25 Sep 2026 (Q&A)

2:08 It is the twenty fifth of September, twenty twenty. I am Cory J. Mahler, and this is at any cost. This is episode 42, a QA episode, and just a little bit of housekeeping before I get started here into the questions. I was going to announce something, but I think I will save that for next week. There's a little more work to be done on that. It won't apply to most of you, so don't be too excited for that. However, applicable to this actual show, I now have a question board, as it were, for the show for helping me with streaming. I am ingesting the chat. I then have an AI agent looking at it, extracting questions, and then presenting them to an iPad that I have here in front of me. So obviously I'm testing that.

2:58 This is the first stream using it. So if it misses your question, let me know. It shouldn't. It's pretty correctly configured as far as I've been able to test it, so I don't think it will miss anything. But there's always a chance that it will. So just to let you all know, if your question does not get pulled out for future answers or for answer in this stream, it might be related to that, so let me know so I can fix it for next stream. But that being said, I think that's really the only housekeeping that I have this week, so I will go ahead and get into the questions here. The first couple of questions are a little longer and more involved. It's why I put them off last week to this week because

3:46 they're going to consume a decent chunk of time here, I'm certain. So the first question is is about individualistic objections to national socialism and it's actually six different questions, so I will just take them in turn. I think I'll just label it as question one with some subparts. So hopefully the dogs barking outside my window are not coming through. They probably aren't. So I'll read the question here. I and some of the other right wing guys at church have been trying to talk to one of the guys who is reasonably on side about government care for the poor under a future national socialist government in America. He has a highly individualistic outlook on politics Politics as has and

4:34 he has various objections. He his objections in brief are, so I'll just take these in turn and answer them as I go. Someone said the dogs are coming through a little bit, so you can go ahead and blame I think that was mostly Gizmo and Callie, my female golden retriever, so you know who to blame for that. But the first question, the first real question here. Socialism of any form isn't in the Bible. The sentiment expressed behind if a man will not work, neither let him eat, and the very non egalitarian nature of God's created world world are both arguments against it with natural law sealing the deal for this person who objects and as revealed in socialist experiments. So I'm not sure exactly which experiments he means.

5:23 He probably means the USSR, which obviously that's a very different thing, right? We're not talking about left wing socialism, we're talking about right wing socialism, which is a different thing. Always remember starting off before I get into the substanti the substantive answers here, politics is in a spectrum, it's at least a quadrant, right? You've got authoritarian versus libertarian and left and right. So you certainly have the more socialist aspects both on the right and the left wing, not the same thing, certainly. You know, National Socialist Germany and Soviet communist Russia are not on the same side. I'm going to close my window because the dogs are being quite loud. That should be good enough.

6:12 Most of the window is closed. So when it comes to socialism not being in the Bible, sure, but neither is capitalism, right? We don't have a particular political theory system design laid out in scripture for exactly what we're supposed to do. But we do have some pointers, right? We have some recommendations from God that can steer us in the right direction. And so I'll go ahead and pull up one that should certainly come to mind if someone makes this sort of objection. And I will pull up logos here so we can all look at the text. Once I get logos logos to actually display the floating window here. There we go. So I'll go to map Matthew for this twenty five starting with verse thirty one. Some of you will of course know exactly where I'm going, right?

7:14 The final judgment. When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the king will say to those on his right, Come you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty, and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me.

7:55 Then the righteous will answer him saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you? And the king will answer them. Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me. So I think pretty clearly we can see here that we do in fact have social obligations to those around us, right? And you all know the rest of this passage, so I won't read that as well. I could also go to the good Samaritan, right? He's praised very highly for taking care of someone to whom he otherwise didn't have any sort of duty, he didn't have a relationship

8:40 of, you know, consanguinity attenuated, right? They were distant cousins. This was someone who was put in his path by God. He had the opportunity to do good for this man. The same thing is certainly true of our brothers and sisters, our cousins, in our own nations. We have a duty to care for them. We do not have a duty just to care for those in our own household. That'll be a later question in this series here. It is important to care for those closest to us first and foremost, and so you don't liquidate all of your assets and spend them on foreigners, right? Or even unspend them on someone across the other side of this country in which you live, in your own nation. But you do have a duty to care for them.

9:25 So part of it, of course, is going to be the resources that God has given you, I'll get into that as well. As well, but there's very clearly a duty in scripture to care for others. The question of course that this person is asking is whether or not that falls to the state. I will get to that as well in one of the later sub questions here because he asks about the church versus the state. But just here at the outset, laying out sort of the framework, we can very clearly see that whether you want to call it socialism or not, and some people certainly object to the word, and I understand why, it's been poisoned by the left, but whether or not you call it socialism, there are affirmative social or communitarian if

10:06 you prefer duties to those in your state, to those who are of your fellow nation of your blood. So it is in the Bible, quite frankly. You can't say that it isn't. You can say that the formal system that we call socialism, whether right or left, isn't in the scriptures, sure. But again, the only system that's really in scripture is monarchy, and it's not fully described, right? It's partially described. God does not give us an exact political plan. This This is a matter of wisdom. It is a matter of looking back through history, seeing what worked, what didn't work, what's moral, what's not, what comports with God's law. But you can see very clearly in scripture, we do in fact have duties, that one might call socialistic or communitarian.

10:54 And so subquestion two. Envy and discontentment drive us to want what others have. That's true, but isn't that actually more a critique of capitalism than socialism? Right? That's a critique that is certainly leveled against capitalism and In much of the academic and other literature, right? What ultimately drives economic activity under a capitalist system? It's greed. It's a desire to have more than you currently possess. That is in fact the engine of capitalism. And so whether it is envy of what someone else has, or if it is looking at it and desiring to have something of your own, because right it can be a good impulse or a bad one. It depends what you are doing, it depends on your intent.

11:42 If you see that your neighbor has a nice house, and you want his house, right, that's coveting. That's a sin. There are commandments on that. If, however, you look at his nice house and say, I would like to also have a nice house, I want to build my own house or buy my own nice house, not his, but another one, that's a different thing. You are permitted to do that. So it depends on what the intent there is, what specifically you want. And discontentment, again, also depends, right? If it's discontentment, because you're in a legitimately bad scenario, right? If you're living somewhere the bad winter out of your car, like you're living in your car, say Michigan in the winter, okay, discontentment

12:26 is probably reasonable and not a bad thing. You desire to have a better set of circumstances, that can drive you forward. That's a good thing. If instead you have discontentment because you just want more to want more, that again is more of a critique of capitalism. Because the raw consumerism and just the desire to increase your consumption and your capital is not really a thing in socialism on either the left or the right, but it is very much part of the heart, part of the core of capitalism. So this critique really lands against the system I presume he would rather defend, not against the system he is attacking. So it's going to depend on what exactly you mean by envy and discontentment.

13:12 If you're using envy in the proper sense, which envy means you desire something that rightfully belongs to another, then it's a bad thing. If instead you're using it in sort of the looser colloquial sense of I would like to also have nice things, that's not bad. It's perfectly reasonable to look at the happy family at church and want to have your own wife. It's sinful to want to have that woman as your wife, right? It depends on the circumstances and what precisely you want. And I would also bring out sort of a generic response to this because with regard to national socialism, and I just mean right-wing socialism, but that's one we're using specifically here, the desire is not just to accumulate more or to have what someone else

14:05 has is what someone else has, right? The desire is to create more and better things for your people. Not just for yourself, not just for your family, but for your nation. It is love of others, those entrusted to your care, act it out both economically and socially. That is an adequate way to describe, insofar as there is an inherent economic system, the economic system of right wing socialism. It's not driven by this naked avarice, this desire to acquire more. Rather, it's driven by the desire to do what is good for your people, and that is going to of course mean work and economic activity, creating those better circumstances for your own. Now, sub question three. This interlocutor says I will fight anything that involves forcibly taking money

15:00 away from my children or grandchildren to enrich someone else, which is what wealth redistribution already does to me. So I understand part of this critique, right? And obviously we all do, because we all live under current governments that are wicked and quite frankly, the current level of taxation is confiscatory, right? It is wicked. It's not a good thing. That being said, the critique does not generalize. The critique is against a wicked implementation of a given system. And you can say the current system does it, right? Well the current system is capitalism doing the same thing to you. So the critique is not against socialism per se as a system. It is against the particulars of the implementation, right?

15:45 I'm not going to defend a right-wing socialist system that taxes you at sixty percent. I think it should be a ten percent flat sales tax and no other taxes, except maybe on large chunks of commercial property. There should be a homestead exemption. I don't want to get into all the tax policies of a hypothetical future government right now, that's not the point. But whether it is a right wing socialist system, a left wing socialist system, a capitalist system, whatever it happens to be, if the taxation rises to the level where it is confiscatory, it's sinful regardless of the system, right? It doesn't matter what the political system is because we're discussing something that is related but in a tangential way.

16:31 Because any of these systems can set taxes too high. That being said, it is important again to look at scripture, which I still have open, so I'll just pull it up. Right? Of course we're going to Romans this time. Pay to all what is owed to them, taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed. And remember this is in the context of the Roman Empire, right? They had taxes. You paid your taxes, you are supposed to do that. Saying that taxes are per se wicked, right? The lovely phrase the libertarians just really enjoy shouting at people online, taxation is theft. That's anti Christian. You cannot be a Christian and firmly believe and follow that ideology

17:22 because it is directly contrary to Scripture. Scripture says pay taxes to whom taxes are owed. You are to pay your taxes. Now, again, can you object to the type and level of taxation in your country? Of course you can. Particularly when it's like ours, that is wicked, right? We pay ridiculous taxes. I used to live in Southern California. I'm well aware of how ridiculous taxes can be. Not that I've found Tennessee is necessarily great when it comes to certain things when with taxation, but as a general rule, we have too much taxation in the United States and the tax rates are too high. You still have to pay your taxes, but it is perfectly reasonable to agitate, to work together politically, to knock those tax rates down

18:09 and to remove some of the unnecessary ones. There's nothing wrong with doing that. But this particular subquestion gets very close in my mind to the libertarian argument, and the whole thing smells of libertarianism to me, which I'll get into that, my sort of closing remarks for this section, but this particular subquestion looks like a libertarian objection cloaked in different language, right? Wealth redistribution it depends what you mean. Do you mean taxation that then drives some social programs? Well, if you call that wealth redistribution, I'm going to disagree with you, because that is one of the duties of the state, and I will get into that a little bit more. If instead you're talking about confiscatory taxation, say the government enacts an

18:55 eighty percent tax rate, right? And just takes a ton of your money, right? And then just gives it to people who do nothing but sit around all day. That's a fundamentally different thing. Taking care of those who have had misfortune, whether it's illness or misadventure, whatever it happens to be To be is fundamentally different from subsidizing the lifestyle of those who refuse to work. National socialism does not subsidize the lifestyle of those who refuse to work. Right-wing socialism would say you can work or you can go in a work camp. We are not going to give you free money. You have to work because scripture is very clear, right? He who does not work, let him not eat. Perfectly consonant with the system if it is structured correctly.

19:43 Question 4. If I have to steal a dollar from a richer man to feed my wife and children, then perhaps I am not ready for a wife and children. This one can really only be addressed in a particular set of circumstances, and so I'll address it in the set of circumstances in which we find ourselves. Maybe also in the hypothetical future one, right? Under Under the present government, the present system, if you do everything right as a Christian, right, you marry your wife young because you should to avoid temptation, scripture's abundantly clear on that. You do all the stuff you're supposed to do and not the stuff you're not supposed to do. You're going to wind up with some number of children north of

20:29 four. Most likely. It may be twelve. It may be a lot of children. Because of the way our current economic system is structured, most men can't support that. Is that a critique of the men who are doing the things God told you to do? The men who are being faithful to God's word and his design for humanity? Or is it a critique of the economic system that has made it impossible for men to be both righteous and financially sound? I take it as a critique of the system, because of, for instance, permitting women to work outside the house, which creates artificial competition, because of the wealth transfers to which this man rightly objects, because of confiscatory taxation and on and on and on. We all know the reasons it's very difficult to sustain an actual

21:17 family, a proper family, under present circumstances. But I don't take that as a critique of a hypothetical national socialist government. I take that as a critique of the system producing that outcome today. Now, under a national socialist, under a right-wing socialist government, you would change these rules. You don't have women working outside the house, and so you don't have this artificial competition between the sexes, which means men draw higher salaries. You don't permit essentially what is slave labor for your own people, right? I'm not saying slavery is per se wicked, but I'm saying paying slave wages to your own flesh and blood is a wicked thing to do. So we should not have jobs that pay below the poverty level,

22:06 which exists today. We all know the numbers if you draw the comparisons between the value of gold, say back in the 1950s versus today, and then compare the minimum wage or even the median wage, right? That should not be permissible. You should not be allowing these large employers to exploit their employees. And that of course has turned into a left wing talking point, right? They're the ones who have sort of captured that. It should be one of our talking points. Care for the worker and care for the average man is 100% something that is consonant with right wing politics and certainly with Christianity. You should not exploit your own people. So if you design the system correctly, this is not a problem.

22:51 Right? If the man is working full time, he should be able to support a family. That should be a right wing talking point. We should not let the left have that. If there is a man who is working full time and unable to support a family, then that job should not exist at that level, because it is a wicked thing to treat your fellow man, your fellow flesh and blood, your kinsmen, in that way. Sub Question five. According to the New Testament, the church must also care for its widows and orphans. I think if you are outside the church you should have no recourse. Beyond your physical family, the church should be the only social safety net. No church, you get a hard landing. Again, this just sounds like libertarianism to me, and I will put

23:37 up my article about libertarianism in the show notes for this one, which against the cry of Cain, because this is Cain, right? This is Cain saying to God, Am I my brother's keeper? Well, the answer is yes. You are your brother's keeper. And so if you find yourself siding with Cain, I encourage you very strongly to reconsider some things. Cain was not a Christian. Cain was the first anti-Christian. Cain was the first murderer. So you probably don't want to side with that man. Now, this is where I wanted to comment on the difference between the church and the state, right? Does the church have a duty to care for widows and orphans? Absolutely. Does the state also have a duty to do so? Again, absolutely yes.

24:24 And we can see some of this even in Old Testament Israel, right? Many of the sacrifices which were a form of welfare for the nation were provided by the king. Where'd the king get his money? Taxation. So you already see that sort of system in the very sort of government instituted by God in the Old Testament. So you can't object that it's not in scripture, even in even if that is a solid objection, which is isn't always so, because it is there. You see the state having a duty to care for the poor, not just the church. So there's a division there, which is a wisdom call, and it's partly going to come down to essentially how competent the state is, right? Because if the state is sufficiently competent to organize these things

25:13 in an effective way that doesn't waste money, that does what is good for the people, then the church is going to have less of a burden. That's a good thing if the church has less of a burden, because then the church can focus more on the core things the church is supposed to do. Think about what they did in scripture, right? For distributing food and things like that. They had to call additional men because it was actually distracting from and detracting from the core mission of the church. So having the state do it instead is actually a good thing where the state is competent. This again is an objection to the current form of the state that we have. We live under wicked governments. No one is going to contend no Christian is going to contend

25:53 otherwise. We all know that. that is not a critique against government, it is a critique against wicked government, right? Just like saying if you have a wife, right, and she commits adultery, is that a critique against your wife or all women? It's a critique against your wife, against the whip the wicked woman, the one who committed the sin. The same thing with regard to government. You don't critique all government because you find an example that does something wicked. Because it's not inherent to government, right? Obviously if we're talking about something that's inherent, that's a different thing. So sub question six, and then I guess I'll have some just sort of general concluding remarks on it.

26:37 I would never deny providing for members of my same household, but yes, I do not lift a finger to help random members of my race race that I do not know, and nor should I Ordo Amoris. So this is kind of correct but mostly wrong, right? Ordo Amoris, obviously, is the order of loves, rightly ordered loves. And yes, you have a a core that is your household and you have the greatest duty to them, right? Those under your own roof. But you also have duties going out from that, that's the whole point of the Ordo Amoris. You have the duty to your immediate family, then you have the duty to your extended family, then to your even more extended family, your cousins, and well your nation is an even more extended family.

27:22 So you have duties to them as well. And this is where I want to point out, the level of your duty is partly dependent upon what God has entrusted to your care. So if you have only enough resources to care for your own family, care for your own family. If you have enough resources to help provide meals to those who have fallen on hard times, do that. If you have the expertise and the free time to help your neighbor repair his house. Do that. We went over this extensively in Stone Choir. The things entrusted to your care, which includes not just the monetary, but that's certainly part of it, but also your skills, your free time, things like that. Your garden could overproduce one year, you can give away tomatoes, whatever

28:09 it happens to be. According to that level of resources, you should give to your fellow man. Scripture's abundantly clear on that, right? Those who have been given great wealth are commanded in Scripture to serve the church and to serve their neighbors with that great wealth, and they will be judged for that. The same with regard to anything that has been entrusted to your care. This is the parable of the talents, right? The talents are not just money. It is all of the abilities, the skills, everything God has given you, because everything you have is a gift from God, and it is a gift from God that is supposed to be used in service of family and neighbor and nation. Because ultimately your nation is an extension of the family and an

28:50 extension of neighbor. So yes, orders applies, but it doesn't terminate at your front door. It depends on how much God is entrusted to your care. I'll leave the concluding remarks from the questioner. If anyone wants to read those, you can go ahead and do that. But I wanted to generally comment on this, that two points that I pulled out that are worth emphasizing. Almost all of this critique is libertarian, which is anti-Christian. I'm just going to bluntly state that. You can't be a libertarian or Christian. They're incompatible. Period. You cannot defend that. You cannot argue against that. You have to select which one you want to be. If you want to be a libertarian, that's your God. Ayn Rand is your God.

29:35 I wish you the best luck at the judgment, but I think we both know how that will go. Or you can choose to have Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Choose wisely. The other part of this, in addition to the the general sort of libertarian critique, is that this is ultimately a critique of the current system that is being used as a critique of a hypothetical right wing socialist system, right? All of this lands as a critique against our current government. It doesn't necessarily land as a critique against the future hypothetical government. Yes, if you have built up a straw man that is essentially the USSR, you've just sort of put a stick it uh sticky note over it and said, No, this is right wing socialism.

30:21 Okay, sure, you can level this sort of accusation, this sort of critique against it, but you're not attacking the real thing. So maybe this is a man to sort of address the question practically and directly. Maybe this is a man who would benefit from actually looking at some of the economic writings of the National Socialists. There are plenty of those. You can in fact find the books from their actual economists laying out what they believed, why they believed it, how they intended to implement things in the future, how they were implementing things. You can look at their success rate over a relatively short period of time, miraculous success, you can look at what they actually did. So if he has critiques of what they actually did, what they

31:02 actually believed, then sure, address the actual critiques, but these critiques land more against again our current economic system and government and really communism, left wing socialism, not right wing. Hopefully that addressed most of his objections thoroughly so you can get somewhere with him in future discussions. Question two. I just want to look at the chat real quickly here. I think it is pulling all the questions well, so I think we're good. Question two is again a series of questions about baptism this time. So I will go ahead and go through those now. Sub question one. I'll read the intro first actually. My wife and I are former Jehovah's Witnesses. We understand our Jehovah's Witness baptism was invalid and meaningless, non Trinitarian,

31:55 submitted to under false instruction and basically a pledge to the organization. That is correct. That is the Lutheran stance, that's the traditional Christian stance. Same thing with Mormons. So just two big groups of the supplies. Not the only groups, but two examples. We are now facing questions about getting baptized properly. So sub question one. The non-denominational church we've been attending will only admit members baptized as believers. This presents no issue for me. However, my wife was baptized in the Catholic Church as an infant, and we are concerned that re baptizing her would offend God. Would it be wrong for her to get baptized to formerly join the church we're attending could other circumstances make her Catholic baptism invalid?

32:40 For example, she recalls taking communion on some occasions to the child, but she recalls neither finishing catechism nor the ceremony that follows it. That's confirmation, just so you know. She was taken into the foster care system at age ten, and the godparents involved in her baptism did not remain in her life to spiritually shepherd her, as they ostensibly promised. That's unfortunate on the godparents' note, certainly, but perhaps not surprising given the circumstances. To answer the core question, do not seek so called rebaptism. It is not a thing. Her baptism as an infant in the Roman Catholic Church is valid. Roman Catholic baptisms, as of today, at any rate, are valid. Perhaps in the future they go off the rails fully, right?

33:26 Right, if they start baptizing people in the name of Mary, then y no, it's not a valid baptism. But as long as they are following the scriptural formula, right? Trinitarian, you're baptizing in the name of the actual God, you follow the wording in scripture, there's water involved, right? It's a valid baptism. And the reason for that is that it is God's work, not man's work, right? If we start thinking that it is man's work, then that's just an ancient heresy, right? That's Donatism. Donatism is essentially the belief that the holiness or the righteousness of the individual performing the sacrament is relevant to the power of the sacrament. And it's simply not. Because it is God who is doing the work.

34:13 He is using the hands of the minister, right, to baptize in the case of the infant or to distribute the elements in the case of the sacrament of the table, also called communion. But God is the one doing the work. So it relies on God's power and God's promise, not on the minister, or in the case of baptism, any Christian can baptize, right? Doesn't have to be a minister. Ordinarily and properly, it is in fact in fact your pastor, or your priest, depending on what you call him. But it could be your father. Even women are permitted to baptize, certainly in an emergency. It's just not the ordinary course of things, it's not sort of right decorum, it's not the proper way to do it, but it's still valid, because it is God's work, not man's work.

34:57 So the short answer, of course, is what I already said. No. Do not submit to rebaptism. It is a wicked thing. No one should do that. It should not be tolerated. Yes, her baptism is valid. She does not have to worry about that. And like I said, if they start baptizing in the name of Mary or something, okay, we can revisit the discussion and point out that yes, you now need to be baptized because that was invalid. But they're not doing that. They are using the ancient formulas, they are doing it correctly, it's a valid baptism. Subquestion two. We have been attending a non-denominational church for about 1.5 years that is basically MacArthurite Thankfully they are not pushy about doctrine and have

35:39 yet to even discuss Israel. Theologically we are attracted to Lutheranism or Anglicanism, but have yet to find one locally that isn't sorely lacking. We visited one Wells and one Nalk, NALC, which were extremely small and literally dying. That is not particularly surprising. Majority white, but elderly, few or no children, and the Nalk is more feminized. They ordain women, despite having a male pastor, in this case. Our non denominational church is almost mega sized, very conservative, vast majority white, which is extremely rare where we live, and absolutely teeming with conservative young families and children of all ages. We are raising two boys under four and are incredibly lucky just to find a place in our state only ten minutes away with

36:31 so many young white families, which feels essential for how we want to raise our children. Setting aside my wife's baptism, their baptism application basically expects me to profess belief in writing in so called believers baptism. Would it be wrong for me to carefully word or equivocate in my answer, so they don't just outright reject me or drag me into a debate, then reject me? Would passing their quiz in this way harm my baptism, or would baptism in this church by itself be less valid due to their professed beliefs? So the MacArthurites typically describe themselves as what is called leaky dispensationalism, which isn't really a thing, but it's how he described himself, so that's how they describe themselves.

37:17 So sometimes they're all in on the Israel stuff, Israel in quotes. And sometimes they're not. This church appear appears to be one of the ones that's kinda not. So hard to tell if they will go off the rails in the future. Often megachurches that are non-denominational are kind of cults of personality and so the head pastor kind of decides everything. He determines the direction, the doctrine, the emphasis, all of it. That's very often the case. Sometimes it's the elders instead. Puppeting the head pastor, but usually it's the head pastor. I don't know which one it is in your case, you probably have a pretty good sense. It's probably the head pastor. So the question would your baptism be valid?

37:58 The answer is yes, your baptism would still be valid because again, same as the first sub-question, it's God's work, not yours. So what the pastor believes would be relevant only if he were something like non-trinitarian, because then he would be a Unitarian baptism, which is not a thing, lowercase B, but if it is a proper baptism, Trinitarian, according to how Scripture says you have to do it, right? It's valid. Even if the church doesn't hold perfect doctrine, thankfully the standard is not perfect doctrine, or basically no baptism would be valid because no church is perfect. So, except for of course the uppercase C church, which is all believers, that one's perfect because God is the one who's in charge

38:40 of it, right? Jesus Christ is the head. Now, should you carefully word or equivocate in your answer so that you can be baptized? I'm going to give two answers. One is I would be a little uncomfortable going that route, but the second one is if you can get away with it really easily, then maybe just for the sake of peace and helping your family, it might be worth it, right? Because I don't think that what you're doing is necessarily rising the level of a false confession. Because if you say that I do believe and I would like to be baptized, and as a believer I want to be baptized, if they wish to interpret that as a believer's baptism, then they are in fact baptizing a believer, but you don't believe in what

39:28 they're calling believers baptism If they're specifically calling you to profess belief in believers' baptism, then I would say no. In that case, go to the Wells Church or the LCMS Church or something and get baptized there. So I don't like Nalk because they do ordain women. So that will probably eventually become an issue for you because they'll rotate out your pastor and rotate on a woman or something like that. And then you'll have the chaos in your life of having to abandon that church and flee somewhere else because what they're doing is wicked. And just being associated with it is not great. The same reason I wouldn't tell someone to go to Elka, right? ElkhA has more problems than Nalk, but it has that particular salient

40:15 one, and as I've said many times before, there's no such thing as a female pastor or a pastrix. It's a whore. That's what she is. She is a false prophetess. So you don't want to be there. But it's going to depend sort of on the exact circumstances there and what exactly it is they are getting you to confess. If they're really pushing hard on the believer's baptism thing, I would say don't do that because what you're doing is you're giving a false confession. You're saying you believe something that you don't believe, and you're denying belief in something you do believe. So there are a couple more questions here, and I won't get into necessarily the rest of what I could say here because they're

40:53 more relevant in the next subquestions. Subquestion three. This church obviously uses grape juice and holds the memorial view of communion, which is Which is disheartening. That's all non denominational churches in the US. I am now tempted by the following prospect formally join the very near Nalk Church and just endure the objectional the objectional stuff objectionable stuff. Or join the wells that is thirty minutes away, a burden on Sunday at eight AM with a toddler and a newborn. I can certainly understand that not having them myself, but I can understand. So that my family can be part of church with real baptism and communion, while continuing to regularly attend the non denominational church

41:35 for these social aspects so my sons can actually have friends and one day find white wives. Would this be wrong? There is also an LCMS, also thirty minutes away, which we have yet to visit. So I think here the course of action I would probably recommend, and it thinks I think it's the most likely given what you've told me and what I just generally know about these sorts of churches. Go talk to the pastor at the Wells Church or the LCMS church. Tell him the situation in which you find yourself, your concerns, all those things. He'll probably be sympathetic. He should be sympathetic. So if that is the case, then you know you can attend that church, say, one weekend out of the month, or you know,

42:20 once every six weeks, whatever it happens to be. Because you want that relationship with the denomination, with the church that has the doctrine that you hold to be true, right? You want that, but he should recognize that there is a burden there. It is a difficult thing to attend a church that's so far away. It's not something you should have to do. It's just the reality of the circumstances under which we live. And then get baptized there, get the sound doctrine, get the instruction there, right? You can instruct you should be instructing your children and your wife at home, regardless of whether you're attending a sound church or not, right? That's your duty as a husband and as a father. So go through the small catechism, go through the large catechism, do

43:04 all those things. And then also attend the other church, right? I don't think that that's impermissible. You are going to have to be careful with how you instruct your children, and you're going to at some point, when they are old enough to understand, have to explain to them why you're doing this, right? They'll understand. They'll be happy, right? They're have more friends. When they're interested in girls, there will be girls around and available. And so they'll understand why you're doing it, but you will have to explain that to them, and it's going to put a little additional burden on you to make sure that they are taught right doctrine when they may very well be hearing doctrine that is not

43:40 exactly correct at one of their churches. But practically speaking, I think that's probably your best path forward because it gets you involved in a church that has the right doctrine, but also involved in a church that is a reasonable distance from your home and actually has you know, membership. Which is unfortunate that there are a lack of solid churches like that, but it is where we are today. There are some new Lutheran churches being started up in a number of places. I visited some of them. They're doing very good work, but they're not everywhere yet. So unless you live in a handful of specific places around the country, there's no church I can just unequivocally recommend to you. If you happen to live closer to an LCMS church, I would

44:28 say join that with the usual caveats I've given before, right, it depends on the pastor, check out the congregation, talk to the elders. But generally speaking, it's a pretty good option for most people in a lot of places. Here I think probably that split approach is best. So, sub question four. While I would love to be a Lutheran in a Lutheran church full of young white families, this may not exist near me, and it could even be difficult to find in some new place we or my children once adults move to in the future. That is true. Thus it is conceivable that whatever we choose to do now my sons could one day face the same dilemma my wife and I now face, given the potential for future for limited options in the

45:11 future, would it be wrong for me to hold my sons back from baptism until they reach such an age that any future church they join would recognize their believers' baptism in quotes, not my quotes, his quotes. I would do that too, though, and have no cause to demand re baptism, thus sparing my sons this silly yet extremely weighty dilemma. This one sounds difficult, but it's easy. Baptize your children. You believe that is a commandment from God, you believe baptism applies to even infants, that is correct. You should bap you should have them baptized. Absolutely. And by the way, you can actually baptize your children at home if you need to. I think in this case, the join the LCMS or the Wells

45:53 Church and have them baptize there is probably the better route. But if it comes down to it, and for whatever reason that route does not work out, you can baptize your children at home. You are permitted to baptize your own children. Just make sure you have the standard witnesses, godparents, things like that. Those are a good thing to have because a future church doing its due dil diligence will ask them, When were you baptized? Do you have proof it actually happened? It used to be this was just the church records, right? Your local town church had records of every baptism, marriage, death, all those things. Now we have to maintain some of our own records because it's just the system we live under.

46:35 Partly because we have so many different denominations, churches come and go, some close down, they don't keep the records. It's kind of a mess. So make sure you keep that stuff for yourself. It is appropriate for a future church to ask when were you baptized? Who baptized you? What is their affiliation, right? Because it could be that you thought you were baptized, but it was the Mormons or something, which is invalid. But yes, baptize your children, and if they have to go through this same thing, then that is unfortunate, but it is the reality. Hopefully, we have better churches in place, including in your era your area, by the time your children are old enough to run into this issue. Or if absolutely necessary, you find other like minded men in the

47:20 larger congregation and start your own church, even if it's a home church. That is certainly a permissible option, and it's something people should be considering going forward. Question three. Expecting nothing in return. A question about Luke Six. What are some ways I can be wise about loaning money or to those who ask for there's a missing noun there to those who ask for it and not be taken for everything? Am I understanding Jesus correctly that I should not seek to seek to get back exactly what I gave out. This is a verse that is abused by the left and by others, and they try to push we're back to socialism. They try to push their version of socialism with it, right? They try to say that, oh, Jesus commanded you to sell all

48:13 your property and give everything away. That command was specifically for that man because Jesus looked into his heart and saw that his possessions were his idol Not all men have that command, obviously. Even the apostles did not sell everything and give it away, right? They still had a fishing business. They didn't liquidate that and give it all away. Christ didn't command them to do that. An example people probably generally miss when they're reading through scripture, but it's right there on the page. So do you have to give away everything? Do you have to loan money to absolutely everyone who asks you for a dollar? No. The answer to that is obviously no. Right, we're back to the Order Amoris.

48:51 You have a duty to your family, you have a duty to those who are closest to you, and what happens if you just give away everything? Well, you can't fulfil your duties now, right? If you can't fulfil your duties, what you've done is obviously at the very least unwise, and probably wicked. So when you do lend, right, if you're lending money, that's a wisdom call as to whether or not you have the ability to do that. If it will cause undue hardship for your family, don't do that because you have a duty that is higher to your family because they're closer to you. God entrusted them to your care. But if you have the ability to lend that money, you have the ability to help others, then yes, lend to your family members

49:36 and your friends and expect nothing in return. If they are able to repay, great. If they're not, forgive the debt. That is the Christian approach. And I'm not going to pretend that's an easy thing to do, right? That's we're sort of hardwired by our economic system and just general human jealousy, greed, things like jealousy in the negative sense in this case. We're sort of hardwired to not want to do that. But some of the sayings of Christ are difficult. That is the reality of it though. If you lend to a family member, you lend to a friend If he cannot repay you, forgive the debt, right? You can think of the unworthy servant, right? Forgiven the great debt, refuse to forgive a small debt. You don't want to be that man.

50:24 And I guess I should probably mention, because I would be somewhat remiss if I did not, but Christ was certainly speaking to a crowd for whom it would have only been a possibility to lend to family and neighbors, right? There was no online micro lending to people 5,000 miles away, effectively in the unknown parts of the world, right? You did not have the option living in Judea or even living in Rome to lend to someone living in Uganda or Russia or New Zealand, wherever it happens to be. So bear that in mind. Don't think that you have an obligation to lend to random people in the third world. You don't. In fact it's wicked to do so because you're taking that money away from your children and giving it to strangers.

51:11 That is right, telescopic philanthropy, that is a wicked thing. You are neglecting your own to feel good about doing something that is in fact evil. So don't do that. Question four. Proper and improper actions for deaconesses in the church What can deaconesses do or not do in the church? What are their duties and responsibilities? By deaconess I mean a regular woman who serves the church, not the deaconesses who are just females pretending to be pastors. Well that's good, because as I mentioned earlier, those are not properly called pastors or pastrixes or whatever you want to call them, they're something else entirely. But the word deaconess just means servant, female servant. That's what she is.

52:02 She can clean the sanctuary. She can help the pastor shelve books. She can serve food at the brunch. She can do any of those things. She's not a teacher. She's not a pretend pastor. She's nothing else like that. So should we even have them? I think no. I think it misleads women, it gives them the wrong impression. It's making an office that shouldn't exist for women. Think what the deacons in scripture did. They were waiting tables. Much of the time. Not always. They did some other stuff too, but that's one of the things they did. So the deaconess is certainly not a higher office than that. I don't think we should have them. Like I said, I think it is a negative thing. I think it leads to a lot of problems in the church.

52:44 Women do not need to have offices in the church. I wouldn't have women working in the church in any shape whatsoever. No office manager, secretary, none of that. It should be men working in the church. And men need to step up and do those jobs. Part of the reason that you wind up with a lot of women is because men have neglected to do the things they should be doing. That's not to say there aren't women trying to usurp power they should not have. That is certainly a massive problem all over the place. But part of it is invited by men not doing the things men need to be doing. So the short answer is we should have no deaconesses whatsoever. But the slightly expanded answer is if they want to serve the

53:24 church, then that's them from doing that, but don't give him a title. Question five. Related to an earlier question. Can you explain why libertarianism is wrong? Especially the slogan I don't care what you do as long as it doesn't hurt slash bother me. And so definitely see my article that I will be linking to the show notes on that earlier question. Maybe I'll link it here as well, just to make it easier for people to find. But The beginning of the answer is that yes, I'm my brother's keeper, right? That's the answer to Kane's question, you know, am I my brother's keeper is yes. Yes, you are. You have duties to your brother. But to answer specifically what you bring up here, right? You are part of a society.

54:19 You live with other people in society. The things you do affect others. The things others do affect you. We can take a sort of extreme example, right? So let's say someone opens up a meth house across the street from your house. Well, it's his house, it's his life, it's his friends destroying their lives. What business is it of yours what he does with his body, his time, and his property? Well, I think we can all see that it's pretty clearly your business as well, right? Because you probably don't want to live across from a meth house, a meth den. You probably don't want your children to do so. You probably don't want one of those to exist, period, anywhere in society. And yes, there's also the concern of you should actually care

55:10 what happens to your neighbor. Cause that man is your neighbor. You should care about his health and his welfare. You should want the state to intervene and not just shut down the evil thing he's doing, but to get him the help he probably needs, right? I'm not saying you know, drug addicts are innocent, but I am saying we have a duty to help them, the ones that can be helped. Get them the treatment they need and also force them to work. That's part of it, right? Round up the homeless, force them to work, get them treatment for their various ailments which are probably both physical and mental. Don't let them just roam free and destroy themselves and everything else. You can t treat both sides at that same time.

55:48 You don't have to pick one or the other, right? You don't have to be anti homeless to the point of being cruel, you don't have to be pro homeless to the point of being cruel in a different way. But the sort of foundational point there is what I already said. You're part of society. And what you do affects others and what others do affects you. There's no way to disentangle that. No man is an island, no man gets to say I am a dependent on no one else, I am totally wildly, absolutely independent, no one else affects me, I affect no one else. Even if you are living out in the woods as a hermit, that's not totally true, right? You can take the Amish example. The Amish are relatively isolated from society.

56:28 Society still affects them, at the very least in a particular way. What happens if we stop defending them, right? Because it's not the Amish who field soldiers to keep in theory, anyway, the border secure and all those things. Let's say we live in a functioning state instead of this one. But in a functioning state, the Amish are protected by the state despite not contributing to it. So they are still affected by what happens outside of their isolated community. No one is isolated, everyone is interconnected, and so the claims of libertarianism are just ridiculous on their face, in particular this one. Question five, which my tab has disappeared so let me open Question six rather my tab disappeared.

57:18 Question six Mother qualities in your personal experience as a son, what are the most important qualities a mother can possess can possess to raise a boy into a man that will be well grounded in his ability to navigate the world. And take a sip of my drink before I continue. I don't know that I will fully answer this one, and I know that there was a comment in my chat about looking forward to my answer here, and so don't be too disappointed. But I am working on some essays and things about women and marriage and things like that, and I'll leave some of it for that because some of it requires a little greater treatment in depth than I'll necessarily go into here. But I can certainly touch on sort of the overarching truth, the

58:08 core of it here. And the core of it is, as a wife, one of the things you're doing is modeling what it means to be a good woman and a good wife for your sons and for your daughters, certainly. I don't know if God has blessed you with daughters as well, but at least in theory, if God blesses you with daughters or has blessed you with daughters, so your hypothetical daughters. You are modelling what it means to be a wife and a mother. And so that is important for both boys and girls. Because in theory, your boys will marry women at some point in the future. One of the things they'll start looking for is some of the attributes you have shown to be good in women in wives and mothers. The same thing will be true for your daughters when they

58:55 start taking on those roles for themselves. That is sort of one of the fundamental things that you are doing in your role as a wife and a mother. So one of the best things you can do is just be a good wife and mother, because they are looking to you as that example. They will, of course, look to others as examples as well. Sometimes that's bad because sometimes it is looking to Hollywood, which is obviously not great. But say if you have other couples and their children who are around often, they'll look to that as well. Children absorb a lot from what is around them. That is one of the ways we learn, right? They're basically a passive sponge early on. So how you model things in your home and how you permit

59:41 things to be modeled around your children is going to influence them massively going forward. So take that into account. Take into account the people with whom you associate. Take into account what your children see, how they see you interacting with your husband, how you interact with them, because that's their model of a mother. That's the mental model they're building up. So obviously mother is not an unserious or a light office. It's a fundamentally important thing. And And make sure that you're doing what you should according to scripture and the reason, the wisdom that God has entrusted to you. And just as a sort of general comment, I won't necessarily get into right the depth of it that I want to treat with those

1:00:33 essays instead of here, but there's currently I think it's fair to call it animus. There's rather a lot of animus between the sexes, particularly among the younger generations, to be blunt. Particularly with the zoomers and younger, it's happening in Gen Alpha as well. And it is a serious problem, right? There's no future if the sexes don't get along, at least well enough. And God made woman to be a helper fit for man, not to be a competitor, not for woman to hate man or for man to hate woman. Men and women are not the same. Don't expect men and women to be the same. Don't expect women to act like men or men to act like women. That's leftism, that's transsexualism, that's transgenderism, that's complete nonsense.

1:01:20 Expect women to act like women and men to act like men. It's important to model both. Your husband models how a man should act, you model how a woman should act. That is things functioning as they should. And if we don't do something about that animus between the sexes that is just growing unchecked and is certainly fueled by social media and is fueled algorithmically deliberately to make people crazy and behave in this way. So maybe consider limiting social media access as well. If we don't get a handle on that, then we are just going to have continually worse problems in the future, and we have problems enough now. We do not need to add on top of all of the challenges we face in a biting hatred between the sexes, who are

1:02:14 supposed to love one another and make it possible to have future generations. Because as a race, you have no future if men and women don't get along. I think we all understand how biology and all those things work, right? There is no next generation, there is no future without marriage. So it's important to model that role as a wife and a mother because if you don't, then your sons are going to have to absorb that from somewhere else. And it will probably be the culture at large and that will probably not work out well for them. They will then learn all the lessons the hard way, that it is much better to learn them the easy way and the correct way than learning them the hard way, and doing it the wrong

1:02:58 way, and probably making a mess of your life at least for a period of years. But like I said, I will get more into this in some essays that I've been planning, sort of mentally composing in my free time. I guess almost a tangentially related question in a sense, but question seven. You have stated previously that men should only cry at specific times and events. Occasionally a hymn in church will really get me and cause tears to well up. Do you find this shameful? I weep for Christ's passion and I know there is no shame in that. Is this different? Yes, that's permissible. I guess I can just answer that one very quickly. It is permissible to maybe don't openly weep as a man. That's generally like something horrible has to have happened for that.

1:03:49 I mean partly yes, I'm Germanic, so I'm going to have a certain sensibility when it comes to these things, but Most Americans are going to, right? Because Americans are mostly English and German, and there's the stiff upper lip thing is not just the English, it's the Germans as well. But openly weeping in church is probably not going to be a great plan, but if it you know tears well up, maybe you have to wipe away a tear. That's I don't object to that. That's perfectly fine. That's entirely reasonable. I would go so far as to say that's even fine if that occasionally happens in the theater. And to be clear, I mean the actual theater, I don't mean the Hollywood slop that nothing they produce warrants that level of emotion

1:04:30 these days. But certain plays, certain operas are w very well designed, and if they elicit that sort of emotion, I don't think it's entirely inappropriate. And certainly Christ's passion and certain hymns. You know, if you've lost someone near and dear to you, say in the past year and then we get to All Saints or whichever one of the calendar celebrations you use and you know you're singing for all the saints and you happen to have a couple tears in your eyes, I think that's perfectly reasonable I don't think that's shameful or impermissible. Question eight. I'm going to drink a little more coffee first. I don't know to how many questions I will get. I don't even know how far we are into this episode.

1:05:19 I have not been paying attention. We are More into the episode episode than I thought, but I'll keep going for a while. I don't have anything else I necessarily have to do in the next twenty-thirty minutes. Question eight. Could you will please elaborate on your tweet that the Great Commission has been fulfilled, and that our mission now is to get our people onto the ark, especially what the latter part means in practical terms. So this is one of those where I could get pretty deep into it, and I don't always want to say this, but maybe I should write an article on this or this or maybe I'll shove this one off onto someone else. I have a person in mind to whom I may give this particular task, if he is so willing.

1:06:14 But I will give the answer from the Lutheran perspective because I am most familiar with that, and quite frankly the Roman Catholics disagree, although they disagree for polemical reasons, not necessarily for theological reasons. And I know some Roman Catholics may object to that, but it is the reality of the historical interaction between the Roman Church and the Lutheran Church, right? So one of the polemical lines of attack against the Lutheran Church by the Roman Church, particularly in the post Reformation era, what would be called the Age of Lutheran Orthodoxy, so maybe the two ish centuries after the Reformation, a little later than that as well, maybe all the way up through, say, the Saxon migration into

1:07:04 America, sort of an extension, but that sort of era. One of the attacks against the Lutherans by the Roman Catholics was surely one of the signs of the true church must be that you have foreign missionaries because then you are pursuing the Great Commission. That was one of their arguments. However, even earlier than that, there were many who had argued, so this is not specifically Lutheran, I'm going to go over the Lutherans in more detail, but earlier than that, there were those who argued that essentially the Great Commission had been fulfilled in one of two ways. Usually they argued that it was fulfilled during the apostolic era because the apostles had gone to all the great races of men,

1:07:51 right? And so not every single little subdivision of humanity had been reached, but it had gone out to the sons of Shem, it had gone out to the sons of Japheth, it had gone out to the sons of Ham. You even see that fulfillment in the New Testament, right? The many of the early converts were formerly Jewish. Those are the sons of Shem. You have Arabs in the same area, sons of Shem, with Hemitic admixture. You have the Ethiopian, right? The Ethiopian eunuch. Well he goes back to the court of one of the countries in Africa, that's Ham. You have Rome and you have the Greeks, that's Japheth. So you see this sort of fulfillment in the apostolic era, and then the additional argument on top of that was that the gospel

1:08:41 had already been heard by all men, because it was passed down from Adam, through Noah, to his sons and the patriarchs of the various great races, and had been retained or lost. So everyone had the opportunity to hear it already. That's one of the two arguments. And there are those who will point out, and I've highlighted this before just to dismiss it, but there are nations that didn't even exist when the Great Commission was given by Christ to the apostles, America didn't exist. America's a distinct nation. So is it something going forward in perpetuity every time a new subgroup is generated pops up? I don't believe so. I hold to the traditional Lutheran belief on this, which is essentially

1:09:29 the two things I explained, with on top of that, you can add, if you are so inclined, I kind of have perhaps mixed feelings on it. I think that it is a strong argument. I don't know that it's a necessary component of the argument But the colonial period was also a rapid expansion and spread of the New Testament era, you know, regeneration, restoration of the gospel message. And so I think that even if you don't want to say it was fulfilled in the apostolic era, certainly it was fulfilled by colonialism in which the sons of Japheth took the gospel to all the corners of the world, including little tiny tribes in the middle of nowhere. I don't think every weird island people everywhere on Earth has to

1:10:15 hear the gospel before it's fulfilled. I think that's a modern and sort of mercenary interpretation used to fund foreign missions and things like that. In some cases it's ignorance, in many cases I think there's a little bit of malice involved. But the Lutheran theologians from the age of orthodoxy, Gerhard is one particular example, and there's another one I posted a quote from him before I started the stream I posted it on X and also on Telegram, but I'll read that as well. Ursinus These are two examples of men who basically just categorically said that the great Commission's been fulfilled. This is no longer a thing. And Gerhard's argument was essentially that there were three things passed down

1:11:00 from the apostles to subsequent Christians, and particularly with regard to, say, the pastorate, right? You have the sacraments. But the important one here is whether or not there was that generic and general command to go to all the corners of the world and spread the gospel. Gerhard came down hard on the no side because his argument and Luther, you also have this in a certain form in Luther as well. Their argument essentially is that the pastor has a mediate call, and the immediate call is to say that it is to his specific congregation and his locality, not to the world generally. And so the argument is that that general or universal call to the world was passed to the apostles, but not down to future

1:11:50 clergy, future Christians. I happen to think that he is largely right in his argument. I might quibble with some things, but I think that is a fair general assessment. Ursinus went further, right? I'll go ahead and read the the translation of his comment. His original comment was in German. I may find a way to translate that whole document because it probably would be useful to have it, but let me pull that up. So So, one of his comments, and this is going to sound harsh to certainly modern Christian years, but this is the sort of thing that you heard from theologians in the 1600s, the 1700s, even into the 18th and early nineteen hundreds, many heathen peoples are savages who have absolutely nothing human about them and are therefore impervious to

1:12:41 the gospel. That's from an Orthodox Lutheran theologian in the 1600s. That was the sort of things that they were writing, and then today we get condemned for saying, you know, there are differences between people groups, right? Completely ridiculous. But I I do happen to believe that the Great Commission was indeed fulfilled. I do not think that we have a general duty to go to all the corners of the world at this point and find every little subgroup of people who speak some pidgin form of a language and try to get them to believe in the gospel. I think that's been fulfilled. But with that sort of background in place now, the actual question that was asked here is what do I mean by get our people into the ark?

1:13:29 And the reason I gave the background is because it lays the foundation of what I mean by that. I mean our duty is to our own people, to our own blood, to our own race, to our own nation, to get them back into the Christian church, which the Christian Church write is the greater arc. That is the greater ark, it is the one that saves you not from temporal death, from from eternal death. And so that is our duty now, not to go to the furthest reaches of the world. Luther, incidentally, in some of his arguments against this kind of stuff, used India as the example to furthest India, farthest India, right? That's not our duty. Our duty is to our own. God has put you in a time and a place. He has put people in your life.

1:14:14 He has made you a certain type of person, right? You have a race, you have an identity, you have all these things that are inherent to who and what you are. He has put you where you are, given you the things you have, and entrusted certain duties to your care. It's not to sail across the ocean and find random people in the jungle so you can feel good about yourself and say, look at how holy I am and what I've done. And the reason people do that is because you know what's very difficult and hard to do? It's to approach your own people and care about them and try to do what is best for them and try to get them back into the Christian church. It's way easier to sail across the world, get paid to go

1:14:56 on a vacation, even if it's not somewhere necessarily that pleasant, these people still enjoy it, and try to get someone with an IQ of seventy to believe you about Jesus. That's easier. The harder work is here. And so people want the easy task instead of the hard work, because that one gets them praise, this one gets you hated. So pick the harder task because it's the right one, it's the one God has entrusted to your care So that is what I mean by getting our people into the ark. It's not a matter of saving the rest of the wicked world. We've done enough. Right? Noah preached, prophesied for long enough about the flood that was coming, and then he got his people into the Ark and saved them. Our duty is to get our own people into the church,

1:15:42 into the actual Ark and save them, not to go hunting around all the rest of the corners of the world for people who won't convert anyway. Question nine. I have been going to my church for almost two years now. I haven't become a member or communed because on the altar where we kneel there is an assortment of crosses, but there are a few stars of Remphan mixed in. The church is faithful, the pastor is faithful enough, seems to be the crosses seem to be the symbols rather seem to be left over from the builders of the church. Can I commune on that? It feels wrong. So the short answer here is Yes, you can commune, and the longer answer involves I don't want to get into the full answer because the full

1:16:31 answer is long, but the longer answer is the symbol is not always a Jewish symbol, right? It's not always Talmudic. And there are a few ways to explain that and defend that conclusion. One of them is that we have historical use in places that were entirely faithful. They just happen to have used the symbol for other reasons or adopted it with misconceptions. That's usually later on. That's usually medieval versus early churches. But even in the early church, you see this in some places, there are Greek churches that we know had this symbol and some that still have the symbol. And it is not always a wicked thing. It has become a wicked thing, so we should no longer use it, but it has been used in ways that were not wicked

1:17:21 in the past. Which leads into the second part of my answer, which is why. The why is very simple. It's a very easy to draw geometric figure. Part of it is just that simple, right? It's two triangles, one flipped. So you do have the argument. It's kind of supported historically. It's not the strongest argument, but you do have the argument that it's symbolic of, say, heaven and earth combined with the triangle being a symbol of the Trinity, right? You have that. But you also have it's a star. There is symbolism of stars in Christianity. It is, again, very simple to draw. It's easy to draw with the tools they would have had, right? You can draw that with a piece of wood and a chisel. You don't need to be very good to draw that particular symbol.

1:18:15 So part of it is just that it's easy to make, but it has become a wicked symbol because of how it has been used in subsequent centuries. It's not necessarily so from the beginning. Was there some wicked stuff in the beginning that was, say, Gnostic or esoteric? Yes, you get it connected to the key of Solomon, the seal of Solomon, and stuff like that. But you also have Christian arguments for it saying it is representative of the six days of creation, being a six pointed star, six being the number of humanity, six being one of the numbers in Scripture that has meaning attached to it. So is it inherently, you know, 666? The answer is no. In this case it seems like it's probably innocent. Should they have done it?

1:18:58 No. Did they do it with wicked intent? I think most likely not. Are you approaching the altar with wicked intent? Clearly no. Is your pastor doing wicked intent? It seems like no. So I think it's just an innocent mistake in this case. It should not have been used, but it was used for reasons that were not wicked. So can you commune yes. Should the symbol be removed if it can be done without, you know, destroying the entire altar or something? I think the answer again is yes. I've been to churches that had the symbol in the stained glass, some of which it's been there for centuries, right? Are we going to say you have to destroy the stained glass because the symbol in the interim has become used by wicked people

1:19:40 to mean wicked things. I think that's overboard. Do you explain why it's there so people understand? Yes, I think that's your burden going forward. But the short answer is yes, I think you can commune there and you're not you're not endangering your soul doing that. Question ten. I can finally get to my board that I've been staring at here and not using because I just got through the questions that were on my Written pad next to me. So what is the application of James 2 3 and what is the scope personal slash public? Is this verse about justice or just how harshly you scrutinize someone? So let's go ahead and pull up James 2.3

1:20:43 Let's actually start with James 2 2. So we actually we'll start with 2 1 so we get the the full context here. My brothers show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, for if a man wearing a gold ring in fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, You sit here in a good place, while you say to the poor man, you stand over there, or sit down at my feet. Have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? And so first off I would say this is one of those cases where, as you can clearly see Clearly see if you read

1:21:24 the context, including the following verse than the previous verses, then it sort of brings the interpretation with it, right? You have become judges with evil thoughts. If you're doing this for wicked reasons, right, it's oh this man can help me pay my mortgage or whatever it happens to be, less of an issue back then, but certainly today. Then yes, you're doing it for wicked reasons. And you're not supposed to show partiality in that way. Is partiality always a wicked thing? No, you are supposed to be partial to the example I often use is your wife, right? You're supposed to treat her better than others. If you get ice cream, you share it with your wife. You don't share it with every person you pass on the street.

1:22:03 That would be very weird. Don't do that. So partiality when it is for a wicked reason is a wicked thing. Partiality when it's for a good reason or even a morally commanded reason is a good thing. So here in the church, you're not supposed to show this kind of wicked partiality. You're not saying we'll treat the wealthy well because the wealthy can help us. No, because what you're doing in the church is you are welcoming sinners to give them the gifts of God, and sinners receive the gifts of God, whether they are wealthy or poor, whether they're intelligent or not, whatever it happens to be, because God's gifts are available to all men. So this is not a matter of you can't ever show partiality.

1:22:48 This is a matter of how you are to behave in the church with regard to these things. You do not get to say to someone, you are worthy of salvation because you can pay for the sanctuary renovation. You are unworthy of salvation because you can't put anything in the coffers, right? That's a fundamentally wicked thing to do. You can't do that. So you have to understand the context that is involved here. And obviously it goes on to critique the rich for certain things and it's behaviors that are particular to the rich, right? The rich are usually the ones going around suing people, because the poor can't afford can't afford attorneys. That's one of the examples given later in the chapter. So that critique is particularly for the rich.

1:23:30 They should hear that and respond accordingly. But you have to take the context here of what is being said. Don't do this stuff in the church. Don't show wicked partiality the same as you should not show it in your life, right? If you're on a jury, you shouldn't convict someone because he's poor. You shouldn't pardon someone because he's rich. And you shouldn't do the verse. The reverse of that. It should be on the basis of the guilt or innocence of the party. So there's good partiality, there's wicked partiality. Bear that in mind when you are reading these verses, right? And just think of the easy example, right? You're partial to your wife, you don't show partiality according to this outward appearance or wealth or something like that.

1:24:12 When it is not relevant to the matter at hand. For instance, salvation. Particular critique of the Jews, because the Jews believed that if you had enough money to pay for sacrifices and renovations to the synagogue and things like that, you were holier and closer to God and you got brownie points for it or something. So there's also that critique inherent in what is being said here. Think I will try to get through a a handful more questions here, probably not too many. I do believe I have all the questions from the chat though. My integration seems to be working quite well, so they're all up here waiting for me to accept them and catalog them. But take a note for myself here.

1:25:14 Just wanted to refresh and see if it is updating it as it should. I think it is, so I think we're good. Question eleven. When it comes to having a monarchy, how should a king be decided on in countries without a proper monarchical history? For example, Iceland, where its only king has also been the king of Denmark. And then there's a second related question, but I will take them as two separate questions Questions. So how you decide on right your first king, as it were, or in this case your first local king, is a matter of wisdom. It is not something that is dictated in Scripture. It is not said you must absolutely do this. We are not Old Testament Israel, right? We don't have a prophet running around who is going to appear

1:26:08 with a vial of oil and pour it on a man's head and say, Congratulations, these people are your problem now. Whether that's a blessing or a curse for the man anointed, you know, interpret that yourself. But we have We have to use the intellectual and other gifts that God has entrusted to our care to make this assessment for ourselves. That's what our ancestors did when they drew up the various ways that they had for selecting their monarchs or approving their monarchs, whatever it happened to be, right? And we get into this with the the second question, so I won't touch on it too much. But I think that the way you do it again is that matter of wisdom. And I think I want to get into this second question to

1:26:51 give the specifics because I know what it asks already. So I will read that next question to get into the specifics and hopefully I didn't miss a number here. This is question twelve if I numbered my pad correctly and did not miss one. My little AI agent is thinking about something. At any rate the question. And since we're on that topic, I'll quickly ask if you consider absolute monarchy the ideal form of a monarchical government, or if you prefer a more holy Roman Empire like system or Prussian constitutionalism. So I am not fond of so-called Constitutionalism, limited monarchy, things like that. And the reason that I am not fond of that is that I think that it is really people lying to themselves.

1:27:43 Because if you believe that a monarch is limited by a piece of paper, you are delusional. Right? Paper does not limit what a man can do. Paper can encourage a man to behave in certain ways, but power is what determines what a man can or cannot do. Obviously, power moderated by morality, honor, cultural systems, all those sorts of things, but it is not a matter of what the piece of paper says. If the king wants to burn the Constitution and do whatever he pleases, then it's a matter of whether he has Whether he has the power to do that or not, not a matter of whether or not the Constitution says, please don't burn me at the top. That's not how it works. So I do not believe in constitutional monarchy or limited monarchy.

1:28:31 I think that the only rational approach approach is absolute monarchy. Now, does that mean you can't have a system that has sort of safeguards in place, right? Like the Holy Roman Empire, the electoral system, in that case, in the sense of electors, not in the sense of electoral politics like we have today. No, I think that that's perfectly permissible. I think that's even a wise way to do it. In an empire where you do have to devolve certain things be you have these different unique peoples all under one monarch, right? Because in the Holy Roman Empire you had different nations, different races. They were not all the same people. You should probably have a unitary king over one single nation, but

1:29:12 if you have what is effectively an empire instead, and I'm not anti-empire, I'm definitely an imperialist when it comes to these things, I think that that Holy Roman Empire system is the better way to go. But what I mean by an absolute monarch is that ultimately if you draw out the logic, the philosophy of it, the morality of it, the positive law depends upon the monarch. The law flows from the monarch, from his office, not necessarily from his person. He is the avatar of the office. It flows from the office. The positive law doesn't just appear from the ether and enforce itself on the people, on the nation. It flows through the monarch. The monarch is supposed to align himself and that law with the

1:29:57 natural law, but he ultimately is the foundation of that positive law. And for those who don't know, I've mentioned it before, but the positive law is the written law that governs a country, right? Or it can be oral tradition as well, but it is the man made law that governs the country. It may be consonant with, or identical to the moral law, right? Thou shalt not murder. But it doesn't have to be identical. It is just you are morally obligated to be consonant in agreement with the moral law. So that positive law flows from is founded on the office of the monarch. And so I don't think you can reasonably say his power is limited because he is the very source of the government in that system. And I think that's the rightful way it's designed.

1:30:43 And also as a Lutheran, in the confessions it does say the king is above the law. That's literally in our confession. So if you want to consider yourself as a Lutheran confessionally bound to believe that, I think that we are, go ahead and use that as well in your argument. Obviously not going to work with someone who's not Lutheran, but for someone who's Lutheran, it is in there. Melanchthon wrote it, it's in our confession. Just looking at the chat for a second here. Looks like everything is still good. Question 13. How do you cope with being smarter than the people around you? I really struggle with this despite being only one standard deviation above my family. Makes me feel like they don't even speak English.

1:31:37 So the good news is if you are one standard deviation different from those around you, that's not too big of a difference. It's really sort of at the three SD mark that you start to have real issues conversing across that boundary. I have a a thread on this that I did recently. I was building up to an argument for the existence of God, but it also touches on the issue of genius AI related issues. So for one standard deviation, that's not much of a barrier. You can very readily talk to someone who is that close. Once you start getting into, like I said, three plus, you start losing some of that shared vocabulary, there's really kind of a loss of a shared language, and it's appropriate the analogy you use there

1:32:31 of speaking a different language. Part of it is compression, how much information you're fitting into the same number of words, how much how much each word is carrying along with it, right? Things like that. But like I said, it's it's not as big of a burden if it's just the one standard deviation difference. You can really communicate with someone who's that far away with relative ease. Yes, you're more intelligent than that person, but it's not so much more intelligent that it's different in kind, right? It's really a matter of degree and not even a huge degree So don't focus on that. Never focus on how much more intelligent you are than the people around you if you happen to be more intelligent than they are.

1:33:15 It's a gift that God has entrusted to your care. It's also a burden, right? Because many gifts are a duty, and there is a certain burden that is associated with duty. There are things that you will have to do that others cannot do. You have to do them because God has given you the ability to do them. Particularly the case when you start talking about you know three, four, five standard deviations or something, because then you have a shrinking pool of the men who can do the things you can do. But take it in the right light. Understand that it is a gift from God that comes with those attendant duties. And by and large, don't think of yourself as being, you know, something fundamentally different from other human beings, right?

1:33:57 It doesn't matter how intelligent you are. you still enjoy many of the same things as other human beings, right? There may be things you enjoy in a way that they do not. You know, there's some aspects to some of the arts that you're going to enjoy in say a fuller or a deeper way, but at the same time, you're still going to like food and drink and and I I don't just mean alcohol there, but that's included. You know, going for a walk or a hike, playing with your pets, like all of these things, you're still very much a human being. You just happen to have a capacity that is higher in a particular way relative to most people. And yes, it is different to have the higher intelligence versus just being able to run fast or something, right?

1:34:45 We all recognize that. There's something fundamental about the way that intelligence interfaces with, interacts with, and modulates the expression of who and what you are fundamentally. So it is different in kind from certain other attributes. But at the same time you were still very much human, right? You have to eat, you have to drink, you have to sleep, you get headaches, you get tired, you know, you want a wife. Doesn't matter how intelligent you are, right? Unless God gave you the gift of celibacy, which he probably didn't, because almost no one has it. You're still a human being, act like a human being, get along with those around you as best you can. Don't expect everyone to understand things as quickly as you do or

1:35:26 as thoroughly as you do. It's wrong to demand that of them. We used to have some systems in place in society where you had some hierarchy and separation and deference and things like that that kept some of this stuff sort of it was there, but it was understood and society functioned on top of it instead of causing that abrasiveness, that friction in daily life. But again, one standard deviation is not going to fundamentally make you alien or unincomprehensible to other people. So live your life in the way that you're supposed to. Get along with the people around you. If you enjoy some things they don't or understand some things they don't, so be it. That's not going to separate you from them in any truly meaningful

1:36:12 way. And have some grace for your family members we all should. They definitely have to have grace for you, right? There's going to be some things you do that probably annoy them, so return the favor and overlook some of their foibles as they overlook yours. I will go ahead and answer this one. I've answered it previously, but it's worth addressing again. Thankfully no one has corrected me on the numbering in chat, so either I have been numbering them correctly. I thought that I might have missed one, but I don't think that I did. Or no one has felt like telling me I missed one or no one else is keeping track. I don't know. But I will answer this one, like I said, because it comes up all the time and it's worth answering it a few times so

1:37:11 people can find it more easily. Was Moses' wife a Hamite? So was she a daughter of Noah's wicked son Ham? The answer to this one is that right we have the narrative of Miriam and Aaron who are arguing against Moses in the desert and they bring up his wife and you know argue about that, right? Because he married a Cushite woman. Well the problem here is that Cush, or if you use Ethiopia, Ethiopian in the Greek, both of those terms aren't univocal. They mean a number of different things at a number of different times, and we can't say for absolute certainty what it means here. It could mean a region, in which case, she was probably a Shemite, a cousin. In fact, it's probably the wife he had before.

1:38:07 Or could she have possibly been from the area that had the sons and daughters of Ham? Sure, there is a possibility of that, I won't deny that that is possible. However, Scripture does not give us enough information to conclude that the woman in that narrative, his wife, is another wife. We don't have an explicit statement that he took another wife, that he married a second wife, or that his first one died, and this is a new one. All we have is this term that could be narrow or very encompassing because it used to kind of mean like the people over that way. So if it means that, it covers his first wife. So we don't know from what scripture says if he took an additional wife. Given that we don't know that, it would be wrong simply to

1:38:56 assume it. So I say that the most reasonable assumption is that it is that generic or broad geographic sense applying to his first wife. Now It's important here to mention, you know, the curse, the leprosy, things like that, and why it plays out in the way that it does, because people try to use this to argue for interracial marriage, or at least to argue against laws against interracial marriage. That's not what's in view in the narrative. I encourage all of you to go read the narrative after this. I will skip doing it here, but I encourage you all to read it. Why does God curse the woman who objects? Well what does God say? Moses is God's chosen. He speaks with Moses face to face. He doesn't contact him in dreams or visions or the usual things

1:39:49 that he uses for prophets. He speaks to him face to face. Moses is chosen in a particular way above and beyond basically any other prophet. And then Miriam and Aaron are trying to usurp his office. They are insulting God by insulting his chosen prophet. Miriam is cursed because what she does is against God. It's not because she is speaking against Moses' wife or anything like that. It is because what she is attempting to do is usurp that office and question the authority that God has given to Moses, which again is an insult to God. They're punished for insulting God. It falls on her because he's the priest, and to curse the priest is a whole different thing. But it is that usurpation, it is that insult to God, that

1:40:40 is what is in view in the narrative there. It is not a narrative from which you draw out rules about marriage, right? Standard interpretive rule, you use passages that actually That actually address the subject instead of passages that tangentially maybe involve the subject, which is probably not even in view here. So did Moses marry a Hammite? The answer is almost certainly no, but scripture does not tell us explicitly because it doesn't tell us if he had you know it we don't know if he was a widow. If the first wife died, scripture doesn't tell us. If he married a second, scripture doesn't tell us. All we know is this term that is equivocal is used of this wife in a mercenary way to attack Moses that is an

1:41:25 insult to God. So it's not an argument for the people who want to say interracial marriage is fine. It's not an argument for those of us who want to say that it shouldn't be permitted. It's not an argument either way on that topic. Some of the questions that have come in are going to take me longer to address, so I will definitely be saving those for next week, or a future week at least. Let's see. Maybe answer one or two more questions this week, I think. I'll try to see what's well I can certainly This one spells my name my last name incorrectly, but I'll still answer it, so Question 15. Do you believe angels still work on the earth today?

1:42:26 The answer is yes. I do believe that angels are still active. Demons are still active too, demons being fallen angels, of course. I think you probably mean the good ones in this question. Yes, angels are God's agents on earth, they do his bidding, and part of what they do is protect believers, right? Michael is the archangel of the church. Incidentally, that means that Satan is now the archangel of the nation of Israel. So maybe I'll get into that in the future. But yes, angels are still very much active. They are, and there are more of them than of the demons, thankfully. But it is worth mentioning God does not give us a great deal of information about what exactly angels and demons are or

1:43:13 are not permitted to do, right? We don't have a rule book for them. Don't go trying to investigate or create your own. God has not given us that knowledge. You're not going to find it. Particularly not by talking to demons, right? Sometimes Roman Catholic exorcists think that they can talk to demons and get the rules for how they interact. Not a wise thing to do. Right? The father of lies and his minions probably not going to tell you the truth, at least not in a way that's going to be helpful. I see the question about interest in economics. I don't want to make the last question for this particular stream a question on usury. I'm tempted to, but I think I will forego that

1:44:36 I think well I'll end on a related question to Yusuri, I suppose. Are the Jews cursed from birth with a hardened heart? Can you speak on heart hardening or point me to some content you made on the subject? Is it like Pharaoh where he sins then his heart is hardened? And so And so this is question sixteen. Should I set that to start? And so a hardened heart and a seared conscience, right, are very much related things in scripture. And it is worth pointing out, as he said here, and I've pointed out elsewhere a number of times, right? Pharaoh hardens his heart first, God confirms him in his choice. So for those who try to use Pharaoh as an example of, say, double predestination or something, if you read the actual narrative, it

1:45:31 doesn't support that conclusion. Because God didn't just predestine Pharaoh to have a hardened heart and to be damned. God does not desire that any should not be saved, right? Scripture is abundantly clear. It explicitly says God desires that all should come to repentance and be saved. God's not lying when he says that. He's not making it up, he's not being facetious or whatever. He legitimately means he wants all men to be saved, but you have the option to reject the free offer of salvation. You are well within your power, within your free will, to elect to be damned. So Now, are the Jews hardened from birth? There is an aspect of that where the answer is yes, because there are genetic components to this, right?

1:46:21 Election in view of headship. See the episode of Stone Choir. We went over this at some length. I will actually make a note to myself to go ahead and add that into these show notes. But when it comes to sort of genetic proclivity to certain sins, that is very much a thing. And for some people it is going to be more difficult to overcome that and to believe in Christ, to believe in the gospel, because they have that genetic proclivity to reject it. Now layered on top of that, and in this case, probably even stronger than that just genetic proclivity to be you know quarrelsome and all the other things, right? The average Jew is taught from birth that everyone is not Jewish is out to get them.

1:47:09 They're taught to be paranoid. They are taught that they are special. They are God's chosen people. Everyone else is not even fully human. They are allowed to exploit the Goyim however they want, and so on and so forth, and it just compounds their entire life. And so trying to convert a Jewish adult, you are You are working against decades of the most pernicious and thorough indoctrination that probably exists on the face of the planet, outside maybe some extremely efficient cults, perhaps. But That has so seared and hardened their hearts, seared their consciences, hardened their hearts, that you will probably find it impossible to overcome that. That's why basically no Jew ever converts. There are those who will claim they converted, and then you will

1:48:01 notice, given the opportunity, they will immediately stab you in the back. Because it wasn't a real conversion. They're conversos, it was mercenary. That is a problem that Christendom has had for centuries, and people have to keep learning this lesson, because apparently we can't just learn the lessons of our forefathers the easy way, by reading about them, instead of making the same mistake, and learning it the hard way again. Does that mean no Jew can ever be converted? No, of course not. God can work miracles. Everything's a miracle. God is able to do that. But by and large, God works through the natural means he has instituted, in this sense I mean the sacraments, right? They are also supernatural, but they are natural in an essence in

1:48:44 a way, because God is working through his word and water, spoken word, water. water. He's working through wine and bread and the Word. God works through means to bring people to saving faith. He does not zap you with lightning and give you belief. Right? That's not how it works. We're not enthusiasts, we're not crazy. Now, can a Jew read God's Word, read the New Testament, or even the Old Testament, if God opens his heart, right, softens his heart, unsears his conscience? But yes, it's going to take that miracle to do it. And like I said, if you look back through the pages, the annals of Christendom and try to find Jews who have legitimately converted, you will find a handful, but you will be able to count

1:49:29 them on one or two hands, and you will have fingers left over. So is their conscience seared from birth due to genetics? Not seared in the sense of making them unable to believe, their heart isn't hardened in the sense they can't come to faith, but you have to take into account that it's not just being born with genetic proclivities, it's being born into a system that will then indoctrinate you for twenty years. Or more. Your entire life you're going to get that sort of indoctrination if you stay in the little Jewish bubble, right? And that's the reality of it. So, you know, purely hypothetical, right? You take a Jewish infant, raise him in a Christian family where there is zero Jewish influence whatsoever, would he still revert to default

1:50:19 settings as it were? No, I think that potentially you would have a Christian in that case. We're not exactly going to run that social experiment, right? I don't think anyone is suggesting that we do that. I don't think anyone's suggesting it would be wise. And also, you can't do it because because there's still the access to the Jewish influence. In the hypothetical, you would have to have such control over conditions that there would be no way for him ever to learn that he was genetically Jewish or what that even meant. So the reality is, is it purely genetic? No. But is it such that their conscience is seared and their heart is hardened? Yes. And that is why basically no Jew ever actually converts to

1:51:01 Christianity. Which is a tragedy. It is an evil and it is a tragedy, but it is one that they have brought on themselves through centuries of wickedness. On that happy note, I think that I will call the stream for this week because we have definitely run a little bit over on time. I don't mind doing that sometimes. It's perfectly reasonable. But I think that will be all. Thank you for those who contributed questions. And of course the questions in the chat, I have them up here on my iPad, so I will be triaging those as it were after the stream. I'll be adding them to my future list going forward. That seems to have worked as intended, so if it did not, which is to say if you do not see your question in

1:51:57 the future questions topic on the forum, or answered in this stream, of course, then by all means please submit it again so that I can see it and please tell me it did not get picked up so I can figure out why that happened. I don't think it missed any, but there's always the possibility. Which raises the topic of how do you submit questions. Well one you can submit in the stream of course as I've mentioned. I am looking at those and it's being pulled out by my AI agent in the background so hopefully it got all those. The preferred way of course is on the forum. The first questions I went through in this stream and the first questions I will do in every stream will be those from the forum. I give them priority because those questions are the best way

1:52:42 for me to organize things because I can link to them in the episode and then people can read the question in the future. I don't have to pull out the text and make sure I don't lose it and all that stuff. It's just the cleanest way to do it. It's the best way to do it. It helps me keep things organized. It keeps a database going forward for people to look at the questions and see how I've answered them, which is part of the point of doing the QA stream. That being said, submitting them in the stream is fine in the chat, submitting them on X, which shows up in the chat is fine, telegram, whatever it happens to be. You know, if you're a friend of a friend, by all means send it that way. Write me a letter, whatever you want.

1:53:18 I try to get to all of those questions. That being said, if I do not see your question, if it is disappeared from my view because whatever platform you're using decides I don't need to see it, that does happen, particularly on X. If that kind of stuff happens, by all means, please submit it again. I didn't just ignore your question. I probably literally didn't see it. As I've mentioned a number of times, my DMs on X are not a good way to do this anymore because my DMs on X don't really work anymore. I open them, they scroll, the scrolling freezes, half the time they crash, it locks me out sometimes. They're basically useless to me now. So please use one of the other methods. But at any rate, again, thank you for those who submitted questions,

1:54:00 thank you for participating in the chat. It is always good to get the chance to do this. And I try to do this on Thursdays, but really it usually winds up being Friday. I pick Thursday because it depends how my week goes. If it goes, I guess well and I have Thursday open, I do it Thursday if not winds up being Friday. So it being Friday evening, I hope you all maybe those on the East Coast don't go out now, it depends. I guess if you're in your twenties it's nice to go out now, but have a good weekend. Go out and do something in God's creation. It's finally cooling off here. It's why I have my window open for the first time since summer began. So go out and enjoy God's creation. Always good out good to do a hike or something on the

1:54:39 weekend. Just enjoy the cooler temperatures and the creation that God made for our enjoyment. It's not just for his glory, it is also for our enjoyment as his avatar, as his idol, as his symbol, his spokespeople, basically, his head of creation. So go out, enjoy that. Have a great weekend. Go to church on Sunday and I will see you all next week. Until then, God bless God bless you you.

2:00:10 no, no, dump. Okay.