17 Apr 2026 (Q&A)

0:00 It is the 17th of April 2026. I am Cory J. Mahler, and this is at any cost. This is episode 25. I am seeing some artifacting in my video. So if someone in the chat could let me know if the video or audio has any problems, that would be great. OBS is using 20 gigs of memory, which is suboptimal. So hopefully it's not having an issue on your end, although I somewhat doubt that. Can anyone in the chat confirm whether or not the video and audio are fine? Looks fine on great. Okay, so apparently it's just OBS being weird on my end, which We'll see how it goes. It's using 20 gigs of memory, which is fine on my system as long as it does not continue to leak, which is what

1:02 I assume it is doing. Anyway, this is episode 25. It is a QA episode, and I do not really have any housekeeping, so I will jump right into the questions. And I guess I guess pray that OBS does not crash on us, because it is still increasing in memory consumption, although somewhat slowly. So hopefully we're good. Question one Is right here. Question one is about the use to the use of first Samuel. When I advocate for monarchy as the most coherent and God-honoring form of government, I frequently encounter resistance from Christi from Christians on the American right who cite 1 Samuel 8 as a definitive refutation. They tend to view the establishment of the monarchy as an inherent rejection of divine authority, rather than a development within the historic order.

2:04 What is the most effective way to engage these individuals and challenge this interpretation of the text. So this is one of those that comes up all the time from people who are not particularly familiar with scripture. And assuming OBS will actually let me switch windows here. Okay, here we go. We will pull up first Samuel 8, take a look at it. This is of course where Israel chooses to have a king, or rather demands to have a king. And the men of Israel gathered together and came to Harmathim to Samuel and said to him, You are old and your sons do not go in your way, and now appoint over us a king to judge us like the rest of the nations. And the message was evil in the eyes of Samuel, when they

2:58 said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord said to Samuel, listen to the voice of the people in whatever they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. According to all the deeds that they did to me from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, and they forsook me and were subject to other gods, so also they are doing to you. So the first thing to notice here, of course, is that God clearly says that they forsook him not just by demanding a king here, but this was their course of action from Egypt going forward. This is something they did All along the way. And demanding a king is not per se forsaking God.

3:50 That is not what's being said here. What is being said is that the Jews are persisting in their rejection of God. This is simply another step down that path. And one of the ways that we can know this, of course, is that if you're familiar with the Old Testament, another section that will come to mind is of course Deuteronomy seventeen. Now if you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you and take possession of it and live in it and you say I will set a ruler over me, like the rest of the nations that are around me. By appointing you shall appoint over you a ruler, him whom the Lord your God may choose. One of your own brothers you shall appoint as ruler over you. You shall not have power to appoint a strange person over you,

4:35 which is to say a foreigner, because he is not your brother, for he shall not multiply cavalry for himself, or return the people to Egypt in order to multiply cavalry for himself, but the Lord has said to you, shall never add to return that way, and he shall not multiply wives for himself, neither shall he turn his heart away. Also silver and gold he shall not multiply exceedingly for himself, and it shall be, when he is sat upon the seat of his rule, that he shall write for himself this second law in a book from the priests the Levites. And so on and so forth. If God is giving requirements for a king and saying when you desire you appoint a ruler over yourselves, it's pretty clear that God

5:21 is saying that's permissible. It is in fact, as we've argued elsewhere in Stone Choir and as I've argued a number of times, the most natural system to have a monarchy. And so these are the requirements that God sets out. God setting out requirements means that it's permissible. God doesn't set out requirements for something that is sinful. And so those who try to appeal to the section in 1 Samuel or 1 Kingdoms as it's called in the Septuagint names of the books. Doesn't matter what you call the book. That much for most of the books. The people who appeal to that are just cherry-picking verses going through the Old Testament and hoping that there's a condemnation of a king somewhere. Realistically, they probably heard it from someone else.

6:06 They did not come up with this themselves. If they did, they happened to be reading through 1 Samuel for some reason, latched onto this, and then decided to run with it. If they were actually familiar with scripture and knew what scripture says on monarchy and kings across all of Scripture, they'd recognize that what's being condemned in first Samuel is not having a king. It is It is rejecting God and desiring to be like every other nation. Because God had set them apart to achieve a certain task, and they were rejecting him. And that's why God says they rejected him all the way from Egypt up to now, and of course they continue to do so as well. So again, the condemnation is not of monarchy, it's rather of the

6:52 wicked Jews. So that's the response to that one. Just bring up the verse, the passage that directly refutes what the person is trying to argue. Question two is about when one ceases to be a new convert, okay. Given that new converts are explicitly warned not to teach. When does one know that he is no longer new? And then the second part to the question Considering the fact that rebuking the sins of others is a core part of the Christian life, which, correct me if I am wrong, is a form of teaching. No, it's correct, it is teaching to some degree. What should a new convert do when confronted with the sins of others? Especially in view of the dire times in which we currently live. So when you are no longer a new convert is going

7:48 to depend on a number of factors. And it's not just a matter of how long, in terms of you know, days, years, whatever, you've been a convert. It's a matter of maturity. It's a matter of maturing in the faith, of being confident in your faith, knowledgeable in your faith, and having what you need in order to in this case teach the faith, but in order to defend the faith and do those things. There are some men who will never really do those things because they do not have the things that God has given as talents to other men that are necessary to do these things, to teach the faith, to defend the faith. And as I've mentioned many times, and as the men who do it also themselves recognize being an apologist is not the same as

8:39 being a theologian and things like that. There are different talents God gives out to different men. Now, for being a new convert, I would say at the very least you're looking at you should be a convert for some number of years before you even consider taking up the mantle of an actual teacher. Because certainly if you've only been a Christian for two years, you're a new convert. Even if you are someone who is knowledgeable, you had a background in this stuff, etc., etc. You should not be standing up to teach because you have not matured enough in the faith in that little time. Are there exceptions? Maybe, but I think that they are such outliers they aren't even really worth considering, and those men are certainly going to know.

9:29 Now Now, the second part of the question, which is perhaps the more interesting because it's more applicable to us today, what do you do with regard to rebuking those who are in sin. Right? Because we have a duty to rebuke our brother, right? If you see your brother falling into sin, you have a duty to tell him what you're doing is sinful, you need to stop, this is going to this is bad for you, this is bad for your soul. This endangers you in some way, whatever it happens to be, however grievous the sin is. And so part of the answer here is going to be how obvious is the sin, right? If your brother is doing something that is open and obvious sin, all Christians recognize its sin, it's plain in scripture, then certainly rebuke

10:21 him. Even if you're a new convert. Because that is something that is so obvious there's no real wisdom call there. There's not any demand for the sorts of abilities that a teacher has in order to assess the scenario. So you can think of the obvious examples, right? A man who's actively committing adultery. You're probably pretty safe telling him he needs to stop doing that. Now a Christian prince should certainly punish him, but you as a Christian should rebuke him for that, particularly if he is holding himself out as a Christian while engaging in this particular evil. So it really is going to come down to how obvious is the sin, how clear is the matter. If it is clear, absolutely it is your duty to rebuke your

11:08 brother because you are trying to get him not to engage in that sinful behavior in order to save him, in order to do good to him and for him. And that is your duty as a Christian. And that is certainly going to be something that is a live issue today with a number of men who are coming back to the Christian faith or turning to the Christian faith for the first time. And so we have a lot of new converts around. We have men who are figuring out for the first time really what it means to live a Christian life. And you need to have your brothers along with you to do that. Because if you don't, you're going to find it much more difficult. So don't stand yourself up as a teacher if you're a new convert.

11:52 But that doesn't mean that you can't rebuke others or tell them this is sinful, you need to stop doing this. That's perfectly reasonable. So there's a sort of a mixed answer there because is it teaching to some degree to say this is a sin? Sure, but it's not really the kind of teaching that's in view when you're looking at the passages that are saying the stricter judgment, not many of you should be teachers, and so on and so forth. There are levels to this, right? If you are a man who stands up as a bishop and is teaching tens of thousands or millions, you're inviting a different sort of judgment from someone who privately tells his brother, Hey, you shouldn't be doing this, this is sinful, particularly when it is something that

12:39 is an open and shut case, again like adultery or you know, drug use, something like that. And obviously I'm not saying, you know, all drug use, but I'm saying bad kind. You know, if your brother is doing meth, you need to tell him to stop. Question three and yes, I know that I've swapped two and three around in the show notes, but I will fix that after the show The show What is a Christian man to do in the meantime if his past sins would have merited death under a righteous government? And then as an example, what is the repentant abortionist supposed to do? Just by way of example. This is one of those questions that is again going to depend on the particular sin. And so the example given is sort of the extreme example, right?

13:39 I could give one that is I gave one already that is close to that but not quite that level a Adultery is a capital crime in scripture, and so under a Christian government, it should be a capital crime. It should be something that is death penalty eligible at least, not necessarily automatic, but eligible. Because a lot of times these punishments in scripture are sort of a maximum or a recommendation depending on what it is. It's not this is required. With regard to murder, the death penalty is required because Genesis 9 6 is very clear. So for instance, we'll just take the abortion one. If a Christian government were to come to power, it would be morally obligated to find and execute abortionists.

14:35 That would be a moral requirement. Because that is a violation of the moral law, and it is a violation of Genesis nine six, and Genesis nine six is abundantly clear he who sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed, for man was made in the image of God. Doesn't allow exceptions. Abortion is murder. Murder requires, according to God's law, the death penalty. And so for abortionists, they have to be punished by a Christian government. The Christian government does not get to say that's in the past. The moral law doesn't change, ex post facto doesn't apply, not a concern here. With regard to other things, right, there are a number of things that should be punished and are currently not.

15:21 Fornication should be punished in some way. Now, generally speaking, the solution is a shotgun marriage, right? That's usually how you fix that problem. You sternly reprimand them, keep them apart till they're married, and tell them you're getting married now. That solves the problem. But with regard to say a serial fornicator who has now caused problems across a number of individuals in society, that person should be punished. Is there any practical way for a Christian government to come to power and then punish all of those men and women? The answer is simply no. Some of this is going to come down to practicality. Can it be done? Right? Abortionists can certainly be punished by a future government because they're

16:16 all MDs. We know all their names. They're all in a database. So the government can just go did you perform abortion procedures or look at the history and say you charged insurance for X number of abortion procedures you know get in the cage. That's something that can be done. There are things that cannot be punished practically because you cannot identify them. And also as a purely practical matter, you would not even really purely practical, there's a moral aspect as well. You would you would cause greater chaos and destruction in society trying to seek out and punish each of these crimes, instead of granting a sort of amnesty and saying, Going forward, things are going to change. Wicked men used to rule.

17:07 They were in charge. They did not do things in line with God's law and God's desires. We are going to change that. We are going to fix these problems going forward. I think that has to be what we would do simply because of the fact that you can't just have complete chaos and destruction of society, even if you think what you're trying to do is strictly follow the moral law. There are things where you cannot grant leeway, right? Murder must be punished with the death penalty. But there are things where you can grant some sort of clemency, and I think that will have to be done. So if the question is what should the abortionist do, he should demand that the government punish him. Because that's the Christian response.

17:54 Repentance is not simply I'm sorry for what I did. Right? It's also a recognition that you have certain obligations, so for instance, an obligation to try to amend harms you've caused and you know don't don't want to sound too much like AA, but they get some things right. For the abortionist, there is no sort of amnesty or mercy or wiping away of that, because it is a moral requirement from God without exception that the murderer must be punished with death. So a Christian convert who was an abortionist should tell the government you have to execute me. That's required by God. He can't say, Oh I repented, I'm no longer that man, I'm no, that's not how it works. Your sins are forgiven. You will be with God in paradise, but you still have to

18:50 be punished by earthly authorities. You know, the best example would really be the thief on the cross, which I know people love that one for other reasons, but Christ did not take him off the cross when he repented. He didn't say, Oh, you repented, that's great, you're no longer being punishment. You're no longer being punished. Rather he said, Today you will be with me in paradise, which means you're still going to die. That's how it works. People mix this up all the time, and part of it's mercenary, but just because you convert to Christianity, just because you become a Christian, even if you actually amend your life and do so in an earnest way, it doesn't mean that all those temporal consequences are

19:35 erased. And sometimes the temporal consequences are severe, in the case of murder, certainly. Question four is about the numbering of the commandments. And I've had this one on my list of topics to address for some time, not on the public facing list as it were, but on my own personal one. This is not an issue that is unique to the Septuagint or unique to the Masoretic text or anything like that. This is a general issue with which Christians have had to grapple for as long as there have been Christians, as long as we've had the scriptures, but I'll read the question first. Second at this point, I guess. As Lutherans, how do we deal with the difference between the Septuagint and the small catechism with regard to the ninth and tenth commandments.

20:32 So that's sort of a microcosm of the overall issue. And I'm not going to get into this too deeply because I want to address it more fully in the future, so I'm going to note that for myself here. And then I'll go back and add it to the show notes when I get around to doing that. There are some differences in the numbering. First of all, the Ten Commandments are listed twice in the Old Testament, right? And there are some minor differences with regard to the order in which they appear. It's not really accurate to say numbering because they're not numbered, right? They are just a list of prohibitions. Do not do X, do not do Y, do not do Z. And then of course you also have the times where Christ or

21:20 one of the authors of the New Testament lists them and says you have heard it was said thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, or thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill. That order gets switched, including in the listing in the Septuagint in the Old Testament and in Luke. So I don't think that it's necessarily like a huge problem for Christians, right? This is a list of things God has told us not to do. Are they roughly in order of importance? I think that is true. I've said it in the past. I still firmly believe that. And you can see that clearly with regard to the fact that the first few commandments are about our duties to God, and then you get our duty to our parents, and then you get our

22:07 duties to our fellow man, right? And so basic hierarchy there. That basic hierarchy does not change regardless of the order of the fifth and sixth commandment, which is to say murder and adultery in the Lutheran numbering. If you're reformed, you can go ahead and just, you know, add plus one there. So I don't think that it changes anything sort of fundamental for Christians. I do think that it's important, and I think that it is a matter that will certainly be relevant for those who are creating the new translation of the Septuagint when that happens. Like I said, I will get into that more deeply at some point in the future, and partly it's going to be left to those men who do that translation work, but I don't think that

22:52 it causes any real problem for us because this was already something that we recognize because there are some minor differences between the two lists in the way things are ordered. Not that there are different commandments, but the way that they are ordered is slightly different. So So we already had to choose an order, right? You had to choose what's the ninth, what what is the tenth. So I think that organizing them in the way the small catechism does is perfectly fine. It makes perfect sense. You have the content of the commandments there, which is the important part, and again, they aren't actually numbered in scripture. It's just a list of things that you shall not do, and then it said it's the ten words of the ten commandments, so

23:36 you already have to do a little bit of work to figure out what the numbering is there. I have no problem using the numbering in the small catechism. I think it is perhaps an open question as to whether murder or adultery is listed first. It seems that there's a compelling argument for adultery being first. You could also make the argument perhaps that they are just equally important, right? Because adultery really is a form of murder and like I said previously in the answer to a previous question tonight, it used to be punished with the death penalty. That's what God says in scripture. But like I said, I will get into this question more detail deeply in the future, I think I want to actually write something

24:15 on it. Question five. Whereas the church is the bride of Christ, and the Holy Spirit through Paul to Timothy demands women's silence in the Church and matters of theology, does it therefore follow that the Church cannot speak or teach except as taught to us by Christ our head. This seems like it undercuts the premise of papal infallibility and teaching from tradition, but I would appreciate your opinion on it. I think that that is essentially a correct argument. I would formulate that a little bit differently. I guess I can close out of this logos window here, assuming that OBS will cooperate. I do not believe that the Church, so called in Roman theology, can promulgate new doctrine. I do not believe that the church has that authority.

25:16 But at the same time, I don't want that to be taken to the extent of saying that everything is contained in Scripture. Right, as I've argued many times, God has two books. This is something that has been argued down through the centuries by many Christians. Creation has truth in it. Scripture has truth in it. You can derive truth from both. And so at the same time, that is still consonant with this in so far as you recognize God is the author of both of those books. To call creation a book along with scripture, right? So there is no truth outside of God, because God is truth itself. God's books are his revealed truth to us. There's truth revealed in creation, there's truth revealed in scripture.

26:10 And so outside of those, uh no, we can't speak on anything because nothing else is knowable to us. So yes, I think the argument is Argument is sound. I would reformulate it a little bit, but I do obviously object to the claims of Rome that the Pope can promulgate new doctrine, new dogma. I don't believe that that is something that is permissible, because God has not given that authority to any man. Except of course, Christ, if you are focusing on the man part there, but he's not promulgating new doctrine and new dogma either, because truth is eternal. Truth is for all time. So, for instance, when Rome decided to promulgate the dogma of the assumption of Mary, I don't think that they have the authority to

27:06 do that. I do not believe that is permissible. Most of the Marian dogmas have been created by Rome. They have been promulgated according to so called papal authority, instead of scripture, because it's nowhere in Scripture. Unless you start looking at Gnostic texts which are not scripture. So, yes, I think that the argument fundamentally is sound. I would reformulate it a little bit, but no, the church does not have the authority to make new doctrine, to make new dogma. That is something that is God alone has that authority. And to be clear, that doesn't mean that we can't have traditions that were created by men. We just can't say that they are salvific, right? So having a Christmas tree created by men completely fine, exchanging gifts

27:54 on certain holidays, completely fine, doesn't forgive your sins, doesn't get you into heaven, doesn't get you, you know, good points for good works or whatever. It could be a good work just incidentally, because serving your neighbor is a good work, and it may happen to overlap there, but it does not get to be a good work because it's a tradition made by men. Let's see the next one. Question six has three premises and then a conclusion, so I will just read through those in order. Premise one. Nations have a trajectory of sin that can reach a fulfillment Genesis fifteen sixteen. The speaking of course of the Amorites, the iniquity of the Amorites being complete and coming back in the fourth generation.

28:49 Premise two, there is a hierarchy of sin, John nineteen eleven. Of course, Jesus speaking to Pilate, he who handed me over to you as the greater sin. And Premise three. Woe's exegesis on the condition of Christ's birth to be born a Judean is to be born of the lowest race. Jesus was born a Hebrew, for the same reason he was born in a feed trough. Okay, and given those three premises, the conclusion or the question, is it fair to say that God permits the Jews to live albeit to albeit as a landless nation, because they will have because they have not yet completed their national sin. Does this suggest they have an even worse sin than killing Christ in their future? Well they're currently committing quite a few interesting sins, not the least

29:41 of all being impermissible genocide and persecuting the church and all of the various things they pushed through through the entire world that are deeply and incredibly wicked. But to answer the core question here, I don't necessarily think that God has a formulaic way of dealing with nations insofar as You have some sort of sin or cap on the amount of sin you get to commit, and then God smites you. I don't think that that's how God operates. And I think that that pans out in history too, if you look at history, because God lets some nations commit a great deal of evil before he destroys them, and some he destroys before they've committed that much evil. You could argue it's a mercy to be destroyed sooner because then

30:32 you don't have that many sins on your ledger. So I think that it is just a matter of God's will and God's plan. I don't think again, I don't think it's a mathematical formula where if you commit X number of sins given the different weight of the different sins, then God will automatically smite you, right? I don't think that God is an algorithm essentially. So this is up to God's wisdom, God's timing, and God's plan. He works all things together for the good, and part of that is using wicked men to achieve good, even if we don't necessarily understand how that is working out in time because we don't have the perspective God does. We are trapped in time. God is outside of time. He can see the beginning and the end simultaneously.

31:27 He knows exactly what is going to happen. He knows the fullness of the consequences of any given action at any given time. We don't do that, we can't do that. We're limited. These things are infinite, only the infinite can understand them. With regard to the Jews, I think God is just permitting them to fill their cup of wrath. That is not good news for them. It would be much better news for them if God would just snap his fingers and they were all gone, because then they couldn't continue collecting sins. The worst thing you can do is spend a long life collecting sins and then die impenitent. And I know some people have sort of a visceral r reaction to that, they want to reject it. Christ says of Judas it would have been better for that one

32:15 had he not been born. There's no way around the conclusion if you are going to die impenitent, the best thing you can do is die younger, so that you do not collect all those sins in the interim. Incidentally a pretty strong argument against the deathbed confession. You may not make it to your deathbed. You may die on the bus, right? Don't wait to the end to repent. Don't say, I'm gonna do as much evil wickedness, all this stuff as I can, and then repent at the very end. That's a terrible plan. It will probably backfire. Don't do it. So confess, repent, and then live a Christian life and collect good works, much better thing to collect than sins. But I think God is again just letting the Jews fill full

33:02 their cup of wrath, which is bad news for them. Bad news for the rest of us as well in some way, but worse news for them. Question seven. How do we deal with family members who have sinned publicly? I have a cousin who was at one time living in sin with his girlfriend prior to marriage. I confronted about it several years ago and in response to me confronting him he basically laughed at me for foolishly being religious. At least to my knowledge he is yet to repent of this sin. Do you have any advice for dealing with such family members? Up until now I have simply ignored him, but he recently invited me to his daughter's birthday party I will not be able to attend the party, but I am obligated to at least respond gratitude

33:46 as invitation. How do I not fall off the horse when it comes to associating with the ungodly versus a lack of forgiveness for I was treated? Is this a scenario where I need to shake the dust from my feet? So the first part of this is going to be: you have different duties to different people. Right? That's going to be a very different approach with a stranger versus a family member. Family members, for better or worse, get more leeway. They get more grace, they get more forgiveness. You give them not necessarily more rope, but you give them more time, you let them act a little worse than you would others. We all recognize this, just dealing with family members day-to-day, right? So with regard to a family member, you just continue being a

34:39 good person in his life. You do what you can to demonstrate being a Christian, and you hope that eventually you get an opportunity where he's willing to listen, where he's receptive to listen to answers to important questions about life and meaning and religion and things like that. So So no, you don't shake the dust off your feet in this case. If this were just some random stranger at work, then sure maybe you don't bring the issue up with him again. But you don't really get to do that with a close family member, a sibling, a cousin, an aunt, an uncle, something like that. So sure. Was it sinful for him to say you were being foolishly religious by telling him not to live in sin with his girlfriend?

35:29 Absolutely, that was a sin on his part. But at the same time, at least he did the right thing and married her, which is kind of all you can do in that situation. And for that at least, he should be not necessarily Congratulated, but he should be told that he did the right thing because he did. That is what any man who is currently living in sin with his girlfriend should do. You should marry her, make her an honest woman, as we used to say, do the right thing. And I think it's also worth highlighting here. I have a a post uh something I've said a number of times. I won't bother with the Latin because I doubt anyone cares. If you want to go look up the Latin, feel free, but a sin that is against nature is a greater evil than a

36:19 sin that is according to nature, and you could also say contrary to nature versus in agreement with nature, right? And And the best example of that is basically this. Fornicating with your girlfriend is a sin that is in agreement with nature. It is natural. If you instead were male and had a boyfriend, that would be against nature. That is a worse sin. And there's no way to fix that one. You can't marry that person and fix it. You have to stop that sin and then technically the state should also punish you. But it is not as bad of a sin to fornicate with your girlfriend. Because that is according to nature. It is not something that you should be doing. It is still sin. I want to be very clear about that.

37:10 But there are significantly worse sins, and at least in this case and in any similar case, if you marry the girl, that's certainly better. You still did it wrong, you should have done it in the other order, but it's better than many alternatives, so there's a hierarchy of sins. Some sins are worse than others. That one is it's not a good one because it has so many consequences that come along with it, but it is a natural one, and so it's not something that is against nature and therefore a worse sin, right? And it's again going to be one that pretty much everyone's going to struggle with that, particularly men. But yes, forgive your family member and hope that God presents an opportunity where you can share the Christian faith with him and he'll

37:57 actually listen to you. So So I think I have an eyelash in my eye. Question eight. Can you please give some historical book recommendations, particularly non-Jewified books on World War II and Hitler, but also history broadly? I think I am going to add some to to the show notes for this and this is one of those where it really depends on what part of history you want, right? Because for instance, there's a very good just as an example series on the Crusades. I think it's a dozen volumes now. I don't know. It takes up an entire shelf on one of my bookshelves. It's quite a few books. It's but it's an excellent series, but it's specifically on the crusade. So if that interests you, that's a good example.

38:54 With regard to World War II, you have a great wealth of books, particularly recently, many have been published. I will link to some of those in the show notes. It's just easier to find those as opposed to my saying it and then people having to go find it. But if you want to know anything about World War II and have a reading recommendation about something specific, right? I would say ask Carl Rodel on X because he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the books that have been written on the topic. He is going to be the best one to give that recommendation. Again, I'll put some in the show notes to get people started. Antelope Hill is a publishing house that has a number of good ones, including some packages where you can get, you know, the World

39:39 War II package, something similar like that But yeah, Carl Rodel is going to be the one where you want to ask him if you have a specific interest with regard to that era. That is Carl with a K Rodl R-A-D-L. I'll link to him as well on in the show notes. Just make a note for myself to remember to do that. And then a sort of related question from the same person. Question nine. Do you have a favorite fiction book? Another difficult one. I get asked for reading recommendations and favorite books and things like that a lot. And I don't necessarily have a favorite book in any given category. Other than obviously I have to answer the Bible, right? But that's a sort of specific one and it almost doesn't even

40:35 count as a favorite in that sense. Dune is definitely high up the list for me with regard to fiction books, but it's hard not to list things like say Gatha's Faust. That's obviously one of the best German language novels ever written. It has very good translations as well, so certainly you can read that in English. I read a decent amount of poetry. I've read a lot in the past, so that would certainly count as fiction. The Lays of Ancient Rome, an excellent collection. I've cited that a few times, I've quoted from that one. many recommendations I could give for fiction, but I don't know that I have necessarily a particular fiction book that'd say yes, this one is my favorite one. I think that I have read so many and liked a lot

41:25 of them that I don't necessarily have just one I would choose. Very tempted to answer a insert a question from the I will actually just go ahead and insert a question from the chat here which makes me have to renumber some things but that's fine. Someone asked for an easy one. What is my favorite pie? I don't know if that's easy either, but pumpkin pie is probably pretty high up the list. It's hard not to like pumpkin pie. But I do also like cheesecake, so. But my mother makes a very good cheesecake, so I'm somewhat biased for that one. And every Thanksgiving there's a pumpkin pie slash cheesecake sort of combo thing, which I like quite a lot. So I guess that's the answer there. But I I definitely got the German sweet tooth, but I usually

42:13 just eat chocolate, but I have chocolate sitting on my desk here, to the surprise of probably no one. Question eleven. Someone asked in the the chat earlier, I am a bit bothered by two things that seem to be at best insufficiently reprimanded and A Lot's daughters doing the unspeakable with their father, and B Jacob stealing Esau's blessing. There are really two points to be made with regard to this question. And similar questions, because there are many similar questions to this one. The first is that not everything in scripture is a recommendation. There are a lot of things in scripture that are simply recounting history, and that is particularly true in the historical books, to probably no one's surprise.

43:08 There is, for instance, if you want to go for the atrocious ones, it's not even necessarily Lot and his daughters. That's not a great one, certainly, and certainly the story that immediately preceded that, Sodom and Gomorrah is also not a great one, but you have the instance of the Levite with his concubine, where something similar happens. She is killed, and then he chops her up and ships her body all around Israel in order to call out men to deal with this atrocity. That's not really a particularly great story. Granted, he at least avenges her, he's the one who, you know, fed her to the lions, but not everything in Scripture is God saying you should do this. Many things in Scripture are God saying you should not do this.

44:00 That does not mean that every time these things come up, God explicitly says this is bad, right? But God says that incest is morally impermissible. So what Lot's daughters did is condemned in Scripture. You just have to know all of Scripture, not all of Scripture, but you have to know the portion of Scripture that has the rules that condemn those sexual sins, right? And it's a pretty long list because apparently the Jews needed a lot of repetition to get the point. So that is condemned in scripture. It's just not condemned in that particular narrative because that's just history. It's not saying this is bad because that's said elsewhere. So that's the first part of this. The second part of this is that a lot of the people

44:52 in scripture are not good people. A lot of the people in scripture are bad men and bad women, and the point isn't that they are individuals after whom you should model your life. That's not what scripture is. There's one man in scripture after whom you should model your life, right? There are some good options as well. Noah's a pretty good option. You know, don't get drunk around your questionable son, but there are individuals in Scripture who serve as role models, and there are some men in Scripture who are just historical figures, who are part of the line of the Messiah, so they are part of God's plan in that way. But really, God is preserving the line of the Messiah miraculously, despite

45:41 how wicked and detestable many of these men in that line are, right? Jacob is not a great man. Jacob is scheming, thieving, obnoxious, weasley. He's not a man anyone would really like or you'd want to spend time around him. He turns into a better man. He does mature so there's character development as it were, but he's not a good man, certainly not starting off. The point is not that God is picking the best men in the world to achieve something. In fact, God is often picking the worst men around to prove a point. God can do great things even with terrible human beings. For instance, a point that I've made before and others have made it as well. How impressive would it have been if God had simply picked the

46:30 mightiest nation on earth and used them to conquer another country? Okay, sure. There's still something impressive about the martial conquest, right? But it's not as impressive as God using the Israelites to wipe out the Canaanites. Because that could only be divine intervention. The Israelites weren't particularly good at war, were whinging awful people, ran away, were cowards, and yet God used them to conquer all of these wicked people in Canaan. That's a miracle. So the two parts again are basically there are things in Scripture that are just history, and just because someone is in Scripture does not mean he's someone you should emulate. There are plenty of terrible human beings in Scripture.

47:18 There are plenty of terrible human beings today. That's part of it. Scripture is recording real history and it's recording real people, and a lot of real people are not particularly good people. But yes, those things are both condemned, right? God look at Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and other places, God clearly condemns being a little thieving weasel. So Jacob is condemned, and obviously what Lot's daughters did is condemned a number of times. Question 11. Do you hold to historicist eschatology, why or why not? Did Didn't Luther hold to something similar or at least that the Pope is the Antichrist? I'll think I'll answer this in reverse order. Luther held at least that the office of the papacy was essentially

48:08 the office of Antichrist, or the or that the office was the Antichrist, which is to say, that the man holding that office is Antichrist because the office is. And do remember that look at what the word Antichrist is. It's Antichrist. So there are many antichrists, as scripture very clearly says. Anyone who is a false teacher is an antichrist in a minor way. Right? The Pope, according to the understanding of basically all Protestants, certainly Lutherans, is anti-Christ. Because he teaches things that are contrary to Christ. Right? We could talk about the Marian dogmas, we could talk about indulgences, we could talk about any number of things taught by the Roman pontiffs that are contrary to Scripture, particularly the core doctrine of

49:02 Scripture, as Protestants rightly understand it, which is faith alone, Grace alone, right? The Word alone. Sola Scripture. I could give the Latin, but again, there's no real point And so the Pope in that sense is indeed antichrist, and that is what Luther held, and I agree with Luther on that. Luther was more of an historicist with regard to certainly Daniel initially and then later in life more fully with Revelation. I am not as much I'm not as inclined toward historicism as Luther was, but that doesn't mean that I think that Luther was necessarily wrong with regard to these things. And to be clear here, with historicism, we're not talking about everything having been fulfilled in the past, right?

49:58 That's preterism, or full preterism, really. That's a different thing. is talking more about histor Historical connections and historical figures being symbolically connected to things in Daniel and Revelation mostly, the prophetic books. It does also overlap a little bit with preterism in saying that some of these things have happened in the past, and I think it's fine. I've talked about cyclical fulfillment and typology before, and there was a question about typology, and I'll get to that, I believe, tonight, so that'll tie back in. But I do not believe that, for instance, everything's been fulfilled. I went into that in a previous episode, so I won't necessarily retread that ground here.

50:43 But I don't think that all of the prophetic parts of the book are about past historical figures or tied to these historical figures. I do think that some of it is still to come, and I think that some of it is symbolic or typological in that it has many fulfillments. So I agree with Luther largely but not entirely. I think that he was perhaps a little too staunch in trying to tie that to specifically the Pope. I understand why he did it. It made perfect sense at the time. But at the same time, perhaps it will turn out that Luther was absolutely correct. Look at what the Pope is doing today. He is getting very friendly with Muslims, he's buddying up with them, he's doubling down on what the Roman Church has long said that

51:34 the plan of salvation includes the Muslims and the Jews. Who knows? Maybe there will be a final antichrist, uppercase A, I guess, and perhaps it will indeed be the Pope. That could happen. I'm not saying I believe that. I'm not saying I believe either way on that. I don't really have an opinion on it. We'll see what happens. This is one of those where I've mentioned many times before, Christians can get very deeply invested in this and get off the rails and focus on the things that truly matter about the Christian life instead of trying to speculate and figure out when God is going to return. Right? He said no man knows the hour or the day. That includes all of us. Question twelve I am new to proper Christianity, I am struggling to

52:24 understand the concept of typology. How can real-life events be treated and be symbolic with regard to being literature basically? So typology is relatively simple to understand. I will go ahead and use the example that makes Baptist mad, but it is what it is. When you have Peter speaking about baptism, right? He speaks about baptism and the flood as being typologically linked. You have the words for typology there, antitupos and tupos in the Greek And so the antitype is just the fullness of the type or types that precede it. So you can have many types that are prefiguring or pointing to an antitype, or you could just have one. Usually it's multiple. God likes typology. This is one of the ways that he likes to organize his

53:25 word. It's one of the ways that he likes to point toward things in the future. And so you have a number of instances that are typological of baptism. One of those, of course, is the crossing through the Red Sea, right? And it explicitly speaks about that in language related to baptism. And so when you think of the type, think of a minor version, a lesser version, or an incomplete version of the antitype, which is the fullness. So again, to use the baptism example. Christian baptism is the anti type because Christian baptism bestows faith, works forgiveness of sins, brings you into the Christian church. That's the ordinary course of things if you're baptized as a child. You can of course come to faith through the word, read, heard,

54:19 whatever it happens to be, and then get baptized later, in which case it is going to strengthen your faith instead of the stowing faith because you already have it according to one of the other means of grace, because there's not one, there are multiple means of grace. But the types of baptism, and the one that Peter of course uses, is the flood. Well, from what was Noah saved by explicitly the Ark, but figuratively the flood? He was saved from temporal death and the wicked earthly realm, from the wicked men, the antideluvians. From what does baptism save you then? Well it can't just save you from those things, because it has to be greater being the antitype. Baptism saves you from eternal death by giving you the free gift

55:08 of faith, and washing away your sins. That's how typology works. So So very simple, the type is the imperfect, incomplete, or minor version or thing pointing to the anti-type, which is the completeness, the fullness, the real thing, the full thing. So, just to give one more sort of set of examples to drive home the point, as it were. Christ is the Messiah. He's the anti-type. But there are many types of Christ in the Old Testament. So you have Joshua, whose actual name is Jesus. Probably helps with the typology, doesn't it? He is a type of Christ because he brings the people into the promised land, he delivers them from their enemies. Type of Christ. Noah's a type of Christ. He brings his family through the evil destructive world, the destruction of

56:10 that world, and he is, of course, prophet, priest, and king. Type of Christ. Solomon is a type of Christ. Moses is a type of Christ. These are figures pointing to Christ and who have aspects of Christ but in a minor way, Christ being the fullness of it. So that's basically how typology works. It's not necessarily that the real life figure is a symbol and not a real person, but rather he's sort of both, right? A person can simultaneously be a real person and a symbol of something. And so you could think of a king being a symbol of authority, right? Simultaneously, he is the king, but he's also a symbol. He's a national symbol as well. So that's essentially how typology works. It's fairly straightforward.

57:01 It can get complicated when you're trying to draw out nuance and things like that, but the concept itself is fairly simple. Question 13, shifting gears here as it were to more politics. History. Is the famous photograph of the Congolese father with the amputated daughter's limbs real? If so, where should we stand on the Congo colony? This is another example of atrocity propaganda and the supposed atrocities committed by Europeans in the Congo were not committed by Europeans. They were committed by other Africans who were punishing those who did not meet their quotas. And in fact, when the Belgians learned of this, they were horrified by it and put a stop to the practice. Because it was not ordered by Europeans.

57:58 It's completely ridiculous. Why on earth would anyone think that removing the hands from a slave would increase his productivity. It's stupid. It's obviously something that did not occur to a European mind. So just that makes it pretty obvious. But no, it's atrocity propaganda against colonization because Satan hates colonization, because colonization spread Christianity to the rest of the world. Very simple. And question fourteen from the same person, a follow-up question as it were, or related question. What is the truth about Nanking and Unit 731? Are we to condemn the Japanese on those or are they fabricated? I think that they are the same sort of largely fabricated atrocity propaganda. I don't know that we have

58:46 really sufficient records with regard to that to make this sort of analysis and the sort of draw the sort of conclusion we would with regard to the European theater because the Germans kept meticulous records. And if you actually look at those records, many intercepted by the British, because of course they cracked the Enigma machine, you can see that the Germans document what they were doing, and you can figure out that the narrative, the standard narrative just doesn't work. You don't have records that are quite as good with regard to the Asian theater. So I think it's pretty clear though. Atrocity propaganda follows sort of a formula. There are a few different formulas it follows, but many of these

59:30 fit the formula of atrocity propaganda, and so I'm simply not going to believe them without very compelling evidence. So unless someone is able to present hard compelling evidence of it, I am just going to consider it war propaganda and ignore it. And I'm not going to condemn the Japanese for it because again, show me compelling evidence. Question 15. As a European, I am not familiar with this, but out of interest, is it true that American blacks were doing much better in the mid-1900s? If yes, what changed? So the answer to that is yes. They were doing better in many ways. Granted, the violent crime problem still existed, it was still the same sort of disparity, but in some ways that problem was regulated, tamped

1:00:26 down, kept under control by segregation and Jim Crow laws and things like that. And how you wind up getting that torn down is a combination of communist agitation through MLK and others, and the so called civil rights movement. Then you get the Civil Rights Acts and the Supreme Court involvement, primarily with regard to Brown v. Board of Education And the Atlanta Motel case. I can't remember the full name of that now. It's something Atlanta Motel. At any rate, that's what happened. And integration, so-called, and the destruction of all of these legal systems we'd built up to deal with the reality of race and the problems caused by multiculturalism, as it were, by having a multi-ethnic society.

1:01:20 That whole structure was torn down. And that is what led to the sort of chaos that we see today in many of those problems. And of course, the demographic demographics have changed as well due to the importation of many millions of hostile foreigners. But yes, by and large, both the white American population and the black population living in the United States were both doing better because the blacks had a structured society that suppressed some of the worst elements of their demographic group and kept things structured and orderly for them so they were doing better. You had much higher rates of marriage and staying married, lower divorce rates, lower rates of fatherlessness, and all these other problems, they were

1:02:12 much better off as well. So you can make the argument, you know, should they be permitted to stay? I would obviously say no because they are not part of the nation and so they should be sent home. But they were certainly doing better when those legal protections and those systems were in place, and those were systematically torn down largely at the behest of Jewish communists. Because the civil rights action the civil rights movement, as it were, was almost entirely funded by Jewish communists, many of them with connections to the Soviet Union. It was partly an act of war. Question 16. What assurance can we have that baby boomer parents who proclaim faith are actually saved? Very immature faith with wayward children, how can one be saved with

1:03:05 fifty plus years with next to no sanctification? That is a legitimate question, and that is fair, because someone who has been a Christian for some length of time, you should see sanctification. You should see some change in that person's life. You should see something concrete. And with many from that generation you do not see that. That is deeply unfortunate, but it is the reality. Does that mean that we despair with regard to their eternal destination I don't think so. There are different levels of reward. There are different crowns, right? So someone who is Christian with almost no works, still saved, does not have the same rewards as someone who is Christian with a lifetime of works, right?

1:03:58 There is a judgment according to works. The judgment according to works does not determine if you are saved or not. That is grace and faith alone, right? That is a free gift of God that is entirely without merit on your part. It is one hundred percent due to Christ's finished work. But there is a judgment according to your works, and God will reward you according to those works. If you don't really have any good works, then you don't get the reward. So some of them, hopefully many of them, are very well saved, right That doesn't mean that they have done what they should have done as a Christian. They should have done better. They should have tried harder. But they didn't. And you can also think here, obviously, the Lutheran response is going

1:04:47 to be felicitous inconsistency, right? We hope that they are Christianed despite the nonsense they have held and said in their life. We hope that ultimately They rely on Christ alone and entrust everything to his finished work, God's grace, and the free gift of faith. So we hope that they are ultimately Christian. We hope they are ultimately saved. Pray for them certainly. If there's an opportunity to discuss things with them, do so within the bounds of wisdom. I know I've said and I still agree, I reiterate it here in fact, there's only so much you can do with baby boomer parents, right? Every millennial knows that at this point. You probably learned it the hard way. You're just not going to get anywhere.

1:05:36 If you argue with them, you are probably just going to sour your relationship with that person. And if that doesn't achieve anything, it's not worth doing. If you have that strife, but the person amends his life, amends her life, turns back to the church, then it's worth it. And hopefully the person will also recognize then that you were doing something good and amend fix that relationship as well, right? But But yes, the baby boomer generation has a very shallow and very corrupted Christianity, but ultimately you can still be saved because it is Christ's work and not our correct doctrine our correct dogma anything like that. And the greater condemnation will fall on the many false teachers who

1:06:26 created the boomer Christianity that has been such a blight. The average believer suffers for it as well, but the teacher gets the stricter judgment, so I would not want to be a baby boomer pastor. I shudder to think what they are going to hear on Judgment Day. Question seventeen. With the way things are going for them, do you think the Jews have unintentionally delayed their plans for the coming Messiah Or is this all just a carefully planned Sia? Well, the Jewish Messiah would be the Antichrist if they actually achieve that, and if God permits a final antichrist, and that's part of his plan. You can read Revelation as that being sort of symbolic of the opposition to Christ and a number of other things, or you can

1:07:16 read it as being an actual final person. I don't really tie myself to either interpretation of that. Again, I don't think that it's the core of the Christian faith, so I don't focus on it. But I think that the Jews have a very real disadvantage with regard to how they pursue these things, and that would be that their psychology almost doesn't permit them to be rational with regard to a lot of this stuff. So if they were just patient and kept pursuing a plan of incrementalism for say another hundred years, they could probably get a lot done with very little pushback. but they are wildly impatient. And so that handicaps them. And also, taking a step back, this is something that is a problem with regard to the right wing, and it has been for

1:08:14 a long time. Don't look at the Jews as some sort of you know arch nemesis evil genius kind of group. By and large, they're not that bright. They are simply viciously preferenced toward their in-group, biased against out groups, and they are mercenary in their approach to basically everything. That gives them certain advantages. But what really puts them in the position that they have today isn't their own efforts. Because by their own efforts, usually they get expelled from countries and lands and other places. It's their father below because they are of their father the devil and he has been a murderer and a liar from the beginning and they wish to do his will. He doesn't sleep. He doesn't die.

1:09:09 He's been around working on this stuff for thousands of years. That is why that side looks like it is organized and achieving things because it has an animating intelligence behind it. It is not the Jews ultimately doing it. They are not the ones running the show. They would not do a good job if they were. So don't think of them as evil geniuses because they're not. They have an animating spirit and an animating intelligence behind them, and he is the one calling the shots ultimately. So that is the ultimate struggle for Christianity, for Christendom, for Western Christians. It's against Satan and his kingdom. The Jews just happen to be his high priests. But I don't think that they have really changed their plans for

1:10:03 their Messiah all because it's entirely out of their control. So I think that they do constantly hobble themselves by making crazy mistakes, but again, animating intelligence behind them, keeping them sort of on track to some degree. There's someone asking about women-led Bible studies. I think I will save that for next week. Just going through the chat to try and find any questions I missed. I see a question that has a one out of two, and then I do not see the second one. So I will just answer the first part.

1:11:04 And I'm not sure which number I'm on now, but I will number them in the transcript. Could the declining birth rate in the West be some sort of a blessing in disguise as most people that don't have children are lefty loons. To some degree, yes, but at the same time I think we would all rather that those individuals were simply reformed and no longer held those insane positions, because many of them have just been indoctrinated. They just believe what they have been indoctrinated to believe. And I've mentioned this many times and it bears repeating. Many men are only going to be as good as the society of which they are part. And you can think of that in a number of different ways. Men are as good as the leaders they follow, they're as good

1:11:55 as the organizations in which they are members, so on and so forth. Many of those on the left would have been perfectly functional members of a proper society. If they had been born into Christendom in medieval Europe, they would have been perfectly fine, functional peasants, and they would not have been engaged in the evil and the insanity in which they are engaged today. They do that because they live in an evil time under an evil government and they are reflec and they are a reflection of that evil. So what I would want for them is to have better shepherds, but that doesn't excuse them from their evil. It does not give them a free pass. They still have to be punished for being evil. They still have to be opposed as enemies.

1:12:46 And I do know that there was a question about leftists and some comments I made about them. I'm going to punt that one until next time. But with regard to the left, yes, to some degree it's a blessing that they are the ones having the fewest children children because in large part the future belongs to the men who show up. And the men who show up are the men who have children, right? So if nation A stops having children and nation B has six children per woman, the future belongs to Nation B because Nation A stopped having children. That's just the reality of it. But again, I would very much prefer that they lived under a better society and were better people instead of being evil and being destroyed.

1:13:31 The same thing is I would prefer that everyone convert to Christianity instead of being destroyed. It is in some ways a tragedy that anyone refuses to convert. It would be better if they converted. And that includes the Jews. Everyone. It would be better if they converted. It doesn't mean I believe everyone will, and we have to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it were. So we just have to deal with reality Let's see. Someone asked about how questions are submitted and it's I comment on this at the end of every episode, but it's always the same. I try to take questions from the chat, I collect them from other places as well, Telegram, X, etc. And the forum is the preferred way to submit them because it's

1:14:28 just easiest for me to organize things. But I do indeed take questions from the chat. That's why I'm scrolling through the chat right now to try to find them. Someone asked about AI. I'm going to add that to my list for next week because that one is a little bit longer and more involved. But yes, I do largely see AI as a negative thing, not exclusively negative. Obviously most things few things are exclusively negative, right? It's the same as sin. If sin were only negative, no one would do it. Right? And you could think back to the example given with regard to an earlier question, right? Fornication. If it were only negative, no one would do it. It has to have an appeal. Sin has to have some sort of appeal.

1:15:14 The same thing with regard to things that have negative external externalities or negative consequences like AI, right? If there were no benefit, no one would pursue it. I think I pulled out most of the questions from the chat. If I missed a question, certainly please let me know. Let's see. Do you think this may be the last question, do you think there are any antideluvians in heaven that aren't in Noah's line but still from his time. That is an interesting question. I am not sure that I know. I mean obviously I don't know, scripture doesn't tell us. No Noah is said to be the only righteous man, but

1:16:19 that depends on what is meant by righteous man, right? Because every Christian is righteous, for instance, in a certain sense. You're righteous because you're a Christian, because you're covered by Christ's righteousness. So those in the Old Testament, prior to Christ's earthly ministry, who believed in Christ, were covered by their faith in the Christ who was to come. We are covered by our faith in the Christ who has come. So if that is the sense in which Scripture is saying that Noah is a righteous man, which I think it's fair to interpret that way, then if he is the only one, then there were no other antideluvians living at that time who were saved, because of course there are antideluvians far back who would have been saved, but

1:17:08 those living at the time, under that interpretation, none of them would be saved. But if what is meant by Noah being a righteous man is that Noah is a righteous man, as we would think of it in sort of the lay sense of the term, he was a very good man who was also a Christian. Then that is perhaps different, because perhaps there is someone who believed, but was sort of in the felicitous inconsistency sense, where ultimately, yes, he believed, but he really wasn't a particularly great person. He was sort of bad and not a good Christian, had all these false beliefs, did wicked things, but in the end squeaked across the line, right? I think it's probably more reasonable to take the former interpretation that

1:17:59 Noah was the only believer in his era, which tells you how bad things can get, right? Things can get very bad. We know things that will get bad near the end, because we are told explicitly by Christ that those times will be cut short for the sake of the elect because of how bad it's going to get. So I think I would certainly lean toward saying that Noah was the only righteous man in the sense of being the only believer, and then at least two of his sons. There's some open questions about Ham. Let's see. Okay Okay, let's see I have I'll answer one more question because I happen to notice it here scrolling. Is the world including the third world speaking English as a major

1:19:01 language and that positive and means something of the white man is preserved. China would be jealous the world doesn't does not speak Chinese. I picked one that has some complicated answers to it as my final question for this week, but there are benefits to English being the lingua franca, which is always ironic that we have lingua franca, in Latin, talking about French, talking about English, but that's just a little mini history lesson all in one term. The reason that there's some benefit, obviously, is because you have sort of cultural dominance to some degree. There is some aspect of your culture that is spread over the whole world by virtue of the world using your language. It's not very much of it, but it's some of it.

1:19:55 There's more of our culture that has been spread by the adoption of Western dress and you know contract law, things like that. But there's also the negative negative that by having those parts of the world, particularly the ones with say lower IQs and other problems like that, use your language, is that it serves as as a negative force pulling the level of your language down over time. So you get sort of pidgin forms of English that tend to feed back into English. And this works for any language that has had this happen. Greek experience the same thing. You have these pigeon forms that feed back into the language and denigrate the language, lower the level of the language. So it is a negative thing in that sense that English has

1:20:48 been lowered as a language because of the fact that it is the universal language almost. The Roman Empire almost had a good solution for this. Greek was the common language, but Latin was the language of the Empire. And so Latin was insulated from this downward pressure, from this sort of anchor effect of various groups speaking pigeon forms of the language, because they weren't doing it to the language of empire which was Latin. Because those in the hinterlands were not learning Latin. They were learning Greek. And so all of the negative went toward Greek, into Koina, instead of into Latin. And I think that's probably a better approach. That's certainly how I would do it. I would have at least two languages if I were setting up

1:21:39 an empire. You have one that is reserved to the empire for imperial use and maintains a strict standard, has very clear rules. That's also a thing English doesn't have, right? There's no body that dictates rules for English. It's just sort of free for all. You don't have The French have their academy. German has something similar. English doesn't have that. Right? You can say there's the Oxford English Dictionary which kinda does a little bit of it, but we don't really have a body dictating what English is, particularly American English. But if I were setting up the way that an empire functioned with regard to language, I would certainly have the official language and then maybe one or two more.

1:22:22 Because if you have this diverse set of peoples over which you're ruling, you need a simple language they can all use, but you don't want them to use a simplified version of your language because it does bad things to your language over time. So no, I don't necessarily think that something of Europe is preserved by virtue of the fact that they're speaking our languages, I would much prefer that our people are preserved instead of just our language. Although yes, certainly if you lose the language you lose something with it as well. I do see the question about tech firms and and hiring practices and such, I will save that one for next time because I'm just not going to get to it tonight. So I think that's going to be the last question for tonight.

1:23:17 Like I've said before, I do try to keep these to an hour. I almost always run over by a little bit. That's completely fine. I don't have a a hard end time for these. But I think that will be all for tonight. If I did not get to your question, then hopefully I noticed it in the chat, copied it. I have a future topic slash question list on the forum. You can find that. And if your question is not there, then please submit it on the forum or get it to me some other way because I do want to answer the question. I just missed it because sometimes it gets lost in the chat. And like I said, OBS has been somewhat uncooperative tonight. It's currently using 80 gigabytes of memory, so yeah, it's probably a

1:24:04 good thing that I am calling it quits right now because I think OBS is probably in the process of crashing, and I am quite frankly surprised that it is still working for all of you because on my end, I am watching a slideshow. But at any rate, I try to do this on Thursdays, usually it winds up being Fridays, just sort of depends how my week goes. Again, you can submit the questions, telegram X the forum is preferred simply because it is easier for me to organize that way. But if you submit it somewhere else, I try to collate all of those and answer them in the future. Thank you to those who submitted questions and for those who participated in the chat. And I look forward to answering more of your questions next week.

1:24:48 I hope all of you have a great weekend. It's of course Friday night, so go out and have a beer or something, have a great weekend, and go to church on Sunday. Until next week, God bless you all, and hopefully the next time OBS will be slightly more cooperative. Anyway, have a great evening and a great weekend. See you all next week.