Mysterium Fasces - Understanding The Sermon On The Mount

00:00:00.000 And the first thing that I really want to say about it is it's called the Sermon on the Mount, but when you actually look up the word mount, it could be any elevated place or any hill or mound, and I think it was far more likely the Sermon on the Mound, because we used to have man-made hills and people used to go up on them when they wanted to talk.

00:00:21.540 It was the equivalent of being on the town hall steps today, and in Britain we still have these mounds, they're associated with pre-Christian society, and I think that was far more likely what he was speaking on, rather than climbing up into a mountain.

00:00:40.600 So I guess I'll begin with the first verse and then offer it over to you for an interpretation of it, Florian, and this is Matthew chapter 5, it says,

00:00:51.100 And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain, that's why I say he went up onto the mound, and when he was set, his disciples came unto him.

00:01:00.960 So it's just his disciples with him here.

00:01:02.980 And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

00:01:10.180 Now a lot of people will think, poor in spirit? What does that mean? You want to be spirited, you want to have lots of vigour.

00:01:17.620 So why is he saying, blessed be the poor in spirit there, Florian?

00:01:24.360 Right, so these are all, there's a couple of things that I want to mention right before we get into the interpretation of this particular verse.

00:01:32.820 The setting of the Sermon on the Mount is very important, and most people, one of the things about Holy Scripture is that it assumes that everyone is familiar with the context and with the symbolism of the actions, especially in the Gospels.

00:01:46.580 And so what Christ is doing by ascending this mount or this mound is he is taking the place of Moses and he is inaugurating the kingdom of heaven.

00:01:58.020 This is the purpose of this discourse is to reveal the law of the kingdom of heaven to the assembled disciples who are the first fruits of that kingdom.

00:02:10.840 And so the mountain represents the meeting place between heaven and earth, and Jesus is seated in a position of authority and is giving the law as one who has authority, like Moses did, but to a subtler and higher degree, being the one who spoke to Moses.

00:02:30.040 So the kingdom of heaven is, you know, this is on earth. This isn't some imaginary faraway place.

00:02:35.820 This is the way society should be on earth, yeah?

00:02:39.340 Right. So the kingdom of heaven is on earth and in heaven.

00:02:45.360 What the kingdom of heaven is, as Christ explains, is the kingdom of heaven is those who are integrated into the life of God.

00:02:53.520 That's all that that means.

00:02:54.560 And so what happened is that when Christ came to earth, when God became man and he assumed our human nature, he gave us as human beings the ability on earth to be integrated into the divine life, which he brought down to us.

00:03:07.840 And so that's why the kingdom of heaven, our entrance into it, begins here on earth through baptism.

00:03:13.140 That is how we enter into the kingdom of heaven.

00:03:15.300 And the purpose of life on earth is a struggle to ever greater, to an ever greater and finer degree, integrate ourselves into the life of the kingdom.

00:03:24.320 And so when we die, our souls move to the place where they have been, they were already on earth.

00:03:31.140 And likewise, we know many people on earth who are already in hell.

00:03:35.180 So it's no surprise to us where they go when they depart this life.

00:03:40.700 Okay, that makes sense.

00:03:41.680 So what's this bit about the poor in spirit there?

00:03:45.940 What's the real meaning of that?

00:03:47.800 Right.

00:03:48.120 So poverty in spirit has to do fundamentally with humility.

00:03:51.980 And so the poverty in spirit has to do with the fundamental difference between the Christian religion and between Jesus Christ, especially as the God-man, and, you know, the sin that we see in Adam, is that in the fall, in the Garden of Eden, man was alienated from God, who is a person.

00:04:14.900 And because of this, he was alienated from himself.

00:04:17.060 He didn't – there is this – disintegration is the correct word between the will of God and between natural law and the cosmic order and how all things should act.

00:04:27.740 And man, who is designed to be perfectly integrated into that reality, that is lost.

00:04:33.920 And because of this, what happens is that man enthrones himself as the giver of law and as the arbiter of right and wrong, having knowledge of good and evil,

00:04:42.140 and relies upon his own knowledge and his own ego as the determiner of reality.

00:04:49.420 Dr. Johnson just gave a really excellent lecture on Hegel, which goes into some depth as to how our own perception of the world as an atomized individual is extremely fallacious.

00:05:01.100 And so what Christ is saying here, essentially, is it's for us to be humble.

00:05:05.500 We should be poor in spirit in that we don't seek aggrandizement of our own spiritual capital, so to speak, that we look towards God as poor people look towards their master.

00:05:19.620 And rather than puffing ourselves up in this kind of business, we act with all humility and service.

00:05:29.280 And instead of caring for the woes of this, the good things of this world, as the rich do, and seeking fulfillment and satisfaction of virtues and reward for those in this life, we look on to the next life, life in the spirit.

00:05:49.880 And, again, it's important to have this context because many take the Beatitudes to be some sort of radical Gnostic detachment of the material world from the kingdom of heaven and saying that, oh, you know, you just have to totally ignore the material world.

00:06:04.860 It's not like that at all.

00:06:06.680 They intersect subtly and completely, as we've just described.

00:06:10.040 Jesus is a man.

00:06:11.100 But rather that for us, the material world is just a step in what is to come.

00:06:16.560 And so our display of virtue and our struggling to execute what is good here on this earth is a preparation for the eternal life, which will come after the second coming of Christ.

00:06:30.240 So that's – go ahead, please.

00:06:33.120 I was just going to say, sir, it's admitting that any gifts that you do have, any skills that you do have, they don't come from yourself.

00:06:41.520 They come from God.

00:06:42.820 Everything comes from God.

00:06:43.980 So it's saying, you know, it's an understanding that you have complete poverty as far as these things are concerned.

00:06:50.880 And it's admitting that.

00:06:52.600 So whatever you have doesn't come from yourself.

00:06:55.540 You don't generate these things.

00:06:57.840 They're given to us by God.

00:06:59.540 And it's accepting that.

00:07:00.820 So that's what it means by blessed are the poor in spirit because they understand that what they have doesn't actually come from themselves.

00:07:09.160 Everything that they have comes from God.

00:07:11.900 So the next one is, blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.

00:07:17.780 And I understand that as to mean you have an understanding of loss.

00:07:22.500 So you have an understanding of grief and an understanding of the grief that other people have experienced.

00:07:29.420 And we all need to understand grief and understand loss so that we have compassion for the people around us, for our fellow white man.

00:07:38.060 And, you know, we have to be able to try and put ourselves in other people's shoes.

00:07:43.840 We cannot just condemn them, such as people that people that are race mixing.

00:07:48.360 I mean, we have to understand that they have been completely brainwashed.

00:07:51.780 That's all they see all day on the television is multiracial couples.

00:07:56.280 They've been encouraged to do that.

00:07:57.700 They've been taught to do that at school.

00:07:59.740 And, you know, we have to have compassion for that.

00:08:02.280 We cannot just condemn them and write them off.

00:08:05.300 We have to try and bring them around to our point of view.

00:08:09.040 So I think that's what it means by saying, blessed are they that mourn, because they have an understanding of, you know, of what it means to have this loss and to have this grief.

00:08:17.980 What are your thoughts on verse four, Florian?

00:08:20.640 I think that's exactly correct.

00:08:24.060 Yeah, the mourning, I mean, is a product, as you say, of loss, and you cannot recognize loss unless you recognize substance.

00:08:32.020 And so to be a Christian, to be repentant and to see the truth of God, by extension, reveals the wickedness of the world.

00:08:40.400 And so if one is a true, and it will be no shock to the listeners of this program, if one is a traditional Christian and has the sort of worldview that we have, I mean, life itself is mournful because you see the exact opposite of the natural law enthroned and played out in the world all around us.

00:08:59.340 And so what God is telling us is that we should understand what his law is and what we have lost and what can be available to us in the kingdom of heaven.

00:09:08.400 We should mourn the loss of that in the world around us.

00:09:11.420 This is not how things were meant to be.

00:09:14.100 And this ultimately, especially within ourselves, the recognition of our own internal corruption, of how we do not meet the standards that the kingdom of heaven sets forth for us, that mourning, which that recognition produces, is the first fruits of repentance, which is how we come to return to a relationship with God.

00:09:32.960 You know, the understanding of how corrupt and degenerate we actually are.

00:09:38.340 I mean, St. Paul talks about this as well, doesn't he, about how even though he knows what he should be doing, and yet somehow he finds himself doing the wrong thing all the time.

00:09:47.980 And that's what sin is, is missing the mark.

00:09:50.840 You have to have an understanding that, you know, whatever we do is going to fall short of the mark.

00:09:56.160 And that's why, you know, we have God's grace.

00:09:59.540 So if we do make these mistakes, we do sin, we can ask for repentance and be forgiven.

00:10:05.540 This next one, number five.

00:10:09.080 This is one that often gets thrown at Christians.

00:10:11.440 Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

00:10:14.920 This sounds like, almost like, blessed are those who just fling open the borders and allow all the third world to invade in, doesn't it, Florian?

00:10:24.000 What does this mean, blessed are the meek?

00:10:27.260 Yeah.

00:10:28.100 Well, so this is one of the, it comes back to the difficulties of context and of language and so on.

00:10:34.320 And that it's so difficult to penetrate into these texts if you have a kind of, you know, Protestant mentality.

00:10:41.080 All you just have to do is pick up the Bible and the Spirit's going to interpret it for you.

00:10:44.200 Well, that spirit is critical, but you also need to be able to speak the language.

00:10:49.200 What meekness is, it's very simple.

00:10:51.980 Meekness is control of the passions.

00:10:54.700 It is the ability to use your rational mind to direct the energies that naturally bubble up within us towards their appropriate ends.

00:11:04.680 And so it's not saying that anger or hatred or any of these motivating actions or emotions are bad, that we should be these kind of passive, you know, limp, you know, pushovers.

00:11:18.480 Many times in Holy Scripture and in the services of the church and the saints, they write about the appropriate use of anger and hatred, but these need to be directed in an appropriate manner.

00:11:28.980 And so a meek man, for instance, is capable, you know, if offense is done to him or his ego is wronged, he's capable of controlling his pride, which tells him that he needs to think only of himself to readdress the wrong that's done to his ego.

00:11:46.400 But likewise, a meek man is also must be willing to embrace the anger that impels him to action when he sees injustice.

00:11:55.640 This is meekness.

00:11:56.840 And we can see Christ with the, you know, scourging the money lenders in the temple is an example of the meekness of Christ.

00:12:03.000 And so, indeed, the meekness is not, you know, womanly passivity.

00:12:09.600 It is the rational subordination of the passions to the law of God.

00:12:15.400 Well, I think the next verse, you know, sort of that's what the next verse is speaking about.

00:12:20.800 But we're also told to hate the enemies of God with a perfect hatred.

00:12:24.140 So it's not saying that we should just give up everything.

00:12:28.620 It's saying that we should use, as you say, we should use our passions for what they are intended for.

00:12:34.680 And verse number six is blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.

00:12:41.540 And righteousness is being in tune with God's moral law.

00:12:47.500 And that means having a righteous zeal against sodomy, against miscegenation, against usury, against your countries being invaded, having a thirst for righteousness.

00:13:00.480 So this verse ties in with this blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth, doesn't it?

00:13:07.640 Right, exactly.

00:13:08.700 And even the earth that's given to the meek is not, you know, the physical world, but it's the world to come.

00:13:14.580 It's the kingdom of heaven, which has already been promised.

00:13:17.500 And exactly, this righteousness is a product of being a friend and a son of God.

00:13:23.620 And if you love God, you will obey his commandments, as he says.

00:13:27.420 And so the holy fathers of the church, they tell us that our righteousness and our zeal starts, first of all, for ourselves and in terms of how much energy we have for ascetic labor.

00:13:38.180 Or how much we are willing to discipline our own passions and willing to strive to live a moral life and to deny worldly pleasures so that we can seek the spiritual glory and the spiritual goodness, which is the foundation of our whole life.

00:13:52.480 You know, and on the one hand, this can mean, you know, like classic ascetic labors, prayer and fasting and so on, which are essential, as Christ will talk about later in this chapter.

00:14:03.080 But on the other hand, I mean, this is, you know, to be a righteous person is just to fulfill the duties that have been set to you according to your station in life and to fulfill them well and for Christ primarily.

00:14:16.800 This is what righteousness consists of. It consists of love for Christ and living of that love within yourself and with your neighbors.

00:14:25.440 I think Noah is accredited with righteousness as well, isn't he?

00:14:29.080 And you're actually taught, not taught that much about Noah, but it does say he was pure in his generations or pure in his race.

00:14:35.740 So just keeping the race pure, I would say that's righteous, you know, to be against the mingling of the races, keeping the races separate.

00:14:44.380 That's righteous behavior. That's in accordance with with God's plan.

00:14:48.480 That's trying to prevent creation being destroyed.

00:14:52.380 And the next verse, number seven, blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

00:14:59.040 You know, if we were if we were in a in a situation, you know, we would like to.

00:15:04.700 I'm sure you would like whoever it is that's persecuting you to be merciful to you.

00:15:08.820 You know, I think we should treat others how we should like to be treated ourselves and and being you know, there is a time for vengeance and there is a time for mercy.

00:15:19.280 It's important that we are merciful to our brothers around us, especially in the white nationalist movement.

00:15:25.340 Some of us do things that, you know, we really are not very happy about.

00:15:29.880 And, you know, we just have to be merciful to them.

00:15:33.200 You know, we all make mistakes. None of us. None of us are perfect.

00:15:36.360 So, again, I think this is you know, this is very good to say blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.

00:15:43.220 You know, this is the faith of the saints, isn't it?

00:15:45.160 That if you die by the sword, if you live by the sword, you will die by the sword.

00:15:50.060 And again, if you are merciful to people, then you yourself shall obtain mercy.

00:15:54.800 So I think this is this is an important one as well.

00:15:56.920 Yeah, exactly. I mean, and what this is just saying very simply is that the standard by which you dispense justice and judge it to the people is the standard that will be applied to you.

00:16:07.460 And if you are honest with yourself and you realize that you yourself have corruption and you are not perfect in your virtues.

00:16:16.040 If you wish to expect mercy from God for these failings that you have, then you must extend that same mercy to your brothers.

00:16:22.760 And mercy is is not, you know, again, it's not some, you know, limp-wristed feminine acquiescence to force.

00:16:31.600 But mercy is just love in action.

00:16:33.940 That's all that it is.

00:16:35.180 It is. So when we talk of God's mercy, these are analogous concepts with God's grace and with his fire, with his life.

00:16:43.000 These are all the same thing.

00:16:44.240 And so the mercy of God to those that love him is perfect blessedness.

00:16:47.680 And the mercy of God to those who hate him is eternal torture.

00:16:51.760 I like to think Adolf Hitler showed mercy to the, you know, the communists in Germany.

00:16:57.500 There were six, six million communists when he took power and he didn't lock them all up or have them all executed.

00:17:04.580 I mean, he brought them around to National Socialism and they eventually came around to supporting National Socialism.

00:17:10.280 And, you know, he showed by example and they came around.

00:17:14.700 If we were to, you know, because a lot of the time I hear people say, oh, all these all these normies, all these race traitors, they should all be executed.

00:17:23.160 And that's that's the wrong attitude to have.

00:17:25.040 We should want to turn their lives around and be and be merciful towards them.

00:17:30.940 Now, you know, it's it's a benefit to us to be merciful to them.

00:17:35.180 Isn't that absolutely correct?

00:17:36.100 I think that that this is a really critical thing.

00:17:38.800 And unfortunately, I think this attitude is it's not very present in a lot of people because the so many people in our side of our side of things feel very alienated from society around them and don't feel as if they have, you know, any social capital of which to, you know, require these breakers of God's law.

00:17:58.060 And we have to be magnanimous and Christlike and we have to set a higher standard for our people.

00:18:04.800 And there's no there's no such thing as there's abstract nationalism.

00:18:08.360 I mean, it's it's just love for one's own people.

00:18:10.360 And, you know, you don't get to pick your family members.

00:18:14.180 And oftentimes, you know, we all have family members who probably are degenerates or do things that we don't like.

00:18:20.260 But we have to, you know, still do our best to to be compassionate with them, to see what's the best thing for them, even if they don't like it or don't like us.

00:18:30.160 It's an extension of the family, the nation is it is an extension of of the family.

00:18:37.380 So whichever way you you know that you treat your family, that you know, that that's how you should be treating your nation.

00:18:43.320 The next one, verse eight, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

00:18:49.020 I don't think there are many people that could criticize this.

00:18:52.140 I mean, we are all about purity.

00:18:54.560 You know, we get accused of being purity spirallers for adhering to moral values.

00:18:59.600 But that's what this is saying here.

00:19:01.320 It's saying be a purity spiraller.

00:19:03.100 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

00:19:05.980 So, you know, purity is an ideal that we should that we should strive for.

00:19:11.320 Purity in everything.

00:19:12.920 Do you think?

00:19:14.560 I absolutely do.

00:19:15.820 And this is of all of the commandments.

00:19:17.400 I think this is one of the ones that is the most important from an Orthodox perspective.

00:19:21.540 And I'm just going to read to you the notes from the Orthodox study Bible here because they say it very well.

00:19:26.320 Pure means unmixed with anything else.

00:19:28.460 The pure in heart are completely devoted to the worship and service of God and accept no compromises.

00:19:33.740 With the aid of the Holy Spirit, those who achieve purity practice all virtue and have no conscious evil within themselves and live in temperance.

00:19:41.600 This level of spirituality is obtained by very few, but we may all strive for it.

00:19:46.240 When the soul's only desire is God and a person's will holds to this desire, then that person will indeed see God everywhere.

00:19:53.400 And this is, in fact, exactly what the teaching of, you know, Orthodox hezochastic monasticism is.

00:19:58.940 Is that man, because God became man, it is possible for man to, on earth, become deified enough where he does see God in every, everywhere.

00:20:09.960 That he lives totally in the kingdom of heaven, on the earth.

00:20:12.900 He manages to free his heart.

00:20:15.180 His highest conscience of all attachment to sin and so on.

00:20:19.900 And, you know, when you achieve that state, it's like you perceive God directly and everything is energizing grace.

00:20:28.720 Like what happened when Christ was transfigured on Mount Tabor and his divine glory emanated from him.

00:20:34.780 The holiest of monks and ascetics and saints can see these things.

00:20:39.640 And they see it everywhere and always around them.

00:20:42.900 And that is the purpose of our life on earth, is to try and purify our heart.

00:20:45.960 To try and seek after this ideal, even though we all fall oftentimes very short because of our many sins.

00:20:54.380 Because this is the heart that's required for the kingdom of heaven.

00:20:58.140 I like to say, unmixed with any contamination as well.

00:21:01.140 I mean, you should try to keep our ideology unmixed with progressivism and feminism.

00:21:06.780 And, you know, and we should hold to the, hold to ideals of natural law and not allow promotion of homosexuality.

00:21:14.800 Not allow any of this to, to creep in.

00:21:17.920 You know, we should make a stand and we should set a good example and we should be pure of heart.

00:21:22.600 So that, I think, yeah, that is a really good one.

00:21:24.860 That blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.

00:21:27.680 I think the next one is a good one as well.

00:21:29.220 Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.

00:21:33.100 Now, you know, that's not saying, you know, we shouldn't defend our countries.

00:21:37.000 This is between ourselves.

00:21:38.860 We should be peacemakers.

00:21:39.980 We shouldn't be encouraging strife between one another.

00:21:44.340 We shouldn't be exaggerating wrongdoings of people in the movement.

00:21:48.900 I mean, I would suggest it's not good to point to people that, you know, wrongdoers in the movement because it's just causing strife.

00:21:55.660 We should be, you know, trying to peacefully correct them if they are doing, if they are doing wrong, but not drawing attention to it or exaggerating it or trying to make an example of them.

00:22:08.620 We should be, you know, trying to make the peace, trying to keep peace within, you know, within the movement itself.

00:22:14.680 And here I'm applying this, you know, not just to Christianity, but to nationalism.

00:22:19.460 As I say, I think a lot of these can apply to nationalism.

00:22:23.220 So blessed are the peacemakers.

00:22:24.740 Again, that's another good one.

00:22:26.240 We should be trying to make peace between each other, not trying to exaggerate disagreements, I think.

00:22:33.880 Yeah, I agree naturally.

00:22:35.960 And it's important, again, to understand we did a whole episode on this.

00:22:40.040 I mean, in our episode on Christian violence as to what exactly is Christian peace.

00:22:43.880 And, I mean, Christian peace is the harmony of the soul.

00:22:49.200 I mean, that's what that is.

00:22:50.600 And so the Christian peacemaker is one who is able to take that inner harmony, the cooperation within themselves that they are able to achieve in Christ and to try and bring that to the world around them.

00:23:03.560 And so it's not just a cessation of violence or a cessation of conflict.

00:23:06.900 Oftentimes these are the very mechanisms by which peace can be established because of the nature of this corrupt world.

00:23:12.620 But it is an attempt, an earnest desire to bring about harmony and goodly cooperation between the various facets of life.

00:23:24.080 Well, the next one is really relevant to what is going on now, I think.

00:23:28.680 It says, blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

00:23:35.720 And right now we've got Jez Turner, who's just been given a year in prison for righteousness' sake.

00:23:41.920 I mean, the guy was speaking the truth.

00:23:44.300 He was standing up for us.

00:23:45.360 He was speaking out against Jewish control of the courts, Jewish control of the government.

00:23:50.720 Everything that he said was proved true because the Crown Prosecution Service itself bent to the will of the Jews and prosecuted him after saying that there was no case to answer for.

00:24:02.100 And he's been jailed for a year.

00:24:03.880 Again, we've got Joshua Bonehill, jailed for four years, again, for righteousness' sake, for pointing out truths of Jewish power.

00:24:12.860 We've got people that stood up for us in Charlottesville that are being persecuted for speaking up for white people.

00:24:19.320 And they're all being persecuted for righteousness' sake.

00:24:23.340 You know, Jesus said that he was the truth.

00:24:25.780 He's the truth personified.

00:24:27.440 So anyone that is speaking up for the truth, which is now called hate speech, you know, they are going to be blessed for this.

00:24:34.820 They are going to be blessed for speaking up for what is right.

00:24:38.800 And all nationalists are persecuted for righteousness' sake.

00:24:43.120 So we are all blessed.

00:24:44.780 And the more we get, you know, the more we get oppressed and the more punishment we get, actually, the more blessed we are for sticking with nationalism.

00:24:53.100 You know, we'll never be tried more than we can actually withstand.

00:24:58.180 You know, that's something to always remember that no matter how bad things get, there will always be a way out.

00:25:03.540 There will always be something that you are supposed to be doing, something that you are supposed to see and whatever is happening to you that you can learn from and try and turn it around into something positive.

00:25:15.200 You know, the more we are persecuted, the more we are actually blessed.

00:25:19.480 And we should be looking out for the people that are being persecuted and are in jail.

00:25:23.780 And I'll just remind people we have got a list of all the people that are in jail at Radio Arian in the sidebar there.

00:25:31.640 Yeah. What are your thoughts on this?

00:25:33.860 Probably the same as mine, I would have thought, Florian, about being blessed.

00:25:37.420 Yeah, mine is the same as yours.

00:25:39.460 And I think that we can kind of fold that into the next one, which is,

00:25:42.220 Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake.

00:25:48.680 Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven.

00:25:52.220 For they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

00:25:55.020 And so this is the central essence of the Christian message is that the tradition of the prophets, the tradition of Christ, the tradition of the apostles is essentially the world rejecting them because they do not like what they have to say and persecuting them falsely because they told them the truth.

00:26:13.620 And so the – this comes – obviously the fundamental level here is religious and theological, but as Sven has pointed out, I mean any struggle for the truth, any suffering, any persecution for the sake of righteousness is the highest example of virtue that we could offer.

00:26:38.840 And for Christians, I mean if you read the story of the saints, this is what would happen.

00:26:45.600 The martyrs would laugh with delight and mock their enemies as they would torture them because for them, they perceived the violence that was being done against them as, in a roundabout way, their own spiritual violence by which they could defeat the passions and the demons and so on.

00:27:05.160 And so this is kind of the great mystery of the cross is that even in the persecution that our enemies do to us, we are able to be victorious, that we gain merit, that there is a transcendental virtue which blossoms, which outlives all of those tyrannies of the temporal oppression of life, as our very conversation is testament to.

00:27:28.660 Right, so rejoice and be exceedingly glad if, you know, if you're being attacked and, you know, this is something again that Hitler wrote about, you know, if you're not being attacked by the Jews, then you're not doing it right.

00:27:44.920 And if you are being attacked, then you know, you are directly over the target and you should be rejoicing.

00:27:50.040 I mean, these two things tie in together here.

00:27:52.700 If you are standing up for the truth, if you are speaking the truth, you are going to be attacked and vice versa.

00:27:58.200 If you are being attacked, you know that you're hitting the target, you're hitting the spot, you're doing exactly what you should be doing.

00:28:05.160 So, again, you know, Christianity mirrors nationalism and that's because, as I said before, Jesus said that he's the way, the truth and the life.

00:28:14.620 Florian, that's brought us to the end of this podcast.

00:28:17.560 I guess we're going to have to do a part two.

00:28:19.680 As I say, we're going to be continuing with the Sermon on the Mount, which is a speech of Jesus Christ to his disciples.

00:28:28.260 It wasn't to everybody. It's been interpreted by the modern day church that it applies to Muslims, Jews, the enemies of God.

00:28:37.220 But it was actually just spoken to his disciples and it was meant for his disciples and for the for their disciples.

00:28:46.180 And it was also explicitly meant just for the children of your people, which we discussed last time.

00:28:53.440 And we got up to verse 13, which I think is very prescient for nationalists, especially for the white race, basically.

00:29:02.460 And this verse 13, it says, ye are the salt of the earth.

00:29:05.900 But if the salt has lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted?

00:29:10.520 It is henceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under the foot of men.

00:29:17.120 And I take that as as meaning. If you don't have salt, if salt hasn't has got no flavour to it, then where are you going to get salt from?

00:29:25.720 And if white people stop behaving like white people, who else is going to behave like us?

00:29:33.380 Who else is going to build civilisation? Who else is going to have mercy?

00:29:36.840 Who else is going to have a system of law? Who else is going to ensure that justice is done?

00:29:41.180 Nobody. It's white people that do all of this. And we're the only ones that are capable of doing it.

00:29:49.360 You know, we have to pull our socks up and set a good example.

00:29:53.220 That's what this is saying, I believe. We have the ability to set a good example.

00:29:57.880 We have the ability to build and innovate. And that is what we should be doing.

00:30:01.800 We shouldn't be wasting all our resources on other races and other nations that aren't capable of doing these things.

00:30:11.180 If we lose whatever it is that makes us white, then there is nobody else that's going to take over and continue civilisation.

00:30:18.160 So I think this, you know, this doesn't just apply to Christians. This applies to white people.

00:30:24.280 If we're gone, there's nobody else to replace us.

00:30:26.560 The same as if salt goes, there's no other substitute that you can have for salt.

00:30:31.680 And I think that's what the point of this is, Florian, this verse.

00:30:36.380 Right. I think that you're very kind of close on the ball here.

00:30:39.100 I mean, so one of the difficulties about Scripture is that especially it is so obscure and difficult to understand for the mind of a modern because of the nature of the context.

00:30:51.680 There are so many assumptions in the writing of the Gospels and of the speech of Christ and the teachings of the apostles that do not easily translate to postmodern Babylonian Western society.

00:31:05.620 So in the ancient world, salt was an extremely, extremely valuable commodity because you could use salt to preserve meat primarily.

00:31:16.320 And so it enabled you to store fish and game for very long periods of time.

00:31:21.920 And in a world without refrigeration, this was critical.

00:31:24.380 I mean, this has supported entire communities, especially during wintertime or other periods of the year when access to fresh meat was not easily available.

00:31:33.160 And so salt was seen as this not only flavor giving spice, but life giving in that it preserved the kind of the corpse and the nutrition and so on so that it could be feasted upon later for sustenance.

00:31:48.400 And so what Christ is telling us is exactly this, that if we, the kingdom of heaven, which is manifest incarnate on the earth in the church, which is what he is inaugurating here with the speech from the mount, that in the kingdom of heaven, it is the leaven of the earth.

00:32:04.500 It is the salt of the earth, that the grace of God is what supports the firmament of reality, and that if we ourselves lose that grace and we lose our saltiness, so to speak, if we stop being supports for the cosmos, however meager we are able to produce that saltiness, then we become good for nothing.

00:32:24.260 There's an expression, you know, what good is an atheist peasant, right?

00:32:28.740 I mean, and so when he says, well, if you're good in the ancient world, when you would have salt, and it would lose its saltiness or it would lose its efficacy after a long period of time, there were specific means of disposing of it.

00:32:40.660 So you couldn't just, you know, throw it into the gutter or into the bin or whatever, because this would ruin the aquifers and it would destroy, you know, I mean, think about it, you know, if you salt somebody's garden or salt the earth, it destroys all the life that's inside there.

00:32:54.920 And so there were actually laws in some places requiring you, you had to throw your salt onto the road, because then it would be safely ground up by the feet basically into sand.

00:33:06.680 It would just disintegrate into nothing. There was no worry of it destroying the environment around it.

00:33:14.680 And so this is exactly what Christ is saying, is he is saying that we have to preserve our saltiness, our leaven, which is our faith and the good works and the love that comes out of that faith, or we are ultimately useless.

00:33:28.340 We're fit for destruction, to claim to have the title of saltiness, but to have no salt.

00:33:33.400 Yeah, it's like when they say a man is worth his salt. It's value, it's of great value. And we still say things today are salty.

00:33:45.680 Well, salary, the term salary comes from payment of salt to Roman soldiers as an alternative for gold currency.

00:33:51.660 There you go.

00:34:21.660 Glorify your father, which is in heaven.

00:34:24.040 Now, I take this to mean that if you have a gift, if you're capable of doing something, you know, you should be doing that and you should be doing it for your people.

00:34:32.120 Like, you know, we're making these podcasts. We're doing this for our people.

00:34:35.540 We're not just talking to our friends about these things in quiet as if we've got a candle and it's hidden under a bushel, but we're making it public so that people can benefit from what we are saying.

00:34:47.220 And I think that's what this is saying. If you have a gift, then you should be using it.

00:34:51.540 You should be utilizing it and you should be giving thanks for it as well.

00:34:55.320 It's, you know, because it doesn't come from you, which takes us back to the to the first verse, really, which is saying if you've got gifts, you must be humble.

00:35:03.540 You must accept that these gifts come from God.

00:35:05.360 They don't come from you and they are there for glorying God.

00:35:09.740 In other words, if God and Christ is the truth, it's for glorifying the truth.

00:35:14.600 It's for speaking the truth. We should be speaking the truth regardless of the persecution.

00:35:21.640 Again, there's another theme all the way through this is that if you do speak, speak up, you do speak the truth, you do do the right thing, then you will be persecuted for that.

00:35:30.140 But at the same time, you will affect so many other people because they will see your light shining and it will affect them and it will help them in their own lives.

00:35:40.820 And that's how I interpret these these three, Florian.

00:35:43.580 What I was saying before, I think, continues on into this verse.

00:35:46.420 The whole idea is that the grace of God is like his light.

00:35:50.120 It's this life giving and life enabling function and operation.

00:35:57.900 And so the kingdom of heaven on earth, the church, is just the manifestation of God's light, of God's truth on the earth, of Christ.

00:36:07.380 That's who it is.

00:36:08.700 And so he's telling us indeed all of these things that you have said that we ourselves created in the image and likeness of God have this light within us or the capacity to bear this light within us.

00:36:20.420 And when that is within us, especially the light of faith, but any other life giving quality that we have, we should strive to develop it and to cultivate it and to share it with our neighbors, with our brothers and sisters for the common benefit of our folk, of our people.

00:36:35.460 And to a greater extent, he's speaking also of the church, that the church itself is a great light to the world and that it can never be hidden and that the church is destined for a – it has a public destiny, I guess you could say, a social destiny.

00:36:49.360 And that even under the oppression of darkness and so forth, it's not capable of being extinguished.

00:36:58.220 I think modern times are proof plus as any that deformation and degeneration and misappropriation of the church or elements of her, images of her and so forth do not affect her essence and her very nature.

00:37:13.740 I think there's also that verse where it says, the church will last and not even the gates of hell will be able to prevail against it, something like that.

00:37:24.760 That's right, yeah.

00:37:25.620 The church will always be there is what it's effectively saying.

00:37:28.860 Well, the next verse, again, this is a really important one that I think the antichrists seem to miss out.

00:37:36.080 It says, think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets, I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.

00:37:44.480 For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled.

00:37:54.120 So what are you saying there is, no, the New Testament does not supersede the Old Testament.

00:37:59.680 It's the fulfillment of the Old Testament.

00:38:01.740 The laws that are in that Old Testament are exactly the same as the day that they were made.

00:38:07.280 They last right until the end, until heaven and earth pass.

00:38:10.980 Those laws are eternal.

00:38:13.740 The no adulteration, no sodomy, no usury, all those laws from the Old Testament, they still apply today.

00:38:22.560 And the prophets of the Old Testament, the ones that many people today will ignore and try and say, well, the New Testament is different.

00:38:32.120 The New Testament is all about love and the Old Testament is all about hate.

00:38:35.520 That's nonsense.

00:38:37.060 And what the prophets were prophesying was Christ coming.

00:38:41.300 That's the point of the New Testament.

00:38:42.840 It's telling us the fulfillment of these prophecies.

00:38:45.900 And there are still prophecies that we're still waiting for them to come true today.

00:38:51.520 I mean, it predicted everything.

00:38:53.320 That was the test of whether a prophet was speaking the truth or whether he was a genuine prophet from God was the fact that he was speaking the truth.

00:39:01.280 And what they said was going to occur did occur.

00:39:04.440 I mean, they even knew right down to the year that Jesus was coming in this particular time.

00:39:10.340 They knew when the temple was going to be destroyed.

00:39:12.800 It was all in the book of Daniel and these revelations.

00:39:17.420 Even Alexander the Great coming along.

00:39:20.440 That was all predicted.

00:39:22.360 And Vespasian and Titus, they all fitted into it.

00:39:25.940 And these are prophecies that were written hundreds of years before these events came to pass.

00:39:31.440 So what he's saying here is, no, this isn't something new.

00:39:35.640 This is the old.

00:39:38.640 It's eternal.

00:39:39.760 It's timeless.

00:39:40.780 There isn't an old and new.

00:39:41.960 I am here to fulfill what you have already heard about.

00:39:47.340 And there's going to be even more coming until heaven and earth pass away.

00:39:50.740 None of it should be changed.

00:39:52.400 The law is exactly the same now as it was back then.

00:39:56.400 Whatever God says is eternal.

00:39:58.420 Otherwise, you make God out to be a liar.

00:40:00.120 If he makes these laws up in the Old Testament and you think that they no longer apply,

00:40:05.880 it's because we have ignored them that our societies are in this situation that they are in.

00:40:12.760 It's because we've gone back on these laws which we had for millennia.

00:40:17.600 These moral laws that nobody dared question.

00:40:21.300 And now we have questioned them and we've changed them and we've brought all hell is broken loose in our countries because of it.

00:40:30.920 I mean, it's quite an important verse, this, isn't it?

00:40:33.040 A very important verse.

00:40:35.300 I mean, it's critical.

00:40:36.220 The whole – here's the thing is there's so much about the Sermon on the Mount in the Old Testament that would have been obvious to the disciples of Christ but to us is veiled in mystery.

00:40:45.720 Like to begin with the very – it would be obvious to anybody who's familiar with the Old Testament that Christ right now is sitting in the figure of Moses, that he's sitting on top of the mountain or the hill and he's speaking as a lawgiver to his people, the people of Israel and the church, the kingdom of heaven on earth, which he has just inaugurated, which he has just announced.

00:41:07.800 And so Christ himself, if you believe what he says, he is the lawgiver who spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai.

00:41:14.420 And so that is who is speaking in the benedictions and in the Beatitudes and so on.

00:41:20.700 It is the lawgiver on Sinai who Moses saw face to face.

00:41:25.300 And now the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant is precisely that, is that in the Old Covenant, Moses saw the back parts of God and even still he was illuminated for weeks afterwards.

00:41:38.720 Whereas now in the New Covenant, we get to see God face to face and our encounter with his light is direct and unmediated except by him as a man being the high priest between heaven and earth.

00:41:50.660 And so what this is saying is exactly correct, that the moral law that we're given in the Old Testament is a reflection of the one true God, and that the purpose of Christ is to come and to fulfill the meaning of that law, which is where people become confused and get themselves tangled up because the law is designed to bring us closer to God.

00:42:17.360 That's the only reason why we have the law.

00:42:19.180 The law is the expression of the love of God, the grace of God on the earth, and it's a guideline for how we ought to conform ourselves to the life that God provides for us.

00:42:31.000 The law is just a manifestation, a written form of the regularity of conduct that is ordained by the Creator.

00:42:40.220 That's all that it is.

00:42:41.160 It's not the penal codes and the sanctions and all of that.

00:42:45.180 That's separate.

00:42:46.320 It comes after it.

00:42:47.140 And so really the law himself is Christ because he is the logos.

00:42:50.500 He is the word, the speaker, the law giver.

00:42:53.380 And so that is who our law is.

00:42:55.920 It's Christ.

00:42:56.440 And he was the one who gave it to Moses in the Old Testament, and he has come now.

00:42:59.860 And in the sermon, he has fulfilled it.

00:43:01.780 This is the whole point.

00:43:04.240 And so these are critical, absolutely critical to understand.

00:43:08.440 And I mean, again, for the disciples, this was easy for them because they had all of that context where we are so alienated from all of that.

00:43:17.040 He makes references as well.

00:43:19.520 He makes references later on.

00:43:21.080 You may have heard this or you may have heard that.

00:43:23.720 And he's referring to specific verses.

00:43:26.260 I mean, all he's doing here is refining what has been said before.

00:43:29.860 You know, he's not contradicting it.

00:43:32.320 If people think that there's anything in the New Testament that contradicts whatever is in the Old, then they're the ones at fault.

00:43:39.540 I mean, this is what he says here.

00:43:40.660 He hasn't come to destroy the law.

00:43:42.300 He's come to fulfill it.

00:43:43.360 And then he says, whoever, therefore, shall break one of these least commandments and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven.

00:43:52.440 But whoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

00:43:58.580 I would say that, you know, this isn't saying that there's going to be a severe punishment of people, but he's saying that they're going to be the least in the kingdom of heaven.

00:44:06.280 If they break, if they break these commandments, but whoever teaches them, they shall be called great.

00:44:12.040 And that that's what we should be doing is setting a good example and keeping to these laws.

00:44:17.180 I mean, it's quite clear that there is no, there's no new commandments or change, changing, changing of what was there before.

00:44:24.620 There's just a refinement of that.

00:44:27.160 And that's what he's saying here.

00:44:28.520 So the people who think that we should be turning the other cheek to the enemies of God or opening up the gates to everyone or giving everything that we've got to Muslims or Jews.

00:44:40.600 No, because that's all, you know, that's all dealt with in the Old Testament.

00:44:44.700 All these all the ways that our society should be governed is dealt with in the Old Testament.

00:44:49.200 And it's assumed that the people that he's speaking to understand this because it was his disciples that he was speaking to.

00:44:56.380 So they knew they knew what he was referring to.

00:45:00.800 And in people today, if they don't know their Bibles and they just read the New Testament, then they're going to think he's he's saying something different to to what he is.

00:45:10.040 And I think that's where the source of a lot of our problems are really, Florian, is people that don't read the Old Testament.

00:45:17.540 Yeah, I mean, that is absolutely that is absolutely correct.

00:45:20.560 And there's no way that you can there's no way that you can understand it without having a foundation in the Old Testament.

00:45:25.880 And this is one of the things that makes the heresy of Marcion so stupid and despicable and gay is the idea that, like, there's some different God in the Old Testament.

00:45:36.160 It is only an idea that can be entertained out of bold face ignorance or deliberate deceit and corruption.

00:45:44.620 Because this is the first thing that when you sit down in an academic setting and you begin to study the synoptic Gospels or even the Gospel of John is you just you realize how how married they are, how intimately set in context they are within the Old Testament.

00:46:00.800 There's no distinction or deviation that they form one part of an organic whole with it.

00:46:07.780 And so this is just doubly important to reinforce every time we get the opportunity.

00:46:13.960 And so, yeah, I mean, but Christ kind of goes on to get at what I was talking about here.

00:46:17.260 And so he says that the law will not pass away, but that if your righteousness does not exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, then you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.

00:46:25.160 And so this oftentimes confuses a lot of people, but it's very simple.

00:46:29.960 It's because for the scribes and the Pharisees, they began to worship themselves.

00:46:34.040 The object of the law was not relationship and obedience and worship to their to God, but it was the satisfaction of pridefulness of their penal codes.

00:46:45.080 They began to worship themselves.

00:46:46.840 And this is this is even like the the Pharisees themselves, the rabbis will admit this in their own Talmudic writings later on, that the reason why the temple was destroyed was because the priesthood within it had begun to commit the abomination of desolation because they were worshiping themselves and their own intrigue and power over the Lord God.

00:47:11.600 And so, yeah, ironic that they couldn't learn from such a lesson.

00:47:15.080 But here we are.

00:47:16.940 And so the for us, you know, our righteousness consists of trying to obey that law in Christ specifically is that Christ is the mediator for us between ourselves and our sinfulness in the law, which is the process of correction of that sinfulness and that behavior and righteousness, the kingdom of heaven, blessedness, eternal life.

00:47:40.640 And that the glory of Christ is that because Christ is able to take our human nature and to purify it and to divinize it.

00:47:49.540 And he is he himself is able to follow the law with perfection and offer himself to God, the father that in Christ, we ourselves can overcome the unrighteousness, which is inherent to our corrupt human character.

00:48:01.640 And that his sacrifice on the cross and his divinizing suffering makes up for all of our own deficits.

00:48:10.540 I think it's also saying that, you know, where it says your righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees, your righteousness must exceed that of the Jews.

00:48:22.700 You know, we mustn't resort to behaving in the same way that the Jews do.

00:48:27.180 That's not the way to defeat them by becoming just like them.

00:48:31.220 You know, we have to defeat them without becoming like them.

00:48:33.900 That's the reason why they are there is to tempt us into into failure and becoming like them.

00:48:41.200 So, you know, our righteousness has to exceed that.

00:48:44.360 And we are capable of doing that as white people.

00:48:47.040 We don't have to behave like Jews.

00:48:48.880 We don't have to be taken in by all their temptations, the temptations to to greed and material goods.

00:48:55.460 We can rise above that.

00:48:56.620 We have you know, we have we have a spiritual capacity to the white man that just isn't there with the Jew, whether that's due to God rejecting them, as I believe, or as Dr. E. Michael Jones says, because they rejected Christ.

00:49:10.100 You know, it doesn't matter the reason for it, but they don't have the ability to to be think in a spiritual way and overcome these these temptations.

00:49:19.820 And we do have that ability and we need to not lower ourselves to being like them.

00:49:27.300 The end does not justify the means.

00:49:30.920 You know, the means should be an end in themselves.

00:49:34.340 You know, part of the reason for doing this these podcasts is is that the ends are a means in themselves.

00:49:41.860 Just just by making these podcasts, we are improving ourselves.

00:49:45.800 We are learning about ourselves.

00:49:48.700 We're learning about Christianity.

00:49:50.060 We're learning about nationalism and how to be good people just by making them at the same time as we're making them.

00:49:55.960 Other people are learning along with us.

00:49:58.140 You know, I'm learning from you as we make these podcasts, Florian.

00:50:02.000 So the end should be a means in itself.

00:50:04.680 It shouldn't be, well, we'll make podcasts and we'll lie to people because that way we'll get more people to listen.

00:50:10.060 We'll flatter people and we'll lie to them and we'll say, oh, it's OK to race mix because then we'll have more people.

00:50:15.480 Or we'll say, oh, it's OK to sleep around because then more people will join nationalism.

00:50:20.560 No, we can't do that.

00:50:22.060 That's not the way to succeed.

00:50:23.400 We succeed if we end up defeating the internal Jew.

00:50:29.540 If we end up overcoming the temptation within us, then, you know, we have won.

00:50:34.480 Jez Turner, he's in prison at the moment, but he won.

00:50:37.100 He won because he was proved correct.

00:50:39.900 He proved that the Jews had this inordinate amount of power and on their say so, he was put in prison because just by the very fact that he was in court, it proved that what he said was true.

00:50:50.700 And yet he's in prison, but he's got a smile on his face because he defeated the internal Jew and he proved that, you know, that they were the ones that were in the wrong.

00:51:00.840 So it doesn't matter even if he is in prison, he is still victorious because he was proved right and he'll have his reward in heaven.

00:51:08.200 There are a couple of things I want to remind people in the in the last episode.

00:51:13.680 We one of the verses was that Jesus came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.

00:51:19.460 So whatever is said in this sermon, it cannot contradict anything that was given as law in the Old Testament.

00:51:25.560 And the second point is that this sermon was given to his disciples and it was how they were supposed to treat the other disciples and their students.

00:51:34.900 And just one more thing before we get right into it.

00:51:38.640 And that is I've got a couple of quotes from Joseph Goebbels here that mentioned the Sermon on the Mount.

00:51:43.480 And these are from his play, which is called Michael.

00:51:47.100 And he says,

00:51:47.560 Now that's Joseph Goebbels in

00:52:16.900 In 1929.

00:52:19.100 So we are continuing in Joseph Goebbels tradition today by discussing the Sermon on the Mount.

00:52:25.980 And the next bit that we've actually got to is verse 21.

00:52:31.040 It says,

00:52:31.980 Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time,

00:52:35.360 Thou shalt not kill, and whoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment.

00:52:41.820 But I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment.

00:52:46.900 And whosoever shall say to his brother Racka shall be in danger of the council.

00:52:51.780 But whoever shall say thou fool shall be in danger of hellfire.

00:52:56.560 So there's quite a lot there.

00:52:57.520 But first off, I'd just like to say when he says thou shalt not kill, he is not saying you cannot kill anyone because that would contradict the law that was given to Noah.

00:53:08.740 And that's from Genesis chapter 9.

00:53:11.300 And it says in verse 5,

00:53:13.020 And what that's saying is that we have to have capital punishment.

00:53:34.400 If anybody murders anyone else, there's any unjust killings, then they have to pay for it with their life.

00:53:40.440 Otherwise, the cosmic scales of justice are unbalanced, and it will bring pestilence upon the land, which is what it has done by us being humanistic about things and not wanting to execute child molesters and murderers.

00:53:56.680 And we should be doing that.

00:53:58.080 And this sermon is not contradicting that in any way.

00:54:02.880 What it is saying is that we need to have patience and be merciful with our brethren.

00:54:11.440 And that's the way that I understand this.

00:54:13.380 I know there's a confusing bit there where it says Racka.

00:54:15.740 Perhaps you could explain some more of that, Florian.

00:54:19.000 Right.

00:54:21.180 So I think this particular part of the Sermon on the Mount can be very difficult to understand for those who have not studied sacred scripture or are familiar with the context of the ancient Mediterranean world.

00:54:35.780 But there's a couple of different concepts that we have to unpack here to kind of go ahead and explain what Jesus is getting at.

00:54:41.620 So the center of a lot of the messages and point of the sermon that he's delivering is that in the kingdom of heaven, the standard of behavior and the mechanism of action, of participation in that kingdom is internal.

00:54:58.360 It has to do with the heart.

00:54:59.320 In the ancient world, it was so familiarly oriented and so communitarian that individual people doing things on their own wasn't really a concept that existed.

00:55:15.360 In a sense, you couldn't bring somebody to court unless there had been a witness to a certain event.

00:55:20.040 And so for someone to go off and do something on their own outside of the company of other people, outside of a context in which that social event can be situated, this is the definition of the word idiotic.

00:55:32.700 This is where it comes from in Greek, referring to like a literally the one person who goes off and is kind of up in his own world, not giving a care to anyone else.

00:55:42.900 And so this is one of the reasons why Christ was so controversial because he is, in his classical sense, idiotic.

00:55:48.400 Like he doesn't, he stands outside of the social realm, but also inside of it.

00:55:55.600 And we see this, of course, with monastics later on who took to his image and John the Baptist and the prophets certainly set the tone for that.

00:56:02.060 It's one of the reasons why they were such, you know, these fearsome and strange men in the Old Testament is because that nobody would kind of go off on their own and engage in this preaching and asceticism and so on.

00:56:12.200 And so what's going on here, basically, is Christ is saying you're not going to be only judged on the external, the cosmetic, on what men can see you perform and what you say with your lips, but what you do in your heart.

00:56:26.780 And so for the first sentence, he's basically saying that your – how you behave in your heart with your brothers is tantamount to the reality of your actions.

00:56:38.920 That spiritual purity requires that we refrain from hatred and anger and these evil corrosive thoughts towards our brothers and sisters.

00:56:48.500 And especially, I mean, it's always understood without cause.

00:56:54.180 I mean, if somebody does something that is wicked and evil, I mean, it's right to be angry at the sin and so on.

00:57:00.140 But it's talking specifically about our own interpersonal and familial relations.

00:57:06.780 And so, yeah, I mean, but it's quite a terrifying verse because Christ is saying that how we in our hearts treat our brother is how we will be judged on the final day in terms of our conduct.

00:57:17.380 And so terms – like the raka is like an old Hebrew or like Aramaic vulgarity, but it's not – it doesn't really mean anything.

00:57:28.060 It's just like an idle word, basically.

00:57:31.200 And so Christ is basically going through the different levels of wrathfulness that one has with a brother and so forth.

00:57:39.780 So this is what the center of the teaching here, and we saw this before when we were discussing the benedictions and so on.

00:57:49.320 People are blessed for their internal purity and conformity with the kingdom of heaven, and now we're seeing this as well.

00:57:55.320 So he's explaining –

00:57:56.460 In terms of the external, right?

00:57:58.200 Yeah, he's explaining how we need to treat other people.

00:58:01.740 And I would say this is how we need to treat other nationalists.

00:58:03.820 We need to be patient with them, not, you know, not seek their harm, especially, you know, it comes to mind now where we've got nationalists in prison or civic nationalists in prison.

00:58:16.000 It's a very bad taste to be attacking them when, you know, they are actually in jail for speaking up for us and for alerting people to Islamic crimes.

00:58:27.060 You know, I don't want to knock them.

00:58:28.740 I don't agree with a lot of their ideology, but I'm certainly not going to stand in judgment over them and seek their harm and knock them while they're in a bad way.

00:58:40.900 That's not the way to be.

00:58:41.880 And the next verse, I mean, it tells us, pretty much tells us this.

00:58:46.140 Verse 23, it says,

00:58:47.220 Therefore, if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath out against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way.

00:58:57.060 First be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.

00:59:01.260 So it's saying that it's more important that we put any animosity that we have with each other, that we put that to rest first, before we go and appear pious.

00:59:14.140 And, you know, you could apply this to nationalism.

00:59:18.000 You could say it's more important that you become reconciled to your brother than you stand up and say, well, you know, I'm more of a national socialist than he is.

00:59:26.260 So I'm not interested in helping him, because he's not a national socialist.

00:59:29.520 He speaks against the Nazis.

00:59:31.420 But yeah, but he may speak against the national socialists.

00:59:34.860 He may speak against anti-Semites.

00:59:36.500 But he is speaking about Muslim crimes, you know, that sort of thing.

00:59:42.040 This is how I see this sermon as applying to nationalism.

00:59:45.780 It's quite clear that Joseph Goebbels also saw this sermon as applying to nationalism.

00:59:49.820 It was something that he meditated on.

00:59:51.700 It was something that he thought about at night.

00:59:54.160 And this is why it's such an important sermon.

00:59:56.640 You know, I really do think it is applicable to nationalism, Florian.

01:00:01.060 Have you got any other thoughts on that?

01:00:02.560 I guess you're probably thinking the same way as me on those two.

01:00:06.500 Well, I mean, historically speaking, this has always been meant to be applied in a concrete geographic national context.

01:00:17.080 There's no conception in the ancient world of some sort of abstract humanitarian cosmopolitanism.

01:00:23.420 I mean, like in most of the history of the world, the context of this teaching is in your family and in your village and your parish community,

01:00:32.620 which is, you'd have no linguistic the vast majority of the time.

01:00:37.640 So, I mean, that's the thing is that so many of these presuppositions, they're just taken for granted.

01:00:42.380 I mean, Jesus assumes that he's speaking to, you know, all Israelites.

01:00:45.980 I mean, he was.

01:00:47.000 I mean, this is the context of the sermon.

01:00:48.420 And so, you know, what has happened now is, you know, people's common conception of the Sermon on the Mount has become so indelibly linked to these ideas of, like, global, liberal, you know, telescopic philanthropy and this kind of business.

01:01:06.900 Well, that's really not what it's about at all.

01:01:11.180 I mean, the essence here is what Jesus is saying is that our communion with God and our relationship with God is integral to our relationship with our brothers and our sisters.

01:01:23.060 And that we cannot be in right relationship with God if we are dealing in a dishonorable way in our hearts and our actions with our family members and with these people that we have obligations to in our lives.

01:01:34.920 That's the language it's using, isn't it?

01:01:37.380 It's using the language brother.

01:01:40.100 So that doesn't mean people of other races.

01:01:42.980 It means brothers.

01:01:43.560 It means your racial brothers.

01:01:45.780 They're the ones that you need to put to rest, you know, any feuds that you have for you.

01:01:51.120 Put those feuds to rest.

01:01:52.620 That's more important.

01:01:53.800 And again, in verse 25, the next one, it says,

01:01:56.760 Agree with thine adversary quickly, whilst thou art in the way with him, lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge,

01:02:04.140 and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.

01:02:08.600 Verily I say unto thee, thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.

01:02:16.220 And again, we have to remember this is him talking to his disciples.

01:02:20.660 And when it says thine adversary, it means the adversary amongst the disciples.

01:02:25.660 He doesn't want them arguing among themselves, taking each other to court.

01:02:29.320 And he knows that if you do go to court, it's going to suck all the money out of you,

01:02:33.680 and it's going to cause the movement to fall apart.

01:02:37.480 It is much better to come to an agreement without bringing in the outside sources,

01:02:43.240 without bringing in the courts.

01:02:45.160 I mean, it's the same with divorces.

01:02:47.240 It just sucks all the wealth out from you, paying for the solicitors, paying for the fees.

01:02:55.020 So at all costs, try to avoid going to court and just put things right with your brothers, with other nationalists.

01:03:03.920 There's been lots of times when nationalist organisations have fallen apart through people taking one another to court.

01:03:10.840 So again, this applies to that.

01:03:14.220 That's the way that I would understand it anyway, Florian.

01:03:18.600 Yeah, well, that's true.

01:03:20.380 There's also a liturgical element to this, where it specifically speaks of bringing your gift to the altar,

01:03:26.020 communing with God in the temple.

01:03:27.920 And the idea is that in the kingdom of heaven and in the community of believers,

01:03:32.580 again, that your communion with God has to come from a foundation of communion with your brothers and sisters.

01:03:38.620 And the idea of an adversary is like your interpersonal enemy is what they're referring to,

01:03:45.200 your rival, some dude that you don't like.

01:03:48.040 And so what it's saying is that even among the community of believers, among the church,

01:03:55.240 that even if we have personal rivals or enemies within our family,

01:03:59.680 that we have a duty to act towards them in a Christian manner anyway, and charitably anyway,

01:04:06.560 despite the fact that we might not like them or whatever other issues might be at hand.

01:04:13.260 And that communion with God is predicated upon being peaceful with our brothers,

01:04:18.020 even when that's difficult and when we have investments against such a reality.

01:04:24.400 You know, if I have bad feeling with somebody, I find it hard to concentrate,

01:04:27.100 because the thoughts of that bad feeling intrude on whatever else I'm trying to think about.

01:04:34.180 You know, I need to have peace in my mind and be at peace with people so that I can concentrate and do what I need to do.

01:04:40.380 You know, I cannot understand how people can get on with their lives that have feuds all the time with other people.

01:04:46.420 I guess they must have forgotten what it's like to not actually be feuding with anyone.

01:04:51.400 You know, that's the way we are supposed to be.

01:04:53.400 We're not supposed to be feeling angry with our brothers.

01:04:57.180 We're supposed to be feeling angry at the people that are attacking our brothers.

01:05:01.660 And we're supposed to be united in what we're doing against it.

01:05:05.280 Well, the next verse moves into another section after discussing that one.

01:05:10.820 And this is more about how we should treat our women, how we should be with women.

01:05:14.760 Verse 27, Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery.

01:05:20.940 And when he's saying, Ye have heard, he's referring to specific verses in the Old Testament,

01:05:25.740 which is the context for what he is saying here, because he's just explaining the verses from the Old Testament.

01:05:32.160 He's not changing them. He's just giving more of a talk on them.

01:05:37.020 And he says in 28, But I say unto you that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her,

01:05:43.520 hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

01:05:47.700 So today, I mean, just looking at pornography, you're committing adultery.

01:05:53.080 He's saying it is just as bad to be thinking about these things as doing them.

01:05:57.500 The same as it was saying earlier about, you know, you're thinking badly of your brother.

01:06:03.740 It's just as bad as physically attacking him.

01:06:06.240 And it's the same here.

01:06:07.920 It's saying that lusting after other women is committing adultery of the heart.

01:06:13.540 It's an internal thing, not the physical thing, not trying to get around the law.

01:06:19.100 Oh, it's OK.

01:06:20.000 I'm getting around the law to, you know, to have sex with lots of different women.

01:06:23.840 But just even just looking at other women, if you're with one woman, then you are committing adultery with her.

01:06:30.620 I guess there's probably a context to this as well at the time that you probably know about.

01:06:39.040 Right. Well, sure.

01:06:39.920 I mean, this goes back to the thing that we were discussing with anger, is that what Christ is saying is that the way our hearts are disposed towards our brothers and sisters and those around us is how we shall be judged before God.

01:06:55.020 And that, especially in the Pharisee and religious culture of the time, appearances have become everything.

01:07:06.120 And so as long as you had the appearance of devoutness, it didn't matter if you were, you know, undressing every woman with your eyes, you know, and so on, like lusting after them in your heart, as long as your outward behavior was respectable.

01:07:21.240 And what Christ is saying is that we should be integrated, that our external behavior should be reflective of our internal reality.

01:07:29.820 And so that, you know, in the kingdom of heaven, there is no distinction between the actions of our heart and the actions of our body, the actions of our eyes.

01:07:38.660 And so he's showing us by what mechanism, by what means the kingdom of heaven will operate.

01:07:43.920 And that's the purpose of our life here on earth is to prepare us, to discipline us so that we can become suited to be citizens of the kingdom of heaven.

01:07:53.400 And that's what the asceticism is all about, the training in that, in these sort of civil ways and so forth.

01:08:01.020 That's exactly what the next verse says as well, in verse 29, talking about the eyes.

01:08:07.020 And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee.

01:08:10.400 For it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

01:08:16.980 So I guess that's saying, if you do take a fancy to someone, then you should avoid that person.

01:08:23.760 Avoid the temptation.

01:08:25.280 It's not saying cut your eye out.

01:08:27.840 That's what I take this to mean anyway, that it's an allegory.

01:08:31.540 Is that what you think, Florian?

01:08:33.640 Yeah, absolutely.

01:08:34.720 That is how it's discussed.

01:08:37.080 And I mean, the eyes and the hands and so forth, I mean, it's symbolic of any temptation.

01:08:43.940 The idea is that if you have a sort of passion that has a grip on your soul, that is able to lead you into sin, or a friend, or something like this, it's better to separate yourself from that totally, than to be drawn into degeneration and iniquity by its leading.

01:09:03.380 That's what it says in verse 30.

01:09:04.600 And I would suggest that this isn't just for men either, that need to be avoiding temptation.

01:09:19.940 Because women are deliberately putting temptation in men's way in order to manipulate them in this day and age with the clothing that they wear.

01:09:30.880 And men just get distracted.

01:09:32.940 And that's a lot of the reasons why people don't get together and fight back against what's going on.

01:09:38.420 It's because men are in a daze all the time.

01:09:40.880 We're distracted from what's going on by all the flesh that we see around us.

01:09:45.180 You know, we cannot help but be attracted to it in ways that women don't have because they don't have testosterone.

01:09:53.460 You know, there's a fundamental difference between men and women and the sexual attraction, which is there to protect women.

01:10:00.480 It's to mean that we don't take advantage of, and we protect them.

01:10:07.060 But it's worked the other way.

01:10:08.640 They use it to manipulate us now instead of using it to protect them.

01:10:13.340 I don't know if you want to say anything about that before we move on to the next one, Florian.

01:10:18.700 No, not really.

01:10:19.580 I mean, but this is critical.

01:10:21.700 And it should be obvious to most of our listeners.

01:10:23.540 I mean, and this is what Jesus is talking about.

01:10:25.880 And then, yeah, I mean, it's both of us.

01:10:27.300 We all have, there's a total familiar responsibility to be merciful towards one another, to act and write a court.

01:10:34.180 I mean, and so for women, modesty is a big part of that.

01:10:37.940 And this next one is definitely more to do with the time.

01:10:41.020 It hath been said, whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement, which was just the way that divorce,

01:10:48.560 they just had to give them a piece of paper saying they were divorced.

01:10:51.020 But verse 32 says, but I say unto you that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery.

01:11:00.940 And whosoever shall marry her that is divorced, committeth adultery.

01:11:05.980 So what he's saying there is if you split up with somebody and it wasn't for the cause of fornication, then you are effectively still with that woman.

01:11:16.040 And if you go off with somebody else, you are committing adultery.

01:11:19.780 I mean, you are supposed to stick with one woman for life.

01:11:22.980 And it's obvious the reasons why that is the the ideal way to be, because that's the best situation for children to be brought up in.

01:11:31.400 And that's that's what marriage is supposed to be about.

01:11:33.340 It's supposed to be about producing children.

01:11:36.040 So, again, this is something that most modern day Christians just just ignore.

01:11:40.740 But it used to be, you know, taken really seriously.

01:11:44.400 I mean, this is why, you know, the the king couldn't marry an American divorcee.

01:11:51.160 And yet now we've got Prince Harry marrying a negress divorcee.

01:11:55.220 But this this is the verse that prevented all of that and prevented women from just divorcing their men and suing them for lots of money.

01:12:04.260 It was because there was this verse in the Bible that prevented it.

01:12:08.080 I mean, most Christians just ignore it now, don't they, Florian?

01:12:11.560 Truly.

01:12:13.260 Yeah, absolutely.

01:12:14.580 But yeah.

01:12:15.980 And this is obviously in our own day with 50, 60 percent divorce rate.

01:12:20.460 I mean, it's a huge issue.

01:12:22.200 And it's precisely this sort of situation where there's these no fault divorces, which is a it's designed to try and avoid.

01:12:29.100 I mean, the whole context is like this.

01:12:31.020 I mean, on the one hand, what it's saying is that there there is a shift in the communal responsibility.

01:12:40.300 That a husband and a father is bound to and is responsible to his spouse and to his offspring.

01:12:47.580 And it has a sacral duty as an image of God to be consistent with them.

01:12:53.200 And so, you know, just because, you know, he goes tired of his wife or whatever, he can't.

01:12:58.180 Like, it's not legitimate for him to acquire a writ of divorce and to put her away.

01:13:02.160 I mean, as it used to be in the old covenant.

01:13:06.460 And I mean, there's a few examples where Christ is actually does take a standard from the old covenant and refines it.

01:13:15.500 And so one of those is with marriage.

01:13:18.580 And so while like polygyny is not strictly speaking unethical, we see very, very strong endorsement of monogamy in the New Testament.

01:13:26.360 And an understanding that the monogamous relationship between a man and a wife is a reflection of God, of the Holy Trinity.

01:13:32.600 And that's why, you know, Christ's first miracle happened at the wedding of Canaan.

01:13:38.080 It's no coincidence.

01:13:39.800 And that's why marriage is a holy mystery of the church, is a sacrament.

01:13:44.200 Because in the Christian sense that it is a means by which the man and wife can become more like God and save their souls.

01:13:50.980 And by the production of new Christian children, the church naturally grows and flourishes.

01:13:54.980 And so, I mean, but yeah, and we have the church since all days did, in fact, permit divorce.

01:14:02.680 You can go and read like, you know, the canons of St. Basil and so on, where they talk about, you know, standards like if your wife is cheating on you or vice versa, then it is legitimate.

01:14:14.940 You know, and you could get married only up to three times and so on and no more.

01:14:18.980 So this is kind of the ancient teaching.

01:14:21.880 Once you are joined together, you are one body.

01:14:27.480 So once you've been joined together, that's either your wife or it's your concubine.

01:14:32.480 And the only way that that can be broken is through fornication, is through them cheating.

01:14:40.080 And then they have to be divorced if they do that.

01:14:43.880 The next ones, I guess we should really do them all together.

01:14:48.520 And they're about telling the truth, really.

01:14:51.880 And in verse 33, it says,

01:14:53.860 Again,

01:15:23.860 So he's saying we should be straightforward and we should speak the truth.

01:15:33.460 And I guess a reason for this is because so many times people swear, they swear by their mother or they swear by God or they swear by whatever.

01:15:42.880 And for reasons sometimes not of their own fault, they end up breaking these oaths.

01:15:47.460 And they've sworn an oath against God or against their mother or whatever, and they've sworn an oath and they've broken it.

01:15:57.240 So that is a great sin.

01:15:58.240 So it is best to avoid swearing on anything at all in case it gets broken.

01:16:05.120 And the words that you speak are so important in the Old Testament, they cannot go back on what they have said.

01:16:10.200 But when Abraham gives his blessing, he cannot go back on it.

01:16:14.000 You see, there's quite a lot happening in the Old Testament, actually.

01:16:17.080 People say things and something happens to show that actually they shouldn't have said it.

01:16:23.120 But there's no way they can go back on it, because once it's said, it's been said.

01:16:27.540 And that was the same with the king's laws.

01:16:29.700 Once a king made a law, he couldn't go back on it.

01:16:32.740 If you look in the Book of Esther when the king of Persia makes his law, he cannot go back on it because he's made that law.

01:16:38.060 And it's the same with all the monarchies in Europe as well.

01:16:41.860 They cannot go back on their laws.

01:16:43.380 The bill of expelling the Jews from Britain, that's still in place.

01:16:48.600 They should not be in Britain.

01:16:50.540 But they just seem to ignore that.

01:16:52.580 But other ones, they cannot ignore.

01:16:54.920 It's very important what we say.

01:16:56.780 You cannot just say anything.

01:16:58.820 You know, it's a sin to be lying.

01:17:02.580 We need to be speaking the truth.

01:17:04.320 That's the way that I take this one, Florian.

01:17:08.060 Yeah, that's about correct.

01:17:10.580 There was, as you say, an extremely casual oaths for our culture around the time of Christ's living.

01:17:16.880 And people would make an oath on this or that, for this or that thing, for the conduction of business, for when they're going to show up to eat, all sorts of very petty stuff.

01:17:26.680 And that's exactly what it's about, is that we should just be straightforward and trustworthy with our brothers.

01:17:31.480 That's not necessary.

01:17:32.600 And that it doesn't – it's not – there's a long Christian tradition of oath-taking.

01:17:37.960 And it's not saying that swearing an oath in and of itself is wrong, but that it is essentially traditionally a sacral promise and something that is of intense and grave seriousness.

01:17:51.080 And so if you take especially, like, the name of God or the Holy Scripture or some other sacred reality and you swear on that, I mean, that's a very serious promise that you're making.

01:18:04.320 And so it's not something to be made lightly.

01:18:07.120 On the opposite side of that is cursing as well.

01:18:10.500 Well, you know, it's a very common feature of Pharisee and rabbinic Judea culture is cursing this, that, and the other off and down many different ways.

01:18:21.120 Whereas for us, I mean, it's sinful.

01:18:23.760 You shouldn't curse people out.

01:18:25.360 It's in the sense of wishing malady upon someone in the classical way and not using vulgar language is not what I'm referring to, although you shouldn't use that either.

01:18:34.140 But specifically the idea of, you know, wishing ill will on someone in a spiritual sense or that kind of business.

01:18:41.860 Well, oath-taking is what the whole of government is based upon, is taking an oath on the Bible, the oath of office to serve the people, because you'd be punished by God if you broke that oath.

01:18:53.820 And people used to take that very, very seriously.

01:18:56.780 I mean, you can look back at Alfred the Great and he made the Vikings take oaths on their gods because it was seen that they would take this seriously if they were taking oaths on their people and taking oaths on their gods.

01:19:10.720 So you can see from that that, you know, the idea of people lying was anathema to them.

01:19:17.100 It was just something that really didn't happen because it was such a bad thing to do, whereas today people, you know, they lie all the time.

01:19:24.060 And the actual oath-taking was changed by the Jews in Britain so that they could get into government.

01:19:28.380 They lobbied the government to change the oath so that instead of the oath being to the God of the Bible to uphold Christian law, the oath was to something else so that the Jews could join.

01:19:40.480 And it meant that the government no longer had to uphold the laws of the Bible as well after the Jews were allowed to get in.

01:19:47.140 So oath-taking is a very important thing that everything is based upon.

01:19:50.460 And once you take away the belief in God, you take away the fear of punishment.

01:19:55.440 So people in office now, they have no fear of punishment if they break their oath because most of them don't believe in God anymore or they worship the Jews.

01:20:05.240 Oath-taking is a very, very interesting subject.

01:20:07.240 And we're going to get into more contentious issues next week.

01:20:11.200 You know, this sermon or this speech, it does get taken out of context by modern Christians.

01:20:19.180 So it's good to look back at it because, as I said, I think it's so applicable to nationalism.

01:20:24.740 Because what you had here, you had Jesus speaking to his disciples and he knew that there was going to be a movement.

01:20:31.460 There was going to be Christianity and they needed to know how to treat one another.

01:20:35.800 And this advice that's been given, this is the way that we should be treating other nationalists.

01:20:43.120 This is the way, you know, we should not be having feuds amongst one another.

01:20:47.560 We should not be having grudges against one another.

01:20:50.100 And it's just common sense.

01:20:51.780 And it's not meant to apply to everybody else.

01:20:54.880 It's not meant to apply to Muslims.

01:20:56.700 We're not supposed to be not defending ourselves against Muslims.

01:21:01.000 But what we're not supposed to be doing is having grudges against our own people.

01:21:07.160 And, you know, we're all in this same fight together.

01:21:09.780 We're trying to prevent white genocide.

01:21:11.580 And we really should not be fighting amongst one another.

01:21:14.020 And that's the general drift of this whole speech.

01:21:18.280 Because it was, too, this burgeoning new movement.

01:21:21.720 And it was said specifically to his disciples.

01:21:23.740 This is how they treat one another.

01:21:26.040 And also the converts that they made.

01:21:28.960 And this is why it was a success.

01:21:31.280 Because they stuck to it.

01:21:33.460 And, as I say, this is from Matthew chapter 5.

01:21:36.300 And we're right the way up to verse 38.

01:21:39.060 And these are now the important ones.

01:21:42.320 Verse 38.

01:21:43.180 Ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.

01:21:48.820 But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil.

01:21:52.760 But whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

01:21:59.300 And I'll just point out that I take this to mean, where he says, you have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.

01:22:05.620 That is directly referring back to Exodus, where the laws of the land are given.

01:22:12.340 So what it is saying there is, this is the law of the land.

01:22:15.720 An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.

01:22:17.800 There must be justice.

01:22:19.220 If somebody murders, then they must hang.

01:22:22.620 Blood for blood.

01:22:23.640 That is the law of the land.

01:22:24.680 But then where he says, where I say unto you, that ye resist not evil, that whosoever smites thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

01:22:32.900 He is speaking specifically to those disciples and this movement, saying, if somebody insults your honour, which is what smiting someone on the right cheek is, it's tantamount to a challenge to a jewel.

01:22:44.020 In actual fact, it became a challenge to a jewel.

01:22:46.280 You would strike someone on the cheek with a handkerchief, and that meant you were challenging them to a jewel because it was an insult to your honour.

01:22:52.580 He is saying, turn the other cheek.

01:22:55.140 Don't have a fight to the death over it.

01:22:58.180 If you get, try not to get angry amongst one another.

01:23:01.580 If somebody does you harm that is in the movement, don't do harm back.

01:23:07.040 Because if we do, we will all fall out, and the movement won't succeed.

01:23:11.180 That's the way that I interpret this.

01:23:14.640 Florian, what are your views on it?

01:23:17.800 Yeah, that's definitely the case.

01:23:19.240 I think that we have to go back and set a few things with context, as always, when we discuss Holy Scripture.

01:23:24.560 Number one, it's important to remind our listeners that this whole exposition, this sermon, Christ is purposely putting himself up as this new Moses, this new lawgiver.

01:23:35.680 But it's important to understand that this is the one who gave the law to Moses in the beginning, in Exodus.

01:23:41.880 This is the one who Moses speaks to.

01:23:43.400 It's the one who he sees on top of Mount Sinai.

01:23:48.360 Jesus Christ is the lawgiver.

01:23:50.480 It's not some separate God.

01:23:52.200 And that's why he's placing himself specifically in this archetype, because those of his disciples who have started to come to believe in his divinity will understand this.

01:24:01.820 And those who see him as a prophet understand this archetypal mode that he's setting himself in.

01:24:07.600 And that's why he's quoting the law of Moses that he gave to Moses, and he is basically expanding and completing it.

01:24:15.780 And that's why he begins in his discourse by saying that the law shall not pass away, not one jot or tittle.

01:24:23.460 So returning to the question of turning the other cheek and so on, in the ancient Mediterranean world, in classical ancient societies in general, honor for men was the paramount social virtue.

01:24:41.600 And the way that your honor was acquired or defended was through the mode of challenge and response.

01:24:47.180 So you had a certain honor or glory or doxa, social standing within your group, your king group, your nation, your city, your area, and so on.

01:24:59.100 And this honor was acquired and defended by engaging in challenges with men of higher or lower honor than you.

01:25:06.880 And so, you know, if somebody who had a lower level of honor than you came and did you a slight or something like this, it would be extremely common for men to do all sorts of things to avenge their honor.

01:25:20.500 And if you had an enemy, say, who had totally dishonored you and made you look really stupid, oftentimes the only way you could avenge your honor would be by murder.

01:25:29.160 You'd have to kill him.

01:25:30.220 It's the only way that the debt could be settled.

01:25:32.340 And so what we see throughout the whole course of the Gospels is that Jesus is constantly getting into these challenge and response duels of honor.

01:25:43.200 Now, it was quite clearly seen in the ancient world that these kind of social battlings, these kind of verbal duels, these are a stand-in for violence.

01:25:52.860 And that once the bonds of kinship and so on break down, usually it would turn into open violence.

01:25:58.980 And so when we see Jesus tangling with the Pharisees and making them all look stupid, this is exactly the dynamic that's going on.

01:26:07.480 He's publicly humiliating and dishonoring them, even though they're the ones who have all of this honor as, you know, the heads and the rabbis of this society.

01:26:16.960 And so what Jesus is saying to his apostles is that when your personal enemies and your kinsmen and so on, you know, dishonor you and try to challenge you to a duel and provoke you over things which really aren't of any consequence in terms of gross justice.

01:26:35.700 That you should turn the other cheek.

01:26:38.240 You shouldn't allow yourself to be involved in, you know, family feuds and blood oaths and duels that go on, you know, dozens of years where you murder each other's family members, this kind of business, which was extremely common in ancient societies.

01:26:52.340 So this is directly what Jesus is speaking to.

01:26:54.620 He's not saying that you can't defend yourself.

01:26:57.460 You know, that's absurd.

01:26:58.680 He tells his apostles to go out and buy swords because, you know, his apostles, his warband carried around swords for a reason.

01:27:07.460 Jesus has placed himself very purposefully in this role as the prophet at the head of an entourage of a warband or a manor bond.

01:27:14.860 He's looked at as being this King David-like figure.

01:27:17.240 And King David had this famous retinue known as the Hezekiah, which were basically great warriors and scholars and sages and saintly men who were his friends, his entourage would accompany him around when he would go out into battle or engage in proceedings at court and so forth.

01:27:35.560 And so this is all contextual information that would have been immediately understood to the first century hearer of the sermon.

01:27:42.220 But for us, we need to, we need to divulge it.

01:27:46.820 We need to make this obvious because so much of the dissection we have around the scripture is because people don't frame it culturally in a culturally appropriate anthropological setting.

01:27:59.080 I think we can distill it down and apply it to nationalism by saying put the nation's needs above the needs of the individual.

01:28:08.420 That's what he's saying there.

01:28:09.900 An insult to your honour.

01:28:12.380 Don't have a fight with, you know, your friends, your brethren over it.

01:28:18.040 Don't fall out over it.

01:28:19.500 Just accept it and move on.

01:28:22.140 Put the good of the nation above the good of the individual.

01:28:25.460 It's the same principles in nationalism, I think, that are being put across here.

01:28:31.000 Verse 40.

01:28:32.980 And if any man will sue thee at the law and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

01:28:40.320 Now, how would you, how would you take that as meaning there, Florian?

01:28:47.140 What would you take that as meaning?

01:28:48.460 Because I would have thought, you know, you want to try to avoid being taken to court at all costs because you are going to, you are going to lose even, even more if you go to court.

01:28:57.240 So what he's saying there is just give up something else instead rather than going to court.

01:29:04.260 But it says there if he will sue thee at the law.

01:29:06.720 So he said earlier, didn't he, don't go to court.

01:29:10.940 You know, just give them whatever they ask for and avoid going to the court.

01:29:14.580 Do you think he's reinforcing that here?

01:29:18.240 Yeah, that's part of it.

01:29:19.440 Another part of it is that a lot of the commandments which he's giving are species of malicious compliance.

01:29:24.820 And if you look at his engagements with the Pharisees, a lot of the times the answers that Jesus gives are these kind of perfect answers, which are ambiguous enough to make the Pharisees look stupid, but are also able to avoid the traps that he's given.

01:29:40.480 Like when they hand him the coin, he says, render unto Caesar what is due to Caesar, render unto God what is due to God.

01:29:46.740 And so in a court of law, if you deroged yourself, this was considered to be extremely embarrassing from the perspective of the law court.

01:29:57.100 It was kind of disrespectful to the law court.

01:29:59.020 And so what Jesus is saying is that if men come after you specifically in the context of like your brothers in the church that come after you and try to extort you and so on, it's better to have the dignity of your honor and poverty and to humiliate them than to be covetous over physical goods.

01:30:24.100 And he's also speaking directly to the apostles who are basically living this, you know, nomadic, you know, life with very few possessions in the, with Jesus Christ.

01:30:35.820 And so fundamentally, yeah, it returns to his previous statement that, you know, you don't want to be involved in legal disputes or it is allegorically speaking as well of the heart with your brothers and sisters.

01:30:49.960 You don't want to have to go to the court of law.

01:30:52.260 Well, I think the next one is a good one as well.

01:30:57.500 It says, whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

01:31:03.500 And verse 42, give to him that asketh thee and from him that would borrow of thee, turn not thou away.

01:31:10.720 So if your brother is asking you for help, then do what you can to help him.

01:31:15.940 Do double what you can to help him.

01:31:18.180 If everybody did this, then, you know, we would have success.

01:31:22.360 We'd live in a perfect world because, again, this is talking about the kingdom of heaven here on earth.

01:31:27.740 If somebody asks you for help, then you should help them.

01:31:30.520 If your white brother asks you for help, you should help him.

01:31:32.960 And I think the second part of this verse where it says, give to him that asketh thee and from him that would borrow of thee, turn not thou away.

01:31:41.480 I mean, this ties in with no usury.

01:31:43.520 If somebody wants to borrow from you, you know, and you think you can afford to, then you should lend them it.

01:31:50.480 You shouldn't be trying to profit from it.

01:31:52.060 You shouldn't be trying to make a profit from the misfortune of your brother, you know, of your brother nationalist.

01:31:59.220 We should, you know, it would be good if we could set up, if we had enough of us to set up banking that didn't have interest on it, that could help people out.

01:32:09.140 Philanthropic causes for white people and nationalists.

01:32:13.440 I mean, that's what it's saying here.

01:32:14.660 We need to help one another out.

01:32:16.760 I mean, you can't make yourself happy, but the only thing you can do is make other people happy.

01:32:21.740 And if everybody was going around trying to make other people happy, you know, we would be euphoric.

01:32:26.960 We really would be, because that's the way that the world works.

01:32:30.340 And this is the way that Christendom was built, was by people following these laws and doing what they could for one another.

01:32:37.620 And the rich people were obliged to help out the poor.

01:32:41.040 And they saw the poor as being of benefit to them because it gave them the chance to help them out.

01:32:46.300 And because they were helping them out, that improved their entire, you know, their well-being.

01:32:52.720 Because if you help somebody out, then, you know, you feel good about it.

01:32:56.400 And you're supposed to feel good about it because we're supposed to be working together as a nation, working together as a race to advance our causes.

01:33:04.480 And, again, this is building the kingdom of heaven.

01:33:07.140 This isn't utopia.

01:33:08.760 This isn't some fake communist idea.

01:33:11.900 This works.

01:33:12.880 This is what built Christendom.

01:33:15.140 This is what built our civilization, was going along with these laws.

01:33:18.200 And this is why it was such a, you know, such a special sermon.

01:33:22.380 This is why, you know, Joseph Goebbels would read it and meditate upon it because it was so important to them.

01:33:29.040 So, you know, I really like those two verses, Florian.

01:33:32.180 You know, this is, we should try to help people out.

01:33:34.540 If people ask for help, help them.

01:33:36.860 Look for ways that you can help, especially within nationalism.

01:33:40.920 Yeah, absolutely.

01:33:42.040 And these verses, I think, expand a lot on some of the ambiguity of the previous ones.

01:33:46.020 Because, for instance, when in verse 40, when it says, if any man will, excuse me, 41, whoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

01:33:54.840 Well, this is speaking specifically of the Roman law, which said that a Roman soldier could compel any citizen of the empire to walk a mile or to carry his equipment one mile and no longer.

01:34:06.700 And so when Jesus is being taken to the site of his crucifixion and carrying his cross, and we see that Simon of Cyrene is coming out from the country and they're forcing him to carry the cross of Christ, this is exactly the legislation that they're enacting.

01:34:21.880 But now what would happen is if you were compelled by a Roman soldier, say, to walk a mile, and now for the Jews, they consider this to be extremely defiling, degrading, you know, to touch something, some unclean, you know, goyish, you know, equipment would be defiling it, humiliating.

01:34:42.840 And so what Jesus is saying is that if you go with him an extra mile, it's a type of malicious compliance, because a Roman soldier could actually get into trouble if, you know, his officers knew that he had been forcing people to go double the regulation.

01:34:59.720 And it would be humiliating for him.

01:35:02.080 He might not choose you in the future to act as, you know, a forced laborer if he knew that you were going to do these kind of clever things to make him look stupid.

01:35:10.540 But it also, of course, as you're saying, Sven, it's speaking to the need for magnanimous charity, that in the kingdom of heaven, God's love is like the sun, as it shines on us even in our sins and our corruption.

01:35:25.340 And that to whatever degree we can emulate that in our lives, that we can provide comfort and succor and warmth in a rational, not, you know, constructive way, even in spite of our brothers and sisters' own corruption and our own corruption, that we treat our kinsmen and our fellows with amiable kindness and charity, essentially.

01:35:51.920 Very important, very important, isn't it, the way that's been changed today and twisted out of all recognition.

01:36:00.060 Well, the next one, this is probably the most famous one, verse 43.

01:36:03.920 You have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy.

01:36:09.620 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.

01:36:19.680 And the really important thing about this that most modern Christians forget to do is where it says in verse 43, you have heard that it hath been said, it's directly referring to a verse in the Old Testament that commands us to love our neighbors and hate our enemies.

01:36:35.840 But it also defines exactly who it means by thy neighbor.

01:36:40.960 And the verse is Leviticus 19.18.

01:36:43.400 It says, Thou shalt not avenge nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

01:36:53.140 I am the Lord.

01:36:53.900 So it's making it quite clear there that where he's talking about love thy neighbor, it means your neighbor from the children of thy people.

01:37:03.000 And thus, where he says, love your enemies, he means your enemies among your own people.

01:37:08.180 And again, he's talking to the apostles here.

01:37:11.200 He's talking to them when they have people that they've fallen out among.

01:37:15.640 That's the enemies that it means.

01:37:17.140 Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.

01:37:23.560 And that's talking about the children of thy people.

01:37:26.780 If you look at the National Socialists, when they took power, there were six million communists and they were all enemies of the National Socialists.

01:37:35.340 Six million of them.

01:37:36.560 Did Hitler put them all in camps and execute them?

01:37:39.720 No, he didn't.

01:37:40.380 Because they were part of his own people, even though they were his enemies, they were part of the German people.

01:37:47.840 And those six million communists became six million National Socialists within a couple of years because he didn't just do what he did for the National Socialists.

01:37:58.400 He did what he did for the whole of Germany, for all the German people.

01:38:01.740 So everybody in Germany had their well-being increased because it was for everybody.

01:38:09.000 It was for the nation, whether they were enemies to him or not.

01:38:12.580 They were of his own blood.

01:38:13.900 So he was he was, you know, doing doing what he was doing for them.

01:38:18.080 And that's what this is saying here.

01:38:19.260 It's not saying love Islam.

01:38:20.920 It's not saying love the Jews, not saying love the invasion of Europe.

01:38:24.720 I mean, we're supposed to be fighting against that.

01:38:26.940 We're supposed to hate the enemies of God with a perfect hatred.

01:38:29.660 I mean, look at the Psalms, King David, that we mentioned earlier, all those Psalms about fighting against the enemies of God.

01:38:36.320 It's not saying, you know, love Islam, love the Muslims.

01:38:40.240 It's saying love our ideological opponents that are of our own race and pray for them that they will turn around and join us and see the truth and learn the truth.

01:38:52.420 We're not supposed to curse them.

01:38:54.180 You know, that's how I take this.

01:38:56.140 That's what I take this to mean.

01:38:57.180 I know that E. Michael Jones looks at it as we can learn a lot from our enemies, from what our enemies do to us.

01:39:04.080 He tends to expand it a little more than I think Jesus actually meant there, where he's talking about the children of your people.

01:39:12.220 But this is this.

01:39:13.360 These two verses are very often really badly taken out of context.

01:39:17.700 And you hear a lot of people criticizing Christianity because of this.

01:39:21.100 But it is specifically talking about the children of thy people.

01:39:24.880 And that's all.

01:39:26.040 It's very exclusive.

01:39:28.400 Right.

01:39:28.960 I mean, St. Philoret of Moscow very famously said,

01:39:31.260 Love your motherland, fight the enemies of your nation, and hate the enemies of God.

01:39:37.400 So, I mean, again, it's only in kind of this disgusting, sick, twisted modern world where there's just so – there's no context whatsoever.

01:39:46.880 People could interpret this verse to mean that we're just – everybody is supposed to be our friend.

01:39:52.080 And we're never supposed to have any enemies, and the enemies that we do have, we can only do nice things to them.

01:39:59.100 We can never fight them and try to stop them from engaging in wicked actions.

01:40:03.440 Just certainly not what it's saying.

01:40:05.600 It is, as Sven has explained.

01:40:08.540 Speaking of our brethren, our personal enemies, those within our own group, I mean, and also to a certain degree, it is talking about our enemies outside of our group.

01:40:18.260 But we should pray for them.

01:40:19.420 We should – that they stop, that they convert.

01:40:22.900 We should pray that they come to obey the will of God and so forth.

01:40:26.760 But that doesn't mean that we allow them to do evil or we legitimize their wickedness in any way.

01:40:32.720 One of the other kind of more obscure reasons that we pray for our enemies is because it's good for us.

01:40:38.160 That oftentimes when we have sort of a personal rivalry or a feud with someone or we have a petty enemy, that take – they have an extremely great hold on our soul.

01:40:48.820 So anger and hatred and jealousy and these things can really take – our passions can take control of us.

01:40:57.420 And so one of the things that happens is that when you pray for your enemies, you actually diminish that hold that they have over you.

01:41:03.800 You give yourself freedom and autonomy from enslavement to these kind of interpersonal rivalries and passions and so on.

01:41:10.580 Yeah, the desire – I was going to say the desire for vengeance can really – you know, it can really make people bitter.

01:41:16.680 It can really twist people up.

01:41:17.880 This is why sometimes you see – you know, we make fun of them.

01:41:21.020 But sometimes you see these people saying, well, I forgive the, you know, the Negro that raped and killed my whole family.

01:41:26.440 And the reason why they have to forgive them is because if they don't, they will be all twisted up with bitterness and they have to let go of it.

01:41:34.660 And I think that's part of it as well.

01:41:36.100 I know we mock these people that say things like that, but they have to do it for their own good because otherwise they will just turn out to be really cynical, wicked, twisted, bitter people.

01:41:46.200 And again, this ties in with this spiritual battle that we mustn't become like the enemy.

01:41:50.660 You know, that's why the enemy does this.

01:41:52.780 He wants us to be like the enemy, make us like him.

01:41:55.560 And one of those ways is if we get twisted up with a desire for vengeance, bitterness.

01:42:01.740 I find it hard to think if I have bad feeling between myself and anybody else.

01:42:06.100 It just, you know, impinges on my ability to do things.

01:42:11.460 I have to be at peace with people.

01:42:13.180 I can't have enemies of my own race.

01:42:16.500 I don't want to be a bitter, twisted person.

01:42:18.600 So you have to, you know, just drop these things.

01:42:21.220 It's all on the same theme of working together amongst your people and not holding these grudges, really, isn't it?

01:42:28.240 Yeah, absolutely.

01:42:30.740 I mean, and he says this really directly in the next verse, which I think, again, context is so important.

01:42:36.420 None of this is meant to be understood without the fullness of grounding in sacred tradition.

01:42:42.620 There's just no way that you could even begin to make heads or tails of this if you just pluck it out,

01:42:47.060 unintegrated and unorganically compiled with the rest of sacred scripture and holy tradition from which it comes.

01:42:54.000 It's what he says in verse 45,

01:42:56.520 And so this is the whole theme of this.

01:43:26.520 of the Sermon on the Mount is that in the kingdom of heaven, we have direct interface with God's love, his light, his sun.

01:43:34.500 This is what we're talking about, his grace.

01:43:36.280 This is all synonyms.

01:43:37.700 And so that the life of God in the kingdom of heaven, the internal uncreated reality of the Holy Trinity,

01:43:43.920 which is what we're trying to enter into by becoming sons and daughters of God for holy baptism.

01:43:48.840 This is the Christian life that we struggle towards.

01:43:53.220 And part of living that life of magnanimousness, of charity, of goodness and of faith is that we do set ourselves above the standards of the world

01:44:02.640 and that we understand that even though we have these intense desires and feelings and rivalries,

01:44:08.760 this is ultimately passing.

01:44:10.680 And that what should motivate us in this life are the higher principles.

01:44:15.460 So even with our enemies, you know, we can, our motivation when we fight our enemies should not be our own personal rivalry,

01:44:21.800 but justice or defense of ourselves or our people or some other higher principle that motivates us towards dispassionate conflict,

01:44:31.760 where it's not about the ego or about personal gain, but about the necessities of justice and the law of God and our own integrity and so forth.

01:44:41.360 And so, yeah, I mean, this is really the essence.

01:44:48.320 And once you get to the end, I think a lot of the ambiguity within makes a lot more sense.

01:44:53.860 I think also where he says, you know, on the just and on the unjust alike,

01:44:59.580 the sun rises on the evil and on the good and the rain on the just and on the unjust.

01:45:04.600 I think that's saying there, you know, even the unjust, bad things happen to them.

01:45:10.840 If you look at the sun as being good and the rain as being bad or, you know, bad things happen to everyone.

01:45:16.320 You know, you have to really walk a mile in somebody else's shoes to understand why they are the way that they are.

01:45:22.540 And if they're part of your race and part of their and part of your nation, then, you know, they're pretty much the same as you.

01:45:29.720 It's just whatever they've been through in life is what is is what has shaped them.

01:45:34.260 You know, we have to understand that.

01:45:36.240 Take the rough with the smooth and realize that, you know, not everybody is going to be exactly the same as us,

01:45:43.040 but they may have different reasons for why they are the way that they are.

01:45:47.980 And we have to try and make these exceptions for the good of the nation and for the good of our people

01:45:52.700 and get on in the organizations that we're in and the activism that we're involved in.

01:45:57.780 You know, you have to try not to fall out and not bear grudges.

01:46:02.640 You know, I think it ties in a lot with nationalism, this Sermon on the Mount,

01:46:08.160 which is why it's such a great shame when people attack it, mainly over this turn the other cheek stuff that's in there.

01:46:16.480 But hopefully, I think we've managed to explain it in in the way that it was intended,

01:46:23.440 especially when you're bringing up the context of the time there, Florian, as well.

01:46:27.860 I don't know if you want to add anything else to this before we before we finish with the Sermon at the Mount.

01:46:33.300 I don't think so.

01:46:37.540 Maybe if we can just very briefly discuss just like scriptural interpretation culture and context and stuff.

01:46:46.940 Unfortunately, because of what the Protestant Reformation and all of this in the West,

01:46:52.780 there really is this idea that the holy scriptures can just be kind of picked up and you can just read it.

01:46:58.120 And if you just have faith and the Holy Spirit will reveal to you the true meaning of the words.

01:47:03.300 Now, I think that's true in a certain sense, but it's also really it's an extremely dumb idea

01:47:09.320 because obviously people get radically different conclusions by various sincere readings of the of the text.

01:47:17.020 And so the critical the critical ability to interpret the text.

01:47:22.120 I mean, of course, purity of heart, I would say, but you also actually need to understand the context.

01:47:27.780 And so the best education I ever received in interpretation of the Holy Gospels began basically as a discussion on the cultural anthropology of the ancient world,

01:47:39.500 because if you don't understand the way ancient the ancient Greco Roman civilization functioned and their norms and the context in which Jesus was preaching

01:47:48.880 and everything that was set up before he came, that he stands at the end of this huge tradition,

01:47:55.360 there's no way you can make heads or tails of the vast majority of what he says.

01:47:59.440 And unfortunately, we live in an age where anybody can just kind of say whatever they want about anything and people believe them.

01:48:06.540 Now, I would recommend people read Flavius Josephus if they want to learn about the about the context.

01:48:12.800 I mean, it goes in a great deal, a great detail of the Greco Roman Empire and the countries that are all around and the customs.

01:48:19.940 It's a really fantastic book to read, collection of books to actually read.

01:48:24.700 But one of the problems with this, I think, is this taking verses out one verse at a time.

01:48:29.160 I mean, the people that criticize that verse about turning the other cheek, they will just pull that out and they and they won't pull out the bit beforehand where it says you may have heard.

01:48:40.340 And they certainly won't look back at the original verse that says this applies to the children of thy people.

01:48:46.600 And again, if you're just taking out that one verse at random, you'll miss a bit at the beginning where it says he was talking to his disciples.

01:48:54.940 Everybody else had gone away.

01:48:56.320 This was meant specifically for his in-group of people, his inner circle.

01:49:01.380 This wasn't meant for everybody.

01:49:03.860 And what the evangelicals and a lot of the modern day Christians do is they will just pull a verse out at random and base an entire doctrine on it.

01:49:14.620 And they won't even read the chapter to get the context, let alone look at the center bit in the Bible, which gives you the cross references.

01:49:23.580 I mean, this is why the Bible is a holy book, because it's all interlinked and cross-referenced.

01:49:28.320 Everything that's said in there ties in with other things that are said.

01:49:32.400 And if it contradicted itself, then it wouldn't be holy.

01:49:35.220 And this is a book that was written over hundreds of years by different authors in different places.

01:49:40.980 I mean, they were all different people, but it's the same Holy Spirit.

01:49:43.680 So that's what makes a book a holy book, because it doesn't contradict itself.

01:49:48.420 Because God cannot lie.

01:49:50.000 If God is the truth, then what he says in the Old Testament, that stands for all time.

01:49:54.800 So Jesus said, you know, I'm not here to change the law.

01:49:57.840 He couldn't change the law, because if he did change the law, then he would not be the truth.

01:50:02.520 Because what he spoke in the Old Testament, suddenly he could change it.

01:50:07.260 He can't change it.

01:50:08.360 And we used to look at things that way as well.

01:50:10.380 I mean, I spoke a bit about this in the last episode, I think, how kings, when they made law, that could not be changed.

01:50:17.420 When Abraham made his blessings, that could not be changed.

01:50:21.120 Once something is said, you cannot take that back.

01:50:24.440 And that was taken so seriously in the ancient world.

01:50:27.700 The idea of lying, it just really didn't come into people's heads to do anything like that.

01:50:33.200 This is why you don't have fiction.

01:50:34.880 You know, you have myth, but you certainly don't have fiction.

01:50:37.460 You don't have novels and fantasies like we have now.

01:50:40.500 They lived in the real world, and the real world was based upon the truth.

01:50:44.140 Jesus said he was the way, the truth, and the life.

01:50:47.480 So, you know, that's another thing that you can point out to these Ziochristians,

01:50:51.360 Ziochristians, when they come out with just one verse at a time.

01:50:54.780 You say, look, you know, you need to read the whole chapter, and you need to read the cross-references,

01:50:59.340 not just take that one verse in isolation from everything else.

01:51:05.060 And again, I would advise people that do want to learn about the context to read the books of Flavius Josephus.

01:51:11.360 Florian, thank you very much.

01:51:13.800 Recommendation to it.

01:51:14.620 And additionally, anybody who wants to learn more about cultural anthropological insights can read the book

01:51:22.500 The New Testament World by Bruce J. Molina,

01:51:25.220 which is a great introduction into the concepts that we were discussing on this episode.

01:51:30.300 Excellent.

01:51:30.860 Thank you very much for coming on today, Florian.

01:51:32.580 I think that's been a really good series of four episodes that we've done there.

01:51:35.940 Thank you very much.

Mysterium Fasces - December 02, 2023

Understanding The Sermon On The Mount — Florian Geyer + Sven Lonshanks

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