22 May 2026 (Q&A)

0:00 I assume that you can all hear me now because there is a weird glitch between sound source and OBS where if I have sound source enabled Yeah. Then OBS throws a fit. And I don't think anyone has yet figured out what exactly the conflict there is. At any rate, I will simply start over. It is the twenty second of May twenty twenty six. I am Cory J. Mahler and this is at any cost. This is episode twenty-nine, a QA episode. I have just a little bit of housekeeping before I get started with the actual questions here. There are some outstanding orders for challenge coins, that's both Stone Choir and Confident Faith. Most of those are ready to go. I should have all of those out either tomorrow morning or Monday

0:52 morning depending on how that goes. So if you're waiting for your order, you'll have a tracking number in your email. If you're signed up for USBS tracking, if it's a foreign order or something like that, then you should still get one, but if you don't, let me know and I'll send one over to you. At any rate you should have those coins in hand in the next handful of days, unless you ordered from Europe, then give it a week. The only other bit of housekeeping that I had is that next week I think I am going to go through some of the more involved questions. So there'll be fewer questions addressed, but some longer answers. I see some in the backlog there that I haven't prepared yet because they're going to be longer.

1:34 They're going to take up a good chunk of an episode. So I'll get to some of those. I think that's pretty much it for housekeeping though, so I'll move on to the questions now. I see that there are already some questions coming in in the chat. I'll try to copy those as we go. So Nothing I need to address right now. But anyway, I'll move on to the first question. Question one. What do you make of the papist photos that they post of the Eucharist and it's bloody? They claim this is evidence of transubstantiation. So I've seen these images going around on X in particular. That seems to be where they've been sharing them recently. And And without actually knowing anything about what happened, because there's never really any facts attached to it, nothing

2:29 substantiated or corroborated, I have no idea what it is exactly they're doing. Generally speaking, my assumption would be it's just wine on the wafer. Wine looks like blood, right? Red wine looks like blood. One of the reasons that's symbolically we use red wine, because scripture doesn't say you have to use red wine. Incidentally, some places in Germany use white wine. There are historical theological reasons for that, but that's permissible because it's not required by scripture that you use red wine or white wine or it has to be cabernet or something, right? It just says wine. So the reason historically and today that we use red wine is that it looks like blood. It reminds you of what is happening in the supper.

3:17 And that's a good thing. So I think using red wine is probably a good practice unless you have some specific reason not to do so, which was the case with those German Lutherans at one point. And some of them just carried it forward. But the claims being advanced, I don't have any evidence. I don't have any facts. So if I were there and I saw something happen, then certainly I would faithfully report that. But I haven't seen that. And like I said, they don't provide facts to corroborate this, go alongside it. They're just weird naked claims. It's kind of the same as the claims of statues crying and things like that. We see this stuff all the time. And I'm not saying there are no miracles, but you should have

4:02 some corroborating evidence that the thing happened is indeed supernatural, because otherwise you wind up embarrassing yourself when it turns out the statue is crying because there was a leaky toilet above it. That's literally happened before. I believe that was in Mexico. You don't want to put yourself in that situation, right? If you're going to advance that something is a miracle, make sure there's no mundane explanation for it. If the priest spilled some wine on the wafers, that's the explanation for it. If the wafers instead were isolated and then the priest spoke the words of institution and they start bleeding, that's a totally different thing. I haven't seen proof of that, so as far as I'm concerned,

4:46 I think spilled wine is the most likely explanation. But again, I'm not saying miracles don't happen. God still performs miracles today. Lutherans are not cessationists with regard to miracles or with regard to sign gifts even. God just does it less today because many of those things were meant in the immediate aftermath of the New Testament era to put God's stamp of approval as it were to prove that these were men who were actually empowered by God to go out and speak his truth. And today we don't need the same thing. God's operating in a different way with us today. Question two Can you give guidance to any delegates who are going to the LCMS convention? I saw there is a resolution that was brought forward against UN

5:33 Wo. So yes, there are actually several resolutions against us. One, at least one, happens to name us personally. So I'll refrain from commenting on some aspects of that. But if you are going to the convention, you have to realize the men at the convention by and large are going to be company men, as it were. There will be good pastors, and there will be good pastors who brought along good elders with them. For those who don't know in the LCMS, the pastor of a congregation goes and he takes one man with him. So usually going to be an elder, right? Or the president of the congregation, someone in a position of authority. Doesn't have to be, usually is. There will be a lot of good men there. But at the same time, if you stand up and advocate for

6:19 Stone Choir, you'll probably be out of the LCMS. And it won't be asked to leave, they'll force you to leave, inside of a few weeks. Now you'd think, oh, the next date. No, it's bureaucracy, it takes a little while to operate. But they are still very much in witch hunt mode and they will try to ruin your life. So So I wouldn't recommend that because I don't think it's going to gain you anything or advance anything with regard to the LCMS. This is just not going to be a convention where anything particularly substantive is accomplished. I think I will refrain from commenting more on that particular subject right now. Maybe I'll comment more on it after the convention is underway. But But the general rule is probably just fly under the radar

7:09 right now. That's the the wise thing to do. Question three. I guess this is sort of a almost a follow-on to question one, just incidentally. You previously mentioned not taking the angelic view of the Nephilim. What phenomena do you believe are supernatural or preternatural that other others may take a naturalistic view on. So insofar as supernatural views, if I ignore that last clause as it were, that limiting clause, then obviously belief in God is probably my primary supernatural view. Belief in the soul. Just belief in the supernatural at all, right? So other than when people take a naturalistic view, I think one of the obvious ones there would be the development of the races of man, right?

8:05 Because there is a spiritual element to that. It's not purely naturalistic, it's not purely physical. And so You have the genetic component, but you also have the component of how faithful a particular race remained to God, how deeply they fell into demon worship, and that influenced the development of that race over time. Then obviously cultures downstream from race and then culture reinforces whatever those proclivities were for the given race and you have a feedback loop. So So many would try to take that as purely naturalistic, and I think that there's very clearly a supernatural element to that as well. Insofar as other supernatural things are concerned, demons are real. They can do things in the physical world within bounds God set

8:54 for them. I've mentioned before God doesn't tell us the bounds, so we can't say, oh yes, a demon can do X, a demon cannot do Y, right, by and large. We know the general rule a demon cannot go further than God has permitted. A demon cannot outright drag you to hell, right? Demons can't do that They tempt you, try to mess with you, do things like that. I mean, look at the book of Job, right? That was obviously a special instance. God permitted Satan to do some stuff that he does not normally do, right? I look out right now and Satan's not calling down fire on my livestock. I can't actually see my chickens from this window, but it's not happening, I know that, so as far as supernatural versus naturalistic views, I think that probably just

9:41 about covers the the general range as it were. If you look at the world, sort of as a an extrapolation from the question, if you look at the world as purely naturalistic, you're going to miss a lot of things and also you can't explain the world. Because materialism falls flat. There are many arguments that demonstrate this. Qualia is probably one of the best one. You can go ahead and look that up. Basically, it's your personal experience of something. Something, your interior experience, which is not physical. And so your per personal perception, experience of the color red, is your qualia of the color red, or qualia if we want to use the singular there, which we probably should. That is not purely physical.

10:26 And there are many thought experiments that have demonstrably and conclusively proven that. So we know that there are things that are at least supra natural, right? They are above the material, outside the naturalistic, which means if you have a purely material science or a purely material view of the universe approach to things, your world view, there will be things you cannot explain within that. Not least of all, you know, things like the laws of logic, upon which you are relying to build up your natural system. So the supernatural is very clearly real and you can't avoid it and have a coherent system. Question four and five are related, and then I think I'll get to some questions from the chat because I think, like I said,

11:23 next week I'll go over some more involved questions. So I'll do some shorter ones this week. Question four. In various episodes you and Wo touched on Levitical Punishments being strong suggestions, but not strictly necessary. I assume, however, that there is, of course, no good argument for not simply following them in principle. With regard to following them in principle, I don't think there's any argument against that. So the arguments against it would be, however, practical arguments. They would be pragmatic arguments. So, for instance, if we were right now, as things stand, to institute a law handing out capital punishment we'll take the extreme example, right? Handing out capital punishment for blasphemy, and we took the expansive

12:20 view of blasphemy that is found in the Old Testament, we would very significantly reduce the population of our country. And given the reality of the conditions of the last 100, 150 years, maybe even a little longer, I don't think that that's a reasonable approach. Essentially, you have to give people some sort of warning, as it were, that this is going to be enacted, right? You have to say, we are going to punish going forward blasphemy with the death penalty. Here are the things that are blasphemous. Do not do these things. The Israelites had that, right? Because God gave Moses the law. Moses spoke it to them, the Levites interpreted it and gave it to them, right? They knew these things. And so they had fair warning as it were.

13:14 And yes, you could make the argument, well everyone knows that God exists and that you shouldn't, you know, say these horrible things about God, right? Okay. That's different from having an explicit statement of, we are going to punish this in this way, you are hereby warned, right. So I think we have to take that approach. I think there is a level of pragmatism when it comes to where we fall on the scale with regard to punishments that are permissible. So we shouldn't go enacting all of the old testament laws with the maximum punishment right now. I saw someone mention there's no audio. I assume that's someone who just started listening to the stream and that the audio did not cut again. My levels all look fine.

14:01 Hopefully they are. If not, someone in the chat please tell me. So the follow-up question, question five, why should we not just execute all adulterers? And adulteresses we're using the generic term there. Is the justification given by God for the execution of murderers enough to put it above the equal in law slave on paper punishments of adultery and sodomy. One of the reasons that I sort of put this one off a little bit, and I've touched on this previously, is that there's actually a difference in the way the commandments, particularly these two, are listed in the Septuagint versus the Masoretic text. One of the lists in the Septuagint actually lists adultery before murder. which would make adultery, the fifth commandment, and murder the sixth commandment,

15:00 in the Lutheran or traditional numbering, right? Not the the Reform numbering to which with which most Americans are familiar. So being Lutheran, I'm accustomed to the Lutheran numbering. And the other aspect of that is that if you actually look at the way that Christ himself lists them in Luke, he also lists adultery first. It's one of those things that we've all read, we've read it however many times you've read the book of Luke, right? And we just go past we're like, oh Christ is just giving an off Christ is God. He's not just giving an offhand list. And yet, he says adultery and then murder. This is one of those things where yes, there's some tension, as it were, in the text, we sort of have to resolve how

15:48 we're going to list them and teach them to our children, right? I could make an argument either way. Very easily argument either way. I could make a compelling argument either way. I am not going to give a resolution to this. I think that it's partly up to the translators to deal with that issue. And so I'm just not going to say that it should be X, right? I'm not going to try to bind them to that. On a related note, I guess little nugget for those who are listening to this. Those who are listening to the Through the Bible in a year readings, you may have noticed that I am not always pronouncing the names consistently. That's deliberate. And the reason that I'm doing that is that I don't want

16:28 anyone to be able in the future to point to those readings and say, well he said it this way, and so we should and so I've denied them the ability to do that by pronouncing the names different ways. I'm also implicitly pointing out the names need to be anglicized in a way that is comprehensible for English listeners, English readers, and so we're not bound by exactly how the name is spelled in the Greek, because some of the things that the Greeks believe are pronounceable are insane to English ears. So that's the reason that I'm doing that. Same sort of thing going on here. Translators need to work through this issue. But to get to the specific question of adultery and the punishment of adulterers, and even if you think the commandments are one way

17:17 versus another, it doesn't mean that we can't have capital punishment for both, right? Obviously, because God says it's a capital crime in the Old Testament. That for those who don't know, the punishment in the Old Testament for adultery is death. It's a capital crime. I do think that we should bring that back. Because adultery completely destroys nations, it destroys families, it is one of the most destructive things in which a man or woman can engage. Now that comes with some caveats. And the caveats would be this for women, adultery should be a capital crime. For men, there are instances where it should be, and where for sort of pragmatic reasons it should not be. So I'll give some examples here to draw out that distinction and

18:09 then explain a little bit why it's there's a difference here. I think many of those listening know why, but I'll explain it nonetheless. So if a man is already married, has a wife, has children, and then sleeps with another woman who is not married, that's important for this. Polygyny is morally permissible. And so there is a solution here that is not capital punishment. You still punish the man in some way, you know, public shaming or beating, whatever it happens to be. There's nothing wrong with corporal punishment. It certainly works. But in order not to deprive the first woman of her husband and the children of their father, and there bo and thereby inflict that sort of harm, you have the solution of him having another

18:57 wife. So there are cases where I think that's the solution. Are there cases where he should be executed instead? Certainly yes, I think so. Now, if the woman, the second woman, is instead married, that's different that should be death penalty for the man as well. The reason for the difference is very simple that it's just biology, right? A woman engaging in adultery has committed something that is never in any way permissible, right? A woman is not permitted to sleep with a man, not her husband. Polyandry is never permissible. So you don't have that solution, as it were, of here's your new wife. You have a second wife, right? You have to marry her. Obviously, the father of the woman should have a veto and all

19:41 that sort of stuff, ancillary to the immediate question. But a woman engaged in adultery, so an adulteress, there's no solution there. She has committed a heinous crime that for which there is no real fix in this life. Now, could you potentially have some sort of minor carve out as it were for a lesser punishment in the law where her husband forgives her and says, I don't want the maximum penalty. Maybe. I think you could argue one way or the other with that. I'm not saying it's morally impermissible. I think I think that that's a morally permissible caveat or carve out in the law. But should it be something we do as a society is a different argument because there's the issue of wisdom, right?

20:31 If you permit that, then you can create conditions in your society such that men are pushed to be the sort of man who has to forgive that, right? Oh, you're not a good man unless you do X, Y, and Z. If you don't permit the exception, you can't run into that problem. Similar to, and this should come to mind for some of you certainly, we should have paternity testing for all children born. Period. And the reason you do that is that it is an incentive not to engage in adultery, because you will be caught at least under those circumstances. And what it does then is it removes the strife that demanding a paternity test could cause in a particular situation, right? If you have a man who is, you know, he's suspicious of

21:21 his wife for some reason and she's totally innocent, and he demands a paternity test, that's going to do grave harm to the marriage. Whereas if the state is instead saying, you must have a paternity test, you have no say in this, she's not going to blame him. You don't cause the problem for the marriage. It's better policy. So paternity testing should absolutely be mandatory. It resolves a lot of problems in society, and you don't have that potential strife between husband and wife. But with regard to adultery, yes, my basic stance is that capital punishment should absolutely be on the table, but it should not automatically and always be the punishment, because there should be some not really

22:05 exceptions, but and not even really mitigating circumstances, but mitigating in the sense of there are other considerations that come into the calculus and argue for a lesser punishment in order to reduce harm. And I think harm reduction is permissible in some cases. Not at all, because Genesis nine six, God doesn't give us the option those who commit murder, and obviously that's kind of thinking, you know, murder one sort of thing there, but those who commit murder, capital punishment, period. God doesn't give us the means, so we have freedom with regard to that, there's leeway there, but the punishment itself has to be capital punishment because again, Genesis nine six is abundantly clear.

22:51 And I've said it enough times on this podcast and elsewhere that I'm sure you all know it by now. It's one of those ones we should all have memorized. Question six is actually from the letter I mentioned last week. I'm just going to read it off the letter because I didn't it was actually a physically mailed letter. I am not going to answer all the questions from it because some of them, as it turns out, I was reading it before I went live, and some of them are a little more involved. There's a question about Mind Kampf and some history and Nexus with theology and philosophy, so it's a little complicated, but hopefully I'll get to that one next week. Maybe I'll go through MindKomp at some point and assess that project

23:36 for the future. Anyway, the question I'm going to answer is the second question from this letter. And it's very nice and short. How can you explain Genesis chapter thirty, verses thirty seven through thirty nine, which gives a very strange story on reproduction? So for those of you who are familiar with how atheists and others try to argue, this is one they love, right? This comes up all the time, so I will just pull that up in logos here, assuming logos will cooperate, and actually read through it since Always better to do that. Logos. Okay, so here we have Genesis. Thank you. Can we stop doing that? The numbering is actually the same in this case for the Septuagint conveniently, so for those of you playing along at home.

24:31 And Jacob took for himself a green rod of styrax and walnut and one of a plain tree tree, and Jacob stripped white stripes in them, tearing away the green, and the white that he had stripped appeared variegated on the rods, and he set the rods that he had stripped in the channels of the watering troughs of water, in order that, when the ship would come to drink in front of the rods, as they came for drinking, the sheep would come into heat at the rods, and the sheep would produce pure white and variegated and ash colored spotted young. And so on and so forth, you get the idea here. This is of course when Laban is trying to cheat him out of his payment for working for Laban by, you know, being what

25:13 Laban is, was was probably, you know, depends there. At any rate, this is obviously not how natural reproduction works, right? The color of the offspring of a given creature are not dependent on what they were looking at when the offspring was being created or being born, whatever it happens to be, right? Your children don't change color based on the paint in your bedroom. That's not how genetics works. We all know that. It's a miracle, right? This is God punishing Laban and rewarding Jacob. That's all this is. So when people try to look at this and say all that's not how it happens, it's the same ridiculous argument as when people find a miracle in scripture and say, well, that's impossible. It's a miracle.

26:01 Of course it's impossible according to naturalistic explanations. That's the whole point of a miracle. If there were no suspension or violation of the laws of you know physics or biology, genetics, whatever it happens to be, then it's not a miracle, it's just unlikely. This is a miracle, that's what's being told here. This is not the Bible giving you a biology lesson, right? There are parts of scripture that are simple recounting of facts, a recounting of history, whatever it happens to be. And there are other parts where God is telling you, you know, you must do this, you must not do that, moral law, there's all sorts of different stuff in scripture. You have to know what you're reading. This is what Jacob did.

26:47 We don't know if God told him specifically to to do this, right? We don't have that here in this text. But we can assume God probably told him to do this. If God didn't tell him to do it, then God simply took Jacob's ignorance and blessed him nonetheless. God can do that. He does it all the time, right? We're ignorant of many things. He still blesses us despite our ignorance, despite the fact that we do things that don't really match up. So again, just an instance of a miracle, not something that's difficult to explain, just something that atheists try to use as a gotcha. It's the It's the same it would be the exact same as if someone tried to say, Water doesn't turn into wine. That's the entire point.

27:32 The entire point is that he's God, he's performed a miracle. It's not that if you do something with water, other than, you know using grapes and yeast, wine results. It's a miracle, so is this. Let me pull out some questions here from the chat, make sure I didn't miss anything. Someone asked a question right at the beginning, and all I have is one out of two. As he numbered them, I don't have the actual question. So if you would like to post your actual question, I can get to it, otherwise I'm not entirely certain what you were asking. But the first one that I see that's actually a question I can answer is could someone believe and accept Jesus but be such an awful

28:35 teacher? The example given here is a modern megachurch or other insane denomination that that this teacher will indeed be damned to hell. So can you be such a bad teacher that despite professing Christ, you will be damned? The answer is there depends. And the reason it depends is because you have an assumption here in the question. So it depends on which way you take that assumption. Is the assumption that he believes in Jesus the real Jesus? Or is this assumption that he believes in someone he has constructed and named Jesus, right? Because you can say that you believe in something and then deny absolutely every single tenet of it. Are you a believer in the thing? No, of course not. This is.

29:30 We're right back to No True Scotsman, right? No true Scotsman comes up all the time. This is another atheist one. They'll try to say that you know Christians aren't Christian because of X, Y, and Z or something like that, or Christians are like this because I found this one person who did something I didn't like. The point of no true Scotsman is that an innate characteristic remains an innate characteristic regardless of other things. So, you can't say that a man, right, no true Scotsman would hate Scotch. That's an insane argument. You can say it in jest, right? We understand there's a difference there. But whether or not a man is Scottish, whether he's a Scotsman, is a matter of his blood.

30:18 I was incidentally just at a Scottish festival this last weekend, but and they did indeed have Scotch. And Scotch is indeed great, but whether or not he's Scottish is not a matter of these incidental things. It's something innate to him. I'm male innately. It's not a matter of whether I like, you know, steak, scotch, motorcycles, whatever argument you want to make for whatever group. An innate characteristic doesn't change because you assign some arbitrary thing, more or less arbitrary, and then find someone who does not adhere to that. Now that's different from something that is not innate. For instance, an ideology. Religion is a great example. What is a religion? It is sort of at a fundamental level a set of tenets,

31:09 a set of beliefs. And so if the religion claims A, B, and C, and the point of the religion, and the core of the religion is A, B, and C, and if you deny any one of those, you're not a member of the religion, that's not no true Scotsman. Because this is an ideology that is a set of beliefs, and you cannot deny the set of beliefs and say you believe the very set of beliefs you are denying. Because again, it's not innate. You elect this in the generic sense here, not dealing with election, obviously. And so you can have someone who claims to be a member of this thing, but is not because of these beliefs. So you can exclude yourself from a group based on beliefs. You can't make yourself cease to be male if you were born

31:59 male based on beliefs. That's not how it works. You know, you can't say my favorite color is pink, well you're no longer a boy, you're a girl. That's not how it works. But it does work that way with religion. And so if this hypothetical teacher has someone, has an idol, he has named Jesus, who denies all the things that Jesus taught and teaches all these false things. Well, he doesn't believe in Jesus. He believes in an idol. He is damned. The other potentiality here, the other potential here would be that you have a man who ultimately does believe in Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible, the Jesus who is God, but has false beliefs. And that's true of most men. Most men have some false beliefs, even if they are Christian, even

32:53 if they believe in Jesus. This comes up all the time. Lutherans have a term for it. It is felicitous inconsistency, which is to say, despite the false teachings of maybe the church of which you are a part, or even the things you yourself profess. Ultimately, in your heart, at the end of the day, you rely on Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you believe that He died for you, you believe in the resurrection, ultimately you're a Christian, despite these things, so felicitously inconsistent in your beliefs between what you believe internally and what you profess. If he's that man, then he's saved despite being a bad teacher. He's going to have a very awkward conversation with God at the final judgment, right?

33:33 Because teachers get the stricter judgment, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's damned. It may just mean that you don't receive the sort of rewards that you would have received if you had been a faithful teacher and more faithful in your beliefs. Because remember, there are two judgments, right? There's the judgment of saved or damned, as it were, and then there's the judgment according to works, which is for your rewards, crowns, things like that. I'm not saying there's like different days or something, God doesn't have a backlog. But well Whether or not you are saved is a matter of whether or not you have faith in Christ. The rewards you receive are a different thing, because those are according

34:14 to works. The man who teaches falsely has fewer works, has wicked works that will be burned up, right? The man who teaches rightly has more good works, just as a general thing all else being held equal. So it depends on what the assumption is there, right? It depends on whether this is a man who has an idle An idol named Jesus, or has it Jesus but some false beliefs that he's accumulated from the world and ultimately doesn't rely on those for his salvation, ultimately still has faith, that man is saved, the former is damned. Yes, to the person who said in chat, Gremlins got me, the Gremlins did get me, and this time the Gremlins are called OBS and Sound Source. See Let's see. A question about infant baptism, which is obviously one that comes up

35:14 frequently. The question is, if I'll just rephrase it a little bit, if children of Christian parents are saved pre-baptism, doesn't that contradict the idea that we must be born again? Secondly, does that not contradict the necessity for infant baptism? The way that this works, and the way that Lutherans have always addressed this, and Roman Catholics as well, this is not exclusively Lutherans, obviously, Presbyterians, others baptize their infants as well. Because Scripture tells you to do so. You can have faith before you're baptized. An infant can have faith. John the Baptist leapt in the womb, in utero. He knew his Savior was nearby, was physically proximate. So we don't know exactly how that works.

36:07 You can hear things in utero, we know that. And there are those who will try to say, oh that's impossible, you can't make out distinct words, you can't do X. What does Scripture say about you? Before you are given the free gift of faith, before you are made alive again in Christ? It says you're dead in your sins and trespasses. So if you think that you're any better off than the infant, you need to re-read your Bible and pay closer attention. If anything, you're worse off than an infant. The infant doesn't have the obstinate will of an impenetent adult with a lifetime of sin and hardened heart toward God and a seared conscience and all these other problems, the infant is not going to resist the Holy Spirit.

36:51 An adult has a worse time than the infant. Because Because again, the infant is not going to resist God. The adult probably is going to resist God to some degree. So the child may very well have faith already before the child is baptized. But the reason that we still baptize the child is one, God told us to do so, and two, if God has given us a gift, we are going to receive the gift with joy, particularly when the gift has the promise of salvation attached to it. So maybe a particular infant has faith in utero, maybe that infant is given faith in the waters of baptism You can't determine which one, so what would it be rational to do? And that's even just, you know, ignoring that first part, which is

37:43 obviously obedience to God, is the major point here. Just in a rational calculation, you still baptize the infant. Because we know that you are given faith in the waters of baptism, at least if you don't already have faith, or your faith is strengthened. So if the infant has faith, you strengthen the infant's faith. If the infant doesn't have faith, you give the infant faith. Either way, obeying God, good thing, you still do it. Scripture very clearly speaks of the child of believers as as being sanctified as being holy, right? Particularly in the passage dealing with the believing spouse versus the unbelieving spouse, and the believing spouse sanctifies the children, other because you know,

38:23 otherwise your children would be unholy sort of thing, that whole thing, other places in scripture as well. But it doesn't change the fact that you have to be born again, because being born again is obviously faith. It's believing. Baptism is the natural means by which that is done, because you are supposed to be baptized as an infant. If you are an adult convert, you generally have faith first, right? That's how it goes. Because we're not running around grabbing adults and dunking them on the street. That's not how things operate. That's not what we should be doing. With adults we engage in them in a different way because we can. With as an adult, I can reason with you, I can give you the scriptures, I can do all these different things.

39:10 You can't do that with an infant. The only means we have and there are multiple means of grace, the only means we have that works for an infant, as far as we know, is baptism. We still read the scriptures to our children, including infants, and we leave these things in God's hands. This is another one of those instances where we shouldn't be trying to look for edge cases and exceptions and saying, well, what if and then God has been super abundant with the things that He has given us. Just accept all the gifts from God's hands hands. Don't ask God why did you give me multiple ways to be assured of my salvation? That's an insane question. Why would you ever ask God why he gave you multiple ways

39:54 to be assured you won't spend eternity in hell? If he wants to give me eighty-seven different ways, I'd be very happy with that. He gave us several means of grace. I'm glad we have all of those. And I've spoken before of the fact that you have, you know, you're tripartite, and so your soul, your mind can grasp different things from your body. Your body can grasp water. Your flesh can't really understand the words of scripture, right? Your flesh understands paper. It understands holding scripture. I was gonna grab the Septuagint, but it's actually over here. So for those who are looking at X, yes, I did go and grab my physical copy of the German Septuagint, but your flesh can grasp physical things.

40:34 And so God has given us physical things with regard to the sacraments, the means of grace, so that the totality, the gestalt that is man, can grasp these things. Excuse me. So So it's not that you don't have to be born again, right? That's not what's going on here. It's that your children are holy to God, and God has given them that gift in some way that isn't one hundred percent spelled out in Scripture. What is spelled out in Scripture is that faith comes by hearing, and that faith comes by baptism. Right? Baptism now saves you. The only thing from which it can save you that's greater than temporal death, which is why it's compared to the flood, is eternal death by giving you faith. I've explained this before many other places.

41:23 So we don't know all of the exact nuances of this. We don't have this long drawn out formula of if this then that, if that, then this, and all these exceptions. We don't have the tree of decision, right? All we know is what God has given us. He's given us the sacraments. He's given us the Word. We know that we use these things because of the means instituted by God to bestow faith on all believers, but certainly on the next generation. We use them in the way God is commanded, as God intended, and we trust in God. We know that for instance with David, when his son dies, having not been circumcised, he was still able to say, and this is David as a prophet, that he will see him again. So we have faith that God has done this in some way,

42:13 that these children are given faith in a way that is consistent with God's plan because of course it is because God's the one designing it. And so as believers, we don't have worry about our children dying before they're baptized if they're very young. We don't have to worry about that because God has been clear in His Word that He provides for that. The children are holy because of the parents. We have the instance of David, a specific instance, even a children a child in this case conceived in particularly egregious sin is David as a prophet can still say he'll see him again. So you look at the totality of Scripture, the way God has laid out, the way this process works, and you simply obey and

42:55 trust in God. God's not saying that there's some you know exceptional way like oh little children are totally fine because no you still use the means God has instituted. You don't try to find an exception and then rely on an exception. That's not the like I've explained it before. The way you look at it is if there's a cliff, you don't walk right on the edge. Now for those who've never been near cliffs maybe I would hope it's still obvious, but the edge of a cliff is often kind of slippery and crumbly. Don't walk right there. The same thing applies with regard to the things of God. Use them as God intended, be thankful for the fact that God has given us multiple instead of singular, and rely on God, because

43:38 He is faithful to His Word and His Promises. So Yes, the children of Believers are holy, and we don't have to worry about if they happen to die in that very narrow window between birth and baptism. But we still baptize them because one, God's command, two, God's promises. And then uh I guess a follow-up question from the same person, sort of the question about the pericope adulteri, which is to say the woman caught at adultery. And yes, that is scripture. We do hold to, Lutherans do generally hold to that. Pretty much all Lutherans hold to that. There's always that one weird guy somewhere in a corner. But we don't think that that's should be removed from scripture, right? They're people who try to make that argument.

44:38 So the question is, what do we take away as a lesson from that? And I'll probably go into it greater depth in the future. I'll actually make a note for myself on that, that another list that is eternally growing. But excuse me. What do we take away from that? I think what we said earlier with regard to some of these punishments not being absolutely mandatory, but more the limit that is set, right? You can punish adultery with a capital punishment. You can punish it with execution. It can be the death penalty. But it doesn't have to be. And I think probably the bigger takeaway here. that's sort of a minor takeaway. It's there in the text. It is obviously part of the argument if you're making the argument

45:26 for civil penalties and the civil law in the Old Testament and how we should use it as Christians, how we should view it, things like that. I think the bigger takeaway though is that he's condemning the wickedness of the Jews who were bringing this woman to him to try to entrap him and condemn him. They were being hypocrites. He's condemning them for being hypocrites. The same thing is true of the passage with regard to the Sadducees and their nonsense hypothetical about the woman who was married to seven brothers, right? And whose wife will she be in the resurrection. Christ is condemning them there. He's not really so much commenting on marriage as he is condemning the hypocrisy and the stupidity of the Sadducees.

46:11 I think we're dealing with the same sort of thing here. He's condemning the wickedness and the hypocrisy of the Jews more than necessarily commenting on whether or not adultery should be punished, right? Because he's very clear, many places, neither jot nor title, none of the law will pass away. Adultery is still one of the commandments, whether it's the fifth or the sixth. It is still eligible for the death penalty, it just doesn't always have to be a death penalty offense. and those who are employing it hypocritically, God is going to condemn them for that, right? God hates hypocrisy. God hates lying. So you don't want to be the person who is doing the very wicked thing that you're condemning publicly, right?

46:56 You can think of many instances of that, certainly among politicians and others, but you don't want to be the person who's saying this adulteress should be stoned Meanwhile you have three mistresses, right? Don't be that guy. You can think of Judah, for instance, in the Old Testament and a couple of events there. So So condemnation of hypocrisy and as a sort of subsidiary point we can draw that certainly you do not always have to punish adultery with capital punishment. As I pointed out previously in another episode, the same thing is true with regard to Joseph and Mary, right? Because engagement was tantamount to marriage, and that was the case in our society as well until relatively recently.

47:41 So she would have been eligible for punishment as an adulteress, and yet he's called righteous for wanting to put her away quietly instead of bringing her before the elders and having her stoned. Also very clear teaching that you don't necessarily have to apply capital punishment because then he couldn't be called righteous because then he would be subverting God's law instead of being merciful while still obeying God's law. Because those two are not necessarily at odds, right? They aren't at odds. Mercy is not at odds with God's law. God's law is not at odds with mercy. As long as you properly conceive of mercy, right? Not the sort of mercy the world thinks where they're setting murderers free to go and kill again.

48:22 That's not mercy. That's hatred of your neighbor. Question about capitalism we have here. So is capitalism really that bad or is the idolatry of capitalism the problem And would slavery basically solve all the problems of the people that put themselves into poverty and single parent households? Sort of a few related questions there, but with regard to capitalism, it's sort of distilling a lot of information into one answer. The episode that we did in Stone Choir on capitalism, capitalist idolatry, highly recommend that one. I will go ahead and put that in the show notes for this question. That's sort of the longer form answer. But the core of the answer is that there's a difference between

49:23 what most people call capitalism and what capitalism actually is. Capitalism is more extensive than just the free ex relatively free exchange of goods, right? If I sell you this pen for whatever amount of money. It's amount of money's not the point. If I sell you this pen, that's not capitalism. If you buy some of my chickens, that's not capitalism. Just because you have a market, that's not capitalism. Ultimately, capitalism is essentially the economics of the social theory that is libertarianism. Because anytime you step outside that sort of maximalist conception of capitalism, you're no longer really dealing with capitalism. Then you're dealing with something else that has overlapping elements with capitalism.

50:19 So for instance, a market, exchange of goods, private ownership of property, right? These things exist. And those exist in systems that are not capitalist. This existed in medieval times. They were not capitalists just because you could own property and goods. So capitalism can't claim to have exclusive authority over those or ownership, whatever you want to call it. Perhaps that's ironic, but Capitalism doesn't have that. Ultimately, what capitalism is, is that laissez-faire market economy. It is the hands-off approach. And some of the economic thinkers, some economists, are a little more honest about that than others. So So as soon as you, for instance, start regulating the economy, you are deviating from what capitalism in its so-called pure form would

51:07 be. Because now you have a regulatory state that has taken some level of control over the economy, that's no longer capitalism, it's a different thing. There are those who want to call it, you know, regulatory capitalism or something like that. But you've really fundamentally violated that core of the claims of capitalism, which that essentially is that the market is a god, right? If you have enough rational actors, which is already a problem here, if you have enough, at least economically rational actors in a system, and enough information that's sometimes a caveat there, in the system, then they will make rational decisions that will ultimately be beneficial Well, one, that doesn't actually pan

51:51 out really ever. And then two, you always have to regulate that. And one of the reasons you have to regulate it, and I know this one makes economists some economists, not all obviously, makes some economists and others angry. Regulation is necessary with regard to the market, because the market inevitably trends and naturally trends toward monopoly. And without getting into, you know, an economics crash course as it were, or regulatory law crash course, essentially the reason that that happens the way that it works is partly corporations, because the corporation is sort of the ultimate outcome of capitalism, inevitable outcome. And a corporation as an economic actor is always going to outcompete

52:36 individuals, first off. And then the corporation, whatever corporation it happens to be, you have a number in a given market, right? One will develop some sort of advantage over time. Doesn't matter what it is. It could be advantage with regard to a downstream supplier. Upstream, whatever it doesn't matter what you're dealing with, right? Distributor, supplier, technology. You just get a good deal on something. You happen to find a good piece of land, any sort of advantage. That advantage can be used to drive out competition. And over time, this leads to concentration in the market. And what you can then do is once you have a certain degree of power within your particular market, you can leverage that into

53:23 adjacent markets. This is the general way that monopolies develop, particularly once you get an integrated monopoly, which basically just means upstream and downstream, right? They've got control over the resources they need going into the product, they've got control over the distribution of the product once they've created it. They are an integrated monopoly. And one of the ways you can do this is say you have 50% share of a market, right? And let's say there is one other competitor. Let's say you're a duopoly. It's 50 and 50. But now you have some sort of relationship with the major we'll do the we'll do the uh supply of some sort of input here. I think it's probably the best, the easiest way to understand this.

54:06 You have some sort of relationship with some key supplier of some particular input that is necessary to produce the widget on which these two companies, you and your duopolistic partner, are supposedly competing. There's also the issue of corruption. See the lovely admission of, I think it was the ATT CEO who said he just didn't, it was Sprint or Verizon. Well, we we just don't compete in that market, just bluntly admitted it on national TV. Basically nothing happened. But you have some relationship with this supplier of this necessary good. And what you do is you use that relationship to monopolize the supply or to drive out your competitor from having access to the supply. Your competitor can no longer compete with you because your competitor

54:51 no longer has that access to the supply. You've now become a monopoly and you can use your monopolistic position now to leverage yourself into the say distribution or retail market because now you're the only supplier. This happens thousands of times a day all over the place. Not all of these individuals wind up becoming successful corporations over time, but some of them do. And if you wind up with ones that have enough power and enough money, they become such monopolistic players that you have additional problems, like regulatory capture, where they take over the entity that's supposed to be regulating them. That's what happened with net neutrality. Whatever you think about net neutrality, the way that it got repealed

55:33 was the major ISPs coming together and subverting it by taking over the regulatory agency that was supposed to oversee them. They took their own personnel, put them in, changed the law, gave them another job when they came back out of having their term in office. Literally, what happened happens all the time in our economy, which is supposedly a regulated capitalist economy. If it were unregulated, this would be orders of magnitude worse. And so there's just the practical matter that it doesn't exist. It can't exist because the market destroys itself absent regulation. So even if you want a market, you have to regulate it. And I'm not saying a market's bad. Markets can be good. They're a tool.

56:22 This is related to when people ask me what's your economic ideology, I say I don't have one, and the example I like to give is that I don't have an ideology of shovels. If I'm digging a trench to bury, say, irrigation tubing, I've been doing that recently, updating some stuff around the property, I probably want a narrow, you know, two inch shovel, right? Because I'm burying a half inch tube. I don't want to get a you know six, eight, ten inch shovel or something crazy and dig a giant trench in my property. That's the wrong tool for the job. I look at economics the same way. I'm not going to say that I have to do X, Y, or Z because ideologically I'm beholden to this system, I'm loyal to this system.

57:08 That's insane to my ears. It's a tool to be used like any other. And so if the market is good in a given area to solve a given problem, by all means use a market. But where the market is not a useful tool, don't use it. So for instance, there's such a thing as a natural monopoly. I know some people hate to hear this, but it's reality. And the reason it's reality is that we are physical beings. So things that are physical are natural monopolies to a certain extent, some of them fully, some of them partially. So for instance, if you are a company mining coal, right? Only one company can mine from a particular mine at a time. If you had multiple companies mining, you would have a sort of chaos that would look like a mini war.

57:59 It just not it would not work at all. Another example would be roadways. Roads are a natural monopoly. Why? I have one driveway. How many different companies, if we privatized our roadways, could build a road to my driveway without without just paving the entirety of East Tennessee, right? The answer is one. You don't want a bunch of different providers of that particular good because it would be destructive. That's a natural monopoly. You handle the natural monopoly by regulating it, not by creating a market. Because you can't create a market because it's a natural monopoly. These are issues capitalism can't solve. Capitalism ignores that they are problems that are inherent to human life, human economic activity, and just tries to hand wave them away by

58:50 saying, well if we just created a market for it, it would solve itself. You can't. You can't create a market for that, right? Are you going to create a market for nuclear weapons? Like there are certain things where monopoly is a good thing. So Capitalism, yes, it it is indeed that bad because it's taking what should be viewed as a tool and elevating it to the level of essentially a god. Look at the language people use when speaking of capitalism. Look at the slavish obedience and loyalty they have to capitalism. They speak of capitalism with more glowing terms and more dedication than they have ever expressed toward any sort of religion in their lives. And that's including supposed Christians.

59:34 That is the mark of perhaps a cult, but certainly a religion. And so there's a reason we called it capitalist idolatry, because the system has become an idol for many. And it should not be that. Because economics, every tool in the economics tool bag is indeed a tool. It's not something to which you pledge your undying loyalty. Then to answer the other part of the question there, it's sort of the the quick view, I guess, of that. Absolutely, slavery is you know, you can call it whatever you want, right? There are people who are object to the term they balk oh slavery is you can't be sl The person who is working for minimum wage is a slave. Period. You can call them whatever you want. You want to call them an employee?

1:00:20 Great. Employees are treated worse than slaves because the person who is making minimum wage at some giant giant corporate job and I'll avoid naming any particular corporation right. That man has fewer guarantees, has fewer s has a much much diminished safety net, has nothing provided for him essentially, he is worse off than a slave. Because what did the slaves get? Well, they got food, they got shelter, they got needful education, not excessive, but needful education. They were instructed in the Christian faith when it comes to the American South at least. They had a better life than a worker, who was just an employee of a corporation. And you can even see that by the fact that indentured servants

1:01:05 were generally and often treated worse than slaves. Men are going to have some concern for their property and slaves are proper. So just practically speaking, a slave is better off than an employee at that low of a level anyway. And the reality of the matter is that there are certain individuals who are not going to be able to run all of their own affairs. So you really have two potential paths you can take. To hearken this back to the first part of the question, I guess, you can take the capitalist route, right, and say You know, survival of the fittest, fend for yourself. If they starve, they starve, too bad. That's the hard line capitalist route. I don't think that's compatible with Christianity.

1:01:50 I think it's also insane and wrong on many levels because it doesn't value things that are still valuable, right? Art is still valuable, beauty is valuable. You're not going to assign an economic value to that and a market. It's just insane to even think of trying to make that argument. I know people have done it and I've read the work, but it's insane. So the other option, right, is to have their affairs run by someone who's more competent. Whether that means that they are, you know, a serf or a slave, whatever term you want to use, that life is better off than the alternative. This goes back to the issue of egalitarianism, right? This is what it runs counter to. People hear this kind of stuff and they their ears catch fire

1:02:33 and they start screaming. Because they think, oh no, everyone's equal and everyone could do No, not everyone is equal, not everyone can do the same thing. Men are inherently inequal because that is how God has made us. Some men are taller, some men are smarter, some men are more attractive. They're all sorts of abilities that have a spectrum, and each man falls somewhere within that spectrum. Someone who does not have the ability to run all of these affairs for himself can still be a very productive, very good, useful member of society. Right? You don't need someone who understands, you know, all these economic issues, right? Politics, and everything else that is supposedly demanded of a modern citizen

1:03:17 in a modern capitalist democracy, maybe his job is just to make shoes. I don't care if the man making my shoes understands all of the theory behind how different systems of political representation inevitably lead to certain outcomes. I don't care if he knows any of that. In fact he's probably making better shoes if he knows none of it. Specialization is not a bad thing, right? This is all again not something that is exclusive to capitalism. This is something that has been around forever. You have had men specializing in different things as long as there have been men. Think of your last name, for many of you. Your last name probably traces back in many cases to the medieval era, and it's probably an occupational name.

1:04:08 That's because your ancestors specialized. That's how far back that goes. Capitalism wasn't a thing yet. So yes, we should have some kind of system where those who can't manage their own affairs are still cared for by society. I think that is our Christian duty. Now, part of that is expelling foreigners who should not be here and are a burden on our system, but among our own people, those who are less capable, we should care for them. We have an affirmative moral duty to do that, and telling them good luck and then leaving them to freeze and starve is not permissible for Christians, certainly. A question about North Korea. I don't know that I'll necessarily Well, I'll touch on it shortly, I guess.

1:04:55 I was gonna say maybe I'll wait for next week, but I'll touch on it real quick. So, brief thoughts on North Korea and the Kim dynasty and why you said it's more Christianizable than South Korea. So, the general reason that it's more Christianizable is that, generally speaking, Christianity has been imposed, top down. That's true of pretty much all ideologies, very few things historically, and I think I would probably even struggle to think of one example. Very few things have been bottom up, truly bottom up. And I know there are people who think, what about the French Revolution? No. The men leading the French Revolution were all scions of noble families. They were those who had money and idle time and things like

1:05:42 that. These are the men who have the time to go and sit for 25 hours a week in a coffee shop, right? That's not working class, that's not bottom-up. It's a totally different thing. So, these things are imposed top-down. That's how most of the Christianization of Europe took place. The nobles were converted, the kings were converted, and then they made it the official religion of the land, and that's how it spread. The bottom-up thing did not really work anywhere. It doesn't work. That's just not how human beings function. Headship is a very real thing. So you can think of the very early church, right? The very early church did a little bit of the bottom-up thing, but not really. Read through the New Testament.

1:06:24 How many times is it mentioned that you had wealthy individuals or the prominent men in a city who were involved? They went after those who had influence because those are the ones who move men, who move societies. That is the reality but because again, headship, hierarchy, these things are all real, and again, certain men have greater aptitude for certain things than others. So, with regard to South Korea versus North Korea, South Korea has basically adopted just full steam ahead the most pernicious form of Western Western democracy and capitalism. It is so decentralized with regard to many things. There's still centralization of power, obviously. Money is in the hands of a few. That always ends up being the case.

1:07:12 But it is so decentralized with a lot regard to a lot of these things, and individualism has taken such firm root. You know, I'm my own person and I can believe what I want, and blah blah blah. That is much more difficult to change in any sort of way than is a society like North Korea that still has that hierarchy. If someone could get to the Kim dynasty and convert that man, whichever man happens to be in control in this hypothetical year, you could convert most of North Korea to be Christian in a generation or two. That would be very difficult to do with South Korea. You can manipulate democratic polities with mass media, but you're going to find it very difficult to get them to fundamentally change,

1:08:02 and converting to Christianity is a fundamental change from either of those systems. So much more challenging somewhere like South Korea than somewhere like North Korea. And just the fact that, you know, South Koreans have basically given up having children and families and all that stuff and all the other lovely things that always seem to go along with capitalism and democracy. So I think So I think you can look at the fruits of the system as well, to hearken back to that earlier question. North Korea has its problems. I'm not going to say the system is perfect, obviously. It has many problems. But I think it is better off in some ways than South Korea and I think it could be turned into something actually good

1:08:44 if someone could get to the man in power and make the Christian argument in a compelling way for him. Okay, the next question I noticed in the chat I may say for another time because it it's question about the American Revolution was it justified or not? That is complicated. But then the next part is how do you stop people from worshiping freedom and enlightenment liberalism and that is probably outside the scope of right now, but I will add that to my list of future questions. Question what is this? Twelve? Question twelve. Should we deal with Sodomites as Jesus dealt with the woman that was going to be stoned, as in stop all promotion that stuff and take the sin no more route rather than capital punishment?

1:09:41 Is this like try to get me banned from you two night, I guess. That one is very clear in scripture, because there are two different categories of things that are called abomination in the Old Testament. There are things that are abomination in the words of Scripture to you, speaking to Old Testament Israel. So shellfish, right? Something like that. And there are things that are abominations to God. A thing that is an abomination to God is an unchanging violation of the moral law because the moral law flows from God's nature and God is unchanging. Sodomites are in the abomination to God category. And so that is always punishable by capital punishment. And that is something that is obvious from nature.

1:10:34 God has written that into the conscience, the heart, the soul. It is obvious in every possible way. And so those who are engaged in that behavior are deliberately sinning against conscience and against God. So they know. There is. There's no need for them to be additionally warned because God has built that into creation itself. So and there's just the fact that the amount of harm caused to society if you take any other route is so unbelievably immense. I think if people knew more about so healthcare costs and various epidemiology and things like that, they would probably have different and sharper views with regard to this issue if they had any idea how truly awful it is. Probably don't read about that stuff if you have a weak stomach.

1:11:32 Don't read about the history of San Francisco. Recent history of San Francisco. L See how many I don't know how many more questions I will necessarily do, but I get to a few more, I think. Question 13: Should we view the Vikings as great or honorable ancestors. So I think it's fine to look at the Vikings as brave, certainly, as great in that sense as being great men. Honorable might be a stretch. They were pretty nasty and they typically decided to raid the weak and the vulnerable. They went after monasteries, unsupervised women, right, things like that. Honorable might be a stretch. Were they honorable within their own frame with regard to their own people? Certainly. But were they honorable with regard to their European brothers?

1:12:30 I don't think so. I think that Christianizing Scandinavia was certainly an immense improvement over their previous behavior. So you can look to them certainly as, you know, they were great men, they were strong, they cared about their own people, so they had benefits. They had positives in terms of who they were, what they did, but with very real drawbacks. And I think that's sort of a generally good approach to looking at all of our histories with regard to our ancestors, because they were people, right? They were real men, they had strengths and they had weaknesses. We can't just look at any particular ancestor and think, Oh, this person was absolutely because there's no person who was absolutely perfect except

1:13:12 for Christ, right? Some were better than others, certainly some were better than others. And I think that strength is important because they were certainly doing what is consonant with God's design for men, right? God's design for men is to be strong, to be protectors, to care for their own people, to provide for their own people. But there are morally permissible and morally impermissible ways to do that. Ransacking convents and we'll say abusing all of the nuns is not a morally permissible way to provide for your family. So the Vikings certainly deserve to be condemned for that And that's you know, that's written on the heart of man, right? This is not something that you need to have revealed to you

1:13:55 by God and his word to know this is morally wrong and you shouldn't do it. Which is why we can condemn what happens all over the third world today with regard to those sorts of crimes, it doesn't matter if they have the scriptures, it doesn't matter if they've been told God says you cannot, it's written on their heart. And if their heart is so blackened and their conscience so Conscience so seared, that's still sin. It's concupiscence, it's still sin, it's a desire to sin, it is a violation of God's moral law and the conscience that He gave them, even if they have so seared that conscience by their own wickedness, including generational wickedness, that they can no longer tell right from wrong. You know, those who are mentally retarded, who have severe intellectual

1:14:38 deficits, should not get off the hook when they commit murder and other heinous crimes, they should still be punished. That's not again out of jail free card. So we can look to Vikings and similar groups for their positive aspects while still recognizing that they did things that we should not do. They did things that were morally impermissible. I have a part two out of two of the earlier question asking about the destruction of a civilization, the Indus Valley, many years ago in this case. But the question essentially is, could God have chosen to end them to save them from being afflicted by wicked races that would come

1:15:39 to those regions later? And so I guess sort of extrapolating that out to the larger question would be does God sometimes destroy a people, so with a natural disaster, in order to spare them a greater affliction in the future? And I don't think that we necessarily have an answer for that. I don't think that God gives us an answer in Scripture, and I could certainly mount a moral argument one way or the other, right, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord. And God is certainly the author of life. He holds your life in his hands. And if you want to think of that in sort of the you know the fates holding the threads, God's the one holding those threads. He's permitted to end your life whenever he chooses to do so,

1:16:30 or to prolong it as long as he wants. And as all are sinners, all are subject to death, and so you can't say God's in the wrong for ending a particular life at a particular time. So could he do that, morally speaking, right? Could he do that to spare some greater wickedness in the future? Uh yes, absolutely he could do that. Does he do it? I don't know. Because that would be to be God. It would be to know the future, right? In you can speculate any sort of way there. You know, are you spared from some truly heinous treatment in the future because you happen to have an aneurysm six hours before it happens? God could certainly do that. So all of the elect will certainly be saved. Scripture's abundantly clear on that.

1:17:18 Could God use that as a means to ensure that Sure. I think that's probably somewhat in the same vein as God saying that the end times, the tribulation, the Truly horrible parts of the end times will be cut short, so that the elect will be saved for the sake of the elect. I think that's kind of in the same vein. So possible, but I can't say that God has done it or God does do it. I just don't have that knowledge. God has not given me that knowledge. He hasn't revealed revealed it in his word. It would be speculation. Someone asked about gender roles. I just want to let you know that I will add that to my my list. I don't know that I'll get to it right now, but I will add it to my future topic list.

1:18:15 Hopefully get to it soon since that list is indeed growing. Get to at least one more question here, I think. I have some things I have to do tomorrow, so I'm not going to run too late and I want to get those coins and things finished so I can mail those out. So question 14. You mentioned a lot in your posts when we win, this is a question from X. Is there any group or activity I could do to help us win? And so that's going to depend on where you are in the country, your free time to some degree things like that. I have mentioned that Patriot Front, they're doing good work. I believe that. I attended their national convention. I've spoken with many of them. They're doing good work. If they're in your area, and they probably are, that's a good

1:19:14 option. There are other regional groups in many parts of the country, so you just have to look at which guys are doing good things in your area and partly exercise your judgment, right? There are groups that are probably less wise to join, but there are good groups out there. Is there some level of risk in all of this? Of course. And there's no avoiding that. Let's just be completely frank. We're in the middle of a war, right? It doesn't feel like it in the same way that if you're in a trench being shot at does, but it's no less life and death. And so taking on some risk in order to advance these sort of things, is going to be necessary for many, if not for all of us, right? I'm taking some risk doing this, you know, this is my face.

1:20:02 I'm answering questions that the world doesn't want answered. I'm saying things people uh particularly people on the other side of the aisle, as it were, it's not aisle, it's the other side of the battlefield, don't want to hear. I'm saying things that people send me death threats for saying it. There's a level of risk involved in this. There's going to be a level of risk involved in all of this, so Be wise, still. I'm not saying be reckless. Don't go out there and do something insane, certainly. But there are groups out there that are making positive change they are raising the level of consciousness, consciousness of these issues, which is very important. You need to get people to actually think about these things, recognize

1:20:41 they're ongoing, recognize the reality of these problems. It's very important. And there are groups doing that. So do we currently have an overarching group, like you know, a main group that is the one running everything? No, we don't have a national at risk of being repetitive, a national nationalist party, not a real formal one with any real power at this point. We're just not there yet. But there are certainly constructive things that you can be doing, groups you can join, you can start forming those networks, those relationships, and depending how things go in the future, maybe they're useful one way, maybe they're useful another way. Just sort of depends on how things play out. Definitely join one of those groups.

1:21:26 It's good as particularly as a man just to have that brotherhood. That's something men need. Men's groups are important. Men's organizations, societies, and many of those were shuttered in the last hundred years. It is not good that probably Gen X, Millennial, Z, this really the groups that really it's been most affected, are just not joining organizations of any kind. That's not natural for human beings. It's not a good thing. You need that camaraderie, you need that brotherhood. So find a group you can join and you know be active in that group. There's also the fact that of course you can be active in your church and you can be active in your local community. You should know your neighbors, you should know their names, you should

1:22:11 know some stuff about them. Be there to help them. That's also part of this. Part of being a Christian and part of being a nationalist is caring for your own people. And that starts locally. That starts with your neighbor. So if your neighbor needs help putting up a chicken coop, whatever it happens to be, it's not a mercenary example. My chicken coop's fine. But if your neighbor needs help with that stuff, by all means be there for him. I think that may be it for this week. I see there's another question about infant baptism. I would refer you to the episode. This is from X. I would refer you to the episode on infant baptism. Episode on baptism, of course, dealing with infant baptism. And there's also from the Book of Concord Luther has an excellent

1:23:06 section on infant baptism. I'll link that in the show notes as well. I'll link that under the previous question that was about baptism and infants and things like that. So I very highly recommend I recommend everyone read that. It's very well written. You will certainly get something out of reading it, even if you ultimately don't agree with Luther. Luther is at the very least enjoyable to read, which is more than can be said for certainly some theologians. I know there are more questions in the chat, but I think I am going to call it here tonight. I will go through and copy those before I close this out. Assuming OBS is cooperative. At any rate, thank you for those who submitted questions and for

1:23:47 those who participated in the chat. I do try to get to all the questions at some point. I have an ongoing list and growing list as it were, for future topics or questions. That's on the forum. You can find that in the information for the stream and in the show notes. The show notes and the audio only feed and all that sort of stuff is at podcast.coreyjmoller.com. I realize it's probably helpful if I give you the actual website so you can find that. So if you want audio only, that's there. It is a little higher quality audio than the stream. So for those who don't care about video, you can get a little better audio. But again, thank you for submitting those questions. I like getting the opportunity to do this every week.

1:24:30 I know that many of you like the opportunity to ask these questions, get some clarification on things that we went over in Stone Choir, post on X, whatever it happens to be. And I will continue doing these for the foreseeable future. So feel free to submit questions. The primary method is, and the preferable method as well, is the forum, but you can submit those via telegram or the chat. I do try to aggregate those. Again, if I miss your question, it won't be in the list. Get it to me again. So think that's it for this week, and it is Friday evening, so I hope you all have a rest of your weekend, the balance of your weekend, a good weekend. Go to church on Sunday, and I will see you next week.

1:25:15 Until then, God bless.