And I would

00:46:59 – 00:47:05:	go so far as to say it's probably not something you want. Because again, this goes back to what I

00:47:06 – 00:47:16:	said earlier, there is a division, not a wall, not some sort of hard separation between church and

00:47:16 – 00:47:24:	state. But there is a division, they have different spheres, different estates, they have different

00:47:24 – 00:47:30:	duties. And so you don't want your pastor to be your prince and you don't want your prince to be

00:47:30 – 00:47:39:	your pastor. Now, you do want your pastor to have proper politics in so far as that is necessary.

00:47:40 – 00:47:46:	You don't want your pastor to be a communist. And you certainly want your prince to have

00:47:46 – 00:47:53:	right theology. You want your prince to be a sound Christian prince. And so there's overlap in that

00:47:53 – 00:48:01:	way. But it's no longer like it was in the garden or with Noah, or at certain times in the history

00:48:01 – 00:48:11:	of Israel, where you had one man occupying the office of prophet, priest, and king, not least of all

00:48:11 – 00:48:17:	because we don't have prophets in that sense anymore. Now, of course, in the broader sense, as

00:48:17 – 00:48:22:	simply meaning one who speaks God's word, we have many prophets, because when a pastor stands up and

00:48:22 – 00:48:29:	speaks God's word, he is a prophet in that broader sense. Because that's all a prophet is a prophet

00:48:29 – 00:48:39:	is one who relays God's word, not in the specialized sense of the prophets who spoke directly with God

00:48:39 – 00:48:46:	or heard directly from God. But I think it's important to make a slight

00:48:47 – 00:48:53:	a little nuance there. God does speak to you directly through scripture. He does not speak

00:48:53 – 00:48:59:	to you directly in the same way as he spoke to say Moses. He spoke with Moses face to face.

00:49:00 – 00:49:09:	That's not how scripture works. If you pick up a book in a very real way, the author is speaking

00:49:09 – 00:49:16:	to you directly. Now, for the average author, he probably didn't write it with you in mind.

00:49:18 – 00:49:26:	There's a slight difference here, obviously, God being infinite, omniscient. I won't go so far as to

00:49:26 – 00:49:34:	say that God wrote it specifically for and with you in mind. But at the same time, it is written

00:49:34 – 00:49:40:	for every Christian and it is written to every Christian. And God being infinite has the capacity

00:49:40 – 00:49:46:	certainly to do that, whereas a human author most certainly does not. And so, yes, scripture is

00:49:46 – 00:49:52:	God speaking directly to you, but still in a very different way from how he spoke directly to

00:49:53 – 00:50:01:	Moses or Joshua or Solomon. Well, I think that's the importance of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit

00:50:01 – 00:50:08:	is that when God speaks to believers through the word, the Holy Spirit within us receives the

00:50:08 – 00:50:14:	word given in scripture. So, God is both the giver and the receiver of the word. And that's

00:50:14 – 00:50:19:	what makes it fundamentally different from just reading some other book, is that you don't have

00:50:19 – 00:50:27:	to intuit the author's intent or anything like that. God is working within you. We are, in a sense,

00:50:27 – 00:50:33:	possessed by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us to receive those things. And so, I think that is

00:50:33 – 00:50:37:	fundamentally different. But it's not a license for someone to say, well, I have a brand new

00:50:37 – 00:50:42:	interpretation of this because God revealed it to me. No, that's not what we're saying.

00:50:44 – 00:50:48:	But the reason I highlighted Pentecost in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is that

00:50:50 – 00:50:57:	God speaking to Abraham face to face was a tremendous blessing, something that we will not

00:50:57 – 00:51:04:	receive until we die and we are in heaven and the New Earth. However, God had to speak to them

00:51:04 – 00:51:10:	because they didn't have the Holy Spirit to receive his word. It's over and over and over again in the

00:51:10 – 00:51:15:	Old Testament and even in the New Testament. But mostly in the Old Testament, God would speak to

00:51:15 – 00:51:22:	his people. He would speak to Israel. He would speak to the elect. And they would listen for five

00:51:22 – 00:51:27:	minutes and they would wander off and do evil again. Now, I'm not blaming the absence of the

00:51:27 – 00:51:33:	Holy Spirit for that, but I think it's important to note that the way that they behaved and the way

00:51:33 – 00:51:40:	that they were hearing God was in some ways worse. I mean, the behavior is obviously worse.

00:51:40 – 00:51:45:	I think that the way that they were hearing God's voice, I mean, obviously the patriarchs,

00:51:45 – 00:51:50:	the prophets who spoke to God were definitely blessed by that. But as we were saying in prep,

00:51:51 – 00:51:56:	when it's then relayed to another man, the other man is just, even though in the case of Moses,

00:51:56 – 00:52:03:	Moses literally led the Israelites out of Egypt. The miracles happened before their eyes.

00:52:03 – 00:52:09:	They walked across the sea. All these things happened right in front of them. And as soon as

00:52:09 – 00:52:15:	the miracle occurs on the mountain where Moses goes up to speak face to face with God to receive

00:52:15 – 00:52:25:	the law, the people apostatize. The people revert into idolatry to worship Egyptian gods and say,

00:52:25 – 00:52:32:	this is the God who brought us out of Egypt. It was incomprehensible to us, that level of apostasy.

00:52:33 – 00:52:39:	This is something that continued throughout the period of the judges. In Judges 2 it's recorded,

00:52:39 – 00:52:44:	then the Lord raised up judges, and this was after Moses, this was after Joshua had died,

00:52:44 – 00:52:49:	the period of the judges began. The Lord raised up judges who saved them out of the hand of those

00:52:49 – 00:52:54:	who plundered them, yet they did not listen to their judges. They whored after other gods and bowed

00:52:54 – 00:52:59:	down to them. They soon turned aside from the way in which their fathers had walked, who had obeyed

00:52:59 – 00:53:04:	the commandments of the Lord, and they did not do so. Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them,

00:53:04 – 00:53:09:	the Lord was with the judge, and he saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the

00:53:09 – 00:53:15:	judge. But for the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning, because of those who afflicted and oppressed

00:53:15 – 00:53:20:	them. But whenever the judge died, they turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers,

00:53:20 – 00:53:25:	going after other gods, serving them and bowing down before them. They did not drop any of their

00:53:25 – 00:53:29:	practices or their stubborn ways, so the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel.

00:53:30 – 00:53:34:	So this was the pattern over and over. God was speaking directly to the judges as he spoke to

00:53:34 – 00:53:42:	Joshua and Moses and to Samuel and the other prophets in the future. Maybe they would listen,

00:53:42 – 00:53:46:	but for the most part they didn't listen. So there was this oscillation where most of the

00:53:46 – 00:53:52:	Old Testament period of the Israelites, most of the time they're disobeying and disregarding God,

00:53:52 – 00:53:57:	and then he's chastising them. He continued to send messengers to whom he spoke directly,

00:53:57 – 00:54:01:	because the people continued not to listen to those messengers, even though they knew that the

00:54:01 – 00:54:10:	messengers had direct communication with God. And I think that God did things perfectly then,

00:54:10 – 00:54:15:	he does things perfectly now. We no longer have priests as mediators between us and God,

00:54:15 – 00:54:19:	as one of the crucial distinctions between the Old and the New Testament.

00:54:19 – 00:54:26:	This sacrificial system has ended. The Holy Spirit has given us. We are given the ability to understand

00:54:26 – 00:54:31:	Scripture on our own. Now, that doesn't mean that you don't need someone to explain it to you.

00:54:31 – 00:54:36:	We all need faithful Christian men to explain Scripture to us, because as we've said many

00:54:36 – 00:54:43:	times in the past, these matters of faith are not simply matters of intellectual ascent. Scripture

00:54:43 – 00:54:47:	is not a guidebook and it's not a puzzle book. If you just think about it really hard and you

00:54:47 – 00:54:50:	move all the pieces around just right, you're going to unlock the puzzle and see it all. It's

00:54:50 – 00:54:56:	not that kind of book. That's why the Holy Spirit is necessary. It's why teachers are necessary.

00:54:56 – 00:55:00:	It's particularly why faithful teachers are necessary, because a faithless teacher, a corrupt

00:55:00 – 00:55:06:	teacher, a wolf who seeks to lead us away from what God actually says will do the very sort of

00:55:06 – 00:55:11:	damage that the Israelites were suffering of their own accord. They had faithful prophets

00:55:11 – 00:55:17:	and they had faithless hearts. We today have hearts who seek to be faithful, and in many cases we

00:55:17 – 00:55:23:	have faithless prophets in the small peace sense who are leading a men astray at the very moment

00:55:23 – 00:55:29:	when they're seeking answers from God. That's why these conversations are not just political,

00:55:29 – 00:55:34:	but they're also within the church. We need to get all of this stuff right simultaneously.

00:55:34 – 00:55:38:	As Corey said, that's not mixing church and state. It's not saying we want to have the church

00:55:38 – 00:55:45:	running the state as one entity. It's saying that we have to be faithful in whatever our vocation.

00:55:45 – 00:55:51:	The King has to be faithful to God, the teachers, the pastors have to be faithful to Scripture,

00:55:51 – 00:55:56:	and we as hearers must be faithful to God above all of them. We have to be faithful to God

00:55:56 – 00:56:04:	even in the face of faithless pastors. We have to be faithful to God even in the face of

00:56:04 – 00:56:11:	faithless leaders or rulers. It's ultimately on us. We're the ones who are judged by God for what we

00:56:11 – 00:56:16:	do or fail to do in this life, and Scripture is given to us for our edification and for our

00:56:16 – 00:56:22:	guidance. When these questions come up, we don't have to wait for God to appear to us in a vision

00:56:22 – 00:56:27:	or a dream or to speak to us out loud. These answers are given in Scripture. Again, not as a

00:56:27 – 00:56:34:	guidebook. There's not a decoder ring, and here's chapter and verse to have a proof text for everything,

00:56:34 – 00:56:40:	but when the examples are given, for example, the Genesis 9-6 example of properly executing

00:56:40 – 00:56:47:	murderers, that's the principle. We don't need to second-guess the principle later on

00:56:47 – 00:56:53:	when related questions come up. We can rely on solid foundations and extrapolate from that

00:56:53 – 00:57:00:	using God-given reason. God gives us reason to understand the things that He reveals to us.

00:57:00 – 00:57:05:	Not that everything is subject to reason, but much of it is not subject to reason, but it is

00:57:05 – 00:57:11:	apprehensible through reason. That's what God has given us. Part of the reason that we started

00:57:11 – 00:57:16:	its own choir, and we're thankful for people listening, is that we as individuals as laymen,

00:57:16 – 00:57:20:	and for the pastors who are listening, who are trying to be faithful, we each have a duty to

00:57:20 – 00:57:25:	listen to God's voice in Scripture and try to get this stuff right and to talk about it, to hammer

00:57:25 – 00:57:32:	these things out, to have all these conversations split into a million pieces where the guys with

00:57:32 – 00:57:36:	strictly political opinions don't have any input from the church, and the guys in the church don't

00:57:36 – 00:57:41:	want to talk about politics at all. That is a recipe for disaster. You don't have to mingle the two

00:57:41 – 00:57:47:	to the point that you have just one. You have church and state as one in order to have godliness

00:57:47 – 00:57:53:	in all things. That should be what everyone desires. Whatever his approach is, and we have a

00:57:53 – 00:57:57:	number of podcasters now who are listening, which is awesome, who don't have religious principally

00:57:57 – 00:58:04:	podcasts. That's great. I'm delighted to know that there is a Christian voice in their ears to help

00:58:04 – 00:58:10:	them navigate some of these problems that we're all facing, because whether you're a Christian or not,

00:58:10 – 00:58:14:	you're facing the same evil men. As we've said before, the evil in the world is one of the things

00:58:14 – 00:58:21:	that's driving men to the church. The church, the faithful Christians, ideally in the pulpits,

00:58:21 – 00:58:25:	would be getting these questions right to the extent that they can speak to the man who's

00:58:25 – 00:58:30:	politically minded and say, yes, God doesn't want this evil in the world either. We're not just

00:58:30 – 00:58:35:	going to give up on this life. I want you to have a wife and children. I don't want them to be

00:58:35 – 00:58:42:	chemically castrated. I don't want them to be taken by the state. They're things that are godly,

00:58:42 – 00:58:48:	that are in the left-hand kingdom. If we can all talk about these together, we can come up with

00:58:48 – 00:58:52:	some ideas that are going to be consonant with Scripture. Part of the reason we're doing this

00:58:52 – 00:58:59:	episode on different types of governments is that it's going to be one. It's going to be some variation

00:58:59 – 00:59:04:	on one of these themes. Obviously, it's ironic for us to be talking about deciding that,

00:59:05 – 00:59:10:	ideally, if you listen to us and you believe the trajectory of these episodes, democracy is evil.

00:59:11 – 00:59:16:	Spoil the future episodes. They're, democracy is evil. It's an evil thing. That does not mean

00:59:16 – 00:59:20:	that input from men is evil. That's something else that we see, that there's often a case

00:59:20 – 00:59:27:	in both the Old and the New Testament where the elders, godly men, speak and reach a cord

00:59:27 – 00:59:32:	together to determine who is going to be a faithful leader from among them. That's not

00:59:32 – 00:59:38:	the consent of the government. That's not the consent of the governed. That is godly men seeking

00:59:38 – 00:59:44:	that which is godly and then, frankly, burdening someone with the yoke of duty to be a ruler,

00:59:44 – 00:59:50:	to be a leader, because that man who has no one over him has god over him. He has no one to answer

00:59:50 – 00:59:56:	to but god. That is a terrifying position for anyone to be in if they actually take it seriously.

59:56 – 01:00:00
If the buck stops with you and you know that you only answered a god,

01:00:00 – 01:00:07:	you can't get anything wrong. Those men above all else need scriptural warrant for what they do

01:00:07 – 01:00:14:	and scriptural bounds for how they do it. As a general, if also extremely obvious rule,

01:00:14 – 01:00:22:	a Christian or even just a reasonable man is going to want to be blessed by god

01:00:23 – 01:00:31:	instead of cursed by god. And scripture is very clear in a number of places, really throughout

01:00:31 – 01:00:38:	scripture, that you will suffer as an individual, as a people, if you have faithless rulers.

01:00:39 – 01:00:48:	But it goes the other way as well. A faithful ruler, if he has faithless people, will also suffer.

01:00:48 – 01:00:57:	And so we should desire to have both faithful people who are attending church and doing their

01:00:57 – 01:01:02:	duty with regard to the right hand kingdom and also faithful rulers.

01:01:02 – 01:01:09:	If we say that we don't care about one of these, so we say that, well,

01:01:09 – 01:01:13:	we're Christian and we're only concerned with the church and we don't care about the state,

01:01:14 – 01:01:19:	what you're really saying is, I don't care about being blessed by god.

01:01:21 – 01:01:29:	That's spitting in God's face. That's sin. That is something that Christians are not permitted

01:01:29 – 01:01:38:	to do. You are required to desire the blessings of God because that is what a Christian does.

01:01:38 – 01:01:44:	That is going to flow out of a living faith. And as I said, if you are simply a rational human being,

01:01:44 – 01:01:49:	you are going to desire to be blessed by God instead of cursed by him, certainly.

01:01:50 – 01:01:57:	But on top of this, if you ignore one or the other, and really I should say three because

01:01:57 – 01:02:01:	there are the three estates, there's the family, the church and the state, and it is important to

01:02:01 – 01:02:07:	maintain the family as distinct in any of these discussions because the family is distinct.

01:02:08 – 01:02:16:	There is a special honor, reverence. The family is supposed to be held in a certain kind of esteem,

01:02:17 – 01:02:24:	both by the church and by the state. And if either one is not doing that, it is illegitimate in so

01:02:24 – 01:02:31:	far as it is not doing that. And today we most certainly see that the state is not honoring

01:02:31 – 01:02:38:	the family and certainly not honoring the father as head of the family. But with regard to these

01:02:38 – 01:02:46:	three estates, it's important to recognize that they are all interdependent. You do not get to

01:02:46 – 01:02:53:	ignore one because you're focused on the other. Because the ones you ignore will be the ones that

01:02:53 – 01:02:59:	destroy the thing to which you are actually paying attention. If you focus only on your family,

01:03:00 – 01:03:05:	and in so doing, you lose the church and the state, you will lose your family too.

01:03:07 – 01:03:13:	If you focus only on the church and you lose the state, chances are you won't keep the church

01:03:13 – 01:03:20:	for very long. That has not gone well historically when atheists have taken over the state in

01:03:20 – 01:03:27:	Toto, think the USSR. Things did not go well for the church. The church basically died

01:03:28 – 01:03:31:	in large parts of Eastern Europe under communism.

01:03:35 – 01:03:38:	And of course, if you lose the church, well, you lose everything.

01:03:41 – 01:03:42:	But in addition to this,

01:03:42 – 01:03:50:	there are some commands in scripture that really go to part of the core of what we're discussing

01:03:50 – 01:03:56:	here. There's one from Proverbs that I want to highlight here. And that's from Proverbs 27.

01:03:57 – 01:04:03:	Know well the condition of your flocks and give attention to your herds.

01:04:03 – 01:04:13:	God isn't primarily concerned with animals here. Yes, you should be concerned about your

01:04:13 – 01:04:18:	animals if you have them as well. I do feed and water my chickens. I take care of them.

01:04:19 – 01:04:22:	I went out early and chased them around because they were hiding in the coop instead of going

01:04:22 – 01:04:28:	outside. These are important things to do if God has given you animals to take care of.

01:04:28 – 01:04:37:	But this is more about the people entrusted to your care. Your family is your flock first

01:04:37 – 01:04:44:	and foremost. If you're a pastor, your church, your congregation is your flock. If you're a prince,

01:04:44 – 01:04:50:	the nation is your flock. And as was mentioned, that's a terrifying position in which to find

01:04:50 – 01:04:57:	yourself because you are the top of the pyramid as far as humanity is concerned. There are no men

01:04:57 – 01:05:03:	above you and so you answer directly to God. Now, of course, every man will have to answer

01:05:04 – 01:05:07:	directly to God at the judgment for what he did or failed to do.

01:05:09 – 01:05:15:	But there are certain positions that have higher duties and will be judged with greater strictness.

01:05:16 – 01:05:23:	Teachers and princes are in that category. And in the case of a prince, there's no one above him.

01:05:24 – 01:05:27:	In the case of most teachers, there's at least someone who is

01:05:29 – 01:05:32:	on equal standing with you. You can talk to him and discuss things.

01:05:33 – 01:05:40:	The prince has no such thing. And so those who would envy the prince, the position he has,

01:05:40 – 01:05:46:	should maybe consider exactly what comes along with that because it's not just privilege. It's

01:05:46 – 01:05:55:	mostly duties. But on the topic of democracy, to switch over to that, since it was mentioned.

01:05:56 – 01:06:03:	No, we're not burying the lead. Democracy is a wicked system. And that's the division from

01:06:03 – 01:06:07:	earlier that I mentioned, the two categories. There's autocracy and there's mob rule. Under mob

01:06:07 – 01:06:15:	rule, you have democracy, totalitarianism and anarchy. These are the three evil systems.

01:06:15 – 01:06:22:	Under autocracy, you have four options. You have patriarchy, monarchy, which is really patriarchy,

01:06:22 – 01:06:29:	so really it's three options. Old agarchy, which is distinct enough to warrant separation and then fascism.

01:06:31 – 01:06:35:	And so those are the options under autocracy. And now you sort of have the full

01:06:36 – 01:06:42:	outline of framework within which to think about these issues. And to assess, because

01:06:43 – 01:06:49:	as we've said a number of times, these are issues on which men can disagree.

01:06:50 – 01:06:56:	You can debate these. You can say, well, no, I think that this particular structure is better

01:06:56 – 01:07:02:	suited to us. And that's another point that was already made, but deserves to be emphasized.

01:07:03 – 01:07:11:	There are systems that can be good for a period, but will not work if you simply lift them out of

01:07:11 – 01:07:18:	that period and stick them in another, particularly if at the same time you cross national borders.

01:07:19 – 01:07:25:	Because what works really well for the Germans may not work as well for the Russians or may not

01:07:25 – 01:07:33:	work as well for Americans because nations are distinct. And so different nations are going

01:07:33 – 01:07:38:	to have different requirements just as different times are going to have different requirements.

01:07:38 – 01:07:47:	Now, I'm not saying that the duties of the state change because they don't, but how the state

01:07:48 – 01:07:54:	enacts those duties, how the state pursues those duties will necessarily have to change

01:07:55 – 01:07:59:	with regard to the climate in which the state is operating.

01:07:59 – 01:08:09:	Because fundamentally politics is a practical art. I'm not saying it's devoid of morality,

01:08:09 – 01:08:16:	that it's amoral, and it shouldn't be immoral, but it often is, unfortunately. No, it should

01:08:16 – 01:08:22:	be bounded by morality, but it also has to take into account practical considerations. That's one

01:08:22 – 01:08:32:	reason that I personally have no economic ideology. Because I see it as a tool, and I shouldn't have

01:08:32 – 01:08:39:	an ideology about hammers. And so I'm not going to have an ideology about markets or an ideology

01:08:39 – 01:08:45:	about the economy, because it is something that the state uses to achieve proper ends.

01:08:47 – 01:08:51:	And one of the ends that is a proper end should be family formation, just to give an example.

01:08:52 – 01:08:59:	And so the state should pursue economic policies that create incentives,

01:08:59 – 01:09:07:	or at least make it easier to pursue family formation. That's just the Christian position,

01:09:07 – 01:09:13:	because what is one of the earliest commands given by God and repeated by God in Scripture?

01:09:13 – 01:09:19:	Be fruitful and multiply. Well, the only way in which humans can be fruitful and multiply

01:09:19 – 01:09:28:	that is sanctioned by God is marriage, is family formation. And so a godly nation, a godly prince,

01:09:28 – 01:09:36:	is going to attempt to create conditions under which that can occur. A nation that is pursuing that,

01:09:36 – 01:09:43:	a government that is pursuing that, is godly insofar as it is doing that. A nation that

01:09:43 – 01:09:49:	is harming family formation is ungodly, is wicked. And that is, of course, what we have today for

01:09:50 – 01:09:58:	many reasons. These are not issues that Christians get to ignore. Again, to hammer on this point.

01:09:59 – 01:10:05:	You do not get to ignore these. Yes, I mentioned earlier, if you happen to be blessed

01:10:05 – 01:10:11:	with a godly government, and you're living in a time of peace and prosperity and stability,

01:10:12 – 01:10:17:	you have to spend very little cognitive bandwidth thinking about these issues.

01:10:18 – 01:10:24:	We are not living in one of those eras. We are living in a time where

01:10:25 – 01:10:29:	a great many things are in shambles and a great many others are on fire.

01:10:30 – 01:10:37:	And so we do not have the luxury of ignoring these. As Christian men, it is our duty to pay

01:10:37 – 01:10:45:	attention to these issues. Now, each man must pay attention to the issues to the extent that God has

01:10:45 – 01:10:53:	given them the ability to do so. If God has not given you the mind for politics, I'm not saying

01:10:53 – 01:10:58:	you have a duty to draft a 10 year plan. First off, a 10 year plan is probably insane, because in

01:10:58 – 01:11:06:	politics you're never going to get that far out. But you do have a duty to have some understanding

01:11:06 – 01:11:14:	of the issues and to at least have staked out a position that is consonant with your beliefs,

01:11:14 – 01:11:22:	with Christianity. Don't just blindly believe that what party A or party B tells you is right.

01:11:23 – 01:11:29:	Yes, you can trust men who have proven themselves trustworthy over a course of time by proving

01:11:30 – 01:11:33:	that they have good intentions and they are true to God's word.

01:11:35 – 01:11:39:	But ultimately it still falls on you to do what God gave you to do as a man,

01:11:40 – 01:11:47:	particularly if you are a father, because then you have care, you have a duty of care with regard

01:11:47 – 01:11:54:	to your wife and your children, your household. And so what we are trying to do with this episode

01:11:54 – 01:12:02:	and future episodes in this series is give you some of the framework within which to think about

01:12:02 – 01:12:08:	these issues and some of the foundational information, the foundational knowledge,

01:12:09 – 01:12:15:	both in terms of the theory side to some degree with regard to the systems and

01:12:16 – 01:12:23:	what they entail and also what scripture says, what God's word says about these issues.

01:12:24 – 01:12:30:	Because ultimately that is the Christian standard. It is what God says about the issues that matters.

01:12:31 – 01:12:37:	If God says we must do A and a certain political system says you must not do A,

01:12:37 – 01:12:42:	that's a very easy question for a Christian whether or not you can support that political system.

01:12:43 – 01:12:49:	And so there's no such thing as an A political Christian. It's one of the major issues that

01:12:49 – 01:12:55:	Christians have had with the Anabaptists historically. Many of them have tended toward the

01:12:55 – 01:13:01:	pacifist or the anarchist and Christians cannot be either of those things, because God commands us

01:13:01 – 01:13:09:	not to be. And it is that fidelity to God's word that is the real hallmark of a Christian,

01:13:10 – 01:13:16:	because yes, obviously we are not discounting the gospel, we're never doing that on this podcast.

01:13:17 – 01:13:24:	But we're dealing with the and then what? You're a Christian, you've been regenerated,

01:13:24 – 01:13:33:	you've been given faith by God, you believe you're saved, you're justified, okay. And now what?

01:13:34 – 01:13:40:	We're talking about the Christian life, what you do as a Christian. And so the law still remains

01:13:40 – 01:13:48:	because the law is God's eternal will. And the law is curb, mirror, and guide. The mirror part

01:13:48 – 01:13:53:	is personal, that's you look at the law, and you see yourself as a sinner.

01:13:53 – 01:13:58:	You see that you need a savior, you see that you need to repent, that you need to attempt,

01:13:58 – 01:14:05:	at least to amend your ways. The curb and the guide are both personal and public,

01:14:07 – 01:14:14:	because the curb is to decrease the amount of wickedness in the world insofar as is possible.

01:14:15 – 01:14:21:	And that can be done both with regard to the law, being the law, acting on the wicked,

01:14:21 – 01:14:27:	insofar as the wicked are not completely seared and impenitent. But the prince can also

01:14:28 – 01:14:33:	use the positive law, modeled on the moral law, to curb evil in the world.

01:14:34 – 01:14:38:	And the same thing with the guide, because even the upstanding citizen,

01:14:38 – 01:14:45:	there's some power of incentive in knowing that you will be punished if you transgress the moral

01:14:45 – 01:14:52:	law. And so it is still acting as a guide. The prince is still coming alongside the upstanding

01:14:52 – 01:14:59:	citizen and helping him to remain a good citizen, a good Christian. And so there are duties,

01:14:59 – 01:15:05:	both for the private individual and for the state, that flow from God's law.

01:15:05 – 01:15:11:	On the subject of the transition between one form of government and another,

01:15:11 – 01:15:16:	I think it's worth touching on one of the last things in Scripture where,

01:15:16 – 01:15:23:	as I mentioned, they were ruled by judges, they were ruled by men of God directly. And then at

01:15:23 – 01:15:28:	one point, Israel said, we want a king like our pagan neighbors. And God said, that's a bad idea.

01:15:28 – 01:15:32:	Samuel said, that's a bad idea. They said, no, we want it anyway. And so God said, okay,

01:15:32 – 01:15:37:	here's what's going to happen. And so in just a minute, we're going to read that passage. But

01:15:37 – 01:15:42:	it's important because this is a passage that's used by those who are both pro-monarchy and those

01:15:42 – 01:15:47:	who are anti-monarchy to make their own points. And it can only mean one of those things.

01:15:48 – 01:15:52:	I want to highlight simply to be consistent with many past episodes of Stone Choir.

01:15:53 – 01:15:57:	When you look at the history of the church in the last two millennia,

01:15:58 – 01:16:04:	wherever there were Christian nations, they were monarchies, almost without exception,

01:16:04 – 01:16:10:	until the Enlightenment, until we started murdering kings and saying, no God's mode, no masters.

01:16:10 – 01:16:17:	So it's relevant to look at how Christians historically have always governed ourselves,

01:16:17 – 01:16:24:	because that should, frankly, be the first immediate reference by which we judge how we are

01:16:24 – 01:16:29:	ruled today. Part of the reason we began here is in the subsequent episode, we deal specifically

01:16:29 – 01:16:36:	with the Enlightenment. It's going to be to highlight in depth how it was an over-rejection of

01:16:37 – 01:16:47:	actual godly governance in the name of deity, in the name of things like liberty as its own deity.

01:16:47 – 01:16:52:	Well, liberty was a god, that there was an altar to liberty. We'll get to that in the

01:16:52 – 01:16:56:	Enlightenment episodes, but these people were very religious. What they were not was Christian.

01:16:56 – 01:17:02:	They were overthrowing Christendom. They were slaughtering kings and continued for a century,

01:17:02 – 01:17:09:	whether by politics or by force, to kill those kings. And it resulted in the world that we have

01:17:09 – 01:17:15:	today. And so we're living in time. We don't get to just be theoretical about this stuff. We're here

01:17:15 – 01:17:22:	now, stuck down in it. We have to try to figure out how did we get here and what is necessary to

01:17:22 – 01:17:28:	stop the evil and then to replace it with something that will be good for us pragmatically and will

01:17:28 – 01:17:33:	be in accord with God, which, incidentally, is always the same thing. When you obey God, when you

01:17:33 – 01:17:38:	love and fear God, you are blessed by God. It's only the nations that reject God, the suffer

01:17:38 – 01:17:44:	chastisement. Scripture says that over and over again. If you are being invaded by foreigners

01:17:44 – 01:17:50:	and you're being cast down and devoured, God is judging you, whether you're a Christian or

01:17:50 – 01:17:54:	non-Christian. Christians are the only ones who are equipped to actually know it. Everyone else

01:17:54 – 01:17:59:	just thinks, oh, this is bad times. Christians know I have caused bad times by my faithlessness.

01:17:59 – 01:18:05:	I need to repent and get back on track. So we're going to look now at 1 Samuel 8,

01:18:05 – 01:18:11:	I think, verses 4 through 22, just to cover that story of the Israelites demanding a king

01:18:11 – 01:18:13:	and then ultimately God giving it to them.

01:18:42 – 01:18:48:	But they have rejected me from being king over them. According to all the deeds that they have done,

01:18:48 – 01:18:55:	from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods,

01:18:55 – 01:19:02:	so they are also doing to you. Now then, obey their voice, only you shall solemnly warn them

01:19:02 – 01:19:05:	and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.

01:19:07 – 01:19:11:	So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him.

01:19:12 – 01:19:18:	He said, These will be the ways the king who will reign over you. He will take your sons

01:19:18 – 01:19:23:	and appoint them to his chariots, and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots,

01:19:23 – 01:19:28:	and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties,

01:19:28 – 01:19:34:	and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war

01:19:34 – 01:19:39:	and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks in bakers.

01:19:40 – 01:19:44:	He will take the best of your fields and vineyards, and olive orchards,

01:19:44 – 01:19:49:	and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards,

01:19:49 – 01:19:56:	and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants,

01:19:56 – 01:19:59:	and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work.

01:20:00 – 01:20:06:	He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves, and in that day you will

01:20:06 – 01:20:12:	cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you

01:20:12 – 01:20:20:	in that day. But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel, and they said, No, but there

01:20:20 – 01:20:27:	shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us,

01:20:27 – 01:20:33:	and go out before us and fight our battles. And when Samuel had heard all the words of the people,

01:20:33 – 01:20:37:	he repeated them in the ears of the Lord, and the Lord said to Samuel,

01:20:37 – 01:20:43:	Obey their voice, and make them a king. Samuel then said to the men of Israel,

01:20:43 – 01:20:49:	Go every man to his city. I think it's important to note that in the subsequent chapter,

01:20:50 – 01:20:57:	God then selects Saul to be their king. He had taller than any of them. He was very handsome.

01:20:57 – 01:21:03:	He was naturally the man that they would have chosen to be their king, and so God selected him,

01:21:03 – 01:21:09:	and had Samuel anoint him as their king. One of the interesting things about anointing,

01:21:09 – 01:21:16:	as we saw earlier this year when King Charles III was coronated as king of England,

01:21:17 – 01:21:22:	they went through the whole rigour-marole, and there was a great deal of pomp and circumstance,

01:21:22 – 01:21:29:	and the ceremony was very ancient. And they highlighted some of the details. I didn't watch

01:21:29 – 01:21:33:	thing. I don't really particularly care, but I was actually familiar with some of that ceremony

01:21:34 – 01:21:41:	as a result of something I saw in a museum like 20 years ago. If you ever have a chance at the

01:21:41 – 01:21:47:	University of Chicago, there's something called the Oriental Institute. It's a great old museum from

01:21:48 – 01:21:56:	the time before patriarchy and colonization were bad when Europeans were going around the world

01:21:56 – 01:22:01:	and collecting the very best examples of all of the world's cultures and gathering them in

01:22:01 – 01:22:06:	one place and examining them and bringing them together and trying to understand history.

01:22:06 – 01:22:13:	No, UFC is a very pagan place, but there was one particular exhibit that I haven't been able to

01:22:13 – 01:22:17:	find a reference for it. One of the reasons I'm mentioning it now is I'm hoping against hope

01:22:17 – 01:22:22:	that someone who's listening will be able to find me a really good link that we can put in the show

01:22:22 – 01:22:27:	notes if it shows up. I'll mention in a subsequent episode, but there was an exhibit that I don't

01:22:27 – 01:22:33:	think is there anymore, and I couldn't find reference for it online. The exhibit was specific to

01:22:33 – 01:22:41:	coronation procedures and ceremonies in ancient Near East. It was going back four and five thousand

01:22:41 – 01:22:47:	years, and what I found incredibly fascinating, and it was something that was mirrored entirely in

01:22:47 – 01:22:55:	King Charles's coronation, was common to every king in this time. When the Israelites were demanding

01:22:55 – 01:23:02:	of God and of Samuel, give us a king like the other nations. As God said, this was one of the

01:23:02 – 01:23:07:	principal problems. It wasn't that a king per se was the problem. It was that they were A, rejecting

01:23:07 – 01:23:13:	God's direct rule over them, and B, they were lusting after what their neighbors had. Their

01:23:13 – 01:23:19:	neighbors had kings, and they just had judges, and kings are more impressive. They're more glorious,

01:23:19 – 01:23:24:	there's more pomp and circumstance. It's just cooler. Everybody loves the optics of kings. To

01:23:24 – 01:23:29:	this day, even if you hate monarchy, you still think it looks really cool, and if you were king,

01:23:29 – 01:23:34:	maybe it wouldn't be so bad. What was in this exhibit was that there were three elements for

01:23:34 – 01:23:41:	every coronation of kings for thousands of years. One was the anointing of oil with oil.

01:23:41 – 01:23:48:	This was something that was common across numerous far-flung civilizations in this day,

01:23:48 – 01:23:54:	and continuing to this day. This is something that occurred with King Charles. They put up a shield,

01:23:54 – 01:24:01:	and they did it for at least 800 years since they have records of them coronating English kings.

01:24:02 – 01:24:10:	They anointed with oil. This is something that was done by Samuel to Saul when he was anointed

01:24:10 – 01:24:17:	as king. The other two elements, however, are not present in scripture as being present for this

01:24:17 – 01:24:24:	godly king. The first was a crown. Now, later on, David did take a crown, but it was one that he

01:24:24 – 01:24:28:	plucked off of one of the other kings that he had vanquished. He took somebody else's crown

01:24:28 – 01:24:36:	and put it on, but it was not a crown that was given to him by God. Pagan kings always had a crown.

01:24:36 – 01:24:40:	They were always anointed with oil. The third element that was always given to a king at his

01:24:40 – 01:24:47:	coronation was a scepter, a rod in his hand. I think one of them was important. I think it

01:24:47 – 01:24:53:	was consistent if I remember correctly. The crown, the scepter, and the anointing with oil were

01:24:53 – 01:25:03:	present for numerous civilizations and cultures for thousands of years. We saw it on TV in 2023.

01:25:03 – 01:25:07:	That wasn't just larping. That wasn't just some sort of tradition. That was

01:25:08 – 01:25:15:	an ancient pagan practice. That was the English doing what the Israelites demanded from God and

01:25:15 – 01:25:20:	from Samuel. We want a king like our pagan neighbors. What does it look like? It looks

01:25:20 – 01:25:27:	like a crown anointing with oil and scepters. I'm not saying that the scepters and crowns are

01:25:27 – 01:25:33:	inherently pagan, per se, because obviously, when you look at the depictions in scripture,

01:25:33 – 01:25:39:	it's clear that God holds a scepter and God has a crown. I think that's one of the reasons why it

01:25:39 – 01:25:44:	wasn't given to David. You can correct me if you think I'm wrong. Maybe if someone else

01:25:44 – 01:25:48:	hasn't paid me, I'd like to hear about it. I think it's conspicuous that of those three elements,

01:25:48 – 01:25:55:	there were particular to the pagan kings. God only used one of them for his first king, for Saul,

01:25:55 – 01:26:02:	and that was the oil and scepter and the crown were something that, in scripture,

01:26:02 – 01:26:08:	is mostly reserved to God himself. I think there could be an argument that David may have had

01:26:08 – 01:26:15:	a scepter of office, even if it's not explicitly mentioned in scripture, except in so far,

01:26:16 – 01:26:23:	as it is mentioned in the blessing for Judah, in that the scepter will not depart. Now, of course,

01:26:23 – 01:26:28:	that is largely figurative, meaning that the kingship will not depart from Judah ultimately

01:26:28 – 01:26:36:	fulfilled in Christ, although also typologically fulfilled in the various kings leading up to

01:26:36 – 01:26:43:	Christ in his line, certainly chief among them David and Solomon. But I think it's probably

01:26:43 – 01:26:49:	reasonable to assume that they had a scepter, some sort of mark of office that was just

01:26:49 – 01:26:56:	standard, they would have had something. But as for the crown, I think we can certainly see

01:26:56 – 01:27:02:	symbolism there in that ultimately the crown belongs to Christ, that's why we have the kings

01:27:02 – 01:27:10:	throwing their crowns before Christ in the end times, because Christ is the king of kings,

01:27:10 – 01:27:16:	which notably he is called the king of kings, not the king of presidents per se, or something

01:27:17 – 01:27:25:	of that order. So I think it is fair to look into that and see a sort of symbolism there with

01:27:25 – 01:27:35:	regard to David as a type, but not the antitype, he's not the ultimate fulfillment of ironically

01:27:35 – 01:27:41:	the Davidic king, because that is of course Christ. Did you have any other comments on this

01:27:41 – 01:27:48:	passage as it relates to the pro and con monarchy arguments? I guess I could address the fact that

01:27:48 – 01:27:56:	some try to argue that this passage is anti monarchy, I've heard this many times, I've personally

01:27:57 – 01:28:03:	argued with people on this point, debated this point. And the passage is very clear if you

01:28:03 – 01:28:09:	just read the text. The passage is not anti monarchy, the passage is not saying you may not

01:28:09 – 01:28:17:	have a king, having a king is wicked, desiring to have a king is wicked. The peoples around Israel

01:28:17 – 01:28:22:	aren't condemned for having kings, Israel isn't condemned for wanting or having a king.

01:28:24 – 01:28:32:	Israel here is condemned for being wicked in rejecting God as king. They had God as their king,

01:28:33 – 01:28:43:	God interacted with them through the judges, through prophets. They wanted a flesh and blood king

01:28:43 – 01:28:48:	they could see and point at who would go out and fight their battles, despite the fact that God

01:28:48 – 01:28:57:	fought their battles for them. And they had judges to lead them when it was necessary. That wickedness

01:28:57 – 01:29:05:	was the rejection of God, not the desire for a king. Scripture does not condemn having a king

01:29:05 – 01:29:12:	anywhere. In fact, having a king is just the natural order of things in Scripture.

01:29:13 – 01:29:20:	As we mentioned before, Adam was a king, Noah was a king, Abraham was a king.

01:29:20 – 01:29:29:	No, not in the modern sense where you conjure up images of the palace of Versailles or some

01:29:29 – 01:29:35:	grand hall and the crown jewels and all of those things. But on a smaller scale, these men were

01:29:35 – 01:29:42:	kings. Most of the kings spoken of in Scripture, even the foreign kings when they are spoken of,

01:29:43 – 01:29:50:	ruled relatively small areas by our standards today. Partly because the population of the

01:29:50 – 01:29:56:	world was smaller and so they simply had fewer men over whom to rule, they didn't have seven

01:29:56 – 01:30:03:	billion people on the planet back then. But they were still kings and they are not condemned

01:30:03 – 01:30:13:	for being kings. And so again to emphasize the point in the passage is that they wickedly rejected

01:30:13 – 01:30:19:	God because they wanted to be just like every other nation. When God had specifically set them

01:30:19 – 01:30:26:	apart for a purpose. And so it's just a continuation of their wickedness. They are disobeying and

01:30:26 – 01:30:33:	rejecting God again. And I guess I'll add one more point about King David and his crown.

01:30:35 – 01:30:44:	We could also read into that a typology with regard to David seizing the crown of a wicked king

01:30:44 – 01:30:53:	and taking it for himself as his crown. Because that's also what Christ has done.

01:30:54 – 01:31:01:	Christ has plundered the wicked rulers of the world and seized their crowns. And ultimately he

01:31:01 – 01:31:06:	will receive all of the crowns because he is the king of kings. And so he is the anti-type

01:31:07 – 01:31:12:	of David being the type seizing the crown from the wicked and

01:31:14 – 01:31:20:	turning it into his own righteous crown insofar as David was righteous. Christ of course being

01:31:20 – 01:31:22:	the antitype for that as well.

01:31:27 – 01:31:33:	One of the other aspects of the kingship of nations that existed in this day and as we've

01:31:34 – 01:31:42:	mentioned this point in a past episode, post tower of Babel people scattered across the earth.

01:31:43 – 01:31:50:	And at some point almost all of them cease to be believers. But they cease to be believers by

01:31:50 – 01:31:57:	degrees. So they remembered bits and pieces of what God had commanded but they forgot

01:31:57 – 01:32:03:	important details. And they eventually apostatized but they didn't all simply devolve into something

01:32:03 – 01:32:10:	totally unrelated from godly order. And one of the very common things among pagan nations

01:32:11 – 01:32:18:	from Egypt to today, whether you're talking about pharaohs in Egypt or the emperor of Japan

01:32:18 – 01:32:27:	in the 20th century, they were revered as gods. The emperor of Japan, Emperor Hirohito in living

01:32:27 – 01:32:34:	memory was the god of Japan to his people. In fact, we uncovered a passage from

01:32:35 – 01:32:42:	letters regarding MacArthur last week where when Hirohito surrendered, there was discussion

01:32:42 – 01:32:49:	at some point between the emperor and general MacArthur on whether or not Japan would convert

01:32:49 – 01:32:56:	to Christianity. Because the Japanese properly understood that you have defeated us, that makes

01:32:56 – 01:33:04:	your gods stronger. If you demand that we worship your gods, we will. And MacArthur demerred. He's

01:33:04 – 01:33:10:	like, no, I would never do that. That wouldn't be proper. So Japan is a pagan nation today because

01:33:10 – 01:33:15:	American refused to Christianize it. And the reasoning was, you can't do that by force. Well,

01:33:16 – 01:33:22:	as we mentioned in the Christian Nationalism episode, Europe was Christianized by force.

01:33:22 – 01:33:27:	You are a Christian because of force. Force is a stupid concept when it comes to

01:33:28 – 01:33:37:	what we call the gospel. When a man becomes a Christian, he has his household baptized,

01:33:37 – 01:33:42:	his children are baptized, his wife is baptized, his family becomes Christian. That's in Scripture,

01:33:42 – 01:33:47:	that is the norm. They also including slaves, incidentally, full grown adults,

01:33:47 – 01:33:56:	directly reporting to the father, had no choice but to become Christian. And some people say,

01:33:56 – 01:34:03:	well, that's not a real conversion. Tell that to God. Because the fruits of that are that for

01:34:03 – 01:34:08:	thousands of years since then, those nations remain Christian. You can't tell me that that

01:34:08 – 01:34:15:	wasn't true or sincere or anything else. The history of Christianity is one where the king

01:34:15 – 01:34:20:	becomes Christian and then the people become Christian. For much the same reason, as I just

01:34:20 – 01:34:27:	mentioned, Pharaoh was a God. His people revered him as a God. Emperor Herod was a God to them.

01:34:27 – 01:34:34:	Obviously, it's not true. But the important part and the part that ties in with the rest of this is

01:34:34 – 01:34:41:	that although that was idolatry, it was false worship of a false God. It was rooted in an

01:34:41 – 01:34:46:	entirely true principle. And the principle is this, the king or the pharaoh or the emperor,

01:34:46 – 01:34:53:	whatever the godly head of the nation is, is standing in the stead of God. And so what was lost

01:34:54 – 01:35:00:	when the Tower of Babel didn't cause, but when men scattered from there and then apostatized,

01:35:01 – 01:35:06:	they remembered that the king stood in the stead of God, but they forgot about God. So what were

01:35:06 – 01:35:12:	they left with? The king is some sort of God figure. And that's what got locked in. In some cases,

01:35:12 – 01:35:18:	it probably took a generation or two. We see within the history of Israel how quickly people can

01:35:18 – 01:35:25:	apostatize even in the most overwhelming face of evidence of the one true God. So when these other

01:35:25 – 01:35:34:	nations revered their kings as gods, we should not view that as parochial backwater superstition.

01:35:35 – 01:35:42:	In a very real sense, worshiping pharaoh as God is more godly than the pagan United States,

01:35:42 – 01:35:47:	where we just have no regard for our heads of state whatsoever, because sometimes they're so

01:35:47 – 01:35:52:	contemptible. How could we possibly bring ourselves to do that? It's interesting that immediately

01:35:52 – 01:35:56:	after Saul's coronation, one of the very first things that happened at the end of the chapter,

01:35:56 – 01:36:00:	was that some men went off and they were grumbling about it. That should not be the

01:36:00 – 01:36:06:	believer's response to someone being placed in charge. Now, obviously, as we said before,

01:36:06 – 01:36:12:	if you're the king, if you're the potentate, if you are the ruler over all people and in your

01:36:12 – 01:36:19:	nation and you answer only to God, that's a tremendous burden on you. And so when someone's

01:36:19 – 01:36:25:	being godly, we should give them some room and pray for them. God commands that. But

01:36:25 – 01:36:37:	those who look at the king as a god are, frankly, more properly ordered than a democracy that just

01:36:37 – 01:36:41:	despises all headship and says, well, I can do better than that guy. I'm going to be in charge

01:36:41 – 01:36:48:	next. There's no god in that picture at all. At least the pagans, when they worship their king,

01:36:48 – 01:36:53:	at least they have some headship in play. It doesn't save them. It's not saying they're not evil,

01:36:53 – 01:36:58:	but it is still a less evil version of government than what we have managed to concoct in our day.

01:36:59 – 01:37:06:	I want to add some emphasis on the point that when the father, when the head of the household

01:37:06 – 01:37:15:	converts, his household converts, and also add some emphasis on the point of force as used in

01:37:15 – 01:37:24:	conversions. For most Christians, historically, the way you are brought into the church is you

01:37:24 – 01:37:32:	are baptized as an infant. Now I'll get to the point for those listening who don't believe in

01:37:32 – 01:37:41:	infant baptism. We'll discuss that in another episode, but typically speaking, historically,

01:37:41 – 01:37:46:	you are brought into the church as an infant through baptism. An infant has no say.

01:37:47 – 01:37:55:	An infant goes where he is carried and eats what he is given. Insofar as it doesn't object to it,

01:37:55 – 01:38:01:	obviously, yes, babies object, but infants have very little say in anything in their lives. They

01:38:01 – 01:38:09:	have no power over anything. It is 100% a matter of force. Now it's not overwhelming force in the

01:38:09 – 01:38:16:	sense of violence, but it is force. It is the use of the physical strength of one to control another,

01:38:17 – 01:38:20:	and that is your duty as a parent, that is your duty as a father.

01:38:22 – 01:38:29:	And so most Christians in the history of Christendom have been brought into the faith

01:38:29 – 01:38:33:	by being baptized as an infant with absolutely no say in the matter.

01:38:34 – 01:38:41:	And now today, for those who supposedly wait until a supposed age of accountability or whatever term

01:38:41 – 01:38:50:	is used, if you did your job as a father, it's the same thing. Yes, I would say obviously you

01:38:50 – 01:38:55:	should have had your child baptized, but if you did your duty as a father, the reason your child

01:38:56 – 01:39:01:	now says that he wants to be baptized is because you indoctrinated him into the faith

01:39:02 – 01:39:08:	over a course of years, which incidentally is what you're supposed to do after you have your child

01:39:08 – 01:39:13:	baptized as well. You don't just baptize him and then abandon him. You teach him the faith,

01:39:13 – 01:39:18:	you cataclysm, you indoctrinate him into the faith. And now, again, we've said this in previous

01:39:18 – 01:39:24:	episodes, but I will note again, indoctrination is not an inherently negative term, the same as

01:39:24 – 01:39:30:	propaganda. It is a neutral term. It depends on into what you are indoctrinating the person.

01:39:30 – 01:39:36:	It can be good or bad, depending on the subject, the material, the end goal,

01:39:37 – 01:39:39:	other things like that. In this case, it's good.

01:39:42 – 01:39:48:	And so in either case, you are, as the head of the household, bringing your child into the faith.

01:39:50 – 01:39:57:	Your child does not actually have a say in this. Because as the father, if you are instructing

01:39:57 – 01:40:03:	your child properly, your child will believe what you are teaching him. Period.

01:40:05 – 01:40:09:	Train up a child in the way he should go. And when he is old, he will not depart from it.

01:40:09 – 01:40:15:	That's a promise from God. So if you train up your child in the way he should go,

01:40:15 – 01:40:19:	of course he is going to want to be baptized. Yes, you should have baptized him as an infant,

01:40:19 – 01:40:27:	but better late than never. In either case, you are using forced to bring your child into the faith.

01:40:29 – 01:40:34:	And that is simply how it goes. Because as we mentioned earlier, authority,

01:40:34 – 01:40:42:	in a very real sense, is based on force. Yes, of course. It is also an issue of justice and

01:40:42 – 01:40:47:	morality and right, truth, etc. However,

01:40:49 – 01:40:56:	God can bring absolutely overwhelming force against any other being in existence,

01:40:57 – 01:41:04:	because he created each and every one. And so in a sense, and to a certain degree,

01:41:05 – 01:41:12:	God's power rests on his ability to bring overwhelming force. And he uses this in Scripture.

01:41:12 – 01:41:17:	See the number of times that God fights for the Israelites, that he appeals to his majesty and

01:41:17 – 01:41:26:	power, that he appears in majesty and power. There is nothing inherently morally wrongful

01:41:26 – 01:41:30:	about the use of force. Now, of course, again, we have to give the disclaimer,

01:41:30 – 01:41:36:	we're not advocating for violence. But we are pointing out that from a Christian perspective,

01:41:37 – 01:41:43:	there is nothing objectionable in this sort of use of force in bringing people into the faith.

01:41:43 – 01:41:49:	In fact, it is a good thing, because the alternative is that they do not come to the faith,

01:41:49 – 01:41:56:	and that they spend eternity in hell. And I'm going to go ahead and say, that no matter how

01:41:56 – 01:42:01:	much force was used to bring someone into the Christian faith, when you meet that man in paradise,

01:42:01 – 01:42:09:	he's going to be very happy he is there instead of the alternative, regardless of how unpleasant

01:42:09 – 01:42:17:	the process may have been in this life. Now, as Christians, I'm not saying that we go out and

01:42:17 – 01:42:23:	forcibly baptize and convert everyone. That's not the point. The point is that

01:42:24 – 01:42:30:	you have to think about these issues in the right context with the right background.

01:42:31 – 01:42:35:	A prince converting his nation to Christianity,

01:42:35 – 01:42:43:	even if he must use force to do so, is in the right. A father converting his family to Christianity,

01:42:43 – 01:42:50:	even if he must use force in doing so, is in the right. It's not the ends justify the means,

01:42:51 – 01:42:59:	it's that force for the head of the family or the state is a permissible tool.

01:43:00 – 01:43:07:	That's the moral argument. That's the point that I am making with this particular argument here in

01:43:07 – 01:43:15:	this part of this episode. It is not morally wrongful for those to whom God has entrusted

01:43:15 – 01:43:25:	the use of force to use that force for legitimate ends, for godly ends. And, of course, that includes

01:43:26 – 01:43:33:	conversion to the Christian faith. So, to wrap this up, I'm going to shift gears just a little bit.

01:43:33 – 01:43:39:	As I mentioned at the beginning, there's something about kingship and governance in general,

01:43:39 – 01:43:45:	as it relates to the nations in Scripture that is revealed in Scripture that we just kind of gloss over.

01:43:45 – 01:43:52:	And before I get into this, I want to make a point clear. I'm not a Michael Heiser guy.

01:43:53 – 01:44:01:	I'm not trying to latch on to one small corner of something and weave some huge elaborate tapestry

01:44:01 – 01:44:05:	of narrative around something we can't possibly know. There's one narrow place in Scripture

01:44:05 – 01:44:11:	where God says something truly remarkable. And so, I want to discuss it now because it has very

01:44:11 – 01:44:20:	profound implications for us understanding that something God says in Scripture when, in Daniel 10,

01:44:21 – 01:44:27:	Daniel is receiving a vision from God. Jesus, the pre-incarnate Christ,

01:44:27 – 01:44:35:	is appearing to Daniel in a vision. So, we have a prophet of God, we have immediate revelation,

01:44:35 – 01:44:42:	and we have a vision that's three levels removed from what is humanly ascertainable.

01:44:42 – 01:44:47:	So, as I talk about this again, I just want to reinforce, I'm not saying that we can figure

01:44:47 – 01:44:52:	that stuff out today. I'm simply highlighting that this existed, and we have no reason to believe

01:44:52 – 01:44:57:	that it doesn't still exist. In fact, I think that we should rightly confess that it still does exist.

01:44:57 – 01:45:02:	We just can't see it any more than they could see it in their day. But, as we'll get to at the end,

01:45:02 – 01:45:07:	it's referenced numerous times in Scripture, just not as directly as here in Daniel 10.

01:45:08 – 01:45:12:	And behold, a hand touched me and set me trembling on my hands and knees,

01:45:12 – 01:45:17:	and he said to me, O Daniel, man greatly loved, understand the words that I speak to you and

01:45:17 – 01:45:22:	stand upright, for now I have been sent to you. And when he had spoken this word to me, I stood

01:45:22 – 01:45:27:	up trembling. Then he said to me, Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to

01:45:27 – 01:45:32:	understand and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because

01:45:32 – 01:45:38:	of your words. The Prince of the Kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael,

01:45:38 – 01:45:43:	one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia and came

01:45:43 – 01:45:49:	to make you understand what is to happen to your people in the latter days. For this, the vision

01:45:49 – 01:45:54:	is for days yet to come. And again, one having the appearance of man touched me and strengthened me.

01:45:54 – 01:46:00:	And he said, O man, greatly loved, fear not, peace be with you, be strong and of good courage.

01:46:00 – 01:46:04:	And as he spoke to me, I was strengthened, and he said, Let my Lord speak for you have

01:46:04 – 01:46:09:	strengthened me. Then he said, Do you know why I have come to you? But now I will return to the

01:46:09 – 01:46:14:	fight against the Prince of Persia. And when I go out, behold, the Prince of Greece will come.

01:46:14 – 01:46:19:	But I will tell you what is inscribed in the Book of Truth. There is none who contends by my side

01:46:19 – 01:46:25:	against these, except Michael, your prince. So the reason why I want to highlight this passage is that

01:46:26 – 01:46:35:	in this particular vision, when God is referring to princes, he's not talking about human beings.

01:46:36 – 01:46:45:	This is one of the ranks of the angelic. We usually call them angels, but that's also a

01:46:45 – 01:46:53:	narrow term for one particular type of servant of God, who is eternal and supernatural. So

01:46:53 – 01:46:59:	Prince is one of the ranks. We know that God is a God of order. He's a God of hierarchy.

01:46:59 – 01:47:07:	We know that there's hierarchy in heaven as there is an earth. And so when God refers to Michael,

01:47:07 – 01:47:11:	one that's the archangel Michael, which again is a rank, angels and archangels,

01:47:11 – 01:47:17:	archangels are obviously higher than angels. And then princes are further up the chain than that,

01:47:17 – 01:47:21:	maybe there's there's debate around that. I'm not trying to take a particular position on

01:47:22 – 01:47:27:	what the hierarchy looks like, but it's important to note that when God refers to the prince of

01:47:27 – 01:47:32:	Persia, which is a phrase probably a lot of us believe if we're old enough, have heard because

01:47:32 – 01:47:38:	that was the name of a video game. I didn't know this until years later that Prince of Persia came

01:47:38 – 01:47:45:	from a vision of God. And Prince of Persia, again, it's not a man, it's referring to a demon,

01:47:45 – 01:47:50:	because this is the archangel Michael, and this is the second person of the Trinity,

01:47:51 – 01:47:57:	waging war against this Prince of Persia. The house cannot be divided against itself,

01:47:57 – 01:48:01:	which means necessarily that this was a supernatural entity, which makes it a demon.

01:48:02 – 01:48:09:	And Prince is its rank. And so God references the Prince of Persia. He references the Prince of

01:48:09 – 01:48:16:	Greece. And he references Michael, your prince, referring to Daniel, who was of course the prophet

01:48:16 – 01:48:21:	to the people of Israel, even while they were under subjection by the Babylonians.

01:48:21 – 01:48:24:	The reason that this is important is that it highlights that there is

01:48:25 – 01:48:32:	a supernatural element to governments that's simply invisible to us, but it exists. It existed in

01:48:32 – 01:48:37:	that day. And remember that angels and demons are, they're supernatural, they don't die. They were

01:48:37 – 01:48:44:	created during the six days of creation, and they're perpetual from that point on. So whoever

01:48:44 – 01:48:50:	the Prince of Persia was, whatever his name was, we don't know. I'm not going to speculate.

01:48:50 – 01:48:54:	Don't go looking for the names of demons, because they have names, and that's a place you don't want

01:48:54 – 01:49:01:	to go. I'm not trying to stir up interest in delving deeper. I'm simply pointing specifically to this

01:49:01 – 01:49:07:	passage, because when God refers to the Prince of Persia, he's referring to a demon that ruled over

01:49:07 – 01:49:14:	the kingdom of Persia. There was the ruler of that place, the human physical ruler,

01:49:14 – 01:49:21:	and there was also, side by side, a demon, the Prince of Persia, who also ruled in Greece had one,

01:49:21 – 01:49:28:	in Israel had one, in Daniel's day. These entities still exist. Again, we're given the

01:49:28 – 01:49:32:	name Michael. We're not given the other names. I don't want to know them. I'm not encouraging

01:49:32 – 01:49:39:	any sort of speculation around where these entities, angels and demons went, but I think it's vital to

01:49:39 – 01:49:45:	know that the supernatural interacts with the political. That's why I want to end on this,

01:49:45 – 01:49:52:	is that there's a lot of debate today, especially as Satan's forces in the world are rebelling

01:49:52 – 01:49:57:	against the idea of people even talking about Christian nationalism. People are freaking out.

01:49:58 – 01:50:03:	The devil's people are freaking out, because that is the antidote to the evil that we're

01:50:03 – 01:50:08:	facing. Christian nationalism, as we've said, doesn't necessarily mean fascism or monarchy

01:50:08 – 01:50:13:	or whatever. It's not a particular type of government. It means an autocracy ruled by

01:50:13 – 01:50:19:	a godly ruler, someone who's in charge. He must be godly above all other things.

01:50:20 – 01:50:25:	These angels and demons interact with the nations in this way. We don't know how they

01:50:25 – 01:50:31:	interact. It's not revealed to us, but this is something that's repeated, as I said, in many

01:50:31 – 01:50:37:	places in the New Testament where you hear rulers, thrones, dominions, principalities, powers.

01:50:37 – 01:50:43:	Those are different names and different translations, but the hierarchy is clear,

01:50:43 – 01:50:48:	or the existence of some sort of distinctions are clear. Hierarchy is not necessarily clear. I

01:50:48 – 01:50:55:	think we can infer some of it, but again, I don't want to entice excitement about the esoteric

01:50:55 – 01:50:58:	or about the occult. It's simply, believe Colossians 116.

01:50:59 – 01:51:06:	For by him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible.

01:51:06 – 01:51:12:	Whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created by him and

01:51:12 – 01:51:16:	for him. This is obviously referring to Christ, the second person in the trinity, by whom all

01:51:16 – 01:51:23:	things were created. This includes both things in heaven and earth, things visible and invisible.

01:51:23 – 01:51:29:	God lists some of the invisible things. He lists thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers.

01:51:29 – 01:51:37:	These are not referring to earthly states. We're not talking about physical flesh and blood,

01:51:37 – 01:51:47:	kings and princes and so forth. These demons and then in some cases angels are waging a spiritual

01:51:47 – 01:51:53:	war between physical, political nations that exists. That's the whole point of highlighting

01:51:53 – 01:52:00:	this is that today, in current year, as we look at the devolution of society and the death of

01:52:00 – 01:52:08:	Christendom and the death throes of Christianity if we lose this fight and we look at countries being

01:52:08 – 01:52:15:	collapsed politically through violence, through subversion. As we've said in the past, there's

01:52:15 – 01:52:20:	clearly a spiritual element to everything that's going on. I think that a proper scriptural

01:52:20 – 01:52:27:	understanding of that claim is found here. There's a demon of Persia 2600 years ago.

01:52:27 – 01:52:33:	There's a demon of Iran today. Let's say it's the same one. We know it's a demon because Iran is not

01:52:33 – 01:52:41:	a Christian nation. It's interesting, the prince of Greece that's mentioned here, this was given

01:52:41 – 01:52:45:	the timing of Daniel. This would have been shortly before the birth of democracy.

01:52:47 – 01:52:54:	Greece, that location was a pagan area at this time. Democracy was created in that place,

01:52:54 – 01:53:00:	starting in Athens. They continued to be pagans. That means that they were ruled by demons.

01:53:01 – 01:53:06:	If they were ruled by angels, if they'd been ruled by one of God's servants, they would have not

01:53:07 – 01:53:13:	worship false idols. They would have not had things like the Parthenon that were

01:53:14 – 01:53:21:	huge temples to false gods, to idols, and also to demons, incidentally. I think that's one of the

01:53:21 – 01:53:26:	things that we miss when we look back at the pantheon of Greek and Roman gods, is we think,

01:53:26 – 01:53:32:	oh, well, that's all made up. Well, they were worshiping something. We know that demons appear

01:53:32 – 01:53:39:	to men to seek their worship because what does Satan achieve? He misdirects the human desire

01:53:39 – 01:53:44:	to worship God and redirects it to something evil, which ultimately separates souls from God.

01:53:45 – 01:53:50:	It doesn't matter that there's some particular form. It only matters that there's disobedience.

01:53:51 – 01:53:55:	We both see the physical manifestation, in the case of temples and thrones that are erected by

01:53:55 – 01:54:03:	these countries, these nations. We also see scripture revealing that there are actual demons

01:54:03 – 01:54:10:	behind the scenes doing something. That's not us claiming that we can say what their names are,

01:54:10 – 01:54:14:	or what they're doing, or where they are. That's not important. It's simply important to acknowledge

01:54:14 – 01:54:20:	that this is both a spiritual and a political battle. If you properly understand it, there's no

01:54:20 – 01:54:27:	difference because it is God's people waging war with and against Satan's people. Satan has people

01:54:27 – 01:54:33:	too, and they're trying to destroy Christendom. The political fights and the religious fights,

01:54:33 – 01:54:42:	all the fights, are fundamentally simultaneously natural and supernatural. It's a tough thing

01:54:42 – 01:54:48:	to delve into because we're not given very much. As I said, I don't want people to try to extrapolate

01:54:48 – 01:54:54:	a whole lot more. It's simply to acknowledge that we're facing a spiritual war, and we should act

01:54:54 – 01:55:04:	accordingly.