At Any Cost: 29 May 2026 (Q&A)

Added: 2026-06-02

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[00:02:51]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat. [music] >> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat.

[00:05:07][music] [music] >> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Hey. Hey. [music] [music] [music] >> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Well, for whatever reason, it seems like OBS has decided that my audio stack is not something it likes. So, at any rate, I will just feed the raw audio to this for this episode, which means you may hear a little more background noise than normal, but at any rate, that will work.

[00:12:35]But it is the 29th of May, 2026. I am Corey J. Mhler, and this is at any cost.

[00:12:42]I assume that you all have sound now.

[00:12:45]The levels all look correct on my end, so please let me Thank you. I was going to say, please let me know in the chat, but at any rate, no idea why OBS is deciding to do this, which it occasionally does. So, if you hear panting in the background, that would be Gizmo, who is hiding at my feet currently because we have a storm starting here, and he really does not like thunder and lightning.

[00:13:07]At any rate, now that the audio is working, I can go ahead and get into the questions here. Question one, some easy questions before I get into something that's a little longer. Like I said, I would get into some more complicated material this week. Probably a longer answer will take up more of the episode, but at any rate, question one, an easy one to start. Do you think God will have jobs or careers for us in the new creation? And the person says, "No reason, just fun to think about." And the answer is that yes, you will have something to do in the new creation.

[00:13:42]The distinction here would be between labor and work. And you're going to have work in the new creation. We should say you're going to have something to do, whatever it happens to be. God originally made us to be gardeners. So certainly that's going to be a thing that we'll do in the new creation. Some of us already enjoy that. So that's good news. But God did not create us just to be idol. That's not a human life. That's something fundamentally different from what a human being should be doing. So there will be work, but it won't be labor or laborious in the sense of being something we dread having to do or something that is, you know, taxing on us, weighs us down, beats us down over time, right? Not that sort of work, but work in the sense of something that is productive, makes you feel like you are doing something because you are indeed doing something. So that will still exist.

[00:14:40]But on a tangentially tangentially related note there, I usually don't say that much about paradise or about the new creation because so much of it is speculative. There are some things where we can clearly say that this or this will not be the case or this or that will not be there. But in many cases, we live in a fallen world and we live thousands of years into the fallen world. So it's difficult for us to understand what a perfect world would even be. And God doesn't really give us a ton of specifics about the new creation. We just know that it will be what he intended it to be. So everything that is bad in this creation due to the fall will not be there. That's why I usually don't say that much on the topic because it is somewhat speculative generally speaking because we only know so much about that just like we only know so much about angels and demons and how they interact with our world and the rules God has set for them. God doesn't give us much in the way of details. So generally speaking, I don't comment too much on that because it's too speculative. I would just be guessing, extrapolating.

[00:15:52]It's not certain enough for me to want to make a public statement on that kind of thing. Question two, if an adult convert and his future wife had a miscarriage outside of wedlock and before they return to Christ, do we have any way to know if the baby is saved in spite of its faithless parents?

[00:16:13]This is a difficult question because there's not necessarily an easy answer here. Certainly, we know that if you have one believing parent, you can be certain that God has provided for that infant. I went over this in a previous episode. In fact, I went over it last week because you have the passages that speak of the unbelieving spouse being sanctified by the believing spouse and then the children are holy because of the parents. And then you have the passage with David and Ba Sheeba where clearly a child conceived outside of wedlock and then David as a prophet says that he is certain he will see the child again and that is comforting to him. I have Gizmo moving around now sitting on my feet. But with regard to those who are not believers, scripture does not actually state what happens for the children of unbelievers who die very young. So miscarriage for instance.

[00:17:19]All we can do in that case is commend that child to God. I don't think it's wrong to pray to God about that child. I don't think it's wrong to pray for the departed. Right. Obviously, I'm Lutheran. I don't believe we pray to the departed. But I don't think that it's wrong to pray for the departed. And it's not a matter, it's not an issue that, you know, you're praying after the fact, right? You're not praying for something in the future. You're praying for something that's already occurred. God's outside of time. When you are praying within your frame of reference with regard to time, doesn't matter to God, right? So, I don't think it's wrong to pray for something like this. In fact, I think it's a good thing to do that. So, the short answer is that we have to leave this up to God. We don't really have any firm word in scripture other than God will do what is perfect and all things work together for the good. God knew this individual would come to faith, would return to the faith. God knew that that was a child of someone who ultimately will be saved, who is a numbered among the elect.

[00:18:26]take comfort in that and knowing that what God will do is perfect. We don't know exactly how that works here in time and that's fine. We don't have to know everything here in time. We know enough that we can take some comfort from that.

[00:18:41]We just can't be absolutely certain because scripture doesn't give us that answer.

[00:18:47]And I know that's not necessarily the answer everyone wants to hear. But sometimes the truth is what it is. It's not necessarily exactly what we would prefer, but we can again take comfort in the fact that God's plan is perfect. God knows all of his sheep. God knows all of the elect. And it doesn't matter when, how you die, when you pray. Right? These things are outside of time from God's perspective. So take comfort in that.

[00:19:15]Question three, do you think kindness to animals count as works? People exist for people and they are who God wants us focused on. But do you think works extend beyond purely human affairs? I guess it's a good question since I currently have a small dog sitting on my feet hiding from the thunderstorm.

[00:19:35]I think that those definitely count as works because many of the things that we have to do are duties that do not pertain to human beings. Right? We have a duty to care for the natural world. We have a duty to care for the possessions that God has entrusted to us. So, we shouldn't be destructive, unnecessarily destructive with regard to those. We should treat our things well, not just people. That includes animals. God certainly entrusted the animals to our care. We are supposed to treat them well. So, you shouldn't abuse your farm animals. You shouldn't abuse your pets.

[00:20:08]You should take good care of those. And that does count as a good work because you are doing what God designed you to do. And a good work is simply doing that which is conssonate with God's will. So taking care of your pets, treating them well, taking care of your other physical things, these are all good works because you're doing your duty that God has given you.

[00:20:32]Question four, how can you argue against race mixing from a Christian perspective? I am convinced by natural law, but my family uses Jesus as a defense for their betrayal. I want to convert, but this is my hindrance. So, this one comes up all the time, which I don't mind going over it again because it's an important question. It's going to keep coming up for the foreseeable future for reasons that are obvious to everyone. I'm not going to give the full answer here because in part the full answer is, you know, go listen to the race series on Stone Choir. I will link to that in the show notes. So, I'll put a note here for myself to link to that.

[00:21:16]You can also listen to some of the debates that I've done on the topic. So, I've gone over it at some length there, although some of those were a little technical because of the reality of the proposition that was offered by the other side. and it was more beneficial to accept than reject the proposition for the sake of the debate. But I would here at least go over three points really. I guess they're really more expansive than three points, but three sort of core points I would go over.

[00:21:43]Your first point you sort of made already, right? You appeal to natural law. Well, God is the author of natural law. So you are appealing to God when you appeal to natural law. There's nothing wrong with doing that.

[00:21:57]Christians have long recognized that the natural law is important. The natural law flows from God's character, flows from God's essence, his nature. And so, you can appeal to the natural law. God is the author. He's the one who created it. The way that I've typically said it, and there are other men who said it as well, God wrote two books. Nature is the first one, and nature really is the more important one in a certain sense. It's the greater one because it's the one to which God appeals when he speaks of his own greatness. You can think of the book of Job, right? He doesn't appeal to prophecy or revelation or anything like that. He appeals to creation when he is telling Job of his greatness. So even God appeals to nature, creation as his greater work. The way in which scripture is greater of course is that scripture reveals the gospel. Nature does not reveal the gospel. you need scripture for that to be saved. So, it's greater in that sense. But there's nothing wrong with appealing to nature. And when it comes to appealing to nature, I think there are a few points you can bring up with someone who has at least some shared Christian framework. Because if there is a designer, right, if there's a God and you can find evidence of the way he designed something, then you should act in accord with that design. One of the strongest points for this is that the peak for for fertility is depending on the group somewhere between third and fourth cousins right around there. Sometimes a little maybe a little more out than that but basically third or fourth cousins that's peak fertility.

[00:23:39]God designed that into the system. God says children are a blessing. God is the one who designed where you are going to have the greatest number of children produced by a given marriage. And that is with your somewhat distant, not close obviously that's a different problem, but your somewhat distant cousins. Not distant in the sense of like other side of the world cousins, but third or fourth cousins. God built that into the system. So that's his design. That's clearly his intent. So not going outside of that and not disobeying and marrying your first cousin is a good thing because you are acting in accord with God's revealed will in nature. So again appealing to nature. You can also use issues like the compatibility of immune systems. Right? There's a reason foreigners smell weird to you. It's not just because some of them have bad hygiene. It's because you're not compatible with them genetically.

[00:24:35]Usually that's to deal with the immune system. Another thing that God built into the system and so God has revealed his design. We should obey his design.

[00:24:45]We should go along with what he clearly wants us to do.

[00:24:50]There's also the fact that scripture is just blunt about this. God is the one who created the races of men and not just created the races of men but set their times and their boundaries. So, geographic and temporal boundaries. He set those very clearly there in the book of Acts. and elsewhere as well. Because for instance, you have when the Israelites are coming into the promised land, God says there are certain places he will not give them so much as enough to set their foot upon of certain segments of land because God has given them to another race. The or the Ammonites, whoever it happens to be, God has given territory to other peoples. As long as they remain faithful, they retain ownership of that territory. Of course, there are consequences for faithlessness.

[00:25:38]But if God created the races of men and then he set their boundaries, he clearly wanted them to be separate. So when you are marrying outside your race or when you are moving to a foreign country, you are actually doing something that is contrary to God's will because God is the one who set those times, set those boundaries. He didn't do that idly. If he wanted everyone to just turn into one undifferentiated mass of humanity with no racial distinctions, no national distinctions, he wouldn't have set times and boundaries. So scripture very clear on this that God is the one who set these. You may have to explain to people that nation and race are the same thing.

[00:26:21]Some people have trouble at that concept, but they're literally identical. Look back through history, look at the etmology, they mean the same thing.

[00:26:30]And sometimes people will try to argue about, you know, ethnicity and race. And they're just arguing over Greek versus Latin. These are all the same terms that mean the same thing. And scriptur is also clear on that point because you'll have the race of insert name here, right? Israel is called Israel because they're the race of Israel descended from Jacob renamed Israel. That's the reason they have the name. So that's a point you can make with someone who has that shared Christian framework, at least some Christian framework. And then the third point I would make would be look at the consequences of misogynation. And again God is the one who designed the system. God is the one who designed how it works. So when you do something within creation and it has negative consequences. God is the one who designed those negative consequences. Misogynation has negative consequences. It leads to health issues.

[00:27:24]It leads to psychological issues. it causes all sorts of problems and that's a very clear indication that it is contrary to God's will. So I think if you bring up those three points, if you're dealing with someone who's going to be honest, if you're dealing with someone who is going to be open to actually examining the issue instead of simply shutting down immediately because they've been trained to react in a certain way, you can probably get somewhere. That's probably the best approach. And it shouldn't be something that prevents you from being Christian because it's only in the last say 50ish years, maybe a little longer, kind of 1960s when it really began in earnest where you have people who claim to be Christian and subscribe to this modern so-called morality. We've called it the new global religion or the post-war consensus.

[00:28:17]That's not Christianity. That's a different religion. It doesn't matter what they call themselves. They're not Christians because they don't subscribe to what Christians actually believe. So, you're going to have to do some work probably in dealing with that. Maybe you can get them to listen to the series on race. It is just purely factual dealing with the issues as they exist. It goes over the the fundamental issues, the Christian perspective, consequences, you know, where do we go from here? So, again, I'll link that in the show notes.

[00:28:47]I would definitely recommend that you listen to that. and then maybe recommend that your family or others listen to it as well.

[00:29:01]The next question here, a related question. This one's easier to answer and then I'll get into the Enlightenment, which may take up a little bit of time here.

[00:29:12]Question five. Since you want deportations of people who are not white in the US, what happens if someone like an Indian born in the US doesn't know how to speak a language other than English? That person gets deported but he wouldn't feel like a or he would feel like a foreigner in India since he can't communicate with other Indians. How would your nationalist political view address this problem?

[00:29:39]There are a number of ways I can address this. The first one is probably just to be blunt. It's not our problem, right?

[00:29:47]Our own people are the ones for whom we're supposed to care. So a foreigner who doesn't feel like he's at home in his own home nation, that's not my problem. That's his problem. That's his home nation's problem. So yes, it may be that his parents or grandparents created the problem for him, but that doesn't make it my problem. My concern is my people because I have the greatest duty to family and then extended family and nation. And yes, sometimes nation trumps family, right? When you have to go off to war, that's nation trumping family.

[00:30:23]But that's how that works. I don't have the same level of duty to the foreigner even if he speaks my language and doesn't know his own language. That's fundamentally not my problem. Now in this particular case, not really an issue because plenty of Indians know some English. So this particular example given isn't even a real example. If you speak English, you can get by in a lot of countries, particularly living in a city. And then you pick up the language, right? when you're living there, it's not that hard to pick up a functional use of the local language. It's not a real issue. It's an argument some people try to use, but it's not a real problem and it's not a valid argument against a nationalist policy of deporting those who don't belong to the nation because they shouldn't be here in the first place. Related to the previous question, right, God is the one who set the boundaries and the times. These people belong in their own lands, not in ours.

[00:31:20]And so they should be sent home. They can, you know, use Duolingo on the plane or whatever it happens to be. Use a better app. That one's not great anymore.

[00:31:35]Going to copy some questions from the chat that I may get to today, I may not, but I just want to keep them for future reference.

[00:31:44]The next question is a longer one because I need to go over some background. It's just more complicated question.

[00:31:54]Someone asked about the Enlightenment and its connection to the American Revolution. And so in order to go over this, there's some background information you have to know because if you don't have the history here and how these things developed and some of the nuance, the differences between different groups within this time period, you're going to miss how these things interacted and played out and how we wound up with the American Revolution. and perhaps more importantly the documents that proceeded from it and then indeed the United States polity as well because it is very much a product of the enlightenment. You know, I'm not sort of not burying the lead here, right? I'm not it's not a spoiler alert.

[00:32:44]We all know that's where I'm going with this. But in order to start off, you have to understand the Enlightenment proper. And there are a handful of different regional distinctions under sort of the umbrella of what we could call the enlightenment.

[00:33:01]Primarily the enlightenment when we speak of it, you know, uppercase E, we mean English, Scottish, French. And in the American context, obviously the Anglo portion, the English-speaking portion is a little more relevant to us just because many of the founding fathers had a smattering of other languages, but they were reading primarily the English authors. Some of them loved the French, Jefferson, Franklin, but mostly they were going to read, you know, lock and others like that or in translation, of course, because these things were still being translated back then. It was just a lot harder without AI. took more time.

[00:33:39]The focus of the enlightenment in short would be a focus on reason, their formulation of reason. So bear that in mind. Empiricism, so divining things from the natural world. And then what they called natural rights. That's a big part of this obviously because that's where we get the declaration and the constitution and the bill of rights.

[00:34:03]that conception of natural rights that is a core part of the enlightenment claims and this is perhaps against some of the claims of traditional European thought and even traditional Christendom.

[00:34:18]There was also attendant with this a skepticism toward authority. So particularly against the aristocracy, the clerical class, significantly more so against the clerical class in the French case than in the American case.

[00:34:33]partly for historical reasons, partly because to be blunt, Satan was AB testing. He likes to do that. He ran the American Revolution in one way, he ran the French Revolution in another. As it turns out, American Revolution was the better way to go. Worked better for him long term. France descended into greater chaos and kind of has cyclical chaos still stemming from that. But by and large, the American experiment far more productive overall than the French. So that skepticism, that skepticism toward the clerical class was because you had the great power of Rome historically in France and the amount of wealth and power in society and things like that that were wielded by particularly archbishops and others in higher positions in the church.

[00:35:24]That made people very skeptical toward them. And then there was obviously the relationship of the French crown to the Roman Catholic Church. And because of the anti- monarchical sentiment in particularly the French thinkers of the enlightenment, it transferred over from there into the church as well, into the Roman Catholic Church specifically. Not as much hostility necessarily toward Protestants because Protestants don't have a pope and typically don't have archbishops.

[00:35:54]some exceptions of course Anglicans and others but it's not the same level of control in society even the Anglican church did not wield the sort of power in the English context that the Roman Catholic Church wielded historically in the French context but in addition to what we'll call the enlightenment proper which is in England France and Scotland that's the core of it and then American enlightenment is obviously sort of a daughter movement from largely the English and the Scottish, some French influence as well.

[00:36:28]But there are two other movements of which you have to be aware because they run somewhat in parallel and there's a feedback a relationship between them and the enlightenment. There's more of it with regard to one of these movements than the other.

[00:36:46]But I'm going to get up for just a second. I'm going to release Gizmo. He'd like released Gizmo. He's free to wander about now. So going back to these two movements, you have the Haskcala, which is the so-called Jewish Enlightenment, taking place primarily in central Europe, largely in German-speaking areas, but it has some relationship to the French as well as to the English enlightenment movements.

[00:37:38]Not as much overlap there necessarily with the American, but obviously you're going to get a connection between that through the English into the colonies, right? And then the other movement, the final portion of this which you have to be aware is the alle which would be the German version of the enlightenment.

[00:37:58]Not the same thing because the the Jewish one is sort of similar.

[00:38:05]There's a focus on reason and you know reason on secularization on secular education and on for the Jews integration into European society in order to avoid persecution and a push for religious tolerance from the society the host society with regard to the Jews. You see this push for so-called religious tolerance across the board all of these movements not as much in the German version of it the offer but you certainly see it there as well because for instance in Prussia and Austria you see liberalization of control over the Jews and more tolerance but you certainly see it in the French context with the French Revolution and in the English context and that a little bit in the American context as well. But the distinction with regard to the German version of the Enlightenment, it's almost a misnomer to call it the Enlightenment, but it's the equivalent intellectual movement happening in continental ger Germanic Europe roughly the same time that the Enlightenment is happening in the Anglosphere and the French.

[00:39:20]The focus in the German context was on reformation instead of revolution. So you get the revolutions and the radical changes in some parts of the Anglosphere because obviously you don't have a revolution in England really. you have some changes, but it's not the same thing as the American Revolution or say the French Revolution, but you didn't have this just sort of wholesale desire to oust the aristocracy and the monarchy that you certainly found in the US in the colonies and in France in the German context. In the German context instead you had the nobility, the aristocracy and indeed the monarchy sort of working with the intellectuals, working with the philosophers and others to implement some of these things. So the rational exploration of some of the sciences and things like that, the philosophical examination of some of these things, that sort of stuff took place, but in a structured way that did not trend toward revolution, obviously until you get into the 1800s, and that's Marxism. It's a separate thing. It was very bureaucratic and administrative in the German context. Very unsurprising for anyone who is aware of how Germans are. If you want to get more into that, because typically speaking, Americans are less familiar with this than they are with the Enlightenment. The sort of three thinkers you would want would be Emanuel Kant and then Gotfrieded Lightnitz and Christian Wulf. Those would be the three thinkers. I'll make sure to put that in the the show notes for people so you don't have to know how to spell those German names. But the core focus here of course is going to be the anglophere plus French enlightenment because that is what influences American thinkers the most because while there were Americans who spoke German certainly the first speaker of the house was a German Lutheran pastor son of a German Lutheran pastor he certainly knew German most of the founding fathers did not know German they were reading the English materials And so in the American context, what you have perhaps even more so certainly than the British, but perhaps even more so than the French is sort of a classical republicanism.

[00:41:42]This love of the republic. There was they were obsessed with Athens, right?

[00:41:46]The Athenian model was a big thing. And so this republicanism focused on derivative from the enlightenment the social contract which is to say the consent of the governed. And the argument is that the government is legitimate only so long as the governed consent to the government.

[00:42:06]We're just going to ignore the fact that that's incoherent.

[00:42:10]But that is how this was structured.

[00:42:12]This was a big part of the thinking in the American context subsequent to the enlightenment. This is social contract theory, right? And so that suspicion or hostility toward the monarchy, toward the aristocracy also carried over into the American context.

[00:42:31]Perhaps a little easier in the American context, although at the same time a little less relevant because you didn't have the same formalized structure with regard to aristocracy and nobility in the US, in the colonies, what would become the US, that you had in England.

[00:42:48]It just hadn't developed yet. You had stratification in society, but largely as a result of wealth, not necessarily as much a result of family lines, because that just hadn't entrenched yet in the New World, at least in the American context. And some of the writing that would be most relevant for this would be common sense from Thomas Payne. He was definitely anti- monarchy, perhaps more so than a number of others.

[00:43:19]He described it as artificial and basically railed against it and just wanted to completely do away with it. So argues for the state of nature, things like that. Obviously descended from enlightenment philosophy.

[00:43:33]But key here in his writing and this was very accessible. Many men read this because it was very accessible pros. It was in English. It was not something that was difficult to read. It wasn't in Latin or anything like that. He argued for a right of revolution.

[00:43:50]That basically the people, the common people had a right to rebel if certain things basically these this enlightenment checklist of things was not fulfilled by the government. If the government was not properly achieving the ends for which the enlightenment argued that government was instituted.

[00:44:13]And you can see the ends in the declaration of independence, life, liberty and the declaration says pursuit of happiness instead of doing essentially this is lock right but for lock it's life liberty and property and of course you have property protections as well but we have pursuit of happiness instead it's the same sort of idea advancing the same arguments it's the same thought behind it it's the enlightenment and then subse Subsequent to that, of course, you have the constitution. The constitution carries forward a great deal of the thinking of the enlightenment. This time pulling in a lot from the French and in particular for Montescu. So in Montescu, you find the division of the powers that would historically have all resided within the sovereign, right?

[00:45:10]And you can think of Carl Schmidt perhaps as a a contrast to this. But within the sovereign, you have the right to legislate. You have the right to enforce the law. You have all these different powers, right? And the right to interpret the law. So judicial, not in our system, right? We have a tripartite division of our government.

[00:45:29]We have the executive, we have the legislative, and we have the judicial.

[00:45:33]So this is from enlightenment thought which basically argued that if you have this division of power you can have checks and balances and you can stop the power from becoming tyrannical. I think those of us living now in this time at a distance of some centuries from these men and what they created can see that in fact our government has become more tyrannical despite these supposed limitations than the kings of old and is certainly doing less for us and is certainly doing more evil against us. So for Montescu that would be the spirit of the laws would be the book if you want to go and look at how that sort of developed. And then we also have enshrined in the constitution this freedom of religion which is very much like I said sort of across the board.

[00:46:22]You have the Jewish involvement in the huska breeding in bleeding into these other groups and then you have this push for tolerance of different religious opinions right in society. This is a deviation from the historical norm of having a state church. Even if you were in a country that was divided with regard to confession, right? You may have some reformed, some Lutheran, some Roman Catholics.

[00:46:48]Usually in a given area, you would have an established church because the ruler of that area was of that religion. That was how that worked. And then in some cases, you have just a state church, right? Anglicanism.

[00:47:02]Even in the US context, you had established state churches.

[00:47:08]This is the beginning of the end of that. And so you have what the founding fathers almost certainly meant to be and their writings do support this. But what they almost certainly meant to be a freedom of denomination eventually becomes what we have today, which is, you know, you could call it a true or a full freedom of religion.

[00:47:30]Right?

[00:47:31]What they thought undoubtedly and this is backed up by lock. I'll mention that in a minute here. What they thought is basically you can be Anglican or Lutheran or Methodist or Presbyterian or Baptist or whatever freedom of denomination, freedom of tradition, not necessarily freedom of religion. So the idea of being, you know, a Hindu or a Muslim would have been completely insane sounding to the ears of basically every founding father.

[00:48:07]But that is ultimately not what they actually wrote because the way they wrote it was freedom of religion, which is unfortunate. they could probably have solved some problems we've had subsequent to their wording if they had just done a better job.

[00:48:25]For instance, one of the ways you can see this are like I said, lock L lock L lock L lock L lock L lock L lock L lock L lock L lock L lock has a letter concerning toleration is what the the title is letter concerning toleration and in that he argues for this freedom of basically conscience and denomination tradition but he actually explicitly says this doesn't mean that we should tolerate atheists and papists so Roman Catholics that's more in line with what the founding fathers had in mind when they were drafting they didn't draft in that way and so that's why we now have you know monkey statues in Texas and things like that but the fundamental point is they were already doing away with Christendom by their actions because Christrysendom requires you to have an established church. It doesn't mean that you have to go out and persecute say every group that is deviant in some way. If you have the Presbyterian church, that might be difficult for the Presbyterians to make that argument. So the Anglican will go with them instead. If you have the Anglican church as your established church, it doesn't mean that you have to go out and execute all the Lutheran, right? But there is a fundamental difference when you have an established church. You have Christianity as your official state religion. You have ceremonies that are Christian, you have all these trappings of Christendom versus what we have today.

[00:49:52]The most we get today is sometimes Congress will say a prayer and sometimes it'll be you know a Jewish woman leading the prayer right that's where you end up when you start doing away with all these pillars that supported Christianity that supported Christmom that ultimately supported our civilization because this is what many of the individuals who were part of the enlightenment did not realize what they were doing relied entirely on centuries of Christendom to give them the foundation to pursue these things.

[00:50:26]But they were undermining that foundation with what they were doing.

[00:50:30]They were destroying the very thing on which they were standing. And this happens all the time. It happens even today when you argue with atheists and others. They will import the moral law.

[00:50:41]They will smuggle it in and deny they're doing it, but they're relying on Christian morality in their argument.

[00:50:49]And so it comes up all the time in debates where you know ask them why is murder wrong and they don't have an answer. At best what they'll do is construct something that ultimately is actually resting on Christian morality.

[00:51:05]It's resting on the moral law but they reject the moral law at the outset. So their argument is self-defeating. It has no foundation.

[00:51:15]This is sort of the beginning of that.

[00:51:17]Many of the enlightenment thinkers were undermining Christrysendom and the ability to maintain and restore Christendom with what they were pursuing even if they didn't realize it.

[00:51:29]And so the bottom line here, I guess in summary, I don't want to go too long necessarily on the topic in any one given episode. I can comment more on in the future if people have specific areas of interest. But the United States is and particularly with regard to its founding documents a product of the enlightenment and particularly a product of enlightenment thought and the attendant rejection of tradition and traditional forms of governance and how authority runs and rights versus duties.

[00:52:05]All of that has contributed to the decline of Christrysendom.

[00:52:11]It's one of the reasons I am opposed to the Constitution. I do not think it is a good document. It is a thing that is descended from and is tied to, inextricably tied to the Enlightenment and all of the wickedness that flowed from the Enlightenment.

[00:52:28]You can't divorce them. It is something that is fundamentally alien to Christendom and to all of our history.

[00:52:37]It's it was Satan AB testing. The US system was better in the long run with regard to the goals he wanted to achieve. The French option was too chaotic. It was too violent. They went overboard. The French kind of do sometimes. And so that's why I oppose the way our government is currently structured and the documents on which it relies because they are products of the enlightenment. And I do not think that the enlightenment is something that a Christian can in good conscience support once you actually delve into it and learn about not just the things they were arguing but the consequences of those things. Because consequences do actually matter. you write fruit tree good trees produce good fruit bad trees produce bad fruit the enlightenment produce bad fruit so I guess that's the the overview as it were of the connection between the enlightenment and the American revolution and then the American experiment that proceeded from that and I do want to briefly note there is a distinction between the United States the political construct and the American nation The American nation should be preserved. That is the thing for which we are fighting. We're not fighting ultimately for the Constitution, the Declaration, the United States. Those are political creations that come and go. The nation is what endures. The nation is what matters.

[00:54:15]Let's see.

[00:54:25]I guess sort of a follow-up question. I may as well answer it now since I just went over some of this stuff. Someone asked, let me get the exact text here.

[00:54:34]Do you think, this is question seven, do you think a republican form of government could be Christian? The CSA wrote its constitution on behalf of God and the Boore Republic tied citizenship to race and church membership.

[00:54:48]I think that yes, you can have a republic that is Christian and I think that it can function for seemingly well maybe not seemingly but in theory an indefinite amount of time and remain Christian, functional, etc. Apparently I activated my HomePod. At any rate, I do believe that's possible. I think the problem is that as we have seen, the form itself inevitably leads to certain forms, certain types of decay over a not very long period, couple centuries give or take. And ultimately, I think it destroys itself. And if you compare that to say centuries of Christendom under aristocracy and monarchy, I think the option is pretty clear. And there's also the problem of if you're going with a republic. And right, I've said there's no real difference between democracy and republic. And I say that because the one inevitably leads to the other. Republics become democracies in the due course of time. That's just how it goes. But let's say you could have a republic that stayed a republic with a very limited franchise.

[00:56:00]That's workable as long as you very strictly maintain that limited franchise. That's your challenge because you're dealing in headship, right?

[00:56:10]You're dealing in men exercising authority over other men, over society.

[00:56:16]Certain men are fit for that task and certain men are not. So ultimately what you're doing is creating an aristocracy.

[00:56:24]You're just creating an aristocracy that happens to vote for certain things. The Holy Roman Empire had a system of voting for the emperor. There were electors.

[00:56:35]So these things are not like opposite ends of the spectrum wildly incompatible. You can have elements of voting representation so-called in a system that is not itself a democracy or anything derivative from democracy like a republic. So can it work? Can it be Christian? Certainly. I just don't think it's wise because I think inevitably it's going to go the same way as every other one has in history. We have not yet managed to construct an exception and I don't think that we ever will.

[00:57:14]Going to copy a few questions from the chat here so that I can get to them in the future.

[00:57:27]Hopefully the video has frozen on my side, so I assume that it's still working since no one mentioned it in the chat. But tech issues are just a lovely thing.

[00:57:59]I have a question here that's in German.

[00:58:02]I will translate it because I suspect most of the audience does not in fact speak German.

[00:58:09]A friend of mine argues that the Old Testament does not show people being saved by looking forward to the cross and therefore finds Christian doctrine not truly convincing.

[00:58:25]This is question eight.

[00:58:30]So the answer for your friend here would be [snorts] it's going to depend really on how he's approaching this. If he's approaching it as someone who is just truly skeptical of Christianity, hostile to Christianity might potentially be the case here.

[00:58:51]You're going to have more of a challenge. You have to probably address that in some other way. you may want to focus on the New Testament and Christ and what the New Testament teaches and then you can get him to believe the Old Testament after he has already believed in the New Testament. Right?

[00:59:11]But to answer sort of the the core objection, which you can decide if it's going to be effective in your case or not with this particular individual, those who were saved in the Old Testament were saved because they were looking forward to the Christ who was to come. They had faith in the Christ to come. Look at Job. I know that my redeemer lives and at the end he shall stand upon the earth and my eyes shall see him and not an other. Right?

[00:59:43]Obviously I know primarily the maseretic text but it's quite similar in the Septuagent.

[00:59:49]So Job is looking forward to a redeemer who will come. He's looking forward to the Christ.

[00:59:56]That is the case with every single one of the Old Testament men who is called righteous. They're called righteous because they are looking forward to the Christ who is to come for us. Now we can look at the Christ who has come. We have that advantage. We know the history.

[01:00:13]They were looking forward in expectation. We can look back and see that it happened and then look forward in hope of the resurrection.

[01:00:22]So my question really would be I don't what would he say is the religion then of the Old Testament? What is it that they were actually doing? Because the sacrifice of the animals and all that stuff was pointing forward as the New Testament is very clear. The blood of bulls and goats does not wash away sin. It's only the blood of the lamb of God that washes away sin. So the ceremonial stuff in the Old Testament is all pointing forward to Christ. It didn't actually that doesn't forgive your sins. That makes you right with God with regard to your social standing in the Old Testament. in Old Testament Israel, but it is only the blood of Christ that can wash away sins.

[01:01:04]And you can see this for instance with David. When David does what he does with Ba Sheba and Uriah, there's no sacrifice for that. God doesn't provide any sort of system for when you get a man's wife pregnant and then murder him, right? God doesn't say that that costs X number of goats.

[01:01:28]But the prophet Nathan going to David says, "God has put your sin away." Well, what is the only way you can do that?

[01:01:34]Well, look at what David says in the Psalms. David is looking forward to the Christ, right? And David calls him Lord.

[01:01:42]Jesus himself brings up this point. How can David call Christ Lord when Christ is modulo some number of generations a son of David? Right?

[01:01:54]It's very clear from the Old Testament and certainly once you get the New Testament to interpret the Old Testament that the religion all throughout scripture is the Christ. It is the forgiveness of sins in the name of Christ by his blood, his perfect life, his perfect sacrifice. And you can see this all the way at the beginning with the proto evangelion when God speaks the gospel incidentally to Satan but also to Adam and Eve standing there.

[01:02:24]That is the gospel all the way back in the garden in the beginning. It is the Christ who will come who will crush the head of the serpent who will destroy death and the devil. It is the same religion all the way from the first to the last page of scripture. So, if you have a follow-up question or your friend has maybe a clarification of what exactly his objection is, I'll be happy to answer that in greater depth in some future episode. But I think that's probably the starting place is to point out the clear places in the Old Testament where you have men who are relying on faith in a savior as opposed to works. Because David is probably one of the best examples because there was no possible work he could have done to absolve himself of that sin. His only hope was the Christ.

[01:03:34]having to scroll through the chat in the web interface because OBS decided I shouldn't have the chat load.

[01:03:53]Okay, I think I pulled out most of the new questions from chat. I don't know that I will get to all of them this week, but I think I'll answer a couple more questions here. Maybe pull some from the backlog. Try to get through a little bit of that.

[01:04:07]I know that someone asked about baptism and infants. That was last week. I'm not going to get to that one this week, but I will make sure to prioritize that one for next week just because baptism comes up all the time. Obviously, I would recommend listening to the episode on baptism from Stone Choir. I'll link that in the chat in the show notes rather as well.

[01:04:30]But I will comment on that next week in the interval. If the person who asked that question is currently listening, I would highly recommend reading from the large catechism Martin Luther's comments on infant baptism. He does an excellent job. You can read it in maybe 10 minutes if that.

[01:04:58]I was going to save this next one for next week, but I think I'll just go over it now because it's it's ultimately not a particularly difficult question. It's just one that gets muddied because of certain modern modern Christian groups.

[01:05:14]Question nine, what exactly is speaking in tongues? The church I grew up in didn't have a great teaching on this.

[01:05:21]That's true with most churches. They generally don't touch on it very well and they really should particularly in the American context. It's not as big of a problem in some well okay in Europe it's not as big of a problem. It's certainly an issue in Africa, South America, some degree in Asia. Asia is not as bad as those two. Speaking in tongues is speaking in a language you have no reason and no right, no way to know, right? So, if I suddenly started speaking French right now, that would be speaking in tonesues. Hopefully, that doesn't happen because I doubt any of you know French. But speaking in tonesues is not speaking in some angelic or heavenly language that no one understands. And yes, I recognize there are some verses touching on that.

[01:06:08]Paul in the most common one people bring up is being sarcastic.

[01:06:14]Paul is actually sarcastic in quite a few places in scripture. So for the people who try to condemn sarcasm, too bad. God likes it. Christ himself uses sarcasm. But speaking in tongues is a sign gift that God gave to certain individuals for basically two purposes.

[01:06:32]The first is the sign part. It's proving this person is speaking the word of God chosen by God to do this thing. The signed gifts were a big part of the church in the early years because God was putting his stamp of approval on this to begin the spread of Christianity.

[01:06:49]He's pulled back on that. I'm not a cessationist. Lutheran do not teach cessationism. So the sign gifts have not totally stopped. They're just not as common these days because God already achieved what he wanted to achieve with them. He does not operate in that way currently at least not as frequently.

[01:07:09]But the second part of course is just the practical part and you see that right Pentecost you see individuals speaking in a language that is the native language of those around them and they're saying we understand what is being said because it's in our tongue.

[01:07:23]That's all they're doing. So if someone suddenly stands up and starts speaking in X language and there's a group of people who understand it, okay, that's speaking in tongues. That can still happen. It's just not very common these days. But it's not the people who stand up and start speaking gibberish, right?

[01:07:44]That's a totally different thing.

[01:07:46]And that's the issue is you get these groups that go overboard on trying to exercise sign gifts that were a very common thing in the early church and not today. Not having these is not a sign you're not a Christian. Right?

[01:08:04]Not all Christians speak in tongues. Not all Christians have the gift of prophecy. These are things that God gives to whom he wills for reasons that are his own. So don't try to speak in tongues. If God gives you that gift for some reason, you'll know. It's not something that you start, you know, stand up and start blathering. That's on the level of like automatic writing.

[01:08:29]That's almost communion with demons.

[01:08:31]That's not something Christians should be doing. But the short answer is that speaking in tonesues is human tonesues.

[01:08:37]And tonesues is just an older way of saying language. We still use that sometimes. It's just not as common in modern English.

[01:09:00]I'm very tempted to answer this question on the national debt, but I feel like it's going to run 15 or 20 minutes. So maybe next maybe maybe maybe a future episode. I won't necessarily say next week because I don't know that I'll get to it, but I will put a a star next to it as it were.

[01:09:20]I think I will end with a question about concubines and surrogacy.

[01:09:29]So, question 10.

[01:09:34]The Old Testament contains concubinage and the use of slave women as surrogate mothers. Where do these concepts stand in terms of the moral law?

[01:09:44]So obviously the clear examples probably the two best examples of this would be Abraham and then of course you know Israel right who has two wives and two concubines. Abram has a number of wives concubines. First off, a concubine is a wife. That's important to understand. And I can't remember the exact place now in scripture where it actually states that.

[01:10:12]I would have to look for it. I the verse is not coming to mind. But there is an there is a place in scripture where that's explicitly stated. A concubine is a wife. And a concubine is just a wife of lower social standing in a given context.

[01:10:28]We don't have that anymore. That's a good thing. That was something that was very common in the near east and the Middle East. Still happens in those parts of the world. Sometimes in Asia, it happens in imperial courts sometimes, things like that. It's not a good thing.

[01:10:44]It's not part of God's intended design.

[01:10:46]It's not how things should generally work. Now, if a man, say a king, has multiple wives, will one wife probably have higher social standing than his other wives? Certainly. The one who bears the heir. That's fine. That's normal. And polygyny is not morally impermissible. So you can't say that's wrongful. But as a general rule, monogamy is the best system. That's why when I have said polygyny is morally permissible, the only real exceptions I've said where society should permit it is where you have a very compelling reason. The two most obvious, the king who needs to produce an heir and after a war if a bunch of men die, right?

[01:11:29]because then you have a lot of women and not as many men. God made the system so that you can recover from a war. Those are basically the two exceptions. There are some more than that, but those are the the core ones. So, as far as slave women and surrogacy and things like that, that is not part of God's design. Right? That is now there are two sort of different aspects of this because you do have the case of say Abram right Sarah gives the slave woman to Abram and then he has children that's a different thing because what that is is he has a wife she's a concubine in this case so she's lower social standing because of the reality of that time and place but she's still a wife you don't get to have children with your slave women and they're not your wives. Scripture has provisions for that as well. She's to be treated as a wife.

[01:12:27]So these are not things that we should be practicing as society. Just because something is not morally impermissible does not mean it is wise. There are things you're allowed to do that are still stupid. So we should not bring back concubinage. We should not have, you know, slave women as mothers for children, things like that. God's ideal system, the way that he wants things to run is monogamy. One man, one woman. That's the ideal.

[01:13:00]That is the goal for society. We should aim for that. Now, again, there are those exceptions when there are extreme circumstances. But just because there are exceptions does not mean we should permit those things all the time. Just because you have to do certain things in a time of war does not mean you want to have them in times of peace when things are operating as they should instead of how they must. So sometime and it's also worth mentioning the general rule the interpretive rule.

[01:13:33]I've mentioned this many times, but there are parts of scripture that are descriptive and there are t parts of scripture that are prescriptive or procriptive depending.

[01:13:44]Just because something is contained in scripture doesn't mean it is something you should do. There are things that are statements of the moral law. They are unchanging. They're God's will. You must obey those. But there are other times where it says, you know what the men in Sodom and Gomorrah were doing.

[01:14:01]that is descriptive. It is describing something that happened that is not telling you how you should behave. So obviously yes you have Abraham right in the case of a man who's called righteous and he is blessed with these things. So polygyny again morally permissible not something society should desire because it is not beneficial and we're not nomadic herders who need a bunch of children in order to keep their flocks right. different social conditions. It's not that social conditions change the morality. It's that social conditions change what where we fall on the spectrum as it were of things that are morally permissible. So again, just because polygyny is something that God permits does not mean it is ideal does not mean we have to permit it. Sort of like we don't have to have the exact same punishments for crimes as Old Testament Israel. We can in some cases.

[01:15:00]We don't need to in all cases except of course murder because Genesis 9:6.

[01:15:05]So the general rule is no. Don't don't bring these things back. Don't don't try to make the political right-wing into some weird little cult of guys who are all arguing we should each have 10 wives, right? We're not fundamentalist Mormons. That's not the goal.

[01:15:21]That's not good. That would be destructive for society and it's just not how we should do things. So, I think that pretty much sums it up for this week. Got to got to more questions than I thought I would actually since the Enlightenment one ran a little long, but the others were not as long. So, I think I will call that here and go see how Gizmo is handling the storm. At any rate, thank you for those who submitted questions. I always enjoy doing this every week. So, thank you for those who participated in the chat. If I missed your question, I did see some questions that went past. Some were repeats from previous questions. There is a future topics list on the forum and you don't have to sign up to see that. If your question is not on there, then I do not have it. I missed it. It went past. I didn't get it. whatever happened. In that case, please submit it via the forum preferably because that's the easiest way for me to keep things organized. But certainly in the chat, Telegram, X, wherever else I try to aggregate those, put them into the topic list so you can see if your question is there. Again, if it's not, submit it to me in some way. I'm not intentionally ignoring your question. Just sometimes it goes by in the chat and I don't see it or OBS just doesn't show it to me.

[01:16:48]That's happened, too. I, for instance, went to look earlier for a couple questions that were posted via X previously, and I actually had to go to Reream, the platform I use to stream to multiple platforms because X just sent them into the void. They're nowhere to be found on the platform. So, that kind of stuff happens. At any rate, thank you for your time and the questions and for your participation. and I look forward to doing this next week. Until then, it is of course Friday, so enjoy the rest of your weekend. Go to church on Sunday and God bless you. I will see you all on Thursday or Friday, depending on which one.