Transcript: Episode 0057

“True Religion”

This transcript:
  1. Was machine generated.
  2. Has not been checked for errors.
  3. May not be entirely accurate.
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00:00:30 – 00:00:45:	Welcome to the Stone Choir podcast. I am Corey J. Mahler, and I'm still whoa. On today's Stone

00:00:45 – 00:00:51:	Choir, we are going to be discussing the subject of religion. What is a religion? This will be

00:00:51 – 00:00:56:	the beginning of a three-part arc where we discuss religion in specific terms and we'll

00:00:56 – 00:01:01:	get into in a minute. In the second episode of this arc, we're going to be discussing specifically

00:01:01 – 00:01:08:	Judaizing and Gnosticism within Christianity because those are two key examples of false

00:01:08 – 00:01:12:	religions that have been inserted into the practices and beliefs of many of us today.

00:01:12 – 00:01:19:	And the final third episode in this arc is going to deal specifically with apostasy. We're going

00:01:19 – 00:01:25:	to deal with the fact that much of the New Testament speaks directly to Christians in the

00:01:25 – 00:01:31:	church in terms of falling away. There are a lot of things that we today read as pronouncements that

00:01:31 – 00:01:37:	we think, well, that must apply to pagans because it's talking about people going to hell. When you

00:01:37 – 00:01:42:	look at in proper context, it's clearly talking to Christians in the church who have or are falling

00:01:42 – 00:01:49:	away and will be damned because they have lost the faith that was given to them. So this is going

00:01:49 – 00:01:53:	to be an arc that's going to be a lot of law. There's not going to be a lot of good news in this

00:01:53 – 00:01:59:	for us. And the reason that we're tackling it is that this is fundamentally about the state of the

00:01:59 – 00:02:05:	church today. As we look at all of our churches, multiple denominations, they're all in varying

00:02:05 – 00:02:11:	states of this decay. And the distinction that we're going to highlight today with definition

00:02:11 – 00:02:18:	of religion is specifically going to exclude what God you're talking about or what practices you

00:02:18 – 00:02:24:	perform. It's going to focus entirely on what is your moral compass? What is the origin of the

00:02:24 – 00:02:30:	right and wrong that you hold to in your heart and in your life? Because there's a degree of passion

00:02:30 – 00:02:36:	that we bring to our morality, that we bring to our violates, our conscience, that is absent from

00:02:36 – 00:02:40:	when we discuss doctrine. So we'll differentiate between the two of those in this episode.

00:02:41 – 00:02:46:	As I said, this is going to be a weighty series to begin the year. If you're a regular listener,

00:02:46 – 00:02:50:	we're coming back after a three-week hiatus. Thank you to everyone who was checking the

00:02:50 – 00:02:55:	back catalog along the way. I had an interesting exchange with somebody on X a couple of days ago

00:02:56 – 00:03:00:	talking about listening to old episodes. And he said something that I didn't really

00:03:00 – 00:03:04:	thought about, but I want to highlight just to say to everybody, he mentioned that when he first

00:03:04 – 00:03:09:	found Stone Choir, he jumped around topically and sort of picked the episodes that seemed like

00:03:09 – 00:03:14:	they were the most interesting to him. And he said that when he did that, it was depressing. It

00:03:14 – 00:03:19:	really hit him over the head. And so he went back to the beginning and listened in order,

00:03:19 – 00:03:24:	and he had the opposite experience. And I realized that that's something that we wouldn't have really

00:03:24 – 00:03:33:	thought about because we very consciously manage kind of the psychic ebb and flow, like the energy

00:03:33 – 00:03:38:	of the episodes. These are woo-woo terms, but you know what I mean? It's kind of like making an

00:03:38 – 00:03:42:	album or a mixtape. We don't want to hammer every, every week because that's brutal. Nobody wants

00:03:42 – 00:03:49:	that. At the same time, if it's all just light and less, not interesting, but maybe less serious,

00:03:49 – 00:03:55:	less urgent, you need to mix those up because we all need a break. We personally need a break from

00:03:55 – 00:04:01:	some of the heavy stuff. And you as listeners certainly do. So I will say once again, if you've

00:04:01 – 00:04:06:	discovered us recently whenever you're jumping in, we highly, highly encourage you to go back to

00:04:06 – 00:04:10:	the very beginning and just listen to them in order. You know, if you get 20 minutes into an

00:04:10 – 00:04:14:	episode and you're like, this is dumb. I don't care about this crap. That's fine. We're not telling

00:04:14 – 00:04:19:	anyone to hang on our every word. There's nothing like that about this. It's just that there's a lot

00:04:19 – 00:04:25:	of interesting information and points that are vital in one episode that carry over in a future

00:04:25 – 00:04:30:	episode. So when we speak, we expect that you've heard the rest. And while we try to make sure

00:04:30 – 00:04:36:	each episode stands alone, the continuum also tells a story. And additionally, you know, some of the

00:04:36 – 00:04:42:	episodes are gnarly. There's some heavy things in there. If those are the only ones you listen to,

00:04:42 – 00:04:46:	this is going to be a fundamentally different sort of podcast than if you listen to them the

00:04:46 – 00:04:51:	way that we're presenting them. But we're conscious of that. And we want the time that you spend with

00:04:51 – 00:04:56:	us to not to be edifying and, you know, to challenge you, but not just to completely be you up and

00:04:56 – 00:05:01:	leave you bruised and broken because that's, that's not the point. The point is for us to come out of

00:05:01 – 00:05:07:	these discussions strengthened and better off than we were before. Before we get into the main

00:05:07 – 00:05:12:	subject, I just want to give a brief thanks to everyone who has donated to us in the past year.

00:05:12 – 00:05:16:	We've had everyone who donates anything as generous, you know, great or small. We had a

00:05:16 – 00:05:21:	couple particularly large donations at the end of this year that I wanted to acknowledge. But

00:05:21 – 00:05:28:	for anyone to give anything of value to a stranger is an act of kindness and generosity. And it means

00:05:28 – 00:05:32:	a great deal of both Corey and myself. And it makes a big difference. So thank you to everyone

00:05:32 – 00:05:37:	who's done that. Additionally, and at least as much, thank you to everyone who shares the

00:05:37 – 00:05:42:	stone choir with friends and family, whoever's going to benefit from it. And thank you to,

00:05:42 – 00:05:47:	you know, for leaving five star ratings and letting people know that this is content worth sharing.

00:05:48 – 00:05:54:	Honestly, I think the most valuable thing to us is the fact that people would spend time

00:05:54 – 00:05:58:	listening to a couple of guys talk about this stuff. Because like I said, some of these episodes

00:05:58 – 00:06:03:	and subjects are challenging. They're hard to hear. And they're intentionally hard to hear,

00:06:03 – 00:06:09:	because nobody's talking about them. That's why we started to begin with tackle issues

00:06:09 – 00:06:14:	that are being neglected. So for you to spend two hours out of 168 a week listening to us,

00:06:14 – 00:06:18:	it means a great deal. And anyone who doesn't donate, God bless you too. Like it's,

00:06:19 – 00:06:23:	none of this has ever had anything to do with what we receive. It's a podcast, it's free.

00:06:23 – 00:06:27:	Please take it, enjoy it, benefit from it. If there's a good episode, listen to it more

00:06:27 – 00:06:31:	than once, you're going to learn some things, even the second or third time through.

00:06:32 – 00:06:37:	Nothing that we ever do here is going to be for benefit. I'm clearly like,

00:06:37 – 00:06:42:	I got doxxed and punished for this. Chory has been attacked and, you know, whatever.

00:06:43 – 00:06:47:	The fact that anyone would think anything kindly of us and share with us means a great

00:06:47 – 00:06:54:	deal. So thank you. The reason that we're going to be tackling this arc in the coming weeks as we

00:06:54 – 00:06:58:	come back from our break, which by the way was great. I thank you for coming back after three

00:06:58 – 00:07:05:	weeks off. That helped me a lot. It's, it takes a lot of time and effort and energy to produce

00:07:05 – 00:07:10:	these. And I didn't realize going in how much work it was going to be. So I actually have a lot of

00:07:10 – 00:07:15:	respect now for the guys who churn the stuff out all the time. It's really difficult. Not them

00:07:15 – 00:07:19:	whining. Like this is not, oh, we're great. It's just, it was nice to have a few weeks off. And

00:07:19 – 00:07:23:	Cory and I actually kick started a couple other things as we had that downtime that will

00:07:24 – 00:07:29:	be paving dividends in the coming year. So I'm looking forward to when some of those other

00:07:29 – 00:07:36:	things come to fruition. This particular arc where we're talking about religion as a subject

00:07:36 – 00:07:42:	itself and how we define it in terms that we can see inside our own Christian churches and even

00:07:42 – 00:07:50:	inside our own hearts where one religion ends and another one begins is a really tricky subject.

00:07:51 – 00:07:58:	The reason that it's challenging is that particularly as Christians, we go to church,

00:07:58 – 00:08:05:	believe the Bible, confess God, we do all the normal Christian stuff. And we think in terms of,

00:08:05 – 00:08:11:	okay, I'm a Christian and that means exclusively I'm a Christian. That's the way it's supposed to be.

00:08:11 – 00:08:15:	But the reality is that is not the case for any of us because we're not perfect.

00:08:16 – 00:08:22:	The only time we will be perfect Christians is when we die and God perfects us in eternity.

00:08:22 – 00:08:28:	Until then, we are imperfect Christians. And that doesn't simply mean that we are free from sin.

00:08:28 – 00:08:35:	It means that we are incapable of having the perfect relationship to God and the perfect

00:08:35 – 00:08:41:	confession of God that he demands. And those are also sins that Christ paid the price for.

00:08:41 – 00:08:45:	So when we talk about these things, we don't want people to be sitting around and fretting like,

00:08:45 – 00:08:50:	oh no, am I doing something terrible and God is going to hate me and send me to hell?

00:08:50 – 00:08:56:	That's not the point. The point is for us to keep in mind what it is that we're thinking and

00:08:56 – 00:09:02:	believing and confessing if it's contrary to Scripture. So the specific focus of today,

00:09:02 – 00:09:05:	when we're talking about religion in terms of source of morality,

00:09:06 – 00:09:12:	deliberately excludes who is your God, because Scripture is clear. We're going to talk about

00:09:12 – 00:09:18:	that in the third episode on apostasy. There are many within the church for all times and in all

00:09:18 – 00:09:23:	places who will say, I am a Christian. I am a God for you. I'm a believer in God, who in fact are not.

00:09:24 – 00:09:30:	Whatever false beliefs, whatever false religion they hold is in fact their true religion. And so

00:09:30 – 00:09:37:	the fact that someone says, I am a Christian, especially today, is fundamentally meaningless.

00:09:37 – 00:09:41:	It's truly meaningless to say you're Christian. Now, that doesn't mean we shouldn't say it,

00:09:41 – 00:09:46:	but what does it mean to be Christian? And that's the question. And the reason that's important

00:09:46 – 00:09:50:	is that there are people who say that they're Christian and they'll have some of the religious

00:09:50 – 00:09:57:	beliefs of Christianity, but they will additionally have other religious beliefs, other beliefs of

00:09:57 – 00:10:02:	right and wrong, of morality that will not have come from Scripture. And when you're not getting

00:10:02 – 00:10:08:	your morality from Scripture, you're still getting it from somewhere. And so the definition of religion

00:10:08 – 00:10:14:	that we're going to talk about today, as I said, excludes practices. It excludes names. It excludes

00:10:14 – 00:10:23:	deities. It excludes anything, all the trappings. It only focuses on what is your moral compass?

00:10:23 – 00:10:28:	Where are you getting your right and wrong? Because if you're getting them from God,

00:10:28 – 00:10:32:	you're getting them from Scripture, and you're going to be a good Christian. You're going to have

00:10:32 – 00:10:39:	only Christian beliefs. However, the second that anyone begins to get his moral compass, his right

00:10:39 – 00:10:45:	and wrong definitions from anywhere other than Scripture, he is importing a false religion,

00:10:45 – 00:10:50:	and he now has two religions. And we all have at least two religions. It's inherent because

00:10:50 – 00:10:56:	we're sinners, because we are incapable of perfectly worshiping God. One of the crucial things that

00:10:57 – 00:11:02:	Luther really gets right in the small catechism, when he talks about the first commandment,

00:11:02 – 00:11:06:	you shall have no other gods before me. As we've talked about this in the past before,

00:11:06 – 00:11:12:	doesn't mean in terms of rank. It means in the presence of, as in, I see before me tons of soil.

00:11:12 – 00:11:17:	What you're beholding is before you. That is not what it means when God says,

00:11:17 – 00:11:24:	we are to have no other gods before him. It means in the presence of, and when God is omnipresent,

00:11:24 – 00:11:29:	there is nothing that is not present for God. So when he says, you can't have any gods in my

00:11:29 – 00:11:35:	presence, he's saying, period. He's saying, anywhere in a superset of the finite universe,

00:11:35 – 00:11:40:	there's no place where you can have any gods other than me. So it's not ranking. It's not that God's

00:11:40 – 00:11:45:	one in football's two, and you just try to keep football becoming number one. There's one in one

00:11:45 – 00:11:53:	God only. Every time we sin, we violate that. Every single time we sin, whether knowingly or

00:11:53 – 00:11:59:	unknowingly, we are disobeying God's will, and we're saying, I reject God. I'm my own God for

00:11:59 – 00:12:04:	the next 30 seconds or five minutes or the next day. I'm going to do this other thing,

00:12:04 – 00:12:08:	and then maybe I'll get back to God later. For right now, this thing that I'm doing,

00:12:08 – 00:12:13:	I am my own God, because God has told me one thing, I'm going to do another. And whether it's

00:12:13 – 00:12:18:	conscious or unconscious, that is enacting a separate religion. And you don't need to think

00:12:18 – 00:12:23:	of yourself in terms of being a God. You're just like, well, I'm just going to do what I want. I

00:12:23 – 00:12:29:	don't think it's so bad. And that's the root of this. If your morality is not coming from God,

00:12:29 – 00:12:35:	if it's not coming from Scripture, you're going to go down a path where all manner of error is

00:12:35 – 00:12:40:	going to occur. We've seen this from the very beginning. In the Garden of Eden, God said to

00:12:40 – 00:12:46:	Adam and Eve, where Eve was taught by Adam, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden,

00:12:46 – 00:12:50:	but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it,

00:12:50 – 00:12:58:	you shall surely die. Now, it's interesting that this is the origin of morality. This is God not

00:12:58 – 00:13:05:	only giving Adam a command of what is good and evil, but the tree itself, the fruit embodied

00:13:05 – 00:13:11:	knowledge of good and evil. And so, this was in perfection. This was in perfect creation.

00:13:11 – 00:13:15:	There was still the ability to have knowledge of evil. And while we don't know what that means,

00:13:15 – 00:13:20:	because we're fallen and we're on the other side of knowing all sorts of evil, we at least know

00:13:21 – 00:13:27:	that God's will is that which is good and anything contrary to it is evil. And so,

00:13:28 – 00:13:35:	that fruit embodied the moral compass that they were to have. And every religion ever since then,

00:13:35 – 00:13:41:	by whatever form, always does the same thing. It always teaches good and evil. And the distinction

00:13:41 – 00:13:46:	is what a Satan say to her. But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die,

00:13:46 – 00:13:49:	for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God,

00:13:49 – 00:13:55:	knowing good and evil. So, he turned it on its head and he said, this knowledge is beneficial.

00:13:55 – 00:14:00:	This thing that God said is evil, I'm telling you, it's going to be fine. And she saw the look

00:14:00 – 00:14:05:	delicious and so, she ate some, gave it to her husband, and he was like, okay, great. He listened

00:14:05 – 00:14:12:	to her, he sinned, he ate the apple, we all die because of it. That moral compass right there

00:14:12 – 00:14:19:	in the garden is reflected throughout every other sin and every other religion to her false

00:14:19 – 00:14:25:	that has ever existed. There's always what is good, what is evil, and then what choices are we going

00:14:25 – 00:14:32:	to make when confronted with it. And Eve didn't listen to God's voice. She didn't listen to Adam's

00:14:32 – 00:14:39:	voice when he told her what God had said. She said something and Satan tricked her. She's like, okay,

00:14:39 – 00:14:44:	well, that sounds good. She stopped having God as her God. She let Satan be her God just for a few

00:14:44 – 00:14:49:	seconds. He told her something different than what God said. He's like, I like your morality,

00:14:49 – 00:14:54:	I like your good and evil better than God's good and evil. I'm going to go that way. And

00:14:54 – 00:14:57:	everything that's happened ever since is a result of that moral decision.

00:14:59 – 00:15:06:	I think it is helpful to go through a few terms as we start out this episode. Just

00:15:07 – 00:15:12:	in general, some of the terms that are related to the matter of religion. For instance, where do

00:15:12 – 00:15:18:	we get the word religion? What does it mean in its core sense? What does it mean today? What does

00:15:18 – 00:15:26:	it mean for us when we say religion? And so religion has the word itself has a relatively

00:15:26 – 00:15:32:	complicated etymology because it is related to a number of terms, a number of verbs in Latin.

00:15:33 – 00:15:40:	And if you understand those terms, it gives you a general idea of what religion

00:15:40 – 00:15:46:	in its core sense means. And so the two big ones are relego and relego,

00:15:47 – 00:15:53:	the difference of an E versus an I in the verb there. relego is obviously from lego.

00:15:54 – 00:16:01:	Re in Latin is just again or an intensifier, much like in English. But relego means to gather,

00:16:01 – 00:16:07:	collect again, or this is the most salient one in the case of the etymology of religion,

00:16:07 – 00:16:14:	to go over or through again, for instance, in reading or thought. And so of course, we can see

00:16:14 – 00:16:22:	where we get this sense of part of religion is going over the religious texts themselves. And

00:16:22 – 00:16:29:	this is true, both of true religion, in this case, scripture, and of false religion, because false

00:16:29 – 00:16:35:	religions also have their scriptures, they have their beliefs that you go over again and again

00:16:35 – 00:16:45:	and again. The other verb relego and I is to bind fast. And so religion binds you to a certain set

00:16:45 – 00:16:52:	of beliefs and actions, it binds you to these tenants, to these beliefs, these claims of

00:16:52 – 00:17:01:	the system itself. So between these two Latin verbs, you get the sense of what we have in

00:17:01 – 00:17:11:	English as religion. Additionally, there is the issue of obligatio, which is tangentially related,

00:17:11 – 00:17:16:	which is just you can probably guess from the word itself, it's an obligation or a binding

00:17:16 – 00:17:24:	related to relego. But related to this, there is the term cult. This is a vitally important

00:17:25 – 00:17:31:	term to understand, generally speaking, because this is more of what we see in our culture today

00:17:31 – 00:17:38:	with regard to false religion. But cult itself is actually a neutral term. In English, it has

00:17:39 – 00:17:45:	started to take on almost an exclusively negative term, except in specialized usage.

00:17:46 – 00:17:54:	But that's false. Cult is a neutral term. Cult simply means a system of religious veneration,

00:17:54 – 00:18:01:	and so for instance, we all belong to the cult of Christ. We belong to the cult of God. We belong

00:18:01 – 00:18:09:	to the Christian cult in the neutral sense, which is the proper sense of the word cult.

00:18:11 – 00:18:16:	Now, there is of course the negative sense that is largely come to predominate in common usage

00:18:16 – 00:18:23:	in English. So Mormonism is a cult in that sense. Cult meaning people who are strange in some way,

00:18:23 – 00:18:29:	who are out there who have a weird religion. And so a cult would be a smaller group with

00:18:29 – 00:18:35:	strange practices. But bear in mind that cult, again, is a neutral term. It simply means a system

00:18:35 – 00:18:43:	of religious veneration, is a system of religious practice. That comes from cultus, which just

00:18:43 – 00:18:50:	means the same thing in Latin. We dropped the US, we brought it into English. It comes from a verb

00:18:50 – 00:18:56:	that means to cultivate land, or to till, or to take care of a field or a garden. Also means to

00:18:56 – 00:19:03:	inhabit, to frequent, or in the figurative sense, it came to mean to worship, honor, or revere.

00:19:05 – 00:19:08:	There is a connection here. We won't get into it in this episode. We'll get into it in a future

00:19:08 – 00:19:14:	episode on a different topic. But there is a connection here between this land and worship,

00:19:14 – 00:19:21:	honor, and reverence. But that is what we mean when we say cult. And it is notable

00:19:21 – 00:19:29:	that one of the words we get from cult, from cultus, is culture. And so at a very base level,

00:19:29 – 00:19:38:	at a foundational level, our culture is an outgrowth of our religion, because culture

00:19:38 – 00:19:44:	is an outgrowth of cult. And so what you have in your culture is going to be based on

00:19:45 – 00:19:51:	a religion or multiple religions. And so some of these things that we just assume are

00:19:51 – 00:20:00:	so-called secular, they are actually religious, because the culture itself is religious by nature.

00:20:01 – 00:20:06:	And so you may think that something is neutral in the sense of secular, or secular in the

00:20:06 – 00:20:11:	sense of neutral, and that it's something about which Christians can disagree or we can ignore.

00:20:11 – 00:20:18:	It's not that important. But there's a reason the second episode we did was on the genealogy of

00:20:18 – 00:20:25:	ideas, because the source of these things matters. It matters. The foundation upon which you build

00:20:25 – 00:20:32:	your life. We should think of a very obvious example here, a very obvious parable from Christ.

00:20:32 – 00:20:36:	Upon what sort of foundation are you building? The same thing applies, not just to your life,

00:20:37 – 00:20:44:	but also to your culture, to your civilization. What is the source from which you have derived

00:20:44 – 00:20:49:	these ideas or these beliefs? If your culture tells you that you have to believe A,

00:20:51 – 00:20:57:	why is it saying that you have to believe A? What is the source of that? Because if you go back,

00:20:58 – 00:21:03:	you will eventually find a religion. And if the religion you find is not Christianity,

00:21:05 – 00:21:10:	then the culture is telling you you have to believe something false from a false religion.

00:21:10 – 00:21:18:	That's worship. That's worship of a false God. That is something that we are not permitted to do.

00:21:19 – 00:21:25:	And Woe mentioned Luther's commentary on the First Commandment. I actually want to read

00:21:25 – 00:21:30:	just one paragraph. This is from the large catechism instead of the small catechism,

00:21:30 – 00:21:35:	which the large catechism is obviously larger. It expands on what is said in the small catechism.

00:21:36 – 00:21:39:	I'll actually read two paragraphs so I can give you the context.

00:21:40 – 00:21:46:	The first paragraph is just going over the actual text of the First Commandment,

00:21:46 – 00:21:51:	but I'll read the second half of it. What is the force of this and how is it to be understood?

00:21:51 – 00:21:59:	What does it mean to have a God, or what is God? Answer. A God means that from which we are to

00:21:59 – 00:22:06:	expect all good, and to which we are to take refuge in all distress, so that to have a God

00:22:06 – 00:22:11:	is nothing else than to trust and believe in Him from the whole heart. As I have often said,

00:22:11 – 00:22:15:	that the confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol.

00:22:16 – 00:22:25:	That is an important point for us to bear in mind. When it comes to belief in something,

00:22:26 – 00:22:33:	if we rely on something that is not God, if we place our trust in a thing that is not God,

00:22:35 – 00:22:40:	we are giving worship to that thing that is part of a false religion, that is cult,

00:22:41 – 00:22:48:	that is the worship of a deity, and if it is not Christ, if it is not God, then it is a

00:22:48 – 00:22:54:	false worship of a false deity. It is idolatry, and we find that all over our culture,

00:22:55 – 00:23:02:	practically in every nook and cranny. Now, I want to be very clear. We do not mean that you cannot,

00:23:02 – 00:23:08:	as a child, look to your parents for good. Your parents were provided to you by God,

00:23:08 – 00:23:14:	the good that they render to you ultimately comes from God, and so it is fine, in fact,

00:23:14 – 00:23:18:	it is required by the Fourth Commandment and elsewhere in Scripture, to be thankful to your

00:23:18 – 00:23:24:	parents, to honor your parents, but you are doing that in recognition that the good they

00:23:24 – 00:23:30:	have provided you ultimately comes from God. The problem is when you are looking to something

00:23:30 – 00:23:39:	as ultimate in itself, or when it is something that has an ultimate object that is not, or an

00:23:39 – 00:23:46:	ultimate source, that is not God, and we find that in our culture. Every time you are looking for

00:23:47 – 00:23:54:	comfort, or meaning somewhere that is not ultimately grounded in the things of God,

00:23:54 – 00:24:03:	you are worshiping an idol. And Woe mentioned that the sense of having no other gods before God

00:24:04 – 00:24:08:	simply means to have no other gods. Thou shalt have no other gods is a

00:24:09 – 00:24:16:	perfectly good paraphrase of the First Commandment. You don't need the before me if that confuses you,

00:24:17 – 00:24:22:	but we can look to Deuteronomy to get God's answer on this question.

00:24:23 – 00:24:31:	See now that I, even I am he, and there is no God beside me. I kill and I make alive,

00:24:31 – 00:24:35:	I wound and I heal, and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.

00:24:37 – 00:24:44:	There is no other God. The issue of the First Commandment is not whether you are going to worship

00:24:44 – 00:24:51:	God as supreme, or have God as one of a pantheon. The issue of the First Commandment is that there is

00:24:51 – 00:24:57:	one God, and that if you have anything else to which you are looking for this ultimate source

00:24:57 – 00:25:04:	of meaning, or comfort, or whatever it happens to be, then you have an idol, you have a false God,

00:25:04 – 00:25:10:	you have a false religion. And as Christians, and the point of this episode, we need to be looking

00:25:11 – 00:25:17:	at the things we believe, and figuring out the ultimate source of those beliefs, because if we

00:25:17 – 00:25:24:	cannot trace them back to the things of God, then they are not of God. And if they are not of God,

00:25:24 – 00:25:30:	they are part of another cult. They are part of some other system of worship, because they are

00:25:30 – 00:25:36:	the worship of some other God, which is to say an idol, a false God.

00:25:37 – 00:25:43:	And this sort of genealogical examination of these ideas is something we've talked about

00:25:43 – 00:25:48:	since the very beginning. I want to clarify something. When we talk about the genealogy of

00:25:48 – 00:25:56:	ideas on Stone Choir, we are not talking about encouraging some sort of exhaustive,

00:25:56 – 00:26:05:	historical examination of every nook and cranny of a subject. We're saying you hold a belief.

00:26:05 – 00:26:09:	Where did you get it from? Where did they get it from? Where did he get it from? Where did he get

00:26:09 – 00:26:14:	it from? It's just like your own genealogy. It doesn't need to be complicated. Just give me the

00:26:14 – 00:26:21:	names and the dates in the locations. That's the origin of the thing. If you go back far enough,

00:26:21 – 00:26:27:	you're going to find the ultimate origin in whatever sense. An example of this, I was having a

00:26:27 – 00:26:34:	conversation a couple of weeks ago with someone who used to not be Christian and had explored

00:26:34 – 00:26:38:	Kabbalah and some other things. And I don't remember what we were talking about briefly, but

00:26:39 – 00:26:45:	he referenced something else. And I said, yeah, if you dig down that path far enough,

00:26:45 – 00:26:52:	you're inevitably going to find the Sephiroth, which is the Kabbalistic tree of life. And that's

00:26:52 – 00:26:56:	about all I know about it. And he got really excited because he knew a whole lot about it.

00:26:56 – 00:27:01:	I didn't know at the time that he had studied Kabbalah. I just knew from my own experience that

00:27:01 – 00:27:06:	whenever I looked at the genealogy thing, just superficially, like this guy said this thing

00:27:06 – 00:27:10:	and then he learned it from this other guy, I could go back just a few steps. And I'm going

00:27:10 – 00:27:15:	to find this sort of Kabbalistic hermeticism. And I'm going to find you. If you look on Wikipedia,

00:27:15 – 00:27:20:	you're going to find the Sephiroth over on the right because there's an entire series of articles

00:27:20 – 00:27:25:	that deal with that stuff. And so for my purposes, that's all I want to know. I don't delve into that

00:27:25 – 00:27:31:	crap. It's demonic. I don't want to know anything. But so I think when I talked to him, he probably

00:27:31 – 00:27:37:	thought like I had been interested too. I'm not. I don't I don't want to know. For me, the genealogy,

00:27:37 – 00:27:44:	the examination of whatever idea I'm running down, when I go back far enough and I find Jewish

00:27:44 – 00:27:49:	black magic, that's the end of the search. I know the origin of that thing. I don't need to go back

00:27:49 – 00:27:55:	further. I don't need to understand any more about it than the fact that it has a wicked origin,

00:27:56 – 00:28:01:	the end. So when we talk about the genealogy of ideas on Stone Choir, sometimes it's very

00:28:01 – 00:28:06:	superficial. Yeah, I think one of the best examples that we gave in another early episode,

00:28:06 – 00:28:12:	we did one on the neglected matters in Scripture, one of the five examples we gave was of

00:28:12 – 00:28:20:	head coverings in the church. And we mentioned that for 1960 years, it was the almost universal

00:28:20 – 00:28:26:	practice in the Christian church for girls to cover their heads in church. Heads were to be

00:28:26 – 00:28:35:	covered because that's what God says in the New Testament. And in the late 1960s, the perfidious

00:28:35 – 00:28:43:	Jewish Betty Frieden Goldstein declared in the same year when she established the National

00:28:43 – 00:28:49:	Organization for Women, and she made the push to get abortion, the sacrifice of infants legalized,

00:28:49 – 00:28:55:	simultaneous at the very same time. The other project the Betty Frieden Goldstein had was to get

00:28:57 – 00:29:04:	head coverings out of churches. There is a concerted campaign by now to reach out to Christian

00:29:04 – 00:29:10:	women. This Jewish told Christian women, take off your head coverings, they're a symbol of the

00:29:10 – 00:29:16:	patriarchy, they're a symbol of your subjugation, remove them, send them in to now headquarters,

00:29:16 – 00:29:25:	we're going to ceremonially burn them. So today in our churches, when the subject of head coverings

00:29:25 – 00:29:32:	come up, pastors don't want to engage with the genealogy of ideas of how head coverings were

00:29:32 – 00:29:39:	destroyed 60 years ago. No, they want to deal with the genealogy of the idea of where did it begin,

00:29:39 – 00:29:44:	because if they can lock it into the cultural context of Corinth, then they can say, well,

00:29:44 – 00:29:48:	that doesn't apply to us. That's one of those things that's like shellfish, whatever, doesn't

00:29:48 – 00:29:55:	matter. That'd be fine, except that no Christian believed that for 1960 years. Every Christian

00:29:55 – 00:30:00:	did the opposite. They're Christians alive today who remember the opposite. There may be some older

00:30:00 – 00:30:05:	ladies listening to this very podcast who remember when it was still common in your churches for every

00:30:05 – 00:30:11:	woman to cover her head. Why? Because it was cultural. Well, as Corey was just saying, yeah,

00:30:11 – 00:30:17:	it was cultural because it was Christian. It was the Christian belief, it was the Christian religion

00:30:17 – 00:30:25:	of what is right and wrong, that was the norm. It was culture because it was part of the religion

00:30:25 – 00:30:31:	of Christendom, and it was only when this wicked Jewess came along and told Christians,

00:30:31 – 00:30:36:	you're free from that. You don't have to do that. In fact, it's bad. You shouldn't be doing that,

00:30:36 – 00:30:43:	because patriarchy is evil. She was making a moral claim against head coverings. See,

00:30:43 – 00:30:48:	the demon-worshipping wicked woman who told girls to take their head coverings off

00:30:49 – 00:30:53:	wasn't making a positive case from Scripture. She wasn't making the arguments the pastors are

00:30:53 – 00:31:00:	making today falsely. She was making an overt attack on heaven itself to say,

00:31:00 – 00:31:07:	there's no God, you have no masters, be your own girl boss. She didn't use that term,

00:31:07 – 00:31:12:	but that's exactly what we have today. We see girls left and right running around headless,

00:31:12 – 00:31:17:	not realizing that they're headless, and so what do they do? They follow their baser instincts.

00:31:17 – 00:31:24:	They do what they do because no one will stop them. If all the moral complaints that we have

00:31:24 – 00:31:29:	girls these days and the misbehavior, the things that they shouldn't be doing that they are,

00:31:30 – 00:31:35:	would they do those things if their heads were covered? It's a ridiculous question,

00:31:35 – 00:31:41:	because the answer is obviously no. There's no possible world where a girl who was actually

00:31:41 – 00:31:47:	devoutly covering her head would engage in the sort of behaviors that are the very opposite

00:31:47 – 00:31:54:	moral end of the spectrum, because it's a real thing. I think that head covering is a

00:31:54 – 00:31:59:	perfect example of the sort of morality that we're talking about today, because it's such a

00:31:59 – 00:32:05:	minor point. It's a small thing. It was never something that was a crucial part of the church

00:32:05 – 00:32:09:	in history. It was simply always done. Why? Because Scripture said to, and everyone's like,

00:32:09 – 00:32:15:	okay, well, God says to do it. This is what we do. It was cultural. It was normative for all

00:32:15 – 00:32:20:	Christians in all places and all times, almost without exception, until it was really 50 years

00:32:20 – 00:32:25:	ago, because it was the end of the 1960s when Goldstein came along and changed everything.

00:32:25 – 00:32:32:	In our churches, a wicked woman outside the faith, a child of Satan, said she gave us permission.

00:32:32 – 00:32:37:	Just as Satan gave Eve permission in the garden, you will not surely die. You don't have to wear

00:32:37 – 00:32:42:	a head covering. What are you doing? That's not how it works. You'll be fine. In fact, you'll be

00:32:42 – 00:32:48:	better off after you take it off than you were before. Eat the fruit. You'll be like God.

00:32:48 – 00:32:55:	It's the same proposition. It's always the same proposition. It's a small thing. It's not something

00:32:55 – 00:33:01:	that lights my hair on fire. When we discussed that in that early episode, it wasn't in vehemence.

00:33:01 – 00:33:06:	It wasn't in vigorous moral condemnation of the fact that probably virtually every girl listening

00:33:06 – 00:33:11:	right now doesn't cover her head. We're not worked up about that. We're simply pointing to the fact

00:33:11 – 00:33:19:	that Scripture says that should be the case. It's not for us as podcasters to tell you. Your husbands,

00:33:19 – 00:33:25:	your fathers, your pastors should be telling you, what do we find instead in the church?

00:33:25 – 00:33:31:	Today, in current year, in some of the congregations where girls have begun head covering,

00:33:31 – 00:33:33:	something has just taken off in the last couple of years,

00:33:35 – 00:33:44:	it causes pastors to become very uncomfortable. In some cases, they will arouse moral indignation

00:33:44 – 00:33:49:	against the practice of head covering that they don't find for any doctrinal issues,

00:33:50 – 00:33:55:	which is fascinating because the church always did it until 50 years ago, almost without exception.

00:33:56 – 00:34:01:	For a lot of ladies, it took until the 70s or 80s. Usually some of the older ones

00:34:01 – 00:34:06:	didn't break with tradition. They kept doing it because they didn't feel comfortable not doing it.

00:34:06 – 00:34:10:	But as new generations rose and everyone said, it's hunky dory to it, today,

00:34:10 – 00:34:17:	in our own seminaries and our own churches, pastors are deeply uncomfortable. They're angry

00:34:17 – 00:34:24:	about this particular issue. Why is that? Scripture said to do one thing, and yet they have a moral

00:34:24 – 00:34:32:	response against that thing. The nature of their moral response is egalitarianism. They are defending

00:34:32 – 00:34:39:	feminism against Christianity. The purpose of today's episode is to illustrate that this is what

00:34:39 – 00:34:46:	happens. These pastors who will teach through very patiently all manner of doctrinal error,

00:34:46 – 00:34:50:	confusion, and a manner of woman when something comes up. But if you do something,

00:34:51 – 00:34:57:	like re-establish even for yourself, if a woman privately wears it, doesn't say a word to anyone,

00:34:57 – 00:35:02:	she just shows up on Sunday with her head covered, everybody's going to notice. A lot of people are

00:35:02 – 00:35:08:	going to get uncomfortable. Some of the men in particular who are feminists, whether they omitted

00:35:08 – 00:35:14:	or not, they get really uncomfortable. Some of them get angry. There are pastors in the LCMS in

00:35:14 – 00:35:20:	particular at the highest levels who are angry that there are girls in our congregations who are

00:35:20 – 00:35:30:	doing this because it reasserts the fact of male headship. It's not that wearing a head covering

00:35:30 – 00:35:37:	is dominating a girl. It's an acknowledgement of the pre-existing ontological nature of the

00:35:37 – 00:35:42:	relationship of the sexes. We did a couple episodes specifically on the nature of women

00:35:42 – 00:35:45:	and on the history of feminism, and we cover this in more depth there.

00:35:46 – 00:35:53:	And so when today you have a moral indignation against that which is scriptural, that's a

00:35:53 – 00:35:59:	separate religion. Even when it's a pastor, even with someone who does all the stuff,

00:35:59 – 00:36:03:	he doesn't curse, he doesn't cheat on his tax, he doesn't do any of the moral things

00:36:03 – 00:36:07:	that you would think, well, clearly that guy is a good Christian, and he's a pastor,

00:36:07 – 00:36:12:	he's devoted his life, he's doing everything right. But when this thing comes up, he flips.

00:36:12 – 00:36:17:	He gets so angry that they will go around in secret and they will try to root out anyone

00:36:17 – 00:36:22:	who would deign to permit, let alone encourage this sort of behavior in our churches.

00:36:23 – 00:36:28:	That is a separate religion because there are all sorts of errors in the church today

00:36:28 – 00:36:34:	that are tolerated. What won't they tolerate? Because what you will not tolerate, what is

00:36:34 – 00:36:41:	way over your line, whatever your personal line is, that is your true religion. In today's world,

00:36:41 – 00:36:47:	our true religion isn't from God anymore. The things that get us fired up are not the things

00:36:47 – 00:36:53:	that God established. The things that get us fired up are the things that culture have established

00:36:53 – 00:36:58:	as moral. And the problem is that the culture is still religious. It is simply no longer

00:36:58 – 00:37:05:	predicated on Christian beliefs. And so left and right, you will find in the back catalog of Stone

00:37:05 – 00:37:11:	Choir, we dealt with head covering, slavery, racism, feminism, all substitute moralities.

00:37:11 – 00:37:17:	And those are the hot button issues of this day. And one of the reasons we did those episodes is that

00:37:17 – 00:37:23:	they were Bible studies. They weren't simply political screeds because this is not political

00:37:23 – 00:37:28:	in nature. This is moral in nature because it's coming from scripture. It's all coming from God.

00:37:28 – 00:37:33:	And when we try to separate the two, when we try to say, well, no, you can, we're going to carve

00:37:33 – 00:37:38:	all this stuff out and call it political. We're going to call it woke. As soon as you do that,

00:37:38 – 00:37:43:	it ceases to be a moral matter. But it's still moral because you still defend it with the vehemence

00:37:43 – 00:37:47:	that you don't even bring to things like the creeds and the Lord's Prayer and these things

00:37:47 – 00:37:53:	that are basic tenets of the Christian faith. Your religion is that which you defend the most

00:37:53 – 00:37:59:	vigorously. And even in the smallest, least significant example that we could think of,

00:38:00 – 00:38:06:	something like head coverings will elicit the greatest degree of vehemence. That itself

00:38:06 – 00:38:10:	is the issue. That is illustrating that there's a separate religion occurring

00:38:10 – 00:38:16:	even in the same pulpit that also espouses Christianity. And that's why this is so dire,

00:38:16 – 00:38:21:	because it's not Satan coming into our pulpits manifest and saying, forget the justification

00:38:21 – 00:38:25:	and stuff. Forget Jesus on the cross. We're going to do all this other evil stuff. No,

00:38:25 – 00:38:31:	he says, you can have all your Jesus stuff. Just do this one thing. You will not surely die.

00:38:31 – 00:38:36:	Don't worry about it. That's the distinction. See, Satan doesn't care how he gets you,

00:38:36 – 00:38:43:	as long as he gets you. Whatever trick works. And if you start disobeying God, you're off to the races.

00:38:44 – 00:38:50:	There's a particular set of questions that I have used a few times in order to highlight

00:38:50 – 00:38:57:	one of the points that Woe just made. I'm going to modify them slightly for the sake of the podcast,

00:38:58 – 00:39:04:	but I have two statements I'm going to make. See which one, initially just viscerally,

00:39:05 – 00:39:12:	offends you more. Jesus Christ is not God. That's the first statement.

00:39:12 – 00:39:21:	Martin Luther King was not a Christian. That's the second statement. Now, there is

00:39:23 – 00:39:27:	another word that I could use instead of Christian that usually elicits a stronger response,

00:39:28 – 00:39:31:	and it proves the point just as well. But again, for the sake of the podcast,

00:39:31 – 00:39:39:	I will refrain from using that word here. Most people in our culture will respond

00:39:39 – 00:39:46:	more negatively, significantly more negatively, to criticism of Michael King,

00:39:46 – 00:39:53:	or any of a number of other secular saints, as it were. Then they will to the other statement,

00:39:53 – 00:40:01:	which is blasphemy. Saying Jesus Christ is not God is blasphemous. It is a violation

00:40:01 – 00:40:06:	of the First Commandment. It is the violation of the Second Commandment as well. But

00:40:06 – 00:40:16:	even pastors, and I have tested this personally, even pastors will respond more negatively

00:40:16 – 00:40:24:	to their critique of one of these secular saints, so called, than a statement that is directly

00:40:24 – 00:40:32:	against the core of the Christian religion. What that tells you is that the individual who responds

00:40:32 – 00:40:37:	more negatively to the first statement or the second, depending on the order you read them in,

00:40:37 – 00:40:41:	if you're going to perform the test reading the statement about the secular saint,

00:40:41 – 00:40:45:	second is more effective. But the person who responds more negatively to that

00:40:47 – 00:40:54:	has a different God, and holds that God in higher esteem than he holds the Lord God.

00:40:56 – 00:41:01:	That's not just having another God. That's having another God as your supreme deity.

00:41:03 – 00:41:07:	Now, granted, you're not supposed to even have lesser gods in addition to the Lord God as your

00:41:07 – 00:41:14:	supreme deity. But making the Lord God a lesser deity is even worse. And that is what we see in

00:41:14 – 00:41:21:	our culture, because people are more offended when you speak against these idols than when you speak

00:41:21 – 00:41:29:	against the Lord God. We have comedians all the time making jokes about Christ. Christians don't

00:41:29 – 00:41:36:	bat an eye. Many Christians listen to that filth and laugh at it, find it funny. But these very

00:41:36 – 00:41:42:	same comedians wouldn't go anywhere near these secular saints, because that is the actual religion

00:41:42 – 00:41:49:	of our culture. That is the actual cult that forms the basis of our culture today.

00:41:50 – 00:41:56:	That is our system of religious veneration, because these are the actual gods in our system,

00:41:56 – 00:42:01:	or in this case, if you name the individuals, they are the priests of the gods of our system.

00:42:01 – 00:42:07:	And one of those gods, of course, is egalitarianism, is the belief, the contention,

00:42:07 – 00:42:13:	false on its face, that all men are equal. They'll even attempt to appeal, of course,

00:42:13 – 00:42:17:	to Scripture and say that, well, God made all men equal. That's not what Scripture says.

00:42:18 – 00:42:21:	We've been over that in other episodes, and we'll undoubtedly go over it in the future

00:42:22 – 00:42:24:	in other episode contexts as well.

00:42:26 – 00:42:34:	But you have a rampant worship of false gods in our culture, and Christians just go along with it,

00:42:35 – 00:42:40:	because they do not examine their priors, they do not examine their presuppositions,

00:42:40 – 00:42:43:	they do not look at the things that they believe and the things that they are doing.

00:42:44 – 00:42:49:	If you have a visceral reaction to someone critiquing some particular person,

00:42:50 – 00:42:56:	you need to look at why that is the case. If that is because the person was a Christian,

00:42:56 – 00:43:00:	and he is being attacked for his Christian faith, then that is a good Christian response.

00:43:01 – 00:43:05:	And you should be proud to have that, quite frankly. That is a good thing to have.

00:43:05 – 00:43:12:	That is a mark of a true Christian. But if the person being attacked, as it were, being critiqued,

00:43:12 – 00:43:17:	was not a Christian, which is the case with Michael King, of course, as we went over

00:43:17 – 00:43:23:	in our series on that. But if the person being critiqued is not a Christian, you have that same

00:43:23 – 00:43:33:	response. You are participating in a false religion because you have a learned and indoctrinated,

00:43:33 – 00:43:41:	most likely, visceral response to an implicit attack on one of your idols. And whether or

00:43:41 – 00:43:46:	not you recognize that you have that idol, if you have the response, you have the idol.

00:43:48 – 00:43:55:	And that is a point that I want to make very clear here. This is something that many don't recognize.

00:43:57 – 00:44:04:	Our culture is suffused with propaganda, much of it propaganda for false gods,

00:44:04 – 00:44:10:	for false worship, for false religions. Now, of course, everyone listening is going to go,

00:44:10 – 00:44:15:	well, of course, I know there's propaganda. That's not what I mean. There is propaganda

00:44:15 – 00:44:20:	in places you do not expect it. There is propaganda in forms you do not see,

00:44:21 – 00:44:26:	because there are very intelligent and also very evil, but very intelligent,

00:44:26 – 00:44:31:	very well compensated men, very well educated men who dedicate their entire lives

00:44:33 – 00:44:41:	to drafting, to tweaking, to optimizing the sort of propaganda that just gets right past your filters.

00:44:41 – 00:44:49:	Because not everything that you see or hear or encounter is run through all of those conscious

00:44:49 – 00:44:54:	filters that you have in place, and you may have very good ones. You may spot the more obvious

00:44:54 – 00:45:02:	propaganda immediately, but the problem is you watched it, you still saw it. And part of the way

00:45:02 – 00:45:07:	that the human mind works is it integrates those things. It's basically Bayesian updating

00:45:08 – 00:45:12:	without getting into the specifics, but you see these things, you encounter these things,

00:45:13 – 00:45:19:	they seep in over time. And so even if you are watching, say, television or Netflix,

00:45:19 – 00:45:24:	whatever it happens to be, you're watching these obvious propaganda programs and you say,

00:45:24 – 00:45:29:	well, I know the propaganda and I could see its propaganda and so it's not dangerous to me because

00:45:29 – 00:45:33:	I recognize it. No, it's still dangerous to you. It is seeping into your mind over time.

00:45:34 – 00:45:38:	And if you find that you have some of these visceral reactions

00:45:38 – 00:45:45:	to certain critiques or certain attacks, there's your source. You have been indoctrinated.

00:45:45 – 00:45:50:	And we have this stuff all over our culture. There is a reason that we are instructed to

00:45:50 – 00:45:56:	avoid even the appearance of evil, that we are instructed to avoid spending time with the wicked.

00:45:56 – 00:46:03:	We are to guard ourselves against these things because they can infect us even when our guard

00:46:03 – 00:46:09:	is up. And so Christians should not be essentially watching television, really.

00:46:10 – 00:46:15:	Most of it is wicked. Are there some exceptions? Sure. Should you be paying for it? I'm going to

00:46:15 – 00:46:20:	go ahead and just say no because if you're paying for it, you are propping up the wicked system.

00:46:20 – 00:46:25:	You are literally tithing to Satan as a Christian. You shouldn't be doing that.

00:46:25 – 00:46:30:	We said this is going to be a law heavy episode and it's going to be because there are some realities

00:46:30 – 00:46:39:	of which you as a Christian need to be aware. Satan is prowling about as a roaring lion seeking

00:46:39 – 00:46:46:	to devour whom he can. He doesn't care if your guard is up or your guard is down. If he can get

00:46:46 – 00:46:53:	past it, it's irrelevant. And he is very good at this game. Now, I'm not telling you to despair.

00:46:53 – 00:46:57:	I'm not telling you that there's no hope because Satan is so good at his job.

00:46:58 – 00:47:04:	What I am saying is that as a Christian, you are to guard your eyes, your heart,

00:47:04 – 00:47:10:	your mind from these wicked things. If you expose yourself to them, they will have an effect,

00:47:10 – 00:47:16:	even if you recognize them as the wickedness that they are. That is why when we go over

00:47:16 – 00:47:23:	certain topics, we don't tell you, go and read this stuff for yourself. There are very real

00:47:23 – 00:47:28:	harms, at least potential harms involved in exposing yourself to certain things.

00:47:29 – 00:47:34:	As a Christian, you should want to deal with holy things, with things that are good,

00:47:34 – 00:47:39:	with things that are of God. Now, obviously, living in a fallen world, we cannot

00:47:39 – 00:47:44:	exclusively deal with those things. We are going to have to deal with the wicked world

00:47:44 – 00:47:50:	and its products to some degree. But you can control to how much of that you're exposed and

00:47:50 – 00:47:54:	the way in which you're exposed, and certainly whether or not your children are exposed.

00:47:55 – 00:47:58:	And too many Christians just let the television babies at their children.

00:47:59 – 00:48:03:	Do you think that the people in Hollywood who are producing those programs have your

00:48:03 – 00:48:08:	best interests in heart? Do you think that they have your children's best interests in heart?

00:48:08 – 00:48:14:	Do you think that they worship the Lord God? They are training your children to be religious.

00:48:15 – 00:48:17:	They are training them. They are indoctrinating them.

00:48:17 – 00:48:23:	They are initiating them into the cult, at least one of the cults, on which our culture is currently

00:48:23 – 00:48:31:	based. If something is not oriented toward God, it is necessarily oriented against or away from God.

00:48:32 – 00:48:36:	Christ is very clear about this. If you are not for him, you are against him.

00:48:39 – 00:48:44:	And so as Christians, we have to be careful about these things. And we have to look at

00:48:44 – 00:48:49:	the things that we believe and the way that we react to certain things or attacks or critiques

00:48:49 – 00:48:54:	of certain people and certain ideas. And we need to pay attention to how other Christians react

00:48:54 – 00:49:00:	as well. Because just because someone says that he is a Christian does not mean that he is.

00:49:03 – 00:49:08:	This is a problem that we see in church history and still today in the church generally.

00:49:09 – 00:49:16:	Many will look at just the external appearance of the thing. And they will say, well, that looks

00:49:16 – 00:49:23:	Christian. Now, there is something to be said for appearances. They do matter.

00:49:24 – 00:49:28:	Anybody who tells you appearance doesn't matter is lying to you. That's wrong. Appearances matter.

00:49:29 – 00:49:32:	We're never going to say they don't. We're not going to say that the liturgy isn't important.

00:49:32 – 00:49:37:	We're not going to say that decorating the church to be beautiful isn't important. All of these

00:49:38 – 00:49:43:	things matter. Of course, beauty flows from God. It is one of the transcendental. So beauty does matter.

00:49:44 – 00:49:49:	But we would caution you not to make that the totality of your assessment.

00:49:50 – 00:49:56:	There are other things that matter in addition to beauty, in addition to that external appearance.

00:49:56 – 00:50:01:	And sometimes if you dig more than skin deep as it were, you may find that it's not so beautiful

00:50:01 – 00:50:09:	on the inside. But there's the issue of the word concept fallacy. I've gone over this previously.

00:50:09 – 00:50:15:	And we see a version of this when someone will claim to be a Christian. He'll say he's a Christian.

00:50:15 – 00:50:21:	He'll even go to church. He may even religiously go to church. He may go Sunday and Wednesday.

00:50:23 – 00:50:28:	But then you start asking questions or you start discussing certain topics. And it turns out

00:50:29 – 00:50:36:	he has a totally different set of gods. He has a collection of idols in his heart

00:50:37 – 00:50:42:	that are contrary to the Lord God that have taken up residence in place of the Lord God.

00:50:44 – 00:50:52:	That is far easier to do in a culture such as ours that is not Christian. In a Christian culture,

00:50:52 – 00:50:56:	that would be that would be very difficult to do. Because in a Christian culture,

00:50:56 – 00:51:01:	you would go to church and then you would go back out into the world for your daily life and

00:51:01 – 00:51:07:	you would still be surrounded by Christians, Christian beliefs, Christian culture, Christian

00:51:07 – 00:51:14:	society. That is easier for someone to remain Christian in that setting. And that is one of

00:51:14 – 00:51:18:	the reasons that we want nations, we want governments, we want states to be Christian.

00:51:19 – 00:51:25:	Because if you live in a Christian context, the odds of you staying Christian are much higher.

00:51:26 – 00:51:31:	When we had Christendom in the West, by and large, the majority of people were Christian.

00:51:32 – 00:51:38:	Even those who were relatively marginal Christians stayed Christian because they lived in a Christian

00:51:38 – 00:51:43:	context. It matters. Scripture speaks to this. Train up a child in the way he should go. And

00:51:43 – 00:51:49:	when he is old, he will not depart from it. You are raising that child in a Christian context.

00:51:49 – 00:51:55:	That is part of what it means to train him up in the way he should go. And by doing that,

00:51:55 – 00:52:03:	you are keeping him in the faith. These things matter. And so when it comes to religion, when it

00:52:03 – 00:52:09:	comes to this cult, when it comes to our culture, you need to look at the things to which you are

00:52:09 – 00:52:14:	exposing yourself and you need to look at the things you believe, perhaps as a consequence of the

00:52:14 – 00:52:19:	things to which you were exposed or you allowed yourself to be exposed or you just outright

00:52:19 – 00:52:27:	exposed yourself deliberately. You cannot assume that just because, well, I go to church and I

00:52:27 – 00:52:33:	believe this so it must be Christian, that doesn't follow. What is the source of the thing you believe?

00:52:35 – 00:52:41:	If it came from someone, for instance, a Jewish feminist, then it isn't Christian.

00:52:41 – 00:52:51:	That idea, feminism, did not originate with God. It originated with Satan. It has been shoehorned

00:52:51 – 00:52:58:	into the church. And now we have men in the church, sometimes even men in robes, defending feminism

00:52:58 – 00:53:04:	that is incredibly wicked. And as Christians, it is our duty to push back against that. But first

00:53:04 – 00:53:10:	and foremost, before you can push back against it, you have to remove it from your own life. You have

00:53:10 – 00:53:16:	to remove it from your own heart. You have to root out those idols and destroy them.

00:53:17 – 00:53:24:	And this is why the definition narrowly of religion as focusing on morality is the test.

00:53:25 – 00:53:32:	Because you can confess the triune God with your lips. You can go to church. You can do the superficial

00:53:32 – 00:53:40:	trappings of that religion that has a name and a deity and a logo, has all the stuff that says,

00:53:40 – 00:53:46:	yeah, that looks like a religion. And then the other things in your life that don't necessarily

00:53:46 – 00:53:52:	have a logo that the gods don't necessarily have names, at least not ones you know. But if those

00:53:52 – 00:53:57:	are the sources of your active morality in your life, those are your gods, even while you're

00:53:57 – 00:54:03:	simultaneously confessing to be Christian. And while that's probably not as common with most of

00:54:03 – 00:54:10:	the stone choir audience, I guarantee you it is much more common with your pastors and with the

00:54:10 – 00:54:17:	leaders of your churches. Because they have all been taught by their own institutions, we are the

00:54:17 – 00:54:24:	experts. We are the more godly ones. We're going to run this stuff well. And if they were testing

00:54:24 – 00:54:30:	their inputs, as Cory was talking about, if they were carefully discerning that all of their doctrines

00:54:30 – 00:54:36:	and all of their beliefs and all their morality was only to be derived from Scripture, that would

00:54:36 – 00:54:42:	be true. But what we see today and what we've seen for certainly the last two centuries, especially

00:54:42 – 00:54:53:	in America, is that morality right and wrong is being originated in new fashions in secular,

00:54:53 – 00:54:59:	increasingly secularized, un-Christian culture. And then it's being imported into the church,

00:54:59 – 00:55:03:	and then they find a proof text somewhere in Scripture to say, look, this new thing that I

00:55:03 – 00:55:08:	just scraped off the sidewalk and I dragged in here, this is actually from the Bible. What's

00:55:08 – 00:55:15:	nothing of the sort? It's a dog turd. You brought in filth, and then you baptize it, and then you

00:55:15 – 00:55:20:	give it to people until then that's Christian teaching. That is the second commandment as it's

00:55:20 – 00:55:27:	ordered by Roman Catholics and Lutherans. Do not bear falsely God's name. Lying about what God says

00:55:27 – 00:55:33:	is a violation of that commandment. When you say that God says something, and he didn't say that,

00:55:33 – 00:55:38:	that is much worse than what we typically think of. We think of cursing using God's name profanely,

00:55:39 – 00:55:45:	using GD it. That's bad. It's evil. It's not as evil as saying, I'm from God, and let me tell

00:55:45 – 00:55:51:	you what God really said. God didn't really say that. He actually said the opposite, and let me

00:55:51 – 00:55:58:	explain how. That's typical in our churches today, across the board. One of the verses that Cory and

00:55:58 – 00:56:05:	I will most frequently refer to is from the beginning of 1 Timothy 4. Now the Spirit

00:56:05 – 00:56:10:	expressly says that afterwards some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful

00:56:10 – 00:56:17:	spirits and teachings of demons through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared,

00:56:17 – 00:56:22:	who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received

00:56:22 – 00:56:28:	with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. There's a lot just in this one passage

00:56:28 – 00:56:35:	that teaches many different aspects of this lesson. One, some will depart from the faith.

00:56:36 – 00:56:40:	It's not talking about unbelievers. We're not talking about pagans here. We're talking about

00:56:40 – 00:56:46:	people who were in the church who had the faith, and then what did they do? They devoted themselves

00:56:46 – 00:56:53:	to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons. Where are the sources of these teachings,

00:56:53 – 00:56:59:	either their scripture or their wickedness? Because everything that is true, everything

00:56:59 – 00:57:07:	that is from God is either naturally revealed in nature or it's in scripture. Not every single

00:57:07 – 00:57:11:	thing that is true is found in scripture. It's not how God arranged things. But when you start

00:57:11 – 00:57:19:	talking about morality, when you start talking about right and wrong, that is distinct. Now right

00:57:19 – 00:57:25:	and wrong is written on the hearts of men. That is part of the image of God, which is damaged in

00:57:25 – 00:57:32:	the fall. For some, it is so damaged that some of those things are gone entirely. I'm going to give

00:57:32 – 00:57:36:	another example of something from past episodes that again illustrates the point we're trying to make

00:57:36 – 00:57:44:	here today. There are some races that are inherently more wicked than others. Some of you listening

00:57:44 – 00:57:50:	right now will get very angry at that. That's blasphemy. Is it blasphemy against scripture?

00:57:50 – 00:57:56:	No, actually scripture says the same thing in multiple places and we see it in reality. We

00:57:56 – 00:58:02:	can explain it theologically. We devoted an entire episode in the race series of Stone Choir to the

00:58:02 – 00:58:10:	biological nature of race and then to criminality. Now criminality directly correlates with certain

00:58:10 – 00:58:20:	races. Now criminality is the government word. It's the secular world word for sin. If something

00:58:20 – 00:58:25:	is sinful, we typically make a law around it. We used to have a lot more of those laws because we

00:58:25 – 00:58:30:	said a lot more things were sinful. As we found fewer and fewer sins in scripture, we got rid of

00:58:30 – 00:58:35:	those laws. But we didn't end up with fewer laws, incidentally. We have more laws than ever because

00:58:35 – 00:58:40:	there are all these new sins, things that weren't sinned 60 or 100 or 200 years ago. Today they're

00:58:40 – 00:58:47:	sins. Today they're crimes, but they're not Christian sins. They're not crimes against God.

00:58:48 – 00:58:54:	And so this is the crucial distinction here. If you look at these matters as something being

00:58:54 – 00:59:00:	less Christian or more Christian, and your only concern is to have the more Christian version,

00:59:00 – 00:59:06:	you're missing out on the fact that either it is of Christ or it is of the devil. There are only two

00:59:06 – 00:59:12:	sources for morality. Either it's God or it's hell. And if you're getting your morality from hell,

00:59:13 – 00:59:21:	well, the end conclusion there is obvious. When 1 Timothy sets the floor so low for teachings of

00:59:21 – 00:59:28:	demons and what deceitful spirits are bringing into our midst, again, when this devotion to

00:59:28 – 00:59:34:	teachings of demons is in the church, that's what scripture says. So when Cori and I say the same

00:59:34 – 00:59:39:	thing, we say that they're wicked men in the church, in pulpits, teaching the teachings of demons.

00:59:39 – 00:59:45:	And we look at the examples. What are they? Is it worshiping false gods overtly? Is it sacrificing

00:59:45 – 00:59:54:	infants to molok? No. It's abstinence from marriage and it's abstaining from foods and making those

00:59:54 – 00:59:59:	commandments saying you must do this. Incidentally, that's going to be part of next week's episode

59:59 – 01:00:03
where we talk about narcissism. That's part of what was being addressed there in this passage,

01:00:03 – 01:00:12:	was the already extant Gnostic cult that existed within Christianity against it. The Gnostic tendencies

01:00:12 – 01:00:17:	are one of the ways that from the very beginning, Satan was attacking the church from within.

01:00:17 – 01:00:25:	And what we see right now is these seemingly closing days of the church. We see the same

01:00:25 – 01:00:33:	Gnosticism roaring back. We see Galatians 3.28 quoted against creation, where God says,

01:00:33 – 01:00:39:	there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female,

01:00:39 – 01:00:45:	for all are one in Christ Jesus. That is an argument that is used by those who have devoted

01:00:45 – 01:00:50:	themselves to deceitful spirits as an attack on creation. They say, there's neither male nor

01:00:50 – 01:00:55:	female, there's no male and female. It's like the ands and the ors separate. We'll talk about that.

01:00:55 – 01:00:59:	After this arc, I think we're going to be doing an episode entirely on Galatius 3.28,

01:00:59 – 01:01:05:	because we've said before, it is the key that unlocks all of these attacks on creation and on

01:01:05 – 01:01:10:	the church. The fact that there are pastors today who are using that as a proof text to attack

01:01:11 – 01:01:18:	God's order, to attack headship of man over woman, to say that man was not created for woman,

01:01:18 – 01:01:25:	but woman was created for man. That's quoting scripture. Yet, if you say it on social media,

01:01:25 – 01:01:33:	you're going to get dogpiled. Why? Because it's against the culture. It's wrong. It is absolutely

01:01:33 – 01:01:38:	wrong. Is it wrong in Christian terms? No, it's quoting God. It can't be wrong in Christian terms.

01:01:38 – 01:01:43:	It is wrong in terms of the morality of this age. Yet, many of the people who will attack

01:01:43 – 01:01:48:	the sort of man who will say that in public are themselves Christians. They think that they're

01:01:48 – 01:01:56:	defending God when they attack scripture. The point in this episode is that when someone attacks

01:01:56 – 01:02:03:	scripture and says they're defending God, they're telling the truth. They're not telling you the

01:02:03 – 01:02:09:	truth about who their God is. Their God is Satan. Their God is not the triune God, but they are

01:02:09 – 01:02:14:	defending their God. See, the distinction we're trying to make here is when you take these things

01:02:14 – 01:02:19:	as doctrinal matters, as measuring them only against scripture and saying, well, this is more

01:02:19 – 01:02:23:	Christian or this is less Christian, you completely lose sight of the fact that these teachings are

01:02:23 – 01:02:30:	either from God or they're from demons. If Satan put this in someone's head and in his heart and

01:02:30 – 01:02:36:	on his lips, there's an immediate threat to the souls of everyone who hears it. From the garden

01:02:36 – 01:02:42:	to this day, we have all manner of false prophets, including at the head of our denominations,

01:02:42 – 01:02:49:	saying things like, slavery is the original sin of the United States. When we did the episodes

01:02:49 – 01:02:54:	devoted to slavery and racism and feminism, they were largely Bible studies, because again, those

01:02:54 – 01:03:00:	are religious matters. In both directions, Christianity says one thing about slavery and

01:03:01 – 01:03:08:	racism and religion, and the modern religion says the opposite thing. Today, when we have these

01:03:08 – 01:03:15:	conversations in public, Corey said, you can say these things and be canceled, doxxed, fired,

01:03:15 – 01:03:21:	unemployable forever. Why? Because you're bad? Because you're a neo-Nazi podcaster? No, because

01:03:21 – 01:03:27:	you said the same thing that God said, and that's all it takes. That is a moral calculus that is

01:03:27 – 01:03:35:	absolutely a religious decision. What it is not is Christian. Christianity doesn't do that.

01:03:35 – 01:03:42:	Satan's religion does that, and the reason that it's crucial to identify that it's Satan's religion

01:03:42 – 01:03:48:	is that it doesn't call itself Satanism. There's no pentagram on this stuff. There's no, usually,

01:03:48 – 01:03:54:	although hilariously in a lot of places, when you see anti-racism marches, you will frequently find

01:03:54 – 01:04:00:	pentagrams in Stars of Remfan in the crowd. It happens quite a bit, but it's not always there,

01:04:00 – 01:04:05:	and you also find it in Christian churches, where pastors will say the very same things.

01:04:05 – 01:04:11:	The men's like Magnus Hirschfeld said a century ago in his book on racism. They are preaching from

01:04:12 – 01:04:19:	Satan's gospel, and it's a true religion. It is absolutely a complete religion that calls itself

01:04:19 – 01:04:25:	Christianity. The genealogy of your morality, whatever it is, whatever specific moral tenet,

01:04:26 – 01:04:32:	if it's from Scripture, it's Christian. If it's not from Scripture, and yet it's still your morality,

01:04:32 – 01:04:38:	that is a false, competing, anti-Christian religion, and we all hold them simultaneously.

01:04:38 – 01:04:43:	Part of the sanctified Christian life is figuring this stuff out to realize I, in good conscience,

01:04:43 – 01:04:50:	believed this for 20, 30, 40 years, and then I realized because someone told me or because I

01:04:50 – 01:04:56:	studied that I was in error, that I had sinned. Is that a surprise? No. He who says he is without

01:04:56 – 01:05:02:	sinned to seize himself, and the truth is not in him. If you find out that you got something wrong

01:05:02 – 01:05:07:	and you've been sinning for most of your life, it should make you feel bad, but it shouldn't

01:05:07 – 01:05:13:	surprise you. It shouldn't surprise you that it's possible. It should certainly be a shock, and it

01:05:13 – 01:05:18:	should be alarming, but to realize that you got something wrong, particularly when you've been

01:05:18 – 01:05:23:	taught falsely. That's the most crucial thing about this, is that it's the pastors who bind

01:05:23 – 01:05:30:	people's consciences with these demonic lies from these deceitful spirits, that men who don't know

01:05:30 – 01:05:35:	any better are going to pair with them. In good conscience, they will say, that's a violation

01:05:35 – 01:05:41:	of my morality to be racist or to be anti-feminist. Corey, when he was falsely excommunicated,

01:05:41 – 01:05:48:	one of the charges was literally misogyny. Think about that. A Christian denomination

01:05:48 – 01:05:55:	excommunicates for misogyny. It's a new sin. They cited falsely the Ten Commandments.

01:05:55 – 01:06:02:	It is a complete fabrication. On one hand, that is not Christian doctrine. It's an error. It's

01:06:02 – 01:06:07:	not binding. It's complete falsehood, and it's a condemnation to hell of every man involved.

01:06:08 – 01:06:13:	On the other hand, it is their true confession. That's the crucial part of this, and that's why

01:06:13 – 01:06:19:	we're going to do the third episode on apostasy. These things that get people fired up are their

01:06:19 – 01:06:25:	true confession. Stone Choir is Corey and my true confession. This is the stuff that we think is the

01:06:25 – 01:06:31:	most important, because it's destroying the church. Now, we don't talk a lot specifically about the

01:06:31 – 01:06:36:	gospel, not because it's not important, and we refer to the gospel all the time. There are numerous

01:06:36 – 01:06:41:	people who have begun going to the church for the first time in their lives because of what they've

01:06:41 – 01:06:45:	heard on Stone Choir. It wasn't that we scared them about hell. It wasn't that we were so law-oriented.

01:06:46 – 01:06:49:	It was that they realized that God had died for them, because we talk about that all the time.

01:06:51 – 01:06:55:	The emphasis that we have is the same emphasis that you find in the New Testament.

01:06:55 – 01:07:01:	I've said before, if you read only their words in red, only Jesus' own recorded words,

01:07:02 – 01:07:07:	it's almost all law. There's a very little gospel in there. There's a whole lot of believe, obey,

01:07:07 – 01:07:13:	do. Is that because Jesus didn't preach well? Did he forget to say what was important? No.

01:07:14 – 01:07:18:	He told the people what they needed to hear, and what they needed to hear was repent.

01:07:18 – 01:07:22:	They didn't need to hear your hunky dory. They didn't need to hear you got everything figured

01:07:22 – 01:07:26:	out. You go, girl. They needed to hear what was going to send them to hell if they didn't stop.

01:07:26 – 01:07:32:	That is a crucial part of Christian preaching. To warn the specific listeners in whatever

01:07:32 – 01:07:38:	congregation or whatever context, here are your sins. That is not hateful. That is the opposite

01:07:38 – 01:07:45:	of hatred. If Cory and I hated any particular group, we would just let them go, ignore whatever

01:07:45 – 01:07:50:	errors they were going to make, and know that that was going to lead them closer to hell.

01:07:50 – 01:07:55:	Instead, we shout and point and warn and say, this over here, this is in danger in your soul.

01:07:55 – 01:07:59:	You need to stop. You have to put that in stark terms, because in a lot of cases,

01:07:59 – 01:08:06:	there's no time to negotiate. There's no time to explain this stuff. Your people are careening

01:08:06 – 01:08:11:	towards a cliff. If they don't make a 90-degree turn right away, they're going to go over the edge,

01:08:11 – 01:08:17:	and there's nothing that any man can do to save them. These questions of morality

01:08:18 – 01:08:22:	are crucial inside the Church because they're masquerading as Christian when they're simply

01:08:22 – 01:08:29:	not. The genealogy of where you got your morals will tell you what your God is. As Cory gave that

01:08:29 – 01:08:34:	example, there are plenty of other examples we could give, like the one I gave about some races

01:08:34 – 01:08:40:	are inherently more wicked than others. This is demonstrable. There are entire races, entire parts

01:08:40 – 01:08:46:	of certain continents that have no concept of some crimes, no concept whatsoever. We can't even believe

01:08:46 – 01:08:53:	it in the West, because in our race and our entire history as a culture, as a people, it's

01:08:53 – 01:08:59:	always been evil to do certain things. I'm not even going to name here, because we talked about,

01:08:59 – 01:09:04:	I mentioned earlier on, the knowledge of good and evil. A lot of parents listen to Stonequire

01:09:04 – 01:09:10:	with their kids, which is awesome. We try to not make too many episodes, things that parents can't

01:09:10 – 01:09:14:	listen to their kids. If you're a kid and you're listening now with your parents, when they say,

01:09:14 – 01:09:19:	you know what, this portion or this episode is not for you, they're not depriving you of

01:09:19 – 01:09:23:	something great. They're not holding out the good stuff. They're trying to protect you from

01:09:23 – 01:09:31:	something that is evil. There's knowledge that has terrible knowledge. What happened when Adam

01:09:31 – 01:09:37:	and Eve sinned is what we see so much in the world today, where people are robbed of their innocence.

01:09:38 – 01:09:42:	They were in a state of innocence in the garden. As a young child to a degree, you have a state of

01:09:42 – 01:09:48:	innocence in terms of knowledge of evil. Once you learn about certain things, you can never

01:09:48 – 01:09:54:	unknow them. There's no going back. You, for the rest of your life, will be burdened with things

01:09:54 – 01:09:58:	that you wish you could unlearn. Every time your parents try to protect you from something,

01:09:58 – 01:10:03:	or even as adults, this happens a lot, especially on the internet, where you're interacting with

01:10:03 – 01:10:09:	strangers. If someone has an innocent ignorance of something, there's a part of some of us that

01:10:09 – 01:10:15:	gets really excited and wants to rob them of it. That's evil. If someone is blissfully ignorant,

01:10:15 – 01:10:20:	if they're innocent of some evil, thank God that they've been spared, because you know something

01:10:20 – 01:10:25:	terrible and awful that they don't know. Give thanks that they've been spared that, and don't

01:10:25 – 01:10:29:	take it from them. Don't rob them. When kids are listening, your parents say, you know what,

01:10:29 – 01:10:35:	not this stuff, you can listen to the next episode. They're doing you one of the greatest

01:10:35 – 01:10:40:	favors anyone will ever do for you in your entire life, because certain knowledge that we have as

01:10:40 – 01:10:46:	adults can't be unlearned. There are things I know and things I've seen and things I've heard

01:10:46 – 01:10:51:	that I would dearly like to get out of my head, and I can't. When I die, God will take that stuff

01:10:51 – 01:10:56:	away, but until then, I'm stuck with it. Once you learn things, when you get older, you're stuck

01:10:56 – 01:11:03:	with them. You can't get rid of them. The knowledge of evil is a burden. It's a bad, terrible, harmful

01:11:03 – 01:11:10:	thing. Robbing of innocence is something that it's almost normal now. There used to be laws

01:11:10 – 01:11:17:	against it, but when the culture ceased to be a Christian culture, the laws ceased to be Christian

01:11:17 – 01:11:23:	laws. Suddenly, that, which was immoral and wicked, was not only removed from the law,

01:11:23 – 01:11:30:	but became promoted everywhere you look. Corey's talking about media. You should cancel Netflix

01:11:30 – 01:11:36:	right now. You should pause the podcast and cancel Netflix, because you're paying for absolutely

01:11:36 – 01:11:42:	wicked things. Cartoons, it doesn't matter. Everything that they produce is suffused with

01:11:42 – 01:11:48:	satanic agendas, and they're not remotely subtle about it. If you can't see it, you're in dire

01:11:48 – 01:11:54:	spiritual state, because it is wildly overt. There's nothing about it that's hidden. This stuff is

01:11:54 – 01:12:00:	so out in the open now, because the culture has shifted so far that it's Satan's culture

01:12:00 – 01:12:05:	right out in the open. Christians are like, that's normal. That's fine. Why wouldn't I tell

01:12:05 – 01:12:10:	someone something, some horrible, innocence-robbing thing that they can never get back? Why wouldn't

01:12:10 – 01:12:15:	I? It's knowledge. Isn't all knowledge neutral? No. Some things are terrible and shouldn't exist.

01:12:15 – 01:12:22:	Some knowledge should be destroyed. That's a Christian position. When the sorcerers brought

01:12:22 – 01:12:28:	together all of their sorcery material and acts and burned it, and it was worth 50,000

01:12:28 – 01:12:35:	whatever's of silver, that was a tremendous amount of wealth that was incinerated, because it was

01:12:35 – 01:12:40:	evil knowledge. They acknowledged that as part of their repentance, as part of turning away from

01:12:40 – 01:12:45:	their wickedness, they had to destroy the evil that they had done in the past. That should be

01:12:45 – 01:12:50:	the case with us. When we discover that some part of our morality turns out not to be Christian

01:12:50 – 01:12:57:	morality, you've got to torch it. That's a good thing to do. The big struggle is getting from,

01:12:57 – 01:13:03:	I thought I was fine. Actually, this is crap. I need to torch it. That process, it hurts.

01:13:03 – 01:13:09:	It's painful. It's why some of these episodes are downers, because we're not free from sin.

01:13:09 – 01:13:15:	We do some bad stuff and it piles up. Getting to the other side is the whole point of the Christian

01:13:15 – 01:13:25:	life. The Old Testament reading for yesterday was from Ezekiel 3, and it brought to mind a

01:13:26 – 01:13:33:	section of the same book, Ezekiel, that we have had on the Stone Choir website from day one,

01:13:34 – 01:13:39:	and that is from Ezekiel 33. I won't read the whole thing. You can go read it if you're so inclined.

01:13:39 – 01:13:47:	That's Ezekiel 33 verses one through nine. The point of the section is that

01:13:49 – 01:13:54:	I'm going to extrapolate out the point, not the immediate point God is making to Ezekiel,

01:13:54 – 01:13:58:	to whom he is speaking in the passage, but the point of the passage for Christians when you

01:13:58 – 01:14:06:	read this, is that if you have been given the ability to warn someone about some evil that

01:14:06 – 01:14:15:	he is doing, and you do not warn him, you have made that evil your own. You have committed sin in

01:14:15 – 01:14:22:	not warning that man, because God having given you the ability to warn him and you having failed to

01:14:22 – 01:14:29:	exercise that duty using the abilities given you by God, you have sinned through inaction.

01:14:30 – 01:14:37:	When we started the podcast, we knew that is exactly what we were doing. Now we put it off for a

01:14:37 – 01:14:43:	while for various reasons, but we knew that the reason we had to do this, that it was not an option

01:14:43 – 01:14:49:	for us. This was not something that we could pick up or set down or do or not do. We were required

01:14:49 – 01:14:56:	to do it. That is our state of mind. That is our opinion, our firm belief with regard to the podcast.

01:14:57 – 01:15:03:	God has given us the ability to understand this material and to teach this material, and that

01:15:03 – 01:15:08:	is what we are doing on this podcast. This is teaching, and as we said in an early episode,

01:15:08 – 01:15:13:	we recognize that does subject us to the stricter judgment. We've elected that in full knowledge,

01:15:15 – 01:15:21:	but what we are doing is warning anyone who will listen about the evils that we see,

01:15:22 – 01:15:30:	about the evils in our culture, about all of these wicked things that to us are obvious,

01:15:31 – 01:15:35:	are incredibly obvious, are out in the open, that some do not see.

01:15:38 – 01:15:44:	We're warning men of traps, of which they may not be aware. We know the trap is there. We are

01:15:44 – 01:15:51:	telling you do not step on it. That is why we're doing this, and it is a duty for Christian men

01:15:51 – 01:15:57:	again who have been given the ability to do so from God. This is clear in many parts of Scripture,

01:15:58 – 01:16:03:	particularly clear in the passage we chose from Ezekiel, Ezekiel 33 again.

01:16:05 – 01:16:11:	But I actually want to speak for a moment specifically to teachers and pastors. Now,

01:16:11 – 01:16:17:	this is applicable to all Christians, of course, because it is dealing with one of the commandments,

01:16:17 – 01:16:23:	and the commandments, of course, are applicable to all Christians, to all persons, actually,

01:16:23 – 01:16:28:	because whether or not you're Christian, God's will and God's law still holds, and you will be

01:16:28 – 01:16:36:	judged by it. But woe spoke of the second commandment, thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God

01:16:36 – 01:16:44:	in vain. And this brought to mind a particular paragraph from the large catechism.

01:16:45 – 01:16:52:	Luther says of this commandment, the greatest abuse occurs in spiritual matters which pertain

01:16:52 – 01:16:59:	to the conscience when false preachers rise up and offer their lying vanities as God's word.

01:17:01 – 01:17:05:	And of course, this applies to teachers as well, not just pastors.

01:17:06 – 01:17:14:	The worst thing you can do when it comes to violations, transgressions of the second commandment

01:17:16 – 01:17:21:	is to stand up and offer that which is false as God's word.

01:17:23 – 01:17:31:	To lie in God's name and say that God said you must do this is the most wicked thing you can do

01:17:31 – 01:17:39:	with regard to this commandment. And in fact, doing so inevitably entails violating the first

01:17:39 – 01:17:44:	commandment as well, because you have shown that you have this other God, and you are actually

01:17:44 – 01:17:50:	speaking on his behalf, you are simply attempting to deceive using the name of the Lord God to dress

01:17:50 – 01:18:00:	up your lies. Some will think that this is uncommon, that this is unusual, that this is

01:18:00 – 01:18:07:	something that would be obvious. For instance, the wicked Bible, if a pastor were to stand up

01:18:07 – 01:18:12:	and quote that and say thou shalt commit adultery, that would most certainly be wicked, that would

01:18:12 – 01:18:16:	be a violation of the second commandment, that would be lying and deceiving in God's name,

01:18:16 – 01:18:23:	and it would be obvious we would all catch that, I would hope. But this happens constantly,

01:18:24 – 01:18:31:	particularly with teachers, and even more particularly with pastors. Because if you are

01:18:31 – 01:18:39:	a pastor, and you stand up and say that this thing, racism, sexism, whatever it happens to be,

01:18:39 – 01:18:47:	this modern sin, if you say that is contrary to God's word, you are lying in God's name

01:18:47 – 01:18:55:	about the things of God. And worse as a pastor, you are doing it while standing in God's place,

01:18:56 – 01:19:00:	because that is the authority, that is the position that has been given you by God.

01:19:01 – 01:19:06:	You are standing up there in his stead and lying in his name to his sheep.

01:19:08 – 01:19:12:	Now we'll get into apostasy in the third episode in this series,

01:19:12 – 01:19:18:	but I can certainly say now that I would not want to be in your shoes on judgment day

01:19:19 – 01:19:24:	if that is what you have spent your life doing. And so if you're listening to this podcast

01:19:24 – 01:19:31:	and you find that that applies to you, you need to repent and reconsider some things.

01:19:32 – 01:19:36:	Now that may be somewhat unlikely for the audience of this podcast,

01:19:37 – 01:19:41:	although perhaps this is where you started listening and perhaps it does apply to you.

01:19:42 – 01:19:47:	But again, that is the worst violation of the Second Commandment possible,

01:19:48 – 01:19:55:	is to lie in God's name while standing in his place about his things to his sheep.

01:19:58 – 01:20:01:	Such men are anti-Christ. They are false prophets,

01:20:01 – 01:20:05:	including many men in our own church, some of whom are listening right now.

01:20:05 – 01:20:08:	We know their names, we know what they're up to. The answer to God.

01:20:09 – 01:20:12:	But this sort of wickedness is, it's common today,

01:20:13 – 01:20:19:	and it's been common since the very beginning. Between now and a couple of weeks from now,

01:20:19 – 01:20:25:	I would encourage all of you to read Revelation 2 and 3. These are chapters that include the seven

01:20:25 – 01:20:33:	epistles that Jesus transcribed to John from heaven to the seven churches. And they're very

01:20:33 – 01:20:39:	interesting because they make clear many of the principles that we outline in terms of

01:20:40 – 01:20:45:	different churches having different problems. Different individual Christians have different

01:20:45 – 01:20:49:	problems, different pastors have different problems, different congregations have different

01:20:49 – 01:20:54:	problems, and groups of congregations, which today we call denominations, all have their own

01:20:54 – 01:21:01:	unique sets of issues. When you read the seven letters from Christ to the churches, what you find

01:21:01 – 01:21:07:	is that they're addressed in very different terms. When you read the letter to Smyrna,

01:21:07 – 01:21:10:	they're in good shape. God doesn't really have much criticism of them.

01:21:11 – 01:21:17:	Pergamum has a few faults, but for the most part they're pretty good. When Christ writes to the

01:21:17 – 01:21:23:	church at Sardis, it's dire. Listen to what Christ writes to Sardis. I know your works,

01:21:23 – 01:21:27:	you have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up and strengthen what remains and

01:21:27 – 01:21:32:	is about to die for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. Remember then

01:21:32 – 01:21:38:	what you received and heard. Keep it in repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief

01:21:38 – 01:21:44:	and you will not know at whatever I will come against you. You have still a few names in Sardis,

01:21:44 – 01:21:50:	people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white for they are worthy.

01:21:51 – 01:21:55:	Now he says what remains and is about to die, he's talking about damnation,

01:21:55 – 01:22:00:	and he's addressing it to a church. So seven churches, some of them are okay,

01:22:00 – 01:22:06:	some are kind of shaky. Church at Sardis, he's saying most of you are going to hell

01:22:06 – 01:22:10:	unless you repent right now. That's in the church. That's people who all called themselves

01:22:10 – 01:22:16:	Christians. They were doing the stuff. They were showing up. You know, all the practices,

01:22:16 – 01:22:21:	they confess God. He said, I look at your works and I do not see Christians,

01:22:21 – 01:22:28:	because the works are an outpouring of the heart of the believer or the unbeliever. You will always

01:22:28 – 01:22:36:	confess with your actions and with your energy what your true God is. If your true God is the

01:22:36 – 01:22:40:	true God, then your actions and your words are going to be in accord with Scripture. You're

01:22:40 – 01:22:44:	going to do the stuff that God says to do and you're not going to do the stuff that he says not to do.

01:22:45 – 01:22:51:	We are judged by our works in terms of them being an example of our belief. Now, no one

01:22:51 – 01:22:57:	can possibly keep God's word perfectly. Scripture is clear about that. We cannot possibly save

01:22:57 – 01:23:04:	ourselves. Our works are filthy rags before God and they are only washed white by Christ's sacrifice.

01:23:05 – 01:23:11:	Nevertheless, there are things that are endemic to the Christian life that will be absent necessarily

01:23:11 – 01:23:16:	from the life of an unbeliever. That's what God is talking about. He's looking at him and saying,

01:23:16 – 01:23:21:	basically, you're going through the motions, but you're not saved. You're going to be damned if you

01:23:21 – 01:23:27:	do not repent. This happens in the rest of the New Testament, too. It's what the third episode is

01:23:27 – 01:23:31:	going to be about. God is calling Christians to repent, to turn away from their wickedness

01:23:32 – 01:23:38:	inside the church. How can you be wicked inside the church by having a God other than God,

01:23:38 – 01:23:43:	by having a morality other than that, which is from God? See, their errors weren't simply doctrinal.

01:23:43 – 01:23:49:	When you go back to 1 Timothy 4 and he's talking about abstaining from marriage and certain foods,

01:23:49 – 01:23:54:	are those doctrines? In some cases, they become doctrines, but sometimes it's like, well,

01:23:54 – 01:23:58:	don't do that. We're just going to do this other thing instead. It's not sold necessarily as a

01:23:58 – 01:24:03:	big ticket. Here's a top line belief of this religion. It's just, no, don't do that.

01:24:04 – 01:24:09:	God says that's a teaching of demons. God says that the liars with seared consciences

01:24:09 – 01:24:16:	who bring those things from false spirits are damned inside the church. Pagans from outside

01:24:16 – 01:24:22:	the church usually aren't coming into our churches and lying, although you have men like Ben Shapiro

01:24:22 – 01:24:28:	and James Lindsay, who are now speaking alongside pastors, talking to us about the body of Christ

01:24:28 – 01:24:33:	in the public square. It's inconceivable to me that these things would happen, and yet

01:24:33 – 01:24:40:	men like Cory and myself are seen as worse than. We're certainly not free from sin,

01:24:40 – 01:24:47:	but do we sin by telling people to God and go to church? No. We sin against the world religion

01:24:47 – 01:24:53:	by condemning the Ben Shapiro's and the James Lindsay's because they're wicked, evil men who

01:24:53 – 01:24:58:	have only evil in their hearts and the fact that some of what they say is able to sneak into the

01:24:58 – 01:25:03:	church is precisely the threat, and the fact that there are pastors that can't discern that

01:25:03 – 01:25:08:	is a tremendous threat. That's intolerable. It's utterly intolerable for there would be men

01:25:08 – 01:25:13:	in positions of authority in our churches who do not have the spiritual discernment to see that

01:25:13 – 01:25:19:	they are inviting wolves inside the sheepfold because the sheep don't know any better. Most

01:25:19 – 01:25:25:	people are not equipped to discern these things reliably. The best you can do is stick to what

01:25:25 – 01:25:30:	you've been taught and hope that your teacher was good. When you're given a false morality,

01:25:30 – 01:25:35:	when you're given a Ben Shapiro morality or James Lindsay morality, when you're told that the

01:25:35 – 01:25:42:	Constitution and John Locke are better sources of morality than some of the old teachings,

01:25:42 – 01:25:46:	we've improved on that stuff in the last couple hundred years. Let's use the new stuff because

01:25:46 – 01:25:53:	it's even better. That is the morality as a religion. It's an absolute religion with a God

01:25:54 – 01:26:02:	pantheon of beliefs. It's just not Christian. When an antichrist speaks in the stead of God

01:26:02 – 01:26:07:	from the pulpit or wherever he's teaching, podcasters can do the same sort of damage,

01:26:07 – 01:26:14:	frankly more in some cases. Our audience is hundreds of times bigger than almost all congregations.

01:26:15 – 01:26:20:	That bears weight. We take that seriously. On the other hand, if we were saying nothing,

01:26:20 – 01:26:26:	we would also stand condemned for saying nothing. The only way we can avoid condemnation is to speak

01:26:26 – 01:26:33:	and to speak faithfully. We do our very best to do that every week. The morality of the world

01:26:33 – 01:26:39:	is coming into the church by the back door. It's not coming in through the front. It's not

01:26:39 – 01:26:46:	saying we're going to just burn up this Bible and replace it because it's not going to work

01:26:46 – 01:26:52:	in some denominations. In others, it has worked. It has happened. It has worked. Most of Methodism,

01:26:52 – 01:26:59:	Elka, a lot of denominations are just absolutely openly apostate. They freely act that way,

01:26:59 – 01:27:05:	and yet they still call themselves Christians. We smugly from the conservative denominations

01:27:05 – 01:27:11:	look at them and say, thank God I'm not like that tax collector. The problem is that we're an even

01:27:11 – 01:27:17:	worse jeopardy than they are in terms of falling for things because we still think that we're holding

01:27:17 – 01:27:22:	to what Christianity teaches and what the Bible says when in reality our morality is every bit

01:27:22 – 01:27:27:	as wicked as theirs because we're getting it from the same source, maybe different parts of it.

01:27:27 – 01:27:35:	I'll tell you this. There are many pastors whose morality is indistinguishable from the terms of

01:27:35 – 01:27:44:	service of Facebook or ex formerly Twitter. If your morality is entirely compatible with the TOS

01:27:44 – 01:27:50:	for a social media site, you are going to hell because that is the world religion encapsulated.

01:27:50 – 01:27:56:	It's very positive. It's very friendly. It's very respectful. All sorts of bad things are off the

01:27:56 – 01:28:04:	menu that you can't do or say. What they protect is evil. They prevent you from naming wicked things,

01:28:04 – 01:28:11:	from saying things that are true. In fact, on X, you will be insta-banned if you quote Revelation

01:28:11 – 01:28:17:	2.9 or Revelation 3.9 because it calls the Jews the synagogue of Satan. Using that term, using

01:28:17 – 01:28:24:	synagogue of Satan will get your account instillocked. They won't even let that be posted. Quoting God

01:28:24 – 01:28:30:	will get you banned because calling Jews the synagogue of Satan is a moral statement. It is

01:28:30 – 01:28:36:	a Christian statement. It is at odds with the morality of the world that says that's racist,

01:28:36 – 01:28:42:	that's anti-Semitic. You can't do that and be a good person. According to the world religion,

01:28:42 – 01:28:47:	that's absolutely true. That is a confession of their religion. What it is not a confession of is

01:28:47 – 01:28:53:	the true God because the true God literally said that. Those are red-letter words too. That is Jesus

01:28:53 – 01:28:58:	from heaven proclaiming the Jews are the synagogue of Satan as he said before that they are the

01:28:58 – 01:29:04:	children of their father the devil. That is what God said about those people, about that race of

01:29:04 – 01:29:11:	people. We did four-part episode dealing with all the details of that. If you say that, you get banned.

01:29:12 – 01:29:18:	Most pastors will have exactly the same response as Elon Musk. They will ban you for saying what

01:29:18 – 01:29:24:	God says. There's a whole lot of the Bible that is off limits in our churches. What are the parts?

01:29:24 – 01:29:28:	They're things about when the Jews do something bad. They're things about when there are differences

01:29:28 – 01:29:34:	between men and women. They're things about sexual sins that differentiate from one and another

01:29:34 – 01:29:39:	to say that Sodom and Gomorrah was worse than the neighboring sent towns that were not incinerated.

01:29:39 – 01:29:45:	These are all moral propositions that are scriptural propositions that are at odds with the morality

01:29:45 – 01:29:51:	of the world religion. All of this is about distinguishing where is my morality from.

01:29:51 – 01:29:55:	If you get upset when someone says that the Jews are the synagogue of Satan,

01:29:55 – 01:30:04:	you are angry at God Almighty. Your visceral moral repugnance at those words is hatred of God.

01:30:04 – 01:30:09:	You're violating the first and second commandments. You are serving Satan when you have that response.

01:30:10 – 01:30:14:	Elon Musk served Satan when he bans people for saying that. It doesn't matter if he knows or

01:30:14 – 01:30:21:	not, he is. It's baked right into the system. The machinery literally enforces it. The machinery

01:30:21 – 01:30:28:	in our churches enforces it too. There has been a massive manhunt across numerous denominations

01:30:28 – 01:30:34:	in the past year specifically trying to root out racists and anti-Semites because you can deny

01:30:34 – 01:30:41:	the Trinity. You can deny the sacraments. You can deny pretty much anything in a Christian faith.

01:30:41 – 01:30:47:	You cannot deny the tenets of the world religion. The episodes we've named in the past and some

01:30:47 – 01:30:52:	of the others specifically go after the world religion, but we want to make clear in this episode

01:30:52 – 01:31:00:	that moral compass is pointed to hell. Many of us by bits and pieces have our own moral compass

01:31:00 – 01:31:06:	that when it comes to those issues, we lose our point towards God and it swings. It swings to

01:31:06 – 01:31:11:	hell and says, nope, I'm going to believe this other religion just for this one thing. I'll swing

01:31:11 – 01:31:16:	right back. It comes to going to church when it comes to saying the creeds or whatever your profession

01:31:16 – 01:31:23:	is. Sure, you got that down. When it comes to racism, no, no, no. This is my religion too.

01:31:24 – 01:31:29:	If it were Christianity, that would be good. That's why the episode that we did on that was

01:31:29 – 01:31:35:	largely a Bible study because the truth is the opposite. It is a worldly modern invention that

01:31:35 – 01:31:41:	has an attack on Christianity and that is why it's so important on Twitter and Facebook and in our

01:31:41 – 01:31:49:	pulpits. Christianity itself is under attack from without, hand within. As we've said many times

01:31:49 – 01:31:56:	before, you are in your life, in your actions, in your beliefs, trending Godward or Hellward.

01:31:56 – 01:32:03:	Those are the only two options. And Satan, for his part, does not particularly care

01:32:05 – 01:32:11:	when it comes to the things about which you are wrong. Yes, he would prefer that you were a truly

01:32:11 – 01:32:18:	awful person and that you led many others to hell with you. But he's fine with it if, when presented

01:32:18 – 01:32:27:	with two options, you pick the one that leads you toward him. Small thing, big thing, medium-sized

01:32:27 – 01:32:33:	thing, doesn't matter. As long as you are doing the thing that God does not want you to do,

01:32:34 – 01:32:42:	Satan is happy. And so many of these things may seem small in the grand scheme of things they

01:32:42 – 01:32:46:	actually are not because these are many of the things that have destroyed our culture, that

01:32:46 – 01:32:54:	have destroyed Christendom, that are dragging all of us, Hellward, along with our people and our

01:32:54 – 01:33:02:	culture, the whole world in fact, but they may seem small in and of themselves. When you decide to

01:33:02 – 01:33:07:	profess one of the tenets of the world religion, instead of pushing back against it and saying

01:33:07 – 01:33:13:	what Scripture says, well that seems small. Particularly if it seems like it's a peripheral

01:33:13 – 01:33:21:	or a tangential issue, a minor issue, but it's not. Because again, the only goal of Satan is to

01:33:21 – 01:33:26:	get you to do the thing that God does not want you to do and not to do the thing that God wants

01:33:26 – 01:33:36:	you to do. Doesn't ultimately matter what it is. He just wants you to rebel. That's the point.

01:33:36 – 01:33:42:	That's the whole point. It is whether you are obedient to God or rebelling against God.

01:33:43 – 01:33:51:	Now I'm not saying that every single choice is binary, Hellward or Heavenward. That's not the

01:33:51 – 01:33:58:	point. There are things that are legitimately audiophora. There are things in a grand sense of

01:33:58 – 01:34:04:	the term. There are things that it doesn't matter which you pick. If you pick chocolate or vanilla

01:34:04 – 01:34:10:	ice cream for dessert, that's not moving you closer or further away from God. That's not how that

01:34:10 – 01:34:17:	works. When it comes to matters of morality, when it comes to matters of religion, when it comes to

01:34:17 – 01:34:23:	matters of cult, when it comes to whether you affirm the words of Scripture or deny the words of

01:34:23 – 01:34:30:	Scripture, these are the things where it matters. And as a Christian, and this may be a hard teaching,

01:34:30 – 01:34:37:	but it is the teaching of Scripture, as a Christian, you are required to affirm the words of Scripture

01:34:37 – 01:34:41:	every time and that is regardless of consequences.

01:34:44 – 01:34:52:	In our modern world, that seems like an impossible task. That seems like something that is insane

01:34:52 – 01:34:59:	to ask. Because as Woe mentioned, we live in a world where you can be fired from your job. You

01:34:59 – 01:35:06:	can essentially be unpersoned if you simply quote Scripture. If you repeat the words of God after

01:35:06 – 01:35:13:	Him, there are those out there who will attempt to destroy you. But that should tell you something.

01:35:15 – 01:35:21:	They're not attempting to destroy you because you said something false. If you just said something

01:35:21 – 01:35:26:	false, they wouldn't care. If you believe in a different false God from their false God,

01:35:26 – 01:35:33:	chances are they will leave you alone. If you worship Bolog, they don't care. If you worship

01:35:33 – 01:35:41:	Baal, they don't care. If you worship money, they don't care. Mammon, if you worship capitalism,

01:35:41 – 01:35:45:	they don't care. Pick your false God. Now, of course, there are some who are going to attack

01:35:45 – 01:35:49:	you for capitalism, but that's just because they don't realize that they're worshiping the other

01:35:49 – 01:35:57:	side of the same coin as we went over in our episode on capitalism. But they care a great deal

01:35:58 – 01:36:01:	when you say the things of God, and that's because those are true.

01:36:04 – 01:36:09:	And that is why you see those who are the Acolytes, who are the priests or the high priests of the

01:36:09 – 01:36:16:	world religion. It's why you see them respond so violently, so vehemently, when you say things

01:36:17 – 01:36:21:	that are just quotes from Scripture because they go against the world religion

01:36:21 – 01:36:28:	and demons cannot bear to hear the word of God. That is one of the things we see

01:36:29 – 01:36:33:	throughout the book of Concord, but particularly in some of the sections from Luther himself,

01:36:34 – 01:36:38:	where he says that one of the reasons we should have the word of God in our hearts,

01:36:38 – 01:36:44:	on our lips, in our mouths, why we should speak, read, discuss the word of God as Scripture,

01:36:44 – 01:36:51:	of course instructs us to do, is because Satan cannot bear to hear it. It drives him away.

01:36:52 – 01:36:58:	One of the ways that you can drive Satan out of your life is to spend time in the things of God,

01:36:58 – 01:37:02:	to spend time in God's word. That's one of the ways that you are sanctified.

01:37:03 – 01:37:08:	And so doing this is one of the ways you protect yourself as a Christian, and it is why

01:37:09 – 01:37:13:	those who are not of the church, those who are not of Christ, those who are not of God,

01:37:13 – 01:37:20:	cannot stand to hear these things because it enrages their master. And so it enrages them.

01:37:22 – 01:37:29:	But again, as a Christian, if you have the option to speak the word of God or to deny it,

01:37:30 – 01:37:35:	as a Christian, you do not have a choice. You are required to speak the word of God.

01:37:36 – 01:37:40:	Again, I will give the same caveat that I have given elsewhere when this issue has arisen.

01:37:41 – 01:37:46:	This does not mean be a fool. Now, in a certain sense, perhaps it does.

01:37:47 – 01:37:54:	But you are still instructed to be wise. The word there is actually shades into crafty even,

01:37:54 – 01:37:58:	because it's the same description used of the serpent. Wise is a serpent.

01:38:00 – 01:38:06:	But that does not permit you to lie. We are not Muslims. We are not permitted to lie about our

01:38:06 – 01:38:12:	faith in order to protect ourselves. There may be very real cost associated with speaking the

01:38:12 – 01:38:18:	things of God, being bold and truthful. But that is what we are called to do. Because again,

01:38:18 – 01:38:24:	Satan just wants you to rebel. He wants you to deny whatever it happens to be, small or large.

01:38:25 – 01:38:32:	His goal is to get you to deny Christ, to deny God's word. It's the camel's nose under the

01:38:32 – 01:38:36:	tent flap. Before you know it, you'll have the entire camel in the tent, and there'll be no more

01:38:36 – 01:38:47:	tent. It's just you and the camel. That is Satan's goal. And so, yes, obviously, we've had a lot of

01:38:47 – 01:38:55:	law in this episode. But Christians still need to hear God's law. The world most certainly needs

01:38:55 – 01:39:01:	to hear God's law. This is one of the things that we have, not we specifically, but Christians in

01:39:01 – 01:39:06:	general have gotten wrong in the last couple decades, or really more than that, the last half

01:39:06 – 01:39:15:	century, perhaps. The law has fallen by the wayside. But the gospel isn't good news if the law doesn't

01:39:15 – 01:39:22:	exist. Because if there's no law, then I don't need a savior. Because if there's no law, I haven't

01:39:22 – 01:39:29:	transgressed. There must be a law that you have transgressed for the gospel to be good news. The

01:39:29 – 01:39:35:	gospel is good news because you're a sinner. If you were not a sinner, the gospel would just be news.

01:39:35 – 01:39:41:	It wouldn't be good news because it wouldn't apply to you. It applies to you. It applies to the world

01:39:41 – 01:39:49:	because we are sinners. Because you are a sinner, the gospel is good news. And so, we need to hear

01:39:49 – 01:39:55:	the law. As Christians, we need to be reminded of the law. And not only does the law remind us of

01:39:55 – 01:40:01:	what we should do, what we should have done, what we have failed to do, but it guides us. We forget

01:40:01 – 01:40:07:	that there are three uses of the law. And one of the uses of the law is to guide us in the Christian

01:40:07 – 01:40:13:	life. And it should not just be individually. It should also help to guide our societies.

01:40:14 – 01:40:20:	God's law should be the basis of our positive law. For those who are unfamiliar with the terms,

01:40:21 – 01:40:25:	moral law would be God's law. The Ten Commandments are moral law. That is the law that flows from

01:40:25 – 01:40:30:	God's nature. Positive law simply means laws that are enacted by men. That's what positive

01:40:30 – 01:40:37:	means in this sense. And so, by that, I mean our criminal laws primarily. Civil laws are less of a

01:40:37 – 01:40:43:	matter for the moral law. They should be compliant with the moral law. But the amount that you set

01:40:43 – 01:40:53:	for a parking fine is only tangentially an issue of the moral law. Making homicide illegal is a

01:40:53 – 01:40:58:	moral law matter. Making adultery illegal, which it still should be. It is in the military court

01:40:58 – 01:41:03:	of justice, just not in the civil courts anymore. Adultery should be illegal in our societies.

01:41:04 – 01:41:10:	As Christians, we should want that to be part of our laws. Again, we want to have a Christian

01:41:10 – 01:41:18:	society because those are the guardrails. Those help you to remain a Christian, not to stray.

01:41:19 – 01:41:27:	Sheepfolds, sheep pens, have fences. Because without them, the sheep wander. A good shepherd

01:41:27 – 01:41:34:	will have fences. And a prince, a proper ruler, a godly king is supposed to be a good shepherd.

01:41:34 – 01:41:38:	He will place fences. He will maintain the fences that have been placed

01:41:39 – 01:41:45:	in order to preserve the flock that is entrusted to his care. And that is the duty of a godly prince

01:41:45 – 01:41:52:	no less, although in a different way, from a pastor or a teacher. Both are under shepherds.

01:41:52 – 01:41:56:	Both will one day answer to the good shepherd for what they did or did not do

01:41:57 – 01:42:01:	with regard to those sheep entrusted to their care by the good shepherd.

01:42:02 – 01:42:07:	The one thing that I want to leave everyone with in this episode beyond what Cory just said,

01:42:07 – 01:42:13:	which is very important, is the idea of using what we've discussed here today

01:42:14 – 01:42:21:	as a tool for evaluating whatever you hear others talking about. When you hear someone making a

01:42:21 – 01:42:28:	moral claim, someone saying, this is right and this is wrong, your first instinct should be,

01:42:28 – 01:42:32:	okay, where did you get that? And the trick is that Christians are always going to say,

01:42:32 – 01:42:38:	why got it from God? The response is, okay, show me. And they're usually going to have

01:42:38 – 01:42:43:	garbage proof texts. Because what they won't be able to do with many of these new

01:42:44 – 01:42:50:	moral issues that are invented in the last couple of centuries, they won't be able to

01:42:50 – 01:42:56:	point to the historic Christian belief. Because these things are a departure from it. And so

01:42:57 – 01:42:59:	it's not simply a question of the Christian saying, well,

01:43:01 – 01:43:05:	show me where your morality came from. And then they show you a Bible or say, okay, well,

01:43:05 – 01:43:09:	it's in the Bible. I guess that's fine. That is a superficial and useless application of what

01:43:09 – 01:43:17:	we're trying to teach here. The point is that if Christianity is true, then is eternal. Because

01:43:17 – 01:43:23:	God is true and God is eternal. God's will is eternal. His will does not change. Christianity

01:43:23 – 01:43:30:	doesn't change. Right and wrong doesn't change. So when someone says that used to be right,

01:43:30 – 01:43:36:	but now it's wrong, that person is from Satan, period. That's all you need to know.

01:43:36 – 01:43:41:	That's the genealogy of that idea. If they come to you and say, well, sure, 200 years ago,

01:43:41 – 01:43:48:	no one knew that it was bad, but today we know it's bad. That person is from hell. Even if it's

01:43:48 – 01:43:53:	a pastor, even if they're a big expert in theology, if they tell you about a new sin,

01:43:53 – 01:44:01:	they're lying. And you should apply this first to us, to everything Cory and I say on this podcast.

01:44:01 – 01:44:06:	Are we coming up with new sins? Or are we saying what Scripture says and what the

01:44:06 – 01:44:12:	church has dealt with in the past? As we've said, one of the tricks that Satan is playing today

01:44:12 – 01:44:18:	is he's taking new attacks. He's taking new approaches. So when the new sin of racism was

01:44:18 – 01:44:24:	invented, there's not much discussion in the historical Christian context about racism.

01:44:25 – 01:44:31:	Is that because it used to be okay and now it's bad? Or is it because it didn't exist at all?

01:44:31 – 01:44:37:	The notion didn't exist. What they call racism has always existed because it's not evil. The

01:44:37 – 01:44:43:	overwhelming majority of what is called racism or misogyny or any of these other things is actually

01:44:43 – 01:44:50:	obedience to God. It's actually telling the truth about things. That small subset that they want

01:44:50 – 01:44:56:	to hold up, that's actual hatred, that's actual wickedness that Scripture condemns, there's no

01:44:56 – 01:45:01:	need for a separate word for it because God calls that murder. It's murder in the heart to hate someone.

01:45:01 – 01:45:06:	It is not murder in the heart to say this person is not like this person. That's not murder. That's

01:45:06 – 01:45:13:	not hatred. There's nothing of the sort present to say you are not like you. God does it repeatedly in

01:45:13 – 01:45:18:	Scripture. We have permission from God to do it. In fact, we may command from God to do it because

01:45:18 – 01:45:24:	we're commanded to tell the truth. So when you're evaluating people's claims about morality,

01:45:25 – 01:45:31:	just check their work. If it's wrong, has it always been wrong? If you just discovered it's wrong,

01:45:31 – 01:45:37:	where did it come from? As soon as you go back far enough in their genealogy that you find, well,

01:45:37 – 01:45:43:	yeah, it came from some girl's vision in 1823. You're done. You don't need to examine whether

01:45:43 – 01:45:50:	the vision was checked out by any experts. That's a teaching of demons. You know that it's evil

01:45:50 – 01:45:56:	because evil is going to continuously attack the church from within. There's evil in the world

01:45:56 – 01:46:02:	that has nothing to do with the church because Satan is the prince of this world. But there's also

01:46:02 – 01:46:08:	evil within the church that behaves in different ways because Satan needs to trick us into worshiping

01:46:08 – 01:46:14:	him while we're calling on the name of God. In the episode on apostasy, we'll talk about where God

01:46:14 – 01:46:19:	says people will come and say, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy and cast out demons in your name?

01:46:19 – 01:46:26:	And he will say, truly, truly, I tell you, I never knew you. That's dire. That's something that

01:46:26 – 01:46:33:	leaves us feeling like that's scary. So we'll treat that entirely in that episode. But just remember,

01:46:33 – 01:46:39:	when someone comes to you speaking in God's name, he's not necessarily from God. And frankly, today,

01:46:39 – 01:46:44:	in the current state of the world and in the current state of our churches, when someone

01:46:44 – 01:46:50:	comes to you and says they're from God, starting with a podcaster, you should test the spirits.

01:46:50 – 01:46:55:	You shouldn't automatically believe them. Don't believe what they say because they're clever or

01:46:55 – 01:47:01:	they're flashy or gimmicky. Whatever appeals to you intrinsically cannot be relied upon.

01:47:02 – 01:47:08:	What you can rely upon is that God's word is true. The scripture is eternal. That it is

01:47:08 – 01:47:14:	existed outside of time and was transmitted to us for our benefit. When God has revealed something

01:47:14 – 01:47:19:	that's true, that says right and wrong, that's it. That's a whole shooting match.

01:47:19 – 01:47:25:	Anyone else who comes along later and says, hey, I found a new sin. You test that spirit,

01:47:25 – 01:47:30:	and then you judge according to what's going on. And when you look at these things in this simple

01:47:30 – 01:47:35:	heuristic, you're going to find all the new stuff is lies, all the new stuff is wickedness,

01:47:35 – 01:47:40:	and all the new stuff is what's popular. The old Christian teachings about these things are gone.

01:47:40 – 01:47:46:	Obeying God, that's gone. And no one wants to hear about that. Never mind. It's what Jesus

01:47:46 – 01:47:53:	exhorts continuously. We don't want to hear that because it condemns us. And that's okay. We should

01:47:53 – 01:48:00:	be aware the scripture condemns us even as Christians because that is the law that explains

01:48:00 – 01:48:08:	why the gospel is our good news. We are forgiven. We are washed white in the blood of the Lamb

01:48:08 – 01:48:14:	by virtue of God paying for those sins, paying for our unbelief, paying for our failures.

01:48:16 – 01:48:20:	But having received that payment and having received the knowledge of that payment,

01:48:20 – 01:48:26:	that's the beginning of the Christian life. It's not the end of it. So as we navigate these days

01:48:26 – 01:48:32:	that are hard and getting harder, as we seemingly have fewer and fewer pastors and teachers who

01:48:32 – 01:48:39:	will speak as God has always spoken, there's unfortunately it's going to fall more and more

01:48:39 – 01:48:44:	to men who have not necessarily been trained in these things to evaluate the claims of those who

01:48:44 – 01:48:47:	are saying, I'm here from God. Let me tell you what he really meant.

01:48:48 – 01:48:56:	To some degree, that is part of the reason for this podcast. Our hope with this podcast, with

01:48:56 – 01:49:04:	these episodes, is to equip you in order to assess the claims of others, to equip you in order to

01:49:04 – 01:49:11:	find these things in scripture. Again, we will reiterate, we have said many times for what we

01:49:11 – 01:49:18:	will continue to say. Do not simply trust the things we say. We're not saying you cannot trust

01:49:18 – 01:49:23:	us. I would say you can trust us. I believe that we have amply demonstrated that at this point.

01:49:24 – 01:49:31:	However, when it comes to the things of God, we have scripture. Scripture is the test.

01:49:32 – 01:49:39:	Scripture is the one standard. Scripture is that against which the words of any teacher,

01:49:39 – 01:49:46:	any pastor, anyone claiming to speak the words of God or to speak on behalf of God must be tested.

01:49:47 – 01:49:54:	And so take anything we say and test it against scripture. If what we say conflicts with scripture,

01:49:54 – 01:50:00:	then we are liars and wrong. It may not be intentional on our part, or it may be intentional.

01:50:01 – 01:50:04:	You, to some degree, will have to make that call for yourself.

01:50:05 – 01:50:11:	We're not saying you cannot trust anyone. Part of human life is trust, and we have to trust others,

01:50:11 – 01:50:19:	to some degree. What we are saying is that things of God must be subjected to the word of God. That

01:50:19 – 01:50:25:	applies to us as teachers, and that applies to any other teacher or pastor. It applies to all men

01:50:25 – 01:50:32:	in all places at all times. When we read the church fathers, we subject them to scripture. When we

01:50:33 – 01:50:39:	read sermons by famous pastors or famous theologians, the works of the great men

01:50:40 – 01:50:45:	of church history, we subject them to scripture. We should do the same thing with modern teachers.

01:50:46 – 01:50:53:	Because, again, it is scripture that is the only standard because it is the standard given us by

01:50:53 – 01:51:01:	God. Scripture is absolutely true and absolutely reliable. It is the rule against which all other

01:51:01 – 01:51:11:	things must be measured. I want to add a quick comment here before we close out this episode.

01:51:14 – 01:51:20:	Woe mentioned the burning of the magic books that occurs in the Book of Acts that is mentioned there,

01:51:21 – 01:51:28:	and the large value, the sum, the value for which those books could have been sold.

01:51:29 – 01:51:34:	It was a great deal of money. It was a great deal of money then. It would be a great deal of money

01:51:34 – 01:51:43:	today. But there is another example that is slightly different because of the way it was executed,

01:51:44 – 01:51:50:	but is still an example for Christians, a godly example of how Christians are to behave,

01:51:51 – 01:51:57:	and that is the disputation of Paris. This was, of course, the trial of the Talmud as one of the

01:51:57 – 01:52:04:	other names of it, carried out under King Louis IX. We won't go into the details here because that's

01:52:04 – 01:52:13:	not the relevant matter. The issue is that a godly Christian monarch, a godly sovereign,

01:52:14 – 01:52:20:	investigated a matter, discovered that it was wicked, and destroyed the evil materials. The

01:52:20 – 01:52:26:	Talmud is evil and should be destroyed. It is an absolutely wicked book. Collection of books,

01:52:26 – 01:52:34:	really. But the value of the copies of the Talmud that were destroyed in front of Notre

01:52:34 – 01:52:43:	Dame by Louis IX, I will admit, it is difficult to estimate in current dollars for various reasons.

01:52:43 – 01:52:50:	These were handmade. They were made of various different materials. Some of the editions were

01:52:50 – 01:52:56:	better than others as to be expected, but it is somewhere between 10 and 12,000 copies of the

01:52:56 – 01:53:04:	Talmud were burned. This was not a small number. That is an immense number of books for that day

01:53:04 – 01:53:10:	and age. Again, remember, handwritten, and the Talmud is not short. In modern printing it is

01:53:10 – 01:53:17:	thousands of pages long. If you were to roughly estimate the value of those books burned,

01:53:18 – 01:53:23:	in modern dollars it would be between 200 million and 20 billion dollars.

01:53:27 – 01:53:34:	That is the Christian response. The Christian response is to destroy evil regardless of the

01:53:34 – 01:53:40:	supposed value of it. And that is what a godly prince does. And so it is right that we have

01:53:40 – 01:53:45:	statues in various places for Louis IX. He was a Christian prince and should be remembered.

01:53:48 – 01:53:55:	But now to close out this episode. I know that many will, again, notice that we focused on the

01:53:55 – 01:53:59:	law in this episode, and that's true. We did. The law is important. I went over that previously.

01:54:02 – 01:54:07:	But there is a statement that is common in particularly Lutheranism, but others have

01:54:07 – 01:54:13:	adopted it as well, that the gospel should be permitted to predominate. Now, of course,

01:54:13 – 01:54:18:	that applies primarily to sermons and we are not pastors. We will never be pastors. We have no

01:54:18 – 01:54:25:	intention to be pastors unless God sends a giant fish to swallow me. I am not becoming a pastor.

01:54:26 – 01:54:29:	I suppose here in Tennessee perhaps it would have to be something other than a fish since we're

01:54:29 – 01:54:39:	rather landlocked. However, many misunderstand what it means for the gospel to predominate.

01:54:39 – 01:54:49:	The gospel does not predominate in terms of volume. The gospel predominates in terms of weight.

01:54:51 – 01:54:57:	And the reason for this is that no matter how many, or how terrible my sins may be,

01:54:57 – 01:55:05:	or your sins, or anyone else's sins, they are finite. Yes, the transgression itself

01:55:06 – 01:55:10:	is infinite in its nature because it is against an infinite God and the party

01:55:10 – 01:55:16:	against whom a transgression is committed does factor into the weight of the transgression.

01:55:17 – 01:55:25:	And so, yes, the weight of our sin is infinite, but the number of our sins, again, regardless

01:55:25 – 01:55:30:	of the heinousness of them, is finite because your life is finite. You can commit only so many sins.

01:55:30 – 01:55:35:	Even if you spent every waking second sinning, you could commit only so many in your life.

01:55:35 – 01:55:43:	The gospel predominates because Christ's sacrifice is of infinite value,

01:55:43 – 01:55:48:	is of infinite weight. And also your sins, if you are a Christian,

01:55:49 – 01:55:56:	are finite in that they will be erased by God when you are renewed at the Second Coming.

01:55:57 – 01:56:02:	God doesn't just promise that your sins no longer count against you.

01:56:03 – 01:56:10:	God promises to forget your sins. That which God forgets is gone in a way that God does not

01:56:10 – 01:56:17:	even begin to approach describing. It will be as if they never existed,

01:56:17 – 01:56:24:	as if those sins had never been committed. What God forgets doesn't exist. It's gone.

01:56:24 – 01:56:31:	I don't even have the words to describe. It is no longer a thing. That is what God promises.

01:56:32 – 01:56:40:	The weight of that is infinite. Nothing can predominate against that. That is the way in which

01:56:40 – 01:56:49:	the gospel predominates. And so, yes, even if most of the episode was law, the fact that we even

01:56:49 – 01:56:57:	mention the gospel permits it to predominate, because it predominates in weight. It does not

01:56:57 – 01:57:06:	predominate in the number of words dedicated to it, because Christ's sacrifice, again,

01:57:06 – 01:57:13:	is of infinite value. And the glory that awaits us in the next life is of infinite value

01:57:13 – 01:57:21:	and of infinite duration, because, of course, it is eternity. And so, the gospel predominates

01:57:21 – 01:57:25:	because it is infinite and all else compared to it is finite.

01:57:27 – 01:57:33:	And so, I just want to close with the second paragraph from the Nicene Creed,

01:57:34 – 01:57:37:	because it is a good summary of the gospel.

01:57:51 – 01:57:57:	Begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

01:57:57 – 01:58:03:	Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the

01:58:03 – 01:58:10:	Holy Spirit to the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate,

01:58:10 – 01:58:15:	he suffered and was buried, and the third day he rose again according to the scriptures,

01:58:15 – 01:58:21:	and ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father, and he shall come again with

01:58:21 – 01:58:37:	glory to judge the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end. Amen.