27 Mar 2026 (Q&A)

0:00 It is the 27th of March 2026. I am Corey J. Mahler and this is at any cost. This is episode 22, a QA episode. And before I get into the questions for tonight, I'm just going to do a little bit of housekeeping, just three things really quick. Three questions that are pushed to next week. That's the housekeeping. The first is about Japan, China, and India and how religion has played a role in that and either preserving or degenerating those people. So really a question about Shinto versus Confucianism versus Hinduism. And then the second is the connection between Jupiter and related things to that, various pantheons and how they tie into Christianity or corruptions of Christianity. And then the last one is national socialism and how it is

0:46 consonant with Christianity. Because I have of course posted before that national socialism was a translation of Christianity into politics, and I do believe that, so I want to treat that at greater length and greater depth, so I'm pushing that to next week when I have more time to prepare it. I didn't have time this week. But moving on to the questions for this week, and I have noted the questions that have come in so far in the chat, so I've added those either for this week or next week, depending on whether or not I'll get to them. The first question, rather timely considering just a few days to go for this. Question one. So this year I noticed in my church's app that we are hosting a Passover Seder service on Palm Sunday.

1:29 However, this is not part of the main service. It is an optional event you can go to later in the evening. It is alarming me because this seems like a very Judaizing move. It is. They will be hosting a speaker by the name of Murray Tillis tiles, I don't know how he pronounces his name. He is a Jewish Christian, in quotes, that's appropriate, man that runs an organization called Light of Messiah Ministries, and links to the website. His whole modus operandi, from what I've read on his site, seems to be to bind the conscience of Christians to Jews in Israel. That's expected. The nation state, of course, he's speaking of, and that he has that here as a parenthetical. Perhaps trying to make sure that the boomer glue is still adhesive

2:10 and emphasizing the Jewishness of Jesus in quotes. Also fighting anti Semitism also in quotes is one of their missions. I am not sure what to do or say about this. If it were just myself, I would be compelled to raise concerns to the pastors about this. However, I am a member alongside my parents who are very entrenched there. Many years I only became a member of the church a year ago. My dad has been part of the music ministry for many years, and my mom is very involved in small groups. I do not want to embarrass them or alienate them from their peers or the pastors by being the person that sounds the alarm. I want to keep the fifth commandment. I assume he means the the reform numbering, so the fourth commandment

2:52 for those of us who are Lutheran. Honor thy father and thy mother, of course. My parents, especially my dad, are quite aware of my weariness of the Jews and my distrust of them as we talk about politics and the Jews frequently. I am thirty four years old and can look for another church at any time, but I love being there with my family as a whole. Side note something that also makes my ears perk up is that my pastor has been increasingly using the pronoun Yahweh to refer to God, and this appears to be a fairly recent phenomenon. I've also never heard any dispensationalism or Zionist teaching coming out of the church are from this pastor, the head pastor. So this sort of Judaizing is kind of taking me by surprise.

3:34 This is obviously going to be an issue that is going to face many and has faced many in the past say ten years or so. There is a very real push to try to keep Christians on the reservation as it were, to keep Christians believing that the Jews are chosen in some way they're special and that we have to support them and blah blah blah. The first point I would make is that anyone who calls himself a Messianic Jew, that's a red flag. Why is he calling himself a Messianic Jew instead of a Christian? The handful of Jews after the very early church period, when, you know, the first century or two, many Jews converted. They did, and then mostly were slaughtered by their brothers for their trouble. But after that point, any Jew who converted did not call

4:26 himself a Messianic Jew. He called himself a Christian, and so And so these Jews who are calling themselves Messianic Jews, all they're doing is hedging their bets. They're doing the same thing that Jews have done down through history. You control the opposition, you play both sides. I would never trust someone who calls himself a messianic Jew. If he calls himself a Christian, I still have some reservations, and I'd like him to be over in Israel being a Christian, over there instead of here. And that raises other problems as well, but if he's calling himself a messianic Jew instead of a Christian, that is such a major red flag that absolutely no he should not be speaking at a church. what gives him some sort of authority or

5:11 anything really. What gives him the teaching ability is it just because he's a Jew? That's what's being implied here. No, being a Jew does not give you the ability to say anything about the Christian faith. If anything it's a handicap and you should say nothing about the Christian faith. So in your case obviously there are some other considerations. If this is a church where your family has been for some period of time, in the American context, a lot of times you don't have someone who's been out of church for generations, so a long time may just be five, six, ten years, whatever it happens to be. Which is not a trivial amount of time. It is in the grand scheme, but not, you know, for a human life.

5:52 So do you go to another church? I think is really the core question here. And I think the answer is if they continue down this path of Judaizing, which is what this is, you correctly recognize that, that's open Judaizing. If they continue down the path, you're going to, for the sake of your conscience, have to find a new church. Because this is probably not going to get better. It's probably just going to get worse. And you're at the age where your parents are probably old Gen X instead of boomers. Right around that age, it kind of depends on some various factors. But so six years different for me, my parents are of course baby boomers. This is going to be an issue for those of us kind of in that age range, because if you want to continue attending

6:42 church with your parents, which is a good thing, you should want to go to the same church as your parents, your siblings, your cousins, you should want to be with family. That's a good thing. But the most important thing is that you're going to a church that is actually teaching correctly, that is teaching right doctrine, that is administering the sacraments, that is an actual church. So this is going off the rails. It will probably get worse. That's just the reality here. If you raise it with the pastor, right, in this case, multiple pastors, you raise it with a head pastor, whatever it happens to be, he's probably just going to brush you off and then watch you like a hawk. Maybe they won't go after you right away or kick you out,

7:24 but they're going to watch you closely, and they may try to make life difficult for you. That's just the reality of it. you may realize that for better or worse, some men who call themselves pastors are not in fact Christian. They really only care about the money, the Jews in Israel. And if this is a man who has before this not been Judaizing and now he's suddenly doing so, I would kinda wonder why? What changed? Did something in his family change? Did money exchange hands? Why did this happen? Maybe you can't find out what happened there, but if he's made that sort of change, the odds of him becoming your enemy, if you point this out are very high. So that doesn't mean that you don't bring this up, it doesn't

8:16 mean that you don't leave and attend another church. Maybe you have to do that. It does mean that you need to keep that in mind there may be those sorts of consequences. You mentioned that you discuss these things with your parents. So if you can discuss this with your parents and get them to recognize that this is contrary to what Christianity actually teaches. It's contrary to what all Christians have believed down through the centuries. Then maybe you can get them to leave the church with you and you can all together go to a new church. That would be a certain Certainly a better outcome than you simply leaving and going to a new church on your own. But the baseline here, I think, is that this is probably going to

8:57 get worse, and you're probably going to have to find a new church. So if you can take your parents with you, that's great. I don't think that you necessarily have to confront the pastor on this because the odds that's going to go anywhere beneficial to anyone are just about zero. If you feel that you are compelled to do so, if your conscience is convicted, you feel that you need to go and tell the pastor what he's doing is wrong, this is not Christian, this is sinful, you need to stop, you need to desist Then by all means obey your conscience. But if you don't feel that compulsion to do that, then just out of an abundance of wisdom, it's probably better not to bother in this case, because the odds of anything, again, anything positive happening.

9:43 Are basically zero. This is a pattern that I have seen many times. I've had people DM me. They've DM Woe and others. This happens a lot. So it's where we are today with the churches, and we're sort of in a transitional period because we're still building up new and better churches to replace these old ones. But a lot of places you're not going to have one of those churches readily available to you. And so the boomers still control these churches. They've not quite gotten old enough yet to stop being elders and pastors. As they retire and live And leave, that presents a real opportunity to shift things. So, as I've mentioned before, it's tangentially related. If you can get on the elder board of your church and

10:30 start to shift things away, and then you were probably one of the ones who has a vote to call a new pastor. By all means do that. That's one way you can return a church to faithfulness, a particular church body to faithfulness. But I think here this is a a matter of conscience. If your conscience is pricked, then perhaps you have to go and confront that pastor. Nothing positive will come of it, just letting you know that. And if it continues down this path, probably find a new church. Hopefully alongside your parents, but if not, then attend the new church and hopefully over time you can raise the issue with them. Maybe they'll see the light. The next question question two sort of related to question one actually it seems that most governing

11:24 church bodies are a shell of their former selves and deteriorating rapidly. In today's climate, I am struggling to see how this will be beneficial for either party in the long run. So the basic question is should we join a church body? I've answered this one a number of times, but it's always worth repeating. By and large, the corporate church bodies, and it doesn't matter which one you have in mind here, whether it's the LCMS in the Lutheran case, or it's any of the various Presbyterian or Reformed ones, or it's the Church of England, in our case the Anglicans over here, whatever it happens to be. They're basically all, if not outright apostate, very close to it. At the upper echelons, which is to say the leadership.

12:07 The same thing, of course, is true of the Roman Catholic Church. I don't know anyone who's actually a true conservative Christian who likes the current Pope or who liked the previous Pope. There were a handful who liked the former Hitler youth guy. Unsurprising, he was actually good on some things. But as far as church bodies go, you're not so much joining the church body as you are joining the local church. Now, there are some obvious differences there, some difficulties for those who are Roman Catholic, right? Because when you're joining a Roman Catholic church You're kind of joining Rome. So that's more difficult for them. For those of us who are Protestant, it's not a problem because what you're really joining, yes, there are some that are episcopal, and

12:55 so there's a bishop over your pastor and things like that. That you have a little bit of that over with Protestants in the US, not as much, more over in Europe. In the Lutheran case, for instance, basically all Lutheran bodies are congregationalist, which just means the local parish owns the building, the land, leases it, whatever it happens to be, and the vice president, who is a bishop, that's all he is, he's just changed his title, doesn't have that much authority. He can't really tell the pastor you have to do X, Y, and Z. Now, there are formal ways to deal with disagreements, right? For instance, if someone is excommunicated, then it can be appealed and then there can be sort of a dispute between the bishop and

13:39 the church. But by and large, the parish has some level of autonomy. And so what you want to find is a faithful parish. And once you have found that, then you can help to move that parish to be more faithful, or if necessary, you can push for leaving the national body. Which is perfectly fine, because then you can join a faithful national body at some point in the future. Like I've said before, for those who ask me, which Lutheran church should I attend I'm in X area? You're going to have to check because Because some of them will be faithful and some of them will have a pastor who's just a company man who's going to follow whatever synod tells him to do. And that guy will stab you in the back.

14:26 So it doesn't mean that there are no good churches. It just means you can't look at the sign and know by what denomination or tradition the sign has on it, whether it's a good church or not. Because these days, it may mean very little. So is it worth joining a church body? Absolutely, because there are still good churches, and you should not forsake the gathering together of the saints. Starting up a home church is sort of the extreme option. And let me know in the chat if the birds are coming through a little bit too loudly. I'm in the south and it's spring and the birds are very excited, the sun's setting. But if you join a church body, you are joining that local parish, and it may very well be a very good church, and

15:10 that's great if you have that. Starting up a home church is the last resort. That is, if you don't have faithful church bodies, if they are all so apostate around you that you cannot in good conscience attend any one of them, then start a home church. That's basically the hierarchy. Find a good parish. If none are available, start a home church. Nothing wrong with starting a home church. It's just not preferable. You don't really want to have to go back to 100 AD, right? You'd sort of rather have the benefit of all of the development in terms of the building and the liturgy and all those things over the last two thousand years. But if you have to, start a home church. Question three. My brother and his wife are pregnant.

16:06 Hopefully just she's pregnant, but with their first child, they did the ultrasound, sadly, I don't have a problem with ultrasounds, but that's not the question. And found out that their first child will be a boy. Would I be sinfully binding my brother's conscience by telling him that I believe circumcision is not a wise decision. Do we know for certain that the procedure of circumcision that God commanded the Israelites is not the same procedure that is performed today? I'll take those in reverse order. So we do know that the procedure that was done back then is not the same. It was a cutting of the tip of the foreskin, not the removal of the full foreskin. There are a number of places in scripture where you can infer

16:50 this. Now archaeologically and historically we know that is the case, but there are number of places in scripture where there are narratives that do not make sense if it were a removal of the full foreskin. One of the most telling is when Joshua crosses over the Jordan and they're going toward Jericho to sack Jericho, they have to circumcise everyone who was wandering in the desert because they weren't circumcised on the way the way. So, you know, these are thirty, forty-year-old men and others as well, obviously. Eight days old and up, right? These are the men who are then going to have to go and walk around the city for a number of days and then fight and take the city. If it were the removal of the full foreskin, I think all

17:33 the men in the audience recognize, you would need a little while to recover from that as a 40-year-old man or a 30-year-old or a 20-year-old man, whatever it happens to be. They didn't really need much time to recover. Another one would be when the angel of the Lord is pursuing Moses as he is going from Midian back to Egypt because he had failed to circumcise his sons while he was in Midian, and his wife takes a stone tool and circumcises the sun. You're probably not going to do that quickly with a stone tool if it is the removal of the full foreskin, I think that's pretty obvious that's kind of a delicate operation that requires a degree of skill and much better tools. So I think taken together it's pretty obvious which sort of circumcision

18:20 is in view in scripture. It's just the removal of the tip of the foreskin or a cut in the foreskin. It's not total removal, completely different thing. That is a modern abomination that has been pushed on many in the world, particularly Americans. So would you be binding his conscience by telling him, say it's it's Judaizing, it is impermissible mutilation of your son, something like that? You are binding his conscience, but I think it's permissible. And I think that if you succeed in that, his son will certainly thank you later in life when he realizes who did that for him. So I don't think that it is objectionable to bind your brother's conscience with regard to this. He should put his foot down and say, I am not s

19:05 I am not circumcising my son, and his wife just has to obey in that. So I think that that is not just something that you could do, but something that you should do in this case. And also the historical argument, this is not something Christians did. The Greek converts, with very few exceptions, were not circumcised. And basically every Christian convert after that was not circumcised. This is completely novel and almost exclusive to the American context outside of parts of the world that are say Islamic where they practice it as well. Question four. I have recently gotten a girlfriend and this woman is everything I've ever wanted in a woman. She wears head coverings and skirts without being asked.

19:56 She wants to cook and do the dishes for me. She wants multiple children. She's deeply caring and concerning and there are many other things. I think she would make an amazing wife, and yet I seem unattracted or bored, although she is somewhat cute. I was very infatuated with her in the first few weeks that I met her, but it is not quite the same now. I know I would be an absolute fool to throw away such a good thing. I do really like her and I deeply care about her, but I have that problem. Am I just getting used to her in my life and have gotten over the initial thrill of finding exactly what I want? Am I trying to be emotional about her when I don't need to be as a man in parentheses there?

20:34 Will my feelings grow? Is there just an ebb and flow that I am making out to be more than what it is? I was exhausted the day that I thought this, so perhaps I'm overthinking it. This touches obviously on a number of profound issues, but I think the general takeaway is that there is a fundamental difference between infatuation and love, right? Now, for some people, there the one can kind of shade into the other to some degree. For men, there's obviously a spectrum. Not all men are monolithic in one way or the other, right? And this is also going to be racial a little bit too, obviously. Germans are not going to behave in the same way as the Spanish, or certainly as you know, Africans or Asians.

21:22 There are different ways of expressing these things and different ways of feeling them to some degree as well. So perhaps the early th feelings there that you had could correctly, as you said, be termed infatuation. It's a sort of different thing from building marriage, right? Marriage is a lifelong, long-term, serious commitment, and it is something that is built over a course of years. Part of the way you build that is by having children and living with this person. Now you don't need to be emotionally tethered in the way that you perhaps desire right now. That will develop over time. For men, that is going to be something that is going to deepen as you spend years Spend years with this woman as you

22:15 build your life with her, as she births your children, takes care of your home, cooks you meals, does all these things, right? That is something that is accumulated over time, and we all recognize this with regard to almost everything, right? You know, I could say I don't actually have a favorite pen, but you know, if I had a favorite pen, it's partly going to be because of how often I've used the thing. It's not going to be just because oh I found a shiny pen, very neat. I conveniently picked a shiny one. I do have some that I like more than others that I write with all the time, and it's partly because I write with them all the time. I've had them for a long time. So you shouldn't look at this as a negative.

22:58 This is not a problem. Maybe you just if this is, you know, the first serious girlfriend you had, then you this is a new experience for you. You've not developed sort of the responses and you don't know your own internal states with regard to how you're going to deal with this new part of your life. So So no, I don't think that you need to be concerned about this. Be glad that God has blessed you with this sort of woman and hopefully everything turns out well and you marry her and have some number of children, whatever number God chooses to give you. So So it I think it is important though to draw that distinction between sort of the emotional infatuation of something novel. Right. It's this it's the level of excitement of opening an Amazon

23:42 box. Ooh, I have new stuff. Okay, fine. That little dopamine hit, great, whatever. That's not what sustains, in this case, the most one of the most important relationships in your life. That's not what builds something long term. That's a completely different thing. It's not nothing. It's not unimportant. But with regard to this, with regard to marriage, I don't think you have to worry at all about that. Just put that out of your mind. Particularly if you were tired that day, then by all means sleep it off and see how you feel the next day. But no. Infatuation is not love, and love is not infatuation, and if The infatuation fades, that doesn't mean there's no love there. Question five. Is there a biblical principle for the punishment of a human judge

24:38 who releases a violent criminal who subsequently commits murder? Similar to Exodus twenty-one, twenty-nine. So I'll pull that up. Let me go ahead and pull that up so everyone can see what I see. Ah yes, but if the bull was prone to gore before yesterday and before the third day and they warn its owner, and he does not restrain it and it kills a man or woman, the bull shall be stoned, and its owner shall die as well. And so of course this is one of the sections that gives you a standard for basically prior knowledge. If you have knowledge of the nature of nature of one of your animals and you know it is prone to hurt people. So perhaps we can think of a certain species, certain breed of dog here.

25:34 But if you have an animal that is known to injure, and then it goes and does that, it is a different thing from if the animal just suddenly spooks and does something, right? And so I think that there is somewhat of a parallel we can draw out there, but I would think maybe go to Exodus twenty Let me find the verse. Yeah. Starting with verse six, I think, is going to be a little more on point here. You shall not pervert judgment of a poor man in his trial, from every unjust thing said you shall keep away, an innocent and just person you shall not kill, and you shall not acquit the impious person for the sake of bribes, and you shall not take bribes, for bribes blind the eyes of those who see and corrupt

26:22 just matters. So judges are put in a particular position of authority and they have duties both to society and to God. And And when they fail in those duties, yes, I think it is the higher magistrate, so whomever that happens to be, he then has a duty to punish them. So our system kind of makes it a bit of a hash, quite a mess as to which individual is supposed to punish whom, right? Who has authority over judges. Okay. But that doesn't mean that just because we've tried to attenuate things that God's going to go, oh, your system is confusing and complex. You're morally excused. That's not how it works. Kinda ties back into the vice presidents and the LCMS calling themselves vice presidents instead of bishops.

27:09 You're still getting a bishop's judgment. Doesn't matter what you call yourself or put on your business cards. So So yes, a judge who releases a violent criminal, knowing him to be a violent criminal, has perverted justice and should be punished by the higher magistrate. And I think that that runs all throughout scripture. All of the places that deal with justice and God's care for you know the poor man who can't receive justice or his hatred of those who pervert justice for the sake of the wealthy, which is also in play here, right? Because you have all these organizations that advocate for not punishing the guilty. That's the same thing as a bribe. Just because money didn't exchange hands doesn't mean it doesn't count as

27:52 a bribe. Because you still have the social perks and all of the articles, the op-eds and New York Times and things like that, right? Those are also bribes. Morally speaking, and so that thread that runs all throughout of scripture is very clear. Yes, judges that pervert justice must be punished. Question six. If the following three things had to be ordered from most important to least in deciding where to move, how would you rank them? Assuming only a single option is possible without the other two Land or self-sustainability is the first. The second is church community that is compatible, so for the family, and three is to be near your aging parents. The problem that I have in answering this one, and I guess

28:46 I don't need the logos window up right now. The problem that I have in answering this one is it would depend on if you're asking me as me or me as a hypothetical man, because you know, the hypothetical man, well do you have a wife and children for whom you have to care? Then obviously self sustainability, land, that's going to rank higher for that man, right? I don't have that particular set of duties. And so that is going to rank lower in my case, although I moved to Tennessee in part so there there's land. But I think it's going to depend on where you are in life and what you have that has been entrusted to your care. So if you're a single man, then obviously being near to your aging parents to care for them is going to rank higher because

29:38 you don't have competing duties. But I think the overall answer here to ignore the restrictions on the question, but to give the the answer that I would actually give. Find somewhere that you would have good employment, whether that is land and self sustainability. I've mixed feelings on you the whole homesteading thing because if society collapses are you really going to provide for everyone around you and defend it and all that? But that's a sort of tangential discussion. But find somewhere that you can live provide for yourself, those entrusted to your care, move your parents with you. If they are your aging parents and it's to the point where you need to take care of them, they probably don't have that

30:22 many of their friends left around them just because of the reality of age of age. So move them with you so they'll be near their grandchildren if God has blessed you with grandchildren. And if there is a good church, great, if not, start one. Same answer as always. Start a home church if you can't find a good church. Question seven. I was just looking briefly at the chat. I see there are some questions. I may note those for next time. I may not get to them tonight. Bolsheviks aside, do you think any explicit deals were made with the devil by any of the allies in either world war, as opposed to merely his usurious children. I don't know that there were any sort of explicit deals with the devil.

31:15 I don't know that there was any demonic rituals involved? Other than, of course, the fact that you had a lot of Freemasons and their rituals are demonic, so that's sort of the easy answer is yes because. But was there anything sort of above and beyond that? I don't know. I don't I'm not aware of any particular evidence for it. I do know that there is a lot of involvement in the demonic and the occult with regard to the early foundations of computers and also on certainly the part of the Americans, probably the Russians as well, the space race. Because for instance, the head of JPL was good friends with Crowley. So for those who know the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, one of the most advanced for that particular area of research, and then

32:07 Alistair Crowley basically created his own version of Satanism and demon worship. So yeah. There's definitely stuff involved there after the war. I don't know if there was anything explicit during the war. There was a lot of weird stuff going on during the war though, so it would not surprise me in the least. Question eight. I guess this is actually related to the previous one tangentially. You've brought up 40k a couple times, so I'm curious what your involvement with the hobby is or was. I actually have never played 40K. I haven't played the games, incidentally. I've just picked up some of the lore as it were from being around others who have played the games and both the computer games and the tabletop.

32:54 So it has a lot of interesting themes in it. So I think probably despite seemingly despite the intentions of the creators, it really does have some pretty strong Christian themes in it. But that's just going to come through for a creator, an author living in a Christian environment, because you're steeped in it. You can't avoid it. So but no, I haven't personally played any of it. I don't really want to get into a hobby that is going to take up more space and time. I have enough and it's expensive. I have enough of those as is. Question nine. From a Lutheran slash Christian perspective, is xenotransplantation, which then in parentheses explained, using animal organs like pig hearts, kidneys, and human patients ethically

33:41 acceptable. How should Christians balance caring for human life with concerns about stewardship of animals and crossing natural boundaries? And more broadly, how should Christians think about this in light of the modern pursuit of extending human lifespan? Does this reflect faithful use of medicine or a problematic desire to push beyond God given limits? Well, without this sort of medical treatment, you would not have Stone Choir, at least not in the form that it took. Not my case, but in Woe's case. So I don't have an objection to it. I don't think that it is immoral or unethical. After all, we use animals for many different things, right? We use them as draft animals, we use them as companions, we

34:35 use them for food, certainly, you know. I have chickens, I eat the eggs. I haven't slaughtered any of the chickens yet, but I certainly eat the eggs You know, I'm wearing clothing that came from animals, things like that. They didn't have to die for my clothing, but God gave all of the animals to us for our use. And yes, we have to steward them, we should not abuse them. I think that animal welfare laws are good. I think that we should have stricter ones. Now, I will note, I do not believe in animal rights. I believe that we have duties with regard to the natural world. It's not that the animal has a right that we are violating, it is that God has given us a duty that we are violating, so really it's worse because you're disobeying God, right?

35:22 You can think of the Psalms, of course, against you you only have I sinned. But I do think that we should translate those things into our positive law and that we should have strict laws protecting animals with regard to their treatment and slaughter practices and things like that, we should absolutely ban kosher and halal. Animals should not be kept in cages their entire lives. We should care for the natural world as stewards, like God intended for us to be. But I don't have any objection to using, and it's really fairly limited, what you can use from an animal and a human being for a lot of reasons. Granted, if you decellularize and then you can use that matrix in order to build it back up that has more potential than just

36:08 straight using the organ. But I'd object to it. And also we're slaughtering the pigs anyway, if we can use another part of the pig, that's great, then we're being less wasteful. So I don't think that we're crossing a boundary there. I think it's perfectly morally permissible. Insofar as using technology to extend human life is concerned, I don't think that God has said you have to die before you reach X age. Right. The ages that are given in scripture are sort of a ballpark of God decreasing human lifespan from what it was in the age of the patriarchs. So So can we extend our lifespan without violating something God has imposed? I think within reason, yes we can. I don't think we're going to wind up reaching the level of

36:56 an in you know indeterminate lifespan. Notably, you can't be immortal. Because immortal means you can't die. Indeterminate means you are not going to die just by aging, by senescence, but you could still bu die by acute trauma, right? If a train hits you, you're still going to die, even if you wouldn't die from old age. So I don't know if we can perhaps get there at some point with advances in medical technology. Maybe that's possible because we've kind of figured out a lot of the things that contribute to aging, right? Build up a plaque in the brain, the loss of the telomeres of your DNA, things like that. So I don't think that we are playing God when we are making these marginal improvements.

37:42 If we get to the level where we can actually administer some treatment that makes you have an indeterminate lifespan. You will simply live as long as you possibly can until you die by misadventure, basically. I think that's a different discussion. I think then we've probably crossed a line. I don't think we should go that far. But if we can extend the human lifespan by 10, 20 years just by, you know, various measures that maintain our health and cut down on the various burdens of disease and things like that. I don't think that's morally impermissible. I think that that's probably a good thing. And in part it's undoing a little bit of the curse of the fall, and I don't think that's wrong. Because if you were going to say that's wrong, you'd also say

38:33 that spreading Christianity's wrong, because that's undoing the curse of the fall, in a small way. Or recultivating parts of the world that have been overtaken by noxious plants and animals, that's undoing the effects of the fall in some small way. I think that's permitted. Is there a boundary there? At some point, yes. So are there legitimate moral concerns? Absolutely. I just don't think we're there yet. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be thinking about them because the last thing you want to do is have the technology, be able to flip the switch, and have never asked the moral question about whether or not you should. So that's something about which we should be thinking because clearly our

39:12 science is headed in that direction. I just don't think we're very close to it. So for the smaller things like transplanting organs, repairing damage to things, you know, cleaning out plaque in the brain if we manage to figure out that technology, I think that's all fine. You know, no one wants their parents to get Alzheimer's. I think it's fine if we develop that sort of technology, it can solve those problems. A question from a previous episode that I said I would get to, and I think I'll get to it now. Question 10 is about polygyny, so I'll just address that briefly. When it comes to polygyny, there are really two separate classes of questions. The first is really monolithic. There's only one question under that umbrella.

40:03 Is it morally permissible? And of course I'm answering from a Christian worldview, because I don't think really most other worldviews say no. Christianity also doesn't say no. Polygyny is morally permissible, and we know this because it's never condemned in Scripture. Right? There are those who will try to go to the restrictions on Israel having a king, right? He should not acquire many wives for himself because they will lead his heart astray. Okay. Many wives for himself is different from having three, four, five, whatever it happens to be. God was saying don't be Solomon because God, when he was giving those restrictions, knew what Solomon was going to do. Notably, God doesn't condemn what David does.

40:51 David has some number of wives, I don't remember exactly how many, it's probably like twenty total, because he also has some concubines and others. So there's a pretty big difference though between 20 and a thousand, right? Because David had David had around that many, 20-ish, and Solomon had a thousand, if you include the wives and the concubines. That's obviously a problem. That's led your heart astray. You have now focused on something pretty obvious what you're focusing on instead of God. So another important part of this, and actually first I'll expand on the the morality of it because before I get to the the second part, which sort of the practicality, God tells David, and this is a key part of the argument, this is the one where you

41:38 can basically shut down anyone who believes in scripture with this. When God takes the wife of Uriah the Hittite, right, Bathsheba. When sorry, when David takes the wife of when David takes Bathsheba, right? When he commits that string of sins, God sends the prophet to him. And the prophet says, in God speaking through the prophet, if these things that I had given you, and what he lists would be the house, the kingship, the wives, plural, if these things had not been enough, if you had asked me, I would have added as much more to you, meaning more of these things, a bigger kingdom, more power, more wives. God offers to David that he would have given him more wives if he had simply asked. God can't offer anything that is sin.

42:33 So if God is ever offering a man more wives, polygyny cannot be sin. It's very simple, and it's something people just breeze through that part of Scripture, don't pay any attention to what's going on, and so they miss that it's very clearly teaching you something here. And so is polygyny morally permissible? Yes. And to be clear about the terms for those who aren't as familiar with them, Polygamy is having multiple spouses, multiple sexual partners. Polyandry is a woman having multiple husbands. Polygyny is a man having multiple wives. Polygyny is the only one that's morally permissible. A woman can never have multiple husbands. A woman is the wife of one man, period. And there are many places in scripture that touch on that that's

43:19 really not even up for debate. I don't think anyone's going to argue against that one. The second question is the practicality. Gonna have a sip of tea before I get into that. So the practicality is different because polygyny is morally permissible. It is not morally required, right? We're not fundamentalist Mormons. We're not saying that you must have multiple wives or you don't get your own planet, whatever it happens to be. If it is necessary, if it is good for society, then it can be permitted in society. But society can also ban it, because it is not morally required. God does not say you must permit it, God says you may permit it. So, if for instance you have a large war, more men die

44:18 than women in most wars. You don't need that many men to replenish a population. You do need a lot of women. And so if you have one man for every ten women because you had a disastrous war, polygyny is one of the ways that you solve the problem. It's a temporary solution. And you can also see, just by virtue of that example, it's sort of a solution to a problem. It should not be considered the norm. Because the ideal, which is a different thing, the ideal is one man, one woman for life, right? And then hopefully you die relatively near so that one doesn't have to outlive the other for ten years or whatever. That's the ideal. You don't want to have polygyny be a goal. That's not what it is. You don't necessarily want to aspire to have five, six, seven, ten

45:11 wives. That is a measure that society can undertake if necessary due to some other circumstances. So maybe that's something that'll be relevant in the future. But that's the answer is that it's two parts. One, it's morally permissible, and two, we probably should not permit it as a society unless we have to. So it's a question and the answer really, not the question. It's an answer that makes a lot of people angry, but it's very clear in scripture and the reason, ironically, that it makes many in the West uncomfortable, other than obviously you have the the male feminists, which who cares what they think, they have adopted a lot of the beliefs of their ancestors because basically all of the European tribes, particularly the Western European

46:06 tribes, were noted for being monogamous and for not having a whole bunch of wise polygyny was not a thing. And this was unusual compared to other parts of the world. And so that carried forward in our culture, and it's consonant with Christianity because it is the Christian ideal, but you have people sort of making this argument against polygyny because it just makes them feel weird, because it's not something our culture has practiced historically, but it's not morally impermissible, because the moral argument is very straightforward, it's very clear in scripture if you just read what's on the page, but again it's not something we aspire to, it's not something we want for society. In fact, given that it is usually a solution when you had

46:52 a disastrous war, it's probably something we'd rather avoid. So And I know that many are going to sort of as a tangential subseri question to that, right? Many are going to tie it into hypergamy and promiscuity and all the problems that we have today. And it just doesn't tie historically. There's no real connection there. You don't have the hypergamy and the polygyny and the promiscuity historically. It was not part of Western European culture. So what we have today is very much a product of enemy action. It is abnormal. It stands out in history because it is not part of our history. It's not part of our culture. So there's there's no connection there. Usually when people are tying genetic bottlenecks from, you know, hundreds or

47:44 thousands of years ago. They're usually looking at the result of a war. And there wasn't a genetic bottleneck because one man took all the women for himself. There was a genetic bottleneck because all the other men died. So the same sort of exception I was speaking of with regard to when polygyny could be useful for society, or effectively necessary. Question eleven, a lighthearted one, the note from the questioner. Is hyperborea just neo pagan fanfiction? I don't think there's a secret national socialist base under the ice. I don't think that that exists. We have the technology now where we could detect that sort of thing. I know someone could say, well, what if they have technology that can shield against that?

48:31 Okay, well. I don't believe that. I think that a lot of the people who argue for that and are not just arguing it in jest, are basically saying the world is flat and there's an ice wall and beyond the ice wall is where all this neat stuff exists and we're basically locked in some kind of purgatory. I don't believe that. The earth is spherical. The earth is not flat. That's pretty obvious. We proved it. We went over it in the episode on conspiracy theories, right? There's retroreflectors on the moon, etcetera, etc. So no, I don't I don't believe in it to give a serious answer to a lighthearted question. Question twelve. We know that Christianity in Africa actually makes a huge positive impact.

49:17 Would this also be counted as an argument for the truth of the Christian religion? As nothing else actually makes any kind of meaningful difference there except accept Christianity. That's very true. I will point out that there's a very tiny exception. Some Islamic areas in Africa are slightly better off than the animistic areas, but only because of the fact that Islam has a tendency to chop off your hands when you steal. That does make things better. So but actually improving people is different, right Stopping thieves from stealing is pretty easy. Improving men is very hard. So I would say that is actually a legitimate argument for Christianity. And this ties into the question I said that I am putting

50:08 off for next time. So I won't get into it deeply, but there's obviously the fact that Shinto has, in the Japanese case, done more for them than, say, Hinduism has done for India, right? So it's not the case that every other religion is 100% negative with respect to whether it improves a population or not, right? Some are better than others. There is good in some of them, but they are missing certain things. And obviously the biggest part for Christianity is they lack the gospel, right? So they're not salvific. They can't justify you. But it doesn't mean that all of them are 100% negative. Because they're not. Insofar as they echo God's truth, they can still be good, which is why some of the pagan religions were better than others, because

50:59 they had echoes of God's truth in them, they maintained certain levels of order in society and hierarchy, they punished certain crimes. Those things are all good. But yes, it has certainly been the case that Christianity has been the only thing that has ever been able to even remotely civilize the African. And there are a number of examples of that, right? You can think of some of the colonial powers, and there's the fact that the Lutheran Church has done a lot of work in Madagascar and the people there are a lot better off than they were when they were animistic ancestor worshippers and the Roman Catholic Church has also done work there. I don't mean to discount what they've done as well, but it's

51:39 the biggest example in Africa of the Lutheran Church doing that sort of thing. So no, I I think that that is a legitimate argument for Christianity, sort of the argument from morality, from moral improvement of believers. I think that is legitimate. Obviously it's not going to be the totality of the argument, but that's always true for these arguments. I've pointed that out before. When you're building up an argument for God or for Christianity, you can do it in pieces. You don't have to have one monolithic argument that ta da Jesus Christ is Lord, right? That's not how it works. But this is a legitimate aspect of arguing for Christianity, that it is the only thing that has been able to create real moral

52:27 improvement in those who are seemingly beyond improvement. Question 13 and then I'll do fourteen and I will get to couple questions I see pending here in the chat, maybe more than a couple. Question 13. What are your thoughts on Catholic and non-Catholic exorcism? I was actually thinking about this question handful of days ago, but I don't know that I necessarily have a fully fledged position on this. My general sense is that I think the Roman Catholics have gone too far with ritualism and they rely on the ritual instead of God to a degree. I'm not going to say obviously, absolutely, because they're still invoking God and such. They invoke Mary too, which obviously I object to that as a Protestant as a Lutheran.

53:23 But I think that non-Roman Catholics, I think that the rest of us have actually gone overboard in the other direction. Lutherans a little less so because there are actually Lutheran rites of exorcism. They are little used these days, and many of them remain untranslated in Latin or German in texts that are perhaps even not digitized or scanned at this point. So a lot of people even know there are Lutheran rites of exorcism. There are. We carried that over. We never abandoned that. But I think that the rest of Protestantism sort of abandoned all of the ritual. And I don't think ritual plays no part in it. I don't think that it is the ritual itself that casts out the demon. But I believe in ritualistic worship of God, right?

54:11 That's what the liturgy is. So So I don't think that it is inappropriate or should even be surprising that ritual plays some role in casting out demons, in exorcism. So I think that it's not that I'm trying to be, you know, a centrist and oh both sides are bad. No, I just think the Roman Catholics fell off the horse on one side, and most of Protestantism fell off the horse on the other side. So it is an area where I think we have all, as Christians, been lax. We have stopped taking the demonics seriously. We have stopped dealing with these problems that are very real. We used to perform a house blessing ceremony, which was basically an exorcism and a blessing for the house. That was a normal thing, and by we I mean Lutherans.

54:55 That was something Lutherans used to do. I know that there are now a handful of Lutheran pastors who have started doing that for their congregants and that's great. But that should be normal. That should be a standard thing that we do. That should not be something that we have effectively abandoned, particularly in the American context, because we never sort of did a thorough spiritual cleansing of this land. There were people here worshipping demons, and in some cases pretty horrible demons, for hundreds of years. We should have taken that more seriously. We should probably exercise every square meter of this land, every square foot, whichever measuring system you want to use. But no, I I don't necessarily say that either one is superior to

55:42 the other I think that we should take it more seriously as Christians. It's an area that we need to invest more time. And I think having exorcists should simply be a part of being a church. Not every parish needs one, but certainly you should have a handful of them at the level of bishop, whatever it is in your particular denomination. Question 14. Pulling up logos again for this one. Your thoughts on John 4 22. Jesus tells a Samaritan woman, You worship what you do not know, we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. This is a beloved passage for neopagans and others. So let me pull that up here. So this is one of those places where the issue is what do you mean by Jew?

56:43 Right? Not to go over that whole thing again, because I've gone over it so many times that is point to the episode. Go listen to the episode of Stone Choir dealing with the term Jew and Hebrew Israelite, etc. So of course, helpfully Lagos does not show you the interstitial, so I guess I will bring up this instead so we can look at the Greek because we obviously want to look at the Greek for this. What is being said here? Help if I pull up the right verse when the Not James. So when it says Jews there, it does not actually in the actual language of scripture, which is to say the Greek pull up the Nestleand. What it says there is Judeans Udaon. So does it come from the Judeans? And of course I have the interstitial up my screen, but you

57:43 can't see it because helpfully it does not highlight it. But if I highlight Jews Well, the software is not being cooperative, but the word there is of course, like I said, Judean. And so what is really meant here, what is he saying? That's the point that is important here I want to get across. What he is saying is that I am the Christ. Salvation is from the tribe of Judah. I am the Christ. I am the lion of the tribe of Judah. That's what he's telling this woman. And so obviously there's the conflict there between the Samaritans, who are the ten northern tribes having been miscegenated into something other than Israelite, other than Hebrew, by the Assyrians. They wanted to worship on their mountain, right?

58:36 This is our mountain, it's in our territory, we want to worship here. He's pointing out that the hatred the Samaritans have for Jerusalem is wrong because the Christ was prophesied to die in Jerusalem, outside the walls, but in Jerusalem, not on the Samaritan mountain. So that's what he's pointing out. He's pointing out that scripture, when it says that the Messiah, the Christ, is going to come from the line of Judah, is speaking the truth. Salvation is from the Judeans, which is just the tribe of Judah, plus some Benjaminites and a handful of Levites. And also, you are wrong with regard to hating Jerusalem for the reasons you hate it. So it it's just one of those things people like to bring

59:23 up and they like to try to argue oh well it's scripture is saying the Jews are chosen No scripture is saying that Christ came from the line of Judah, which if we didn't have translators playing games with these terms would be much clearer. It should probably say Judean there, Judean, however you want to pronounce it. I always pronounce it like the Latin, but it should say that instead. They play the same sort of game with the word Gentiles, which shouldn't appear in anyone's scripture. Because we have the words in English for what that actually is. It either means heathen or nations, depending on the context. And depending on the word sometimes, because ethnos, ethnikos, but these are little games that translators play when they're trying to Judaize.

1:00:05 And it is a problem we have in pretty much all of the translations, but it does open the door for some neo-pagans and others to play really dishonest games, because most of them actually know the the counter-arguments, they're just using it to deceive the weak. Which incidentally is what Satan likes to do. Now I will try to look through the chat to see if we have some questions in the chat. Got a sip of tea while I do that. My Lutheran church uses Jewish wine. Yes, a lot of people love to use the Menishevitz. Then there's whatever the other one is. I am conflicted between not wanting to give them money but laughing at Satan's minions work being used to bless us in the Eucharist. Any thoughts?

1:01:02 So The goal of the Jews with creating their wine is to make wine that is unfit for the Eucharist. That's their goal. Because their goal is evil, and generally that's what they're doing. So is it an invalid sacrament if you use what is effectively mutilated and sweetened wine? I don't know that it invalidates the sacrament. I think it is inappropriate, and I don't think it is something we should approach. You know, it's the old example I've given so many times. Don't stand right on the edge of the cliff. You know, stand back a little ways. So just buy your church a case of wine. They're not going to say no. So have it reserved at the local liquor store and have your pastor pick it up if you think he's going to be concerned about

1:01:56 you personally delivering the case of wine. You know, you can buy a full case, it'll be sealed, possibly even from the winery. Deliver that to him. They're probably not going to say no to free wine. Most people don't. So that's an easy way to get around the problem, right? You basically are earmarking your tithe and instead of earmarking it for the church to use, you're just using it for the benefit of the church. That's something you can do. You know, I've bought things for my churches before instead of, you know, tithing or in addition to tithing just depending. So that's a perfectly fine way to solve that. They should not be using the Jewish wine. They should be using natural wine. You can find various explanations of what the Jews do to their

1:02:42 wine. And then maybe send one to your pastor, he can look at it. It's going to depend on sort of the relationship you have with that pastor and what sort of pastor he is, some of them will be more open to that than others. So if he's open to it by all means, lay out the argument for him, but I think the easiest way is just buy the wine yourself. If that obviously maybe it happens to coincide with exactly what you're going to tithe. I don't know how much you are tithing. I don't know how much the wine is going to cost. You don't have to buy super expensive wine. Not because communion has to use cheap wine, but because super expensive wine is usually a ripoff. Just a little tip there for guys who aren't as familiar with

1:03:26 wine. I think that's probably the best way to handle it though. Question sixteen. I guess he was question. Are Messianic Jews Christians? Almost always no? Because if they're Christians, they would call themselves Christians Christians, instead of calling themselves messianic Jews. There's a reason they're calling themselves that, right? If a man calls himself something, you should probably listen, he's probably telling you something about himself. Just going to paste these into my thread for the episode here so I have them for later. I'm going to save this one about eschatology for next time. Question 17. Where'd you get the teapot?

1:04:26 It is from a German company. It is oh what's the it's trend glass. T-R-E-N-D-G-L-A-S. And it is in the German city of Jena with J-E-N-A. It's a city that has made glassware for a very long time. And the nice thing about it is that it is Pyrex borosilicate glass. Pyrex being obviously the trade name. It is the real stuff, so it's safe to have, as you can see, the candle went out now, but as you can as you could have seen, you can apply fire directly, it handles boiling water, it can go in the dishwasher, all these things. So it's a great option. And it's not really actually particularly expensive, even to get it shipped from Germany. So if you happen to be somewhere on the east coast, maybe you can get it shipped from a couple places in New York.

1:05:23 But other than that, you'll probably have to get it shipped from Germany. But like I said, it's not as expensive as you might think for what it is, and you'll probably buy it once and have it for life. Unless you drop it. And the tea glasses are also from the same place. And the little stand. The candles, like I've said before, I this I brought this up on X. You're going to be have to choose between paraffin wax and beeswax. Beeswax is significantly more expensive it is better, it burns hotter, it burns cleaner, it doesn't produce the volatile compounds that paraffin wax produces that are not particularly great for you. But if you're in a well-ventilated room, the difference isn't that big.

1:06:21 I use both. I have both sitting over there. But the beeswax is superior. I have a question about the verses in scripture that deal with wives wives submitting to their husbands, I'm going to note that one for next time I want to look at all of the spots where it says that before I give an answer. So add that To my list Question is, eighteen, I believe. I believe. Yes, question eighteen. Do you have any thoughts on why certain degeneracies such as bikinis, nudity, fry copper, culture, free body culture nudity, same sort of thing.

1:07:26 Took such a stronghold in the West to an extent surpassing even the third world, is it just liberalism? I think that it is largely liberalism. It is partly a rejection of Christianity. Not entirely though, because for instance in Germany, nude sunbathing and things like that have a pretty long history really back into the pagan times and just never really went entirely away. I'm always a little bit conflicted on it, partly, you know, German blood, but It obviously is better if we tamp down on those things and at the very least don't have coed nude anything. That's obviously a temptation. It's a problem. We should not be advocating for that in Christian societies. I don't object to you know spas that have separate facilities for

1:08:21 men and women if you don't have to wear a swimsuit. I don't object to that. I don't care. That's not a problem. Over in Europe, a lot of times those are co-ed. I don't think that's permissible in a Christian society. I don't think we should allow that. I think we should certainly tamp down on that. But I do think that it basically just took hold because of the post-war rejection of Christianity, sort of reactionary movements, trying to say, look at how advanced and liberal and free we are. Look at all the liberty we have. Particularly you saw a lot of that in say East Germany, where they're trying to say, look at how free we actually are. The West says that we're enslaved and really it's the capital, you

1:09:02 know, all that stuff. But no, it's by and large not good. And it's something that we should We should largely ban in a Christian society. And I know that there are going to be people who object to that. You know, I like I said, I have some mixed feelings on it, but at the very least, if you're going to have some of that in your society, then clearly have it sex segregated. I don't think that's objectionable. I don't think that's as much of a an issue of, you know, modesty or whatever. I think that's mostly an issue of men and women not being in mixed company in inappropriate attire because only your spouse should see you like that. So yes, there should also be public decency laws with regard to

1:09:44 swimwear, particularly for women. And someone mentioned that, you know, we have beautiful women, so that's part of it. It is. Because you know, that's the reality of it. There's some parts of the world where you would definitely not want to see everyone naked. Question twenty no, it's question nineteen rather. Why do we hear so much about German occult practices during the war? That's a very easy answer. Post-war propaganda, and during the war as well. Atrocity propaganda was a very common and popular thing, particularly by the British, and they did this particularly against the Germans, but against others as well, and obviously it was Jewish involvement, particularly in the American context, but also in the British context for propaganda to gin people

1:10:34 up to get ready to go to war. It's all nonsense. And the only thing that they had was they could point out that, you know, the SS had nighttime rallies with torches and oh look, it's paganism. It's not paganism. It's having fire at night, it's a bonfire. Is it paganism when you go to the beach and have a bonfire? It's such It's so incredibly transparent and dumb, but it works. Because if you can hammer home a simple point with propaganda, even if it's a lie, many times it will be effective. So that's why you hear so much about it. But if you start to dig into it, it all evaporates because there's no evidence for it. You start finding Christianity everywhere you dig. Guess I should put that into the show notes.

1:11:30 I remember I answered that one. I think that is probably about it for this episode, but I'll see if there's maybe one more I can answer quickly. I I did see the question about Galatians 3.28 for that. People rightly mentioned it's about salvation, but also the episode on Galatians 3.28. I just go listen to that. We covered it quite thoroughly. I've covered it elsewhere as well, but it is one hundred percent about salvation. It's not about obviously anything else, because then we would have to say that men and women don't exist. And no one is really arguing that. That's the case with regard to salvation, right? You can be saved if you're a man or a woman, if you are racially X or Y, and you can sub out whatever

1:12:27 you want there. You don't say Jew or Greek. You can say Russian or German, you can say German or Japanese. Same thing works. And obviously slavery free hierarchy. Condemning in part the beliefs of the time, which basically thought that if you were higher up the hierarchy and therefore had greater wealth and resources you could contribute more to whatever, buy a synagogue, open a synagogue, build something, and then you were more holy because you'd done that thing. That's also part of what's being condemned there. And I think I will use this as the last question for this episode. If God uses terraforming to punish us in our lands, the Sahara, locking up India, does this suggest God found something particularly wicked in

1:13:15 Antarctica? So for that, that's question twenty unless I misnumbered something there. I don't think that it means God found anything particularly wicked there, because it seems like God intended for the climate cycles and the particular way that heat distributes in on our on our planet, around our planet. It seems like that was part of his intended design. So I don't think Antarctica was intended to be a lush rainforest. I think that it was intended to be basically the air conditioning for the planet. So So I think that's just how God designed Earth to be. I don't think it was punishment for wickedness and perhaps the Sahara is punishment for wickedness. The Himalayas are sort of a containment zone, but God built the

1:14:07 geography of the world in such a way that people groups naturally spread and then spread out in certain geographies, right? You spread up to the mountain range, you spread out to the sea, things like that. And as we pointed out a number of times in Stone Choir, if you look at the Earth from the satellite view, you can actually see all the natural nations instead of the artificial ones, because you can see the geographic boundaries that are real as opposed to the man-made lines that are fake that are artificial. So clearly the subcontinent is meant to be separated from others. South the sub-Saharan Africa is meant to be separated from others. That's why there's a giant desert that you can't cross without, you

1:14:56 know, very high odds of dying even today. All of these areas, and then the various mountain ranges and things like that. We should account for those natural boundaries more than we do, and we should respect them more than we do. But no, I don't think that Antarctica was particularly wicked and so it's covered in ice and inhospitable. I think it's just part of how God designed the the air currents and things to work. You can look up a map of how the the airflow works and all the the cold masses versus the warm masses and things like that. In my case, I particularly have the example of I used to live on the west coast right near the beach. Despite what you may think about Southern California, you think that oh

1:15:38 Southern California, always sunny, warm paradise. The water's cold because it comes down from the North Pole. Whereas here on the East Coast, I'm not coastal at this point, but I've gone and visited the beaches, the water is very warm because it comes up from the equator. So that's basically there's a giant climate battery, as it were, that just makes sure that certain parts of the earth are hospitable when they would not otherwise be. And so a good example of that is that continental Europe is much more temperate than you would think it would be if you just looked at the latitude. And the reason for that is basically the jet stream. So I think that's just how God designed the planet and how

1:16:22 things work. If I missed any questions, I will try to get to them next time. If I don't add your question to my ongoing list of questions to answer in the future, then excuse me, please let me know so that I will add it to that. That can be found on the website. You can go to the website that's in the description of any of these videos. That's the best way to submit the questions because I go to those questions first, and then I know that I have answered them or not answered them, I can mark them as answered as well. And it's the easiest way for other people to find these things in the future. But if you comment in the chat or on Telegram or X, I try to find those as well and amalgamate those, aggregate those

1:17:12 into my thread. But if I don't notice it, it won't be there. Please let me know. So thank you for those who submitted questions, and I'm glad that I was able to answer these questions this week, as every week so far, and I look forward to answering the questions for you next week. It's Friday of course, so I try to do this on Thursdays, but often it winds up being Friday. So have a great weekend and go to church on Sunday. Until I see you all next week, may God bless you. Have a nice evening.